#because i was alive for 2006

[kindredspiritsandgoodomens]

sometimes I think about how Sam Tyler wanted so so badly to go home where 'people don't want anything from me, they just love me' but still managed to fairly consistently treat everyone as a human being (even when he thought they were imaginary constructs) and his obituary writer called him 'the most loved man' she'd ever met

[nonstandardrepertoire]

Parashat Pinəḥas, 5784

(This dəvar was originally given at Kolot Chayeinu on the morning of Saturday, 27 July, 2024.)

Today's Torah portion comes from the book of Numbers, which is called that in English because it has so many lists of numbers of things. Several of those lists occur in today's portion, including a second census of all the Israelites in the wilderness. You may remember a similar census being taken way back at the beginning of the book, some forty years ago or so; we have to do another one here because the entire generation that was counted in that first census has since died. Or, well, that entire generation minus Mosheh (for now), Yəhoshú’a and Kaleiv, and everyone who wasn't yet 20 the first time around. But still, close enough. An entire generation, give or take, minus those spared by G-d or fate or what have you.

Perhaps because it's a census of the next generation, this list of Israelite adults contains some little nuggets of history along with the tribal tallies. We hear about Qóraḥ's rebellion, for example, and then we hear that the sons of Qóraḥ did not die.

It gets an entire verse all to itself, Numbers 26:11: And the sons of Qóraḥ did not die.

What do we make of this?

One approach is to take it very literally: Qóraḥ had some sons, they didn't rebel with him, they didn't die. That's the approach Ibn Ezra — a scholar from early twelfth-century Spain — takes. He notes that several psalms are attributed to the tribe of Qóraḥ, surmises that these must be Qóraḥ's descendants, and explains that some of Qóraḥ's kids must therefore have survived. Easy enough.

But if you know anything about our tradition, you know that our sages of blessed memory are seldom satisfied with a simple surface reading, and they have some wild things to extrapolate from this one verse. The Babylonian Talmud, in tractate Sanhedrin, page 110a, records a story from Rabba bar bar Ḥanah. He says he met a guy this one time who brought him to a crack in the earth that belched steam and heat so intense it could singe wet wool when passed over it at spear's length. And yet when bar bar Ḥanah listened, he heard the sons of Qóraḥ singing songs of praise from the underworld.

The Talmud doesn't cite a Biblical prooftext for this story, but we can find an allusion to it in Numbers 26:11 itself: If you take the first letter of each word in the verse, you get ו, ק, ל, ם, which together spell vəqolam, "and their voice". The sons of Qóraḥ did not die, and neither did their voice. If you listen, perhaps you can still hear it today.

What does that voice tell us? If you take Mosheh's side of the dispute, which the sages certainly do, this is a warning that no victory is final, that there will never be a perfectly stable society where no one seeks to challenge the status quo. It's a warning against resting on your laurels, a warning that leadership requires constant attention to discontent among those you hope to lead.

If you take Qóraḥ's side, tho, it suggests that defeat need not be final either, that a setback, however ruinous, to the cause of pursuing justice is never the end of the story — the sons of Qóraḥ did not die; another generation will come and carry on the fight.

This reading echoes Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg's quip that dissents speak to a future age, that the dissenter's hope is that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.[1] Dissents like these remind us that the past is not flat, that the majority or official opinions aren't the only ones that existed, and that the world does not always move in a tidy line from less to more just.

Our tradition is full of dissents such as these. One that I come back to regularly as I build my own Jewish life is a dissent from Rabbi Howard Handler from 1992. At the time, Rabbi Handler was a member of the Conservative Movement's halakhic authority, the Committee for Jewish Law and Standards, which was debating whether to alter the traditional ban on homosexuality. The majority opinions adopted by the Committee reflect the ambient homophobia of the time — the consensus position includes a clause saying they will not accept "avowed homosexuals'' into the movement's rabbinical school, for example — but Rabbi Handler's dissent is having none of it. He writes:

The CJLS has made gay and lesbian Jews second-class citizens or, even worse, a tolerated minority. . . . The policies are discriminatory at best and profoundly oppressive in any event. There is no reason for us to hesitate in accepting gays and lesbians into our community with complete equality.[2]

In some ways, this dissent, with its insistence on full equality for queer Jews, goes further than the Committee would go some fourteen years later, in 2006, when the Committee finally approved a təshuvah abrogating their halakhic ban.[3] His dissent is a reminder of what could have been, that there is a radical tradition there for us in the past, no matter how hard some have tried to bury it.

Rabbi Handler wrote these words some ten years into the AIDS crisis. Despite Fukuyama's "End of History", it was a time of tremendous upheaval, uncertainty, and death. In my undergraduate gay and lesbian history class, the lecture on the early years of the crisis was the one lecture my professor asked us not to take notes on. Instead of his usual academic analysis, he just showed us pictures from when he was in college, some 40 years ago or so, pictures of his friends, with little annecdotes about each of them in turn. This one would always make sure you got home safe from the party, no matter how drunk you were. This one was so beautiful, but so annoying to be in class with. This one sang so enthusiastically, even if he wasn't always the most in tune. Each of these stories, a whole hour's worth of them, ended in the same way: And he died. And he died. And he died. A whole generation, give or take, minus those spared by G-d or fate or what have you.

In 1993, Rabbi Handler was outed and fired from the congregation where he had had a pulpit. He was kicked off the Committee for Jewish Law and Standards, and his former colleagues debated whether the movement should help him find a new job. In a decision stark in its cruelty, fourteen of these rabbis voted to deny him that help. He was left without a rabbinical position.

But the sons of Qóraḥ did not die.

Queer Jews did not simply go away. We certainly didn't get any quieter. 1992 was not the first time we asserted our halakhic rights, and it would not be the last. The struggle is far from over, but more and more, these days, it's the people who would shame us who are themselves shamed instead.

We are living in a time of tremendous upheaval, uncertainty, and death. (When are we not!) I don't know how it will all turn out. I don't know what the ledger will say when the final case has been tried and decided, the final verdict rendered with no appeal left in any court human or Divine. I don't know where things will stand when history truly, finally ends. I don't know what happens when that day comes.

But I do know it won't come for a while yet. And so even when the prospects seem bleak, when I am in despair and the possibility of bending the universe towards justice seems faint, remote, impossible, even then I keep working, keep putting my little voice out into the world. Because I want there to be a record of it. Because I want people to know I was here. Because, even if things don't all turn out the way I hope they will, perhaps another generation in some future age will be able to say "Look! Even back then, there were people who thought like this, who fought for these ideals, however imperfectly and unsuccessfully.''

Because the sons of Qóraḥ will not die.

Shabbat shalom.

This quote has been widely repeated, which makes it difficult to track down a precise source. If anyone can point me to the origin, I'd love to cite it more properly.

Rabbi Howard Handler, “In the Image of G-d: A Dissent in Favor of the Full Equality of Gay and Lesbian Jews into the Community of Conservative Judaism”, 25 Mar, 1992 (PDF)

In my experience, many Conservative shuls today go much further than even the most permissive ruling in 2006 would theoretically allow. The ruling in question explicitly says that bisexual Jews must only enter into relationships with Jews of the "opposite" binary gender, and bars gay and lesbian Jews from sanctifying their relationships with the rite of qidushin. (Instead, they create an alternate rite that heterosexual Jews are not supposed to use — it's very marriage vs civil union, honestly.[4]) I have been in many Conservative shuls in the past ~8 years where I would be, frankly, shocked if the suggestion that bisexuals halakhically ought to limit themselves to heterosexuality were met with anything other than shocked condemnation. There is the Law, and then there is the Community, and I think it's important to remember that they're not always in synch.[5]

Or at least, that's the theory. In 2017, the CJLS approved a təshuvah about trans people that, among other things, allows married Jews to stay married after one of them transitions, meaning that you can, in fact, have two men or two women joined in qidushin or a man and a woman joined with the bərit ahuvim after all. But I digress...

That said, from what I gather, both the 1992 and 2006 discussions of gay and lesbian Jews in the CJLS were acrimonious and distressing for most of those involved, so I understand why they're not exactly eager to dredge the whole thing up again.

[homiro]

#all weebs should be legally required to read about japanese imperialism both inside and outside the country that is now labeled as “japan”

Couldn't have put it better if I tried, prev.

The Ainu have not intentionally forgotten their culture and their language. It is the modern Japanese state that, from the Meiji era on, usurped our land, destroyed our culture, and deprived us of our language under the euphemism of assimilation. In the space of a mere 100 years, they nearly decimated the Ainu culture and language that had taken tens of thousands of years to come into being on this earth. ~Kayano Shigeru (1926-2006) Our Land Was a Forest: An Ainu Memoir

[yououghtaknow]

personally i am neutral on/dislike Most of the changes made to company (2018) BUT when they made bobbie say “but who will take care of me?” instead of “but who will i take care of?” ..... now That was good

[schadenfreudich]

At this point, I just say I'm multilingual.

How many? Haha, good question.

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Dead or Alive - You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) 1984

"You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" is a song by the English pop band Dead or Alive, featured on their second studio album, Youthquake (1985). Released as a single in November 1984, it reached number 1 in the UK in March 1985, taking 17 weeks to get there. On the US Billboard Hot 100, it peaked at number 11, becoming their highest-charting single there. The song also reached number 1 in Ireland and in Canada, while in Australia it peaked at number 3, and it charted highly in numerous European countries.

According to lead vocalist Pete Burns, the record company was unenthusiastic about "You Spin Me Round" to such an extent that Burns had to take out a £2,500 loan to record it. After it was recorded, he recalled, "the record company said it was awful" and the band had to fund production of the song's video themselves.

A remix version of "You Spin Me Round" was released in 2003 at the same time Dead or Alive's greatest hits album Evolution: The Hits was released. The song reached number 23 in the UK Singles Chart. The original 1984 recording was re-released on 30 January 2006 because of Pete Burns's controversial time as a contestant on television series Celebrity Big Brother and reached number 5.

"You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" received a total of 90,2% yes votes!

[breawycker]

This panel is why I love Cassandra Cain

[Photo ID: Cassandra Cain (Batgirl) and Stephanie Brown (Spoiler/Batgirl) floating above a destroyed Blüdhaven (see: Infinite Crisis) talking about Brenda Miller who is lying dead half submerged in green liquid from Chemo next to another mostly submerged corpse, some rubble, a telephone pole knocked at a 45° angle, some ruined buildings. Cass and Steph are both depicted as being far away so their faces are completely blank. Their hair is blowing in the wind and they're both in costume but not wearing masks. Cass is in her Batgirl black full body suit with a utility belt around her waist and Steph is in her Spoiler purple full body suit, blue gloves, boots, and utility belt, and her purple hood is on her back. Here is their dialogue

Cass: Brenda. No. No. I... She... ...Why does everyone I care about die?

Steph: Because... You care about everybody. And everybody dies.

End ID]

batgirl (2000) #73

- …why does everyone i care about die?

- because… you care about everybody. and everybody dies.

[undying-love]

Paul's grief over time: A Compilation

“During the session [in 1981] Paul fell into a lugubrious mood. He said, ‘I’ve just realized that John is gone. John’s gone. He’s dead and he is not coming back.’ And he looked completely dismayed, like shocked at something that had just hit him. ‘Well, it’s been a few weeks now.’ He said, ‘I know, Eric, but I’ve just realized." (Eric Stewart)

“It’s still weird even to say, ‘before he died’. I still can’t come to terms with that. I still don’t believe it. It’s like, you know, those dreams you have, where he’s alive; then you wake up and… 'Oh’.” (Paul, 1986)

"Occasionally, it wells up. Y'know, and I'm at home on the weekend suddenly and I start thinking about him or talking to the kids about him and I can't handle it." (Paul, 1987)

"Is there a record you like to put on just to hear John’s voice?" I ask Paul the next day. Paul looks startled. He fumbles. “Oh, uh. There’s so much of it. I hear it on the car radio when I’m driving.” No, that’s not what I mean", I persist. "Isn’t there a time when you just wish you could talk to John, when you’d like to hear his voice again?" For some reason, he instead responds to the original question.“Oh sure,” he says and looks a little taken aback. ‘Beautiful Boy". (1990)

"Also not obvious is that McCartney [for the Liverpool Oratorio] has penned a gorgeous black-spiritual-like piece for mezzo-soprano that intones the last words spoken to John Lennon as he lay dying of gunshot wounds in the back of a New York police car -- "Do you know who you are?" McCartney gets a bit choked up at one point when he reveals, "Not a day goes by when I don't think of John.” (1991)

"Delicious boy, delicious broth of a boy. He was a lovely guy, you know. And it gets sadder and sadder to be saying “was”. Nearer to when he died I couldn’t believe I was saying “was”, but now I do believe I’m saying “was”. I’ve resisted it. I’ve tried to pretend he didn’t get killed." (Paul, 1995)

"Paul talked about John a a lot, but the strange thing was that it was in the present tense, “John says this" or "John thinks that. Very weird." (Peter Cox, 2006)

“John Lennon was shot dead in 1980. That totally knocked dad for six. I haven’t really spoken to him a lot about it because it is such a touchy subject." (James McCartney, 2013)

"It's very difficult for me and I, occasionally, will have thoughts and sort of say: "I don't know why I don't just break down crying every day? […] You know, I don't know how I would have dealt with it because I don't think I've dealt with it very well. In a way… I wouldn't be surprised if a psychiatrist would sort of find out that I'm slightly in denial, because it's too much." (Paul, 2020)

"Like any bereavement, the only way out is to remember how good it was with John. Because I can't get over the senseless act. I can't think about it. I'm sure it's some form of denial. But denial is the only way that I can deal with it." (Paul, 2020)

"When I talked to Paul about John and when he missed John most, he couldn't answer me for a long time and his eyes teared up. And I asked him where he thinks about John and when John comes into his mind and he just … he lost it, he completely lost it." (Bob Spitz, 2021)

-------------------------------------------------

The following two are from the gossip website Datalounge, so they may or may not be true. Still interesting though:

"The one time I was ever actually in a room with Paul, zillion people between me and him (and no way I'm gonna bother him, all of us who travel in celeb circles have people we're fans of and all of us inexplicably try to hide it to seem "cooler"), he started talking loudly about himself and John, and how hard it was not to have him there. I remember him saying something along the lines of not a day passing that John's not still in it with him, but it's not like he can pick up a phone and say, "Hey, just needed to hear your voice today," and even when he got craggy responses, he still missed them. He misses it all, and it's bothering to him that he misses him more as time goes on -- it doesn't heal, he just learns new ways to bandage the wound."

“Since everyone is anonymous here, I guess I can give a bit of info I got from a female friend of mine who at one time worked as one of Paul’s assistants. [...] She does not know for certain if John and Paul were involved but she suspects it since to this day whenever John’s name is brought up he acts in her words ‘like a widow’ and he also addresses John in present tense. He would say things like, ‘John thinks that the music should be like this,’ and during his bitter divorce from Heather he was saying, ‘John says that this is getting nasty.’ Kind of creepy." (this one actually seems very intriguing because it sounds very similar to what Peter Cox said, about Paul often talking about John in the present tense, saying "John says.." or "John thinks...")

[pftones3482]

I want to be excited for the live action Little Mermaid so badly

The Little Mermaid is my favorite Disney movie. Anyone who knows me knows I'm obsessed with mermaids as a whole and will watch any media that has them. Hell, I own my own tails and monofins. But every time I see a gif or a video for the new Little Mermaid, I cringe

(btw, this is NOT because of the casting. If you're against this movie because Ariel is black, you're a racist piece of shit and this post isn't for you)

My issue lies with the CGI. It just looks so FAKE. We've seen through the course of movies and TV shows that use it that CGI does not age well, and that's because technology is constantly improving. What was impressive in 2005 is not impressive in 2023 (Just look at Aquamarine, another movie about mermaids). And the CGI on Ariel and her sisters already looks fake and the movie isn't even out yet!

Compare this image from the trailer

To this screenshot from H20: Just Add Water (a TV show that came out in 2006):

You can see the details of the scales in the second image

The first image is flat. Sure, it's colorful, but it's flat. It's fake. Halle herself is the most beautiful and alive part of the image, because everything else is fake

The difference?

H20 had costume designers, ones specifically trained in mermaid tail making, HAND CRAFT every tail on the show. All of the scales were hand laid, all the tails molded to fit the actors/actresses perfectly, painted by hand

Let's even look at someone with no affiliation to TV or movies:

This is Mermaid Linden, a very well known (in the mermaid community) professional mermaid. You can tell her tail is not as high quality as the ones made for H20 (though it's still a VERY expensive tail) - but it still looks like it's a part of her. You can still see the details. Because professional mermaid tails are also all handmade and molded to fit each person. Even if they don't lay every individual scale, good professional mermaid tail makers are very meticulous about what they do.

This is what happens when Disney refuses to pay practical effects artists. We could have had beautiful, handmade tails that would look real on screen for decades to come and could be reused for promotional purposes - instead, they're underpaying and overworking their non-unionized employees to make CGI tails that don't even look real now.

(to be clear, I'm not shitting on the artists. As I said, they're being underpaid and overworked. This is not their fault)

And before anyone comes and says "But swimming in those is difficult!" Absolutely it is. You should never swim in a professional level tail (or even just fabric tails) without practice and training. Which Disney could have given the cast if they were willing to PAY people (the cast of H20 [a TV SHOW] literally learned how to be mermaids on set. It's been done before)

Disney's "Live Action" needs to be rebranded as "CGI with some real people tossed in" because that's all any of these remakes have been, and it's exhausting when I look at what we could have had.

[yourstru1y4ever]

Day 18 - Hiding an injury

Pairing: Satoru Gojo x F!Reader Word Count: 2.6k Content: Hidden Inventory Arc, canon typical violence (blood, passing out, becoming paralyzed), Gojo is a total asshole through most of this (sorry not sorry), Reader is in her first year at Jujutsu High along with Nanami and Haibara Tuna-Tober 2024 Masterlist <- check out the other fics posted this month!

A/N: So I’m stealing this prompt from the day 15 list because I really liked the idea of hiding an injury and I wanted to play with that here. Anyone who's curious about where in Hidden Inventory this takes place it would be in June 2006! Anywho be sure to like, reblog and comment if you want more! - YoursTruly

No one is going to help you out.

“Damn it!” You grumble. Of course the mission that the second years are supervising is the one where you, Nanami and Haibara get trapped in an incomplete domain.

The three of you were told that there was a second grade curse who could manipulate other people’s realities. The longer it was alive the stronger it would become. Granted it wasn’t supposed to be your curse to exorcize.

“A measly second grade?” Gojo whined. “Do you want us to immediately wipe it out? Give the case to someone else!” 

Gojo slouched over his desk in annoyance, while Yaga huffs out a sigh.

You and Nanami were sparring out by the track field and Haibara was keeping track of who was winning when you all overheard Gojo from the classroom.

Nanami rolled his eyes and brought his blade up towards you. Shaking your head, you spun the bamboo pole around your hands and pointed it towards him. He swung and you blocked his attack, looking for any opening to strike him.

Yaga glared at him, “Satoru is right, as much as I don’t want to feed his ego.” Geto agreed, “This curse is way too weak for us.”

Gojo brought his gaze to you and Nanami sparring. You were blocking every single hit from Nanami and you were starting to look bored.

“Why don’t we give it to the three of them?” Gojo blurted out.

Yaga followed Gojo’s gaze and took a deep breath in contemplation. “They’re still pretty weak, it’s only been a month since coming to Jujutsu High.” 

“We’ll watch over them.” Geto reasoned, “There’s plenty that they can learn from us out in the field.” 

And now you’re stuck in an incomplete domain because of their lazy asses.

You wanted to stick together as a group but due to the curse’s technique it separated you three from each other.

Maybe if Gojo wasn’t bothering you the entire bullet train ride over, you would’ve been able to sense the curse much better. 

There’s not much you can do about it now, you need to find the entrance. If the curse is strong enough to trap you in this twisted domain, then it’s strong enough to cause you serious damage. 

You can’t retrace your steps, when you look behind there’s just a vast emptiness. Looking ahead isn’t much better; it’s still a vast emptiness but you can see some semblance of walls trying to form around you.

No curses are surrounding you so you just keep walking forward. Staying still will get you killed. It had to be at least an hour since you guys had entered the domain, Geto and Gojo should’ve gotten you guys at this point. What’s taking them so long?

The walls are slowly taking more of a shape and you suddenly stop. Looking down, your feet are stuck in a viscous liquid. You’re unable to move from where you stand and you start to feel a prickling sensation at your feet.

“Damn it!” You yell. You can feel your frustration building up in your body and turning into raw cursed energy. Breathe. Conserve that energy, don’t waste it.

You close your eyes and focus your energy. Try to feel your surroundings, gauge where the curse is located. 

It’s an overwhelming presence, it feels like the curse is all around you. It has to be the domain you’re sensing. Dig deeper.

You can feel your heart beating and the blood flowing through your veins. You try to find any feeling similar to yours. 

A few moments pass by where you’re completely still, seemingly unaware of the presence that was slowly trudging towards you.

A claw swings down towards your face, “f o u n d. y o u.”

You lean back from the claw, eyes still closed but scrunched in a focus. While leaning back you focus your cursed energy to your right fist, a splattering of black and blue covering your arm.

You open your eyes and land the blow on its face. “Divergent Fist!” 

It tanks the hit, and gets pushed back when your cursed energy surges through the punch a few milliseconds after the initial hit.

The curse disperses around the room and the energy output it was spewing out grew stronger. The liquid you are stuck in is slowly creeping its way up your legs, making you more immobile.

You close your eyes again and focus on your breathing. Look defenseless, the curse will come back.

The curse’s overwhelming presence doesn’t bother you anymore. You can feel the blood moving in its body; it’s different from human blood that much you can tell.

Its weak point is now around your legs, the blood coursing through and trying to digest you. Your face twists in concentration and you can vaguely sense everyone else you were with. 

They- they’re outside!

SLASH! You barely dodge the curse’s attack, but your reaction could have been faster. You feel your right shoulder throbbing and a steady flow of blood coming out. You bring your left hand up to start putting pressure on the wound.

You needed to keep your arms up anyways since the goop is now at your hips and slowly climbing higher.

You’re the only one stuck in this incomplete domain. You can outsmart this curse. Desperate times come desperate measures.

You focus your cursed energy to flow through the bottom half of your body and you try your hardest to push your legs through the sludge.

With a lot of force your legs become free, small pin pricks lining your uniform. Run, escape, get outside. You need to see your family again.

With that thought, your legs had a dark blue outline that turned red from raw cursed energy. While Yaga trained you to keep your cursed energy more focused and balanced, you figured he would allow this exception.

As your raw energy flowed you picked up the pace, outrunning the curse. You bring the energy that flowed from your legs into your fists, never losing momentum.

With as much energy you could muster you bring your fist to a half-formed wall, “Black-!” You jump and your fist makes contact-

CRASH! “-FLASH!!” You crash through the domain, shards of the cursed energy shatter around you and you’re falling. Your hand opens up and you roll onto the ground, laying flat on your back with the wind knocked out of you.

Your body aches and you shakily bring a hand up to your right shoulder. You shift, feeling the curse still in the area. Just because you broke out of its incomplete domain, doesn’t mean that you’ve won.

“Damn. . . it. . .” You breathe out. Your legs are immobile at this point, realization sinking in when the curse poisoned you with that goop around your legs.

You can sense the curse still slinking around, waiting to finish you off but you can vaguely feel Haibara and Nanami closing in on your location. You smile and try to lean to your left side.

When you move, the curse picks up its speed to attack. Your smile doesn’t wane, if anything it gets wider.

The curse forms itself into a creature with multiple limbs, its mouth agape, leaking out purple blood. It’s charging at full speed towards you and you bring your hand up trying to give yourself some sort of protection.

You make eye contact with the curse and start laughing, “You’re. . . dead.” you huff out. Two fingers curl into your palm and the hand you had facing the curse becomes a finger gun. 

You pretend to shoot at it and the curse’s limbs fall off.

You become slack-jawed, looking down at your finger gun.

“Did I just do that?” You mutter. You feel a pair of arms wrap around your torso, lifting you up into a sitting position.

“Nah it was Nanami,” Haibara tells you, “Can you stand?”

“No. My legs are paralyzed from the curse’s poison.” You look over and see Nanami focused on the fight in front of him. Haibara walks in front of you, his back to you and kneels down.

He pats his back, “Hop on!” And you sulk while putting your hands on his shoulders 

“This is humiliating,” you say under your breath.

“Huh?” Haibara looks back at you and you hoist yourself onto his back.

“I said you should be helping Nanami.”

Haibara turns his attention back to the fight and gently picks up your legs to wrap around his torso.

He stands, “Nah Kento’s got it, plus Geto and Gojo should be here any second now.”

You scoff, “Uh-huh.”

You hear a squelching sound and the curse is exorcized by Nanami.

You rest your head on Haibara’s shoulder and allow yourself a moment of peace.

“Great work Kento!!” Haibara beams.

Nanami cleans off his blade, and wraps it up, “I wouldn’t have been able to exorcize it without your help.” He gestures towards you.

You weakly smile at him and your eyes flutter close.

“Hey come on stay awake!” Haibara shakes and you groan in frustration.

”I’m fine, I just-“ You freeze and whip your head to your left. Eyes focused on something the other two couldn’t see.

“What is it?”  “How many?” They overlap, you stay quiet and they wait for your response.

Nanami unwrapped his blade again, getting into a fighting position as Haibara took a firmer grip on your legs. His carefree smile turned into a more serious look.

“Two more curses, both are maybe a third or fourth grade.” You tell them and they visibly relax.

“Well if that’s the case-“ Haibara looks at Nanami and the blond rolls his eyes.

“No.”

“What?!“ Haibara pouts, “Come on, you owe me!”

You’re still looking at the oncoming curses, but something feels off. 

“. . .Fine.”

Gojo and Geto were here too, right? So that would mean what you are feeling Geto’s-

“Rock! Paper! Scissors!-”

“DUCK!”  You push down on Haibara’s shoulders and Nanami follows. You all land on the ground right as Geto’s rainbow dragon comes blasting through, destroying all the greenery you were surrounded by. The two boys hop off the dragon's back and Geto sends it away.

Motherfuckers-

“Maaaaaan, you first years got roughed up pretty bad, wouldn’t you say Suguru?”

“The curse should've been an easy task,“ Geto walks up to the pile of you on the ground, you glare at the two boys who are smirking.

Haibara slowly gets up and helps get you on his back again as you stare down the two upperclassmen. 

“The curse was able to create an incomplete domain, we were trapped as soon as we went inside the veil Haibara created.” Nanami informs them.

Geto shares a look with Gojo who still has a carefree smile on his face.

“An incomplete domain?” Geto pushes.

Nanami nods his head, “Yes, we would’ve been dead if she hadn’t broken through the domain.” The upperclassmen still.

Gojo turns and gives his attention to you, “You broke out of its domain? You?”

“I thought you guys had escaped!” You ignore Gojo’s question, “I sensed your cursed energy outside of its domain.”

“Uh, hello?”

“Nah we were stuck fighting these fourth grade curses. They just kept coming and coming; they were never ending!” Haibara complains.

Nanami nods his head once, “At least it gave us good training on target practice.”

“Hello? I asked a quest-!”

You cut him off, sighing, and barely look in his direction, “Yeah I did, so?”

“How?”

“Uhm. . .” You close your eyes and try to remember. Despite being in that fight mere minutes ago you can’t seem to remember, “I’m not sure.”

“HA?!”

Your shoulder throbs and you wince in pain, “You okay?” Geto asks.

“Just. . . fine. . .” You groan. Black spots start to appear in your vision and your grip on Haibara’s shoulders loosen. 

“Hey! Stay awake!!” Is the last thing you remember before passing out.

When you open your eyes, you’re back at Jujutsu High in one of the medical dorms. Your right shoulder is bandaged up and you notice that the cuts on your hands are gone as well as Gojo holding onto your left hand. He’s looking away from you, his head on your lap, fast asleep.

You use your other hand to gently card your fingers through his hair but Geto walks into the room, holding some tea. He gives you a knowing smile as you set your right hand down, a light blush on your cheeks.

“I see you’re awake.”

“How long was I out?” You try to sit up, but the lower half of your body still feels like mush. Gojo groans at you moving, but still stays asleep.

“For a few days at least,” Geto moves to the other side of your bed, “He’s been here since waiting for you to wake up y’know.”

“Oh.” You both glance at Gojo, who’s still resting. 

“We didn’t realize how much blood you were losing,” You turn to look at Geto, who’s avoiding your gaze.

“It’s not anyone’s fault,” You tell him and the corners of his mouth dip down for a moment before he gives you another smile.

“All that matters is that you’re safe.” You nod at that, but can’t help but still feel tension in the air. Sorcerer’s like you are a dime a dozen. They shouldn’t have been this upset at you getting hurt. It’s a small price to pay when dealing with curses.

“I should tell Shoko and the other’s that you’re awake.” Geto starts to leave the room, “They’ll probably ask you questions of things you remember and make sure that your vitals are alright; stuff like that.” He waves his hand as a silent goodbye as he leaves the room.

You lean your head back and look up at the ceiling, trying to make sense of everything. Why did any of them care?

Your legs are still slightly paralyzed from the curse, so you don’t feel Gojo stirring. He slowly blinks awake, eyes widening realizing you're okay. Thank God.

He wants to say something, anything, but when he opens his mouth nothing comes out. He looks down and sees that you’re still holding his hand. He squeezes your hand and smiles. You look back at him and he can see a faint blush on your checks, cute. 

“I’m sorry?” You tilt your head to the side and Gojo gives you a look.

“What?”

“I thought you said-,” You look down at your lap as Gojo lets go of your hand and stands up to stretch. His hand was so warm and without it just feels wrong.

“I didn’t say anything.” He crosses his arms and looks away from you, hoping you wouldn’t notice that the tips of his ears are slightly pink.

“You probably said something stupid,” Shoko tells him as she enters the room. She gives you a smile, “Glad to see you’re awake.”

“Glad to be awake.” You give her a smile back. 

Shoko nods her head and starts her examination while Gojo stays beside you, not saying a word or acknowledging you.

However, Gojo doesn’t actually leave your side until after you go back to your dorm, which took most of the day. He quietly helped you walk back to the dorm, since your legs were still recovering from the poison, and made sure that Haibara or Nanami would bring you something to eat.

But of course Gojo went back to his usual asshole-ish self once you were fully healed and back in class. 

You wondered if that would ever change. . . though you seriously doubted that.

[astonmartingf]

NEW PERSPECTIVE ; FA14

fernando alonso x photo journalist!reader

. . . twenty years into his career, alonso faced a lot of changes. but it was all because of you, that he looked forward to at the end of everything.

amgf 2.8k words. implied mentions of spygate, rumors, other controversies, accidents and more. slightly realistic? i cried writing this— made me in awe of fernando as a driver even more. enjoy 👍

death of a bachelor ; masterlist

[2005]

Is Fernando selfish?

He could say that to himself, it doesn’t matter to him what other people thought of him. At the end of the day, they’re just here to race.

He’s aware of it, if it weren’t for his skills and passion he wouldn’t have come this far— a young boy from Spain, dreaming to make it to the top. It didn’t seem like reality four years ago, yet here he is.

Standing on top of his car in parc ferme, the crowd cheering him on as his engineers flood through from the garage to greet him. The sun shining down on him— celebrating his win, it felt as if he was back at home in Spain, under the protection of his helmet he could see the entourage of people crowding him.

People as far as his eye can see, but it’s all a blur— to Fernando this was everything he dreamed of and more. It peeved him that he didn’t win the Brazilian Grand Prix, but winning the World Championship was even better.

His shoulders held high hugging every Renault engineer he could find, it was history. He will be a part of history- no. Fernando Alonso made history. And this was just the beginning.

[2007]

Where did things go wrong?

Exactly two years ago, Fernando was on cloud nine. The only thing he’s getting to the nines is stress. As much as he hates to admit he was intimidated to be one-upped by a rookie at that.

It’s his ego that’s eating him alive, nonetheless Fernando is still proud. If he has his head high, nothing could ever stop him.

It scares him, the monster growing inside him, but what else can he do? In this sport, one can either hunt or be hunted. If he had to use tricks up his sleeve, why wouldn’t he?

It’s nothing personal, Hamilton just happened to be there, his only mistake was thinking that the rookie won’t retaliate. In hindsight, he’d gladly accept P2 over his teammate.

Fernando may have an egotistical and dubious character but he wasn’t blind to the young man’s skills. But it was also a mirror and testament to his own, if Hamilton could do it, what’s his reason not to deliver?

Thinking back on his phone call with the team principal, he should’ve immediately told the FIA instead of ratting himself out. Now he has to face the consequences of his actions, deciding to do better, Alonso ultimately leaves the team.

[2008]

He must be a penchant for bad luck, this time Fernando knows it wasn’t his fault.

It annoyed him that controversy seemed to follow him wherever he went. “Are you Fernando Alonso? Is it real you tried to kill your teammate? What can you say in response to the rumors circulating about you?”

Joder!

“Fernando Alonso? Do you have time for an interview?”

Alonso wasn’t one to be caught off-guard, but for the first time he stood frozen, in shock. Glancing around the area, Alonso stepped forward nodding towards the interviewer. He’d been dealing with stupid questions all day long, what’s another one gonna change with his mood right?

“I’m YN LN interviewer for Formula One Herald. As someone who has witnessed you win the championship back in 2005 and 2006, what are your plans in securing the most points possible?”

Wrong.

Now Fernando is truly caught off guard. Wary off your question, overthinking and analyzing hidden meanings behind it. Alonso didn’t think of himself as calculative, he’s simply observant and protective of his space. Knowing how easily one’s words could be twisted into a narrative.

Fernando stares at you, Surely you’re not the type to work for meager clicks on the webs?

It was silent for the next few minutes.

“Sir Alonso? I’m sorry for taking your time, you can go ahead if you don’t want to answer.”

Somehow you managed to catch Fernando’s attention even more, “I thought journalists were supposed to be persuasive? You’re just letting me go without getting a scoop of the news?”

Fernando’s eyes widened, hearing you laugh at his words, he didn’t think of himself as funny, maybe it’s one of their tactics. To know one’s information you must soften them a bit, his expression only hardens ultimately catching you off guard.

“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to laugh- I guess I’m just nervous since it’s my first time actually being dispatched on field. I used to take pictures on the sidelines- I even took one of yours when you won back in 2005, it was such a nice memory. I remember fighting a lot of reporters to catch a glimpse of you, I managed to take one and it was chosen as the front and center photo of one famous magazine! Hopefully you win more races and podiums, you make it fun and exciting. Speaking as a fan and not some journalist, I’m rooting for you- I must’ve been rambling for a while, thank you for sparing me your time, don’t worry this will all go off the record just for you. Have a nice race week.”

The air must’ve felt it too, because since then things have changed.

Fernando was left alone watching your back disappear from the crowd.

The moment things were finally looking better for him.

[2012]

“Sir Alonso!”

The voice from afar alone caused Fernando to look around for the familiar voice in the paddock. Somehow he’s been always keen on answering your questions or setting up time for interviews, often extending them for an absurd amount of time as what his manager said.

It’s not biased if your questions are the only thing interesting. That or it could be your magnetic presence, he could feel your passion beaming through as you asked him intricate questions none that he experienced before. 

Another telltale sign is you’re the only one who calls him “Sir Alonso”, thinking back on his first meeting with you, it definitely came as a shock. Despite all the formality, he’s taken a liking to the name only you call him.

It makes him feel respected and more importantly it makes him feel like he has a special relationship with you. Walking through the crowd, he spots you at one of the tables waving your cards in the air, like a bait to lure him into your trap.

Not that he minds, if he had to spend the next hour talking about how the season wrapped, he’d rather talk to you about it. Smiling unknowingly, Fernando rubs the palms of his hands on his red tracksuit. 

Was he nervous to talk to you? No. It’s all about racing, a topic Alonso is fond of, but is your presence rubbing him off? I guess he could say that. All the thoughts in his head buzzing, what should he say? What should he do? How should he act in front of you.

Fernando never thought of himself to be as calculative, but the need to impress you has astounded him even more.

“Fernando Alonso, congratulations on finishing P2 for the season. It’s exciting to see you on and off the track now that the season is over.” 

He could feel himself beaming at the sound of your voice, it’s like you infected him with your insurmountable enthusiasm. Alonso liked that about you, no need for snarky remarks, or hidden agendas behind your question, you were always talking about the sport, yet somehow your spark never seemed to fade away.

And as much as you like to praise him, he’s slowly in the making for one of your biggest fans. Not that he will admit that to you himself.

“YN, it’s always a delight talking to you.” Grabbing your hand for a handshake, Fernando pulls you in for a hug without thinking. Immediately pulling away, Alonso’s thoughts began firing, overthinking the previous interaction.

His doubt was erased once he saw the smile on your face, happiness reaching the corners of your eyes. “Thank you for taking the time to talk to me, this is becoming a thing isn’t it?”

A thing. What thing? Fernando raises his brows asking for more context, maybe he’s overthinking it again or confused, maybe he didn’t hear you properly, totally not distracted just by being in your personal space.

“Post-season interviews? It’s always nice to catch up and look back on the season, especially this one P2. Congratulations Alonso…” Your voice drowns out into the background.

It was another turning point in Fernando Alonso’s life, and somehow this was all because of you. Only realizing then that he’d rather sit down for what seems like the longest time in his life, talking to you, not just about his racing but about your own life. He realized that he’d never catch himself doing this with other interviewers, and this was your thing.

Fernando liked that.

It’s nice to catch up and look back on the season with you.

[2016]

Lucky to be alive. Lucky. To be. Alive.

It only dawned on him what happened then. Fernando sat in silence next to you, from the corner of his eyes, he could see you tidying up the small things you prepared for the interview. Alonso felt vulnerable, it’s been a while since he’s experienced such a crash.

“I should leave you to rest, hmm?” Raising his head, Fernando meets your eyes full of concern or at least that’s how he sees it. In a spur of the moment, Alonso shakes his head ‘no’.

“Can you stay for a while?” Fernando avoids your eyes, halfway in regret from being unable to control himself. To his surprise, you drop your papers sitting down next to him.

“Do you want to talk as a friend?”

A friend.

Fernando stays quiet before nodding his head.

And just like how you do all the time, just being by your side Fernando could feel himself slowly getting better. Letting himself let go of all the thoughts and worries in his head. If not now, when?

When will he have another chance to spend time with you? Not just as a friend.

It was the second time he felt it change.

[2019]

“Congratulations Alonso!”

The corner of Fernando’s lips curl up to a smile watching you approach him closer, opening his arms, catching you in his arms. If he wasn’t already feeling better with his win, having you here by his side is even more enjoyable.

“Didn’t think you’d actually come here. Sick of the F1 Paddock?” Fernando inquisitively asked, he expected you to reply politely for support, but what he didn’t expect is for you to suddenly grow balls.

“Honestly it’s boring without you there. Why would I go when you’re here?”

Or were you always so straightforward that he didn’t notice it? Stunned. 

It was always a surprise with you, not that he minded it didn’t matter what you would’ve said, Alonso would gladly listen to you. “When did you arrive?” Clearing his throat, trying to not get your words to affect him as much as he wants to.

“Oh, I’ve been watching since yesterday, I stayed in one of the tents.” 

And there goes Alonso, surely if you had looked further into his eyes, you could see his heart doing somersaults and cartwheels. Is this your effect on him? He wasn’t that aware, but now it’s slightly concerning for him to be acting this way in front of you.

You simply stunned him. And Alonso wouldn’t have it any other way.

“It’s surprising how I managed to hide from you, to be honest my self-control isn’t that good-”

I’m sure yours is better… if only you knew mine, Alonso thought, lips curling into a smile.

“But somehow I thought, wouldn't it be better to surprise you in the end? If you win then it’ll be a surprise and a celebration. Just like now! I took so many photos of you, you want to see?”

Fernando didn’t notice you moving closer to him, showing him the photos you took of him. 

“And if I lost? What would happen then?” A smirk grows in his face, feeling proud to put you into the corner, but Fernando should know by now that you will always have the upper hand. Especially when it comes to you.

“Oh, I planned on giving you a big kiss, comfort you and take you out for dinner. But isn’t it good that you won?”

The way Fernando’s face fell at the thought of getting a kiss from you sounded a lot better than winning.

Joder! I’d rather kiss YN than win… Is this where I’m at now? 

“What a shame that I won then, are kisses only for losers?” Fernando ought to shut up, but he just can’t let you win, taking blow after blow he’s been hit hard where it hurts. His ego and what could’ve been a kiss from you.

As if you couldn’t surprise him more, Fernando stood frozen watching you move closer to him, hands wrapped on both of his cheeks. He could feel the coldness of your hands against the warmth of his cheeks, pressing a small kiss on the side of his face totally catching him off guard.

“Winners get one kiss. Losers get two.” 

Fernando can’t help but burst out laughing, eliciting the same to you laughing along with the sound of his laughter. “What?”

Alonso shakes his head, face red from the blushing, laughing, or just being in the same proximity as you. You’re full of surprises, he’ll give you that, but he completely surprises himself in the end.

Fighting the urge to kiss you then and there, Fernando settles on grabbing your hands, “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go on that dinner you were talking about.”

[2021]

Getting out of his seat, Fernando immediately looks around for you. The energy, adrenaline, and excitement fueling him. Walking towards his team waiting for him by the barricades cheering, yet his eyes linger towards you.

Behind a camera with a wide smile on your face, Alonso waves as you mirror his movements. It’s as if time had stopped, as you capture his moments, Fernando has already ingrained you in his mind.

Coming back to Formula One wasn’t easy. He had sacrifices to make, but seeing the warmth and familiarity of your face around the track. He kept his shoulders up.

Now more stable than ever, his sacrifices, priorities, and privilege will all be tested as the season comes to an end. Nevertheless, Fernando is grateful to have you by his side.

It’ll only be the beginning for more changes to come, and with you by his side, there’s nothing stopping him now.

[2023]

“You're back with the interviews?” Fernando sits at the other side of the table overlooking the view of the yacht dock.

“My favorite driver is on the grid, so why not. I thought this was our thing?” Fernando watches as you prepare the papers in front of you, head tilting, focused doing your own things. Sitting back and letting you do your magic, Fernando grabs one of your cameras.

You were always behind the lens of your beloved camera, Alonso remembered you saying to him that this was one of your oldest cameras. You also gave Fernando free reign in using your camera, he wasn’t aware of the magnitude of you letting him use your camera, but knowing how special it is to you, Alonso knew to handle it with care.

Fernando turned on the camera immediately looking for the photos you took in them. He has an inkling of the contents inside them, but what he didn’t expect was the overwhelming amount of photos you have of him.

Going as far back as 2003, photos of him in his first win in Hungary, photos of him in podiums, smiling, some showcasing his losses, photos of him with past teammates and in various uniforms.

The feeling dawned on him, you’ve been there from the start, watching him through the lens. Seeing himself from your eyes, Alonso was taken aback at the photos. As if you couldn’t sweep him off his feet even more, learning this about you even made him fall in love with you more than he already is.

“Why are you crying?” 

Your voice breaks his train of thought, blinking away the moisture poling into his eyes. Alonso isn’t one to be emotional, but seeing your love flow through the pictures from the screen, fills his heart heavy with emotion.

Wiping his tears, Alonso places the camera back on the table. “I never thought I would feel this way about these…” Fernando watches you shuffle around, dropping everything as you move beside him.

“I remember telling you about these photos. They’re all about you.”

Alonso nods his head, still deep in thought, beyond belief at his love for you, ever growing every single day.

“I never saw myself like this… how you capture my every moment, through the good and bad. I feel loved, and I love you.” Fernando, professing his love for you. Truly, one of the best seasons.

You allowed him to see himself in a different light, different from what the media says, the roles he played in the sport, a conniving villain. You allowed him to see himself in a new perspective.

amgf death of a bachelor comes to a close. thank you for supporting the series this far, i laughed, cried and felt a rollercoaster of emotions writing this. i hope you enjoy this, until the next series <3

[essjujutsu]

EVERYTHING I WANT

WITH: satoru gojo x reader

⤷ during his first year at jujutsu tech—satoru gojo makes an impulsive purchase, a polaroid camera. captivated by the fun of instant photography, he sees it as a way to capture fleeting moments in a world. years later he looks back at his favorite photos, the ones of you. . ݁₊ . ˖ .

TAGS: fem! reader, best friends to lovers(?), fluff!!! and angst....sorry, may be ooc, manga spoilers ! , switching povs, language, timelines/years may be wrong, not proofread, roof scene ib fruits basket , header made by me :p, song! word count : 5k

APRIL 2005: ( gojo's pov )

it was almost two am—satoru knew he really shouldn't be sneaking out when he's only been at jujutsu tech for a week and a half, but his old habit from when he was at home picked right back up.

that's why he was standing outside the closest convenience store. he probably looked really starange, his hands tucked into his hoodie pocket, the hood pulled over his head—sunglasses hiding his eyes. the neon light from the sign cast a bright glow, lighting up the street.

back when he was still living at the gojo estate in kyoto, he found himself sneaking out almost every night—it was his escape from his family, servants, training, the pressure, everything really. he was sheltered his whole life, and he really hoped when he got to jujutsu tech things would be different. maybe he could even make friends.

unfortanly, he wasn't sure if his classmates had the same idea.

he had met his three classmates the second day he was on campus. he expected them to fawn over him, the satoru gojo—inheritor of the famous six eyes. though to his surprise, they seemed to not care.

he had met them all in yaga's classroom. the other boy there, suguru geto looked distinctly annoyed at him—maybe it was because he was "late" but he was only twenty minutes late! the next face he met was shoko leiri, a girl that really seemed like she had a smoking addiction—and she seemed really bored, as if she was on the brink of dying from boredom.

lastly, you. you were looking at him like being there for one more minute was going to make you completely lose it—and that him stepping into the room only intenified that feeling.

so that was why he was alone in the back of the dimly lit connivence store, the flickering overhead lights casting a harsh glow against the snack isle he was in. he ran his hand down the shelves, picking up a bag of candy. he approached the checkout, noticing the cluttered impulce-buy section on the counter—though there was something that caught his eye, a discounted polaroid camera.

"is this all for today...?"

the half-awake cashier asked him, glancing at him—her voice barley rising above the hum of the stores lights.

"uh, yeah. i'll take this too."

he replied, grabbing the camera and placing it ontop of his snacks on the counter.

he his card into the reader, paying for his items and taking the plastic bag the cashier gave him. he exited the building, taking in the breeze of toyko at night. the city was still alive with the distant sounds of chatter and traffic.

he went over and sat down on the curb, the pavement cool beneath him. he carefully pulled out his new impulsively bought camera.

he tried to figure out how to work it, playfully pressing random buttons untill a shutter noice came out, followed by the whir of the camera as a photo began to print out. the anticipation hung in the air as he waited for the image to come out, excited to see what he had captured, even if it was an accident.

the photograph wasn't anything good, afterall it was just his shoes and the pavement beneth him. yet the thrill of taking it—taking a memory and capturing it forever sent a rush of excitement through him, and made him wonder what else he would use it for.

AUGEST 2006:

snap!

you quickly turned your head as you heard the faint noice in the distance, with a quick motion—you removed the headphones from your ipod, letting them dangle around your neck as you looked to see where the noise came from.

"yn! come here often?"

satoru emerged from the trees, his tall figure framed by the sunlight as he came up to join you on the hidden bench you sat on.

"how did you find this spot?" you asked, curiosity filling your voice.

"thought nobody on campus knew about it—that's why i come here."

as you spoke, your gaze drifted to what he held in his hand—a polaroid camera. it must have been the source of the noise that had caught your attention.

"was just snapping some pictures and heard someone up here, whatcha listening to?"

you shifted a bit on the bench—creating just enough space for him to settle in beside you. you gave him one of the wired airbuds you had connected to your ipod.

when you first arrived at jujutsu tech last year, your initial impression of satoru gojo was far from flattering. you found him annoying, spoiled, and arrogant which really got on your nerves. but slowly but surley you deicded he wasn't that bad, you saw moments of humor and warmth—and maybe he wasn’t so unbearable after all.

and it seemed suguru and shoko agreed with that aswell. together, the four of you created a fun dynamic, a blend of personalities that complemented one another in different ways.

you stole a sideways glance at the boy sitting next to you, mazzy star playing softly in your headphones. you've always seen him with that camera—a lot this year. he snapped photos of the new first years, shoko, suguru (against his will), and you—a lot of you, he said you were photogenic.

gojo reached his hand down into his pocket, pulling out a few photos he had taken since the school year had started.

he laughed, "look at nanami's face in this one."

he held up the photo, and you couldn't help but laugh. one of the first years—nanami. his brow was furrowed, eyes narrowed, and a look of annoyance was directed at gojo.

that summer, gojo seemed to never stop taking pictues. whether it was making late-night convenience store runs after class—the neon lights reflecting off his carefree grin or weekends spent at the arcade. even on missions, satoru was seen taking seflies on his flip phone or off-guard pictures of his teammates mid-fight.

after that day he found you on the bench, you found yourself getting closer to the white-haired boy. you weren't sure why exactlly, maybe it was the "satoru gojo charm" he often boasted about, a charisma that seemed to weave its way into your thoughts. or maybe, as you spent more time together, you realized you were genuinely liking him more than you thought was possible.

a late night, a few days before he left on the star plasam vessel mission with geto—you found yourself hanging out with him in his dorm.

he was rummaging through his desk drawer while you layed on his bed. you weren't sure what he was trying to find exactly, he haden't really mentioned his mission yet—but you were sure he was confident about it, he always was.

after a moment of digging, he proudly pulled out his camera, now with a playful array of stickers that reflected his personality, bright colors, quirky designs—and little reminders of past memories. he held it up with a smile.

"smile!"

he called out to you, his voice light and teasing, leaving you confused and unprepared for what was coming next. just as you turned your head, the sharp click of the polaroid camera snapped to life, capturing you in a candid moment that took you by surprise—catching you off-guard in a way that made him giggle and you be playfully annyoed.

"gojo, you ass! i wasn't ready!"

"firstly, its satoru—you know that! and secondly, its funny and i'm keeping it in my wallet while me and suguru go on this mission."

he teased, coming over and jumping on the bed beside you, the dim lighting creating a cozy atsmophere in the room. it was defitnly past curfew and you should deftinly be in your own dorm by now—but you didn't care at the moment.

"don't you worry, i'll call you!"

"yeah, yeah, whatever satoru. i wasn't worried."

SEPTEMBER 2007 :

satoru did call you, he called you the night he was in okinawa.

he seemed happy, said the mission was going well and that they were having fun in okinawa—you didn't worry too much, after all it was satoru, what's the worst that could happen?

that was untill they returned though. it seemed...fine at first, though you heard that the mission didn't end well somehow—something about a assassian? satoru didn't want to talk about it, he changed the subject every time it was brought up. and suguru was distant, he was diffrent too.

a year after that mission, everything was diffrent.

one of your underclassmen, haibara had passed away during a mission. everyone was hurt, you had never really lost someone like that before and it stung.

it was autumn when suguru did the unthinkable, he had murdered an entire village of 112 people. you were with satoru when yaga let the two of you know about the situation at hand. he instructed satoru to kill his best friend. you saw the look on his face—you both knew deep down he couldn't do it. shoko had been the one to originally find him, leaving you at the school.

you were never that good at comforting people. you rembered the night haibara died, standing next to nanami outside the school, the cold air biting at your skin. you placed a hand on his stiff shoulder, trying to offer some help as you whispered that it would be okay, even though you both knew the weight of the moment felt anything but.

you, satoru and shoko handled things differently. shoko was distant, you could tell she didn't get enough sleep—dark circles starting to form underneath her eyes. you, on the other hand, threw yourself into work, overloading your schedule with training sessions and missions—trying to distract your mind. and satoru, satoru pretended he was okay, you knew he wasn't though.

a few weeks after everything happened, you found yourself going to satoru's dorm in the middle of the night, well past curfew. you knew he always left it unlocked—a promice he made for you in your first year, in-case you couldn't sleep. though when you stepped in, his bed was empty. you knew there was only one other place he could be, the school roof.

you snuck outside, finding the old rusty ladder near the dorm building. the metal felt cold against your fingers as you climbed. when you finally reached the roof, a quiet stillness enveloped you. there was satoru, layed out on the cool surface, his white hair catching the glow of the stars above that he was watching.

"thought i might find you here."

you murmured softly, your voice barely breaking the quiet of the night as you stood near him. with slow steps, you walked closer, the breeze rustling your hair. each step felt heavy with unsaid words.

"you know me too well, yn."

"that i do."

you replied, sitting next to him. you pulled your knees up to your chest, wrapping your arms around them for comfort.

"satoru, you know—you don't have to pretend with me. you—"

"i found his kid."

he cut you off mid-sentence, turning his head to face you, and the night sky shimmered off his glasses. you tilted your head in confusion, your brow furrowing. who's kid was he talking about?

"the assassian, the one that killed riko. his last words to me were about his kid—megumi."

"wait, slow down. i'm confused."

"he's a zenin, he's got the ten shadows technique—he has lots of potential, yn. but, the zenin's are assholes. so i'm gonna find him, and help him."

he sat up as he spoke, moving so you're faces were closer together then before. you smiled softly.

"that's a good idea, and when he's old enough—he can go here."

"exactly!."

you look into his eyes, blue and dazzling as always. he seemed exicted about this, he seemed happy. if he’s happy—then you can’t help but share in that happiness. thats how it was for the two of you.

AUGEST-DECEMBER 2009 :

"trust me, they'll love you! megumi's just a little reserved, but tsumiki's a friendly kid. they're really both sweet!"

satoru said, the warm toyko heat shooting from the sun. as you walked down the rocky road toward their apartment, the air was thick with the scent of summer.

"i'm not that worried, 'toru. kids are just—hard to talk to sometimes. i mean, remember that mission last month when I didn’t know how to talk to that kid, so I started just talking to him like he was an adult?"

satoru laughed, his glasses sliding slightly down his nose. he pushed them back up with a quick gesture, a grin still lingering on his lips.

"you'll get used to it. afterall, you're gonna be a teacher like me at jujutsu tech! righttttt?"

"satoru! i already told you there's no way, being a sorcer is already enough work."

as the two of you approached the aparemnt building, he playfully elbowed your arm. the light touch sent a spark through you, and you couldn’t help but smile at his antics.

"your gonna give into it one of these days!"

as you both walked up the creaking staircase of the old apartment building, the soft rustle of the takeout bags cradled in your arms accompanied your footsteps.

once you reached the third floor—you follwed satoru through the hallway until he came to a stop in front of a door. he knocked twice, and you heard the rush of footsteps from the other side of the door.

the door swung open with a gentle creak, revealing a small girl standing in the doorway. her brown hair was pulled up into a ponytail. she had an enthusistic grin on her face, seemingly very exicted to see the two of you—right before you were about to introduce yourself, she spoke up.

"gojo! is this your friend?"

she asked, pulling satoru by his leg inside, you giggled softly as you follwed suit behind them.

as you stepped into the apartment, your gaze swept across the space, taking in its decent size and inviting atmosphere. the sunlight spewed through the windows, casting a warm glow over the room. and the furniture wasn't that bad (curtesy of satoru, of course).

your sight drifted to the younger boy on the couch—he must be megumi. he looked slightly younger then the girl you met, who was still clinging onto satoru's leg, telling him a story about something.

"tsumiki, megumi, this is yn!"

the girl—tsumiki looked up at you, her expression was a mix of wonder and appreciation. she then brought you into a tight hug, which made your lips turn into a smile.

"are you gojo's girlfriend?"

she asked innocently, her brown eyes sparking with curiosity as she tilted her head slightly to look up at you and satoru. at the same moment, megumi got up from the couch and started walking to the takeout boxes you had on the kitchen counter—peeking inside of them.

you giggled, shaking your head no—trying to hide the small pink hue on your cheeks. you glanced to satoru, his experssion hard to read, as if the question had taken him off guard—something he had never anticipated. and was he blushing? you couldn't really tell, he quickly changed the topic as he spoke up.

"wait a minute megs! i haven't even taken out the food yet!"

he dashed over to the counter, a playful glint in his eye as he gently nudged megumi aside, a joke frown on his face. he began unpacking the takeout—taking it out on the dining table.

the dinner went well of course, tsumiki asked many questions about you, she was a cute kid. megumi on the other hand was more quiet, barley speaking a word expect to humorously insult satoru, who would playfully ruffle up his hair in return. they had a cute dymanic, and you could deftinly see how much satoru cherished those kids—it made you smile.

for the next months after that, you and satoru seemed to develop a routine with the kids. of course, the two of you were busy with missions—so once a week you took megumi and tsumiki out somewhere, the zoo (megumi's favorite), the park, the arcades, the candy store (satoru's favorite), the aquarium (tsumiki's favorite).

as the crisp autumn air set in and the vibrant leaves began to fall from the trees, the four of you took walks in the afternoon. it almost felt like a family sometimes, you wondered if satoru ever thought of it like that. he was hard to read, you never really knew how he was feeling, let alone his thoughts about you.

and as the winter holidays came about, satoru approched you one day. the two of you were third years now, on the brim of graduating. you two and shoko tried to make time to hang out, but it was difficult.

so when he approcahed you, exicted and out of breath from running, his bright smile broke through the chill of the day, it felt like a burst of warmth, and a smile automatically appread on your face.

"christmas!"

"'toru, we still have three weeks 'till christmas."

"no listen, we need to plan!"

you paused, raising an eyebrow at his antics. you were in your dorm, laying down on your bed, he jumped onto it to join you.

"i have a plan, okay! for christmas—just hear me out."

you looked at him, tilting your head slightly to the left as if to show him how much you were listening.

"'megs and tsumiki need a good christmas this year—so i say we give one to 'em! we can get shoko and nanami to come to, it'll be fun!"

"that's actually a pretty cute idea 'toru."

"'actually?!' all my ideas are amazing!"

and so, three weeks later, when christmas eve rolled around, you and satoru pulled an all-nighter—somehow, neither of you exploded from the large amount of coffee you drank and the way-too-many energy drinks satoru chugged.

you had spent the past weeks collecting presents for the two, of course with satoru's credit card there was a lot of things you bought. it made you happy, really happy.

you wished others in jujutsu society could see satoru the way you did, how he was himself with you. he wasn’t just the strongest—he was simply satoru, your satoru.

you loved those cozy evenings spent in your dorm, curled up together, laughing at reality shows while the glow of the screen moved in his eyes. you loved how he had an uncanny ability to sense your sadness, often knowing when to offer a comforting word or a playful distraction. you loved how—camera in hand, he would capture candid moments of you lost in thought or mid-laughter, those photos appearing on his bulletin board as happy memories. and there were those countless nights spent on your guitar, his encouraging cheers coming out as you fumbled through his favorite songs, his proud smile lighting up the dorm each time you finally nailed a chord.

"this is the only time i will willingly wake up at five in the morning for anything."

shoko groaned as she spoke as the four of you stood outside megumi and tsumiki's apartment. nanami nodded in agreemnt, santa hat he wore on his head tipping slightly over his aggrestivly side-parted hair.

"shoko, no being negetive on christmas morning! someone clearly dosen't have the christmas spirit!"

you knocked once, and then twice. you heard the familiar sound of small footsteps approaching the door.

"yn, gojo, you're here, on christmas! we totally didn't think you'd come today!"

"of course i did silly."

satoru replies, bending down to get on the same height as megumi and tsumiki.

"these are my other friends, shoko and nanami."

he pointed to the two figures behind him—shoko with her bag of presents and nanami holding a cup of coffee. the two were both normally more stoic, so it was nice to see them look happy.

the holiday went great, you grew to love the times when you felt like you could forget about jujutsu society as a whole—and just spend time with your friends.

snap!

"gojo, throw that away. i look terrible!"

shoko complains playfully, trying to grab the camera from satoru's arms. with a teasing grin, he lifts it high above her head, using his height to his advantage. sticking his tongue out at her, he watches as the image slowly begins to develop.

NOVEMBER 2016 : ( gojo's pov )

"everyone, this is yn! we went to school together and yes guys this is proof i have friends!"

he paused as you waved to his four first-year students gathered on the sun-drenched grass of the training grounds.

"she didn't want to help me teach, so make sure to give her a warm wel—"

he was quickly silenced by your piercing glare, a look that unmistakably said, "get on with it." and of course, he felt an irresistible pull to agree, fully aware that when it came to you, saying no was not an option.

"anyways, yn—this is maki, panda, inumkai, and yuta! and today, shes going to help all of you with your training!"

the students took that as a cue that they should start their individual training—satoru, seeing a rare opportunity for a break, decided to sit back and relax, confident that you had everything under control! he sat back on a bench, crossing his legs and watching as you went up to inumaki and panda first—who were already sparring.

he watchrd as you spoke to them, showing panda an example on the punches he could do. the way you gestured with your hands, showing the flow of energy from your core to your fists, made the gears turning in panda's mind so he could mirror your demo with his cured technique.

he watched happily as you spoke with maki, your calm demeanor matching hers. he wished he worked with more people like you. hell, he wished there were more people like you.

sometimes, when hes alone in his room in the little hours he gets to sleep—he finds himself thinking about the two of you. he wonders if in another life, you were not sorcerers, and he could finally give you the life you both deserve.

lost in thought, he snaps back to reality and blinks away the daydream. he sees you now sitting on the grass—talking to his new student, yuta. he thought the two of you would get along.

he gets up, about to walk over, before he rembers sometimes he brought. he finds your bag hung over the bleachers, rummaging through it untill he finds his old camera. he had hoped you’d carry it, thinking he might use it during the day—and a wave of nostalgia washes over him as he holds it in his hands.

"smile!"

he said, catching both you and yuta off guard. the katana you were holding in your arms dropped to the ground mid-photo from him startling you.

"satoru, you have to stop doing that! im serious this time i fu—"

"hey, hey, not in front of the kids!"

just then before you could playfully argue back with satoru, maki came over to the area where the three of you were standing.

"yuta, were gonna spar. panda and inumaki are on their hundredth water break and im bored."

she then (without giving him a moment to reply), pulled him by the arm and dragged him to the middle of the training fields.

"so, you like the kids? wanna be a teacher now?"

"whatever you say 'toru. do you even have a teaching license?"

"hey! i'm trying to be nice, you're good with them—the students."

as you looked at him, you looked almost taken aback at his sweet talk. as you processed his compliment.

"yuta's a nice kid, i know how he feels, i mean rember first year me! i was nervous as fuck too—being bullied in middle schools never good for you."

satoru opended his mouth to respond, but you continued.

"and satoru." you hesitated for a moment. "i think its good that you're doing this—teaching. these kids could you someone like you, and you're gonna do a good job."

"aww! that might be the nicest thing you've said to me all year! you're such a sap!"

and even though he joked, deep down—though he would never admit it to you—he felt a genuine happiness. beneath his playful attitude, there was a sincerity that made all the moments with you truly special, a joy that he cherished in silence.

SEPTEMBER 2018 :

"satoru, are you sure your students know how to get here?"

you asked, standing outside the abandoned house where the mission for satoru's new first years was located.

"yes, yes—stop worrying! ijichi is driving them, and they're proably only late because they made him stop at mcdonald's or something."

a moment after he stopped speaking, a black car pulled up in front of the two of you. out stepped three students, two of which you had already met.

"there you guys are, yn here was starting to get worried!"

"i wasn't—"

"anyways, yuji you've already met yn, right?"

the pink-haired boy nodded enthusiastically, his large soda in hand. he took a loud, exaggerated sip, earning him a sharp glare from megumi.

"yep! after nanamin and i got back from our mission."

you nodded, a small smile spreading across your face as you took in his infectious happiness.

"and megumi, you've known yn as long as you've known me! aww, i remember when you were so little and we first met you and—"

"please shut up now."

megumi shot a glare at satoru, his eyes narrowing. in response, satoru put on a playful pout, his lips curling into an exaggerated frown that made it hard to take him seriously.

"wait a minute, so i'm the only one that dosen't know her? guys you know i hate being last to stuff!"

the ginger-haired girl that you had yet to properly meet spoke up, her voice clear and confident. you remembered satoru mentioning her name, nobara kugisaki, before—but this was the first time you were meeting her firsthand.

after you introduced yourself, satoru took the lead and directed the students to follow you as you ventured into the abandoned house for their mission.

the mission went smoothly and quickly—and once the four of you stepped out, you saw satoru waiting for the car outside with something in his hands.

"there you are all, since you guys did well, i brought something to show the three of you!"

satoru spoke up, casually crossing his legs as he addressed the students. you watched him with your arms crossed, a sense of confusion swirling within you. what was he planning this time? yuji and nobara leaned in, eager to see what satoru was gonna show them—and megumi did seem a bit curious.

"look, its my old camera—me and yn as students!"

"oh god."

you groanded, palming your face as satoru smiled widley. nobara and yuji let out quick ooh's and ah's as they waited for him to show them. with a playful grin, satoru directed you and the students towards a restaurant down the block, the lively chatter of the city surrounded you.

"now this ones got to be my favorite."

satoru chuckled as he tossed an old polaroid photo across the table, the picture sliding to a stop in front of you. you glared at him, your annoyance showing as you recognized the image. it was of you in your first year being caught in the rain after a mission—you looked like a drenched cat, furiously glaring at the camera.

yuji and nobara across the table on their side of the bench giggled, megumi even showing a small smile at the antics. there were many, many old photos spread across the table, each containing a memory from you and satoru's teen years. even one of megumi as a kid—which very much embrassed him.

satoru drapped his arm around you, going on to the students about how he was cool when he was their age. you couldn’t help but roll your eyes playfully, caught between amusement and annoyance at his antics, while the students listened intently, their faces lighting up with admiration and laughter—which made you laugh aswell.

DECEMBER 2018 :

"satoru, are you in here?"

you asked, pocking your head around the door that lead to his office at jujutsu tech. he soon would leave to fight the king of curses, to save megumi, to save everyone. you had been trying your best not to think on the impending fight, but the anxiety gnawed at you relentlessly since he announced it. 

before he could answer, you saw him standing there. he was standing above his desk, photographs sprawled out across the table. you tried to read his expression, was he worried, scared, confident? you couldn't fully tell. though, knowing him—you suspected it leaned more towards confidence. still, a lingering doubt tugged at your thoughts, adding to the tension in the air.

"everyones waiting for you outside."

you spoke, your voice barley above a whisper as you came to stand next to him. you looked down at the pictures he was looking at, they showed moments shared between the two of you—laughing alongside shoko and suguru, smiling with megumi and tsumiki, and the countless adventures with the students.

"i know they are. i'm just thinking, and collecting good luck."

you smiled faintly at him as he glanced over at you.

"when this is all over, i'm gonna take you out on a date—a real one. we still have time, i want to give you that, everything you want.'"

and then he hugs you, and he hugs you tight. you embrace him back, holding your arms around his neck—you think you could stay like this for a while, but of course, reality kicks in.

as the two of you leave his office, you don't notice it then—and you won't notice it untill weeks after everything was over. yet, beneath the carefully arranged photographs on his desk lies a letter, its presence unnoticed by you. weeks will pass after the dust settles before the significance of that letter becomes cleart—its addressed to you.

A/N : this took FOREVER to write so im so happy im finally done with it! just a reminder its not proofread/edited fully so im sorry if there are any mistakes or anything poorly written :p this is my first full length fic !! thank u for reading !

[celaenaeiln]

What are some of your favorite Dick Grayson moments?

Please and Thank You 😃

My favorites will always be Dick being the canonical center of the DC universe 😌

Dark Crisis Issue #1

The greatest hope and the leader of the ages

Nightwing (2016) Issue #49

The Brave and Bold (2007) Issue #15

"And no one doubts that you're the best one to strategize a counterattack."

"Next to Superman, Dick Grayson is the one guy alive that every other crimefighter trusts."

JLA/Titans Issue #2

"--Founders of the original Teen Titans--"

Titans (2003) Issue #23

"It's a natural thing when Nightwing shows up. None of us are conscious of it, really--but we all look to him for orders."

Nightwing (2016) Issue #9

"You vouching for someone is worth its weight in gold. It was true in my world, and it's true in this one. In fact, of everyone I've met here, you're the least changed from the version I knew. Always confident, always kind, always cool. Dick Grayson--the multiuniversal constant."

JLA (1997) Issue #73

"It was sad at first. We were discussing the work--this work...and I asked him if he ever felt pride." "He didn't....then he stopped for a second and said...'The only time I ever feel pride is when I look at Nightwing. Sometimes I think he's the only thing I ever did right.'"

Batman: Urban Legends Issue #22

"We have a shorthand I don't share with any of the others, save for maybe Alfred. He's always been the one keeping me centered. Grounded."

"Dick's the beating heart of this family we've created, whether he realizes it or not."

Titans (2003) Issue #6

JLA (1997) Issue #71

Nemesis - The Impostors Issue #3

Batman!Dick - he's so freaking cool!!!

He's so amazing and cool and extraordinary and over competent. He's what everyone looks up to. He's collectively placed on a pedal so high by every hero and anti-hero in that everyone wants to be him or be acknowledged by him. People have died in his footsteps. Even the Titans, his own friends, hero-worship, look up to him as the peak of excellence and goodness.

Justice League of America (2006) Issue #50

Roy

World's Finest: Teen Titans Issue #5

Titans (2016) Annual 1

The paragon of rightness and justice of the world - Superman - thinks dick is the best thing to ever come into existence.

Whenever you read a comic, there's always some character that goes "Nightwing!" when something happens and another responds "Dude, he's Nightwing. He'll be fine. He always is." That's the amount of confidence heroes have in him to always succeed and excel.

Like Kon said - when he shows up, people automatically fall in line. It's like second-nature to just follow him.

Dick has that Charisma, the leadership, and the strength to hold the entire community together and as a result the world. He's proven it, he's done it. Whenever the Justice League evaporates in any situation - because this isn't the first time the JL have died/gone missing - everyone turns to Nightwing for order and direction.

Truly, he's the greatest.

[cdragons]

Fuck Everything, But Mostly Fuck You - Part 2

Previous Part, Next Part

Summary: You have never, EVER, in a million years hated anyone the way you hated Felix fucking Catton. But silver linings exist in the sticky toffee pudding Mrs. Gavey made for you.

Warnings- MDNI 18+, Sex, Felix is Felix (a ho), Reader finally eating some good fucking food, Michael is Michael, Farleigh is Farleigh, Oliver is Oliver (a creep), alternating POVs between characters, and author has spent too much time researching Oxford crap for this mess for a crack fic to be a crack fic

Author's Note: BRUH??? HOW DID I GET SO MANY NOTES IN PART 1??? Everyone has been so wonderful and supportive. I received so many questions and comments, which have all been great! Thank you for reading this story, and I hope that this part lives up the first one. Also, this is technically a Christmas fic bc it just fits with the story's timeline. I would like to thank Grammarly for catching all my grammatical errors 🥲, @ethereal-athalia for enabling my crazy ideas 🥰, and @valeskafics for providing me Saltburn smut when I catch myself thirsting 😇

Christmas Eve - Saltburn 2006

“Oh! Oh – y-yes, yes, yes! FUCK!”

Fucking the girl underneath so hard to the point where she likely saw stars. Meanwhile, Felix was trying to finish as soon as possible.

“So big! God, you’re so fucking big – FUCK!”

He brought her to his room and in his bed because he thought her hair just barely matched yours, and if he didn’t think too much about it – her voice sounded a bit like yours too.

But he made a mistake.

The girl – whatever her name was – sounded nothing like you. Her hair was nowhere near as pretty and shiny as yours, and her nails were fucking long and sharp that they were digging for his blood. Her makeup too – fucking hell, it was like she trying out for the opera with how much she caked onto herself.

Every time Felix saw you – whether in the library or under a tree – your nails were trimmed short. And from what he remembered, you didn’t plaster yourself in cheap cosmetics.

No, you never needed to. Your style of choice was simpler and more elegant than most girls he knew, including his sister, Venetia. Granted, he loved his sister to bits and pieces, but the girl loved her spray tan in the winter.

But worst of all – she didn’t have your eyes. Her gaze was too mindless and soft, a mix of adoration and unparalleled lust. Your eyes held vivacious rage and

“Felix?” What’s-Her-Face asked. “You okay?”

Fuck, he was getting soft.

Closing his eyes, Felix knew the only way he would get to finish was to think of you. He thought about the last time he saw you. He remembered how hard the wind blew and how cold it was that night. He felt himself harden at the memory of how alive your eyes were right before and after you broke his nose. His back still had the welts from the blows of your notebook. Every time he saw them in the mirror, he would lovingly stroke each bruise because they were the only evidence that you were real.

That you weren’t just a figment of his imagination.

Letting his mind run wild, Felix imagined you here instead of this imposter. He’d imagine you on top – no way a woman like you would let anyone be on top, not even him. Fuck, you’d be the most wild thing ever to exist, he’s sure he’d let you do anything to him.

His heart, his soul – whether you cared for him or wished to crush him under your shoe – everything of his would be yours.

He wondered if you were the type to be into using a riding crop.

Regaining his vigor with his eyes still closed, he imagined you riding him until oblivion. Your breasts would fit perfectly in his hands as you would still be bouncing on his cock. Your head would be thrown back, and his eyes would roll to the back of his head at the feeling of your pussy tightening.

Oh God, he was going to blow.

Quickening his pace, the girl that wasn’t you was full-on howling in unbridled pleasure. When she climaxed, he could finally let go and come. Ropes of his cum spilled into the condom as he shouted out your name.

Falling to his side, he hadn’t bothered to check if Lady Not You remained in the sheets. It didn’t matter if she did; Felix was too exhausted to care. Finally feeling like he could rest, he fell into a dream about the day he felt his life truly begin – the day he met you.

First Week of Oxford University Michaelmas Term of 2006

Felix remembered the first time he saw you – it was after the first week since the term began. He and his mates were fucking around in Radcliffe, and the old bag running the desk was having a cow with them. He was bored out of his mind when all of a sudden – he spotted you on the upper level. You wore dark wash blue straight-leg jeans with rolled-up cuffs and white high-top Converse sneakers. It looked like your shirt must have been at least a decade old, given how the black-dyed cotton was faded to dark gray, and the paint looked cracked and chipped. Your thick locks were gathered in a loose but simple braid. Unlike everyone else, your eyes weren’t focused on him – but on the structure and life around him.

He had to know more.

Slipping a tenner to one of his friends to cause a distraction, he used the diversion to make his way to your spot on the second floor. Having a closer view, you were the most vividly gorgeous creature he had ever laid his eyes upon. He was worried that his movement toward you would alert you of his presence, and you would only scurry off – and away from him. But judging by the slight bobbing of your head, you wouldn’t be able to hear him since you were listening to whatever was playing through your earbuds.

All the better for him to keep observing you.

As he inched closer, his eyes caught the tiny wisps of your hair that weren’t contained by your messy braid, creating a lovely frame of your face while also bringing out the shine in your eyes. You had a simple gold chain around your neck with a circular locket hanging. From the side, Felix could faintly distinguish the words “Bon Jovi” in blue cracked paint and “1989” underneath a skull wearing red aviators.

He didn’t know who the fuck Bon Jovi was, but clearly, he was someone pretty fucking important to you.

But what captured Felix’s interest was how engrossed you were with the scene unfolding underneath you. Your eyes very rarely broke away from the view – only to quickly glance at the hardcover sketchbook you balanced on the white-painted railing. Whenever you glanced down at your sketch, Felix could see how long and thick your eyelashes were. Each time you blinked, it was like his mind broke down the movement of your eyelids frame by frame as if he were editing a Garry Marshall film. He wished he could be your cheek at that moment. If only to feel the gentle flutter of your lashes’ touch. Deep in your concentration, your lips were slightly pursed in a way that brought out their luscious fullness.

He couldn’t help but imagine how they would look around his cock. If he came inside your mouth, he was sure that some of his spunk would leak past your lips before you tried your best to swallow it down.

He was so lost in the fantasy of you and him that he hadn’t realized you had been calling out to him. Breaking out of his reverie, he looked down to see you right before him. And you looked downright pissed at him.

“Hey! HEY!” you exclaimed while waving your hand to his face to catch his attention.

You were American. How adorable.

“If you could stop staring at me like a fucking serial killer, I think your ‘mates’ are trying to get your attention.”

You pointed your finger at his group of friends still on the first floor. It seemed that they successfully drove away the grounds' warden. The old bat was now fixated on putting away all the returned or misplaced books on the shelves.

Must have been Farleigh’s idea.

Anyway, back to you.

“Yeah, sorry about that. Hey, can I get your –” but you were gone by the time he turned back to you.

Instead, he found himself alone on the second floor. He quickly glanced around to see if you had just moved to a different area. But you were gone. Racing the stairwell, hoping to catch up to you, he found that you had already walked too far for him to call you out without seeming completely desperate.

Except that he was.

He watched you walk away – shoulders back, posture straight, and head held high – and thought at how utterly unfair it was to him that you walked away from him so beautifully without giving him your number, or at least your name.

Felix woke up in a dark room; he was confused as to why the maids hadn’t drawn curtains – until he realized that Mum had likely sent them for their holiday after the party was finished.

It's too bad that he wasn’t there to see everyone out like a good son. But he wouldn’t beat himself over about it too much – chances were that his parents were also hungover off their asses too. He didn’t even want to imagine V’s state right now.

Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Felix dug into his closet to find whatever someone wore the morning after fucking a completely faceless stranger to scratch an itch meant for someone else. In the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a little note on his nightstand. Swiftly plucking it with two fingers, he could barely make out the words written in swirly cursive.

My name’s Cassie. Just thought you should know for next time. Call me: XXXX-XXXXXXX 💋

Felix scoffed before tossing the dingy paper to the floor – destined to be forgotten before the next hour came – before locking himself in the bathroom to take a piss and wash off the smell of booze and cigs off his skin.

By the time he was finished, it was probably close to noon. He would have made his way down to the kitchens to fix something up – but he was immediately met with Farleigh as soon as he stepped out of the doorway. Bastard startled him up so bad that he practically jumped a foot off the ground.

“Fucking – really, Farleigh?” he asked. “Practically gave me a heart attack first thing in the morning.”

“It’s almost one so that ship has sailed.” He quipped back. “Aunt Elspeth and Uncle James were quite distraught when their golden son wasn’t seen by any of the guests when the party ended. It wasn't good when the Carltons’ daughter was gone for almost an hour. But at least she returned to her loving parents’ arms by the time it was to go home.”

Farleigh shot his cousin a curious look.

“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you? I’m pretty sure her name was Cassandra.”

Felix just shrugged.

“Don’t know about any Cassandras. Fucked a Cassie last night, though.”

Farleigh snorted a laugh as they went to the kitchens to see if any food was prepared.

“Merry Christmas, indeed.”

A few minutes of companionable silence passed before Felix asked his cousin something important.

“Hey, do you think she’s thinking about me?”

“Cassie or Cassandra? Because the answer’s probably yes anyway.”

“No, not them. Y/N, Y/N L/N.”

Farleigh immediately stopped. He genuinely wondered how Felix managed to get into Oxford sometimes. Sure, he was a legacy kid, but the line had to be drawn somewhere.

“You really think,” he slowly began, “that the girl who dragged you out of the library in front of everyone, broke your nose, beat you bruised with only her flimsy-ass notebook – because you ruined her painting – would be thinking about you?”

Judging by the look in his cousin’s eyes, yes. Sighing at the incredulity of it all, Farleigh could only shake his head before finding something to eat and drink away the migraine he could feel was coming.

Watching his cousin walk away from him, Felix knew he thought he was fighting a losing battle. But he wasn’t too worried. Everything would change during the upcoming term. Oxford was its own world – broken away from everything else. All that mattered to anyone in Oxford was this world's history, present, and future. And now – as it was made clear now to Felix – you were also part of that world. He would get to find you again and make sure to bring you to the point where you would look for him the way he would look for you.

Still, a selfish part of Felix hoped that you were even just the slightest bit miserable being away from him as he was being away from you.

Manchester, December 2006

You were having the time of your life.

Michael invited you to his home in Manchester for Christmas to spend the holidays with his family. You refused, at first, the idea of being a burden to your best friend during a time when it should be spent with family. Michael liked to put up a big front, but you knew that he was just as – if not more – excited to spend Christmas with his folks than you were before the “incident.”

But he insisted, and you could not have been more grateful for the invitation. But you wish you were a tad bit more graceful with your reaction when he first brought it up.

Oxford Dining Hall December 2006

You were angrily shoveling pasta into your mouth at the time. Sadly, the appallingly bland marinara sauce paired with the overcooked spaghetti and dry meatballs was the university's most flavorful dish.

“Come home with me.” He told you one evening during dinner time at the dining hall.

Caught off guard, you half-choked on the mountain of overcooked noodles in your mouth. Immediately, you reached for your glass of water to wash it down and to prevent a truly horrifically dull death.

“What?” you croaked out.

“Come with me to my house for Christmas.” He clarified, utterly unfazed by your near death. “Come on, you’ve been complaining to me all week about not being able to fly back for the holidays. And no one should have to spend Christmas eating whatever slop they’ll end up serving.”

“Michael,” you began, “I am not going to impose on your family like that. And you seemed to have forgotten one key detail: I can’t leave until I re-do the painting.”

“So, come over after you finish,” he reasoned, “I know you remember what to do, and that already cuts the time you originally spent on it in half. You won’t need a whole month to do it again, so come over when you finish. Plus, you don’t have your other classes to worry about.”

You knew that he was right – he was right about a lot of things – but the offer still made you uncomfortable. Scholarship student or not, you were no one’s charity case. If there was one thing you hated more than being underestimated, it was being pitied by people who didn’t know you. That wasn’t the case with Michael, but the feeling made you feel small.

You hated feeling small.

“That doesn’t change the fact that I would be imposing on your family. Your mom’s a nurse, right? She’s probably been looking forward to your homecoming for ages now. Informing her that she should be expecting a complete stranger, who would be staying for two weeks, would be a huge burden on her. She shouldn’t have that kind of stress burdening her during the holidays.”

He rolled his eyes at your concern.

“Don’t be a drama queen. I already have one in my life, and I’m genetically attached to her. And you’re hardly a stranger. Mum’s always asking when you would be visiting anyway. She’s worried if you’re eating enough or getting enough sleep. She’s a bit looney like that.”

You shot your friend a glare. He was trying way too hard to keep a cool, nonchalant façade. Michael Gavey was a total sucker for his family but in the sweetest way. During the long study sessions that stretched into the night, Michael’s defenses were lowered, and you could get more information about his life and home.  

His mom was a Manchester Royal Infirmary nurse practitioner, while his dad was an accountant at Pearl Lemon. They met at a coffee shop. He was working as a barista to pay off his student loans, and she was a nurse just starting her residency. He wowed her with his terrible jokes, and she charmed him with her infectious smile, and the rest was history. Three years into their marriage, baby Mikey was born, with the addition of his baby sister Lilypad a decade later.

When you remained silent, Michael knew your stubbornness would give him endless headaches. But you were his best friend, the only person he saw worth befriending in the infinite sea of prats and slags that overpopulated their university. You laughed at his shitty jokes, and he snorted at yours. You would try to trip him up with out-of-pocket sums; he’d laugh when he answered them before your calculator. You had his back when some rugby bloke pushed him around, and he had yours when some fake tanned bitch called you a tramp.

“Look, I can’t promise it’ll be anything like your home. I know you miss your mum’s cooking and your dad’s drunk stories. But my parents already made me promise that I would get you to visit because it’s Christmas and no one should be alone and you’re going to die without me here and blah blah blah. Just say you’ll come? Lil’ will murder me if you don’t come. She’s been dying to hear all about the Great Apple and Broadway.”

“…It’s actually called the Big Apple.”

Your comment brought a loud and rather unattractive snort to leave his mouth. And the chuckle that came after brought a small and tentative smile on you.

“Look, are you coming or not?”

You had to admit, the invitation sounded welcoming. You were dying to put faces on the people that made Michael Gavey, well, Michael Gavey. He rarely talked about his family, but his tone was warm and soft when he did. It was such a sweet contrast to the snarky little shit you were used to, and so temptation won in the end.

“…Fine.” You agreed after dragging out the tension. “But I am bringing presents for all your family members, and you have to help me. And any funds that were spent on me are going to be paid back before summer. Got it?”

A true, genuine smile crept across Michael’s face.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“…Will I be seeing any baby pictures of you?”

“Don’t push it.”

You weren’t sure what exactly to expect from Michael’s family – maybe they were wonderful, or maybe the idea of an American that hailed from a city with some of the highest crime rates in the US gave them hives – but you were sure that you wouldn’t be alone if Michael were with you. Safe to say, your expectations were set way too low.

His dad's arms immediately enveloped Michael after you two exited at your stop and the station. You had always assumed most British father figures to be a bit cold and distant, but it seemed that stereotype didn’t apply to his dad. You went in for a handshake but were also caught in a warm hug. You introduced yourself while expressing your gratitude to him and his wife’s generosity.

“Oh no, please,” he insisted, “please call me Greg. Mr. Gavey was my father’s name, and I don’t think I’ve grown that many wrinkles yet.”

When you arrived at his home, it was a medium-sized red brick building in the suburbs. After entering the door and Greg announcing your arrival, quick footsteps ran down the stairs, and a young girl with golden honey curls in pajamas and a pink tutu ran to Michael.

“MIKEY!” she exclaimed. “YOU’RE HOME! Did you miss me? Why did it take you so long? You said your tests were done by the third. It’s the fifteenth today!”

“Lily, Lily,” Michael breathily laughed, “calm down. Of course, I missed you. But I had to wait for my friend because she’s hopeless with directions.”

“That is not true!” you blurted. “It’s not my fault I come from a grid system!”

“Anyway, this is my very good friend, Y/N L/N. Y/N L/N, this is my little sister, Lily.”

Lily turned to you with a big smile and curtsied like a perfect ballerina.

“Hello! My name is Lily! I’m eight, but I’ll be nine in April!”

You almost squealed at how adorable the sight was. You crouched down and mirrored her smile.

“It’s so nice to meet you, Lily! I’m Y/N, and I’m turning nineteen this coming b/m! Your brother here told me so much about you.”

“He did?” she asked with wide eyes.

“He did! He told you how smart you are in math and that you’re an amazing ballerina.”

Lily shyly looked down as a massively cute blush bloomed on her cheeks.

“I wanna be good at sums like Mikey. That way, I can help Daddy with his work like Mikey did when he was my age.”

“Ok!” interjected ‘Mikey,’ cheeks equally flushed at the slipped detail from his baby sister. “Time to find Mum. She in the kitchen?”

“Yep! She’s making roast chicken and mash with peas!” She turned to you. “Is Y/N allergic to anything?”

“Nope!” you replied, “Only dust, but I’m pretty sure that won’t be in the dishes.”

Meeting Michael’s mom – who was absolutely gorgeous, by the way – was another huge highlight of the break so far. Hearing you three entering the kitchen, she immediately turned off the stove and dashed over to hug you and her son.

“Oh, Y/N!” she warmly greeted you. “I’m so happy that you were able to come. Michael has told me so much about you. Have you adjusted well in Oxford? The time difference isn’t putting too much strain on you, is it? You both look so skinny – are they feeding you at all at that school?”

“Careful, Mum. You might scare her off.”

You shot him a mocking glare before answering his mother.

“Don’t be mean! And I think I’ve adjusted well enough to the university. Jet lag wasn’t too much of an issue because my parents made sure I moved into my dorm early and adjusted to the time zone changes before classes started. The food they serve at the dining halls doesn’t compare to homecooked meals, so I haven’t had much of an appetite. But after walking into the kitchen, I think I’ll be able to regain it once I have your cooking!”

“Oh, you are so sweet! I’ll let you get settled. Greg and I cleaned up the guest room for you. It’s next to Lilypad’s room. She’s excited to hear any stories you have about New York. It’s just on the second floor at the end of the hall.”

Walking back to the entrance to grab your bags, you were just in earshot of Michael and his mom’s conversation.

“Michael! Why didn’t you tell me she was so beautiful! I thought she was a model from Vogue when she first walked in! Are you sure nothing’s going on between you two? Should I expect any grandchildren in the near future?”

“Mum!” he loudly groaned as you softly chortled.

Christmas with the Gaveys was so much fun. You played a dozen board games. Michael was a beast in Poker and Uno while you cleared the board with Scrabble and Black Jacks. Mrs. Gavey was a fantastic cook – you couldn’t remember the last time you had any meal that had more than salt as a seasoning since coming to England. You tried sticky toffee pudding for the first time – you almost cried at that first bite. Everyone was so warm to each other and showered one another with so much love. Most of the neighbors watched Michael grow up, and many shared his childhood stories. It reminded you a lot of the Christmases at your parents’ apartment back in Queens.

The community and camaraderie- it was like you were back at home with your family. Your mom would pick up a roast duck from Peking Duck Sandwich Stall in Flushing while you and your dad would go to Eileen’s to wait in line to pick up your favorite cheesecake. The building would have a huge potluck on Christmas Eve, and everyone would bring a dish. Your neighbor, Mrs. Wong, would bring out everything necessary to make her famous dumplings. Everything was made from scratch. You and the kids of the building would learn how to wrap the fillings in the wrappers while the adults made the wrappers and fillings. You would play White Elephant with the other kids on Christmas Day, which usually ended in a fistfight.

You still missed home. You missed your parents and cat. You missed making cookies with your parents because Christmas was the only time when both of them had time off from work. While his school was still on break, you and your dad would take advantage of your mom’s employee benefits and watch a bunch of live Broadway shows.

When your parents skyped you, you cried after seeing their faces for the first time in so long. School was so stressful, and you were starting to regret traveling so far when you could have easily gone to a school so much closer to home. You tried your best to reschedule your flight, but round-trip flights were expensive, and they increased exponentially during the holidays.

You cried for an hour after seeing the prices online.

But thanks to Michael, you felt so much less alone than you would have if you had stayed at Oxford for the entire break. You introduced him to your parents during the call, and they loved him. It was such a massive relief that they liked your friend, especially because of how much his friendship meant to you. When he left the room, your parents basically forced you to ensure he would come with you to stay with you when you returned for the summer. They were shocked when you told them he had never had fresh jianbing or a decent slice of pizza. After the call, you were confident they were making a list of every store and stall you and Michael would visit during his visit.

Classic Queens’ family behavior – showing love by forcing food down your throat whether you like it or not.

At the moment, you were at the window in your room and looking at the moon. It was about three in the morning, and the rest of the household was asleep.

Well – everyone except one.

Michael had crept in about half an hour ago, and the two of you were just looking at the stars. You hadn’t expected to see so many – you could only see the lights from planes and aircraft at night back home. There wasn’t any talking, only comforting silence. The scene outside your window with the fresh snow on top of the rooftops and ground. Each house had a slight outline of their Christmas tree lights shining from their lower windows.

Your fingers itched for your pencil and sketchbook to immortalize it.

Ever so softly, Michael broke the silence while looking at you.

“So,” he began, “how would you rate your first English Christmas in the Gavey Household?”

You looked back at him with the biggest smile that Michael had ever seen on you.

“Ten out of ten. Would pay to see lightsaber reenactment again.”

If there was a God out there, you prayed for the coming term to be as wonderful as this holiday had been for you.

Suburban Prescot, Liverpool December 2006

In a well-established suburban home in Prescot, a short boy with crystal blue eyes and inky black hair locked himself in his room. The noise and babble from downstairs gave him a headache. He hated his parents. He hated his sisters. He hated being invisible and being from nowhere.

He had to get out of here.

In his backpack, a photo of a specific heir of a manor was safely tucked in the bottom. The new term was going to be different for him. He would make sure of it.

Tagging: @aemondsbabe, @ethereal-athalia, @arcielee, @asa-do-your-thing, @valeskafics, @axelsagewrites, @the1999kid, @poolnoodlerescuer, @winterblu2, @abaker74, @whereismymindnow, @agustdeeyaa, @iamavailablesstuff, @bonnieblue0606, @st-eve-barnes, @nyxthoughtss

Let me know if you want to be added to the tag list by commenting!

[hotel-casifornia]

i like to think there are true crime episodes in the world of supernatural that are just dedicated to dean winchester

because like okay

he gets arrested in jericho california one/two days after halloween in 2005 and escapes custody before they really charge him for anything then he disappears

then a few months later in december of 2005 he shows up in st louis where hes pinned for the murders of two women and then the attempted murder of another, BUT hes found dead in this same womans house and then theres nothing about him for months

THEN in 2006 he gets arrested in baltimore and is charged for trespassing, grave robbery, grave desecration, murder, impersonation, identity theft etc etc and also arrested at this time is his younger brother sam who isnt charged with anything (as a side note here his brother went to stanford and was studying law, he was on track to be a lawyer a year before this) then overnight while an officer is transferring dean to st louis he escapes and that same officer is found dead on the scene by his partner - around this time sam also escapes custody

and so then they disappear for a while and later he shows up again, in milwaukee where a bank heist is going down and hes supposedly held hostage, then after the original perpetrator of the heist is shot and killed dean takes over running the heist, at that point fbi is called in and they storm the building, they find three or so dead bodies and no dean or sam and find the two escaped by impersonating people in the fbi’s swat team and dumping them in a closet having taken their clothes to blend in and get out of the building

and so they disappear again for a while until a few months later they get arrested again and are actually convicted and sent to folsom prison. they spend definitely under a week in this prison and then escape and once more disappear

then in 2008 theyre arrested again in monument colorado and its planned that theyre to be transferred to a maximum security prison in nevada but before they can be transported they supposedly die when the helicopter thats supposed to transport them explodes, a day later though the sheriffs office where they were kept is destroyed and everyone in it dies

AND THEN. there is dead silence on them for YEARS. they become myth after this, some super weird criminals who go down in infamy in online forums and chatrooms and dean winchester is known as the guy who can never stay dead.

and then. dean and sam get arrested again. a decade later. yeah theyre alive still. who wouldve guessed. what are they arrested for this time? TRYING TO KILL THE PRESIDENT.

[s4lv4tions]

numerology; nsfw

pairing; gojo satoru x reader / gojo satoru x geto suguru (past) / geto suguru x reader (past) summary; numerology — the belief in an occult, divine or mystical relationship between a number and one or more coinciding events. or: trying to move on. wc; 13.4k cw; death, angst, requited unrequited love, violence, smut (at the very end, but mentions throughout), canon divergence, spoilers for manga an; if you think you've read this before, you probably have! i posted this on my old tumblr a year or so ago, and it's still available on my ao3. this version is slightly updated and edited, but still diverges from canon as it was created at the start of the culling games arc :)

1.

The first time you bathe with Satoru, he cries.

You don't notice at first; he's quiet — abnormally so —, and his face remains pristine, unchanged. The only hint you get is a small, barely audible sniffle that stops as quickly as it starts — and you think he wants it that way. You don't think he's ever cried in front of anyone.

That's why you don't say anything. Just continue washing the suds from his hair, and pretend that the tears rolling down his cheeks are beads of water dripping from his hair — but you take extra care to massage the conditioner in, and peck his cheek as you finger-comb through silky, cloud-white strands. 

It occurs to you afterwards — as he lounges on your bed, scrolling through channels with a wayward hand planted on his stomach — that perhaps, it's the first time somebody has taken care of him. The first time ever, or just the first time since… since…

Geto Suguru's face smiles up at you from your vanity — a tiny polaroid, his face no bigger than the nail of your thumb. Beside him, Satoru grins, cheeky and bright-eyed — you don't think he's ever been any different —, and in the corner, the smudge of your thumb covers the lens. You don’t have to lift the photo and check the back to know what’s written there, in your scratchy, looping scrawl; the strongest, 2006.

"Lord of the Rings?" Satoru calls, carefree as ever. A yawn catches in his throat, and his fingers slip underneath his shirt to scratch absentmindedly at his chest. "Ooh, haven't seen this one yet…"

"Uh, yeah. Sure."

It was a better time. Less pain. Less responsibility. Less death — or maybe the same amount, just shielded by the blinding cover of childhood inexperience. Suguru was still alive and burning bright, Satoru was happy (happier. He didn't cry in the bath, at least). Shoko didn’t self-medicate as intensively as she does now. The days were spent in childish ignorance and stupid indulgence, and even when things seemed their darkest, you never lost hope. 

(It probably says a lot about you that, if given the chance, you wouldn't return. Whether that's because of what you know is bound to happen, and the pain is too much to experience again, or because you're so utterly pathetic that you'll take sadness and grief and a tiny shred of affection over… whatever it is you were back then, you don't know. A smudge in the corner of a picture of the jujutsu world's greatest.)

Suguru's eyes seem to burn into you. You turn the picture over, and rejoin Satoru on your bed.

2.

"It's been two years."

Satoru doesn't like to talk after sex. Not in any way that's really meaningful, you mean, nothing that lets you in. He loves jokes, empty small talk, work politics. Chatter that's deep enough to show he cares a little without bearing any part of himself — your injury healed up? When was the last time you had a break? There's a new teppanyaki place in Shinjuku, I'll treat you. Don't work yourself too hard, you'll put me out of business! 

If you're being honest, you didn't go into this expecting anything more than a person to scratch an itch with. 

You're already friends — though, you're not sure friends totally encapsulates what Satoru is to you, romantic or platonic. You've been friends since you were 12. Satoru, Suguru, you — and then Shoko, when you all met in your first year at Jujutsu Tech. That's how it's always been.

You swear sometimes you know him better than yourself. You swear sometimes it's his voice you think with. Is that what "friends" encompasses? Somehow, it doesn't seem enough.

Whatever. The point is that your relationship with Satoru is already strong; foundations tall and proud and unshakeable. You didn't start fucking Satoru in the hopes of forming a relationship — one was already there.

It's just... Satoru is young, yes, and he enjoys flirting, but (contrary to common belief) he's not all that keen to sleep with the first person who's willing. You don’t say this with the belief that you’re special. It’s just that with work, and especially with — y'know, his… romantic history, Satoru hasn’t found the time or will to just sleep around. At least, according to him.

Sheer willpower isn't enough to make those urges go away, though, and… well, you had them too, and you were willing, and he trusts you. And you'll take anything he'll give you, really, even if it's just scraps. Even if sometimes it makes you feel worse.

Today's one of those days.

You feel sick, after. Not because of him — because of yourself. Your polaroid of Getou and any other photo he's in has been turned over, anything that could remind you of him tucked away, but — but he's everywhere today, everywhere, and you'd fucked Satoru despite it. And Satoru is covered in memories of Getou, of course. Every freckle, every shifting of muscle, every jut of bone — did Getou touch him here? Caress every bit of him he could get his hands on? Tangle his hands in his snow-white hair, breathe against his collarbone? 

When you came, you cried. Pretended it was just because it was so intense, but behind your eyelids, dark, cat-like eyes stared back.

"Hm?" Satoru hums as if he didn't hear you, eyes fixed on the TV. Dumb doesn't suit him — it's honestly a bit of an insult for him to even try it. Like you didn't sense the stiffness of his limbs the second he'd stepped inside, or the crumbling edge of his smile, or the way he'd forced you to love him harder — pull his hair harder, scratch his back deeper, his Infinity turned off and his skin yours for the marking. 

Satoru's mannerisms are scribed into your brain. You catch yourself emulating them, sometimes; hands waving, head tilting, grin wide and posture open. You wear it like an oversized coat, an ill-fitting costume, and sometimes you wish you could stop taking on pieces of him. The more you take, the more you must throw away — and it's Suguru that your memory discards. You find yourself forgetting how he hummed when he woke up from a nap, or filled his cheeks with food like a hamster; how he scrunched his face up when he laughed, pretty all the while…

The point is that even with his incredible knowledge, his awesome strength, the sheer holiness of his existence — you know Satoru. And the fact that he came to you today isn't mere coincidence.

You decide to come out with it. You've tiptoed around it for 24 months, give or take, had a shockingly brief mourning period before the jujutsu world forced you along, and… even with what he did, Suguru deserves better. "Suguru died today."

A beat of silence. Then:

"Mm, I guess he did."

You'd spent the day staring out at the grey sky, the miserable sight of soaked pavement. Grey, grey, grey. Concrete jungle. Heavy rain clouds and an ocean of multicoloured umbrellas, bobbing and rolling to destinations unknown. You hadn't said it aloud; hadn't even thought of it, specifically. The knowledge of it had just sat over your head like a thick, sweltering fog — and if you know Satoru at all, you know that he'd done the same. Maybe he hid it better.

You don't have to look now to know that his lips are pressed thin. You find the sudden thought of looking him in the eyes daunting, anyways, so you turn onto your side, back facing him, and pick mindlessly at the sheets. You don't want to see what his reaction will be when you say—

"Did you know that I loved him — back then?"

You don't want to see the shock, or the confusion — and you'd rather not see a lack of them, either. What's worse, you wonder — him knowing and loving Suguru too, or not knowing and loving him?

"...Yes."

You screw your eyes shut and try to will away the sudden surge of cold, like a sharpened dagger to your chest. 

(It turns out that knowing is much more painful.)

Suguru Geto had been the apple of your eye ever since you'd met. 11 and gangly and stupid in a way that all children were always stupid, Suguru had been a bit kinder than his white-haired counterpart. Satoru, being Satoru Gojo, had grown up with no fear of authority, no mindfulness for his less-powerful peers as anything more than people who existed around him. You and Suguru were allowed the title of friends, but very few were. Anyway — he grew out of that mindset, of course, but your fondness for Suguru stayed.

(Though they'd always seemed to be on another level than you — not even just in terms of power, but… just caught up in each other, always. Suguru had only ever wanted Satoru. And vice versa.)

And then Suguru changed. Right under your nose, he changed, and his sudden quietness made sense. His fatigue. The way his hands would always shake when swallowing an exorcised curse, always had since you were kids, and then suddenly they were ingested with a scary calm. Nobody understands the taste of curses. Not even you, not even when he’d explained it in sickening detail.

You sigh, then. Tired and lethargic and not from physically straining yourself for an hour. This is bone-deep, soul-weary. It's been held in for 730 days, or maybe more. Maybe you've carried it with you since birth. "I never apologised."

"For what?" Satoru asks — and he laughs, jolly, and the sound fits awkwardly in his throat. A clear attempt at feigning indifference, but he's a bad liar. He always has been, because he's never needed to lie. Perks of being the strongest, you guess. You can just come out and say shit — and if you can't, not saying anything technically isn’t lying. 

"I hated you, after," you confess. You dig your thumbnail hard intoyour pinky finger, taking momentary refuge in the sharp shock of pain. "I couldn't stand to look at you. When I did, I saw… I saw what you did. What you had, and what you had thrown away. I blamed you for Suguru. I blamed everyone except Suguru."

Another snicker, a bit too humourless. "You can't stand to look at me now."

"I…" You don't know what to say to that.

Truth is, you don't want to see his face. Contorted in pity, or disgust, or sadness for you. You've gotten used to living in his shadow — most everyone has — but that doesn’t ease the ever-present blanket of insecurity that you carry around your shoulders. It doesn’t dull the ache of inferiority you’ve been housing in your chest from the moment you were saddled with your technique. As you aged, you got better at hiding it, and you generally prefer your self-pity to go unnoticed, but Satoru—

He could always read you like a book. And you hated it. You hated being pitied by someone who was as powerful as him — someone as close to God as one could get. It was demeaning. Patronising. It makes you feel like a child again, bowing your head as your mother makes excuses for you.

You shift over — onto your back, and then onto your other side — and you look at him. You force yourself. Blankets pooled around his waist, his skin so pale it could be translucent, eyes icy blue and framed with fluffy white.

"You were forced to do it," you murmur. Your eyes remain trained on his chin — his are much too bright, much too all-seeing for comfort. "If you hadn't, he would've gotten worse. He never would have stopped. You knew that, you always did. It… took me a while to come to terms with it."

Satoru sighs. Then, he slumps down so that — like you — his head rests flat on the pillow, and his body arcs towards yours. He's forced himself into your sights again, in a way that’s gentle, but not so much that you wouldn't be able to figure out what he's doing: forcing you to face him.

"Would it have made you feel better," Satoru begins, reaching forward to brush his fingers against your chin, "if you were there when I did it?"

Would it have?

Would it have given you closure? Would you no longer spend your nights wondering what he'd looked like, what his last words were, his last thoughts? If he had spittled and roared in anger, if he had wept in fear, if he had attempted a smile, a joke? If he thought of you, or if you were just another insignificant blip in his radar?

In your mind, Suguru exists as his 17 year old self — smiling and mischievous, polite yet humorous. He puts extra broccoli on your plate and gently berates you to eat more. He tells you that you're a precious part of the team, that none of them would be who they are without you. He calls you crybaby because you always wear your heart on your sleeve, and tells you not to worry about things you cannot change.

Change what you can. Forget the rest and leave it to me, crybaby.

The bubbling hatred that had festered inside him has no place in your head. You want him to stay as he is, your Suguru that was never yours, shining like gold in your mind.

"No. He hated me at the end, I think," you say quietly. For a second, you dare to meet his eyes — bright and pointed in how they stare at you. You know he can see the tears that have begun to burn in your waterline, the way you ball your fists so hard you dig half-moon into your skin. He doesn’t need to be blessed with the Six Eyes to see.

"I wasn't interested in changing the world like he was, even with my Technique. That made him despise me, I think."

Satoru stares for a few more seconds. You wonder what he's thinking about. A second in your time is a lifetime in Satoru's; he must be thinking hard. 

But he blinks, at last; sighs so deeply that his chest caves in with it, before he winds an arm around your waist and pulls you close, bare chest to bare chest, only atomic space between you.

There's nothing sexual about it. You're nothing but bones and skin and blood, here. He moulds your head to his shoulder with one large hand and cocoons you in his embrace, warm. Protected. You're not sure who the action is meant to comfort.

And just when you think the conversation is over — just when minutes have passed with nothing but the sound of the TV between you both — he speaks.

"Suguru could never hate you. Trust me."

You don't want to know what that means. You're only beginning to get over it, two years later.

3.

Satoru is holding three onigiri in one hand, and two Starbucks' cups in the other — extra sugar, extra cream, extra ice, extra unicorn-marketing, just the way you both like it. 

"There she is!" Is the first thing he says as he meets you just outside the metro, grinning. 

It's sweltering hot today — the sun had risen early and would surely set late, and Satoru seems to be taking advantage of it. Gone is his Jujutsu Tech uniform and thick blindfold, but he's stuck with the all-black theme like he usually does — black jeans, black linen shirt, black socks and shoes. Even the frames of his sunglasses are black.

(Handsome. He's handsome. He's always been handsome — years later, you'd think you'd stop feeling the effects of it.) 

Lucky for him. You're not, y'know, the strongest sorcerer in the last century, so there's no leeway for you — and even in your summer uniform, the skirt and short-sleeved blouse, you're sweating. Your only respite is that the combined force of you and Satoru will mean this mission is going to be a breeze.

Satoru tsks. "Took your time. I almost ate your onigiri."

A man nearby jogs past, clearly in a rush, and Satoru has to step closer to you to avoid him. He could've stayed still. He wouldn't have touched him, anyway, with his Limitless.

"And you would've had to buy another, genius."

A pout. "You only love me for my bank account, don't you?"

(He's joking. It's a joke. 

But your hand shakes — a miniscule tremor — as you reach out to take one of the cups, and you know he sees it because he's Satoru and he sees everything. You turn away as quickly as you can, setting off in the direction of whatever place it is you're here for, and pretend that the fact that he can say it so casually doesn't kinda fucking hurt. 

(He could never say it like that with Suguru — so bluntly, so crassly. Not without softened eyes and softened smiles and a gentle tilt of his head — those are mannerisms reserved only for him, never to be seen again. Instead, you get snickers and digs in the arm and teasing pulls of your hair. Of course it’s a joke. That’s all you are.

Perhaps you should just be grateful for what you get. Perhaps you should try to stop comparing yourself to a man you once loved. Perhaps you should try to stop comparing yourself to a dead man. Perhaps, in the end, you just love the pain of it all.))

"Yeah," you reply, taking a large, sugary sip. "And don't you forget it, either."

Satoru catches up to you quickly, effortlessly; his arm flops around your shoulder as he tugs you in the opposite direction, chastising you for going the wrong way — but it stays there long after it needs to.

4.

Itadori Yuuji — Sukuna's dead-but-not-really vessel — thinks your cursed technique is powerful. He thinks it’s amazing that you can use reverse cursed technique — you must be really powerful, right? Gojo-sensei says you’re special grade. He also thinks you're very pretty. He tells you this over his fourth grilled pork belly wrap — this one bursting at the seams with kimchi, garlic, and roasted sesame seeds.

He doesn't say it in a flirtatious way — it's just an observation to him, simple and blunt, and you figure he has about as much of a filter as Satoru does.

"O-oh," you say, metal tongs frozen over the sizzling meat. "Thank you, Yuuji."

You had briefly met him for the first time before his death — Nobara, too. Megumi, the third piece of the golden trio, has been something of a little brother ever since Satoru had taken him in, and you know him well enough to know that Yuuji's death (or lack thereof) is weighing on him terribly. 

(There are too many parallels you could make. Suguru and Satoru. Haibara and Nanami.)

Hiding it does make you feel guilty. To experience that grief, that loss — even if it will soon go away when Yuuji rejoins jujutsu society — isn’t something to take lightly. But Yuuji needs a guide that isn’t completely off the rails. Satoru and you balance each other out, and balance seems to be something Yuuji needs.

He reminds you terribly of Satoru when he was younger. Maybe that's why you have such a fond spot for him — he's too goofy and well-meaning and genuine to dislike.

"Why are you acting surprised?" Gripes Satoru, chewing with his mouth open. "I tell you that all the time."

Your eyes narrow. You place a perfectly cooked slice of marinated beef on his plate. "You're you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" He whines. "We're best friends, crybaby!"

"You don't say I'm powerful. You say I'm helpful. There's a difference. And don’t call me that."

"Is there?" Satoru asks, turning to Yuuji for guidance. The teen boy shrugs, preoccupied by assembling his newest monstrosity. "I call you pretty, too."

"Yeah, when—"

When you're eight inches deep in me, face buried in my neck, trying to get yourself off. Your cheeks flush with warmth at the thought, and you shut your mouth. Yuuji doesn't notice your slip up, busy as he is; Satoru does completely, and fixes you with a grin so sharp that you vow to not give him any more meat until Yuuji is completely full.

"It's not the same," you say, voice final. It's a lighthearted lunch. You don't want to ruin it by getting touchy over semantics, and that's exactly what'll happen if you keep going. "You say it to reward me. Like tossing a dog a bone."

You reach for the scissors to snip the meat into little pieces — and in doing so, you miss the brief frown that presses against Satoru's brow.

Neither of you say anything more on the matter.

5. 

Satoru has known you for five years when he realises that he resents you. Not completely, and not for one particular or solid reason, either. He prefers not to think about it, in any case, because you're one of his closest friends — and even at 17, he knows that that's hard to come by. Especially as the Strongest.

Satoru stares up at his ceiling; stares at the miniature striations only he can see, the starburst-shaped gyrations of clay used to finish it off. 

Tonight, he's thinking about it. And many other things.

He hates that you're so hesitant about everything — he hates that you believe yourself so weak that you have to tiptoe. You, with your reverse cursed technique — which is a feat in and of itself — that could transcend time and space, just like he could. A technique passed down for hundreds and hundreds of years, accumulating power all the while…

(Your technique has lots of rules and regulations, of course. A handicap, and he understands it frustrates you, but his own frustration eclipses his understanding. Why should someone so strong feel anything but their own strength?)

He hates that you curl in on yourself when you're sad, or lonely, or angry. He hates that you wear your heart on your sleeve — he's never allowed himself to, not fully. He can't, never fully, because there are people who are watching him, people who hate him, people who want him dead. He can joke. He can make his political desires clear — but he can’t love like he wants to, and God forbid he cries.

He hates that you close your eyes and bask when it's sunny, like a cat in a sunspot; hates that you remember that he doesn't like chicken wings and prefers thighs; he especially hates that you watch over Suguru like it's your job, when Suguru doesn't need it.

And some part of Satoru hates Suguru, too. It was strange for him to come to terms with it, fond of him as he is, but as he grows Satoru realises that there's no love of his that isn't closely affiliated with hate. It makes the love all the more strong.

Satoru, for one, dislikes how polite Suguru is, even when he doesn't need to be. He hates that Suguru becomes a straight-faced, unfeeling thing when he's upset, and tries to hide it — the emptiness in his eyes unsettles him like nothing else.

Most of all, above all, Satoru hates that Suguru loves you, crybaby, and is too pussy to do shit about it. Satoru doesn't understand why, anyways, because he'd made it clear that if he wanted, Suguru could have you both and Satoru wouldn't care. Usually, the thought would offend him. How can you love someone when you already love me? When you've already sworn yourself to me? You already have the strongest, who else do you need? 

But… he doesn't know. He kinda understands. You're precious to him, too, after all, sunflower soaking up the sun. 

Like he said: there's no love of his that isn’t closely affiliated with hate.

6.

Six and a half hours after the hours-long meeting that followed the ruined School Goodwill Event, you find yourselves in a diner somewhere in Harajuku. It’s one of those weird fusion places, loaning ornamentation and tokens from classic American diners, serving omurice with fries, sushi with mashed potatoes, with a cute little mascot that looks like Elvis. It’s loud enough and bright enough to make you feel timeless. It's a sensation you can appreciate. 

Something’s been telling you that time’s ticking, and you’re not quite sure what it is. Trauma, probably. Anxiety. The fact that curses have been banding together, learning spoken language, amassing power — planning an attack on Jujutsu Tech, gaining intelligence, gaining anger.

Satoru doesn’t say it — doesn’t want to say it — but you think it’s unnerved him, too. The last time outsiders entered school grounds was… two years ago, wasn’t it? It’s crazy. Everything always seems to lead back to Suguru.

The attack has fueled something in both of you, anyways; something that makes you both stay up instead of knocking out like you usually do; something that makes you both hungry and restless and liable to travel across Tokyo past midnight. By public transport, no less. No warping or high-speed flying for you, tonight.

But you appreciate it. And you think that Satoru is taking things slow for the same reasons you want to — to take things in, to appreciate what you never think to appreciate. To admire the mundane, even for a little while. Satoru’s less emotionally attached to the jujutsu-less aspects of life than you are — bullet trains and waiting in line and standing on the train platform, escalators and traffic — but he enjoys them all the same when he has time to. And it’s not often The Strongest gets to experience pure, genuine normality, too, so maybe sitting in this gaudy diner and watching the world pass you by is a luxury he rarely affords himself.

He orders the most complicated drink they have — a sakura-caramel milkshake topped with whipped cream, glacé cherries, and an entire slice of cheesecake. He’s down to the last dregs of melting cream within 10 minutes, swiping fries from your plate between sips, ignoring your chides of rotten teeth and high blood sugar.

Blindfold swapped for glasses. Strands of hair drifting down against his forehead. 

You’re always reminded at the worst times of how handsome he is. It’s not like it’s a secret, or he’s unaware of it — and he takes pride in his looks, if his extensive skincare shelf and general attitude is anything to go by — but he puts much more stock in his strength, in his usefulness to others, his intelligence. The things he can provide for others. Not many people realise that.

Maybe you shouldn’t act so high and mighty. It’s not like you don’t appreciate his appearance as much as the next person — hell, half the time you’re trying to stop it from distracting you — but maybe you get a pass. Y’know, as a person who actually has reason to marvel over the stretch of his neck and the flush of his cheeks and how his lips go the prettiest pink when you kiss him. Or the cords of muscle along his arms; the slender-yet-thick bands of muscle of his chest and legs. The large, veiny expanse of hand — slim, delicate fingers wrapped around a paper straw…

"Are you gonna eat those?" Says Satoru, slurping obnoxiously. “Haven't eaten since dinner."

You push the basket across the table, uncharacteristically void of argument. "Go crazy."

Satoru sets his empty glass aside, but the straw remains in one hand. The other he uses to pluck up fries, 4 or 5 at a time, his gaze suddenly fixed on you as he chews nonchalantly.

"Y'know," he says, licking salt from his fingertips, jabbing the straw in your direction, "I can always tell when you're horny."

"Excuse me?"

"You squirm," Satoru continues — matter-of-fact, casual, as if he's talking about the weather. "And you get quiet.”

“I’m a quiet person,” you snap, nails pressing against your palms under the table. “Sorry I know when to shut the fuck up—”

“And then you get flustered. And when you’re flustered, or embarrassed, you get angry.” He raises his hand — signals the cute waitress for another basket of fries, and leans back with his arms splayed along the back of the booth. “Don’t look so surprised! How long have we known each other?”

If you were a better person, you’d probably admit that yes, he’s right. You do get quiet when you’re horny, and you do get angry when you’re flustered — if you were a worse person, though, you’d remark on how you're the first person he crawls to when he’s sad, or overwhelmed. How getting you into bed and losing yourselves in each other is a sort of therapy for him. How he always tries to distract you with cheeky grins and sly, flirty comments, but then afterwards he cries in the bath as you clean him up. 

You don't say that, obviously. Seems like a pretty shitty thing to bring up today of all days. He'd probably deny it anyways, but you don't think it's a coincidence that the attack has left him restless and he obviously wants to take you home.

The new fries are delivered to the table, but he looks right past them. He bows his head slightly, glasses slipping a little further down his nose so that his white-framed eyes peek over the top of them. 

"Let's warp home," Satoru says — and oh. There's that voice. That drop in tone, that lack of boisterous humour he always employs. It's soft enough to have goosebumps rising on the back of your arms, smooth enough to have you squirming — yes, squirming, you admit it — in your seat. "Alright?"

"Yes." And it's embarrassingly breathless, and embarrassingly quick, but Satoru doesn't tease you. Just smiles, raises a hand for the bill, and watches you all the while.

7.

You count seven stitches in the forehead of Geto Suguru.

Count, because it's all you can do. Everything else is lost to you. 

Breathing.

Standing.

It feels like even your heart has stalled. Because—

Because—

Because Geto Suguru is dead. Dead, in the ground, no longer breathing, no longer living. Satoru had killed him. Satoru had demolished him.

The lips of the Geto in front of you twist — a sickening, stomach-turning imitation of the smile you once adored. On his face it's a sneer, a mockery. Your Suguru did not smile like this when you knew him.

"Hello," he greets pleasantly. His arms are hidden within the sleeves of his yukata. Hair down. Suguru always tended to wear his hair up, unless he was fresh out of the shower. Unless he was upset. It was too much hassle to take care of. You know when he took over the Time Vessel Association and donned the gojo-kesa he began wearing it down. "_____ _____, yes?"

You can't answer. Your ears are ringing. Your stomach gives a worrying lurch that winds up your throat — you think you're going to be sick. 

How? Why? Who — who is this in front of you? Because it's not Geto, not Suguru — and you don't say that because of longing or a pathetic desire for ignorance. This thing feels wrong. Inherently, blasphemously wrong. Looking at him for too long makes your cursed energy prickle. Seeing Suguru's image painted in such slimy, rancid energy has you gasping for breath.

Satoru, your mind whispers. Satoru needs to know.

He should. He needs to. But this pseudo-Geto does not look friendly in the slightest, and you are isolated.

Looking back, it had seemed fine to go alone to exorcise curses in the belly of Tokyo's metro. Taking old service tunnels and eventually entering abandoned tracks hadn't felt scary. You're a semi-special grade sorcerer with years of experience under your belt and a powerful cursed technique that could get you out of most, if not all, pinches, restrictions and regulations be damned.

"I'm sure you're very confused. I apologise, really…"

The reality of the situation hits you. Maybe hit is the wrong word — it doesn’t come as a bloody, stinging smack in the face. It’s a trickle of ice-cold water down the nape of your neck, drawing dread from your head all the way into the pit of your stomach. You don't think this is a pinch you'll come out of — at least not battered half to death, especially when a silver-haired curse decorated with stitches steps out from behind pseudo-Geto. The curse Kento had fought. The one that he said to look out for. Patchwork.

Immediately, you know fighting isn't an option. But what else is there to do, in the face of pseudo-Geto and his silver-haired, sentient curse? Your technique may not be limitless in your possession, but in theirs? If they did to you what they did to so many others — transfiguring you past the point of recognition, stealing your body and technique, desecrating your corpse with cursed energy…

"I can feel it from here," titters the curse excitedly. "So warm… I have to have it! Her soul, I have to have it!"

Fuck.

You could try to escape, but you wouldn't have enough time to run past them and through the winding corridors of the underground, even while distracting them with your cursed technique. They'd catch you within seconds. You’re sure they have curses lurking around waiting to thwart you, too.

You could burst directly into the layers of concrete and metal above — use your technique to revert them back millions and millions and years to their very first forms, atoms and subatomic particles, and then rebuild them up as an ascending platform — but that would take too much time, and you'd be completely defenceless while you did. Not to mention the toll it'd take on you.

(Not to mention the fact that you'd be bursting into the public eye from a giant crater in the ground.)

"I'm sure you know what I'm going to do," continues pseudo-Geto, amiable. "I would ask you to join us, but I know that is impossible. Therefore, there is only one course of action."

Can't fight. Can't escape. Can't get answers. Can't stay clueless. How contradictory.

You're not dying, that's all you know. And if you have to do the one thing you never wanted to do, then so be it. Anything is better than death. Death is not an escape, in this scenario — it’s a guarantee of imprisonment.

"It's a shame," pseudo-Geto sighs, bloodlust swelling. "Such a waste of a good technique."

You make a Binding Vow with yourself within seconds.

Using a magnitude of cursed energy usually out of your reach, your entire body will be reduced to atoms — intangible, untrappable, unkillable — for as long as it takes to retreat to safety. In return, you will be unable to think, unable to move according to your own will, only a mere pawn to entropy as the rest of the galaxy is — high risk, high reward.

There are many things that could go wrong.

In reducing yourself to essentially nothing, in splitting your cursed energy into billions of particles, you could reach a state of such low cursed energy concentration that you are, for all terms and purposes, considered dead. In doing so, your Binding Vow could break, and you would be unable to return to living. 

Or you could float for days, weeks, years — safety is subjective, subjective is dangerous when it comes to contracts, and you can only hope that your own understanding of it sets the standard.

It's either this, this fleeting, terrifying chance, or death. With one, you can return to your school, your students, your Satoru — you can tell them what happened. You can bring justice to whoever has disturbed Suguru from his slumber. With the other — nothing. Just plain, utter nothingness forever and ever.

(You know which you'd rather.)

The last thing you recall, in spotty haziness, is the heart-stopping sight of Suguru surging towards you, eyes bloodthirsty, face contorted in malice. 

The last thing you hope is that Satoru isn't too upset about the risk you've taken.

8.

Eight days after your solo mission, you resurface — a discombobulated, stumbling mess on the outskirts of Shibuya, eyes glazed and mouth stuttering over syllables. A nearby Window calls the college within seconds, and Gojo is there just as soon — hands shaking when he grasps your arm and turns you to face him, fingers trembling when he cups your cheeks and brushes them under your eyes.

It’s you. It’s you, it’s you, it’s you, and he can breathe, he can fucking breathe, his chest is lighter than it’s been for those entire 8 days — all the while, he burns with an anger so intense it hurts. And Satoru is no stranger to anger, of course — knows it as intimately as he knows himself — but he's not sure if he can remember the last time it had rendered him breathless, trembling. Bloodthirsty.

It's not the time to think about it. Not when you're shaking in his arms, so frail and weak everywhere except your hands — no, your hands remain strong, fingers digging into his clothes and skin. He turns off his Infinity. The sting of your touch grounds him.

Shoko is already waiting in the clinic for him — she’d been preparing ever since the call first came in. The students (the ones on campus, at least) crowd together at a distance, buzzing anxiously as Satoru disappears swiftly into the depths of the infirmary with you in his arms.

Bad things happen often. Too often. Satoru isn’t sure whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing that they haven’t gotten used to it yet.

“Gibberish,” Satoru answers when Shoko asks if you’ve said anything competent since he picked you up. “Just gibberish.”

Shoko is poking and prodding you with the usual doctor's shit — stethoscopes and thermometers and that blood pressure band that goes around your arm — and you just lay there and take it. Head rocking side to side, limbs trembling, mouth lolling open, and Satoru's trying not to lose his head because what good is taking your temperature? Do you look like you have a fucking cold? Is the way your eyes focus and unfocus normal? The way you can’t string together two syllables that make fucking sense?

But even with how he can see your cells malfunctioning all over your body, Shoko knows more about this shit than him. So he sits pretty on her swivelling chair, twisting back and forth, body the image of boredom but mind anything but. Time and time again, he’s reminded of how unprejudiced tragedy is — how it leaves no hint, no mark of itself, no time to prepare for the toll of it all. 

Satoru had greeted you briefly before you’d left. Said something about getting lunch together, that you better be careful because you were treating him — the same shit he said time and time again, his real plea hidden within the folds and twists of his jokes and quips. Be careful. Don’t die. I can’t lose you. You’re precious to me.

You’ll be okay. You have to be — he won’t allow anything otherwise. But if he’d known last week that you’d end up like this, would he have said those things out loud? He doesn’t think so. He’s cowardly in that way.

A few moments later, Shoko straightens up. Immediately reaches into the pocket of her lab coat and pulls out a cigarette and a rusting lighter, and is puffing out clouds of bitter air just seconds later. 

Shit. That’s not a good sign.

Shoko sighs. Rubs at her dark undereye circles and only makes them worse, taps her cigarette so that the ash falls to the floor. “I know what it is.”

Well fucking tell him instead of keeping it in!

“Oh?” Satoru says instead, leaning forward onto his knees. “What is it, then?”

“She used her technique on herself.”

“She does that all the time to heal."

“She didn’t heal herself,” Shoko snaps — and Satoru remembers that he’s not the only person you’re important to. That while he and Suguru had gotten ahead of themselves being the strongest, they’d left you and Shoko to stroll humbly along your own paths. The only girls in their year. The only person Shoko could fully confide in, really — at least in Tokyo —, the only person who had bothered to check up on her when she drank too much, smoked too much. Even if Shoko hated it. 

Shoko is upset. Satoru doesn't what to do with it.

(Alcohol — she likes alcohol. Satoru reminds himself to pick up the most expensive bottle of the stuff the next time he's out.)

(No. She’s trying not to drink so much, isn’t she?)

(Whatever. Life is short.)

“She dissipated herself.”

Satoru knows about your technique intimately enough that it immediately gives him pause — but he runs over the details in his head, just in case, as if it isn’t already imprinted on the flesh of his skull.

Your cursed technique allows you to disassemble items down to their most basic units — subatomic particles — while your reverse cursed technique allows you to reassemble them. Items can be reassembled into their previous form, or to another related form, but you cannot exceed the item’s natural entropy threshold. If you do, the item cannot be reverted back to a physical state, and you will bear the brunt of the resulting shift in energy.

It's a finicky technique. Finicky and fickle and the risks tend to outweigh the rewards — but you'd always used it so elegantly, so gracefully. Even when you doubted yourself, you had a handle on it. Satoru admired that about you.

("You don't say I'm powerful. You say I'm helpful. There's a difference."

You'd said that to him once, when he brought you and Yuuji to lunch. You'd acted like it didn't bother you but he could tell it did — he didn't need his Six Eyes to notice how your nose twitched and your eyes narrowed, displeased. 

But Satoru believes in two types of helpfulness. 

The kind he is — powerful, needed, a force to be reckoned with. Someone that keeps things afloat, that acts as a beacon in the dark.

Then there's the other kind. The usefulness of pawns, of bait. Necessary, but not fundamental. Desired, sure, but rarely crucial.

You've always been the first. Always. You and him and Suguru and Shoko, always. Even he could admit that.)

You disassembled yourself into atoms. Into nothingness. You lost your mind, your body, your energy, everything—

Satoru sighs. He's been doing that a lot today.

“I didn’t know she could do that,” Satoru says. His throat is covered in a layer of sawdust. He can’t remember the last time he had to actually focus on not throwing up. “Why would she do that?”

“She talked about it, before,” Shoko says. She leans against the bed you’re laying on, gazing over her shoulder — and the way she looks at you turns his stomach, the upturn of her brows, the sad downturn of her mouth. It’s as if you’re already dead. As if she’s looking at a living corpse. “Just… as a theory. A last resort to help her get away, if needed, but—”

“But what?”

“She knew she didn’t have the power for it,” Shoko mutters. Breathes another puff of cigarette smoke. “If she tried, she'd end up just… fading away. In breaking herself up, she'd negate the cursed energy that gives her the power to put herself together.

"And the side effects would be… well, you can see that for yourself. Stupid, so fucking stupid…”

“Well, obviously she has the power for it,” Satoru murmurs. “Or made the power for it.”

“A binding vow?”

Satoru shrugs. Clenches his jaw, watching as you scratch at the faux-leather underneath you. “It'd make sense. Explains how she put herself back together."

(But for what? What could have driven you to such lengths? 

A curse like Jogo wouldn't be all too difficult for you to defeat.

So who…?)

Shoko hums. She stares into space for a moment, eyes unfocused, and for a moment Satoru sees her younger self — the one who just started smoking, just started drinking, who carried the weight of all the people she healed (and those she'd failed to) tucked in her pocket. The Shoko that would make sarcastic quips and humble them when they needed humbling, but humour them when she knew the outcome would be funny.

A time when they had very little responsibility. Even him, shackled with it since birth. Comparing his duty from then to now is like comparing a boulder to the weight of the world.

He feels very old, suddenly, at 28.

"There's nothing I can do for her," Shoko says, softly. Regretfully. "If she did make a binding vow, I can only assume she made a condition about returning to normal. If so…"

Satoru can’t do anything about it, basically, she explains. Your condition is one that will only heal with time, patience, and the odd boost from Shoko’s technique. Maybe, she says — she's still unsure about that last bit.

It sickens him. It festers as a deep, curdling annoyance in his bones, his uselessness. It’s a sensation he had only felt once before, standing before the slumped-over body of Geto Suguru. Nothing he could do for him except put him out of his misery, and even then that felt like a cop-out.

So… he can't go directly after the thing that had forced your hand, because they had left no trace. He can't heal you, either. He can't take care of you while your body repairs itself, while your supposed binding vow returns you to your rightful state — that duty will fall to Shoko, or one of her interns. 

He can do nothing. And Satoru is nothing if he cannot be of use.

9.

Nine months after the events of the culling games, Satoru enters your room to see you sitting up — eyes wide, eyes seeing, and it only takes you fixing him with a single look to know that you're okay. 

(Subjectively. Relatively.)

Suguru Getou — Kenjaku — is finally dead — exorcised. He’s not sure which is the right word to use. All of his allies, killed or exorcised too. Nanami, murdered. Nobara, comatose. Yaga, dead. Inumaki, Maki, Okkotsu, maimed; the great houses of sorcery destroyed and rebuilt in the image of Satoru’s will. 

Itadori Yuuji — dead. Sukuna Ryomen — exorcised.

Adding up the gains, subtracting the losses, carrying the ones… Both sides seem to have lost pretty evenly. And he should be happy about it, too; things could have turned out much worse. And they would have, too, if he hadn’t pushed himself out of his pouting and escaped the prison realm — a feat that was half out of spite and half concern for the outside world, and maybe a little curiosity. Rage. Longing to see the bastard who’d stolen Suguru’s face and body, who dared to reanimate him and rouse him from peace — longing to slaughter the thing that had rendered you bedridden and half-mad for months.

He had been the one to kill Kenjaku. It only felt right to be the one to do so — he’d killed Suguru, after all; had been the one to leave him defenceless and open to manipulation. If Suguru hadn’t been dead, Kenjaku wouldn’t have been able to steal his body. 

Of course, Satoru ignored the fact that the very last rotten, desperate dregs of Suguru would have enjoyed Kenjaku’s plan — it was the only way he was able to keep his eyes open when he blasted his brain to bits. It was hard enough the first time.

All of these things sit on his tongue, bitter and souring and curdling — every detail of the battle, of the culling games, the colleagues and peers and students he’d held in his arms, the ones he’d comforted as they slipped away, the ones he’d reassured and promised. 

(Pink, blood-covered hair; a smile that never dimmed, a nervous murmur (“It’s okay, Gojo-sensei. I know what I got into.”). The shaky laugh that had followed.)

Satoru’s hands tremble at his sides.

Your eyes are wet with tears when you look at him. 

“How long has it been?” You croak — voice dry and cracked with disuse, whining in some parts, low and wheezing in others. Bone-deep, the fear in your voice, and for good reason — things had already been at a boiling point when you’d been taken down. Everything had moved past you. “Satoru—?”

Another selfish decision on his part: he doesn’t tell you. At least, not now, when the words threaten to vomit out of his mouth, when the pain is suddenly too fresh and too raw. 

(For one strange, too-long second, he’s reminded of his mother — weak, presence-less, powerless as she was. Empty-eyed and unhappy. She was hardly even a mother with the amount of governesses he had.

Somehow, though, every problem would seem worse when her eyes were upon him; every cut and bruise was more painful; every slight against him a grave insult; every mistake a cause for self-pity and temper tantrums — and none of it mattered, as long as she took him into her arms.

A rarity, yes, but… maybe one of the only fond memories he has of his childhood in the Gojo household.

Satoru feels like a kid again — suddenly sniffling from a bruise he swore didn’t hurt, his mother ready to pat his head and baby him and coo his name. Satoru. Not Gojo-sama.)

He crosses the room and plants himself upon your bed and takes you into his arms for the first time in months, and—

And for the first time since Yuuji’s death, since Nanami’s, since Suguru’s, since your injuries—

He cries. Openly. Heaving, chest-wrecking sobs; red, wet nose and ugly whimpers. It’s overwhelming. It’s cathartic. It makes the pain worse, for a second, before it begins to taper out in a bruising wave; with it, he remembers his darling underclassmen who died, his colleagues that he’d wanted to live at least a few more years; he remembers that despite years of being told so, he’s not God — he couldn’t stop Yuuji’s death, or Suguru’s, or Toge losing his arms, or—

“Thirteen months,” he manages to get out. “Thirteen months — you couldn’t talk, or move properly, or—”

Satoru grabs handfuls of you — hair, waist, belly, it doesn’t matter. He can feel you beneath his skin. Rushing, pounding blood, cells, micromolecules — and he doesn’t need to, but he engages his Six Eyes for a moment — actually engages them, doesn’t let them run unconsciously in the background. It’s a comfort to let himself see each receptor interact with each signal on each plasma membrane, to let himself see the tissues that formed organs that formed organ systems forming you, breathing, living, sentient—

He kisses you — or you kiss him, he’s not sure — but it’s far more intimate, far more tender than any touch he’d delivered unto you; hands clutching the sides of your face, your fingers digging into his wrists. You’re crying, salt on his tongue — and he only knows they’re not his own tears because you give a great, shuddering sob when you part, trembling like a leaf in the wind. 

“I had to,” you gasp, and he wants to tell you that he knows, he knows, he doesn’t blame you, sweet girl — did what you had to do to live, to survive— “I had to—”

“Only go where I can follow, okay?" His eyes are burning again, voice cracking with the promise, regardless of the fact that he’d rather you do it 100 times over than die. But it's the only way he can tell you he loves you without telling you he loves you, and he can't remember the last time he said the words aloud.

(He does. He remembers. And he remembers that Suguru wouldn't mind if he said it to you — that Suguru loved you as he loves you. And he remembers that Suguru is dead and doesn't have an opinion anymore, so it really doesn't matter, anyways.)

Satoru calls Shoko when he rights himself, barely pulling back from your embrace to text her something barely understandable and hurried. You don't say much while he does; still acclimating to being aware, being awake — he catches you with your eyes screwed shut and your nose buried in his jacket, fingers tight on his arms again. Grounding yourself. Reminding yourself that you're alive, and with him.

Shoko scolds you between rummaging around for a thermometer and scribbling your prescription in messy, barely legible cursive — calls you a dumb bitch for doing what you did, tells you that you owe her a bottle of wine and a trip to a fancy hot spring, and it all seems a little lighter.

(She cries a little — if the slight glassiness of her eyes can be considered crying. Satoru only teases her a bit for it, though you're quick to mention how he'd blubbered like a baby when he saw you, and he's humbled quickly.

It's the most normal he's felt in weeks.)

Shoko clears away after a few hours — gives you strict orders to rest, and sends him a knowing look that he's not all too sure of the meaning of. 

"You look tired, Satoru," you finally say when you're alone again. Your smile is sad, knowing, and Satoru curses it all. You deserve a grace period, a moment of ignorance before the grief settles in. "What happened?"

But when have you ever wanted a moment of ignorance? When has he ever been able to hide the truth of things from you? When have you ever been anything but his equal, his confidant?

"Everything," Satoru says. A short, humourless laugh punctuates his single-worded sentence. "Everything, crybaby. Everything that we thought could happen, and everything we thought couldn't."

A flicker of a smile — uncomfortable, flat. Your eyes flicker down to the bland, starched sheets of the hospital bed. "Did you see him?"

He doesn't need you to elaborate. There's really only one person you both mean when you say him.

"Yes."

"Who was he?"

Satoru shifts in his seat. "An ancient sorcerer named Kenjaku. His cursed technique allowed him to transplant his brain between bodies and possess them."

"And he chose Suguru."

"Yes. And many others, too."

"And you killed him."

"Yes. For Suguru, and for you. But mostly for Suguru.”

“I’m glad,” you say, but your fingers twist the sheets tightly. “When I saw him, I was angry. So angry, I… I wanted to kill him. I knew I wasn’t strong enough, and I knew he would kill me, but for a second—”

He understands. God, does he understand. “You wanted to take the risk.” No matter the cost, no matter the damage to your own body. Anger like that consumes.

“I did.” You swallow. Your eyes meet his. “It was like… adding insult to injury. As if it’s not enough that Suguru is dead, but this — this Kenjaku has to puppeteer him too. Disturb his peace."

The wind rustles the trees outside. The late-afternoon gold of the sun settles along the horizon, a burning orange that stretches the shadows and warms the wind and turns the side of your face honey-soft and sad.

“But I realised that I was probably the first person he’d revealed himself to," you continue, "so I was the only one that could warn you."

Always thinking about the good of others. It was another thing he admired about you — Nanami, too. Satoru, for all his big talk about changing the world of jujutsu, about being better than those who came before him, is really quite selfish. 

It's why his hands had trembled when he'd had to kill Yuuji. It's why he couldn't put Suguru in the ground the first time they met after he became a curse user. Even when he knows things are necessary, he tries his damnedest to hold on — just for the chance of it all. The chance that Suguru could change his mind. The chance that Sukuna could be removed from Yuuji without him needing to die. 

"And…”

One snow-white brow raises. “And?”

“You’ve already lost too many people that you love,” you say simply, shrugging — like it's a simple fact, no need for experimentation, no need for an academic paper complete with its own abstract and footnotes. Like you've always known, in some little way, but you're only able to bring yourself to say it now.

And Satoru — well, it's no secret to him, is it? He's known it since he was 13, 14, 15 — had a bit of a buffering period, sure — and now here at 28, he knows it just as well. The point is that you're not supposed to know. Not while you're still healing from Suguru and… being attacked by fake-Suguru.

Regardless of what he knows and how long he's known it, Satoru feels his throat begin to close up, twisting and turning and holding his breath tight. He doesn’t like the feeling.

“Love?” He echoes. His voice has gotten a little empty. It's too soon for him to say it aloud, he thinks. It was okay when he whispered it in his head after making love to you; it was easy when he grinned at your scrunched up nose and scoffed comments and thought fuck, I love you. It was easy when he could pretend it was a simple, passing comment, a trick of the mind — but having it said as fact? 

Not so simple. But you don’t need to know that. “Is that so?"

You don't seem to notice his momentary pause — a lifetime of rambling in his time, a second's hesitation in regular time — too busy staring at the space where his fingers stretch apart over the sheets. Just inches away from yours. "We're friends, aren't we?"

Oh.

"Oh." Satoru blinks back. "Oh, yeah. Best friends, you and I, crybaby."

"I know it's normal for us," you say, ploughing ahead, "to just lose and lose and keep losing, but… I'll be honest. I never fully got used to it, and I don't want to."

He wishes he could say the same, but he can't.

He understands, in some capacity. Nobody wants to see the people around them die, a continuous and vicious cycle. Nobody wants to get so used to loss that most funerals no longer hold any emotional significance. But getting used to it had saved him. Getting used to it helped him act without consequence, without remorse, and that's what the battlefield both needs and requires of him.

He could count on both hands the people he wants to save in this world — about half of them were dead, at this point. A lot of them died while he was imprisoned. Two, he had to kill himself. He swore he'd protect the rest with all Six Eyes, every non-existent boundary of his Limitless.

So Satoru doesn't care much about getting used to death and dying and loss and grief. As long as you're okay, he's okay. As long as his job as the Strongest is done, everything is as it should be.

He doesn't say that to you, of course. You'd probably curse him out and call him a heartless bastard. Instead, he nods, hums and agrees and tells you the names of those who died when you work up the courage to ask.

It's a long night. It's an even longer list.

10.

Shoko keeps you for observation for 10 days after you wake up — three days longer than necessary, but she won't hear it from him, no matter how many times he reminds her that technically she falsified her degree—

He's joking. Mostly.

Satoru volunteers himself to help you back home, taking with you the plastic bag filled with your cleaned sorcerer's garb and weapon. He carries it over his shoulder along with two teddy bears, a half-wilted bouquet of tulips and a half-eaten box of chocolates (all courtesy of the second years — except for the chocolates, which are half-eaten because of him). He winds his other arm around your waist even though you can walk perfectly fine, but — it's just in case. Purely precautionary. For once, you don’t argue about being babied.

In the midday sun outside, you tilt your head back and close your eyes and smile. For a moment, it's as if the sadness has melted away from you — the tears you shed over Yuuji, Nanami, Suguru. The tears you shed over him, and he wasn't even dead. Satoru is glad your eyes are closed — even beneath his sunglasses, it's painfully obvious that he's staring.

You decide to take the subway home — it's my first time outside in almost a year, you remind him, so he pushes down any arguments he might have and enjoys the too-cramped journey towards Akihabara. You’re both shoved standing together, between a panicked looking man holding a tray of coffee and a woman with her child hanging about her legs, your head bobbing against his chest as the train moves. 

For a moment — as the train passes momentarily out of the underground and becomes encapsulated in light — it's easy to drown in the normalcy of it all. For a moment, he sees himself looking in as a stranger would. Here, he isn't the Six Eyes; just a simple man taking his girlfriend home, standing close on the train, wishing to be closer. Riding home to your shared apartment where he'll peel oranges and feed them to you, where he'll lay his head in your lap and hold your hands to his heart.

His nose wrinkles. He prefers reality, he thinks, where he can be powerful and have you by his side; where he can protect you, uphold peace, change the jujutsu world for the best — and then go home all the same, and have you to hold.

"What are you thinking about?" You mumble against his collar.

"Oranges," he replies.

"I don't have any at home," you say, "or if I did, they're rotted."

"Don't worry — we cleaned your kitchen up. Me and the kids." It was an afternoon of Yuuji attempting to shove rotting potatoes in Nobara's face. That was before Shibuya; before everything, really.

"Oh? You got your hands dirty?"

Satoru tries to not think about that same beaming, smiling Yuuji's last breaths. "Of course! This is me we're talking about, honey. I was front and centre."

You snort, soft against his neck. It's a wonder he went almost a year without you. "Housewife Satoru. I'll keep it in mind."

When you return to your apartment, you shower together for the first time in forever. He spends extra time and care massaging shampoo into your scalp, detangling each knot; spends extra time rinsing the suds out, tilting your head back with a gentle tap to your chin. 

Steam clogs his mind. Almond shower oil and citrusy shampoo fog his senses. The realisation that you could have potentially been taken away from him sits heavy like a stone in his stomach — why it hadn't sunk in in the past, oh, 13 months or so, he doesn’t know. All he knows is that he's terribly bad at caring for precious things — but if he could, if it's possible, he'll remould and reshape his hands, his heart, his mind, just for the chance—

"Satoru," you breathe against his lips, "Bow your head."

(Bow your head, you say. He'd kneel if you asked him to.)

You brush your hands through his hair; rinse him free of suds and bubbles and kiss his temples as you shut off the water. What is supposed to be healing for you is quickly becoming therapy for him — muscles relaxing, mind clearing of all responsibilities, mournings, obligations. All he knows are the soft, newly washed sheets beneath him and your nose in the crook of his neck.

It's a strange sensation, the lack of tension, his brain not working overtime. But hardly unwelcome.

11.

Satoru asks you if you saw anything when you were indisposed. Memories, flashbacks, prophecies? Blurry half-truths, nonsensical babbling? You tell him that you can't really remember — and you can't, not really, but you do remember one thing.

When you were 11, you met Satoru and Suguru for the first time. It's that memory that you can remember playing in your head, over and over and over again: Satoru and Suguru, scrawny and still-faced in their yukata. 

Satoru was from a great, traditional house. Suguru was not, but upon discovery of his powers, was taken into unofficial custody of the higher-ups. In most circumstances, you wouldn’t have been allowed within two feet of them — but the elders had deemed your cursed technique a great gift, and so you were warily accepted into the upper echelons of jujutsu society, a stranger, a foreigner.

Introducing you to the most powerful sorcerers your age was nothing more than political play, of course. The adults followed behind as you walked through the grand grounds of the Gojo family — (maintained by a team of 12 gardeners, according to the Lady of the house) — muttering and scheming between themselves, making sure nothing would go awry.

Nothing did, of course. Satoru picked his nose and Suguru told him it was rude and they bickered for a while — Satoru bickered, Suguru replied calmly and quickly. Satoru asked you if your technique was good or bad ("No such thing," interjected Suguru) and whether or not you think you could beat him in a fight. 

(That last question was to stroke his own ego, of course. Everyone knew he was the strongest sorcerer born in the last century.)

At some point, Satoru made you cry. 

You can't remember what about, all these years later — you'd think you'd remember, considering the fact that you know the amount of gardeners employed by the Gojo estate — but you know that you had tried to stop it; fists balled, teeth gritted, full-body heaves. Crying was the last thing you had wanted to do. Crying meant weakness. Weakness meant being taken advantage of.

But you were so scared. It was all so alien. You wanted to go home, but home didn’t exist anymore. You wanted your mother, but your mother was long gone. All you had left were stone-faced adults that were only interested in your abilities. 

Suguru had been confused at your reaction to what he took as a harmless quip — a little callous, as most children are — but he had reassured you nonetheless.

"Don’t cry. Satoru speaks before he thinks," he'd said, nudging your shoulder. "Sometimes you have to ignore him and he'll be so bored that he has to think."

"I can hear you," Gojo huffed. "I didn't mean to."

"See?" Suguru smiled. "Works like a charm."

Yes, Suguru had always been there to protect you. Emotionally, at least. He was willing to be kinder to people. More gentle, more forgiving. He'd believed that it was his duty as a sorcerer to protect those that couldn't protect themselves, and—

Well. That had changed, by the end, but having that memory replay in your head made you see the bigger picture of it all. Suguru's place in things. Your place in things.

You'd loved Suguru, no doubt. And you’ll probably always carry a piece of him with you — you'd hate to do otherwise. You’ll carry his kindness and his jokes and his catlike smile, all tucked away in bubble wrap somewhere in your chest cavity — but you will never disregard his wrongdoings. Since his death, you'd argued against the two sides of him; felt guilty for loving him after what he did, felt guilty for hating him after loving him and knowing him for as long as you did. Two halves of a whole. Darkness in light and light in darkness.

He was both of those things. You love him, but you don’t forgive him, and you probably never will. He will never again be the boy that comforted you after Satoru made you cry; he will never again be the boy who let you braid his hair back. He won't be the boy who slaughtered innocents, either — death's funny like that. Indiscriminately doing away with both the good and the bad.

And that's okay. Kenjaku is dead, after all, and Suguru can finally rest — and with him, your warring mind.

12.

Midnight strikes and you're still awake. You don’t even seem tired, and that's after a long shower and takeout and a movie. Usually you'd be a drooling mess by now, but tonight is different. Feels different. Satoru isn’t sure if it's just a year's worth of built up sexual tension or something else, but he feels it regardless. 

He's flopped on his stomach, hair still damp; you're curled up in the shape of a C, skin reflecting the light of the TV. He might visit Nobara tomorrow. Megumi usually goes on Wednesdays, too — they could make a day out of it, and you could tag along, too. He's got a craving for the pistachio macarons they sell near—

"I'm in love with you," you announce. 

Satoru doesn't bother asking you to repeat yourself because he knows he didn’t mishear. It isn't the knowing that shocks him — he's not stupid, and you wear your heart on your sleeve — it's the sudden, quick verbal affirmation of it that catches him off guard. After all, haven’t you two been putting this all off? Yearning for a dead man? Being pulled from two opposing poles?

He turns his head towards you, opens his mouth to ask you just that, and—

"After Suguru, I thought I'd never be happy again," you say, and you’re smiling like you didn't just say something inherently heartbreaking. But no, you look fond — content, even, blinking slowly at him. "And I thought I'd never feel for someone as strong as I did for him. But here I am: happy, and in love, and okay."

Satoru opens his mouth — then closes it quickly. For some reason, he remembers something Suguru said to you when you were younger: "Satoru speaks before he thinks." But he wants to think about this — about what he should say. How does he respond to you quite literally baring your heart to him? How does he tell you what he wants to tell you, what you deserve to hear? He's never been good with real, genuine words — emotional shit never came easy to him out loud. His thoughts are much more concise than his mouth is, but he guesses it's because it moves so fast in comparison.

Pity you can't read his mind. It'd make things much easier. 

“You don’t have to say anything,” but he wants to, don't you know? "You don't have to pretend. It’s okay. I know that… maybe you don’t love me as much as you loved Suguru, but I know you love me in some way, at least—”

Satoru frowns — strings of ideas and thoughts bunching up and stopping short as your words register. “As much as I— hey, stop putting words in my mouth—"

"The truth is," you continue on, "I feel lighter than I have in years. I don't dread life so much anymore. I don't dread you anymore."

"You… dreaded me?"

You hum. Your legs stretch down, arms forward, face scrunched up in a passing yawn. "I'm not stupid to think you didn’t know how I felt, but… I hated that I was so obvious about it. Even when I was fighting with myself about it, I was obvious. It made me hate being around you, sometimes."

You sigh, then — not as heavy and melancholy as they used to be, no. This is a sigh of relief, of cathartic release. 

Satoru blinks, and attempts to wade through the seventy-or-so compulsions telling him to make a joke, to laugh, to tease you. Maybe he should actually be serious for once. Say it straight and say it firm, so you can't take anything the wrong way. If there was ever a time for him to not beat around the bush…

"I've liked you since I was 17," he confesses, finally. "Me and Suguru, we were together, y’know, and we were happy. And Suguru loved you, and somewhere along the line I… began to do the same, but we were so young and then… Everything changed so fast. Everything broke so fast.”

Your fingers brush against his, and he breathes in a sigh. Your eyes are wide and watery, low light reflecting like glitter in your eyes. 

"Sometimes, it keeps me up at night," Satoru says, laughing a pained sort of laugh. "Out of everything, that's what keeps me up — that we could've been happy together, all three of us. It never would’ve been enough to make him change, but…"

At least you would’ve known what it was like. To be happy together in that way. To be content. To find your places in the world, hand and hand. To know what it was like — even if Suguru’s fall from grace was inevitable — so you wouldn’t have to keep wondering until your untimely, gruesome, sorcerer-style deaths, or whatever. 

Back then, Satoru didn’t understand why Suguru never told you how he felt. He couldn't understand how he could be content watching from afar, looking but never touching. What Satoru wanted, he learned to take; the Strongest didn’t need to ask for permission, only forgiveness. 

He learned quickly that some things were better left unsaid. And now, 28 years old, half of his friends, students, colleagues dead — he understands even more. 

He remembers how Yuuji had tried to stave off tears when he realised he had to die; remembers how his student’s throat had felt being crushed in his hands. He loved Yuuji like a little brother. Like a son, even. He was family. He was his student, and yet his death had been necessary, and Satoru battled with it. It allowed him to succeed in the mission he was born to complete. But he had given up Yuuji in return.

There is no curse more twisted than love.

Therein lays the problem, he supposes. The second you love someone, you run the risk of having them end up like Yuuji did. Like Suguru did. Like Nanami did. When you are burdened with incredible power like Satoru is — like Suguru was — you must be able to sacrifice for it. The closer that people are, the more likely they are to be caught in the crossfire, the more likely you are to be hurt. Suguru hoped to avoid that at all costs. It was easier to watch from afar, less painful. 

Satoru is a tad more selfish. Which is bad, he knows, because he's too prepared to sacrifice. Even now. Even now, he knows that if caught between saving you and saving society, he would be forced to — to—

Satoru inhales. The only thing for it is to simply stop things from getting that far. 

He could explain all this to you. He could talk circles around you about it, in fact, but the truth is that it's all conjecture. Suguru isn’t here to tell him why he did what he did. He can’t speak for him, no matter how well he knew him.

"I don't know why Suguru never told you," Satoru says instead. He folds his fingers tighter, taking yours in his grip as he does so. "Guess that's something he took with him to the grave."

"I've stopped wondering," you say. “I’ll never stop regretting, but I’ve stopped wondering. I can’t stay rooted in the past any more. It was doing more harm than good."

And you raise your interlocked hands — nestle them under your chin and screw your eyes shut, like you're wishing on the evening star, like he's something precious to be treasured. All of a sudden he's 17 and confused about why he can't stop staring at you. He doesn’t have Suguru to tease him about it, now.

“I’ll never forget him,” Satoru announces — a warning, or a reassurance, he doesn’t know. All he knows is that he’s telling the truth and nothing but the truth, and whether or not you like his truth is not his concern. He respects you too much to lie about this to you.

Your lips twitch upwards, a phantom of a smile. “Neither will I. "

"I'll never forget you, either."

The smile grows, blooms, blossoms, until it stretches bright and full across your face. The first smile of yours he's seen in a while that wasn't at half-mast, or tinged with sadness, or pain, or fatigue.

"How lucky I am," you whisper, "to be known by you, Gojo Satoru."

It should be the other way around, he thinks.

(12.5.

It's the first time he makes love in years.

Satoru has always fucked you. Always. No matter how tired you both were, no matter how injured — he'd always force himself to be rougher, force his touches to not linger as much as he wanted them to.

If he felt too much, he'd crack a joke instead of drowning in it; if he felt his eyes beginning to burn he'd bury his nose in the crook of your neck and push it down. If he thought of long, dark hair and cat-like eyes, he'd tighten your grip in his hair and the shock of pain would clear his mind. He fucked quick, and when he was done he'd lay far away enough that he couldn't feel your skin against his.

Tonight, he lets himself love and be loved again. 

You're on top of him, ass flush against his thighs, taking every inch he has to give you; his hands have found your jaw, thumbs brushing back and forth across your dewy, sweat-slick cheeks. One hand of yours clasps around his wrist; the other bands to his chest, nails digging red into his skin. Your cursed energy blooms, flushes, flourishes when he opens his eyes to look at you. 

He sees every pore, every hair, every dimple, every broken capillary, every scratch and scrape. Every part of you, bending to him in some places, unfalteringly stubborn in others. 

"Look at you," he mumbles, blinking dumbly. "So… pretty…"

You snort something like a laugh, and continue: up, down, up, down. Slow, grinding gyrations of your hips that make his head spin pleasantly; and with his Limitless nullified, he feels every inch of skin, every tensing of muscle, every scrape and press fully and completely. He’s never felt so engulfed in it before — the sensations of it all, the warmth, your scent, your weight above him.

He'd drown in you, if he could. Take you in his mouth and nose and ears and everywhere, until he's left gasping for air and grappling for something of substance. Maybe once upon a time he would keep those thoughts to himself, for whatever reason — but now he's allowed to be selfish in his affections, allowed to give more than surface-level compliments and vague declarations of love.

Between pleasure-ridden shudders and sloppy, wet kisses, he breathes:

"I want you everywhere," he says, "All the time. Over me, on me, in me—"

You raise a brow, impudent and teasing in a way that makes his abdomen tighten. "In you?"

And maybe he didn’t mean it in the way that you took it, but he plays along anyways, waggling his brows. "You heard me."

"You're terrible."

"I'm not joking," Satoru argues — but it’s hard to take him seriously when his voice quietens, when he arches up eagerly to meet your lips— 

When his grip on your lower back becomes painfully tight, when his lips part in a moan and his eyes screw shut and he throws his head back, hips rutting up to meet yours, and—

His peak rises to greet him — and his heart swells all the while. He finds himself clawing for you as his orgasm builds, hands clambering against your back, your neck, your hair, until (with a great, shaking breath, may he add): "Fuck, I — mmf, I love you—"

It carries him off to a state of fuzzy, empty-minded ignorance — pleasure tightening his entire body, fizzling from the tips of his fingers to his curling toes. Your name on his tongue, slurred and mellifluous, his smile dizzy and drunk. 

As you smile down at him, so unbearably fond, Satoru thinks that he doesn’t mind saying I love you aloud after all.)