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In Satoru’s defence, he has really good eyes.
Still, he didn’t mean it to come out like that. Like an accusation.
The hot tongue lapping at his pulse has stilled. Where he’s draped over Satoru, pressing him into the mattress bit by bit, Suguru’s entire body goes lax. He breathes out a laugh, damp against Satoru’s neck, but Satoru can’t find the humour in the situation. Can't do anything but stare down the newly inked skin encircling Suguru’s ankle, peeking out from under his hakama. There’s barely more than a centimetre on show, but to Satoru, it’s unmistakable. It’s out of place.
Somewhere by his ear, Suguru sounds mildly disappointed though not exactly surprised when he says, ‘I guess I didn’t think this through.’
Satoru isn’t used to people hiding things from him; it isn’t something that’s usually possible. In fact, there’s probably only one person alive who could successfully keep a secret from Gojō Satoru.
And the thing is, blinking down at the secret in question, Satoru doesn’t understand why he would even want to. Dishonesty just isn’t something that occurs to Satoru. Not when it comes to Suguru.
Obviously, he knows there are things Suguru doesn’t tell him—just because he doesn’t hear about all the gruesome details, doesn’t mean Satoru isn’t fully aware of what Suguru gets up to when he isn’t around—but that’s different. That’s less like dishonesty and more like circumvention of the truth. Circumvention of the truth that they agreed to for the sake of their relationship, if they can even call it that.
Because people in a relationship don’t keep dirty little secrets from one another, do they? People in a relationship share everything. People in love share everything.
‘It isn’t finished yet.’
Sitting back on his haunches, Suguru smacks Satoru’s hand away from his ankle, tugging the fabric back down over an inky black cuff that stretches far higher than Satoru anticipated. Something must show on his face, because when he only sits there in stunned silence, Suguru takes pity on him. Rolling his eyes, he peels his juban away from his hip to reveal the sharp lines cutting shapes across his skin, blossoming under the gap in his hakama before disappearing somewhere Satoru had until this very moment believed was for his eyes only.
‘It was too big for one sitting,’ Suguru says, letting the cotton of his juban fall over where Satoru’s gaze is burning a hole into the curve of his behind. He can barely contain his excitement; his voice is practically trembling with it. It’s outrageous. ‘Tsukide-san is doing the colour next week.’
‘Tsukide-san?’ Satoru barks. Actually, it comes out more like a yelp. A really whiny one. It’s just that he’d failed to make the mental leap from “Suguru got a secret tattoo” to: ‘You let another man touch you? On your ass?’
‘How do you know it’s a man?’ Suguru chides, all haughty and self-righteous.
It is a man, then. Satoru says nothing, folding his arms over his chest. He feels naked all of a sudden. He is naked, sat there in his underpants while Suguru hovers over him, practically fully dressed. Anyone could be forgiven for thinking that Satoru was the one who went around showing his ass to other men.
Suguru purrs his name through a smile like a cat that got the cream, dragging out the last syllable in that way that makes the hairs on the back of Satoru’s neck stand to attention.
‘Are you pouting, Satoru?’
Probably.
‘Are you jealous?’
Definitely, but Satoru won’t admit it. It isn’t dishonesty, it’s circumventing the truth. It’s what they do.
‘Did it hurt?’ he asks instead.
Because it’s more complicated than that. If they were people in a relationship, Suguru would understand that. Instead, he just huffs out a laugh that’s both amused and bemused, like he doesn’t know why Satoru cares.
‘No more than a regular tattoo, I imagine.’
Satoru prides himself on his quick wits. He’s excellent at finding patterns and even better at synthesising information into a cohesive conclusion at a moment’s notice. He’s a fucking genius and no one could even fault him for saying it, but now, he just feels like a fucking idiot.
‘A regular tattoo,’ he repeats, monotone.
This evening is rapidly taking a turn for the worse, catalogued by a series of tiny hurts delivered with a charming smile that borders on nihilistic. Every one of them is a needle under Satoru’s skin.
And Suguru still doesn’t get it. He scoffs, tossing his hair over his shoulder. It’s casual. More than that, it’s defensive. ‘Well, I wasn’t going to let a mo—non-sorcerer do it, was I?’
He corrects his slip-up so quickly that Satoru almost believes Suguru simply stumbled over his words. He knows better, though. He knows what Suguru gets up to when he isn’t around, even if they don’t talk about it. It isn’t dishonesty, but it feels like it right now.
Gritting his teeth, Satoru tries to remember that they came to this agreement for a reason. He knows he can’t change Suguru. Doesn’t want to change Suguru, except for in moments like this. Mostly, he tries to pretend that Suguru murdering people in his free time is the thing that’s bothering him.
But dishonesty just isn’t something that occurs to Satoru. Not when it comes to Suguru.
‘A sorcerer used his technique on you?’ he blurts before he can stop himself. ‘He put his cursed energy inside you?’
Suguru doesn’t even try to hide the fact that he’s laughing at Satoru now. He leans in close, making bedroom eyes as though he can simply seduce his way out of this. When he slips his hand up Satoru’s thigh to squeeze at his cock, caging him against the wall, Satoru can’t help groaning at the touch. Not because it feels good (it does feel good) but because he’s still straining against his underwear, embarrassingly. Fucking frustrating when your most sincere feelings are undermined by the raging boner you’re sporting.
‘Seriously?’ Suguru asks when Satoru turns away from his kiss. From the corner of his eye, Satoru sees his lips twitch, torn between amusement and condemnation when he poses his next question.
And what can he say to that?
He takes a moment to consider his answer—to think of a way to circumvent the truth—but perhaps that’s answer enough. As the silence stretches on, Suguru’s smile starts to fall and Satoru doesn’t even care. Can’t find it in him to stop scowling, even as Suguru’s eyes grow wide in his face.
‘Did it, Satoru?’
It always bothered him. It still bothers him.
Back then, it was nothing more than petty teenage jealousy. Someone else putting their hands all over his crush that Satoru didn’t even realise was a crush at the time. It was easy to dismiss when he didn’t understand what he was feeling.
But then it took root, branching through the murkiest depths of Satoru’s being, feeding and searching and growing before finally emerging fully formed, unmistakable when it broke the surface tension at last. Satoru still remembers the strength of the wave, washing over him with enough force to knock the air from his lungs. Still remembers the bittersweet sound that burst from his chest as the truth lapped at his edges, as the bud took on the colour of it.
He wishes he could say his love is pure, but dishonesty just isn’t something that occurs to Satoru. Not when it comes to Suguru. The truth is, his love was awash with the blood on Suguru’s hands long before it ever bloomed.
‘You’re being a baby now,’ Suguru says suddenly, pulling away without warning. He throws himself back on the futon—takes himself away from Satoru, out of his reach—and it feels like a punishment. Love has always felt like a punishment to Satoru. ‘I can’t believe you’re throwing a—Satoru!’
It’s okay though. By now, he knows how to speak Suguru’s language. Knows that even as he protests in Satoru’s arms, launched back into his embrace by the tiny Red at his back, Suguru prefers indirect communication. Satoru’s love laid bare makes him uncomfortable. And Satoru is getting better at talking in riddles.
‘Don’t use your technique on me without warning me,’ Suguru snaps, but he’s breathless with the thrill of it. Satoru can see it lighting up the darkest parts of his eyes where he glowers down at him. He knows how to speak Suguru’s language.
‘Here’s your warning then.’ Satoru searches his face for a sign that he’s taking things too far, knowing he won’t find it. ‘Over my knee, Suguru.’ He means it as a command, even as he pulls Suguru close, presses their bodies together to tug at the straps still sitting snug around his waist. ‘These off first.’
Finally, Suguru stills in his hold. ‘Are you punishing me?’ he breathes at last, voice barely more than a whisper. ‘Is this a punishment?’
‘For what?’ Satoru slips his hands between the gaps in Suguru’s hakama, sliding his fingers over his ass. ‘For letting another man touch you?’ he growls. ‘Hurt you?’ It draws a hiss from Suguru when he squeezes, sinking his claws in deep. ‘Fill you up with his cursed energy?’
Satoru grazes his teeth along the line of his jaw, waits for Suguru to bare his throat to him.
‘Tsk, of course I’m not punishing you.’ He withdraws his hands, lips twitching as Suguru rushes to steady himself. ‘What kind of asshole do you take me for?’ Satoru asks, gloating over the sight of his flushed face falling in the moment before he fixes it. ‘I’m going to finish Suguru’s tattoo so Tsukide-chan doesn’t have to.’
‘With your technique?’
Staring down at him, Suguru looks incredulous. A little nervous, perhaps, with his brows pinched together like that. He looks like he doesn’t know how to feel, smile wavering even as his cheeks flush and his eyes darken, pupils blown wide with arousal.
Satoru shapes his voice into something softer. Soft but firm as he pats his thigh. Just enough to take the edge off when he gives his command one more time.
‘Over my knee, Suguru.’
For a moment, he wonders if Suguru is going to make him fight for it. Satoru’s gaze flickers to where the corner of his mouth ticks up and he feels his heart twinge something awful in his chest. Feels his throat seize with a strange desperation, something he doesn’t want to say getting caught on the way up.
Then Suguru softens, too. Without a word, he shuffles back on the futon, slipping off the sheets like silk to stand before him. In the low light of the temple compound after dark, he towers over Satoru like a king. Here, in this place Satoru only ever steals away to in the dead of night, Suguru is king, but now he obeys someone else, smiling at Satoru as he first lets his hair free of its constraints.
It falls around his shoulders like a curtain, darkness blacker than the darkness beyond the window, even glinting under the glow of the lamps. His expression is dangerously at ease as he rolls his shoulders, letting his already disheveled juban fall open. Even with his heart in his throat, Satoru can’t help his gaze falling to newly uncovered skin, stretched taut over a sculpted chest. The cotton slips down over Suguru’s arms—and that’s when Satoru sees them.
Inky waves washing over his stomach, petals crawling over his lower ribs, climbing towards his heart. And reaching within, too, down under his hakama where even Satoru can’t see.
At least until Suguru lets him in on the full scale of his secret. At least until he turns his back on Satoru to tug the fastening loose, winding the ties around his waist, letting them fall slack over his hips. The material glides over the swell of his glutes, pulling back the curtain on the colourless flower in full bloom over his left buttock, emerging from the murky waves breaking all around it.
His hakama slip lower still and Satoru hears his own breath catch in his throat. Because it’s only when Suguru turns to face him once more—it’s only when Satoru sees the actual waves, uncoloured where they crest over the stem of a flower—that he realises the spiralling shapes originating from an untouched patch of skin over Suguru’s knee aren’t waves at all.
Worse, he realises he doesn’t know what they are. Where it follows the unique contours of Suguru’s anatomy, the swirling vortex of ink reminds Satoru of the swirling vortex of cursed energy at his centre. Similar, but not the same. A roiling writhing mass of curses that’s both familiar to Satoru and entirely foreign, too.
It’s beautiful, absolutely, but the real secret Suguru has been keeping from him is overwhelming. Wave after wave washing over Satoru with enough force to knock the air from his lungs, or perhaps these aren’t waves either.
He studies them in silence. Rather, he’s stunned into silence by the sheer scale of the design that twists its way down the entirety of Suguru’s left leg, unbroken until it ends in a clean line above the jut of his ankle bone. Even if he discards them now, Suguru drapes himself in robes every day, hiding his true self under the garb of a pious man. His commitment to the charade would be impressive if it weren’t so upsetting.
Only non-believers are privy to the real Suguru. A singular non-believer, and now a curse user with a convenient technique. Satoru wonders exactly how long this stranger had his hands on Suguru’s naked body. More than that, he wonders how much he made it hurt.
‘Still want to finish it?’ Suguru asks, pointing his toes, elongating his leg so that Satoru might appreciate the enormity of the artwork sprawled across his sculpted body.
Satoru has no idea what his face is doing, but he can tell Suguru is enjoying it. He can hear the self-satisfied grin in his voice. Can’t see it, though; he’s too busy counting flowers. Six in total, but Satoru has his sights set on the petals spreading across Suguru’s left ass cheek, curling over his hip and across the crease where his thigh begins. It’s almost too perfect.
When Satoru says nothing—simply sets his jaw and plants his hands on the futon behind him—Suguru makes a little sound of amusement in his throat. Still, he dutifully gathers his hair over one shoulder and climbs into the space Satoru has made for him.
Suguru has always had a knack for making the inelegant seem elegant. Muscular though he is, he unfurls like a flower, unfolding limb after long limb until he’s all laid out in Satoru’s lap. Where Suguru’s pelvis presses into him, Satoru can feel his growing anticipation filling out against his thigh. His own flagging erection responds in kind, as though conditioned to answer Suguru’s arousal.
The weight of him is grounding, the warmth of him comforting, the sight of him utterly arresting. Suguru is a work of art all by himself. He doesn’t need any enhancements, Satoru’s or otherwise, but that’s hardly relevant. Even if Satoru is almost afraid to touch him now, afraid to ruin it all, beautification isn’t the point in what he has planned.
If Suguru notices the way his breath shudders out of him when he drags his palm over his glutes, he doesn’t mention it. The flower is big enough to house Satoru’s entire handprint, even when he splays his fingers wide, reaching for the edges of the blossoming petals. Studying the distinctive shape, he almost asks Suguru why he chose it then immediately thinks better of the idea.
Instead, Satoru traces the line art with his fingertips, as though he could draw out the residuals of the technique that put it there. It’s useless, of course. The sorcerer’s cursed energy has long since been subsumed by Suguru’s—superior, potent enough to overpower almost anyone’s. Still, it isn’t hard to imagine it rushing under his skin, travelling along those inked lines, distinct from the familiar ebb and flow of Suguru’s cursed energy until it wasn’t.
Whoever this Tsukide is, he’s weak; Satoru doesn’t need to see his residuals to know that much. It’s a creative technique, certainly. Valuable for talisman users, potentially, but they’re weak, too. Satoru wouldn’t even need to waste his energy on the flick of a finger to erase each and every one of them from existence. Even for Suguru, the curse user provides nothing more than a fleeting amusement.
Somehow that makes it worse, knowing that Suguru accepted his cursed energy into his body anyway, welcomed it with his own even. After all, he’s the supremacist between the two of them. If Suguru could see the world the way he does, he wouldn’t have done it, Satoru thinks. That’s the whole problem; that’s what he isn’t getting.
All sorcerers can “see” cursed energy, but none of them can really see it. Not like Satoru can. He alone knows what it looks like when cursed energies mix and mingle and merge. He’s watched the mint green infusion of Shōko’s technique at work a thousand times. He knows exactly how long it takes for two unique energies to become indistinguishable from one another.
And it’s all the same to him; the Six Eyes don’t distinguish between good and bad, pure and impure. Satoru doesn’t care if “dirty” cursed energy rubs up against him.
But Suguru does. If he could see it, Suguru would care. Suguru would understand that this piece of shit doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as him, let alone desecrate the temple of his body with his technique.
Except this no-name sorcerer can do something that even Gojō Satoru can’t.
Satoru has pushed Limitless further than any of his ancestors, yet no matter how hard he’s tried, no matter how much he’s willed them to pass beyond the bounds of his own body, he cannot share his blessings. He cannot heal others, he cannot save them. And he certainly isn’t an artist. He cannot create something beautiful using another person’s body as his canvas.
The only thing Satoru’s technique is suited for is total and utter annihilation. The only way he knows how to transfer his cursed energy is through the violent application of it. The only way he knows how to paint colours into another person’s skin, too.
Love to the strong.
Well, no one can say the strongest sorcerer isn’t resourceful.
For a moment, he thinks he’s fucked up. Suguru throws his head back and Satoru thinks he’s fucked up.
Except when he looks at the colour forming at the centre of the flower, a blush bleeding into the shape of his fingers, he realises he didn’t miscalculate. Satoru knows the importance of precision; he knows the devastation caused by even a single vector left unaccounted for. That was a lesson he learned before he could even speak in full sentences. People are like petals, they told him in the aftermath, easy to bruise if he miscalculates.
But Suguru isn’t people. And Satoru never miscalculates.
‘You know, Suguru,’ he says, barely reining in his excitement as he reaches down to smooth away the tension between Suguru’s shoulder blades. ‘People tend to underestimate Blue.’ To the ignorant and the impressionable, it doesn’t seem as formidable as Red or Purple. It doesn’t create spectacular explosions in rainbow colours. ‘But when I use it like this?’
He pours amplified cursed energy into the Limitless now, gathering it in his palm before bringing it down on Suguru’s ass cheek. Blue shifts to red, blooming beautifully between the lines inked into his skin.
‘The space around my hand converges infinitely at the precise moment of impact,’ he explains over Suguru’s gasping. ‘Everything is drawn towards the negative distance I bring into reality. Nothing can escape an impossibility like that.’
Satoru slaps him three times in quick succession, revelling in the shout he smothers in the sheets. He’s barely even trying; it’s less force than he uses on his first years in the training room, but it doesn’t matter when Blue is wrapped around his fingers. Worn like a glove, it's a weapon all of its own.
‘It’s like a pair of brass knuckles, only far less crude and far more efficient. Not a single joule wasted,’ Satoru says, a little breathless with his own brilliance. ‘Do you understand, Suguru?’
Blue doesn’t create spectacular explosions in rainbow colours, but it’s versatile. It’s complex, it's sophisticated. It’s why it’s Satoru’s favourite part of his skillset even now.
Flexing his fingers confirms that he’s entirely invulnerable to the effects, naturally. There’s no pleasant tingle spreading over the surface of his palm; his hands aren’t hot with friction. There’s a good reason Satoru usually prefers to leave Limitless at the bedroom door, but even while he mourns the feeling of Suguru’s warm flesh under his fingers, his breath shudders out of him as he comprehends the potential of his new discovery.
He studies the flower blooming over Suguru’s left buttock, studies where the colour gathers at the centre. It’s good, it’s natural, but it’s clear the petals are going to give him some trouble where they taper to soft points. That’s okay, Satoru has always liked a challenge.
Settling one hand over Suguru’s lower back, he smooths the other over his ass, sparing a glance at where Suguru is twisting his fingers into the sheets. Turned away from him like this, Satoru can’t see his face where his loose hair spills over his shoulders. He can’t see the expression he’s wearing. Can’t recall Suguru giving him an answer either.
Well, he hopes Suguru understood, because now Satoru has revealed his hand, his hand is about to hurt a whole lot more.
‘Jesus fuck!’
When he was younger, Satoru found Blue exhausting to use, but what was tricky then is second nature to him now. Where he’d previously struggled to balance vectors and output and range, applying his technique to the same coordinates each and every time he brings his hand down is as easy as breathing—especially when Satoru has a motive as persuasive as this one.
After a bit of experimentation with the parameters, he establishes that he can redirect the force to an area the size of a pinprick, regardless of where his fingers land. If Satoru put his bodyweight behind the blow, charging it up with cursed energy to boot, it would tear through the flesh of a lesser sorcerer like a bullet.
Suguru is strong though. What would kill the chump who put the ink under his skin, Suguru could probably shrug off without even a mark to show for it. Unfortunately for Suguru, leaving marks is kind of the whole point in this particular exercise. And although Satoru isn’t trying to kill him, he certainly isn’t trying to go easy on him either.
Suguru is strong though. Every time Satoru ups the ante, he can’t help matching him strike for strike, cursed energy rising to meet him. Each application of his technique draws a slightly different sound from Suguru, who seems to grow quieter and quieter the more Satoru narrows his focus. He’s always been one to grit his teeth through the worst kind of pain where Satoru has always been one to grin through it.
He’s grinning now, too. Suguru has always had trouble letting go, but that’s okay, Satoru thinks as he siphons a little more cursed energy into his next hit. Suguru has always had trouble letting go and Satoru has always liked a challenge. They’ve always been a perfect match.
It’s effective, impressively so. Gratifying, too, watching Suguru’s capillaries bursting beneath his hands, his skin blooming in various shades of rouge. The entire thing is engrossing, almost ritualistic. Satoru gets into his rhythm like that, methodically punching his cursed energy into Suguru’s flesh, working his way along the line art smack by satisfying smack.
It reminds him of the first time he saw a geiko paint her lips with beni, back in Kyoto, back when he was tiny. The rich pigment had seemed stark against the oshiroi covering her face. It turned cinnabar red with a single stroke of her brush, like her skin was torn open by the fibres.
He’d later come to learn that real beni was inordinately expensive, owing to the one thousand safflowers required to produce enough red pigment for a single pot, but the geiko let him dip his fingers in it all the same. She let him marvel at the way it stained his pale skin, laughing behind her hand when he managed to get it in his hair. A young Satoru had been perplexed by it, transfixed by how quickly the colour transferred.
He feels like his six year old self again, applying a geiko’s rouge, captivated by the abrupt transformation from blue to red with every pass of his hand. By the sight of Suguru’s cursed energy rising to meet him, the taste of it on his tongue, the scent of it most of all.
The scent of iron on the air, too. The red mist settling over his vision. Like a shark in frenzy, he snaps his jaws to sample the metallic flavour of it, he bites again and again and again.
Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack.
It rings out across the room, broken up only by his own ragged breaths filling the silence between each strike.
The silence.
Satoru comes back to himself with his hand reared behind him, way too far behind him. Looking to Suguru in a panic, he sees him with his face buried in the sheets, panting softly. And looking down at his work, he feels a sick thrill rush through him, feels his cock jump against his stomach with the colour of it. No longer rouge, but crimson. A crimson lotus, bursting from Suguru’s skin.
It’s beautiful. It’s more perfect than he imagined possible, bleeding along the edges of the ink. It’s more precise than he believed himself capable of. Perhaps too precise. Satoru never miscalculates, but this is the colour of a miscalculation. He’s seen it hundreds of times before. He saw it staining the tips of his hair at the age of six, then again at sixteen.
Satoru never miscalculates, not anymore.
Does he?
‘Good job, Satoru.’
It’s muffled by the mattress, but Satoru would know his voice beneath the sound of a thousand screams.
He looks to where Suguru is lifting himself on shaky arms, heaving equally shaky breaths as he turns towards Satoru. His dark hair falls over his face like a curtain, but between the gaps, Satoru sees the glaze to his eyes, syrupy and sweet where he struggles to focus them. He sees his cheeks like red buds blooming.
The praise trickles down Satoru’s spine like his miscalculation trickled down the shōji screens within the Gojō clan compound before he could speak in full sentences, slow and sticky. This isn’t a miscalculation though.
‘You’re good, Satoru.’ It’s honey warmed by the heat of summer, it’s a spoonful of liquid sugar to settle his stomach. ‘You’re good.’
And Suguru is strong. He’s strong.
It’s with a thrill that Satoru realises Suguru’s cock is now engorged with blood where it’s pressing into his thigh, swollen with pleasure even as pain blooms across his skin. It’s with a thrill that Satoru realises Suguru is smiling.
Of course he is. Of course Suguru is getting off on this of all things. And who is Satoru to judge him for it? He feels a manic grin tugging at the corners of his lips, feels his own cock straining against the confines of his underwear.
Suguru is a fucking freak. They’ve always been a perfect match.
Even with Suguru laid out over his lap, skin on skin, sweat on sweat, Satoru is overcome by the need to close the distance between them. Limitless is a luminous blue thrum against his skin, but he lets it fall away now, eager to hold the angry red heat of Suguru’s flesh between his hands.
‘Fuck, Suguru,’ he whispers, tracing the mottled skin with the tip of his finger, dragging it through the pinpricks of colour bursting across the surface. ‘Fuck.’
Drunk on the sound that hisses out from between Suguru’s teeth when Satoru massages the tender flesh, he does it again, drawing more oxygen-rich blood to the surface. The bruises will change colour within hours, but for now, they’re bright and beautiful, even in the low light.
Overcome by strength of feeling or maybe his simple desire, Satoru sinks his fingers into Suguru’s swollen skin with a growl, pulling his cheeks apart then pushing them together then spreading them wide. His asshole reacts like a pupil exposed to the light, constricting under Satoru’s shameless admiration.
His name is little more than a whisper.
‘I know,’ Satoru breathes, swallowing down the curse that’s perpetually stuck in his throat when they’re together. He presses his thumb to the pucker of Suguru’s hole, just to test the give there. Just to feel it tighten and relax under his touch before pressing a little further, groaning as the tip of his thumb slips in, as Suguru’s body swallows him dry.
‘Satoru…’ This time, it’s more like a whine, more like a warning.
‘I know,’ he says again, soaking up the glorious sight for as long as Suguru will allow him. Satoru’s love laid bare makes him uncomfortable, and so does this. So does his devotion, his worship. Fucking hypocrite.
At least he’s more willing to tolerate this, at least for a while. Only when Suguru starts wriggling in his lap does Satoru yield to his unspoken demands. Pulling his thumb to the side, Satoru tugs him open and spits, loud and messy. When it comes to this, he can afford to be imprecise. He likes it, even. Likes to watch his saliva travelling down the seam of Suguru’s ass before slipping into the space alongside him, smoothing the way for him.
Swearing, he smears it over Suguru’s rim then sinks his thumb into him, swearing again at the filthy image of his shy little hole stretching around the joint. Somewhere to his left, Suguru buries his face in his arms, grumbling breathless complaints into the sheets.
‘I know, I know,’ Satoru says, before he can get snippy with him.
He activates Limitless, eyes still fixed on where Suguru’s body is easing open for him. Satoru doesn’t need to see it to summon the bottle stashed at Suguru’s bedside, refuses to look away even to get the damn thing open. He struggles with one hand, overeager when he finally gets it, drizzling it over the place his knuckle is still buried. Messy, imprecise.
When Suguru gasps at the cold, Satoru gives him something better to gasp about. Tossing the lube aside, he presses his hand to Suguru’s lower back to stop him squirming, then replaces his thumb with his index finger, sinking it to the hilt without waiting for Suguru to adjust. What’s a little stretch after everything else he’s taken tonight? Everything he’s still to take?
They groan in tandem, Suguru at the sudden fullness, Satoru at the sensation of velvety hot flesh making way for him. Obediently, Suguru stays put beneath Satoru’s hand, but his body can’t help rejecting the intrusion, spasming around Satoru’s finger. His insides are snug and warm and soft and Satoru finds that, even in the wake of his new discovery, Suguru is still his favourite glove. It was never even a contest.
He pumps his finger in and out, getting it nice and slick, turning his wrist to find the right angle, and when he locates that spongy sweet spot that makes Suguru’s toes curl, he crooks his finger at the knuckle. At once, Suguru clenches down around him, moaning long and low, sucking him in and squeezing him tight.
Obsessed with the feeling, obsessed with Suguru, he raises his free hand and brings it down hard on his right ass cheek, comparatively unblemished next to the pretty mess Satoru has made of the other one. This time, his fingers sink straight into warm fat and muscle, sending the impact rippling out across his skin. Suguru shouts and he bucks and he squeezes and Satoru has to bite down on his tongue to stop himself from crying out.
Growling, he grabs handful after handful of plump flesh just to slap it again and again and again, watching Suguru’s skin turn ruby red in real time. Now, there is nothing precise about Satoru’s finger-painting. There is no barrier between his skin and Suguru’s. It’s messy, born from the frantic need to hold Suguru in his hands, feel him around his fingers, hot with the blood pumping through his veins and oh so alive.
Satoru smacks every bit of flesh he can get his hands on, swallowing the sounds Suguru makes when he cracks his palm over the back of his thighs, gorging on his pleasure when Satoru curls his finger inside him exactly the way he likes. By the time he’s pink and pretty all over, Suguru is practically fucking his thigh, rolling his pelvis against him to get more friction.
Cruelly, selfishly, Satoru withdraws his hands just to see Suguru throw a tantrum, rewarding him with the press of two fingers against his rim. They’re the same fingers he uses to activate Red, and Satoru ensures he knows it. Pinching at his flesh with his free hand, he lets his cursed energy swell to a menacing crescendo, grinning wide and wild at the groan it earns him. Fucking freak.
‘Want more?’ he asks, reaching down to drag his fingers through his messy hair, yanking on it just a little. Suguru nods desperately, shoving his face into the sheets and pushing back against Satoru’s hand, moaning like a whore. Feeling positively unhinged, Satoru throws his head back on a laugh. ‘You asked for it, Suguru.’
Never one to deny his lover anything, Satoru shoves his fingers exactly where Suguru wants them, sinking them straight to the knuckles in one swift stroke. He doesn’t activate Red—he’s not totally fucking insane—but he does wrap Limitless around his free hand, out of his mind with the image of Suguru’s angry red skin cast in the blue glow of his technique.
When his palm comes down with a sickening smack, landing right in the centre of the bloody flower on his ass, Suguru is too slow or perhaps too surprised to react. His cursed energy thrashes around and he thrashes around too, hips bucking up instinctively.
‘Ah, ah,’ Satoru says, pressing his weight into Suguru’s spine to stop him from wriggling away as he starts up a brutal assault on his prostate. The squeeze around his fingers—from the stretch, from the sting—is fucking glorious. ‘Just a bit more, Suguru can take it. A bit more.’
In response, Suguru’s hand comes back to grip at his knee, whether to push him away or cling onto him it’s unclear, but he’s definitely holding on for dear life when Satoru slaps him again, curling his fingers into the meat of his thigh the same way Satoru curls his fingers inside of him. Still, he bites down and grits his teeth and grunts through the pain and pleasure alike.
Suguru has always had trouble letting go, but Satoru has always liked a challenge. Whether fighting or fucking, they’ve always been a perfect match.
When Satoru’s love starts clawing its way up his throat again, he settles for painting it into Suguru’s skin instead. Viciously, conspicuously, somewhere Suguru won’t miss it. He isn’t supposed to speak his love plainly, but he can make sure Suguru hears it loud and clear all the same. He isn’t supposed to lay his love bare, but he can make sure Suguru feels it every time he sits down for a week.
Satoru keeps up a relentless attack, alternating from pain to pleasure, pain to pleasure, disorientating his opponent to force him to let his guard down. And Suguru fights to the last. Too damn strong for his own good, he fucking fights it.
Satoru can push his love back down his throat, but his delight is too buoyant to suppress. Laughing like a goddamn maniac, he pours yet more cursed energy into his palm, watching Suguru’s rise to meet him. It’s beautiful—violet and violent and volatile where it flares around his form—but Satoru’s is diamond-tipped, like sinking a superheated knife into butter. It makes a home for itself in Suguru’s flesh, iridescent where Suguru resists him in the moment before he’s overwhelmed. Accepting Satoru’s cursed energy into his body isn’t even a choice. His love is iridescent then violet then crimson where it oozes from Suguru’s skin.
It’s deeply erotic, almost pornographic to watch. Like a JAV created with the unique perversion of the Six Eyes in mind. Overcome by his own obsession, Satoru doesn’t realise he’s about to come until it’s too late, hadn’t even realised he was close. Groaning, he curls his body over Suguru’s, rutting up into the curve of his waist, but he doesn’t stop. Even as his balls tighten, he’s too fixated on the task at hand to focus on the feeling. Even as his cum soaks into the cotton of his underwear, spilling over the waistband where his cock is making a valiant attempt to escape, Satoru maintains the offensive.
Suguru is making a valiant attempt to escape, too. His cursed energy is erratic, kicking out like his legs kicking over the mattress. Satoru can tell he’s reaching his limit, but he’s so close. He’s so close. When Satoru’s hand comes down on the bloody mess, already smacked red raw, he thrashes and snarls like a wild animal, but still, he takes it.
His shoulders start shaking. For a moment, Satoru thinks he’s crying, but then Suguru’s laughter rings out, ugly and uncontrolled and utterly enthralling. Grinning wide, Satoru pistons his fingers in and out of him at an unforgiving pace, one slap for every six times he buries them to the knuckle. One slap for every six lotus flowers, blooming across his skin.
‘Come on,’ Satoru urges, curling them just right. ‘Come on, you’re strong, Suguru.’
Turns out that’s all it takes. Satoru only counts to five before he feels Suguru stiffen in his lap, feels his cock pulse against his thigh as he finally cries out, a scream ripping from his throat as his orgasm rips through him. Limitless falls away from Satoru like petals from a flower as he rushes to soothe Suguru instead, stroking his hair, rubbing his back, easing him through it.
‘Suguru is so strong,’ he says, and he means it. He means it.
When Suguru’s shoulders start shaking this time, it’s with relief, with release. It’s a dam breaking. It’s a wave washing over him with enough force to knock the air from his lungs, and Satoru holds him through all of it. He holds Suguru until the water recedes, red where the truth laps at his edges. Where it bleeds from his skin.
Folding his body around Suguru’s, like nightfall over the pond, Satoru presses his lips to his spine, presses the words over Suguru’s beating heart.
‘You’re strong.’
The strongest. The only one who can hurt him like this, the only one who can reach him. The only one who comes close, even if he’s still trailing behind.
—
‘Well? What do you think?’
Suguru still hasn’t said anything. Studying Satoru’s handiwork in the mirror, turning his body this way and that, his expression is hard to read. Hovering at his shoulder, Satoru feels like a dog anxiously awaiting praise or perhaps a scolding.
‘Satoru…’ A scolding then. ‘This won’t heal in time for my appointment.’
A scolding, but Satoru has to stop his tail from wagging all the same. He bites back a grin as Suguru drags his fingers through the mess he’s made. Lifting them for inspection, Suguru raises his eyebrows at what he finds, but he’s breathless with the thrill of it. Satoru can see it lighting up the darkest parts of his eyes in the mirror. He knows how to speak Suguru’s language.
‘Then again, I suppose I could always make a trip to see Shōko.’
Satoru’s childish glee dies away, replaced by abject horror at the thought of the devotion he’s poured into Suguru’s skin erased by a simple wave of the hand. All of his strength rendered impotent by his one and only weakness.
Mostly, it’s the thought of yet another sorcerer pumping him full of cursed energy.
Suguru’s laughter is like honey warmed by the heat of summer. It’s a spoonful of liquid sugar to settle Satoru’s stomach. A balm for his bleeding heart when Suguru pulls him in close, murmuring his next words against his lips.
‘Guess I’ll have to postpone.’
It’s the most tender kiss Suguru has ever bestowed upon him. It’s petal soft, entirely at odds with the treatment he just received at Satoru’s hands. Where Satoru laid his love into him violently, Suguru cradles his face like he’s a delicate thing. Like he’s easy to bruise.
Satoru certainly feels fragile when Suguru leans back, looking at him, looking like that. Looking all beautiful with his hair all wild and his cheeks all flushed. He’s smiling as he swipes his thumb over Satoru’s bottom lip, wiping away the residue of his kiss and replacing it with the taste of his blood.
High on the sugar sweet sight of him, on the metallic flavour of him, it takes Satoru a moment to register Suguru’s words. He rushes to respond, trying and failing to keep the hopeful inflection out of his voice.
‘You’re going to keep them red?’
Satoru knows how to speak Suguru’s language. He’s getting better at talking in riddles.
‘It’s my colour, don’t you think?’
But even after all these long years, he’s no better at deciphering them. Not when they’re Suguru’s. He’s probably the only person alive who could successfully keep a secret from Gojō Satoru.
As Suguru turns back to the mirror, there’s a secret tucked into his smile. It’s the same as the secret tucked into his kesa, neatly folded over the arm of the chair in the corner. Satoru even thinks there’s a secret tucked into the blooming flower that Suguru traces with his fingertips now, colourless before Satoru’s hands stained it with blood.
Rolling his own name around his tongue, he almost asks Suguru why he chose it, but then he thinks of crimson lotuses—of beating hearts, bleeding hearts. Of miscalculations. Of murder. Mostly, Satoru thinks of love—and decides against it. Suguru prefers indirect communication. Satoru’s love laid bare makes him uncomfortable and maybe his own does, too.
Or maybe Suguru doesn’t love him at all. Maybe there’s no secret to it.
It doesn’t matter, Satoru decides as he steps behind him in the mirror, winding his arms around his waist. ‘Yes, Suguru,’ he says, pulling him close, pressing kisses to his red, red cheeks. Satoru knows why he chose it, and that’s enough. ‘It’s always been your colour.’