Chapter Text
Run your teeth through the vapour lit veins of shinjuku. Shoulder past the throngs nestling the takoyaki and yakisoba shacks, use elbows for the izakaya queues. If the 10:15 train is due, duck into the fifth alley on your left. The tarmac is misgiving under the dirt veil of Tokyo, but if you keep walking straight ahead, you're unlikely to knock over an overflowing can. Chlorine green fluorescence trickles through the grubby aquarium tanks of the defunct fish store and marks the end of the alley. You hop over the defaced brick wall and fall hind-first into the solitary patch of vegetation in downtown tokyo.
Tucked away in the tight packed suburbia that has managed to circumvent money grubbing real estate agents, you would find a run down one storey overlooking the algae-green myōshōji backwater.
Tonight, no stove heat bubbles at the frosted glass of the kitchen window, no sizzling of fresh produce or the drone of conversation being knifed by peals of laughter. the camellias have wilted.
It has not been homely for a while now. Gojo would know.
Gojo shifts from foot to foot — to be easily mistaken for a shadow if not for the flash of white on top of his person, glimmering like sea foam breaking in the dark. One would say he is restless, as Shoko did this afternoon, but what did she mean by rest? Repose doesn't mean much when he has limitless on in his sleep. Neither does he need it. He strolls in the night like he has no destination, but always comes back under the same mossy awning. Reversed cursed technique eats and spits and rebuilds his insides — incessant nibbling that he had learnt to ignore but now feels like a swarm of rats gnawing at his walls in order to escape. He is brand new every day, unblemished and invincible.
And it's no use.
(He watches the door and the unlocked knob. The timber is old and discoloured from years of rain and sun, but never from disuse. It guards three lives, a humble master and his daughters. Gojo can't deny how the faint curse energy seeps through and soothes, how he greedily returns to it again and again if only for a bit. In hesitance and in pride he hides behind the flimsy barrier of an unlocked door, basking in the presence that sloshes navy and watery against his skull — like bioluminescence. The seashell echo between his ears. Salt and sage in his nostrils.)
Pride should mean nothing for a man who holds the world at the cusp of salvation. But it is all he has when he is weak like this — heart slow and stuttering in his chest, trying to summon the last shreds of bravery from the corners of his being. Untouching fingers tremble around the metal knob. All he has to do is push. He knows what awaits him with open arms.
And it's no use.
Because the door opens before Gojo could bolt: crawl back to his empty apartment with his tail between his legs. A swift, urgent motion that knocks his hand away. It stings for a second until he forgets about it, lungs hungrily gulping in the familiarity that washes over him. It's like crunching ice. being unearthed by a beloved.
"Suguru,"
Geto stands in the doorway. He is heaving, though it's almost imperceptible. He is not in his billowing robes, and his hair reminds Gojo of nightfall over the shoulders of Mount Haku, from that one time he, Suguru and Shoko had camped out on the tongue of a neighbouring hill overnight to watch the sunrise. Darkness seems to spill out of the void of his shadow from the way tattoo ink undulates under his shirt's neck and sleeves. Gojo gets a whiplash everytime he looks at Geto, surprised by the gaps of time when he missed the onset of change.
"Stop rubbing your eyes dumbass," Satoru sneers with a forearm thrown over his eyes, so suguru only catches the curl of his sweaty cupid's bow. "I hate the squelching."
Suguru relents but the discomfort remains. He had gotten a full night's sleep even with Satoru attached to him like a limpet. He didn't mind since the booger eyed bag of bones always runs cold, especially in the night. He's washed his face twice, still something keeps poking his pupil and god does it hurt.
He must have been blinking too hard for too long because satoru notices, "That's a weird way to flirt, dude," the white mop of hair finally rises from the stack of pillows, and rears back in the cocksure way a drunk salaryman does when the new female colleague laughs at his punchline, "I mean, I know your game is weak but this is pathetic even for you."
Suguru swats at him, jagged knuckles out, and swears he hears a hollow echo when he hits satoru's head. "That's rich coming from Mr. Got Flaked On By His First Date."
Satoru lets out a squeak followed by a head splitting crow as he rolls down the edge of the bed like he's been shot in the temple. He lays there, probably expecting a response from Suguru but the latter keeps his eyes closed and lips pursed. Suguru is well aware that once the fucknugget catches his eyes watering from the irritation, he would not let him live this down.
Minutes pass until he feels Satoru get up to his knees and shuffle towards him when the warmth of a hard torso washes over the length of his thigh. If Suguru were to open his eyes he is sure he would find Satoru up in his face like an affronted toddler, "I did not get flaked on. I told you she was feeling under the weather and had to get home ASAP." Heavy hands are planted on Suguru, one on his back making its way up to his nape and the other grabbing onto his forearm as he is coaxed to turn and face his friend, "What's wrong?"
The tacked on gentleness catches Suguru off guard. Feels like a new variety of mockery. "If that's what you want to call getting ditched in the middle of your date after she excused herself to the toilet, with no follow-up text or call. Sure." He tries to get up and away, not in the mood for banter or teasing, but is forced back down on the mattress with clutched fingers. He sighs.
"Something just keeps poking into my eye and I can't get it out."
Satoru doesn't retort and for a moment It's nice, if Suguru is to be honest. His head has quietened within the few minutes of having his eyes closed. If he tries hard enough he can hear the sunlight barreling through the window.
"Open your eyes," Satoru's voice is light as he says it, a little demanding in the way his voice has lost its playful lilt, "Let me see."
Suguru does as told, a little afraid of Satoru's ungainliness, but trust is something that comes easily (its worrying, how he trusts a boy who he has only known for a little over a year, a boy who has barely got his own bearings,) and all he sees is liquid light.
He would like to gloat how he had known Satoru's eyes were not just cloudless blue without having to look closely. Bet on it and take home a million because oh, it's no colour at all. They say eyes are the windows to one's soul and Suguru takes a peek to find —
Satoru has starburst for a soul.
Every celestial body has lent a bit of their light to their child of infinity.
It's unnerving to have a piece of universe stare back at you, to cup it's elbow and slot your chests together like the lips of yin and yang. Suguru hears the roil of hunger in himself — the great void's slow call to consume. It pulls a smile out of him because isn't that so terribly tragic.
Puckered lips blow into his right pupil (gentle, gentle) and Suguru would recoil if not for the palm holding him firmly by the side of his head. Satoru brings a finger to his eye, nail chipped from abrasion as usual, and for a moment Suguru can count the ridges on his fingertip before it plucks something from the wetness under his lashes.
A stray eyelash.
Satoru grins, toothy and proud, "See, it was that easy." He doesn't lean away yet and they keep breathing each other's air. "Knock off that stuck up attitude and be out with it if something's bothering you," Suguru can feel his ear burn under the other boy's touch, "I'm gifted in many areas but telepathy is not one of them."
He swats the hand away and scoffs, shaky and undignified and not sounding like a real scoff at all, "I didn't need you to do it—"
"Who else would?" Satoru asks the question like he is privy to the answer. Smirks and cants his head, looking obnoxiously self-assured. And frankly, Suguru doesn’t know.
To be held through the most minute changes, to be known so closely that pairs of pain and joy become one and whole.
Who else would?
"Isn't it too late for you to be out here?"
Geto does this everytime, like clockwork. Gives Gojo an out like he's trying to save him the trouble that comes with fraternising with a traitor. It irritates Gojo, that the man thinks he is entitled enough to look out for him — that he still has a say in what battles Gojo wants to pick.
"Are you turning your guest away?" He balks, like he's been let in on something scandalous. "It would be detrimental to your..." He gestures in the curse user's general direction, "single father slash monk brand if word got out, you know. What would your girls learn?"
Geto smiles that secret smile where the cliffs of his cheekbones chip and his eyes droop. Gojo feels his insides go sticky sweet at the sight, the gloom of the night suddenly lifting and leaving them snickering in youthful brilliance.
"That won't do, I guess." Geto holds the door open but only wide enough for their shoulders to brush when Gojo walks in. He stops in the doorway, the relief of familiarity deluding him into believing that he has returned home. It feels exactly how their dorms used to, despite the different layout, furniture and space. He knows why, had long realised that home is not a place but a person. The thought makes him less of a god everyday.
He toes off his shoes and steps into the foyer. Floorboards creak to announce his presence as he makes his way to the small windowsill. The camellias are now regaining their colour. Then, Gojo feels it before he turns in his place to find suguru leaning against the door, cut-glass-violet gaze slicing through him.
And Gojo should be a good guest: ask how his family is doing and hold out a pack of sweets as they make their way to the little table of four, stew in silence while the host puts on a kettle and make small talk till the hollow-ache becomes bearable. Except it never does, and never will. Instead, he reaches for the loose end of his bandages.
Gojo gradually peels away the white cloth over his eyes like a second skin. Geto's curse energy cages his feet and surges up, up, up, swallowing him with his presence. The pieces fall around his neck and some to the floor when he finds Geto approaching him like he used to approach a bad curse attack scene, steadfast and searching. The leak of moonlight through the window soon finds two boys under its solemn halo, the accumulation of their body heat rendering the air around them lukewarm.
But Geto is a good host because he brings up two summer-mellow palms to Gojo's face and pours all the warmth of a crackling hearth into him. The pads of his thumbs sweep over the tender skin under Gojo's eyes—and he believes this is the closest thing to being touched by the sun.
So Gojo falls, wings burning as he descents with all the grace of a bird shot in the chest. He hopes he would be granted a death wish as a broad shoulder comes up to meet the softness of his closed eyes. He presses his face to the firmness of clothed flesh and bone until the want hurts.
"Take me to bed."
Geto's weight holds him in place and Gojo feels like a feral being tamed. Callous palms ride up and down the sides of his torso, as if to retrace the trail they left last time. Today morning satoru had stood in front of his mirror, shirt rucked up, and poked at the last of the love-bruises just under his ribs. he had watched the pool of blood under the bruise spread and turn plum purple—wondering if he could develop a technique that would stop his body from recovering altogether.
Even in the scant light of the waning moon, Geto must have seen the faraway look in his eyes because blunt fingernails find perch on the hills of his spine. Firm hands knead his midriff and pump shallow breaths out of him. balmy warmth laps under his skin, thawing a freeze he didn't know he had been harbouring. "Satoru, look at me."
Gojo's reaction to the purr in his ear and the vibration on the sensitive skin over his pulse is instantaneous: his hips jerk up, grinding into Geto's bulge. He arches up, an all consuming need bubbling over in the pits of his stomach. He can feel the ache tighten its claws around his lungs now that he is finally near Geto.
Gojo's hands scramble to find the hem of Geto's shirt and pull. A deep, wounded mewl bursts out of him in desperation and Geto obliges with a light chuckle, like this is funny to him. Gojo huffs in indignation despite having made peace with the fact that the black haired man will never feel the cloying need for him like he does. It has always been this way.
Pale hands latch onto the tan expanse of Geto's skin, galactic eyes marvelling with the same awe as they did the first time. then the eyes travel up, up, until they latch onto wormhole-violet ones.
Soft light catches in the cliffs and dips of Geto's face. His long hair wades in and out of the shadows around them. Gojo runs his hand through it, expecting his fingers to return stained black and speckled with moonglow-gold, but is surprised. He tries again, and it feels just as soft and fluid like water, slipping through his fingers just like suguru does—every single time.
Geto takes his hand away from his hair and kisses the valley of his palm. The white haired man cups his cheek in return, spreading his spindly fingers along the side of his jaw and neck. He thumbs at the tan peak of his Adams apple and presses. Gojo feels Geto swallow.
Geto then surges forward and his cursed energy effluxes like a high tide, gentle ripples washing at the fringe of Gojo's crumbled limitless. Goosebumps rise under the thin sheen of sweat along Geto's biceps and torso. He hisses through his teeth, eyes pinching shut as Gojo ruts up against him. hard girth burrows into the moist heat between Satoru's legs like a lone drumbeat, then a caress along his clothed clit with practised ease, spitfire. The heavy pressure and roughness of fabric is enough to send Gojo keening, but he only gets a couple seconds before Geto is coming up with newfound lust. He sits back on his heels and pulls down Gojo's pants and boxers in one tug, pitching it across the room. if Gojo wasn't so attuned to Geto's every movement, he would have missed how his breath hitches.
"First time seeing pussy?"
Geto still doesn't look up, eyes trained on the new dollop of translucence gushing out of Gojo's cunt. There's an uptick in the tail-end of his left eyebrow — mouth twisting around the smuggest chuckle of the century.
"First time seeing a pussy as wet as yours. what, no fly fall for the strongest's flytrap?"
Gojo's ears burn. He would uppercut the bugger to the moon if he wasn't throbbing so hard. Geto's gall surprises him everyday.
"Keep testing me and you will get trapped and shime waza-ed by these thunder thighs with your nose still in my cunt."
Geto finally deigns to meet his eyes, mirth swirling in his sweltering gaze but cursed energy crackling with something else. "Oh by thunder thighs you mean," he plants a warm palm on Gojo's inner thigh, dangerously close to the pink notch, sending tremors to his underbelly. Another palm catches at the crook of his cherried knee, easing him open, "these twigs that washed up in the storm?"
"You motherfucker—" Gojo grabs a fistful of the hair he had been waxing poetry about two minutes ago because I definitely liked this guy better back when even tickling his balls couldn't sound him out and pulls him into a bad kiss. Teeth clack and lips catch haphazardly and this jackass keeps grinning—
The square head of a knobby middle finger parts his folds like a curtain and slides up and down in the slippery heat. Calloused heel of a palm comes down on his clit with force and Gojo bucks up into the friction, calves flexing with the need to clamp down on the finger. He trembles under the untouching weight of a wide chest on his own, "Oh—hah—"
Geto's hair sweeps past the expanse of Gojo's abdomen before he is breathing over his cunt. Long full breaths that blow over the watery ecstasy and send static bursts down his fried nerves. The pad of his thumb comes to aid and rubs around the button of his clit but never at it, a fucking tease. The finger pushes in and out, in slow circles that send Gojo gasping on empty air, head twisting and fists clawing at Geto's scalp.
"You were saying?"
Geto's voice is raspy, vowels slippery around mouthful of slick. Gojo sees stars.
"I-I'm gonna cum—"
"No, you're not."
He is going to cry, then. "Give me more then, please."
Gojo doesn't get much of a response, except for a tongue breaching his already soaked pussy, teeth nipping at swollen lips. Another finger slips in, a blunt forefinger, followed by Gojo being scissored open like a piece of meat. He squirms and thrashes in sensitivity, mind barely there as Geto licks a fat line up his cunt. the fingers work there way into him with rapid momentum, already knuckles deep, and the next thing he knows he is fucking on Geto's fingers like a whore on inducers.
"F—fuck, Suguru! God!"
He spits out another bunch of expletives under Geto's palm that slapped over his mouth. "Quiet. The girls are sleeping."
Gojo doesn't think Geto's daughters finding out that their dad is a bigger freak than the manic homicidal in a costume that they already know is going to change anything, but he shuts up nonetheless, eyes welling up in lieu of cursing Geto's entire bloodline. his fingers clamp around Geto's iron grip before he all but garbles, "Let me cum, please."
Geto let's go for a brief second, "Satoru, come on my tongue, baby."
Gojo comes to from a punch to his underbelly, squirting in pyrophoric, white bursts before he could register the cool metal of the barbell near the tip of Geto's tongue on his clit. The arch of Gojo's spine collapses like a bridge in water, drowning into the mattress.
Fingers still shovelling slick out of him, now three in number, Gojo considers passing out. Geto emerges from between his legs like he's just seen glory. The palm that had been warming his underbelly moves to cinch his hip and he kisses Gojo, making him taste himself, tongue under tongue, teeth nibbling on Gojo's drool-swept lips. Gojo feels his muscles soften, body pliant and giving like river water despite the shockwaves washing up his ribcage.
"You're so cute," Geto has forgone exchanging spittle for eye-gazing now, his naturally sharp features now melting like a chipped candy held to flame. The pillowy flesh below his thumb wipes at his cheeks and Gojo realises how much he's been crying—cupid's bow sweaty and temples cold from the tears drying in the night air, he distantly wonders if the pillowcase is drenched too, "and so red, like a pepper."
Gojo sniffles to further corroborate the statement. He can be cute. He can be anything for Geto to keep him. "Want your cock."
Tunnel-echo of a laugh. Deep from Geto's belly. Gojo internally preens.
"Yeah? Think you can take it?"
The moment shatters.
"This cunt's ever been around your cock since high school Suguru, fuck you mean if I can take it."
Geto huffs, face slack like he would pitch his hands up in surrender if they weren't preoccupied, "Damn okay. Sorry for trying to turn you on I guess."
"I'm leaking like a faucet on your three fingers I think the only thing that needs to turn on is your goddamn horse sense."
"Can you go back to being cute?"
"Bro you're rock hard everyone in this room knows you like being ragged on, you get off on it," Gojo huffs, dips his hand in the muggy air between their bodies and gets ahold of a beer-can-thick cock, long and meaty in all the right places, fists the thing slowly and surely, thumbing tentatively at the tip, "so are you gonna give it to me?"
Gojo watches the headiness in Geto's eyes dissolve into something darker, as primal as they come. For all the softness the man is capable of, he is first a curse handler—user, he is a vessel of beasts, thousands of them. Geto, the concaving umbra girding Gojo's light.
Back at the Gojo estate when he used to have the faceless maids deck him out in silk kimonos thrice a day and hold oil paper parasols over his head, when he'd keep his socks spotless as he paraded the labyrinthine hallways like a real statesman—he had once tagged along with his grandfather to a visit to a hindu clan smack dab in the heart of buddhist community of old tokyo. They were of the shaivism sect, as he'd later come to know, and their clansmen were browner than the servants at Gojo estate. Their god was of polished quartz that gleamed a golden lustre in the dimly lit chamber. Milk and flowers and sandalwood as offerings. The temple's walls recited a story, murals upon murals knitting themselves into a tapestry, an epic. On his way out Gojo had slipped a book from the little stall sidled up against the gates of the temple under his haori—a navy, binded thing that sat heavy and snug against his flank.
Shiva, it had said, neelkanth, who drank the venom from the churning ocean to save heaven, hell and earth, and held it in his throat. God of destruction and regeneration, guardian of dharma and its adherents, the deity who in his grief for Sati caused an universal imbalance.
Suguru, knelt over the toilet bowl, discoloured and mottled fuchsia like a ghosting layer bleeding out of a photograph. Static in his ears from heaving like a disposal truck except he hasn't eaten anything all day. fifteen. A gunshot. Ropes of blue and red. Satoru dead. The first time Suguru's hands closed around the intent to kill. Crossroads of jagged incisions across his chest. Sixteen. two shivering girls in his arms, razing a village to the ground. His father's blood in his hair, mother's yukata around his shoulders, rusty nail beds. Seventeen. Six thousand curses under the dogged give of his skin, shoulders wider and hair spilling to his hips, twenty-six.
What is the divide between a god and a monster?
Geto presses a thumb on Gojo's jackrabbit pulse and he decides: none.
In another world, he would tell Geto all this as lucidity trickles down his sinewy flesh—like kerosene light ricocheting off burnished quartz. Tell him that he has found faith in something clandestine and filthy, something that used to be pure and incandescent. Tell Geto about the puranic god Gojo has manifested in him.
He gives Geto's cock a couple of sporadic pumps, bringing his hand up to lick at the little precome that had gathered in his palm, all the while staring into the flecks of embers in Geto's irises. The room reeks of insatiety.
This is Gojo's worship.
Fangs flash in the faint light and he feels Geto plunge in. Something pavlovian in the way Gojo's body sucks him in, cock-first, as if the intimacy shouldn't feel foreign after the hit and run in shinjuku years ago. A heart still bleeding out on that pavement. Geto kisses him, fervent and just the right pitch, tongue licking the inside of Gojo's cheek. Wind swoops past Gojo's ears, like he's falling in, falling through, the bed, the floorboards, the dirt and rock. He curls his arms around Geto, holding on for dear life. They break the kiss, coming up for air and Gojo can't think. Geto drives into him in painfully languid but deep, sending gentle tremors to Gojo's bones.
Geto is weak like this. His heartbeat all over the place. Sweat beads on the ledge of his nose, the shallow dip under his bottom lip, the crest of his Adam's apple. Gojo nips at the thin skin there, earning a berry-red bruise suckled under his ear in return.
Chests flush, Geto's spasmodic breaths cooling the spit under his chin, it would be so easy like this when Gojo can't see his face but still has him in his arms. hook, line and sinker: flick his finger and cushion the dead weight of suguru's body—hold on until their bodies meld in rot and become one and the same. He can't bring himself to worry about the consequences, or if the girls find their bodies.
Gojo whines as Geto bottoms out, subsequently increasing his pace. He lets suguru swallow his moan and he wraps his pointer and fourth finger in a clasp around suguru's neck, middle knuckle sitting right on his Adam's apple, slotting in perfectly.
He knows Geto knows when the latter stills but doesn't pull out. With his nose in satoru's cheek, forehead to temple, he half grunts half grins, "do it."
It should be easy with Geto spurring him on, voice dry with resignation, body defenceless against Gojo's tight warmth. He is bare to Gojo's mercy, but mercy seems to mean something else for Geto. Gojo's hand trembles.
"The elders wanted you to do it long ago. you keep hesitating, Satoru. It's so unlike you,"
Gojo grits his teeth when a sudden jolt of anger impels him to shove Geto away but not far enough to lose sight of the tiny mole under his eye. So unlike me to disobey the elders for a deserter, so unlike me to stall the execution of a murderer, so unlike me to want you, still, after ten fucking years. Fingers still locked tight around his broad neck, six eyes sneers, "So unlike me, huh?" he segues, cruelty seeping into his blood flow. Two can play the game, "Tell me what I am like, Suguru."
"No," cop out. In that almost believable fashion. Geto was always suave that way—a liar's face they say, they aren't wrong. "You know yourself well. We don't need to rehash..." he latches onto Gojo's hips, "Plus your inflated ego rivals the fucking sun." Tacks on a trite joke at Gojo's expense to distract him. Old tricks, Gojo's knows them by heart like a good dog.
He knows the drill. Unlearning is a blessing. They have had 10 years to carve a hole in the dustier depths of their psyche and shove the three years of blue spring in it—label it a dream, leave it to rot, call it 'teenage petulance' and walk away. Whatever dredges of the past they've kept alive in the darkness and under the sheets is an attempt at soothing the phantom pains. For each of them, reminiscence is akin to scoring dough or knifing a fish's flank, letting the pain pour sideways and flow along with the blood and saltwater down the drain.
But Gojo is also a dog scorned. His canines are sharper this time, "I don't," he purrs, saccharine sweet, legs locking Geto in place, pulling him close enough to slot the rungs of their ribs together, "remind me?"