Work Text:
“Someone must have friends in high places to get both of us on this mission.”
Before Megumi could continue, the GPS interjected to remind him to turn when he had already exited the expressway. The road remained paved for only as long as it took them to get to the toll booth. With a muffled bump and a rough jolt, they trundled up the winding mountain road that would take them to Lake Tamako.
Sukuna gritted his teeth and willed away snide remarks about Megumi’s reckless driving—Megumi would just trot out that stupid story to remind him why he wasn’t allowed behind a wheel anymore. Instead, he made a scornful noise and said, “More likely than not, someone wants to develop the area to build a resort or something.”
Megumi hummed, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, but Sukuna knew he understood. After three years in the backwards hellhole that was Jujutsu Tech, Megumi had finally made it to First Grade despite how the new Zenin clan head tried to block his promotion at every opportunity. Consequently, his fees had grown exponentially to reflect his new rank.
Sukuna, on the other hand, had enrolled as a Special Grade sorcerer, having been scouted under suspicious circumstances. His sponsor had died shortly after and Sukuna was convinced that Gojo Satoru had stayed his execution just to spit in the eye of the higher ups. Sukuna wasn’t ungrateful but he hadn’t really needed that idiot’s help.
The mountain road eventually broke through scraggly trees and devolved further into a patchy dirt road. Megumi made no effort to slow down so every bump made Sukuna’s teeth rattle in his head—he wondered if it was revenge for their last mission together. It hadn’t been Sukuna’s fault that Megumi’s stubbornness was far greater than his strength.
Megumi braked hard and that was that. No one was likely to visit the lake so it didn’t matter that they had parked in the middle of the path. Megumi got out, nudged the door shut, and gave the surroundings a quick scan. “That’s a lot of abandoned buildings.”
“Shops and…” Sukuna narrowed his eyes. “Are those love hotels?”
“Lake Tamako was popular with a certain crowd,” Megumi responded. “Even when all these establishments were in business, people had a tendency of disappearing. That probably had less to do with cursed spirits and more to do with people who couldn’t deal with reality.”
At the flat look Sukuna gave him, Megumi simply jerked his chin in the direction of their rental car. “It was all in the brief. One of us has to read it.”
“Fushiguro Megumi, you get more insufferable every time we meet.”
Had Sukuna imagined the twitch of Megumi’s lips? He had turned his head away just a little too quickly for Sukuna to be sure.
“Come on, the cursed spirits are that way.”
They subsided as they started making their way closer to the lake. The air was still, stagnant, even though the lake rippled with a phantom breeze. It was only when Sukuna’s foot hit the cracked pathway outlining the lake that he sensed the rising cursed energy and the resultant barrier.
Megumi’s brow creased—he must have detected the same thing Sukuna had. Ever the responsible one, Megumi pulled down a tobari even as Sukuna went on the offensive. Cleave took care of the cursed spirits boiling out of the love hotel ahead of them but as quickly as they evaporated into columns of spectral ash, more took their place. They were little more than minor annoyances, requiring just as much effort to swat down as one would mosquitoes, which made Sukuna click his tongue, already bored.
Yet, inside the derelict building down the path, the one with the pink walls streaked with mould and dirt, beat a rotten, cursed heart. Something much stronger lurked within and Sukuna couldn’t wait to cut it to pieces and see what it was made of.
“Here, I’ll take care of these cursed spirits and mop up the rest.” Megumi put his hand inside his shadow and pulled out Sukuna’s golden trishula. From experience, Sukuna knew it was searing and thrummed against the skin in a most unsettling way, but Megumi didn’t even flinch. Perhaps he had grown used to it. “You go after the big one.”
“With pleasure.” Sukuna accepted his cursed tool with a toothy grin. As a Special Grade sorcerer, he had myriad techniques and skills at his disposal, but the higher ups had seen fit to impose ridiculous limitations on him.
What a joke they were: the one with the domain expansion had been forbidden to use it while the one with the incomplete domain had been told to use it more. Sukuna swore that the higher ups were trying to hamstring their best and brightest, if not out of fear, then from a desire to cling to what little control they had left. Well, Sukuna wasn’t about to let that happen, not when he had found something, someone, interesting to slow down for.
Sukuna kicked the front door in without any ceremony and immediately came face to face with the cursed spirit. Not that he could have missed it—it was just as large as the room it oozed out of, its girth straining against the rotting partitions and the flimsy walls. Every part of it was covered in grabbing arms, writhing tongues, and tangled hanks of hair. From between the rolls of bruise-coloured skin, a viscous fluid seeped. The smell was so rancid it made Sukuna gag.
It was pathetic.
It swivelled its lumpy head around and held its insectile arms out to Sukuna in entreaty. It wailed and sobbed too, as if Sukuna could so easily be moved.
“Do you love me?”
Sukuna wrinkled his nose and brandished his trishula. The cursed spirit was huge—he needed to think of a good place to strike.
“Show me proof!”
“Oh, I’ll show you proof of my love,” Sukuna scoffed.
Physical form meant just as much as the soul, but in the case of cursed spirits, cursed energy was all that mattered. Sukuna ignored the way the cursed spirit squirmed towards him, easily sidestepping the swipes of its clawed hands, and aimed for the concentrated kernel of cursed energy at its core. With the trishula held at a perfect angle to his body, his arms folded in just the right way, Sukuna struck a decisive blow that split the air and the body of the cursed spirit alike, sparking light and dark energy, setting off violent rumbles like a bolt of lightning. It stripped away the twisted form the cursed spirit wore, carved away its cursed energy, and just one strike crushed it into a mass of pure energy.
The energy spun in one direction, mimicking the cursed energy it had been distilled from, but as Sukuna stared at it through the floating debris, it twisted and curled up on itself until its rotation was reversed and cursed energy turned into positive energy.
Interesting. That hadn’t happened before.
Something creaked under his feet. It cracked, groaned, groaned louder, and the next thing Sukuna knew, he was pitching forwards into the gaping maw of the rest of the cursed spirit, which had been hiding under the love hotel.
He wondered what would happen if he used Malevolent Shrine inside a cursed spirit. If he redrew the perimeter of his domain, perhaps he wouldn’t end up accidentally digging a canal straight into the side of the lake.
His feet hit the edge of the cursed spirit’s maw. He tried to kick off from the edge but the slimy spit there made his shoes squelch and slip instead. Grinning madly, readying his trishula, Sukuna prepared himself to be swallowed by the disgusting cursed spirit.
But Megumi had other ideas. From the darkness under the splintered floorboards, two pale hands appeared. They grasped Sukuna by the collar of his uniform so that he fell into a pool of shadow rather than the gaping maw of the cursed spirit.
Sukuna’s heart stopped; the air in his lungs froze. Time itself came to a standstill and everything that made the world real melted away. There was no weight, not gravity, no up or down or even motion. In the lonely abyss, there was nothing, and nothing was all Sukuna was.
Then, he was being ejected from a height, out of Megumi’s shadow, upside down, wrongside right, all while the derelict love hotel rolled onto its side.
Sukuna crashed onto the ground and let himself roll until he got his feet under him. He sprang to his feet as soon as he did and found the other end of the cursed spirit haunting the love hotel. It was a small, shrivelled little thing, but it had attached itself to the larger, bloated cursed spirit, feeding it cursed energy while it rotted away the world around it on the second floor. It turned its teary face up to him, its many eyes leaking down its cheeks, and shrieked.
“I gave up everything for you!”
This was what Sukuna had to strike at first—he hadn’t sensed it before because the first cursed spirit had hidden it completely. In an instant, what had happened became clear: as soon as Sukuna had exorcised the large cursed spirit downstairs, Megumi must have detected the true source of the attack upstairs.
Nue swooped past and Sukuna leaned out of the way with little effort, his thoughts derailed.
“Oi, are you slacking off up there?”
“Just wrapping up!” Sukuna called back cheerfully though his teeth were gritted tightly. He turned back to the wailing cursed spirit and swung his trishula around one-handed so that he could bring his free hand up. With his index finger and middle finger pointed straight up, the rest curled towards the palm, he intoned, “Cleave.”
As it turned out, the love hotel had been steeped in so much cursed energy that it became a target of Cleave as well. Not only had Sukuna sliced the cursed spirit into a million fluttering ribbons, he had torn the love hotel apart too. Who even knew how all that interacted with the ball of positive energy that was still downstairs.
For the third time that evening, the floor shifted and bucked, before the building came crashing down around his ears.
When the rubble had settled, Sukuna shoved the broken piece of the ceiling off his body and patted the dust from his uniform. He ran his free hand through his hair to fix it, pushing it back from his forehead. He hated his hair getting in his eyes—he really couldn’t understand how Megumi could stand it.
It was as if his thoughts had summoned the younger third year. Megumi climbed out of the shadow between two trees and looked around intently, no doubt in search of Sukuna. Sukuna knew the moment his gaze landed on him, because it was then that his face scrunched up in a dark glower.
Megumi marched up to Sukuna without fear, when all others would have cowered with their faces pressed to the ground. None of them had eyes that lit up like Megumi’s did, especially when he was furious, and none of them looked half as good with blood smeared over half their face. Sukuna could acknowledge the fact that Megumi was mesmerising, even when measured in this most banal of ways.
“How is using Cleave like that different from using Malevolent Shrine?”
Sukuna didn’t listen to the rest of what Megumi had to say. He was far more preoccupied with the absurd lashes framing Megumi’s eyes and the wash of pink over the bridge of his nose. Even the seeping cut on his forehead suited him, serving as a testament to the way he had stuck by Sukuna’s side when everything was said and done.
Was it strange of Sukuna not to have paid attention to all those details before?
Sukuna eased the pad of his thumb over the wound, drawing a twitch from Megumi, especially when he used reverse cursed technique to heal it. The pink on Megumi’s cheeks deepened and so did the frown he was wearing.
“You know, the only reason I tolerate being in that good-for-nothing school is because you’re there.” Never had Sukuna ever thought he would confess such a thing, but once the words were out, he felt no regrets.
Megumi’s lips parted but it took him another second before he found his words. “I know. You’re not very subtle.”
“You’re being awfully bold, Fushiguro Megumi.” Sukuna’s hand moved lower until his fingers curled over Megumi’s chin. “It’s stupid of you to speak to me as if I were just anyone else.”
“It’s not stupid.” Instead of jerking away and seeking to escape, Megumi went very still. His eyes were dark, his pupils spiralling open and making the green of his eyes thin down to a sliver. Had his mouth been that pink before? What about that little peek of the tip of his tongue as he wet his lips? “I know you’re a real threat and I know you’re not a good person, but I know you.”
Sukuna couldn’t keep himself from trailing the pads of his fingers up the line of Megumi’s jaw. When he reached the hinge and the hollow right behind it, his hand kept moving up and cupped his cheek. “You really believe that, don’t you?”
“There’s—” Megumi leaned into Sukuna’s touch, seemingly without thought. The same couldn’t be said about how he curled his own hand over Sukuna’s, caressing along the valleys of his knuckles, threading their fingers together. “I do. It just feels… right. The day I figure out what this is is the day I will be free from it.”
Sukuna's voice grew more quiet and he tilted Megumi’s head up, leaning in so much that their foreheads almost touched, “Then I’ll just have to take everything I want from you before that day arrives.”
Sukuna meant the enigma of Megumi’s cursed technique, of course, and the relentless willpower he possessed when he was shoved into a corner. Yet, what he did was lean in and press his lips against Megumi’s.
Whether Megumi’s lips parted then out of surprise or eagerness, Sukuna didn’t care. He pressed closer, sliding his tongue into Megumi’s mouth, and deepened the kiss. It was strange how something so basic could remind him that he wasn’t standing by the lake alone, craving something he had no right to.
Wait.
The small, strained noise Megumi made was almost enough to distract Sukuna, as was the tentative brush of his tongue against his. He felt good in Sukuna’s embrace, leaning against the front of his body, his mouth hot and wet and eager. And Megumi was eager—his fingers were tangled in Sukuna’s hair and in the front of his jacket, like he couldn’t conceive of releasing Sukuna.
“Megumi, wait—” With great reluctance, Sukuna pushed them apart. He hated the flash of hurt in Megumi’s eyes, but it was gone almost as soon as Sukuna identified it.
“You feel it too.”
Megumi looked over and nodded. “It must be the lingering influence of the cursed spirit.”
“Yes.” There was more, and after a moment’s consideration, Sukuna added in a low voice, “But I don’t think it would create something out of nothing.”
Megumi’s back straightened suddenly. When he turned to meet Sukuna’s gaze again, there was steely intent in his dark eyes. “I’m tired. You should drive us somewhere nearby where we can stay the night.”
A slow smile blossomed on Sukuna’s face. “You’re right. A love hotel?”
“Go to hell.”