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Gojo switched the beat-up engine of his white, made sometime within the current century, car. Which he never bothered to get fixed—even though he had the means to do so. He had more important things to do in the afternoon, like finding out where Geto had run off to.
His disappearances had become more frequent over the last year with Gojo scrambling to find his scent with little to no clues. Bothering parents, friends, classmates, even passersby who had no way of knowing who he was. Almost always, he would get unlucky and just have to wait until his return. This time was special. This time was different.
He decided that he was going to make him return, no matter how much he complained or moaned about staying. This was his best friend and he was convinced that whatever was going on could be resolved from within the loving arms of the village.
Heavy rain beat down on his car some more, sounding out like a bunch of lit firecrackers being thrown around the blue and grey skies of Takayama.
One hundred and forty miles away from Tokyo.
His jaw dropped when Shoko told him. Even then, her own eyes betrayed her. They couldn’t hide the way it surprised her too, and the worry that glazed over them when she’d also mentioned that she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.
It was by pure happenstance that she’d found out during a hangout at the bar between the two of them. During Geto’s drunken rant he let it slip.
Gojo was forever grateful.
He focused his eyes on the bright yellow sticky note clutched in-between his fingers, now sort of de-saturated-looking, one more time to make sure he would remember the directions she wrote down before following them.
For someone studying to be a doctor, her handwriting wasn’t all that difficult to understand. Yet.
The thin, sticky-rimmed paper surely wasn’t going to survive the rain, and he didn’t know if his uniform would either. Carelessly, he’d forgotten to bring an umbrella to his solo-search-party.
Outside the car was a narrow and light dirt path that disappeared into a cluster of very bounteous trees.
Gojo crumpled the paper in his hand and threw it in the backseat before getting out of the car and quickly slamming the door shut to keep the rain out. He took off down the path, holding his arms out in front of him to push the wet leaves of a painted maple tree reaching toward him away.
By the time he made it to a small clearing at least 5 minutes from where he’d parked, he was completely drenched. And his shoes were smothered with wet dirt he kicked up while running.
The cabin he stumbled upon fit the description. It was fairly small, even smaller than he thought it’d be. It fit a blinding white door that stuck out like a sore thumb next to the dark brown wood. And next to it was a bike, black, it’s metallic skeleton enshrouded in rust. There was no awning, so there’d be more to come as the rain hammered down on it. The chain was probably next.
He caught himself holding his breath when approached the door. What was he nervous for? He should be confident—maybe mad too. That’ll convince him. Show him how much he really cares. There’s no way he can refuse after that.
Gojo clears his throat, “…Suguru,” he rehearses, barely able to hear himself over the sound of the pouring rain, “please come back to Tokyo. With me.”
He shook his head after hearing what the words sounded like out loud, “stupid…”
It would be pure improv, he would get every word from off of his chest and hope it was enough.
The door wasn’t closed, it was cracked open so much so that he could see the floor pattern and the back of Geto’s empty sneaker up against the wall. He put his hand out and pushed it open some more to be able to get inside. Ignoring the panic that settled in upon the discovery.
The door creaked on his hinges when he shut it behind him, eerily filling the silence that came with walking inside the unlit cabin, the only light coming from the open windows further into the house.
It didn’t look lived in—the light switch by the door was still covered in plastic, and the shoe rack had a cream white tarp over it. There was no life to it. He wasn’t sure if he was even here.
“Suguru?”
Gojo steps around a corner, into a space that resembles a living room. In the middle was a green couch that looks too itchy for comfort.
He squints his eyes to get a better look, what he’s seeing must be real. It has to be. Gojo blinks. There’s what he’s looking for. Laid down. Unmoving.
He’s there before he even knows he’s moving his feet. Geto’s here. The worst hasn’t come.
His long hair is splayed all over the cushion, some of it falling over the edge of the couch. His shiny opal earrings are in view, above his white long sleeve shirt. In his sleep, his eyebrows are kneading skin together and his eye bags, the color of coffee stains.
“Heeyyy,” Gojo reaches for his shoulder, only to stop halfway there.
Geto shakes his head and starts muttering. His words, slurred and his voice husky against the sound of his quiet breathing. Gojo leans down over Geto and cups a hand over his ear to try and make out what he’s saying, a smile forming.
“…No… no…”
Nightmare. Gojo sucks in his breath, his smile tearing itself away in an instant. He places a hand on Geto’s shoulder and pauses for a moment. His thumb finding itself in a semi-shallow divot near his collarbone.
He’d noticed the weight loss, failing to mention it to him in hopes that it was just injury-related. But actually feeling it was a whole other experience. Regret made quick work of him. He felt like a total asshole.
“Wake up, Suguru,” he shakes him, eager to leave, eager to ask more questions.
It doesn’t work, in fact it seems to have the opposite effect. The beats of his breathing start to hasten. Gojo tries both shoulders with more fervor than the last attempt, with Geto’s mumblings growing louder and his head shakes spontaneous, twitchy even.
A groan exudes from his mouth and he gasps, sitting up immediately. Gojo steps back, unsure of what to do now that he’s finally got what he wants.
-
There’s a curse in his house. Out from his head. To take him farther away than he’s already come.
His mouth stands agape in horror. It’s everything but human, swirls of impure flashes of light and dark murky fog materialize this thing. He rushes his hands over his mouth. It was probably too late for that anyway. Curses might as well have been the walls of flesh that touched his teeth. Who was he to call himself a sorcerer if he was just going to sit here and die?
Geto covers his ears and shuts his eyes tight. Maybe he can save himself. He scrambles onto the floor. His elbows and his knees burst with a sudden pain. And his forehead kisses the dusty wood.
The curse pulls up at his shoulders. What for? It was already in his ears, his eyes, his mouth, he could taste it. Breathe it in. Witness it for himself. Taste the sickness and the way it burned it’s way down his throat–rattling his vocals. What more did it want? His mind?
It gets his head up and turns him around on pulsing knees. The touch is rough, and cold. There’s no sympathy for his restraint. It’s harsh coldness slips around to the back of his head and his backside. It’s pulling him in, and he can’t resist it no matter how hard he pulls back against it’s force.
It reels him in. He pushes up against it’s cold heart, and the wet mush coats his face and the shaky hands he gathers around it. He squeezes the curse tight, it feels like a return to a hug he knows will never be there as long as he’s in it’s clutches. He breathes it in. The smell is earthy and it lingers in his nose. Geto listens, close, it’s heartbeat hammers into his ears at an anything but steady pace.
“Open your eyes c’mon! Don’t you know where you’re at?” It infects him. “Seriously. Suguru. If you keep on shouting someone’s going to complain!”
Suguru.
He cracks one eye open, the beads of light and dark he remembers taking a stand over his body in the living room are gone. What clouds his vision is a gold button fastening the front of a familiar uniform.
He looks up through the circular blue tinted windows and meets a pair of a brighter, bluer shade beneath them who’ve enacted their place beneath them. Not a curse. Not rough hands surrounding his figure–gentle–trying. Trying to help him, not get under his skin.
“Go—Satoru…” He stutters out in disbelief, “You’re here…?”
He unhooks an arm from his waist and cups his face, pressing his thumb down onto the soft fleshy spot under his eye.
Gojo opens his mouth, but no words make their way out before Geto goes to speak again, an opportunity presenting itself right in front of his eyes, “Take it… Take these off… Please. I need you to use the eyes on me. I have to know.”
Gojo adverts his gaze and looks down in a shameful sort of way. A pale rose color lightly patted onto his cheeks.
“No.”
“What?” The hand slips from his face and back onto his chest.
Gojo scoots back, leaving his arms empty and stiffened in place. He gets up off the ground and crosses his arms over his chest. The tight-knit expression of worry, wiped from his face. Now the vines of a hardened one that Geto’s pleading with him couldn’t pierce grew over it.
“I said no,” he bites his lip, like saying the words pain him, “you were… just having some nightmare. That’s all.”
Geto puts his leg out as a crutch, using it to get up into a space where the air in the room has shifted and the smoke it has turned into starts to suffocate him.
“Why did you leave again?”
“I– Um– It–” His brain short circuits, and he blinks a few times, so hard he could shatter his eyelids if he was made of glass. Not that he was so fragile.
He looks outside through the window at the rain, then down at Gojo’s muddied shoes, his damp uniform, everything. He comes to terms with a sudden realization outside of his dream-like state, this is all very real. Happening now. Geto’s eyebrows furrow. And the fiery sensation in his throat pours into his ears.
“How did you get here? Did you follow me Satoru? Did Shoko–”
“It doesn’t matter. Why… do you keep doing this? Running away—disappearing for weeks.” He puts his arms down and clenches his fists by his sides, his hands were trembling now that Geto’s had almost come to a complete stop.
Fear had no place in his heart anymore. The curse in his house was no more than a boy desperate for answers–the slightest hint–whatever he could get his hands on, more than he’d already put them on Geto. He gave no notion that he was going to speak, or give him any of those blessed things.
He just stood and stared as the heat split apart like embers and gathered in his chest. It only made him feel feverish and awkward to think about what had probably happened outside of his hallucination.
“You have nothing to say? This is crazy, Suguru. You were screaming your lungs out and holding onto me like your life depended on it just a few seconds ago. What would’ve happened if I wasn’t here?”
Gojo recounted it for him instead.
Geto turns around so he doesn’t have to see the worked up expression on his face, and the way his shoulders bob when he speaks with so much vigor— he couldn’t take it, or this conversation for that matter. This was his getaway and even he wanted to escape from that.
“The same thing that always happens.” Geto pauses, wanting to stop talking. Stop letting Gojo in on the horrors that go on inside his head, because there was always the slim chance that he would understand taunting him.
It didn’t feel like a problem on it’s own, most people he knew would be grateful someone understood them. But it wasn’t like that. What if Gojo had the same pains as him? What if he remembered the day as vividly as he did? Like it was all yesterday. Like the sword keeps piercing it’s way through his body as if he were made of paper. The stinging regret of a failed mission, a person, a vessel.
He’d talked about it so easily before, like the whole incident hadn’t happened to him in the first place. But the same question still loomed on his conscious: What if?
He continues to talk because he can’t get his mouth to stop moving, “I wake up… screaming. The girl’s dead… then I find out, you. Are dead.”
“Are you kidding? That’s… no way to live. After surviving that guy? I’m–I’m right here. I’m still alive–not some ghost haunting you. I’m here for you Geto. I mean it.”
That was the worst part, Gojo was here. Seeing him like this, trying to help. Not at school or at home studying for upcoming tests like every other student should be doing. Here.
“Look at me won’t you?”
The request sounds simple enough, look at him. He’d done it everyday at school for three whole years. It should come to him like sorcery did, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Maybe it’d be better–easier to imagine his face instead, and build up all six of the blue rounds that could fire through his head, flushing out exactly what his mind was set on in the moment. Would that be enough to satisfy him?
“Look.”
He flinches, Gojo closed the space without him noticing, the rain concealing the sound of his footsteps. His fingers loomed dangerously close over the side of his biceps.
“Suguru.”
He could feel himself slowly shrinking under the threat of his touch. Something that only ever came exclusively as a small brush, around shoulders, or bike rides, or–he could keep on going.
He was lying to himself and he couldn’t figure out why. Gojo was the most invasive person he knew–and personal space was a second thought rather than a first when it came to Geto. It was never like this though. Never this form. Truly unrecognizable
He didn’t know what to feel–or do. Would turning around get rid of this feeling? His hands were glued to his sides. Nothing like before.
“No.”
Gojo moves them in more, wrapping them around the front now, his freezing hands somehow stilled even though they should be shaking like hell.
“Stop.”
His arms meet in the middle and cross over Geto’s chest. He doesn’t squeeze, his arms sit there encasing him in the comfort of an oddly cold warm hug.
“Please.”
“I can’t,” Geto’s head droops down and his gaze falls to the floor.
He brings his hands over Gojo’s arms and up to his face. The wells in his eyes dried up and lulled him to sleep way earlier. He couldn’t bring himself to cry, physically. So he swallowed down the thick smoke that had been building in his throat and laughed. Loudly into the room. Gojo’s arms tense around him. It’s the kind of reaction he wasn’t expecting.
“...Why are you laughing?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He struggles out through his laughter, his voice becoming increasingly breathy and forcing him to stop in between each word.
“I’m sorry,” he can hear the smile in Gojo’s words, “I think I got your shirt wet.”
Geto pulls his hands off his face to look down at his chest. He finds his thumb in the nook of Gojo’s and peels it off him. He was right, but it was pretty damp now. There was a small bit of red coating his fingertips.
“Not really, I think you opened one of my stitches.”
“Blegh!” Gojo pulls his hands back while Geto turns around to actually face him.
He was sticking his tongue out and looking down at it. Geto laughed even harder, his jaw was starting to hurt. He couldn’t stop.
“Seriously, you have to tell me what’s so funny.”
“...Secret,” Geto looks out the same window from before, his laughter quieting down a little when he sees the view.
The rain had stopped and now the sun was beaming through the cover of trees and hitting the wooden cabinet resting under it, coloring it golden.
“Hey look. It stopped raining.”
Gojo whipped his head around and looked too before turning his attention back to Geto. “Perfect! Let’s go home Sug’! This cabin is kind of depressing me.”
“Can we go to yours?”
“Sure.”
He stuck his cleaner hand out toward Suguru and he took it without thinking twice. Gojo led him to the front, helping him put his shoes on after wiping his hand on his uniform, explaining to him that it was already ‘ruined’.
And then out the door, and on the walk to the car. During it he was still laughing. Gojo kept prodding at him to say what it was. Even going so far as to make a few guesses. But he didn’t give in. Not once, because he knew what it would mean. And he knew he wouldn’t be able to answer.