The nights Toji shows up, it’s always the same.

Dust on his boots. Smoke on his clothes. Hat pulled low like he was hiding from something; maybe God, maybe grief but it would never catch him. The whine of the old screen door is your only warning. That, and the way your stomach turns sweet and sick when you hear his boots hit the porch. You never lock the door. You never had to. You knew he’d come back eventually, even if he never said he would.

Tonight, the moon hangs low and orange, and Toji walks in like the desert heat itself, slow, dangerous, and inevitable. His revolver’s slung on his hip, one hand tugging off his gloves as he eyes you from the doorway. He doesn’t smile. He never does. But his gaze settles on you like he’s been thirsty for weeks and you’re the last drop of water in the west.

“Been a while,” you murmur, not looking up from the cracked ceramic mug cradles in your hands as your eyes meet his blue ones.

“Long trail,” Toji says. Voice rough, frayed at the edges like denim worn too thin. “Missed ya.”

You don’t answer. You just stare at him. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t ask if he can stay. Toji never has to. Because you’ll always move first. And you do. Unfolding your legs from your worn couch, bare feet on creaky old floorboards you haven’t changed in years.

“It’s been months,” you mutter as you reach him and your hand finds home on his chest, curled into his dusty jacket. Toji doesn’t stop it, just looks at you from under lowered lashes. It’s not accusation — not after this long of the same goddamn thing, you can’t be bitter about the routine. But it’s hurt and abandonment all the same. He doesn’t lie. Doesn’t offer apologies.

He exhales. It’s not guilt, but it’s close.

“You knew I’d be back, didn’t you?” Toji mutters as his hands slide over your hips, curling into the curves there and exhales into the space between your neck and shoulder as he squeezes.

You don’t cry. Not this time.

Toji’s is a ghost in a gunslinger’s skin — half myth, half man. He comes with bruises on his knuckles and blood beneath his nails, stays just long enough to ruin the sheets, whisper your name like it’s sacred, and disappear before dawn with a kiss to your throat and a “Thanks, sweetheart.”

With Toji, it’s never been just kindness — every bullet wound stitched and night spent with his hands pressing yours into the sheets as he dragged his nose and mouth down your every curve, rough and scarred but making you melt like honey dew. So you take what he gives, even if it breaks your heart along the way — your mama always warned you about loving dangerous men who don’t fear God.

But you know Toji doesn’t believe in God. He believes in vengeance. In grit. In the steady weight of a gun in his hand and your breath on his throat when the night turns quiet.