Chapter Text
In the minute it takes for Gojo to cheerfully tap a rhythm out on the door and Toji to drag his indolent ass to answer it, even Gojo can’t hold back shoving Megumi into the wood, his larger frame pinning him from shoulder to hip and Megumi chews his already sore, cracking lip on a moan. He knows it’s Gojo pinning him, Gojo rocking into his ass like he could sink into him through sheer force of will. It’s just sensation, fabricated carnal impulse driving the hunger to touch and be touched, Megumi knows he doesn’t…
But it’s been hours, and Megumi’s last fraying cords of rational care are beginning to snap. He pushes back into the friction and Gojo takes in a slow, shuddering breath, hands resolutely on the door even as his hips rut forward faster, chasing the pressure to alleviate some of the cloudy lust Megumi’s made even the strongest feel. The drag of his clearly hard cock makes Megumi buckle, nails scratching at the wood and gasping Gojo’s name with just enough self-preservation left to not be loud. His hazy vision pulses dark around the corners and boiling want urges him to thrust back into the base instinct to get fucked.
“Are you sure, Megumi-kun?” Gojo sighs into his hair and Megumi almost falters, every warped desire inside him yearning to give in. “You know there’s no guarantee—”
The deadbolt and chain start to unlatch. Gojo pulls away, seeming no worse for wear while Megumi is ready to throw any sense of decorum or pride out the window and follow Gojo’s weight leaving him. Somehow, he keeps dragging himself back from that ledge, and Megumi collects himself in time for the door to open to his sire. Father was pushing it.
Toji stares at Megumi first, then Gojo, a brow cocking in mild confusion. Megumi rarely comes home, especially not during the weekdays, and especially not after a mission.
“Change of plans,” Gojo provides, nonchalance dripping from his tone Megumi knows is an act this time.
“Oh no,” Toji says with all the emotional affectation of a droning text-to-speech. “Did he bite another kid on the playground again?”
“Fuck you,” Megumi seethes, but even with his cutting sarcasm Toji’s eyes are a little too sharp where they scan over his face, Gojo’s, and the hand still tight on his shoulder.
“Aw, Toji-kun, you know Megumi’s better behaved than biting.” Gojo titters, releasing Megumi’s shoulder with the self-control only Gojo could have. “He wanted your company tonight instead, isn’t that nice?”
Toji’s frown doesn’t falter. His nose curls then, drawing back on reflex from where Megumi’s hunched in the doorway.
“The hell.” Toji’s face scrunches up with clear disgust. “What did you step in? You got something rank around you.”
“Funny.” Megumi scoffs, voice slurring on his words slowly to make sure they make sense. “Don’t tell me you have company tonight.”
“And if I did?” Toji drawls.
“Then keep it down,” Megumi forces himself to say levelly, trying not to let Toji see his crestfallen—what? It’s not disappointment, Megumi didn’t fucking want— “I just want to sleep, okay?”
Toji sighs and says nothing else, stepping aside with an eyeroll for Megumi to hurry past him. He forces himself not to turn right back around and go out the door to Gojo, whose hand he felt brush on his back at Toji's brusque dismissal over Megumi's presence.
Megumi had some suspicion coming here, given the nature of this curse and their blood relation, but Toji doesn't even falter as Megumi leaves his sight.
"Something you want, you albino freak?"
"Is that anyway for my favorite serial killer to talk to his sugar daddy?"
“I’ll break your fucking nose.”
Megumi doesn’t care for whatever bickering is about to happen between Gojo and Toji, never concerned himself with why they know each other. Piecing together Toji’s arsenal and Gojo’s personality it was easy to surmise Gojo had a hit on him and Toji failed. Right now, his already thin patience couldn’t handle the threats disguised as violent flirting. He catches Gojo mentioning Megumi was slathered by the unfun end of a curse, so he might be under the weather, and Megumi hackles.
“Gojo, I’m fine, go away,” Megumi calls from the kitchen, already pressing an icepack to his hammering pulse to cool his temperature down.
There’s a playful hum, just short enough to convey Gojo’s hesitance, but Gojo still listens.
“Take good care of him, Toji-kun, okay?”
The door slams shut presumably in Gojo’s face and Toji...doesn't come after him in the kitchen. He hears the sounds of the TV, the creak of the couch, and Toji's back to whatever underwhelming weekend he'd planned without Megumi. Well, that confirms it then, Toji—
Megumi drops the icepack, buckling into himself suddenly with a groan. The heat in his blood boils over, spreading from his pounding headache down his throat, his chest, pooling molten in his gut and Megumi braces on the fridge to keep from falling to his knees.
Fuck. Fuck.
He’s alone for the first time since the mission, no one else’s lust to temper the effects and Megumi feels the ravenous fever slam down on him like a riptide.
He can’t think. He can’t…the fridge wavers out of focus, hazy lines like he’s trying to see through tears building up, over-sensitized desperation fast bleeding into pain.
All he can process then is motions, steps; icepack, water, something in a wrapper he forces down to his churning stomach that doesn’t satisfy the hunger.
Megumi picks up the ice, then uses the wall for support to stumble out of the kitchen into hazy hues of warm yellow light of cheap bulbs and dark furniture, off-white carpet. Each step met with a double-time dance of his heart hammering harder, suffocating his lungs with how it swells in his chest, how it throbs in his throat.
This is why no one lasted, he thinks blearily. This is why the outcome was the same, every time.
No, he’s stronger than this dammit, he’s not some run of-the-mill victim, he’s a sorcerer, he’s stronger than a stupid, disgusting lust curse.
Megumi manages to get himself down the hall, leaning into the chipping plaster as he goes, vaguely hears Toji calling his name with an impatient inquisition.
Megumi slams his room door shut behind him, locks it and doesn’t make it to the bed before his hand is down the front of his uniform pants, still rank with blood and barely a touch makes him tip over, gasping a wounded sound when the orgasm that rips through him provides only pain and not a modicum of relief.
Megumi moans into his bitten palm, tasting iron as he shudders and collapses against the door, working his fist brutally over his stiff cock to chase impossible relief; he just needs…just a little more, he can fight this—he has to, he needs to, he can’t want—
Megumi whimpers with the pulse of another meek orgasm, cock chafed miserably already in his haste without any sort of lotion. In the same fogged motions Megumi manages to toss his clothes in the hamper, change into something more comfortable and press the half-melted icepack to his burning forehead.
Dammit; dammit, god dammit, Gojo was right. Of course Gojo was right, he’s never fucking wrong.
He needs to…needs to what? No, he needs to call Gojo…there was something he had to address, something he… He needed to call Gojo…but he doesn’t want Gojo, that’s why he left, right? Why does he need to call him, he wants—he needs…
He can’t think.
Megumi can feel his heartbeat in his tongue when Toji knocks; minutes, an hour later? It’s hard to be sure with how fast his heart races, making him lose track of his internal measure of time.
He only hears it when the door rattles with the pounding, and then the doorknob snaps when Toji twists it hard enough to break the lock. Why did he lock it? He never locks it, no reason to except…right.
Megumi scoffs to himself, turning his head enough from his prone position on the bed—to rut his hips against the mattress—to take in Toji’s looming frame in the doorway. Has he always been this unimpressed by his towering figure? He could break him in half. He just broke his door. He could bend him in half and Megumi couldn’t do anything but—
“Gumi, what the fuck?” Toji asks, looking at the broken door like it’s somehow done Toji wrong. There’s a mug in his hands, he can smell the herbal spice. Toji wouldn’t be caught dead drinking herbal tea. Megumi tucks his face into the pillow with a weak laugh.
Toji made tea for him. He has no idea if Toji thought of that himself or was bombarded with texts until he played the dutiful caregiver for a few minutes, but he still did it. Is Megumi awake? Is this a dream, a nightmare? Hell?
Toji sighs, leaving the door open to cross to the bed. “Sorry, you don’t…you know, your door ’s never locked. Your band of merry misfits told me you’re sick?”
“Obtuse assholes,” Megumi grumbles, scratching his forehead into the pillow. He stretches, bites his wounded lip on the urge to rut back down and reopens the raw bites. The way Toji pauses a step means he had to smell the blood.
Toji stops at his bedside, brow creasing up as he sets the mug down. He doesn’t touch him when he kneels down to his haunches, scanning Megumi with that severe sharpness to assess while Megumi blinks glassy eyes up to him.
“Shit.” Toji hisses in a breath, brow furrowing deeper. “You really reek, kid, that’s some nasty curse that coughed up on you.”
Megumi snorts softly through his nose, unable to focus beyond registering Toji’s presence and piercing eyes. There’s no use hiding the fever, the splits in his lip, the ragged cuts where the curse tried to find purchase on his shoulders, so Megumi watches while Toji catalogues each one, analyzing and processing a fight he didn’t see.
He’s so close too, that need for contact gnaws at his bones but Megumi can’t find the strength to reach out. Toji doesn’t reach out to touch, either, and Megumi swallows around his swollen, scratchy tongue protesting the lack of moisture. He’s not touching him. He hasn’t touched him once, Megumi realizes.
Toji’s hard grimace draws down further. “Okay. What the hell happened out there?”
Toji smells the curse. He did before too, but he doesn’t…Megumi’s thoughts finally pick up the cues.
It’s not that Toji is less affected; family members had less affect, they found, but it was never gone. Not by the stories. No curse is that kind.
It’s that Toji is immune. Toji can sense the curse just as he always has but he doesn’t feel it. Of course he can’t, Toji is restricted. This curse latches onto curse to feed, no matter how small. But it can’t latch onto nothing.
Megumi looks up to Toji, his furrowed brow, scanning over his fever-flush cheeks with only awkward concern etched into his features, and Megumi doesn’t know if he’s more relieved or terrified. He resigned himself to his belated realization that Gojo was right, so part of him wondered if that meant Toji would…what? He doesn’t know, really, he only knows what delirious desires this curse tore out of his rationality, dug its claws into depths of craving he never would have acted on but dropped him here, home, without thought, a breath away from having to tell Toji the truth and beg him to call Gojo or—or... No, there was no ‘or’, there’s no choice here, no matter what Megumi desires, he needs to think.
But he can’t. He still isn’t thinking, he wasn’t in the right mind to have made this decision in the first place and he can’t figure out the right one now, Gojo should have stopped him—
He did. Gojo tried. But even Gojo, apparently, had limits on what he would and would not do to Megumi.
Megumi buries his face, whining into his pillow with no strength to answer Toji’s hanging question or fight his childish misery. He’s an idiot. He should have listened to Gojo. He should have let him fuck this curse out of him, no matter what Megumi wanted, because the only two outcomes he could be at peace with were impossible, unobtainable, and to ask for this from Toji was cruel. Why should he get what he wants now of all times? When it would only cause more fucking pain, bringing on Toji what so unfairly was thrown on him?
He hates curses.
“You’re not affected,” is all Megumi can manage to whisper, unable to articulate more in the haze. The fever pace hasn’t dissipated, and it’ll only get worse from here, there’s only one option. Only one option.
Toji’s lip curls. “You know I don’t get sick."
Megumi nearly laughs again, but then he feels a brush to his hair, feather light, then heavier, warm, rough, there, there—
Toji brushes Megumi’s hair away to feel his forehead, and the touch is too much, the first contact since Gojo, the first contact he’s ached for. Megumi groans, startled and sudden with the wash of pressure, sensation, contact, his hips jerking uncontrollably and—and.
And Toji actually stutters before yanking his hand away.
“Megumi. Did… did you just—” Toji glances down to the incriminating sticky dampness building against his crotch. “Kid, what the fuck.”
Megumi lets out another, humiliated whine and hides his face again. “Fuck, please just go.”
Toji scoffs. He shoves at Megumi’s shoulder, not shying away from what touch just made him do, and makes Megumi bare his face to him again. He cringes for a moment at Megumi’s hitching, wretched moan at the rough glide of his fingers on his softer skin, the helpless flutter Megumi’s eyes give when he has to fight not to lean into his blunt touch.
“What. The hell. Is going on.” Toji clips out shortly, keeping Megumi forward by the tight grip on his chin so he won’t turn away. Fuck, please don’t let go.
Megumi swallows down another moan, and tries his best to explain.
**
All cases end up with body counts. Most were already cold and in their graves, beyond help but more importantly, beyond recognition of the damage humans wreak with their worst emotions.
Most cases end in death; but not all. Gojo is required by curriculum—pointlessly threatened by Yaga—to chaperone them on a case where the victims rarely die; a curse that persists, feeds, and festers, growing stronger the more victims it takes, near impossible to kill with how it lives on like a sickness.
“What kind of person makes a curse like this?” Yuuji says miserably after their fourth interview, and Gojo shrugs.
“Just when I thought people couldn’t get more disgusting,” Kugisaki shivers, and Yuuji makes a weak sound of agreement.
“These curses aren’t made by the perpetrator,” Megumi explains, glaring at the back of their useless teacher’s head. “Usually it’s formed in trauma, not desire.”
Kugisaki and Itadori both lose their color and their step, and Megumi sighs.
“Megumi-chan’s right,” Gojo chirps, back still to them all, “Remember, curses are formed in the negative!”
“That’s…worse.” Yuuji says quietly.
Megumi clears his throat, looking away from his stunned silent classmates. “It’s just the truth.”
Every account from every victim was the same; ringing in their ears for days before, a nightmare of being violated, waking from a night terror paralyzed by what felt like an awful weight overtop them like burning heat, and an inability to breathe before it was suddenly gone. They felt like they had a fever, and then…well, then they were attacked.
Megumi’s read about these curses. He’s sure it’s a siren, a twisted manifestation of the victim surrounded by hungry, unempathetic vermin masquerading as human. Given how it’s grown past unwanted advances into assault, Megumi’s sure it’s no longer a grade two.
The massive curse has a wail that sends shivers down Megumi’s spine, so once they track it by its sound, they can corner it. As predicted, it’s only gained power; it’s easily a grade one now, and while all three of them could handle it alone Gojo stands by in case the nature of this curse affects them.
It goes from bad to worse in seconds. It’s only grown in size, wound like a spring ready to strike with a gaping jaw unhinged for a dripping, serpentine tongue to match its long body. Its coiling body unfurls as it launches itself at them, catches Itadori by the ankle in a move so fast Megumi doesn’t see and has to call off Nue so he won’t hurt Itadori with the electroshock. It’s already slithering around him like a constrictor before Itadori rips it bodily off. The piece left behind disintegrates to nothing before Kugisaki can hammer it with resonance, its wounded tail slamming them both into the wall and then it’s on Megumi next.
It knocks him down on his back, slithering up from his bound legs to squeeze down across his chest, that revolting tongue dragging across Megumi’s face that doesn’t feel wet, only heat and vile humiliation at the thing wheezing something like a laugh behind that haunting discordant tune; the heat is unbearable, it feels like he’s trapped in a sauna. It pries his mouth open with that disgusting muscle to shove it down his throat and he can’t fucking breathe—
The curse twists apart, exploding from the inside out with a flash of red. Megumi feels the piece snap in his throat and sink into his stomach like lead.
Gojo whistles low, a teasing lilt in his voice contradicted by the deep frown on his lips.
“Well, that’s not good.”
Even with the curse dead, Megumi’s skin still itches, aches, starts to prickle like that undulating, burning body was still bearing down on his chest. He tugs at his collar, feels the sweat building in his uniform. He swears he feels its remnants churn his guts.
“Shit.”
Megumi holds on to hope that the effects of the curse will dissipate now that Gojo obliterated it. At least, that’s the hope Kugisaki and Itadori try to reason, despite Megumi knowing that this curse can break into pieces, infects and invades like a vicious little parasite until it’s satisfied its only prerogative.
That lasts half the car-ride home, the passing evening lights pulsing in hazy piercing hues that make him wince and bury down into the seat, nails digging into the faux leather to keep from ripping off his coat. He doesn’t even realize the heat on his neck isn’t lingering effects but rather Itadori’s nose under his jaw, gasping out a trembling, “Fushiguro, I’m—I’m sorry—” and Kugisaki’s wickedly sharp manicure dragging up the inseam. A rough palm hitches up between his legs, agile fingertips snaking up his shirt and Megumi’s heavy breath falters. He spreads his knees, turning to Kugisaki and—fuck, her lips are warm—
“Hm, might want to pull over,” Gojo muses from the front seat, startling Megumi into glancing up at the voidless mask in the rearview mirror.
Gojo resituates them all, Megumi pressed to the cool glass window, Gojo between him and Itadori on his other side with shame burning on his cheeks even with his face buried in his hands, Kugisaki uncharacteristically silent in the front while Nitta drives.
“Good thing you’re ace, Nitta-san, or you’d crash the car!” Gojo laughs, the only one to find any humor in the tension and smell in the car. God, Megumi reeks of his sweat and his damn dick already staining his pants with precum from his persistent arousal. He groans and curls up tighter on the seat, willing the drive to go faster.
They get back to campus and Gojo shoos Itadori and Kugisaki to their rooms, then grabs Megumi by his collar and walks him backwards into one of the empty rooms.
It’s quiet on campus this late, only the sound of his stumbling feet and sharp, hissed cusses at Gojo manhandling him into a training room to fill the air, before his back clatters into the shoji Gojo slams shut behind them. Then the void space fills with Gojo’s sharp inhale, the weight of his body pushing up into Megumi’s. His narrow thigh shoves against his crotch and the solid, hot press of his erection digs into Megumi’s lower belly.
“F-fuck, Gojo—”
“You have quite the curse on you,” Gojo interrupts, his usual saccharine smoothness straining for nonchalant right to the seams. “It’s even taking me a bit not to push you on your knees.”
Megumi clenches his teeth so hard he feels they might break. “Don’t you dare.”
“I won’t,” Gojo states, and it seems he tries again for blasé, but it falls flat with the sharp edge so foreign to his normal flippant air. Despite the weight of him pinning Megumi to the wall, he keeps his hands against the wood, long fingers curled into tight fists. Megumi gulps, sagging against the door; for all Gojo will make him grey by the time he's twenty, he believes him. Gojo's the strongest for a reason.
But Megumi isn't; Megumi glances to his white-knuckled fists and wishes he’d put those digits in his—no, not his, not Gojo’s. They’re too slender, he wants thick, callused, he—fuck, no, what? He doesn’t want anything, fuck that intrusive thought straight to hell.
Megumi tries to even his breath but what comes out is a mortifying moan. He slaps a hand over his mouth to quell it, biting his lip down hard as he inhales sharp and holds it until he knows he's not going to rut up into the beckoning pressure of Gojo's thigh.
“Get off me,” Megumi forces out, but it’s too weak, it sounds too close to a beg.
“How bad is it for you?” Gojo asks, still unmoving, still has his thigh between his legs and it’s not—it’s not right, he doesn’t desire Gojo, his eyes aren’t dark enough, hands not rough enough and—no. No, he doesn’t want this at all, doesn’t matter whether it’s Gojo. He can’t let himself think about that intrusive hunger, like the curse wriggled its way into his darkest desires since his skin first started to itch for touch. It’s mucking it up to the surface, keeps making him catch glimpses of his buried shame until he’s sure it could burn him alive.
Megumi swallows to get some moisture back in his throat, lost with all his stupid panting, says, “I—no. I'm just…turned on. I don't want to do anything I just…”
That much is true. Nothing in him aches to touch, to take. He doesn’t desire anyone, he just—he just wants. Who he wants is secondary, pointless, impossible.
Megumi's hands clench in the wall, staring at Gojo’s neck. Even from his peripheral, he can see him frown deeply.
“Very nasty curse then. The goal really is for you to be raped.”
Megumi’s mouth trembles. He squeezes his eyes shut and looks away. He already knows that. He knew the moment the curse attacked him, marked him, every one of those stories from those poor students on that campus haunting him for days now coming into sharp focus of what it was like—what it’s about to be like.
But does it have to be? He isn’t some unassuming college student unprepared for the weight of a curse. He’s trained for this, he’s stronger than that curse.
“How badly do you want me to touch you right now,” Gojo asks, a finely flat note void of emotion he's only seen from Gojo on the worst of missions. He's the strongest, but the fact it's pushed even his limits this far...can Megumi fight this? Can he? Should he? Shit, it’s getting harder to think…
“Shut up. I don’t.”
“Right.” Gojo hums. “How badly do you want to be touched?”
Megumi goes silent, chewing back down on his lip until he tastes blood. He scratches into the door, willing himself not to move but he can’t stop the small jerk into Gojo’s unmoving thigh. Gojo’s breath sucks in quick through his nose, his thigh pushing up and Megumi releases another humiliating groan, meeting that friction on—reflex, he supposed, but it's driven completely by the acrid desire in his belly. He immediately grits his teeth in aggravation, even when his hips won’t stop moving.
He's losing his reason to fight this—he doesn't want him but...but it's getting harder to fight not wanting. In the back of his mind, all he can think about is who he wants, who he's wanted, drudged up from that buried muck, no matter how impossible.
Gojo clears his throat and extracts his thigh. He puts a hand on Megumi’s chest to keep him still, then quietly asks. “If you want me to, I can do what little is needed to curb the curse.”
He knows it's the right choice; Gojo knows it's the right choice. Those few interviews that took place in the hospital, the ones that lasted alone for over a day before the delirium set in, he knows he needs to say yes.
Megumi shakes his head, even with his hips rutting uselessly into the air like a needy dog. "No."
Gojo swallows, then takes a slow breath. "Megumi. If the curse hasn’t dissipated by now—"
"Take me home," Megumi blurts out, driven entirely by the burning in his gut, the heat coiling lower, persistent, welling into desperation that pounds through his blood the longer he resists the object of what this curse craves. "I want to…to be alone."
“You can’t be alone.” Gojo quips matter-of-factly, “Besides, isn’t—”
“It’s fine. I’ll be fine.” Megumi grits it out, unable to bear Gojo giving voice to the looming possibility. Even if he’s there, it doesn’t matter. If Megumi’s own curse can’t override, then he’ll… “If I need to…I’ll call you. Just let me be alone.”
Even beyond that mask Megumi can feel his eyes on him, reading whatever flow of his own curse is betraying inside him. Megumi hungers. He isn’t thinking. He needs Gojo to listen. He needs him to ignore him. He needs, he wants, needs—
"Alone." Gojo clicks his tongue. "I bet.”