Toge Is My Everything - Blog Posts

Bitter Eclipse # i. toge

↳ Inumaki would've offered you a sip of his coffee ages ago if he knew what came next.

pairing: inumaki toge x gn!reader

genre: fluff, non-jujutsu!au.

warning(s): obnoxious prose.

word count: 1.5k

author’s note: edited this in between study sessions lol but hello inumaki nation!! i hope he's doin okay... wherever he is...

Inumaki knows the question poised at the tip of everyone’s tongue when he first meets them. Rarely are they ever upfront about it in the beginning, but by the third or fourth encounter, the words slip past their lips and fester in the dust moted air with a life of its own.

“So, what’s the deal with the mask?”

Their shoulders always slacken, chests falling, as if their curiosity had swelled so ponderously that just uttering these words bring them reprieve.

But they are never satiated by his answer—his lack of one, because Inumaki has no justification.

“Is it a hygiene thing?”

He was reared to uphold a minimum standard of cleanliness in the Inumaki household—not that there were any stringent rules regarding the practice, more a sitting down and scolding to when he wore shoes inside or forgot to store his toys away—but he isn’t particularly scrupulous about sanitation.

“Is it a self-esteem thing?”

Sure, he’d been riddled with insecurities as a teen—what teen wasn’t? But he’s in his twenties now, and though he’s still plagued with a few doubts, Inumaki isn’t so beleaguered by them he’d shroud half his face in fabric.

“So, what is it?”

All he always offers in response is a non-committal toss of his shoulders.

Then, their question sprouts fangs, grows talons, cultivates a blood-lust tailored for an ‘acceptable’ answer because a shrug isn’t one. But—reluctantly—irrespective of all these phylogenies, their interest retreats into whatever dingy fissure it came from and lies in wait for another time. Momentarily, at least.

They nod and say ‘Ah’ as if in understanding, but he knows they want a better explanation. Maybe they think that if they wait long enough, their patience will be rewarded. That maybe Inumaki will reveal the deep, dark secret behind his mask if they become good enough friends. This never happens.

Inumaki has no grim ailment behind his decision. He wears masks because he likes them.

He’s not upset by the intrigue; it’s reasonable. So because he knows people inevitably cave in to their curiosity, he’s made a game out of it. He’s no hedonist, but thrills are scarce. Who would he be to reject them?

The game: How many meetings will it take until the fabled question arises?

Current record: 37.

Current record holder: you.

No, scratch that. The current record is 38, including right now.

“So, what did you think of the movie?” you ask, swaddled in a puffer jacket and scarf, breath pluming in cold wisps before you.

Inumaki shrugs and leans back into the decaying wooden bench, running his nail along his paper cup of coffee, the sides ridged with crests and troughs.

You tip your head back, eyelashes glimmering with moonlight. “It was boring, huh?”

A hum of agreement resonates from the well of his throat, and you smile. You take no offense to his reticence. Most people do, and he doesn’t blame their frustration, which makes patience—from his friends, from you—all the more appreciated.

“At least the desserts were okay, right?”

He nods and takes a sip of his coffee. A cat café hadn’t been a part of the itinerary, but with tongues waxed by cheap popcorn and bitter disappointment, the tabbies and persians lounging by the window were impossible to resist.

Inumaki hadn’t minded, especially since you’d asked for a taste of his strawberry tart and leaned forward, mouth open, instead of plucking the fork from his fingers. When he’d fed you, heat simmered in his abdomen. You’d haloed with a smile and hummed at the sour tang, the indulgent cream cheese, pleased. It was cute. You were cute.

If someone had been watching, would they have mistaken you two as a couple? He wasn’t opposed to the idea.

Now, he tips his coffee towards you in silent invitation.

“I can have some?” you ask, eyes flickering from him to his drink.

Inumaki realised months ago that you like sharing your food. He’s not the type to—he knows his own penchants well enough that he’s never tempted to try someone else’s order—but he likes the way you beam when he offers.

You take the cup, fingers grazing his. The sensation is something he finds himself yearning for recently.

He tugs his mask back over his face as you cautiously take a sip. It’s a gradual shift; you lower the cup, throat bobbing as you swallow, eyebrows pinched in the way Inumaki knows they do when you’re deliberating. Then, the corner of your lips are quirking, the apples of your cheeks raising, eyes crinkling, glinting as you grin at him.

“It’s really good!” you say, handing it back. “Not too bitter.”

He’s gone out one-on-one with you eighteen times now. They’re not dates, he’ll remind himself,  but he still frets over which outfit to wear and whether he’s worn it before every time. They’re not dates, but heat still pools in his cheeks when your hands brush together walking side-by-side, crescents carved into his palms as he digs his nails into them to curb the intensity of his emotions. They’re not dates, but he wishes they were.

Inumaki doesn’t know what possesses him. Maybe it’s the lucence of your smile, so sweet, so delighted, or the vestiges of warmth from the phantom touch of your fingertips, or the way moonlight limns you pearlescent, like you’re forged of it, spun from its finely woven threads, seeping luminescence into him, to embrace every inch of Inumaki down to the very bone.

Or maybe its the coffee foam rimming your cupid’s bow.

Whatever it is, he reaches forward—eyes trained to your lips, to how they’re parted, the carnation pink of your tongue peeking from behind gleaming teeth—and swipes the foam away, his other fingers cupping your jaw with a ghost’s touch. Your lips are plush beneath the pad of his thumb, and Inumaki has to physically rend himself from staring at the pliant give of them, from imagining how they would feel against his own.

He flashes the foam dotting his finger towards you as reasoning for his actions. You stare at it, at him, and he retracts, wiping the residue on his pants. Your index and middle finger hover over where he’d touched you, as if he’d left something behind: a mark, a burn, a crater.

Shit. He messed up. Inumaki messed up. He’d crossed an unspoken boundary and now the repercussions were going to sink its teeth into and devour him whole. He should apologise—

But before the words can manifest, your lips are pressed against his.

Everything, every sensation, every sound, smell, sight, engulfs him all at once. The cant of your head, the weight of your palm resting on his thigh, the redolence of your perfume, the rustle of your jacket as you angle your body towards his.

Insistent, soft, delicate, even through the material of his mask he can feel the velvet heat of your lips eclipsing his own; moonlight ephemeral, an iridescent fever, opaline and benevolent and intoxicating.

Then it’s gone, as quick as it came; a fleeting whisper, a promise.

You kissed him. You’d just kissed him. Through his mask.

“Thanks,” you whisper, breathless, as if you’d done it with fervour, as if he’d kissed you the way he’d been dying to, the way he’d been dreaming of for weeks.

The pressure of your hand against his thigh begins dissipating as you pry yourself away, intent on leaving him with nothing more than a sliver of what could be, what he’s craved for who knows how long.

Inumaki’s familiar with his tastes. He always knows what he wants. And right now is no different.

So he envelopes your wrist with his fingers, fixing your hand in place, feeling the thrum of your pulse as he yanks his mask down and leans closer.

Inumaki’s a man of very few words because he is of the philosophy that each one should matter, that they should mean something. And he’s never meant anything more in his life than when he whispers, “Again.”

Cold nips at his bare lips, the tip of his nose. It doesn’t matter. He can feel the heat suffusing from you, and he knows that it’ll be more than enough.

Inumaki is drawn to you like the tides, in umbra from the force with which he yearns for your opalescence, for you. He can taste it: the unbridled heat of your lips, the coffee melted on your tongue, the whipped cream from your dessert, the ardour of mingling breaths.

“Do it again,” he whispers, barely even that, but you’re so close now that it’s impossible you hadn’t heard, that you don’t feel the weight of it blanketing the two of you.

And when you do kiss him again, Inumaki himself wonders what he likes so much about masks.