Work Text:
Human, he calls you. Like he’s not, like the word is something funny to him. You’re so very human.
What's that supposed to mean, you return.
Nothing, in particular. Only that he can’t believe it. Only that this would be easier if you weren’t.
...
He sits across from you in a rarely used office space, your file laid out on the table.
You have a decent enough work record. Nothing that stands out. Menial labor and office jobs. No exorcism at all.
You’re being brought in as a liaison between the education board and Jujutsu Tech. They need someone less eccentric to talk to outsiders, and you fit the bill. Normal. Capable of relating to non-sorcerers.
The questions Gojo asks are all strange and invasive. Which side of the bed do you sleep on, how often do you shower, what’s your comfort food. It’s a given that you’ll get the job. You’re the only person in the resume stack who can see curses, although the ability is unsubstantial. Your awareness of the mystic world varies from day to day—sometimes you can’t see them at all.
That would make for a shit sorcerer. But as a go-between you’ll do just fine.
His initial analysis of you is simple: Non-threat.
You’ve never killed anything. You’ve never wanted to.
You have the demeanor of someone who isn’t constantly vigilant, a simple presence of self unavailable to men like him. You’re not even armed.
“How do you like your coffee?” he asks, just to waste time.
You bear the interrogation as well as anyone could. Complacent, surprisingly unbothered by it. You don’t have an agenda, which is strange and new around these parts. You don’t want to change the world. You just want to get paid.
He likes that. He likes you.
...
You live in one of the dorm buildings, alone. It’s weird, but it beats commuting.
The building is similar to the student residencies, individual bedrooms and communal living spaces all pieced together. Your stuff makes its way into every nook and cranny. Pictures tacked to the walls, throw blankets on the couch, books left everywhere. It’s your space, now. Feels more like home.
You’re very isolated from the others living on campus. Most of them are polite, but distant. Some of them flat out ignore you, disgusted by your lack of power, your presence here an insult.
That’s fine. You know a negligible amount about this world—most of it from eavesdropping—and none of it is very pleasant. You’re okay with being excluded.
Gojo didn’t quite get that memo.
He shows up at random, something sickeningly sweet at hand. He makes you eat with him, the both of you cross legged on the floor, chattering about absolutely nothing at all. It’s stupid, but it makes you laugh. He’s fun, despite the blatant disregard for your personal space.
Always touching, a hand on your waist to guide you where he wants you, a nudge to get your attention, poking at any scar he notices. Did it hurt?
Probably. Most of them are so old you have trouble remembering how you got them. Still, they fascinate him, fingers tracing over and over the raised skin, almost like he’s petting you.
“Isn’t it miraculous that you don’t remember these things that changed you?” he asks. “Kind of profound.”
You point out one of your most recent wounds, received after a night of bar crawling and an unfortunate run-in with a can opener. “How’s that for profound?” you say, and he grins.
You have trouble reconciling him with the idea everyone’s put in your head. A genius with the powers of a god. Nearly omnipotent.
You know, logically, that he’s leagues above you. The other sorcerers love or hate him—but either way they worship him. Everyone who understands holds a reverence for his abilities.
Except you, smiling as he demonstrates his infinity like a party trick.
Hand to hand, the vibrations of never touching sending a shiver up your arm.
He has big hands. Gojo is big in general, but it’s only moments like these, when you’re so close together, that you really remember. He never makes you feel small. Not in a bad way, at least.
“Does anything ever really touch you?” you ask.
He says, “If I want it to.”
The infinity dwindles to nothing, until your palm reaches his. He slips his fingers between yours, squeezing gently.
This is the power that's made him the strongest sorcerer. A part of you recognizes that you should be awed.
But when he insists you eat daifuku right out of his hand five minutes later, all you can see is a man, making a fool out of himself just to get you to laugh.
...
He’s kind of obsessed with you.
He doesn’t think too hard about it.
He likes the way you say his name and your taste in movies. He likes that you have no secrets, answer any of his questions without pause, without withholding. He likes that you don’t talk to the other sorcerers too much.
It’s pushing one in the morning, but he knows you’re awake. He’s spent the day exorcising curses, and for some reason the tedium bled into a desire to see your face.
You’re reading, when he finds you in the common room. You look up, startled, when he takes a seat beside you with an exaggerated sigh. His knee brushes yours. You don’t ask him to move.
You tell him about the book, upon request. He hardly absorbs any of the words, focused instead on the soft lilt of your voice, the rhythm, the pattern of your breathing.
He doesn’t tell you about the fighting that took up his whole day, the running around, the urgency of it all. He tells you about a new gelateria he wants to try, something silly Nanami said this morning, how he’s going to take you to Nara Park to see the deer some day.
You nod along, starting to doze as he talks. He wraps an arm around your shoulder, pulls you in until you’re leaning on him, until he can nuzzle into your hairline.
Your ability to see curses has waned today—you don’t even see the blood lingering on him.
He thinks that’s what he likes best about you.
...
The first time he kisses you is unextraordinary in a special kind of way. You’re eating wagashi and you’re pressed up against each other, hips and shoulders aligned.
He reaches for the plate, grabbing another little flower shaped confection to drop in your hands, placing the slightest peck on your lips as leans in. If you weren’t paying attention, you might have missed it. But the sensation lingers, seeming to infuse your whole body with that slight pressure. You can feel it in your fingertips as they close around the wagashi, in the space between you when he pulls back.
Then you both continue eating.
...
He’s taken to sleeping in your dorm. There’s something gratifying about you being the first person he sees in the morning. You never questioned him about it—no point in letting such a big building sit empty. You like the company, anyway.
Usually he makes you coffee, eats breakfast while he waits for you to wake up. He likes to ask about your day, where you’ll be, what you’ll be up to. It’s satisfying in a proprietary way, knowing your schedule. When anyone needs you, they ask Gojo. Like you’re his.
You’re gone this morning, though. They’re short on staff, and you got roped into driving some students to an exorcism site. An adult is an adult, they said, and a license is a license.
It’s a simple enough assignment; there shouldn’t be any problem. The space is large, an abandoned lumber yard, and the curse is low level. You’ve been instructed to stay well clear of it all. Gojo is still not happy about it. He keeps tabs on you the entire time you're gone, watching from back on campus, fingers tapping against his thigh as higher ups talk at him.
He sees it the moment things go awry, and you get swept up in the mess. One step away from death.
The curse locks eyes with you. It’s hulking body lunges, shaking the ground with every step. You’re out in the open, a massive concrete lot. There’s nowhere to hide.
He shocks even himself, with how quickly he ends things. Less than a second, necessity burning through him like nothing he’s ever felt before. The curse explodes on impact, no trace left behind. Like it never even existed. Like none of this happened.
Then he’s dusting off his hands, sauntering up to you with a lopsided grin he can hardly maintain.
He ignores the gapes of the students, still trying to decipher what just happened. He throws an arm around your shoulder.
“C’mon,” he says. “Let’s go home.”
...
He holds your hand, when you get back to the dorm. Trailing after you like it’s a leash, not even letting go when you start preparing dinner.
He’s quieter than usual, not as quippy. You make jokes to him as he hovers behind you at the stove, but he just stares from behind his blindfold.
He’s close enough that you can feel his warmth on your back, that you need to be careful not to bump him any time you move.
He edges even further in, as the minutes wear on. Until he’s slumped over you, chin on your shoulder. His hand finds the place on the back of your wrist, the can opener scar, and he strokes it gently.
You let him hang off you as you finish cooking. This is probably about this afternoon, the curse and how it almost hit you.
You probably would have died, if he hadn’t shown up, but you don’t feel like you’ve just had a run-in with doom. You feel like it’s a normal Tuesday night.
Maybe it’s because of him. Maybe he makes you feel too secure, as if nothing could ever hurt you. Or maybe you still just don’t understand this world enough to know when to be scared.
“They told me you wear the blindfold to stay human,” you say. “That if you don’t blind yourself, all you see is numbers, not people.”
You turn to look at him, over your shoulder. You’re eye to eye like this, close enough to feel his soft breaths on your lips.
His smile is sardonic. “There’s a lot of reasons for a sorcerer to conceal their eyes.”
You tap his nose. He nips at you as you draw away.
“What do you see,” you ask, “when you look at me.”
“Potential.” He traces a finger up and down your arm, so soft it makes you shiver “Possibilities.”
You turn off the burner, but neither of you move. Caught in the moment like tar.
“How you could hurt me.” You watch him play with your fingers, running a thumb over your blunt nails, mapping out your knuckles. “All the ways you could kill me.”
“Just potential.” His own fingers slide between yours. He holds up your linked hands, inspecting the connection like he’s going to take notes. “For a lot of things.”
You have to hip check him to get him to back off enough for you to turn around, look at him directly. His smile is vague, unbothered. Such a liar.
You reach for his face, and he bends, meets you halfway as you slip the blindfold up and off.
You’ve seen him without it before, once. It had been shocking, not because of the promise his eyes held but because you had grown so accustomed to not seeing them. Like he doesn’t have them, like they never existed until he was looking right at you.
“You were watching me today,” you say. “Do you always do that?”
He doesn’t respond, just takes your hand again, brings it to rest against his cheek.
“I could have died,” you say.
Still nothing.
You drag your hand up, settle it over his eyes, blinding him again. His smile doesn’t falter. You wonder if anything you do could ever really get to him, if you’ll be left with this strange nebulous question forever. Different species. Different worlds.
“Now what do you see?” you ask.
He lifts a hand to yours, squeezes your fingers. Presses them tighter into his skin. “You.”
...
It’s explained to you over and over --in jest, in good faith, in warning-- why you’re not suitable for him. They use any number of reasons, his status, his ability, his future.
You just look at them, blank faced. You don’t understand why any of that matters.
You suppose that’s just another reason.
...
He’s in a bad mood today. He’s been cagey ever since you were attacked, and it’s making you nervous. He still comes to your building every night he’s on campus, and that makes you nervous too. Why bother visiting if he’s just going to watch over you like a sentry?
He must have realized how weak you really are. How easy to kill.
He’s still flippant about personal space, touching you constantly. Maybe even more than before. Now there’s rarely a reason behind his hands on you. He just does it because he wants to.
When you settle on the couch to read, he follows. He pulls your legs up to drape over his own, his big hands on your thighs, kneading softly.
You want to ask him things and you don’t.
Really you just want to know if the answers to those questions will hurt you, if you’ll regret bringing any of it up at all.
“I’ve been reading about set theory,” you tell him.
He squeezes your knee. “Nerd.”
It's not something you’d be particularly driven to look into, if not for him. But everything you learn about his powers seems so far away, incomprehensible. You can explain it now, as well as anyone, but it still feels like you don’t understand.
“Y’know, there are some mathematicians that don’t believe infinity actually exists,” you say. “It’s something we just made up. There’s no practicality to it.”
He’s smiling. “I believe them.”
You look at him for another minute. You wonder who else he watches, if anyone. You wonder if he thinks of you like a pet, something to be looked after, to play with.
You shove his hands off you, get to your knees and shuffle over until you’re looming over him, straddling him.
“Hold your hand up,” you say. He does.
You hit the barrier, a constant drag against your palm. You play with it, approach from different angles, apply different pressure, always with the same outcome. “Some infinities are bigger than others.”
He nods. “That’s true.”
“If infinity exists at all, that implies that it can be exceeded,” you say. You’re whispering, now. You don’t know why. “Infinity plus one.”
He’s watching your hands, the way you hover around him, so close, so close. “Makes sense.”
“What happens if someone comes along with a bigger infinity than yours?”
He releases the barrier, your hand falling against his with a quiet clap. He uses it to pull you in close, against his chest, your weight settling on him.
“I guess they can do whatever they want with me, then,” he murmurs, face tucked against your throat. “If they’re fast enough.”
...
He thinks often about getting you a weapon. Something small that you could carry around with you, use during emergencies.
But you have no combat training. A lot of days you can’t even see curses.
If you get attacked, you’ll die.
The thought circles him like a vulture. It reminds him of his youth.
Once, he’d have said you’d deserve to die for your weakness. Now the possibility fills him with dread, makes his whole body go cold, then hot.
All this power, and for what? He can do everything and nothing at all.
How’s that for a paradox.
...
It’s early morning, and they’re on their way to another meeting. It feels like all they do anymore is talk.
“It’s inappropriate to see a coworker romantically,” Nanami tells him.
Gojo grins. “Jealous?”
Nanami ignores that. “You know the risk of getting involved with someone so vulnerable,” he says. “Why are you doing this?”
Gojo looks at him for a moment, taking in his lanky figure, his stony expression. He draws up beside him. Kisses him. “I promise I’ll never love anyone more than you, baby.”
The conversation is quickly dropped.
At the meeting they talk about death. Random, unprovoked. Housewives and students, grandparents and neets. People who never saw it coming, aren’t even aware of the darker shades of magic, hovering in the peripherals of life.
For some reason, today he wonders about their particulars. He wants to ask what their names were. He doesn’t.
They’re sunk costs. Indicators of something, directions the sorcerers need to take, precautions or clean up. Secrets to be kept. It’s cyclical, death and the prevention of more death.
People really are so delicate.
...
The first time he fucks you is on the couch, too.
It’s late and it’s raining. He was off campus for an exorcism today, and not expected back until tomorrow. You nearly drop the cup of tea you’re holding when you turn to find him standing there in the middle of the common room, dripping, silent. He looks like a ghost.
“Gojo?” you whisper, setting your cup on a nearby table. He’s in one of his moods. Maybe you’ll make him something to drink, or ramble at him about math again--he likes that.
But he beckons you closer, closer, until he can simply lean down and kiss you, until he can wrap his arms around your waist and shuffle you back until you’re falling onto the couch gracelessly. He follows you down.
He strips you and you let him, raising your hips or lifting your arms when he asks, pulling at his own clothing in between.
When you’re naked, the first thing he touches is your hand, fingers tracing nonsense patterns on your palm, dragging up and up. He traces your jaw, your throat. His lips follow.
He’s gentle with you, he always is. But now he touches you like you’re glass, butterfly sensations building and building as he plays between your thighs. Your peak is honey slow and frictionless, your moan in his ear barely a whisper.
“I think I’ve wanted this since the day I met you,” he says, lining himself up, pressing into you, gently gently gently. You hardly realize when he’s all the way inside, only that he’s so much closer now, the motion so tender, almost unintrusive. Belongs like this, you think. Inevitable.
“Or maybe I’ve always wanted it.” His hands grip your waist, so large. His thumbs press into the creases where your thighs meet your hips. “That’s a theory of infinity too, right, that all of time is happening at once?”
You cup his face, trace your finger over his bottom lip. You say, “You’ve got me, whatever time it is.”
There’s not much leverage behind his thrusts. He’s too tall to be taking you like this, has to bend nearly in half to stay close to you. It’s a grinding sort of motion, waves and waves falling over you both, your hands stroking his flanks, his touching any part of you he can reach.
Your second peak is a bright flash, a shock of pleasure that seems to creep up on you, that pulls him down as well.
You’d slipped off his blindfold, at the start. He’s looking at you and then he’s not. Eyes closed like he’s dreaming. Like he’s not seeing the numbers. Just you.
In the aftermath, he cradles you in his lap. One hand lightly clasps your wrist, rubbing circles around and around your scar. He’s so warm against you. Warmer than anyone you’ve ever met.
“If all of time is happening at once then you can tell me what comes next?” you say.
His response is immediate. “You ask me to do something, anything, and I do it.”
You kiss his chin, his cheek. “That’s a lot of power, for a mere human,” you return.
His arms tighten around you, pulling you infinitesimally closer.
“It’s your burden to bear,” he says. “Your infinity is bigger than mine.”