Asperula

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: 原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Rape/Non-Con Relationships: Il Dottore/Scaramouche (Genshin Impact) Characters: Scaramouche (Genshin Impact), Il Dottore (Genshin Impact) Additional Tags: Rape, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Loss of Trust, Trans Scaramouche (Genshin Impact), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - College/University, Whump, Hurt No Comfort, Angst with a Sad Ending, Bad Ending, Horror, Dissociation, no beta we die like everyone scaramouche ever loved, References to Depression Summary:

He thought that he felt things towards Zandik, he really did. He thought that he trusted him, thought that he liked him, and yet for some reason, at this moment, all he feels is this numb yet tingling feeling in his hands and cheeks, like ice is being actively injected into him.

“What are you doing?” he asks, to Zandik, who has pushed him down on his own bed. There’s a strange, animalistic glint in Zandik’s eyes, and Scaramouche doesn’t recognize his face as he replies.

“What does it look like?”

Or, in which Scaramouche is raped by the only person he could call a friend.

---

Beginning notes:

title is from the christina perri song (yes the one from twilight), it was playing in a drug store one day and the inspiration for this just spawned

please mind tags

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Scaramouche isn’t in the country’s best school for medicine because he wants to be.

In fact, most of his current situation was not his choice. He never cared that much for academia, and yet the majority of his days have been spent studying. He’d always wanted to live in a smaller, more rural area, yet here he is, in the country’s capital. Many would argue that he’s extremely privileged, what with being the son of Raiden Ei, and perhaps he is just that ungrateful brat they all say he is, as he can’t remember the last time he felt any positive emotion towards his mother.

He hasn’t felt many positive emotions towards anyone other than Zandik, really.

Zandik, his best friend, who he met on the first day of university. Zandik, who saw the dysphoria within him, who erased “Kumiko” and left Scaramouche standing in her wake. Zandik, who cared for more than just his family name.

He knows, objectively, that Zandik is not a perfect person. He is certainly not in love with Zandik—he doubts that he’s even capable of such a feeling—but Zandik is brilliant, and Zandik is all that he has. Zandik has those traits that make him strange, bizarre, even within the circle of medical students. Zandik is objectively more popular than Scaramouche, as someone who is genuinely interested in medicine, but even he is noticeably different in the way he perceives medicine.

It’s never something that Scaramouche has quite been able to discern, not that he really cares. Everyone has their reasons for being here; it’s not his place to pry Zandik for these things.

Still, Zandik is by no means his raison d’etre, nor his sole lifeline. Scaramouche knows enough about codependent and parasocial relationships that he knows better than to attach himself to someone in such a manner, and quite frankly, he’s never felt a need to attach himself like that anyway. He’s survived all these years with the numbness that courses through his veins; all he needs is an objective and a deadline. Sure, he’s been feeling more comfortable in his own skin since Zandik bought him those binders, but things like eating, sleeping, breathing—all of those are still the monotonous tasks he must bear to get through the day.

He thought that he felt things towards Zandik, he really did. He thought that he trusted him, thought that he liked him, and yet for some reason, at this moment, all he feels is this numb yet tingling feeling in his hands and cheeks, like ice is being actively injected into him.

“What are you doing?” he asks, to Zandik, who has pushed him down on his own bed. There’s a strange, animalistic glint in Zandik’s eyes, and Scaramouche doesn’t recognize his face as he replies.

“What does it look like?” Zandik asks, raising an eyebrow. Scaramouche was never particularly tall or bulky, and right now, Zandik’s hand cages both of his wrists effortlessly. Zandik towers over him and Scaramouche finds himself unexpectedly shocked at the ease with which Zandik tears his pants off.

“...Why?” Scaramouche asks, voice small and quiet. He should feel scared right now, should be fighting back, yet the mere thought of this betrayal from Zandik cuts deeper than any scars he might make. And even then, he thought that this would hurt more, yet all he feels is this strange, tingly numbness.

“Why do you think?” Zandik retorts, yanking Scaramouche’s shirt off as well. Just one of his hands can essentially cover Scaramouche’s entire stomach; even physically, he feels like a child compared to Zandik.

“This’ll be easier if you just sit pretty,” Zandik hums, and when Scaramouche doesn’t respond, he sits back on his heels and starts to undo his belt. “You’ll probably even feel good.”

Again, Scaramouche doesn’t respond. I’m getting raped is the alarm bell sounding in his head, yet he can’t bring himself to do anything about it. Perhaps he’s too tired, having stayed up too late last night studying, or perhaps he’s just too numb. He’s never had much interest in sex anyway, and his education has made him see it from a purely clinical perspective; perhaps sex means so little to him that his body doesn’t even understand what’s going on.

Zandik has clear lines of muscle running down his abdomen, down his pelvis. It’s the body of someone who exercises regularly, though Scaramouche doesn’t know when he finds the time to exercise, especially as a med student who sleeps around and parties. His penis looks the exact same as every other penis Scaramouche has seen, and he feels a painful contraction in his vagina.

“At least use a condom?” he begs. His body is, unfortunately, still capable of pregnancy, and he’d rather not mess up his hormones even more with birth control pills. He’s not particularly one to be embarrassed about buying personal hygiene-related items, but this is a purchase that he really, really doesn’t want to make. Moreover, he doesn’t know how his mental or physical state will be after this is over, and the morning after pill is only effective after so many hours.

Zandik considers him for a while before leaning down and reaching into his bag. “If my prince insists. In fact, I even have lube.”

This is not a surprise. Zandik sleeps around so often that he just keeps those items in his bag; this is not new information to Scaramouche. In fact, the packaging of the items is extremely familiar, as Scaramouche has seen them fall out of Zandik’s bag a couple of times. Zandik was never embarrassed about it, though, so Scaramouche never commented on it either.

The pet name registers a second later, and it sends a soft coil of warmth into Scaramouche’s chest. It feels like a hug, like a blanket wrapping around him, and that is what makes his eyes burn with unshed tears. He’s always known that he’s a little fucked in the head, but even this is a little much for him, and he has to swallow the laugh that bubbles up in his chest.

What the hell is he doing?

He finds that same satisfaction from getting a question correct curling in his chest when he sees Zandik put the condom on exactly as he ought to, pinching the tip and rolling the sides on. That doesn’t last long, however, as Zandik is quickly turning his attention back to Scaramouche.

Scaramouche’s legs instinctively close when Zandik pulls his underwear off. He’s not particularly embarrassed to be seen by Zandik, since his body is probably the exact same as every other naked person Zandik has seen and/or slept with, but the sudden cold air against his genitals is still a bit of a jarring sensation. Thankfully, Zandik seems to have no interest whatsoever in removing his binder, instead letting the tight fabric let him pretend that he’s not a woman as Zandik presses his mouth to Scaramouche’s vulva.

Scaramouche flinches at the sensation. Zandik’s mouth is unbearably hot and wet and extremely uncomfortable. His saliva is nothing like the water Scaramouche regularly cleans himself with; his tongue is slimy and blistering and it raises goosebumps all over Scaramouche’s arms. Although his genital area isn’t particularly sensitive, and although having someone perform oral sex on him isn’t painful at all, it’s still extremely uncomfortable and overwhelming, like music playing in his headphones too loudly.

Still, just as he has adapted to everything else in his life, even his body learns to become less sensitive, and the sensations stop being so overwhelming after a couple seconds. They’re still undoubtedly uncomfortable, and Scaramouche finds himself focusing on a spot on his ceiling, trying to recite something he’d seen in his textbook yesterday.

Rape. What a strange feeling.

He thinks his vagina is clenching and spasming around Zandik’s tongue, but it’s hard to tell. He’s not very familiar with having any kind of sensation down there, and he can tell that he’s starting to dissociate, the ceiling suddenly not looking so real or clear. The tears in his tear ducts have dried up without being shed, the same way they dried every time he felt and then stopped.

He doesn’t really have a sense of time, of how long it’s been since Zandik has started, but time seems to bleed infinitely slowly as Zandik continues, wet noises filling the room. His hands are… cold.

Tick, tick, tick.

The clock is a sharper and easier sound to focus on. His ears feel like they’re filled with cotton.

His stomach hurts. He wonders if it’s his uterus.

There’s a different sound. What is—

Scaramouche jerks backwards as cold liquid makes contact with his vulva. He looks downwards to see that Zandik has approached him with his hand, presumably with lube, and is looking at him, thoroughly unimpressed.

“Really? After I ate you out?” Zandik scoffs, and Scaramouche forces his eyes back to the ceiling as Zandik inserts a finger. It’s surprisingly not painful, but it’s still undeniably unpleasant, and with a few breaths, Scaramouche is dissociating again.

I wonder what I should have for dinner. His thoughts are slow and syrupy, like they’re flowing through honey, which is exactly what he wants. The physical sensations are dying down, though he isn’t quite at the degree of dissociation and sleep deprivation where even pain is almost completely numb. There’s definitely a rude and painful tug back to reality every time Zandik adds a finger and Scaramouche wonders whether the tissue around his vagina is capable of stretching that much at all. He hopes that nothing tears.

One sheep jumps over the fence. Two sheep jump over the fence. Three sheep jump over the fence.

Tick, tick, tick.

The fingering is painful and extremely uncomfortable. He hopes that he can be fully asleep by the time Zandik penetrates him.

Four sheep jump over the fence.

Zandik pulls his fingers out, and Scaramouche feels his heart rate skyrocket. He wants this over with as soon as possible but more fingering means that penetration will hurt less—

Zandik slams all the way in and punches all the air straight out of Scaramouche’s lungs. He’s heard of rape victims experiencing arousal during assault and doesn’t know whether it’s better that he feels only pain and discomfort. Zandik’s penis feels massive inside of him, invasive and nauseating. Everything feels raw, like there’s been a wooden pole shoved from his vagina through his uterus all the way into his throat, and he wonders for a second if he’s dying.

He’s a med student. He knows that none of that makes sense logically. Human penises only come in so many sizes, and as far as Scaramouche is aware, Zandik is human. What is happening to him right now will not kill him.

He doesn’t know whether that’s a blessing or a curse.

He feels sick. He feels like his organs are getting rearranged. He feels things touching in places that he never really registered existed and everything is raw, sharp pains burning him from the inside out. If this were a fight, if Zandik were punching or stabbing him, he would at least understand the feeling, but this is something inside of him, and it feels so strange.

Zandik’s skin slaps against his with clap-like noises and the sensation is so, so strange. He’s suddenly extremely grateful that Zandik has lube, because despite the implications, his vagina feels so, so raw, and he can only pray that nothing tears. There’s a wet sniffling sound and oh—is that him?

Breathe in, breathe out.

How long has it been? It feels like it’s been hours. His throat hurts. His body hurts. His pelvis feels like it’s being run over with a truck and then a jackhammer.

He needs to dissociate.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic inflammatory lung disease that causes obstructed airflow from the lungs. Symptoms include breathing difficulty, cough, mucus (sputum) production and wheezing. It's typically caused by long-term exposure to irritating gases or particulate matter, most often from cigarette smoke.

It feels like there’s a knife digging into his lungs—

No. He needs to dissociate. Thinking about med school notes won’t help. Moreover, brains associate things with trauma. If he thinks about school now, it will make forgetting about this event a thousand times more difficult. He needs to think about things that are less unrelated, things that won’t affect him in everyday life.

His ceiling light is slightly blue. That colour is meant to help him stay awake and focused.

Shit. He’s probably going to need to replace that light later, assuming a typical trauma response.

It HURTS—

BREATHE IN, BREATHE OUT. BREATHE IN, BREATHE OUT.

His cheeks are wet. He can’t believe he’s crying. He didn’t realize his eyes were capable of doing psychologically—it’s always been because of irritants like dust in the past. Perhaps this counts as a physical irritant? He feels like he’s getting punched all the way into his lungs.

The slapping is getting louder and more frequent. If he weren’t currently being assaulted, he would probably start thinking about how repetitive sex is.

There’s a sharp slap against the inside of his thigh and he gasps, blinking with blurry vision. Zandik has a scrunched up look on his face, the kind that Scaramouche can’t discern between physical pain and sexual pleasure. Oh, what he would give for Zandik to also be in pain, but he knows better than to think that.

Don't look. Remain calm. Dissociate. Forget.

There's a cold tingling in his fingertips like bits of static electricity under his nerves. It's there behind his ears, too, under his scalp and above his occipital bone. As much as he tries to dissociate out of it, he can't help the way his brain processes the sounds, the grunts, the slapping of skin on skin, the wet gasping breaths. The best way to dissociate is to make his thoughts louder than anything else in the world, he knows, but when he needs it the most, his mind is blank and useless.

The world flips too quickly for his syrup-laden mind to process and everything is dark but he is still conscious. There's fabric digging into his face that he slowly registers to be his bedding, shoving against the tip of his nose and bending the cartilage every which way. He can't really tell where his arms are, in this position, can't really tell if they're still attached to his body. His knees hurt but his vagina hurts more, forced open and repeatedly hit with blunt trauma.

There's a tugging in his hair, a violent but distributed force that squeezes tears out between his eyelids. He doesn't think the hand is touching his neck but it feels like it's choking him, squeezing every last bit of trust out of his body.

He tries not to think about how these are the same hands that carved his body into an agreeable vessel. He tries not to think about how this head of blue hair was the only friendly face in a world of faceless hostiles. He tries not to think, tries not to think at all.

It hurts. His face hurts. It's hard to breathe. He thinks he's choking on something, but he's not sure what it could be.

His world is spinning from oxygen deprivation. He's not sure when he loses sight of it.

...

His body is sore when his consciousness finally returns. There's a wetness between his legs, a pain in his groin. His limbs are scattered haphazardly, like someone took apart a doll and couldn't be bothered to put things back properly.

On the other side of the wall sits his best friend's bed. It probably wouldn't be appropriate to call him his best friend anymore, though.

His chest feels cold with grief, with loss. The logical thing to do would be to break off contact with him. The responsible thing would be to report him.

He doubts that it would do anything, though, or that it would even be worth his time. He hasn't heard a single story of the administration being any form of helpful, and he knows it would be report upon report that demand his corpus for evidence.

He doesn't want to think about what his mother would think.

He wonders whether the access to easy relationships with his classmates is worth pretending it never happened. He wonders whether having any friends at all is worth pretending it never happened.

His body is heavy, like his skin has been flayed open and his bones stripped of their marrow. There's nothing left inside of him, no capacity to process events or emotions.

Chapters: 11/? Fandom: 呪術廻戦 | Jujutsu Kaisen (Manga), 呪術廻戦 | Jujutsu Kaisen (Anime) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Getou Suguru/Gojo Satoru, Getou Suguru & Gojo Satoru, Getou Suguru & Gojo Satoru & Ieiri Shoko, Getou Suguru/Gojo Satoru/Ieiri Shoko, Getou Suguru/Ieiri Shoko Characters: Gojo Satoru, Getou Suguru, Ieiri Shoko, Hasaba Nanako, Hasaba Mimiko Additional Tags: Can be read as gen or slash, Codependency, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Miscommunication, (but not in the way you think), Death Threats, Feral Gojo Satoru, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, autistic gojo satoru (?), gojo satoru has alexythmia (?), he has the silly neurodivergent emotion processing, idk words are hard, Dark Gojo Satoru, Gojo Satoru Needs a Hug, Men Crying, Getou Suguru Needs a Hug, Getou Suguru Defects From Jujutsu Society, Unhealthy relationships (?), Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, no beta we die like them in canon, Mild Gore, mostly just descriptions of satoru's thoughts, Violent Thoughts, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, satoru is a mentally unstable god, Gojo Satoru is His Own Warning, ghibli date!, Dubious Morality, satoru keeps casually threatening murder, Underage Smoking, satoru is high as a kite and suguru is both his drug and his dealer: the fic, Gojo Satoru Has ADHD, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Gojo Clan Bashing (Jujutsu Kaisen), Dehumanization, Polyamory, Unconventional Relationship, Ambiguous Relationships, Feral Ieiri Shoko, the gojo clan is a cult, (i mean. so are all the other sorcerer clans), feral gojo clan, Unreliable Narrator, Self-Esteem Issues, Literal Sleeping Together Summary:

“Revoke his death sentence, or I will kill everyone in this room.”

The words ring out, echoing against the walls. Still, his ears feel muffled, and his hearing is blurry.

The old men are shouting, probably insults and expletives. He draws blue on his fingertips, and they silence.

“Revoke his death sentence,” he repeats, slowly. “Or I will kill everyone in this room.”

The fools are too cowardly to die.

In which Satoru takes Suguru back by force after jujutsu society shuns him.

---

♪

this chapter contains footnotes because author has discovered that their favourite genre is "footnotes in my porn" except this isn't porn so it's just footnotes

cw: mild descriptions of food, difficulty eating. it's in the weird gojou style that i've got going

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Satoru awakens slowly and comfortably, like a sunflower slowly bending upwards as the sky turns from indigo to pink to blue.

His mind is calm and rocking as if filled with ocean waves. He's warm, yet cool, just the right temperature to be comfortable, enveloped in Suguru's human heat but not enough to be burning. His body feels light, like he's floating again, the world opening itself up to him as he becomes a god once and for all.

Except, when he opens his eyes, Suguru's colours are a mess.

"Satoru!" Suguru practically sobs. There are deep, dark bags under his eyes. His lips are cracked and his breath is short.

"Suguru," Satoru answers, immediately awake. "What's wrong?"

"I thought you were dead, what the hell!" Suguru cries. "You've been asleep for three days!"

Oh, hm. That does sound unusual. Would a normal human die like that though? Aren't they unconscious half the time after getting beaten to shit by a curse?

"I'm sorry," Satoru says, placing a soft, hopefully placating hand on Suguru's cheek. The skin is sticky and tacky. Ah, he's been crying. Satoru longs to see what that would look like.

"You- you-" and Satoru gets his wish, since Suguru immediately breaks into tears again. His wet eyes glisten like crystals under sunlight, long eyelashes clumping together. His skin crinkles where it's squeezing and his lips tremble. It's the most beautiful thing Satoru has ever seen.

"Shh, I'm sorry, okay?" Satoru coos, wiping a teardrop away with his thumb. The liquid is warm against his skin, warm and filled with everything that is human. All the world's colours are inside those tears, refracting a thousand times before being seen by anyone else.

Satoru doesn't know what emotion Suguru is feeling. Except for when his eyes are directly irritated, Satoru has never understood the cause of his own tears. There is a whole ocean between them, between a god and a human that can't ever be crossed, yet in this moment, Satoru holds all of humanity between his fingertips.

Suguru's tears are quiet. He sniffles and holds Satoru's hands in a vice grip, nails just barely digging into Satoru's skin. His fingers are white with exertion and Satoru can feel what is probably best described as "pain," yet all he wants is more of it. It's nothing like the overstimulating flashing lights of society; it feels like Suguru is ripping Satoru's godly skin open and injecting humanity inside.

Suguru's colours are splattering like rain, as if the raindrops are teardrops that are each filled with a thousand colours. Satoru doesn't recognize many of the colours, and some of them feel like they're in the wrong context. There's a bit of the grey and red from when Haibara died, yet it feels like an echo rather than a direct splash. There are greens and blues and deep shades of indigo against vibrant hues of vermillion. It should mix to make grey or brown, yet the colours feel like the inside of a kaleidoscope, crystalline and brilliant.

"How… how do you feel?" Suguru croaks eventually, when his tears have stopped flowing so freely. "Are you thirsty? Surely you're hungry, right?"

The honest answer is no. The answer that Suguru wants to hear is yes. Satoru blinks, and laces his fingers together with Suguru's.

"Will you eat with me?" Satoru asks. It seems like a safe middle ground. It startles Suguru, who starts breathing quickly again.

"Sure- I- let me get-" Suguru stutters, turning away from Satoru. His heart rate suddenly skyrockets and his cursed energy flares. His hands are shaking and his mouth isn't moving.

"Suguru?" Satoru asks, concerned.

Suguru stares at him with wide eyes. His heart rate is climbing - 96, 112, 133 - yet no words are coming out of his mouth. Distantly, Satoru registers this as a fear response, but he's never seen Suguru react this strongly to anything, not even a curse. There's nothing noteworthy in this room, nobody except the two of them, and there is no world in which Getou Suguru would ever be afraid of Gojou Satoru.

Or, perhaps there is, in a different light cone. Perhaps in a world infinitely far away, in which curses don't exist, in which Satoru is not the god who fights at Suguru's side, Suguru might be afraid of him.

"Suguru," Satoru says. Humans are delicate, fragile creatures, and such a heart rate might be deadly, or at least uncomfortable. This is the least he can do for his favourite human.

"Suguru," Satoru says, with the resonance of a thousand voices. "Look into my eyes."

It's called Six Eyes, but the true power is closer to a thousand. A thousand eyelids blinking at once, a thousand pupils dilating and drowning in the violent purple that is Suguru. There is no place in this world where Getou Suguru would ever be afraid of Gojou Satoru, so Satoru expands his presence into the entire world.

Cursed energy, eyes, breath. There is a god in this room becomes there is a room being consumed by this god's presence. Just as Suguru wraps Satoru entirely in his cursed energy to coax him to sleep, Satoru wraps Suguru in his everything to bring Suguru to peace.

There is all of humanity in Suguru's eyes. Tears, fear, all that is beautiful in this world. Satoru wonders what Suguru sees in his eyes. Perhaps somewhere in the depths of this godly blue, there is some hue that a human eye cannot properly perceive. In the depths of his colours, in his layers of paint, in his brilliance, perhaps there is something that Suguru can gain from Satoru, too.

Would Suguru like to experience the world from Satoru's eyes? Perhaps it is rude of Satoru to impose it onto him anyway, a god's order imposed from his unblinking eyes that brings Suguru into a world where he no longer even needs to think about breathing. In the depths of his fear, in his short breaths that barely draw any oxygen, Suguru is perhaps more radiant than ever.

But this radiance brings him discomfort. As a god, this is the least that Satoru can do for him. This is perhaps the only thing that Satoru can do for him.

Suguru's breaths become wide and wet like his eyes as he stares back at Satoru. His breathing shakes, colours rattling like candies inside a metal tin. Satoru slows the blinks of his thousand eyes and Suguru follows suit, everything slowing until his pounding heart settles. Crystalline tears clump on his eyelashes and Satoru presses a hand to his face, gently thumbing the liquid emotion away.

"I'm okay, Suguru," Satoru murmurs softly. This god that longs for death will inevitably outlive this beautiful and precious human. Satoru will write his own ending one day, one where he lays beside Suguru and they take their final breaths together, but that day is not today.

Suguru blinks once, pressing his beautiful, delicate face into Satoru's hand, then pulls Satoru towards him, pressing their bodies together as if he wants them to become one single entity. Suguru's body is heavy against his, fabrics and flesh stitched into a canvas stretched[1] upon bone and tears. Over the fabric, Satoru can no longer press his fingers into the indents of Suguru's shoulder blades.

The infirmary door clicks open and Suguru tenses. Satoru soothes him with a whisper of "it's just Shouko," but Suguru is pulling away already and Satoru is chasing after his touch. A deep breath makes his colours muted and somber, but the words that come out of his mouth are ever brilliant and precious.

"Satoru's awake," Suguru says as Shouko enters the room.

"Gojou?" Shouko's tired eyes widen at the words. Her steps are frantic as she makes her way towards Satoru, shoes tapping against the floor like rocks in a landslide. Satoru tilts his head and smiles. Shouko sighs.

"Did you sleep for three days just to be an asshole or is there something wrong with your RCT?" Shouko demands, but there's no anger in her voice. Her eyes reflect a rope pulled taut. Satoru wonders what the resonant frequency[2] of that rope is, wonders what is tied at the ends of that rope.

"My RCT was off," Satoru explains. "That's why I wasn't waking up."

Suguru goes pale at that, colours splashing like a tectonic plate in the ocean. Shouko purses her lips.

"Gojou," she says slowly, as if trying not to startle an animal. "If something had happened, would you have been able to wake up?"

"Of course," Satoru replies easily. "Six Eyes would have noticed if there were a real threat. My RCT turns on automatically if there's a significant issue. I can be combat ready within 0.8 seconds at any given time."

Although being clan heir allowed him some leeway, he still participated in all the standard exercises, including becoming combat ready within thirty seconds of being woken up in the middle of the night. Naturally, he quickly became the best at that too. Thirty seconds might be acceptable when dealing with a grade 3 or 4, but the special grade god that is Gojou Satoru cannot be weak for a single millisecond.

"But Satoru," Suguru says weakly. "You're shaking."

Is he? He lifts a hand and it trembles like molecules in dynamic equilibrium[3]. His hands should be able to mould the world beneath them, should be able to cause anti-matter reaction-type phenomena[4] with a flick of his fingers, yet the there is a weak human tremor beneath his fingertips. He should be able to control and distort space at will, yet for some reason, he won't—can't?—stop this trembling.

"Oh," he says dumbly. "So I am."

Suguru reaches out for him and the touch feels like a thousand needles stabbing into his skin. He doesn't move, doesn't flinch, but something must show on his face.

"You're burning up!" Suguru exclaims.

Except he's not. He knows what a fever feels like; his eidetic memory could never forget the burning pressure behind his already-overwhelmed eyes. He knows what sickness is; it is something that he left behind long, long ago. The tremor beneath his fingertips is something weak, something human, but it has been too long since he has properly been a human for something like sickness to affect him.

"Let me see," Shouko interjects, and touches him as well. The touch doesn't sting this time, doesn't send stabs of stimulation through his spine, but it still feels different from usual. There's no value in staring at his own trembling hands, so Satoru blinks and looks up at Suguru instead.

He wonders what Suguru has been doing in the three days he's been unconscious. Has he been taking care of Mimiko and Nanako? Has he been taking care of himself?

"Gojou," Shouko says, after barely a second. "Your blood sugar is too low. You're starving."

…huh.

"I thought you said you didn't…." Suguru trails off, pupils dilating in realization. "RCT."

"Even when I have it off, it auto-activates when I reach a state that is life-threatening or could cause permanent damage," Satoru tries to reassure, but that just makes Suguru's cursed energy flare even more violently. There's a grainy, bitter texture to the black on his canvas, like rough coffee grounds pressed into espresso and then broken up again.

"Turn it back on," Shouko orders. Satoru complies without complaint, but instead of the white relief that he expected, Suguru's breathing becomes even rougher.

"Let's get dinner," Suguru says quietly. His voice reveals nothing. Satoru wonders whether he has been fragmented into a jigsaw puzzle, or whether he has never been in a wavelength that Satoru can see at all.

...

Satoru orders zaru soba with a side of strawberry cheesecake for dinner. Suguru and Shouko both look at him for too long. Their glances burn like hot branding irons in his muscle tissue. Satoru wonders what it would feel like to burn alive. He wonders whether it's possible for him to burn at all.

Shouko is the first to break the silence with a quiet "thank you for the food."[5] Despite her nicotine addiction that has only gotten worse and worse, her voice remains as smooth as the day he met her. Her eyes have grown bags and her cheeks have grown greyer, but her hair remains glossy.

Satoru doesn't look at his own hands. His flesh would be useless as a comparison point.

Suguru echoes her words after a pause that feels too long. Despite claiming to have no respect for (the customs of) non-sorcerers, he holds his chopsticks under his thumbs and clasps his hands together to say the words.

The Gojou Clan doesn't engage in these kinds of customs. In a world that worships power, there is no merit in honouring equality. There is no merit in honouring food whose purpose was to be eaten by the strong, no merit in honouring food that symbolizes weakness in and of itself—for a real god, human sustenance isn't necessary at all.

What does it feel like, to see the world through Suguru's beautiful purple eyes, to see life and colours instead of numbers and trajectories? What does it feel like, to touch the world with Shouko's hands, which breathe life back into mutilated bodies instead of annihilation?

Inevitably, Satoru looks at his hands as he places his palms together, feeling like a newborn calf as he places his chopsticks under his thumbs. It takes a second, but he's able to form the words between his teeth.

There's disbelief in Suguru's eyes when Satoru looks up. He makes eye contact, holds it, doesn't let go.

Satoru's heart is pounding in his chest. Is it the starvation, he wonders, or is it fear?

Suguru looks away, and it feels like he's tearing away a piece of Satoru with his gaze. Satoru looks back down at his chopsticks, at his trembling fingertips. Is this what it's like to be human?

He places the chopsticks between his fingers, clicking them once before reaching for his soba. The plastic is hard against his skin. He wants to dig his teeth in, wants to feel the polymers shatter between his molars.

He resists the urge. He grasps the noodles between his chopsticks and brings them to his mouth. He bites down.

There's starch, there's salt, there's umami, there's mirin. In his saliva is enzymes that will break the starches down into simpler sugars. The salt will draw the water out of his cells via osmosis. There's alcohol but the alcohol was cooked out; it was used as a solvent for flavour and then removed when its existence was counterproductive.

It's bitter, it's sour, it's salty. He doesn't know anymore. There's saliva filling his mouth, coating his teeth. He's gagging. This is a vomit respose.

He keeps his hands extremely still as he activates RCT—properly this time, the way he keeps it on to compensate for the cursed technique constantly overloading his brain. He takes a slow breath, takes two, and the nausea recedes back into the ugly place it came out of.

He doesn't know how Suguru could handle that without RCT. He doesn't know what it would feel like to truly swallow a curse, to swallow a dirty rag used to clean up piss and blood and shit. He is a god, and he forced his nausea away immediately. Humans are precious, delicate, fragile creatures. He is a fool for allowing one to suffer through this over and over and over.

But despite being (claiming to be) a god, Satoru is no different from any other creature on the street. He has a mouth, an esophagus, a stomach, intestines, kidneys, lungs. His stomach is filled with hydrochloric acid strong enough to burn through its own lining, just like everyone else. His immune system is unaware of his eyes, because it would attack them if it knew they were there.

His hands are shaking properly now, muscles contracting uncontrollably. His fingers are cold and his stomach is made of tissue that goes squish squish squish as it pushes food into the next part of his digestive system. The bolus he just swallowed will be squished down his esophagus by the soft muscle and cartilage. When he puts a hand on his belly, he can feel his organs pulsating beneath his skin.

What a fool he has been, to have forgotten his roots. Despite all the cursed techniques, despite coming back from the dead, despite being able to manipulate spacetime itself, his original body is still that of a pathetic, mortal human.

What kind of a god allows a little girl to die under his nose? What kind of a god allows the most beautiful human in the world to spend hours and hours vomitting because of the source of his power? He has always been late, too late, never strong, never enough. What kind of god can he call himself, when he is naught but a failure of a human?

"Gojou?"

"Suguru," he says. He doesn't know how he manages to choke the words out. He's too aware of all his organs right now. They don't feel like they (should) belong to him.

"Are you okay, Satoru?"

"Suguru," he repeats, looking up at concerned violet eyes. "If one day, I were no longer able to fight, if I were to become one of the monkeys that you hate so much, would you kill me?"

---

1

art canvases are made of fabric stretched over and stapled to wood

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2

resonant frequency: the frequency at which an object is naturally inclined to vibrate; if you stimulate an object to vibrate at this frequency, the vibrations will become larger even without extra external force. this is important in building/bridge design because if the wind comes at the resonant frequency, the structure will vibrate at increasingly large amplitude until it breaks apart (see: Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse)

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3

Dynamic equilibrium: when a reversible chemical/physical reaction occurs forwards and backwards at the same rate. As such, each molecule is constantly changing, but the overall appearance is that the substance stays the same.

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4

anti-matter reaction-type phenomena: I made this term up because I thought "Electron–positron annihilation" didn't fit the sentence. anti-matter is composed of anti-particles, which are particles of the same mass but opposite charge as a "regular" particle. when matching "regular" and anti-particles come together, they annihilate each other and release energy. hollow purple is conceptually very similar, because it's taking two opposite types of force (convergence and divergence) and mashing them together to make uber big boom. where do these types of reactions happen in real life? nuclear reactions! in other words, satoru is a power plant. or something. i know fuck all about quantum physics and am 100% talking out of my ass.

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5

thank you for the food: "itadakimasu" is the customary phrase to be said before meals, and it literally means "I humbly receive (the food)". The phrase comes from the Buddhist idea that all life is equal; it expresses respect, honour, and appreciation for the things you have. the standard is to put your palms together and hold your chopsticks under your thumbs (between the thumbs and index fingers) as you say it

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Rape/Non-Con Relationships: Xiao Xingchen/Xue Yang | Xue Chengmei Characters: Xiao Xingchen, Xue Yang | Xue Chengmei Additional Tags: Object Insertion, Vaginal Sex, Trans Xiao Xingchen, Warning: Xue Yang | Xue Chengmei, Xue Yang | Xue Chengmei Being Xue Yang | Xue Chengmei, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Spit As Lube, Eye Trauma, Eye socket fucking, Xiao Xingchen Deserves Better, unfortunately i'm not giving it to him, Xiao Xingchen needs a hug, He Does Not Get One, Xue Yang | Xue Chengmei Has Issues, Xue Yang | Xue Chengmei Has Pinkie Finger-Related Trauma, Xue Yang | Xue Chengmei is Bad at Feelings, Porn with Feelings, Crying, Blood and Gore, no beta we die like them in canon, sex as symbolism for (handwaves) all the shit they got up to, xiao xingchen gets fucked with a tanghulu Summary:

It's the slow numbness in his fingertips that makes Xiao Xingchen realize his hands are tied.

"Who are you?" he gambles. He's met with a vicious laugh in reply.

"So now you want to know?" The voice gets closer, until it's right beside his ear. "And I had thought it was something you didn't care about. Well, I suppose it's been long enough."

His breath catches as the person's left hand touches his throat. The fingers wrap around his trachea without gripping, one, two, three, four-

No.

"You didn't forget me, did you, Xiao Xingchen?"

---

beginning note: this idea came to me in a dream, put me in a chokehold, bent me over a table and smashed my head into the surface

---

It's the slow numbness in his fingertips that makes Xiao Xingchen realize his hands are tied.

Spirit-binding ropes, no less, bindings powerful enough to suppress the majority of his power. He tries to keep his breathing even as he strains his ears, trying to figure out what's going on.

There's the sound of footsteps from his right, a pat pat pat he'd grown familiar with in the past few days. The floor is barely cushioned with dried grass - also a familiar feeling.

"My friend?" he tries. "Is that you?"

The footsteps suddenly stop, and are quickly replaced with sharp laughter.

"Good morning, daozhang," his friend replies, but the accent is all wrong. The words are laced with the tight-tooth grit of the Lanling dialect. The pitch is identical to his friend's voice, but…

"Where is this?" he tries.

"You need to ask even that?" his - the person scoffs. "This is your home, Xiao-daozhang. The coffin house."

Xiao Xingchen flinches at the poison laced in every single word. His friend usually speaks sharply, but that was usually with the bite of sarcasm, not genuine threat. Is - has his friend been possessed?

"Who are you?" he gambles. He's met with a vicious laugh in reply.

"So now you want to know?" The voice gets closer, until it's right beside his ear. "And I had thought it was something you didn't care about. Well, I suppose it's been long enough."

His breath catches as the person's left hand touches his throat. The fingers wrap around his trachea without gripping, one, two, three, four-

No.

"You didn't forget me, did you, Xiao Xingchen?" the voice croons. "I'd be terribly upset."

"Xue Yang," Xiao Xingchen chokes out, and the fingers come away from his throat, patting him on the head like a child.

"That's a good boy," the voice - Xue Yang - hums. "Did you miss me?"

Xiao Xingchen isn't given a chance to reply. The moment Xue Yang finishes speaking, he places his hands on either side of Xiao Xingchen's head and shoves his knees upward.

His blood runs cold. How had it not noticed? No - Xue Yang was supposed to be dead!

"Xue Yang," Xiao Xingchen addresses shakily. "What is the meaning of this?"

"Remember that story of the child who begged for candy?" Xue Yang coos. "You didn't want to hear how it ended, but I want you to know the ending. You see, the receiver of the message had been the nobleman's enemy. Upon the delivery, the child was beaten black and blue. He still went back to the nobleman - he'd made a promise! - and the nobleman refused to even acknowledge him."

"Xue Yang-" Xiao Xingchen sucks in a sharp breath as Xue Yang pushes his robes up and places an icy, four-fingered hand on his abdomen. The fingers press into the flesh, so cold they feel fiery.

"The child jumped in front of the nobleman's carriage, desperate for food, but still the nobleman continued to ignore him. The horse whinnied and the carriage strode forth, running the child over and crushing every bone in his left hand!" Xue Yang laughs, digging his remaining fingers into the seam of Xiao Xingchen's trousers. "All for want of a single piece of candy! Xiao Xingchen, is my life worth so little?"

"Xue Yang-"

Xiao Xingchen hisses at the sudden pain as Xue Yang yanks his trousers off. He closes his legs instinctively but Xue Yang is in between his thighs, forcing his knees open.

"Xue Yang! What is the meaning of this!" The air is icy against his sex and Xue Yang's clothing scratches as he moves.

"What do you think, Xiao-daozhang?" Xue Yang snaps, but freezes when he sees what's in between Xiao Xingchen's legs. Xiao Xingchen tries again to close them, but to no avail. Hot shame shakes his body, followed by fear. He doesn't know how Xue Yang will react to his body. He's managed to push his clitoris into a cock with his cultivation, but he knows what his body looks like.

The sharp laughter with which Xue Yang reacts is expected. The slap across his face is not.

"Does it feel good, Xiao Xingchen? Prancing around with a fake body like this? Judging me when you're just as much of a liar as I am?" Xue Yang growls. "Is this why you don't have a courtesy name?"

"Shizun didn't-"

"Even I have one! Isn't that a thought!" Xue Yang suddenly cackles, nails digging into Xiao Xingchen's thighs.

"From who?" Xiao Xingchen reacts instinctively. Xue Yang? He's the last person who deserves to have a courtesy name. He must be lying-

"From the Jin bastard who maimed me, of course!" Xue Yang laughs, and Xiao Xingchen cries out as a sharp pain snaps across his cock. "Aren't you lucky! If I had your body I would have already died three times over!"

Xue Yang's fingers are rough against his hypersensitive cock. Xiao Xingchen squirms, the stimulation inevitably sending sparks of arousal up his spine. He can't stop it either, not with his cultivation sealed.

"Xue Yang, please," he tries shakily. "What do you want? Whatever grudge you have with me, there's no need to do this."

"Xiao Xingchen," Xue Yang hums, making him flinch with a sharp tug to his cock. "Who ever said anything about a grudge? This is a warm thank you for all that you've done."

"Xue Yang-" There's a sudden sharp pressure against his hole, which has become uncomfortably slick. It's hard and unrelenting but it's too cold to be Xue Yang's cock-

"Xiao-daozhang," Xue Yang croons. "Thank you for the tanghulu you bought me yesterday. I'm so happy to be celebrating New Year's with you."

"No!" Xiao Xingchen cries, shaking as the pressure grows, pressing against him painfully. "Xue Yang, please, whatever you want-"

"Such a shame, isn't it? I would have died for less than this," Xue Yang sighs, and Xiao Xingchen screams as the candied hawthorn breaches him. The stretch feels like a thousand needles stabbing inside of him but he can't even reach out with his qi to see if anything tore.

"It hurts, doesn't it? Like fingers inside a wound," Xue Yang says, almost sounding absentminded if not for the poisonous edge on each word. Xiao Xingchen is barely able to process his words as the next fruit presses against his entrance. His legs shake as the fruit seems to stab all the way into his stomach. He can't help the scream that rips its way out of his throat when Xue Yang cups his cock again.

"Come now, this isn't even as thick as my fingers, and I don't even have five!" Xue Yang cackles, laughs catching wheezily in the back of his throat. "Imagine if they cared a little less about the dead people all over my skin! Then you might've found me covered in cum instead of blood!"

"Please," Xiao Xingchen begs. "Please stop. It hurts."

"It hurts, he says!" Xue Yang croons. "Isn't that cute? Well, it is New Year's, so I suppose I'm feeling nice today."

Before Xiao Xingchen can sigh in relief, something warm and wet lands on his sex, just where the tanghulu touches him. The liquid drips onto his ass and Xiao Xingchen freezes when he feels Xue Yang's breath on his cock.

"Tanghulu is meant to be eaten, isn't it? A shame I won't be eating this one," Xue Yang sings, then thrusts the entire tanghulu into Xiao Xingchen at once. Xiao Xingchen screams as the sugar scrapes against his insides, clawing futilely at the ropes that bind him.

"Xue Yang please-" Xiao Xingchen gasps as Xue Yang angles the tanghulu upwards. "What do you want from me? My fingers? My left arm? Why are you-"

"How are you this stupid!" Xue Yang exclaims, roughly ripping the entire tanghulu out of him. There's definitely blood on his face now, from his bloody tears or a bleeding nose he doesn't know. "Trading your body with one murderer for the sake of another? The Chang Clan deserved everything they got!"

"Xue Yang-"

"Fifty of their lives for a single finger, you say? That's hardly enough!" Xue Yang screams. "I wanted each of them to feel exactly what freezing from inside out felt like! My only regret is that Shuanghua kills too quickly!"

The entire tanghulu stabs into him again like a sword, merciless and bloody. An electric sensation runs all the way down into his toes, undeniably that of arousal, and he can't say whether he's relieved by the little bit of lubrication he can make or disgusted by the fact that he feels anything at all. Xue Yang twists his wrist and the sugar haw stabs into another overstimulated part of him, jabbing at nerves he didn't know existed and sending sensations both down his spine and into his throat.

He sobs as the hawthorn is pulled out and thrust in again, scraping relentlessly at his insides. The stretch isn't getting any less painful either, the fruits starting to tug at his skin as the sugar melts and sticks. Xue Yang tugs his blindfold off and he wails at the thumb pressing against the bone of his eye socket.

"You're so pretty when you cry, you know? All red and bloody. Such a shame your Zichen isn't around to see it."

"Zichen wouldn't-" Xiao Xingchen begins, but Xue Yang presses his thumb into the empty eye socket and he screams. There's hardly any pain but the feeling is overwhelming, like Xue Yang is pressing straight into his brain, agonizing yet numbing and mercilessly violating-

"'I don't want to ever see you again' were his exact words, weren't they?" Xue Yang snaps. "You think others will like you because you cut yourself open for them? Wake up! You have no one but yourself to blame for this! I can't believe you're so stupid that you didn't even recognize me as the corpse delivered to your doorstep!"

He can't tell the difference between his sex and eye socket anymore, every sensation a stab straight through his core. He can't help but recall the way he extracted the sword fragments from Xue Yang when he first found him. There's an ugly, messy gurgling sound, and it takes too long for him to realize that it's coming out of his throat.

"How does it feel, to be fucked on something worth more than my life?" Xue Yang shouts. "How does it feel, being defiled by these hands that killed Song Lan's entire clan? Xiao Xingchen, you are as disgusting of a being as I am!"

He can't see anymore but his vision seems to pulse with red every time Xue Yang presses into him. He can't remember much past that.

"Shit, fuck- wake up! Wake up!"

His insides feel like they've been scraped with a knife. He can't tell which way is up or down. He feels sick.

"You're fine- you're fine, you're fine! It didn't tear anything, I didn't fuck you, your hymen is still intact." The voice is quick, the syllables barely being pronounced. "By all accounts you're still a virgin. Even if you were a princess you'd be fine."

Nothing tore? Then why does everything smell like blood?

"Look, you have your qi back, see? If it hurts you can just heal yourself, can't you?"

Indeed, his hands are no longer numb. But why are they so cold?

"Xiao Xingchen, I will not allow you to die!"

---

so uh,,, happy pride month?

 bluesky    tumblr

LINK TO ALL CHAPTERS ON TUMBLR      

Chapters: 10/? Fandom: 呪術廻戦 | Jujutsu Kaisen (Manga), 呪術廻戦 | Jujutsu Kaisen (Anime) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Getou Suguru/Gojo Satoru, Getou Suguru & Gojo Satoru, Getou Suguru & Gojo Satoru & Ieiri Shoko, Getou Suguru/Gojo Satoru/Ieiri Shoko, Getou Suguru/Ieiri Shoko Characters: Gojo Satoru, Getou Suguru, Ieiri Shoko, Hasaba Nanako, Hasaba Mimiko Additional Tags: Can be read as gen or slash, Codependency, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Miscommunication, (but not in the way you think), Death Threats, Feral Gojo Satoru, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, autistic gojo satoru (?), gojo satoru has alexythmia (?), he has the silly neurodivergent emotion processing, idk words are hard, Dark Gojo Satoru, Gojo Satoru Needs a Hug, Men Crying, Getou Suguru Needs a Hug, Getou Suguru Defects From Jujutsu Society, Unhealthy relationships (?), Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, no beta we die like them in canon, Mild Gore, mostly just descriptions of satoru's thoughts, Violent Thoughts, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, satoru is a mentally unstable god, Gojo Satoru is His Own Warning, ghibli date!, Dubious Morality, satoru keeps casually threatening murder, Underage Smoking, satoru is high as a kite and suguru is both his drug and his dealer: the fic, Gojo Satoru Has ADHD, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Gojo Clan Bashing (Jujutsu Kaisen), Dehumanization, Polyamory, Unconventional Relationship, Ambiguous Relationships, Feral Ieiri Shoko, the gojo clan is a cult, (i mean. so are all the other sorcerer clans), feral gojo clan Summary:

“Revoke his death sentence, or I will kill everyone in this room.”

The words ring out, echoing against the walls. Still, his ears feel muffled, and his hearing is blurry.

The old men are shouting, probably insults and expletives. He draws blue on his fingertips, and they silence.

“Revoke his death sentence,” he repeats, slowly. “Or I will kill everyone in this room.”

The fools are too cowardly to die.

In which Satoru takes Suguru back by force after jujutsu society shuns him.

---

Summary:

literal sleeping together (of course they're freaky about it)

---

Beginning note:

music for this chapter 

---

Suguru’s violet irises are caressed by crimson rivers and outlined in grey valleys.

His eyelids are adorned in splatters of colour, as if roses and violets and carnations are growing out of his skeleton. His hair spans out behind him like a fan and his skin clings to his skull like a white-knuckled grip.

He eats slowly. No, not slowly, not compared to when he was exorcising curses with Satoru – but slower than the pace he adopted after he burned down that village.

Perhaps he is not hungry. Perhaps he is ill. What would Satoru find, he if cut open Suguru’s chest cavity and caressed the organs inside his ribcage?

“Satoru,” Suguru addresses, voice a gravelly whisper. It sounds different from usual, yet at the same time the tone is overwhelmingly familiar. “You’re staring again.”

“Mm,” Satoru replies noncommittally. He is indeed staring. It’s only been a week since the funeral, only a week since Satoru last saw him, yet he feels so different. There’s something missing from the vivacious storm of colours and brilliant shine of his eyes, yet at the same time, it feels like this is the “correct” form of Suguru.

“Satoru,” Suguru repeats. “Are you okay?”

“Hm?” Has he done something to indicate that he is not? Physically, he is the same as always – has been the same as since he killed Toji and the world opened itself in his head. He is no more inclined to kill than usual and the elimination of cannibalistic practices in his clan has not negatively affected him at all. The only difference is that the world became less vibrant in the week in which Suguru was away from him, but that was to be expected, and Satoru learned to find pieces of him in every sensation anyway.

“Satoru,” Suguru says for the third time in a row, this time in a redder colour. “How long has it been since you last slept?”

Oh, that’s a bit of a difficult question. “I stopped sleeping after I learned RCT, which means before I killed Toji, but I didn’t sleep while we were babysitting Riko-chan, which would be-“

“You stopped sleeping?!” Suguru exclaims, voice hoarse and wet. “What- Satoru, you can’t just do that!”

“W-why not?” Satoru asks quietly.

“That’s not healthy!” Suguru cries. “You’re destroying yourself! Satoru, that’s dangerous!”

“But…” everything that gets destroyed is fixed by RCT. His body – his existence – is a paradox, existing solely through cursed energy, or its negative. He is no longer human. He has no need for sleep.

“Satoru,” Suguru breathes, and there’s a grey-purple edge to his voice. “Please.”

“I…” don’t understand. “I’m just trying to make the most of the time we have together.”

“W-what does that mean?” Suguru startles. “Satoru. What are the higher-ups telling you? It’s okay if you hate me, just-“

“Suguru is life itself,” Satoru tries to reason, but his thoughts are no longer fitting into the constraining boxes that are words. And although he tells himself that they have all the time in the world, deep down he knows the truth. “There are only so many hours in a week when I can see you. Only so many years in our lives – maybe even less – in which we’ll be together. Every moment I spend asleep is a precious moment with you that I lose.”

“Satoru…” Suguru’s face twists in an expression Satoru doesn’t know how to read, colours splattering and twisting and storming. His cursed energy pulsates with life and all of its beauty, pushing and pulling as if it were alive. “What if- what if we slept together? Then you wouldn’t be losing any time.”

...

When they were constantly being sent on missions, sleeping together was not an uncommon occurrence. Suguru would keep up his appearances and look neat while writing up mission reports, but the moment the papers were all sent in, he would throw himself beside the unconscious Satoru, sometimes not even bothering to remove his outer clothing before falling asleep. It was a system that worked for them both – Satoru would go to Suguru after being blinded and sickened by unfamiliar cursed energy, while Suguru would go to Satoru for the reminder that his partner was alive and breathing.

It's different this time, though. There is no mission, no life-or-death situation, no bloodstained clothing. Suguru turns off the lights so that Satoru can comfortably remove his sunglasses. He offers him sleep clothes – a luxury which Satoru often forgot he had.

It’s – awkward. Unfamiliar. Every time prior which he fell into Suguru’s bed – or they collapsed into the same bed, if they were sent on a mission together – he would wrap himself thoroughly in Suguru’s cursed energy until it choked him into unconsciousness. The consideration that they were human beings never even crossed his mind – he was just a vessel of exhaustion and cursed energy, his body a machine that needed to cool down before its next use tomorrow.

“Satoru,” Suguru addresses in that familiar, song-like lilt. “Come here.”

So Satoru goes to him, wrapped in the overwhelmingly soft sleep clothes with which he allows contact. The blanket is also soft and Suguru’s hands are warm as they touch his arms, then pull him into Suguru’s embrace. This is also unfamiliar – they never held each other when they shared a bed, never this methodically or neatly.

“Suguru.” Satoru breathes in a lungful of Suguru’s scent when Suguru presses Satoru’s head into his chest. It smells like blood, like life, like the children who Suguru adopted, like the soba they had for lunch. The smell of fabrics and laundry detergents is in the way and Satoru finds himself wanting the clothing to go away.

“Satoru.” His breath quickens when Suguru’s hands lower to the nape of his neck, large hand wrapping around the muscles that surround his spine. He can feel the location of each of Suguru’s fingers in relation to his vertebrae, the locations of each bone in Suguru’s hand in relation to the nerves in his spinal cord.

It’d be so easy for Suguru to snap his neck right now. It’d be so easy for him to summon a curse with blades that go directly through the space between each of his vertebrae. He can feel it, the taste of blood on his tongue as the liquid fills his esophagus after the tube is punctured. Then RCT would automatically kick in, and the neck wound would close even quicker than it formed.

Suguru is life itself, yet even he cannot impose death onto a god.

But even if god cannot experience death, he craves the touch of life.

“Suguru,” Satoru breathes, a soft exhale into the fabrics. “Can I touch you?”

Suguru’s heartbeat picks up at that, an accelerated lub-dub lub-dub that seems to echo through Satoru’s skull. His breathing accelerates too, in a reaction not unlike fear, but his colours are not that vivacious blood red. “You can do anything to me, Satoru.”

So Satoru moves his hands downwards, pressing them under the seam of Suguru’s sleep shirt and placing his open palms against Suguru’s waist. He traces the lines of Suguru’s spine with his fingertips, mapping the location of every vertebra and aligning the bones in his hands with the contour of Suguru’s ribcage.

“If you had wings,” Satoru muses, “would they grow out of your spine right here?”

The words make Suguru pause, the hand on Satoru’s neck no longer caressing his vertebrae. “Bird wings are analogous to human arms, Satoru.”

“Not bird wings,” Satoru replies. “Angel wings.”

Suguru stiffens. “I’m not an angel.”

Satoru doesn’t say anything. He’s not too familiar with the folklore of angels, so he doesn’t really know the technicalities. But if angels are meant to be the right-hand men of gods, then Suguru would be his angel. No, that’s not enough – Suguru is his one and only. He is all that is beautiful in the world, and the only thing in the world that matters. “Angel” is not a sufficient word to describe him. It is a box, a role that constrains and restricts everything that Suguru is.

It doesn’t matter, what the humans think. It doesn’t matter, what everyone else thinks. The only thing that matters is Suguru’s skin beneath his fingertips. Satoru traces the planes of his muscles gently, feeling the blood and nerve impulses that pulse beneath his skin. Suguru’s cursed energy pulses in time with his heartbeat, rising and falling like tides.

Suguru is life itself, and Satoru craves what he cannot have.

He pushes up the shirt until Suguru is raising his arms to remove it completely. He presses his arms flush against Suguru’s back, digging his fingers into the space beneath Suguru’s shoulder blades. Satoru is objectively a large human but Suguru’s shoulder blades encompass more space than Satoru’s hands. He imagines the scrape of bone on bone if Satoru were to touch Suguru’s scapulas with the bones of his fingers. The material would grind roughly and harshly, the sound scratching the walls of the room and tearing through the cells the bones are composed of.

But both of them are wrapped in layers of skin and muscle. Satoru presses his fingers flush into the space between Suguru’s shoulders, feeling the pulse of blood beneath his fingertips, feeling the pulse of his own blood beneath his own skin. His blood is barely blood at all, composed of cursed energy instead of organic matter, but his heart still beats in a pathetic attempt to convince his body that he’s still human.

Suguru pushes Satoru’s face into his bare chest and Satoru feels Suguru’s heartbeat pulsating through his entire skull, echoing and resonating like the shaking of a building in an earthquake. The sound is all-encompassing and all-consuming, each pulse sending vibration through Satoru’s fingertips and toes. It sings with the sound of life, with the sound of the world.

Satoru craves.

Each breath of Suguru’s scent feels like he’s drowning in everything the world has to offer, every bit of life and every corner of the universe. Suguru smells like humanity, like imperfections, like everything that is ugly and everything that makes the ugly beautiful. Suguru smells like life, like the grotesque, like blood and flowers and homecooked meals and the laughter of children. The cursed energy flowing through his veins craves this pulse of life and Satoru finds himself opening his mouth, wanting to taste Suguru’s blood on his teeth-

And then he stops. Although he is a god, he is still restricted by binding vows. He must not consume Suguru.

Deep breath in, deep breath out.

Suguru is human. He is fragile. He needs to be cared for like a flower. Satoru can’t do these awful, inhuman rituals with him. Suguru is the reason why he banned them for all of his family, after all.

Suguru is all of humanity. Suguru is all of life. There would be no merit in consuming him.

So when Satoru opens his mouth again, he presses his tongue to Suguru’s flesh and breathes in the gasp that Suguru lets out. Life is salty on his tongue; he tastes like sweat and blood and oils and acid. He tastes like suffering and compassion and empathy and emotions. He closes his mouth and wipes his saliva away with his sleeve; he doesn’t know how much of even his saliva is composed of cursed energy, but he won’t risk hurting Suguru. Not again, not anymore.

“Satoru,” Suguru whispers breathily. His heartrate has gone up and his breathing is shallow.

“Shh,” Satoru hushes. “Sleep, Suguru.”

Because that was the whole point of all of this, wasn’t it? For Suguru to be embraced with unconsciousness, the quiet and sweet kiss of death that it offers before it swallows life whole. For Satoru to experience it as well, or at least try to remember what it feels like to be human, body needing a way to remind itself that death is constantly on their heels in order to force itself to keep living.

His words make Suguru no less restless, but it seems to remind Suguru of their original goal. Suguru tucks Satoru’s chin against his clavicle, blocking out all light from his eyes, and extends his cursed energy around Satoru like an all-encompassing hug. He wraps him in such thick, dense cursed energy that it chokes him, consumes him, overwhelms every part of Six Eyes that seeks more information.

With a slow breath, Satoru disables RCT, and the world goes dark.

---

End note:

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: 呪術廻戦 | Jujutsu Kaisen (Manga), 呪術廻戦 | Jujutsu Kaisen (Anime) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Getou Suguru & Gojo Satoru Characters: Gojo Satoru, Getou Suguru Additional Tags: Gojo Satoru Needs a Hug, Gojo Satoru is His Own Warning, Getou Suguru is His Own Warning, Child Gojo Satoru, Dehumanization, strongest sorcerer & strongest curse duo, Parental Getou Suguru, suguru has a saviour complex, satoru has a god complex, Mild Blood, Hurt/Comfort, Lonely Gojo Satoru, the gojo clan is a cult, Hurt Gojo Satoru, Protective Getou Suguru, no beta we die like my ability to tag, i refuse to acknowledge canon, both of them are traumatized Summary:

Nine-year-old Gojou Satoru is sent on a mission to exorcise a special-grade vengeful spirit. Said vengeful spirit is Getou Suguru, a curse user who was sick and tired of watching the people around him die.

Naturally, Satoru gets adopted. There's only one person in the world who can treat him as an equal, after all.

---

Beginning note:

title is the name of an After the Rain (soraru+mafumafu) song. from mafumafu wiki: 「天宿り」(“amayadori”) is a pun on the phrase 「雨宿り」(also ”amayadori”), which means to take shelter from the rain. The character 「天」, although referring to the sky, most often holds the connotation of heaven— thus, the title of this song can also be translated to “Taking Shelter from the Heavens”.

cursed spirit/strongest sorcerer has me in a chokehold

---

To nine-year-old Gojou Satoru, the world is terribly, utterly, infinitely

Boring.

The second-grades evolved into first-grades but exorcising curses is still so mundane. All of them die with a single shot of Blue. He wants the curses to be stronger so that they can at least hold half a matchstick to him for maybe more than five seconds but they’re all effectively just ants that die the moment he takes a step.

Today’s mission should theoretically be interesting – it’s a special-grade vengeful spirit. Satoru fidgets his legs in the back of the car (he’s sitting there because he’s too short and light to sit in the front) and plays with Blue on his fingertips. He doesn’t get special-grades often, and the few times he has gotten them have been so exciting. He’s never gotten a special-grade vengeful spirit before either; he wonders what this one will be like.

(Yes, yes, he got a mission briefing document, but reading hurts his eyes and what’s the fun in knowing all that your opponent can do? He’s nine-years-old. He likes surprises.)

They drop him off in front of the former village, 112 corpses lining the floor. Satoru raises Infinity to block out the stench of rotting flesh and cracks his knuckles as he walks into the scene. There’s an overwhelming amount of cursed energy and residuals on the scene, so much that it feels blinding to Six Eyes. The majority of it is condensed further in the village, so Satoru keeps walking.

Even though he doesn’t ever touch the bodies, they still squelch and crunch under his feet. It’s a nasty sound, wet and irritating. Damn humans, can’t even be bothered to dispose of their own bodies. Why are sorcerers the only ones who do it properly?

He is still focused, though, so it doesn’t bring him any surprises when he hears the whisper of who are you doesn’t surprise him.

“Hmm, Gojou Satoru, current user of Six Eyes and Limitless, here to exorcise you,” he drawls, but his heart is pounding with excitement. He can feel the masses of cursed energy pulsating like a heartbeat, viscerally pushing and pulling with emotions and desires and power-

And then it stops. What?

I don’t fight children, the vengeful spirit replies, sounding too human to be a curse. Satoru wrinkles his nose.

“You looking down on me or something?” Satoru sneers. “I’ll have you know I’m more powerful than any sorcerer you’ve encountered in the past four hundred years. Besides, you certainly fought children when you burned down this village.”

The cursed energy around him swirls relentlessly, tasting of all kinds of emotions that Satoru hasn’t been able to feel in years. They twist and churn like trees in a typhoon, contorting and distorting into amorphous forms of raw feeling.

It feels raw. It feels visceral.

Satoru wants more of it.

Those are monkeys, the vengeful spirit hisses. They deserved to die. I have no conflict with you. Leave.

“Nah, I don’t think I will,” Satoru grins, because how interesting. He’s had curses run from him before but he’s never had one turn down a fight like this. For the vengeful spirit to say that it has no conflict with him? He’s a sorcerer; he was born and bred to kill.

Leave! The vengeful spirit snarls, but that just riles up Satoru even more. He pulls Infinity tighter around him and draws raw cursed energy upon his fingertips, leaping two steps towards where the cursed energy is most dense. The vengeful spirit senses him, of course, so it starts to move.

“Oh no you don’t!” Satoru laughs, a full grin on his face. He can feel it – the suffocating cursed energy that pulses out in waves, the speed at which it moves; this vengeful spirit is strong, perhaps even stronger than he is. The thought tips him into a high, blood roaring in his ears as he sprints.

He can feel the vengeful spirit, a condensed ball of a hundred thousand cursed energy signatures. It’s twisting and churning like it’s eating itself, the marks of countless curses upon the ex-human’s skin.

Oh, this is going to be so fun!

Curses fly at him like mosquitoes and he blasts them all away with Blue, not bothering to watch them dissipate as more curses come at him. There’s a manta ray, a yuki-onna, something that looks like a cheap version of Mahoraga – Satoru jumps and leaps throughout the air as he fires Blue at everything.

Leave! The vengeful spirit growls. You are walking into your own death!

“And why do you care if I die?” Satoru sings breathlessly, jumping and soaring over a blast of ice. His heart is pounding like never before, the unfamiliar rush of adrenaline spiking through his veins. His body feels so light and yet so easy to control at the same time; he doesn’t think he’d mind if this is the battlefield he dies on.

(Oh, how the prospect of death excites him! For something to be able to kill a god-)

You are a child! The vengeful spirit snaps, and there’s a sort of edge to its sounds that make Satoru even more curious. He’s a child? Is this one a pedophile, perhaps? Or a cannibal? Why does his age make him special?

“A child who’s strong enough to exorcise you!” Satoru taunts, blasting Blue at another curse. This is fun! This is so, so interesting. Vengeful spirits naturally attract curses, but this one seems like it’s in control of them. Is it its cursed technique? Vengeful spirits were all formerly sorcerers, after all; perhaps this one had something like Ten Shadows?

The vengeful spirit is still clearly looking down on him because the curse sent at his exposed back is possibly the weakest one in its arsenal. Satoru lets it come close, kiss the clothes on his back, and then envelops the entire thing with Infinity so dense it crushes the curse into dust. He does the same with the rest of the curses – extends Infinity to push them away, pulls back enough for them to fall towards him, then envelop them and crush them.

Weak, weak, weak – Satoru can feel that this vengeful spirit is stronger than that! But the vengeful spirit is running away, pulling its cursed energy and the curses with it.

“Won’t you come play with me?” Satoru shouts joyously, tearing into the fabric of space and teleporting right to the vengeful spirit’s side. The vengeful spirit wears a human face, a tall man with black hair and brilliant violet eyes. It startles and snaps away when Satoru throws a fist embedded in cursed energy at it.

“I have no interest in fighting you!” the vengeful spirit exclaims defensively. It speaks with its mouth and jumps backwards with its feet, almost like it’s a human. The only visual indication that it’s a vengeful spirit is the mosaic of black lines running up its neck onto its cheeks.

“I didn’t realize vengeful spirits were that eager to be exorcised!” Satoru responds, condensing Blue in front of him into a black hole and shredding everything around them. The weaker curses disintegrate in seconds and the stronger curses scream, firing cursed energy back at him. He dodges all of the blasts and Infinity covers the aftershocks.

“I didn’t realize child sorcerers were this eager to die,” the vengeful spirit spits, cursed energy swirling and churning. Satoru pushes a hand through a dense wall of curses and reaches forwards, trying to touch the vengeful spirit-

Slice.

Drip, drip, drip.

Blazing, fiery pain explodes in his fingers and burns up his arm. Everything is still there – his fingers, his bones – but there’s a massive web of cuts on his hand.

“You touched me,” Satoru breathes, lightheaded. “You cut me.”

The vengeful spirit pauses and the curses around him all stop moving. “Is that not a given? Is this all – “

“Do it again!” Satoru exclaims gleefully, throwing his hand backwards and watching his blood splatter all over the vengeful spirit’s robes. His heart is hammering against his ribcage and his blood is singing in his veins. Adrenaline has him in a chokehold like a drug and he wants more.

“Wh- what is wrong with you!?” the vengeful spirit shouts as Satoru lunges forth, blood mixing with cursed energy and splattering upon the ground. He strikes, Black Flashes and blows of Blue coated in Infinity, grinning even harder when his knuckles kiss the vengeful spirit’s bare skin. His own skin splits, unused to any kind of friction or contact. The vengeful spirit is warm, like a human.

“Hey, hey, why won’t you play with me!” The words are barely coherent, flying off Satoru’s tongue with minimal conscious input from himself. He feels like he’s drowning with the amount of cursed energy and numbers coursing through his head, flying across the backs of his eyelids like flocks of crows. He lunges forwards, reaching for the vessel that’s practically bleeding cursed energy, gathering Blue on shredded skin and drawing everything towards his fingertips.

The vengeful spirit dodges the Blue but the curses surrounding it don’t. Satoru keeps channeling cursed energy into it until all the bugs and flies around him have been swallowed and crumbled; he wants to see what this vengeful spirit can do. He’s sure that it has a Domain Expansion. He wants to see it.

His arm burns like hellfire, pain pulsating through the blood that drips and splatters with every punch. It’s a kind of warmth that scorches all the way to his core, pumping his heart and organs. He laughs and screams as he throws punch after punch, catching wounds and blows that only excites the adrenaline singing in his blood.

There’s a wetness on his face, probably splattered blood, which impedes his vision. No matter; Six Eyes tells him everything he needs to know. The vengeful spirit sends three sword-like formations in his direction; he twists to jump between them like a circus show. There’s so much feeling in the world, so much sensation, so much colour-!

He raises Infinity when the vengeful spirit finally charges towards him, particles of Blue on every fingertip, excitement pounding in his ears at the idea of the vengeful spirit finally taking this fight seriously (what kind of colours would the world be painted if he died?) but instead of hitting him with any kind of blow, the vengeful spirit just slams into him bodily and they both tumble to the ground.

…what?

The vengeful spirit has its distinctly human arms wrapped around him, as tight as Infinity will allow. His form towers over Satoru’s tiny child-sized body, but he doesn’t feel dangerous. Not anymore.

“What is the meaning of this?” Satoru snarls. He wants pain, wants adrenaline, wants a fight. He doesn’t know what’s happening, but it’s definitely none of the above.

“Kid,” the vengeful spirit whispers in his ear. “Drop your technique. I won’t hurt you.”

“I’m not stupid,” Satoru snaps.

“Drop your technique for one minute and I vow not to hurt you in that one minute,” the vengeful spirit presses, cursed energy coiling around them in a distinct mark of a binding vow.

What on earth is this guy doing? Satoru doesn’t get it at all, but he drops Infinity anyway.

Instantly, the vengeful spirit’s skin comes into contact with his, warm flesh against blood. He can feel every bit of the vengeful spirit, silky hair and smooth skin and soft fabrics.

It’s unfamiliar. It’s overwhelming. It’s warm.

It brings all sorts of weird sensations into Satoru’s chest, burning like the blood dripping from his hands. It curls around him like ribbons of blood and flesh and softens every edge of pain around him.

Satoru could exorcise it right now. It can’t do anything to fight back for a minute. Theoretically, that would be the best time to strike, but Satoru finds that he doesn’t want to kill it. He wants a fight, wants a game. If he killed it like this right now, he might be losing his only chance of playing with something – someone – more powerful than him.

“There were two little girls in the village. Sorcerers. Have your clan take them in and I’ll go with you,” the vengeful spirit says, holding Satoru in a way that makes him feel so, so small.

His answer should be no. This is a vengeful spirit, after all. He was sent to kill it. But he doesn’t want to.

“What’s two human girls to you?” Satoru demands, but his voice is quieter now, softer. He doesn’t think he’s ever spoken this softly since his ascension to godhood ceremony.

“You don’t know who I am?” the vengeful spirit asks, sounding surprised and somewhat bitter. “Surely they gave you a mission report.”

“I don’t read those. Makes it too boring,” Satoru drawls in response.

The vengeful spirit sighs, long and exhausted. “My name is Getou Suguru, ex-jujutsu sorcerer. I became a vengeful spirit out of hatred towards non-sorcerers and the system that makes sorcerers throw their lives away as children.”

The vengeful spirit wraps an arm around Satoru, lifting him off the ground and cradling him to its chest. When it runs a hand through Satoru’s hair, Satoru doesn’t want to resist.

“I became like this because I was tired of watching kids like you die,” it murmurs, humming softly. It’s walking now, back to the village it burned to the ground, completely unbothered by the human remains under its feet. It should be humiliating, being carried like this – by a vengeful spirit, no less – but Satoru can’t bring himself to hate it.

He’ll get his clan to take the girls in. He doesn’t really care either way, but it seems to matter a lot to this walking contradiction of a vengeful spirit. His clan won’t say no, either; he’s their god, after all.

There’s a feeling in his mind, in his chest, reaching for the vengeful spirit. He longs to touch it, to fight it, to bleed with it. The minute has already passed, but Infinity is still down, and the vengeful spirit hasn’t laid a hand on him.

Is this what it feels like, to meet someone as strong as him?

Is this what it means to be equals?

---

End note:

to clarify: all the cursed spirits that satoru has fought are manifestations of emotions, not sorcerers that weren't disposed of properly. that's why suguru is an anomaly

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