Archive of Our Own

Here is a tale as deep and fathomless as the ocean…

/ / /

A rich man at a market was destined to part with his money. If not from the greased smiles of clamoring merchants, then it was the sour men lingering on the outskirts, hoods drawn, or the small fingers from grimy, sticky-faced orphans, slipped right into a cloak worth more than their life. A market of vultures, the rich man a wandering country mouse, the trappings by design.

Sukuna propped his elbow on the counter of the soup stand. The old woman on the other side of the counter huffed.

The rich man who'd come to the market that day was as ostentatious as a peacock, skin so pale he was almost luminescent, and a mouth primed for cruelty. Blue eyes swept over the crowd.

"Look away, child," the old woman muttered. "Death's out hunting again."

Sukuna balanced on his stool, head resting in the palm of his hands. All he could do was look. The man wasn't the first elite who had wandered past where the taxes paid for decent sidewalks. Different ones came every other week, sheltered men and women here to gawk at the seediness of it all. There for a bit of excitement, a change of scenery from the monotonous boredom wealth afforded them.

Sukuna liked those the best.

To call him a man was confusing the matter. He was a wallet, a bed to sleep in, and a hot meal to gorge himself on. Sukuna ran his tongue over his teeth, tasting the day-old grime and yesterday's burnt bread he'd pulled out of the baker's trash. He caught a bit of his reflection in the cup of water he'd sipped from—eyes hollowed, face grimy, hair lanky from grease. He looked poor, defenseless. For some men, there was nothing more tantalizing.

The crowd parted around the rich man like a river stone. Those too scared to seize the opportunity made themselves small as he passed.

Sukuna fished the meager coins out of his pouch, slapped them on the table, then drew himself up and out of the stand. The sun that day was brutal, and the minute he escaped the comfort of shade, it cast its scorching rays on him. No doubt he was sunburned. Even better.

He towered over the crowd. Like the rich man, people avoided him the moment they saw the grit on his skin and the tattoos. But it wasn't like Blue Eyes; people reverently feared him. The only thing people feared about Sukuna was his size and the greedy, hollow-eyed look of an orphan about him.

When Blue Eyes was within arm's reach, Sukuna stepped in front of him. At once, the buzz of the market died. Blue Eyes stared at Sukuna's feet, probably noting the holes in the cracked leather. Then he looked up. And up.

"Can I help you?" The rich man had a posh sort of voice that suggested he'd never so much as opened a door for another person.

Sukuna rubbed his chin, felt the stubble growing there. "Looks like you're looking for something to do."

Blue eyes gave him another once over, nice and slow. He snorted. And the moment was over, the man stepping around him, whistling to himself. The silence broke as the market breathed again.

"Child. Child!"

Sukuna didn't register the old woman's words until he felt the tug at the hem of his shirt. The anger that simmered in him was slow-brewing. He hadn't expected it to be easy—some marks were a challenge. He hadn't, however, expected to be laughed at. He shoved her away. "Fucking what?"

She drew herself up, indignation lighting across her wrinkled face, carved up like a riverbed. "You're not a listening one, are ya? I said that was death, and ya go and introduce yourself like a nice juicy pig."

"One rich asshole is like them all."

She teetered back around the counter of her booth. "Not that one, child. That's a devil wearing the skin of a man."

Well, then. Sukuna was going to kill the devil.

__________________________

"Of course he laughed at you. You look like you haven't showered in years," said Jin. His face rippled in the gentle waves of the scrying bowl—somewhere nearby, a train rumbled along its tracks.

Even in the murkiness of the water Sukuna had fetched from the well, Jin looked a markedly better sight. The hollow of his eyes had filled out, the dark bruising underneath lightened to faint gray smudges like the absent stroke of a paintbrush. Pink hair a little longer in that style favored by the men in the coastal cities. He looked right and proper, the stink of a vagrant finally washed away. A high society man.

Sukuna saw no trace of himself in his twin.

He hated that Jin called now, arguably, when he was at his worst. Jin must have sensed the hot, frothy anger slowly churning inside him. Even when a whole city was between them, their connection could never be severed. Only dulled to a distant ache like the edges of a faded dream.

When Jin wanted to scry, it started as a low buzz at the base of his skull, that imperceptible pull of magic. It could have almost been dismissed as the start of a headache, if not for the fact that he'd caught an eye that wasn't his own in his reflection at a jewelry stand. It'd startled him so much he nearly fumbled the bracelet he was slipping into his pocket. The merchant turned to him barely a second after, lips curled, and shooed Sukuna away.

Sukuna lay on his side on the dusty floor of the hotel room. It was all the bracelet had afforded him. Nothing fancy—really, just a rolled out cot in the corner that stank of sweat, a circular table with a wobbly leg in the other corner, a small window near the ceiling to provide just enough light to the basement room.

"These assholes love the impoverished orphan look. Worked for you," Sukuna grumbled.

"Because I looked like one of those charming kids from a play." Jin knitted his brows together. " 'Oh gosh, miss, you want to take little ol' me home with you?' " He smoothed out his face. "You look like a feral street cat that's eaten its own kind. Or the third act villain."

Sukuna fought against the itchy, threadbare blanket for a minute before he got settled again. "Please, oh wise one, give me the secret knowledge of how to woo one of these rich fucks. Since it's your area of expertise." By the twitch in Jin's face, Sukuna knew he had won. He would always win, as long as he brought up that day at the orphanage: Jin had been picked, and Sukuna hadn't.

Ten years later, the memory was little more than a sting. He got by as best he could—stealing, murdering, falling into the beds of whatever city dwellers found their way into the slums looking for a bit of fun. And afterwards, he'd rob them. He tried not to do too much murdering when it came to the ultra-wealthy. They were important, which inevitably meant someone more official than street coppers would come looking for them.

But he'd make an exception for Blue Eyes.

He was a man now, and this was his lot in life. That didn't mean he wasn't going to use his pitiful backstory in fights with his brother. It was his right as the older brother.

The distant trill of a voice floated through the scrying bowl. Jin tossed a glance over his shoulder, lips stretching into an unfamiliar smile. Sometimes, Sukuna wondered if he would have turned out the same if it were him, not Jin, that'd been whisked away. He supposed he would never know.

He didn't understand what Jin said; the dialect was nearly obscured, but the voice eventually faded away, and Jin turned back, the smile slipped from his delicate features.

"Sorry, parties to attend, which means decorations to pick, flowers to arrange…" he trailed off. "Listen, I've been squirrelling away a bit of money. Not enough to change your life, but it'll get you out of the slums, at least. I know a guy who could get it to you—"

"Oh fuck off." Sukuna sat up in the cot. All at once, it occurred to him that the misery of the room was by design—the shame radiating off the walls mere byproducts left behind by the last person who'd stayed, and the person before them. From the deep-dark stains on the wall, to the splintered floorboards, to the thin stream of ants flowing out of a crack in the corner. He watched them now, killing them with his eyes. "Told you it's risky. You said it yourself: 'Maman and Papa watch me.' " His voice was high, mocking. "They'd definitely notice you sending money to mules. Besides, your money's no good to me. Ain't nobody going to trust someone branded a criminal, even if I flashed a bit of coin." He held up his arm. Even in the low-dimming light of the evening sun, he could see the bold black lines that vivisected his skin. He would always know they were there, even if he was blind.

"Just be a good little rich boy for maman and papa. I don't need you." And I never did, hung in the space between them, ugly and bloated and festering with all of history. Who would pop it first, this unsightly mass that grew ever since their separation?

Jin was quiet. Then he opened his mouth. "If you'd let me come with you—"

"You wouldn't last five minutes out here. They'd have your ass five ways to Sunday the moment your prissy loafers touched Slum soil."

"As opposed to the seven ways they have your ass," said Jin. There it was again, that voice trilling in the distance. "At least wash your face, jackass. Use soap. Steal some if you have to. And maybe some robes not crusted in the cum or blood of whoever you fucked last for money."

Jin's face rippled in the water. When it finally stilled, the curdled form of his own face stared back at him.

__________________________

Sukuna wasn't a go-getter, but murder was different. He had a real talent when he put his mind to it. When just the right asshole pissed him off, he could get creative. He currently had no less than five different ways he was going to kill Blue Eyes. It just required patience and a little planning.

He really was filthy, though.

The tunic, once a plain beige, now dirtied black from soot and grease, clung to his skin. His pants were best left forgotten. Like all inhabitants of the Slums, the desperation and darkness in the air seeped straight to the skin. He rummaged through his rucksack, but the rest of his clothes were in a similar state.

He knocked on the door of the washerwoman on the third floor. After at least five minutes of hemming and hawing, she acquiesced after Sukuna levelled a menacing glare. She accepted the rucksack with a heavy sigh. When Sukuna didn't immediately vanish from her doorway, she arched a brow in question.

"I'll need a towel and cloth. Soap, too, if you have it."

"If I have it," she huffed. "And is that it? There isn't anything else you'll be needing?"

Sukuna thought. As he did, he touched the week-old stubble on his face. "Some oil for a shave."

She spun on her heel, mutterings trailing in her wake. She returned with a bulging pouch. "Away with you! I'll have the clothes done by nightfall. And it'll be four coins for you, five if you give me any lip about it."

Sukuna was certain no one in history had ever given a washerwoman more than a coin for service, but he counted them out and dropped them into the outstretched hand. If everything fell into place, he'd have more than enough coming his way.

He stopped by the kitchen to bully one of the fry girls into boiling him a pot of water. He spent the next twenty minutes kneeling on the dusty floor of his room, scrubbing himself clean, the water black and cold when he finished. Sukuna got through shaving with only a few nicks that dried just as quickly as they came.

He cracked open the small window, and city sounds slipped through. An oily film of misery wrapped over the city, bled through the streets, sweeping up all in its path. He watched the ankles of passersby. For a moment, he almost felt a kinship with them. They were all a part of the amorphous blob of the Slums. But when he squinted, really looked, he recognized none of these shambling spectres. Nothing looked familiar. As obscured and unknowable as the gunk at the bottom of a well.

__________________________

The next day, Sukuna pressed into the stiff wooden chair of the soup stall. His skin still smarted from the fervor of his scrubbing, but at least he was clean. He'd fetched his clothes from the washerwoman, and there was a light lemon scent on his old rags. She'd even mended a few of the holes.

The old woman was there, bundled and sweating underneath her stained frock. She squinted hard at him. "Ya have the look of trouble about you, child. Just like my husband. Flirted so much with it, I started believing I was the slag!"

Sukuna sipped at his soup—barley and bits of stale vegetables swam around in the watery, flavorless broth. "What happened to him?"

Her gaze was shrewd. "What always happens. Eventually, trouble starts demanding commitment."

Sukuna snorted. Trouble would never demand commitment from him. They were dear old friends at best, business associates at worst.

Trouble arrived during a brief respite, when the sun dipped below passing clouds, and a long shadow fell over the market. Like before, the arrival of the rich man had a chilling effect on the crowd, and everyone moved like they were waterlogged. Based on the casual tilt of his shoulders, Sukuna had a feeling he reveled in the discomfort he caused.

Sukuna placed the coin on the bar and stood swiftly. The old woman's face twisted, but she said nothing beyond the curl of her lip.

Sukuna fell in step beside him. The man cast a side-long glance. "You've discovered soap." He had a mirthful voice, as though everything were a joke. Even Sukuna.

He tried not to bristle. "And you still haven't discovered what you're looking for. Can't imagine there's much for you amongst the vermin."

They weaved through the crowd. Some faces Sukuna recognized periodically popped out—the jewel maker and his treasured wares Sukuna liked to pilfer, people he'd shaken down, people he'd fucked. Extras cast in this dreadful play.

After a few turns down the streets, the path opened with startling familiarity—the Pleasure District. The whorehouse his mother had birthed him in was still standing, though like much of the street, its exterior was little more than dilapidated, rotting wood and grimy frosted window panes. Some people he didn't know were loitering outside, smoking, taking swigs from bottles, while young men and women who, like Sukuna, had tried their best to scrub the filth from their bodies, giggled. Their robes were beautiful, but time had dulled the colors.

Sukuna held his breath. Scent was a powerful thing when it came to memories. Just a whiff of brothel air, and he was sure memories better left dismembered would reassemble themselves in his brain.

Just as they were clear of it, the jiggling face of the pimp stuck his head out the door. Sukuna did know him, unfortunately. He'd run the brothel even back when his mother was still alive, and Sukuna and Jin lived in the shit room afforded to her for her services.

The pimp waved them down. "Sir, sir!"

Blue Eyes stopped, much to Sukuna's consternation.

The pimp was disgustingly old now, Sukuna realized. All it would take was one swipe—

"New bodies in from the South. I have good rates." The pimp huffed between every word.

Blue Eyes actually tilted his head. Like he was considering it, the goddamn idiot. "Wouldn't go in there if you paid me. Heard your dick'll fall off," Sukuna said.

The pimp turned the color of rotten grapes. There was no recognition in his eyes as he stared up at Sukuna. No one who'd ever come out of the brothels had ever managed to loom so large.

"You little shit. I have the cleanest girls—"

But Blue Eyes clapped Sukuna on the shoulder. "Good man," he said cheerily.

Sukuna allowed himself to be stirred away, and they left the pimp spitting on the cracked sidewalk.

"Really? You came all the way down here to get your dick wet? Imagine there are better girls where you're from."

"Girls where I'm from hardly make good wives."

Sukuna slowed to a stop, Blue Eyes blustering ahead a few paces until he realized his shadow had vanished. He cast a keen eye over his shoulder at Sukuna, who was standing there incredulously.

"You came to the Slums…to find a wife?"

"Or a husband." Blue Eyes shrugged, the shawl over his shoulders slipping. His robes today were thin, a translucent film that only just covered his skin. Supposedly, they were like that in the city. All…revealing. Show-offs.

"Say…" Blue Eyes peered up at him. "You're fit. And I find myself to be a kind and charitable man. You're exactly the type I'm looking for."

"What type?"

"The husband type," Blue Eyes said. "What say you?"

Blue Eyes had a face others would call handsome. Sukuna thought of it as unbearably smug and imagined cutting it into an infinite number of pieces. Finally, he managed to push out, "So you just troll the streets looking for someone to marry you?" He tilted his head and stared down at the man. Sukuna knew the terror of men. Had known it all his life. "Are you crazy or a serial killer? Or both?"

Blue Eyes smiled, took Sukuna by the wrist, his hands surprisingly warm. Sukuna closed his nail-bitten hands around them.

"Or both."

Men were a terror. But they were also fragile things, prone to breaking.

__________________________

Blue Eyes' name was Gojo Satoru, and he lived on a sprawling estate overlooking the Great City. He wouldn't shut up about it, as the carriage creaked and shuddered along the detritus-strewn forest path.

Whenever there was a break in the trees, he would slide open the window and point. "See, there."

And Sukuna would squint at some non-existent speck in the distance. Gradually, the speck grew bigger, until it was more of a grain, then a bean, and then Sukuna could actually make out pale-faced windows, spiraled columns, and the tip of a tower poking through the clouds.

Satoru only talked about himself—how he grew up, what he liked, what he didn't like, and people Sukuna would eventually meet. The questions he asked Sukuna were blissfully sparing.

"Do you have any family?"

"A brother."

"Where is he?"

"In the city."

"You could send a pigeon once we're at the estate."

"Nah. We're not close."

Satoru settled into his seat. "I don't care much for my family either."

"What, they don't like you marrying random vagrants off the street?"

"Amongst other things."

Finally, when Sukuna could have torn open the carriage door and flung himself down the rocky cliffs below, it slowed, creaking to a stop. It was nearly sundown now. Up close, the estate was massive, probably more than several blocks, a wooden building sitting high on slats that stabbed through the earth. A collection of smaller buildings in the distance. It looked like a little town, but as Sukuna gauged the area, he couldn't find a single soul.

The driver of the carriage tipped his hat. He was a huge, hulking man with nothing behind the eyes as he began hoisting up Satoru's bags. He clomped up the steps without another word.

The tower he'd spied on the journey was detached, a leaning thing of dilapidated stone that seemed anachronistic to the housing around it. Climbing ivy broke through the stone and wrapped and fanned around the spiral. There was a single window high up, and for a moment, Sukuna thought he glimpsed something there—a shift in shadows, the lingering of a body against the curved stone edge. But in the next blink, there was nothing, just a gaping maw.

Satoru slipped his hand into Sukuna's and tugged. "Welcome home."

Even with the sun rapidly fading, the night bringing with it a swift chill, it was pleasantly warm inside as they took their shoes off in the foyer. A hunchbacked, heavy-bosomed woman was there to greet them, a bundle of fabric in hand as she slunk behind Satoru and pulled off the sheer outer robe. Sukuna was treated to the sight of Satoru's naked torso. Not that there was much left to the imagination. But it was different seeing how the muscle tensed when exposed.

The woman slipped the new robe over Satoru's outstretched arms. "And him, my Lord?" Her eyes ghosted over him, but there was no warmth, no coldness. There was nothing at all.

"My new husband. See if we have anything better than those rags for him. Oh, and fetch the priest," Satoru rambled, doing the belt himself. His new robe was opaque, a deep red that brought out the blue veins under his skin.

"Of course, my lord," the woman intoned, exiting the room without so much as a glance behind her.

This is insane. Sukuna followed Satoru down the long corridor. Whatever he was saying fell on deaf ears. Sukuna only nodded vaguely as Satoru pointed to this vase or that painting or picked up a sword with a handle crusted in jewels. All along the walls, what Sukuna could only assume were generations of Gojos sneered down at him. Same stark white skin, cerulean blue eyes, and cruel twisted mouth—inbred fucks.

Unlike the outside, the interior of the manor teemed with life—everywhere servants were bowing and slipping in and out of doors, their arms full of folded fabric or baskets of fruit or piles of books. Every new face took the arrival and introduction of Sukuna with only the mildest blink before setting off on whatever task Satoru set for them. Sukuna may as well have been as unremarkable as one of the hoarded trinkets littering the manor; just something else to put on the shelf.

This is insane. The refrain splintered across his mind. Sukuna wasn't sure what precisely he was referring to—Gojo Satoru? The manor? Himself? Probably the last one. This was a lot of effort to kill one man.

Satoru showed him the dining hall, a circular room with a long golden table that looked like it could have fed the whole of the Slums for the price it'd fetch. Mounted just behind the head of the table was a plaque of spalted dark wood holding a brass revolver. Sukuna's curiosity jumped, and he made a beeline for it. Up close, he could see the intricate vine-like pattern twisting all along the metal.

"A replica my grandfather commissioned. It's pretty, but useless." Satoru smiled encouragingly. "Go on, touch it."

Sukuna plucked it from the iron-wrought hook supporting it and turned it around. Where he'd grown up, there was no use for pretty guns that didn't fire. Anyone carrying a gun meant to use it.

A tiny girl with white hair chopped severely at the shoulders and a smear of plum across the crown of her head bustled through a flapping side door, a tray of cutlery in hand. When she saw them, she squeaked and bowed immediately. "I'm sorry, sirs. It's still too early for dinner. Pheasant and roasted duck is for tonight." She kept her head bowed, eyes trained on the floor.

Satoru waved this away. "No matter, Uraume. Take my dear husband and draw and scrub the poverty from him, if you can. If you find Alsta, he should have a new soap I picked up from my travels you can use." He held out Sukuna's hand like he was a maiden being given away.

Uraume placed the rest of the cutlery down with a firm clink and rushed forward. "Of course, my lord." She barely reached Sukuna's waist and had to crane her neck sharply. "Please follow me, sir." One hand wrapped around Sukuna's fingers, she pulled him along before he even registered the shift. He glanced behind and caught Satoru smiling widely just as the doors closed.

The servant girl marched Sukuna down the winding hallways, brows knitted with more life than he'd seen out of anyone so far, and still, there was a faded quality to her, like a cinder-gray photograph stuffed in a drawer. Sukuna nearly squashed her when she stopped abruptly.

"And what room is it you'll be wanting, sir?" She had a plain southern accent that reminded him of some of the girls at the brothels. A far better fate than them, if she'd been trafficked here, he supposed. Setting dinner places and cleaning shit off a rich prick nightly was probably better than gobbling their cocks.

The corridor they were in seemed infinitely long, with just as many doors. "Which one can I pick?"

"Any o' them, sir. Husbands can have any room they'd be wanting. 'Cept for the one, o' course."

Sukuna lifted a brow. "There's more than one of me?"

"O' course not, sir. Just you now."

This answer was strangely disappointing and bordered on nonsensical. "Give me the best one."

"That'll be the Lord's, then," she said, and led him down a confusing series of turns before arriving at a massive set of stone doors.

Satoru's room looked like something out of a painting, more ballroom than bedroom, though there was a massive bed in the center. The bathroom was equally fantastical—larger than a public bath, and infinitely cleaner. The crater in the center of the room looked deep enough for a swim.

Uraume turned on a faucet, and hot water burst out and with it, the slow building of steam. Uraume wasted no time stripping Sukuna, taking each of his worn rags with only the faintest look of distaste before folding them out and putting them in a wooden basket Sukuna suspected was destined to be burned. She gave no indication that the tattoos or the hundreds of scars bothered her at all.

"Wait right here, sir, and I'll go get Alsta for the soap." At the door, she paused, then said, "And don't go getting in without me. Don't want you to be drowning."

Sukuna plopped down on the tile, his bare ass sticking to it not unpleasantly. The tub had hardly filled more than a few inches, but he watched it dubiously. It didn't look big enough to kill, but who knew what rich people did to their tubs? He'd never thought to ask Jin about his new bathing arrangement.

Uraume returned in no time at all with a tiny glass jar of swishing yellow liquid. She tipped a few drops in the tub that had now filled halfway. A musky scent perforated the steam, something like summer and dandelions and grass. "In now, as easy as you can," she ordered.

The water was stinging, but it was probably the best thing to touch his skin in…well, ever. His muscles tensed at first, but once he was fully submerged, everything in him seemed to release at once. He wasn't sure if there was ever a time his muscles hadn't been hardened, ready to go at a moment's notice.

On the tile, Uraume eyed the bottle speculatively. "Imported from my kind, I reckon. Best there is." The bottle disappeared in one of the various cabinets along the wall, and she came back with a clean towel with flowers embroidered on the hem.

Sukuna rested a cheek against the edge of the tub, the water lulling him somewhere far away. He was only loosely aware of Uraume squatting down to her knees, dipping the towel in the water, and slowly, methodically going over him.

A distant creak of the door opening. "I'll take over, Uraume," came the voice.

Sukuna's face scrunched in irritation, and he opened his eyes to find Satoru hovering like a gnat. He'd changed again, this time into a silky, golden shawl.

Uraume eyed him dubiously but didn't voice a word of protest, just folded the cloth she'd been using delicately and placed it in Satoru's outstretched palm. The door shut firmly behind her.

Sukuna ran a hand through his hair as Satoru leered at him. The water was still warm and heavy on his skin, but Satoru's gaze burned hotter. The look of horny men was nothing new to him.

"You gonna dirty your knees getting on the floor, rich boy?" Sukuna asked.

Something keen gleamed in his eyes. Satoru knelt with controlled grace, legs folded up underneath the long tunic. He dipped one pale hand into the water and swirled it, bright red patches blooming on the skin. "Has anyone ever told you you're one huge motherfucker?"

The swear was huge and clunky on his tongue, like he was trying it out for the first time. Sukuna could have told him it didn't suit him. Instead, he shrugged and said, "Once or twice, and in more ways than one. You're not exactly tiny yourself."

Blue eyes roamed over him. "I'm well-bred and well-fed. I thought all of you poor people were supposed to be malnourished and dying of dysentery." After a beat, he added, "And I heard you eat people."

Abruptly, the tension popped, punctured by Sukuna's loud snort. He lifted his head from the basin to stare up at Satoru. "Are you serious?" A petulant look flashed across Satoru's face before it was quickly smothered by that cool, effervescent facade. "Holy shit, you're actually serious." Sukuna crossed his arms atop the basin and rested his head between them. "You're right, we take whore babies and roast them on spits, then slide them between some flatbread seasoned with tears of the women we beat. We call it Toddler Taco Tuesday. That's if we have time between toiling away down in the mines and shitting our brains out. Woe is us."

Satoru's face went to lemons, the rag floating away in the water like a lily on a riverbed as he straightened up. "Didn't realize you had a sense of humor. I may have made a mistake."

He made to stand and Sukuna rolled his eyes. In one swift motion, he latched onto Satoru's arms and pulled him down. The sleeves of his shawl dipped in the water. "Relax, my lord. What's teasing between husbands?"

Satoru's face hovered mere inches from his, lips parted, close enough that his breath warmed Sukuna's cheeks, far hotter than the steam rising around them. Sukuna steadied him with one hand while the other snaked up and intertwined the white locks.

Satoru made a noise that sounded like a scoff, but he didn't pull away. It would have been all too easy to do it right then—drag him under, hold him down by the neck until his struggle ceased, until the fight fled from flailing limbs and Satoru's body drifted along the same current as the rag. His cock hardened at the thought.

Don't think with your dick, asshole, the reasonable part of him supplied. Loathed as Sukuna was to agree, it was a good call. Killing Gojo Satoru mere hours after he arrived at the manor as a wayward vagrant was incredibly stupid. All good things took time.

Instead of killing Satoru, he drew his face closer until their lips met. Satoru's lips were soft and plump. Chaste, more the ghost of a kiss than anything, but when he drew back, Satoru's eyes were wide, his breath coming a little faster, big splotchy patches dotting his pale skin. Sukuna barely suppressed a gleeful smirk. Good. The little idiot was already hooked, and it'd hardly taken any effort. It would make the look on his face when Sukuna betrayed him funnier.

He pushed Satoru back up lightly. "We shouldn't, my lord. Not until the priest arrives."

"The priest?" Satoru said stupidly.

"The one you called for. Shouldn't we hold off on doing…husbandly things until after he officiates? I may come from the Slums, but I'm still a proper, honorable man," Sukuna lied, quite improperly and dishonorably.

The cloudiness of Satoru's eyes cleared. His wet sleeves stuck to his thighs as the affable coolness returned. "Right. Wouldn't dream of sullying your honor. What kind of Lord do you take me for? Don't answer that," he said, just as Sukuna opened his mouth to quip. "I'll leave you to finish up. I've left clothes I'd like you to wear for the evening on the bed. Do take great care with the fabric. It's delicate." He swept out the room as quickly as he'd come, like a vanishing ghost.

Sukuna was alone then. The water had cooled only slightly, and he dipped his head below, allowing the pleasant feeling to warm his skin. He'd allowed this brief moment of respite to collect his thoughts before he stood and climbed out of the tub. There were plans to be made and traps to lay.

__________________________

The priest was an elderly woman with a U-shaped broken crown of hair and a keen, if not exasperated, look in her eye. She entered the dining hall wrapped in a black cloak that made her look like a great bat. More devilish than godly, and judging by the sneer curling her lip as she eyed Sukuna up and down, the woman thought much the same of him.

Sukuna crossed his arms in an act of intimidation, but the effect was lost as the frilly fabric bunched—a diaphonous pale red robe laced with flowers that exposed far more than he was used to. The fear factor was suppressed when you looked like a background extra in a ballet.

Despite her obvious disdain for him, he welcomed the intrusion. Dinner was a painfully awkward affair of stilted conversations, dropped sentences, and clinking metal. The rich food sat heavily in Sukuna's stomach, but even then, he could not stop himself from reaching for something else from the magnanimous feast spread out before him. Meats from creatures he was positive didn't exist in their lands, vegetables soaked in foreign spices. Each new taste on his tongue was indescribable. He thought of Jin, of him sitting in some grand manor somewhere in the city, eating this every night until the novelty wore off. He stamped down the rush of bitterness that rose so swiftly with the drumstick of some sort of bird. The old woman shuffled closer.

Satoru sat at the head of the table. "Sister, won't you join us for supper?"

The priest raised a shriveled hand riddled with bulging veins. "I'm abstaining. Let's proceed with the ceremony, shall we? You'll stand here." She grabbed Sukuna without warning and drew him to the right. "Face east…east. Do you not know what east is, my boy?" Sukuna was spun around until he faced a large window of fractured colored glass, the moon just a thumbnail. "Where are you finding these?" the priest muttered. Sukuna imagined severing her neck right at the shoulders.

"Come come, my lord. Backs together. That's a good lad."

In a moment, something pressed against Sukuna's back. He could feel Satoru's rhythmic breathing—in, out, in, out.

The woman cracked open a book equally as weathered and beat down as she. "Your prospective union stands as a mirror of the Triple Goddess. Love, devotion, eternity yada yada, all the standard stuff."

Sukuna blinked, cranking his head to the right, but he was unceremoniously whacked and forced back.

"Fruitful is your union to the Goddess, yes?"

There was a beat of silence. Sukuna felt something pinch his wrist. "Er, yes?"

"Yes," Satoru said firmly.

"Face each other."

Sukuna turned and glanced down, meeting Satoru's gaze. Even in the fickle amber light of the hall, they shone impossibly bright.

The priest slipped a hand into the folds of her cloak and withdrew the heads of two white flowers, both slightly crumpled. She placed one into each of their palms, then held their wrists. "The Maiden nurtures the first blooms of romance, the Mother maintains the gardens, and the Crone prunes the withered petals, so that love may continue to flourish. Hold hands."

Satoru's fingers were finely delicate in Sukuna's. Their flowers smushed together.

"Blessed are those who stand steward to their garden…let me just skip forward a bit…ah yes, through ever-winter and summer, may your joy and wisdom grow in abundance under their eye, until that which is inevitable comes to pass, and we all return to the big garden in the sky. Seasons ebb and flow, but your love may never die."

The priest clapped her hands together. A sweaty sheen formed on her brow, which she dabbed at with her collar. "Well, isn't this wonderful. I shall leave you…fine young men to it."

Their hands had only just fallen, and she was already halfway out the door. Sukuna caught the faint mutter, "…longer than the last, hopefully," before the door slammed behind her with a resounding thwack that seemed to echo endlessly.

"What the hell was that?" Sukuna said finally. In the Slums, weddings were quick—hurried vows said by randy couples eager to get things moving—but they were also fun. That had all the joy of an exam. Did rich people do things so differently?

"Yes, she did seem a bit rushed," Satoru said thoughtfully. He leaned against the edge of the table, fingers drumming. "Well, husband. What should we do now?"His voice carried the notes of mischief.

Sukuna thumbed his jaw, pretending to think. He pointed at a dish on the table, of which the only remains were small pitters of sauce. "Tell the kitchen to bring more of that."

"I—what?"

"More of that bird, too." Sukuna dropped heavily back into his seat, and despite its obvious grandness, still creaked under him. "And whatever the hell that green sauce was." He began plating again, keenly aware that Satoru was hovering behind him, willowly as the tall stalk of a flower. In between mouthfuls, he said, "What did she mean by 'longer than the last' anyway?" The air shifted behind him.

Satoru coughed. "I'll go speak with the cook."

__________________________

"You still smell poor," Satoru said breathlessly.

"Yeah." Sukuna slid his hands up and down Satoru's back, stopping at his ass. "Think it's baked into me at this point."

This shouldn't have made Satoru hard, but it did. Sukuna could see the strain under the sheer robe, the freak. Probably had a poverty fetish or something. Well, there was no one better than Sukuna to fulfill it.

He'd hardly passed the threshold of the bedroom before Satoru—mind you, the one who'd warned him of the fabric's fragility—cut the thin rope of patience binding him and set upon him, tearing at the gossamer sleeves, which ripped with ease. Sukuna responded by throwing Satoru over his shoulder and marching them straight to the bed. Falling into it was nothing like the brothel beds, those hard lumps that left bruises on the joints. They sank down on what felt like a bundle of tightly bound feathers.

Satoru leaned over and rummaged around his night table until he withdrew a clear bottle. "From Alkmeri. Beloved by their highest courtesans, supposedly. Haven't had a good reason until now—" He was cut off by Sukuna's lips on his, hungry, devouring; his hands roaming all over.

And now Satoru was pinned underneath him, wrists gathered in one of Sukuna's hands and shoved above his head. Satoru's slutty little robes, tattered ribbons on the bedside floor, had left very little to the imagination, but still, Sukuna cast an appraising eye over his body—lithe, the shadow of muscles carving up the plains of his skin. He was rather fit for someone who probably sat on his ass all day. Sukuna's best adventures with the elite were flabby skin stretched over jutting bones. Sukuna traced the divots of Satoru's abdomen and watched as he shivered.

"W-wait," Satoru stuttered out.

"No," Sukuna said because he was a bastard. Sukuna grabbed his jaw and twisted it to the side, stroking alongside it with his thumb. He was pleased to see the red that bloomed from his touch. Then he bit him. Right on the jaw.

Satoru let out a startled sound that went straight to Sukuna's dick. He released Satoru's hands, which fluttered uselessly down to his sides, and parted Satoru's legs, settling between them; pale as he was, Satoru was turning an alarming shade of red all over. He drew his hands up to cover his face, and those were splotched red, too.

He scooped up the bottle of oil, popped off the cork, and dribbled out some along his fingers, rubbing them together.

Sukuna pried his hands apart and watched the storm of emotions rage across Satoru's admittedly pretty face—bone-aching desire, yes, but a mortifying embarrassment. A tinge of fear. The impression of Sukuna's teeth stained his jaw, neat white hair fanned around him in a halo. It was the hottest thing Sukuna had ever seen.

He groaned out, "Save that face for when I kill you."

"What?"

"What?" Sukuna slipped his hand under and stroked Satoru's rim with one finger.

"Fuck!" Satoru's hips jerked up. His breath hitched, coming in fast pants.

All of this gasping and twitching—it was doing strange things to Sukuna. He wasn't horny for this rich prick. Definitely not. This was all according to plan, he thought as he inched his finger in slowly. Satoru tightened around him, breath ragged. Sukuna was nothing if not committed to the bit.

But—gods, this was hot. Damn Gojo Satoru for looking at him like that. For fucking with his head. The wrong head. Fuck. Satoru's erection was pressed against his abdomen making him dizzy, almost drunk off it. Abruptly, he pulled out the finger, a lewd pop, and heat was pooling in his groin. "Suck me off."

Satoru made a noise of confusion, but Sukuna was already in motion, tugging Satoru off his back and up on his knees as Sukuna leaned back, legs spread open. Satoru only gave one considering look before he was leaning forward and gripping Sukuna's cock between nimble fingers; it was hot and heavy in his hands.

Satoru opened his mouth, tongue flicking out. It slid along the side of his cock, light, the ghost of a touch. He felt the breath, heavier than anything, before Satoru's lips closed around the tip, and his breath came out in sputters. His tongue swirled around the head, and Sukuna thought he might actually lose his mind, before Satoru finally moved up the length, swallowing him. Almost—the length that couldn't fit, he wrapped his hand around, the touch just as warm. Slowly, he bobbed, pulling a groan from somewhere deep in Sukuna. Satoru's other hand crept up Sukuna's chest, the pad of skin resting heavy and warm, like he was steadying Sukuna.

His mind went hazy to it all as he cupped the back of Satoru's head, the noise of the world falling away as he watched that white head work. It was ridiculously wet and hot, and the sensation of quick tingles quickly built up to sharp pulses, like lightning, as he thrust into Satoru's mouth—listened to the whine escape those lips, felt his balls draw up, and gritted his teeth.

Something else seized him, gripped him so hard, stopping him from saying all the dirty shit he'd usually say at this point, his script all but lost to the rising tide inside him. Fuck, he was gonna come now. He was gonna—

The pressure vanished, and Sukuna blinked down stupidly at Satoru's grinning face, a line of spit and pre-cum trailing down those glistening, swollen lips. He flopped onto his back. "Now that you're all worked up, big boy—" he stopped abruptly, words broken by the shaky hitch of his breath, betraying him. That face, still so ridiculously smug.

Sukuna shoved him down, hard, hitched those long legs over his shoulders as he settled back in between. Satoru's erection rubbed against his stomach. "You absolute bitch."

Satoru took the moniker with a mocking smile. Sukuna took his oil-slicked middle finger and thrust inside, pleased to watch as that grin fell away, eyes fluttering shut. He tugged at his rim, stretching it. Satoru kept making these small sounds, half-startled, half-overwhelmed, and inside Sukuna's brain was nothing but the crackle of fireworks.

"You—ah—desperate for it?" he managed at last, but it sounded less like a taunt and more like a question.

Satoru whined in response, body squirming underneath. At last, Satoru was stretched (enough), and Sukuna could hardly wait a moment longer, pressing the tip of his throbbing cock in. The arm looped around his shoulders stiffened, nails digging in, stinging, probably making a mess of the skin, but all Sukuna could conjure through the haze was unrelenting want. He wanted Gojo Satoru, wanted him almost as much as he wanted to kill him. Maybe a little more.

He was fully inside, and Satoru was quivering and tightening around him, making those ridiculous sounds that etched themselves in his mind. Fire burned in his lungs. In, out, in, out. He changed the angle, thrust in again. Below him, Satoru shook; the hand splayed on Sukuna's chest dropped and found its way to his own cock, and he rubbed it, beads of precome welling up.

Fuck. Satoru needed to come first. He just had to. Sukuna could hardly fathom the reason, but he leaned down, covered Satoru's body with his own, nipping at his neck. Close enough that the vibrations from Satoru's throat buzzed on his lips. "Gods, fucking come." He called Satoru every slur he could think of. "Fuck, fuck, fuck—you bastard—" He thrust again and again and again. He was an exposed nerve—Satoru's fingers on him, the heat of his body, the breath ghosting his skin. Too much stimulation. One good blaze and he would burn out—

Satoru's breath hitched sharply, body freezing, then Sukuna felt the hot, sticky cum on his stomach. I win, he thought before a white-hot flash overtook him, and he was spilling inside, the relentless rhythm he'd started finally stuttering to a stop. He pulled out before collapsing. They lay there, limbs jittery, breaths syncopated, unspooling together.

Beneath him, Satoru drew in a deep breath, then released a shaky chuckle. He wiggled an arm free and patted Sukuna lightly on the cheek. "Budge up, would ya? You're smothering me."

If only. Sukuna rolled off, post-coital clarity returning to him in spurts as the thrum coursing through his body grew weaker. Lying on his back, all he could see was how absurdly tall the bedroom ceiling was, lined with arches and painted like the night sky. The moon in the window cast just enough light that the tiny white dots glimmered like the real thing. At least he assumed so. Sukuna had only seen the stars a handful of times in his life, and all ocurred on the carriage ride up to the manor. The smog in the Slums was too tightly woven.

When he finally felt in possession of his own body, he made to sit up, but he'd barely placed one foot on the floor before a hand curled around his bicep and tugged him back. Satoru stared up at him through his long (ridiculously long) lashes.

"What, are you shy all of a sudden? Or are you just not a cuddler? Actually, I don't care. I like to cuddle," Satoru said.

Sukuna blinked uncomprehendingly as he was shoved on his back. Satoru's head popped onto his stomach, cheek smushed against Sukuna's abs, white locks sticking to his sweaty forehead. He traced the curved lines lightly, enough that it tickled slightly, and Sukuna choked out a cough to mask the sudden laugh that'd welled up.

This was…not unpleasant. Definitely weird, though, and possibly scary, if Sukuna believed he was capable of fear. Disconcerting, then. Discombobulating. Unprecedented. Yes, that was it. This was a unique thing that had never happened before. His sexual trysts with the richscum that'd made their way down had always ended with the rapid, clattering of coins on the floor and the hurried rush of clothes pulled over naked bodies. In and out, before the come had even started leaking from their asses. No one had ever wanted to cuddle. He couldn't recall a time since the orphanage that another human had touched him this benignly.

A pit formed in his stomach, right where Satoru's head lay. Those blue eyes were staring at him, and the longer Sukuna stared back, the more the blue abyss swallowed him. He blinked a few times to break the effect, but inevitably his gaze would wander back. They were moth-light.

This was a trap.

"You're fascinating, Sukuna," Satoru said.

From experience, Sukuna knew some traps were almost nice.

__________________________

There was a boredom in having too much money, but as the days passed by, Sukuna repeated to himself one simple refrain: he'd rather be bored than starving.

That first week, Satoru hardly allowed him to leave the bedroom, let alone the manor. But once he seemed to exhaust most of the new pleasures he could from his new husband, and Sukuna made the compelling argument that even whores were allowed to go on walks, the leash was loosened, and Sukuna was given free rein of the place.

Rich people simply had too much stuff: damasks, jeweled vases, and whatnots. Satoru, fond of trailing behind him, never missed an opportunity to impart a history lesson on antiques the Gojo family had acquired over the ages. In all these tales, Sukuna could not gleam a reason as to why they were wealthy, except that they always had been, and always would be, Satoru merely the heir of one branch in a long-lived tree not so easily pruned.

"Your parents don't care about you ruining the family lineage or whatever?" Sukuna asked one day. They were picnicking by a small pond north of the property, tangled in one another, the mid-year sun above casting pleasant rays down on them. The kitchen had prepared them a wicker basket of fresh fruit and sandwiches full of jam—wisely, they made several sandwiches to account for Sukuna.

Sukuna, propped on an elbow, stared at the bright orange creatures swimming in lazy little loops around the pond. He'd thought to fish one out and bring it to the chef for a snack later, but Satoru had looked so affronted by the suggestion that he knew the only viable strategy was to return under the cover of night to nab one, then bully the chef into secrecy.

"Parents?" Satoru lifted his head off Sukuna's thigh, expression quizzical for an instance before clearing. "Oh, them? They're dead." This was said with such cavalier that one eavesdropping could have mistaken him for talking about an unloved creature.

"So you're an orphan."

"'Fraid so. No in-laws to give you money for the new Equinox, if that's what you're wondering. I have one aunt, but she's an absolute cow. She'd sooner bludgeon me with her cherished rat than part with a single cent." Satoru's fingers were inching up along Sukuna's thighs, sliding under the pale linen shorts.

Sukuna rolled his eyes and batted the hand away. "What the fuck is a cherished rat?"

"Do people not even have pets where you're from? Is life down there really that dire?"

It took everything in Sukuna not to throttle him. The hand now pressing into his groin was only a small compensation. "Rats are pests, not pets. Or food, if you're that desperate." And annoying as hell to catch, but at one point, Sukuna could have made it a competitive sport.

"People have all sorts of pets," Satoru said matter-of-factly, clambering onto Sukuna and, with one hand on his chest, pushing him down into the grass. Sukuna's heart quickened. "I've seen people with turtles, owls, squirrels, ducks, lemurs." Satoru ticked off on his fingers.

Sukuna grabbed the offending appendage and brought it to his mouth, sucking. Satoru's eyes flashed. He released it with a pop. "The hell is a lem—" His words were swallowed by Satoru's hungry mouth on his.

As Sukuna soon discovered, manors primarily existed as a means to facilitate fucking: on an ornate rug, in a grand chair, on the spiraled staircase, in this room in the east wing while the sun rose, and in that room in the west wing during its departure. As Satoru was without a proper means of contributing to society, Sukuna became his main job. He wished he could say wholeheartedly that he despised the manhandling at inopportune times, the bites along his thighs, the claw marks carving him up like meat, or that he mourned what must have been dozens of quality robes ripped to shreds. He was an excellent liar to all but himself: he was hopelessly aroused by Gojo Satoru.

Worse, his earlier assertion that Satoru was obsessed with the sound of his own voice was only true in part—he certainly liked inanely chattering about any and everything, but often, the conversation would somehow steer back to Sukuna. His childhood, his life in the Slums. They were dissecting one another, but Sukuna couldn't hazard what Satoru found amongst gore and viscera.

Sukuna would provide him with stories; most of the childhood ones ended with punishments that, in hindsight, far exceeded his crimes. Every tattoo was a different story, another opportunity for Satoru to sigh, then rest his head on Sukuna's shoulder.

"You poor thing," he'd murmur, and Sukuna's heart would do a strange flip-flop.

He wished he could rip the damn thing out. It was thrumming too much, the pulsing finding its way to every corner of his body. It was evening and they were lying on the floor in the drawing room (one of them)with a black-and-white game board between them. Chess, Satoru had called it, with its intricately carved pieces and equally intricate gameplay. It was a welcome distraction, provided he could destroy Satoru just once. He moved the black bishop on g4 to take the queen, and allowed himself the small respite of joy as Satoru ceased his pitying and frowned.

Satoru tapped his mouth. "You don't think that was extreme? I mean, stealing flowers is hardly a capital offense. You were just a child."

Sukuna shrugged. "Probably. But I learned not to waste time going after useless shit."

Satoru's fingers fluttered over his pieces, but he'd yet to make a move. "How are you so good at this when I taught you yesterday?" he murmured. "And flowers aren't useless. They're beautiful."

"Anything that doesn't have a practical function is worthless."

"How bleak. It's not worthless if it's something you want." Satoru pinned Sukuna with an intensity that caused him to fidget. Then, all at once, his expression cleared, replaced by a summery smile as he moved his knight on b5 to c7. "Check."

Sukuna regarded the chess pieces with some offense. "You piece of shit. Why did you make me think I was winning?"

Satoru blinked innocently. "I didn't tell you? Chess is psychological." The caress of a finger under his jaw drew his attention away from the board. "Give up? You can do that, too, if it's what you want."

Sukuna's breath caught in his chest, and try as he might, he couldn't force it to expel. He swallowed Satoru's hand in his. With the other, he picked up the king and shifted it to d8. "Psychological, huh?" He shoved Satoru flat on his ass and crawled on top of him. "Then let's do a minigame."

Satoru had hardly wasted a moment after his orgasm, flipping onto his stomach and wiggling back over to the board. He moved his knight to a8, taking Sukuna's rook. They were completely silent as they moved the pieces—the shuffling sound muffled by the crackling of the fireplace.

In seven moves, Sukuna said, "Checkmate." He fingered the white king.

Satoru stared at the board, thumb placed between his lip and teeth. He drew it out slowly, a trail of saliva following, lips curling into an appraising smirk. "Brilliant."

That's a devil wearing the skin of a man.

Sukuna could not say whether or not Satoru was a devil, but he was certainly bewitching.

__________________________

On a pale, colorless morning some two weeks later, Sukuna wandered along the banks of the nearby river, the manor looming in the distance. To the south, mountains carved up the skyline. If he squinted, he could make out faint smudges every so often—other estates. But they were so far away, they might as well have been cut off from civilization. The Great City was only a suggestion down below.

Satoru allowed him more and more time alone, which Sukuna took advantage of. Being alone cleared his mind. Broke whatever spell Satoru was casting on him. When Sukuna was alone, he remembered he wanted to kill him.

The plan so far had not come to fruition—obviously, and for a multitude of reasons beyond the suspected enchantment. He had not yet devised a realistic exit strategy that didn't involve becoming the most wanted man in the nation. Being wanted for petty crime was one thing, and being wanted for the murder of an elite was another. As much as he'd dreamed of wrapping his fingers around Satoru's throat (in the unsexy way), the only way he could rationalize getting away with murder was through more underhanded means.

Something slipped in his food? he mused, crouching down to inspect the rocks. It was while he was hunched over that a sudden, sharp pulse at the base of his skull nearly sent him tumbling into the water below, but he caught himself before he careened over the edge.

Jin was calling.

Teeth gritted, he chanced an unneeded look around; he was completely alone, save for some birds nesting in the trees. Sukuna gripped the edge of the bank and peered over the edge at the rushing water.

Jin's face shimmered into focus, or tried to. The water was coming too quickly, so the face that was meant to mirror his rippled and distorted until it only looked like the approximation of a face. But Jin's irritation was apparent even if Sukuna couldn't quite make out the furrow in his brow.

"It's been almost a month, jackass."

Had it? Sukuna was certain he'd only been at the manor for two weeks…he tried to count back the days and found them hazy. "Been busy," he grunted. "Besides, it's not like you haven't gone silent for twice as long."

"Yeah, but that's not usually preceded by murderous plans. I thought you'd gotten caught, or worse."

'Or worse' didn't need clarification.

"So," here, Jin's voice took on a shrewd edge. "You got your guy."

"Ah, well." And Sukuna told him everything sans the copious amounts of sex. When he finished, the only sounds were the roar of the river and the general hum of the forest—birds tittering, the swaying of tree branches in the breeze.

Jin's reflection rippled, but Sukuna knew his brother was utterly still.

"You married him," Jin croaked out.

Sukuna nodded.

"You're on his property in the middle of gods-know-where?"

Another nod.

"And you can't kill him because he might actually be someone important?"

That seemed to be the sum of it. His arms were going numb propping him up, so he pushed himself to a sitting position and dangled his legs over the edge.

"What did you say his name was?"

Sukuna told him, and this time, he was certain the break in Jin's image actually came from a sudden convulsion.

"Gojo Satoru. Gojo fucking Satoru." Jin said this a few more times, each successive utterance louder and more unhinged than the last. "By the Crone's left tit, you're trying to kill a fucking Gojo."

"I take it that's bad?"

"Bad?" Jin's voice took on an unpleasant shrill. "That's…that's…"

Whatever that was didn't come. Sukuna peered down, interest piqued. Would he succeed in killing his brother with shock? "So," he said contemplatively. "That prick is someone important."

Jin got a hold of himself. "I—I don't know about him, but the Gojos are one of the oldest clans in Maris. They're part of the Sacred Three that founded the damn country. And you just want to kill one because he looked at you funny?"

It may have been Sukuna's imagination, but the water seemed to still for a brief moment, Jin's eyes shining up at him in picture-perfect clarity. Jin was looking at him like he'd never considered that Sukuna might actually be insane.

A sudden thought niggled him. "Say, you run in the same circles. What information can you give me?"

"I don't run in the same circles as a Gojo. Are you mad?"

"Oh, come off it. I know there's nothing you cunts love more than gossip. You wouldn't happen to know of a family allergy to, say, peanuts, would you?"

"Peanuts? That's your grand plan. Trying to kill him with hives?" Jin let out a humorless laugh that was partially a moan. "Just let this go. For once, do the smart thing and walk away—"

"Can't do that now, can I? We're married. And the asshole's obsessed with me."

"….he can't be right in the head," Jin muttered. "Who goes shopping in the Slums for a partner?"

"That's what I told him." The curtain of overcast above parted, thin streams of light escaping in a bolt of freedom. Sukuna tilted his head back to soak up the warmth. That week had been nothing but heavy rains and muted, balmy air, but maybe it was finally abating. Eyes closed, he said, "You know me. Once I put my mind towards something…" When he opened his eyes, sunlight had pierced the image of Jin and distorted it further. His brother was nothing more than fragmented snatches of color.

"There's never been anything you couldn't do," said Jin with all the confidence of a man delivering a eulogy.

__________________________

There were odd things about the manor. For one, it possessed infinitely spawning rooms.

When Sukuna would grow bored of roaming the grounds or tormenting the servants, he'd take to wandering the halls. There was always a new hallway, a new door to open he'd never seen materializing in the corner of his eye. The rooms themselves weren't particularly remarkable—every one he tried bore the dull hallmarks of what the aristocracy considered good taste. Neat and tidy, but sometimes he'd stumble upon a dried mug, the rim stained with lipstick; a lone glove poking out the cushion of a chair; gold spectacles with scratches on the lens; shoes so ornate and impractical not even Satoru was vain enough to wear them.

The manor brimmed with the telltale signs of life, but, as far as Sukuna could tell, was mostly empty.

Satoru only offered the briefest of smiles whenever Sukuna brought up these irregularities. "It's an old house full of old magic," he said with a shrug one late evening. Dinner was on the veranda for a change, the air thick and heavy with the approaching summer. Satoru swirled around wine in his glass, blood red, and Sukuna watched him take small sips, the red staining his lips. The setting sun on his back, casting an orange outline on him, he looked like one of those creatures the caregiver at the orphanage had warned him about: blood-drinkers, cursed with an insatiable hunger.

"And you don't care what I get up to?"

"What's mine is yours." Perhaps because the wine had relaxed him just enough, but Sukuna caught the blue eyes sliding over to the tower. It was an eyesore in the otherwise mesmerizing view of the sunset.

"Well, not everything," Sukuna said.

Satoru smiled thinly before downing the rest of his cup in one gulp. In just as swift a motion, he paced the length of the table and straddled Sukuna's waist.

"We don't speak of the tower, sir." He'd wrangled that out of Uraume that first week, the only servant capable of holding normal conversations, and even she had looked strained when Sukuna had steered their discussion to the tower.

After another minute, she'd added, "And don't you go asking the young lord about it either."

Naturally, it'd been the first thing Sukuna had asked when Satoru returned from wherever it was he ventured when he wasn't trying to hump Sukuna's leg. From the gravelly warning in Uraume's words, he'd expected Satoru to fly into a rage the minute Sukuna asked. As it was, Satoru waved him away while rambling something about cursed, crumbling old buildings and safety hazards. The Gojos had been trying to tear it down for generations, but apparently, only time could destroy it.

"It's warded against all but me, so you wouldn't be able to get in anyway. Don't waste your pretty little muscle head thinking about it."

Despite his condemnation of the building as something inconsequential, Sukuna periodically caught Satoru gliding up the gravelled path to the tower. From a window, Sukuna would watch those hands linger on the doorframe before Satoru disappeared inside. He wouldn't emerge until hours later, and always with a smile of a different strain, one Sukuna knew he couldn't be the cause of.

In the expanding puzzle Sukuna was assembling, the tower was an important piece he could not place. Naturally, Sukuna became obsessed with it.

In the early hours of the morning, before the sun rose and the air was still wet with dew, he'd alter his route just so he'd have an excuse to pass it with only a cursory glance thrown its way. Other times, he'd drop the pretense and walk right up to it. A simple wooden door, chipped and splintering, prevented his entry. Flimsy in its presentation, but when he tried jiggling the handle, then leaning on it with his full weight, he found Satoru's words to be true—something old and beyond his understanding barred his entry.

Sukuna would glower at the tower, and it would glower back; equal was their contempt for one another, both considering the other an intruder in the heart mind of Gojo Satoru.

__________________________

In the intense heat of summer, Satoru finally adventured with Sukuna away from the manor. They'd hardly taken the last bite of breakfast before servants cleared away the plates, prodding them up and ushering them about. The carriage that had taken them to the manor sat outside with the footmen and the bullish driver waiting. He tipped his hat as they climbed in, then took his spot at the back of the carriage.

Sukuna watched the tower through the curtain until it disappeared into the horizon.

The world outside the carriage passed by in a blur. The heatwave had killed off some of the forest, but enough remained that it produced an interesting array of colors. Satoru leaned out the window with the air of a child, as though he had not seen such sights a million times before. Sukuna thought to tell him to sit down before he lost his head to a tree that passed too close, or the carriage tipped due to a rock and sent him careening out the window, before he realized how damn convenient that would be.

So Sukuna crossed his arms and settled back into his seat. "You're not gonna tell me where you're taking me?" He asked, hoping a conversation would prove a fatal distraction.

To Sukuna's disappointment, Satoru stuck his head back in. "Nah. Seeing you confused makes me horny."

Sukuna snorted.

"You ever been on a date before?"

"Every day of my life."

The sun was still high in the sky when their carriage made it down the hill to a massive arched gate along a tower wall that spanned forever in either direction as far as Sukuna could see. A pock-faced teenager dressed in flimsy armor napped against one side of the arch. He lurched to consciousness as the driver pulled up alongside him.

With a sheepish grin, he asked the driver to state his business.

"Gojo Satoru has an appointment in the city center," was all the driver said.

The teen's eyes widened, and he hurriedly waved them through. Sukuna leaned out to catch the kid repeatedly bowing at them as they passed. Just who are you?

Sukuna's entire life had been spent in the drudgery of the Slums, where every building could only be described as crackling and some unpleasant shade of gray. Where the smoke from the factories choked them, and everyone wrapped heavy cloth around their faces to stop it getting in their lungs. Where the sidewalk had stopped resembling a sidewalk long ago, so cracked and caked it was with weeds and moss and shit.

The Great City had none of that.

It was Sukuna's turn to stick his head out the window. In the Slums, almost everyone shambled by with their shoulders hunched. Standing too tall made you a target. And loitering about was just asking to get knifed by one of the street children.

The occupants of the Great City did not shamble, nor did they slink or scuttle. Everyone moved at the exact pace they wanted to, as there didn't seem to be anything or anyone ushering them along. Their faces were bare, save for the odd painted face or piercing, and Sukuna could not spy a single hole on their colorfully bizarre clothing—both the men and women done up in flimsy fabric that would have made it difficult to flee.

Sukuna craned his neck up and up and up at the buildings. A city of stone reaching for the heavens, unlike the cold metal back home. What the fuck, he thought.

Across from him, Satoru was pointing out various shops. There was a place that only sold chocolate, fountains and fountains of it, a taco cart serving toddler-free meat, and shops dedicated to every individual accessory in existence. There was a park, an actual strip of greenery in the city, filled with benches for people to enjoy nature. The carriage wrapped around a fountain. Pristine water shot out of the stone mermaid's face. Everything was noted in his usual haughty tone, seemingly unaware of all the ways in which Sukuna was stewing.

Occasionally, a passerby would cast a curious eye on their carriage and spy Sukuna's hulking form. Sukuna bared his teeth, but their blanched faces brought him no joy—he simply wanted to destroy them. Flense the flesh from their faces. Rip them limb from limb.

He didn't stir when Satoru's breath warmed his neck. He'd moved to sit beside Sukuna.

"What are you thinking?"

A hand crept along his chest. Sukuna placed his hand atop, freezing it in place. The carriage slowed to a stop, the driver's voice drifted over to them—some dancers were putting on a performance, and a crowd had gathered to block the street. Sukuna could just make out the gold clinking along their skirts through the throng of bodies.

He rubbed the back of Satoru's palm with his thumb. "There's so much."

Satoru laughed. "Too much."

"Enough for everyone?"

"Ten times over."

Even without looking, Sukuna could feel the crack of Satoru's smile on his shoulders. "Hmm," Sukuna said. They listened momentarily to the driver screaming at the crowd to get out of the way. The carriage inched forward slowly.

"Did I tell you about the time after my brother was adopted?"

"You were all alone at the orphanage," Satoru murmured, his lips leaving trailing kisses that sent electrifying shivers down Sukuna's spine.

He said, "Wasn't there for too long after. The old bitch who ran it didn't like me much. Jin was always her little darling because he ate whatever bullshit she fed with a smile. As soon as he was gone, she found the first excuse to have me thrown on the streets." With each kiss, he relaxed bit by bit. "I know you probably think the Slums are full of degenerates, but no one likes to see kids starving. They try to keep them off the streets. Most of the ones out there are feral and refuse to go to the orphanages. I wasn't stupid enough to think I could survive amongst them. But all the Matron had to do was have a word with a copper, and I was tossed out with a new set of tattoos that warned even the biggest bleeding hearts away."

He smoothed a hand over his face. For a moment, he was a child screaming as he touched the blinding-hot skin where the ink was still settling. He pulled the hand away, expecting to see blood and rejected ink smeared on too small hands, but it was only his hand as it was now—large, calloused, ridged scars.

"I thought I knew hunger because I'd never eat any of that crap they served at the orphanage, but two weeks on the street and I'd probably lick the gruel off the floor and be grateful for it."

Satoru ceased his ministrations. He was finally, for once, completely still. "Why are you telling me this?"

Sukuna returned his gaze to the passing city. "Because I'm wondering why. If there's so much leftover for everyone, why did I have to eat mud? Why did I have to use what little energy I had to catch rats?"

The heat on his back disappeared as Satoru returned to his seat. He didn't know what he expected to see on that face. Guilt? Anger? Anything but the cool apathy that slid over those pretty features. A look he'd seen countless times before on the painted faces of the smucks who'd come down to the Slums for a bit of poverty tourism. On the faces of the ones he fucked. It was something homegrown, naturally occurring in the havers. A perfect weapon formed against the have-nots. Satoru, for as much as he enjoyed listening to Sukuna's tales tailored for tragedy like they were a play, he, like the rest of his kind, didn't enjoy having an active role.

The levy broke. Satoru shook his head, a small laugh escaping. "What should I say to make it better? I'm sorry I couldn't cure world hunger? I was five, but I'm sure I could have done something about it if I'd known. I'd just ring up the king on my play scrying bowl and demand he feed all the bastard children across the land. Think they'd give me the knighthood for that?" His voice climbed higher.

Sukuna said nothing.

Satoru snorted in derision, crossing and uncrossing his legs. His posture shifted again, and the mocking smile was gone. "You think I'm horrible. I'm not." In a flutter, he was on his knees in front of Sukuna, hands coming together around his knee. "I'm not," he repeated. "Don't look at me like that. Don't be mad. I'm sorry, okay?" He nuzzled the inside of Sukuna's thigh. "I'm not a bad person." The longer Sukuna's silence continued, the more fervently he pleaded for forgiveness.

Sukuna bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. Chess is psychological, huh? He cupped Satoru's face, squishing the cheeks slightly. "Of course not," he cooed. "You're not like the other aristocrats."

The watershed threatening to spill dried instantly. A large, relieved smile broke across his face. "Yes, yes!" he cried. He sprang to his feet, throwing his arms around Sukuna's shoulders. He kissed without a shred of that cockiness Sukuna had come to expect.

Satoru's face hovered above his, blue eyes eclipsing everything.

I, Sukuna thought, am going to destroy you.

__________________________

Satoru spent the rest of the ride regaling Sukuna with his many charitable deeds. There was a nervous energy about him now, hovering around Sukuna like he were a wounded animal that might lunge to bite at any moment. It was possible with him.

Their bodies shifted as the carriage rolled to a gentle stop. Springing up, Satoru said, "We're here." He was so eager to escape the confines of the carriage that he didn't even wait for the footman to open the door.

Great City dirt felt like any other dirt. Sukuna peered down at the ground as he took his first steps in a world that had largely remained imaginative to him. Lightly springy terracotta soil and verdant grass. The carriage had dropped them off in what appeared to be an open field with the city curved around them.

Satoru whispered something to the driver that sent him and the horse trotting in the opposite direction. To Sukuna, he said, "Come."

Together they wandered down a winding path, the footman trailing a respectful distance behind. It was an exercise in futility to ask questions, so Sukuna allowed himself to be led like a lamb.

The path emptied in front of a small hut made of gray brick. In a curved window behind a barrier of glass, an older man with the largest mustache Sukuna had ever seen straightened up once he caught sight of them. He tipped his little brown cap at them. "My lords. Two tickets for the evening?"

"And one for the footman, if you would be so kind. Add the observatory, too."

The man's mustache twitched over his smile. Something clicked just out of sight, then the man was sliding two slips of paper under the glass. "Enjoy. The marigolds are looking particularly stunning this time of year."

Satoru accepted the paper, passing one over to Sukuna. "Keep it safe. It makes for a fun souvenir."

Sukuna turned it over a few times, squinting at it, but it produced no magical effects, nor did it say anything. It was a plain piece of brown parchment with a small hole cut in the corner. "You want me to hold onto scrap paper?"

"This one's a bit boring, but they have better paper during the other seasons. Last winter was this marbled black and white sheet as thin as ice."

Sukuna could not imagine being so bored that collecting paper was a novelty, but he slid it carefully inside his robe pockets.

Around the little hut, the dirt path transformed to one of smooth concrete. A delicate length of chain ran along both sides, reminding Sukuna strongly of the little rope the matron at the orphanage would use to shepherd them around. Every few paces beyond the chain-link would be what seemed to be a purposeful arrangement of plants. Satoru paused at one, a tall yellow flower atop a bright blue stalk that furled and unfurled its petals every so often, like a breath. It was nearly as tall as he was.

"Oh, this is new. I've only seen them in the coastal cities." He bent down to read a small plaque. "Hilarisum. What do you think, does it look funny?"

It looked like a big flower. Sukuna voiced this, and Satoru rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, but what feeling does it evoke?"

Hands on his hips, Sukuna decided to humor him by bending down for a closer look. Trailing alongside the blue stalk were millions of tiny, nearly clear needles. "The name's a joke. Don't think anyone would be happy picking this up."

Satoru sidled next to him. "I suppose it would be funny for everyone else watching. Botanists are the mean-spirited sort, aren't they?"

"We traveled for nearly half a day to look at flowers?" Sukuna asked, incredulous. An endless span of artful arrangements of…plants.

"This is a botanical garden. Suppose you don't have those where you're from?" Satoru had seemingly lost his nervousness now, the teasing lilt back on his tongue. He linked elbows and tugged Sukuna along. "This space is dedicated to the study and preservation of plants. It's open to the public, but it's primarily a place of research. There's been four breakthrough drugs that have been created from just the research done here. People travel from all over the city to see it."

Sukuna raised an eyebrow, but allowed Satoru to chatter. Behind them, even the footman was pausing every so often at a plant, a considering draw to his brow.

There was apparently a logic to the sprawl—families and species of plants grouped together, different habitats one after the other. They passed through wetlands, deserts, and woodlands at a leisurely pace. He maintained a neutral expression at each new environment, places he'd only seen in the weathered geography books at the orphanage. Satoru had the habit of reading off the plaques, then throwing his own childhood tales spent galavanting around the world into the mix. Fragrant, earthy blooms of air burned his nostrils with their freshness.

The pavement gradually faded back to soil, the soft tck of shoes swallowed up, and trees lined up on either side pressed closer and closer, their spindly branches curling over them, weaving together to form a thick blanket that blotted at the sky. Like burrowing into a warren.

Something dawned on him. "Where is everyone?" It was the exact sort of place that should have buzzed with people, but up until now, they only crossed paths with workers in unremarkable black frocks.

"I rented it out for a day," Satoru said idly, playing with the hem on Sukuna's sleeve. "It's torturous when it gets too crowded."

Sukuna threw him a sidelong glance. "The entire place?"

"Hmm. All the workers, too. It's not fun if you don't get the whole experience. Don't make that face. I'm friendly with the owner, and he gave me a great discount, if that's what you're worried about."

Sukuna had a few concerns about Satoru. Money had never been one of them. "You're used to doing whatever you want, huh?"

"Money talks."

The end of the tree tunnel broke out to a small alcove surrounding a dark pond. Big, billowy bulbs burst out of green bushes, a kaleidoscope of pastels fanning out around them. The diffuse light that slipped through the canopy gave everything a soft glow. One could almost call it romantic. Sukuna remained blank-faced.

"Oh come on, are you really unstirred, you heartless lunk?" Satoru whacked him lightly on the arm. "A sight like this is good for the soul."

"Don't have one of those," Sukuna said, the corner of his mouth ticking downward.

"Yes, I'm starting to see that."

Slim fingers wrapping around Sukuna's, Satoru led in a strange dance. Sukuna was unsure of what to do with his feet, but Satoru guided him with expert precision. Still, Sukuna kept his eyes trained on the ground, watching their feet rhythmically chase each other. Everything quiet and still, save for them.

"Well?" Satoru asked pointedly after a failed attempt to spin Sukuna only succeeded in locking their arms together.

Sukuna raised an eyebrow.

In the solitude of the alcove, Satoru leaned in, cheek to chest, arms winding around his waist. "Still think flowers are worthless?"

__________________________

They returned to the manor under the gloom of an approaching storm. Thick ominous clouds billowed in on an eastern wind. When the carriage rolled to a stop, the tower was only a faint impression, a cavernous black void that produced a strange, melancholy ache in its absence.

Attendants fluttered about them inside, ushering them out of day clothes into evening loungewear. One servant whispered frantically at Satoru before bowing repeatedly. Whatever was said had a remarkably fast improvement on Satoru's mood—whereas before he was sluggish after being pulled from the nap he'd taken on the ride back up the mountains, he was now alert and in fine spirits.

At Sukuna's questioning gaze, he said, "Our guest is here."

A guest at this hour?

They were brought to the first drawing room, the one with big windows that poured in fountains of sunlight during the day. The curtains were drawn now, light jittering from the fireplace and casting shadows. Three figures occupied the space. The driver was there, standing behind a plush chair, so still he could have been a corpse. In the chair before him sat an old woman, forehead shiny, a thick black coat fastened all the way to her throat. She had filmy, wandering gray eyes that flitted about—from Satoru to Sukuna to the antiques littering the room, then back again, and then she brought her hands together, and Sukuna saw the thick veins bulging through liver-spotted skin. Her eyes would land on him and they would tighten, nails dug in, relaxing only when her gaze found something else to latch onto.

Thirteen years had passed, and the Matron had shrunk considerably. Well, most people were small in comparison to Sukuna, but it was like someone had come along and forcibly curled her spine so that she was hunched, diminutive; nothing like the stern-faced woman that had stared down at him with barely disguised disgust.

Uraume, the servant girl, was crouched on her knees before the old woman, rag in hand as she lightly dried the old woman's shoes.

Satoru said, "That's a good girl."

Uraume tipped her head, stood swiftly, and moved to the corner of the room.

Sukuna considered this peculiar arrangement of bodies, like strangers gathered on a transport dock awaiting the day's shipment, only dimly aware that they were surrounded by other living, thinking beings.

Satoru undid the top button of his silk dress-shirt, pale flesh exposed. He smiled good-humoredly. "I was thinking of how I could make it up to you for earlier. You hardly care for my sympathies, so I thought maybe you'd tolerate something even better—my hate. Alsta?"

The driver blinked his beady black eyes like he was roused from a deep slumber. He slipped a hand in his jacket pocket and pulled out an object that glinted in the firelight—the short blade of a curved dagger, passed like it were simply a letter correspondence from servant to master.

How strange it was to see it twirling between Satoru's fingers, when Sukuna had never seen him with anything more dangerous than a butter knife. "If you want to kill her, I'll support it." The blade was still in his hand. He held out the hilt to Sukuna.

Sukuna accepted it, no stranger to the feel of a knife in hand. There was a time, not too long ago, when he'd considered it an extension of his arm. He held it up to the light, squinting. Gold metal, intricate grooved lines curling around small jewels. He lowered it and looked at the old woman. She shrank under his stare, fingers scrabbling helplessly at the hem of her coat. She'd recognized Sukuna instantly, just as he had with her.

He cut a glance back at Satoru, who leaned against a credenza, arms folded, smile steady in the low light. His head tilted, he said, "I've always been able to do whatever I want, remember?"

Check. Sukuna balanced the knife atop his palm. Killing the old bitch wasn't for his benefit, though Satoru certainly wanted him to think it was. He considered whether petty revenge was worth tangling himself in the web further. Three witnesses to watch me kill a defenseless old woman.

A trap and a message: I have the money and the means to find you anywhere. Because when and how had he so effortlessly found this decrepit pile of bones?

The old woman tensed at his approach, the fear lighting her eyes as she clawed the arms of the chair. She made to get up, only to be held in place by Alsta's heavy hand.

"You wicked things," the old woman said at last. It was the same as it had been back then—grating, like crunched glass on the skin. "I should have drowned you. Mother knows, I sh—"

Sukuna pressed the flat plane of the knife to her cheek. "Yeah, you should have."

The smallest cut, there right under her eyes, rivulets bubbling up and racing down her face. She quaked, mouth opening and closing to plead to the Maiden, the Mother, the Crone. Anyone listening, please don't let this monster kill me, oh please. Sukuna worked silently, moving the knife like a paintbrush across her face. He stepped back when he was done. Satoru came up behind him to admire his craftsmanship.

"They look better on me," Sukuna said.

"You're a much nicer canvas," Satoru agreed.

The woman's mouth hung slack as she pulled at her face, and blood soaked the fingertips. Sukuna had spent so many years tracing the pattern of tattoos across his face that it was all too easy to give them to the old woman. Pained tears mixed with snot made her an ugly sight.

There was nothing at all. No hate. No excitement. Dreams of revenge seemed more a folly of his teenage years, when rage whipped inside of him like fervid fire. But killing the old woman now was nothing more than snuffing a matchstick.

Sukuna turned suddenly and pressed the hilt of the knife in his hand. "You finish."

Satoru blinked down curiously at the dagger, accepting it smoothly. "Where's the meaning in that?"

"I'm sure you'll find one." Sukuna flicked his cheek, enjoying the flash of irritation in those blue eyes. From somewhere outside, the caw of crows temporarily muffled the Matron's sobs. Walking to the plush chair opposite the old woman, Sukuna sat with his legs crossed, elbow on the armrest, his cheek on his fist. He quirked his brow. "Well? Show me your hate."

Satoru looked down at the snivelling woman. The moment was untethered, drawn out, hanging between them, swollen and putrid. For an instant, Sukuna almost thought he would do it. He watched those fingers tighten around the hilt, the way his shoulders drew back with determination. Then just as quickly, it was lost.

"Alsta," Satoru hummed cheerfully.

Alsta bent slightly and wrapped two meaty hands around the woman's neck; he jerked it to the right, the snap quick as a whip, the old woman's marionette strings cut. He let go, and the body tumbled to the ground, where it moved no more.

Sukuna made a noise of disappointment. "Couldn't be bothered to get your hands dirty, could you, rich boy?"

Satoru held up a hand in dismissal. Alsta came around the chair to scoop the old woman up before heading to the door, Uraume trailing behind him with her head bowed. Once they were gone, Satoru stood before him, hands on his hips. Slowly, he dropped one and used it to prod Sukuna's legs apart. Sidling between them, he said, "I can when it's something I'm interested in."

"You went through the effort to bring her here, and you have the gall to say you're not interested?" Sukuna stroked the back of Satoru's head, white locks soft between his fingers. He reminded Sukuna idly of the big sheep dog he saw once trailing behind a farmer who'd come to the market to sell a poor harvest. Fluffy and overeager.

"Your happiness is what's interesting to me." Satoru grabbed hold of his head and pressed their lips together. The kiss was slow, languid, wine-smooth.

__________________________

Sukuna didn't know what happened to the old woman's body. He'd asked Uraume the next day while she drew his bath, steam swirling around them. Though he knew the Matron's death brought him no satisfaction, he still thought to piss on her corpse. It seemed delightfully disrespectful.

Uraume paused, then said, "I don't know what the driver does with them, sir."

Sukuna knew from experience that pointing out this odd turn of phrase would only earn him pointed silence and an abrasive scrub.

After the date turned murder party, Satoru had taken to spending more and more time in the tower. Sukuna watched his form disappear behind the wooden door at odd times of the day, and he watched him emerge later, smiling.

He tried to merge these images: the Satoru who believed the Slums were inhabited by cannibals and the one who'd joyfully brought an old woman to her death, and found them both congruous. A sheltered young lord with no regard for anyone but his own hedonistic pleasure. It was almost exceedingly predictable.

But the tower—the tower was an unknown element.

It was during dinner a week later that the game finally revealed itself.

They were on the veranda again, watching the sunset, a platter of roasted duck and vegetables between them. Satoru refused the meat but peeled off the seared skin and shoved it in his mouth, chewing slowly. His mind was somewhere else, and Sukuna found the distraction vaguely irritating.

"I have business in Maris," Satoru said suddenly. He picked up a chunk of carrot, swirled it around in the dippings before swallowing. "Nothing serious, but I'll be gone for at least a week starting tonight."

Sukuna's head snapped up. "You're leaving me here alone?" he asked in what he hoped was a casual tone. He refused to glance over at the tower, to betray his own thoughts, but he thought this refusal to look also said everything in itself.

Satoru nodded. "The people of Maris are more conservative, and you're…" he trailed off, gesturing at something imperceptible about Sukuna. "No matter. There'll be other cities in the future, perhaps." He fished around his pocket before withdrawing his closed fist. "Here."

Head tilted, Sukuna held his palm flat. When Satoru pulled away, a single black key sat in his palm, weathered and rusted with iron.

"You'll be lord of the manor while I'm away, so it's only right that you have the key to the house. That key unlocks any door on the estate, should you need it."

Sukuna closed his hand around the key, feeling the scratchy imperfections. "Any door?"

Satoru watched him closely. "What's mine is yours," he said. "But listen. I forbid you to go into the tower. That's the only rule I'll give you. Do whatever you want, go wherever you want, as long as the tower remains undisturbed. I'll know if you've gone in, so don't bother lying. I don't want to punish you."

The rules laid out before him, Sukuna pocketed the game piece. "Understood, dear."

__________________________

Satoru departed at sunset, the evening sunlight unsheathed like a sword. He'd pressed a kiss to Sukuna's temple and said some words in a language he didn't understand before taking off. Sukuna leaned against a front-facing window and watched the carriage trundle down the path, the black top hat head of the driver growing smaller and smaller.

The first three days were spent lazing about and mapping new hallways and corners of the manor. Apparently, lord of the manor came with new perks—sometimes he thought about a type of room he'd like to exist, and it would appear just as pristine and exact as it'd been in his mind. Lying on the floor wrapped in silks, piles of gold and jewels around him fit for a king, he'd dream of even bigger rooms full of a hoard fit for an emperor, and it would be so.

If he thought that he might enjoy a hallway where fish swam lazily behind a glass, than the next turn he took, they would appear, the wall replaced by blue saltwater that cast murky shadows, and if he turned back, everything would disappear, and it was only an ordinary hallway. He tried once to imagine a path to the tower that was underground and cavernous, tunneling straight to it. In those instances, the manor refused him, and he was likely to wander down a hallway of pooled muck up to his knees.

The servants behaved no differently in their polite disregard for him, but Sukuna couldn't help but get the sense they were observing him out of the corners of their eyes. During late-night walks, his skin prickled with the weight of someone's gaze. He began noting their schedules, who went to sleep when, and where they were most likely to spend the day.

On the fourth day, he pulled a bow and arrow from one of the imagined rooms, one he'd seen in a children's book he'd read with his brother long ago, and ordered one of the groundskeepers he knew hunted the surrounding forest to teach him. The older man's rheumy eyes expressed nothing at all as he guided Sukuna's body like he was a doll. The thrum of the bowstring when he released vibrated through him like lightning.

He practiced alone, and when that grew boring, he ordered three of the stable boys to stand before him with apples on their heads. Only one of them trembled, a wisp of a boy with a lame leg.

"Don't worry. If I miss, you might end up even," Sukuna told him.

The first shot sliced a neat path across the bulkier boy's cheek, planting itself in the grass a little ways away. His target hardly flinched, but Sukuna noted the dark spot spreading across the front of his frock and smiled.

The next three shots found the apple with hardly any effort. Bored, he dismissed them, watching their shambling forms run back up the hill to the stable, then the tower was to their back, and they were gone.

The key burned in his pocket. He had not forgotten it, not even once, always a thought just out of the periphery. A reminder of the game to be played, the puzzle to solve. When he was alone in the dining room, picking through the spread, a sudden cavalierness would grip him, and he'd think of abandoning the meal and marching right down to the tower. But then the door would fling open, and there was Uraume with something to fret about, and he would see her not as she was, but as the stalwart face mopping the old woman's feet. The driver was gone, but Uraume remained. He toyed with the idea of killing her, but more eyes lingered than one. And the key was certainly magical in nature, cursed, perhaps, so no matter how many eyes he disappeared, it'd reveal the truth.

On the sixth day, the day before Satoru was to return, he woke early in the morning in one breath, not bothering to wait for Uraume to come and pull him together. Early morning was wet, the grass covered in dew squelched underfoot. He stepped onto the paved path and followed it up to the tower door.

He would avoid any punishment by eliminating its arbiter, he decided, so there was no reason to avoid the tower anymore. No reason to keep up this farce. He would settle his curiosity, then he'd wait for Satoru to return and end things. He'd tested loading the treasures from the imagined rooms in his pocket and leaving the property, and they never vanished. He'd take enough to get on a boat destined for some faraway land.

Sukuna was nothing if not a survivor.

The twist and click of the lock was mundane, the door shuddering open. The scent of earthy musk assaulted his nose. Inside was a circular atrium with a single set of stone steps spiraling up. It appeared to be crumbling from the inside out, several of the steps lurching a little as he climbed. He was quick as a mouse, but when the stairs ended at a large open room framed by a doorway withered with vines breaking through the stone, he thought maybe he'd made a mistake, and the tower was just a tower.

Light streamed through a single window halfway up the adjacent wall, illuminating only a corner of the room. He only saw the desk at first, a simple wooden thing missing a leg, and in front of it a chair lay on its side. Dust motes whipped into a frenzy as he pressed along the edge, tracing the curve of the wall. Breath tight in his chest, fingers scrabbling along cool stone, finding nothing—

His thumb goes into something soft. Sukuna jerked back, wetness slicking down his palm, the side of his wrist. He held the hand out to the light and saw the red stains. Slowly, he felt along the wall with more caution until—yes, that was a nose. Holes where the eyes should be. Moving lower, he touched a slit too large to have been the mouth.

Sukuna lugged the body—because it could only be a body—over to the lit space.

A young woman without eyes stared up at him. She possessed an aery softness in her still features, only disturbed by the missing eyes and the gash on the right side of her forehead. Something had hit her fast, taken a chunk of her with it.

Sukuna found six bodies in the dark. They now lay on their backs in the sun like something to frighten the birds away, each different from the next, and none excessively decayed. Three men, two women, and one Sukuna couldn't tell because a large crater replaced the face. All different ages and colors. Some with their throats slashed, others with pieces missing, but each wrapped in delicate robes, and their hair—if they still possessed it—was stylishly groomed to frame their face. Cared for like dolls were.

Sukuna cupped his chin, studying them intently. A more imprudent mind would have dismissed these corpses as high society. If they can die, what of me? each would think after discovering the one before them, the small, inconsequential things they were. Each would miss the layers of callous under the fingertips, soft downy hair along the hairline that spoke to prolonged hunger rather than centuries of crossed genetics. He nudged a young woman's wrist with his foot and saw she was branded like cattle, a symbol of a girl born to the Pleasure District.

Each body told a different story, but no matter the journey, each ended the same: here, in the tower.

Where I'm likely to end up, he thought with a laugh. The old priest's words echoed with all the subtlety of a brick: …longer than the last.

The teeth of the key dug into his palm. Who'd been the first? Was it the body without a face? Sukuna grasped its wrist, turning the palm face up. The delicate softness reminded him of Satoru—a hand that had never seen strenuous work. There was a wildness to the death, a lack of carelessness not seen in the others that spoke of clumsy hands that hadn't meant to, not really. What was left of the heels was scrubbed bloody, like it'd been dragged along the gravel path.

The first had been an accident, the second a taste, and the sixth a craving.

The devil had come to the Slums to hunt.

With the puzzle solved, the rules of the game made clear, he released a low chuckle. That old woman at the soup stall had tried to warn him, hadn't she? The people in the market averting their gazes, tipping their heads down.

Dead men tell no tales, but their absence from the narrative couldn't be understated.

Sukuna left the corpses exactly as they were and returned to the manor with hardly a stumble to his step, whistling jauntily as he went up the path.

He found Uraume folding laundry in a back room and ordered her to draw him a bath. She took one look at him and sighed. "O' course, sir," like she was humoring a dead man. "Should I be using the dandelion soap?"

Upon request, she left him alone to soak in the bubble bath. Every muscle in him loosened, tension carried on the soft shifting currents. There was freedom in being in check—not many moves left to play, a capture just on the horizon. He could leave before Satoru returned, let him chase him around the board, but an ending was inevitable.

Unfortunately, Sukuna was, among other things, a sore loser and a cheat.

He cupped his hands, drawing up water, reflection rippling. A light pressure began at the base of his skull.

Let's play, Satoru.

__________________________

Satoru returned the next evening, the sun was big and yolky in the sky.

He wasted no time on his hunt, but it was short-lived—Sukuna was in the dining hall, sitting at the head of the table, an extravagant spread of meats, cheeses, and wine before him.

Sukuna chewed on the perfectly-seasoned leg of bird. "Hi, honey," he said.

Satoru flexed his fingers, then drummed them along the top as he walked the length of the table, pausing right before Sukuna. "You went into the tower." It wasn't a question.

"No, 'Hello, I've missed you and your wonderful dick?' Thought you were supposed to be well-bred," Sukuna mocked. He ripped a piece of bread with his teeth.

Satoru withdrew from his robe the key—the one that, until minutes ago, had steadily burned a hole in Sukuna's pocket. The little traitor.

Sukuna sipped wine from a gold goblet. "So is it a fetish for you? You should have told me. We could have had some fun together. I know a lot of ways to kill a man."

"I was really hoping you wouldn't. I quite like you," Satoru said with a sigh. Cautiously, like he was trying to soothe a cornered rabbit, he brought his hand to Sukuna's shoulder. "You're not running?"

"Is that what makes it fun for you? Then no. You know I don't like giving you what you want." Sukuna leaned back, legs crossed. "Guess this'll just be unsatisfying for you."

Satoru finally smiled. "You've always been a bastard." His touch turned loving, heavy as it moved under the collar, like so many late nights since Sukuna had arrived at the manor. The other picked up a steak knife oily with drippings, raised it high and—

Sukuna stabbed him in the leg with a fork. Satoru reared back, and he was so clumsy he tripped over the hem of his robes, landing flat on his ass. The knife clanked to the floor, skidding out of reach.

"You did not think I was actually going to let you kill me? You're too pretty to be this stupid." Sukuna towered over Satoru now, a sadistic expression curling his lips before dropping to a crouch.

Satoru's eyes were wide, sky blue, and pearlescent. Sukuna wanted to hold them, the gems that they were. He yanked the fork out, savoring the way they winced. He dragged the tines along Satoru's cheek, puncturing the skin.

"You got too greedy, dear. Should have stuck to hunting the little pests that scurried Slum streets. I'm a bit too big for you to bite. Though you've certainly tried your best, I have to admit. Say, what if you suck me off one last time—"

The door banged open. The brutish, dull face of Alsta blundered in, the sword fastened to his hip unsheathed. The knight come to defend the king.

"No thirds," Sukuna barked.

Alsta lunged without a word. Sukuna dodged and smartly moved a few steps back. Dim surprise took over the driver's face as he stared at the vacant spot. Slowly, he lifted his gaze and tracked Sukuna.

"What the fuck are you, anyway? You're like some proto-specimen piece of shit. Did he scrape you off the wall of a well?" Sukuna taunted.

The two of them danced, Alsta swinging his sword with all the finesse of an ape while Sukuna weaved away with ease. He'd had better fights drunk out of his mind with the grunts at a pub. Pitiful, he sneered. Out the corner of his eye, he saw Satoru climb to his feet.

When Alsta started for him again, he feigned a stumble. Alsta took the bait, thrusting forward with too much of his weight. The instant he was off-kilter, Sukuna snapped up, the blade whizzing by his ears as he surged forward with his fist balled—it connected with Alsta's throat, crushing.

The sword clanged to the ground as Alsta released a choked gasp. His fingers dug grooves into the soft skin of his neck.

Sukuna, wasting no time, snapped his hands around Alsta's flailing arm. Grip tight, he brought the elbow down, right over his knee. The sound of the joint shattering was like the beat of a drum, Alsta's high wails making the melody.

He tossed the brute aside as easily as rubbish. Now, where did pretty boy…

Something clicked from behind. Sukuna craned his head to look over his shoulder and spotted Satoru leaning one hip against the table with practiced ease. The scrape on his cheek looked nasty, the bruised hide of a fruit. In his hand was an antique revolver.

Sukuna glanced at the empty display board past him as though to confirm. "Thought you said it was just for show?"

"I lied. I do that a lot," said Satoru. The way he held the gun was far too competent for Sukuna's liking. It suited him.

"You think you're the first one to fight back?" Satoru tutted. "You're all the same. Despite my generosity, no one can obey one simple rule. What is it you all imagine is in the tower?"

"I thought it was going to be your horse porn collection."

Satoru opened his mouth, but whatever he was going to say next never came, his words drowned out by the explosion of a gun.

His expression shifted rapidly as Satoru's body snapped back. A pin prick of red unfurled on his shoulder like a blossom. Abruptly, he toppled over, and the revolver skittered away without ever being put to good use.

Acrid smoke stained the air. He turned to face the direction the shot had come from. In the great doorway, he glimpsed a reflection of his past or maybe his future behind the smoking barrel of a pistol: slightly smaller, skin unmarred, hair flattened neat against his forehead. Sukuna blinked again, and the image became that of his younger brother, Jin, breathing far too heavily and eyes bouncing from Sukuna to Satoru's prone form and back again. His eyes widened until they threatened to pop right out.

"You look like you've never shot a man before in your life," Sukuna said cheerily.

Jin sputtered. There was more life to him than what the scrying water showed—rosy-cheeked, softened edges, a luster to his hair. Precisely everything Sukuna could never be, including being bashful about violence.

From behind him came the stomping of dozens of feet on marble. A horde of men clothed in black cloaks and top hats poured in, shouting amongst themselves. Coppers, Sukuna thought with distaste. They swarmed like gnats. A couple hovered near Sukuna, wisely too wary to approach in full.

A few paces behind, a tall, willowy older woman in pressed slacks and a flowy, flower-patterned wraparound entered. He thought the brown lump on her shoulder was shit, but as she moved closer, it quivered. A great big rat.

Satoru's most hated aunt.

She cut a neat path through the police, stopping a hair's breadth away from Satoru's limp body. The aunt took one good look at the blood fanning around him before nudging his foot with hers. "Are you dead?" She had a bullfrog of a voice. The rat on her shoulder jumped, landing with a great big plop in the blood puddle.

After a beat, Satoru lifted his head. Impossibly, his face was whiter, nearly bloodless, and gray around the mouth. A thin sheen coated his forehead. "You—" He choked a pained breath. "—wish, you cow."

The aunt huffed. To Jin, she said, "Mightn't you have aimed better, dearie? Was this not your cherished brother's life on the line?"

Jin's mouth moved wordlessly.

She scooped up the rat, her face screwed up in a grimace as some of Satoru's blood stained her palms, then began ordering the coppers about like a seasoned general. "Search the grounds. I'm sure the little monster has dozens more stored away."

This whipped them into a frenzy. A couple cuffed Alsta, who still lay on the floor moaning uselessly, while some wondered aloud if they should give Satoru medical aid.

Let the bastard bleed out.

He crouched down, nice and low, and lifted Satoru's head by the hair. Even near death, he was too pretty. "Oi, Satoru?"

Satoru's breath rattled in his chest, but he managed the softest of glares when their eyes met.

Sukuna laughed. The first full laugh he'd had since this whole damned story had begun. The kind of laugh that came from somewhere deep in your belly and spread to all of your limbs until your whole body ached. Still laughing, he traced a pattern lovingly down that pale cheek.

"Checkmate."

__________________________

After months of officials handwringing about precedence, votes, and revotes, Gojo Satoru was scheduled to be executed on a Wednesday, just after autumn had hit the Great City and many of its trees' leaves had turned.

Sukuna hung his head out the carriage window, breathing in the harvest scent. A few of the pedestrians on this quiet little stretch of road startled when they saw him, but rather than the fear he'd grown accustomed to, they only pointed curiously.

A street rat inheriting one of the largest fortunes in the country after his rich husband was arrested for unspeakable crimes? Well, people talked.

Still, Sukuna bared his teeth and enjoyed the way they quickly averted their eyes. He still had it.

"Bugs'll be making 'emselves at home in your teeth, sir."

Sukuna pulled his head back in. Across from him, Uraume sat cross-legged, pinched face looking reproachful.

"Extra protein."

Uraume sighed noisily. "You'll be ruining your appetite, sir."

Sukuna thought this particularly audacious. It was only a few months ago that she was nearly given the rope for aiding and abetting her former lord's murder. Uraume and the rest of the staff of the manor (even the stable boys) had been marched on platforms in front of a politely bloodthirsty crowd.

Crk.

Crk.

Line up the bodies, tighten the rope, pull the lever, crk.

Alsta had been particularly enjoyable. His big body had snapped the first rope, and he'd flopped to the ground on his bad arm, yowling like a cat. The executioner dragged him back up the platform, triple knotted the noose, and pulled the lever. Crk.

It was only when he saw Uraume's tiny form being marched up the platform steps that a thought struck him. He turned to the thin man beside him—the judge overseeing the proceedings.

"You don't think you could leave just one of them? I'll need someone who knows the manor."

The judge raised an eyebrow, mustache twitching.

Sukuna said, "I'll make sure they're thoroughly punished. That little one's hardly a threat."

The judge released a long-suffering sigh. He whispered in the ear of a much younger man who'd been taking notes, and the young man hastened over to the platform because the executioner had just tightened the last noose.

And now Uraume was sitting here scolding him instead of resting at the bottom of a mass grave.

The road wound up a steep hill, cutting through a quaint neighborhood, before dipping back down to a valley. They rolled around for quite a while, the only conversation being Sukuna inquiring about some wildlife or other.

Eventually, the sound of the horses whinnying as the driver pulled them to a stop filled the cabin just after nightfall. They'd trotted straight up to a big iron-wrought gate guarded by a couple of men dressed like tin cans, who clanked as they moved.

The new driver, blessedly, was a bright-eyed young man with some signs of intelligence behind the eyes. When they asked him to state his purpose, he said in his chirpy voice, "Gojo Sukuna has business in the prison."

They waved them through without another word.

Of course rich people's prison was a far nicer sight than the poor people's. Floors free of piss, human-sized beds in each cell. Cell after cell they passed as the guard took the lead, all the while, polite gentlemen behind bars nodded or tipped their caps amicably before returning to their books or craft projects or smoking pipe. Not a single soul spat.

"We put him in solitary because he killed ol' Gunther the first week he'd been here. Don't much care for him, to be honest," the guard said.

Solitary was in the dungeons, which were decidedly not nice. Water seeped in from somewhere, so their feet splashed. In his peripherals, tiny shadows scurried and squeaked. Sukuna's mood improved considerably.

"Here he is."

They stopped before a single cell at the end of the hall. A full moon shone through a small window that kissed the ceiling, just enough to illuminate the area.

Gojo Satoru was simply too tall for his cot and, based on his behavior, no one had cared to get him another, and so his legs dangled off the end of what looked like a piss and blood-stained hard lump. One arm thrown over his face, the other swaddled in a grimy sling. With the way the sullied fabric clung in excess around his body, he'd lost a considerable amount of weight. The trays of rotten food piled in the corner confirmed this.

All of that and Sukuna still wanted to fuck him.

He snapped his finger. From beside him, Uraume pulled out a small coin purse from her sleeves and passed it to the guard, whose eyes widened.

"Are you gonna kill him, sir?" he asked eagerly. "Promise I won't tell a soul, I won't."

Uraume scowled and shooed him away.

Once the splash of footsteps could no longer be heard, Sukuna said to Uraume, "Go speak with the Warden. Remember to reward him generously."

Uraume bowed her head and set off down that long stretch.

Finally, they were alone.

Minutes ticked by until Satoru uncoiled, nice and slow. He sat up, and Sukuna saw his face was smudged and bruised, white hair tangled and dove-gray. His eyes held that incandescent shine as he squinted in the lowlight.

"Ah ha ha. Look at you! You look so esteemed. Is that the set I ordered from Maris?" Satoru crossed his legs. There was a falseness to his sincerity, to his affability. A captured king feigning dignity.

Sukuna, silent, lifted a finger and beckoned.

Satoru cocked his head before showing his back.

Sukuna waited. Satoru had never been one for patience. He had the scars from his nails to prove it. Eventually, Satoru's resolve cracked, and he spun on his heel and marched right up to the cell bars.

Hands on his hips, Satoru tapped his foot. "Well?"

Sukuna reached down, hooked his hand under Satoru's jaw, and brought his face to the gap in the bars. So close, he could smell the sour fragrance of neglect, rub the filth on his skin. He pressed their lips together, felt the grooves of cracked skin on his. Satoru yielded at Sukuna's heavy insistence, and then Sukuna's tongue was in his mouth, slippery, wet, and so warm. Dizzily, Sukuna was aware of the wild tremble of Satoru's hands reaching through the slats and pressing, sliding up his chest, each finger white-hot.

Abruptly, he jerked back and shoved. Satoru, with only one good arm on him, smacked flat against the prison floor, sending a splash of water up like a faucet. He looked quite like a drowned rat.

Sukuna dragged a hand down his face to steady his breathing. The moonlight was a damp, cooling rag. The inklings of an idea, of a new game, were beginning to take root. Sukuna stuck his arms through the bar slats, resting his elbows against the cool metal, and stared down his nose. Blue eyes swirled up at him, pond-reflected sky.

"Say, you're fit. And I find myself to be a kind and charitable man."

/ / /

…or so the story goes.