Archive of Our Own ^beta

Suguru doesn’t remember it, but they tell him that Shoko found him. 

On the edge of that little village. Pale. Cold. Swimming in a pool of his own blood, limp hand resting over the wound on his neck. Dead, or close enough to it that the distinction was hard to make. 

She’s the only one there when he wakes up. Her hands are on his, tightly clenched around his limp fingers. The glow of her reverse cursed energy is blinding, painful. Suguru startles violently and Shoko steps back, watching him with a clinical, practiced sort of neutrality.

“Suguru,” she says. The phantom feeling of blood coats his skin, his tongue, the lenses of his eyes. His hands fly to his neck, and there’s nothing there, the skin is smooth and scarred, but he feels the metal piercing his carotid, feels the urge to grab and tear away until it’s gone. Shoko’s blurry and distant. “It’s just me. Do you know where you are?”

He opens his mouth, to scream, to cry, to respond, it doesn’t matter, because he chokes instead. His vocal cords remember the sensation of being torn in two. Blood flooding his lungs is sense memory. He’s dead. He should be dead, if only he could be so lucky. 

Shoko gets him a pen and paper, but they stay abandoned on the bedside table. She sits on the other end of his bed, and Suguru doesn’t mean to, but he jumps, uses the meager strength in his body to sit up and pull himself towards the wall to leave his back protected, and so Shoko remains standing. 

I could tell you were still there, she says. Her hands are behind her back, so Suguru can’t see if she’s shaking, if she’s as afraid as he suspects. Clinging onto your body or something.

Like a flea, or a tick, he thinks, and feels the thought rise up his throat. Digging his claws into something he has no business holding on to. He doesn’t remember dying, but he tastes iron behind his teeth. Tick is appropriate, then, if his mouth is full of blood anyways. 

After the initial pain comes the numbness. An object at rest is inclined to stay at rest, and so it follows that a body that was dead wants to stay dead. It’s a fatigue like nothing he’s ever experienced. Days pass in transient minutes of sunlight. He closes his eyes again and wakes up 14 hours later, a new cold plate of food on his bedside. It’s better that way, anyway. In his dreams he’s meant to be alive. In his dreams he knows those girls’ names.

The first time he’s lucid enough to realize it’s Shoko coming in to replace his food, she makes eye contact with him and presses a warm mug into his hand.

“Drink,” she says, and tips it back for him, one finger on the bottom of the cup. He knows it’s miso from the smell, but when it touches his lips, the copper taste of blood fills his mouth instead. He tries to recoil but Shoko’s hand on the cup forces another few sips down before she relents and takes the mug back. Before he can really recover she has a scoop of rice in front of his mouth, pushing the chopsticks past his lips. The first bite is still sitting in his mouth when she presents the second one to him. “C’mon, Suguru, just swallow it,” she says. She sounds tired. “If you would eat it yourself I wouldn’t have to keep doing this.”

Suguru obeys, and she nods. “Yaga’s gonna come talk to you later,” she says. She puts the back of her hand to his forehead, and his reflexive attempt to pull away is thwarted by her other hand already at the back of his head. “Try to be awake. Nod if you understand me, Suguru.”

Suguru nods. She watches him for a second longer, and then puts the chopsticks in his hands and lets herself out of his room.

It’s dark in the bedroom, so the time he waits for Yaga is syrupy and indeterminate. There’s light coming in through the shutters, but not enough to flip on the switches in his brain, to bring him into a higher awareness than just the couple feet around him and the sensation of whether or not his eyelids are open. 

Yaga’s in his room for a couple minutes, droning on about something, before Suguru really even realizes he’s not alone. A brief inventory of his limbs confirms he’s huddled into the corner of the bed again, as distant as he can get from the door.

Yaga sighs as Suguru blinks rapidly, pulling his hands out from underneath himself. His wrists ache from the full weight of his body resting on top of them. His mouth is dry. 

It’s hard to make sense of each of Yaga’s individual words, but the consensus seems to be this: the Getou Suguru that was revived in the woods isn’t the Getou Suguru who left campus a week ago. 

Suguru catches pieces of it over several visits; I know it doesn’t make sense, Yaga says. Listen, please. Unprecedented. Too much blood. Not yourself, Getou-kun. Not him, anymore. 

He doesn’t feel different, now that his energy is coming back in pieces. The simmering anger, the tension building in his joints, the way he instinctively protects his vital organs whenever the door so much as creaks; Yaga cites these as manifestations of death lingering in his body. Like a traumatic brain injury, he says, leaving a lasting impact on someone’s personality. Suguru remembers Nanami coming back to campus with Haibara’s body over his shoulders, remembers the feeling of Haibara’s cold skin against his own as he lifted him off to let Nanami crumple into himself, shaking so hard he could barely breathe, and he remembers Shoko performing the autopsy on her classmate’s corpse. He remembers Nanami being sent out for another mission the next morning, and those poor girls—trembling in a terror so strong it reflected back into his own heart—and he thinks if old Suguru didn’t feel the way he feels about those things now, he wasn’t a person worth being. 

There’s an assistant manager positioned outside his bedroom door now that he’s more conscious. No one tells him this, but he gathers it all the same; he hears Nanami’s voice outside, just once, talking with someone in hushed tones before his footsteps disappear down the hallway. 

Shoko makes more of a fuss—raises her voice more, says what’s he gonna do to me? It’s just Getou—before her voice, too, fades into nothing. 

He’s a captive, then. Would be a fugitive if he left, if he forced his way past the poor assistant manager outside tasked with guarding a hostile special-grade sorcerer on their own. Old Suguru would have left—he’s certain of that much—but old Suguru believed he was strong. The Suguru who existed a couple weeks ago had envisioned his death before in nauseating detail; dying young, he knew even then, but dying like the strong do, at the hands of a special grade curse. Dying alone, dying afraid, with blood under his nails and hatred in his bones. Dying at the hands of another sorcerer, had he carried out his vision. Dying at the hands of a friend. 

Suguru of today, though, knows he’s weak. So easy to kill a monkey could do it. Familiar hands at the end would be too kind a fate for a world cruel enough to rob him of even the kindness of death. Exorcize. Consume. Die. Repeat. 

When Gojo returns to campus several days later, he obeys no such precautions as Shoko and Nanami. There’s a commotion out in the hallway; Suguru can hear Yaga’s placating tones, some chiming in from the assistant manager, Shoko further down the hall calling Satoru, hang on, listen to him, and then Gojo teleports into his room and appears at the foot of the bed like he was never anywhere else. 

“Oh, good,” he breathes, dropping a shopping bag at Suguru’s bedside and flopping down face-first across his comforter. His ease is discordant with the tension in Suguru’s jaw, ready to bite down until his incisors pierce soft, pale skin. Suguru can still hear arguing out in the hall. “Yaga played a mean prank on me when I got here, but I knew you were fine.”

Suguru doesn’t speak. He hasn’t tried, since he last did and found himself choking on his own warm blood, and the memory is fresh enough to discourage another attempt. Gojo doesn’t notice. Gojo would have noticed, a year ago. 

“Your mission was ok?” Gojo says, stretching to dig through the shopping bag with his face still buried in Suguru’s bed. His glasses skew across his nose, slipping crooked down his face. “I found this mango taiyaki I thought you might like but by the time I got up to the counter they were all out, so I just got red bean–”

“I died.”

“That bad?” Gojo turns to him and grins, lopsided and toothy. If there’s a joke he’s supposed to be in on, Suguru doesn’t understand it. “You losing your touch, Suguru? Yaga said the same thing, y’know, like he was trying to scare me or something. So mean–”

“No, Satoru, fucking listen.” Gojo freezes, and Suguru winces at the tone of his own voice. “I died. They killed me.” 

Gojo pushes his glasses back up his nose and crosses his legs on the bed. “I don’t like this joke anymore, Suguru.” 

“I’m not fucking joking!” Again, that tone—loud, bitter. Gojo recoils and tries to disguise it as sitting up straighter. There’s that metallic taste building in the back of his throat again. “Not everything has to be a fucking joke!”

“Hey, hey.” Gojo sits forward on his knees. “You’re here, though. You’re not dead.” 

“They killed me,” he repeats. Gojo lifts a hand from his lap tentatively, stretching it towards him just by inches before returning it to his lap. “I tried to take care of the curse, but there were these girls, and—”

“And the curse…killed you?”

“No.” Suguru shakes his head. “The—the people. The villagers.” 

Gojo’s gaze flicks to the patch of thickened, shiny tissue on Suguru’s neck, and his fingers come up to trail against his own throat. After a moment, he moves closer, leans forward and crowds himself into Suguru’s space. 

“You’re ok, though?” he says. The tips of his fingers find the inside of Suguru’s wrist, and it’s claustrophobic to feel Gojo’s pulse echoing against his. “You’re fine now.” 

Gojo’s weight presses down across his lap, and Gojo’s blood runs parallel to his, and the pounding in his ears is getting louder and louder every second, every sensation on his skin becoming pressure on his lungs. Gojo moves a finger back and forth over his palm, places a gentle hand just over his collarbone, threads his fingers into the hair at the base of Suguru’s neck, and Suguru feels his nerves burn.

“You’re ok now,” Gojo repeats, more an instruction than an assurance. Suguru knows he means it, too—because Gojo never says anything he doesn’t mean—and Suguru instantly feels sick. 

“Get off.” There’s an edge to his voice he can’t dull, a throbbing underneath his skin he can’t shake. “Get off, get off right now.” 

“What?”

“Get off, Satoru!” 

He pushes him—just enough to get his weight off him, to use the momentum to push himself up the bed and away—and Suguru’s not under any delusions that he would actually be able to hurt Gojo even if he wanted to, but the stiff fabric of his uniform burns under his fingers. The chill of his infinity is absent, even as Gojo’s eyes widen in something like fear. 

“There were two girls,” Suguru says. Gojo pushes himself up on his hands at the other end of the bed. “At the village. Two little girls. I told them I’d help them, I–”

“Nanami took care of the curse,” Gojo says. He’s quieter now, clipped, and Suguru feels himself inhaling in aborted half-breaths. He wonders if Nanami saw him before Shoko did, if he had to carry him like he did Haibara. “If they’re alive I’m sure they’re fine now.”

“If?”

Gojo nods. “Nanami said the whole place was pretty messed up when he got there. Seemed kinda empty. Lots of bodies.”

“I need to go,” Suguru says. “They could still be out there. It’s not safe for them there, I can’t—”

“Hey, hey.” Gojo moves closer again. “Calm down. You’re ok now, right? That’s what matters.”

“It’s not—”

“Everything’s gonna be fine,” Gojo says. “As long as you don’t pull a Haibara or something, we’re good, right?”

And Suguru loves Gojo. More than anything. More than he’s ever known how to understand. He’s never said it, but he knows that Gojo knows, even if it’s never been spoken aloud, and he likes to think Gojo feels the same, but the truth is either way it wouldn’t change a thing. As angry as he ever is with him, that’s always the undercurrent. 

Maybe it’s because he loves him, or maybe it’s because this is the longest he’s been awake and active in weeks, but it takes Suguru a second to really process what it is that Gojo’s said. There’s a moment—only one, but that’s one too many—where Gojo’s already said it and Suguru isn’t blindingly, unforgivably mad at him.

“Don’t touch me,” Suguru says. Gojo pauses but doesn’t move away. “Get out.” 

“Suguru—”

“Get out!” he repeats, loud enough that his raw throat cracks with it. He hears the skid of a chair against the wooden floor as the assistant manager on guard stands out in the hallway. Old Suguru would have laughed—as if anyone could stop him, aside from the boy in front of him—but new Suguru can only curl in on himself. “Don’t fucking touch me.” 

Suguru tucks his head between his knees as Gojo retreats, arms over his ears to block out any sound. The door clicks behind him silently. Suguru clenches his knees around his own head, heaves in a wet, heavy breath, and shakes. 

He sleeps fitfully through the night and into the early morning until the damp air and the crackle of thunder in the distance wake him with a throbbing in his sinuses. 

It’s still dark—the clock on the bedside blinks a number barely past 4—but any sliver of light burns his eyes like he’s staring directly into the sun on a bright, cloudless noon. He squeezes his eyes shut, and the pain in his sinuses immediately retaliates, so he settles for burying his face in the pillow and ignoring the scent woven into the fabric that isn’t his own.

Time passes. Suguru isn’t sure how much. Rain pelts at his window in uneven intervals for what seems like hours but could be minutes. Suguru can’t muster the will to lift his head to check the clock again until the rain has fully subsided. It’s 10 in the morning. Just as dark as it was when he woke. He buries his head back into the pillow.

There’s a knock at his door around noon, with no approaching footsteps preceding it. Suguru doesn’t answer, and Gojo leaves without any fanfare—no more knocking, no call through the door, no noise as he retreats, hovering the distance of mere molecules over the ground, just enough to be separate from it. 

The sun is setting again by the time Suguru manages to sit himself up, and it’s firmly behind the horizon when he actually opens his eyes. He hauls himself across campus to Yaga’s office once the meager threads of light that had filtered in through the storm clouds throughout the day have completely vanished, and the damp chill in the air seeps into every crevice as he traverses the exposed wooden hallways. 

“There’s no precedent for this, you know,” Yaga says. His office is dark, minus the one dull lamp on the desk between them. Suguru’s head pounds still with the effort of walking over, but the blurriness of Yaga’s features and the dim lighting provides some relief. 

“I know, sensei.”

“The only case studies we have, historically, of someone coming back to life after their body dies are in instances of possession, or vessels making some sort of bargain with their inhabitant.” Yaga straightens a stack of papers on his desk. “Realistically, you might not even be just a changed version of Getou Suguru. You might be someone else entirely, using his body.” 

Suguru certainly feels used. Maybe he’d be better off, were he possessed. Were he— “I know.”

“And although I honestly don’t think that’s the case, we still have to take precautions,” Yaga says. “There could be any number of alternative reasons to consider. A number of smaller curses could be responsible, or some larger ones that would require additional contingencies, and with your huge energy potential we just can’t risk some sort of loss of control, or—”

“I know!” 

Yaga doesn’t startle, but he does sit up straighter. Suguru’s sinuses throb in his head, near their breaking point, and he resists the all-consuming urge to tuck his head between his elbows and sob until the pressure is relieved. 

“I’m sorry,” he says instead. “But there are little kids out there, sensei. We can’t just leave them out there. Let me look for them, please.”

“You’re not yourself,” Yaga says, as if that’s a proper answer. Suguru clenches his hands tighter at his sides. “It wouldn’t be safe. For you or for anyone else.” 

“Since when has safety been a concern around here?” Suguru says. “What, too many teenagers killed this month? You already hit your quota?” 

The guilt chokes him the second he says it, but Yaga’s expression still hammers the point home. “I care about your safety, Getou-kun,” he says. Suguru drops his gaze to his feet. “And when you’re back to yourself again, I don’t think you’ll be very happy with me if I let you wander around the woods without your wits about you.” 

“Who says I’ll ever go back?” Suguru says. “Maybe Getou Suguru has been dead for weeks. Maybe he’s rotting in the woods somewhere with his brain spilling out of his ears, huh?” And then, after a moment without further reaction from Yaga, “Send someone else, then. Doesn’t have to be me.” 

“We don’t have anyone to spare right now,” Yaga says. “I’m sorry, Getou-kun. Truly.” 

It’s worse because Suguru can tell he means it. The anger would feel better if Yaga was insincere, or placating, or patronizing, but as it is he’s left with it writhing in his gut, heavy and nauseating and inescapable. Yaga cares. He’s sorry. Suguru wants to vomit. 

“You look pale,” Yaga says, as Suguru pushes back in his chair and stands, swaying violently for just a moment before he catches himself. “I’ll walk you back to your room.”

“I’m fine,” Suguru says. His vision swims. The door in front of him warps, closer and then further and closer again, and he steadies himself on a low bookshelf pressed up against the wall. “Goodnight, sensei.”

Yaga’s chair scrapes against the floor as Suguru turns the doorknob. “Wait, Getou-kun—”

The door shuts behind him before Yaga can reach him, leaving Suguru alone in the hallway. His vision is going dark at the edges, and he makes it the few steps he can away from the door before he has to crouch down, head tucked between his knees, his hands braced against the wall. He’s weak. He’s weak, and he’s vulnerable, and he’s useless, and it’s all so pointless—

“Suguru?”

“Leave me alone,” Suguru says, operating on reflex alone as he feels all the blood in his body remaining stubbornly pooled in his legs. There’s a ringing in his ears, his vision down to a pinpoint.

“What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” Gojo’s voice is impossibly gentle. Suguru feels like an animal being comforted before slaughter. “Come here, let me see.” 

“Don’t—” Suguru protests weakly as Gojo hooks an arm around his waist, turning him to sit against the wall. The tingly chill of infinity encompasses him as Gojo’s hands brush over him, and he tries to push him away, but Gojo’s persistent. 

Finding nothing in the way of injuries, Gojo’s hands come up to cup his face instead. “Suguru, hey,” he says. “Talk to me.” 

“I’m fine.” 

Gojo’s glasses rest up on his forehead, so Suguru can see his displeased frown clearly, even with his vision graying. “Don’t lie. Why would you lie?”

“You could do it,” Suguru says. A barely restrained sob tightens his throat. “You could find them if you wanted to. But you won’t.” 

“Hey, Suguru, c’mon.” Gojo shakes him gently. “Open your eyes, look at me.” 

Suguru’s head is too light to respond. Gojo says something else, but it’s only static in Suguru’s ears. Gojo’s thumb brushes across his cheek, and before he passes out, he has just enough time to feel the cold press of guilt when he leans into the touch. 

Gojo had bled the first day he and Suguru met. 

It was a mistake. Gojo had been cocky, brazen, pretty, so pretty, and Suguru had been overeager, itchy to show off the way he could harness the tension in his fascia into something productive, something to show he was worth the air he breathed and the iron in his veins and cost of the fuel to haul him over from Toyama. 

They had sparred after class, and Gojo wasn’t a match for him—not in hand-to-hand alone, not really—but his technique was sharp enough to catch Suguru off guard, to get a knee to his jaw as he dropped to try to sweep his legs out from under him.

Gojo’s eyes had flashed with something like surprise, and then excitement, but never remorse, because Gojo Satoru is never sorry, because Gojo Satoru never makes mistakes, and then Suguru had clipped his lip with a well-placed elbow, and Gojo’s red-stained fingers had pulled away from his mouth in awe, like he didn’t know he could bleed. He had rejected Shoko’s offer to heal it up for him. He had let Suguru press ice to the swollen, purpled flesh of his lip. Suguru remembers wishing Gojo would have hit him harder, so he would have had something to nurse, too. 

“You know he’s an idiot,” Shoko says. They’re sprawled out on the lawn nearest the dorms. There’s a pebble protruding from the dirt under Suguru’s back, digging right into the jut of a vertebrae. He can feel eyes on him, somewhere, whether from Yaga himself or from a cursed corpse lurking in the trees nearby. “If you expect him to not be an idiot you’re always gonna be disappointed.”

“Not disappointed,” Suguru says. His voice is still hoarse. His throat itches incessantly, an internal scab that needs to be bloodied. 

“Upset. Angry. Whatever.” Shoko huffs, blowing her bangs up off her forehead. If he convinces her to go back inside first, maybe he could just walk into the trees and never look back. The brush would be too dense, after a point, even for a cursed corpse to navigate. Those girls might be out there, somewhere. “All he wants is for you to be alright, y’know.” 

“He should want something else,” Suguru says. “Yaga says I'm not even me anymore, anyway.”

“What do you think?” Shoko says, eyes still trained up towards the sky. “I mean, you would know, right? Do you think you’re him?”

I'm not the person you think I am. I’m not the person you all loved. “You clearly don’t,” Suguru says. “If you thought I was Suguru you wouldn’t have asked it like that.” 

“If you felt like Suguru you wouldn’t have responded like that,” Shoko says, and Suguru can’t help but agree. The Suguru he’s watched his friends mourn was strong and level-headed and sweet. Kind. Good. Suguru doesn’t remember a version of himself that fits those descriptors. 

“Whatever,” Suguru says, pushing himself up off the ground. His shoulders ache like the remnants of a fever, and Shoko quickly sits up with him, brushing the dirt off her own back. She follows—hands stuffed into her pockets, the perfect picture of nonchalance—as he trudges silently further into the trees towards the creek. 

“He’s gonna be back again tomorrow,” she says. Suguru kicks a rock from the far edge of the river bank and watches it skitter down until it hits the water. “Do you think you’ll go talk to him?”

“Don’t have anything to say,” Suguru says. He sees Shoko’s eyebrows tick up from the corner of his vision. It’s not completely false, anyway. “What d’you care anyway?”

“Don’t be an asshole,” Shoko says. Her tone is completely devoid of ridicule but if it’s an attempt to shame him it works all the same. Suguru ducks his head and kicks another rock. “C’mon, let’s go back.”

“I’m staying,” Suguru says. “You can go.” 

Shoko turns back and re-tracks the couple steps of distance she gained from him. “I’ll stay too.” 

“I want to be alone.” 

“Too bad,” Shoko says. She sits down on the riverbank, letting the tips of her boots dip under the rush of the water. “I’m staying if you are.” 

Suguru bends down to grab a fistful of pebbles, filtering through them by touch until something that isn’t entirely eroded into homogeneity grazes his fingertip. He tosses the smooth ones thoughtlessly, and they hit the water in scattered splashes back up onto the bank, but the rough stone stays in his hand, digging into the meat under his thumb. “Just go, Shoko, it’s fine.”

“It’s obviously not,” she says. “Why are you trying to get rid of me?”

“What are you, my fucking suicide watch or something?” 

“I mean, yeah, man,” Shoko says. “Even you aren’t that dense.” 

She’s exasperated, her patience fraying. Suguru feels a flash of victory before shame and grief wash over him anew. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, and if Shoko hears the way the words choke off at the back of his throat she doesn’t react.

“Don’t apologize to me, dumbass,” she says. “I can handle you being a little bit of a dick, y’know.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, again, because it feels like the only thing to say. Shoko wordlessly extends a hand up to him, avoids making eye contact like she’s trying to earn the trust of a feral animal, but Suguru can’t even pretend like it doesn’t work, because after a moment, he takes it. The touch of someone else’s skin against his feels like a nail file to the nerves of his teeth, but he bears it. The feeling will fade, eventually. It has to fade eventually. 

Gojo’s outside his door when he steps out of his bedroom into the hallway that night, hand half-raised in a fist poised to knock. 

“Hey,” Gojo says, shuffling back and forth on his feet to disguise his momentary startle. “I, uh, I just got back, Shoko said you ate already, but would you want to get takeout tonight? And play a game or something?” And then, after another second, “I’ll buy.” 

Suguru looks him up and down; the outcome of whatever mission he was just on had Yaga and Gakuganji whispering frantically to each other in the hallway yesterday, and he’s covered in a thin layer of dust, from the toes of his boots to the rims of his glasses. One of the lenses has been wiped clean, but he seems to have forgotten the other one, pretense dropped before it could really begin. 

“Not hungry,” Suguru says, and closes the door in his face. Gojo jams a foot in the door, but it doesn’t really touch him. If Suguru squints, he can see the thin line of his infinity separating his shoe from the pinch of the wood. 

“Just the game, then,” he says. “C’mon, Suguru, I haven’t seen you in forever. I brought snacks.” 

“I don’t want your snacks.” 

“I’ll eat them.”

“I’m not in the mood, Satoru,” Suguru says. “Goodnight.” 

“Wait, Suguru—” Gojo shoulders himself further into the room. “We don’t have to hang out tonight, if you really don’t want to, but—we’re good, right? Are we good?” 

With his glasses up on his forehead, Suguru can see that Gojo’s gaze is soft and nervous. Suguru recoils despite himself. 

“No, we’re not fucking good, Satoru,” he says. “Go away.” 

Gojo lets himself be pushed out of the room after that, face frozen in a flat sort of non-expression as the door clicks shut in front of him. The clammy feeling of infinity lingers on Suguru’s fingers where his hand pushed at Gojo’s shoulder. 

Gojo’s gone for three and a half weeks. Suguru doesn’t ask, but Shoko tells him anyways: some grade-one the Kyoto school couldn’t handle, three sorcerers already dead, a regenerating ability that leaves the thing writhing and screaming and shooting off lancets of cursed energy long after it should be dead. 

When he comes back, he’s noticeably skinnier. He’s brought sweets from Kyoto for Shoko and Nanami and Suguru, but they’re all a little stale. He leaves Suguru’s on the floor outside his door, because Suguru doesn’t answer when he knocks. 

Gojo’s gone for a week. Semi-first grade, but one student is already dead, so they skip the professionals and call him in. When he gets back, he goes straight to his room. Shoko tells Suguru he hasn’t said a word to her, but he’s had lunch with Nanami once, in silence. The conversation occurs while Suguru is having lunch with Shoko in silence only she fills. Suguru feels guilt, because now guilt is more familiar to him than hunger or pain or tiredness, but he doesn’t relieve her. Maybe old Suguru would have. 

Gojo has two days back on campus, and then he’s gone for nine days. Shoko doesn’t tell Suguru about this one. Gojo knocks on his door again when he gets back. Suguru gets all the way to his hand on the door handle on autopilot alone before his conscious mind wrests control and he sits back down on his bed until Gojo leaves. 

Gojo’s gone for six weeks. Yaga and Shoko and all the higher ups can’t successfully make contact with him for the latter three. It’s long enough that Suguru considers asking after him—lies alone in his bedroom at night and stares at the ceiling and pictures his body, dark blood pooling around him, blue eyes dull and cold—and then Gojo returns. 

He flashes right into the center of campus, and horrible, perfect relief shoots through Suguru’s chest and belly like a lightning strike. Gojo looks at him. Suguru looks back, and then turns and closes himself in his room to kneel down and curl over with the nausea clawing up his throat. 

Gojo is still on campus the next morning, and then the next. Suguru doesn’t mean to, but he finds him in the kitchen early in the morning pretending to eat a bowl of cereal. He doesn’t say anything when Suguru walks in, but he’s never been subtle without the glasses. His eyes flick to the door and then back to his hands tapping restlessly at the table, and then back to Suguru, and then back to the table again. He pushes his cereal around in the bowl with his spoon as Suguru pours himself a cup of cold black coffee and sits at the table in the opposite corner of the room. 

“You can’t live off coffee, Suguru,” Gojo says, a faux sort of sing-song lightheartedness to his voice. Suguru pushes out from the table silently and moves towards the door. He turns back at the sound of Gojo’s head thunking against the wooden table. 

“Suguruuuuuuu,” he whines, muffled into the table. “When are you gonna stop ignoring me?” 

“I’m not,” Suguru says, and it’s only kind of a lie. “You’re just never here.” 

“You’re ignoring me,” Gojo says, definitive. “You’ve never been mad at me for this long before. I miss you.” 

Something twinges in Suguru’s chest, at that. He grimaces and turns away again.

“Just tell me what to do, Suguru, c’mon,” Gojo says. “Whatever you want me to do. And then we can just forget about it and go back to normal.” 

Suguru’s silent.  

“Was it the Haibara thing?” Bingo—Suguru winces, and something in Gojo’s face lights up. “That was stupid to say. I didn’t mean it, Suguru, you know that.” 

“How am I supposed to know what you mean.” 

“You always know what I mean.” 

“You’re impossible,” Suguru says. Even if it isn’t true. Even if loving Gojo is so easy he thinks he’d be a different person entirely if he didn’t, because loving him means he knows how to hit him where it’ll hurt most. “You’re fucking impossible, Satoru, and I can’t take it anymore. I don’t want to do this with you, I don’t want to be your friend, I don’t want you, alright?” 

Gojo blinks at him emptily for just a moment before he ducks his head to his chest, letting his hair fall into his face. 

“Don’t do that.” Gojo says. The sad little pout he’s trying to hide doesn’t feel as much like a victory as Suguru had hoped it would. “You can just tell me to leave.” 

Suguru grimaces. “I would if you would listen.” 

“Because I don’t want to leave, Suguru,” Gojo says. He takes a step closer. “I just want things to go back to how they were. And I don’t know what’s going on with you, because you won’t tell me—”

“I wanted to kill them all,” Suguru says. Gojo freezes in his approach. “I would have killed every last one of them, if I hadn’t…” His voice sticks in his throat. “If they hadn’t gotten there first. And they would have deserved it, and I would have never looked back, and I would have never regretted it for a second, Satoru.” 

Gojo stares without blinking through eerie white lashes. “You don’t mean that.” 

“You have no fucking clue what I mean,” Suguru bites. 

“You said we weren’t allowed to kill like that. You said it would just be meaningless.” 

“It’s all meaningless,” Suguru snaps. “You don’t get it yet? There’s no we, Satoru! There was you, and your Suguru, and he’s fucking dead. He died and there’s no we anymore, and you don’t fucking know me!” 

This is the thing that breaks Gojo’s frozen-solid demeanor. His fists tighten. His mouth twists, like he’s trying to stop it from doing something else. “I do,” he insists, childishly, desperately. “I do, Suguru, you’re my Suguru.”

Suguru almost laughs. “Do us both a favor and stop pretending like you give a shit, alright?” he says. 

“Suguru, I don’t—!”

“I can’t be him for you anymore, and I can’t pretend like I buy it any more than you do. No reason to make this any harder than it has to be, right?” 

Suguru doesn’t give Gojo time to respond before he ducks back out into the hallway. His chest twists sharply, like a hand around his lungs, nails digging into the arteries supplying his heart. Suguru stumbles down the hallway without air, and hopes his breath never comes back. 

Gojo’s gone again. It doesn’t matter why or for how long. Suguru sleeps, and paces the campus, and lets Shoko sit in the same room as him while she drinks her coffee so she can stare, and he can pretend he doesn’t notice. He sleeps more. He eats if someone puts something in front of him, and if not, the constant gnawing in his stomach is indistinguishable from hunger, anyway. 

Suguru used to count the days he was gone, but he doesn’t anymore. He sleeps enough that the days fade into each other all the same, and Gojo doesn’t try to come find him. 

It’s colder out than it was a couple weeks prior. Suguru feels stiff when he wakes up in the morning. 

The sun is already up, streaming through the closed blinds. Suguru’s tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, the inside of his cheeks dry and chalky. He blinks repeatedly for a minute before his eyes decide to produce any tears to ease the pinch of dryness. His skin cracks into little streaks of bright red over his knuckles when he sits up and reaches for the old water glass on the desk. 

A shower does nothing to make him more comfortable, his joints creaking, his skin pulling tight over the tension points, head throbbing in the same dull ache that hasn’t faded since he woke up with Shoko at his bedside. He puts his same clothes back on, leaves the dorm without telling anyone, and heads out into the forest. 

The creek isn’t quite deep enough to swim in this time of year, and it’s nowhere near warm enough, but Suguru tries anyway. The shock of the cold water is enough to make him forget about the pain in his head as his skin fires off warning signs instead, so he stays in until his skin goes numb and then he stays a minute longer. It takes 20 minutes of sitting on the riverbank for his body temperature to come up enough that he stops shivering. He gets back in once the water bites again. His body’s tired, the second time, and it takes longer for the shock to dull as he floats face-up in the water. He doesn’t have the energy to turn and float face-down, but he imagines the sensation of it—the chill on his teeth, the insistent pressure of the water at every dip of his face, how easy it would be, to forget, to leave his skin so numb to sensation he’d forget which way was up, which way he could take a breath, how the cold water would feel soothing the ever-present burning in his lungs—

Getou-san. A warbled voice rings through the barrier of the rushing stream past Suguru’s ears, and he lifts his head from the water. Nanami stands on the bank, hands folded behind his back.

“Nanami,” Suguru says, by way of greeting. “You alright?” 

Nanami nods, once, sharply. “Gojo-san keeps whining about you being down here.” 

Suguru pushes himself up straighter. “Did he tell you to—?”

“No,” Nanami interrupts. “Just didn’t want to hang out with him and I knew he’d follow me anywhere else.” 

“Oh.” Suguru settles back down against the smooth rocks of the riverbed below him. “Ok. Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Nanami says. And then, after another second, “Are you going to stay in there?” 

Suguru’s skin hasn’t quite adapted to the water this time, so leaving won’t be as piercing as it could have been, but he shakes his head anyways. “No, I’ll, uh—” His tongue is numb with the cold, but he pulls it into words. “I’ll get out.” 

Nanami slips his shoes off and settles down on the bank as Suguru pulls himself out of the water, careful not to drip onto his underclassman’s clothes. 

Nanami’s quiet. He isn’t watching him, just staring out over the slow-moving creek. “If you want to talk about something—”

“I don’t,” Suguru says. “Thanks, though.” 

“Alright,” Nanami says. He’s silent for another moment. “Can I talk, then?” 

Suguru turns to look at him. Nanami’s eyes flick to him before going back over the water, so Suguru follows, looking away again. Guilt twists in his chest between the shivers tensing his lungs. “Yeah,” Suguru says. “Yeah, of course.” 

“Ok.” Nanami presses his foot into the dry rocks under his shoe, tucks his arms around his folded up knees, and stays quiet. 

It’s another couple minutes before he says anything at all. Suguru stares at the moving water and lets the wind turn to sharp pinpoints of pain on his bare skin, and waits. 

“I think I’m going to quit,” Nanami says. “After graduation.” 

Suguru looks to him, and he can’t help the startled expression on his face. “Really?” 

Nanami hums in confirmation. “I‘ve been considering it for a while. Haibara told me—” He pauses, and clears his throat. “He told me he thought I should do whatever would make me happy. And I’m not happy here, so…”

The lump in Suguru’s throat grows. “Oh.” 

“You think it’s stupid.” 

“No. No!” Suguru shakes his head. “Just surprised, I guess.” 

“I was staying for him, before,” Nanami says. “Figured he would need someone to look out for him.” 

They both know the rest already. Nanami clears his throat again. Suguru hunches his shoulders up to his ears in a futile attempt to warm up. 

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” Suguru says, after an extended couple minutes of silence. Nanami turns toward him just slightly, but keeps his eyes trained on the water. He waits for the question clarifying what here means—the school or the riverbank or all of it—but it doesn’t come. 

Instead, Nanami says, “Why are you staying, then?” And then, before he has a chance to answer, “For Gojo-san?”

Suguru huffs out a cynical sort of laugh. “He doesn’t need me.” 

“He doesn't need anybody,” Nanami says. Suguru lets his head drop between his knees. “He’s a god. Letting us pretend we’re even close to him is the best he can do.”

Suguru says it mostly on reflex: “He’s not a god.”

Nanami hums noncommittally. Another several minutes pass in silence. 

“I had a friend who had a snake for a pet when I was a kid,” Nanami says. Suguru doesn’t pick his head up this time. “He always wanted one, and then he got it, and he was upset it couldn’t do tricks or go on walks or sleep in bed with you the way a dog or something could.

“His mom told him it was different, because a snake couldn’t love. But it could trust the food he brought. And it could let him get close without biting, and that was like its version of that.” Nanami pauses. “Maybe if it could, it would love him. But it couldn’t, so he had to be ok with that, I guess.” 

Suguru feels the water from his hair dripping into his eyes. “So Satoru’s the snake?” 

“I don’t know,” Nanami says. He shrugs, and looks over the water again. “Just thinking.” 

“Can a snake still be happy?” Suguru says, before he can stop himself. “It can’t love or play or anything, but it can still live a good life, right? A good life for a snake.” 

“I don’t know. I guess so,” Nanami says. “It wasn’t my snake.”

“Right. Sorry,” Suguru says. “Nevermind. Forget about it.” 

They stare at the water more, so long that Nanami leaves, and Suguru isn’t sure when. He gets back in the water until the sky darkens and his skin goes numb. 

Haibara’s been in his dreams more, lately.

Sometimes it’s mundane—in class, training, lounging on the stairs next to the track and eating lunch between spars—but tonight it isn’t. He closes his eyes and shutters the blinds but he sees him behind his eyelids, in perfect, crystalline detail even in the dark. 

The worst part isn’t how it makes him feel, because how it makes him feel is shitty and nauseous and empty, and he always feels those things. The worst part is that he’s happy, just for a minute. It lingers, too—beyond the brief moment it takes for Suguru to differentiate the dream from reality.

He gets out of bed and steps into the hallway. It’s still pitch black outside, either the middle of the night or very early morning. The cool draft curls through the propped open windows, and he walks down the hallway with no plan as to where he’ll end up. 

Shoko’s room is darkened when he passes, no telltale flicker of a laptop from underneath the seam of the door. He walks past the kitchen, and then the dorm’s center courtyard. He grabs the beams of the doorframe, leaning out into the nighttime air without letting his feet ever leave the wooden floorboards. 

The energy of his brain spreads outward through his body, carried along by hyperawareness the still of night brings, and so by the time he finds himself stopped outside of Gojo’s room his fingertips tingle, the tremor in his hands just shy of imperceptible. His overhead lights are still on. 

Suguru’s past thinking about what he would have done last year, how much easier this would have been for Old Suguru. Old Suguru is a stranger to him, motives foreign and actions unpredictable. Fantasizing about it is a luxury out of Suguru’s reach. He pushes the door open.

Gojo’s slouched on his bed, head crooked against the headboard at a stiff angle to read the manga propped on his chest. To his credit, he doesn’t startle; only lifts his head at Suguru’s intrusion, silently observing him hovering in the doorway.

“I can’t sleep,” Suguru says. Gojo hums wordlessly and tucks an old receipt from his bedside table into the book, dropping it on the floor next to the bed. 

“Do you wanna talk about it?” 

“No.” Suguru shakes his head. Gojo blinks, still for only another second, before he pushes himself up on his hands and moves over to the far side of the bed. Suguru takes the invitation and crosses from the doorway to lay down next to him, face half-turned into the pillow. Gojo twists to watch him and props his head up on one hand. 

He lets Suguru remove his glasses where they sit on top of his head, pushed askew by the hand in his hair. Gojo’s hair is soft and fine between his fingers, the skin of his cheek warm against Suguru’s palm, and Suguru misses him even with him right there under his fingers, with him closing his eyes and pressing his face into Suguru’s hand, like he doesn’t know his touch is tainted.

“Are you ok?” Gojo says. Suguru blinks up at him. It’s hard to look right into his eyes. Gojo’s hand overlaps his on his cheek. 

“I don’t know,” Suguru says. He lets his head fall heavy across the pillow. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” 

Suguru turns his face into the pillow and clenches his eyes shut. There’s a pressure building in his skull, threatening to spill out, and Suguru is weak now, all exposed wires and fragile skin and open wounds. He inhales sharply but it sticks in his throat when Gojo’s fingers skim the dip between his neck and shoulder, and the next exhale is choked and shaky. 

“Hey.” Gojo’s voice is barely above a whisper, his hand on the side of Suguru’s face. “Suguru, hey, c’mon.” 

When he opens his eyes again Gojo’s closer, the heat of his body radiating into Suguru’s chilled skin. Their knees knock together as he shifts down off his elbow so they’re eye-to-eye, and he moves his hand in, tentative and careful, to swipe a thumb under Suguru’s eye. 

“I miss you,” Suguru says, garbled and wet. Gojo furrows his brow. “I don’t know what to do anymore, but I miss you.” 

“I’m right here,” Gojo says. “I’m here, I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’re not,” Suguru says. Gojo’s hand tightens on his. “You don’t get it, Satoru, I’m alone. I’m alone, and I’m gonna die, and you’re gonna die, and Shoko, and Nanami and Haibara—”

“Hey, hey.” Gojo’s more insistent, now, his hand firm on the side of Suguru’s face. “It’s you and me, alright? Nothing’s gonna happen to us. It’s us, we’re gonna be ok.”

“We’re never gonna be happy.” It’s selfish to speak it out loud. Like something so intangible could ever compare to the dried blood holding the whole campus together like glue. Gojo pulls him to his chest, wrapping his arms tightly around him, so Suguru’s face is pressed into the crook of Gojo’s neck. “We can’t be. We’re not supposed to be.” 

“I’m happy,” Gojo says, whispered, like a confession, lips pressed to the crown of Suguru’s head. “As long as you’re here, I’m happy.” 

“I’m not,” Suguru says. He feels Gojo’s chest rise and fall underneath him, the beat of his heart echoing through Suguru’s bones. He squeezes Suguru tighter. 

Suguru tries to slow his breathing, but he’s powerless to the whims of his body, and his shaky breaths go faster, his heart speeding in his chest like a hummingbird’s. He barely pulls in enough oxygen, and his lungs feel hollow, screaming for more with each sharp, useless inhale. Useless useless useless, everything about him is useless—

“Suguru, breathe,” Gojo says. 

“Can’t,” Suguru bites out. He wonders, distantly, how long borrowed time can last, if it’s more finite than what little he might have been already granted, and can only breathe faster still. 

“Breathe,” Gojo repeats, like an order, this time. He takes a deep breath of his own, presses Suguru to him tighter, breathes out purposefully with one of Suguru’s own hurried exhales. “With me. Ok?” 

Suguru nods, because he doesn’t have the air for speech, and tries to focus all his attention to the rise and fall of Gojo’s chest underneath his cheek. Gojo’s arms squeeze tighter around him on each exhale, like he’s trying to force the air out of him, and he lets up on each inhale. Suguru feels the chill of infinity swell around him, and panic rises up his throat until he realizes Gojo’s encompassed him in it, too. The pressure of it across his shoulders is pulsatile, in time with Gojo’s breathing. 

Suguru holds his breath until Gojo’s next inhale. His lungs burn, his vision going gray at the edges, and as Gojo’s chest rises again he sucks down air as best he can, trying to fill his lungs to the bases. He holds again, until Gojo releases, too, and although his chest aches with it he’s in control again. 

The relief of it is immense, but not so immense as the grief that follows. Gojo’s t-shirt grows wet with his tears. Gojo’s going to know, now, how burdensome it is to try to preserve a corpse. 

“Sorry, fuck, sorry, I’ll—” Suguru pushes up on shaky forearms, which seems to freak Gojo out more than the whole unprompted panic attack. 

“Stop, stop it,” Gojo says, as Suguru attempts to push up again, against the insistent pressure of Gojo’s arms squeezing around his shoulders, holding him down. The panic in his voice only makes Suguru’s heart thrum faster, shaky arms push more desperately. “Don’t—Suguru, just, stay, ok? Stop, just stop it.” 

All at once, Suguru slackens, and Gojo squeezes him tighter. Now that he’s coming back to himself, Suguru can register better how shaky Gojo’s breathing is, the flittering thrum of his heartbeat under Suguru’s cheek. 

“Please stay,” Gojo says, near-whispered. “Don’t be stupid, ok? Just stay here.” 

“I should go back,” Suguru says, but doesn’t try to get up this time. “It’s late. My head hurts.” 

Gojo’s nose wrinkles, reflex trying to push his glasses up to cover his eyes better even with the dark lenses abandoned on the bedside table. He shifts underneath him, wrenching one arm out from underneath himself and turning so that he and Suguru are face to face.

“Close your eyes,” Gojo says. Suguru obeys easily, thoughtlessly, before his brow furrows.

“Why?”

Instead of responding, Gojo presses one finger to the center of Suguru’s forehead, dragging it down over the crease between his eyebrows down to the tip of his nose before starting again. The pressure is firm at first, forcing the muscles under Suguru’s skin to release his face back into neutrality, but after a minute it becomes lighter, delicate. Suguru finds himself slowly sinking further into the bed, tension bleeding from his muscles with each touch. His eyes are heavy. The pressure in his skull relieves, just a little. 

“Satoru,” he says, voice muffled by his face pressed into the pillow. Gojo hums in acknowledgment. “I’m still mad at you.” 

Suguru’s eyes are still closed, but he feels the bed shift with Gojo’s nod. “Ok,” Gojo says, barely above a murmur. Another gentle stroke, just one finger, from the top of Suguru’s forehead down the bridge of his nose. “Ok. I know. It’s fine.” 

And sleep doesn’t come easy, but it comes. He dreams of screaming girls and cold fingertips and Gojo’s hands on either side of his face, like he’s something worth framing. 

Gojo’s gone in the morning.

Suguru kind of expects it, but there’s a moment between when he wakes up and when he opens his eyes where he tries to convince himself that he’s still dreaming. Gojo’s sitting at the end of the bed, and Suguru just hasn’t spotted him yet. Gojo’s in the bathroom, trotting back down the hallway with sleep-softened, tired eyes. Gojo’s pressed up against his back, chin curled over his shoulder, radiating the same warmth as streaks of sunlight through dusty old blinds. 

But then he opens his eyes, and the morning light streaming in through the window is cold and bright, and there’s a divot in the sheets next to him, cool to the touch when Suguru stretches his arm out from under the comforter to press his palm to it. 

Gojo’s glasses are missing from the bedside table and his shoes aren’t in the entryway. The blanket is tucked neatly around Suguru’s body. Suguru kicks off the comforter and lets it fall to the floor. 

Yaga’s down the hallway looking a bit panicked when Suguru pushes open the door to Gojo’s room. His face relaxes into careful neutrality when he spots him.

“Morning,” Yaga says. Suguru stuffs his hands into his pockets. “Gojo got sent out early this morning if you’re looking for him.”

“I’m not,” Suguru says, instead of asking when he’ll be back or where he went or if he put up a fight about leaving. Yaga’s expression is incredulous at best and openly disbelieving at worst. “Is anyone looking for those girls, yet?”

Yaga’s expression is clear enough to avoid necessitating a verbal reply. Anger burns white-hot behind Suguru’s eyes, and a startling clarity with it. Gojo’s not here, and the girls aren’t here, and so there’s nothing to stay for. It’s time for Suguru to leave.

He turns down the hall without saying goodbye to Yaga and heads towards the kitchen. 

Shoko’s in the kitchen already when he slides open the door. 

“Good morning,” she says, pointed. Suguru huffs out a wordless response. Shoko’s eyes follow him as he crosses the kitchen to the fridge and yanks it open with more force than is strictly necessary. “I slept well, thanks, Suguru. And what about you?”

“Do you know how Yaga’s barrier works?” Shoko raises an eyebrow. One of Gojo’s stupid little pre-packaged fancy pastries is in a neat plastic wrapper on the top shelf. Suguru snatches it and pushes the fridge door closed. “Or whatever it is? Barrier, alarm system, whatever. How can I get past it?” 

Shoko takes a slow sip of her coffee as he tears open the pastry. “Are you doing something stupid?”

“Does it matter?”

“Guess not.” Shoko shrugs. “Just don’t wanna have to revive you again.”

The pastry is sickly sweet, almost medicinal, when he bites into it. Suguru grimaces and swallows it down. “That’s not funny.”

“Didn’t say it was.” Shoko takes another sip. “I think he has to monitor it manually. If you wait until he’s asleep he probably wouldn’t even notice.”

“Thanks.” Suguru tosses the remaining half of the pastry into the trash. He can feel Shoko’s eyes on him as he crosses to the door.

“Hey, Suguru,” Shoko says. Suguru stops under the doorframe. “I know you’re going through something right now or whatever, but I’m glad you’re back.”

Suguru huffs. “It’s pointless,” he says. “I’ll die again. And it’ll be just as meaningless then.”

“You’re here though, aren’t you?” Suguru turns to her. Shoko’s tone is still light but her gaze is piercing, analytical. “You’re welcome, by the way. It’s not like I wanted to find you dead, y’know.” 

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know you didn’t.” Shoko lets out a heavy breath and sets her mug down on the table. “You’re here, though, and even if it is so pointless I’d still rather you be alive.” 

Suguru tucks his chin to his chest, sucks in as deep a breath as he can manage, but it’s not enough to fill his lungs. “We’re just pawns to them, Shoko,” he says. “We’re not even people to non-sorcerers. As long as things stay the same they’ll just keep killing us like cattle.” 

“Ok, sure,” Shoko says, far too casual for the tension Suguru feels building in the space around his lungs. “What’s the alternative, though? Dying super young instead of dying a little less young?” 

“Burning the whole thing down,” Suguru says. Shoko huffs—in amusement or surprise, Suguru isn’t sure—but otherwise doesn’t react. “Killing them before they can kill us.” 

This time, Shoko laughs for real. “That’s intense, don’t you think?”

“It’s the only thing that’ll work,” Suguru says. “And it’s what they deserve, anyway. For how many of us they’ve killed. For killing Haibara. For killing me.” 

“A curse killed Haibara.” 

“A curse made by non-sorcerers.” Suguru feels his hands clench into fists at his sides. “They kill us and then they turn around and cry for us to save them. What’s the endpoint of that? How long can that last before we decide it’s enough?” 

“Ok, yeah, sure, people are shitty,” Shoko says. “No arguments there. You and Gojo are shitty all the time and I put up with you anyways. Non-sorcerers don’t have a monopoly on that.” 

Suguru grimaces. “You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“What are you talking about, then?” she says. “An eye for an eye, right?”

“No, that’s not—” Suguru feels his voice starting to stick in his throat, that all-too-familiar feeling rising up from his stomach. She’s wrong, she doesn’t get it— “It’s not about revenge. It’s about creating a better world. Where we can be safe.” 

“You just said it was about what they deserved,” Shoko says. She plucks a plastic coffee stirrer from the tin on the counter and sticks it between her teeth. Suguru feels anger lick white-hot in his stomach, but even that makes him feel sick. He shouldn’t be angry at Shoko—she’s not the source of it all, she just doesn’t understand—but he is. He’s supposed to have control. That’s what should separate him from them. “Assigning blame, then?”

“I’m not a child.” 

“Fine, fine.” Shoko raises one hand in lazy surrender, the other still occupied on her near-empty mug. Suguru’s silent as she pushes out from the table. She takes her mug to the sink and pours the dregs down the drain. “I’m not trying to change your mind or anything. Just saying that just because Gojo’s been a real dick lately doesn’t mean you have to get all sulky. I’m your friend too, and I love you, you asshole.” 

“He has been a dick,” Suguru says. Shoko raises an expectant eyebrow. 

“Say it back.” 

Suguru ducks his head. “I love you, too.” 

Shoko hums approvingly and goes back to her coffee. Suguru leaves before he can do anything else. 

Gojo returns from his mission before the end of the day, in the late afternoon. Suguru doesn’t come to meet him, and doesn’t answer the door when he knocks. A locked door has never stopped Gojo before, but he doesn’t try to open it. 

It’s not until it’s dark that Suguru actually makes to leave. In the midst of autumn that’s early—barely past 6pm until it looks like near midnight, but it’s not until nearly midnight that his heart thrums in his chest to a regular enough rhythm that he can make himself open the door. 

He heads out towards the courtyard. He has his coat on, and a small backpack with a few cursed tools and a few snacks. It’s not enough to subsist for any real amount of time without returning, but Suguru’s past caring. Anywhere else is better. 

“What’re you doing?”

Suguru turns around to find Gojo, haloed under the dim lantern light of the center courtyard. His jacket is on, but he’s in his pajama pants, glasses pushed up to his forehead, sneakers loose and untied on his feet. He yawns and scrubs a hand up and down his face.

Suguru turns on his heel and trods towards the front gate. He hears the shuffling of Gojo’s shoes in the leaves behind him.

“Go away,” Suguru says. “I’ll be back later. Yaga won’t even notice.”

“I’m not asking for Yaga,” Gojo scoffs. “Suguru, where are you going?”

“Can you leave me the fuck alone?” Suguru speeds up, and Gojo jogs the last couple steps between them to meet him. “You’ve made it very clear you don’t give a shit about this. Go away.”

Gojo tries to step in front of him and Suguru sidesteps, leaving Gojo stumbling after him. “Suguru, wait—”

“You’re not stopping me,” Suguru says. “I’m going. I don’t care about whatever they wanna do to me when I get back.”

“I’m not trying to stop you, Suguru, c’mon.” Gojo catches his wrist, and Suguru stops to face him. “I’m coming with you. It’s you, so I’m obviously coming with.”

“You’re not,” Suguru says. “You can’t come. I don’t want you to.”

“I wasn’t asking,” Gojo says. There’s a heat to his voice now, miles away from the sleep-addled questioning from only moments ago. “If you’re going somewhere I’m coming.” 

“Jesus, would you cut it with the romantic bullshit?” Suguru tears his wrist from Gojo’s grasp. He’s yelling now—risking someone hearing, risking the integrity of this whole mission—but he can’t bring himself to care, not when Gojo insists on looking at him like that, like he cares, like any of it’s real. “Whoever your Suguru was, everyone’s made it very clear to me that I’m not him.” 

“I love you,” Gojo says. Suguru’s stomach curls in on itself. “More than anything else, alright? So you’re not gonna get rid of me with any of this crap about not being yourself, or not being my Suguru or whatever. It’s bullshit and I won't hear it.” And then, as if to make sure Suguru heard him the first time, “Because I love you.”  

“You don’t,” Suguru snaps. “I’m not him.” 

“I do,” Gojo insists. “And you are. I would know if you weren’t.” 

And he’s so sure, so recklessly confident, that it makes Suguru angry. Jealous, maybe, that this gets to be so easy for him. Angry that he’s jealous. Angry that he wants to say it back. Angry that he can’t, or won’t, if the difference even matters. 

“Six eyes might not be able to tell,” Suguru says instead. “If I was different, but my body was the same.” 

“When did I say anything about six eyes,” Gojo snaps. “I would know.” 

And in that moment, Gojo doesn’t look like a god, or a monster, or a snake. Standing in front of Suguru in his pajamas—eyes tired, wrinkled t-shirt half-tucked into his sweats, hands shaking at his sides where his nails dig into the soft heel of his palm—Gojo looks a lot like a scared teenage boy.

Suguru isn’t sure when he starts moving towards him if he intends to hit him or hug him, but when his arms wrap around Gojo, Gojo squeezes him right back like he knew it was coming all along. He shakes a little as Suguru holds him tighter. He fists one hand in the back of Suguru’s sweatshirt, so firm Suguru can feel the fabric pulling at the seams around his neck. He buries his face in Suguru’s shoulder, and it’s only when Suguru feels the heat of Gojo’s tears against his skin that he realizes he never felt infinity come down, which could only mean it wasn’t up in the first place. 

“I’m coming with,” he says, infinitely shakier than the first time. “I don’t care if you want to get rid of me, Suguru, because you can’t. I don’t care about anything else. I just need you.”

“You don’t need me,” Suguru murmurs. 

“Shut up,” Gojo snaps. “Stop saying stupid shit like that. I hate it. It doesn’t matter if I need you or want you or if I’d be fucking fine without you, because we’re not gonna be apart long enough to find out, ok?” 

Gojo trembles through the whole thing, but his arms stay tight around Suguru’s middle. He breathes heavily, his face reddened up to his ears, his eyes swollen and watery. His tears are staining Suguru’s shirt. He’s warm under Suguru’s palm. Suguru can feel him under his palm. 

“Ok,” Suguru says, and Gojo nods into the crook of his neck. “Ok, yeah, let’s go.”

The train is empty this time of night, so when Gojo sits next to him and presses their legs together at the thigh, there’s no pretense to hide behind. One of the LEDs overhead is flickering as they board the vacant car. Suguru presses his palms to his eyes and lets the gentle rocking of the train knock their knees together.

The tip of Gojo’s pinkie brushes his as the train jostles into the next stop. He keeps it there even after the train stills, and Suguru opens his eyes and looks over to find Gojo’s gaze planted firmly at his own feet, face flushed up to his ears. Suguru rolls his eyes. 

“Jesus Christ, you’re annoying,” Suguru says, untangling their pinkies in favor of wrapping his whole hand around Gojo’s. Gojo’s eyes flick to him and then back. He pushes his glasses up his nose, but it doesn’t hide the deep red coloring his cheeks like he’s been running alongside the train instead of sitting inside of it. Suguru huffs out a laugh at the image. Gojo smiles, small and shy, and squeezes his hand back. 

After the train is a long walk down unpaved dirt roads, weaving seemingly directionless through dense trees and sprawling fields. On the way here the first time he had been driven, and it had been daytime, and he had never died before, and so the whole trip was altogether boring and tedious. Now, something like fear, but deeper, more instinctual, curls in around him. By the time they reach the village Suguru has become firmly anxious. He wishes Gojo would take his hand again, and then scolds himself for wishing it, and then scolds himself for the first scolding. Gojo’s hovering near the treeline, peering up into the darkness. 

“What do they look like?”

“I don’t know, like little kids?” Suguru runs a harried hand back through his hair. “Maybe four or five years old? One was blonde, the other had darker hair. They were wearing pajamas but that was weeks ago, who knows—”

“Their cursed techniques?” Gojo pushes his glasses up to his forehead and turns somewhere off into the woods. “Was one of ‘em something to do with dolls or something?” 

“Can you see them?” Suguru turns to follow his line of sight, but he can’t see more than a few feet beyond the trees. He tries to tamp down the flash of hope that radiates up through his chest. “Satoru, what do you see?” 

Gojo hums noncommittally. “Dunno if it’s them, but there’s definitely two sorcerers over there. They seem small, anyway.” He takes his glasses off and tucks them into the pocket of his pants. “I can see the techniques but the cursed energy is all over the place, so they’re not very good, whoever they are.” 

“Show me,” Suguru says. “Please.” 

He grabs Gojo’s hand as he steps forward into the trees. Gojo freezes just for a second—eyes wide and expectant—before he nods and steps forward, and leads Suguru into the dark. 

With Gojo’s technique, it doesn’t take long for them to get within the girls’ line of sight. 

Even with the empty forest giving away their movements, twigs snapping underfoot with each step, they’re fast. Suguru figures they’d have to be sneaky, to have made it as long as they did, and his chest clenches horribly. He shakes his head and squeezes Gojo’s hand as they snap through the forest again. 

The first flash he gets of their faces is pure concentrated fear, diluted only by the exhaustion on their gaunt features. All at once, Suguru feels like he might vomit. 

“Hey, hey,” Suguru says, as the girls move to scramble backwards. “It’s me. Do you remember me?” 

The blonde girl—standing in front of her sister with her arms spread out to either side as if to shield her—nods hesitantly. Suguru kneels down in front of them. 

“I’m Getou Suguru,” he says. He gestures to Gojo, standing just a couple steps behind him. “This is my friend, Gojo Satoru.” 

“Her ankle,” Gojo says. He gestures to the smaller girl, the dark-haired one, and after looking a little closer Suguru realizes she isn’t really smaller at all, but hunched over, one leg tucked precariously up underneath her. “You ok, kid?” 

The dark-haired girl ducks further behind her sister as she’s addressed. Gojo lifts his glasses off his face.

“Hey, it’s ok,” he says. “We’re sorcerers too.”

As he speaks, Gojo extends one hand out in front of himself. Purple light sparks dangerously in his palm. The girls’ eyes widen, and Suguru’s stomach drops as they start to hurry back again.

“Satoru,” he hisses.

Gojo quickly extinguishes the flash. “My bad,” he says. Suguru glares at him. Gojo takes another step back.

“Here,” Suguru says. He slowly kneels down and extends one hand in front of himself. The girls carefully watch each slow movement, but don’t step back again. “Look, we’re like you, see?”

 From his palm, Suguru summons one of his smallest curses: a small, fish-shaped thing that swims gently through the air around his fingers, colorful scales glittering under the scant moonlight. The girls watch in rapt silence. 

The blonde girl’s arm darts from her side to grab her sister’s hand. For a minute, Suguru’s afraid they’ll run again, but instead, the girl takes a step closer. Her free hand extends towards the curse.

“You can touch if you want,” Suguru says, voice barely above a murmur.

She steps closer again, her hand hovering in the air next to his. Suguru lets the curse leave his palm and flit over to hers. The clammy chill of the curse on his skin makes Suguru’s gut twist unpleasantly, but the girl only watches with stunned curiosity as it swims around her wrist and through the gaps between her fingers before he pulls it back.

“I can control them,” Suguru explains. The girl nods eagerly. “We can keep you safe. I promise.” And then, once he’s sure they won’t run or startle again, “What’s your name?” 

“Nanako,” says the blonde girl, quiet but sure. “This is Mimiko.” 

“Well, Nanako-chan, Mimiko-chan,” Gojo says. “You guys ready to get out of here?” 

They walk for a little bit, through the dense darkness of the part of the forest they’ve found themselves in, until Nanako and Mimiko must decide it’s safe enough to let Suguru nearer. He hauls the injured Mimiko up on his back, as Gojo picks up Nanako for good measure. 

“Can you get us back?” Suguru says. Gojo huffs and tips his head to one side. 

“Maybe,” he says. “If we can get back to the village or a street or something I could do it in a few jumps, I bet.” 

Mimiko’s reaching out from her place propped up on his back, one hand extended almost desperately towards her sister. Suguru takes a step closer to Gojo, putting Nanako in arm's reach, and the girls link hands between them. 

Gojo shifts Nanako’s weight on his back, leaving one of his hands free. He extends it and looks at Suguru expectantly. 

Suguru takes it. Gojo squeezes his hand once and smiles, and then the world blinks away around them. 

Nobody’s waiting for them when they get back; the empty courtyard flashes in Suguru’s vision for a second, and the girls gasp, and then Gojo shifts on his feet and they’re outside Shoko’s room. No alarms are ringing. No one’s waiting to shut Suguru back in his room. Shoko’s light is off, but the muffled sound of some TV show filters under the door.

“Shoko!” Gojo calls, pushing the door open without hesitation. Shoko startles, sitting up from where her face is smushed sideways into her pillow, the light of her laptop flicking across her face. “Fix this?” 

Shoko blinks drearily, scrubs at her eyes with the back of one hand, and surveys the sight of them. Gojo’s put down Nanako, who’s only started clinging to his legs instead of getting some distance on him as he clearly expected she would. He’s still holding Suguru’s hand, and Suguru’s still holding Mimiko, so he turns to put her within Shoko’s reach. Shoko sighs, reaches up to touch Mimiko’s ankle, and promptly kicks them out as soon as the glow of her technique has subsided. 

Gojo reaches down to get a hand on Nanako and flashes them to the outskirts of the campus, on the paths leading towards the training fields. Suguru gets the sneaking suspicion he’s showing off; a smirk creeps onto his face just as the girls gasp again. 

They follow as Nanako and Mimiko amble down the path to the field. It’s early enough that the darkness has started to lift, but the sun hasn’t quite made an appearance. Suguru leads Gojo to the stone bleacher steps as the girls explore the empty grass field. 

“I can’t stay,” Suguru says. Gojo pulls his gaze away from the girls, who are cautiously examining some bug flitting around the dewy grass. Mimiko shrieks in fear and ducks behind her sister, and Nanako puffs out her chest and swats it away. “They won’t be any safer if they start at the school. They’ll just end up dead another way down the line.” 

“Where would you go?” Suguru’s expecting an argument, but Gojo’s tone is more curious than anything. The early morning light across his face softens him, and he blinks, his long white eyelashes gentle against his cheeks. 

Suguru shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “A smaller city, maybe. Not so many curses. Somewhere we could blend in more.”

Gojo hums and turns back to look over the field. “I could make that work.” 

“What?” Suguru says. “You’re not coming. You can't. I can’t ask you to do that.” 

“You’re not asking,” Gojo says. He grabs Suguru’s hand where it rests at his side and squeezes, so tight it hurts. “If you’re going somewhere I’m coming.” 

Suguru hums. “You’re a real sap, you know that?” 

“Whatever. Shut up,” Gojo says. Suguru laughs. “Did y’know Fushiguro had a son?” 

Suguru shakes his head. 

“Megumi. He’s four. Living alone with his stepsister in some shitty apartment.” 

“The Zen’ins haven’t picked him up yet?” 

“Nah,” Gojo says. “Once they realize he’s got ten shadows I’m sure they’ll want him. I tried to get him before then but he wouldn’t come with me.” 

Suguru snorts, and Gojo slaps at his arm in retaliation. “You couldn’t overpower a four year old?” 

“I wasn’t gonna force him!” Gojo cries. Suguru chuckles, and Gojo’s lips twist up almost imperceptibly at the corners. “And he’s a really bratty four year old. Way too smart.” 

“Is that where you went this morning?” Suguru asks, even though the sun is already starting to peek back up over the horizon, turning the whole field in front of them a blinding orange-pink. “To meet Fushiguro’s kid?”

Gojo shrugs, and the gesture makes him look younger than Suguru can remember him ever looking. “Couple days ago. I’ve been checking up on them, though. Between missions and stuff.” 

“You feel guilty or something?”

“Nah.” Gojo shakes his head. “Not like I could have avoided killing Fushiguro even if I wanted to. And it doesn’t really seem like he was a great dad anyways.” Suguru huffs out a laugh, and Gojo smiles. “But he’s gonna be strong. He could be as strong as us one day.” 

Suguru can’t help but wince at that. “I’m not strong like you, Satoru.” 

“Maybe not,” Gojo says. “But you’re close. And you could get stronger.” 

“I might not.” 

“I don’t think I really care,” Gojo says. “Stop worrying so much, Suguru, geez.”

Suguru can’t help but chuckle. Gojo’s shoulders relax almost imperceptibly as he does. 

After another minute of watching the girls, Gojo sits on the concrete steps underneath them. He tugs Suguru down with him, leaving their hands tightly intertwined with every movement. He tips his head sideways into Suguru’s.

“Why didn’t the kid want to go with you?” Suguru says. 

“He asked me if his sister would be happy, and I wasn’t gonna lie to him,” Gojo says, quieter. “Doesn’t seem like anyone’s really happy here.” 

“You said you were happy.”

Gojo laughs, quiet, just a huff in the back of his throat. “I’ve always gotta be the exception, y’know?” he says. “I’ve got you. Not everyone’s gonna get that lucky.”

“Satoru…”

“That’s probably your problem too, I figure,” he says. “I’ve got you, but you don’t have you. You just have me. Shit deal, huh?” He’s quiet for a moment, and then, “I’m sorry.”

Suguru looks to him. “What?”

“I would have killed them all, too,” Gojo says. “The star plasma group, if you hadn’t been there. You were there when I needed you but I wasn’t there when you needed me.”

“It’s not your fault, Satoru.”

“I know,” Gojo murmurs. “But I still should have been there.” And then, when Suguru stays silent, “I meant what I said earlier, about loving you.” 

Suguru blinks at him. Gojo holds his gaze, face twisted up in determination, even as his cheeks pinken with apparent embarrassment. Gojo takes a deep, steadying breath. “How do you feel? About me?”

“Me too,” Suguru says, like it’s been startled from him. “Of course I do, Satoru, Jesus, I mean—” An unsteady breath rattles through him as he tries to settle. “You know that. You have to know that.” 

“I can’t read minds, Suguru.”

“It’s obvious though, isn’t it?” Gojo only blinks at him. “It’s all I do. I—I wouldn’t know how not to.” 

Gojo’s gaze is piercing, like he’s trying to see through his face and past his skull right into his brain. Suguru thinks he would let him, if he could. 

“You didn’t say it right,” Gojo says. 

Suguru takes another shaky breath. “I love you too,” he says. “I love you.” 

Gojo’s glasses are still up on his forehead, so Suguru can watch his eyes flit back and forth over his face. Gojo shifts to face him better; their arms aren’t so linked anymore, and Suguru instantly fears the next time he tries to touch him, he’ll meet infinity’s chill instead. He reaches one hand up to Gojo’s jaw, cupping it gently in his palm. 

Gojo looks at him curiously, but goes easily as Suguru tilts his face, studying him. With his other hand, he takes Gojo’s glasses off him, setting them on the steps next to them. Gojo blinks softly, his gaze gentle and open. Suguru tips his chin up, and then back down, watching the breath moving through his chest, the way his bangs fall into his face. 

Suguru leans a few inches closer. Gojo doesn’t move, only keeps his gaze trained steadily on Suguru. 

When their lips meet, Suguru’s hand is still on Gojo’s face. He inhales, trying to maintain some measured air, and pushes his hand up into Gojo’s hair. Gojo sighs softly and presses forward into him, only so far that Suguru’s hand doesn’t lose its place on his cheek. The touch of his lips is careful. He moves a hand to Suguru’s jaw. There’s a nervous tremble in the tips of his fingers. Gojo draws back, just barely, and Suguru feels his shaky breath against his lips. 

Gojo moves closer again, but this time to tuck his face into Suguru’s neck. Suguru mirrors him, wraps his arms tight around Gojo’s thin frame as Gojo squeezes him so tight his lungs constrict in his chest. Gojo sniffles wetly. 

“Stop trying to do things without me,” he says, muffled into Suguru’s shoulder, in such a childish tone Suguru would laugh if he didn’t know it would come out just as teary. “Whatever you want to do, wherever you want to go, I don’t care. Just take me with you.” 

Gojo’s body is warm against his. The fabric of his uniform is soft and worn under Suguru’s cold fingertips. Suguru’s own heart beats in his chest, oxygen pumping through his lungs, pulse radiating rhythmically parallel to Gojo’s. The sun peeking over the tall trees at the edge of campus streaks down into little keyhole spotlights through the clouds. Down on the field, in the dewy grass, the girls laugh, like kids do. 

It’s the most alive he’s felt in a while.

“Ok,” Suguru says. Gojo nods into his shoulder. “Together.”