* / before the dawn.

( what's the point anymore? )

on repeat, it hammers. again and again. beating itself into the back of his skull to replace logic, craving itself into his spine as to replace the courage and the strength; ' this isn't like you, suguru. you are strong, suguru. don't ignore it, suguru. didn't you teach me that?' some teacher, he thinks, and since when has gojo satoru found himself willing to learn? since when... since when ( eyes fall towards the grasp around that far too worn wrist, aching not from the touch but the tension which seeps through his body; even now, even here, it's almost grounding – ) did his touch start to feel foreign?

it's an uncanny feeling, realizing that the weight on his own body as dropped and that such close contact will easily reveal the extent of it. starved, rotting. what good was eating when everything tasted the same? regret, disgust, hate. every sip of water as close to acid as it came and every once savory bite of one's favorite food crumbling into stale ash the second it hit his tongue.

this corpse is not one that satoru will carry.

this corpse would sooner rot at the bottom of the sea.

" are you okay , then ? " he asks in return, coldly, not the sharpness that has brewed on his tongue throughout this mission. it's a far too haunting question between them and them alone, not they as in the strongest, but them as in the weakest. " are you fine ? are you content with the way the path ahead has unraveled for either one of us ? are you satisfied with the narrative of humanity ? "

had it been a different life, perhaps suguru would have found himself capable of twisting the touch around, but there's no need. no motivation. no lingering desire to return to him what is offered. what remains is a corpse, withering away within the one touch he never thought he'd crumble in, a corpse whose beating heart weakens with every step ahead and whose legs are far too ready to give out. he cannot turn this touch around, nor can he find it in him to reach back in return – there's no reason to.

and there, there, in the moment the next question slips out of him, suguru feels a part of his own heart crack. it falls, deep, crumbles and spreads itself thin throughout his own shell, seemingly dimming an already dead light further.

" are you capable of saying her name as if it never mattered to begin with, satoru ? "

( there's a new star vessel ready / i want to live )

satoru wants to bristle, automatically defensive at any perception that he isn't okay, but (you have already lost someone once from your arrogance. can you afford that again?) he attempts to let go of the discomfort that comes from being vulnerable, trying to actually answer suguru's question rather than to snap back with something quick and shallow.

is he okay? is he content with how things have turned since? (on the rare occasion you find yourself sleeping, sometimes you remember how it felt to breathe despite being split in half, the way you could feel yourself sluggishly bleeding as your body's healing kicked into overdrive. you hadn't stopped to look at the pile of blood you had left behind because you hadn't needed to -- you had felt every bit of it rushing, oozing out.)

(sometimes, you find yourself waking up and clutching your throat, expecting your hand to go through a hole that is no longer there.)

he's been working like a dog, the higher-ups taking his awakening and his failure and forcing him to work, especially once they knew that rct could substitute for sleep. he's rarely been in school since, flown to different parts of japan and the world, taking on missions that no one else can. so far away from suguru -- one of the only people he cares about -- that he can barely recognise him now. pale. unseeing.

(maybe a part of him also -- ).

he's barely given a chance to answer when suguru's next question, torn from his lips like it's been tortured out of him, hits so hard that he sharply inhales, hand tightening around suguru's without conscious input.

(yes, you want to say, because you know that you have, even though you can barely remember the second fight with fushiguro. you had been in a daze; the world around you brighter and more full than it had ever been before. everything had been moving in slow motion, coated by golden rays. you know you had a passing thought about amanai, but you can't remember it now. all you can remember is your ascension and the fall.)

(no, you think the answer is now. too coated with guilt, too curious about the "what ifs". suguru's only said her answer once, after they buried her and lit incense at her marker. "she wanted to live," he had said, staring at the smoke trailing up in the sky, and the irony made satoru's teeth grit.)

silence is his answer for perhaps too long, teeth biting the inside of his mouth so hard he's surprised he doesn't taste the tang of blood. "i am capable of that," he says quietly because it's true, "but i'd be lying because she matters to me." somehow, the brat managed to get under his skin faster than anyone else ever had before.

you know, when i was a sales girl, not yet a sales woman, i had a knack for making something out of nothing. even when i was a 𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖞 𝖑𝖎𝖙𝖙𝖑𝖊 𝖆𝖕𝖕𝖑𝖊, i had a green thumb. i made my own 𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓪𝓭𝓲𝓼𝓮 out of … playgrounds, doll houses, oversized costco boxes. because i had to. ❜  [ had to ... what? ] survive. ❜ ⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

(Throat) - sender grabs reciever by their throat

(jaw) - sender takes hold of recievers jaw harshly

(wrist) - sender has hold of recievers wrist / wrists

(twist) - sender twists reciever's arms behind their back

(bind) - sender restrains reciever with item of choice

(pull) - sender pulls reciever roughly to them

(drag) - sender drags reciever to / away from something

(hair) - sender pulls or controls receiver by their hair

(pin) - sender pins reciever to the wall

(knife) - sender uses a knife against reciever as a threat

(nick) - sender nicks reciever with a knife

(push) - sender pushes reciever roughly

(eyes) - sender forces receiver to look at them

(neck) - sender grabs the back of reciever's neck

(smack) -sender slaps reciever

(grip) - sender grabs reciever by their shirt

(gag) - sender forces reciever to stay quiet (with hand or with a gag)

(strike) - sender hits reciever with their hand or other item

Don't tell Miyano.

Confession. Rejection.

He didn't even know who the blonde was referring to, the only person he ever saw him with aside from their little group was his roo-

Slowly realization paints over his face, mouth hanging wider by the second as light shines within his eyes.

"Shut up." Kagi? Roommate Kagi? Kagi who didn't want to show Hirano his chest Kagi?

he can feel himself flush red, which fucking sucks, as taiga outright watches sasaki make the connection. (he's pretty sure sasaki has never seen him turn red before, which feels more humiliating than he would have thought despite the fact that he has literally watched sasaki's somewhat sad love life at times crash and burn with miyano. maybe that's what makes it so much more embarrassing? this time, it's his turn in the "limelight", so to speak.).

worried. asshole. fucking worried, fucking repulsive – him? capable of carrying concern in between tight schedules and supply and demand? somewhere, somewhere, there should be a fragment of suguru that finds it in him to listen, take those words into consideration instead of false consolation; i'm fucking worried about you, from the other side of japan, in the middle of night and nowhere to be found. but there is no fragment that finds itself willing to listen to the words that fall so monotone within that hazy veil that suffocates suguru's mind.

worry? worry? the great heir of the gojo clan, worry? no, it doesn't add up, doesn't sound right. doesn't make suguru turn his head to glance at the one he calls... called (?)... finds retracing hollowed steps straying between close friends.

( w h e n did it all w h i t h e r away ? when did t h i s piece of m i n d slip away ? )

" did you believe you had to ask ? "

and there it is again, that same cursed toxicity that boils within. his own, or some else's? someone so dark and twisted that not even the curse manipulator can find it him to keep it down. " greatness shows, where most of us spend three years on a stone, the great gojo satoru only spends a split second ; what is there to find yourself troubled about ? they call my name, i answer and i see the mission till the end," it seethes, it burns, it bellows in the depths of his own tormented soul, that far too fickle thing that have already started to melt and twist. it no longer blends and molds in hope and pursuit for the greater good of those that require their assistance (to reach for a new tomorrow – he still cannot wash her blood off his hand), for there's simply none left.

( i t died with h e r, it d i e d with them, it d ie d in t he s ea of ap pla use. )

" also – don't be crude , satoru ," and there's no warmth in the way he speaks his name, speaks. no call. no invitation. satoru. how strange it is to speak his name in his presence, not merely consideration (ah, how fingers curl and clench within their secluded place / satoru, satoru, satoru ). " no one likes a foul-mouthed superior. "

and there it goes, comes and fades, the glance over his shoulder that takes him to the last time he looked to him with such numbness; a flickering sea of clapping hands, the blurry image of white tucked into his arms (there's no life, there's no breath, there's no hope). dead and torn, carved out with nothing but echoing blanks for eyes. there's no one there anymore, no one willing to pretend that there aren't ghosts lingering in the air between them. he's looking at him, but not him. the one who stood in that sea, not the one on the mission with him. they are not the same, they will never the same.

satoru has never been fooled by suguru's polite veneer -- suguru can be as rude and as much of an asshole as satoru is, often on purpose with an air of obliviousness. and yet, each word that comes out of suguru's mouth dripped in absolute venom comes as a complete surprise. it almost sounds like suguru is jealous of satoru's strength, but suguru had never hesitated in agreeing with satoru that they were the strongest.

(but... even you acknowledge that you, alone, are the strongest. untouchable with the inverted spear of heaven now in your hands. how long has it been since you were the strongest together? how long has it been since you said those words?)

(after all, you changed the balance of the world simply by being born. it is your fault that curses have gotten stronger as you grow older and more powerful. you don't want to die -- you already know what it's like -- but you never asked to be born like this. an abnormality. a tool. a god.)

(suguru and shōko made you human. taken the deity and brought you down to earth in such a way that your clan can't accept. but now, the distance between you two seems greater than the infinity you keep between yourself and everyone else. he's not seeing you. you don't know what you're seeing, but he's leaving. leaving you to go to a place where you can't follow, and for the second time in your life, you're truly frightened.)

"i don't care about the mission -- this or others -- i care about you," satoru snaps. if satoru could, he'd burn the society to the ground. a fire is supposed to cleanse, right? and there is just so much wrong in this world. but. (it's your fault). determined footsteps bring him closer, and satoru purposefully brings down infinity to grab suguru's hand. (when was the last time you held him? when was the last time infinity let him in? and you realise... there is so many more things that you've lost since. you can't lose anything more. anyone more.)

(but you don't know how to navigate this. you were never taught how to navigate this. why would you have been? when you were supposed to be so vastly superior, so much higher than the rest. you were never supposed to run knee deep in the mud and sink yourself into the damnation they call love. after all, what use is a god who loves?)

(you want to tell him to take a break, but you worry it's going to come off across as arrogant. that you're only proving him right, that you think you're better than him, that you're stronger.).

"i don't worry about you because of your strength -- i know you're strong, apparently i know you're stronger than you think you are -- but this isn't like you, suguru, and it's... okay if you're not okay, but it's not going to get better if you keep ignoring it and brushing off my and shōko's concern. it's not weak to need help. didn't you teach me that?" satoru says, hoping it's not the wrong thing to say.

( sms ) : this date is a total disaster. can you call me with a fake emergency?

not requested but there's something about a text thread, isn't there? anyway, these are a mixed bucket, i'll deffo post more of these, but for now, here you go, bon appetit, and if you wanna make them texts to a wrong number?? all the better! just make it clear for the person receiving it!

( sms ) : hey! is this [WRONG NAME] from the club last night?

( sms ) : wait right there, i'm on my way

( sms ) : sorry, who is this?

( sms ) : so... last night was fun.

( sms ) : can i come over?

( sms ) : did i leave my underwear at your place last night?

( sms ) : i am having the WORST / BEST day!!

( sms ) : we need to talk.

( sms ) : i'm in. whatever it is you're planning, i'm in.

( sms ) : you awake?

( sms ) : i miss you.

( sms ) : i'm sorry.

( sms ) : wanna hang out later?

( sms ) : it's honestly insane how much i love you.

( sms ) : i'm worried about you.

( sms ) : please don't say i told you so...

( sms ) : you know how you totally adore me?

( sms ) : got any plans tonight?

( sms ) : i know it's three am but i got donuts and i'm outside.

( sms ) : i'm outside. come on. we're going out.

( sms ) : i'm boooooooooored.

( sms ) : i can't sleep.

( sms ) : i know it's late, but... would you like to go for a walk with me?

( sms ) : where are you?

( sms ) : i love you.

( sms ) : are you really okay?

( sms ) : please don't shut me out. i can tell when something's bothering you.

( sms ) : can you come pick me up please?

( sms ) : this date is a total disaster. can you call me with a fake emergency?

( sms ) : why have you been acting so weird lately?

( sms ) : you know you can tell me anything, right?

( sms ) : not to sound like a tv trope, but i need a plus one for a wedding this weekend. you in?

( sms ) : wanna do fake proposals at fancy restaurants for free food?

( sms ) : wanna go on vacation together?

( sms ) : i got arrested and it's a hilarious story but i really need you to come bail me out first.

( sms ) : what the hell happened last night?

( sms ) : i don't wanna be alone tonight. can i stay at your place?

( sms ) : i got a code red situation.

( sms ) : what's shakin, bacon?

( sms ) : what should i have for dinner tonight?

( sms ) : it's so boring when you're not around.

( sms ) : so... the drunk voicemails i left you last night... you totally listened to them, didn't you.

( sms ) : i love you but if you ever eat my bagel bites again...