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Hunger
~~~
After practice one day, when Shoko had already wandered off to melt into her pack of cigarettes behind the school somewhere, Geto sat side by side with Gojo, trying to hide how long it was taking for him to regain his breath.
“Here, Suguru.” Gojo places a sugar cube onto the back of Geto’s hand straddling his thigh.
“Is that what that bulge in your pants was? This whole time I thought you were just really enjoying our sparring session today.” Geto chuckles breathly, popping it in his mouth as fast as he could to flush the familiar taste of curses back down.
“Ahh, sorry, sorry. You should’ve been keeping your focus on what matters though! And it’s really not my fault this school has no vending machines. We’ll have to protest until they start keeping some good treats around here for us and the third-grades.”
Gojo stands up and wobbles around, as a foal just learning how to walk. As usual.
Geto, mulling the loose sugar in his mouth still, simply watches him flail about. The taste never truly dissipates.
“Suguru, let’s go on a walk.”
“Gojo..” Even smacking his lips already brings the taste bubbling back up.
“Let’s break into my flower garden again. For meee?”
“If it was yours, we wouldn’t have to break in each time..”
Before Geto could even finish explaining he’d do anything for this whiny bitch, Gojo has already placed a peppermint in his hand, and has pulled him to his feet with his other.
~~~
It’s barely even breaking and entering with him. Everything in the world knows to gives way to Gojo. The security cameras seem to be focused on lingering in dark corners, away from fences, anywhere of no real use. Gojo tries to jump a fence with limitless off, but leaves a small crater when he unconsciously uses limitless to catch himself before hitting the dirt. The same courtesy is not extended to Suguru, who’s pants catch the majority of the brunt instead through the fence.
“Ah–”
“Oh damn… Do you think they’ll notice?” Gojo whimpers out, kicking the dirt back in place loosely, clearly for his own peace of mind.
“Leave it, leave it. They’ll just assume a raccoon must’ve flopped here.”
“Right! Well hurry on over, Suguru. I don’t want to wander around without you.”
Geto considers summoning a small spirit to help him over, but decides against having to swallow it back down after. Gojo didn’t teleport over, either. Why not just enjoy getting his hands a little dirty for once? I’m good enough at climbing anyways , he congratulates himself with a soft, perfect landing on the other side, not even disrupting the trampled flower Gojo left behind.
“Come, come!!” Gojo extends his hand, Suguru’s fitting into it instinctively.
Through the dimly lit cobblestone path, the bushes and trees frame a path onwards; one they know well in its usual sense. The hum of cicadas pours through the flower bushes, echoing off the pond in the center. Even in darkness there is serenity to be found left echoing by life.
Gojo leads Geto through the brambled path outside of the usual way. Staying close, Geto isn’t smacked by the thorns as the limitless pushes them back. The small clearing surrounding the two as they pass through the thick bush makes itself clear, the limitless enveloping Suguru near and leading the bushes to rustle softly out of respect. Gojo suddenly stops and looks back. Geto knows he sees through him, and meets his bright gaze regardless.
“You gotta find a way to turn off those damn LED’s of yours, buddy.”
“I’ve never had anyone else move so easily in my Limitless than you, Geto.”
“Excuse me?”
The rustling subsides, leaving the cicadas the only remaining orchestra note floating on.
“It just feels natural, making space for you.”
“Alright Gayo; is there any reason you wanted to come through here, or did you just want to ruin this bush with me?”
Gojo lets out a loud guffaw, and the wind carries the scent of an unusual flower through to them. The Limitless flickers, and the bush smacks Geto in the face.
“That!--Oh, shit, sorry, Haha! Come on!”
Gojo’s eyes dart around until they land on the path he’s found forward–the one limitless will carve through.
The bushes spit them out in a loose clearing around the end of the flower garden, seemingly off the property. The oak trees surrounding this space leave a perfectly empty space in the middle of them all, all except for one lone white flower growing in the spot where moonlight flows freely through the canopy.
“It’s me, Geto.”
“It doesn’t have your bright blue eyes though.”
Gojo spins, sighing, as if he’s used to whatever this is.
“I’m not just my six eyes, Suguru.”
“I know that, Satoru.” Geto winces as the hellish taste of cursed spirits dances back up his tongue. “How did you even find this?” he says, trying to push it off.
“Well–I saw it’s aura through the bushes as it was growing recently. I wanted to see it bloom with you. I overheard a worker here saying they kept smelling it, but could never find it. They only give off this intoxicating smell at night.”
Gojo skips a step closer to the center, the moonlight catching him from above. “I even tried tending to it, but it wouldn’t take! Seems like it’s all perfectly fine enough here without me.”
Around the lone gardenia lies old pedals, wilted into the dirt into this small mound. It stands on its altar of muddied white pedals proudly.
“Promise me you’ll come back here.”
Geto turns his gaze off of the flower back to him, confused.
“What?”
“Oh, it’s not so far from the school. I’m sure you’ll have no problem breaking back into this place alone anyways-”
The smell of the gardenia grows louder than the cicadas buzzing. Geto has to spit out the taste in his mouth before he has to learn the taste of the fragrance mixing itself in.
“Geto, do you think you could stomach using Limitless’s power yourself?”
“Gojo, are you trying to say something? You know how little sense you usually make anyways, just spit it out.”
“Suguru… The six eyes keep showing me a world I don’t want to see. I know I’m the strongest–We’re the strongest, but even with that being the case, I never feel you in my future. I’m scared to lose you.”
“I see a dark future too, Gojo. One you don’t need six eyes to see. Any world without you will be washed in darkness and filth. Don’t speak of death so loosely. This world needs you.”
“I won’t let you die , Geto. I’d-” seeing Geto open his mouth to interrupt, Gojo grows louder. “I’d rather kill myself and the whole world before I ever let something come to happen to you.” Gojo crushes a twig under his foot, and looks through the canopy above.
“I wish we could be one.”
“Satoru… Satoru, you’re starting to sound delirious, frankly.”
“Do you not wish the same?”
“Do I not wish we could be one?”
Gojo’s head-light eyes dart back to meet Geto’s cloudy spirit.
“Well?”
“I have nothing to wish for, Gojo. This is everything I’ll ever need.”
A cold breeze blows through the clearing. The two slowly collapse down to the ground, together, turning their gaze back to the gardenia standing alone on its altar. Gojo puts another peppermint in Geto’s hand, an apology, swiftly. They both try to laugh, though Gojo doesn’t seem to blow over with the wind like he used to. His body is still; his warmth finally palpable.
~~~
~~~
August 30th
Geto rubs the tension out of his palm, his chipped nail polish intrusively reminding him of black mold spots. The heat from the shower offers the comfort of trying to clean it off, with no success.
“Ohhh, Geto..!!” Shoko’s voice echoes softly down the hall, carrying with it the pleasant smell of today’s lunch.
The two sit down to eat, Geto trying to relish in the flavors as much as he can, as Shoko devours a burger in record time, seemingly to rush her after lunch ritual.
“Shoko…”
“Hmmprh?”
“Gojo’s seemed delirious as of late, right?”
“Oh, absolutely. He’s fucked up.”
“It’s so tiring at this point. His eyes feel so much more… endless now.” Geto almost whispers out, as he fixes a loose wet hair absentmindedly.
“You both have that look now, honestly. Everything with Amanai… even Haibara.” The sunlight piercing the shoji is even trying desperately to pull them back out of wherever this is going. “Both of yours ability to be moving these days is-”
“Has Gojo spoken of the future with you?”
The cicada buzzing outside lingers as the room falls still.
“I don’t trust a word out of his mouth, Geto. If he has spoken about anything, it’s about whatever designer shoes he’s planning to get or something.”
Shoko takes a breath, and finishes her food. Geto follows.
The touch startles him.
“Suguru, Six eyes is always making Gojo say some weird shit. He sees EVERYTHING , practically. He’s like a street cat that can speak fluent Japanese. Just give him something sweet to chew on whenever he’s slipping into some crazy tirade. I’m sure he’ll drop it instantly if it’s really freaking you out. But, come on, shouldn’t you be used to some crazy shit by now? You of all people, that is.” Her hand lifts back up, and pats at her pocket the sunlight has been hinting towards.
“Want to come outside with me and share this cigarette? It’s a.. Camel Crush!”
Geto still sits silent, eyes are as dark and purposeless as ever.
“Just one hit. I don’t want to get the smell on me, I just showered.” Geto whispers out, as if Tengen may hear and snitch.
“You’ll take another shower soon enough anyways~!”
~~~~
For what feels like a first in weeks, Suguru and Satoru are walking back home together, the sunset guiding them home. Underneath telephone wires following this rural street, the two move more stoic than usual. Maybe due to all of the groceries they’re carrying.
“Uwaaa… How did you find the worst way back to school?” Geto whines out, putting up a tired act. “Why don’t you just float all of these groceries? I can’t even imagine what you’re planning to cook with all this.”
Giggling his words out, Gojo turns his loose thick shades to regard Geto walking side by side with him. “Oh, God forbid I want us to look normal for these kind people living out here.” Gojo gestures loosely to the closing businesses and empty streets surrounding them. “Even we have to walk, Suguru. You don’t feel like spitting up your rainbow dragon to fly us home, do you?” His arm pulls up to gesture his infamous spitting up face, mockingly.
“You sound so stupid right now.” Geto shoulders him, knocking his pace a step ahead to keep Gojo on tempo. Gojo’s jacket is surprisingly cold, even as the purple sky highlights his tips, and the orange clouds find their way down to him. Geto turns back to look ahead. “We’re lost, aren’t we?”
“Of course we’re not lost,”
“But we have been lost for the last 20 minutes.”
“Well–That’s a point of perspective type of thing, really-”
“I’m eating this mochi now, Gojo. It’s gonna perish before we even get close to school.”
The third bag on Geto’s arm is already lighter, as Gojo has the mochi loose, floating in front of them, like a carrot on a stick. Geto reaches up for one, but it catches the wind, moving just out of his reach. Geto whines.
“You’re right, love. They look like goop already. Maybe we should be running home!!”
The gust from behind is the gunshot starting the race. Gojo wishes he could have a faster starting step than he does, as Geto already can tell what’s happening. Geto snatches a piece of mochi out the air with his mouth, already sprinting ahead.
“Ahh, you’re such a cheater~! I don’t want to crease these shoes-” Gojo chirps, glad to be giving into the bait.
The two run loosely, already near a train crossing the empty street. The sunlight ahead waits with open arms. By the time they skip over it, the crossing arms are already beginning to close behind them. They slow down, nearing a tree line, both understanding they’ve only ended up further away from any path back to school.
“ Oh ..” Gojo dejects, standing back as he looks at Geto ahead, only just now chewing the mochi that had been dripping down his chin. He cracks a smile.
“Come here, Gojo,” Geto says as he steps nearer. Gojo bites into a piece that had been floating alongside him, watching Geto approach, licking his lips. Before he can speak, Geto is wiping his face along Gojo’s jacket.
Gojo squeals, activating limitless to fling it off of him. Geto laughs and throws the groceries towards him, and Gojo instinctively catches them in air.
“Loser has to carry all this shit back!” Geto moves to fix his hair, as Gojo lets out a sigh for nearly a minute straight following along the treeline ahead with his groceries floating nearby.
Geto is already moving to regain his composure, as Gojo spits out: “We’re near the flower garden, you know.”
“What, you want to bring some shiro miso to your shrine?”
“Surely the rest of this stuff will be fine if we take a quick detour…” Gojo does a shimmy, already with the pep in his step leading him to the fence nearby.
“You just wanted to bring me out here for a picnic, didn’t you..?!” Geto winces, faking shocked. “You ran with me to go on a picnic?”
Gojo laughs, his master plan revealed. He floats the groceries over the fence, without a care in the world. They plop down in a pile as he is already doing his fake superhero jump over the fence. Geto follows his way over the fence with ease.
~~~~
Chewing on nori, Geto sits in the small field of old petals next to Gojo as he looks into the empty space of the canopy above. The sun must’ve lost them after the race. Instead, the moon floats above, eyeing the two openly, lying their plastic bags on the soil.
Gojo sees Geto already filling with his fog. The night comes heavy onto him, and he still can’t even tell.
“I wonder if we could share six eyes, Geto.”
The words float above, hidden somewhere in the moonlight.
Geto pinches his nose bridge.
“Stop talking like that, Gojo…”
“Imagine, though. If I was a cursed spirit. Do you think I’d be able to give you my six eyes then?” Gojo sits up proudly delirious, blooming this heartless want to give.
“I don’t want to have to imagine that. What would this world be without Satoru Gojo? I’d never let you end up becoming a cursed spirit. You are so vividly human it burns, Gojo!” Geto is already red with anger, his whole face warm.
“It wouldn’t be your fault. Even with Limitless these days, there is this heavy pressure flooding into me, Geto,”
Their gaze is met as they both rise to their feet. The pressure of his words stiffles them both in this cloud caught under the canopy. Geto can’t help but taste bile build up in his throat.
“Gojo, you are the strongest among us. We need you. All of these monkeys out here would end up dead in a day if you were ever to die. Your jokes aren’t funny. I–”
Geto is caught by a tree, hoping to keep the flower garden out of this. The wind is immediately knocked out of his lungs. Gojo is reaching behind his waistband.
“We all know that if sorcerers die without cursed energy, they come back! That’s what Sukuna did. Imagine if we could share it all, Geto..! You wouldn’t have to taste cursed spirits anymore. We’d be a God together. ” Gojo’s glasses have fallen off, his face lit up by the moonlight caught in his clouded speech. He looks free.
Geto moves to stand up, stumbling under this sudden weight. His brain is barely waking back up as his jaw falls, making eye contact with this monster in front of him, suddenly undone entirely by his bliss. Gojo doesn’t even let him respond before the knife catches the light, and Gojo offers Reversal: Red as a taunt ahead. His feet readjust into position, mimicking Toji, and he nearly tramples the Gardenia behind him. Gojo’s eyes are entranced with the kitchen knife he’s just bought, this simple chess move to keep each other from moving. A perfect stalemate, so simple. As Geto’s fog swirls to summon a cursed spirit, Gojo sends a pebble into his shoulder. Immediately his arm is dislocated, with a hole pierced through his armpit.
“You just need to stay right there, Geto.. Just watch for me. I just need you here. You have to catch me! Don’t leave me now, Suguru,” His mania sounds like an electrical hum just waiting to catch skin. There must be something wrong with him.
Geto moves into the treeline to catch his breath. Reversal: Red removes an empty space into the field behind them both. Inches away from the hollowed out forest, Geto tries to readjust his shoulder, stumbling back into the flowers startling awake behind him. Gojo is already between Geto and the flower behind himself. His delirious grin is lovingly piercing him, as if to offer a road of comfort to try to establish some sense into this. His eyes piercing, like headlights flooding a deer’s mind.
The smell flooding in around them is overpowering. It’s pervasive, loose yet still with weighted steps. That floral hue pierces Geto’s taste buds as he continues to pant his way through that popping noise his shoulder makes as he moves it back into place. He can’t even consider summoning something at Gojo still, even in this moment, delirious all the same. Gojo follows slowly into the field, avoiding trampling even one of the flowers underneath. This purple blanket will be here for him.
“Geto, you hate humanity, you hate those who are weak, you hate curses, you hate any reflective eyes that find you.” Gojo’s screams echo.
I can’t kill him.
“Let’s make this world better, Suguru. Please. I can’t let you leave me, Suguru . I can’t lose you! For you, Geto, I would give up everything. I would lose to any power. We only win because we have to, Geto. I refuse to become what this world needs me to be. I need you.”
Before Geto can move closer to him, as his body is calling him to; before Geto can shed a tear—Gojo opens his domain.
~~~
Satoru Gojo is, hopefully, the first person in Jujutsu history to use domain expansion in order to ensure his own death.
Within Unlimited Void, Geto watches in horror. In this moment, it’s as if he can feel the whole world through six eyes. It assaults all the senses, flooding out any sense of self Geto was holding onto. Truly Limitless. Life becomes unending, and the future seems infinite, until the pressure floods in.
Gojo finally has a comforting look in this delirium, his eyes hopeful. Without blinking all this time, Gojo has sowed his comfort in Geto.
The sky is as bright as it was just before the domain began. The domain lies, telling of the world still lying beneath their feet, as if these flowers could extend forever.
Geto pants, his mind desperate to find something he can do. This must all be wrong. The void acts empty with Gojo’s ego stepping back to give up. Gojo’s Limitless is off, and the knife is already carving out his heart. He coughs out blood, trying to keep a smile on his face. I can’t let this world take him from me.
~~
I alone am the holy one–but you, my sweet Suguru, are my purpose.
~~
Kneeled in prayer above his still corpse, the stars of the night above begin to finally dance again.
Gojo’s eyes won’t close.
Geto wishes his own would. He can’t fathom why his mouth is watering.
Don’t leave this to me.
The light in Gojo’s eyes pools, his irises dim, as the six eyes remove themselves from his disgraced corpse.
Don’t leave.
A flower sprouts out of Gojo’s dejected core. Geto’s tired eyes wander down to it, still with the afterburn of the six eyes in the flower’s bulb. When it bursts open, Geto realizes the hallucination is not his.
Those heinous blue eyes are still there. They float within the Gardenia’s bright white pedals, shimmering as the moonlight on a still lake. Geto’s blood pools with Gojo’s, finally. Gojo’s Limitless has stopped trying to reactivate itself. Geto, having caught his breath, can finally taste the loose blood spilling from his split lip.
The Gardenia folds in on itself. It floats above the two, all the while Geto tries to drown himself in the warmth Gojo’s chest still has. With Limitless finally over, it reminds him of all the times he’s lingered in Gojo’s air. Their memories feel even livelier than Geto has ever had the joy of imagining.
Even if the world ended here, I’d be lost in you until the end of time.
Surely the world is over. How can it go on from here?
Gojo…
And then, two fingers reach down to Geto’s bloodied chin, lifting him off of death yet again. The feeling is all too familiar. Geto follows the arm all the way to its source, his eyelids fluttering as he locks eyes with Gojo’s six eyes. They float loosely where he should be, his spirit promising itself still tangible, whispering a language he should know to him. Gojo’s cursed spirit lingers in the gardenia, one of those familiar cursed orbs yet acting holy. It’s so much brighter than the sun, burning his retinas with bliss. Geto’s eyes finally close, filling in Gojo’s form through his heavy eyelids. His mouth opens.
“Sweets, Suguru. For you. Open up.”
Gojo’s hand guides it down for Suguru. The light of his one and only is finally within him, though tainted in all of the usual ways Suguru seems to find all cursed spirits to be. The taste is more than he can imagine. Geto can never let himself forget this taste; his taste buds singed almost in the same way the limitless spirit burned his eyes. It’s as if he’s digested his own Sun, blotting out the sky to keep his spirit alight. This is Suguru’s only truth; his holy purpose. Gojo is his, finally.
And yet the hunger remains. His mission is only just starting.
With Limitless beginning within Suguru, as muscles tensing subconsciously, Geto’s body finally moves itself to kiss Gojo’s floating hands before they can dissipate. With one kiss, Geto’s heart catches back up to the world, bursting the pressure ordained years in the future—finally. Gojo was right.
As shards of flesh flake off onto the linoleum below, Suguru Geto kneels a pool of blood that isn’t theirs. To his side are Gojo's glasses still, crumpled in front of rows of bodies. Geto’s mind and entwined soul has arrived at the Shibuya Incident, meters away from that fake ass bitch.