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Yuji still wasn’t used to the size of the shinden-Sukiru estate Sukuna had brought him to. The fact that it was Sukuna’s, apparently, and he was more than just a nomadic cursed spirit, was both enthralling and more than a little intimidating. It was also a brutally empty building. The few servants Yuji ran into all fled from him the moment he saw them, and though it was apparent someone had been keeping the space clean and repairing the structure over time, Yuji rarely got any glimpses of the servants. Someone always brought him tea when he asked, but that was it. And no one ever went near Sukuna.
Sukuna didn’t seem to mind, and Yuji was so unfamiliar with aristocracy and the way the kuge behaved with servants that he didn’t know what to do, so he chose not to say anything. He tried to offer his assistance whenever he could, but the servants usually just ran away from him when he did. And when he’d tried to bring it up with Sukuna, the curse had just laughed.
Yuji was also still learning his way around the place. Not that a shinden-zukuri had a particularly complex layout, but this one had a lot more than the usual three tai no ya, and so many wataridono he didn’t know what was where. Sukuna’s rooms were in the shinden itself, he knew that , and the onsen was either in the kita no tai or the kita ni-tai, one of the two. Or it was in a separate section entirely, but to the north? Oh, he was so lost.
“Sukuna?” The section of wataridono he was in presently flanked the northern tsubo, and there wasn’t a soul in any of the bay rooms, all of which were unlit and abandoned. Really, although the estate was massive, and well-kept, the lack of life and people in any of the rooms did not show off Sukuna’s importance and wealth. It showed he was feared, certainly; that people were terrified of him, but it didn’t show how powerful he was, which was powerful enough to hold his own court separate from the Emperor and the capital Heian-Kyō. Yuji couldn’t help but feel this was a bit of a waste. And when Sukuna wasn’t here, did this magnificent palace just languish in silence and emptiness the entire time?
Yuji crossed the tsubo directly, admiring the wisteria tree at its center, and hopped the side of the sunoko to cross into the interior of the kita no tai, but a quick round of the building showed no one there and no onsen, and that, according to the note he’d been left, was where he was supposed to be locating Sukuna.
While a more independent part of him rankled a little at being summoned like a servant, he couldn’t forget that a large part of his relationship with the curse played on the dynamic of master and servant. Sukuna often expected him to behave as a good vassal would, and his reward for behaving well was getting fucked brainless. He wasn’t truly expected to do servant chores, as far as he could tell (and when he’d tried, he’d had the servants run away from him) but he was still expected to respond to Sukuna’s summons, and might be ‘punished’ if he failed to meet a specific task, however creatively Sukuna might come up with a ‘punishment’. Usually, the task had to do with some sexual service, and of course the punishment was usually sexual as well, as was the reward, of course, so Yuji found the entire thing to be a win-win on all accounts.
Still, it didn’t save him the slight anxiety and frustration of not being able to figure out where the onsen was.
He finally located the damn thing in an outbuilding situated to the side of the kita no tai (so technically a nishi ni-tai? Since it was directly above the nishi no tai? He had no idea.) The building itself was huge and oriented like the shinden main hall and the adjacent north pavilion and its ni-tai, rather than rotated ninety degrees like the east and west pavilions and their respective ni-tai. The tsubo, he imagined, contained the onsen; once he had followed the wataridono across into the actual building, he knew he was right. Most of the bays of the hisashi had their kōshi open so you could step right out, and the most striking thing about it, Yuji noticed right away, was that unlike the onsen somewhat near his home village that Wasuke had taken him to once, this did not smell of sulfur. There was no smell at all.
Sukuna was reclined on the far end of the onsen near the western side, upper arms spread back over the rocks and his lower set resting behind his head, reaching up over his first set of shoulders to do so. It didn’t look particularly comfortable, but Yuji felt that without four arms himself, he couldn’t appropriately judge. As always, he took his time admiring the curse’s body, eyes trailing down the sinews of his neck to his sharp collarbone, the enormous, deep chest with its double set of muscles, and the abs below that, the mouth of fangs perfectly bisecting them with two squares above and two below. Sukuna didn’t really breathe all that much, and when he did it was very shallow—he seemed to do it out of habit more than anything, but also occasionally held it for whatever reason and forgot to start breathing again afterwards—but he was breathing now, slowly and not deeply, and Yuji’s eyes immediately landed on how his muscles moved with the rise and fall of his ribcage, the ones overlapping his ribs, the obliques pointing like two chevrons down to his groin. Yuji could see that strip of darker reddish-pink hair even under the water, and he felt himself flush, just a little.
“About time,” Sukuna said, a folded linen towel draped over his eyes. He adjusted one leg so his foot was up on the ledge he was sitting on, knee sticking out of the water; Yuji saw how his dicks settled against the other thigh instead. He had to swallow down the thoughts that had immediately sprung to the forefront of his mind; he had absolutely no doubts Sukuna had called him here for sex, but he had to wash himself off before he launched headlong into the onsen to jump on that.
“Here I am,” Yuji replied, still staring and making no bones about it. “What did you want?”
“Is that any way to talk to your master, servant?” So Sukuna was in a playful mood today, then.
Yuji adopted his cheekiest attitude. “What did you want, Master? ”
One red eye opened underneath the towel to look at him. “I want you naked and in the onsen with me, for starters.”
“But Master, I have to rinse off first,” Yuji fluttered his eyelashes.
“Don’t be glib, it gets creepy when you do that.”
Yuji acquiesced in silence, walking back into the building to clean himself with a bucket of warm water a servant had definitely left out—or maybe Sukuna had? He wasn’t even sure Sukuna obeyed traditions and societal norms, especially not when in his own house. He stripped down, folding his hakamashita and hakama neatly and placing them in the baskets set waiting (Sukuna had just left his hakama on the floor; Yuji would have had to bind them four times over around his chest to have them fit and they would still be long on him) before washing himself thoroughly and wrapping a towel pulled from a small table around him—even though he didn’t need it. And wouldn’t be needing it.
Yuji folded the towel neatly and eased into the hot water, almost flinching at the high temperature—this was really hot. He was surprised he wasn’t boiling! But Sukuna seemed utterly unconcerned, just as he did with all temperatures, hot or cold.
“Uraume’s returning today,” Sukuna said, removing the towel from over his eyes and leaning his jaw on one hand, eyeing Yuji. “Why are you so far away?”
Respect, was the answer, but Yuji obliging moved closer to Sukuna, who had stretched out an arm to reach for him and kept indicating he should get closer. ‘Closer’ meant ‘on the curse’s thigh’, actually, and Yuji took his seat there, leaning back against Sukuna’s arm and more than tempted to lean into Sukuna himself like a swooning woman and just sleep forever, listening to the curse’s powerful heart. “Uraume? I’ve met them before, right?”
“Briefly. The second time we fucked.”
“Not while we fucked!” Yuji scratched at his ear, which was faintly pink.
“Not while. But after. They were the reason I didn’t fuck you again the next night,” Sukuna admitted. “They brought important news and I had to leave the estate.” And you, went unspoken.
“Implying you would have,” Yuji teased.
“Of course I would have,” Sukuna muttered, avoiding Yuji’s grinning face.
“You were adamant you would not.”
“Don’t get cocky, brat, it doesn’t suit you.”
Yuji thought it suited him quite well, and he had plenty of cock jokes he could make in response, but he instead chose to ensure he was remembering Sukuna’s manservant correctly. “White hair, right?” Yuji tilted his head. “Are they male or female?”
“Neither,” Sukuna replied. “I’ve never seen them naked and I don’t plan on asking.”
“Okay.” Yuji didn’t remember them well, and had been hoping to picture them a little better, but he had no intention of prying into a subject that personal if they were the rare kind of person who did not identify with the sex they were born; while some might disagree with that, Yuji felt it was no one’s business but the person’s. He certainly wasn’t about to judge. He didn’t even know his own past, he wasn’t about to presume to know someone else’s biology and spiritual balance.
“Where have they been?” Yuji asked a moment later. “I thought they were usually by your side, but I haven’t seen them at all in the last… year we’ve been together.”
“Their father passed. They returned home to Ōsaka to assist with sorting his affairs, and then I believe they were traveling in between doing work for me.” Sukuna did not clarify what kind of work they were doing and Yuji did not ask. “They should be back today, if all goes well. You’ll be able to ask about that garden.”
Uraume’s garden was in one of the tsubo on the east side, and Yuji had desperately wanted to help weed it, but Sukuna had scolded him sharply the first time he was caught doing so. “I just want to make sure the weeds don’t choke the plants,” he argued, and Sukuna had responded that that was Uraume’s problem to deal with and not his; if he uprooted a valuable plant he didn’t recognize, it would be his head on the chopping block and not Sukuna’s. Rather than risk potentially harming someone’s pet project, or something as clearly loved as this garden, Yuji had backed off, but he couldn’t help but feel sad when he looked at its neglected state. It was the only part of the estate that wasn’t well-cared-for, and that was only because its curator was away.
“I still think that the least you could do, if you’re not going to let me groom it, is do it yourself,” Yuji replied, somewhat sullenly. “Because I know you know what plants are intentional and which are weeds.”
Sukuna scoffed. “Manual labor? Me?”
“You’re a warlord. Fighting is manual labor.”
“A warlord, not a farmer,” Sukuna sneered.
“You know, warlord, you never told me how you came upon this estate. It’s human-built, isn’t it? I heard someone in the village refer to it as Kofun-era, too.”
Sukuna waved his hand flippantly. “Murder, same way I accrued most of my mortal wealth.”
“Murder of who? They were clearly wealthy.”
“Fujiwara no Tsunatora. Estate probably belonged to one of his wives. He agreed to give me the property if I killed him in combat and promised not to take his other holdings, and I did, and the estate was mine. His sons didn’t exactly agree with their father’s decision, so I killed them too.” He shrugged. “But I kept my vow and didn’t take the rest of his holdings.”
Yuji whistled in shock. “Fujiwara…”
“They’re not half so godly and powerful as they want you to believe. Most of them aren’t even sorcerers.”
“Fascinating…so they had a presence in the area?”
“They did. Now they keep well away from it. And many of them don’t like that, given there are deep roots of the family in Hida—I’ve been at odds with the Fujiwara and the Yamato since the day I could wield a blade, it was why I was willing to help the Gangyo rebels with their little rebellion.”
“Which didn’t go well.”
“That’s not my problem. I wasn’t going to fight their battles for them—the deal I made with the lord leading the rebellion was that I avoid killing off towns, villages and cities under his and his cohorts' immediate control and if I just happened to fall a little heavier on the Fujiwara regions, well. It’s not like he could control me, now could he?”
“I see.” Yuji leaned back against Sukuna’s arm, providing cushioning from the rocks edging the onsen. “Your estate is beautiful, by the way. I don’t think I ever mentioned that.”
“It certainly is.” Sukuna had never once responded to a compliment with ‘thank you’—Yuji wasn’t sure he even knew that specific word.
“It’s so empty, though. It feels…lonely.”
“The locals call it Norowareta no Machi.” Sukuna grinned. “The few human servants I employ were here when Tsunatora no Fujiwara was here and they haven’t left, for whatever reason that is.”
“You should employ more people,” Yuji said quietly. “I think with your status, your estate should be lively, even when you’re away.”
“That would be contradictory to my status as a horrible, cursed monster no one wants to work for.” Sukuna’s hand trailed up and down Yuji’s back a few times and then came to rest on his waist.
“Well, that’s not true, now is it, Master?” Yuji asked, sly, running his own hand over the curse’s powerful body.
Sukuna turned his head to grin at Yuji, their faces close together. “You don’t work for me.”
“You order me around like I do.”
“That’s part of the fun. I don’t pay the other servants in sex.” He ran a thumb over Yuji’s lips, and Yuji leaned closer.
“I should hope you don’t.”
“And what would you do if I did?” Said quite mockingly, but there was a degree of curiosity in his voice, like he wanted to know what Yuji would actually do. Yuji still wasn’t sure if they were exclusive or not. He had never taken Sukuna for monogamy, and given he was more or less part of the kuge he shouldn’t be expected to be monogamous, but for the past year or so, Yuji hadn’t seen any evidence that Sukuna was even interested in fucking other people. Only him. And maybe part of that was the binding vow he’d forced out of him, or maybe it was that Sukuna’s interest was genuinely fixed on Yuji.
It made him a pleased, smug little thing, deep down, regardless of the why.
“Be jealous,” Yuji replied, keeping his voice sultry and playful. “And probably refuse to fuck you.”
“Oh, so you’d punish me? Since when does a servant get to punish their master?”
“Does this master own his servant, or am I a free person?” Yuji asked coyly. “I suppose if you own me I have no choice. But if I can do what I want…if I’m employed of my own free will and I can just quit whenever I please…” His fingers were trailing up Sukuna’s abdomen to his pecs, reaching for one of the curse’s nipples, the thick black tattoos above so dark they seemed to absorb all light. This close, though, Yuji could easily see the shallow scarification that made them up, dyed black with cursed ink.
“Oh, you’re quitting? I don’t think so. I think you might be my slave.” Sukuna’s hand had gone from Yuji’s waist to his ass and it squeezed, now, gripping hold of his buttocks and not letting go. Yuji caught his breath before he made any embarrassing noises and tweaked said nipple in response, but Sukuna simply caught his hand and pulled it to his lips, running his tongue over the tips of Yuji’s fingers. The hand on his ass was starting to hurt a little. “What do you say to that?”
“I say maybe I’ll consider it.” Yuji murmured, focusing on Sukuna’s other hand, one of which had gone down to his own double members.
Sukuna’s main hand was already between Yuji’s legs. “And what if I want you, hmm? Right now? What do you say to your master then, pet?”
“You can have me,” Yuji breathed, leaning into Sukuna’s touch, the curse’s hand on him and fingers running tantalizingly over his cock under the water’s surface.
“Hmm.” The contemplative sound rumbled out of the curse’s chest. “And if I don’t want to prepare you first?”
The small wince of pain Yuji made at the thought was belied by the way he grew slightly harder in Sukuna’s hand, Sukuna’s palm now roaming up and down his length, beginning to curl around him, and Yuji fidgeted, tingling sparks shooting up his spine. “I’d get on my knees for you anyway.”
“Good boy. An obedient dog gets a reward.” Even though Yuji found nothing particularly arousing about being compared to a dog, he probably would have barked if Sukuna asked him to. What was arousing was the curse’s voice, his thumb on Yuji’s chin, tilting his head up to him. Yuji leaned in, a hand going to Sukuna’s neck to pull him closer into the kiss, but to his surprise Sukuna caught his hands and pulled them away from his shoulders, his other set on Yuji’s hips, preventing him from moving closer.
“Did I give you permission to touch me, pet?”
Yuji hissed against Sukuna’s smirking lips, pulled away from the kiss and left chasing. “Fuck you.”
“Now, now. You were so close to a reward, do you want to be punished instead?”
“Maybe I do,” Yuji replied, cursing inwardly at the deprivation when Sukuna loosened his grip on his dick. “What are you going to do about that, master?”
“Let you sit there,” Sukuna purred, voice low, rumbling, and oh so deliciously cruel. “Hard and needy and unable to do fuckall about it.”
And he let go of Yuji entirely, keeping his hands on his hips and switching the other two to Yuji’s wrists so he was unable to touch Sukuna or himself.
Yuji cursed again, out loud this time. “You bastard.”
“We do this song and dance every time, and I have yet to see you behave well. Perhaps this dog is poorly trained.”
“What does that say about the master who trained him?” Yuji shot back, already so overheated from the onsen that the arousal throbbing and not going away wasn’t doing much to him. “Bad trainer, I guess.”
“So impudent.”
“Yeah? And how long can you wait?” Yuji shot back, glancing down at what was under the water and then back at the curse’s smug face, and he saw a glimmer of a challenge cross Sukuna’s red eyes. He hadn’t missed the curse’s own cock starting to stiffen where it lay against his thigh under the water.
“If you think you’re going to win a battle of wills, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“You underestimate my stubbornness,” Yuji replied, still staring directly at Sukuna’s thighs and what was between them. “And I think you underestimate your own impatience.”
“This is true,” Sukuna said.
“And your own laziness.”
“Lazy?” There was a hint of playful danger in Sukuna’s voice.
“Yeah. Lazy.” Yuji smiled blithely at him. Sukuna was well aware Yuji was goading him and they both knew he knew it, but he also knew the curse would probably give in in a matter of seconds. “You want me to do all the work. You always do.” He grinned, wider and cheekier, and even though he couldn’t move his hips, he could shift his thighs, so his did—moving one leg so he was no longer kneeling with his feet behind him on the ledge they were seated on, straddling the curse’s thigh, but had one foot on the bottom of the onsen. He brushed his knee over the curse’s inner thigh, touching at least one if not both of his cocks in the process, and he felt and saw the monster stiffen right then and there. “Just like I’m doing now…”
The whole intention was to goad Sukuna into action, but Sukuna was impatient, unconcerned with appearances, and had never been afraid to give in to his most base desires, even when someone else’s pride might have made them hold out. Yuji was suddenly lifted by the hips and planted on the edge of the onsen, prompting a nervous giggle from him—that was very improper, but then again so was fucking in an onsen—and immediately working two of his fingers inside him, pushing him apart, bringing their hips close together. Yuji caught his breath at the shove and the somewhat painful intrusion, but ignored it, because Sukuna’s mouth was now on his and he could finally touch the curse how he wanted. He seized hold of the first dick in one hand and grinned fiercely at the startled noise Sukuna made against his lips, the way that deep voice sounded when he was like that, and drew him closer, ankles on Sukuna’s hips to drag him in, since Yuji couldn’t fit his legs all the way around Sukuna’s waist. He felt the strange warm-cold glow of reverse cursed energy around his perineum and his ass itself, and bit back a hiss of need when the intrusion he was waiting for didn’t come; Sukuna still had two fingers in him, scissoring them and stretching him without penetrating him like he wanted.
“Fuck me, master,” Yuji commanded.
“What’s the magic word?”
“The magic word is fuck me because I said so.”
“That’s not how this works,” Sukuna smirked, having entirely too much fun even as his eyes were starting to glaze over, equally unfulfilled as Yuji.
“Fine, I’ll do it myself.” Yuji reached down for his own cock, but Sukuna shoved his hands away.
“Now that would be rude. You said I was lazy and make you do all the work, am I not supposed to be showing you how wrong you are?”
“Well, then get to it!”
“Say please.”
“Oh, fuck you— please,” Yuji snapped.
To his delight, Sukuna snarled in response and obeyed; who was really the master, then, in that situation? The curse held him open and shoved their hips together, ignoring Yuji’s half-grunt, half-moan of mingled pain and arousal, how his back arched up against Sukuna. The second mouth split open as usually, his tongue sliding over Yuji’s belly and then teasing the head of his cock, and then he began to thrust, slowly at first, but picking up speed and force even as he pinned Yuji down against the onsen rocks. Yuji groaned, thighs trembling as they tightened around Sukuna’s waist as much as they could, digging his hands into the curse’s biceps—though he did reach out at one point to try and grab his towel, so he had something under his hips and wasn’t being rubbed raw by the stone. Not that it truly mattered; like this, pain and pleasure mingled into one cohesive experience, and he was not able to truly distinguish them. He would know the difference later, but right now his only thoughts were Sukuna, and Sukuna inside him, and Sukuna’s hand on him, and the pressure and searing heat building in his body as Sukuna took him there among the steam, his feet still hanging in the hot water.
“Faster—” Yuji always made this mistake. He asked for faster and Sukuna went faster and harder—and he did so now, thrusting deeper with every swing of his hips, pinning Yuji down with two hands on the crest of his pelvis, pushing him down on the stone and the towel just barely underneath him, the other two arms pinning his hands over his head. Sukuna bent over him, his enormous form blotting out the hazy sun that was already hardly visible behind gray clouds, casting a shadow over Yuji that he leaned into, desperate, straining for the curse’s touch on every part of him. “Ah—Sukuna—” A tear slipped out of the corner of his eyes. His shoulders felt raw against the rock, but the pressure inside him felt so good, and yet so—intense at the same time, Sukuna was everywhere, above him, inside him and all around him and he could not escape and did not want to escape and it was all just building, building—
“Sukuna—gods—fuck—fuck—!”
“That’s it, brat, let me hear you…”
“—kuna—Suku—na—ah—”
“Louder.”
“—Ryō—” It wasn’t a name Yuji used often. He could only think of one other instance he’d called Sukuna by his given name and not his title. And in that moment, of course, he wasn’t thinking at all. “—Ryō—men—!”
But the effect it had on Sukuna was instantaneous. He felt the curse stiffen in his arms, which he’d released at this point, and then Sukuna twisted his head down like a striking snake and bit Yuji’s neck, hard, sharp, his teeth piercing the skin and drawing blood. Yuji let out a gasp, the cold sting of pain countering the warm and heady fire of need directly, yet it in no way quenched the flame brewing in his gut—in fact, it was over embarrassingly quickly after that. He felt something coil in the pit of his stomach and then he was off, coming on the tongue currently folded around him, and Sukuna’s teeth sank harder into the muscle.
Yuji did the only thing he could think to do, his response that was at this point essentially conditioned; he bit him back. His teeth were blunt and human, and he couldn’t reach the same part of Sukuna that Sukuna could on him, but he got ahold of Sukuna’s collarbone and sank his own teeth into the cursed skin as hard as he could. There was no blood, and only the salt of the onsen; Sukuna had no particular taste.
The curse hissed, a long, drawn-out sigh as his own release came, their bodies interlocked and chests pressed together. Yuji’s arms were around his shoulders and he saw Sukuna’s eyes flutter shut, his fingers digging into Yuji’s hips before loosening. They hung there for a second, Sukuna bent over him and Yuji splayed out beneath him, just panting.
“Good boy,” Sukuna murmured in his ear, when Yuji let go of his clavicle and let his head flop back against the stone. One hand carded through his hair. “That’s it, pet…”
“Master…” Yuji whispered, his throat raw and dry, body shaky. The tongue in Sukuna’s stomach was licking him, over and over, and he squeezed his eyes shut, whimpering from the stimulation. Over-stimulation, at this point. When Sukuna’s hand went down to touch him here, he whimpered.
“No, pet, not yet. I’m not done with you.”
Yuji hissed, eyes smarting as Sukuna began to rub his hand over Yuji’s cock. “I can’t—”
“You can. Be a good boy for your master.”
Yuji just whimpered, a hand going to his neck where he was still sluggishly bleeding, beginning to grow lightheaded. He was no stranger to this; Sukuna would bite him and sometimes let him bleed just enough to get woozy, it helped the overstimulation hurt a little less afterwards. Yuji liked the loss of control, and the feeling of being used. Everything was starting to feel surreal, and when Sukuna pushed inside him with the second of his two cocks, Yuji just keened again.
“Good. Very good. You’re such a good boy, pet. I should reward you more often.” Sukuna caressed his cheek, cupping his jaw possessively as his other two hands went back to Yuji’s hips. Yuji supposed he, too, would be this insatiable if he had two dicks, but honestly, Sukuna’s stamina was frightening sometimes.
“Heal me after?” Yuji muttered, eyes rolling back into his head as Sukuna started to thrust again, slowly this time, drawing it out, more for himself than Yuji. There was at the very least more than just Reverse Cursed Energy lubricating his way this time.
“Of course, pet, I would never leave you languishing.” Sukuna lowered himself down atop Yuji again, though his hand was still between their bodies, stroking Yuji until he was almost twisting to get away, and yet utterly unable to move, and yet he didn’t want to get away. He was trapped in a space between stay and go, and the limbo was as heady and incredible as the orgasm, even if he knew he’d be sore and pissy after.
“Think you can come for me a second time?”
“No, no…”
“Yes, pet, I think you can.”
It was slow and it was torturous, but Sukuna got him there, got him pulsing and spilling in the curse’s hand, Sukuna’s teeth in his shoulder—much more gently this time. He felt the curse’s own peak arrive and spill over inside him, and this time when Sukuna came down from his high, it was down—he retreated, his body leaving Yuji’s and Yuji left blinking at a surprisingly bright sky. Unexpectedly so.
Sukuna took a moment to compose himself before leaned on the rocks next to Yuji, pressing two fingers to his neck with the stirring warmth of Reverse Cursed Energy there, sealing the damage. Yuji just stared at him with half-awake, sex-drunk eyes, roaming over the rings of perfect human teeth marks on Sukuna’s left pec—right over the nipple—his bicep, and his collarbone. Sukuna turned his attention to Yuji’s lower half, using the same two fingers to heal the red skin of his cock, now flaccid once again, but still far more sore than it should be. “Anywhere else?”
“Leave the shoulder, you didn’t break the skin the second time,” Yuji muttered, attempting to sit up and letting Sukuna help him upright. He bit back a moan of pain, and leaned temporarily against the curse’s chest as Sukuna reached down around to his backside, pushing the healing energy into that part of his body as well. “What a good master you are,” he managed, too exhausted to move himself and more than content to just curl back up on the stone and sleep. “Healing your pet…”
“I’d be a dreadful owner if I didn’t,” Sukuna chuckled, and Yuji was pleased to hear he sounded tired himself. He took a seat on the edge of the onsen and picked Yuji up, Yuji barely coordinating his own limbs as Sukuna set him in his lap and let him lean against his chest.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Yuji mumbled into his breastbone. “I couldn’t.”
“Because you’re human, and I’m not,” the curse replied, entirely too pleased with himself. “You’ve been good today, pet. You can sleep, as a reward.”
“Wasn’t asking permission.” Without further ado, Yuji drifted away into exhausted sleep, secure in Sukuna’s arms, the onsen’s heat lulling him into a dreamless, blissful night.
Sukuna’s estate was usually fairly devoid of people; he kept a handful of human servants who were the descendants of those who were probably too scared to run away when he took it over from Tsunatora no Fujiwara ninety-four years ago, and plenty of curses hung around hoping to feed off his immense cursed energy, but generally speaking the innermost areas of the shinden were for the Lord’s use alone. Normally Sukuna sensed when Uraume returned and came to greet them at the kizahashi as an honored guest, but he was mysteriously absent from the sunoko when Uraume arrived, even though they could feel his immense cursed energy the moment they even set foot on the estate grounds, let alone reached the shinden-zukuri itself.
They followed his cursed energy to the source, discerning relatively quickly that he was in his private onsen adjacent to the northern kita ni-tai. But as they approached through the corridors, they became aware of an additional presence on the shinden grounds. It was curious simple yet strange, and vaguely familiar, but Uraume could not identify it as human or curse. The closer they drew to Sukuna, the more they suspected it was indeed human, but something still felt… off about it. Closer to curse than human.
And the closer they got to Sukuna, the more certain they were this strange other presence was with him.
An attacker in the onsen? No, Uraume would have felt him toying with prey, utilizing his cursed energy in a way similar to a fight, albeit a one-sided one. So what, then?
When Uraume reached the onsen, they understood exactly what.
Sukuna’s immense, muscled frame was in the water up to mid-thighs, bent over another shape on the rocks completely swallowed up by the King of Curse’s form, engulfed in those four arms. For a moment, Uraume didn't register what exactly they were looking at, the skin was the same color exactly and the hair blended together, what with Sukuna’s back to them. But they certainly recognized the movements —and then from there it was fairly easy to make out the legs around his waist and the arms around his neck. There was someone underneath him, and when Uraume spotted the hair they were alarmed to realize they knew exactly who.
But—that had been at least a year ago, if not more. The meeting with the rebel ryouko where he had entreated Lord Sukuna’s help in the revolt, when that man had shown up who looked so bizarrely like their master and yet behaved so utterly flippantly around him. What was he doing here now—fucking Ryōmen Sukuna? (Or, being fucked, more accurately.)
In Ryōmen Sukuna’s private onsen??
For a good long second, Uraume just stared in complete consternation. Of course they knew Sukuna had fucked him back then. A year ago. The fact that he was here again—still here? Had he ever left? Of course he had, he had to have left, Lord Sukuna didn’t keep people around that long just for sex. Or for anything. (Uraume themself being the sole exception because they were a good cook)—was absolutely baffling to them.
“Sukuna—gods—fuck—fuck—!”
No one just called him Sukuna like that, not even the people he bedded. The default was ‘my Lord’ and Sukuna was known to punish those who used his name so…intimately and personally.
“That’s it, brat, let me hear you…”
Sukuna didn’t usually talk to the people he was fucking either. They might get lucky with a growl or two.
“—kuna—Suku—na—ah—”
“Louder.”
“—Ryōmen—!”
Now hold on one hot second. They definitely didn’t call him Ryōmen.
No one called him that.
What in the hells…
The younger man howled, an almost animalistic wail, the air full of breathy panting and keening and Sukuna murmuring things that sounded like praise to him. Uraume had sat outside a lot of closed doors in their times and kept an eye out for those who might come to a maiden’s aid, but they’d never heard this. “Good boy. That’s it, pet…”
“Master…”
He went from ‘Sukuna’ and ‘Ryōmen’ to ‘Master’? That’s so backwards. Make it make sense. This was the most bizarre and confusing exchange between Sukuna and a sexual partner Uraume had ever witnessed, and they had heard a lot of things before, from girls crying and protesting incoherently to sorcerers cursing him and whores simpering. This was…confusing.
Uraume was confused.
Uraume withdrew, stepping back into the wataridono as quietly as possible, though they had harbored absolutely no illusion that Sukuna had not heard or sensed them coming. They would go about their duties as a servant, begin seeing to the cleaning of the estate and the preparation of food—Sukuna was a perfectly talented cook, but he tended to eat his people raw when left to his own devices, and they had never known him to the be the type to wash floors—and if their lord was so inclined, he could find them in the Mizushi-dokoro.
But as they walked, they could not help but run this over in their mind. Who was this strange man, who had not only apparently held Ryōmen Sukuna’s notoriously capricious interests for an entire year, but called him by his name and title so flippantly in the same breath as ‘Master’, whose pleasure was encouraged by the curse, and who had found their way into the onsen not another soul had ever been invited into?
Who was he?