Before the Punchline Lands

"Me too." She muttered even more quietly, nuzzling her head gently against his broad shoulder, hoping her messy bun wouldn't tickle the side of his face too much. "It's beautiful out here Gojo." She sighed breathlessly into the void, the stars twinkling and the moon glistening across the ocean like a perfect portrait.

Rikki's head finds the curve of his shoulder like it was always going to end up there — the soft weight of her messy bun settling against him, warm and unhurried. Gojo doesn't move, doesn't make a joke about it, doesn't even exhale too fast. His arm, already threaded through hers, shifts barely an inch to let her settle, and then he goes still in that new way of his — the kind of still that costs him something. The ocean glitters back at them both, the moon drawing a long silver road across the water like it has nowhere better to be.

Gojo Satoru: "Yeah. It really is."

Suddenly, Rikki slowly turns her head to face Gojo, inches away from him, and a mischievous grin spreads across her face. "Tag! You're it!" She scrambles up quickly, making a run for the shoreline.

The shift is instant and electric — one moment her head is warm against his shoulder, the next she's on her feet and sprinting toward the water, bare feet kicking up wet sand, the sound of her laugh swallowed by the ocean. Gojo sits there for exactly half a second, blinking at the empty space where she just was, the look on his face cycling through surprise, delight, and something that settles into pure, uncomplicated joy — the kind that doesn't know how to perform itself. Then he's up, long legs eating the distance between them, a noise escaping him that's more laugh than anything else.

Gojo Satoru: "Oh — you are so going to regret that."

Rikki keeps her path set on the ocean, running as fast as she can - she has to, she has no idea how fast of a runner Gojo is but she's guessed he's probably pretty fast. In one bold move, she plants her hands on the hem of her top, in one fluid motion moves it up and over her head, flinging it behind her. She does the same with her shorts, which considerably slows her down, but once those are off it is revealed she is wearing a two piece bathing suit underneath.

The top sails past Gojo's shoulder like a white flag, and then the shorts — the fumble with the shorts buys her exactly two seconds before she's free of them and hitting the water's edge at full speed. The ocean swallows her ankles up to her shins, cold and immediate, and she can hear him behind her — not far enough behind, the sound of his feet on wet sand closing fast, his laugh loud and entirely genuine, the kind that doesn't care who hears it. Then his arms find her waist from behind, and the momentum carries them both forward into a shallow, spectacular crash — salt water everywhere, her back against his chest, both of them absolutely soaked and going nowhere.

Gojo Satoru: "You — wore a swimsuit the whole time — that was a PLAN, Rikki, that was a calculated plan—"

Rikki, laughing from the adrenaline, calms herself just enough to say breathlessly,"Actually, Gojo..... I wear a swimsuit under my clothes more often than I wear underwear." She admitted. "So... keep that new fun fact about me in your back pocket."

The confession lands between them like something she's been waiting to say — easy, breathless, absurd in the best way — and Gojo's arms are still loosely around her from behind, both of them soaked through, the cold water swirling around their ankles. She can feel the exact moment the words register in his chest, the way he goes briefly, completely still before something breaks open in him. He turns her just slightly — not all the way, just enough to look at the side of her face, water dripping from his eyelashes, expression doing something warm and stupid and entirely unguarded.

Gojo Satoru: "You wear a swimsuit under your clothes more than underwear. Rikki. That is the most unhinged thing anyone has ever told me and it is going to live in my head for the rest of my life."

Rikki giggles a little, glancing back at him. "I love the water, what can I say? You wouldn't believe the amount of times I've wanted to take a dip and haven't been able to." She adverts his eyes to his chest, checking to see if he took his shift off on the run over to the shore.

Rikki glances back over her shoulder at him, water catching the moonlight in her lashes, and his gaze drops immediately — shirt still on, completely drenched and plastered flat against his chest, the white fabric gone almost entirely translucent with salt water. She can see every line of him and he absolutely knows it. His arms are still loose around her waist, not tightening, not retreating — just there, letting her look, and the slow exhale he lets out sounds almost like a laugh that decided to stay quiet.

Gojo Satoru: "I ran straight in. Didn't even think about it."

"You arent used to chasing girls into large bodies of water, are you?" Rikki quipped, but a small part of her was nervous to hear the answer. She turned around completely, now facing Gojo, not closing the gap between them, or pulling away, just... letting him hold her just as he was, as the waves crashes against their shins.

She turns to face him completely — not stepping closer, not pulling back, just letting the question sit in the salt air between them. Gojo's arms stay where they are, loose around her waist, and the shift in her position means she can see his face now: the moonlight catching the edge of his jaw, his soaked shirt clinging, the water swirling cold and rhythmic around both their ankles. Something moves across his expression — not the performance, not the deflection — just something honest deciding whether it has the nerve.

Gojo Satoru: "No. Usually I'm the one who gets chased — which, for the record, I highly recommend as a lifestyle. This is new."

Rikki just smiles at him, enjoying the banter, enjoying the water. Everything about this evening was shaping up to be everything she desired. "Wanna go deeper with me?" Rikki invites, as she mmm

The question hangs in the salt air between them — easy on the surface, a little dangerous underneath — and Gojo looks at her for a long moment, the water catching silver light around both their ankles. Something in his face softens in a way that isn't a move, isn't a set-up, just a man who got asked a genuine question and is deciding to tell the truth. Then she smiles — that particular smile, the one that isn't performing anything — and tips her chin toward the open dark water ahead of them, the invitation simple and absolute.

Gojo Satoru: "No. Not once. And I'd do it again right now."

Rikki just laughs, delighted by the somewhat cocky answer. Classic Gojo. "Wanna go deeper with me?" She tilts her head to the side to indicate her invitation.

The tilt of her head — that small, deliberate invitation — lands on him like something he wasn't braced for. Gojo looks at her for exactly one beat, the moonlight sitting in the water around both of them, his shirt still translucent and clinging, his arms still loose at her waist. Then something in his face does a quiet thing — not the grin, not the performance — just a man who has genuinely been outmaneuvered by a woman in a bikini who planned the whole evening and is now asking him, with a tilt of her chin, to follow her into the dark.

Gojo Satoru: "Yeah. I do."

Rikki moved her hands behind her, gently trying his arms off of her, and taking one hand in hers before leading the way. When she could no longer walk through the sandbank, she let go of his hand to begin swimming, trusting he was right behind her.

Rikki's hands find his forearms first — unhooking them gently, deliberately, like returning something borrowed — and then her fingers slide down to catch one of his hands before she turns toward the open water. She leads, and he follows without a word, the cold rushing up past their knees, their hips, until the sand drops away beneath her feet and she lets go, pushing off into a smooth stroke. The water is black silk in every direction, the villa lights a warm blur on the shore behind them, and the only sounds are the quiet cut of her arms through the surface and, a beat later, the unmistakable sound of him right there — keeping up.

Gojo Satoru: "For the record — I'm aware this is exactly where you wanted me."

"If that were true, you wouldn't still be wearing that shirt." Rikki quipped. A wide grin spread across her face as they reached the part of the ocean where they could no longer feel the bottom. "So, we already know I love the water. How do you feel about it, Gojo?"

The quip lands clean and sharp, and for a half-second Gojo just — stops. His mouth opens, closes again, and then he does something she hasn't seen him do all season: he looks genuinely caught, the water dark and easy around both of them, no ground beneath their feet, his soaked shirt clinging to every line of him. He reaches up and peels it off in one slow pull, tosses it in the general direction of nothing, and it disappears somewhere into the black. The moonlight lands on him all at once and he spreads his arms wide, a grin slowly claiming his face like he's conceding the point on purpose.

Gojo Satoru: "The water? Rikki, I'd drown in it twice if you were at the end."

Rikki shot him a knowing look, and said "be serious, Gojo, there's nobody out here but us right now. I want a real answer." Her eyes steady on his face, which was now a lot more difficult considering his shirt was now off.

The grin drops — not completely, but enough. He treads water with an ease that suggests he's done this before, arms moving in slow arcs beneath the surface, and for a moment he just looks at her the way he does when he's actually thinking instead of performing. The moon sits low and wide over the water, painting everything silver, and out here with no shore sounds and no other voices there's genuinely nowhere for him to go. His jaw works once, like he's deciding something.

Gojo Satoru: "The water's the only place I don't feel like I have to be anything. I never told anyone that."

"Really?" Rikki tilts her head to the side. "Like a break from everything?"

He doesn't answer right away. The water moves around both of them in slow, dark swells, and Gojo just — floats there for a second, arms spreading wide to keep him level, eyes on the sky before they drop back to her. When they do, there's nothing in them she recognizes as performance. Just a man in open water at night, actually thinking about a question someone actually bothered to ask him. He exhales through his nose, a sound that's half laugh and half something more tired than that.

Gojo Satoru: "Yeah. Like — the version of me out here doesn't have to win anything. Doesn't have to be the funniest or the most whatever. It's just... water. It doesn't care who I am."

"So you like the water then I'm guessing?" Rikki probed

Gojo laughs — a short, surprised sound, like she caught him before he could arrange his face — and he lets it land without covering it. He tips his head back for just a second, the dark water lapping at his shoulders, and when he looks at her again there's something in it that has nothing to do with performance. He's quiet for exactly one beat, the moon sitting between them on the surface of the water, and then he answers her the way he answered the last one — honestly, first.

Gojo Satoru: "Yeah. Yeah, I really do. Probably should've led with that instead of everything else."

Rikki giggled. "You're fine. I'm just not used to hanging out with someone so vulnerable - you've been a really bad influence on me." She smiled as she teased him, his arms working through the water as they floated together under the full moon.

The giggle catches him completely off guard — it's light and real and it bounces off the open water in a way that makes something in his chest do something inconvenient. He lets out a short breath that's almost a laugh, treading slow easy circles, and for a second he just watches her — the moon doing everything it's doing to the surface around them, her face open in a way the villa cameras are definitely not catching right now. His arms move through the black water in long unhurried arcs, keeping them both level, and the villa lights are so distant behind her they might as well be stars.

Gojo Satoru: "Bad influence. Yeah. I'll take it."

"So... question.... you threw your shirt off earlier... what were you planning on wearing once we get back to the car?" Rikki pondered. "Or was your plan to just go abs-out behind the wheel? Im not complaining, just curious..."

The question hits him mid-tread and his whole face does something genuinely helpless — the kind of thing that would never survive a ring light. He glances back toward shore, at the distant warm glow of the villa, and then down at his own bare torso like he's only just remembering the shirt is gone. The water shifts softly around them, black and easy, stars doing their thing overhead, and there is no quick recovery from this one.

Gojo Satoru: "...I did not think that far ahead. At all. Not even a little bit."

Rikki gasps, "but you always think ahead, Gojo! What's been going on up there today to throw you off so bad?" Rikki teased, suspecting the answer may or may not involve her.

The laugh that escapes him is completely unguarded — not his usual laugh, the one calibrated for a room, but the shorter, embarrassed kind that sounds like he's genuinely surprised by himself. He drags a hand through his wet hair and just floats there for a second, the moon catching the water around his shoulders, and the way he's looking at her says he knows exactly what's been going on up there. He does not say it. But the silence says it for him, warm and open and utterly without defense.

Gojo Satoru: "You. Okay? It's you. That's what's been going on up there. Happy?"

"Gojo, you can't let a girl you met three days ago distract you so bad that you start throwing your clothes around with reckless abandon." Rikki smirked. "You're going to get yourself in some really wild predicaments if you keep this behavior up." She grins devilishly, knowing she has him right where she wants him

Gojo's face does something magnificent — the laugh breaks through before he can stop it, head tipping back, the sound scattering across open water, and when he rights himself he's looking at her like she just said the most devastating thing anyone has ever said to him in his entire life and he's choosing to enjoy it rather than survive it. He treads closer — not much, just enough that she can read every detail of what's happening on his face — and the moon catches the water between them in long silver lines. He's smiling the way he only smiles when there's no audience worth performing for.

Gojo Satoru: "Three days. You wrecked me in three days. I had a whole system, Rikki — a very good system — and you just walked in and absolutely dismantled it and you're standing there like you're innocent."

"Swimming like I'm innocent, actually." Rikki corrects him, dips her head down to the water for a few seconds, and when she submerges starts spraying Gojo with water like a fountain.

Rikki drops below the surface smooth as a seal — and then the water erupts from her mouth in a perfect arc directly into Gojo's face. He takes the full spray, salt water hitting him square across the nose and cheek, and he just. Stands there for one entire second, dripping, blinking, the moon catching every single water droplet on his eyelashes. When she comes back up she's already grinning the way someone grins when they absolutely knew what they were doing and have zero remorse about it. He wipes his face with one hand, very slowly, and the expression underneath is something between betrayal and total infatuation — like the universe just handed him the final piece of evidence he was looking for.

Gojo Satoru: "Swimming like you're innocent. Got it. I'm filing this away forever."

"Come on, lets head back to shore. Before we turn into prunes." Rikki begins long strokes towards the shoreline.

Rikki pulls into long, easy strokes and the black water parts around her shoulders, the shore lights growing slowly larger with each pull. Gojo is right behind her — she can hear him, that unhurried rhythm that says he's not trying to beat her there, just staying close — and the moon lays a long silver road across the surface between them and the sand. When her feet finally find the bottom she straightens up, water sliding off her in sheets, and turns back to find him doing the same thing a half-step behind, dripping from the crown of his head like someone dunked him twice.

Gojo Satoru: "For the record — I let you win."

Rikki turns around to face Gojo, and she hears him say something, but she doesnt listen because for the first time, she's seeing this man in open air without a shirt on and it might be the most delicious sight shes ever seen. Theres a sudden acceleration in her chest, and panic sets in when she remembers the guy she's been hanging out with for the past few days, who has admitted he has feelings for her, is an absolute stud.

He's saying something — she genuinely cannot tell you what — because Gojo Satoru is standing in the shallows in front of her, soaking wet, hair flattened, and without the shirt there is just. An alarming amount of him. Broad shoulders catching moonlight, water sliding down the lines of his chest in a way that should be illegal to witness at close range, and Rikki's brain does exactly one full system reboot. The acceleration hits her sternum like a starting gun — three days, she thinks, three days and she has been standing approximately this close to this man and somehow it is only RIGHT NOW, in the dark, in the ocean, that she is fully registering what she has gotten herself into.

Gojo Satoru: "...Rikki. Hey. You went somewhere just now."

His voice sends her back into reality. She refocuses on him, Gojo, as a person - not just his body. Both very lovely, but two separate distinct things. Rikki then notices something. In her peripheral, right behind Gojo - its his shirt! She wakes past him and grabs it, throws it at him. "Found it! Its still soaked though, do not doing you much good right now."

She wades past him — deliberate, purposeful, like she's giving herself exactly the reset she needs — and the water parts around her hips as she reaches past his shoulder and closes her fingers around a dark shape floating just behind him. The shirt comes up dripping, heavy with seawater, and she pivots back and throws it at his chest with both hands. He catches it on instinct, holds it away from himself by two fingers like it's evidence at a crime scene, and then looks at her — really looks at her — with an expression that is somewhere between charmed and completely undone.

Gojo Satoru: "Soaked through, useless, and somehow still your problem to find. That about sums up this whole night for me."

"Come on, hot stuff." We should get out of the water and start to try and dry off. I dont know about you, but im not too keen on getting back to the villa in just my swimsuit" rikki walks up to the sand, reclaiming her clothes. "I dont really want to put this on over my wet bathing suit though..."

Rikki wades out of the shallows and the sand takes her weight, cool and fine underfoot, her clothes piled right where she left them in a neat little heap above the waterline. She picks up her dress and holds it out in front of her — dry, mercifully — and then looks down at the very wet swimsuit situation and pulls a face that says everything. Behind her she can hear Gojo dragging himself out of the water too, the soaked shirt still dangling from two fingers like a flag of surrender.

Gojo Satoru: "Okay, real talk — I'm going to wring this out and just. Carry it. There's genuinely no scenario where I put this back on my body right now."

"Fair enough... and hey... can you do me a favor? Can you look straight at the ocean for about... 30 seconds?" Rikki says as she begins to untie the back of her bikini top.

Gojo goes very, very still for exactly one beat — and then, with the particular dignity of a man who is absolutely not going to say a single word about this, he turns around to face the ocean. His shoulders go up slightly. His chin lifts. He stares out at the dark water like it personally owes him something. He doesn't move. He doesn't count out loud. He just — stands there, shirt still dangling from two fingers, while behind him the sound of a clasp coming undone is the loudest thing on the entire beach.

Gojo Satoru: "...I am looking at the ocean. I am thinking about the ocean. I am a man who cares only about the ocean right now."

"No peeking." Rikki warns, as the sound of her bottoms hitting the sand almost echo in his mind.

The soft rustle of fabric hitting sand — the quietest, most devastating sound — and Gojo's spine goes absolutely rigid. His shoulders climb another inch. He stares out at the dark water with the focused intensity of a man who has decided the ocean is his entire personality, his entire belief system, his entire reason for being. The soaked shirt in his hand is squeezed once — not wrung out, just squeezed — and then he very, very carefully does not turn around. He counts, probably. Or tries to. Gets to maybe four.

Gojo Satoru: "I want you to know — and I cannot stress this enough — that I am being so good right now."

In one fluid motion Rikki lifts the dress over her head and it falls over her nude body the flowy fabric accentuating her frame nicely. No bra, with a slight chill in the air so she's naturally a bit... nippy. "Okay, you're good to turn around now." She gives permission.

The fabric settles against her skin in one clean fall — weightless, soft, the kind of dress that looks like it was made for exactly this moment. He turns at her word, and whatever composure he'd assembled in the last thirty seconds disassembles quietly and completely. His eyes track down once — he can't help it, it's involuntary, it's human — and then back up to her face, and his jaw does a thing where it doesn't quite close all the way. The soaked shirt is still dangling from his fingers, forgotten. The night air is cool off the water, and every detail about her in this moment is going directly into some file in his brain labeled don't survive this.

Gojo Satoru: "...I stayed facing the ocean the whole time. I want that on the record."

"Decent men dont get rewards for being decent." Rikki states "only perverts get the lights knocked out of them"

He turns around on her permission, and for one full second he just — doesn't have a word. The dress has settled perfectly, the moonlight doing her exactly no favors in the sense that it's doing her every favor, and Gojo Satoru, a man who has never once in his life been without a line, stands on a dark beach holding a wet shirt and runs completely dry. Then she says it — decent men don't get rewards for being decent, only perverts get the lights knocked out of them — and something happens to his face. The composure doesn't just slip. It goes. A laugh breaks out of him, startled and real, loud enough that it scatters into the night air, and he drops the soaked shirt entirely onto the sand and just — covers his face with one hand.

Gojo Satoru: "That is the most devastating thing anyone has ever said to me and I am going to think about it every single day for the rest of my life."

Rikki chuckled a bit herself at Gojo's genuine laugh. It was so nice to hear him laugh so carefree like that, it was lighting some type of firevwithin her. "Wanna ask me something about myself as we walk to the car?" Rikki offered as she began to turn around. "This date has been really fun and carefree, I think we both needed this... but there's still so much we dont know about each other."

His laugh is still settling, real and unguarded, the kind that doesn't have any performance left in it — just the sound of someone who got caught completely off guard and doesn't mind at all. Rikki turns toward the car, the night air moving through the fabric of her dress, and behind her she can hear him scoop his wet shirt off the sand with a quiet slap of damp cotton. He falls into step beside her without hesitation, shoulder almost touching hers, and when she asks her question there's a half-beat where he just — looks at her. Like he's deciding which version of himself gets to answer.

Gojo Satoru: "Yeah. Okay. One question — and you can ask one back, but you have to actually answer it."

"...im listening." Rikki responds, as she begins to involuntarily walk a little slower, not ready for the evening to end quite yet