Work Text:
Spring
Gojo Satoru is a beautiful boy. Suguru understood this with the certainty with which he knows the Hyakunin Isshu he’d memorised in a mere two weeks in elementary school.
It is an easily absorbable fact of life, unlikely to change anything significant.
Still.
Gojo Satoru is a beautiful boy.
He has stark white eyelashes, like snow has melted into them and painted them with winter’s grace. His eyes are a bright, bright blue. Shining with an ethereal hue so beautiful it felt wrong to try and capture them in mere words.
Crowded around him are five, maybe six adults, rearranging his kimono so it sits just right. His face is expressionless. He lifts an arm to let a sleeve flutter gently with the breeze before it is wrestled back into place by a tutting adult.
He is staring straight at Suguru.
Creepy.
“Hey, is that guy a cursed normie? What’s he doing here?” the Gojo kid suddenly says, jerking a thumb in Suguru’s direction. The recently settled sleeve drifts with the wind again, earning Gojo a disapproving sigh that even Suguru could hear from this distance.
“He has the traces of dozens, no,” Gojo squints a little, looking Suguru up and down like he’s a novelty at the zoo. “He has hundreds of curses clinging to him.”
Suguru decides right there and then that he absolutely despises this rich looking brat, beautiful eyes or not. If there is a God in this world, they’d surely give Suguru the opportunity to knock Gojo flat on his pretty face.
Please let there be a hand-to-hand combat curriculum at this school.
“Hey!” Gojo calls out to Suguru. Toying with the idea of completely ignoring him, Suguru decides to be the better person.
“Yeah?”
“What’s your name? Do you know you’re gonna die soon?”
Maybe despising the guy was too kind. Suguru is going to hate his fricking guts.
He slides on a pleasant enough smile before turning to answer. “Getou Suguru. And sure. I’ll make sure to haunt you when I cark it too.”
He feels, rather than sees, the way the adults around Gojo shift subtly. Moving their bodies to become a shield, a wall between Suguru and Gojo. He takes that as the dismissal it is.
Whatever. It’s not like he wanted to be friends with the guy anyway.
Something makes him hesitate as he walks away. Maybe it was the earnestness in Gojo’s voice. Maybe it is the loneliness gnawing at Suguru’s soul ever since he first saw a curse at 5 years old and cried so loudly his parents immediately took him to hospital, only for the doctors to pronounce him normal. (He had always been a quiet child, he’d learned pretty quickly to stop crying at the monsters he saw clinging to people, only to offer his internal condolences).
He turns back. Gojo is jostling past the adults, movements careful and considered. He was trying to not mess up his kimono, Suguru realises, and it feels like a forbidden piece of knowledge. Like his eyes were not meant to notice the quiet, respectful grace with which Gojo moves through the world.
He turns away, hot with a discomfort that he cannot describe. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see an adult carefully ushering Gojo back into the safe fortress of human shields. Gojo moves willingly, with a polite tilt of his head and a smile to the adults but-
his hand is reaching out to Suguru, and it hits him almost physically. The way Gojo is bumping careless fingers against his very soul, the way it twisted his chest with a tight, airless emotion that goes as quickly as it came.
He learns later that Gojo Satoru was the first in hundreds of years to be born with both the Gojo family’s limitless technique and the six eyes. His birth was a historic event, his existence a revelation.
He learns later, that Gojo Satoru is slightly worse at hand-to-hand combat than Suguru, and that he has a little frown furrowed between his brows with each time Suguru lands a hit. The little frown has grown by the sixth time Gojo has had to tap out of Suguru’s hold.
They both settle into alert stances, and Gojo’s expression again shifts into something artificially friendly. Not a trace of his previous irritation can be found on his face, yet Suguru can still feel the pure resentment being sent his way in waves. The spoiled brat was probably unused to being bested. Either cozied by adults who went easy on him, or simply having never met his match, Suguru didn’t care. He drops into a sweeping kick that catches Gojo by surprise, sending him flat onto his back. Gojo rocks into the fall, using it to tumble back upright.
“Again.”
Satoru is a beautiful boy. He makes an even better best friend.
Satoru is a nightmare. He absolutely freaking sucks.
“Get off my bed.” Suguru snaps, towelling his hair dry. God. It had been the worst kind of mistake to keep his door unlocked for his brief foray to the showers.
“You’re in my room, this is my bed.” Satoru replies from where he’s hanging upside down over the edge of what was clearly Suguru’s bed in what was clearly Suguru’s room. The complete lack of clothing strewn on the ground laid testament to that.
“Ha! I can tell from the look on your face that I got you for a secon- Owwww. No throwing books at me!” Satoru sulks, even though he managed to catch the tome flung his way.
“What? Scared you’ll learn something for once via osmosis?”
“What’s osmosis?”
“You’re incorrigible. What do you want?”
“Sounds like porridge, you just think I’m delicious,” Satoru laughs, arranging himself to lie on the bed, patting the space he’d just vacated for Suguru to sit down.
An invitation. To sit. On his own bed.
If he weren’t so tired he would’ve bodily thrown Satoru out of his room. He sits instead. On his own bed.
His body immediately aches with the siren song of sleep, desiring no more than to sink under the covers and close his eyes to the world. He throws Satoru a dirty glare.
“My family called.” Satoru starts, staring at a point on the ceiling, voice suddenly low and cold. The mood in the room shifts, each molecule of air jostled by Satoru’s words seem to move hesitantly in their motions. Suguru tilts his head to try to meet Satoru’s gaze. Blue eyes flicker away from his own.
“What did they want to talk about?” Suguru responds. Satoru will come around in his own time, he always did.
“It’s my 16th birthday soon. They want me to become the head of the household.”
Suguru pauses, taking his time to contemplate his reply. There’s a gravity to this that he doesn’t yet understand, something fragile hanging over them.
“That’s a lot of responsibility isn’t it, for 16. Isn’t it usually at- was it 18 you said?”
“Yeah, that.” Satoru sighs. The sound drifts heavy in the air. “And it means grandpa will die.”
“Oh. I’m sorry for your loss.” Suguru replies.
“No, Suguru,” He replies, finally twisting on the bed so their eyes met. “I have to kill my grandpa.”
“What the actual fuck.”
Satoru had once explained some of the basics of the three great sorcerer families and the rigid traditions that held up the Gojo clan, but he’d clearly neglected to mention this.
Satoru snorts, flopping on his back, arms outstretched. “Don’t swear, you tell me off for it constantly…It’s a family thing. Earning the power and all that.”
“What do you have to do?” Suguru asks, morbid curiosity ironic given the topic at hand, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted to know what Satoru would have to go through, to learn if he could somehow-
Somehow what? Protect him?
Yeah.
“It’s mostly ceremonial, there’s a fun little historical dagger that you know, I plunge into his heart while declaring melodramatically my authority over the clan and my plans for world domination.”
His voice is light and cheerful, but his eyes are still fixed everywhere but on Suguru’s face. He knows that if he plays along now, teases about the plans for world domination, that Satoru will let it drop too.
He doesn’t know the right thing to say, so he does nothing. Always waiting for Satoru to move at his own pace, with Suguru following with considered footsteps.
Satoru slinks to curl around Suguru’s sitting form, curling into foetal position as well as he could manage with Suguru leaning into his chest. Tentatively, he lays his head in Suguru’s lap.
Suguru accidentally grimaces at the sudden weight of Satoru’s head on his thighs, feeling a wave of guilt wash through him as Satoru smiles tensely at him and moves his head to rest on the bed instead.
It wasn’t that they weren’t accustomed to sharing the odd physical touches. After a year of friendship with the clingiest person on earth, Suguru had gotten accustomed to sharing his time and space. He’d even adjusted to the specific, soul draining emotion of being around Satoru on a sugar high.
No. It wasn’t the physical closeness that had Suguru unsettled. Just that...This Satoru felt wrong.
This Satoru reminds him of the friendly faced, vacant eyed Gojo he’d met under last spring’s cherry blossoms. A hollow boy. An empty vessel to be filled with the expectations, desires and hopes of others. He never once flowed over, always growing to meet the demands put on him.
Suguru wonders how he doesn’t go insane. He maybe understands the answer, in the way Satoru’s eyes have him pinned down, offering something unspeakably soft and delicate to him.
Trust.
It’s a little uncomfortable, just how much Satoru trusts him.
Suguru had once held a butterfly, one of its wings torn by the thorny brambles of their rose bushes. The futile beating of its wings in his hands had felt a little like a heartbeat. A faint flutter that ebbed out.
Satoru’s trust is as fragile as butterfly wings, and Suguru is determined to not be a rosebush. Something like that.
He fumbles suddenly clumsy fingers to stroke Satoru’s hair, patting at his lap with his other hands. Thankfully, Satoru understands the implied permission there, before Suguru even musters the beet red courage to say it.
He lays his head on Suguru’s legs again, looking up into his eyes.
“Did you just find out?” Suguru asks, tentatively, trying to steer them back into the conversation. “That becoming the head means you’d have to. You know.”
“No, I’ve known since I was young. Maybe a year? Maybe two? After my technique popped up.” He replies.
“You could’ve told me, if you wanted to. We can find another way.”
“I didn’t want to.”
“Oh,” Suguru say, feeling unreasonably hurt. He struggles to keep it from showing on his face, from it becoming another burden tossed into Satoru’s ravenous hollowness. “Is it one of those ‘gotta do it myself’ kind of things then?”
“No,” Satoru replies, “Well yeah. It is something I have to do myself. But that’s not why. I didn’t tell you because- I didn’t want you to think of me differently.” His sentences are clipped, emotionless. An unsettling behaviour from someone who was normally so determined to fill up empty and full spaces alike with his words.
“Differently like what?” Suguru chimes, carding fingers through Satoru’s hair again gently. “I already know you come from a prestigious clan or whatever the shit.”
“I don’t want you to think of me as a killer Suguru.” Satoru snaps, jerking his hair out of Suguru’s grasp. “There. I said it plainly alright?”
And how very Satoru that was, for his patience to simmer and splinter until he snapped. No, he never overflowed, but he would crack, leaking frustrations. Determined to rebel against duty, if only for a second.
It was uncomfortable sometimes, how Satoru trusted Suguru with the ugliest parts of himself. Suguru was holding something far bigger in his hands that he couldn’t fathom, and if he pulled the wrong thread, it would all unravel. It was uncomfortable. It was terrifying. It was for Satoru, so he’d accept all that it was.
“I’ll never think of you as anything other than Satoru.” Suguru says. It is simple. It is true. Satoru will always be Satoru and Suguru will always be Suguru and to each other they will always just be.
Somehow, Satoru understands.
“I wish it was enough to just be Satoru all the time.” He replies, eyes tired. He wriggles to make space on the bed (and a brief flash of annoyance comes over Suguru again. It was. His. Bed.) that Suguru lies down on.
Suguru flings a slipper at the light switch. Miraculously, it hits, snuffing the lights with a satisfying click.
“If you were around me all the time then I could be just Satoru all the time.” He continues. In the dark, Suguru cannot parse out his expression. “At least to someone. At least to you.”
He doesn’t know how to answer that, doesn’t know what to do with the painful, gnawing emotion in his heart that wants something with an ache. He just runs his fingers through Satoru’s hair instead, listening as his breathes mellow out with the sound of sleep.
He dreams of white butterflies, beating their wings.
Summer
They were in detention again. Like 85% of the time, it was 100% Satoru’s fault (the remaining 15% of the time, Suguru was willing to accept a 50% share in responsibility. Satoru tried to argue that it couldn’t work like that. Suguru definitely did not know or care for the mathematics well enough to retaliate).
Shoko pulls a face at them as she skips out of the room alone, probably to do some weird things with bones again.
“It’s not WEIRD Suguru, I’m investigating how reverse cursed techniques interact with natural regenerative cell growth in bone marrow.” Shoko had tried to explain once, in one of her more accommodating moods. She kept the insults to a minimum, at least for Suguru, who was listening politely. On the other hand…
“Satoru…If you don’t stop making lewd gestures with my tools I swear I will not be merciful when your dead body finds it’s way on my table one day.” Shoko snaps, lunging to snatch her tools out of Satoru’s hands. Satoru, side steps her easily, only to catch an elbow to his ribcage that he doesn’t quite parry in time. Suguru tries to school his expression into a stern one, but he can’t help how the corners of his mouth are quirking up in amusement.
“I’m terrified.” Satoru deadpans, while still making an obscene gesture with his two fingers and a round, possibly surgical, possibly cursed tool. He then dangles the tool above Shoko’s head, taking full advantage of the growth spurt he’d had last year which sent him shooting to 180cm, far above Shoko’s own short stature.
Satoru was really dumb, Suguru thinks, slapping a hand over his mouth so he can hide his mirth at the scene in front of him. Either that, or he had a death wish. Nobody poked fun at Shoko’s height and left unscathed.
As expected, Shoko lets out a warlike scream, leaping to tackle Satoru. Using her legs to keep herself firmly attached like some possessed backpack, she starts smacking him over the head. Suguru can’t help it now, feeling himself double over in laughter as he hears Satoru honest to god shriek, trying to throw Shoko off.
They knock over at least three of Shoko’s specimen jars before Suguru sees fit to get involved himself to stop any more damage. Unfortunately, Shoko chooses the exact moment Suguru is trying to pry her off Satoru’s back to send them all toppling down hard onto the morgue floor. Though admitting it out loud would get his dead body dissected and flung to the far corners of the universe, Suguru quickly discerns that of the three of them, Shoko would be the worst one for him to land with his full body’s weight onto. Satoru seems to have the same realisation, twisting their bodies so-
Oh.
Suguru wonders…does Satoru’s technique slow time too? What other explanation could there be for the way he sees Satoru’s eyes widen in unfiltered surprise, the subtle narrowing of his shoulders so he can fit comfortably between Suguru’s open arms.
Suguru wonders, if he can keep lying to himself, and ignore the way he instinctively spread his arms wider to catch Satoru, even when he knew he should be using them to brace his fall.
He’s vaguely aware of Shoko squirming off Satoru’s back, much more agile than either of them gave her credit for.
Yet, his world narrows to the slow shock creeping across Satoru’s face, then the happy unguarded emotion that blooms once he settles into Suguru’s arms.
They land with an ooft, blow cushioned by Satoru’s (“Genius! It’s genius how it’s become a reflex!”) decision to precisely activate infinity so it protected both himself and Suguru.
Satoru is very warm against Suguru’s own chest. His hair smells like something sugary sweet, and Suguru just immediately knows the idiot has probably tried to taste his own shampoo at some point in his life.
He doesn’t want this moment to end.
The moment ends. Principal Yaga storms into the morgue, assessing the scene with a brisk eye and coming to the entirely wrong conclusion.
Suguru was going to KILL Shoko, and her entirely too innocent demeanour.
It was absolutely a farce that he got detention for the damage done to the morgue and Shoko hadn’t. She’d caused it after all.
And she definitely knew it, from the mocking expressions she’s making at Satoru and him from outside the classroom where they were trapped and she was not.
Yaga-sensei marches them back to the morgue like criminals. His creepy little cursed corpses dump a veritable mountain of cleaning supplies on one of the tables.
They have an hour to clean up the mess. Suguru was not allowed to use his curses to help them.
This is bullshit. He picks up a cloth anyway.
Satoru shudders, kneeling to wipe up some substance they were probably better off not knowing the name or origins of. It immediately eats away at the cloth he was using, eliciting a cute yelp of surprise from him. Suguru smiles and flicks him a replacement. At least he wasn’t stuck in purgatory alone.
“Remind me to never end up here.” Satoru bemoans. He’s already decided to slack off, the long lines of his legs sprawled over the cold tile.
“Well, that’s the plan. Try not to die. The stuff is eating away at your pants by the way.”
Satoru shrieks dramatically, and runs to rinse it off. Suguru is laughing as Satoru curses colourfully. It served him right for being a slacker, and only 3 minutes in at that. Probably a new record for him.
“I’m serious Suguru,” he says, with uncharacteristic sombreness. His voice is barely audible over the loud splashing of the faucet. “I know Shoko is probably dying to have a closer look at the anatomy of the six eyes but…I think I’d just like to rest in peace. Promise me won’t you? That you’ll be the one to bury my body.”
Sorrow floods his lungs, heavy and suffocating. Suguru’s breath feels caught in his throat.
How could Satoru speak so casually of his own death like that?
“I dunno, if I have to fight Shoko for it…might be a no from me. How about you don’t die on me instead?” Suguru replies, aiming for levity.
Satoru laughs, shocked and genuine. Suguru breathes again, the sorrow flowing out of his lungs and dissipating in the air between them
“Ha ha! Fine, though I’ll make sure to not let Shoko get her grubby paws on your dead body either. She’s been way too interested in your curse absorption for years.”
“Yeah, she once asked me to season one of the curses with some chili and test if I could taste anything.”
“Really?”
“No, get back to cleaning that up.”
“You literally suck so much.”
“Okay shoujo beat.”
“Shut up curse breath. You know I’m sensitive about how flashy my eyes look.”
“I’ve changed my mind. I’ll kill you and deliver your body to Shoko myself.”
Autumn
Things happen.
People die.
Some by Suguru’s own hand. Most by Satoru’s.
They bury Amanai next to Kuroi, the only family they'd both had. Their graves are unmarked but the path towards them is etched behind Suguru’s eyelids every time he closes his eyes at night.
14,444 steps east of Jujutsu Tech. 260 steps south.
More people die.
Satoru gets stronger. Suguru feels weaker than ever. His eyebags have become near permanent, to the point where even Shoko doesn’t make snide comments about them anymore.
Satoru never looked tired anymore. It used to be obvious when he had stayed up far too long for a mission, or to read those dumb manga of his that Suguru secretly borrowed. The dark circles would stand in stark contrast with Satoru's bright eyes, a flaw on his otherwise perfect face.
Suguru always looked tired nowadays. Worn at the edges. He can tell it from the concerned looks Shoko always gave him, and her multiple offers to use her reversed cursed technique on him. He'd always smile and rebuff the offers, saying that he was just tired.
He was.
He was so tired. An endless cycle of exorcism and consumption with no end in sight. No light at the end of the tunnel.
What made it worth it? What was the point of fighting for a greater cause if the cause itself was rotten? Like the bile slick taste of a curse washing down his throat with acrid regret.
A hand clamps down on his shoulder, shocking Suguru out of his thoughts. He instinctively shifts his weight into a fighting stance, tumbling his attacker over his back.
Satoru rolls with the tumble elegantly to land on his feet. He fixes Suguru with a hurt expression.
"Ouchhhhh. I think you made me sprain a toe."
Suguru snorts, relaxing. "What happened to running infinity 24/7?"
"I limited it to touch you on the shoulder.” Satoru replies, like Suguru is somehow the stupid one for not knowing the intricacies of how the Gojo techniques worked. “Are you not gonna apologise for my poor toe?"
Satoru pouts. He'd seemed more...unstable recently. More prone to theatrics. He’d return from missions with the rusted tinge of dried blood stark against his white hair.
Curses don’t bleed red.
They’d talked about it. Before. Thumbing at a sluggishly healing wound on Satoru’s temple.
“Why aren’t you more careful?” He asked, dabbing gently at the wound. “Why don’t you get Shoko to fix you up?”
He tries not to think about the way Satoru sighs into his touch, nor about the way it fills Suguru’s own heart with a boyish longing. A pure emotion, untouched by the toils of the life they lead.
“It’s not worth bothering her for. She’ll just make fun of me for it and you know it.” Satoru replies, his head now resting against Suguru’s hand. He’s warm.
Satoru yawns.
“I’m gonna take a nap, hold still Suguru.”
“You bastard, the dorms are 2 minutes away.” Suguru snaps, but still rearranges himself so Satoru can rest his head in the crook of Suguru’s elbow. His arm starts humming with a dull, sour ache, yet Suguru still doesn’t dare move.
Satoru falls asleep on him, 12 minutes in. (He must be exhausted).
Suguru carries him to his room 39 minutes in. He doesn’t even stir as Suguru lays him under the covers.
There are fingers twisted into the dark navy of his uniform, caught as they are, hooked under a button. With gentleness he didn’t know his hands were capable of, Suguru lifts each finger.
One. The staccato beat of his heart.
Two. He feels like his breath is caught in his throat.
Three. The soft pulse he can feel in Satoru’s fingers.
Four. The way he unconsciously twines his own fingers with Satoru’s.
Five. Satoru’s hands are larger than his, heavy with the weight of sleep. He doesn’t want to let go.
There is a feeling blooming in his heart, threatening to kick its way up his throat. It feels nothing like the constricting tightness of his chest as he swallows a curse down, but somehow it hurts just as much.
He’d stayed to wash the blood out of Satoru’s hair, he told himself. He would be so grumpy to find his pristine white hair matted with blood when he woke up. It would be a funny sight, if not for Suguru having to deal with a mopey best friend for a day.
Summoning a water bearing curse, he whispers instructions to it. He’s almost certain he feels the curse roll its eyes. Either that or he’s going crazy. Yeah. That would describe the odd motions of his heart when he sees the sickeningly red colour staining Satoru’s hair, or the flushes of red-hot emotion as he remembers how paradoxically fragile someone as strong as Satoru could feel in his arms, that day on the morgue floor.
The curse bears forth a soft spray of water. Suguru summons another, more intelligent one, to fetch a towel to mop away the dirty water.
He does not let go of Satoru’s hand.
Satoru’s hair was red again today. His smiles were wider, showing more teeth. A shadow of barely-there hysteria always present in his eyes. It was hard to find any of the boy in him now. He’d become a one-man army.
No.
A weapon.
Satoru does not think of 14,444 steps east 260 steps south but of the molecular compositions and velocities of threats approaching his infinity. Nothing touches him nowadays, not even Suguru.
Time passes in completed missions and not days. Time passes in cycles of lying awake in bed and his sluggish reflexes reacting just a little too slowly sometimes. Shoko patches him up solemnly and tells him to talk to Satoru. He’s not sure what she thinks will come of it.
It’s harder to hold a conversation with Satoru now. He’s too tired to feel guilty about it.
"You look bad." Satoru says, blunt as ever, picking at the blood in his own hair. Ah, so he had noticed. Not carelessness then. Deliberate.
Suguru's mouth twitches into an involuntary smile as he prepares his excuses.
"Just had a lot of work recently."
"No you haven't. None of those curses would've been a particular bother for you." Suguru again wonders if the six eyes allowed Satoru to see lies, or if he just knew Suguru's soul so well that there was no hiding from him.
"I've...had a lot on my mind."
Satoru tilts his head in response, sticking his hand into his pockets. He looks deep in thought, but knowing him, he could very well just be thinking about the daifuku he’d left in his room.
"Do you want to talk about it? I'll listen."
Suguru considers it. How do you tell your best friend that you're losing all hope without worrying him?
You can't.
"Don't worry about it. The feeling will pass. I promise to talk to you if it gets worse."
Satoru removes his sunglasses, gaze boring into Suguru's. A dirty trick he uses to con Suguru into telling the truth (or forgiving him when half of Suguru’s dessert went mysteriously missing.)
There really were no dark circles under his eyes anymore.
"Okay, I trust you."
"I know."
Suguru leaves. Satoru yelps in surprise and gives chase.
(“You suck, I come back from a weeklong mission with no contact and you don’t even ask me if I’m okay!? You’re cold Suguru.”
“I knew you were okay, I have faith in you.”)
“Hey Suguru…” Satoru starts, dithering at Suguru’s doorway.
“Yeah?” Suguru responds, rubbing the sleepiness out of his eyes. What time was it?
“Can I stay here tonight?”
“No, go away.”
“I’m serious! I can’t sleep.”
“I thought you didn’t really need to sleep anymore.”
“Yeah. But I miss it.”
“Sorry Satoru. Another night maybe.”
Getou Suguru meets Yuki Tsukumo. He breaks his promise to Satoru.
There are two little girls in a cage. Cowering. He feels something inside him fall into place. Or out of place. It doesn’t matter, it is quickly pushed out by the beat of red hot anger.
There is blood on his face. He doesn’t care if it’s his.
He feels nothing.
“Hello. I’m Getou Suguru. Let’s make a home together, okay?”
Young eyes peer up at him, with a frighteningly familiar expression.
Trust.
Trust still feels like the paper-thin wings of a butterfly, beating weakly as he scoops the girls into his arms. He puts on a smile that must look more genuine than it feels.
They track bloodied footprints, away from the cage, away from the village.
He feels nothing.
Satoru confronts him, after.
His anger is familiar, more familiar than he’s been to Suguru in months.
He feels nothing he feels nothing.
Suguru leaves. Satoru lets him.
He feels. Nothing.
Later, lying alone weighed down by regrets heavier than the burden of curses, Suguru realises Satoru hadn’t looked tired.
He’d been about to cry.
He. Feels. Nothing.
Winter
Dying, is oddly more peaceful than he’d expected. Probably more peaceful than he deserves.
There are footsteps, and then a tall shadow eclipsing the sun. He doesn’t need to look up. Some things, some people, are too familiar to forget.
“Took you long enough. Satoru.”
He slumps a little more, from pain and relief. He could’ve won. He knows this. Defeated, and possessed Rika had he not divided his resources up, but that would’ve meant killing that young sorcerer too, and risking his family’s safety.
Satoru tells him he trusted him. Suguru knows it is a faltering trust. A trust battered, limping. Unable to fly yet not ready to die yet. The gentle last beats of butterfly wings cupped in his hands.
Satoru asks for last words. Suguru makes a last request instead.
Satoru is warm when he leans in, the heat from him compensating for how he casts Suguru into the shadow. Suguru’s own lips part to meet him and it is so brutal and painful how right this feels. Satoru’s cursed energy snakes into his chest, dancing around his heart. Butterfly wings beat in time with his own pulse.
He murmurs into Satoru’s mouth, “Wow, what a way to go. At least buy a guy dinner before being inside him.”
Suguru’s cheeks are damp. His eyes are dry. Tears not springing from his own eyes fall onto his face.
Satoru laughs wetly, “Way to make this weird.”
For a moment, they are just two lovers in an alleyway rendezvous. The soft drip of blood from Suguru’s shoulder is easy enough to ignore. Satoru’s hand must painted sticky red now, from where it rests against Suguru’s chest.
“I loved you. I love you.” Satoru chants like a penance, cracking, overflowing. “I’m sorry. I forgot how to love you for a while. I forgot how to love anything. But as long as I’ve known love I’ve loved you.”
“I know, I know.” Suguru replies, kind and honest. To say anything more would be a cruelty, even as his heart aches to say what it has felt for many long years. “At least curse at me a little, at the very end.” He laughs into Satoru’s mouth, honest for the first time in a long time.
Satoru does not stop kissing Suguru like if his touch left him, he would disappear. Suguru can feel Satoru’s cursed energy hum in his heart, slowing each heartbeat. The world gets woozy, blurring a little at the edges. His vision starts narrowing.
His last sight is of snow-white eyelashes and blue eyes too beautiful for words, glassy with tears.
And then.
And then.
He is trapped in his own body.
It is an odd, floating sensation to see the world second hand. Second eyed? It barely matters. The world passes in a haze of real and not-real and not-quite-real and Suguru lets it.
And then, the curse in his head uses his own hands to strike Satoru. Something within him, an emotion that he thought had died far before he took his last breath, jumps to life.
Suguru had not cared for protecting the weak for a decade. He never thought, that he would have to consider Gojo Satoru of all people weak.
And yet… Watching the blood bloom under the pale skin of Satoru’s face. Seeing Satoru’s eyes widen in shock, in fear before his expression is rearranged into one of fury. The way Satoru’s head had whipped with the blow, the way his body had wanted to naturally jolt with the violence of the motion only to be stopped by the prison realm holding him grounded.
Suguru had long stopped caring for the weak. Or perhaps. He had never had to think of anyone he cared for, as weak.
But right now, with his own body’s thumb wiping away the blood dripping lazily from Satoru’s lips, his own voice barking a laugh at Satoru’s expense, he realises-
Weakness is not an innate state. The weak can become strong just as the strong can become weak.
How stupid, he was, to die for an ideal he can no longer whole-heartedly believe in.
Satoru calls out to him, and foolishly, selfishly, instinctively he responds. yesI’mhereSatoruSatoruSatoruseemefindmeSatoru.
The intruder in his body beats him down. He falls willingly, he’d been conscious for a fleeting second, but it was enough to gather glimpses of the intruder's plans, to form his own.
He must wait until Kenjaku fulfils his plan to possess Mahito. Then for his concentration to be frayed by Itadori Yuji. Then…
Wrestling another brain for control of his own body is a solidly awful experience. Moreso when he’s trying to dodge a flurry of attacks. Itadori-kun could really move. He feels a faint pang of sympathy of how he’d injured the boy.
He uses Mahito. He gets his own brain back.
The intruder’s brain is pulsating on the floor, brain fluid a slick slime. He gives it a kick for good measure, before Itadori-kun pummels it to a-
Oh. Now that’s just disgusting.
It takes a lot of convincing and a solid knock to the head, rendering Itadori-kun unconscious for Suguru to slip away to retrieve the prison realm. What a stubborn kid. Suguru liked him already, having a few curses to stand guard and make sure no harm befell him before he either regained consciousness or someone found him.
The small, innocuous eldritch horror of a box was still where the intruder had left it (had been forced to leave it. Satoru was a nuisance even now.)
“Gate. Open.”
The prison realm opens with an almost human groan. Its sickening. It’s tortuously slow, or maybe Suguru has just been driven stupid with impatience.
The prison realm suddenly shudders. Then disappears.
Gojo Satoru springs to his feet, moving faster than most eyes can comprehend.
He flings a burst of cursed energy at Suguru’s feet. He can dodge it, but it doesn’t feel right to. The ground beneath his feet craters, tripping Suguru into a free fall.
Satoru’s hand immediately at his throat, the other coming to summon something. Be it red, blue, purple, whatever fate Satoru has decided for him, he’ll accept. Suguru raises his hands in surrender, tilts his neck to welcome Satoru’s touch.
“Who…Are you,” Satoru grits out. His eyes are wild and angry and beautiful. How spoilt Suguru was, for this to be his last sight, twice.
“You know,” Suguru replies, voice barely above a whisper. He holds this moment like it will shatter. “You know me.”
“Suguru.” Satoru breathes, voice flooded with relief. “If I knew all it took to get you back was getting bitch slapped then I would’ve spited you years ago.”
He rises, offering a hand to pull Suguru to his feet. His eyes are still wary. He’s tugged the sleeves of his jacket to cover his hands, a habit he had grown out of by the end of first year. It conceals the hand signs he’d use for a split second’s advantage, important against an opponent like Suguru, who knew his technique almost as well as Satoru did.
It’s unbearably cute, even all these years later, but it still stings, to see how Suguru had ripped parts of Satoru’s fragile beating trust in him and cast them aside.
“No way, I’m too mature and cool to rise to your petty taunts.” Suguru replies, falling into the familiar rhythm of lightening Satoru’s moods. His fingers twitch. It is odd to be alive again. It is odd to think that it is odd to be alive again. Everything is odd. Almost everything.
Satoru, is smiling and bright and so familiar it hurts.
“Okay curse breath.” Satoru banters back. It’s not entirely genuine yet, but it’s enough.
“I take that back. You have 6 seconds to run.”
And Satoru runs, his laughter echoing through the despondent corridors of Shibuya stained red with blood he’d spilled.
And Suguru chases him, foolhardy with love.