Chapter 5: The Bloody Aftermath
The bathroom light buzzed like an angry insect, throwing harsh, unforgiving shadows across Sukuna’s body as he slumped onto the closed toilet lid. Megumi moved on autopilot, the deep-seated instinct to care for him overriding the shock still humming in her veins. The first aid kit was under the sink, a dusty plastic box beside bottles of bleach and a crumpled bag of bath salts.
“Quit starin’ like I’m a fuckin’ ghost,” he grumbled, but there was no heat in it. He was watching her, his crimson eyes tracking her every movement from beneath heavy lids. Exhaustion was starting to leech the violent energy from his frame, leaving behind the solid, wounded animal.
She knelt on the cracked linoleum, the tiles cold through her thin shorts. Up close, the damage was more detailed. The graze on his shoulder was a ragged trench, oozing a slow, stubborn well of blood. Smaller cuts littered his knuckles, and a bruise was flowering spectacularly across his ribs, a palette of deep purple and angry red. She unscrewed the bottle of hydrogen peroxide, the sharp, clean smell cutting through the metallic blood and his sweat.
“This’ll sting,” she mouthed silently, knowing he’d read her lips.
“Everything stings. Do it.”
She poured it. The liquid fizzed and foamed a violent white as it met his torn flesh. He didn’t flinch. Not a muscle moved. He just watched the reaction with detached interest, then his eyes slid back to her face, to the tight concern pulling at her features. A smirk touched his bloody mouth.
“See? Told you it wasn’t mine. Mostly.”
She dabbed gently with a gauze pad, cleaning away the dirt and dried blood. Her hands, which had trembled before, were steady now. This was a ritual. She’d done this before, for lesser wounds. This was part of their world. Her fingers worked methodically, touching him with a clinical tenderness that felt like its own kind of intimacy. He let her. His breathing was a deep, slow rhythm in the small room.
When she taped the fresh square of gauze over the cleaned wound, her fingertips brushed the skin of his collarbone. He was so warm. Alive. Here. The solid reality of him under her hands grounded her, pulling her back from the cliff-edge of panic she’d been clinging to all day.
“Good job,” he murmured. His voice was quieter now, rough with weariness. “My little nurse.”
She sat back on her heels, surveying her work. The bandage was neat. The other cuts were shallow; she left them to air. The visual story of the night was now catalogued and contained. But the smell of violence still clung to him, seeped into the fabric of the room.
He shifted, groaning as he stretched his back. “Fuck, I’m stiff. And hungry. You eat anything today?”
She shook her head, then pointed a stern finger at him. He hadn’t either.
“Don’t mother me,” he said, but he was still smirking. He reached out, his hand—the one with the scraped knuckles—cupping the back of her neck. His thumb stroked the delicate hinge of her jaw. “My report, Megumi. You’re stalling.”
Her pulse jumped. The fantasy she’d nurtured in his absence now seemed ludicrous, a fragile soap bubble next to the brutal sculpture of him before her. How could she translate those dark, intricate thoughts into gestures? She looked down, suddenly shy.
His grip tightened, just a fraction. “Hey. Look at me.” She did. His eyes were intense, probing. “You sat here all day, thinking your pretty little head off. I wanna know. Did you touch yourself?”
A hot flush crept up her neck. She gave a single, small nod.
“Where?”
Her hand fluttered vaguely toward the bedroom.
“Here? On my bed? In the mess we made?”
Another nod. Her cheeks were burning.
“Good girl.” The praise was a low rumble. “And what did you think about? While you were there, getting yourself all wet and lonely?”
This was the impossible part. She gestured to him, a sweeping motion that encompassed his body, then mimed his hands on her, the rocking of hips. The basics.
He chuckled, a dark, knowing sound. “Yeah, yeah. Me fuckin’ you. Obviously. But I gave you a prompt, didn’t I? The condom thing. Your drunk thing.” His eyes glinted. “Your choke thing.”
She froze. She hadn’t mimed that. She’d only thought it. But he saw it. He always saw the sharp, deviant edges of her thoughts as if they were printed on her skin.
He leaned forward, his face inches from hers. The blood under his jaw was a dry brown crackle. “You thought about that, huh? My cock in that pretty little throat of yours.”
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t nod. She just stared, trapped in his gaze.
“You’re a twisted little bitch,” he whispered, and it sounded like a prayer. “Tell me.”
Desperation made her inventive. She held up a finger—wait—and scrambled up. She went to the bedroom and returned with the box of condoms from his nightstand. She held it up.
His eyebrows shot up. “Oh? Getting specific now, are we?”
She set the box on the edge of the sink. Then, with deliberate slowness, she pulled one foil square free. She held it in her palm, looking at him, her heart hammering against her ribs. Then she placed it carefully on the vanity next to his cologne. A landmark.
Understanding dawned in his eyes, followed by a surge of predatory heat. “Leaving them around for you. Fuck.” He looked from the condom to her face, a new, reckless energy revitalizing him. “And the drunk thing?”
She mimed drinking from a bottle, then swayed, letting her eyes go unfocused. She pointed between her legs, then back to him.
“You wanna get wasted while I’m in you.” He stated it flatly, a fact. He laughed, a short, sharp bark. “Christ. You’re gonna be the death of me.” He stood up, his movement causing the toilet lid to clatter. The small room seemed to shrink further with his height. “And the other thing? The choking?”
This was the deepest, darkest secret. She looked at the floor. She reached a hand toward her own throat, then let it drop, as if the thought was too heavy to lift.
He closed the distance in one step. His hands, those brutal, blood-stained instruments, came up and framed her face, forcing her to look at him. “You want me to use you that way?” His voice was dangerously soft. “You wanna feel that? The no-air? The panic? You trust me that much, you stupid girl?”
Tears welled in her eyes again, not from fear now, but from the sheer, awful truth of it. She did. She trusted his viciousness absolutely. She trusted him to walk the line and never let her fall. She nodded, a frantic little movement against his palms.
The sound he made was almost a growl. “Fuck your report. Consider it delivered.” His mouth crashed down on hers.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a claiming. He tasted of blood and copper and the beer he must have drunk somewhere between the violence and coming home. It was brutal and perfect. Her hands flew to his bare shoulders, clinging to the hot, solid muscle, careful to avoid the bandage. He bit her lower lip, and she gasped, opening for him, letting him plunder.
He walked her backward until her spine hit the cold porcelain of the sink. His hands left her face and slid down, gripping her hips, grinding her against the hard ridge of his erection straining against his jeans. The coarse denim was a rough friction even through her thin shorts.
“You spent all day aching for me,” he snarled against her mouth. “Let’s see it.”
He made quick, savage work of her shorts and panties, shoving them down her thighs. The cold air of the bathroom hit her wet skin, and she shuddered. He didn’t bother taking them off. He just hooked his hands under her knees and lifted, planting her bare ass on the edge of the sink. The porcelain was icy. She gasped, her legs instinctively wrapping around his waist, drawing him closer.
He looked down between them, at the delicate, exposed heart of her. “So pretty,” he muttered, almost to himself. “All that quiet, and here you are, screaming for me.” He pressed two fingers against her, sliding through her slickness, and pushed them inside without preamble.
She cried out, a soundless shape of her mouth, her head tipping back against the mirror. It was a stretch, an immediate, satisfying fullness. He worked his fingers in and out, a crude imitation, his eyes locked on where they disappeared into her body.
“You’re so fucking wet,” he said, awe and vulgarity mixing in his tone. “All for me. For your thoughts of me.” He curled his fingers, and her back arched violently. “This what you wanted all day? This what you thought about while you played with yourself?”
She nodded frantically, her hips trying to meet his rhythm.
He withdrew his fingers, shiny and wet. He brought them to his mouth, his eyes holding hers, and sucked them clean. The obscenity of it, the direct consumption, made her womb clench with empty need.
“My reward,” he said, his voice thick.
He dropped to his knees.
The linoleum was hard and unforgiving under his knees, but he didn’t seem to notice. His hands slid under her thighs, pushing them wider, opening her completely to the harsh bathroom light and his hungry gaze. He didn’t tease. He didn’t start slow. He leaned in and licked a broad, flat stripe from her entrance to her clit.
Megumi’s hands flew out, gripping the edge of the sink on either side of her hips. Her knuckles turned white. A shocked, silent gasp ripped the air from her lungs.
He ate her like a starving man. With a single-minded, ravishing intensity that obliterated thought. His tongue was relentless, delving inside her, then circling her clit with rough, perfect pressure. His stubble scraped the tender skin of her inner thighs, a bright counterpoint to the devastating softness of his mouth. He growled against her, the vibration traveling straight through her core, and her legs began to tremble.
She looked down, her vision blurring. The sight of him there—his wild dark hair tied back, his powerful shoulders working, his face buried in her—was the most devastating thing she’d ever seen. This terrifying, violent man, brought to his knees for her. To worship her in the most profane way possible.
His hands held her hips down, preventing her from bucking too hard, forcing her to take the pleasure he was meting out. He alternated between deep, penetrating strokes of his tongue and sucking her clit into the heat of his mouth, each shift in technique pushing her higher, tightening the coil in her belly to a painful degree.
She was panting, her breaths coming in ragged, voiceless heaves. One of her hands let go of the sink and tangled in his hair, not to guide him, but to anchor herself. To feel the reality of him. He grunted in approval, the sound muffled against her flesh, and redoubled his efforts.
The climax built not as a wave, but as a fracture. A seismic fault line spreading through the bedrock of her. It started deep inside, a splitting pressure, then raced outwards until every nerve was alight. It shattered her silently. Her body locked, rigid, her back arched impossibly, her mouth a wide ‘O’ of stunned, soundless ecstasy. Pleasure, pure and scorching, detonated through her, wave after wave, shaking her apart against his unwavering mouth.
He didn’t stop. He gentled his tongue, lapping at her through the sensitive, shivering aftershocks, drinking down her release until she was whimpering, pushing weakly at his head, overstimulated and raw.
Finally, he pulled back. His lips and chin were glistening. He looked up at her, his crimson eyes hazy with a possessive, carnal satisfaction. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, a king surveying his spoils.
“There’s your reward,” he said, his voice hoarse. “For bein’ so good. For waiting.”
She was boneless, liquefied, slumped against the mirror. She couldn’t move. Her legs, still draped over his shoulders, felt like they belonged to someone else.
He stood up, his knees popping. He looked down at himself—at the obvious, urgent bulge in his jeans—then back at her ruined, blissful form on the sink. A different kind of smile, slower and more deliberate, spread across his face. He reached for the condom she’d left on the vanity.
“But the report’s only half-done,” he said, tearing the foil packet open with his teeth. “We got practical application to get to.”
He sheathed himself with a few efficient movements. The sight of him rolling the latex down his thick, flushed length made her stomach flip. It was the fantasy, made flesh and plastic.
He moved back between her legs, his hands gripping her hips again, pulling her to the very edge of the sink. The condom tip pressed against her, a blunt, promised pressure. He leaned over her, bracing one hand on the mirror beside her head, caging her in.
“The drunk thing’s for another night,” he breathed into her ear. “You’re too fucked-out on my tongue to appreciate it right now. And the choke thing…” He nipped her earlobe. “That’s a maybe. A big maybe. You gotta earn that kind of trust, brat.”
He pushed inside.
It was a slow, inexorable invasion. She was still fluttering tightly from her orgasm, sensitive and almost too full, but he didn’t stop. He filled her, a deep, burning stretch that chased away the last of the hollow loneliness from the day. He bottomed out, his hips flush against her, and let out a long, shuddering sigh. His forehead dropped to her shoulder.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “Every time. Like the first time.”
He began to move. It wasn’t the frantic, desperate pace of the night before. This was different. Deeper. More purposeful. Each thrust was measured, grinding, meant to be felt in the deepest part of her. The sink rattled gently against the wall with their rhythm. The bathroom filled with the sounds of their bodies: the wet slide, his ragged breaths, the soft impact of skin on skin.
Her arms came around his neck, holding on. She buried her face in the crook of his shoulder, breathing in blood, sweat, and him. This was the answer to the fear. This was the antidote. The world outside with its discrepancies and violence meant nothing when he was inside her, anchoring her to the earth.
His control began to fray. His thrusts grew harder, faster, losing their measured cadence. The sink rattled more violently. A bottle of cologne tipped over and rolled into the sink basin with a clatter. He didn’t notice.
“That’s it,” he gritted out. “Take it. All of it. You’re mine. This pussy is mine. Your thoughts are mine. Your fucked-up little fantasies are mine. You don’t get to have a single thing that doesn’t belong to me first. You understand?”
She nodded against his skin, clutching him tighter.
He drove into her, once, twice, three more times, a brutal, perfect rhythm, and then froze. A raw, guttural sound was torn from his throat, a noise of pure, unfiltered release. He pressed deep, grinding against her as he came, his body shuddering with the force of it.
For a long minute, they stayed like that, fused together, breathing in the steamless, scent-charged air. The only sound was their panting and the drip of the faucet.
Slowly, he softened inside her. He carefully pulled out, his hands steadying her as she winced. He disposed of the condom, tossing it into the trash bin with a precise flick of his wrist. Then he turned back to her. He looked drained, the last of the night’s adrenaline finally spent. The bruises stood out lividly on his skin.
Without a word, he pulled her shorts back up her legs. The gesture was almost awkward in its tenderness. He then scooped her up off the sink, cradling her against his chest. She was limp, utterly spent. He carried her out of the bathroom, through the dark living room, and into the bedroom.
He didn’t put her on the messed-up side. He laid her down on his side, on his pillow. Then he climbed in beside her, his big body curling around hers, pulling the sheet over them both. He was asleep almost instantly, his breathing deepening into a soft rumble against her back, one heavy arm thrown possessively over her waist.
Megumi lay awake in the dark, his heat