Chapter Text
“I’m already someone who can’t look you in the eye.”
Higuruma had told Yuji that exactly six months ago today, sitting by himself on concrete steps when the pink-haired boy — because that was what he was, really; a teenager who had been made to carry far too much for shoulders that young — approached him and asked, very sincerely, whether he had a death wish.
For volunteering to fight Sukuna.
It would’ve been deserved, Higuruma had thought then, to die in that fight. Still thinks, though that line of thinking is very gradually declining in frequency. Higuruma Hiromi had killed. Taken the lives of others, mostly other sorcerers in the name of self-defence during the culling games, but the judge and prosecutor who had borne the brunt of his violence when his cursed powers first awoken took up a majority of his guilt.
The tension pulled too taunt when the string finally snapped somewhere in his soul.
When Higuruma’s hands found the gavel in that courtroom on that fated day, something dark and sinister and enormous compelling him to slam it down over and over again on the sounding block until all the accumulated discontent slid out from deep inside him to blot out the light, like a theatre when a movie is about to start.
Showtime.
Because wasn’t that all that the courtroom was? A piece of theatre? Everyone in it a prop or actor reciting lines in a story that had already been written before anyone had even stepped foot in the room to hear the case?
Japan’s criminal justice system has a conviction rate of 99.9%.
“It’s always gone against my nature to leave things alone when I feel like they’re wrong.”
“I just never managed to fix this habit.”
Wrong.
Higuruma was wrong.
He felt this deep within him with all the conviction he had channeled whenever he sought to defend people he truly believed innocent of the crimes they’d been charged with. He, a lawyer possessing knowledge of the laws that were meant to uphold society, had blood on his hands, because what was the point when the law never actually protected the people they were put in place to protect?
The system, in which he had placed so much faith when he was younger and much more naïve, had failed. Failed his clients. Failed him.
He had killed the judge and prosecutor in the case where his client, who had previously been found innocent of murder charges, was convicted during a retrial in which no new evidence had been brought forth.
Higuruma was a murderer. And, he would argue still, they had deserved it. His specific brand of guilt was not rooted in the deaths of two supposed innocents. Rather, it stemmed from the fact that, as someone who had very blatantly committed a crime, he would not be held accountable for it.
So now he was a man lost.
He knew the top brass had put in a pardon for him, had chosen not to prosecute him for his misdeeds. Higuruma was too valuable now to them as a jujutsu sorcerer, someone with the intelligence and innate talent to rival even Gojo Satoru himself. An asset who had essentially become untouchable.
Above the law.
It was laughable. The greatest irony of all.
So he had plucked the sunflower pin from his lapel, the one that had taken him years to earn the right to wear as an attorney, and placed it in the palm of his former colleague after she had declared her intent to continue prosecuting him on behalf of his victims’ families.
“Return this for me. And I hope you make a better attorney than I did.”
“Higuruma? Like sunflowers? What a great name!”
Tuesday, March 3, 20XX. 9:13 am.
The first time Higuruma Hiromi met you.
Briefing room with Ijichi sitting to your left and Ino on your right.
He has never seen a smile that bright before.
Bright enough to be incongruous with the world of jujutsu; with the world itself, as Higuruma knew it.
There was something in it that reminded him of Itadori Yuji, and he felt one corner of his lips lift a fraction in response — the feeling like the return of something so faraway it had almost been forgotten.
He had caught the rise of Ijichi’s brows before the man quickly schooled his features into one of stoic professionalism, handing out printouts from the folder that lay open on the table before him, coordinating details of the mission Higuruma had been assigned along with the other two sorcerers in the room.
Ino he had worked with a few times before, found the young man easy enough to get along with. He was always enthusiastic, often talking about Nanami Kento, a senpai he had looked up to and still held in great regard even after the man had been killed in action.
“You know, you kinda remind me of him sometimes, Higuruma-san. I think the two of you would’ve gotten along really well.”
Understanding the enormity of that comment, Higuruma had responded with a solemn nod.
But you…
You were a new factor. A different variable.
Someone who, like him, had found yourself with newly-awakened powers during the culling games. A woman who had inadvertently stumbled upon Hakari Kinji and willingly offered up a portion of your points when you learned what it was they were trying to achieve. In return, the remaining members of Jujutsu High had sought you out after the dust of Sukuna had settled and strongly encouraged you to continue on as a jujutsu sorcerer.
“I couldn’t really say no to Panda. I mean, have you seen him? He’s just too cute! I guess that’s why they brought him along when they asked me. Devious move.” You tapped a finger to your temple as you sat in the backseat with Higuruma, Ino riding shotgun beside Ijichi as the bespectacled man chauffeured the three of you to the mission site. “What about you, Higuruma-san? What they’d bribe you with to stay in this crazy jujutsu world?”
He had paused then, suddenly conscious of his words in a way that wasn’t entirely tied to the reasons for self-flagellation he’d been committing for months now.
He thought back to when the culling games first started, the country suddenly thrown into violent and bloody disarray; a veritable Battle Royale of kill or be killed. He should’ve been horrified. Any normal human being would’ve been.
But Higuruma Hiromi had long since stopped being normal.
Because finally, finally, here was a system that worked. A system that was honest in a way that the scaffolding meant to uphold the law wasn’t. A system truly impartial to anything but objective evidence: that the strongest survive.
“Have you ever killed someone who ticked you off?” he had asked Yuji back when the boy first barged into the theatre, requesting that Higuruma relinquish his points to him. “It feels much better than I expected.”
He thought about this then, sitting in the backseat of the moving car, sensing the patience radiating from you as well as something more shadowed lying in wait beneath the brightness of your words.
“I didn’t really have a choice,” Higuruma finally replied, gaze finding his hands on his lap.
The pardon from the top brass. Their intention on recouping whatever loss they’d incurred by his actions in the courtroom that day by working him to the bone as a jujutsu sorcerer.
Then he looked up, just in time for your eyes to lock with his for a moment longer than necessary. You nodded and didn’t say anything more, which he appreciated, given the audience in the close confines of the car. But then your smile grew into something warmer, sympathetic — private in the way that a secret passes between two people who understand exactly what wasn’t being said because both had lived through their own versions of darkness.
He discovered that he envied you then. The way you could still smile. The humanity that still clung to your aura like warmth nestled in the fibres of a wool coat.
And before he could think any further on it,
“We’re here!”
Ino’s announcement — completely unnecessary given that Ijichi was clearly in the process of parking the black sedan — sliced through the moment. Higuruma quietly spooled back the thread of thought, tucking it away to be re-examined at a more convenient time and place.
Wednesday, March 4, 20XX. 10:25 pm.
“Ahh.”
Higuruma let out a quiet sound of content as he stepped into the tub. He’d deliberately drawn a warmer bath that night, and as he sank into the water, steam rose up in a cloud of humidity to temporarily obscure his view of the tiled walls. As the heat began to penetrate his stiff muscles, he closed his eyes and tried to quiet his mind, but to no avail.
He thought about the mission, about meeting you for the first time the day prior. Recalled how composed you had been throughout it all, coordinating seamlessly with both Ino and himself to exorcise a slew of curses in the abandoned hospital in Sendai. Remembered how his mouth had fallen open a fraction to witness your cursed technique in action; the sheer power and devastating precision of it all, which had undoubtedly given you a massive advantage during the culling games.
Higuruma finds it somewhat problematic, the way his thoughts keep tracking to you. And if he were a less honest man, he would tell himself that it was due to sheer novelty; the fact that you had only just entered his professional orbit. Because this was what it was, after all, wasn’t it? He had been impressed with your skill, your efficiency. With the way you had delivered your report during the debriefing at Jujutsu High, words polished and intelligence glaringly obvious even at 7:30 in the morning.
Cupping his hands, he scoops up warm water and splashes it over his face, as if the act could bring clarity.
Because at the end of the day, Higuruma was an honest man. And right now, he found himself honestly curious about what your life had been like prior to the culling games: what you had done for a living, what you had studied in school. Whether you’d had a boyfriend or a husband, or maybe even a family of your own. He honestly tried to reconcile how someone so clearly capable of destruction as yourself could also be so…
…so beautiful.
It was ridiculous, he knew. One could never judge hearts by appearances alone. He himself was the perfect example of this. And yet, Higuruma found that far from being put off by your lethality, he was drawn to it — the image of your smiling face overlapping with the gruesome way you’d dispatched the curses doing something to Higuruma that he hadn’t felt in so long, it took him a while to name it:
Attraction.
Higuruma Hiromi was attracted to you.
How long had it been since he had last had a woman? He couldn’t remember. His days as a defense attorney had been filled with never-ending work: gathering evidence, building cases, courtrooms and disappointment. He’d barely had any time for himself, let alone a girlfriend. Love, and even sex, required a certain mindset that Higuruma just couldn’t muster up, not when his mind was constantly weighed down by the faces of the people he’d been unable to help.
The ones he couldn’t save.
But now, soaking in a tub with the ends of his hair curling from the damp heat, Higuruma says your name aloud — testing the shape of it in his mouth, teeth and tongue working each syllable and finding it pleasantly malleable, the sound of it echoing off the tiled walls to soothe his ears in a way he hadn’t quite anticipated.
And he wonders what it would feel like to have you join him — here, in this bath. Wonders about the shape of you, bared and hot and slick under water, the weight of your body above him, skin to skin and nothing in between. In his mind’s eye, he is drawing you with the same meticulous care that he brought to his legal work, Higuruma’s considerable skills of observation automatic and working overtime even as he fought alongside you on the mission, subconscious filing away the curves that were only partially hinted at beneath your dark navy uniform.
He thinks about wrapping his arms around you, this spectre of his imagination. Thinks about where he would touch first: the rounded joints of your shoulders, the hollows just above the collarbone where hot water would pool. Or perhaps the gentle swell of your breasts, pliant as he kneads from their soft sides towards the middle, just so he could watch them heave beneath his fingers — pinching and teasing at your nipples to test how hard they would grow at his touch.
Hard, like the way Higuruma currently finds himself beneath the water.
“Hmm.”
Sighing, he sets about traversing your body in his head, large hand reaching down until those long, tapered fingers are curling around his considerable girth to languidly stroke once, twice — mouth falling open wider as he inhales deeply at the contact, at the sensation of his palm reacquainting itself with his cock. And as he begins to build up to the pocket of a rhythm that makes him grow longer and thicker and harder, he wonders what you would do to him if you’d have him, whether that ruthlessness you’d displayed in the field would translate into something just as violent and necessary to completely unravel him behind closed doors.
Or not.
Because Higuruma Hiromi was not beyond taking you wherever and whenever you’d tell him to. And he knows this. Knows without a doubt that if you’d directed him to lay you out on the hood of a car and sink his face between your legs in broad daylight, he would do it, no hesitation. Even if Ino were there and Ijichi had still been buckled in the front seat, helpless behind the wheel.
“Shit—"
His breath catches as his hand picks up the pace, water sloshing over the sides of the tub when his body suddenly jerks upwards, undone by the mental image. He wonders what you would say to witness how quickly he’d kneel, perhaps chiding how careless he was to tear his dress pants on the sharp dig of the gravel beneath his knees. He would take it all in stride, anything to continue tasting you on his tongue, burying his face, his nose, deeper and deeper into your pussy just to drink you in, drunk on your juices.
And he would smile to feel the forceful pull of your fingers in his hair, driving him further into your body as if intent on swallowing him whole between the clench of your thighs. Would pant out how far gone he was for your flavour in between each deep dive — lips and tongue making a veritable mess of his face and your cunt, spit and arousal shiny on flesh that trembled in just the right way to make him your prisoner, Higuruma unable to do much else but press kiss after kiss to your slit, until you’re boneless and begging him to fuck you.
And god, how he wanted to fuck you.
To see you try to smile with all sincerity even with his cock in your mouth, the pink corners of your lips straining to contain him when he was hard and full, throbbing over the slippery surface of your wet tongue. He wondered if you’d look up at him with that same sweetness in your gaze as when you’d made that offbeat comment about his name and sunflowers, how you’d react when that voice in his head would inevitably grow louder, urging him to thrust farther and faster towards the back of your throat — how much more beautiful your eyes would appear when they began watering with the effort of taking him in.
Head falling back on the lip of the tub, Higuruma picks up his pace on instinct, squeezing hard around his cock, vaguely aware of the increasing intensity of the throbbing that pulses in the veins that snake along his length, ensuring that each pass of his hand teased at the sensitive spot just beneath the swell of his swollen head until the effect was enough to make his jaw clench, pressure building through his abdomen.
He thought of the way Ino had looked at you during the mission — the man’s expression filled with an awe that Higuruma was sure had mirrored his own when they saw you fight. Ino’s cheeks had been visibly pink when he finally lifted his face mask at the mission’s end, sidling up beside Higuruma to whisper, “Incredible, isn’t she?” as if Higuruma didn’t have eyes of his own.
Yes, you were incredible. Are incredible. And Higuruma Hiromi wanted you all to himself.
He could admit this now to himself in the privacy of this moment with nothing but water and steam around, stepping back to examine his feelings with all the rigour he usually reserved for court cases. It was ridiculous, he knew, to be jealous of Ino; to have been silently irked whenever you laughed at a joke the younger man made on the ride back to headquarters. Even more outlandish to have felt that tightness in his chest to see Ijichi smile when you had thanked him for taking care of the post-mission documentation.
Have I always been this jealous?
Higuruma could count the number of girlfriends he had had on one hand. And with each, he had, unfailingly, treated them with decency and respect, as should be expected. He had never been the type to feel the sting of insecurity whenever he witnessed them smiling or laughing in the presence of other men. Didn’t get angry, didn’t feel annoyed. He was self-possessed in a way that his friends and colleagues didn’t understand, slapping him on the back with a chuckle as they made some comment about how they wished they could do the same.
People couldn’t be owned. And to desire this was, in his mind, no different from wanting a puppet or a toy.
And yet.
Higuruma had known you for less than 48 hours. There was simply no rhyme or reason for him to feel so…so…
…possessive.
In nearly every other aspect of his life, Higuruma Hiromi had always been a measured man…
…until he’d gone off the rails after hitting his mid-thirties.
And perhaps it is the remnants of this breakdown that is the source of these thoughts, the ones that are spurring his cock to jump and twitch within his grip, precum spilling from his tip to immediately dissipate into the bathwater. Because Higuruma knows that he would relish the chance to fuck you before an audience, to drive the full, hard, hot length of him into you over and over again until his name is being torn from your throat in a clear reminder to all of exactly who was capable of reducing you to this debauchery, that a woman like you would only choose a man like him.
Yes, he would make it known.
Would throw your legs high over his shoulders just so he could bend over and fold you close, lips sealing tight upon yours to steal every breathless whimper that escapes every time his hips snap against your backside, the particular geometry of your body sheathing his cock like your pussy never meant to let it go. The pursuit of pleasure would be shameless; every tensed muscle, every wet sound, amplified in the lewd knowledge that they could watch but never touch.
Not you.
Not the way he could.
And when you come apart around him — wet heat squeezing in tight pulses, hands clinging to Higuruma like he is the only solid ground in a tilting world — he would follow suit, stilling the blistering rhythm of his lovemaking just for a fraction of a moment before he, too, arrives, spilling deep into your greedy body, your cunt begging for every last drop as each subsequent spasm milks him of all he had.
He would give it to you gladly, every last drop—
“Fuck—!”
The word escapes in a hiss, barely formed when he finally comes, the cloudy haze of cum spilling from him in spurts that dilute in the bath water as if it were never there at all.
Like you were never here with him.
Inhaling on a trembling breath, Higuruma strokes himself a few more times, pressure precisely applied to ease the rest of his cum out. And as he does so, he allows himself one final image: his seed slowly leaking from between your folds, delicately swollen from the attention he’d lavished upon you with fingers, lips, tongue; the rhythm of him moving inside you to draw forth something that bordered on overwhelming — the specific alchemy of his body in the crucible of yours.
Higuruma sat for a few moments longer, water now lukewarm. He unplugged the drain. Washed himself again and let the water from the shower head beat upon his face.
Clarity, he thinks. Clarity is what he needs most when he sees you next.
So he could look you in the eye as a colleague, as a professional.
Not the man who had brought himself to ecstasy on thoughts of you after having spent just a handful of hours in your presence.
So that the next time you say his name and “sunflowers” in the same breath, smiling like you were made of light, he could tell you,
Yes.
The seeds are being planted.
The garden is being tended to.
One flower at a time.
I’m learning. Rebuilding.
And when the flowers finally bloom, when he’s finally done the work and earned the right, Higuruma will hand you a bouquet of sunflowers and say,
“I was wrong. But every day feels a little more right.”
“So please, smile like that for me again.”