Chapter Text
“You want me to mama-bird the curse into your mouth?!”
Geto puts his head in his hands. “Please don’t say it like that,” he cringes. It’s not like Gojo’s wrong about the…physics of it all, but his semi-enthusiasm about it is something Geto is not keen on exploring right now. “Don’t fucking chew on it, don’t do anything just–I’ll do all the work, okay?” He figures they only have one real shot at getting it right; the curse needs to go directly from Gojo and to him, or else there’s a chance it could take form. Geto really did not want to fight a curse in his bedroom. Not while it was relatively clean.
“Yeah, just tell me what to do,” Gojo says with a sigh, leaning back to sit against the headboard.
They’re both still on the bed, only now they’re sitting with a fair amount of space between them. Geto doesn't know where to begin. He’s never had to expel a curse from his own body, let alone someone else’s; the curses become an extension of himself, and they always return.
“What does it feel like?” Geto asks, pointing to Gojo’s abdomen. He wonders if it’s anything like the constant churning in his own stomach, or if the curse has even awoken yet.
“Like there’s a black hole in my fuckin’ guts, I don't know. There’s a pit of… nothing. My eyes know it’s there, but I can’t touch it at all.”
Geto hums and reaches toward Gojo, placing his hand on the man’s torso. He can feel the cursed energy beneath his palm, dormant, but there nonetheless. He’s about to try to move it when his hand stills, apprehension clouding his head as he’s suddenly very worried about the odds of him killing his best friend. Gojo looks at him expectantly, but Geto can’t meet his eyes.
“What if I can’t do it?” he whispers, and as soon as he says it he wants to shove the words right back in. Speaking his doubt aloud felt like bearing an open wound to the blade that cut him. He knows it’s bleeding, he feels it sting. He thinks with almost certainty that Gojo wouldn’t even be angry. He’d just look at Geto with forlorn disappointment, and any chance at mending their friendship would be shattered irreparably. He feels his breath quicken, and he’s about to just get up and run when Satoru’s hand covers his.
“You’re the only one who can,” he says, and maybe it’s the way his fingers interlock with Suguru’s or the honesty that overwhelms his voice, but somehow, Suguru convinces himself it’s worth trying.
He closes his eyes and focuses his attention on the feeling of his fingertips, waiting for the familiar static murmur of a curse crawling toward him. It creeps up to Suguru’s palm like a heavy fog, and he can feel Satoru’s breathing become laboured beneath their hands. Suguru guides them up to his chest, Satoru’s heart beating wildly when they pass it, then faster still when their fingers brush the skin of his collarbone. Satoru’s breath catches in his throat as his hand slides down to hold Suguru’s wrist, and Suguru can feel the fog up to his elbow now. He slips his hand to the back of Satoru’s neck, pulling him close and running through the hair at the base of his skull as he kisses him.
When the curse finally hits his mouth, Suguru drinks it down hungrily and finds he doesn't mind the soiled taste as much when it's on Satoru’s lips. All he feels is its raw power rolling over his tongue, pouring into him. The aftertaste burns like he drank a whole bottle of liquor and chased it with firecrackers, blazing through his body and down his limbs, scalding his skin as the fog overtakes him completely. Suguru gasps, pulling his hands from where they had been holding Satoru so that he wouldn't burn him, too, but the other sorcerer isn’t concerned with that at all.
“How,” Satoru’s voice is hoarse and he coughs, “how do you feel?”
“Like I could fucking fly,” Suguru feels a grin split his face and can't help the laughter that tumbles out. This warmth, this strength flooding his veins–it’s addictive. He can’t remember the last time he felt it was power fueling him instead of poison. He can't even figure out what kind of curse it is right away for lack of the usual dread.
Satoru pulls him down for another kiss, and Suguru thinks his heart might combust. He’s kneeling in between Satoru’s legs and running his hands up the muscles of his thighs when Satoru groans. It’s a sweet, low sound, and Suguru wants to hear it again and again. His hands migrate to Satoru’s biceps and he squeezes them in awe.
“You’re so obsessed with me,” Satoru teases breathlessly, and Suguru says nothing, peppering kisses down the column of his lover’s neck. He pulls aside the loose collar of the t-shirt Satoru’s wearing and bites him between his neck and shoulder. The man swears as he falls back against the headboard, his head hitting the wood with a soft thud. “Off,” he says, and Suguru blinks twice before he realizes Satoru means the shirt. There is so much to worship under the fabric; a god bare and vulnerable, as if the man’s skin was cut from satin woven to be smooth for Suguru’s fingertips; divinity fashioned for his hands, divinity he is worthy of praying to. Suguru leaves marks where he knows nobody else will find them, relishes the bruised hips he’s laid claim to, and begins to undress.
Satoru makes love like he argues, rambling with cheeky arrogance that folds under Suguru’s firm gaze and reverent touches. He commands and Suguru is eager to comply, to devote himself completely, and he thinks he might have stumbled upon salvation.
They don’t talk about it all right away. It’s hard to broach the topic of the Star Plasma Vessel with Gojo, mostly because he only remembers bits and pieces of that mission. Riko getting shot through the head, though? Yeah, he’s never forgetting that. The image of her crumpling to the ground moments after being told she’d be saved–Geto relives it when he sleeps, when he hears a sound that might be a gunshot. Satoru starts sleeping over in his room.
It’s hard to stop being angry when every day seems to give Geto a new reason to be. How is he supposed to forgive and abide by this fucked-up system for the rest of his life? How is he supposed to be okay with a society that glorifies sending kids to die, raising them like lambs for slaughter? The anger eventually simmers to bitterness, but not before reaching its peak. When Haibara and Nanami are nearly killed in a mission fighting a mis-graded curse, Geto sprains his wrist punching a hole through his wall. He’s flooded with such visceral rage and the worst part is that he doesn’t even know where to put it. The higher-ups, for making kids do their dirty work? Non-sorcerers, for generating cursed energy with no way to control it? Himself, for not being strong enough to do anything about it?
Just when it feels like he’s about to slip off the deep end, there’s a hand in his that pulls him back from the edge. They go out to the training rooms and spar until Suguru is too tired to fight anymore and can’t tell if it’s sweat or tears streaking down his face. Satoru tells him about wanting to be a teacher, and Geto entertains himself thinking about how much the kids are going to love him. Or hate him. Maybe both. He swears he’d never let them be hurt, and Geto knows he's the only one who could make that promise and keep it.
Somewhere along the line Geto realizes the problem is a lot more complex than he thought. Non-sorcerers aren’t just unbridled beacons of negative emotions, and most of them don't even have the heart to draw it out of one another without reason. Geto sees a lot of reasons. They’re victims of a system, too, one that needlessly pits them against each other for money and power, that turns them into pawns for their leaders.
Everything Geto hates about Jujutsu is merely a mimicry of the bigger picture, and he’s forced to grapple with a new kind of helplessness.
Satoru inspires him, though. He’s the strongest, he could have the Earth fall before him if he pleased, and he doesn’t want it; he claims the world is too delicate for one pair of hands, let alone his. At first it puzzles him, but learning that the Gojo Satoru dreams of a future filled with mundanity is revolutionary. Maybe fulfillment isn’t something that already exists, waiting for him to chase after and seize it. Maybe it's made. Maybe it’s the warmth of shared meals, the familiarity of his friend’s faces around the table, the steadiness of the ground he sits on; knowing surely that he matters to the only people he really cares about. Maybe he doesn’t have to change the world completely, because as long as he takes care of the people around him he’ll be leaving it a better place. Suguru adjusts his philosophy, and amelioration is much less of a burden when his world is only a handful of people.
Over time, mornings become tolerable, then desirable. There’s no more nausea that sits deep in Suguru’s throat threatening to leap out as he wakes, or a crushing weight on his chest that buries him beneath his blankets. He stops lying in bed for hours before getting up. He brushes his teeth and hair, he lets himself actually look in the mirror. Practices smiling in it. His cheeks are fuller and his skin is no longer as ghastly pale as it had been, and he grows his hair past his shoulders for the first time since childhood.
“I like it like this,” Satoru tells him while they laze about in the grass. He’s got a finger curled around a piece of Geto’s hair while the other sorcerer lays in his lap.
“Watch it,” Geto warns when he feels a light tug, but his eyes remain closed. He can picture Satoru’s face peering down at him, sunglasses perched in his hair, haloed by the gold and red leaves of the maple he’s leaning against. The September air is cool and sweet in his lungs, and it’s an odd feeling, not to crave a cigarette instead. He hears some light rattling, a whispered, ‘Fuck! ’ above him, and then something small is bouncing off Geto’s forehead into the dirt by his ear. “What are you doing?”
“Want the last one?”
Geto’s eyes open and focus on the teal bottle of ramune in Satoru’s hand. The man shakes a single candy into his open palm, thankfully with no chance of strays this time. Geto opens his mouth to take the candy then balks when Gojo shoves it in his own. Asshole.
“Why would you ask if you were just gonna eat it, shithead?” he spits, but he’s not truly bothered. Satoru grins with closed lips, then leans forward and presses them against Suguru’s. He’s eager, swiping his tongue past chapped lips and flooding Suguru’s taste buds with sugary citrus. Suguru can feel the candy as it fizzles in his mouth, bumping his teeth as he tries to kiss back, but the angle is awkward and Satoru leans back against the tree with a laugh.
Suguru realizes one day over a bowl of rice that the emptiness he once felt in his stomach can be satiated. It’s a sleepy Saturday morning, frost painting the grass and trees outside while Gojo and Shoko fry eggs on the stove. He eats breakfast because he’s hungry, he pulls out his phone to take a video when Shoko yells at Gojo for breaking a yolk. He smiles when Satoru sits across from him because he’s happy, and simply being has never been easier.
Curses don't hurt him as badly as they used to. They barely hurt at all. They still taste horrendous, tinged with fear or hatred, jealousy, rage–but Suguru learns to consume them with sympathy. He handles the curses with the same care he’d give a wounded animal, and they’re all better for it. The curse Satoru had swallowed months before was a tiny thing he named Aiko, a serpent-like creature with charred sapphire feathers and sharp, venomous fangs. Satoru refuses to stop referring to Aiko as their child, and though Suguru rolls his eyes every time, he does it with a smile.
He still smokes sometimes, but the tobacco isn’t as soothing as it used to be. Not when Satoru tears the cigarettes out of his hand if he sees Suguru try to light one, or ignores him if he can smell ashes on Suguru’s clothes. Once he might have been annoyed, resentful, or argued out of spite. But now?
He’s fucking grateful.