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It was the end of another grueling mission. Satoru had gone alone—because of course he had.
He returned unscathed. Or, well, uninjured. His uniform was torn, there was soot in his hair, and unknown gunk was splattered on him. His sunglasses had been lost, and Suguru found himself frozen for a moment.
Satoru was in God Mode.
He stood far too casually, far too loosely—like stress was a foreign concept, worry was a silly game for mortals. His smile was half-hung, eerily emotionless. And his eyes. Satoru's eyes were truly a window to his soul, if you knew how to look. Usually he hid mirth and amusement behind impossible fractals of azure and cyan. But it was like it had all been emptied out—a frozen lake on a winter’s day.
The more Satoru pushed, the more he was isolated, the more frequent these episodes got. He’d be high on the euphoria of infinity, detached from the consequences of reality. It was just like the gods of old.
Suguru laced his hand with Satoru’s and tried not to shiver at the cold pressure of Infinity. He pulled him along; Infinity fought him for a brief moment before Satoru was following him. He chattered inanely, in that awful impersonal way that was becoming familiar, as Suguru led him to the baths. He had to undress Satoru this time, and nearly had to tear his clothes off as that damnable impenetrability fought him at every step. He was going to kill Yaga one of these days. Really, he was.
But then they were both stripped down and Suguru only took mild pleasure in shoving Satoru in the onsen. He fastened a towel around his waist as Satoru spluttered (apparently, water was so void of cursed energy, it was the one thing he had to consciously repel), and picked up one of the small buckets littering the wall.
“You’re a disaster,” Suguru muttered as he settled on the edge, scooping up water and dumping it on Satoru’s head.
“I touched the sky today,” was Satoru’s response. Suguru bit back a sigh as he tugged Satoru closer and used the brief flicker of Infinity’s collapse to get his fingers in Satoru’s hair. If Yaga got pissed over them dirtying the bath, well, maybe he shouldn’t send out a fledgling deity with no support. Them gunking up the onsen with soap and soot was just karma, at that point.
“Did the sun tell you you’re an idiot?”
“It looked like a kaleidoscope. A thousand colors, a thousand emotions—”
Suguru just dumped water on him again.
Satoru just spat it out and kept rambling. “—it reminded me of my mother.”
“Mm-hmm.” Suguru rolled his eyes as he worked a small amount of shampoo through his hair. Infinity wasn’t fighting him quite so hard now. He rinsed Satoru’s hair and dropped his hands to Satoru’s shoulders. The moment he began to press down, Infinity released.
Satoru finally fell silent as Suguru carefully massaged his overworked muscles.
It was honestly sickening that any of the higher-grade sorcerers thought turning Satoru into this was okay—that they thought this was laudable. The Gojo heir, able to create, warp, and destroy reality with just a flick of his fingers—able to see the cracks in reality, and the infinite possibilities in any moment. But you fly too high, and you forget the ground exists until you crash. They never seemed to get it.
His first controlled Purple was commended.
But they hadn’t been there. They hadn’t seen him, with his eyes shuttered, his voice lifeless, as he held the corpse of a girl he’d fought so hard to save. They didn’t hear his plans for a massacre. They couldn’t taste that cold, inhuman rage in the air.
Satoru wasn’t a god. He was just barely 17—just a human imbued with power curated by generations of selective breeding.
“...thank you,” came out as a whisper, and Suguru paused. Satoru leaned into his touch more fully, right hand coming up to cover his. It was warm, and wet, and free of Infinity.
“Always,” Suguru said softly.
“No, like—really. Thank you,” Satoru said. “You—you don’t have to do this. But you do. Every time.”
Suguru swallowed hard as he tried not to let his hands clench. “I want to.”
“I love—that you do.”
And Suguru couldn’t help the small smile curling his lips, nor could he stop himself from leaning close and murmuring, “Big bad sorcerer can’t say the l-word?”
Satoru flinched hard enough to slip off the bench and tumble into the deeper water.
“I’ve seen you naked, Sa-to-ru,” Suguru smirked, borrowing his best friend’s signature lilt. Satoru glared at him as he floundered and spat out water. “It’s just one simple word.”
“I hate you.”
“What a shame. I love you.”
Satoru went bright pink.
“C’mon, say it. Or are you scared?”
“You’re such an asshole.” Satoru had finally managed to get steady, and he pushed back his hair. “I love you. That was what I was trying to say, okay? I love you, Suguru.”
And Suguru couldn’t stop his grin if he tried; he slid into the water, took the three steps to get to Satoru, and just looked at him. “Prove it.”
Satoru smiled at him, bashful and raw and perfect, and closed the distance. It was imperfect—neither of them knowing what they were doing—but gods, Suguru wouldn’t change anything about it.
—
Six months later, he swallowed a curse and didn’t gag.
It still tasted like rot and garbage and everything awful, but he wasn’t repulsed. If anything, he was satiated. And perhaps for the first time in his life, Suguru felt all-encompassing existential terror.
There was a theory on curse users like him—a theory Suguru had desperately hoped wasn’t reflected in reality. In its short form, it went like this: curse eaters were locked in a symbiotic relationship; they absorbed the curse, and the curse absorbed a little piece of them. With careful consideration of the curses consumed, the curse user would maintain a balance of their energy and the curses’ energy. However, balance can tip.
It was very possible the balance was tipping.
How many curses had he absorbed over the last year? How many strong curses had he wrangled into submission? How many times had he actually tried to purge?
At night, he could sometimes hear them. Chittering and chattering and clapping—
But it was because it was night, right?
He wasn’t losing control. He couldn’t be. He had Satoru now (unless Yaga had sent him on missions) and Shoko (for as long as she could stand him) and the underclassmen (even though only Haibara tolerated him), and the upperclassmen (who were so busy with their own missions).
He swallowed back bile.
He’d talk to Shoko. That’s what he needed.
But when he got back to campus, he was greeted by a frantic Haibara and a God Mode Satoru. He dragged Satoru back to the baths, not bothering with a towel as he joined him in the water. Infinity permitted him easily, and Suguru’s own worries faded away as he stroked Satoru’s hair and indulged in his insane rambling and kept touching his perfect skin. Gods, as cheesy and sentimental as it was, Satoru really was his home—his center. Nothing could be wrong if he just had Satoru with him.
He let himself indulge in a kiss to the nape of his neck and a murmured, “I love you” as Satoru waxed rhapsodic about leaves.
Satoru’s voice was a soothing, never-ending chatter, and it was just so easy to give into the warmth of the bath, the comfort of skin against skin. His eyes fluttered shut.
A bite to his neck woke him up.
He shoved the culprit away, and felt (almost) no remorse seeing a soggy Satoru pouting. “Well, here I was, trying to be romantic—”
“Uh-huh,” Suguru said, tugging at Satoru’s hips to bring him closer. “It had nothing to do with Shoko teasing you for that hickey a few weeks ago.”
“It was your fault!”
“See, I recall someone begging for it—”
“I hate you,” Satoru said, even as he kissed Suguru so softly. Suguru pulled him close, angling him so he was technically in his lap but they’d have plausible deniability if anyone walked in. They fell back into comfortable silence, and honestly, this was one of his favorite things of being with Satoru. The touching. It didn’t have to involve kissing, it didn’t have to be sexual. They could just be in each other’s space, feel each other’s warmth, and that was enough. It was just so easy .
He tangled their fingers together, and they just indulged in this sweet peace until a very unamused Nanami appeared. (Seriously, would it kill that kid to smile?)
—
“Hey,” Suguru said, nudging a melon bread towards Haibara, who looked up at him with wide eyes.
Easy to gouge, easy to hurt, easy, easy, easy—
“I need a favor.”
Haibara nodded eagerly. “Of course, senpai—”
Suguru had to shove the vile thoughts away, give into the clapping. “Watch over Sa—Gojo,” he said, managing to make it sound friendly.
“Another mission?”
Sympathy is weakness, and god how simpering—cut, slash, grab—
Clapclapclapclapclapclapclapclapclap—
“Something like that,” Suguru said. “I might be gone for a while. Gojo—he needs someone to remind him he’s human. When he gets spacy, you need to ground him. Touch works, if he lets you past Infinity.”
“Oh! Is that why you do baths with him?” Haibara asked. Suguru nodded.
“He registers water as having no threat. Gives you a chance to touch him.”
“Well, I don’t want to overstep—”
satoru’s mine, rip, tear, slash, don’t touch—
Clapclapclapclapclapclapclapclapclap—
“Hey, it’s just a communal bath with friends, right?” And, god, how did smiling get painful?
Well, actually, it was probably when that last curse tasted fine, and the voices started to get louder—
But that was okay. That was why he was leaving.
—
And when Satoru killed him, maybe that was why it didn’t hurt.
He couldn’t hurt Satoru if he was dead.