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He’d eaten a feathered curse once, crumpled it down into a black mass of a sphere and shoved it down his throat with a grimace and a brave look, back when they’d been kids.
Satoru had watched him shiver as he’d tried so hard not to gag, his eyes squinting and his face contorting at what he’d once described the taste of as tarmac and the eternal suffering of the damned. Suguru had shaken his head, tongue stuck out in disgust in a brief, but less rare moment of what’d he’d call vulnerability but what Shoko always said was just fun, and Satoru had laughed at the look on his face.
“Like chicken?” He’d called, voice full of mirth from a few feet away, where he’d still been a little stuck standing in his own crater. In his defense that he’d ultimately used against Yaga-sensei and gotten nowhere with, they’d been out in the boonies. Nobody would even miss the dang bridge! (It’d been in the news the next week. Yaga-sensei had not been pleased).
Satoru had smiled wide at the pissy look Suguru had thrown at him, one that very rapidly dissolved into something that didn’t want to admit he’d found it just a little funny. Instead, Suguru had shaken his head as he’d pointlessly wiped his mouth, and meandered Satoru’s direction so they could find their way together back into the heart of the town. Shoko was going to meet them at the bus stop- she’d gotten out of the fight they’d wound up in by going on a cigarette break, that bastard. She’d known, too, and she’d been undeniably smug about it when they’d found her at the shaded green bench.
“More like a vulture,” Suguru toned beside him in answer as they fell into step, hands stuffed deep into his broad pockets, and with his head down like that, he looked a little smug when he smiled just a bit.
“You think they taste as bad as curses?” He asked, and Satoru had laughed loudly, then.
Later, all of his jubilant mirth had been sucked from his lungs with his own inhale when they’d gotten back to the dorms. Hesitantly, almost reverently, he’d feathered his fingertips over Suguru’s bare shoulder, mindful of his friend’s slight twitch at the delicate touch. Infinity silenced and tucked away, the contact was warm under his hands, familiar only because it was Suguru.
“Feathers?” He’d whispered, purposely quiet within the dark room and the darker hour, neither of them particularly keen on having Yaga finding them and getting the wrong idea. Suguru only hummed, nodding with inky hair cascading to the side, and let the sleeve of his open button down shirt fall a little lower.
“It goes all the way to your collarbones…” Satoru hushed in a quiet sort of awe, achingly aware of the tiny uptick like a smile below him, curling up the edges of pretty pointed lips in the dark.
“I really like the color of this one,” Suguru murmured, tugging him a little bit closer between his knees where he sat on the side of the bed, his arm a steady weight against the back of Satoru’s waist.
“Steel blue is a nice color,” he agreed absentmindedly, gladly stepping into the warmth when it was asked after.
Trailing his fingertips along the bright colored patterns, he traced their swirling, still movement all the way to Suguru’s clavicle, where the overlapping feathers ended and a new pattern began; one from a previously eaten spirit, blocks of scales wound together with roses and vines, a spiraling ladder that led all the way down to a pale hipbone.
If Satoru looked further over pale shoulder, he could see faint wisps of dragonflies spiraling up Suguru’s spine. They were the only thing that ever showed up consistently.
Without a word, he pressed his palm flat along ink stained side, dragging it down the waterfall of scales all the way to the waistband of Suguru’s sweatpants, and got a full body shudder for his efforts.
The scales wound from his side to his arm, where a dragon had rested over his skin a few days ago. Satoru couldn’t help his wonder, always so awe filled whenever Suguru let him get so close; when his own slightest fear of touch was always silenced and temporarily forgotten when he let infinity drop, when Suguru let him trail hands down the bright ink and the stained wishes of his curses.
(Before he’d been so afraid, so afraid to let it down again; years before the worst had happened and so long before he’d been so afraid, so afraid after splitting open skull to hip, infinity gone and dying, dying, dying, with no hands or warm smiles left to entice him out of it.)
The new tattoo blended in with the rest- smatterings of flowers and words, images he could barely make out, and simple patterns that looked like they could belong to old yukata, haori, or traditional paintings. Wishes and wants of despair, hope, emotions; the longings of those that created the curses he ate; the curse’s aching themselves.
Getou Suguru’s tattoo’s had always changed with every passing month, because each time he’d ingest a curse, it would be always something new. His bare body was always a colorful pallet of ever changing, always swirling shaman ink, made of curses and their energies; his very technique, stained unstatic into his skin.
Always ever changing with every curse Suguru consumed, Satoru only ever had a moment to memorize the fleeting patterns he got to catch a glimpse of, whenever they had a moment to themselves.
Suguru quietly sniffed, tilting his head down to look himself. “...Yeah,” he murmured, eyes drifting down his partially bare arm to where the bright colors of a dragon used to wind around his bicep, replaced now with steel blue and misty gray.
“I think it might have been almost a part of a bird. Look,” he said, sliding his fingers around Satoru’s hand to drag it back and around his body to rest on his shoulder blade, moving under his skin slightly with the motion of his arm.
“It looks almost like a heron, like the only part of it that could stain was the wing,” Suguru said, his shoulder moving forwards, his shirt falling to bare more of his back and pooling into a partial fold of fabric where he sat on the edge of his bed.
Between his knees, Satoru could only stare. The coiling of muscles under skin was only a little less visible under the shaman made ink; under the blurry, nearly washed away image of a fuzzy heron flying down Suguru’s back in blue-gray, inky swirls of a paintbrush.
His lips parting in wonderment, Satoru leaned forwards and traced his fingers down the edge of the wing, the neck, where the beak vanished into a smear, bleeding into the next tattoo of a curse. Suguru shivered, and apologetically, he pressed a little harder down onto warm skin to soothe the tickle tremoring down bony spine. A dark head of hair fell to his shoulder, and with his free hand, Satoru gently tugged on a shiny black lock in a wordless acknowledgment.
“It is a heron. It vanishes, but there’s definitely a beak there,” he said, unable to keep the grin out of his voice. Suguru’s tattoos, while constantly changing, weren’t always perfect inking's. They varied, warped, or partially vanished with the strength of the curses he ate.
“I think this is the coolest one you’ve gotten yet, Sugu,” he said, delighted. Suguru snorted, unimpressed, and let his head rest where it had fallen on Satoru’s shoulder for a long moment, simply breathing.
Then, he finally straightened up, knocking Satoru’s hand away and pushing him out from standing between his legs as he slid his shirt back up onto his arms. “You say that about every tattoo. You said that about the dragon last week,” he refuted, not quite flatly, dark eyes bright.
In front of him, Satoru opened his mouth in mock offense, clapping a hand to his chest. “You doubt my sincerity?” He sputtered, and Suguru laughed, a quiet chuckle.
Shaking his head as he stood, and shoving Satoru’s shoulder with one hand as he pushed past him to putter around in his closet, Suguru snorted. “You laughed at me when I got a frog. You actually asked if I could roll my stomach to make it jump.”
“Shoko wanted to know too-” Satoru protested in a whine that garnered him no pity, and got what was definitely a scoff accompanied by an eyeroll.
“Go back to your own room, snow white. It’s late and I’m tired, and you’re a racket.” Satoru stuck his tongue out at that, and didn’t miss the way Suguru’s eyes crinkled when he glanced over his shoulder.
“Fine, fine. Kick the coolest guy ever out. People would kill to have this hot piece of ass in their room this late, y’know,” he snarked, and got a dirty shirt lobbed at his head for it.
“Oh my god, get out!” Suguru shouted in an almost whisper, and ducking the secondary barrage of dirty laundry, Satoru bounded out with a grin and a snicker, the tingle of warmth still fresh on his fingertips.
He actually had really liked that frog. It had been inked in flowing, old calligraphy lines, sat atop a blooming lily pad and brilliant green. He’d been sad to see it go, but he’d certainly loved the more common looping tsunami waves that had taken its place.
It had started out as something embarrassingly innocuous, the both of them insanely curious about the other’s tattoo’s from the engraving of their techniques, but too stubborn to ask. It had really been an accident that Satrou had the privilege to see Suguru’s shaman markings at all.
Suguru, Getou still at the time to him, had caught him at a bad moment in the morning before their classes had started, and clock alarms for the morning only just gone off. He’d woken up late- had been rushing, and he’d gotten careless.
With Satoru standing in his room about to pull a shirt over his head and back to the door, his skin had been on perfect display when Suguru had opened it without the warning he usually gave- the drawl for him not to be late dying on his tongue with widening eyes.
He had seen in perfect detail the colored eyes trailing down Satoru’s spine all the way up to the white of his hairline, carved in ink onto his shoulder blades like eyes in the back of his skull; the prints of imaginary hands stacked over the back of his neck, pale red and blue, overlapping into a blur; their thumbs pressed on either side of his shoulders in a doubled display of ten fingers, and two overlapping palms. The eyes on his vertebrae shown through them, unnaturally bright.
Satoru, though Gojo to him then, had whipped around with a frantic look, hands pressed white-knuckle hard over his collarbones, where more bright eyes made of ink stained his skin.
“Out! Get out!” He’d yelled, frantic, and more than a little shaken.
Suguru had fled, and they hadn’t spoken for a good week, maybe longer.
Things had been tense, then- enough so even Yaga had noticed, but never mentioned. Satoru had been bitter and pissy, expecting for them to never speak about it and just brush it under the rug until it was forgotten, and they could move on.
Until they’d come home to the dorms after a particularly rough mission, and Suguru had flopped down onto the couch, tired and scuffed and still sweaty. Satoru hadn’t thought much of what he’d been doing until he’d come back with two waters, and- stopped in his tracks.
Because there had sat Suguru, button down open and a painting of mountains swirling on his stomach, patterns of clouds and calligraphy spiraling up onto his marked-up shoulders, his side. Mouth suddenly dry and eyes transfixed on the way narrowed dark gaze had stared down at inked stomach in slight awe, Satoru hadn’t known what to do.
“...I’ve never gotten mountain’s, before?” Had been Suguru’s hesitant offering, cheeks a little pink and almost-wince a lot meek as he sat, the perfect olive branch.
Satoru would never tell anyone how embarrassingly long it had taken him to stop gaping and finally sit down. Once he had, though, he hadn’t been able to stop asking.
Eventually, that night had stretched late, and tenseness had fallen way to curiosity. He’d swear to his dying days that that night, that moment, had cemented their friendship. (And maybe, the something more that had almost come after it).
“Hey.”
The word almost rang in his ears. He’d been sitting in silence too long, again. Satoru closed his eyes, and stuffed the flatness down. The six eyes made it hard for him to feel like a zombie, but he’d always been good at accomplishing the impossible.
“And what is everyone’s favourite ghoul doing up here?” He threw back with a smirk and the toss of his hair, the edges of his sharper smile curved a little too much to be real.
Across the faded greenery of the courtyard, Shoko raised one unimpressed eyebrow, and with her arms crossed and hip cocked, tapped her cigarette ash into the wilted grass. The fractals shattering down her slender fingers and bony wrists were vibrant, holographic, and glimmering fervently in the sunlight even from so far away; without the bandages or glasses to hide them, they burned his retinas.
“It’s not usually like you to be an asshole,” she called, a pinch in her mildly darkened expression and eye bags big enough to look more like makeup smudges than skin. “Well, not usually so much of an asshole,” Shoko corrected after a second of thought, and Satoru swallowed the sudden thought that he might have done something to genuinely upset her.
It didn’t really happen often, since Shoko had always used to make herself so scarce. She was still scarce now, but in different ways, since December.
He fidgeted instead where he was perched in his winding tree, trying to rack his brain for something he had done in the last week. “Can’t a guy have a brand-” Satoru started, only to cut off with a pause, and then a genuine wince.
He’d forgotten to show up for their lunch date.
“Yeah,” Shoko said flatly, tapping a foot along the edge of the grass where it met the brick walkway. “You remember now?” She mocked, the sardonic words dripping off her tongue like tar more than Japanese, the words cold like the morgue she worked in.
Free time of any kind was rare for jujutsu sorcerers- especially the irreplaceable. Often it was trampled by emergencies, and so weighed down with work as they were, when free time was ready, it was often ignored in favor of rest. Shoko hadn’t exactly had much, since...Suguru’s implosion. Satoru hadn’t had much, since Suguru’s implosion.
The best they had been able to do for a long while now was scattered moments of strained relaxation here and there; visiting old cafes steeped in stressful nostalgia, or stealing tense moments in the basements of the school where no one but the dead lingered. Satoru was beginning to wonder if Shoko was one of them, with her ashy pallor and permanent, smokey under-eye.
The new features had all finally stuck to her like everlasting glue the moment he’d watched the last of her hope flicker and dim and maybe even die. That horrible night he’d seen the set of her shoulders fall and brace, the curve of her still pretty face set and wipe clean of emotion, as if readying to wait for when Yaga would deliver Satoru’s own mangled corpse to her for an autopsy, too.
(If they’d had a corpse. Satoru had been selfish. All Shoko had gotten was the news.)
Halfway hidden in the twisting branches of the school’s old trees, Satoru opened his mouth to say something- an apology, maybe- but nothing came out past the lump steadily growing there.
“...I-” He started, swallowing down the guilt coating his tongue in something sour and trying not to hunch in on himself. He watched behind dark glasses as Shoko rolled her eyes, muttered something under her breath, and walked over anyway after snubbing her light out on the brick.
Satoru kept watching as the edges of her matte heels stained faintly green as she crossed the lawn, steadily uncoiling from his purposely lazy looking tangle in the branches to something more dignified (cowed, really). He kept watching still when his second oldest friend leaned back against the trunk of the tree. Slumped would have been a better word.
“Fuck, I’m tired,” she muttered, a grimace to herself, and Satoru didn’t comment on what he wasn’t supposed to.
Shoko fell with a sigh that felt bone weary, the circles under her eyes so dark Satoru could almost mistake them for shadows as residual smoke curdled up from her parted lips. She closed her eyes, tilting her head up, and Satoru could smell the specific acidity of her brand of cigarettes when the dappled sunlight hit her skin. It stung his nose.
Time had taught him how to tell the two of them apart by scent alone; the pungent acidity of cheap products had been Shoko’s defining feature before her beloved caster’s had discontinued two years ago. A seven’s smoker and total prude all around, Satoru had heard Suguru’s drawl of a nag for what felt like a hundred times when Shoko had only upgraded her quality by a smidgeon with bat’s.
He’d known exactly who’d be walking down the hallway, or secluded on the roof, or in an outdoor alcove taking a smoke by the scent of their cigarettes alone. He still expected to walk past the broken vending machine behind the gardens, sometimes, and smell the charcoal-like burn of Suguru’s lights.
(Shoko’s smoke had always burned more. She smoked for the dragging heat of it more so than the nicotine, Suguru had murmured, time and again.‘ Unlike you,’ Satou had always thought, but never said.)
Against the tree’s bark, Shoko’s hair nearly blended in, color mixing with the wood and the dappled light from the rays and her skin alike. A sight like it might have made anyone else look youthful, Satoru thought. It certainly did, in a way, but with the sun on her, every feature that claimed tired on her face was only put into a glittering spotlight.
Satoru opened his mouth to say anything, again, but was left with nothing. Wordlessly, he closed it.
When he looked down, the tattoos on Shoko’s hands that wound up her arms to scatter away on her shoulders were catching the light shining through the leaves, glimmering where her knuckles rested at her sides and setting dots aglow on the grass. Fractals that bled into one another, shapes and recurrences that shone impossibly reflective, all stained onto her skin.
‘Reversals,’ she’d explained. Fractals. Geometric inversions. They’d always hurt his eyes, being so bright- but Satoru had loved to see them shimmer when they’d been kids, regardless.
(Suguru had called her a mermaid. Shoko had blown smoke in his face and called him a patchwork quilt.)
“You don’t have an apology, do you?” She murmured, finally breaking the silence that had settled like discomfort, residual smoke curling from her lips. Her eyes were half lidded and heavy-looking as she stared out beyond the short walls of the courtyard. A good handful of meters away, one of the training fields started; glints of light caught on the metal edges of sharp weapons, and faint yells and shouts could be caught if listened for. The dark figures they belonged to moved in quick succession on the grass.
She was right. Satoru didn’t. He didn’t particularly have much of anything, these days.
“You wouldn’t want a sorry,” he muttered, leaning sideways against one winding branch, the bark of it rough on his cheek. It skewed his glasses- let the sun’s light into his eyes, the sharp brightness of Shoko’s tattoo’s reflections. It hurt, and he welcomed it. Some of the flatness subsided with the pain, something he didn’t feel much of, now.
“No, I wouldn’t,” Shoko agreed. She breathed another sigh, this one less tired and more a deep breath, and Satoru flickered his gaze down to her again. “How’s your class? You seem busy,” she dug, and Satoru fell into the opening for barbed mockery gladly. Suguru had described their friendship as borderline verbal assault a lot. It had only worsened in his absence.
“Says the nicotine addict. What, you come up out of the basement for a smoke in the sunshine?” He pitched back, and Shoko raised an eyebrow, the corners of her lips ticking up.
“Vitamin D is good for my complexion. Some of us have to work to be albino.” The words tugged something like a smile onto his lips, and Satoru dangled a leg down to scuff the shoulder of her lab coat, a silent invitation to touch. He relaxed when she didn’t push him off.
“At least I’m not a walking zombie,” he teased. The smile fell from Shoko’s lips when she looked up, and Satoru had a split second of a moment to feel regretful before her words hit him.
“Like you?” She said, and Satoru inhaled sharply, looking up to hide his want for a flinch.
“I’m not the one who looked like she attempted a smokey eye in the dark,” he bit, a little more vicious, and Shoko groaned a sigh as she rapped her shiny knuckles against the tree bark, right by his leg.
“You said you were doing fine,” she murmured, an accusation rolled up in tidy, pissy concern, and Satoru ignored it by turning his head away. The hand that settled warm on his calf was a lot harder to. He swallowed, face pinching.
“Do you see any tears?” He griped, but they both knew it was a pointless statement.
He’d come back mostly undamaged, after December. After Suguru. There had been no tears, no wailing. No shattering and no normal grief; no breakdowns of epic proportions that would have made his maybe something snidely comment on, once. No rage, no fights, no deleting hundreds of photos or tearing up polaroid's. There had just been Satoru, and nothing.
Then it had stayed Satoru, and nothing.
“I’ll save you the words since we both know that’s bullshit,” Shoko muttered, fingers twitching towards her coat pocket in a want for another cigarette, but ultimately refusing for his sake. Neither of them had ever gone out of their way to smoke in his face, when he hadn’t been teased for being a wuss. It was something Satoru had appreciated once. Now, he wondered if he might like the burn of it, too.
(Now he missed the scent of it wafting up from the hidden hall on the first floor, or down from the roof. He’d never thought he would.)
When she looked up, Shoko’s eyes were honey and chocolate in the dappled sunlight, flat from their lives but invested enough in what she still had left. Scarce, but still there. Satoru reveled in the stab of guilt that cut him in his gut, and then he only felt bad for it. He was glad when the weight of her hand didn’t leave his leg.
“You said you wouldn’t get lost, Satoru,” she sighed, looking just as tired as he felt, and Satoru finally turned his head down to properly meet her eyes. Sometimes, it was easy to forget that Shoko hurt just as much as he didn’t. She’d packed just about all of it away under a layer of ice and paperwork and cigarette smoke- so much of it that it was easy to look at her, and think, ‘she’s overworked,’ instead of, ‘it’s been three months since she lost a best friend.’
Satoru hadn’t done that. Instead, he’d come back, washed the meager blood from his hands, and wished he hadn’t honored that wish of keeping his eyes closed. Then, at least, he’d have had a reason for still seeing it when his mind wandered. Maybe the six eyes made it a little impossible for him to be a zombie, but it was impossible for much of anything to escape their sight, too.
Instead, he scuffed his shoe against her shoulder again, and leaned back against the gnarled tree branch.
“I’m not,” he promised, the words flatter than they really should have been. “I’m just...stopping to look at the map.” Toge had left a note on his desk. ‘Feel better soon,’ it had read in his crimped, neat kanji, sincere despite his students loving bullying of him. Satoru had wondered if he was doing that poorly in hiding the emptiness from them, if Toge of all of them had thought he was sick.
Although, the note might have really been Panda’s influence.
Shoko’s brow twitched, and she turned to look back at where Maki and Panda were crushing Toge and Yuuta, nothing more than faint figures and movements.
“Well, then hurry it up,” she grumbled, but it was worry in its own way. Her hand squeezed, and the warmth felt like something he could soak in, like a bathtub he’d let run too long that had overflowed and drowned his bathroom once, something that ran dry and dripped even less now.
“Yeah,” Satoru responded, drinking in the acidic scent of her cheap smoke, and maybe wishing it would burn his lungs a little like it used to. “I’ll try.”
The months dragged on. He got better about remembering the dates Shoko was free enough to find a place to get bitter coffee from. Suguru was still gone. The façade became easier, felt realer, when he had new students to pretend for.
Most days, he forgot, and life continued to drag on.
He was thinking about Suguru today.
That in and of itself wasn’t entirely rare, but Satoru did make a point to never think too hard about his maybe something. It generally didn’t tend to work out well when he did.
Maybe it had been the old note that had fallen out of his nightstand this morning, or the doodle scribbled on a sticky pad he’d found in an old file. He hadn’t been able to draw for shit when he’d been a kid, and he still sucked now, if he was being honest. The only reason he’d known it had been a frog was the memory of making the damn thing.
It had been a favorite of his, when it had inked itself onto Suguru’s stomach.
Maybe that was why he was thinking about him today. It would certainly have explained the old melancholy that was soaked into his bones like it had never left.
“No way no waaay-! Fushiguro! Come look at this!”
Satoru winced at the volume of one pink haired, overly excitable student, and curiously poked his head into the dorm living room. His black glasses slid down his nose, and he blinked, the bag of baby carrots in his hand wilting ever so slightly.
Maybe he would get some excitement today. A distraction would be nice- Yaga’s wanted word hadn’t been nearly long enough of one, and it was a rest weekend after the excitement of Kyoto. He couldn’t bait any of his students into training. Not for lack of trying, really- they’d just bite if he did.
“For the love of- I’m in the middle of something!” Megumi snapped, desperately wrangling the 3DS in his hands from Yuuji’s grip, dragging unwilling partner out of his room and away from his screen.
“Tom Nook is so not as important as this! Check it,” Yuuji burst, bouncing in place as Megumi finally deflated and turned his way with an exasperated look. Satoru caught pale green eyes sliding to him in a flat squint, and only offered a wave as he leaned against the wall.
“Yo!” He called, pushing off to settle instead on the plushy couch, and grinned at the withering glare he received. It didn’t last long, not when Yuuji demanded all the attention of those same eyes in front of him.
“Hi Gojo-sensei! Anyway-” He stressed, ridiculously serious, and Satoru hid a smile by biting into a carrot. “Fushiguro you’re never gonna believe this,” Yuuji continued, and Megumi’s frown flattened.
“You said that about that shitty magazine quiz, too,” he muttered as Yuuji got to work rolling up his sweater sleeves, and only got a sputter of disbelief.
“That was Kugisaki’s, not mine. And it was her idea anyway,” Yuuji griped back as he struggled with one too big sleeve, and Megumi finally set his dingy, dinky old 3DS that he’d never let Satoru replace with a switch down on the coffee table with a sigh.
“Here, let me help,” he muttered, and Satoru pushed down a very familiar feeling as he fumbled his phone out of his pocket, setting the bag of carrots on a nearby standing table beside the couch’s arm. Suddenly, he wasn’t very hungry. He really had been thinking too much today.
A gasp drew his eyes back up before he’d even opened twitter.
Blinking immediately back to the two in the farther end of the living room in the faintest hint of concern, he startled slightly to watch as Megumi almost reverently cupped his hands around one of Yuuji’s forearms.
“They changed,” he breathed, and Satoru recognized the awe in his voice all too well. He’d have to have been blind to miss Yuuji’s megawatt smile, so bright it could outshine the sun- bright enough to out-gleam Shoko’s tattoo’s.
“Yeah! Isn’t it so awesome? Now they’re not just Sukuna’s, anymore. They’re really mine,” he said, and his brown eyes were wide with something just as bright and relieved as his smile when Megumi looked up to catch his gaze. “I have real shaman marks, now,” he nearly breathed, and very acutely, Satoru felt like an intruder.
But mostly, he felt a little more like a sailboat cut of its wind.
Instead of his students, there was a familiar sly smile; narrowed eyes, dark hair. A thousand different colors and things, painted onto a body that was a new masterpiece every week. Thickly, he swallowed, and looked away, blinking just a little too fast.
Tracing delicate fingertips along a sharp collarbone, watching as the tips of a feathery wing reached the thin skin there, and melted into traditional calligraphy clouds. The quiet words floating to his ear in the dark about how it was new, something almost like-
“Flames?” Megumi asked, all traces of exasperation gone from his tone, replaced instead with a subdued excitement- hidden relief, mutual celebration. Satoru caught the motion despite still looking away as Yuuji nodded enthusiastically.
“For Black Flash!” He trilled, and Megumi softly snorted.
“Of course,” he muttered, but it sounded quietly happy. “They almost remind me of Kugisaki’s,” he mumbled, almost too quiet to hear, and Satoru had the fleeting thought pass through his mind of Nobara’s own shaman tattoo.
In the center of her sternum, just about crawling up her throat- the top of her Borromean rings were always just barely visible over her necklines, three translucent circles of white, gold, and blue imprinted on her skin, mirrored and much smaller on the insides of her wrists.
‘They’re for my resonance!’ She’d proudly proclaimed when showing them off, and then later, uttering ‘these are new, though,’ when Yuuji had pointed out a spot of color on her back on what they’d declared to be national crop top day. The outlines of three multicolored steel nails, perfectly aligned and exactly on the nose- it had made the three of them laugh when they’d found it.
They’d delighted in telling him about it, and it was one of the few memories of shaman tattoo’s that didn’t have Satoru feeling like he was about to suck in water instead of air.
Megumi couldn’t have been referring to anything but the color, though- Kugisaki’s rings didn’t really resemble the plain black bands Yuuji had held solitarily on his forearms before today. He wondered, how had they changed?
The pivot and stepping of footsteps had registered in his ears even before the delighted call of “Sensei!” that rang in them just after, and Satoru figured he was about to find out. Sliding on his best interested smile and beating the old hands of the flatness down, he glanced back, gingerly pushing his darkened glasses back up his nose. Smiling, he tilted his head in a motion that, to anyone who probably wasn’t Megumi, would look like amusement.
“Yes?” He asked, meeting Yuuji’s sunny grin with an indulgent smile of his own, wondering how sunlight wasn’t leaking through those perfect white teeth.
“Look! You said that I’d start getting real tattoos when I started making my own techniques- I have! It isn’t just Sukuna’s anymore. They finally showed up.” With two bare arms thrust out for him to look at, Satoru turned his eyes away from that cheery look, and finally glanced down.
The sight had even his own breath catching slightly.
Carefully, he reached out and turned one arm over and back up again, marveling at the flames dancing up tan skin where previously, only two twin, single black bands had decorated both of Yuuji’s forearms like brands. Or maybe shackles.
Instead, now they were different. The black of the plain shaman made ink had melted into burgundy flames edged in cobalt blue, licking up Yuuji’s forearms to kiss the insides of his elbows. The fire was achingly traditional, in the same calligraphy as those clouds and tsunami’s-
Swallowing back the lump and refusing to turn his head away lest Yuuji mistake the motion for anything other than what it was, Satoru reached up and set his darkened glasses atop his hair.
Without the veil of the black lenses- too dark for any regular person to see through, blacked out to nearly the point of being painted- the tattoos became startlingly vivid, just like holographic fractals. Every intricate detail burned itself into his memory; the wild curves of every tongue of fire, the indistinct shift of color really so similar to Kugisaki’s rings, from black to deep crimson, to burgundy to cyan, to cobalt blue and white-
They were gorgeous, and with a swallow that had no right to be as thick as it was, Satoru blinked hard and smiled. He gave one of Yuuji’s arms a last pat, and let them go.
“They’re very nice. I’m glad, Yuuji,” he cheered, smiling as wide as he could, and he meant it, but Yuuji frowned anyway. Sidling up behind him, Megumi shot him a look, one thinly veiled with suspicion he knew was really only piercing concern.
It took a moment, brown eyes narrowed and lips pursed slightly, but Yuuji eventually seemed to find the words he wanted.
“You took your glasses off, so it does matter. But it doesn’t seem like you’re very excited, Sensei,” he muttered, curious and a little dimmer. Frozen, Satoru caught his face before it could blanch- all too aware of the lack of his blindfold and the glasses atop his head still instead of his nose- and tried not to seem too shaken up.
“Ah- sorry, sorry!” He chuckled, raising a hand and swatting at them from midair as if to bat away the worries. “They just reminded me of- a friend’s. I’m very glad you’re happy with them, Yuuji. They’re good tattoo’s,” he promised, and after a long moment that had sweat beading on the back of his neck where those damn inky handprints sat, had his eyes darting between brown and green, his fingers struggling not to tap or fidget, Yuuji finally nodded.
The smile returned, megawatt and even brighter than before.
“Okay. Thanks, Sensei,” he smiled, the words a hint of wobbly, before Satoru was catching an armful of pink hair and giddy excitement. He laughed in a way that felt real despite the thoughts still hovering along the edges of his mind, and gave Yuuji a squeeze.
“They’re good,” he repeated, determined to make up for the fumble. He felt the weight of Megumi’s eyes on him, heavy with the memory of when his own tattoo- a tree of life, with its branches filled with all sorts of animals and creatures- had stained itself onto his back, large enough to crawl over his shoulders.
Satoru had been much more solemn then, when he’d patted Megumi on the shoulder and told him in a voice that was a little too strained for the occasion that it was good. He’d still been drowning then; still been staring at the map instead of his feet that should have been walking. Megumi had believed him, was proud of his shaman ink, but Satoru knew he’d never quite forgotten, either.
He hadn’t been able to help it. Everything had reminded him of Suguru, then. Shaman ink the very most.
Shoko had told him more than once that maybe, being unable to stomach the sight of their own tattoo’s wasn’t a very healthy reaction, but she was a chain smoker on a good day. What did she know.
Maybe swallowing curses was nowhere near the companions of shikigami, but the sight of winding ink and so many tattoos of animals- those damn shadow frogs that looked so much like one bright green and sat on a lily pad that he’d stuffed a doodle of into a folder that would become dusty and forgotten until that very morning- had forced his throat to close before Satoru had been able to push it down and away.
(Before Megumi, still so little then, had turned his head to shoot a narrowed gaze of what Satoru had only figured out to be concern later over his shoulder, he could have almost imagined it to be Suguru in front of him; Suguru, with dark hair and pale skin, a new, intricate tattoo staining his back from the terrible taste of a new curse.
A pat on his small shoulder and a strained smile that didn’t match his tone had been the best he’d been able to do, then. He still regretted it, on the worse days; on the better, he wondered if Megumi had appreciated the subdued pride over energetic joy.)
“It means a lot,” was not-sniffled into his shoulder. “I’m just so happy, y’know?” Yuuji explained needlessly, the tiniest bit of tightness in his voice, and Satoru had to wonder as pink hair tickled his nose, though not with much difficulty. He didn’t miss it when Megumi’s hand curled in the edge of a pink hoodie in a silent show of support when Yuuji pulled back with a wide smile that he returned.
Even Suguru had struggled occasionally, to have tattoos inked into his skin that belonged to the curses he ate. How much worse did Yuuji often feel- how inhuman had he felt?- staring down at the black, single circles around his forearms? The rings that belonged to the king of curses, and not to himself.
Satoru was glad- so glad- that they’d become his own. Aoi had been a good match up, and it was with relief and a genuine joy that he let the memory of perfect black, blue, and red flames shine in his mind's eye. It was with a tightness that he swallowed, though, as Megumi and Yuuji left the living room, stampeding down the hall to find Nobara and pound on her door until she opened or it busted.
It was hard not to think of so many years ago at the sight of them retreating with the intent to bother and annoy and celebrate together with their other half. Hard not to blink back a sting he’d tried to permanently burn off once it had started showing up- hard not to bring one hand up to his eyes, and simply grimace for a moment.
(“This looks new- is it?”
“Oh, no. I’ve had that one for a while. The curse hasn’t been destroyed yet, so it hasn’t disappeared.”
“Mmm, I think you should try to keep it! Nobody else could make a Hannya tramp stamp look cool.”
“It’s not a tramp stamp-!”)
The sound of excited shrieking broke him from the words, and Satoru jerked up, black glasses falling back onto the tip of his nose. Hastily, he gathered the carrot bag and stood from the couch, striding back into the small kitchen and pointedly not thinking about anything as he drew a slightly unsteady breath in.
It was a bad idea to think of him around anyone else. It was a bad idea to think of him, period.
Even still, when three overexcited teenagers tumbled into the kitchen, he clapped his hands together and proposed the idea of making a cake to celebrate, because he was happy, and Yuuji certainly deserved recognition for this. And maybe a happy memory or two, to die with if nothing else.
Two cheers and a flat ‘whoo-hoo’ punctuated that particular proposal, and Satoru pushed every thought of swirling ink, vibrant colors, pale skin, and downturned eyebrows when a smile was genuine from his mind. He led the parade when they all dragged Megumi down to the nearest grocery store like the grump he was.
Like always, for a while, he forgot again.
Later, much later that night, when all three of his rambunctious, loveable idiots were well asleep and Satoru himself was hidden away at home, he’d stood in front of the mirror like he hadn’t done in years, and with shaking hands, pulled the shirt from his head.
“I dunno why you hate them, ‘toru. They’re so detailed,” Suguru had whispered, right against his ear as calloused fingertips had skated feather light along his collar bones.
He’d grimaced, more of a scowl really, and turned his head to the side that dark hair and curious face wasn’t occupying. He’d brought his arms up to cross, remembered there was a body in the way, and let them fall back onto the quilted bed. His best friend was heavy sitting on top of him, but pleasantly so.
“It’s like that stupid giant, from Percy Jackson. Argus, or whatever.” ‘Or whatever.’ Argus Panoptes, the thousand eyed giant and a legend Satoru had faced in the mirror since before he’d left the Gojo estate; since before he’d even reached double digits. Eyes on every plane of skin to watch, always watch; horrifying in being known, more than a little disturbing when they watched his own every move. A thousand eyes, just to eventually die like the legend foretold.
He’d be the strongest. They’d be the strongest. The eyes wouldn’t follow him when he was the most powerful sorcerer.
(He’d been wrong. They still did, but instead of simply watching, they glared.)
“From Greek mythology, you mean,” came the sly correction just a little ways below his ear, the weight on top of him shifting just so, and Satoru rolled his real eyes. Nevermind that he’d only been able to read the translation of the kids series because Shoko had brought a few of the books to the dorms with her. The idea of Argus as anything but a monster had been decidedly nice, even though he’d done his best to pretend it didn’t exist.
“Media schmedia,” he muttered sullenly, and Suguru sniffed huffily in the way that meant he thought Satoru was being a brat, and had something to say.
He shifted slightly, looking to the side out of the dark window to their right as he gathered his thoughts, and Satoru was able to see the winding, pale blue of the jellyfish coiling down the side of Suguru’s neck. It was big enough that it didn’t stop until just below his belly button, partially hidden by soft feeling, loose black cardigan; in the pale light of the late hour, it looked almost illuminated.
Satoru had a thought to reach out and touch, to drag his fingers along the two dimensional frills of the sea creature, translucent, blue, and made of a curse. The press of his open palm against it had Suguru looking back at him in mild surprise, brows lifted and mouth already opening.
Before he’d sighed and looked back up to coal eyes, attention drifting up again to listen to whatever Suguru wanted to say, Satoru could only think of how the jellyfish was warm skin beneath his hand, rather than cool ocean water. It was so real, made of brushstrokes, color, and shadows. Like it’d float right off of Suguru’s skin if only he’d let it. Reluctantly, he let his hand fall to scrunch in the pooled fabric of black cardigan, and drew his eyes back up to a face pinched in thought.
“They look like oil paintings,” Suguru started, eyes dropping as he dragged a pad of a finger under the ink of a tattooed eye on his clavicle, and Satoru shivered. “Like painted versions of your own eyes. I don’t understand why you dislike them, because I think they’re pretty.” The staunch words were a little stiff, Suguru’s dark eyes drawing away, but they had Satoru blinking in surprise anyway.
“...Pretty?” He fumbled, the word falling out of his mouth. “You think...my eyes are pretty?”
Suguru shrugged with one shoulder, biting on the inside of his cheek in an unsure motion, and Satoru watched the movement of the curling snake- winding in a spindly way up the side of his throat the jellyfish hadn’t claimed- when he swallowed. Watched the subtle shift of his body as he re-centered himself, consequently moving the many colorful tattoos spiraled up and over him, like Suguru was a canvas to be painted on. The snake was a newer curse; it wouldn’t fade for a good month, if the curse was lucky.
He hoped the same for the jellyfish.
“You really think they’re pretty, and not- creepy, or something?” He muttered lowly, shoulders rising slightly as he tried to shrink, and nearly pressing into his stomach when he leaned forwards, Suguru flicked his forehead with a frown.
“Hey-!” Satoru protested, only to cut off and rub his forehead with a trite look as Suguru interrupted.
“You looked me in my face and told me that the Oni mask last week was, and I quote, ‘badass.’ I think that eyes are a lot less intimidating than a demon mask. You even get a legend to go with yours.” His tone was flat while he said it, but dark eyes were narrowed in mirth, in real genuine fondness, and Satoru felt himself finally relax.
“It was badass,” he protested, and got an eye roll and an “-oh please,” for his efforts.
“...I still think you’ve got it backwards,” he murmured, a near silent admission, as he reached up to lightly press his fingertips to the literal human heart, tattooed in reds and blues and purples, right overtop of where Suguru’s sat in his chest. Recent; shaman ink but a curse’s spirit.
“Me?” Suguru asked, reaching up to curl his fingers around Satoru’s hand, and simply let it hold where he touched.
“Mm-hm. You’re a new painting every week. I’ve just got extra eyes,” he said, the explanation lacking a certain ‘eyes that I can’t stand to see,’ but he figured Suguru knew anyway. Above him, shiny black hair pure as pitch in the dark and the shadows was tossed absentmindedly over one shoulder, and Suguru’s lips thinned.
“Maybe. But none of these are mine. This doesn’t belong to me. It won’t stay,” he toned, words low and a little longing as he untangled his hand from Satoru’s to press against his right shoulder, where the jellyfish wrapped around his skin and floated down his chest.
Eyes crinkling with the promise of a tease, Satoru tugged on his hand until rough fingers came loose and fell back to the eye by his shoulder. “I’d trade you, if you’d let me,” he said, a sly smile curling the corners of his mouth, and Suguru raised one unimpressed eyebrow.
He was smiling, anyway.
“And have those eyes on me forever?” Suguru murmured, not really a question as he dipped down next to the shell of his ear, feathery breath nothing but a whisper of warm air. “Always.”
The curious fingers hadn’t left the painted blue eye, rimmed in nearly translucent white lashes where it rested on his collar. They’d stayed there for the better part of the night, and they’d talked, and talked, and talked, until the moon was disappearing behind the horizon and Yaga had been almost surely on his way to the dorms.
They really had almost been caught, then. Shoko had given them hell about it for months.
In front of the mirror, Satoru pried his eyes open to the sight of even more, and wished he could remember what Suguru had found so beautiful about them on the exhale of a sigh. He’d understood once, back when he’d been so much younger and still had a hand to hold, a friend to tease. Before he’d thought of pointless slaughter and felt nothing.
He couldn’t bring himself to remember now. He hadn’t been able to for a long while, and he wasn't really sure he even wanted to, anymore.
“What did you see?” He whispered to himself, and rested a hand over the painted eye on his left collarbone even as he ignored its twin, pretending like he could almost still feel the warmth and weight of the palm that had been there once, twice, a million times.
(A palm that had killed hundreds; a palm that had steadily dyed itself red, for a reason he hadn’t seen. )
Images of tsunami’s and frogs, masks and snakes and flowers, dragons and patterns and jellyfish...when he closed his eyes, Satoru could remember them all, and even as he drank in the memories, he couldn’t help a watery smile.
‘You were always the prettier one of us two,’ he thought, and choked back a laugh to settle for a silent huff. ‘You and your colors and patterns.’ The bittersweet amusement died quickly, replaced like always with the churning ache that permanently hollowed out the space between his ribs.
No one responded, just like they never did, and he was still nothing but alone and sad and missing his best friend (and maybe, definitely, something more). As always, the thoughts in his head swirled like thunderclouds, always so much worse ever since he’d perfected limitless and that awful reversed technique.
(‘Why didn’t you look harder.’ ‘How did you miss it.’ ‘Where were you.’ ‘You have the six eyes,’ ‘You are impossible,’ ‘You are a thousand eyes and the strongest,’ ‘Why didn’t you see.’)
They sounded a lot like Suguru.
A thousand eyes reflected in the tattoos of a few; an impossible technique, sight too perfect to name, and still, he’d been blind. Satoru swallowed down the choking feeling that left him wondering if it might be like swallowing a curse, and dropped his eyes from the extra in the mirror glaring back at him.
Maybe he’d lost his mind first, but they’d always promised to be strong together. Staring down at his jittery palms didn’t particularly help his failure, any. It never had. Instead, Satoru sucked in a breath, and let his eyes shut; a pointless barrier to block out the world. It was only ever louder in the fake darkness.
Shoko had said it would only hurt them to think about, years ago over a bitter tea. Satoru had never been able to stop. In circles and circles and circles he went, staring at the ground but not really seeing his feet, wondering what meaning there was in anything but perhaps the kids who could be better than him; him, and his wire thin restraint, reckless and ruthless and pathetically empty, at the end of it.
The inky, deep purple handprints on his sides when he slid his own hands over them felt warm, stained with the afterimage of a touch that was long since gone. Suguru had never known, and it was maybe one of his bigger regrets. The purple hands, lilac and a deep royal over his ribs from the inside out, were just like the red and blue pressed over the nape of his neck. (The imprints of a little something more.)
They’d appeared the very last time a certain pair of calloused hands had dragged along his skin after he'd found the means of an end to his technique, but hadn’t shown until they’d been long gone. Satoru himself hadn’t realized until it had been far too late, and he’d been so afraid, so afraid, so afraid. Suguru had never touched him again, once he’d perfected limitless, once he'd become untouchable.
Running his own over the aging handprints always brought him a semblance of grief, but they made the loneliness a little more bearable too, in some twisted sense of relief.
(A little something more, in the marks he’d left behind, just as prominent as the ones he hadn’t.)