Chapter Text
One of the greatest miracles of Yaga Masamichi’s life would be the fact that he had not a single strand of white hair. An unusual statement for a man still middling through his thirties, but most men had not endured the excruciating phenomenon of Gojo Satoru. For two years. Masamichi suspects that if his hair does not start thinning by the time Satoru graduates, he’ll have thinned it himself from pulling it out in frustration.
“Satoru,” he says, in the careful mix of weariness, admonishment and authority he had nurtured through his years of teaching. It boasted high rates of effectiveness on most students, and he had persuaded many to do anything from buying him a drink from a vending machine too far for a summer day to submitting their three weeks late homework. Unfortunately, it worked best on students whose names did not begin with ‘Gojo’ and end with ‘Satoru’.
“Satoru,” Masamichi begins again, a useless effort in the face of white hair, black sunglasses and a shit-eating grin. “Get him out.”
Satoru pouts, a movement juxtaposed by Shoko’s cheerful face of non-involvement and Suguru’s own face dropping further into incredulous annoyance. Satoru thrums in his seat, a habit that had in turn instilled in Suguru and Shoko the habit to separate their desks when necessary. It was certainly necessary now.
“But Sensei,” he whines, voice pitched into comical volumes. “This is my seeing-eye dog! He’s here to aid me!”
Satoru waves at the ugly scar running across the top half of his face, the handle of his dog leash flapping with the movement. At the other end of the leather, Fushiguro Toji grins, as equally obnoxious as his 'owner'.
“It would discourteous of you to deprive the disabled of their much-needed aids.” The older man says as if he is not the source, cause, Q.E.D- of Satoru’s current state.
Satoru, also seemingly nonchalant about his current state, snaps his fingers in glee. “That’s right! What a smart dog you are! Do you want a treat?”
Toji looks down at him with a mixture of fond kinship, like that between a vulture and a hyena sitting at either side of a fresh kill, and predatory amusement, like that between an injured deer and a lucky wolf in a cold forest.
“You’re a little shit of a brat aren’t you?” He responds and Yaga will not voice his agreement, out loud, in the heart of Jujutsu society, with the god damn Sorcerer Killer, no matter how much he agrees. Shoko and Suguru send him some sympathetic looks, which is why they're his favourites and not Satoru.
Yaga buries his face in a hand and dismisses the class before his migraine develops another migraine.
“Suguru, wanna run down the pet store and get some dog toys with me?”
Getou Suguru has had three fortunes to his life. That he lived through the first time he met a curse, that he lived through Gojo Satoru thus far, and that he had lived through the ten minutes it took for Fushiguro Toji to cut through the strongest curses he owned and the strongest Jujutsu sorcerer of the century.
The price for the first had been the lingering taste of piss and vomit in his mouth, a phantom burn in the back of his throat. The price for the second was that not once had he been unable to trust Satoru with his back. The price for the third it seemed, was the spectacle he was looking at.
“I’m not going into town with a guy who looks like he walked out of a bad porno.” Suguru sighs, nose scrunched up. “You look ridiculous.” He wished he had Shoko’s common sense to flee from the scene- she was surprisingly fast when she wanted to be.
Satoru pouts, twirling the handle of the leash in his hands. Toji was unfazed by the minuscule tugs on his collar the movement brought about, no doubt something he could attribute to having twice the bulk Satoru did. He seemed unfairly serene, considering the situation he was in- owned, in all terms relevant to Jujutsu Society, by both its most powerful and annoying sorcerer.
Satoru seemed unfairly cheery, as if the man whose life was in his literal hands had not traumatized Suguru with the haunting vision of his dead body last week. (And to this day, a stubborn vision undeterred by the sound of Satoru’s breath, his heartbeat, half a meter away.)
“I’ll take off the leash when we go to town so come down with me?”
Satoru pouts, and Suguru rolls his eyes because that move has been ineffective since day one. What has been effective however is the threat of Satoru whining at his elbows until he gets what he wants, or he was going to go alone and make enough of a mess that Suguru has to go down anyway and appease whatever flailing citizen’s having a crisis.
“Fine,” Suguru says. “I’m gonna laugh at you if someone calls you his kid by accident.”
Satoru snorts. “You’re the one with black hair.”
Everything goes wrong ten minutes into town.
Actually, not everything goes wrong, it's just a great portion of things that matter to Suguru that go wrong- or no, not really that either. One minor thing happens and aggravates Suguru’s brain into a downwards spiral until it comes back up and tries to punch Fushiguro Toji in the face. Yes, that is perhaps, a more apt description.
Here’s how it plays out- the scene begins its transition from Jujutsu Tech’s boundaries and into the beginnings of ordinary Tokyo. When the scene begins in full, Gojo Satoru breaks script, stumbling and walking into a lamppost. It is so entirely out of character, Suguru’s brain lags at the image.
His technique leaves him uninjured, and Suguru is both aware of that and still reaching out to help him up. His fingers stop short an inch from contact, hitting a piece of time, frozen into armour. Suguru tries not to let the ugly feeling curling in his chest show on his face.
When Satoru gets up slowly, too slowly, facing the wrong direction with an alien, halting hesitation, Suguru begins to entertain the unlikely idea that maybe, something is wrong. Toji is three steps ahead.
A blink and Toji’s face is at the precise distance from Satoru’s own where his infinity begins, with a bemused smile bordering on malice.
(A wolf, in the cover of the night, coming across an injured deer, blood-speckled leaves garnishing it.)
“Well, looks like I managed to do some lasting damage.”
Satoru’s moment of befuddlement vanishes into anger as he knocks back Toji with a burst of cursed energy, and in that small moment Suguru’s already replayed the memory of Toji sinking a knife into Satoru’s neck ten times over, so the older man bounces back right into the trajectory of Suguru’s fist.
“Hi, welcome to KFC can I take your order?”
“Two Buckets, a burger, three cokes,” Satoru announces to the smiling cashier, freeing his wallet from the confines of his pants. There is a pause in movement as he stares down at the open wallet, acutely aware of how people never really memorise the notes by size without reason, before Suguru reaches past him to slap the precise amount on the counter. Satoru’s face twists for a moment, and he rounds on Suguru-
“You paid for the entire Okinawa trip,” Suguru huffs, as nonchalant as he can. “You’ll make me look like a bad friend.”
Satoru freezes, mouth half-open before he twists it into a smile. ”Then you’re paying for a month of KFC!”
Suguru rolls his eyes. “You’ll give yourself a stroke with your eating habits.”
Satoru laughs, bouncing away. “Nope. I’m the strongest now. I’m gonna live to a hundred on nothing but grease and sugar.”
They shuffle away to a corner table, waiting for their order, and Satoru walks into the edge of the table without a break in his smile. Suguru moves past him, lightly shoving him in the back as he messily clambers into his seat. He knocks into the fixed furniture enough times that a bat could echolocate the whole table without opening its mouth.
“I want the window seat,” he declares. It sounds flimsy. He jabs a thumb in Toji’s direction, the man languidly sliding into the seat across. “And I’m not sitting beside him.”
Satoru slides into the seat next to him laughing, the tight grip on the table edge semi-disguised. “You don’t like my dog Suguru? Always knew you were a cat person.”
Suguru notes the queue number display. Two more to theirs. “Did you check him for rabies yet?” He says, in an effort to entertain. Distract. Misdirect.
Satoru cackles, and Toji remains in an infuriating state of indifferent amusement. Asshat. Suguru’s hand is throbbing for another ago. Actually, scratch that, it’s throbbing from pain.
“Why the fuck are your cheeks so hard?” He complains, examining the red skin of his knuckles. It is unfair. He knew he landed that hit, felt the force of it jar his wrist, but Toji’s face is mockingly bereft of bruises.
“Exercise,” the man remarks offhandedly, to which Suguru calls bullshit.
“You can’t exercise your fucking cheeks-” Suguru argues and Satoru laughs, a little more genuine. He eases for a moment.
The little display screen above the counters flashes, the ageing speaker gurgling out some indecipherable series of numbers and Satoru turns to see if it’s their number. Seconds tick by, and the hand that had been casually draped over the chair’s back curls into a fist.
“Dude, you got yourself a manservant.” Suguru scoffs. Suguru is a good liar. Suguru is an even better liar than Satoru. He lies about the eye-bags every time he visits home on holidays, he can lie about this. “Make him get it, lazy-ass.”
Satoru is almost as good at lying as Suguru though, because there is no visible fault in his face when he turns back to Suguru, grinning broadly. “You’re right. Toji, go fetch.”
The older man rolls his eyes and for a brief moment, his eyes meet Suguru’s, something like knowing and mocking cross his face. Suguru feels guilty that for a moment, he becomes grateful Satoru cannot see the ugly snarl his face twists into.
Toji moves to get their order with a practised laziness to his gait, a slouch that makes him smaller than he actually was. Suguru maps the brief outlines of muscle visible through his jacket and plans where he’d sink a knife into him.
Suguru is only there because Riko had looked like she wanted to cry, and the lines of Kuroi’s shoulders had shaken so gently, and Suguru wasn’t the kind of man who enjoyed seeing women cry. He’d stepped away just far enough that he could still hear Riko’s voice and he could see Satoru’s face, pale and sweaty, lips pressed into a firm line.
Toji’s first blow goes through Satoru’s neck. It must’ve cut into the windpipe- Satoru’s next breath is raggedly wet. The next strike goes into his head, followed by a diagonal slash across his torso as his body falls, and a series of quick, successive strikes to his leg. It’s overkill, for a seventeen-year-old boy. It's a necessity, for boys named Gojou Satoru. It’s terrifying, and Suguru’s vision goes red.
He swears, and the voices behind him abruptly stop. The sound of a clumsy start into running echoes into the tunnel and Suguru plants himself in the middle of it. How long does it take for a high school girl and her caretaker to run down four flights of stairs? He needs to buy that amount of time and no less. Toji’s face is familiar to him- there is an insanity, an assuredness in it that Suguru has seen more times than he can count on Satoru. It unnerves him more than the blood.
Toji grins, lets the knife fall out of his hand, jerking to stop beside Satoru’s head as it hits the limits of its chain. He begins to swing it.
The sharp arc of the knife runs across Satoru’s face, cutting a clean line across his eyes before it is yanked and thrown in Suguru’s direction.
Suguru wakes up more damp than is reasonable, considering the air conditioning. The feeling of his clothes sticking to his skin and the warm outline of a person on his bed build into a mild irritation. Suguru stares into the dark of his room, his chest twisting into itself. He waits a minute for his body to sort itself out and come into full wakefulness, an event signalled by an attempt to get him to vomit. He swallows that down- it's a waste, and it’s nowhere near the most disgusting thing he’s tasted so the action arouses no revulsion from him. He’s not going to sleep with the taste though, so he stumbles towards the door and out to the bathrooms.
He’s just about done with brushing his teeth when, in the reflection of the mirror, he sees Satoru amble into the low lights of the bathroom.
“You went for a snack run? Without me?“ He scolds through a yawn. The scars are harder to see in this poor lighting. Suguru smiles. “Nah, mouth just tasted gross.”
Satoru shuffles up to him, overly fluffy slippers squeaking on the tiles, as Suguru leans down to gargle the last of the toothpaste out. He turns off the tap, introducing a sudden silence punctuated by soft breathing and broken by Satoru’s voice.
“Suguru.”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t need your pity.”
Suguru looks up. ‘Shame’ is not an expression Satoru wells well or seriously. Not ‘embarrassment’ either.
‘Anger’, perhaps. ‘Pride’, even amongst friends.
“Do you think I pity you?” Suguru says. There is a small part of him, a part not as small as he would like, that is getting a little mad.
“Isn’t that what this was?” Satoru accuses. “All of today?”
“Satoru,” Suguru begins. What does he say? What is the right word?
“I think that I’m your friend.”
The silence stretches.
“Am I?” Suguru asks. He didn't think he'd have to.
It seems a bit forced, murmured in a practised offhandedness, but Satoru is not a liar so what little discomfort has been building under Suguru’s skin calms at the response.
“Obviously.”