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Exorcizing curses had gotten worse and worse. As time passed, Suguru had to adapt, swallowing worse curses and feeling so…fucking pathetic and disgusted with himself. He couldn’t wash himself enough to get rid of the touch, he couldn’t deep clean his body to get rid of the taste.
Satoru doesn’t know this, and Suguru wasn’t planning on telling him.
He moves in a daze after his mission. Walking from the abandoned factory he had to exorcise something he doesn’t even want to remember.
This curse was the result of a factory fire that killed 40 people. It could speak, though not very intelligibly and it did not like that Suguru had come to destroy it. It tasted like ash and oil. So appalling he almost didn’t swallow it at all. His body tells him no. He forces his mind to shut up and he does it anyway.
Though it was immensely difficult, he did do it, and he was preparing for the aftermath. Usually, this part didn’t last too long.
A heavy feeling so thick and overwhelming starts to nearly suffocate him.
It’s grief, and longing, anger, and pain, and suffering. Those were all the emotions tied to that place, all of them were so tangible and human .
After a minute of feeling like a person who had lost someone they loved to that fire, the feeling recedes. He hates it when they make him feel so strongly about it, though he supposes its way better than some of the darker and more disgusting aspects of humanity. The things he hasn’t repeated to anyone and took so long to leave because there was just so much of it.
He wonders how long this can last before he drives himself insane.
Should he tell all of this to Satoru? No, he doesn’t think he should.
Though it felt a little hypocritical. Satoru has given so much of himself to Suguru meanwhile, Suguru can’t even express what was even close to the worst parts of himself. What were the thoughts keeping him awake when he was alone? What was the reason he even got up and did what he was supposed to? Was there a reason at all anymore?
As soon as he even thinks of confessing this, it feels wrong. Satoru had to deal with his cursed technique working against him constantly. Suguru chose to swallow those curses, but Satoru couldn’t just turn off his sight. Light, sound, touch, all of it could become overwhelming. Even his infinity the most powerful defense sometimes wasn’t perfect.
So you feel the lingering negative emotions after you exorcize a curse. So what?
He remembers the strongest lying on the floor his infinity way too powerful, and he couldn’t get through it. Satoru was in pain and suffering and Suguru somehow managed to pull him out of it. How could he ever think to burden him with the knowledge that he wasn’t at all okay.
While Satoru’s ability might be a blessing, Suguru’s was a curse. The two were polar opposites. Suguru’s cursed technique, was dirty, vile and frankly disgusting. It was the polar opposite to Satoru’s blessing, nothing could ever touch him unless he willed it to.
Suguru had to ingest the worst of humanity to be able to fight it. This was his life, and he was born to endure it.
Satoru knew just how unworthy Suguru thought himself to be. He constantly questioned why he trusted him this much, why he let himself be so powerless with just him. He finds it absurd, and Satoru saw it as inevitable. Suguru was the only one he could entrust himself to.
“I trust you more than I trust myself,” Satoru says, knowing full well he’d burn the world for him. He’d kill without a second thought, he’d ruin himself far worse than any curse Suguru has ever forced himself to swallow if it was something Suguru wanted him to do. It was terrifying how much he knew he wouldn’t even hesitate if it came down to it.
It wasn’t logical, and certainly wasn’t healthy, Satoru knew this but it didn’t stop him from feeling this way all the same. He didn’t put much stock in so-called morals and the lives of people he didn’t know.
The higher-ups seemed to have gathered this. Satoru was always keeping tabs on the happenings of the upper workings of their jujutsu society. Ever since he graduated really, and begun to see the cracks in the system, ever since acquaintances had started to die before Satoru could even learn their first names. He had thoughts of becoming a teacher, but he was advised against it.
He was too important to defer to the position of teacher. “Too important,” Satoru had scoffed, they didn’t entertain the idea that maybe he asked because he wanted to. It was fine, he left the office and decided he’d give it some more time.
Suguru had vouched for him a little too personally, and it was easy to see how involved the two of them had become. They didn’t make it a secret, but they certainly weren’t flaunting it either.
Satoru didn’t want there to be a target on Suguru’s back. Though the man could take care of himself, it wouldn’t be easy should a group of the wrong people decide it was worth going after him.
Especially with Suguru speaking up, vouching for Satoru to have fewer missions.
Who are you to say what Gojo Satoru needs? What he should and shouldn’t do?
He won’t tell you himself, so I am asking you to see him as an actual person and see that he needs a break.
It was desperate, too personal and unintentionally very revealing. Satoru saw it because of course he did. Suguru hadn’t meant for him to see, but he usually seemed to be at the right place and right time for certain things. He doesn’t speak much about it after
Though he was learning trying to purposefully hide something from Satoru was pointless. So he didn’t even really try.
Satoru didn’t mention it, but he was grateful, even if nothing came of it. He was still overworked and he didn’t protest, no one even mentioned Geto Suguru’s protest.
If they garnered any more attention there might be a move to separate them. Satoru wasn’t stupid he could see it coming, but he wouldn’t let anything happen to ruin the one thing in this world that kept him sane.
“Certainly you know just how not okay that is,” Suguru says, taking a sip of his now lukewarm coffee. The strongest shouldn’t follow those below him.
Good thing they were the strongest then.
“I don’t care,” He’s so exasperated, and nonchalant about it. There’s a sudden tenseness in his body, his eyes latched onto a sudden spike in cursed energy, approximately four miles east, but he forces himself not to look or even react in the direction.
Someone else can handle it, he’s doing something right now. He wasn’t going to let this conversation end so quickly, and not while Suguru was feeling so…uncertain about everything.
But Suguru is just as capable as sensing as anyone.
“Should we go?” He asks, knowing they had just exorcized a special grade not even an hour ago.
“No.” He answers, softly, though it feels wrong. He should be able to have time for himself too, as of right now, no one seems to be in any imminent danger. The sorcerer at the scene should be able to handle it. The strongest can see everything, sure, but he can’t be everywhere at once. He might kill himself by trying.
“Okay,” Suguru answers, sitting back into his seat, Satoru can tell he’s still uneasy though. Itching to go to the scene. He understands. The boundary between work and personal life wasn’t even blurred, it hardly existed at all.
“I know you think you’re a bad person, but you aren’t,” Satoru slips right back into their conversation. With each word he says the battle so closeby becomes easier to ignore.
“What makes you think I’m not?”
“You still care,” Satoru answers, with a soft chuckle, it’s sardonic, and unnerving. He almost wishes the time when he didn’t know Satoru so well, when he didn’t know just how much pain was behind every word.
“And Suguru, I really really don’t.”
Suguru still cared about the notion of good and bad. He still cared about protecting the innocent, saving the weak, and incapable. Satoru cared about those things only because Suguru cared about them. Not because he held any value over those ideas himself.
He simply wished for his boyfriend to be happy, content. A sight he saw much more frequently in the past and less so now. There was a darkness eating away at him, and though he could see it, there wasn’t much he knew he could do to dispel it.
It wasn’t a curse, so easily indisposed by his power, but it was something much more sinister. Suguru was convinced that it was only because of him that it was there, and not because of the shitty circumstances of their unfortunate lives.
Suguru is convinced the power he holds over him will corrupt him further.
Maybe he’ll convince the great Satoru Gojo to run the old Jujutsu sorcerers to Hell. Condemn them to death, all the while curses remained free while those who lived did nothing to exorcise them.
A reality like that, would be so easy to obtain.
Suguru doesn’t…want to do this anymore.
Swallowing curses, wasn’t easy, it was hell. Ingesting them into his body was the worst thing he’s ever had to do. It slides down his throat like the worst matter he’s ever had, and it lingers in his mind with its malicious thoughts and violent impulses. Rage seeps under the surface of his skin and it crawls along him constantly, like an army of insects he can’t shake off. It’s unsettling how much its grows with every passing day. The only thing that even remotely helps is Satoru himself.
The god seems to be a deterent all on his own. Those eyes make him calm, complete. He can be whoever Satoru needs when he asks for it. Comply with every wish as if he was made for it.
By now they’ve settled into an unspoken rhythm, the only thing keeping him together was the assurance that Satoru was around, that he’d never abandon him so easily by dying.