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The GPS had been "recalculating" for the past twenty minutes and you were starting to think it was doing it on fucking purpose. You were also starting to think that your lovely great-aunt had a very specific sense of humor for someone you only ever saw like once or twice a year at your grandma's house. Every single holiday she would corner you in the kitchen and try to get you to come out here for whatever ass reason.
"Come see the ranch again, it's beautiful during the summer, you'd love it," she'd insist and you always said no. You used to come there a few times when you were a kid. But now you were always too busy, or to be honest too uninterested. You belonged in the city, always did. And yet here you were, inheriting half of it. A piece of land with horses on it and also, like, mud and the smell of poop and other ranch things.
Half of it. Could have been the whole thing, because you were the favourite niece for whatever reason. Which you were not going to dissect and why your family thought money + career = good person, though the holidays were definitely going to be eventful this year. Get that, fucking cousins.
The other half was left to the ranch's foreman. Some guy you had never met, inheriting a solid amount of money according to Shoko, your lawyer. Must have been some village gold-digging freeloader who had somehow charmed a lonely old woman into signing away half of a multi-million-dollar estate. People really had no shame. What happened to working like the rest of us?
Your great-aunt must have been going senile and the guy must be fucking sly. Which was why you came. You needed to sort this mess out. Convince the guy into agreeing to get bought out for a sensible amount, or straight-out bully him into forcefully giving you his half, the one that should belong to your family, to you, anyway and not to some village bumpkin who probably thought conning elderly ladies was fun.
But it did start to smell a bit funky as you drove through the countryside. But a smell was just a smell, and dirt was just dirt, and according to the pre-evaluation currently burning a hole in your bag, your half of this dirt was worth exactly, roughly, a lot of, the money you needed to invest, get rich, and finally quit your soul-sucking corporate job. You were fucking done being a corporate slave.
You just had to assess the property, convince the squatter to get the hell out, take the cash, even if only hypothetically now, and get back to civilization.
Yes, this was a pain in the ass, but how long could liquidating one crusty ranch in the middle of nowhere possibly take? You kinda just answered yourself here. Crusty and in the middle of nowhere, sure, but the real estate market was vast. There was definitely a target group for these types of properties. You just had to clean it up a bit, call a good photographer, make it look like a trad fam wet dream to appeal to the rich and morally ambiguous, and boom. Millions cashing in.
Your GPS finally managed to cooperate — mental note to just use Google Maps next time instead of trusting the car navigation. You threw the car into park with a loud crunch of gravel, shoved your sunglasses up your nose, and opened the door. Your heel immediately sank half an inch into the dust.
You could almost giggle at how cliché your arrival was. What would come next, some hot ranch hand emerging from the barn with a piece of hay between his teeth?
Actually, probably not. Instead of a hot cowboy, you were about to meet whatever rat-ass sugar baby had sweet-talked his way into half this inheritance, single-handedly complicating your rich-city-girl retirement plans.
You just didn't understand why your mom was so sceptical when you whined into the phone about the guy. Like, why did only you and your lawyer seem to take some random guy as a threat to your family's financial wellbeing? Oh god, did he try to charm away your mom too when she was visiting last summer?
And look, the ranch was actually, objectively, fine. Less impressive than you remembered from when you were twelve, but still pretty-ish. Green and wide, annoyingly picturesque, and okay, it had real potential. But that only meant getting rid of it would be easier.
You hauled your overstuffed weekender bag over your shoulder and marched up the steps of the wraparound porch. The wood groaned under your amazingly inappropriate shoes, but hey, slay was mandatory no matter where you go. You just needed to get inside, set up your phone hotspot, and start firing off emails alongside with financial and legal threats left and right.
You jiggled the front doorknob. Locked. Obviously.
You dug through your purse, aggressively shoving aside lip glosses and tampons on the loose, before you kinda realized that Shoko hadn't given you a key. She'd handed you a stack of folders, offered her condolences, and sent you on your way.
"Fantastic," you muttered. "Worth millions and I'm fucking locked out."
You dragged your bag down the steps again, heels clicking against the wood before sinking into the grass, and made your way around the side of the house. There had to be a back door. There was a back door, as far as you could remember. Maybe a loose window? You were NOT about to spend your first few hours of rural homeownership waiting on a locksmith in a town that probably only had one, if any.
You found the back door off a screened-in patio. You rattled that knob too. Also locked.
You knocked. Knocked again. Then you banged both fists against the peeling paint of the door.
"Okay, great. Perfect. I'll just sleep in the car. Or maybe I'll kick the door in. Who's going to arrest me, the local sheriff? Have some western-style shootout," you muttered under your breath, chuckling.
"Wouldn't kick that if I were ya, darlin'."
You froze. You spun around so fast you nearly rolled your ankle on the back door mat.
He was leaning against the corner of the patio, one shoulder against the wood, arms loosely crossed. Ends of his white hair were peeking under the hat. Canvas jacket and worn-in jeans that stretched across his muscular legs just right. And — you actually wanted to fucking scream — a literal stem of sweetgrass tucked in the corner of his mouth.
And someone fuck you, are we for real now?
He tipped the brim of his hat back, just a bit, almost cartoonishly, in the true m'lady fashion, revealing bright, entirely too-amused eyes. Gorgeous eyes.
"Door's solid wood," he drawled, his voice slow and warm, as he peeled himself off the post and walked over. God, he was too tall as well. Annoyingly tall. "You're just fixin' to break a toe. And them shoes ain't exactly built for it."
"How long have you been standing there," you said. It did not come out as a question.
"'Bout as long as it took ya to go around the front." He sent off one cheeky smile. "Front door's been sticky since April. Shoulda just knocked."
You looked at the door you had been knocking on for the past two minutes and then back at him. "And you are?" you crossed your arms, eyeing him down. Was this the sugar baby? Well, at least your aunt had taste, you gotta give her that.
"Co-owner," he flashed you a proud smile and you just glared at him. Co-owner my ass. Not for long. "There's a trick to it," he added, and produced a key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and held it open. What a prick.
"I did knock, m-multiple times —"
"Yeah, seen ya." He now leaned against the open doorframe, looking you up and down like he was confirming something. "Your aunt said ya were stubborn."
You stopped dead in your tracks. "Excuse me?"
"Pardon me for lockin' up," he continued seamlessly, ignoring your shock and shifting the sweetgrass to the other corner of his mouth. "Didn't realize her favourite city girl was fixin' to kick our door in."
"My door in," you hissed, and walked past him without another word, feeling a betraying flush spread across your cheeks. So he seemed to know who you were. And he was talking to you so crude and straightforward so no surprise some old lonely lady would get swayed by his sweet tongue. But you were not like that. You were young, smart, and knew exactly why he was trying to charm you. He was not getting your panties nor your half either.
He called out behind you, way too pleased with himself. "Gonna want different shoes, by the way."
You went in. The spare keys were by the front door, lying on the side console, mocking you. But you had plenty of time to actually look around.
The house itself was pretty average — ranch looking, kitschy decor pieces here and there, crocheted blankets galore. Apparently every room had been assigned at least one horse painting, and if you stared at the wallpaper long enough it would probably give you an ugly headache.
It was also surprisingly spacious. You claimed the master suite, settled in, and spent a good while beating the dust out of things before your stomach reminded you that you hadn't eaten since the gas station off the highway.
You followed your nose downstairs. The smell was offensively good. You were expecting the lingering scent of mothballs or dusty staleness. Instead, the kitchen smelled like garlic, butter, and seared meat. Why did your kitchen smell like garlic, butter, and seared meat?
You walked downstairs to find the hot, who said that, guy from the porch standing at your great-aunt's stove. He had ditched the canvas jacket, leaving him in a faded henley that did entirely too much for his shoulders. His infuriating hat was currently resting on the kitchen island, revealing white hair that was a bit slicked, a bit messy, and had absolutely no business looking that good unstyled.
"What are you doing in here?" you demanded, pausing with one hand on the doorframe. "Do you live in this house?"
"Nah, not fully," he drawled, not looking away from the cast-iron pan as he flipped a steak with a pair of tongs. "Fam's got a place down the road. Usually head back there 'round sundown."
"Then why are you cooking in my kitchen?"
He finally glanced over his shoulder, flashing that same cheeky smile from earlier. "Our kitchen, ya mean? Figured a pretty city girl like you wouldn't think to stop for groceries. Auntie always said you practically lived on overpriced coffee. Can't have ya starvin' to death on night one, can we?"
You leveled him with your best hostile glare. "Stop talking about her like you knew her better than I did. And why exactly did my aunt give you half of this property? Who are you? ‘Cause you're using my house —"
"Satoru Gojo," he said easily, not letting you finish, man really was rude, putting a perfectly seared cut of meat onto a plate. "Foreman. Manager. Owner of the other half of this ranch. Currently actin' as your personal chef."
The audacity of this cowboy gold-digger seemed to know no bounds. The man standing between you and your generational wealth, and you would not have that, thank you very much.
He set the plate on the table and gestured to the chair. "Take a seat, darlin'. Food's gettin' cold."
You crossed your arms, prepared to tell Satoru Gojo to pack up his steak, his cowboy hat, and leave, but then your stomach rumbled.
His smile only widened. It was infuriating. It was even more infuriating that five minutes later you were sitting at the dining table eating the best piece of steak you had ever tasted in your life. You refused to give him the satisfaction of a compliment. Last thing this man needed was to know his cooking skills were as superior as his shoulder-to-waist ratio. Instead you chewed, swallowed, and mentally decided to dismantle his little squatter dream right over the medium-rare beef.
"Just to be clear, Satoru," you said, pointing your fork at him across the table. "Don't get used to cooking here or whatever. I'm selling this place. Which means you are going to sign off on it. I'll make sure of it."
You waited for the panic. The sudden realization that his free ride was over. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, stretched his long legs out under the table, and rested his arms loosely across his chest. He looked like he had been expecting you to say exactly that.
"Sure ya are," he hummed, his eyes tracking the way you stubbornly cut another piece of meat. "How's the food?"
You stared at him. The sheer audacity. It was a small-town disease, it had to be. Some terminal inability to grasp how the real world actually worked. Let him sit there looking all smug and broad-shouldered in his little cowboy fantasy. Let him think his stupid, slow-drawling cowboy routine was going to stall a multi-million-dollar liquidation. You had a hefty folder of documents ready, a schedule, and an unyielding need to get out of your current life and no man was going to ruin that. Let alone some tall, thieving cowboy.
You shoved another piece of steak into your mouth, chewed aggressively, and refused to look at him for the rest of the meal.
You slept til ten. You would probably sleep til noon if the cows and whatever other animals outside wouldn't be so loud. Like, don't get me wrong, you loved animals, okay? You weren't some psycho. But you loved these kinds of animals mostly on your FYP through cute little short videos where you didn't have to be close to them. Beauty sleep was important, but also you hadn't had any hot yoga in the morning in so so long, so sleeping in felt appropriate and also important for the ruthless negotiation performance you were going to execute today. It was simply strategic.
You were going to assess. To start figuring out how fast you could get this place on the market and this man out of your life. You were going outside to take a slow and thorough assessing walk. To assess. Not because you were curious about what he looked like in daylight doing actual ranch shit.
You marched downstairs like a woman with a plan. The house was empty, a fresh pot of coffee on the counter, and a note on the table that said good morning <3 in handwriting that had no business looking that nice. Also a heart? Now c’mon. That man's intentions could be a glass house and you were standing outside with a rock in hand.
You were not going to say no to the coffee though. Even if it definitely wasn't the artisan blend you always bought downtown. You only scoffed at the note. Satoru Gojo did not deserve any other reaction.
It was a nice morning. The air smelled like grass and something warm, the sun already shining. There were people already working. You counted five of them, including Gojo, spread across the property doing various ranch-related things you probably did not even have vocabulary for. The first one to spot you was a guy with pink hair, who lit up like you were the most exciting thing that had happened all week.
"Oh, you're auntie's niece!" he said, jogging over, already grinning. "I'm Yuji. We heard an awful lot 'bout ya."
You were going to ask what exactly they had heard, and from whom, and in what context, but he was already pointing across the property. "That there's Megumi—" a dark-haired guy by the barn who was currently taking a break "—Nanami's over by the water trough, an' Nobara's in the stables—"
Five people working here? The ranch must be waay larger than you remembered. But the question kinda remained, and it was who was paying them? Because your lawyer had surely not mentioned any post-mortem fund to cover ranch workers. Look, if they weren't going to ask you for money, who were you to argue.
"Co-owner," you introduced yourself flatly, despite him already knowing who you were. "Nice to meet you all."
Yuji grinned wider, if that was possible. You're exactly like she described ya," he announced to no one in particular. You did not know what to do with that, so you did nothing with it. Were you supposed to be offended?
Over by the fence line, Gojo was with the horse currently chilling in the outside pen. He was wearing a white t-shirt today and his forearms on display like this were frankly disrespectful, but you didn’t hear it from me.
He was soothing the animal, murmuring low, his gloved hands running over its flank. You shamelessly, SUBCONSCIOUSLY, okay, eyed him down, because you wouldn't do it CONSCIOUSLY. You were into finance bros, Wall Street kinds of guys, thank you very much. But you had read the cowboy romances. You in retrospect should not have read the cowboy romances.
The display was doing things. And you were NOT looking at things. But he spotted you before you could look away and cheekily waved in your direction, and you gulped, rolled your eyes, and looked at Yuji who was currently looking at your shoes.
"Them's some cool shoes," said Yuji.
"Thank you," you said and smirked. How they all thought you were some inexperienced city girl who didn't know what shoes to wear, but take that, cowboys! You had worn your trusted hiking Salomons. The pink ones. You came prepared.
"Gonna get destroyed, though," he added cheerfully, and went back to work.
As if. They were waterproof. Or at least claimed to be. You had never actually tested them on a hike, because you didn't go on hikes.
You spent the next hour trailing around the property with your phone out, taking photos for the appraiser follow-up and pretending you were not keeping precise track of where Gojo was at all times. Because you were not. Because that was not what you were doing. You were doing a thorough and professional property assessment that happened to occasionally require looking in the direction where a man was doing something with a post and a mallet that you did NOT find interesting at all.
At some point Megumi walked past you carrying something heavy, looked at your shoes, then at your face, and said "hm" in a tone that was the whole opinion. Nobara, when you passed the stables, gave you a long once-over from where she was working and said "cute outfit". You decided to take it as a compliment and move on. Nanami simply nodded at you and then decided to ignore you all the way.
At some point Gojo sauntered over to the fence when you walked past. "Mornin'. Sleep good? Bet ya must have, seein' as ya slept 'til ten."
"Ten AM is average waking hours," you clipped, aggressively tapping your blank screen. "Look, I need the exact acreage of the grazing pastures and a list of any structural issues on the property."
He leaned his forearms against the top rail. He smelled like sweat, dust, and actual physical exertion. It was fucking awful.
"Barn roof needs a patch 'fore winter. Pastures stretch 'bout forty acres back to the tree line."
"Great. And the soil quality? I need to know if the land is viable for commercial rezoning once we liquidate."
Gojo tilted his head, his eyes flashing with that same stupid knowing amusement from last night.
"Commercial rezonin'? Ain't exactly the most pragmatic approach for this topography, considerin' the watershed."
You blinked. Huh. "I'll let the appraiser decide that tomorrow."
"Sure thing, darlin'," he hummed, pushing off the fence and turning back toward the barn. "Just don't go wanderin' into the north pasture in them sneakers. Mud's deep today."
Sneakers. The absolute nerve of these people. These were premium quality shoes suitable BOTH for city and hiking, thank you very much.
You followed as he gestured you around the property. He pointed things out as you went — which pastures flooded, where the good water was, how many head they were running right now. You kept your appraiser brain running on a loop: acreage, fencing quality, water rights, how many rich city people would pay premium to play cowboy for a weekend. You could already see the listing. It was going to be soooo easy to sell. Please insert the money-tongue emoji.
Except every time he turned to look at you the summer sun caught on his white hair under the hat and your stomach turned. He walked you back to the house and stopped at the bottom of the steps, looking down at you with that cute, annoying little smile.
"Still plannin' on bullyin' me into signin' by dinner? Tour didn't change ya mind, sweets?"
You crossed your arms. Sweets. So now y'all were on cute pet name basis? That man was moving fast, clearly a shameless veteran of the con. "By Friday if I can swing it."
Gojo tipped his hat back with one finger, eyes bright and way too amused. "Sure thing, darlin'. Just let me know how that goes." Then he turned and walked back toward the barn like he hadn't just made your entire plan feel like a joke you were telling yourself.
You stood there a second too long, watching him go, heart doing something annoying in your chest. It was surely because of his condescending tone and the stupid, uncalled-for pet names. Trust.
"Asshole," you muttered under your nose, and went inside before you could do something even dumber like follow him and watch his back muscles coil behind the washed-out white fabric.
You made yourself busy in the kitchen. Lunch, or whatever could pass for lunch when the fridge did not contain avocados, prosciutto, and a hummus from the farmer's market, just farm things and one sad block of cheese. You were rummaging through the cabinets for something edible when you spotted a book.
It was just sitting there next to the coffee maker like it lived there. It was your favourite book. And it made your stomach turn in the best way. Oh my god, you didn't know your lovely aunt had a taste for good literature too. It suddenly made you a little sentimental.
The spine was cracked in three places, dog-eared every fifty pages or so, almost just like your copy back home. Aight, alright then. Time for a reread. You picked it up and took it upstairs.
It was strategic. Because everything you did here was strategic. You simply needed something to read before bed, and also your phone was at four percent currently, so you plopped down on your bed and started reading — the old bookmark falling silently onto your bedsheets.
The appraiser arrived the next afternoon, armed with the pictures you took yesterday and very long, very frustrated emails you had sent off since you arrived. You waited outside with your trusted thicc folder of the pre-eval from Shoko and a very clear agenda that did not include any Satoru Gojo.
But Satoru Gojo was hovering by the porch outside when the appraiser's car pulled up.
"Gojo," you smiled through your teeth, using your most professional voice that could still curdle milk. "You don't need to be here for this."
"Well I'm a co-owner, ain't I?" he said pleasantly, and pushed off the railing to shake the appraiser's hand before you could. "Satoru. Good to meet ya."
The appraiser was in his mid-fifties, clipboard in hand, shook it warmly. "Great spread you've got here."
"We're selling it," you interrupted as you shook his hand too.
"Might be," Gojo shrugged with the stupid smirk and gestured for the appraiser to lead the way.
The walkabout took about two hours. Gojo trailed behind you, next to you, hands in his pockets, answering the appraiser's questions before you could even try, pointing out things you hadn't even thought to mention. Making it extremely difficult to maintain the fiction that you were the one in charge here.
He knew where every fence line ran. He knew the load-bearing issue on the barn roof and the drainage pattern on the pastures and could rattle off the grazing capacity per acre without looking anything up. It was very annoying. It was also a little bit impressive, but that was all against your better judgment.
At some point the appraiser asked about the property's existing tax classification and whether you'd looked into agricultural exemption status for the sale. Gojo paused and looked over at you.
"That one's yours, darlin'," he murmured, stepping back slightly with his arms crossed.
So you answered. Answered well, actually better than well even. You'd done your homework the second you stepped out of your lawyer's office. Taxes, agricultural exemptions, the step-up in basis on inherited property, comparable county sales, all of it.
"Right," the appraiser said, making notes.
Gojo made a small sound of agreement. "Auntie said ya had a head for money," he said as he started to walk next to you again. "She was real proud of ya."
You furrowed your eyebrows and scribbled something in your tablet that made no sense, just so you didn't have to answer that one. You were not going to be sentimental about that. So why did it make you all woozy? That Yuji kid had made it clear that your great-aunt had a thing for talking about you, but why did it feel different coming from him? Because! it felt like a privacy violation! Exactly that. You were here to sell a ranch, not to stand in a dirt field and catch feelings about a dead woman being proud of you, relayed by the man currently standing between you and the money. That was manipulation, probably. Surely had to be.
"And this section here," the appraiser was saying, gesturing toward the east field, "good flat acreage, nice aspect. You thought about any alternative use options instead of selling? Agritourism's been doing well in this county. Glamping setups, farm stays, that kind of thing —"
"We're liquidating the full property," you interrupted. Last thing you needed was these men giving each other ideas. You wanted the money and to get the hell out, and you were going to repeat this shit until the moment it actually happened. It was called positive affirmations.
"Could be viable for a boutique rental operation, dependin' on how ya market it," Gojo interrupted you right back. Great. Now he was giving him an annoying idea. But also... huh.
You turned to look at him. Because huh. He was looking at the east field like he was already imagining it.
"Just a thought," he shrugged, and met your eyes briefly before looking back at the appraiser. "Carry on."
You were still looking at him, a little dumbfounded. Because that was a bit out of a cowboy's pocket. It was actually a legible idea, and you hated that you recognized ball when you heard it.
You were so busy trying to wedge yourself back into the conversation that had slightly gotten away from you, ping-ponging your attention between the two men, that you didn't notice the ground getting slick and spongy under your left pink Salomon.
A hand closed around your arm. Gojo redirected you gently, pulling you to his side of the path, and you could feel the warmth of him through his flannel.
"Watch where ya goin', darlin'," he murmured, low enough that it was just for you. "Can't have ya all wet n' muddy now, can we." He let go and kept talking to the appraiser like he hadn't been tracking exactly where you were walking for the past two hours.
You looked at the puddle and it was a big puddle. You looked at him, a betraying flush already dusting your cheeks, and he glanced back at you just to check if you were okay. The expression was quiet, strangely real, and gone before you could name it.
You both looked away. The skin on your arm was warm and tingling and your heart started to thrum in your ribcage, which made you furious. This man was trying to cause a cardiac arrest so he could have the entire ranch to himself. That was obviously what was happening here.
The appraiser cleared his throat. "I'll need about a week to compile the full valuation report. Some water rights questions I'll need to verify with the county, and the barn will require a structural engineer before I can sign off. I’ll return with the updated documents next week, and let you know which day."
"A week?" you repeated.
"Give or take. We will likely need to assess some things in greater detail."
You thought about your weekender bag left half-packed back in the master suite. You had packed only about three days of clothes, your skincare bag, and a laptop charger. You looked at the ranch stretching out around you, annoyingly large and annoyingly beautiful in the late afternoon light. You looked at Gojo, who was gazing at the middle distance serenely. So you were going to have to stay here even longer.
"And can’t we do like a Zoom call or something?" you demanded, scowling at the very idea of staying here with him and his annoying cowboy life.
"I’d appreciate if we could meet here again in person."
You bit the inside of your cheek, blinked down at your already muddied-up shoes, RIP, and nodded in defeat.
"Fine," you hissed. Now you were going to have to explain to your boss that you were taking more days off, and that no, you were not living out some cowboy romance fantasy, and that you had apparently chosen the slowest appraiser in the entire world.
"Fantastic," he said, winking at you before flashing that very sweet, very crooked smile. "Least ya got more time to try n' change my mind, sweets."
"I don't need more time, I will make you," you scoffed, narrowing your eyes. "We ARE signing."
"We'll see," he answered, still smiling down at you. "Least ya get a proper look at the inside of the house while ya here, darlin'. Plenty of space, ain't there."
You stood there by the porch again in your Salomons, holding up completely fine, for the record, and thought that you were going to need more underwear. Also possibly a therapist. But mostly the underwear.
Fuck. You didn't have enough clothes.
"Where is the closest mall?" you blurted out.
Gojo paused and looked back. "Mall?"
"I don't have enough clothes for a week," you answered, genuinely horrified.
"Relax," Gojo said, walking the appraiser to his car. "Got a washin' machine. And Nobara can lend ya some things." He glanced back at you over his shoulder, that infuriating not-quite-smile on. "Least they'll be more ranch appropriate."
You woke up to a small pile of clothes sitting right outside your bedroom door. Kinda on cue, because you had just officially depleted your clean panties supply and were more than ready for a small laundry day. You wanted to slap yourself because why did you only take three extra pairs of panties anyways? Whenever you went somewhere just for a weekend you took like two weeks' worth, just in case you would shit yourself approximately every two hours. This time, you were being way too ambitious.
You brought it over to your bed. There were two outfits that clearly belonged to Nobara judging by the sizing. But underneath them, three of Gojo's t-shirts. Soft from washing, faded, and obviously his because they were stupidly large.
Why though. You asked yourself as you INEXPLICABLY took a lungful of one of them. Was this kinda deranged domestication game he was trying to pull on you? Thinking that giving you his clothes would make you more pliable in his wicked evil squatting plans?
But two can play the game, as you pulled it over your head. Put on one of the two pairs of pants from Nobara and padded down. He was in the kitchen in the middle of making a fresh batch of coffee for you again.
"Mornin'—" he stalled as he turned around and saw you drowning in his favourite tee.
You braced for the smirk, the cocky comment and how you would retaliate even meaner. But he just blinked at the way the short sleeve was almost at your elbows and how the hem was hitting your mid-thighs. His eyes flickered and darkened, the corner of his mouth almost twitching, and then he swallowed hard and looked away first.
"Coffee's fresh," he muttered, turning his back to you.
You nodded, looking sideways, why was it suddenly so hot in here? And Satoru, I mean GOJO, started to wonder that too, as he caught his reflection in the microwave glass with a blush adorning his sun-kissed skin.
You took your coffee outside before either of you could make it weirder.
You spent the rest of the day doing laundry, arguing with your boss over the phone, finding signal to argue with your boss over the phone, then arguing with your mom over the phone, the good signal spots moving all over the fucking property like it tried to piss you off. Which guess what, it fucking worked. You then found the tree swing you used to play on when you were a child, so you argued from there too. You then watched Gojo and Nanami take the horses for a ride, rolling your eyes at the obvious hot cowboy shit, who said that again, and spent some time with Megumi, who showed you how to pet a cow named Betsy.
The next day started off fantastic. The appraiser called to say he'd powered through and would arrive in two days instead of five.
But the tall cowboy sugar baby was everywhere, unbothered, breathing down your neck. Surely because D-day was approaching and you were NOT yielding. You had resolve made out of titanium. You would be sitting at the island, dissociating in the appropriate i’m-on-a-ranch-and-have-nothing-to-do way over your filtered coffee, which was kinda growing on you now, which you hated to admit, and he would just stroll in, grab a wrench, fix the squeaky cabinet hinge you'd whined about the day before in under two minutes, wash his hands, and leave. It was vile, and the way his bicep and tricep flexed while he did it was even viler. Ugh.
By late afternoon you were sitting on the porch steps, holding your phone up to the sky like a sacrificial offering to the cell tower gods. Zero bars. You just needed one fucking bar to send this email.
Down by the fence, Satoru was working with Yuji and Nanami. He was hauling heavy wooden posts, his t-shirt clinging to his sweaty back. Yuji tripped over a coiled rope, nearly eating the dirt, and Satoru laughed.
He threw his head back, resting his hands on his hips, and the sound carried itself right over to where you were sitting. It was a booming, tingly sound that went straight to your belly and made you feel all warm. You lowered your phone and stared in their direction. The air was hazy in the early twilight light. Your chest did this weird little flutter, and for a second you completely forgot you were supposed to be liquidating his life. He just looked so—
"See ya watchin' him all the time."
You jumped out of your skin, almost dropping your phone down the stairs into the mud. Nobara was walking past the porch, lugging two heavy buckets of feed.
"You like him, huh?" she added, casually dropping the bomb over her shoulder. And it felt like getting shot straight in the underbelly. Because it WASN'T true, it OBVIOUSLY wasn't true. You were just assessing the ranch workers, doing ranch work stuff on the ranch. Simple as that.
"Nuh-uh!" you sputtered, your voice cracking horribly as you scrambled up from the steps. "I was just—"
Nobara paused, turning back with a single judgmental eyebrow raised.
"I was just looking if anyone doesn't need any help!" you blurted out, speed-walking down the steps in a blind panic. "There is no signal again and I have absolutely nothing else to do!"
You marched right up to her and violently wrenched both of the heavy buckets out of her hands. Nobara didn't even resist. She just let her arms fall, looked at her empty hands, and then up at your manic face.
"Right," she said smoothly, smirking. "Follow me then, hard worker."
She continued walking, strolling toward the stables with you in tow, aggressively out of breath, holding fifty pounds of horse feed, which was fine because you frequented the gym, while drowning in Satoru's t-shirt.
Which in retrospect you shouldn't have done because now you were lounging on the couch, fucking sore day later. You were still wearing the t-shirt and it's nobody's business that it might have been the third day in a row. You were finishing the book you found prior, absolutely eating up the best part of the story.
"Well, well," Satoru suddenly appeared over your lying form, eyeing you again. And you're saying again because you caught this creep eyeing the way his t-shirt fit you every single time he came into frame. He looked at the book in your hands and crossed his arms. "A little book thief, ain't ya, sweets?"
He pointed at the book and his bookmark currently lying flat on your belly. Huh. It's his book?
"I didn't steal it," you said, defensive, pressing the book flat against your chest to hide the cover. "It was left in a common area. I simply... took it."
"Took it," he repeated, tilting his head as he sat on the armrest by your feet. "That what we're callin' it?"
"I don't know what else you'd call reading orphaned books lying around. Clearly you're a bad owner."
That got a real laugh out of him, short and surprised. And instead of pushing the teasing forward, his bright blues dropped back down to the book clutched to your chest. The cocky, crooked smirk faded into something softer and more observant.
"At the chapter with the train station, ain't ya."
You blinked, completely thrown off guard. "How did you—"
"'Cause yer white-knucklin' the spine," he said softly, nodding at your hands. "Best part of the book. Read it 'bout four times myself. Rhetoric in that monologue's somethin' else. 'Sides, can tell by where it's cracked open."
You only blinked at him, surprised. He loved this book too? And you were reading his copy too… No. No. NO. Again this must have been some stalling tactic. Your entire family knew you loved this specific book, because you couldn't shut the fuck up about it over Christmas break back in freshman year. Auntie must have accidentally mentioned it too, and now he was using this against you.
You swallowed hard, suddenly feeling incredibly exposed. AND suspicious. "It's... yeah. It's really good."
"Take your time with it," he murmured, his eyes staying on your hands a second too long. "Ain't askin' for it back anytime soon, darlin'."
He stood and stretched, unfairly tall in the low afternoon light coming through the window. “Also came to tell ya, I'm headin' home early today. Dad wanted some help with somethin', an' one of our ranch hands got sick, so gotta help the old man myself.”
"Yeah, uh, okay," you said, picking up the book from your chest again, looking up at him with unknowing puppy eyes. His expression softened even more at that. Fuck. "Tomorrow the appraiser comes back, at 11 am, so be back by then?"
He smiled. "Don't worry, sweets, I'll be back at eight sharp, like always. Don't miss me too much, will ya?" He tilted his head, cooed. Then he walked out the front door, the screen slamming shut behind him, leaving you lying alone on the couch. Your heart was doing a stupid tap dance against your ribs again.
You stared down at the book, then glanced down at his t-shirt.
Fuck indeed.
You realized that you were in so much trouble. Not even your titanium hard resolve could stay on the offensive forever.
The house remained quiet, and frankly, you became kind of bored and antsy. Nanami and Nobara had disappeared somewhere toward the far pasture with a truck full of fence posts, and Yuji and Megumi were off doing something with the hay bales that involved a lot of yelling and, from what you could hear, at least one near-death experience for Yuji.
You wandered out to the porch and looked toward the pasture. There were cows.
Megumi had shown you how to pet Betsy. It was basically just a large dog that ate grass. You marched over, zeroing in on a brownish cow closest to the fence rail that was aggressively chewing its cud. You climbed over the wooden rail and approached the animal with your palm out.
"Here, Betsy two-point-zero," you cooed, using your best networking voice, murmuring something you'd heard Gojo murmur to the horses. It surely wasn’t Betsy, because Betsy had a notch out of one ear and the general demeanor of a woman who gave about zero fucks. But a cow is a cow, isn't it? Yesterday went well. Great, even. You were basically a natural cow petter.
So today you were going to do it again. Because you were an adult woman temporarily owning large farm animals, apparently, and the cows were kind of soothing to be around.
The cow stopped chewing. It slowly turned its massive head, glaring at you with hostile, beady eyes. Uhh. Before you could even reconsider moving onto another, more friendly-looking cow, Satoru’s truck came tearing back up the driveway, parking half on the grass. You whipped your head around, but the sudden movement, combined with the car crunching the gravel, spooked the cow. It let out a demonic moo and lunged forward.
Being the sensible person with great reflexes that you were, you naturally turned and bolted instead of just calmly backing away from the charging cow. But the cow took it as a game of tag and started running after you.
You shrieked, scrambling backward as you tried to change direction, but your premium waterproof Salomons found absolutely zero traction in the mud and manure, still slick from last night’s rain. Your feet flew out from under you.
There was a loud whistle that spooked the entire herd, sending them running in the opposite direction including the gladiator cow.
"Gotcha!"
Satoru appeared quite literally out of nowhere. His arms wrapped tight around your waist, hauling you backward before you could literally eat shit. But his momentum was too fast, the mud was too slick, you were spooked too, and physics was a bitch. You both went down hard anyway. Yummy.
“Well,” he said, voice warm and way too delighted despite the fact that you were currently rolling in mud, “sure wasn’t expectin’ a rodeo.”
You flailed in a blind panic, wildly trying to push yourself up. Your elbow jabbed him in the ribs and your knee caught his thigh. You were in shock from the freezing cold mud and the smell, but also from how warm his body was underneath you, and how tightly his arms were still wrapped around your waist.
"Stop swingin'!" he groaned, shifting his weight to trap your legs beneath his so you wouldn't kick him again.
He rolled you off of him and ended up fully pinning you into the mud, his forearms planted on either side of your head, his chest heaving, his hair splattered with brown dirt. He hadn't wanted to get you dirtier, but oh well.
“What are you even doing here?!” you shrieked, violently shoving your muddy palm over his mouth to stop whatever smug comment was forming there. “You said you were leaving!”
His bright blue eyes crinkled at the corners. He didn't even try to move your hand.
"Forgot my wallet," he mumbled, his voice warm and vibrating directly against your palm.
He kissed the center of your muddy hand before gently prying your wrist away so he could speak properly. Oh god.
"Had to come back for it," he smirked down at you, chest still heaving against yours. "Couldn't risk ya stealin' my social security number and signin' shit without me knowin'."
He knew he should let you go. Your expression was somewhere between flustered and furious, because how dare he think you would do such a thing! Not that you hadn't thought of it yesterday when he was giving fresh hay to the horses, but still.
You had mud in your hair and everywhere else, wearing his favorite t-shirt and completely ruining it. Yet you were the prettiest thing he had ever seen. It was, in hindsight, a bit of a stupid thought to have about a woman covered in cow shit, but he was having it anyway.
Fuck, he thought, the realization hitting him so fast and so hard it actually knocked the remaining breath out of his lungs. He was in so much trouble.
Auntie’s photos hadn’t done you justice. Neither had her stories, told over coffee on the porch with that soft, knowing look she got whenever your name came up, like she already knew something he hadn’t figured out yet. He’d built you up in his head over two years of hearing about you before you ever set foot on this land. Then you’d walked in wearing heels and being an absolute bitch to him, and he’d liked you before you even said a real word. He’d been kinda fighting it ever since.
He really should let you go. But studying your pretty face now, feeling the frantic pulse in the muddy wrist he was still holding... he kinda didn't want to. And was he crazy for wanting to stay exactly like this? In the mud, with you pinned beneath him? It was pathetic.
He wanted you to steal his books, and wear his clothes, and yell at his, well, your, cows forever. But then your eyes dropped, heavy under his gaze, staring right at his mouth. Well. There it was. He was in it now, and no amount of good sense was gonna talk him back out of it. He was, after all, just a man head over heels for a woman.
He let his weight settle a fraction lower and your breath went shallow. Traitor lungs. The mud was already drying at his temple, one strand of white hair stuck flat against his forehead, and his eyes weren't doing the cocky thing anymore.
"Darlin'," he said, low, breath fanning over your cheeks.
Your hand was still loosely caught in his, wrist turned up, his thumb tracing absent circles against your pulse point like he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. Every single working brain cell you owned had relocated its entire focus to that one spot on your skin.
He tipped his head. Not much. An inch, maybe less, could've been him just adjusting his hat if he'd been wearing one, except he wasn't. You could smell mud, sweat and something underneath that you already recognized as him, and you must have hit your head on the way down but you leaned in too.
But your brain caught up to your body about four seconds too late, the way it always did around him, and pure animal panic did the rest.
You slapped a muddy hand over his mouth.
Again.
His eyes went wide, startled this time, caught in the moment, and something that might have been a laugh got trapped somewhere behind your palm.
“Nope,” you said, breathless, voice cracking clean in half. “Nope. We are not. I am not. This is mud delirium. We hit our heads and probably inhaled some mud bacteria already eating our brains.”
He said something back, muffled completely against your palm, warm breath ghosting over your skin. You had absolutely no idea what it was and every intention of never finding out, because knowing would mean acknowledging that some small part of you had wanted to hear it.
You scrambled backward out from under him so fast you nearly went down in the mud again. He let you go this time, sitting back on his heels, and watched you flee toward the house at the speed of light.
“I need a shower,” you announced to no one, to the yard, to the traumatized cows, and speed-walked the rest of the way inside without looking back once.
You did not, in fact, need a shower nearly as badly as you needed time alone to NOT think about the fact that you’d wanted him to kiss you with mud on his face, in a field full of manure, and that some small, stupid part of you was furious he hadn’t managed to before you panicked. And that the kiss he’d left in the center of your palm was still burning.
You slept like shit, heart still erratic, dreaming weird-ass dreams, and had only about four minutes of peace before you remembered the appraiser was coming today.
Exactly in an hour. Which kinda gave you no time to figure out what you were supposed to do with your face around Satoru after yesterday. You felt like the cow might as well have run over you, actually, the entire herd might as well have. Every muscle ached, and your brain was a buzzing mess of mud, lips, pulse, panic.
Satoru's gray t-shirt, completely ruined and stiff with dried mud, was crumpled in the corner of the room where you'd thrown it yesterday.
You stared at it, feeling your cheeks heat up again. Then, looking around the empty room like you were committing a federal crime, you snatched it up, folded it aggressively, and shoved it at the very bottom of your weekender bag. You were throwing it away. Obviously. You just... needed to throw it away in the city.
He was already on the porch when you came down, coffee in hand like always, and for one horrible second, neither of you said anything at all.
"Mornin'," he said, testing the water.
"Morning." You didn't look at him directly. You couldn't bring yourself to. Your stomach hurt, and you couldn't tell if it was because you needed breakfast or because you were trying so hard not to look at his flushed cheeks.
The appraiser arrived thirty minutes early, his folder thick with the finished valuation. You sat across the kitchen table from him, determined to make today feel like any other Tuesday in your old life.
Numbers. Signatures. Clean.
The guy talked about the process, spreading topographical maps across your kitchen table. He droned on about riparian water rights, soil degradation, and grazing easements. You tried to focus on the numbers, nodding along like a shark smelling blood. But you couldn't really lock in. Not when Gojo leaned over the table, planting a hand next to your coffee mug to casually correct the appraiser's boundary lines. He effortlessly traced the east pasture, tossing out phrases in that drawl of his that, you finally had to admit, made your toes curl. Damn those unreasonable cowboy romances that had apparently planted weird shit into your subconscious.
You sat there, spine rigid, staring at a pie chart you weren't actually seeing, aggressively ignoring the way everything he did was sending weird, electric tingles straight down in between your thighs.
"Report's solid," the appraiser finally said, sliding a copy of the finalized valuation across the table. "Given everything we assessed, you're looking at a strong number either way—as a straight sale or if you wanted to explore the other angles we talked about. If you two have reached an agreement on the buyout or liquidation, I have the preliminary sign-offs right here."
This was it. The moment you had been plotting since you got the lawyer's call. Your fingers were tingling with anticipation. Your rich city-girl dream was just a few letters and a signature spot away.
You turned to Satoru, your heart hammering against your ribs, giving him the widest eyes.
"Well," you said, your voice tight and overly bright. "We're liquidating. Satoru is signing his half over for the buyout. Right?"
Satoru looked at the appraiser, then slowly looked at you. And god fuck him, because why did you choose this moment to finally call him by his first name, the exact second he was probably about to crush your heart?
"No," he shook his head.
The appraiser's pen paused mid-air. "No, as in—"
"No, as in I ain't signin'," Satoru said, his voice low, and devoid of its usual teasing lilt. "I ain't sellin'. Not today, not next week. The ranch stays."
You blinked at him. Once. Twice. Waiting for the joke, for the crooked smile, for him to say gotcha again and produce a pen from his back pocket like this was one more bit in a week that had already had way too many bits for your personal liking. The appraiser looked awkwardly between the two of you, slowly closing his folder and clearing his throat like he wanted to be literally anywhere else on the planet.
"We talked about this." Your voice cracked upward and you hated it instantly. "You knew this was happening today. You knew the appraiser was coming with a report and sign-offs and you just—what, let me sit here? Let me say all that in front of him? You couldn't have told me before I—"
"Talked 'bout it when, exactly?" Satoru interrupted as he furrowed his eyebrows. "When ya were tellin' me yer sellin' without even askin' what I actually wanted?"
"Are you kidding me?!" you yelled, pushing your chair back so hard it screeched against the floor. You didn't even care that the appraiser was practically shrinking into the wallpaper. "You are literally holding my life hostage! You're just being arrogant and stubborn—"
"Ya think that's what this is? Think I'm holdin' ya hostage out of spite?"
The appraiser, wisely, had begun quietly gathering his papers and backing away.
"I want to go home!" you whined, your chest heaving, the sheer panic was making you cruel. "I want to go back to my actual life with this entire thing done, and you are standing in my way because you want... what? To win some stupid game? To have this house all for yourself?"
He flinched at that. And whatever raw thing that had been sitting behind his eyes since yesterday disappeared as quickly as you put it in there. The warmth completely drained from his face as he bit his lip and his eyes dragged over the papers again. His eyes returned to you and searched yours. He wanted, no needed, you to realize that his refusal to sign had absolutely nothing to do with acreage or payouts, and everything to do with the fact that the second you both signed, you were going to walk out the front door and never come back.
"Fine," Satoru said. He stood up slowly, frustrated and upset that he couldn't make you stay if you were this determined to run. "Go home, then. But I ain't signin', sweets."
You were shaking. You were so furious at him, and even more furious at the sudden, horrifying thought that maaybe you didn't actually want to sell. Panicking at the sight of the usually bright blues losing their glint, and the cowboy hat sitting at the table suddenly looking less annoying than it ever did. But your pride was a titanium trap, and it snapped shut, locking you inside.
"I am leaving," you hissed, backing away from him, your pink Salomons, which were pink no more, but rather a crusty, dirty brown from the mud, loud against the wood. "But I will be back. And I will make you sign that paperwork, Gojo. Even if I have to blackmail you to do it."
You turned on your heel, marched upstairs to grab your weekender bag, left his book still unfinished on your nightstand, and practically ran out the front door. You threw your car in reverse, spitting gravel everywhere, and drove away without looking in the rearview mirror once.
The first thing you did when you arrived home, finally, was throw the stolen t-shirt in the washing machine on the heaviest cycle you had. Twice. You told yourself you were killing whatever mud bacteria had survived the first wash. The second time was just to be sure, before you would eventually throw it away.
It still ended up in your bed three nights later. All your silk pajamas were at the dry cleaner, and you were tired, and it was right there and clean. Purely coincidence. The fact that it still smelled faintly like him was irrelevant. Coincidence, again. You kept wearing it every single night out of pure spite, because you were being just practical.
Your usual eight-dollar oat milk latte suddenly tasted like burnt dirt water, which made no sense, because it was from the good place, the place with the little chalkboard sign, and you'd loved it for three years. Now all you could think about was the cheap drip coffee Satoru brewed blindly at seven in the morning.
You caught yourself hovering over the search bar. What brand of coffee do ranches use. You deleted it fast though. You were just curious, and the curiosity just dissipated. Don’t search for anything behind it!
And on top of that, work was even shittier than usual. You stood in the breakroom and watched some guy from acquisitions spend three full minutes trying to lift and flip the new water jug onto the cooler. He was panting, his shirt was wrinkling and making annoying small sounds every time it slipped. Ugh. Stupid incompetent men. For whatever reason you thought of Satoru effortlessly hauling fifty-pound wooden fence posts over his shoulder, his big triceps flexing in the sun. You actually had to leave the room because you were viscerally angry at nothing in particular!
And no amount of meditation, pilates, or the cowboy romances you suddenly kept seeing everywhere in your favorite bookstore would flush out the paranoia and this weird feeling from your mind.
You kept thinking about him. You kept assessing him, that's what it was. Trust. TRUST. Okay? Because thanks to your dwelling little sessions, sitting on your couch in his t-shirt and zooming in on the pictures you took over the week for the appraiser, in which he MIGHT have been in a corner or in a distance, you cartwheeled into the realization that Satoru wasn’t just a stubborn cowboy, he was a manipulator. Surely. He wanted you off-balance. Gave you his clothes to trojan horse you. The pet names were calculated to disarm you. A man that competent didn't tackle a woman into the mud by accident. It was strategy, retention. Keep the city girl soft and stupid and sentimental long enough that she wouldn’t push the sale.
It all made perfect sense.
You did not fantasize about him standing in your kitchen, making you coffee from the drip machine you might have recently bought, out of pure coincidence again. You did not wonder what it would have felt like if you had fallen and pinned each other to your plush living room carpet instead of the cow shit mud. You did not miss the way he said darlin' and the way he would smile at you. None of that. Obviously.
He was trying to emotionally manipulate you into backing off, just like he’d manipulated your great-aunt. But you were not going to fall for it.
And then, to forcefully snap you out of it, Shoko called you into the office. Hallelujah. Your mother wasn't exactly nice to you when you told her you tried to sell the ranch, and then nicer when you told her the buyout stalled, and then not nice again when you added FOR NOW.
It was just you and your lawyer against the world. She then lowkey dropped a nuke on you, explaining that if Satoru refused to sign, a forced legal sale would take three to five years, require endless court appearances, and bleed hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the estate in legal fees. Three to five years. You would be a cautionary LinkedIn tale in three to five years.
Panic set in, quickly followed by a manic spite. If you couldn’t force the sale from here without wasting money and time you didn’t have, then you needed leverage. Something that would make him tap out without dragging this through the courts.
So you then spent days locked away in your apartment. You went through every note from the appraiser. Every line about barn repairs and property tax increases and the financial reality of running a ranch that wasn’t printing money. You cross-referenced county zoning laws and agricultural exemptions and cost projections until your eyes burned.
By the end of the week, you had a about forty-page murder-binder. Color-coded, tabbed, and legally terrifying. You were going to corner him with the math until he had no choice but to fold and cry.
This was about winning. And stalling the buyout, not cashing your paychecks, wasn’t really winning. This was about proving that whatever game he thought he was playing, you were better at it. And you sure as hell will die on this hill.
You were going back. You washed your pink Salomons, which miraculously became somewhat pink again, repacked your weekender, and off on a hitman mission you went.
You showed up the next week with the paperwork shotgun and even colder smile. The car crunched to a stop in the same spot as last time, but everything else felt different. It made you feel sick. You’d practiced this in the mirror. Rehearsed it on the drive. You were not going to let proximity or pet names or whatever the hell had happened in the mud get to you again.
Satoru walked to the front of the house when he heard your car pulling in, which felt, annoyingly, inevitable at this point—like he had some kind of internal radar that went off whenever you crossed the county line.
"Back already, sweets?" he said, not moving from the rail of the porch. He was in his chaps, probably interrupted him mid-ride when you pulled up, and you hated that you recognized that already.
You didn’t bother with small talk. “I had my lawyer look over everything. We need to talk.” You took the binder off the passenger seat and started walking to the front door.
"Do we?" he asked as you walked into the house, his arms crossed over his chest as he tailed after you.
You walked into the kitchen and immediately went for the filtered batch that was, again, sitting on the counter. Fuck, you needed this. Finally some good coffee. Satoru had to bite his lip to prevent himself from smiling. He could smell blood on you.
"Alright, what're we talkin' 'bout," he sat at the table, and you dropped the binder on it with a loud thwack! You sat opposite him, your mug, your favorite one, in hand.
You walked him through the numbers — barn repairs, property tax jumps, zoning restrictions, thin profit margins. Going through your tabs, your notes with total precision, acting like something didn't just lodge in your throat when you glanced at him and saw he was actually listening with a little furrow between his brows. You kept your voice steady even when you glanced up and saw the small dirt smear on his jaw, or the way his hair was still damp with sweat, or the way the smell of him hit you again and made something in you feel both uneasy and strangely calm.
You waited for the pushback, for him to cross his arms, lean back, and call you darlin' in that stupid, condescending drawl. You had a rebuttal prepared for everything. For anything. But he only took the binder, flipped through it, and asked a couple of clarifying questions about the tax projections and the structural engineer’s notes.
"Okay," he said quietly.
You blinked. Your brain stalled. "Okay?"
"Yeah. Numbers look thorough." He closed it, sliding it back toward you. He looked up, his blue eyes so uncharacteristically polite. "I'll run it by my lawyer, see where it actually holds up. Math's as airtight as yer sayin', we'll go from there."
It was somehow worse than if he’d laughed in your face. Fuck. You felt it strangely in your chest, and your stomach plummeted. "You're... you're just going to send it to your lawyer?" you asked, hating how your voice lost its sharp edge.
"That's standard procedure for a buyout, ain't it?" he replied smoothly, already reaching into his pocket for his phone. "Shoot me the digital copy. I'll forward it to him this afternoon so we can get ahead of it."
"Right," you managed to choke you, digging your own phone out of your purse with numb fingers. "What's your email?"
He rattled off a standard, boring gmail address. You typed it in and pressed send. It felt like a business transaction. It was awful.
"Got it," his phone buzzed in his hand. He stood up and grabbed his hat. "Nanami's waitin' for me by the stables, we're goin' on a ride. Make yerself at home." He paused at the door. "I'll have 'em reach out to yer side directly. Don't reckon I'll be back tonight. See ya ‘round, sweets."
You stared at him. “That’s it?” And you weren't exactly asking about the negotiation process, either. "What'd ya want me to say?" You didn't have an answer to that, which was, in itself, infuriating. "For now," he said, fixing his chaps. God, why did they look so good on him? "I'll holler once I hear somethin'."
And then he left, leaving you in the kitchen staring at the empty space he was in just seconds ago, feeling a flush adorn your cheeks, but not from him saying something stupid this time around.
By late afternoon, you found yourself standing on the back porch, a cup of his coffee warming your hands. It was your fourth cup of the day, and it was no one’s business if you would be able to fall asleep, because you probably wouldn't be able to anyway, watching him out in the round pen.
He and Nanami had returned from their ride and were working one of the younger horses. The one Yuji was struggling with the entire day, the one Yuji waved you over to pet again, even if his voice wasn't as warm as the last time you two spoke.
Satoru’s voice carried over the quiet yard, low and steady as he directed the animal. The late day sun caught the lines of his shoulders beneath his faded henley.
You felt like an intruder in a house that you legally owned, and it felt fucking terrible. The cool summer wind bit your skin as you hovered there, not knowing what to do with all of this. You had braced yourself for a big fight, an ugly shouting match, some resolution from the last time you saw him, but certainly not him giving zero flying fucks about you. Giving you nothing to push against. Last time he had hovered close to you as much as possible, even if the blatant flirting with you made you sick. But the sick you were feeling now was so completely different from what you felt when he still thought he had you.
Later, when you went upstairs, you found the book, his book, the one you didn't get to finish last time, still on your nightstand. It made you bite your lip so hard it almost bled. He didn't take it back. You lay on your bed for a long time. You'd come here to strong-arm, and could not, for the life of you, remember why that had ever felt simple.
The next morning you packed slowly, suddenly realizing you might have overpacked, perhaps thinking you would get stranded here like last time. Dragged your bag out to the porch and left it by the steps. Then you made yourself one last cup of his coffee, because apparently you were a masochist now.
You stepped out, walking over to the chilling cows by the fence. The gladiator cow was already watching you, but this time it let itself get petted finally. It felt like even she was mocking you.
She started to lick your hand, and her coarse tongue was tickling you when Satoru walked up to you from the stables, a coiled lead rope slung over his shoulder. He was in his chaps again, probably working intensely with the horses this week. He looked at the porch where your packed weekender sat, and he bowed his head like it confirmed something he’d already expected.
"Mornin'," he finally said, his voice softer than it had been yesterday. "Takin' one of the mares up to the east ridge. View's real nice this time of day." He paused, his blue eyes searching your face, offering one little olive branch. "Wanna come?"
The offer landed like a trap. Your mind immediately started spinning. Alone with him. Close to him again. Being friendly when you were supposed to be hostile and fighting. The panic rose fast and ugly. It mixed badly with the flutter in your chest, making you stammer over your words.
“I…” You swallowed. “Uhh-perhaps... perhaps next time.”
Satoru nodded once. The small warmth in his voice vanished completely. It was enough for him to know. "Right," he said, his voice dropping all of its color. "Next time."
Satoru reached over your hand and petted the cow's head too before stepping away, adjusting his hat. It had no business making the fluttering feeling intensify even more. He looked past you toward your bag. "Lawyer'll handle the rest from here. Ya don't gotta stay on my account. Nothin' holdin' ya here now that we've talked the paperwork through." He paused, putting on his gloves.
You opened your mouth, but nothing came out. He gave you only a small, humorless smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. "Won't be actin' out my sugar baby dreams while yer gone, promise."
It hit like a slap. Well, it was meant to hit like a slap. You stood there frozen as he turned to walk away, the words still ringing in your ears.
"Satoru—" you started, the panic seizing the opportunity to break through your self-imposed trap. You hated how small your voice sounded.
He stopped but didn’t turn around. "Safe drive back."
"Wait,” you stepped forward in his direction, "I don't — I don't wanna. Can we just talk? Actually talk, not — not through lawyers, just—"
His shoulders were stiff and his head bowed, watching his boots. "I think," he said, turning only his head a bit, "ya oughta go home."
You saw the tired, the hurt in his pretty blues, and it stopped you frozen in your pink shoes over the dirt. It wasn't cruel, but it was final, and that made the knife twist in your gut. He only kept on walking until the barn door swung shut behind him, and you stood there with a half-finished cold cup of coffee, and one hand slick with cow spit outstretched as if reaching for him. And the worst part is that if you would see yourself like this just a month ago, you would slap the fuck out of yourself. And then you would slap your old self right back. Going slap for slap.
You'd won the negotiation, yes. He was letting you win. He was letting you leave. His lawyer would confirm it, and the partition case was going to be a serious problem for his side. But why did you feel like a massive loser right now?
Which, you weren't the only one who felt like that. Satoru tossed the lead rope onto a hook and braced both hands against the rough wood of the stall door, dropping his head as a heavy breath shuddered out of him.
You’d said next time in that clipped voice that was so, so painful to listen to, like you were declining a date invite from someone you didn't want to offend. He knew what that was. He'd been watching you do it all week. Reach for something real and then pull back into whatever that felt safer. He'd done it himself, to be fair. He didn't have a lot of room to judge.
Your aunt had warned him. “She's gonna fight you on everythin’,” she'd said, watching the livestock, with that cheeky smile of hers. “Stubborn as anything. Gets it from my sister, same as her mom. It runs in the family.”
He had laughed it off back then. “But she’s worth the headache, I promise you,” she had added, giving him that infuriatingly knowing look.
Satoru closed his eyes, the memory of you stammering, looking so panicked and pretty in your expensive, stupid clothes, burning a hole in his chest. Auntie was half right, anyway. You were a headache. But he wasn't going to let you treat his, well, your, home like a real estate playground, and he sure as hell wasn't going to let you play games with him just because you didn’t know what you wanted.
He could see it in your eyes, which made it even worse. You were just breaking both of your hearts in the process. But if you wanted out, who is he to hold you off? He just needed to find a way where you wouldn’t fully disappear now that you were finally in his life, and not just in his head rent-free.
He fixed his gloves on and straightened up. You weren’t ready to be honest yet and that was fine. But Satoru wasn't going to let you practice being dishonest on him until you figured it out, but that wasn't the same as giving up. Satoru was locked in and ready, he just needed you to be that as well.
Pretty silly thing.
Your favourite coworker from marketing left a succulent. You stared at it from across the open-plan office before your monitor's screensaver kicked in and you realized you hadn't typed anything in half an hour.
That was the week you came back. By the next week, two more desks had been quietly emptied. By Friday, HR sent a company-wide email with the subject line “Exciting Organizational Updates!” aka the corporate equivalent of someone saying “now don’t panic” right before they ruin your life.
You were not panicking. You were, however, sleeping like shit, actively losing your appetite, and refreshing your bank account every morning just to remind yourself the safety blanket was still there. But the looming dread of the layoffs wasn’t the only thing keeping you up at night, and you refused to talk about the rest of it with anyone.
If they let you go before you could quit on your own terms, the ranch money kind of stopped being a silly little get-rich-quick plan and became a necessity. Because you knew you wanted to quit, but that's where the rest of the planning went.
You didn't know what else to do other than working, and you were dead set on not spending more years in corpo than you already had. You would say shit like time to become a trad wife since you already own a ranch, but since the possibility wasn't that far from reality anymore, you didn't find it exactly funny this time. Yikes.
You couldn’t tell anyone you actually needed the money. So far you’d acted like selling the ranch was about freedom and city socialite fantasies, not a fucking lifeline. Least of all him. The idea of Satoru knowing you might need that money, that you might actually need him, made you want to literally crawl out of your own skin.
You were still sleeping in his t-shirt. You’d kind of stopped pretending it was by accident. It was nicely soft and it made you feel safe in a way that pissed you off. You still put it on every night like some kind of fucked-up security blanket. The cheap drip coffee maker you'd impulse-bought now sat on your counter right next to your expensive espresso machine. And you must have hurt your head somewhere, because why were you considering buying the horse painting you'd seen in a thrift store last weekend?
You'd kind of reached your personal low. White-knuckling life while all you could think about was Satoru's cold eyes. Fucking awful, if you ask me. Why was it YOU who inherited this ranch? You had cousins! Why couldn't it have been anyone ELSE? But at the same time, thinking about Satoru wrestling in the mud with any of your bitch-ass cousins made your stomach turn. Ugh.
If only he'd agreed to sell, perhaps the guilt wouldn't be eating you alive. You were pulling overtimes just to stay employed, while trying to come up with another plan — one where you wouldn't need the money or the job anymore. If only there would be someone rich who wanted you... Should you buy some get-rich spell from an Etsy witch, just in case?
So you did get the spell… Just in case.
And then, after a few weeks of silence, Shoko forwarded you an email.
Subject: Gojo/Estate — Request for Joint Counsel Meeting
Your eyes darted over the text. Satoru’s legal team was requesting an in-person meeting. Holy motherfucking shit, you almost jumped out of your office chair. He was folding.
THE SPELL WAS WORKING. Everything would work out after all! You just needed to make Shoko convince them to meet in the city, because you probably wouldn't be able to think straight coming back to the countryside anymore. It was only fair to do it on your terms, in your space, because that's what winners deserved after all!
It took her a hefty email thread to just agree to meet in her office. Home turf through and through. We are oh so coming home.
But then you got nervous. Because alongside it coming home, it was also Satoru coming here, and that felt even weirder than you just going to the ranch.
And the nervousness got even worse by the time you arrived there twenty minutes early. You bounced your leg under the table, fiddling with your fingers in your lap as you darted glances between the door and Shoko, who was watching you with a weird expression on her face. You wanted to believe that you didn't look crazy right now, that your heart almost didn't pound straight out of your chest, that you hadn't been stress-buying cowboy boots and Etsy witch spells for the past month just to force the man who was about to walk through this door out of your mind and see him only as someone who was holding you back. And bet he was! You'd written it over and over in your manifestation notebook, so it must have been true. And not like a man you wanted to wear your cowboy boots for. Not that you wanted to. You got the boots because they're trendy right now!
And when he and his lawyer arrived, you wanted to scream. He was wearing a suit and a cowboy hat, and for some reason it made your toes curl in your heels to the point you almost tripped over your own feet.
"'Been a minute, sweets," he murmured, shaking your extended hand, his calloused grip completely swallowing yours. He gave you a once-over, the corner of his mouth ticking up. "Lookin' real good, as always."
You absolutely did NOT blush and squeezed his hand back. "Likewise," you managed to choke out in a voice that definitely did NOT crack, to which he gave you a very small private smile, to which you certainly did NOT blush again, and sat back down. The fact that his hand was so warm and the ghost of his touch lingered along your palm, and that he smelled like himself, and that you kind of caught yourself inhaling more than you should, because you certainly did NOT miss the smell, were all irrelevant information.
The meeting started and it lasted four hours. Full of documentation, counter-documentation, revised assessments, and sub-clauses that seemed to breed more sub-clauses every time someone closed a folder.
His lawyer was not difficult, which made it even more annoying. Every figure your lawyer produced, he had a newer figure. Every assessment from your side, they had a follow-up.
You weren’t fighting, which was kind of a relief but also a bummer, because that would at least explain why you felt so hot all over the entire time. Especially whenever you caught Satoru watching you across the table, his hair messy from the hat even if he’d tried to smooth it out, tilting his head at you when he caught your eyes darting to him.
Though he stayed mostly silent the entire time, read what the lawyers handed him, nodded at stuff that needed nodding at, just like you. Then, somewhere in hour three, Satoru leaned forward slightly and asked one question about the watershed boundary relative to the county’s updated flood plain mapping from last spring.
Both lawyers paused. The appraiser flipped back three pages. Neither of the lawyers could produce a legible answer, and the appraiser just shrugged because he deadass didn’t know either.
So long story short, hours in and with no signs of resolution, both lawyers just closed their folders in unison and reached a general consensus that enough was enough and that the meeting was postponed until further notice.
“We can reconvene next week,” his lawyer suggested. “That gives both parties a week to review the adjusted figures.”
You looked at Satoru in absolute horror.
"Works fine by me," he said softly. "Ain't in no rush."
The meeting adjourned and you felt like a failed experiment in Mythbusters. You wanted to cry into your useless papers, drink your drip coffee that still tasted like shit, and piss off, instead of going to a joint dinner the lawyers proposed to ‘lift the parties' spirits’ or whatever. The only spirit you needed right now was to spirit yourself into oblivion and not spend more time in his general cowboy vicinity.
You went because saying no would’ve looked weak. And you WEREN’T emotionally weak. To hell with that. You were waiting for the cringe, for the inevitable, for Satoru to squint at the menu's French terms and ask the waiter if they had a burger, or a Bud Light, or do anything that would confirm your narrative that he was a simple, uncultured cowboy. You needed him to fumble. You needed to feel superior again.
Instead, Satoru ordered the duck confit and then asked the sommelier for a specific bottle of Nebbiolo, discussing the vintage notes like he did this every fucking Tuesday.
You stared at him. Shoko stared at him. The sommelier fucking stared at him.
Satoru caught your eye and flashed a smile, dimples and all. "What? Auntie liked the good stuff. Taught me a thing or two."
You ordered the steak, because you needed protein and for the first time in weeks you genuinely felt hungry, and you weren't paying so might as well.
"How's the food?" Satoru asked casually, just as you stabbed into the meat and it was definitely not medium rare, just how you'd wanted it. You hated that it didn't taste like the steak Satoru had made you the very first evening on the ranch. And then you hated that you were even thinking about it at all.
"Fine," you said, chewing through the not-so-tender cut with a completely straight face.
So you did the only reasonable thing and tried to get drunk on the wine he ordered, downing your glass every time he smiled at you just so you'd have somewhere to look. It wasn't exactly working in your favour.
Your lawyer, who happened to also be your friend from college and who had clearly decided somewhere between the entrée and the dessert to, not only financially, but also personally ruin your life, put her hand on your upper back. "What about one more drink?" she asked, batting her eyelashes at you. "To toast the progress. You've been uptight the entire day, we need to loosen you up a bit."
You oh so obviously needed to get shitfaced. Your life was falling apart, so of course the right response was to poison yourself with enough alcohol alongside your hot enemy, like some plot of a below-average manhwa. You were just being… well, not exactly strategic. But that was all beside the point. You had been psychologically manipulated by that shitty steak and the wine Satoru requested.
So off to the bar, you even helped to choose, all of you went. You slid into the booth in the back and Shoko immediately ordered tequila shots. Which, bless her, but you already knew you would wake up with a terrible hangover tomorrow and have to call in sick.
“To successful negotiation!” she toasted. The shots clinked, the awkward polite social-cue eye contact entailed, and you spilled the burning liquid down your throat like there was no tomorrow.
You cringed and washed it down with the drink you’d ordered, which didn't make it any better. But it loosened you up a bit, which made the conversation less stiff. Your lawyer was complaining about her clients, Satoru complained about some of his, well, yours, horses.
“There are cross-departmental lay-offs happening, the fucking worst timing imaginable,” you added, waving your hand like it was just another annoying email from HR. You had bitten your lip and had that little frown on your face, the one Satoru already recognized you used when you weren't exactly joking.
"Well, that's why the buyout's gotta happen, so take that, Gojo," you deflected, toasting your glass and looking at him expectantly, half-serious, half-joking. The table chuckled at that, because you were the queen of comebacks and whimsy.
"Can't promise ya anythin', sweets." He tilted his head and took a sip of his beer, then flashed a quick, uncharacteristic look at his lawyer.
Now what was that. You didn't like it. You narrowed your eyes and turned your head to Shoko, who just shrugged, obviously clocked out of the lawyer-doing-lawyer-shit factory for the evening. You weren't drunk enough or sober enough to pry further, so you let it slide. For now.
The conversation loosened even further as the drinks stacked up. Shoko was clearly dead set on getting home on all fours—nth drink in, complaining about a client who kept CCing her on emails she had explicitly asked not to be CCed on. His lawyer had a counterpart story about a property dispute that had somehow involved a neighbor's goat in the middle of downtown.
Satoru turned to you and said something. Over the course of the evening the music had gotten louder, the crowd had gotten louder as well, and you had apparently gone partly deaf, because all you caught was the vague shape of a question. The lawyers had drifted back into their own orbit, something about agricultural legislation, an amendment that had apparently been deeply controversial in circles you did not run in, and the conversation forked. Shoko and his lawyer turned toward each other with great purpose, absolutely ditching you, which left you sitting there like a spare part. And there goes having a nice evening when you're an adult.
"What?" you said, probably too loudly.
He leaned in slightly and repeated it. You caught the gist—something about the horses, one of the mares. The one he liked to ride. It was, yet again, infuriating that you already knew this detail. He must have used some kind of Etsy witch spell as well, because why the hell were you retaining so much? You were there for nine days total. Nine! You leaned in a little more to catch the rest, close enough that his scent hit you properly, warmly enveloping you.
"Hold on," you said, shutting your expression down and snapping the fuck out of it. "I gotta piss."
Very smooth. Very ladylike. Extremely elegant. Yes, that was you.
You stared at yourself in the dim bathroom mirror, eyeing the stickers plastered on the inside of the door. Right at eye level there was a fuckass sticker that said this ain't my first rodeo in bold western font, a little illustrated cowboy hat sitting right on top of the O.
Your eye twitched. You had the upper hand. The buyout would finally happen and soon you would be the big city socialite you were always meant to be, completely free of ranches and their foremen and their specific, nice smells and the way they looked at you with those panty dropping blues. Out of sight, out of mind. The sooner this evening ended the better as well.
That's why you smoothed your hair. Then decided it looked like an ugly cowlick, so you fluffed it back out again. That's also why you uncapped your sparkly lip gloss, the good one, the bad bitch one, the one which you certainly did not save only for dates. It simply happened to be the only one in your purse. Trust.
That's also why you stopped at the bar on your way back and picked up two beers. Purely strategic. You were marginalizing your enemy by handing him alcohol, loosening him up, extracting information. An evil plan, completely airtight, totally unprovable.
That's why you slid back into the booth a little closer than where you'd been sitting before. Tactically. Obviously.
Satoru picked up where he’d left off, repeating the question for about the fourth time. Something about the mare. He'd apparently been thinking about breeding her. There was a stallion his parents recently bought, good bloodline, good temperament, but the timing had to be right and he wasn't sure yet.
And you were following along, which was the horrifying part. You were already imagining a little baby horse trotting around doing whatever it was baby horses did.
"Why are you asking me?" you said, when he paused. "I don't know anything about horse breeding. Well, about horses in general."
He considered that for a second. Looked down with that small, cheeky smile and took a sip of his beer. "Dunno." A small shrug. "We were sittin' in silence an' I guess I just wanted to talk to ya, sweets."
Well, now. You took a swig of your beer and pursed your lips, because you had absolutely no idea what to do with that, and you already hated that the butterflies in your stomach had gone and responded to it instead. He was watching you be flustered—sitting so close, close enough that you were acutely aware of how warm he was, his scent hitting you even more aggressively than before—and all you could do was look him in the eyes and then, helplessly, drag your gaze down to his thighs, very nicely filling out the slacks he was wearing, and then immediately curse yourself for doing it.
He tilted his head. Something in his expression shifted, went a little softer, a little more serious.
"Aren't you supposed to be angry at me?" you dared to look back up at him, curious why he is always so nice to you.
"Bein' upset an' hatin' are two completely different things, darlin'." The corner of his mouth ticked up. "Thought ya were a big girl an' knew that."
Before you could gaslight, gatekeep, or girlboss your way out of that one, Shoko resurfaced from whatever legislative rabbit hole they had disappeared down. She turned to face the two of you with an expression that meant absolutely no good.
"Okay." Her voice cut straight through the music as she leaned forward. "I have to ask."
You already didn't like this.
"I don't wanna sound unprofessional," she said, in the tone of someone who had fully committed to being unprofessional, "but I have been dying to ask this the entire day." Her eyes darted quickly to you and back to him. "I've never actually talked to a real cowboy before, so I have to know—is it true what they say? That cowboys have insane stamina? From all the riding?" she giggled. "Like, do you work out, or does it just naturally come with the hat?"
"Shoko—" you gasped, because it was indeed unprofessional, all of you were supposed to keep working together, where had this come from, what was happening—
"Well," Satoru bit his lip, like he was trying to make it less awkward, or perhaps just awkward in a completely different direction.
He looked at you instead though as he picked up his beer. "All I'm gonna say is... with the right horse, a cowboy can go all night long."
Shoko absolutely fucking lost it, fully cackled, hand flat on the table. And you love—NO. Hated. You hated the implications. Obviously. What was even happening right now, for real, genuinely, someone please explain this to you—
You picked up your drink and put the whole thing away in one go.
"That's what I thought," Shoko said, giggling away as she turned back to his lawyer like nothing ever happened.
His lawyer left right after he finished his drink. He missed his wife, had a court case tomorrow morning, and had clearly reached his absolute limit for sexual tension that didn't involve him. Handshakes, and off he went. You almost envied him.
Shoko did not have a wife at home or an early morning, and she had decided she was not done yet. She ordered one more drink with the confidence of a woman who had started a fire and intended to watch it burn. She told a long, winding story that had somehow, gradually become about horses. You weren't entirely sure how. Then she stopped mid-sentence, looked at both of you and stood up, not entirely steadily, and gestured at you to follow her. You slid out of the booth and she hauled you toward the door, just far enough that the music covered your voices.
"You didn't tell me Satoru looked like that," she turned to you with the expression of someone personally betrayed. "I can't blame you, girl, though I don't entirely understand your restraint."
"The fuck you mean? And wait, let me grab my purse, I'll leave with you—"
"Nuh uh, you stay. You get the D. You two have been eyefucking each other the entire day anyway."
"What?! No, that's not true! And I can't sleep with him, he's the opposing party, have you lost your entire mind?!"
"You will lose yours if you don't rodeo the fuck out of his dick," she whispered fiercely, pointing a finger at your chest. "Relax. Y'all are on a property case, not a murder trial. Easy. I won’t tell anybody."
"Wait—"
"Text me,” she knowingly winked at you and it sounded more like a threat than a suggestion. The door swung shut behind her and gone she was. You stood at the edge of the bar for a second, staring at the door swinging shut behind her.
"She's a menace, yer lawyer," he murmured as you slid back into the booth, next to him. "She is a great lawyer," you argued weakly, staring at your empty glass.
“We can leave too, ya know,” he said, his voice dropping sweet and low right by your ear, effectively moving the conversation elsewhere. He draped his arm over the back of the leather seat, caging you in—inviting and annoying. He could see the slight unsteadiness, the flush on your cheeks that wasn't exactly only from the alcohol.
He was being a perfect gentleman, which was honestly the most infuriating thing he had done all day and he had done a lot of infuriating things, like looking at you nicely. He cleared his throat, his thumb gently, experimentally brushing the curve of your shoulder. He was giving you the out.
"It's late. Don't wanna keep ya if—"
You squeezed your shoulder blades at the touch, leaning a bit closer, chasing the warmth. You eyed your empty bottle, his half-finished one, and Shoko’s words uncharacteristically ringing in your ears.
“One more drink,” you blurted out, not even letting him finish. And then your treacherous mouth added one desperate "please" for grand effect. You didn't mean to say it, and you couldn't take it back. His thumb instinctively went a little rougher against your skin. He stopped, fully taking in your flushed face, the way you were leaning into his space, and trying to understand exactly what that please meant.
"Yeah," he murmured softly. "Okay."
It was the closest you had been all evening. It was also the warmest the night had felt. Satoru, without further questions, went to the bar and returned with the last round. What the lady asks, the lady gets. He caged you in again, perhaps on instinct, as he handed you your drink. You, already tipsy and feeling dangerously floaty, gleamed up at him.
The conversation flowed naturally after that. Who would have thought that when you stopped being a deliberate bitch, he was actually incredibly nice to talk to. He talked about the ranch, about Yuji doing something incredibly stupid with a tractor, about Megumi delivering a devastating insult to a feed supplier in five words or less.
You listened. Not just listened, you talked back. You told him about the time you spilled an entire coffee down yourself on the subway right before an important meeting, about the traffic jam where you almost peed yourself. You realized mid-sentence that you hadn't even told Shoko that one. Yet here you were, offering it up freely to the man who was actively stalling your dream, giggling at him with your head tipped back against his forearm on the seat.
Satoru was watching you with something careful and warm in his expression. Maybe regretting getting the last drinks. Grateful for them all the same, because he was finally seeing you like this — unguarded, easy, your pretty smile doing something genuinely unfair to him from up this close.
“You coming back to the ranch?” you asked, turning your head and subconsciously nuzzling your cheek against the sleeve of his suit jacket. Satoru had to bite his tongue. You were being so fucking adorable, it genuinely hurt him.
"Nah," he said, once he trusted himself. "Gonna stay in the city 'til we get it resolved. Don't wanna be goin' back an' forth."
“Then you left our house unsupervised?" you gasped softly, pulling back slightly. "What about the animals? Already told you you were being a bad owner.”
And now, fuck him. Our house? You might as well have stabbed him straight through the heart, because you certainly had a way with words and a thing for timing. It sounded dangerously natural and familiar coming out of your mouth, and he almost dared you, begged you, to fucking repeat it.
“No worries, sweets,” he finally managed, his voice coming steadier than he felt. “Nanami an' the kids are takin' care of it as we speak. Well, not now, they're dead asleep. But it's in the best hands possible.”
“Who are they, anyway?” you asked curiously. He always talked about them so sweetly, yet he had never given you anything else. Satoru’s gaze softened. He looked down at you, at the way your cheek was still pressed against his arm, and something in his chest actually physically tightened. He hadn’t expected you to ask.
“Known Nanami since high school,” he murmured, as he flexed his biceps under your head on reflex, maybe on purpose too, who knows. “He’s the only one who can actually put up with me for more than ten minutes. An’ got to know Yuji through auntie. She knew his uncle back in the day."
He took a sip of his beer, his eyes distant for a fraction of a second before focusing right back on your face. "We needed some new part-timers a while back, extra hands for the stables. So I just asked him. Kid showed up the next day an' brought Megumi an' Nobara along."
He left it at that. Not that Satoru wasn't chatty, he just felt weirdly vulnerable talking about his life with you. You might have been giving him the most adorable, glassy doe eyes in human history, but you were still trying to take the ranch away from him. He still remembered the way you looked at him when he refused to sign the papers. But yet, being so close to him, feeling his warmth while he felt yours, your hands itching to touch him—it was so domestic, so impossibly intimate.
You blinked up at him, your alcohol-soaked brain trying to process everything. You wanted to ask more, get lost in his masculine voice, have him murmur into your ear more. You were dangerously close to letting yourself get entirely too attached to the idea of this man and his life. You were drunk. It was fine. A little fantasy, a little pretend before the sun came out again... Right?
But before you could open your mouth, the bartender came over to inform you the bar was about to close. And then, with the timing of all romcom timings, a sudden heavy drumming hit the front windows. You both looked toward the entrance. It was raining.
And there went your little horny fantasy.
"Uh," you sighed, blinking away the daze of the booth. You sat up, suddenly hyper-aware of how deeply you had melted into his side, and shakily reached for your purse. “I guess we should get going then. Lemme go pay—”
You tried to scramble up, fishing in your bag, but his large hand softly closed over yours, prying it away. “No need, darlin'. Already paid when I got the last round.”
"You didn't have to pay for that," you pouted.
"My treat, sweets," he said, already leading you toward the exit. He looked down at you, the faint, infuriatingly handsome smile returning. "Let's get a cab, alright?”
And something must have seriously possessed you, because under normal circumstances you hated the rain with a capital H. “I wanna walk home.”
“It's just five blocks from here, yeah?" he asked. You had apparently said that out loud at some point tonight.
"Yeah," you bit your lip. Your skin was buzzing, perhaps from the cold draft from the door hitting your heated skin, or from his resolve-killing blues looking down at you so, so sweetly.
You swayed unsteadily, looking higher, eyeing his Stetson, his white bangs cheekily sticking out from underneath. Without thinking, you reached up, yanked it from his head, and put it squarely on your own. He blinked at the intrusion, a faint, sudden flush adorning his cheeks as he watched you adjust it.
"Looks better on ya anyway," he muttered.
Though your silly little drunk idea of walking home was acutely crushed by the literally biblical downpour happening outside. Well, you said walking, so walking it is.
One block over and both of you were drenched, shivering and mentally voting how much of your aura it would cost to beg for that cab after all. He shrugged his suit jacket off without breaking stride and dropped it over your shoulders.
"Satoru, you're going to freeze," you pointed out, gripping the lapels and pulling them closer to your chest anyway. It engulfed you so nicely, smelling like his cologne, a bit of clean air and so much like him.
"Well, better me than ya, ain't it? Ya were already freezin', just keep walkin', sweets."
You hated how good that sounded. You hated that you were letting him walk you home in the pouring rain like this was some kind of romcom and not the messy disaster your life had become.
The rain was relentless. His white hair was dripping, plastered to his forehead, and his shirt was doing increasingly interesting things in the rain. Somewhere between the second and third block your hand found his. Well, sort of. You hesitantly looped your pinky around his, testing the waters, waiting to see if he'd interlace his fingers with yours. You were feeling daring and dangerous — or maybe not. Surely not thinking entirely straight.
“C’mere,” he murmured, and tugged, bringing you shoulder to shoulder, his hand snaking away from yours to find your lower back instead. You were definitely too drunk for this. Or not drunk enough.
You stopped in front of your building. You dug your keys out of your purse, your fingers fumbling slightly as you stood under the awning of your building's entrance.
"You're soaking wet. Just come up," you tried to tug him in.
He looked at you for a second, like he couldn't tell if you were joking or dead serious. Hell, you didn't know if you were joking or dead serious. "I'll grab a cab to the hotel. Already super late anyway. No worries, sweets, it's fine—"
"Please,” you pouted again, absolutely not knowing what had gotten into you. Why were you inviting this man up? Do we need to answer that though?
"Sweets." His voice was low, something in it wasn't quite steady. "Yer 'please' is gonna kill me one day, ya know that?"
So you went up, the elevator was warm after the rain, making the world tilt slightly. You swayed into his shoulder without meaning to, sleepy and damp and thoroughly done with your own defenses for the evening. Your hand found his, more confidently now, and your fingers interlaced.
Satoru went very still for a short moment. Then his hand closed around yours, and you watched his throat move as he stared straight ahead at the elevator doors.
You fumbled with your keys at the door. And then it was just the two of you in your quiet apartment.
It looked even better with him filling up your tiny entryway like this, and no daydream had ever done the image justice. You couldn't even be mad at yourself for thinking it at this point.
He swiftly glanced around and clocked your stupid pink Salomons lying near the shoe rack. You’d thrown them there since you'd got back weeks ago, deliberately, maybe, never really bothered putting them away. The corner of his mouth ticked up at the sight. He turned to you. You were watching him half-expectantly, half lost in your own head. His hat looked so good on you. The suit jacket too. Well, any of his clothes did — specifically that t-shirt of his he didn't seem to be able to find. You bit your lip as he tilted his head at you.
His eyes were already blown out and hazy and fixed exactly on your mouth, just like yours were on his. It was now or never, because that’s what you say about kissing your supposed enemy. You took a step closer, then another, tipped your head up and crashed your sparkly lips against his.
Satoru made a low sound in the back of his throat as your fingers tangled into his wet hair. The gentlemanly restraint he'd had going on clocked out. His hand flew to grip your waist, fingers curling into the soaked fabric of your dress, kissing you back, because this was everything he'd wanted ever since your bloody aunt, may she fucking rest in peace, told him about you. Who would have guessed his dream would come true in your small apartment, in the middle of a property dispute, drunk. He finally had you and you finally had him. But that was exactly the issue. Drunk. And Satoru wasn't raised a dick.
He tore his mouth away. He caressed your cheek with his thumb as he cradled the side of your head.
"Satoru," you breathed, chasing his mouth. He groaned at the needy tone of your voice — god, he wanted to hear more of it. Even needier, under him, and only for him. But he held you firmly in place, at war with himself and every moral he'd ever had, so you couldn't close the gap again.
"No," he rasped. "Not like this, sweets."
You froze, the rejection feeling like a bucket of ice water.
"Yer drunk," he murmured, brushing a wet strand of hair out of your face. "An' yer not thinkin' straight. An' tomorrow mornin', when the sun comes up, yer gonna hate me for it. An' I ain't gonna be a mistake ya regret."
"I'm not that drunk," you informed him, trying to counterargument him, desperately clinging to him. And there went your bad bitch persona.
"You were asleep on my shoulder in the elevator."
You glared at him. He slowly, reluctantly let go of your waist. He reached up and lifted his hat off your head, putting it back on his own. “I was just resting my head,” you muttered, pouting at him. He definitely could get used to that pretty expression.
"Sure ya were." He looked at you for a second, something warm and certain in his expression. "Let's just put ya to sleep, yeah?"
"Wait," you blurted out, the sudden realization piercing right through the warm haze. "You're... you're leaving?"
Satoru tilted his head, the brim of the hat casting a shadow over his eyes, as he took your hands gently into his. "Not unless ya want me to."
You groaned into your pillow as you came to slowly. Your bedroom was nicely dim, the blinds surprisingly closed—you usually never bothered with them, you only got them because they were pretty, anyway.
You immediately registered the blunt pressure in your head. Ah. Hangover. But it was swiftly overshadowed by the unfamiliar warmth enveloping you, tickling your belly, and the god-like smell you were inhaling all around you. Satoru’s arm was slung over your waist, holding you in, and his bare chest was pressed flush against your back as he snored softly into the pillow behind you.
Wait. Whose hand is slung over you?! Holy shit— Did y’all…? No. No, you didn’t.
The actual going-to-bed part was slightly fuzzy in your memory. Him putting you to bed, him saying that he would sleep on the couch, you tugging him next to you anyway. Or something like that.
You let out a soft exhale and sank a fraction deeper into his arms. You decided to bask in it for exactly a little while before you would deliberately turn into the bitch you were supposed to be and say something like yesterday was a mistake.
You carefully turned around to watch him. He looked so peaceful, almost angelic in your bed, his mouth slightly open, faint freckles scattered across his unfairly pretty face. He stirred a bit and brought you snug against him, your legs tangling together. His body was all hard and soft at the same time, and you hated that you were already imagining yourself waking up like this more often.
But then your eyes drifted to your nightstand and your alarm clock. It was ungodly late, and you were supposed to be at work today. Then, your eyes noticed a glass of water and two aspirin set beside it.
Another hazy memory resurfaced of him asking, his voice all low and soft in the dark. “Where d'ya keep your medicine, sweets?” He had actually pre-gamed your hangover. You bit the inside of your cheek, a betraying flutter going off in your chest. Asshole. How were you supposed to ruthlessly negotiate with a man who took care of your morning misery before you even asked?
You very carefully snaked away from the bed so as not to wake him, not ready to fully face him just yet. You downed the water with the pills and disappeared into the bathroom. You made a quick and miserable call to your boss to call in sick today, then went to the sink to brush away your post-night-out morning breath.
Then you looked in the mirror to assess exactly how much of a disaster you looked like. Uh. Eh. Ew. Not the best, not the worst, head still throbbing just enough that you couldn't fully dissect why your hair looked both greasy and like a bird's nest at the same time.
"Okay," you told your reflection. So. You'd kissed him, and he'd kissed you back. But he'd stopped it, but he still stayed. And now he was in your bed.
Oh, god. Oh, fuck.
You should have left with Shoko yesterday, but that felt almost worse than bringing him home. You still couldn't believe your drunk self, that you were so willing to jump his dick so vehemently. What happened to attract, not chase?
You washed your face with the coldest water possible, once, twice, scrubbing last night, the shame, the what ifs your off skin like that was something you could actually do. It helped approximately nothing.
You buried your face in the towel and let out a pathetic, muffled groan into it. You were going to lift your head, look at yourself in the eyes, and remind yourself that you didn't do things you regretted. You were going to be rational, in control of —
Two arms came around you from behind. He was awfully quiet for someone his size.
He'd been already half awake when you'd slipped out of bed. Laid there for a minute in the warm space you'd left, staring at the ceiling with shit-eating grin, because what the fuck, and listening to the muffled sounds coming from the bathroom. He probably should have thought about this more carefully. He'd expected almost anything to happen yesterday. Like, you not talking to him at all, you being all cold and distant or just collegially friendly as far as the legal stuff went. But not you blushing the very first second you saw him. And especially not him waking up in your bed. You had no idea how much he'd had to physically restrain himself yesterday.
But god, he'd had you in his arms the entire night. You'd even cuddled him first! It was all he could have asked for, and he was pretty sure you knew it. Took you long enough — but then, maybe he'd been just impatient.
"Mornin', sweets," a sleep-heavy voice rumbled right against your ear. He was so warm and sleep-slow, his bare chest fitting so perfectly against your back as he nuzzled his face into your hair. It sent tingles down your spine and settled low in your belly, right where his hands were.
He let out a contented sigh, pulling you a fraction tighter. "Hidin' from me already?" he mumbled, sounding like he was about to fall right back asleep standing up.
"I'm not hiding," you managed, your voice muffled by the towel you were still pressing over your face to hide the blush.
"Could've fooled me," he hummed, his thumbs lazily stroking the sides of your waist, and it made you lean into him even more, against his— Oh. "Ya bolted outta bed before I could even say good mornin'."
"I needed to call in sick," you finally dared to lower the towel and turned your head toward him. His white hair was messy and sleep-tousled, his eyes still half-closed.
"Head hurt?" he asked softly, burying his face into the crook of your neck, his breath ghosting over your collarbone.
"A little," you whispered, completely forgetting how to be a bitch.
"Told ya." He looked at you through the minor, watching the beautiful timid flush spreading across your cheeks. "Should've let me take ya home earlier, big girl."
“We should talk—” you started, but the rest of the words never made it out. His fingers caught your chin, tilting your head back, and before you could utter another syllable he pressed his mouth to yours and kissed them right out of you.
Satoru let out a satisfied sound as you didn't even bother resisting, because why would you anyway. His lips were so soft, so much better than yesterday, though perhaps that was just because you weren't drunk anymore. He turned you around and pinned you between the sink and himself, cradling the side of your face, kissing you so reverently, so impossibly sweet.
“Mmm, soo good,” he mumbled against your lips, nuzzling his nose against yours. He kissed you like he’d been waiting months, years, for it. Which he kinda had, so you couldn't really blame the poor guy. Especially not when you melted so instantly against him, a tiny sound catching in your throat as your fingers curled into his bare shoulders and the kisses turned hungrier.
And you also got grabby fast. Hands sliding down his chest, over his stomach, reaching lower to palm his cock. He was already hard and straining in his boxers. Satoru groaned roughly, tugging at your hair as he pulled back just a bit to look at oh how nicely you were gripping him. A wicked, sleep-flushed smile spread across his face, because holy fuck, your hand was finally, finally on his dick, though his hands gently caught your wandering wrist, stopping your assault. He felt flattered that you simply couldn’t fucking keep your hands to yourself! But there were priorities.
“Nuh-uh,” he muttered as he caressed your blushing cheek. “Wait, baby. Gotta get ya in the shower first.”
You blinked up at him, dazed and chased his mouth again. “Huh?”
He chuckled at that and pressed a small kiss to the tip of your nose. "You'll feel better. Promise.” Then he started trailing open-mouthed kisses down your neck, sucking softly, and it made your knees buckle. The inner bitch packed her bags and left for the other side of the world. But hey, you were all soft and into neck kisses, so who could blame you? His hands slid under the hem of your sleep shirt as he worked the fabric up.
“Been wantin’ this,” he murmured against your jaw as his fingers ghosted up under your breasts. “So sorry, wanna take my time with ya.”
He slid the shirt higher, his thumb flicking over your peaked nipple, and you both gasped at that. You immediately put your arms up so he could get rid of the shirt altogether.
Satoru’s eyes darkened as his gaze raked over your newly exposed skin, looking at you like you were the only meal he’d been allowed to eat in a decade. And do NOT even pity him, because it was all he ever wanted anyway.
"Fuck," he practically moaned. "Yer so fuckin' pretty." He lowered himself and kissed your sternum, fingers grazing the skin of your tits before his mouth closed over your nipple, sucking hard enough to make you whimper, before letting it go with a wet sound.
"Satoru—" Your fingers flew to his messy hair as he lowered himself to his knees, ghosting kisses everywhere he could reach. It was fucking maddening, it made your stomach hurt so, so much.
He hooked his fingers into your panties next, tugging them down slowly. He pressed a deliberate kiss to your hip, then the inside of your thigh, then higher, just barely, making you clench around nothing. Satoru had to bite his lip. He didn’t want to be a teasing fucker, but god, you were making it so easy and so hard right now. You were already soaking, your slick dragging down as he stripped your underwear, and he could taste you just from the kisses pressed to your inner thigh.
He looked up at you from the floor with an expression that was going to probably ruin you. You buckled your hips almost instinctively as you tried to bring him closer.
“Said shower first, pretty girl," he said, completely straight-faced, and stood back up.
You made a frustrated little sound but he just hooked an arm around your waist and into the shower you went. He kicked off his boxers and stepped under the overhead stream and you just needed a moment. A moment to shamelessly gawk at him, because holy motherfucking shit, he was so pretty, so hot, so big.
He pulled you under the water immediately. His hands ran down your arms, your back, washing off last night's rain, last night's bar, all of it. It was almost stupidly normal. You tipped your head back into the stream, closing your eyes and letting yourself just be there for a second, warm and clean, his hands moving over you like it was the most natural thing in the world.
His mouth found yours again, pressing you flush against his straining cock. He rutted into you gently as he licked into your mouth, and you blindly reached for the shampoo before your knees could completely go out of commission before he'd even done anything properly to you.
"Let me," Satoru said, and took it out of your hand. He stepped behind you, his fingers finding your scalp, and you immediately understood that nothing in your life had prepared you for this. He was so gentle with your hair, working the lather through to your roots, and the sound you made was embarrassing and music to his ears. Your head dropped back slightly as you felt his cock grinding lazy and slow up and down your ass and lower back.
"Good?" he murmured.
"Mm," was all you had.
One of his hands started to wander around your body, caressing, positioning you better, while the other stayed tangled so nicely in your hair, massaging the crown of your head. You were getting absolutely lost in the reverence of his touch. His cock slid from between your cheeks to between your thighs, dragging through your slick folds.
“Sorry,” he murmured, not sounding sorry at all, as he tipped your head to the side and kissed your neck. “Can’t help it.”
He kept working through your hair, even as his hips started rolling more deliberately against you. His cock catching on your clit everytime he pushed into you.
"Hands on the wall f’me, yeah?" So you put your hands on the wall. He made a pleased sound and nudged your legs a little wider and then the blunt cockhead was pushing into you, stretching you so open while his soapy fingers never stopped massaging your scalp.
"Fuck," Satoru groaned, his forehead dropping against your wet shoulder as he fully bottomed out. "Yer so fuckin' tight. Jesus Christ."
"Ngh — 'Toru—"
"I know," he rasped, loving the way that slipped out of you, pressing his mouth to the side of your neck as his mushroomy tip kissed your cervix. "Just take it. Doin' so good for me, pretty girl."
He rolled his hips into yours, every stroke dragging over that plush spot inside that made your walls flutter. You were already lost in it, his breath huffing warm against your ear, his hands stroking over your stomach and hips like he simply couldn't stop touching you, the hot water coming down over both of you, though it had nothing on the heat of your own skin under his hands.
It was too much. Infuriatingly too much, and you hated that your legs had started shaking. You could feel yourself clenching around him harder every time he bottomed out, feeling him so impossibly deep, and from the broken sound he made he could feel it too.
"There she is," he rasped into your ear, voice gone rough. "Feel how tight yer gettin' for me? Ah— baby—"
One hand snaked to your lower stomach and pressed firmly, right where he could feel himself moving inside you. "Feel that?" he moaned, filthy and soft at the same time. "That's how deep I am. Takin' every inch an' still tryin' to pull me deeper."
He pressed gently on your lower back, coaxing you to arch up for him even more, then leaned over you and stole another heated kiss from your sweet mouth. You moaned into it, grateful he was holding you up because without him you would have dissolved straight down the wall into a puddle by now.
He found his rhythm. Thrusts turning a little messy, a little desperate, but knowing exactly where to drag his cock while his palm kept pressing from the outside, adding to the assault. And it was all—
Gosh.
You stood no chance. It demolished any fantasy you’d ever had about him and we are not going to talk about the fact that you’d had any.
“I—I can’t—” you couldn’t even finish that. You came hard and sweet, a broken cry punched out of you as your cunt clamped down around him, pulsing and absolutely milking him. Your legs nearly gave out completely. Satoru had to put both arms around you to keep you upright while he fucked you so nicely through it, letting you feel every second.
“That’s it… that’s it, baby. Just like that. Give it to me.” He lasted maybe eight more strokes before his movements stuttered. Couldn’t really blame him, you’d gotten so infinitely wetter, so impossibly tight and warm. And trust, he wanted to stay buried inside you like this forever, but his cock was a desperate bastard, especially when he had you like this, completely broken from what had barely even been a proper fuck.
His forehead dropped against your shoulder as he bit you there lightly and he groaned, grinding deep against your cervix as he buried himself as far as he could go and came. He moaned filthy little praises against your skin while he rode it out, filling you up so so nicely.
He stayed like this for a moment, just breathing you in, the smell of sex on your skin already becoming his favourite scent, while one hand still gently stroking your tummy like he was soothing both of you.
“Fuck,” he finally muttered, almost laughing under his breath. “You alright, sweets?”
Now, were you? He had just fucked you in your own bathroom, leaving you all needy and pathetic, but was it also the best fucking sex you’ve ever had? So, yes, and yes.
You frantically nodded as he slipped out of your still-pulsing pussy, the cum already starting to run down your thighs. He turned you to face him and cupped your cunt gently, feeling the sticky mess he’d left leaking out of you.
“Shit,” he murmured, almost in awe, watching it drip over his fingers as he teasingly slipped his index finger just a little bit back inside. “Look at that.”
Satoru kissed you lazily, feeling the water already getting a little cool. “C’mon,” he said quietly, reaching behind you to turn the water a little warmer again. “Let me get ya cleaned up before ya get cold.”
And he had just fucked you physically and was absolutely fucking you sideways emotionally, because why was he so nice, so careful, so genuinely caring — it was making your poor heart do things at the sight of his dazed eyes, his dripping wet hair, the soft expression on his face that would probably send you to an early grave and you would send him a thank you card from the afterlife for it.
He still insisted on washing you carefully after that. Gentle hands between your legs, rinsing his cum off your thighs, soaping your skin while you tried, heavy on the tried, soap his, but you felt like warm jelly floating in the afterhaze.
But hey, good thing the hangover had completely disappeared! Perhaps the aspirin finally kicked in or perhaps Satoru just fucked it away. Both were plausible. Every now and then he’d lean in and kiss your shoulder or the corner of your mouth, like he still couldn’t quite believe he was allowed to.
Only when you were both clean and the water was starting to run lukewarm again did he shut it off. He wrapped a towel around you, rubbing your arms dry.
Somehow you ended up in the kitchen, still wrapped in towels, hair dripping onto your shoulders and all over the floor. Your legs were a little unsteady, but it was such a nice feeling.
You took two mugs out of the cabinet while he leaned against the counter next to you. His towel was slung low on his hips, and he looked so unfairly good, so completely comfortable in your space, that you didn't know if you wanted to scream or just bury yourself in his arms.
You looked sideways at the drip machine. “Can you make the coffee, please?” you asked timidly, immediately hating yourself for sounding so stupid and small. You crossed your arms over your towel, shivering slightly in the cooler air, and looked away. The post-orgasm haze was absolutely ruining your usual defenses in the best and worst way possible.
"I missed your coffee," you mumbled to the floor. "Mine still tastes like shit."
Satoru was quiet for a second, then he let out a soft huff of a laugh and when you glanced up he was looking at you like you just broke his heart, put it back together, broke and put it back together again. “Yeah?” he said, his voice dropping low. “Want me to show ya how to make it taste good, sweets?”
“Yes,” you nodded, bit your lip and he smiled and gestured toward the counter. “C’mere. Up you go.” And before you could prepare yourself his hands were at your waist, lifting you clean off the floor and setting you on the counter like it was nothing.
"Watch," he said simply.
So you watched. Satoru stepped right between your dangling legs to reach the coffee machine for absolutely no reason, gently nudging your knees wider with his hips. It made it infinitely more difficult for him to actually prepare the coffee when he had no business being that close, but he just couldn't help himself, and you weren't going to complain either.
He started messing with the filter, pouring the grounds. The kitchen filled with the smell of fresh coffee and something very warm and domestic. And once the machine finally started brewing, he caught the dazed way you were looking at him. You were still blushing so cute, hair damp, towel barely staying put. His hands settled on your bare thighs under the towel, thumbs stroking your skin slowly.
“Got it, baby?” he asked teasingly, though his chest was still super floaty from the fact that you’d admitted to missing the coffee he loved making for you. He nudged you closer to the edge of the counter, planted a soft kiss to your lips, and god help everyone because he loved, loved kissing you — the way your lips fit so perfectly against his or the way you tasted.
"So, okay," you said, slightly breathless against his mouth. "But I still don't understand what you do differently because I took a picture of literally everything you use at the ranch. Same beans, same filter, same everything. And mine still tastes like burnt water. It's a filter machine, it's supposed to be—" He pulled back from the kiss and looked at you. "—idiot proof," you finished, somewhat even more breathless now.
The corner of his pretty mouth curled up. So you really did miss him that much. It made his heart and his dick jump all the same. Holding your gaze, he slowly loosened your towel. Let it fall open, pooling around your hips, baring you to the cool morning air of the kitchen.
His eyes dragged down you and back up and you kinda forgot what you were saying, instinctively moving to cover yourself. “What—”
And before you could even form a coherent thought, let alone finish that question, Satoru sank to his knees right in front of you. He nudged your thighs wider and planted your feet on the edge of the counter, opening you up for him.
"Shh." He pressed a kiss to your inner thigh, one on each side, and looked up at you through his white lashes. The coffee machine rumbled in the background, the warm scent filling the kitchen, as his hot breath ghosted right over your already swollen cunt.
"It's kinda simple," he drawled, blowing air against your slick folds, making your pussy throb in response. "Thought ya would've figured it out by now, big girl."
That man absolutely loved to tease you, even when that smug-ass mouth was hovering right between your thighs. And please, do not send help for either of you, because you were both exactly where you wanted to be.
He kissed the sensitive skin right above your slit, then your hips, making you shift impatiently against the cold surface. You didn't exactly know if you were dying to hear the answer or just dying to finally have his tongue on you.
"Ya just gotta make it with a little love.” And then he put his tongue on you, giving you both.
Your head instantly dropped back against the upper cabinet with a soft thwack! as you let out a shameless cry. Satoru purred in approval, the sound vibrating right against your sensitive flesh. He started with short licks first, right near your clit, making your stomach clench, so close, yet so far. His large hands gripped the backs of your thighs, pinning you in place so you couldn't squirm away even if you wanted to.
He went in broader this time, his flat tongue dragging all the way over your clit before he finally sealed his mouth around it and sucked.
“Fuck— Satoru—”
One of your hands flew to his damp hair, while the other flailed blindly around you, trying to grab hold of the countertop, the upper cabinet, anything to keep yourself upright.
Satoru let you grind down slightly against his mouth, giving you just enough, and then pulled back to press a teasing kiss to your inner thigh while you whined in utter frustration. He was cruel and relentless in the best way possible. He kept alternating between fucking his tongue into you and sucking hard on your clit until your thighs started actively shaking around his head.
He mouthed your folds, teasingly licking the blushing skin, and then he looked up. His mouth was completely covered in your slick, his blues were blown out, and the sight alone almost fucking finished you.
“Close?”
And you couldn't even play it cool and say no, because under normal circumstances you probably wouldn’t be, but this man was holding something over you that made you all dazed, woozy, and entirely soft for him. It was fucking terrible, truly.
Though he didn't get an answer from your mouth, your eager pussy answered for him by clenching over nothing, whining so prettily for him. So, the gentleman he was, he hoisted your legs right over his shoulders and fucked two of his long fingers into you. He swiped right over that gummy spot that made your walls flutter violently around him, pressing up from the inside while he went right back to sucking your clit.
This man truly loved a good double assault in any combination, huh.
"Please—" You were gripping his hair with both hands now, hips rolling shamelessly, completely beyond caring. "Please, 'Toru, please—"
He groaned against you at the please, like it did something to him every single time, and went a little faster, making you cum on your kitchen counter with his name in pieces on your tongue.
"That's it, yer just so pretty I couldn't help myself," he mumbled as he drank down your wetness. "Let it go fer me real good."
Your thighs clamped tightly around his head, which made him groan like he was the one getting off, and he licked you right through it. Slower now, gentler, dragging every last pulse out of you until you were trembling, oversensitive, and trying weakly to squirm away.
You were left panting and basically boneless. Satoru pulled away, licking his fingers clean and swiping the leftover slick from his chin with his tongue as he looked up at you like he’d just found religion between your legs.
He stood up slowly, pressing small kisses to your stomach, your sternum, and your collarbone before finally landing on your mouth again. You could taste yourself on him, which made you moan a little all over again.
He reached behind you without breaking the kiss and poured two mugs. "Coffee's ready," he drawled.
And the most infuriating thing was that the coffee was of course perfect. It was rich, smooth, and absolutely not tasting like burnt water in the slightest.
You somehow found your very wobbly way to the couch, feeling completely spent all over again despite having just woken up and currently sipping on a strong cup of coffee. Satoru jogged back toward the bathroom to grab his discarded boxers, and on his way back, he noticed a suspiciously familiar-looking gray fabric slung over your armchair.
“So this is where that t-shirt went, huh?” he drawled. He picked it up with a fond smirk and strolled over to where you were sitting, dropping it gently right into your lap.
“Put it on, sweets. Can't be wrapped in a towel forever,” he said so sweetly, and you flushed hard, maintaining as much dignity as someone caught stealing their cowboy's clothes possibly could.
You pulled it over your head and he smoothed the collar down once you threw it on, leaning in to press a tender kiss to your forehead.
"Keep it, then," Satoru murmured, his bright blue eyes crinkling at the corners as he looked down at you. "Looks a hell of a lot better on ya anyway, darlin’."
You spent the next half hour just chilling. It was bizarre, but so peaceful — curled up on your own couch, nursing his coffee while Satoru lazily traced circles on your bare knee. The morning light caught the dusting of freckles over his nose, making him look unfairly soft and relaxed for a man who had just spent the morning fucking you stupid in two different rooms.
You padded back to the kitchen for a glass of water. Satoru leaned back on the couch, dropping his head against the cushion.
"Still can't quite believe it," he murmured out of nowhere, his drawl breaking the quiet of the room. You stopped midway back. "Believe what?"
"That I actually have ya," he answered, a sincere smile tugging at his lips. "Still feels like I'm dreamin'."
Your stomach tightened anxiously at that. Because he did have you, kind of, probably, in some unclear way. But he also had half a ranch you were still trying to figure out what to do with. The whole buyout thing was still unresolved, complicated, and looming over you, and either of you most likely even wouldn’t wanna start this discussion any time soon.
Oh, no. No, no, no. You were so not doing this right now.
He was so blissed out from this morning's fantasy that he had kinda forgotten you were supposed to be the cold bitch and he was supposed to still be at least a little upset with you, and not looking at you like you hung the goddamn moon.
"I — well —" you stammered, your face burning. Your panicked eyes darted around the living room, desperately looking for a way out. They landed on his hat sitting on your dining table, where he’d put it last night.
You reached for it before you could overthink it. Settled it on your head and tipped the brim up just enough to look at him properly. Deflection time, baby.
"You said a cowboy can go all night with the right horse," you said, voice light, almost careless. "Were you just talkin' shit for Shoko, or was that actually real?"
Satoru let out a short bark of a laugh that didn't quite reach his eyes. The couch shifted as you sat back down next to him. He saw right through your terrible attempt at a defense mechanism, immediately, but was going to let you have it anyway.
If you wanted to play a game to avoid talking about your feelings, he was more than happy to oblige. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
"Talkin' shit, huh?" he raised his eyebrows as he leaned in and trapped you against the arm of the couch. "Darlin', I don't make promises I can't keep."
"I don't know," you challenged, crossing your arms defensively over your chest. "So far, I've only seen you perform in the morning. Going all night is a completely different rodeo, cowboy."
Satoru's eyes flashed with absolute delight. Oh, you were so asking for it. If you always deflected by trying to get on his dick, he would let you happily deflect as much as you wanted, any time you wanted.
"Is that right?" He chuckled, his thumb coming up to trace a slow line along your jaw. "Seems to me you were the one whose legs gave out before noon, but suppose my memory could be just a little fuzzy."
You let out an offended gasp, swatting his hand away, but he just took your hand and pressed a kiss to the inside of your palm. This time without any mud, though.
“I—I’m just saying that, statistically, all night is not really probable,” you stammered, but it came out more like a choked-out moan than anything.
He tilted his head and smiled, his unfair dimples finally arriving to the party, too.
"But hey," Satoru murmured against your skin, his eyes lifting to yours with a predatory gleam that made your thighs press together completely against your will. "If yer really doubtin' my stamina..."
He let it hang there, perhaps waiting for another smartass retort from you, as his eyes flickered lazily over to the wall clock before turning back to your flushed face.
"You did say you called in sick today, didn't ya?"
He took the hat right off your head and put it on himself. He didn’t even give you time to answer before claiming your mouth in a hungry kiss. His tongue, all mean and demanding, raked over yours, swiping across your palate. You might have moaned at that right into his mouth, but that didn't mean you were putting the attitude to sleep. You apparently had no survival instincts whatsoever, because when he pulled back, you smiled.
“Well golly, mister,” you said in a terrible fake accent, chin tipped up. “You gonna keep talkin’, or you actually gonna do somethin’? And the hat stays on.”
Satoru scoffed, because now you were just mocking him. And he wouldn’t have that, especially with that shit-ass imitation of the way he spoke, thank you very much.
He wrapped his hand around the back of your neck. “Turn around,” he ordered, his voice ice-cold as he guided you down onto your knees. His hand ran slowly up your spine, hiking the fabric of his t-shirt up, leaving your pretty ass and blushing cunt completely exposed for him. He kicked off his boxers again, settling right behind your perked-up cheeks.
“All that mouth,” he muttered, and spanked you, making you jolt. “Runnin’ around actin’ like you still don’t want this. Look at you now.”
Another spank, right where the first one had landed, harder this time.
“Stubborn as hell. Just like a horse that don’t know it’s already been broken in.” He traced the stinging red mark with his thumb, and you made a sound that had no dignity in it whatsoever.
"Gotta remind you who's holdin' the reins, darlin'."
You opened your mouth to snap something back, but he spanked you again, making you gasp and arch your back instead. Your fingers curled into the back cushion as the stinging sensation was making more than just your eyes wet.
He pushed in, sliding right into your sopping hole as he bottomed out immediately and stayed there. He ground against you in circles, one hand gripping your hip hard enough to bruise.
"Fuck—!" you cried out, your elbows instantly giving out as you dropped flush against the cushions, making him go instantly deeper.
"Still so tight—" he rolled his hips, slow and testing. "Still tryna act like yer not fuckin' soaked for me." Another tentative roll.
Once he saw your shoulder blades weren't squeezing together in response to the tight burn, to getting used to the stretch, he started moving properly. Hard strokes that shoved you further into the cushions.
You still tried. Because hey, your pride might have been crumbling, but if the cornerstone was still intact, you weren't going down without a proper fight.
"I'm—" you gasped into the cushion. "—I've—ah—been wetter—"
He shifted, changed the angle and drove into you harder, absolutely railing you into the cushions, making your pussy clench and squelch around him — was it really any wetter? You moaned into the upholstery, face buried, completely betrayed by your own body.
"That so," he said completely conversational. Like he hadn't just rearranged something inside you. His hips snapped forward again, harder, finding an even meaner angle and locking onto it, because Satoru always did things thoroughly.
"Go on then," he said, breathless but steady, hips not letting up. "Finish that sentence."
You know your mouth opened, but what came out was like a half a syllable and then just a broken moan as he fucked into your cervix and you felt him in your stomach, which wasn’t exactly the comeback you had been reaching for.
"Thought so," he murmured, smug as hell, rewarding your shut-the-fuck-upness with a slow caress across your lower back. But you weren’t done. You were… just taking a breath. Trust. You turned your head to the side, fighting through the haze just enough to gasp out, "Gonna have to— try harder than that, Satoru—"
“Oh?” he murmured, his tone almost gentle. But you were kinda pissing him off right now. He knew exactly what you were trying to do—trying to goad him into absolutely railing you into next week, perhaps literally. But did you really have to be such a brat about it? What happened to just asking nicely? Though Satoru would be lying if he said he wasn’t enjoying toying with you like this, because he ceased all movement.
His dick stayed unmoving, you could feel his veins faintly pulsing against your swollen walls, and you certainly did NOT feel the way your poor cunt kept fluttering trying to pull him deeper even though he refused to give you anything, because that was what was NOT happening.
You clenched on purpose, because the heated stillness was maddening.
"I—" you tried to rally again, but your voice faltered, shifting your hips experimentally, trying to push back into him, but his hand on your hip tightened to stop you. "Wait, you can't just—"
"Ah ah," he said warningly, making your cheeks burn even hotter, if being a bitch gets you this, can't blame a girl for acting like one all the time.
“Move,” you whined and whined, white-knuckling your poor couch.
“Ask me nicely then, such a pretty girl but so so impatient,” he tsked and put one of his arms on the backrest like he was taking a break, it was so hot and so infuriating, you hated it made your pussy throb. Ugh.
You made a sound of pure outrage into the cushion. "I am not — you can't just — this is so unfair—"
"Mm," he said again, but his hand left your hip, as it snaked up your back and into your hair. Satoru pulled back gently, forcing you to arch your spine and lift your chest off the cushions.
"Can't just what, darlin'?" he murmured right against your ear. He finally rolled his hips again, tickling your insides.
You made another broken, frustrated sound. “You can’t just— stop like that—”
"I can," he said simply. "And I will." His lips brushed the shell of your ear. "Until ya say what I wanna hear." And with another shallow roll, his fist tightened in your hair, pulling, making your spine curve.
“Wha-ohh!” He didn't even let you get another stupid remark out. He thrust upward with more power this time, the sharp arch of your back making you feel him so, so deep.
"Say ya want it, baby," he cooed, impossibly sweet for a man actively trying to rearrange your spine. His lips grazed your ear, your jaw, the side of your neck. "Stop hidin' behind that mouth, sweets. Tell me what ya want." A pause, another slow roll that made your toes curl. "Tell me ya want me."
What a jerk. You knew he was a jerk from the very beginning, you were aware. And now he was trying to emotionally manipulate you into admitting something that might have been the truth, but for legal reasons, you were NOT going to examine it right now. He was basically holding your poor orgasm, which was already forming so embarrassingly quickly in your lower belly, hostage.
"No—" you started. You expected another shallow roll, but the fucker started to pull out, making your poor pussy spasm at that in protest, because what the hell NO?!
"Fine, FINE," you gasped, completely past caring, this was psychological torture and you had nobody to blame but yourself. "Fine. I want it. I want you. I've wanted you, okay, I've — for a while, I've wanted you for a while, but — I want you. I want this. Please, Satoru, please—"
You would ramble like the absolute desperate whiny mess you were for longer, but you ran out of words.
"Yeah?" Satoru praised, or perhaps teased, you weren’t entirely sure. He let go of your hair, letting you plop face-first back into the cushion like a very undignified sack of potatoes. His large hand slid down to caress your spine again. "That's my good girl. 'Bout damn time." He thrust forward. "And—ngh—ya said it so nicely." A slow roll. "Guess I can go back to work."
He shifted his weight, because now it meant business since you'd finally decided to be good. Satoru planted one foot firmly on the floor, giving himself the leverage he needed, and pinned you back down with one hand. The other flew up to hold his hat in place, because he meant business now and intended to demonstrate exactly how much stamina he had.
Although he could feel, that the demonstration wasn't going to need to last very long at all. Your pussy was weeping so, so much around him, clenching and fluttering and sucking him in like it was trying to keep him there permanently, and he could feel you coiling tighter with every single movement. So, who didn't have stamina now, huh?
The wet sounds immediately filled the quiet apartment, skin slapping against skin, the squelch of your wet hole drooling every time he shifted. You had absolutely nothing, face pressed into the cushion while he used you exactly the way he’d wanted to since you put the hat on his head in the first place.
"Fuck — look at ya," he rasped, not slowing this time. "Takin' it so well now that ya stopped bein' a brat."
His hand released your hip and slid underneath you, pressing flat against your lower stomach, feeling himself move inside you again.
"God," he breathed, his rhythm stuttering for just a second before he drove deeper. "Feel that? Feel how perfect ya take me?" His fingers found your clit. "This pussy was made for me, sweets. Nothin' else fits ya like I do."
Was it the words, was it the way he rolled your throbbing clit around his fingers? You couldn’t really tell,because you fucking came hard again. A broken cry punched out of you, getting partly muffled into the cushion as you turned your head to look at him. He looked so fucked out, so smug. His stupid cowboy hat still on, that smile spreading across his flushed face, and you squeezed around him harder just out of spite.
"For such big words," he rasped, still moving through your aftershocks, "didn't last that long, sweets. How am I supposed to prove anythin' when ya turn into a sobbin' mess so quickly, mm?"
A few more deep thrusts, and then he pulled out suddenly.
"What—" you protested weakly, though it didn't have much effect on anything. He grabbed your arm and guided you gently down onto your knees while you were still seeing stars behind your eyelids.
Satoru stroked his cock over your face. He looked down at you with those pretty blown-out eyes, his chest still heaving. "Now look at ya," he murmured. "Kept lookin' down at me. Pretendin' yer above all this." His thumb brushed your lower lip. "Who's under who now, sweets."
You watched him with completely glassy, dazed eyes, gaze darting between his darkened blues and his slick pink cock in his hand, your mouth already watering, wanting to taste him—
"Ah—" he moaned, his hand moving to cup your jaw. "Open up for me."
You didn’t have to be told twice. He pushed into your mouth, one hand steadying the back of your head while the other cradled your cheek like he didn’t just hit the back of your throat until you gagged. He kept your head in place, gently fucking your mouth, deep throating your poor mouth.
Just like that, pretty girl. Just — yeah, exactly like—"
His hand tightened in your hair, your cheeks hollowing as you swiped your tongue across his length, tasting yourself on him.
"Been thinkin' 'bout this," he rasped, barely audible, his head dropping back as his thumb kept brushing your cheek. “Ever since ya walked onto our porch in them heels of yours with that condescendin' expression... God, how I wanted to fuck that attitude right out of ya then—”
He cut himself off. His hips stuttered forward. "Sweets," he gritted, "I'm gonna—"
You sucked harder, your hands gripping his muscular thighs to bring him even closer, your nose burying into his white happy trail. He came hard, heavy pulses of his salty cum hitting the back of your throat as he held you firm and snug until he finished completely.
He dragged his thumb across your lower lip again, collecting a stray drop, and pushed it right back into your mouth.
“Good girl,” he murmured, feeling you suck on his thumb. “My pretty girl.”
You didn't talk about the buyout that morning. Or the next. Or the next after that.
You two silently agreed to pack the word ranch into a box, wrap it in caution tape, and shove it somewhere dark. It was a haze of stolen touches and the smell of actually good coffee that you shamelessly started bringing to work too. It was his hands lazily tracing your spine while something played on TV. It was the weight of his arm thrown over your waist in the middle of the night, holding you against his warm chest. It was him fixing your creaking bedroom door without being asked.
But he tried to bring it up. Of course he did, because unlike you, Satoru actually had a spine. He would pick you up from work and start saying something that began with "look, about the meetin'—" and you kissed him stupid on the sidewalk so he would forget what he was even trying to say. He would try again in the morning, you getting ready, still sleepy and usually with your defenses down, him leaning against the kitchen counter with his phone in hand. He would start again with "my lawyer sent over—" and you would shut him up by dropping to your knees right there.
And yes, it is said that you should not fix what isn't broken. Even if it was a stupid game of avoidance, you were a coward who would rather experience the sweetest week of her life wrapped in the thickest blanket of delusion rather than come clean with reality. The reality you had also kind of self-imposed, by the way.
You knew you were playing the stupid game. You were its best player, afterall. But god, the prize felt so good. But what were you supposed to do when the timer was finally up and Satoru was giving you the same eyes across Shoko's meeting room table that he gave you whenever he cuddled you? You hated that you didn't know where you stood now that you were finally standing where you'd wanted to be all along. And suddenly, looking at him from across the table, you didn't really see a villain anymore.
Shoko had her professional face back on, even if she suspiciously glanced your way multiple times, because you were wearing a turtleneck.
But look, self-imposed or not, in this reality you were supposed to be the shark smelling blood. The one with the upper hand. The one who was going to get rid of the ranch and— Wait. Did you want to get rid of him too, though?
"Shall we begin?" Shoko said, voice perfectly even. So you did. The discrepancies from last time got cleared up, everything explained, all the points covered again in order. You breezed through it to the point you were buzzing with petty anticipation, just because you had apparently become a full masochist.
But as Shoko moved to pull up the revised final valuation figures, Satoru's lawyer held up a hand. "If we could pause before the final numbers," he said, sliding a folder to the center of the table. "My client would like to present a new proposal." He looked around the table. "A full buyout of your fifty percent stake. Fair market value, sixty-day closing, clean transfer."
Huh.
Satoru held your confused gaze and there was something in his expression that wasn't quite an apology but was in the same neighbourhood. Something like I tried to tell you and I know and I'm sorry it's happening like this all at once, without saying any of it out loud.
"Additionally," his lawyer continued, "in the interest of full disclosure, Mr. Gojo has been personally funding the ranch's operational costs for the duration of the estate dispute. Staff salaries, equipment, general maintenance. All out of pocket." He glanced at Satoru. "Which should all be taken into account when we get to the final figures."
You had been calling this man a freeloader for months. In your head, out loud, to Shoko, to your mom, in your affirmation notebook! Gold-digging freeloader. Sugar baby. Village bumpkin. And he had been paying everyone's salaries out of his own pocket the whole time. Yuji. Megumi. Nanami. Nobara. All of them. His people. Funded entirely by the man you were trying to evict.
Your face felt suddenly very warm and you became aware that your grip on your pen had gotten extremely tight.
"We'd of course welcome the opportunity to look over the figures in detail," his lawyer added smoothly, sitting back. "But we wanted the proposal on the table before proceeding."
Shoko looked at you — though she looked at you now more as a friend than as someone who was supposed to be professionally winning you this case. Oh god. You felt stupid. You felt betrayed. You felt unsteady. But you didn't, wouldn't, feel like a loser.
Shoko cleared her throat. "We appreciate the transparency regarding the operational costs," she said carefully, clicking her pen. "That context is certainly relevant to the overall—"
"It's a generous offer," Satoru's lawyer politely interrupted, nodding. "We're confident the figures will reflect fair—"
"And we'll of course need time to review the proposal thoroughly," Shoko continued, reaching for the folder, "before my client can make any formal—"
Satoru said something then. You didn't catch what, because the blood was very loud in your ears as the conversation steadily got away from you while you quietly experienced a very embarrassing implosion of your entire narrative of everything that was, is, and would be.
The plan had been to say something sharp. Something professional that would reestablish the hierarchy in this room. Lean back, politely decline the immediate offer, remind everyone who was steering this ship. But trying to be the captain doesn't really work when you feel handled, managed, and like you're about to be tossed overboard.
"Just because we slept together," you blurted out, absolutely sinking your composure and the ship alongside it, "doesn't mean you get to write me a check because you feel like it's the righteous thing to do."
Satoru stood up immediately, hands raised slightly, voice low and careful. "Sweets. This didn't come out of nowhere, I promise. I tried to talk to ya about this all week. It's why we proposed the meeting altogether—"
"I—" you started.
"Perhaps," Shoko cleared her throat, hastily gathering her things, "we should give the parties a moment." She looked at you with an expression that was equal parts girl what the fuck, good luck, and I will be charging you extra for this. She picked up her coffee and followed his lawyer out without looking back.
"You played me," you fired off once the door shut.
"I didn't play ya," Satoru said, his voice stupidly calm. He stepped away from the table and took a step closer to you.
"You used the entire week to soften me up!" you accused and paced a line behind your chair. "You played dumb and then you played house with me and let me think—let me think we were actually... and the whole time you had this sitting in your back pocket!"
You pointed at the damn folder still sitting on the table.
"I tried to tell ya," he reminded you gently. "Every single day. Ya didn't wanna hear it."
"Because I didn't know you were trying to get rid of me!" you shot back immediately, feeling how your throat was tightening. You felt betrayed and humiliated, all of it stinging your eyes. "All the flirting, all the sweet talk.. It feels an awful lot like you got exactly what you wanted out of me, decided what was best for me without asking me. It felt like you used— And now you're just trying to be decent to pay me off to do that!”
Satoru physically flinched at that. "Is that really what ya think this is?"
"What else am I supposed to think?" you demanded, crossing your arms tightly over your chest to keep your hands from shaking. "You played the struggling cowboy for months. And now, suddenly, you're dropping buyouts and funding payrolls like it's nothing. So what is it? Some trust fund you're using to push me out because you want the ranch all for yourself?"
"It's my savings," he answered, though the hurt was visible in his face. "I emptied out my own accounts to make that offer."
Okay, now you were the one who flinched, taken aback. "I wasn't tryin' to push ya out," Satoru continued, he took another slow step closer. "I was givin' ya an option, sweets. Not an ultimatum. I wasn't gonna let ya be trapped in somethin' ya clearly didn't want just because ya felt obligated."
"I thought if I proposed this ya'd agree without—" he faltered at that, suddenly looking at the floor.
"Without what," you coaxed him and your jaw was tight. His head snapped back up and his eyes were glassy with desperation.
"Without fuckin' leavin' me behind, okay?!”
He never raised his voice like that. It felt like a gunshot going off. Oh my god. No. No. No. This wasn't supposed to go this way. In your little mental script he was supposed to say something… something vile, something ugly, something that would justify you being a bitch and him being the villain. You couldn't handle him being the good guy, because if he was the good guy, that meant you were the villain of your own story.
"Then why didn't you just tell me?" you demanded, still reaching for any possible crack. "Why let me come down there for months and fight with you tooth and nail over this— this mistake?"
"Because it wasn't a mistake,” he said, his voice dropping so low it was almost inaudible.
"What?" you breathed out.
"Your aunt left us both this place on purpose, sweets," he bit his lip. "Because she wanted us to find each other.”
Okay, what the fuck now? Not only he really wasn’t what you’d spent months trying to paint him as, now apparently your own dear great-aunt played you both by playing some fucked up posthumous matchmaker. Legally tying you to a man she’d oh so graciously picked for you herself, via inheritance law. You felt trapped in your own lie, in this entire situation, under the weight of his pretty, now sad-looking eyes.
“I wasn't tryin' to be pushy. I gotta admit I was smitten with ya the second I saw ya," Satoru confessed. "But I knew ya were upset. With your aunt, with the whole inheritance situation, with me. So I didn't say anythin’ because I thought ya didn't like me back anyway. Figured it was irrelevant.” He took a breath. "Your aunt was real important to me. She took me in when I had a fallout with my own family. I started helpin' her out and we got close. She was like my own grandmother. And then she started talkin' about her one niece that was my age." The corner of his mouth twitched. "Painted ya like this brilliant, driven, beautiful woman. And I was gone before ya ever set foot on that property. And yeah, sounds stupid, I know."
What the FUCK now, for real?! So that was why she had wanted you to visit, more so often these past few years. She wanted you to meet Satoru. That's why she made sure to see this through even after her death. And you couldn’t tell if this was totally fucked up or the best, and the most stubborn thing someone had ever done to you. Probably both, to be honest. You hated her for it and adored her even more.
But here’s the thing. You hated NOT being in control. And this entire situation, for its entire duration, had never been under your control, no matter how much you tried to convince yourself that it was. Satoru had known, he’d had time, and he’d had opportunities to tell you. But he’d let you live your delusional little of a story, because he thought the truth was irrelevant. He let you think he was a dick. And somehow, right now, that was what made you the angriest.
“Y-you—” you stammered, looking out the window. Tears were starting to well in your eyes, and crying in here would be the last thing needed for your completely crumbling resolve. "Keep your damn money," you spat out. Your somehow voice steadied itself, which was the only victory left available to you in this damn room. "I'll find a way to buy you out and sort this myself. I never asked you to do any of this in the first place."
“Okay,” he said quietly as he ran hand through his hair. You gathered your shit and walked out. The door shut behind you and it was the loneliest sound in the world. The spell was supposed to work, but the witch said don’t fish for fortune upon someone’s downfall, and now the one who fell down was you, for fuck’s sake.
The last cherry on top was receiving THE dreaded email from HR a few weeks later. So, yes you did get fired on top of everything, exactly how you didn’t want! And they dared to write it so politely, too, “role elimination”, while your entire existence felt thoroughly, physically, and emotionally eliminated in every other way, too. But what a great way to finish off this particular arc of your life. Honestly? Served you right. Served you absolutely, completely, and justifiably right for being a bitch.
You always thought you would absolutely freak the freak out if you ever got fired. Full meltdown, floor-level, calling your mom in tears. Instead you were kinda... chill? You already felt like your life was over for completely different reasons, so what was not being financially secure going to do to you damage-wise at this point?
You almost felt relieved. Scary, I know. You thought about calling your boss, like, to give them the option to reconsider, but you thought about this for like a minute and then just accepted it. You wanted to quit sooner or later anyway, so what a little sooner than expected was going to do.
The universe had just beaten you to it, which was annoying, but fine. That was apparently just how things went for you recently. You made a plan and then the plan changed without your knowledge and went in a completely different direction, and you ended up standing in your kitchen in a dead man's t-shirt with no job, no strategy, and the worst cup of drip coffee you had ever tasted sitting cold on the counter next to you.
And the worst part was you couldn't even tell if you were the loser or the winner of the situation anymore. You win some, you lose some, but lately these things had started to blend together that you kinda couldn't tell which was which anymore.
So you had tried to seek validation from the one person biologically obligated to give it to you. Your own mother.
A few days prior, you had called her, desperately looking for emotional comfort.
But instead of being unconditionally supportive, like any good mom should and would be when their child is clearly in the wrong, she had decided to fully cement the fact that you were actively ruining your life to make it even clearer for you. Thank you very much, mom.
Long story short, it turned out she had actually met Satoru last summer, and was now describing him as a perfectly lovely young man who had even fixed the flickering light on her car for free!
She admitted she hadn't wanted to interrupt your little inheritance warpath over the last few months, but she graciously took the chance to let you know that trying to sell the ranch out from under that sweet boy would make your great-aunt incredibly disappointed. And that you should definitely not talk about this in front of your grandma, because she would curse you out for trying to sell her dead sister’s house. So there was that. Great.
Oh! And apparently he also had wonderful shoulders and cute dimples, so she simply didn't understand your decision-making process and told you to fix this mess immediately.
So, yes. You were not only at the rock bottom of your entire life, but also being actively humiliated by your own mother, who had been on his side long before you even knew who he was. You really couldn't make this shit up. What would come next? Your landlord deciding your request to fix the non-working doorbell was unjust and not in alignment with your tenancy agreement and kicking you out?
Shoko called you into her office later, so you dragged your ass all the way downtown. As you sat in the waiting area, you couldn't help but glare at the frosted glass of her door. Did she find more shit to bill you for? She had just bought a new car, shit must have been expensive, so of course she was dragging you in to squeeze a few more billable hours out of your misery.
When you trudged inside and slumped into the chair like the dignified lady you were, she immediately slid a folder across the table your way. The same folder. THE folder. Satoru's lawyer's new deal proposition, sitting there on Shoko's desk like it hadn't already caused enough emotional damage to your life.
You glared at it. "Get that thing away from me. Did you call me in here just to torture me?"
"Jesus fucking Christ, calm down," Shoko rolled her eyes and flipped it open. "Did you even read the full proposal?"
You shook your head. "Of course not. Why would I? They made it pretty clear when they said buy me out. You were there."
"I know. I'm still charging you for the emotional damage of whatever the fuck that was." She flipped to a specific page and turned it to face you. "But if you had bothered to read past the first page before deciding to be the victim, you would have seen the addendums."
"Fuck off," you said, but you straightened your posture. "What addendums?"
"The operational roadmap," Shoko said, tapping a nail against the page. "Read it."
So you read it once. Then again. Then some specific parts a third time just to make sure.
Turned out he wasn't offering you the buyout so he could turn the place into a bachelor pad or whatever. The dude had a plan. Real hospitality plans. Landscaping blueprints for the east field to host events. A very rough but preliminary draft of a proposal for boutique rental cabins — just like he'd floated to the appraiser all those months ago, the idea you'd been pissed about because you were too busy trying to wedge yourself back into the conversation to properly clock it. Plus, a clause regarding profit-sharing for the original stakeholders.
And you hated that it was good. You hated that it made sense. And you hated that it wasn't your idea, and that you had lowkey stifled it for months just because your ego was bruised. He was thinking about a future while you were only thinking about the present. About money. About an exit.
"Babe, he wasn't really trying to kick you out," Shoko said softly, sounding dangerously close to pity. "He really isn't the bad guy. And I know you like him. Losing—"
"No, stop," you interrupted, still reading the same paragraph over again. You might have been dumb about a lot of things lately, but you were NOT stupid.
You sat in silence for a while. When Shoko wasn't allowed to speak she at least had the decency not to send you nonverbal pity vibes. You finally looked up, catching her eye as the lightbulb finally went off in your head. "I need you to draw something up for me."
You already had the ranch's address saved in your navigation. And unlike last time, you were armed with your well-trusted pink Salomons, your overstuffed weekender, and a folder that hopefully wouldn't sever your connection to him this time, but rather, hopefully, save it.
What a turn of events.
The drive felt like it took both ten seconds and ten years. The GPS, regardless of the saved destination, kept recalculating anyway like an old habit, because you still hadn't switched to Google Maps like you'd told yourself you would.
When your tires crunched to a halt in the exact same spot you always parked, you killed the engine and just sat there for a second, hyping yourself up. Because you were haunted by the very real possibility that he wouldn't want to see you after what you'd managed to theatrify back in the meeting room. But look, you were already here, the legal stuff still needed to be dealt with anyway, and it was now or never, baby.
It took just a few awkward steps around the back porch before Yuji spotted you from the stables, where he was doing something with Megumi again. He paused, squinting against the afternoon sun, and when he recognized you he sent off a very friendly wave in your direction, like you hadn't recently tried to financially ruin their boss.
Nobara was tending to the cows and Nanami was washing off his horse near the pen. But Satoru was nowhere to be seen, and you were too embarrassed to ask, because what the hell were you even doing here anyway.
So you went to pet the cows. Betsy was by the fence again and you needed your hand to be licked for emotional support. It was a reasonable thing to need. And as you stood there, you noticed that the barn roof was fixed. It was now neatly patched with fresh shingles. And while Betsy actively worked on trying to dissolve your sleeve into a wet mush, you looked out toward the east field and suddenly, you could picture it all. The future he had been quietly building, while you were busy trying to tear it all down.
"Didn't think I'd be seein' you around these parts again so soon."
Your heart dropped directly into the mud under your feet. You spun around, yanking your soggy sleeve away from Betsy's sandpaper tongue.
Satoru was standing a few feet away, a little further back than he usually stood, with a smudge of dirt across his sun-kissed cheek and wearing his chaps again. How could you be reasonable when you just wanted to kiss him stupid for looking so pretty? And yeah, you're putting this on the record. You had always wanted to do that while he was wearing them, so fucking what.
You had a speech prepared, like you always did—an explanation of the new legal parameters of your partnership alongside an epic but logical apology, and it all instantly went out the window the second you looked at his thighs.
He stood there with a little frown on his face, like he was bracing for another fight, probably waiting for you to hand him the promised eviction notice.
“I—uh—I,” you very beautifully stammered as you bit your lip, feeling the blush creep terribly up your neck and all over your face. “I—” Okay, forget the speech. You had also apparently forgotten what words were.
He only raised an eyebrow, rested a hand on his hip, and patiently waited for you to produce a legible sentence. You absolutely panicked. Reminding yourself what you held in your other, non-salivated hand, you shoved it his way. “I—I stole the book last time. I’m s-sorry. I just wanted to return it because I finished it and I d-didn't return it when you were over.”
You looked at the ground, idly kicking a small stone between your shoes.
"Sweets, what—"
"And I got fired," you continued. "Or, technically, my role was eliminated. And my mom hates me. Well, she doesn't hate me, but she loves you, and she thinks I'm a terrible person for trying to take the ranch from you." Aaaand full word vomit sequence engaged. "Which I'm not doing anymore! Because at first I hadn't read the proposition, because I was dumb, but then Shoko made me read it and then I saw all the plans and I'm an idiot, okay?!"
Satoru just stared at you, his mouth slightly parted, but you couldn't stop talking if you tried.
"I'm not buying you out—or, like, not trying to," you babbled, shoving the papers you and Shoko cooked up at him next. "I had Shoko draft a new agreement. You get full operational control. I'm keeping my stake though, because my grandma would kill me, but nobody is selling anything, and you don't have to give me your savings! And I understand if you hate me after how I acted, and I'm not asking you to forgive me, I just needed to fix this mess because I was wrong and—"
He didn't let you finish that one. He took a step forward instead, not even glancing at the documents you were currently using as an emotional shield, letting them drop alongside the poor book into the dirt, and caught your face in both hands.
"Sweets."
"—and I'm sorry," you finished, as his thumbs brushed your cheekbones and he gazed down at you with very soft eyes for a man who was supposed to be very upset with you.
"God, sweets." He exhaled, biting his lip as he searched your face for something that might tell him to stop himself. "I love you. What are you even talkin' about?"
Oh.
OH.
You looked shocked, but not shocked the way you'd expected to be. A cheeky smile with a few tears slipping down your cheeks finally broke through the panic on your face. Because after all of this, all of that, and everything, you were standing here in your trusted pink Salomons, completely in love with a cowboy.
"I—" you started.
"The papers are fine," he interrupted again. "We'll sort the papers." His thumb moved slow and tender against your cheek, catching the few stray tears. "That ain't why you drove out here, is it?"
"Well, kinda," you admitted shyly, and shrugged, which he dignified with a small chuckle. "But also not."
You finally brought your arms around his neck and looked at all of him for a moment, the hat, the dirt smear on his cheek, the chaps, and suddenly remembered something.
"Does the horseback ride offer still stand?" you said. Your voice came out slightly trembling, which was fine, because you'd told yourself to finally be honest and you felt slightly wrecked now, so what. "Since it's — you know. Next time."
Satoru laughed and pulled you flush against him. The wet and slimy sleeve could be damned. "Yeah, darlin'," he murmured into your hair, inhaling you, planting a small kiss there. "Offer still stands."
It was a few months later when you found yourself zipping your, at this point, threadbare weekender back up. Only this time, instead of your pink Salomons, you packed your bad bitch heels instead.
"You're really leavin' me alone again?" Satoru was leaning against the bedroom doorframe, wearing the most obnoxious, unfair pout.
"I have meetings in the city, Satoru," you answered, tossing your laptop in and pulling the zipper shut. "Somebody has to secure the funding for phase two of the boutique cabins, and they refused to do it over Zoom"
"Thought you were supposed to be takin' a day off."
"I will take a day off when I’m sure the east field is fully funded," you countered, grabbing your bag and marching toward him. He caught you by the waist, not letting you through the doorway.
"Ya know, under the new operatin' agreement, I got full day-to-day authority," he drawled, his nose brushing against yours. "I could formally request you stay put."
"And as your financial stakeholder," you whispered and hugged him back, "I have veto power. And I am vetoing your request until Friday evening." He chuckled and kissed you until you almost forgot your own schedule.
Or it was when you were both stuck in your car in the middle of a traffic jam on the way back from said meetings.
"How folks can live in this kinda chaos is beyond me," Satoru groaned, gripping the steering wheel as he glared at the endless sea of red brake lights. "We've been stuck in the exact same spot for twenty minutes! The damn cows move faster than this!"
"It's just rush hour, babe. Normal weekday experience," you said softly from your passenger seat, typing away on your laptop.
"I ain't embracin' nothin'," he grumbled, leaning his head back against the headrest. "I just miss my tractor."
He looked so stressed, sporting the same cute pout he always did when he didn't like something. He looked so adorably out of place, and was only putting up with it just to drive you back from your meeting. You suddenly felt an uncomfy pressure in your lower tummy, and you couldn't help the giggle that bubbled up in your chest. You widened your eyes, giggling harder as he narrowed his eyes at you. "What's so funny, darlin'?"
"Oh shit," you snickered, closing your laptop and clutching your stomach. "I kinda need to pee."
Satoru's head whipped fully toward you, absolute horror flashing across his face. "Do not tell me this right now—"
"I don't know, twenty minutes is a long time," you teased, laughing harder at his panicked expression as he desperately started looking around for a gas station that definitely didn't exist on this block.
And look, you win some, you lose some. But no matter where you were, if it was being stuck in traffic, covered in mud, in a boardroom, on the ranch, or in your apartment — having this beautiful cowboy by your side? Yeah. You had definitely won both.