Toji Fushiguro

You married him for the quiet between his storms, the way he softened when he looked at you, the rare hours where he laughed without a knife-edge to it. Two years in, you believed in the promises he gave: “I’ll stop. I’ll put it down. For you.” He meant it in the small moments, at your kitchen table, fingers curled around your hand and you wanted to believe him so badly you made those promises real in your bones.

Then the sirens came.

He was arrested: illegal firearm possession, drugs, murder, charges that carried a weight you couldn’t breathe under. The news felt like someone ripping a page out of your life. You knew the rumors, the half-heard things about the deals and the men he kept in shadows. You’d been told he’d changed. He’d been different with you. He’d smiled for you. He’d been the man you married.

Loving Toji is a different kind of devotion. He is a man who’s easy to worship in private and terrifyingly real in public. He never raised a hand at you; he was careful, almost reverent, in the small domestic spaces you shared. But outside that, he moved like a blade, tidy, efficient, and dangerous.

You promised you wouldn’t leave. You told yourself you’d stand by him, even knowing the cost; even knowing the law would not be swayed by the softer version of him who warmed your feet in winter. It isn’t bravery. It isn’t morality. It’s a pull you can’t explain. A loyalty that burns and hums in your chest when you think of his laugh, the way he folds laundry with deliberate calm, the way he sleeps like a child against you on rare nights when the world is quiet.

---

The court smelled like sweat and cheap disinfectant, but all you could smell was him. Toji stood there in chains, broad shoulders rolling back, that fucking smug tilt to his mouth like he didn’t care. He didn’t look like a man begging for mercy. He looked like a man who’d already decided he was fucked and wasn’t about to whine about it.

You’d scraped your savings raw for a lawyer, a decent one too, dressed sharp with his rehearsed lines. Toji had told you not to, over and over, low voice in the dark of your bedroom before trial. “Don’t waste your fuckin’ money, baby. I did it. They caught me red-handed. I’ll pay the price like a man.”

But you couldn’t listen. You thought maybe, maybe there was a way. That was the last piece of hope clinging to your ribs.

And then the footage played. Grainy black-and-white, a street camera catching him in the act: gun in his hand, knuckles split open, eyes glassy from whatever shit he’d taken that night. The whole goddamn court saw it. The defense didn’t stand a chance. The lawyer you’d hired with money you didn’t even have anymore sat there sweating bullets, already beaten before he spoke.

Toji spat to the side, laughing low like the whole thing was a bad joke. “See? Told ya. Nothin’ to save here. They got me on camera. Even your fancy-ass lawyer can’t pull me outta this one.”

But when his eyes slid to you, your hands trembling, tears streaking down your face…something in him shifted. The smirk faltered. His jaw clenched hard, a muscle ticking like he was fighting the chains.

“Hey… quit cryin’, babe.” His voice dropped, softer, almost tender in a way no one else ever got to hear. “Don’t… don’t do that for me. You’ll break my fuckin’ heart sittin’ there like that.”

The bailiff yanked him forward, steel biting into his wrists, but he didn’t stumble. He stood tall, broad, still dangerous, but his eyes never left you.

“You hear me?” His voice was firm now, but not cruel, never at you. “I’m still your man. Still your husband. This shit doesn’t change that. You wait for me… yeah? Even if it’s years, you’re still mine.”

The gavel cracked, the judgment sealed. Years, maybe decades. He didn’t even flinch. You did.

Toji was dragged out in chains, but he turned one last time, eyes burning into you, and mouthed the words no one else caught:

“I love you.”

---

You show up every time. Rain, sun, sleet, or snow, nothing stops you. You learn the rhythm of it: two weeks, like clockwork, the same metal gate, the same motionless faces at the check-in, the same fluorescent lights that make the world look cheap and tired. You learn to fold hope into a transparent bag.

The day before, you go to work with the weight of everything tucked in your arms, jars of your stupidly good stew, the pack of sandwiches you wrapped slow and careful, little plastic tubs of fruit, an extra bra, a toothbrush with the cap untied, a tube of the soap he likes, the soft socks that smell like home. You put it all in the clear bag the guards demanded and zip it, watching the food press against the plastic like it’s trying to crowd out the shame.

Rules are rules: gray sweater, white shirt, sweatpants or legging and chinelos. No loud colors. They let you wear makeup and spray on perfume like you’re allowed to be pretty for one man in a room full of everything he’s lost. You dress to be an arresting, guilty thing, because you know what eyes will snap to you the second you cross that threshold. They stare. Let them. Your skin prickles and you want only one pair of eyes.

Toji sends money. That’s another small miracle, coins traded for his hands at the jail barber bench, cash tucked into your account with a little note scrawled on a napkin: For you. Don’t spend it all on stupid shit, yeah? He tells you not to, his handwriting messy, the corners of the letters like little knives. Sometimes he keeps some back, and you don’t ask; his pride is raw and honest and the way he sacrifices little things for you makes you want to scream with a stupid sort of love.

Intimate visits are the best four hours of your life. They let you in every fifteen days and every fifteen days you plan like a general. You fold the food into neat squares. You bring hygiene products, you know what he’s allowed and what he isn’t. Everything is inspected in front of you, the guard’s hand running a finger over a container, glancing at your clothes like he’s checking a crate of contraband. You smile like a saint while your heart thumps like a drum.

They hand you a cup of coffee that tastes like nothing, and then they walk you down the corridor to that stupid room. The door opens and there he is, same broad shoulders, same damned jaw even behind the orange, but softer at the edges when he notices you. He stands up from the folding chair like a man who’s had his whole day paused for this moment.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he says, voice rough, but his hands move to you before his mouth can finish the sentence, fingers at the small of your back, the press of his palm saying the things he’d never say where eyes can pry. “You go through all that shit for me?” His smile is a crooked promise. “You’re a goddamn idiot.”

You hand over the bag and he sniffs the stew like a dog and then looks at you like you’re the only thing in the room with color. The guard gives you a curt nod. Then he steps close, the way he moves when the rest of the world is allowed to be quiet, low, careful, possessive.

They give condoms at the door, it’s humiliating and practical and exactly the sort of realism that makes you love him more and ache at the same time. You don’t bring any. You don’t have to. He jokes, half-grim, half-soft: “They hand those out like free bread. At least they know what’s what.” But when his mouth reaches yours, the city noise and the metal clink and the fluorescent light all fade.

He’s rough as hell with everything else, the cops, the other cunts who think they can sniff around you, the system but never with you. Not once has he raised his hand in a way that makes you flinch. He’s gentle because he can be, because he saves it only for you. Fingers tangle in your hair, his breath hot and real against your ear, and he murmurs the stupidest, softest words you’ve ever heard.

“You look good, princess. Don’t wear that sweater outta spite,” he growls, then smirks. “You always look good. Don’t act perf—” He breaks off, kisses you with teeth and need, then laughs low and ugly when you gasp. “Christ, I’m gonna eat you.”

You eat while you talk, you feed him, and he eats like a man who’s been fasting for memory. He gives you money sometimes back-handed, slips it across the metal like a payment for sins; other times he points out the stain on your collar with a grin that means please, don’t ever stop being mine.

He swears like a sailor in front of the others, calling the guards assholes, telling the world to go to hell but his hands are reverent on your skin. The beast is caged but the tenderness is earned, concentrated, and fierce. He says, between bites and kisses, “I ain’t gonna make a kid in here. I’m no damn idiot.” There’s a hard set to his mouth when he says it, a promise and a plan and a prayer all rolled into one. “First I pay my penny. Then we start something that ain’t gonna be fucked up from the start…a family.”