Chapter Text
There are a few iron-clad rules, of being a jujutsu sorcerer.
One, no one is going to save you, so learn to take care of yourself.
Two, never go into Aokigahara at night.
Honestly, it’s only two rules. You’d think, with that small a list, that most sorcerers would be capable of following them. However, Gojo has seen them broken, time and time again, by people that he’s respected, people he’s thought were smart. Worst of all, there’s an absolutely excellent sorcerer currently breaking one of those rules right now, someone that people should look up to, someone that everyone thinks is worth trying to be like.
Worst of all, that person is him.
Curse tend to gather around places with a lot of negative energy. There’s absolutely no place that has more negative human energy than Aokigahara, known as the Suicide Forest. Cursed energy is blatantly strong here, so strong that Gojo can taste it, on top of the melon soda he’s been throwing back all night.
Not only is it an incredibly fucking stupid idea to go into Aokigahara at night, it’s absolutely forbidden. Which, of course, is why he’s brought the full-head hood, and why he won’t be using his techniques on this Curse Hunt.
“Omoibakishii,” he repeats to himself, somewhat nervously, his hands shoved into his pockets. In all his twenty-eight years, he’d never considered chasing down a Curse for any reason other than exorcising it. “Special Grade curse, known to come out only on full blue moons in Aokigahara. And if you catch it…”
Fortunately, it’s not like he isn’t going to catch it. The only issue, he finds, is an hour into his hunt, when he catches sight of a footprint, fresh in the dirt. Sure, that could be some poor fuck from any time, but Gojo’s hyperaware senses tell him that no, he’s not wrong, this is from today.
The moon is a crescent, and pale blue around the edges. Gojo doesn’t need moonlight to see, but he takes advantage of it, checking to see whether anyone’s seen him here yet. That would be the end of his job as a teacher, for one thing, let alone the end of him chasing after absolutely fascinating curses.
For better or for worse, Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru tend to linger on similar threads of thought, about ninety-nine percent of the time.
Unfortunately, that one percent has been a lingering, dark, gloomy cloud over their lives for the past ten years, and that is why, ultimately, something has to give eventually.
The ‘give’ is this evening, when Geto Suguru makes a drastic decision in a fit of frustration and anger and loneliness, and ends up in a forest that he has no business being in—but hah! He’s a curse user already. Who the hell cares what he does? Is he going to get into more trouble for tracking down something grossly, agonizingly illegal?
Maybe, but what are they going to do about it? Kill him? Bring it. Even still, he’s deliberately not dressed as a priest tonight, his hair is tied up, and the aid of a curse or two makes him shrouded in shadow as he traverses through these haunted woods, hunting.
The problem truly arises when he realizes that he isn’t alone.
It isn’t a curse that he’s keeping company with, but another person. Geto realizes that quickly, and irritation rises. Really—can he not hunt something illegal out of desperation by himself anymore, either? It doesn’t take long until his path starts running parallel with…whoever else it is, and he clicks his tongue, full of growing aggravation for the situation. Whatever. Time to kill someone, and get back to the task at hand.
Geto circles back until he’s behind whatever person dares to interrupt his evening out, and contemplates. If he uses any curses on an attack, that’s a trace back to him…and, well. Perhaps that’s too much of a price on his head to be hunted down, if someone found out he absorbed something so powerful. Throwing hands it is.
Gojo feels the shift in energy, from wary to violent, before he sees another person. His lip curls back from his teeth. Who the fuck thinks it’s a good idea to track this absolutely illegal, deranged, batshit curse? This person is going to get himself super fucking killed, idiot, and then Gojo will have to save him? No, he won’t! Rule number fucking one. “Get out of here,” he says, pitching his voice a whole octave lower than it should be. No one can know who it is that’s in here, after all.
Geto rolls his eyes so hard that they hurt in his skull. “Tough guy, huh,” he says underneath his breath, low enough to not be audible when he’s a fair distance away still—a distance he quickly closes, when he settles on going for the kill.
There are few people alive that can match him in hand-to-hand combat. None of them would be so stupid as to risk their reputation in Aokigahara like he is right now, and so he isn’t worried—not when he aims to incapacitate immediately, with a hit directly into the middle of their face.
Musculature, excellent. Reflexes, excellent. Power, excellent. Accuracy, excellent. Gojo judges all of those things before the hand gets halfway to his face. Then, belatedly, he remembers he actually needs to duck, because if he uses Limitless, absolutely anyone in the Jujutsu world will know that it’s him.
He dodges, a little later than he should have, shutting off Limitless even as his brain struggles to try and turn it back on. It’s been a decade since he properly dropped it, and it WANTS to be up by this point, as if it has a mind of its own.
“Fuck off,” he mutters under his breath, and tosses a powerful kick at his opponent. “This is my kill.”
Ooh, this one’s the real deal. That realization flits across Geto’s mind in short order, and he modifies his own reactions accordingly—not some random human. Someone who knows what they are doing.
Any other day, and that might be fun to toy with, but he’s on a time limit today.
He ducks, moves, and catches that leg out of thin air, very much intending to use that force against the person throwing it at him—but, hm. Too much strength there, too much resistance. Geto abandons that thought, and slams an elbow right into the other man’s sternum instead. Fuck off. This thing is mine.
Damn, damn, damn.
Any other day, and Gojo would be thrilled to fight someone this good. It’s fun. And it’s a challenge, to use his body without using any of his powers. If it were for any other reason, he wouldn’t mind. He’d be thrilled. He hasn’t had anyone fight him this well since—
That doesn’t matter.
He’s on a deadline, and this isn’t the day where he can indulge himself. He’s here to get that fucking Curse, and get it now, so he takes the blow to his chest and twists, using his opponent’s strength against him, landing a hard right hook to his opponent’s gut.
Whoever this person is, they’re about as solid as one of those enormous, unmovable trees that surround them. Geto bites down a grunt, springing back to lessen the intensity of that blow as much as he can, which isn’t that much, unfortunately.
And then he feels it.
Out of the corner of his senses, he feels it—that looming, lurking, heavy presence of a Curse that’s above any normal special grade that even he has consumed. Geto hisses out a breath, spares a last, annoyed look at the interruption ruining his evening, and decides to turn and run and go for the Curse instead. Fuck it. This idiot can die getting in his way at this point, for all he cares. This is more important.
Fuck this guy!
Gojo leaps forward. This guy might be agile and fast, but he isn’t as agile or fast as Gojo. No one is. No one ever has been. He sprints, and even if he’s a few steps behind, he makes up ground quickly. He’s not here to trade blows with this guy, he’s here to get his hands on that fucking Curse, and make a difference.
Fast, too. That’s fun—not.
Shades of someone he’d rather not think about right now, and that’s annoying beyond belief.
Where? Where is it?
The energy is overwhelming, but to the point it fills the entire forest around them. Pissed, Geto abruptly stops and lashes out, hoping he breaks a few ribs this time with that round-house kick. Fuck off, go away, go die on your own time!
Gojo turns, streaking towards the Curse, but it moves fast, unpredictably, and he doesn’t even notice the way his Limitless snaps back up, deflecting that kick. None of it matters, nothing matters except getting his hand on that fucking thing.
And—
THERE!
He twists in mid-leap, turning, and just barely manages to grip one sticky, caustic, inky-black tentacle.
Geto’s mind processes a number of things very rapidly, all at once, and doesn’t fully put together the pieces of all of them.
One—why doesn’t his kick connect the way it should? There’s a sluggishness that stops him, and his mind quickly warps into denial. Two—fuck. That’s the Curse, right there, and he is not sharing.
Three—there is almost no possible way he can absorb it without an extremely drawn-out fight, and this bastard is in his way.
In that next instant, his own curses drop their concealment, giving him far more focus to bolt forward and lunge, sinking his fingers into whatever part of Omoibakishii he can reach—because nothing else matters, so long as he gets this thing to do what he needs it to do.
Gojo focuses, and ignores everything, everything else. If he focuses, the legend says, he’ll be able to steer. He’ll be able to control how it works. All he has to do is focus—on that time, on the time just before that time, on the day before they’d met Amanai Riko.
To hell with it, there’s no time.
This isn’t how Geto wanted this to go, but there’s no time. His mind swerves in its desperation, straight to the legends, straight to what he knows. If he focuses on what he wants, where he needs everything to change, it’ll work. And he’s certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that he is far more stubborn than any random guy he’s running into in the woods in the middle of the night.
Anything—anything to go back to before they’d met Amanai Riko, when everything was as perfect as it could be.
The Curse tears at Gojo’s mind. That’s fine, he can regenerate it. He can make more brain. Who cares? The world itself has been tearing at his mind for ten years. He grits his teeth, and shoves that information at the Curse again, feeling it lashing at him, burning away his flesh, his bones, his soul, as fast as he can regenerate them. Take me back. Back to that day. My regret should be enough.
Something doesn’t quite work in the correct way.
Geto realizes it first—perhaps because he’s so accustomed to being up close and personal with exactly how Curses operate, both inside and out. Maybe it’s because there’s this other person interfering, but there’s an arc of power where there shouldn’t be one, and a disconnect from how he should be able to start tapping into what the Curse needs to take from him, in order to successfully give him what he wants—Satoru.
Instead, the Curse exhales an otherworldly shriek, and the moon whites out the sky above them.
Geto has no idea how much time has passed when he opens his eyes, but it’s enough that the sun begins to rise over Aokigahara, peeking up and above the early, early morning clouds. He curses, slowly picking himself up, eyes scanning his surroundings--and he freezes.
“…Oh, this is rich.” He recognizes that outfit from the night before. He recognizes the hood, and he frankly recognizes the cursed energy now, with stark familiarity. No wonder. No fucking wonder. “Long time no see, Satoru.”
Gojo pulls off the hood, instantly tense, but frankly, not that surprised. Deep down, he’d known, hadn’t he? It had been obvious, hadn’t it? Or maybe that’s just hindsight. “Hello, asshole,” he responds flatly. “Of course it’s you that got in my way.”
Geto spreads his hands. “I think you’re the one that got in my way,” he says in what he thinks is a very sweet tone of voice. “Unless for some reason, the strongest sorcerer of the modern age is suddenly attempting things that are quite illegal.”
“What’s the worst curse user alive gonna do, tattle on me?” Gojo snarls, feeling the cold, heavy churn of sadness in his gut he always does whenever he sees so much as a photo of the damage Geto has left in his wake.
“You keep throwing that out like it’s supposed to be an insult. Coming from you, it’s far more of a compliment, Satoru,” Geto drawls, stepping closer and deliberately into Gojo’s space. “We could’ve had fun last night, maybe even a conversation. But instead you decided to fuck around—“
There’s a sudden, strange spike of energy, further up the forest hills, and Geto stiffens, head whipping around immediately. If he isn’t mistaken—and he rarely is—it feels almost exactly as if there were another Gojo, some short distance away…but that can’t be right. A veil, bouncing cursed energy around like mirrors? Gojo, just messing with him? None of it makes sense.
“What the fuck did you do?” Gojo demands instantly, all of his senses focused on the energy from right through the trees. “I had it, it was under control, but you just had to fuck with me.”
“Heeeeeey, Suguru,” comes a voice through the trees, sounding suspicious. “Did you hear that? Ugh, may phone isn’t working, what the hell, Docomo…”
“What the fuck did I do?” Geto snaps back lowly, his eyes narrowed to slits as he shoves at Gojo’s shoulder, fully convinced that he’ll make contact—and he does, for whatever satisfaction it brings him. “You’re the one that messed everything up. If you hadn’t been here, I would’ve been able to subdue it and absorb it, and then properly control it. This is your fault—whatever it is!”
“Mine isn’t working, either.” The answering voice sounds equally dubious, and the crunch of two pairs of footsteps approach down the forest pathway. “Satoru…you’re aware where we are, yes? I don’t know what Curse managed to drag us here, but the sooner we leave, the better.”
“Oh,” Gojo says, when those energy signatures are unmistakeable, and he’s so stunned he doesn’t even know how to react. “Oh, shit. Uh-oh.”
And out of the woods walks Gojo Satoru, age sixteen, moodily mashing at the buttons of a flip phone, next to Geto Suguru, age sixteen, in their Jujutsu High uniforms.
Geto stares—and stares again, not realizing that his hand remains on Gojo’s shoulder after shoving at him, and his fingers dig in, firmly. “Uh-oh,” he repeats, agreeing. “Wow. You were so freaking cute.”
The younger version of himself jerks his head up, sets eyes on them, and promptly steps back, tapping his Gojo in the shoulder to make him look up from his phone. “Put your phone up for a second, please,” he firmly orders.
“It’s not working anyway, stupid piece of shit,” Satoru grouses, and looks up. Those blue eyes blink, very slowly, moving between his own older self, and his friend’s older self. His mouth falls open. “Uh…huh. So—“
Before he can say anything else, his older self is moving, faster than anyone else alive, streaking towards sixteen-year-old Suguru—
And grabbing him in a fierce embrace, stuffing Suguru’s face into his chest, squeezing him with the grip of a vie. “Suguruuuuuuuu, look at you, you’re exactly the same, holy shit….”
Suguru is not a fan of the unmanly squawk that escapes when this apparently-older-version of his best friend grabs him up, and seems intent on suffocating him by hugging him so tightly that breathing seems to be an afterthought. “Wh—“ No matter how he attempts to break apart this puzzle, there’s no mistaking it—this cursed energy, the voice, the mannerisms, the everything, it is all Gojo Satoru, but—how?
“Well, if you’re going to do that,” Geto snaps, intensely annoyed in spite of himself. So what if his younger self has skin that naturally dewy? It is not the cigarettes, in spite of what Gojo would say; it’s the stress. He snorts, striding over, and—shit. Gojo’s younger self is genuinely, ridiculously cute.
“…I bet you’re still so fluttery that your Limitless randomly fritzes out when you’re flustered,” Geto fondly sighs, and swings an arm out before Satoru can protest, snatching him close by the waist. “I could get used to this again.”
Satoru leans back so far his back makes a few crunching sounds, decidedly un-enthusiastic about being squeezed like a stress toy, no matter what his soul is assuring him. “Suguruuuuu,” he calls, eyes widening hugely. “This is somehow a really adult mood? Um, older me? Help?”
“You like me, don’t you?” Gojo is demanding, squeezing Suguru so tightly he can hardly breathe. “Wow. God. Genocide is really bad for the complexion, huh? Look at you, you’re so smooth!”
“Eh? Eh?” Suguru’s voice reaches a sort of pitchy, stressy level of nervousness, especially when he casts a horrified glance sideways towards his older self—which makes him full-body cringe. What the actual fuck. There is no way in hell, first of all, that he’d let his hair get that long. “Can you please, maybe, possibly, let me go? Or at least, not squeeze quite so hard?”
“Good lord, I really was too polite,” Geto mutters, yanking Satoru back in when he attempts to wind himself backwards and away. “What, do you suddenly not want this to be an adult mood?” This is revenge for Gojo being a shithead about his skin, actually. “If I’m remembering correctly—when you were sixteen, you were quite easy. I put out a lot.”
“Oh my god,” Suguru whispers, his face slowly heating up with mortification.
“Eh, can you blame me, though? You looked like this. Now you’re just a shitty old man that wears bandages on his face—you were sooo much cuter like this, with those big eyes of yours…”
Gojo opens his mouth to respond, but at a look at Suguru’s gentle, sensitive face, bursts into tears instead. “Sorry,” he says, not letting go after all. “Just bear with it….I’m your sempai now, so you have to listen to me…”
Limitless does in fact fritz out, when Satoru is as startled as he is, when his attempts to wiggle desperately away are met with absolute indifference, and he only manages to be more thoroughly ensnared. “Suguru—other Suguru—oi, watch your hands, those are Gojo family treasures you’re touching, you pervert!”
“Yes, yes, and they’ll never make another little Gojo, ever,” Geto sighs dismissively, cheerfully slamming Satoru’s back into the nearest, enormous tree, looming over him with a catlike smile. “If you really wanted me to stop, you would’ve made me by now,” he says, and runs his fingers down Satoru’s chest, rolling his thumb over a nipple in the way he is certain sixteen-year-old Satoru still likes. “At least you still like me.”
“Wh—Satoru—other Satoru?” Suguru hastily, worriedly presses, and gingerly raises a hand to rub his back, which is—so much broader than he anticipated. “I have no idea why you’re crying, but maybe take a breath and we can try and figure this whole situation out? And also, older me, stop molesting him!”
“Was I always such a nag?” Geto says underneath his breath, a finger hooked into Satoru’s belt.
“Yes,” Gojo shoots over his shoulder, tears obviously soaking into the bandage. “Ugh, Suguru…you care about me, don’t you? You’re happy? You’re not hiding a lot of deep dark secrets I was supposed to ask about?”
Satoru eyes Geto suspiciously, even as he squirms at the touches, his face heating up. “You’re, uh, that’s a really, um, interesting style you’ve got going on…”
“What kinds of questions are these?” Suguru asks underneath his breath, craning his neck around to better keep eyes on Satoru—who should really be more resistant about this whole thing! Why, first of all, is his older self so horribly, unapologetically flamboyant? He would never. This has to be a projection of their greatest fears or something—an openly flirtatious, perverted, swishy version of himself grabbing at his boyfriend in public? Yeah, that seems like a great fear. “Of course I care about you—well, I care about Satoru, which, I guess you also are…” Actually, suddenly, having two Gojo Satorus to be concerned about makes his brain fizzle. Nope. That’s too much.
“Perfect. Seems like that curse did its job, then. You can take the fussy baby version of me that doesn’t know how to tell anyone ‘no’, and I’ll take this far cuter version of you that still seems to like being felt up,” Geto snidely retorts, securely winding his arms around Satoru again. “Let’s go to my temple, and I’ll show you a thing or two. I guarantee I’m better than I was when I was sixteen~”
“This is a really adult mood!” Satoru protests on a yelp, and casts a frantic look back over his shoulder. “Oi, are you my friend or what? Get your future self under control!”
“He’s really cringe,” Gojo informs Suguru. “Like, so cringe. He has henchmen. And he gets manicures.”
“Your future self won’t let me go and won’t stop crying on me,” Suguru points out helplessly. “And I’m not sure if you noticed, Satoru, but you’re extremely strong when you’re older.” He casts a wary glance up at Gojo, and adds, a bit sourly, “And even taller, why.”
“You’ll like that it’s an adult mood,” Geto reassures him, catching Satoru’s chin in his fingers and forcing him to look at him. “Don’t worry, Satoru. I know what I’m doing. Your older self is just jealous.”
“Jealous of your rusty skills?” Gojo demands. “No way. Also, he’s a lot stronger than you think,” he mutters to Suguru. “He’s holding back.”
“Ehhh? Shut up, don’t just do whatever you want!”
Gojo rolls his eyes behind the bandages. “What are you gonna do, Blue at me?”
“Don’t mind him, he’s just a brat that never gets laid anymore,” Geto airily says. “Wish I could say the same.”
“…First of all, I have no idea why you two older versions of us are fighting,” Suguru tiredly says, still vaguely attempting to wriggle his way out of Gojo’s hold. “Second of all, please let Satoru go—“
“Nope. What are you going to do, throw a curse at me?” Geto pauses, and sighs. “I had nothing good at that point, wow. Maybe one thing. Pathetic.”
“You had plenty of good things,” Gojo snaps. “You just decided they didn’t matter to you anymore. Suguru, you wouldn’t do that. You wouldn’t be The Worst.”
“He’s the best,” Satoru says hotly. “I don’t care who you are, you can’t just talk about him like that.”
“So cute,” Geto sighs, unfazed. “Look at you, so defensive of me back then—well, whatever.” Unconcerned about any protests, he scoops Satoru up into a princess carry, and smiles. “Let’s go, shall we? Those two seem more concerned with whining, I want to have fun.” He pauses, and adds darkly, “Also, what the hell is wrong with getting a manicure? Sorry that I like actually looking nice, Satoru, unlike you with your manic-phase bandages—“
They are a bit much, but I would also never be caught dead having a manicure in public. “Oi—Satoru, don’t let him kidnap you—and…Satoru-again, I’m literally begging you to let me go, you’re going to crack my ribs.”
“Is that it? Did I hug you too much?” Gojo demands, pulling back and shaking Suguru roughly. “Do you wish I didn’t hug you so much? I can hug you less.”
“Stop promising to hug him less! Stupid old man!” Satoru snarls. “Suguru, come save me, or I’m gonna….” See if older you’s bragging is just for show or not.
“That’s—really—not—the problem—I have no idea what even happened, first of all!”
“Whatever,” Geto hums, starting to walk away, Satoru cheerfully clutched against his chest. “I’m the one that got the good end of this deal, so let’s go have fun! Ooh, I just remembered how squirmy and sensitive you were at this age.”
“Quit pinching me! If you’re Suguru, you should be nice, you should be spoiling me!”
“Don’t listen to him,” Gojo informs Suguru, squeezing him tighter. “Little me was such an idiot, no idea what he had. I appreciate you. And your MUCH better skin.”
Geto pauses, and a sudden, intent irritation washes over him. One insult too many, on top of a stressful night without sleep—and a scenario this ridiculous. It all adds up, and he suddenly smiles, sweetly—intently. “You’re right,” he says, and sets Satoru back down onto his feet, gently…and subsequently back into one of the massive trees of the Aokigahara forest. “I should be spoiling you,” he breathes, turning his head aside to kiss the side of his neck, and unbuckle Satoru’s belt one-handedly. “So let’s do that right now.”
“I don’t even do anything for my skin?” Suguru definitely feels a rib pop out of place. “I have no problem with your younger self, I’m not sure why you think I do?” he tries again, rather pleadingly. “Satoru—can you please scream if you need me? Your older self is just—really persistent.”
Satoru eyes older Geto, obviously struggling with his options. For one thing, his younger self is currently attempting to fluster him, and he’s doing a fantastic, phenomenal job. Second…well, they’re obviously not going to kill them. How else are they going to grow up big and, um, weird?
He grins. “I wanna find out if he’s still in practice. Ganbare, Suguru…but, you know, it’s dangerous to fuck your own clone, so I’ll make sure you don’t have the option!”
“Why is that dangerous? Not that I want to! I really don’t,” Suguru hastily says, and promptly pushes a hand into Gojo’s chest to squeeze out at least a sliver of distance between them. “I mean—I’m not going to stop you, I don’t think this counts as cheating, necessarily, but—“
“It doesn’t,” Geto calls back cheerfully. “I’m you, you’re me, and these days, I do whatever—whoever, hah!—I want.”
“…I want to die, thank you. Why is he—why am I, I guess!—like that?” Suguru miserably asks into the universe.
Geto ignores that, and gives into the urge to silence any further protests that might arise from his newly captive, much cuter, MUCH sweeter sixteen-year-old Satoru by kissing him soundly, keeping an arm cinched securely around his waist lest he try to wriggle away again—all the while, keeping a side-eye trained on the bastard that is Gojo Satoru. Fuck you, by the way.
“…What the fuck does that mean, whoever,” Gojo mutters under his breath, coming dangerously close to pulling off his bandages and going a little bit nuclear on one Geto Suguru. “Who are you fucking, huh? Which one of your cronies? Do you make them call you ‘King’ when you do it?”
Geto tilts his head back, expression decidedly smug as he runs the tip of his tongue over his lower lip. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” he snidely shoots back. “Rest assured, Satoru—I’ve stayed in practice. Do you want to watch, and see how easy it still is for me to get you off? Closest you’ll be to getting laid, anyway.”
“I mean,” Satoru hedges, obviously considering this a pretty intriguing proposition. “Can Suguru, too…?”
“I’m not letting that bitch touch him!” Gojo snarls, holding Suguru more tightly.
“Oh, now I’m a bitch.” Never mind. He’s done playing. A twitch of a hand, and a rift opens behind him, with his favorite, fluttering, flying manta ray slinking through. “We’re going,” Geto cheerfully says, grabbing Satoru and tossing him onto it without hesitation. “You know where I live, not that you ever visit. You can’t bring him back to the school, death sentence on his head and all. So when you’re done pouting and being a bastard—come meet us, or don’t, I suppose. Off we go, Satoru—I’m going to buy you a parfait.”
He joins Satoru with a flounce, keeping a rather vice-tight grip on him, and zooms off.
If it were anyone other than Satoru—Suguru would be very, very concerned. Admittedly, because it’s Satoru, he’s very concerned, but at least he knows his best friend is more than capable. Which leaves him with a more pressing problem—and far too many questions. “…Right. Now that all of the drama has left, you’re going to start explaining, yes?” Suguru tiredly attempts, not even bothering to try and wriggle away anymore. It’s moot.
Slowly, Gojo unwinds his arms, with a sigh. He kicks a tree, so hard it crashes down to the ground, and he sits on the fallen log, taking off the bandages briefly to rub his hands over his face, then puts them back on. “Yeah. Sure. Have a seat, if you want.”
“…Blackout sunglasses no longer cut it, huh?” Suguru’s voice is quietly sympathetic, but not surprised. He slowly sits, pulling out his phone one last time, a desperate hope that maybe something has changed, but nope. No signal. He sighs, pockets it again, and stares up through the dense forest cover. “So. Context clues. We hate each other, I’m crazy, and apparently, have a death sentence on my head. Sounds like I should quit while I’m ahead, heh.”
“You went evil without me,” Gojo says bluntly, tugging the bandages back into place. “You torched a village, killed your parents, and started a cult, to make you money and collect curses for you until you have enough of both to kill all the humans in the world. So, yeah. We’re not on the best of terms.”
“That’s a lot to process all at once,” Suguru faintly says after a long moment of silence. The only thing that sounds correct is the vague, niggling desire to off his parents, but he doesn’t say that. He’s never spoken that aloud, not to anyone. “I’m…sorry? I think that’s the most appropriate thing to say to all of that. Even though I didn’t do any of that yet…when did I do that, exactly?”
“Do you know a girl named Amanai Riko?”
“…No, I don’t think so.”
“Okay. Has younger me gotten the Untouchable badge in Digimon Dusk?”
Suguru’s sigh is long-suffering at that, his head tilting back as he shuts his eyes. “Yes. After you—he—whatever—stayed up for thirty-six hours straight, and then begged me to periodically go on conbini runs for gummies and those damned chicken teriyaki onigiri in the middle of the night.”
Against his will, Gojo finds himself grinning fondly at the memory. “Ahhh, that was great. How long ago was it?”
“Mm…about a week ago? I believe Mei-san just left on a mission, right before we got caught up in…whatever dragged us here.”
“…So, it’ll be tomorrow for you.” God, this is weird. Gojo shivers, the enormity of fucking with time settling on him. Then, he shrugs. Well, that’s a problem for Tomorrow Gojo, probably! “You’re gonna go on a mission. It’s not gonna go, uh, super good. And then you’re gonna be different. And you’re not gonna tell me about it.”
Suguru opens his mouth to argue that there is very, very little he wouldn’t consider telling Gojo Satoru about—but then his mind flits to a great number of things, actually, and he shuts his mouth instead. “I don’t want to think about that,” he brightly says instead. “I have an extremely hard time believing something could make me act like that in public—or ever, actually. Clearly I have gone insane. I need to be committed. Why hasn’t that happened?”
“Well, you just started killing people,” Gojo says bluntly. “You didn’t stop and explain. You just killed a couple hundred people, then told me you wanted to kill all the humans in the world, and then you got mad at me for saying it was impossible, because it would be possible for me. And you walked away. We haven’t talked since. In ten years.”
“…I have nothing to say to that,” Suguru says after a moment. “Except that I have zero idea why I would do that. Whatever happens in the next few days, I don’t know—but I swear, as of right now, I have no idea about any of that.” He sighs, rubbing a hand back through his bangs in vague irritation. “Nor would I even come up with that, you’ve always been the one rolling your eyes at me when I tell you to be more careful around humans…”
“I know! Obviously, if anyone was going to go batshit, it was supposed to be me! You were supposed to pull me back!” Don’t yell, don’t yell, you just got him back, the real him. “But you have to know why you killed your parents. Tell me that much.”
“You’re coming on really strong and accusatory about all of this when I seriously haven’t even done anything,” Suguru defensively retorts, clamming up in an instant. “Take it out on older me, I’m not the one with a death sentence. What did you two do to drag us forward in time like this? There’s no way that’s legal.”
“No, it’s super fucking illegal,” Gojo admits. “It’s that rare-ass configuration, I was trying to grab that Curse and go back in time to that day. To try and help you, to try and…fix things. I guess he had a different idea.”
Aokigahara, Curses capable of changing the shape of the universe themselves…fuck. “You idiot,” Suguru flatly says, reaching up and smacking Gojo in the back of the head reflexively, fully expecting there to be zero barrier in his way. “Omoibakishii, are you for real? Satoru, you’re stupid, but you’re not that stupid.”
The way the slap stops in midair makes Gojo wish fleetingly that he had kept Limitless suppressed. What he wouldn’t give to feel that slap again. “Desperate,” he corrects, with a lopsided grin. “Bored. You were ninety percent of my self-control.”
Suguru’s eyes flick to where his hand stops, and he scowls. “More like ninety-eight. Do you ever drop your technique? That must be exhausting, no wonder you can’t hold a coherent conversation without sounding rude.”
“Nah, that’s just how I am without you to stop me.” Gojo leans back on his hands, turning his face up to the morning sky. Even multiple layers of bandages can’t keep everything out. “I can even do it in my sleep now. It’s brain damage, but I learned Reverse Curse Technique. So I just…damage my brain, then heal it right up. It’s pretty automatic.”
“That sounds terrible,” Suguru bluntly tells him, worry starting to furrow his brow at the idea of his Satoru ever getting to that point—and why he would get to that point. He can’t even imagine Satoru taking anything seriously for more than an hour, let alone endlessly, for days. “You’re not really sleeping if you have it up. Not REM sleep, anyway.”
“Sometimes I dream when I nap.” Gojo looks at him, and tries to keep his tone light. “I always dream about you. You-you, not…him.”
Of all the people to be dragged into the position of relationship counsellor, it should not be him. It should absolutely not be him about himself specifically, because that’s a whole other level of stressful and painfully embarrassing on most days. He’s gotten lucky up until this point, because Satoru tends to not ask questions, and be fine with whatever happens. “…You know we’re the same person, right?” Suguru says with a sigh, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his thighs. “You can be mad about it, which is very Satoru of you. But that older version of me is still me, even if he’s so cringey.” He hesitates, then rolls his eyes. “You’re both acting more like children than Satoru and I do now—and you’re what, twenty-six, twenty-seven?”
“Twenty-six.” Gojo shrugs. “Not much I can do about it. He left me. I didn’t tell him to go, the last thing I said to him was asking him if he lost weight, told him I was worried about him. Next thing, I’m on a mission, when I came back they told me you were under a death sentence for mass murder. What am I supposed to do about it? He leaves me, he tells me there’s nothing I can do, he doesn’t ask me, he doesn’t explain shit, then he gives me grief about not coming to see him? Piece of shit! Did I ever even mean anything to you?”
Suguru stares at him, utterly disbelieving. This, he dimly thinks, is the why and how behind migraines. This mind-numbing, mind-fuckery of time-traveling relationship drama.
…It does, admittedly, sound like the kind of thing he’d do if he were completely fed up and exhausted and over something though, which isn’t a good realization.
“That’s a horrible question to ask and you know it.” The words come out more defensive and hurt than he’d like them to, but—he didn’t do anything. Not yet, at least. Being accused of no longer caring about or loving the one person he’s ever truly given a damn about is like a punch to the gut. “You are the only person I’ve ever cared about like that,” Suguru mutters, looking away awkwardly as he feels his face heat up. “You’re stupid if you think something like that would go away that easily.”
“That’s what I thought.” It’s stupid, and weird, and absurd, to be talking like this to a teenager who doesn’t know anything about it. But who else? Gojo hasn’t talked about it, about what he lost, to anyone, since it happened. He can’t, can he? Talk about how much he misses, longs for, the worst curse user there is? No one wants to hear that. “I just…miss you. Like a phantom limb. Like I turn to the side to tell you something, and you aren’t there, even ten years later.”
“What, did I change my number, too?” Suguru dryly sighs out, rubbing his hands over his still-burning face. “Obviously, it has to be a two-way street, or older me wouldn’t have snatched up Satoru like that and kidnapped him to his villain lair or whatever.” He hesitates again, and reluctantly mutters, “But it’s me, so I wouldn’t be good at saying this kind of thing. At all. Ever.” It is always so much easier to deal with feelings by making out or grabbing Satoru’s dick. Take that out of the equation, and no wonder he’s gone crazy.
“I didn’t leave!” Gojo snaps. “If you left, you should be responsible for reaching out. Last time I went after you, you just left again. My phone still works, too!”
Suguru’s stare is deadpan. “You’re yelling at me again when I didn’t do anything. Quit it, Satoru. Also, that’s childish. You’re both being childish, obviously, but don’t you want to be better? Win the grown-up contest, hello?”
Gojo crosses his arms in front of his chest. “How many times would you keep reaching out, if that kid rejected you? Walked away, and told you he was walking a path that didn’t include you? How many times?”
The question takes Suguru off-guard, and his mouth snaps shut for a moment, his eyes flicking away to stare down at his hands, laced together between his knees. He breathes out slowly, and says, very carefully, “I don’t think that’s a fair question, but fine, I’ll answer, even though you’re going to just make fun of me. I can’t imagine a world without a clingy, needy, bratty Satoru chasing me down--so I wouldn’t stop bothering him if he suddenly was running from me, because I’d assume I did something so horribly wrong that I’d have to fix it. It would drive me crazy. He’d need to kill me to make me leave him alone.”
Fury takes over for a second, fury fueled by sadness and a bone-deep ache, until Gojo snaps his fingers, and a nearby tree explodes. It doesn’t make him feel any better. It never does. “Yeah,” he says, sounding exhausted, and not from the technique. “Yeah. I thought so, too.”
“Glad to see your anger management has gotten more pinpoint,” Suguru wearily says. “You know, I’m just going to put this out there. If I murdered hundreds of people after losing my mind or whatever, and left my boyfriend after said mental break, I’d probably have my fair share of dark anger management issues in a room alone over the past few years. And then I’d probably be way too embarrassed to ever, ever try and reach out again. Especially if my ex-boyfriend talked to me the way you talked to me—older me—today. Don’t,” Suguru immediately says, turning his head and holding up a finger, “get defensive about that immediately. Think about it, use your grown-up brain, Satoru.”
“I’m not exactly at my best when I see him,” Gojo mutters. “Fuck me, I’d have gone evil with him if he asked. He has to know that. He has to know he only had to ask.”
“I can’t imagine a world where you’d go evil,” Suguru sighs, rubbing a hand across the back of his eyes. “So older me probably couldn’t, either. Neither of you are at your best around one another right now, that is so obvious—but if I know if someone keeps picking at me and yelling at me and insulting me, I’m going to stop even thinking about trying fairly quickly. So…maybe…try to not do that.”
“Look, I know, right? That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m breaking every rule we have, to try and go back and fucking fix it.” Gojo shrugs helplessly. “I want to try and make it right.”
“Drop your damn technique. Do it, right now.”
“No, you’re gonna hit me.”
“Even if I was going to, are you that much of a wimp now?”
Gojo scowls, and drops Limitless. “Hurry up.”
Suguru doesn’t hit him. Instead, he turns, and calmly grabs Gojo’s face in both of his hands, and squeezes gently. “Instead of attempting to enlist an extremely illegal Curse to go back in time and fix things,” he levelly says, “you should have picked up the phone and called him. Because if older me is anything like I am now, there is no way he will ever make the first move. You know that. You absolute moron, Satoru.”
Tears prick at Gojo’s eyes. Fortunately, he’s got the bandage on, so, whatever. Not like anyone can see. Except his voice sticks in his throat, and he just manages to mutter hoarsely, “It’s not just for me. No matter how selfish you think I am. Whatever happened…I want to save you. I want to fix it.”
“I didn’t say you were selfish,” Suguru gently admonishes, reflex making him wind an arm around Gojo’s neck and pull him forward and to his chest to be properly cuddled, only to remember, quite starkly, that this isn’t his Satoru. Taller, for one, and much, much bulkier, two. Suguru flushes, hesitating only for a second, then owning it, petting the back of Gojo’s neck. “I can’t speak to any of that—I can’t imagine becoming like that, truthfully,” he admits. “But I don’t think that sort of thing is possible to avoid. Legends of Curses doing that kind of thing always have a caveat. It never ends well. You know that. Ah, maybe that’s too negative…” His fingers curl. “Huh. Nice undercut.”
Gojo shivers. It should feel weird, being touched by a teenager after all this time. It should feel unfamiliar. It should make him want to leave.
But how can it be weird, when it’s Suguru?
He leans into that embrace, trying to squeeze the tears back. “I miss you,” he mutters. “I’d do anything to keep you just the way you are now.”
“You’re ridiculous, Satoru,” Suguru murmurs, continuing his petting, gently rubbing his fingers up into Gojo’s hair. Touch-starved. Just like when he’d first met Gojo—touch-starved and unpleasantly bratty to the point of snarly. Not good. “Depressed, crazy older me can’t be that different. I mean, there’s obviously a lot of embarrassing, performative bullshit going on. Someone needs to tell him to drop it and act right, that could be you.”
Immediately, Gojo scowls again, even as he shoves his head against that touch. God, how long has it been? Way, way too long. “Apparently he’s got someone. One of his cronies, I guess. They call him King, and Geto-sama, ugh.”
“Did you seriously believe that?” Suguru deadpans, digging his fingers in more firmly, rubbing at Gojo’s scalp. “There’s no way. I know I’d never sleep with anyone else. I could be completely batshit, and I still wouldn’t. No wonder he glommed onto Satoru so hard, you’re both acting like stupid cats that won’t get out of the way when you’re walking—you know what I mean? That way they keep winding around your legs until you kick them or pick them up and pet them. At some point, they’re so desperate for attention, either one is good.”
“I’m not a cat. You’re a cat.” It doesn’t need to make sense. Gojo is upset. He buries his face in Suguru’s shoulder, leaning heavily on him. “Even if I went for it. And I’ve thought of it. He’s got a death sentence. He went so big, so crazy, so murdery, that there’s nothing I can do.”
Suguru ponders that silently, letting Gojo flop his full weight onto him without complaint. He coils his other arm around him then, stroking long fingers down that sculpted back, gingerly feeling out musculature that is both familiar, but not. At least the years only made Gojo hotter, even if it made his older self horrible, except for the hair. “There’s no one that could kill me except you,” he settles upon after a moment, which is probably not the best conclusion to come to. “We’re the strongest. So…just do it in secret. Or be so good at it that older me gets over it and atones to the point of a lot of sanctions instead. Wouldn’t be the first time all the higher ups changed their minds, when they’re desperate for extra hands.”
“I missed your bangs,” Gojo says, muffled against Suguru’s shirt. “They’re so…you. And your harem pants. And your soft little way of saying my name. I can’t do it, Suguru, I really can’t. I hardly recognize him now. And the racism is really a turn-off.”
“The racism…” Suguru really has no idea how it could’ve gotten that bad. Hating his parents is one thing, but… “Sounds like quitter talk,” he wearily says, not stopping his petting all the same. “Maybe you could use your words and say this to his face instead of calling him a bitch? Just a thought. I feel very warm and fuzzy when you compliment me, and definitely like throwing down when you call me things like that in a not-funny way. Eh, maybe Satoru will calm him down and make him act more normal…it took you a minute, too.”
“He’s useless.” Gojo’s voice is flat. “He never even noticed anything was wrong. He thought it was all a lie, until it was way too late. I can’t trust him to do shit.”
“You’re way too hard on yourself nowadays, too,” Suguru scolds, giving him a light shake. “Stop that.”
“Stop telling me it’s all my fault for not reaching out, then saying I’m too hard on myself!” Gojo complains. “It can’t be both.”
Suguru leans back, grabs Gojo’s head in his hands again, and shakes him. Gently, still. “Brain, turn on,” he deadpans. “Do you need sugar? I have gummies in my pocket. Context is important, Satoru. If I was hiding something from you, up until the point of going crazy—there’s no way you would’ve known, so stop kicking yourself. I’m a great liar. But now that the damage has been done? Definitely chase more, duh.”
“Gimme the gummies. Can’t hurt.” When’s the last time someone bought him gummies? No need to ask. He knows exactly when. Not that he can’t buy himself gummies, but…still. “He hurt my fucking feelings,” he grumbles finally, admitting it at last. “He really fucking hurt me. Leaving me behind—and nothing, not one word, just dropping me like it doesn’t mean anything. Then rejecting me when I did go after him, surrounding himself with fawning cronies instead? No, fuck that, I deserve to have him make a move.”
Suguru obediently pulls out the pack of gummies—the best kind, the fettuccine kind—and opens it, offering it up. “That’s fair. That’s also the first you actually talked about feelings, good for you.” He smiles wryly. “You’re doing better than me. Like I said…maybe Satoru will work some magic on him and get his head on straight. It usually works for me.”
“Maybe I was smarter back then. Maybe you were. Eh….nah, I’m pretty smart now. I’m a teacher, of all things.” Gojo pops open the bag of gummies, then feels his lip tremble. Holy shit. It really has been ten years since he’s had someone buy him gummies.
“You’re a teacher?” Suguru’s disbelief is quickly overshadowed by the fact that it looks like Gojo is going to cry—again. “Yeah, this is really no good,” he says underneath his breath, reflex making him pull his phone out again--before he remembers, exhales in aggravation, and puts it up. “We need to rescue Satoru at some point. Or at least, I need to borrow your phone so I can…well, not call him because I can’t, maybe call older me so I can make sure he hasn’t eaten Satoru completely…” He grimaces. “I’m not used to not being able to immediately contact him.”
Gojo grimaces, and stands up from his log. “Yeah. We should get him. Grab my arm, I know where they are.”
Suguru stands, and warily does as he’s told—though admittedly, that wariness turns to subtly giving those muscles a squeeze. Huh. Well, apparently, Satoru has nothing better to do but work out these days.
“Oh, yeah,” Gojo says, as if he’s just thought of it, instead of pulling the skill out of his back pocket to impress the kid. “I couldn’t do this back then, could I?”
He traces the circle around them, arcane symbols flowing easily from his fingertips, then claps his hands together, crossing the hundreds of kilometers to Geto’s compound in an instant. “Don’t feel bad if you see a person and wind up killing them here,” he says, voice set. “Everyone here is a Curse User. Well, that and their human slaves.”
“Holy shit,” Suguru breathes, feeling very much like he’s been windswept without any of the actual ruffling, and blinks rapidly for a moment, processing the change in scenery as much as the actual teleportation. “Uh—no, you…definitely didn’t have that mastered yet,” he faintly says, slowly letting go of Gojo’s arm. “I’m really not interested in killing anyone if I don’t have to,” he adds, and then hesitates. “Wait. If this is older me’s really weird cult temple…my showing up here and going in is probably going to cause some issues. Or maybe not? Ugh, do you think they’ll listen to me, too? That’s creepy.”
“Trust me,” Gojo says wryly. “The second any of them see me, they won’t be looking at you.” He pauses, looking around. “Uhhhh, so, I’ve never been here, I don’t know where he would be.”
“Call him. Or give me your phone and I will, let’s not start a war by you walking through the front gate and stirring things up.”
Gojo grimaces, then pulls out his phone and hands it over. “Go for it. He’s probably changed his number, though.”
I wouldn’t have, Suguru almost says. He sighs instead, unlocks the phone with Gojo’s passcode—which he knows, obviously—and dials, waiting through only two rings before it connects on the other side.
“Really, Satoru?” The drawl of his own voice on the other end of the line is disturbing, when he actually thinks of it. “This is what it takes for you to call me?”
“Something like that.” Suguru glances up to Gojo, shrugging. “Sorry to interrupt. I’m here to check on Satoru, actually…could you put him on the line, please?”
Hearing his own voice sigh back at him (annoyed, but he knows his own sighs—disappointed, above all else) is so odd. “Typical. Just come in, I can tell he’s out there, anyway. Go around the temple, not through it. No murdering, please.”
The call ends. Suguru hands the phone back hesitantly. “He says we can just come in…as long as we aren’t murdering anyone. Perhaps try to restrain yourself.”
Gojo shrugs. “I might. That’s the temple, right?”
Suguru gives him a put out stare. “Don’t murder anyone,” he says more firmly, and slips through the gate. “Be civilized, Satoru. He just invited us in—around the temple, not through it, specifically…” Sure enough, there is a pathway that seems to go around the massive temple building, leading around the back to a much more secluded living area, tucked into a well-maintained garden. At least his older self isn’t living in a gutter. “He sounded happy you called.”
“I like that you’re telling me to be civilized, when we’re in his nasty-ass slave compound,” Gojo remarks bitterly. “Maybe it’s not that crazy that you wound up this way. Without me.”
He leads the way, easily following Geto’s residuals even if he pretended that isn’t something he can do. No one wants to hear that he still reaches out for that man, hungering for even the smallest sniff of the person he knew so long ago. No one wants to hear that he still isn’t over it, so he pretends. He can keep pretending.
He opens the door, knowing without a doubt that it’s the correct one, and finds Geto Suguru, puffing contentedly on a kiseru, and his own younger self looking rumpled and dazed in a loose yukata, his school uniform crumpled in the corner.
Satoru jumps to his feet the second he sees the two of them, fastening himself immediately to Suguru’s side. “Hiiiiiiiiiiiii, jeez, it took you long enough.”
“Sorry--we were talking and lost track of time. Are you all right?” Suguru immediately, worriedly asks, letting himself be latched to as if it’s second nature, and winding his arms around Satoru to better inspect him. He seems vaguely mauled, though perhaps not as detrimentally as he’d feared.
“He’ll survive,” Geto drawls, leaning back onto one hand as he regards the two of them briefly, and then looks up at Gojo, eyebrows raised. “Hello, Satoru. How nice of you to pay me a visit. Would you like some tea?”
Gojo hesitates, then beams, and drops down to sit across from him. “Sure. Let’s send the kids to bed, and talk a bit. Sugar in my tea.”
The look Geto gives him flickers between sharply skeptical, and a flutter of pleasantly surprised wariness. “…I have mikan tea. You know, the kind they discontinued.” He snuffs out his kiseru, and slowly picks himself up to his feet, retying his own yukata more appropriately. “There’s a guest room just next door. Bath down the hall.”
It seems less than wise to leave these two in a room alone together after all he’s witnessed and all that he’s heard now, but Suguru doesn’t seem many other options—and he needs to update Satoru on what he’s learned, besides. “Thank you. Come on, Satoru, let’s go,” he murmurs, and hefts Satoru up into a princess carry before he can protest (not that he would).
“Weren’t we cute?” Geto idly remarks the door sliding shut after Suguru fumbles one-handedly with it while balancing Satoru in his arms. He secures a bottle of the fabled, discontinued mikan tea of years past, and dangles it in front of Gojo. “At least, you were.”
It’s with the sound of a fervent, eager grab for that tea that Satoru clasps his arms around Suguru’s neck, holding him close, as they enter the guest room. “Holy fuck, Suguru. We need to talk. Seriously.”
“Right?” Suguru hisses near-frantically, sliding the door shut behind himself with an exhale of relief at being isolated with the Satoru he knows. He slides down the door to the ground, allowing his strings to be cut for a moment as he finally breathes normally, head thunking back against the door once, then down against Satoru’s shoulder. “I am so sorry it took so long to come after you. Your older self spent the past hour sobbing on me.”
“Ew. What?” Satoru looks repelled, disgusted, flinching from the idea. “You mean slobbering, right? Heh…older you isn’t, uh, as good at some stuff as you are. He definitely thinks he’s better, though.”
“No, I mean sobbing. Full on sobbing. Crying through his deranged eyeball bandages.” Suguru lifts his head, scowling. “Well, judging by what I’ve heard, we haven’t slept together in ten years—and older me is definitely lying about sleeping with anyone else, so he’s got to be insanely out of practice.”
“Oh, he’s rusty,” Satoru confirms, snorting. “He’s also, uh. Kind of crazy? And, no offense, but his skin is not as good as yours.”
“Stress,” Suguru mutters. “And smoking. I have got to quit now, start yelling at me more about it. Did you at least enjoy yourself? He didn’t hurt you, right? It’s still me, I can’t ever imagine deliberately hurting you…”
“Of course he didn’t hurt me,” Satoru says wearily. “He sucked me off once, then started chainsmoking and muttering about how much of a bastard older me is. And I met a couple of his, um…I don’t know what to call them? K-kids?”
Suguru’s head snaps up at that, his stare pinpoint. “What. No. There’s no way.”
“They’re like, fourteen,” Satoru says, shrugging. “A gyaru-girl and a goth-loli. They called him Geto-papa and he gave them omiyage.”
Suguru’s brain fizzles out for a moment. At least they aren’t mine biologically, he settles upon, the horrible thought of actually reproducing and replicating his gene pool with a woman still making his stomach do weird, anxious flips. “Oh. Sure. That’s normal. I don’t think I can process that right now. More importantly, what are we going to do about this? Your older self will not stop crying every time he starts talking about me. I gave him gummies and he nearly had a meltdown. He won’t call older me, and actually hasn’t even talked to him in years. They both attempted to summon and use Omoibakishii to change…whatever happened, to make us like this…so obviously, they still care about one another, it’s just…”
“I don’t know how you’re gonna take this,” Satoru warns, “but older you is, uh. Really, really, um. Gay? Like, in a really confusing way for me. Sooooo, if you’ve got some secret toddlers somewhere, it’s kind of surprising.”
Suguru calmly punches him in the shoulder. “One, I do not have any secret toddlers. Two, did you think I didn’t notice? It’s all a front. Attention-seeking, embarrassing bullshit. You’re a teacher.”
“The fuuuuuck I am.”
“Mmhm. You are. Also, you can teleport, that part was super cool. Less cool is the fact that you have your technique on all the time—to the point you’ve mastered the reversal and are just running it in your sleep, in spite of the brain damage. You just keep rebuilding your brain.”
“…Okay, that’s cool as shit, though,” Satoru admits. “I mean, being able to do that? Amazing. You, uh. Killed your parents, apparently.”
“It’s not cool if you’re literally giving yourself brain damage all the time. You never sleep properly anymore, that’s horrible,” Suguru protests. “And yes, your older self already told me.” The dismissiveness is obvious in his voice. “Apparently, all of this starts after we meet some girl named Amanai Riko and have a failed mission involving her…in the next couple of days, in our timeline.”
“Yeah, he muttered something about that.” In between a lot of other terrifying things. “Hey, so. We need to make them kiss and make up. We can’t leave them like this, it’s making my ass itch.”
“I know.” Suguru lets his head thunk back against the door. “Neither of them want to really talk to one another, though. I’m amazed they haven’t blown each other up next door.”
“We’re not gonna wind up that way, right? Promise me. I can’t cry like that, I can’t wear lame bandages on my head.”
“They’re so lame. At least wear a blindfold, that’s fine. You had a nice undercut, though,” Suguru mutters, absently running a hand up the back of Satoru’s neck, where he’d felt it on the older version of his friend. “And you’re seriously ripped.”
“Yeah, you got really huge, too,” Satoru agrees, then immediately pivots. “Wait, an undercut? That’s kind of cool, I should totally get an undercut. His hair isn’t crunchy, is it? I mean, what’s with that wild style?”
“You’d look good with an undercut, even now. It’s not crunchy, he’s definitely using Limitless to make it do that. Show off.” Suguru’s lips twitch into a faint smile. “I know I said he was sobbing all over me, but other than that…I don’t know. You haven’t changed much.”
“Can’t say the same for you,” Satoru says immediately. “Like, holy shit. You’ve got so, um, many emotions on your face, now? And you’re so…expressive? About, um, everything? Flamboyant, maybe? And you killed your parents.”
“So you’ve mentioned. Ugh. It’s so cringey,” Suguru mutters, looking away. “I can’t even begin to imagine acting like that. Maybe if I was possessed by a Curse or something. Oh, do I have any cool new Curses? At least there’s that, maybe.”
“You have…” Satoru pauses for effect, eyes wide behind his glasses. “Over four thousand Curses.”
“Hah.” The number actually sucks the strength out of him for a moment, making his stomach lurch uneasily. “That’s got to be a lie.”
“He showed me a little sample. Like…he’s got ‘em, for sure. Jeez, that’s over one a day, for ten years. Didn’t you say it makes you super sick for a week to swallow even a little one?”
“Usually. Even thinking about absorbing that many makes me sick,” Suguru mutters, feeling himself pale as he keeps thinking about how many curses that really, truly is. “I have…maybe seventy-five now? There’s no way most of those four thousand are even good ones. Bleck.”
“No, he said he, um…” Satoru shifts, uncomfortable. “He keeps his cult around to drain them of curses and money. Then he kills them. Then he made a joke about how he makes sure not to get their blood on his shoes, and made a couple suuuuuper racist jokes.”
“…Great.” Suguru feels a migraine coming on, the stress-born kind that starts right between his eyes. “So no cool ones, then.”
“Oh, no, there’s cool ones. He’s got Tamamo-no-Mae! He said she kinda tasted like perfume. And chlamydia.”
Suguru openly gags. “Thanks, that ruined every single bit of badassery. Okay, maybe not every single bit…but pretty close. Damn, that must’ve been so hard to get ahold of.”
‘What I can’t understand is…we don’t talk.” Satoru frowns, shaking his head. “I don’t get that. How can we not talk? It’s us!”
“I don’t know.” Suguru shuts his eyes, letting his head knock back into the door again. “Whatever happened was that bad, apparently. Bad enough to make me go crazy, bad enough to make you give up chasing me. Can’t say I’d blame you, after hearing all of this. I wouldn’t chase me, either.”
“Bullshit, I wouldn’t stop.” Satoru snaps his fingers. “It’s gotta be the brain damage. Okay, if we’re gonna not turn out like that, let’s be different. I heard you never told him—me?—why you killed your parents, so, tell me now.”
“I really doubt that’s the key to this, and frankly, I haven’t killed them yet, so who knows.” Suguru doesn’t bother opening his eyes. “I think we’re better off focusing on what could possibly get them back together now. If they just start kissing, that would…oh, let’s throw Kissymonster in with them. We all love Kissymonster.”
“Ooooh, no one can resist Kissymonster!” Satoru beams, then pauses, blinking. “Hey. Wait. Okay, but…you know why you would have killed them, right?”
“I guess. Hmm. I wonder if Kissymonster would listen to older me, though…that would kind of ruin that plan. I know you like being caught up in Kissymonster’s kissing thing, but you’re kind of a freak, so I don’t know. I suppose it’s worth a shot, neither of them would exorcise it, at least.”
“Heyyyyyyy.” Gojo rests his elbows on his thighs, some things starting to fit together, pieces making sense in his mind. “You’re deflecting. Why won’t you tell me?”
“I’m not deflecting.” Suguru’s eyes slit open. “I don’t have anything to say about it.”
“Tell me what they were like, then,” Satoru suggests. “Just do that, and I’m sure you won’t turn out like him. Swishy and racist and alone and not as good at sucking dick as you were at sixteen.”
Suguru makes a disgusted face. “Shitty. That’s what they were like. Ugh, I bet I can’t even taste anything right, if I’ve absorbed four thousand curses…”
Satoru takes off his glasses, gazing unwaveringly at Suguru. “What were they like?”
“Shitty,” Suguru repeats curtly, meeting that stare for a moment before he looks away with an audible click of his tongue.
“Suuuuuguuuuuruuuuu.” His lashes flutter. “Tell me more.”
“There’s nothing to tell. Yes, very good, you have enormous, sparkly eyes, extremely pretty.”
Satoru doesn’t waver. He reaches out a hand, palm-up, just waiting. “I want us to have a way, way better future than they do. Sooooo…I promise not to say ‘penis’ even once. If you just talk to me, for real. Don’t deflect. Tell me about them. Did they hit you? Was it a sex thing?”
There’s an abrupt shift in the way that Suguru holds himself. It’s less casually dismissive, and far more riddled with tension, his shoulders raised and tight, lips pressed into a thin, annoyed line. “Gross, no. Satoru, I don’t want to talk about it.” The more he feels backed into a corner, the flatter his voice gets. “This has nothing to do with anything, anyway. You don’t like talking about your family, either, so I don’t ask.”
“I have no idea who my parents are,” Satoru says bluntly. “In the Gojo clan, the only thing that matters is the Curse Techniques you’re born with. Like the Zen’in, but different. It’s not that we kick you out if you don’t have any, you’re just not important. There were a dozen women I called auntie, and a dozen men I called uncle, and any of them could have been my parents. I don’t know if they even knew. They didn’t have Techniques, so they weren’t worth anything. They all smiled and bowed to me and did whatever I wanted, and told me that everything I did was perfect. I don’t know any of their names.”
He shrugs, his unsettling gaze unwavering. “I didn’t tell you because I know it’s weird, and I wanted you to think I was cool.”
Suguru’s gaze briefly flicks back over to Satoru, then away again with a huff of breath. “I mean, yes, that’s weird,” he mutters. “But I always think you’re cool. You could tell me anything, and I’d think you were still cool. I assumed your family was weird, anyway; old sorcery families usually seem to be.” He hesitates, fingers picking restlessly at a loose piece of weave in the tatami mat underneath him. “I’m sorry you had to deal with that. No wonder you were so lonely.”
“Uh huh. What was your family like?” Satoru asks, absolutely implacable.
“Shitty,” Suguru flatly replies. “Bad. Not weird, just bad.”
Satoru stares. He’s got a very cute stare, he knows.
“Stop it. I get it, you’re cute, that’s not going to change that there’s nothing to say, Satoru.”
“What was shitty about them?” Satoru asks patiently. This is literally the most patient he has ever been. Future him better appreciate this. “You wanted to kill them, it was the first thing you did after going evil. Or, I guess he said second, after an outfit change.”
No, I would’ve killed them first, he was lying to you for drama.
Things he does not say out loud.
Things he does not explain have a ranking on his mental list of shit to do if I ever thought I could get away with it. And he wouldn’t have killed them dressed as a shitty Buddhist priest, anyway. Maybe in his goddamn pajamas, because they’re not even worth getting dressed for.
He’s not hyperventilating. He’s not. He might be close to it, but he’s keeping a very tight grip of control on how he breathes, on making sure his expression doesn’t change, on not lashing out that he’s not being allowed to wriggle out from underneath his conversation when he feels like a worm on a hook, dangling mid-air for Satoru to keep snapping at as bait. Abruptly, Suguru realizes it’s been too long since he’s said anything, and he remembers to breathe, too quickly, too sharply, and he shakes his head, pushing himself more upright from where he shrinks back against the door. “I really don’t want to talk about them, Satoru. Please, just drop it.”
Satoru reaches out, gently taking Suguru’s hand between both of his own, squeezing it. “When you see that shitty older version of me, don’t you get pissed that he didn’t go after shitty older you?”
The sudden touch makes him flinch before Suguru can stop it, and he hates himself for it. Ooh, that’s some deep-set loathing, actually, creeping up so sharply that it makes him taste bile. “Yes,” he mutters, still looking away. “But at the same time, I can’t even be that mad. If I really acted like that—yeah, fuck me, seriously. I don’t deserve someone like you coming after me.”
“Well, this is what me coming after you feels like,” Satoru says stubbornly. “And right now, you do deserve it. You haven’t done shit yet, and your skin is good, and you suck dick good. So. I’m not going to stop. I’m not ever, ever going to stop.”
That makes Suguru exhale a laugh in spite of himself, even though the sound is somewhat strained. “You really think my skin is good, huh.”
“What made your parents shitty?”
Strain turns to a sort of panicked silence again, and Suguru sucks in a breath that sounds stressed this time, in spite of his best attempts to hide it. “Fucking lay off,” he mutters, now visibly bristling. “For a minute. Seriously, Satoru. Just…give me a minute.”
“Okay.”
Satoru simply waits. This level of patience is possibly the hardest thing he’s ever done, more at odds with his personality than anything else difficult he’s ever tried. Buuuut.
But.
He knows how this works, hm? And once he learns how something works, there’s basically nothing he can’t do.
So he waits, chin propped up on his hands, his eyes wide and lashes dipping.
Fuck. Fucking hell, he’d expected Satoru to give up and let it go after being bored or something.
Suguru feels those eyes on him, even when he can’t bring himself to look. He swallows audibly, wondering how lame it would be to open up the door and stalk out. Lame, he miserably concludes. As lame as my stupid older self running off without warning. Lamer, possibly, because Satoru is right here, staring at me and waiting.
“…You’re just going to laugh at me and tell me I was a pussy or whatever.” The words stick on his tongue, choked in his throat. “It’s stupid. It’s…all of it is stupid.”
“Can you think like, a tiny bit better of me than that?” Satoru asks, with no edge to the words. “I won’t be a dick to you. Just tell me.”
Suguru goes silent again, and shifts, drawing a knee up to his chest, restlessly picking at the tatami again. “You know how normies think we’re all weird and creepy? Like…they can just tell, most of them, that we’re not the same as they are. So they perceive it as something being wrong with us.”
Satoru opens his mouth, then forcibly shuts it. Holy shit, this ‘listening’ thing is so incredibly fucking hard. Suguru better not go evil, after all of this. Instead, he nods.
A piece of straw breaks off in his fingers. Suguru keeps picking at it, not noticing. “My parents knew there was something wrong with me. Maybe…it was worse, because I’m a special grade or whatever, and that’s a lot of cursed energy being thrown around. Maybe it’s because my innate technique is genuinely fucking disgusting. But they knew. And they hated me.”
Saying that out loud makes his voice choke up in his throat, and his fingers curl, blunt nails digging into the tatami. “It didn’t matter what I did. I was their only kid. I did everything they wanted me to do, but it…heh. You know. I joked about Setsubun being my birthday, right? How I was used to being chased around by people wearing demon masks telling me to leave, for real, for extra birthday fun? I wasn’t fucking joking.”
“That’s fucked up,” Satoru says softly. It’s getting a tiny bit easier to listen, to focus on Suguru instead of himself. “And…it’s you. You must have tried so hard, to make them like you.”
“Yeah. Because I’m an idiot.” Abruptly, something his older self had snidely said rings in his ears—you can have the version of me that doesn’t know how to tell anyone ‘no’—and he swallows, suddenly uncomfortably warm, his pulse thudding in his ears. “Martial arts. That’s what they…that’s why I’m good. I went out of my way to be good. But I’m just a fucking show off, and need to stop trying so hard, it doesn’t look good when the instructor’s kid wins everything. School—not even a high school where I grew up, so, you know, no chances for anything good anyway, and I still…” Suguru trails off for a moment, feeling himself flounder, fumbling with words again. “And they knew. They knew…even though I didn’t tell them, and I hid it. That I…that I liked guys. I knew he knew, and he hated me even more for it. I have had the shit beaten out of me so many times for it—but you know. Teacher’s kid. Middle of nowhere village. Who would say anything.”
“That’s not fair.” It’s a childish, frustrated plea, but deeply honest, coming from somewhere so deep down Satoru couldn’t throttle it if he wanted to. “It’s not fair, you’re a good person, you’re nicer than anyone I know, you try so hard…that’s so stupid. They had the best kid ever, and they wasted it, where’s the meaning in that?”
Suguru shrugs helplessly. He winds an arm around one leg, squeezing it into his chest when he feels his restlessly picking fingers start to shake. “I’m not special. I know it happens all the time, everywhere. But I…” His voice catches up again, and he shakes his head, the words clogging up in his throat.
“But it shouldn’t! And…” The whole enormity of everything starts to sink in for Satoru, and his chest tightens horribly, squeezing like a vice. “And you didn’t have anyone to tell you that it wasn’t supposed to be like that.”
“What good would it have done?” Suguru’s voice is barely above a whisper. “You know how it is—stronger cursed energy attracts stronger Curses. They thought I was a creepy bad luck charm. They weren’t even wrong. But, fuck—I hate them.” Saying it out loud makes his pulse spike wildly. “They were thrilled when I got recruited. They didn’t care why, or where I was going. They were just glad I was going to be gone.”
Fucking hell, what do people say when their best friend opens up like that? Satoru fumbles for words—but the words aren’t important, are they? What’s important is that he’s here, and he’s listening, and fuck it all, he is. He grips Suguru’s hand, squeezing it hard, so hard he’d hear little bones crack if the other boy weren’t a sorcerer. “I hate this,” he says softly, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “It’s wrong, and it’s gross, and I’d want to kick their asses if I ever saw them.” He pauses, then admits, “I mean, really, I’d wanna kill them, but I’m trying not to encourage bad behavior.”
“I do want to kill them.” The admission is quiet, and shaky, and Suguru’s fingers curl within Satoru’s grip. “You know how people make lists? Of what you’d do if you thought you could get away with anything? It’s at the very top.” He exhales a trembling, wet laugh. “Guess I got away with it.”
Satoru lurches forward, sealing his mouth over Suguru’s, holding him close, trying to put into the kiss whatever he can’t put into his words. “I’m not that good at talking,” he says, shrugging. “But…if you ever do feel like you can’t do anything else other than that…bring me with you. At least you know it’ll be funny.”
Suguru suddenly grabs at Satoru, yanking him forward and into his chest, squeezing him so hard that he feels the bones in his own arms protest. “If I’m ever stupid enough to try, please don’t you dare let me walk away from you,” he whispers frantically into Satoru’s hair. “Just fucking kill me instead if I won’t listen. You know I’m a hardheaded moron sometimes.”
“Deal,” Satoru agrees fervently, wrapping his arms around Suguru’s cute little waist in turn. “I won’t let you. I won’t let you! I swear it, Suguru. I won’t let you leave me.”
It takes a long, long moment before Suguru finally relaxes again, loosening his grip enough that he can draw in a breath without shuddering. “I hate this so much,” he mumbles, his head thunking down into Satoru’s shoulder. “So lame. So, so freaking lame. I seriously feel like I’m gonna be sick just talking about them, please don’t ask again.”
“I don’t want to hear about them again,” Satoru assures him. “I don’t ever want to see you that upset again, gross.”
“I’m going to need to keep squeezing you for awhile, sorry.”
“Maybe quit apologizing for things I like?”
Suguru exhales a quiet laugh, and squeezes him tighter. “Different kind of squeezing, though. Kind of like a stress ball.” He lifts his head, looking around the room blearily. “Let’s move to the futon so I can squeeze you like Kissymonster.”
“Not squeeze me with Kissymonster, though,” Satoru says warily. “That kind of thing has a time limit. Can I grab your ass?”
“Yeah, I really want you to grab my ass,” Suguru mutters, heaving himself to his feet with Satoru still in his arms, then kicks out the futon before collapsing back down onto it with him. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to squeeze you with Kissymonster. I just want to squeeze you. It’s a sensory thing, I don’t know.”
“You can do whatever you want,” Satoru mutters, slightly embarrassed now. “Seriously. So…we’ve gotta get them to kiss, right? It can’t be that hard. They’re probably already kissing.”
“Doubt it.” Suguru shoves his face back down into Satoru’s shoulder, winding all four limbs around him. Nope. He’s done. He’s over today. Actually, he’s over the last sixteen years of his life. Maybe his older self is onto something, just going batshit and murdering people. “They’re too mad at one another. Older me calls older you a bastard, older you calls older me a bitch. Never by name. They’re just mad. Or in older you’s case, he has a lot of hurt feelings that he wants to tell you about.”
“EW! What? Gross! No!”
“Mmhm. Sobbing on me and telling me about your hurt feelings. That was my morning with your older self. He didn’t even try to make out with me. Or grab my ass.”
“You know what? It’s the brain damage. Gotta be.”
“That’s why I’m saying it’s not good for you to be running your technique all the time like that. At least you got an out of practice blowjob out of this.”
“I can get better ones from you all the time, though? Though…he has got some great hair. You should think about growing it out.”
“Eh…I don’t know, it’s already a lot, don’t you think? His is all the way down to his waist, that’s so much.”
“Nice to touch. Soooooo nice to touch. Dreamy, really.”
“I guess you do already pull mine down all the time,” Suguru mutters. “Fine. But we really do need to figure out a way to make them kiss again. I know I’m way less likely to murder something if you’re kissing me, just…putting that out there.”
Satoru nods seriously. “Okay. So. You know how we’re having gay feelings? Well, older you is plenty gay, and older me…” He grimaces, disgusted. “Has lots of feelings. Gross. So we just need older you to remember you have feelings, and older me to remember he’s really gay.”
“…That makes sense, in theory. But in practice…”
“Okay, what’s your plan, Mr. Genocide?”
“I haven’t done any genocide! Don’t throw that in my face when I haven’t done it,” Suguru protests. “Older you won’t even call older me. I bet you anything they’re just sitting there in silence glaring at one another right now.”
“Okay, yes. So what do we do? Lock them in? Older you has some scaaaaary-ass Curses.”
“Older you uses Red for fun when he’s kind of pissy, and takes out massive trees so he can sit on them. I don’t think locking them anywhere is going to work. I’m still leaning towards Kissymonster, but even then…”
“I mean, older me is definitely going to still love Kissymonster, everyone loves Kissymonster.”
“Sure, but…” Suguru falls silent for a moment, dread twisting in his stomach. “At least older me was all over you. What if older you just…doesn’t want me anymore?”
“Not possible,” Satoru says immediately. “Totally not possible. Never gonna happen. He’s probably being a bastard because of….eeeeeeuuuuuuuuuughh, don’t make me say it.”
“What? What? Have feelings, you made me have feelings, it was horrible.”
“Because if you left me, it would hurt me so bad I’d stop liking anything at all,” Satoru says, and hides his face in his knees. “Besides, what’s he supposed to do? You’re like, ninety percent of my self-control.”
“Ninety-eight,” Suguru wearily corrects. “So…what? We remind him that he’s gay and likes things? How are we supposed to do that?”
“You should seduce him,” Satoru says immediately. “Remind him what it feels like to have someone touch him. He’s gotta be more lonely than he thinks, if he’s got his technique up all the time.”
“He was really twitchy when I pet him,” Suguru mutters, his face flushing. “I’m not good at seducing people. I got you because you literally climbed on me and told me we were having sex.”
“Older you is okay at it,” Satoru points out. “He just did the same thing to me. I mean, he basically just told me we were doing it.”
“Older me has no boundaries. Or sense.” Suguru sighs. “You’re so tall. I can’t kabedon you or anything.”
“Tell him to sit down,” Satoru suggests. “If you say it in your teacher voice, he’ll probably just do it.”
“I have a teacher voice?” Suguru mutters. “He’s a teacher. Does that still apply?”
“The voice you use when we’re pretending to be old to get into naughty movies,” Satoru clarifies.
“Oooh, that voice. Yeah, I can do that. Wait, do you like that voice?”
“Yeah it’s a panty-dropper.”
“What the fuck, Satoru.”
“That means it’s sexy. What, are you suddenly scared of panties?”
“No, bastard.” Suguru pauses, considering. “You could pull off lingerie, you’re pretty enough.”
“Duh. I’m gorgeous. What do you think, blue to match my eyes? Black is always a classic. I’d wear lingerie for you.”
“Black is classy. Especially under your uniform. Scandalous.” Suguru coils an arm around Satoru’s waist, pulling him close again, and giving him another squeeze. “I’m almost done recharging. Then maybe I’ll check on them and make sure they haven’t slit each others throats or something.”
“Older you is easy to distract, at least,” Satoru says with a grin. “I just basically have to show up. But how do I remind him he has feelings?”
“…Be cute at him. Like you were cute at me earlier. Be cute, and then get all clingy and cuddly that way you get when you’re tired.”
“Easy, my eyes hurt real bad already,” Satoru says cheerfully. “C’mon, let’s go. I don’t want to let this get away from us.”
“I’m not done recharging,” Suguru grumpily mutters, but releases Satoru reluctantly all the same. “Scold him for smoking, too. Tell him how worried you are about him. Lay it on super thick.”
“You actually like that?” Satoru asks, standing up and stretching. “You always tell me to shut up about it.”
“It’s not that I like it,” Suguru admits, raking a hand back through his bangs. “It just…it reminds me you care. I don’t look like I just freaked out for the past half hour, do I?”
“You look like we’ve been fucking,” Satoru assures him. “Pretend we’ve been fucking.”
“Um. Would that work on you? For real? I guess he did get really crazy earlier when he thought older me was sleeping with someone else.”
“I don’t know, I don’t have nearly as many feelings as that guy does!”
“You’re sooo unhelpful.” Suguru climbs to his feet, smoothing out his uniform with a sigh. “All right. I’m ready. Totally looking like a seducer, that’s me.”
“Look, it’s weird. It’s gonna be weird. But maybe…maybe then we get to go home?” Satoru flashes a peace sign, opening the door. “I haven’t even started thinking about that, yet. I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”
“There’s got to be a curse loophole somewhere about it that will send us back after we fix the problem,” Suguru agrees, following after him. He pauses at the other, closed door, leaning in close to see if he can hear anything unusual—but nope, nothing. That’s almost worse.
“Awkward,” Satoru mutters, and pushes the door to the side, observing the two of their older selves sitting in exactly the same position as they’d left them, tense and wary and hostile. “Gross,” he mouths to Suguru, then flops down at older Geto’s side. “Heyyyyy. Doesn’t look like old me is playing with you too much, but I’m bored. Make the future fun.”
“You embarrassing little twerp,” Gojo says exhaustedly.
“Thank you for reminding me that you used to be cute,” Geto sighs, hauling Satoru over into his side with an arm immediately cinched around his waist. Really, it’s a relief to not have to deal with the realization that Gojo’s technique is constantly active around him now—a bigger insult than one could ever imagine. “Oh, I promised you a parfait, didn’t I? We could go.”
This is ridiculous. They are ridiculous. There’s no way this can continue. Suguru almost conjures Kissymonster, just to break some of the tension, then decides against it, and drops down next to Gojo in seiza, as close as he can get with Limitless still running in the background like an obnoxious program that won’t force quit.
“I want a parfait from the future, hell yeah!” There’s a second of nerves—this isn’t his Suguru—but he squashes them. This is still Suguru. “Peace out, Suguru, I’m getting a future parfait. I hope it’s got aliens on it.”
“Probably just a lot of cornflakes,” Geto cheerfully says, pulling himself to his feet and sweeping up Satoru with him. “It’s where we go on Parfait Wednesday.”
“…What on earth is Parfait Wednesday?” Suguru asks underneath his breath as his older self pulls Satoru from the room, a rice-water scented hair flip accompanying the exit. Just kill him already. That would be kinder than having to witness more of this. He waits until the door shuts, and then shakes his head, slowly picking himself back up to his feet and walking over to the lights, flicking them off. “Honestly. He’s just being petty now.”
“That’s older you,” Gojo says, taking a tight-lipped sip of his mikan tea, feeling a pounding start in his temples. Well, ‘start’ is a pretty strong word for something that’s been building for ages. “You okay, kid?”
“Please don’t call me that, it’s too much coming from someone with Satoru’s face,” Suguru wearily says, walking across the room to pull closed the curtains as well, neatly tucking them into the edges of the window to at least block out most of the glaring sunlight. “I’m fine. Are you?”
Gojo sighs, and pulls the bandages off in immediate reaction, rubbing at his closed eyes. “That’s the most we’ve talked to each other in a decade. I just…” Gojo flutters a hand helplessly. “I can’t make him understand a thing.”
“Oh, you did talk.” There’s obvious relief in Suguru’s voice at that, and he picks his way carefully across the now dimly lit room, slowly folding himself back down into seiza on the tatami mats. “He’s stubborn. I would know.”
“We talked. We just didn’t say anything. He made a bunch of petty, bitchy digs at…” Gojo trails off, his eyes softening when he looks at Suguru. “God. Your bangs are so cute.”
Well, it’s both fortunate and unfortunate that Satoru is even prettier when he’s older. Prettier—handsomer? Same thing. Literally the most beautiful person he’s ever seen, that sums it up. Hey, older me, you’re stupid, he tiredly tells himself, feeling his cheeks flush with the compliment that doesn’t seem real, coming from someone so egregiously attractive. “Turn your technique off again,” he says sternly. Teacher voice. Apparently, something else Satoru likes. News to him, but he supposes he has gotten felt up shortly after going into movie theaters pretty often.
“…I missed that voice,” Gojo says wearily, and drops his technique. It’s easier now than it had been earlier, after he’d had his guard up from that fight. “Wanna hit me again?”
“I didn’t hit you in the first place,” Suguru protests, frowning at him. “Honestly, Satoru…”
It’s still Satoru. Even if he’s older, it’s the same Satoru. Actually, he’s way closer to the way he was when I first met him.
With that in mind, Suguru gathers all of his confidence, and scoots forward, then climbs into Gojo’s lap in short order, because that’s a lot easier when Gojo’s so damned tall. “I told your younger self that you spent most of your time crying on me,” he bluntly says, draping his arms around Gojo’s shoulders. “He was not impressed.”
“Don’t tell him that,” Gojo complains, even as he sucks in a breath, his arms going immediately around the younger man. How strange, that he feels so familiar, when it’s been so long. That he feels more familiar than the man he’s been sitting next to for the past hour. Slowly, he relaxes, his hands splaying out on Suguru’s back, his breath coming slower, more deeply. He inhales, taking in that achingly familiar scent. “Maybe I just won’t find a way to send you back,” he muses. “I’ll find a way to keep you safe.”
“That’s a cop out, Satoru,” Suguru grouses, slowly dragging his fingers up the back of Gojo’s neck again, because—yeah, the undercut is good to pet. Good texture. “Older me is still me. But I get it—it’s been awhile, and he’s not being pleasant.” He reaches back with one hand, unraveling his bun as he pulls the elastic free, and shifts further into Gojo’s lap, tilting his face closer to his. “I’ll just be pleasant for both of us, for a little while.”
Gojo sucks in a breath, so fast he has to turn away to cough a little bit. His arms go around Suguru on reflex, yanking him deeper into his lap. That sudden, full-body contact of another warm body against his for the first time after years, especially this one of all, makes his heart race, his pulse pounding. “You are, huh?”
“Don’t choke on your own breath, good grief,” Suguru mutters, his face hot as he’s yanked forward that enthusiastically. It doesn’t change the way his own breath catches, every single hard, lean plane of muscle suddenly pressed against him so eagerly making his own pulse thud fast in his ears. “Anyway…y-yeah.” His arms wind around Gojo’s neck as he tips his head again, leaning in to kiss him, the strangeness of kissing someone that is Satoru but isn’t, not yet, making him shiver. “You should…you should let me take care of you for a bit.”
Gojo’s hands come up, cupping, cradling Suguru’s face, holding him tenderly for a soft kiss. Electricity arcs through him, and he gasps against Suguru’s mouth, suddenly hungry in a way he hasn’t let himself feel in a decade, feeling parts of himself light up. “Suguru, shit—careful, I’ll…”
“What, you’ll come?” Never mind. It’s exactly the same. Gojo is exactly the same, when he’s not upset and brain-sizzly from a lack of proper relaxation and rest. “What else is new?” Suguru murmurs against his lips, gently dragging his teeth against that full lower lip, sucking on it as his fingers pry apart Gojo’s belt and unzip his fly. His hand reaches in, and—“Wh—holy shit, you got bigger,” he says with a startled laugh, blinking a few times to process that. “Oh, he will be so thrilled to hear that.”
“Fat lot of good it does me, except making it more annoying to buy pants,” Gojo says with a grin. “Nnnnh. Your hand is…still so nice. God, you have nice skin.”
“At this point, it’s just rude of you to keep remarking on it, you’re all bullying older me,” Suguru complains, and curls his fingers around Gojo’s cock unrepentantly, his head tilting to let his lips drag up his throat. “I think it does you a lot of good, by the way. I like it.”
Gojo licks his lips, his hips thrusting up into that touch, already hard as a rock. “You think, ah, it does me good to have a big dick? Or to bully your older self?”
“To have a big dick, obviously. Didn’t I tell you to try and be civil?” He belatedly realizes he’s using that teacher voice again, and decides to roll with it. “Obviously, your brain still works—it’s connected to this,” Suguru idly points out as his fingers squeeze, stroking up towards the head of Gojo’s cock, which already is dripping and slick when his thumb rubs into it. “If you’d stop bullying him for a second, I bet he’d put his mouth on it again. I know I would.”
“Fuck,” Gojo whispers, his back arching, leaning back on his hands, eyes squeezed shut. “Fuck me, if you do—just for a second—I’ll be nice to him, I’ll say whatever, oh, fuck, please, Suguru, just let me come, it’s been so long—“
He’s babbling, knows he is, but his mind is blown open by the shockwaves of pleasure ripping through him after so long without.
Oh. Oh, that’s an idea, actually. Kind of a stupid one, but hey, it might just be dumb enough to work.
“Uh uh, not until you swear on it.” Suguru’s fingers tighten, his thumb pressing just underneath the head of Gojo’s cock as his tongue snakes up along the curve of his ear. “I mean it—you’re going to behave,” he lowly says, sneaking his other hand up underneath Gojo’s shirt, thumbing over a nipple. “Don’t you want someone sucking your dick all the time again? I will let you come only if you make a vow, right now, that you’re going to treat him as nicely as you treat me. And if you make that vow, I will let you come as many times as you want.”
“I’m—not that easy,” Gojo chokes out, trying to deny that he is, in fact, that easy. His body starts to tremble, from his toes up to his chest, his heart thudding hard. His skin tightens, lips dry, his breath fast. “I, ah, just—it’s not that, that easy, you don’t understand—oh, fuck, please—“
Suguru clicks his tongue, sounding all the world like a disapproving schoolteacher. “What I’m understanding,” he idly says, shifting in Gojo’s lap just enough to let his own, hard cock press against Gojo’s hip through the fabric of his pants as his fingers drag through the sticky, slick mess beading at the tip of his cock, “is that you must not want to come that badly. Mm, even though you’re so big, I could still take it all the way down. Don’t you want to see that? You can come wherever you want, even, I won’t make you ask.”
“Just one,” Gojo whispers, the words already a plea. “Just—just give me one, just one, I can’t even think, it’s been so long, come on—“ His hips thrust up into the air, desperate, half-insane with the longing. “Just—squeeze it, just a tiny bit, you know—you know how I like it, please—I’ll let you fuck me, I’ll let you do anything—“
If he holds out, he’ll probably get what he wants.
But if he holds out too long and he doesn’t and Gojo is upset…damn it.
“…Fine, just one,” Suguru mutters, winding his fingers back around Gojo’s cock properly again. “You’re so needy, Satoru,” he sighs, kissing the side of his neck again as he strokes up slowly, firmly, and then squeezes just the way he knows Gojo likes it, the blunt nail of his thumb pressing in just enough on the underside. “It’s okay, I know you suck at doing this by yourself. Go ahead.”
He might as well have hooked a cattle prod up and used it, for the electric shock that goes through Gojo.
He cries out, spilling harder than he ever remembers doing in his life, making an absolutely mess of both of them, hips rutting up helplessly into Suguru’s hand. The full-body shudders rip through him, leaving him tingling and exhausted, overwhelmed, until he finds tears running down his cheeks, the shuddering turning to shivering.
“…Damn, have you not even jacked off in ten years, either?” Suguru breathlessly asks, slowly letting his hand slide away when Gojo almost stops twitching. He nuzzles into Gojo’s neck, pressing close to him, unconcerned with how much of a mess is already between them, and how that only makes him messier. “Hey. Satoru, breathe. You’re fine. C’mon, kiss me.”
Gojo moves sluggishly, feeling his limbs heavy and weird, as he wraps his arms around Suguru and squeezes him close. “Give me a second. Just…need to hold you.” Until the crying stops.
“Take your time.” Suguru settles his weight forward, deliberately leaning into Gojo’s chest when he’s squeezed. “You’re too pretty to not be getting attention all the time,” he mutters, winding his arms around Gojo’s neck again. “We’ve got to fix that.”
“I don’t want you to go.” Gojo’s breath stutters, his hands clutching at Suguru’s back, nails digging into his shirt. “He doesn’t deserve you. He doesn’t know how precious you are. He’s a fucking idiot, okay?”
“Hey—hey.” His arms tighten around Gojo, his lips pressing into the side of his head against his hair. “Breathe a little more, okay?” he softly says, stroking his fingers down the back of Gojo’s neck. “Please don’t be so upset after I just gave you an orgasm, okay? You’re going to give me a complex.” Suguru hesitates, still not thrilled about even mentioning it, but seeing Gojo this rattled still forces his hand, and he reluctantly says, “Earlier…Satoru and I talked. About things I really, really hate talking about. He wouldn’t leave me alone about it until I did. So…I guess I’m not totally a lost cause, you’ve just got to stare with those big eyes for long enough and be kind of nice and not yell at me, maybe.”
“It’s too late,” Gojo chokes on the words. They don’t feel real, not anywhere near as real as Suguru feels in his arms. “I…he’s gone too far. I just wanted to fix it, I wanted to knock you both out and kill that girl before we learned how to love her, I wanted to do the mission myself so that I’d never have to see you like that, so that you’d never…never think that was your only option. So—if you’re…maybe I did it. Maybe we’ll disappear, and it’ll be a whole new world for you guys. But me and him—it’s too late. He’s so full of hate.”
“And that’s why he’s doting on the younger version of you, right?” Suguru slowly pushes away—not out of Gojo’s arms, but enough to look at him again, frowning down at him. “Satoru. Satoru, listen to me. You know I’m him, right?” His hands slide forward to grab hold of Gojo’s face, gently squeezing. “I’m like, three days away from going batshit, too. You’re talking to the same person. I…” He exhales out a soft breath, briefly shutting his eyes. “I didn’t get like that overnight. I’ve been depressed for a long time. It’s not you. It’s not this girl or this mission. That might’ve been a tipping point, but to make it all go away, you’d have to just unmake most of my life. Which—I know you don’t want to hear, but I’m fucked up. Sorry.”
“I didn’t know.” It’s been a long time since Gojo has felt anywhere near this helpless. “If…if he knows he can lose you, he’ll be better, maybe. If he doesn’t figure it out, I’m really not letting you go back to him.”
“…Yeah, that’s not going to go over well, so let’s not say that to him,” Suguru says underneath his breath, sighing as he drops his hands back to Gojo’s shoulders. “He knows. He knows, Satoru. I told him things. And I made him promise to not stop chasing me if I get stupid, and if I still don’t listen, to just kill me. But—seriously, I really wish you’d keep trying.” He cracks a tired smile. “Talk about hurt feelings. You could have this kind of deranged determination about my older self, too, even if you don’t think I’m hot anymore, geez.”
“Don’t be dumb, of course you’re still hot,” Gojo mutters, grabbing for the empty bottle of mikan tea, emptying the last few drops into his mouth. It tastes like having a friend.
“Okay, that’s a really pathetic thought, we’re just gonna have to be better than that,” he mutters, briskly rubbing his face clean on his sleeve. “Any idea how I get you to stop being racist and doing genocide? Gonna be a lot harder to chase him down if he’s still, you know, doing that.”
“Easy, tell him that it makes you soft,” Suguru deadpans. “He’ll shut up, at least. That’s a start. But you can’t lead with that. If you go in wanting to fight about it, he’s going to throw hands. It’s me, hello? We both love picking at one another, that’s foreplay. Uh, well, it used to be. Start with kissing him, maybe. And then you can definitely come on strong about making him stop smoking, I refuse to hear one more comment about my skin.”
Gojo stares at him, blinking slowly. “I feel like you kids are really glossing over the genocide bit. Like…kissing him is all well and good. Making him stop smoking is great. But he’s got a ton of apologizing to do before I can do anything about it.”
“That’s not going to happen unless you’re already kissing him again,” Suguru bluntly says. “Satoru. Hello. Are you aware that he has like, four thousand Curses? I can barely even say that without wanting to throw up. I have, uh, seventy five? You don’t have that many Curses with this horrible ability unless you’re suicidal and don’t care anymore. He doesn’t have a reason to care anymore, thus the genocide, probably.”
“That’s not how that happened,” Gojo retorts, anger in his voice, spots of color rising in his cheeks. “You didn’t go evil because I quit on you, I quit on you because you went evil! Without me!”
“Okay,” Suguru patiently says, unmoving from where he lies plastered against Gojo still. Clearly, this is a default argument, and one that is usually used to incite a fight. “I never said that’s how any of it went down. Let’s try this again. Do you want to be back together with him?”
“…That’s a dangerous question, you know. He’s got a death sentence on his head.”
“I will not suck your dick while I’m here if you don’t answer. And neither will he, never again. Are you seriously willing to endure that?”
Gojo sighs, and runs a hand back through his hair, momentarily letting it flutter upwards with Limitless, before releasing it again. “Yes, duh. Piece of shit that he is, douchebag that he is, absolute bitch that he is, I still want him. Obviously. I was going after the Omoibakishii for him, obviously I want him.”
“Cool. Say it without the insults and I’ll believe you. It doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy to hear you insult my older self,” Suguru tells him, prodding him in the chest. “So even if you decide you’re giving up and keeping me here and never letting me go or whatever, like a real nutcase, I’ll remember that and go crazy, too. Just a heads up.”
Gojo’s face softens, blue eyes sparkling, somehow far more vibrant than they had been even as a teenager as he gazes at Suguru’s face. “I still want to be with you,” he says, his voice matching the gentle look on his face. “Just a heads up.”
Suguru’s cheeks immediately flush hot, and he looks away rapidly. “Say that to him,” he mutters, his heart giving an odd, thudding lurch in his chest. “Just like that. With the eyes and everything.”
“His fault, he didn’t draw the curtains like you did,” Gojo says with as shrug. “So you get more eyes.”
Suguru bites back a sigh at that, and slowly pushes himself up, raking a hand back through his hair. “Just…do it like that later, it’ll help,” he says, and glances down at himself briefly, rolling his eyes at the mess drying on his uniform. “Classy,” he remarks underneath his breath, heaving himself out of Gojo’s lap. “This is why I always insist on blowing you, you know. You’re a mess.”
“That’s not why.” Gojo grins, and reaches out, poking a messy spot with the tip of one finger. “It’s because you’re a hoe who likes swallowing.”
“Rude.” He does not deny it. “There is no way older me doesn’t have a box of tissues around here somewhere,” Suguru mutters, rolling away and pulling out the bottom drawer of a nearby cabinet.
And then he shuts it, somehow with a straight face. “Yeah, you two have got to get back together as soon as possible.”
“Let me guess. Just like, sooooo many vibrators.”
“It’s actually quite startling, even knowing myself.”
“Any with weird shapes or colors? Every time I see one in a store I think about…” Gojo trails off, his cheeks hot. How goddamn embarrassing. “Anyway. You did good work on me. Think he’s having good luck with older you?”
“I’m not looking again,” Suguru snaps, his own face burning, knowing exactly what Gojo is thinking about. “Apparently, he already gave your younger self a blowjob. And it wasn’t even that great, so he’s definitely out of practice.”
“Good for me, having standards.” Gojo gazes at Suguru, then shrugs. “Well? They’re out for parfaits, what do you wanna do for a bit? Check out future video games? Blow up some of his temples, since we’re here? Several more blowjobs? I’d offer to spar with you, but…well. It wouldn’t be fair.”
That makes Suguru twitch, and he sits upright, stripping his gakuran off in short order. “You can’t say something like that without pissing me off,” he cheerfully says, rolling up the sleeves of his white undershirt. “Let’s confuse the hell out of every sycophant my older self has. I want to see if you’re really any good still, you crybaby.”
“Oh, no, that’s definitely not what I wanted at all,” Gojo drawls, and stands. “Pick whatever handicap you want. No limits.”
“Round one, no cursed techniques. Yours isn’t even fun.” Suguru climbs to his feet, tying his hair back up. “Otherwise, I don’t care.”
“Really? You don’t want me to tie my hands behind my back, or do the whole thing standing on my head, or while singing my ABCs? I mean, I’m already doing it blindfolded.”
“Maybe after I kick your ass once, you’ll want me to do some of that,” Suguru lightly says. “We’ll renegotiate after that, I guess.”
“You’re so ridiculously cute,” Gojo says with a sigh. “It’s almost a shame that I’m about to absolutely kick your ass. Let’s party.”
So much for keeping this whole strange ordeal under wraps.
Geto knows that Shit Has Occurred the moment he returns back to the temple, when he’s all but tackled by Manami and firmly shaken. “Geto-sama,” she hushedly says. “Could you please ask your…friend??? You know, Gojo Satoru?? to stop.” And then she pauses, and looks at the younger, past Satoru, and adds, “Not that one.”
It’s good that no one really questions the fact there are currently multiple copies of them running around. It’s probably assumed it’s a cursed technique of some sort, not a fault in the space-time-continuum. “Why?” Geto blithely says. “What is he doing?”
“Fighting your double?!”
That’s fair, he supposes. He also would like to fight his double.
“I can’t wait to take a nap after this,” Geto sighs, sweeping forward without care, following the sounds of vague destruction which at least has not resulted in any permanent property damage yet, as far as he can tell. No, it mostly seems confined to his practice room, which of course Gojo found, and of course his younger self also found, and of course they are murdering one another.
Sweaty, he absently notes of Gojo, watching from the door for a moment, contemplating how nice it would be to lick his collarbones. That’s a little too horny of a mood to be useful, but oh well. “That really was a look,” he remarks of himself instead, equally sweaty, more disheveled, and absolutely more bruised, but the high-waisted pants over a buttoned-up shirt is really good. “Yo, Satoru.” He holds up a bag, dangling it slowly. “You weren’t forgotten.”
“Whatcha think?” Gojo asks Suguru, obviously having expected this arrival, though his face doesn’t turn. “Sick of trying to beat me while I hop on one foot already? I guess this time I can start out laying flat on my face, and give you a head start.”
Satoru makes a face, and snuggles into Geto’s side, obviously marking his territory. “Wow. How bored am I, these days?”
Geto’s lips purse. “Very, apparently.”
“Keep talking shit,” Suguru cheerfully says, even as he wipes at a bloody nose. “I’m not the one that cries when—“
“—when he comes,” Geto finishes dryly underneath his breath, ruffling Satoru’s hair absently, and then giving up immediately. It’s not worth ruining his vaguely decent mood. He sets the bag down and turns away, pulling Satoru with him. “Let them keep killing each other, if my younger self is stupid enough to enjoy his company.”
“He’s got a cool undercut,” Satoru mutters darkly, allowing himself to be pulled away. “The bandages are suuuuper lame, though. Your hair got so much better.”
“The bandages are bad,” Geto dryly agrees, pulling him along back to his bedroom, which has apparently been properly Gojo-fied in his absence—curtains drawn, lights off, and futon left in an unrolled heap on the floor. A sigh follows that, and he nudges Satoru inside before he shuts the door. “Undercuts are only good if they’re touchable, and his isn’t, so it defeats the purpose,” he says matter-of-factly. “Don’t turn out like him. He’s not cute.”
“Do you not like me at all anymore, then?” Satoru asks. He’d intended to ask as part of their Grand Plan, but finds the words come out wounded. “I mean…it’s still me.”
“You grow up into a bastard, in case you haven’t noticed.” Geto resists the urge to rip open the curtains. If Gojo were standing there, he would have.
Maybe.
But probably not today.
Ugh.
Geto resists the urge to reach for a cigarette. They aren’t doing much to calm his nerves, anyway, and so instead he collapses down into his futon, after making sure it isn’t covered in god knows what. There’s a good chance that his pillow smells like Gojo’s hair—Gojo’s hair, not his younger self’s hair, and that’s important. It’s also important that he doesn’t stuff his face down into it right now, even though he wants to, desperately. “But of course I still like you,” he says after a moment, begrudgingly. “You’re just an ass. It’s self-care to keep you at an arm’s length.”
“So,” Satoru hedges, deciding on a course of action as he scoots closer, casting off his sunglasses, “what can I do to make you not leave me? Because that’s what he says, right? That you left? So how do I make you not do that, when we go back?”
Never mind, he’s going to need a cigarette if this keeps up.
Geto cracks a wry smile, but he doesn’t push Satoru away, letting him worm his way over to him. “What, did you formulate a plan with my dumbass baby self to try and butter us both up?” he asks, opening up his arm to let Satoru slither into his side all the same. “I guess he does see it like that, doesn’t he. He always has, and that’s fine.”
“How do you see it?” Satoru presses, climbing into Geto’s lap, all bony elbows and knees. “I only heard his side, through younger you. Tell me yours.”
“You’re so sharp, and I know you eat enough, I just fed you,” Geto mutters, sighing as he locks an arm around Satoru, hauling him into his chest. He can be squeezed like a stress toy. It’s important that he is, actually. “I already told you, it’s fine. I’ll just keep you instead and ignore him, and he can keep my younger self that he thinks is so damned perfect because he runs around like a chicken with his head cut off to make him happy. His favorite.”
“That’s not why I like him, though,” Satoru mumbles, gnawing vaguely on one of Geto’s shoulders, then pulling back to cough suddenly as the smell of nicotine burns his nose, making him sneeze at the same time he’s coughing. “Bleh! Ahhh!”
“Drama,” Geto says with a snort, entirely unfazed as he lets Satoru cough and wheeze. “I already told you I’m not going to smoke inside again while you’re here, you don’t need to overact about it.”
Satoru looks up, snot dripping from his nose, his eyes red and watering. “Do I look like I’m overacting?” He croaks.
“…You giant baby. Hold on already.”
Geto gently dislodges him, plopping him back onto the futon, and strides over to the window, cracking it open behind the curtains. At the same time the breeze comes through, a Curse flares to life in the air, strangely ripping out the lingering traces of smoke from the room, and taking it out the window with it. It’s almost as if he has two teenagers that also complain quite similarly. “There,” he grouses, slamming the window shut again. “Better? I’ll just vape next time, princess.”
Fuck. He’s doing it again. Gojo sucks in a breath, annoyed with himself for falling for it again. Suguru, and Geto, both really only have one trick, after all. “So, how is it from your point of view?” He asks again, tugging gently on Geto’s robes. “What did he do? So I don’t do it.”
“Hold on, I’m going to change so you don’t complain about the way I smell—that thing’s not perfect, after all,” Geto mutters, absently batting away Satoru’s hands before he sidles away to strip.
“Yeah, okay, that sounds like something I need to supervise,” Satoru says seriously, raking hungry eyes over Geto’s body as it’s bared. “You’re so ripped. How are you so ripped?”
“The same reason your older self is, I imagine. Not much else to do to preoccupy our free time except to train,” Geto blithely says, letting every later hit the ground in a puddle of fabric before he changes into something far less traditional—a loose pair of sweatpants that stay up on his hips as a suggestion, and a shirt that does the same on his shoulders. He flips Gojo’s empty mikan tea bottle into the nearby recycling bin before collapsing back down onto the futon. “Here, now you can sniff test,” he cheerfully says, yanking Satoru back over against him.
Satoru takes a hesitant, careful sniff, not wanting to burn out his nostrils again, and finally relaxes, stuffing his face into Geto’s chest. “Yeah, yeah, that’s the good shit. Now we can talk.”
“Uh huh, sure.” Geto flops backwards, propping himself up onto a pillow with Satoru on his chest, and pulls out his phone, turning down the brightness a few more notches. His fingers stroke up through Satoru’s hair, the familiarity of being able to pet and stroke him like that more of a balm to his nerves than nicotine could be, anyway.
Satoru sighs. “I bet the undercut is fun to touch. I’m gonna get one. Ne, Suguru…what did I do wrong? Why’d you go?”
“Because I was sick and tired of watching sorcerers be used and abused. It’s not rocket science,” Geto murmurs, not glancing up from the glow of his phone. “Get an undercut, but don’t do that stupid thing with your hair with your technique. It’s just showing off at that point.”
“What did I do, though?” Satoru asks persistently, looking up through his hair, his eyes huge and sparkling, though not nearly so otherworldly as they will become later. “You wouldn’t just leave me.”
Geto’s eyes flick up briefly—which is a mistake, of course.
Damn it.
“I didn’t.” He tears his eyes away again. “It wasn’t so one-sided as your older self likes to make it out to be. You had already moved on from me, anyway. You can turn off the sparkles, I know what you’re doing.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not effective,” Satoru counters, resting his hands on Geto’s chest. Wow. Damn. Big and firm. Sweeeeet. “I don’t wanna move on from you. I’m not gonna.”
“And yet, you did,” Geto patiently says, firmly ignoring the sparkles this time. He’s had enough time and experience with ignoring the sparkles, unlike his younger self. “It’s fine. I’m over it. I’m not the one acting like a crazy person at the idea of their ex sleeping with someone else.”
Satoru decides not to point out that…never mind, if Suguru is going to be a bitch, he will, too. “Okay, but you’re definitely not,” he drawls. “You’re out of practice.”
“Rude,” is the mild response. “Keep it up, see if I let you keep groping my chest.”
“Just saying. He’s stupid if he actually thinks that you’re sleeping with someone else. You’d be happier if you were.”
“You think? Then maybe I’ll give it an actual try,” Geto says with an unconvinced roll of his eyes. “He is stupid, you’re right. But it’s so easy to rile him up and make him angry, it’s satisfying.”
Satoru pulls away, frowning slightly. “Do you even still like him, though? I don’t know how he ‘moved on,’ or anything, but…what did he do that’s that bad?”
“If you’re going to keep prying at this, I’m going to crush you,” Geto tiredly threatens. “He’s hot, sexy eyes, sexy voice. Nice muscles. Sort of want him to make me pass out on his dick. You know, the usual good jerk-off fodder comes to mind. Obviously I still like him.”
…Was there a second step to this plan? Oh, right. Feelings. Satoru isn’t quite sure where to go from here, frankly, though it feels like a good start, so he loops his arms down, taking a squeeze of that ass. “Nice. Okay, but…don’t you ever wish you could just…call him up and say hey? That would drive me crazy, not being able to say, hey, Suguru!!! I know he misses you, he cried about it. Yuck.”
Geto does not squawk when his ass is grabbed. All right—maybe he does, a little, but only because it has been so damned long that it’s a surprise when he is groped out of the blue. “Oi,” he mutters. “Grabby little shit. If he cried about it, he should do something about it. But he won’t—which is typical. Don’t grow up to be like that.”
“Tell me how to not do it,” Satoru demands. “Tell me what he did, how he left you.”
Geto’s smile thins at that. “You’re cute,” he says at first. “It makes me forget what a bastard you can be. Even now—you’re kind of a shit, though. Do you know how close you came to being the one that committed genocide?”
“I mean,” Satoru admits, “that would make more sense to me than hearing that you did it. So…what did I do wrong?”
“…You didn’t do anything. It’s just who you are. You can’t help it.”
The urge to have a cigarette rises again sharply. Maybe he does have a problem…or maybe his oral fixation has just reached an all-time low. Geto sighs, shutting his eyes, letting his head hit the pillow. “You nearly died. That’s how you figure out your reversal technique, by the way, and all the other fancy things you can do. The pinnacle of jujutsu…that’s you. Buddha in the flesh. After that…we weren’t the strongest anymore. You were the strongest. There wasn’t really any point in me being around you; I just got in the way, you didn’t need me. You did everything by yourself more and more, by necessity…and I was left behind. So—really—you didn’t do anything. You just went with it. You didn’t notice the natural evolution of things. Or the fact I was puking in the shower and not chasing you down for dick.”
A pit sinks into the pit of Satoru’s stomach. He wants to deny it, say that it doesn’t sound like him, but how many times has he gotten lost in a new technique, how many times has he gotten obsessive about training, to the point where he’s ignoring anything and everything else? He can see it. Especially if he’s got a whole new technique to learn. He can see it, see his own flaws reflected in that story, and doesn’t like it. “I don’t want to,” he says softly. “I don’t want to be someone like that. Do you still…want someone that shitty?”
“Apparently.” The response is bone-weary, answered without Geto even cracking open his eyes. It’s easier to admit it when he doesn’t have to look at Satoru, anyway. “You’re already someone like that, Satoru. Sorry, but you are. My younger self’s just too much of a pushover to be annoyed by it, but he’ll get there, eventually, when you stop being cute and you just start being a dick. Ah, not that it’ll matter. He’ll be gone by then. You were so surprised when I finally did get fed up and lose it, and honestly, I think it pissed you off even more that it wasn’t a direct result of something you did. But…because you had already left me, more or less, it was a lot easier. I didn’t have anything to stick around for. You were it. The only thing.”
Despair and fear overwhelm Satoru for a moment. He’s got to fix it, he’s sure he can fix it, except—doesn’t that mean he has to fix who he is? It’s nothing he did, it’s just a problem with him, being himself? Well, that’s fucking terrifying.
Then, a tiny spark of hope shoots out, and he grabs it, clinging to it. “Wait. You were going after that Curse, too. You wanted to undo something, too. Deep down…you want me back, don’t you? Even if I’m kind of the worst.”
“Yes, for some reason, I like how shitty you are,” Geto mutters. “In spite of being told I need to stop acting like the stupidest ex-girlfriend in the world, I persist. I’m afraid my intentions weren’t particularly noble, though, when I went after that Curse. I think your older self wanted to stop us from getting close to Amanai or he wanted to do the mission himself, because that’s who he is when he feels like he needs to overcompensate. I was just going to let you kill everyone in the Star Religious Group like you wanted to. And maybe help.”
“I don’t know who that is,” Satoru complains. “But, fine. I mean, you still like me, I still like you. It shouldn’t be that complicated. And you’re super unfair, you know. You can’t say that he was trying to do way too much to overcompensate for you, and also say he was walking out on you. Don’t you think you’re being unreasonable? That’s what I’m supposed to do.”
“Heh. Of course I’m being unreasonable. I’ve passed the point of reasonable a long time ago,” Geto says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “He’s also being super unfair, so we’re even. We both walked away. We both hate the system, but refuse to agree on a method of dealing with it. I’d make out with him, but I don’t want to talk to him. The end.”
“And he’d talk to you,” Satoru says with a sigh, “but he doesn’t want to make out with you. Okay. Never mind. There’s no fixing you two, I just have to figure out not to turn out that way.”
“Oh? If he wants to talk to me, that’s news to me,” Geto snorts. “He always says he does, and then he spends the time insulting me instead, if he says anything at all. Good luck, brat.”
He pushes himself upright again, and finally gives into the urge to grab his vape, because if he’s going to be scolded for smoking, at least this is marginally less bad. “I’ve been fucked up since I was born and I should’ve offed myself pretty early on, quite frankly. This was all inevitable.”
Gojo snatches the vape, his reflexes still vastly faster, even with the veil of years and experience between them. “You’re not that good a liar,” he says, flipping the vape in his hand, then looking down at it. “Ara? I thought it was a cigarette…what is this?”
“Oi,” Geto mildly protests, snatching it back after pinching one of Satoru’s nipples first as a distraction. “You can throw away my cigarettes, but you don’t get to throw that away. Welcome to the future, where even the cigarettes are electronic. And candy flavored.”
Satoru squeaks, his eyes following the weird little device. “I mean, that sounds waaaaaaay better than cigarettes. Ne, ne—stop lying, though. You still like me, you wanna talk to me, you wanna make out with me. He’s got an undercut and cries too much, but he’s still me. You should go get him.”
“Nope. Don’t wanna.” Geto flips his vape around in his hold again, turns it on, and takes a long hit off of it. True to his word, the resultant exhale of vapor is scented rather like watermelon candy. “Maybe if he made the first move without insulting me for once, I’d consider it. I’ve been nothing but civil all this time, deliberately avoiding his students, deliberately staying out of his way and not picking fights. And the second we cross paths again, all he can do is snarl at me? No, thank you.”
“…You know he’s thinking the same thing, right?” Satoru asks dryly. “I know, because I’m already thinking the same thing. ‘Well, I don’t want to make the first move, he should, because he’s the one that blah blah blah blah. You’re gonna be alone for another ten years, both of you, if neither of you takes that step. Oh, oh, go on! Go ahead and say it, I know you want to!”
Geto blinks back at him slowly. “I’m not planning on living another ten years,” he calmly says. “So being alone that long isn’t a big, convincing factor for me. This crap with Omoibakishii—if I had pulled that off properly, that would’ve been interesting. But that was my last ditch effort, before I kept on and just did whatever else made sense to get my point across before you got sick of me for real and killed me. Depressing, isn’t it?” He exhales another stream of white smoke. “Well, guess what. I’m depressed.”
Satoru lunges forward, grabbing Geto’s kimono in his hands, shaking him suddenly. “So be better!” He snarls. “Act more like the man you really are, and he’ll burn down the whole world for you, don’t you know that by now?”
“No. I don’t.”
Geto grabs hold of one of Satoru’s wrist, giving it a firm, but still-gentle squeeze before dislodging him with a sharp shake of his own. “If you’re going to keep lecturing me, you can go help my younger self attempt to land a single hit on him. This is who I am, Satoru—who I’ve always been. You can say I’m a shit liar all you want, but I sure got one over on you, didn’t I?”
Satoru grabs him again, undeterred by that shake. “Bullshit. I don’t believe you. Even right now, I’m trying to reach out to you, isn’t this the first move?”
“You aren’t him.” Geto lets him grab this time, unconcerned about dislodging him as he brings his vape back up to his lips, and draws from it, long and deep, before turning his head aside to exhale. “Not in the same way. So no, this doesn’t count. It’s cute, though, I’ll give you that.”
“What would you even want him to say, as a first move?” Persistently cute. Satoru can be persistently cute. He knows how to get what he wants, and he wants to avoid this future, badly.
That’s the first question that does actually take Geto by surprise, and he falls silent for a moment, clicking his vape on and off, on and off. “…’I miss you’—or something like that.” He shakes his head, a tired smile on his lips. “Nothing complicated. I’m past that point. I told you, I don’t really want to talk to him about anything anymore if we can’t do it without arguing.”
“So, if he looked at you, and said that he missed you,” Satoru clarifies, “you’d make the second move? You wouldn’t just keep holding out, keep requiring more, keep making him do stuff because you don’t know how to take a step forward either, and you’re mad at him and you want to punish him?”
“Mm, nope. I’m not that petty. I don’t expect anything else of him. We’re in two different worlds these days, after all.” Geto shrugs a shoulder. “We could have a super secret forbidden romance. Or not, I have zero expectations.”
“Why should he?” Satoru asks, pouting now. “It doesn’t seem like you want him at all. I’m strong about a lot of things. Everything, really. But I’m not strong about not being wanted.”
“I never said I didn’t want him. I don’t want something half-assed, either. Either a full blown super secret forbidden romance, or I don’t want anything.” Geto lids his eyes and flops back down, throwing an arm over his face. “Any other questions?”
“You didn’t say you didn’t want him,” Satoru agrees, not putting away his eyes, even if they’re starting to ache deeply now, pain throbbing through his brain. “But you didn’t say you want him, either. For sure, he thinks you don’t.”
Geto bites down on the insult that he wants to throw out—he’s an even bigger idiot than I thought, then—and merely sighs instead. “Of course I want him. I never stopped. That’s not even up for debate.”
Satoru leans forward, and presses a soft, urgent kiss to Geto’s mouth, holding them together for a moment. It’s so much more intimate, somehow, even than the blowjob earlier. “I might be the strongest…but that doesn’t mean I’m the best at understanding people, you know. Sometimes you have to tell me things for me to get them. Sorry.”
Geto doesn’t pull away. His pulse thrums quietly, and he sighs softly against Satoru’s lips, his own curling into a faint smile before he does pull back, and absently messed up Satoru’s hair with a flick of his hand. “…Then we’re seriously out of luck, because I’m the worst at telling people things directly.”
He hauls himself up to his feet, pushing his hair back over his shoulders. “I actually have to go do my job somewhat now, so behave yourself in the meantime. Make sure your older self eats those fancy donuts I got him, he looks skinny.”
“He looks fucking buff, but okay,” Satoru says with a shrug, climbing to his feet. “What kind of job? I thought you were just a cult leader.”
“Mmhm, sure. And I also keep appointments with all the disgusting monkeys of the world to absorb their curses. A real public service, I think.”
“Godddddd the racism makes me so soft.”
“Thank god for dildos, then,” Geto snaps irritably, and with that, slips out of room, sliding the door shut with a slam before Satoru thinks to follow.
“Dammit, Suguru, you said that would work,” Satoru mutters to himself, and tugs his clothes back into order, vaguely embarrassed about his own apparent failure.