Chapter Text
Itadori Sukuna, in all his glory, stood in Shoko’s doorway and blinked down at her as if he was the one surprised to see her there. “I’m looking for Gojo’s room.”
“You found it.” Shoko glanced over her shoulder at the shipwreck site that was Satoru’s side of the room. “He’s not here right now.”
“I know. He’s in my room.” He frowned straight over her head at the shipwreck site. “Didn’t know his roommate was a chick.”
It tracked that star basketball player Itadori Sukuna would be baffled by a co-ed living situation. Something something heteronormative athletic sphere, meathead jock. Hot one though. Goodness. “He’s in your room?”
“I’m Geto’s roommate.”
“Oh.” Shoko hadn’t realized Satoru’s boyfriend was cool enough to be Itadori Sukuna’s roommate, but Satoru was big shit himself, in his own nerdy way, so it made sense. She pulled out her phone to see if Satoru had messaged her about staying at Suguru’s. Five texts and two missed calls from him. “You sexiled?”
“Yeah…” His eyes, still on Satoru’s bed, narrowed and he chewed the inside of his cheek. “He told me to go sleep in his room.”
Shoko’s gaze drifted over the top of her phone and into the middle distance. No wonder Itadori Sukuna was so alarmed by her gender. She’d been unfair to him. He’d apparently chosen to room with a gay man, after all.
Satoru’s messages, very long and full of praying hand, crying face emojis, promised that Itadori was not as scary as he looked, but he was being a little bitch about getting sexiled, and Satoru just reeaaaally wanted to stay the night with Suguru since it was their eighteen month anniversary. Shoko rolled her eyes. It wasn’t that Satoru didn’t care about her safety. Gay boys were still boys, and Satoru was a gorgeous 6’4” rich boy with a black belt. That a large, strange man might pose some risk to her sleeping body that he wouldn’t pose to Satoru’s registered on the same level as pickpockets and car wrecks—theoretically possible, yet he still abandoned his electronics on cafe tables and took the highway at triple digit speeds. Why oh why had she ever decided to room with a man?
“I can…” Sukuna winced. Finally looked at her again. “…probably find somewhere else.”
“Where do you usually go?”
“Uh…” his eyes wandered away again and he pushed his bangs back, a motion that was just as much head as hand. “Usually I have tinder dates and stuff I can crash with.”
“Fresh out of situationships, huh?”
He scowled. “You have any you could go stay with?”
“No. That’s not something I do.” She backed deeper into the room. “Are you going to touch me in my sleep?”
“No!” He put up both hands. “No, I did my consent module or whatever. I’m not one of those guys. Not that… you have any reason to believe me.” His lowered the hands—very large hands—to her doorframe and pushed himself backwards into the hallway. He looked down it like somebody he knew would pop out of a room and offer him another bed. His forearms between his signature wrist tattoos and his pushed-up hoodie sleeves flexed. Veins stood out under his tan skin. Were his nails painted?
The way he’d answered that didn’t set off any red flags. Sounded like the idea alarmed him, but he wasn’t mad that she’d asked. Shoko shrugged. “You can stay. I’ve still got some studying to do though. Hope you don’t mind the light.”
“Nah, I can sleep through anything.” All six-something, two-hundred-ish pounds of him sauntered through the door. He didn’t look any bigger than Satoru, but Satoru’s was a mass she was used to. At five-six, Shoko was by no means short, but these giants towering over her all the damn time made that easy to forget.
“You sure?” Itadori Sukuna said as he closed the door behind him. “I could go… find a couch or something.”
“It’s fine.” Nobody roomed with Gojo Satoru if they couldn’t roll with the punches. It would probably be fine. Odds were that Itadori wouldn’t risk a fallout with Satoru by trying anything untoward, even if he was a creep. “I’m Shoko, by the way.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Shoko, cool. I’m Sukuna.”
“I know.”
Shoko didn’t say a word as Sukuna pushed all of Satoru’s laundry onto the floor and sniffed his pillow. She had o-chem to worry about.
At nine thirty, Sukuna sauntered out of the room and came back minutes later in a loose tank-top and boxers, toothbrush in hand. He crawled into Satoru’s bed, put his back to her, and started snoring. Athlete. Right. He’d probably be up and tripping over Satoru’s shit at five.
In the lamplight, she eyed the elegant tattoos wrapping his thick arms and snaking down his muscular back through his thin shirt. His pink hair feathered over Satoru’s fancy gazillion-thread-count pillowcase. What a gorgeous thing he was. Tomorrow Satoru would act like he’d graciously bestowed him on her, and whine about how single she was, and she’d give him shit. She’d never admit to Satoru that she put down her pencil for nearly five minutes just to stare at Sukuna’s back. In the end, she was the one ogling him in his sleep.
Shoko smiled and picked her pencil back up.
Sukuna didn’t wake her at whatever ass-crack hour he had to get to practice, but Satoru did when he kicked the door open.
“Shokooo!” He yelled, and dove on top of her while she was still prying her eyes open. “How was he, huh? Pretty, right? Did he stay in your bed?”
“You’re so predictable.” She groaned and put her arms around his shoulders. “No, he stayed on his side of the room where he belonged.”
Satoru clicked his tongue and squeezed her. “This is why you’re still single, Shoko. You squander your opportunities.”
“Pfft. Ready and willing is actually not the vibe I want to put off around the big scary man with free private access to my sleeping body, you moron.”
“Only if you’re not willing,” Satoru grumbled. “C’mon, Shoko. Men are easy.”
“Says the ten.”
Satoru squealed into her shoulder. “You think I’m a ten?”
“I think you’re a two. You’re the one who’s always bragging about the damn modeling contract.”
Satoru huffed and sat up, propped on his hip between her and the wall. “I knew your taste was shit. Don’t tell me you prefer those awful sixes you date. Is that why you didn’t seduce the hot man?”
Shoko rubbed her hands over her eyes. “Satoru. I am a six.”
“No you aren’t.”
She squinted at him. “What am I then?”
He sniffed. “A two.”
Shoko snickered. “Right, so those sixes were actually a reach, you see.”
“No, no. Shoko, c’mon, you’re at least an eight.”
“I’m at most a seven.” She finally rolled out of bed. Before leaving, and without turning the lights on, Sukuna had made Satoru’s bed and put all his shit back on top of it. “Which is fine,” she said, cutting off his whining. “Surgeons don’t need to be tens. But sixes don’t take desperate swings at D1 basketball players. Even if I was into quick hook-ups with massive tattooed meatheads, which I’m not.”
“Sixes needn’t be so picky,” Satoru grumbled with a huff. “You’re selling yourself short, Shoko. You’re very cute.”
“Cute.”
“Very!”
“Fine, I’ll suck his dick next time.”
“That’s the spirit!”
Next time, Shoko opened the door and Sukuna greeted her with a flat, lipless grin. It had only been five days.
She snorted. “No luck on tinder?”
“Deleted it.”
“Uh oh.” She stepped aside to let him in. “Why’s that?”
“Just needed a break.” He shuffled past her wearing a knit sweater this time instead of a hoodie.
“Some cheerleader break your heart?”
He shot her a quick, narrow-eyed look. “Uh…”
“Sorry, am I stereotyping you?”
“Hah.” He plopped his backpack on the bed. “Yeah, how dare you. She wasn’t a cheerleader. Just… a sorority girl on the dance team…” he scrubbed a hand over his face.
“She perform at your games, buddy?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Wow, I really misjudged you.”
He huffed one more laugh and shook his head. “‘Kay, but she didn’t break my heart, you got that wrong. She and her friends started fighting over me and I became the villain somehow.”
“I’m sure you’re completely innocent,” said Shoko as she sat back down at her desk.
“Oh yeah, for sure. Completely.” He sighed. “Hence the break.”
“Very wise of you.”
“Uh-huh.” He pushed himself up onto Satoru’s bed, clean this time, and unzipped his bag. “I can see how you’re Gojo’s roommate now.”
Shoko tapped her pencil against the desk. She’d assumed that would be the end of the conversation. “Because I’m a little mean?”
He shot her a smirk so handsome, she wanted to crawl under her bed and hide. “Bet he can’t talk circles around you like he can with everybody else.”
Oh, how charming. No wonder he had sorority dancers fighting over him. “Wish I could say you were right,” she said. “Satoru’s ruthless.”
“Yeah, that’s true.” And with that he pulled out a tablet and started reading.
Five minutes slid by before Shoko stopped rereading the same two paragraphs in her textbook and actually managed to note something down that made sense. The middle-school self still surviving in the corners of her brain reared up and wondered how the sorority dancers would feel seeing a mousy STEM girly alone behind closed doors with their heartthrob basketball star. If she developed her first crush in two years on this hunk, she’d smother Satoru in his sleep.
Sukuna had arrived earlier this time. The clock ticked past 8:20 and Shoko had barely gotten through two pages. At 8:40, she took a bathroom break just to splash water on her face. Her hands trembled. In the mirror, her hair looked a little greasy and unkempt because she’d kept her hood up during class. That’s right, she’d meant to wash it tonight. Maybe after he went to sleep. Should she bring her clothes into the bathroom? Or just change behind her closet door? Would Sukuna think she was trying to clean up for him if she finger-brushed it into something less slovenly?
But when she got back, hair tidied, Sukuna had tipped sideways on Satoru’s bed and fallen asleep. His tablet had tumbled out of his hands. Shoko closed the door gently. She sat back down and gave herself a few minutes to ogle the half of his handsome face that wasn’t smashed into Satoru’s pillow. With that out of her system, she rushed through the rest of her studying.
Her shower took long enough for Sukuna to wake up, get ready for bed, and tuck himself in. Shoko had opted to dress in the bathroom after all, but he didn’t stir as she fussed around quietly and snuck into bed herself. It probably would have been fine.
“You have failed me again,” said Satoru when Shoko picked up the phone.
Shoko grinned. “Hm? How?”
Satoru huffed loudly into the receiver. “You said you’d suck his dick this time.”
“Oh god, you didn’t ask him about it, did you?”
“Suguru asked him if you sucked his dick and he said, ‘no, what the fuck is wrong with you.’”
“You know what? He’s alright for a guy on a sports scholarship.” Irritating Satoru was an unexpected plus of this arrangement. On the tails of a very enjoyable photography gen-ed with Utahime and Haibara, fueled by sleep deprivation hysteria, Shoko had a pep in her step that no amount of chilly weather and Satoru dramatics could bring down.
“Did you guys talk at least?”
Shoko tugged the sleeve of her jacket higher up on her phone hand to protect her fingers from the brisk wind. “We complained about you.”
“Phew! That’s progress.”
“It’s cute that you’re so invested in this match, Satoru, but I fear I’m not his type. He likes cheerleaders.”
“How do you know this?”
“Called him out for it.”
“Shoko.”
She swept her toe into a pebble and sent it skittering cheerfully down the sidewalk. “What?”
“Critiquing his taste in women is the opposite of sucking his dick.”
“Who said I was critiquing? I’m a girl’s girl, I’ll have you know.”
“But Shoko, you’re a STEM girly with brown hair. Cheerleaders are, like, your natural enemy.” She heard a heavy door creak open on his end. Sounded like one of the big ones on the academic buildings.
“Well I guess so, if I’m competing with them for baller penis. I’m afraid I’m going to lose that one, that’s all I’m saying.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. He’s had a pretty bad experience with the cheerleaders lately. Now’s your chance.”
“Right now, maybe,” she said. “Here he comes.”
“What?”
Up ahead, Sukuna’s towering frame and distinctive pink hair turned onto her sidewalk. “He just left the dining hall. We’re going to pass each other.”
Satoru gasped. “Suck his dick!”
“I’ll make you a bet. Hundred dollars says he doesn’t say hi to me.”
“He’ll nod at you,” said Satoru.
“What makes you think he’ll nod?”
“He always nods to me when I see him around.”
“Yeah, you.”
An elevator dinged on Satoru’s side. “I bet a hundred dollars he’ll at least nod.”
“Done. Aren’t you finished with class? What are you doing?”
“Oh, Suguru’s in the middle of a Student Socialist Union meeting right now. So I’m bringing him takeout truffle pasta with gold flakes from that tacky place downtown, and a bottle of champagne.”
Shoko cackled. “They’re going to guillotine you.”
“They’ll have to catch me first.”
“So I’ll be seeing Sukuna in our room again tonight, huh?”
“Or you’ll be seeing nothing but me all day every day for weeks.”
“Very possible.”
“Worth it.”
“Okay, I’m almost to our boy.”
Thirty or so paces away. Sukuna strode down the sidewalk, eyes on his phone. He wore an unfriendly glare that had become almost as signature to him as his tattoos. His coach once explained on national TV that it was just his resting face and should not provide any metric of team mentality. Still, Shoko couldn’t shake the feeling that if she was the one to initiate a hello, she’d get slapped.
Fifteen paces, Sukuna pocketed his phone. They made eye contact. Sukuna’s eyes flickered away. Shoko kept her head forward, phone pressed to her ear, face neutral. At the risk of looking like she was trying to catch his eye, she glanced sideways at him only enough to check if he’d acknowledge her again.
He didn’t. They passed each other with room to spare.
Shoko let her face crack into a massive, cheek-splitting grin. “Bitch,” she hissed into the phone. “He didn’t even look at me.”
“WHAT!”
“One hundred fucking dollars. Right now.”
“Are you kidding me?! I just spent so much money on gold leaf truffle pasta!”
“I’m changing directions to the coffee shop. There better be fresh money in my account by the time I get there.”
“Did he just not see you?”
“Oh he saw me. You know when you accidentally make eye contact with somebody and pretend your eyes were just kinda passing along?”
“Dammit,” Satoru hissed. “Fine. You deserve a hundred dollars for that bullshit treatment. Actually, bet it’s cuz you make him nervous.”
“Fuck off, dumbass. Nerdy girls do not make Itadori Sukuna nervous.”
Long sigh from Satoru. “I sent the money,” he groaned. “I gotta go, Shoko. My love awaits me.”
“Give him hell.”
“Hehehe.” Satoru hung up.
Shoko skipped off to the coffee shop and bought herself a giant fancy coffee and a chocolate muffin.
Shoko took a very long, very deep breath before knocking on Suguru’s door. It opened a moment later. Sukuna towered over her. Tight black t-shirt, thin gold chain around his neck, gray sweatpants. He gave her a crooked smile and stepped aside. “Come in.”
“Thanks…” She shuffled in. Suguru’s room was new to her. Just as small as hers and Satoru’s, but without her neglect or his sheer volume. Also without Satoru’s overenthusiastic decorating. Suguru had a nice, if minimal, space. A sculptural lamp and forest wall art matched his dark green comforter. Sukuna’s side had bare white walls.
Sukuna strolled back to his desk, but angled his chair out towards Suguru’s side of the room before sitting down. “I heard I made you some easy money today.”
She grinned. “Yeah, thanks for that.”
He sighed and dropped his head to push his hand back through his hair. “I feel like an asshole.”
“Hey, don’t sweat it. Satoru’s just psychotically friendly and has skewed expectations.” She pulled out the chair at Suguru’s desk, lined up right next to Sukuna’s.
Sukuna’s tattooed arm rested on the back of his chair, twirling a pen in his stylish black fingernails. A chunky, blingy ring wrapped his fourth finger. Looked too ostentatious to be his high school class ring, but what the hell did Shoko know about men’s jewelry? “I’ll say hi next time,” he said.
“What an honor.”
He lifted an eyebrow as he picked his headphones up. “You could have said hi to me, you know.”
“With that mean mug of yours?”
“Kay, fair.” He smirked. “Maybe I thought you were going to be mean.”
She laughed. “I wouldn’t dare. You know where I sleep.”
He grinned as he put his headphones back on.
Shoko dragged all her stuff out onto Suguru’s desk. Being friends with Satoru had some benefits it seemed. In high school, a boy half as good-looking as Itadori Sukuna once sat at her lab table. She’d barely had the guts to even look at him all year. A mutual acquaintance told her afterward that the guy thought she hated him, which was at least preferable to him mistaking her shyness for a crush. To be perceived by the gorgeous just felt mortifying.
Satoru had cured her of that affliction. He’d been terrifying to look at at first, when he waltzed into Chem 0100 freshman year, scanned the room, and picked the seat next to “the girl who looked like she could handle him.” Where he got that impression, she couldn’t say, especially with his people skills being what they were, but he’d been right. Two years later, Shoko could banter with intimidating athletes with movie-star faces.
Didn’t stop him from being a horrible distraction though. The indistinct whir of his music came through the headphones. His pen scratched over his notebook. Shoko wished she could focus with music on. The amount of problems she needed to do and chemical equations she needed to memorize this evening made it a terrible night to be jerked out of her usual environment. If only Satoru consulted her before engaging his boyfriend in a vigorous round of, ah, class struggle.
And then Sukuna packed up his stuff and started milling around the room, which just reminded her that she was invading his space. She had her back to him, but his footsteps vibrated through the floor as he paced around, folding clothes, shuffling through his things. Shoko rubbed her eyes and put her forehead down on her notebook.
The steps came up behind her. A sharp tap against the surface of her desk made her turn her head. She came face to face with that chunky ring. Chock-full of diamonds it was, sparkling on his big, tan fingers. She was probably supposed to ask about it. She wanted to, but suspected he was preconditioned to equate that question with flirting. How many cheerleaders had he picked up in conversations that started with “what’s the ring for?”
Shoko slid her eyes skyward and noticed that his chest looked very big from underneath. He tilted his head and examined the problems on her computer screen.
“Hello,” she said.
“What subject?”
“Uh. Chemistry. I’m pre-med. You?”
“Literature.”
She blinked at him. “Really? Humanities?”
“That’s how I know Geto.”
“Huh.” She sat up again. “You a Marxist too?”
“Nah.”
“Thought you athletes were all business majors.”
He chuckled and moved away again. For such a big guy, he walked softly. Satoru shook the whole room when he lumbered around. “If I have to spend my downtime getting a degree, I might as well pick something interesting.”
“Those professors probably expect you to do the work though.”
“Now you’re stereotyping me,” he said. “I make straight As.”
“No shit. My bad.”
“S’fine.”
The conversation died again. Shoko chewed on her lip and prayed he’d go shower or something so she could focus. Her computer clock said she was running behind and he probably wouldn’t be in bed for hours.
“What kind of literature?” she asked. “You got a favorite?”
“Uh… Science fiction.”
“Oh nice! I thought you were going to say classic Russian literature or something.”
“At least you didn’t peg me as a Hemingway guy.”
“Not sure what that means.” The name sounded familiar anyway, in a high school required reading kind of way.
“But you know what being a Russian literature guy means?”
She spun half around in her seat. “I just know it’s very serious and dreary.”
Sukuna stood by the closet, hanging things up. He smirked. “Serious and dreary, huh? I’m guessing that the only shit you’ve read for fun since middle school was fairy smut.”
Shoko’s cheeks heated up. She had not read the fairy smut, if only because if Satoru saw it, she’d never hear the end of it. “Uh, no way,” she said. “It was Twilight.”
Sukuna’s smirk stretched wide enough to show some sharp-ass teeth. “Wow, really misjudged you,” he drawled. “You a cat person?”
Shoko sniffed. “Yes.”
“Knew it.”
“Fair play, fair play,” since they were in the business of making mildly rude assumptions about each other. “Got something against cats?”
He shrugged. “I’ve never seen the point.”
That struck her as odd. Not that he seemed like a cat person, but that’s what she would have guessed for some reason.
“Dog person?”
“Not really. Not a pet person I guess.”
“Oh. Okay.” Weird.
Sukuna put his back to her to hang the last item, then turned around again. He put his hands on his hips and blinked at the empty space at the end of the bed where the stack of clothes used to be. “Uh. I’m gonna. Go get a drink. Want anything?”
“No thanks, I got a water.” She pointed at her water bottle sitting on the edge of the desk.
“Cool.” Sukuna snatched his lanyard off the end of the bed and disappeared.
A trip to the vending machine took him forty-five minutes, so he must have run into a friend. In the meantime, Shoko plowed through her practice problems. He came back empty-handed and didn’t stay long enough to break her focus, just grabbed his toothbrush and left again. She glanced up once as he turned off the overhead.
“That fine?” he asked.
Geto’s desk lamp lit her workspace nicely.
“Yup, this is good.”
“‘kay.” Sukuna crawled into bed. Once again, it only took moments before his breath took on the heaviness of sleep. The sound reminded her of her old family cat—he wouldn’t let you touch him, but he’d curl up nearby wherever you were and fill the quiet with soft little snores.
Shoko finished her studying an hour earlier than she expected, and drifted off still listening to the rhythm of Sukuna’s breathing.