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bkgexe · 20 days ago

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the defiance of a life spent almost in touch

geto x reader ✾ 15.7k ✾ part one of two ✾ ao3 link

info! (canon au, haibara lives and geto never defects.) Your cursed technique allows you to read people—to see into their minds—when you touch them. It's not pleasant, but to jujutsu society, it's useful. Which means you end up in close proximity to Geto Suguru, who you've been avoiding for nearly a decade since seeing just how frightening it is inside his head. Though it's something you vowed never to repeat, it seems that there are powerful people vested in having you read him once again. ✾ tw! reader is scared of geto, typical jjk gore/violence, geto is. mentally unwell. like he didn't defect but he's Wrong ✾ notes! part two should be out end of january!!!

When the jujutsu higher-ups ask you for help, they always send Kento, because you have a hard time saying no to him.

To his credit, he always looks sorry. You have the number of every other sorcerer you know blocked. He still comes in person because he knows the blow will be softer if you can complain to him after. He drives you to the appointed location, a small town on the border of Yamanashi Prefecture. The ride is mostly silent. When the car stops in front of a small, traditional house, Kento sighs deep, a sound you got so well acquainted with in high school that you can still conjure it in your mind on command.

A familiar look: why are you doing this. Another: you can say no.

“You know why I have to,” you say.

The sigh again. “Fair enough.”

You left jujutsu society for a few reasons.

The first: your cursed technique is useless in a fight. You had to rely on strength and agility alone, which got you to Grade B—but you saw what happened to Haibara. The higher-ups send lower grade sorcerers out as a test, a toe in the water. They misjudged the grades of so many curses that at a certain point, you started to suspect that they were making it all up. That they had no way to accurately measure the strength of a curse until it had drawn a sorcerer’s blood. You didn’t want to be a body in a hospital bed, cut so deep through the middle that you had claw marks on the inside of your spine.

Haibara lived, but not without consequences.

The second: three men wait inside the house you’ve been called to. The window that alerted the higher-ups, a non-sorcerer passed out on the ground—and him. Geto smiles warmly when he sees you. You used to like his smiles before you saw the inside of his head. Now all you see is fox teeth hidden behind a stretched mouth.

Though your cursed technique isn’t useful in a fight, it’s still useful. Skin-to-skin contact allows you a look into another person’s mind. Just flashes, and nothing specific, but it’s helpful when the only witnesses you have are comatose or otherwise indisposed. You’re allowed a normal life for these few visitations. The higher-ups don’t bother you anymore. Even Gojo stopped asking you to come back and teach somewhere along the line, distracted by things more (or less, knowing him) important than your existence.

Geto never tried. You can at least respect him for that.

He explains to you that six people have been found in the same state as the man in front of you. It’s not a normal coma—something is smothering their soul, stretching it far from their body. As if they’re standing on the sidewalk across the street from themselves, watching the inside of their head through a lit window in the middle of the night. You’d forgotten what Geto’s voice sounded like, all friendly tones and half-hidden condescension.

When you touch the unconscious man, you don’t see anything at first, which is odd. His wrist is clammy and cold, his whole body covered in sweat. You briefly wonder if his soul is so disconnected that you won’t be able to read him.

And then, memories: noodles in warm broth, a pair of leather shoes with buckles, a live wire at the power plant, what it would feel like to put your hands on it?, to feel electricity for the first time in so long?, to take something into you r body that was never supposed to be there?, hands wrapped around spark-soaked copper—

Outside, you throw up behind a camellia bush. Bile burns your throat, the roof of your mouth. The flowers smell of putrid rot when you know they shouldn’t. Cold air digs needles into your cheeks, so you’re stinging inside and out. Kento hadn’t given you enough notice for you to skip breakfast, but the higher-ups hadn’t given him any notice that they’d need you.

People are predisposed to show you either wants or memories. Never both, for reasons beyond your understanding. Memories are worse than wants. They burrow deeper, which makes them harder to expel.

Instinct tells you the hand is coming before it connects, and you dodge contact—Geto at your shoulder, asking if you’re alright. He doesn’t miss that you flinch away from him. “I’d have brought a bucket inside if I knew,” he tells you. His face says: I’m sorry for overlooking this detail. He’s very good at lying with it.

“It’s at the power plant,” you say. “Whatever’s causing this.”

“Do you want to read any of the others before you go?” The question feels cruel. His face says it isn’t.

You shake your head and leave without a word.

Kento drops you off at your building and you thank him. You could invite him up easily. The two of you have known each other for so long, have experienced so much together, that being with him feels natural. It’s possible to turn off your brain around him, to touch him and only experience the smallest flashes of memory.

You thank him and say good night.

It would be selfish. You would give anything to be the kind of person that could be a good partner to him. He’s an easy man to love, which is exactly why you can never love him. You’re difficult, a puzzle that comes with a sizable warning.

When you fall asleep in your cramped apartment, you see soup and silver buckles, live wires and burning flesh.

✾

An unknown number calls when you’re at work. You pick up because it breaks the monotony of clicking around account records and absorbing none of the numbers on the screen.

“Are you busy?” the person on the line asks, and you realize you never blocked Geto’s number because you never had it in the first place.

You tell him you’re not, even though you have a project deadline this week. If you sit in this closet-turned-office for five more minutes you’re going to explode all over the walls. You're not sure why you entertain him—why you didn't just hang up the second you heard his voice. There's something about him that compels you. A terrible, morbid curiosity that sometimes, when you're not looking directly at him, overrides your fear.

He meets you at the same house as last time, but today there’s no window. Just you and him. Kento didn’t drive you. For some odd reason, you thought there’d be someone else here, as if jujutsu society at large should know that you always need a buffer when it comes to Geto. A witness. And you realize that despite the curiosity, despite the compulsion, you should never have entertained this man on the phone for more than ten seconds. You shouldn't be here. You keep your keys spiked between your fingers, as if you’d ever be able to stop one of the most powerful sorcerers alive from doing whatever he wanted with you.

“I didn’t find anything at the power plant,” he says, leading you down a wooded path behind the house. You emerge onto a dirt road on the other side, a near-identical house sitting before you, its sloping, tiled roof dripping with excess morning rain. “Have you had lunch?”

You shake your head. He smiles with his hidden fox teeth.

The man you read this time is just as feverish as the other, but his wrist is hot. This isn’t relevant to reading a person, but you notice these things because you touch people so infrequently. Each time you do it’s a research experience, notes taken inside your head, recorded to compare against other studies you’ve done over the years.

The memories are instant: rough hands that have hardened from years of manual labor, watching baseball with the other construction workers after projects done in town, your daughter moving to Tokyo for college, radishes that she used to grow in the backyard that she boiled and roasted every day after harvest, and who will you eat them with now? and who will grow them? and who will you make your hands rough for? you don’t like baseball.

Pulling away from the man’s mind is like extracting yourself from honey in the process of crystallizing. His consciousness clings to you as you leave, trying its best to suck you back in. You’re the only company it’s had in a while.

“I didn’t get anything,” you say, and your voice is rough. Your throat burns even though you didn’t throw up.

Geto sits in one of the two plastic folding chairs in the house’s main room. He plays with the piece of his hair that’s loose from his bun, twirling it between slim fingers. You haven’t seen him in a jujutsu tech uniform since high school, though you’re pretty sure Gojo still wears one daily. Geto’s always in crisp white or black button-downs, slacks, expensive oxfords. Maybe playing dress-up makes him feel less like a sorcerer and more like a human.

“I can try again,” you say, and you’re not sure why. It’s for this suffering man, you think, even though your savior complex was left behind with the jujutsu world.

“You don’t have to,” Geto says, dropping the strand of hair and leaning forward. His language is careful. He’s not telling you no. The way he watches you, elbows on his knees, hands clasped in the middle, makes you feel like you’re being tested.

You try again. This time: getting your wedding ring engraved, sitting on the porch in late spring sipping on plum wine, nearly crying when you see your daughter playing with the girls that have caused the town so much misfortune, the relief when they ’re finally gone, the relief when your daughter brings new best friends home and their eyes aren’t shadowed and sharp and too old for their sockets—

Retching is your second-least favorite thing, right behind actually vomiting. Your body rejects the images you’ve seen, trying to empty your stomach before the memories can begin to digest.

You tell Geto what you saw.

His question: “Does he remember what happened to the girls?”

“If he does, I didn’t see it,” you say. When Geto is silent, you tell him, “I can’t do it again. I can’t.”

After a tense, quiet moment, he smiles at you. You still feel nauseous, but you can’t tell if it’s because of your cursed technique or because of the bone-deep malaise that spreads into your skin like a balm when he looks at you—when you’re reminded of what you once saw lurking in the corners of his mind. “Of course,” he says. “Let’s get you home.”

✾

Kento meets you at your usual coffee shop a few weeks later. Your throat no longer feels raw every time you swallow. He has a drink waiting for you when you get there—(describing Kento as punctual would be doing the man a disservice)—and it’s your favorite, with all the little add-ons that you get too nervous to ask for at risk of being a burden to the already overworked baristas. You’re positive he tipped heavy after putting in your order.

He asks you what you think about the murder mystery you’ve both been reading. You tell him about your job, the monotony, the fantasies of exploding. He tells you about jujutsu business, even though he’s not supposed to. This has never stopped him in the past and won’t ever stop him in the future.

“The higher-ups are pleased with your work,” he tells you. He doesn’t sound pleased.

“Kento.” A warning.

He hmms at you as if actually considering your warning before speaking his mind. “Having a foot in either world is difficult. It’s impossible to keep your balance.”

Your drink suddenly disgusts you. You taste bile. The cup is hot between your hands as you roll it back and forth with your palms. “Are you saying I should come back to Jujutsu Tech?”

“I’m saying that if you want to leave entirely, you should.”

You consider this: a normal life, surrounded by normal people, with a normal job and normal friends and a normal partner, maybe, if you’re lucky. The higher-ups would never let this happen. If you wrong them, they make sure to wrong you back. “You know why I can’t.”

“I’d take care of it. You wouldn’t be bothered by anyone.” He speaks with such confidence that you could almost believe him.

You tell him you’ll think about it. The coffee stings your palms. A terrible feeling sits in your throat like a weathered rock.

There’s something other than the threat of retaliation that stops you from pulling the trigger—from fully leaving the world you grew up in, as Kento once did. Maybe you’re not as brave as him. Maybe you can’t reconcile how quickly he ended up going back. Or maybe you just feel so inextricably tied to the world in which you were raised that you need to have it in your life somehow, even if it’s in brief, unpleasant flashes of memory and want.

“You can make your decisions for yourself,” he says. He’s not disappointed with you, you’re sure—just worried. The same way you often worry about him. “They’re pleased. Geto found the curse and exorcised it the same day thanks to you. I can see why the higher-ups don’t want to let you go.”

The stone in your throat grows edges, forgets its weathering. His name always unnerves you, but Kento’s words unnerve you more. “He exorcised it—the same day we drove out there?”

Kento nods, sips his tea. “He can be vicious.”

A tremor begins in your fingers and lodges deep in your elbows, your shoulders, your very soul. “He didn’t need me to read another victim?”

Kento’s a smart man. His eyes narrow. “Not to my knowledge. Or anyone else’s.”

You wave off his concern (suspicion, really, but you love to downplay these things), and your coffee is finished, and you really should be going, anyway. “He didn’t do anything,” you lie, standing and folding your coat over your arm. “He called and asked me to come back out, but I said no.”

It’s easy to see that Kento doesn’t believe you, but he doesn’t press you either. He knows that if you tell him half-truths, once you have all of your feelings together, you’ll tell him everything. He’s done the same, and you’ve given him the grace he’s currently allowing you. He puts up with a lot—but that’s the nature of living the lives into which you both were born.

“Thank you for the coffee,” you say.

“You’ll call me soon?”

“You’re on speed dial,” you tell him—and it’s true. His contact is the only one in your phone that’s favorited.

Kento smiles—something you rarely see. You wish it didn’t call to mind the shine of fox teeth.

✾

How you ended up coming into contact with the wants of Geto Suguru: he showed up at Ieiri’s dorm with his ribs visible through his uniform.

You remember very specific things from that day. The heavy knock, the thud of him collapsing, blood soaking the tatami floors. Shockingly white bone beneath torn skin and muscle, his ink-black hair coming undone, silk-soft and slipping across your fingers as you dragged him inside. Ieiri’s hands were shaking. She smelled like cigarette smoke and metal. Pressure here, she told you, ripping away the remains of Geto’s jacket, and when you touched him everything was skin-muscle-bone-blood and: bodies. bodies of people that have wronged you. people that haven’t. their blood thick beneath your fingernails like orange peel. how easy it is to snuff out each life. to take from them what they have forgotten to value. you could kill more. you could kill everyone.

When you pulled away from Geto, his skin was knitting together beneath Ieiri’s shaking hands—hands you knew well, her black nail polish chipped around the edges because she bit at her nails when she was somewhere she couldn’t smoke. His ribs faded from view, and then muscle, and then his skin was pink and shiny, scar-new, as if whoever had done this to him had simply taken a paint brush to his bare chest and drawn a bold X.

Blood was underneath your fingernails. Orange peel. It’s all you remember about the aftermath. Getting back to your room and locking yourself in the washroom were voided from your memory. Your head was all bodies. All bone. An undeniable feeling of righteousness, completely sure that they hadn’t deserved what you’d taken from them. And on top of that, the most frightening thing: relief that they were dead.

You washed your hands so much that the skin was raw, peeling, but you still couldn’t get your fingernails clean.

✾

You ignore his calls.

The frequency with which you receive them makes you uneasy. You don’t have his number saved. The first few digits become a bad omen.

In school, he and Gojo had a reputation for toying with people. Mostly women, mostly in a romantic sense. The difference between the two is that Gojo was easy to understand—a spoiled boy-prince that liked the attention. He wanted girls to fawn after him, to beg for more when he finally graced them with a kiss, to cry when he dropped them.

Geto always seemed worse, somehow. He would date girls and leave them behind like candy wrappers, charming them into giving him a taste and only revealing his true appetite when his prize had reached the inescapable vicinity of his jaws.

It’s more insidious than simply liking attention. He liked power. Having control over someone.

Whatever he’s doing now is insidious in nature, too. You can feel it. So you ignore his calls and keep working the days away until you can’t ignore him, because he shows up at your office with the confidence of someone supposed to be there, hands in his pockets, leaning against the frame of your door.

You jump so hard that your bones creak, almost louder than the creaking plastic of your poor hand-me-down rolling chair.

“Your instincts are a little dull,” he says. “I thought you would’ve heard me coming.”

Standing up feels necessary. You don’t want to feel smaller than him, even though he towers in your doorway. “I’m not supposed to be bothered by sorcerers without advance notice.”

He smiles. “I tried calling.”

Your heart is pounding like a rabbit at the foot of a wolf, partly torn to shreds but conscious enough to experience the abject terror of what comes next. “Who let you up here?”

“I was hoping you might be willing to humor me without advance notice.”

“I’m calling security.”

“I need your help,” he says.

“Like you needed my help last time?”

He sits with that for a moment. “Is it a crime to be curious about you? What you’re capable of?”

“You lied to me,” you reiterate. “You didn’t need me to read that man. And, what—it was so you could see more of my technique?”

“Yes,” he says plainly, as if it's a perfectly sane response.

“Why didn’t you just ask?”

He chuckles, the sound rich and deep and calm, as if you’re having a nice conversation between old friends. “Are you saying you’d have responded well if I just asked?”

You remain silent, staring at the sticky notes on your monitor with reminders and deadlines written in blue pen. Tanaka account today. Get stapler back from Yoishi!!!! You both know his question is rhetorical.

He crosses his arms, taps his long fingers against his bicep. Is it impatience, you wonder, or his inability to sit still for too long? His face belies nothing. “Would you read me if I asked?”

Your veins feel too tight, constricting muscle. It must be a leading question—he’s suspicious of your aversion to him, maybe. The exterior he’s built is charming and handsome and kind. That’s probably how he got to your office. You wouldn’t be surprised if the receptionist saw a handsome face and caved immediately. It’s not his fault you see through it. If you could go back and revoke your touch, remove the bodies from your memory, you would. But you can’t, and the things in his mind scare you. It’s part of what made you leave. The idea of working with a man like that, who held such terrors in his head, was incomprehensible to you. It still is. You would always be thinking about the ease with which you could become one of those bodies.

When you read people who project to you in wants, it’s usually easier. Makes you feel less sick. But not him. He wanted those people dead, whoever they were. He wanted blood on his hands. He was thinking, concretely, that he could have killed them all. That they deserved it.

The relief was the worst part. Seeing all those people dead, and the resounding thought that outshone everything else: finally.

He steps forward, hand extended slightly. “If I—”

“No. Just—don’t,” you say, and you stumble a little as your legs hit your chair and push it, rattling, against the wall. Your office has never been this small. You never want to be inside his head again. You'd do anything to get him out of your space. “Tell me what you need my help with and we can go.”

He doesn’t look pleased. It seems people in your life are operating on a theme. Still, his hand retreats, and he smiles, slouches a little, as if to make himself smaller. Less intimidating. “Thank you.”

As you leave your office, you give him a wide berth, though you could swear his body goes taut, as if suppressing the urge to touch you.

The Ueno Zoo is closed during operating hours. This hasn’t happened in the entire time you’ve lived in Tokyo. The woman at the gate is a window—the look she gives Geto is one of recognition, respect. He and Gojo are the most well-respected sorcerers currently active, though you believe entirely that Kento is much more deserving of respect than they are. The window lets the both of you inside without a word.

Geto leads you to the vivarium, just to the right of the gate. It’s a beautiful glass building, the windows fogged with humidity to keep its plant and animal residents comfortable. You haven’t been to the zoo in a long time, but when you used to come with family and friends, you always visited the vivarium before you left. The air was heavy and hot, birdsong piped in through speakers, echoing off the glass walls like prism-dispersed light. Every animal inside moved slowly, heavily, and if you listened closely enough, you could hear the soft slide of scales against stone, the heavy thud of a taloned foot into packed dirt. A haven for living in calm and peace.

Inside, it’s chaos.

Display cases are smashed, plants and trees are torn up from the roots, stone walls have been dismantled and crushed. In the center of the rubble, the strewn dirt and bundled roots: jaws. Alligator jaws, crocodile jaws, all long and horrible teeth, and when you look closer—the jaws of snakes, fanged and dripping venom, and others from what you can only assume would be turtles, small and rounded.

The skin remains perfectly intact on every jaw. Muscle, bone, blood. You see bodies. You see limbs. You remember: finally.

“Don’t look at that,” Geto says from beside you. “Look at me.”

With a deep breath, you do—though looking at him does nothing to dispel the unrest in your stomach, the pit in your chest.

“Good.” He’s not smiling anymore. You wonder if he’s decided to drop his disguise or if the orphaned jaws are more horrifying than the wants he carries like stones. “Come this way.”

He leads you away from the viscera, into a small office next to the stairs. A man sits in the single chair, staring into the security monitors on the desk in front of him. His gaze is absent, hollow. His hands clasp and unclasp on his lap. Blood is spattered across his face and the front of his cheery yellow jumpsuit.

“He’s been like this since I got here,” Geto tells you. “I need you to read him.”

Ieiri used to tell you that if humans come into contact with curses and live, you have to monitor them closely for cardiogenic shock—stress and fear mounting to such a peak that the heart can’t handle the pressure. It’s not a peaceful death. “He needs to go to a hospital.”

“I’ll take him after.”

“How long has he been in shock?”

“Read him first,” he says, more curt than you’ve ever heard.

This is the thing lurking under the surface. The wolf peeking through the mouth of the sheepskin. It sits in him waiting to be called forth. You’ve seen it already—it’s no surprise to you that it lives in him still. It is, however, a surprise that he let his facade slip so badly.

He smiles, fox teeth a little sharper than usual. “Please.”

You put your hand on the side of the man’s neck, the only skin available to you. Touching people’s faces horrifies you. Such an intimate thing tarnished by the images that flood your brain.

Memories on a loop: guttural screeching, death cries that couldn’t be conjured by a human mind, and from the ceiling, from the ceiling the jaws falling, falling, falling, blood everywhere and on you and you can taste it ??? in your mouth ??? on your tongue ??? metal and rot, and there is something discarding these jaws from the bodies of animals it eats while clinging to the vivarium’s rafters something ??? when you met your wife you knew you were going to propose to her in the zoo in the vivarium because of the beautiful glass the beautiful plants she loves plants something there is something there is something you cannot see some thing ???

This time, Geto has a trash can waiting for you. You’ve gotten very good at gathering your hair up with one hand at a moment’s notice. He puts the trash next to the desk when you’re done, and you tell him everything useful that you gathered on the curse. Everything else, you keep to yourself. You’ve gotten very good at that too.

You wipe your mouth with the back of your wrist. The bile tastes more like copper than usual. “Is that everything?”

He holds his hand out to you and you hide your flinch poorly. “Gum?”

The foil-wrapped stick shimmers green, held between his fingers like a cigarette. You stare at it for a beat too long. It’s your favorite brand, spearmint flavored.

“It won’t bite,” he says. He tilts his head to the side, eyes crinkling with mirth. As if you weren’t tasting blood just a moment ago. When you still don’t take the gum, he laughs softly and it reminds you of high school. His laughter has always been a little mean, as if it gets harder for him to hide his true nature when amused. It reminds you of a housecat playing with a bug. “I won’t either.”

A funny thing for someone with such sharp teeth to claim.

You take the gum from him, careful to grab the very end so there’s no chance of your fingers brushing his. “Thanks.”

He smiles and nods as if he’s done you a favor. You appreciate the gum, but you’d appreciate him ceasing contact with you more. “I’ll see you soon,” he tells you.

“Get him help, Geto.”

He smiles wide in response.

✾

You lost your virginity to Kento during your graduating year at Jujutsu Tech.

Haibara was recovering, still in the hospital for the third consecutive month. He had to learn how to walk again, the implants in his spine acclimating to him at the same rate that he was acclimating to them. You and Kento were the only two students in your year that made it to graduation. The two of you felt like celebrating but when you began drinking, you realized it was more commiseration than anything celebratory.

“Do you always see things?” Kento asked. He never drank—saw it as beneath him—so when he did, he was a lightweight. “When you touch people?”

“Yeah,” you said. The both of you sat against the headboard of your bed, passing a bottle of gin back and forth—the only thing you could find in Yaga’s campus stash. It stopped tasting like liquor twenty minutes prior. “I can make it quieter. But I really have to focus. Like—I couldn’t make it quiet now, I don’t think.”

Kento turned towards you and said, “Try.”

And always, you would protest when people suggested this. It was like a party trick to people that didn’t have to deal with the fallout. They all wanted to know what you saw in their mind, whether it was wants or memories that jumped to the forefront, what their subconscious decided was important enough to broadcast.

You didn’t believe at all that Kento was asking for those reasons. It’s why you touched him.

Wedging the bottle between Kento’s thigh and yours, you turned towards him and reached for his face. This, for some reason, was your first instinct. His skin was soft, a little dry. His mouth was set in a nervous slant.

And you got a few things from him: finishing your favorite book for the third time, going to the beach with your mother, finding out how cold the sea was. Memories, unfortunately. The feelings behind them.

But what you felt was mostly your own.

You pushed his bangs back from his face, and you couldn’t take your eyes from the slant of his lips, and suddenly you were in Kento’s lap, kissing him, and he was kissing you back, hands on your hips, groaning softly into your mouth.

The gin tumbled off the bed and spilled all over your floor. Your dorm would smell like liquor for weeks.

It was awkward the way a first time should be for teenagers, misplaced limbs and kisses with knocking teeth. You both tried to take care of each other the best you could while shit-faced and entirely inexperienced. You hadn’t kissed anyone before then—you hadn’t touched someone’s face since you were little.

You’d been scared. He figured out how to make that okay.

✾

Gojo is in your office when you come into work, reclining in your chair with his feet up on your desk. He peers at you over his glasses, eyes like jeweled robin eggs. “Running kinda late, huh?”

“I don’t have to be here until nine,” you tell him. “It’s eight forty-five.”

“Semantics.”

“You’re in my office.” You don’t even have the good grace to make it sound like a question—just an admonishment.

“Or is it syntax?”

“Can you please get out?”

“Can’t you pretend you’re happy I’m here?” He pouts, taking his feet from your desk. “I won’t even ask you to do anything. I basically just came here to say hey.”

“That would certainly be a first.” You walk behind your desk and shoo him away from your computer, waking it from its slumber. An orange post-it note on the top of your monitor reminds you that tax reports are due TODAY!!!!!!, and you try to prepare yourself for a grueling eight-to-twelve hours of tax filing, depending on how smoothly things go. Gojo Satoru showing up at your office before you is not your definition of smooth. “You said hey. Why are you still here?”

Gojo slowly spins in your chair, pushing himself in circles lazily with one long leg. Avoids looking at you. “You’ve been working with Suguru a lot lately.”

“Twice.” You open up the tiny K-Cup machine you have on your desk and start preparing the world’s smallest cup of coffee. Three times, technically, but you still don’t know what to make of the second time he called you out to Yamanashi Prefecture. When he lied to you. “That hardly constitutes a lot.”

“Enough that it got back to me.” He slows the chair, then starts spinning the other way. “You got any idea why he’s taken an interest?”

Your tiny mug clatters against the K-Cup machine. Geto is probably miles from here, dealing with important jujutsu business, but your heart beats like a prey animal nonetheless, the way it often does under his gaze.“I don’t think he’s taken an interest.”

“As much as I’d love to be flattering you, that’s not what I mean.” He stops the chair entirely, body directed at you. “You’ve been useful.”

There’s nothing you hate more than being talked about like a tool. Your coffee finishes brewing and you take a sip before you really should. It burns your lips. You lean against your desk and look at Gojo, trying to read anything from his face, his body language. As always, you glean nothing. Though you see Geto as the more insidious of the two, you’re keenly aware that Gojo is just as good at pretending.

“I’ve been useful,” you repeat. “So what?”

“You don’t think you’ve been pretty unnecessary for the missions you’ve been asked to help with?” Though his glasses are on, it's as if you can sense the intensity of his gaze through the darkened lenses. “Suguru could’ve found and exorcised either of those curses easy. I could’ve done it even easier.”

Every meeting with Gojo requires a mandatory ego-stroking period. You decide to get it over with quickly. “Yes, you’re both very strong. What’s your point?”

“Do you know what happened that night?” he asks, taking off his glasses—and this is what really instills a fear in you that something terrible is about to happen. A full view of eyes like glittering sapphires. There’s no question what night he’s talking about.

You don’t like thinking about that time in general. You don’t like thinking about Geto’s ribs. You don’t like thinking about the bodies. “A non-sorcerer tried to stop the merger. You guys… neutralized him.”

His gaze clouds for a moment. You’re aware that Gojo carries his burdens, despite his unbearable ego. He’s somewhere else, seeing things that you have the good fortune of never having to see. You briefly wonder whether you’d read memories or wants from him. You’re content with not knowing. “Don’t play coy,” he tells you. “You’re smarter than that.”

“You killed him.”

“I killed him.”

Gojo’s account of the day you read Geto: both he and his best friend so narrowly avoided death that they still remember its taste.

A mercenary whittled down Gojo’s endurance and attacked just as they were delivering Amanai Riko to Tengen for their merger. Gojo stayed back to deal with things. Geto escorted Amanai. Gojo was slit from throat to hip with a blade so sharp he didn’t feel the pain until his blood was already varnishing the floor. Geto was carved apart by that same blade, left alive only because of the curses he stored and their indeterminable state upon his death. Amanai, quick on her feet, made it to Tengen. The merger was successful. Things settled down and another Star Plasma Vessel wouldn’t have to be found for a long, long time.

Gojo shows you the scar on his forehead, shiny rib-white, usually hidden by his hair or his blindfold. Being so close to death changed him, he tells you—he fully understood the limits of his cursed energy and what it could do.

It changed Geto too.

“I’m not telling you all this for nothing,” he says, a disarming smile appearing on his face so suddenly after a serious conversation that the speed makes you nauseous. “I just have one tiny favor to ask you.”

It’s long into the day. The details took a while to get through. Your lunch hour is coming up and your appetite is nonexistent and tax forms sit unfiled on your desk. Gojo asking for a favor is always bad news. You can taste vomit and you wish you had a piece of gum or alternatively that you were born an entirely different person. “I don’t want any trouble—”

“No trouble. Promise.” He lifts his right hand, pinkie out, grinning—as if it’s funny that you, specifically, can’t touch him. “I just want you to read him for me.”

Your heart slams into the base of your throat. “That’s… You know that’s not a small ask.”

He drops his hand, shrugs. “C’mon—look, it’ll give you an excuse to get close to him.”

“Why would I want that?” you ask.

“As if I didn’t clock your embarrassing crush on him in high school.”

“Excuse me?”

“Excused. It won’t even be bad,” he says. “I only need you to read him one time, probably.”

“Why?”

“Just curious.”

“Gojo.”

Weighing the cost of telling you a half-truth versus keeping you in the dark seems to take a toll on him, his smile turning brittle at its corners. You think he knows that you won’t do anything for him without more information. Not that you’d read Geto ever, at all—but Gojo hasn’t always been good at believing people when they say never. Hesitantly, he tells you, “Something happened.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, something,” he says, finally a little exasperated. “I wouldn’t be asking if I already had answers.”

There are things he’s not telling you, very obviously. He’s minimizing. Jujutsu sorcerers are good at that. And he and Geto are best friends, two people so closely intertwined that they could count as one. “Why can’t you just ask him?”

For the first time in your acquaintance with him, Gojo is silent.

“He doesn’t know you’re asking me to do this,” you say. It would be a question if you weren’t already so sure.

“Oh, no, he’d kill me if he knew I was here.”

“I’ll call him and tell him to come get you.”

“I’d like to see you follow through on that.” He grins, peeks at you over his glasses. “Bet you won’t.”

Geto answers on the first ring, your name spoken in question.

“Your dog’s in my office. Come pick him up.”

He does.

Gojo could easily leave before Geto arrives, but he doesn’t even try. He sits in your chair, still reclined, surely doing immeasurable damage to the hydraulics. Asking him about his motives would be wasted breath—he’ll never tell you something he doesn’t want to, regardless of how much you wheedle him. He’ll enjoy the wheedling, though, and you don’t want to give him the ego boost of being begged.

Instead, you shoo him out of the way of your desk and start working on submitting the tax forms, leaning awkwardly over your computer. Gojo hums and your back aches, and you refuse to be curious about this entire situation because it’s none of your business. This is what you do now. Taxes and filing.

Geto arrives at your office once again without needing your permission to come up. You wonder who’s working reception.

“Sorry about him,” Geto says, leaning in your doorway. His hair is loose, strands falling softly against his face. You forget how tall he is sometimes. How handsome. It makes your stomach turn. “Badly trained.”

“I think the fault is more the owner’s than the dog’s,” you say.

He shrugs. “If you tried training the dog in question, maybe your opinion would change.”

“Can you guys stop talking about me like I’m not here?” Gojo asks.

Geto grabs him by the back of the collar. “Walk’s over. Time to go home.” He smiles at you over his shoulder as he leaves, his hair so inky black that it almost blends into his dark dress shirt. You remember how it felt sliding through your fingers years ago. Even though you never touched his wound, you think you can remember the texture of his ribs.

You consider Gojo’s proposition long after you’ve submitted the tax forms, after you’ve arrived home late once again, after you stare out your bedroom window into the night sky and see nothing but storm-cloud gray.

You expect Geto to be the kind of person to keep secrets. It shouldn’t worry you. But keeping secrets from the one person he views as an equal makes you uneasy. The bodies are in your head. You wonder how close you are to finally. When you sleep, it’s fitful, and you wake in the night to the feeling of silk-soft hair running through your fingers, falling so quickly that it’s impossible to grasp.

✾

Kento is antsy when he comes over for dinner. It wouldn’t bother you if he didn’t also happen to be the calmest man you know. He keeps bouncing his leg as he sits at the little two-top table in your kitchen, drumming his fingers incessantly on the tiled surface. He’s not wearing his glasses—and he usually watches your cooking like a hawk, just in case you make a grievous mistake—but instead holds them in his hand, twirling them back and forth.

The one-sided conversation you have with him is unbearable. Did you have a nice day? Mmmhmm. No crazy assignments? Just the usual. Should I use soy sauce or sesame oil? Oil. My favorite author is doing a book signing next month. Do you want to go with me? Sure. Is something up? Not at all.

Eventually, you’ve had enough. “I’m going to burn the cabbage.”

He glances over at the pan you’re wielding. “It looks fine.”

“I’m going to do it on purpose and I’m going to make you eat it,” you say, pointing your spatula in his direction so he’s positive that it’s him who’ll have to eat the ruined meal. “I’ll spoon-feed it to you.”

Kento is bewildered by this, his eyebrows raised very slightly—shock has always been a micro-expression for him. “I’m sorry. I’ve been a little absent.”

“More than a little.” You stir the cabbage again. “You know I don’t want to pry.”

He nods. The space you offer each other is a give-and-take. If neither of you are ready to speak about something, there’s usually no pressure to do so.

But this time is different. You’re worried that the strange things happening around you are begging to connect, veins folding over each other to become arteries, blood flowing into your life and staining the foundations. You need to tell him about everything that's happened over the past few weeks. But first, you need to ask. “Does this have something to do with Geto?”

His leg stops bouncing. His fingers quiet against the tabletop. “So you know.”

You tell him everything. Being called out to the village again, going to the vivarium, the jaws. Gojo showing up unannounced, though that's the most usual thing out of everything that's happened. “He asked me to read Geto,” you say. “There are secrets being kept.”

You told Kento about the bodies only once. The two of you had just recently graduated. You shared a studio apartment in Tokyo for three months before your Jujutsu Tech paychecks started coming in. In his arms, you saw memories of a kind-hearted blonde woman, the scent of coffee and pastries, the cool chill of the air in the mountains of Denmark, and you had to pull away from him, trying not to gag and failing.

When you returned from the bathroom, teeth minty-fresh and tongue burning, he apologized so earnestly. As if he had done anything other than hold you close and thread his fingers through yours.

It was then you began to understand that you could never be his, though the realization didn’t settle in for a while. You told him not to apologize. You told him that nothing was his fault. And then for some reason, you told him about the bodies and the orange peel and the finally and he asked if he could comfort you and you had to say no because you didn’t want to throw up again. From then on, he was wary of Geto. Maybe not as much as you—though that’s understandable.

Knowing what’s going on in his head is one thing. Experiencing it is another.

Kento sighs, familiar. He joins you in the kitchen, in the heat that radiates from the stove. The cabbage is burning slightly even though you never meant to follow through on your threat. Your attention has been elsewhere. “Let me,” he murmurs, and his hand brushes yours as he takes the spatula from you: fresh bread from the bakery at the end of the block, long nights at the office alone, a deep hatred of the word ergonomic— He begins to peel the burning cabbage from the bottom of the pan. “He’s been quiet lately.”

“Isn’t he usually?” You remember Geto being reserved, but then again, maybe that’s only because your memories of him are often in the context of Gojo.

“He can be.” Kento takes the pan to the trash and scrapes off the burnt cabbage, then returns to where you wait for him, leaning against your counter. He opens the top drawer next to the stove and pulls out the menu of the Indian restaurant nearby that you both like. “He’s exorcising Special Grade curses that he shouldn’t even attempt to take on by himself, no matter how strong he is. There are days where he’s cleared missions back-to-back without stopping to sleep.”

“You think he’s focused on work because something’s wrong.”

“Yes,” Kento says, and chews on the thought for a moment. “I don’t like it when he’s focused like this. He gets… obsessive.”

“Him and Gojo were always odd, though,” you say. Minimizing whatever is happening with Geto feels crucial. You’ve never seen Kento this worried.

He hums. “In different ways, perhaps. Gojo’s obsessive nature is more self-centered. But Geto—when he’s consumed by something, it’s like nothing else matters. He’d raze the world to ash if it meant doing what he felt needed doing.”

“Should I be worried?” you ask.

You should. You already know this.

Another sigh. He can’t quite look you in the eyes. You both think: bodies. You both think: finally . “Biryani for you?” he asks. “Or do you want something different this time?”

“Biryani’s fine.”

“Great,” he says, proceeding to order your food. And you don’t talk about it again that night.

✾

You’ve been a regular at the same coffee shop for nearly half a decade. The times you come in vary, depending on work or your weekend plans. You know the regulars and have seen thousands of faces pass through the cozy little building. Not once have you seen Geto here.

Yet he’s at the back of the line when you arrive, smiling pleasantly when he sees you walk through the door. Almost as if his arrival was timed.

If he hadn’t already seen you, you would’ve left. Even as you step into line behind him, you still consider it: bolting out the door and down the street, sprinting your way home as if he’d catch you if you stopped running. He stares at you expectantly while you think about your escape. It puts a shiver deep into your bones, his handsome face and kind eyes and warm smile, all tactics granted by genetics and lifted straight out of a manual on inviting body language. Instead of doing what your instincts tell you is right, you say, “Hi.”

“It's good to see you.” His smile widens, Cheshire in nature despite not showing teeth. “I didn’t know anyone else knew about this place.”

You almost tell him you live close by, but then think better of it. “It’s Kento’s favorite.”

“Of course,” he says. “Haibara took me here a few years ago.”

Yu is kind to a fault. Neither you or Kento have ever talked to him about what you saw in Geto’s head—mostly because you're scared to tell too many people, but also because of the blind respect Yu has for Geto. As if he's a story-book hero that could never do anything wrong. You care about Yu too much to disappoint him with the truth.

“I’ve gotten the same thing here for a long time,” Geto tells you. He gazes up at the menu, such concentration on his face, pulling at the strand of hair loose from his bun for a moment before turning back to you. You remember what Kento said about him not sleeping. His obsessiveness. Nearly imperceptible purple smudges lurk under his eyes. “Would you like to try something new with me?”

You can’t decide if you say yes out of sick curiosity or the fear of what would happen if you said no. Geto pays for both of your drinks—you insist that he shouldn’t, enough times in a row that it’s rude and very obviously makes the cashier uncomfortable, but his insistence wins out.

Waiting at the drink counter with him is torture. You hate when people buy things for you because it makes you feel like you owe them something. For Geto, it’s time. He paid for your presence, at least for however long it takes the baristas to make your drinks. He asks you about your work. You tell him about the books you’ve been balancing, hoping to bore him. Instead he asks more questions about how you like your office, whether your coworkers are nice, if your boss is treating you well.

“Are you looking for a new job?” You fail to keep vitriol from lacing the underside of your words. “We’re not hiring.”

If Geto is bothered by your attitude, he doesn’t let on. He even seems a touch amused. “I enjoy what I’m doing now, but thanks for keeping me in the loop.”

The barista calls out Geto’s name, and he grabs your drink first, hands it to you. You ordered a cappuccino with a syrup that you’ve been curious about but have never tried. The coffee smells amazing even at arm's length, creamy and strong and a little like cinnamon.

“Thanks.” You slowly turn to leave. “I should be—”

“Wait,” he says, reaching towards you.

You flinch so hard that a slim stream of coffee shoots from the lid’s mouthpiece, burning hot when it lands on your hand. Geto never makes contact, but his arm is still outstretched, as if waiting for you to calm down so he can go through with touching you. You think of Gojo’s request, of the cases where Geto has asked for your help but hasn’t needed it. Yu might have shown him this coffee shop however long ago, but why is he here now? Why have you never seen him here before if he’s a regular?

“Get away from me,” you snap, stern and quiet enough that your words lace themselves underneath the shop’s easy-listening music.

He does, hands raised and palms open, proclaiming innocence. Slowly, he lowers them. The barista calls his name again, his coffee still waiting on the counter.

“If you ever make me read you against my will,” you tell him, “I will never forgive you.”

Your forgiveness probably means little to him, but it’s the only thing you can threaten. You don’t know him well enough to understand what he holds dear—but you remember respect being important to him when you were at school. Respect and forgiveness.

“I wouldn’t,” he says. “Never.”

You thank him for the coffee again in lieu of a goodbye. The air outside stings against your face, your neck, the spots on your skin where the coffee burned you, steamed milk already drying to film. You’ll wash your hands when you get home. And you’ll wash them again. And again. Eventually they’ll feel clean enough.

✾

Yu calls you at 3:06 in the morning. “They’re dead because of me,” he tells you, and then he’s crying and you’re already walking down the block, heading toward his apartment in your pajamas and large winter coat.

After his injury, Yu wasn’t sent on more dangerous missions for a long time. Even when he was healed fully, despite the nasty scar that twisted and puckered the width of his chest, the higher-ups didn’t think he would be psychologically ready to take on anything too stressful.

They were right. One of the few things you’ve agreed with them about. Yu had always been the most hopeful out of all of you, the most caring. But he was also the most sensitive. Getting so close to death did nothing but make that worse.

He’s on the couch when you get there, using your key to let yourself in. You and Kento were given copies at the housewarming party, which had consisted of four bottles of peach soju, the three of you, and Ieiri for a few hours before she was called back to the school. His eyes are red and puffy, and he’s curled into himself, laying on his side. It looks like he’s been crying for the entire evening. The worn leather of the seat is darkened beneath his face.

You’re by his side immediately, brushing hair back from his face, wiping stray tears from his cheeks: i wish i’d known i should have !!! known how did how did i not know how i wish i “Hey, it’s okay. I'm here,” you say, trying a little more pointedly to keep your fingers off his scalp. The thing he wants, simply: to have done better. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“I messed up,” he says, and you’ve never heard him sound so defeated. Even during his recovery he sounded less broken than this. “I don’t—I don’t know how I didn’t see it.”

At seventeen, you and your classmates began to receive solo assignments. Yu always got the easier ones—still recovering from his injury, both physically and mentally. He tells you about a mission he had almost forgotten: a curse terrorizing a village on the outskirts of Yamanashi Prefecture. The curse was easily exorcized, easily forgotten—what Yu remembered well were the whispers that came after. They called him a devil, named him unnatural, said that he could see things no one else could because he was damned. Just like the two little girls that lived in the village, their late mother’s otherness somewhere in the same vein.

He thought nothing of it. He would get rid of the curse, and the village would go back to normal. Yes, they were skeptical and untrusting of anything that could be perceived as even slightly supernatural, but most non-sorcerers were. Sometimes you had to protect people that would never thank you—that could never comprehend the things you’d given up to offer said protection. Whatever oddities they attributed to other people would fade away once the curse was gone, and the village would go back to normal. Everyone would trust everyone again.

The bodies of the girls had been exhumed during a construction project aiming to bring affordable housing to prefectures outside of Tokyo. The Hasaba twins, Nanako and Mimiko, reported truant by their school over a decade ago. Their mother wasn’t alive to receive the report. Their father hadn’t been there from the beginning. The town didn’t report them missing—they knew exactly where the girls were. From the remains, bones weak and brittle, authorities determined that they died of malnutrition.

“I could’ve helped them.” Yu’s lip trembles and he bites it so hard that you see the skin around his mouth turn bone-white. “They might have been alive then. If I paid more attention, I just—how could they have done that? How can anyone justify that?”

You don’t know. How does anyone justify anything? How many times do you have to tell yourself you’re doing the right thing before you believe it? You wonder if the inhabitants of that village let out a breath when the sisters had finally passed—whether they, too, had a moment of finally.

Yu cries for a little longer and you hold him carefully. It’s all you can do. You’d call Kento if you didn’t know that Yu would be mortified to cry in front of someone he views as his superior at work, despite their friendship. After a while, he pulls his phone out and opens up a message chain. A groupchat for Jujutsu Tech staff. Ieiri’s text, attached to the official posting from the higher-ups: zen’in clan are holding a service for the girls on sunday. gakuganji wants us there to pay respects so everyone better show up. In the report, there are photos of each of the girls, from Picture Day at their school, judging by the uniforms—and you recognize them.

You’ve seen these girls inside a man’s memories. A man that you read for Geto.

Your heart beats so hard that you’re sure Yu can feel it through your shirt, through your skin. When you’ve reassured him as much as possible that he couldn’t possibly be at fault, when he promises you that he’ll be able to sleep without the feeling of guilt crushing him under its heavy heel, you head further into the city instead of back towards home.

The apartment building you come to is sleek, flashy, piercing the night sky like a blade. The doorman lets you in—you’ve been here before. On business only, and never of your own volition. You take the elevator to the top floor and slam your fist against the hallway’s only door, choosing to ignore the shiny golden doorbell and the even shinier knocker. After a few moments of you hitting the wood so hard that it feels like the meat of your palm is going to split, the door opens.

A terribly annoying grin greets you. “I would’ve invited you up if you called me.”

“Why,” you say, trying your best to be calm, “do you want me to read him?”

Gojo’s expression flickers. A moment, a fleeting instant of concern. He’s without glasses or blindfold—you must have woken him up. It’s probably nearing five in the morning. The first trains will start running soon. “Hello, business,” he says. “I’ve got to admit, I’d hoped I was talking to pleasure.”

“It has to do with the girls, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t ask Suguru about what girls he’s seeing—”

“I saw them, Gojo,” you say.

This shuts him up.

“I read someone who knew them.” You’re not sure why, but it feels necessary to not tell him that you read the man because Geto asked you to. “He didn’t like them playing with his daughter because they were different.”

He stands, silent and contemplating, eyes pearlescent and glowing in the soft shadow that precedes sunrise.

There’s a terrible phantom that lurks between your ribs, a sticky feeling that slimes along your bones. You think of Geto’s sudden reappearance in your life, you think of Gojo’s intimidating request, you think finally, finally, finally. “Did he kill them?”

His eyes snap to yours, fluorescent, flaring—you had forgotten that the hottest part of a flame is blue. “No.”

He’s so serious that your heart rate picks up, your body going into fight-or-flight at the coldness of that single word. “Gojo—”

“He wouldn’t.”

“Okay—it’s okay. I believe you.” You don’t, but you’ll say anything to remove the hardness from his eyes, his tone—the same hardness as when he sat in your office and told you not to sugarcoat things. I killed him. “Then why do you want me to read him?”

“I told you,” he says, and his voice is back to normal but his eyes are nowhere close. “I’m just curious.”

Your hand darts forward on instinct. You want to know what’s inside his head so bad that you can’t control yourself—until you remember exactly who you’re trying to touch and exactly what his power is. Forget being untouchable—he could physically destroy you. He could snap your arm like a matchstick. He could pull at the broken end until the limb splits completely. You step back, but the movement was too obvious to have been anything else.

He grins again. Holds his hand out. “Wanna touch?”

“Good night, Gojo.”

He watches as you get in the elevator, as you press the button for the lobby, as the doors slide shut. All the while, eyes burning.

✾

You’re at a run-down warehouse in Roppongi with a cursed weapon in your hand when you wonder where your life went wrong. Kento called you half an hour ago—cornered, bleeding, his cleaver knocked out of his grip. “I wouldn’t have called you,” he said, “but no one else is picking up.”

It didn’t matter. If he needed you, you would be there. That had been the case for the better part of a decade.

The warehouse was a storage facility for flour and corn, most likely. The floor is covered in rancid mold. Your knife—Sound Eater, the cursed tool you’d conveniently forgotten to return to the armory when you left Jujutsu Tech—is familiar in your palm. Its handle is worn to the shape of you.

You feel comfortable like this. More comfortable than at your job filing accounts, at your apartment reading or watching some awful reality TV show. It’s because this is how you grew up, you think. You’re remembering the person you were for twenty years before you became someone else.

At the far end of the warehouse, a stone staircase leads to the basement—where Kento is. Where the curse is. You can sense it, the same feeling as being watched. A specter’s ghostly nails tracing the ridge of your spine.

The basement smells mustier than the warehouse. A single light blinks ahead, allowing you flashes of the series of hallways that lead deeper into the warehouse’s underground storage. The floor is wet, and the viscous liquid that coats the stone soaks through the soles of your shoes. Your socks stick coldly to your feet. You listen to your weapon to see if you can locate the curse, its energy responding to the curse’s with vibrations and muted shrieks that sing through your bones unpleasantly. The curse seems to be everywhere, spread through the basement like an even layer of butter.

You find Kento’s cleaver before you find him. It’s deep in the tunnel system—you’ve already been walking for two or three minutes, and there’s been no sign that anyone else is down here with you.

Taking his weapon as a sign that you’re close, you even your breathing, measure your steps—stealth training from long ago functioning like a ghost limb, sending signals through your body despite not having been used for years.

You enter a large antechamber—some sort of production facility—and though it’s quiet, you hear breathing from behind a burnt-out piece of machinery. Slowly, you approach, Sound Eater singing against your skin. This is not the cursed tool’s energy responding to a curse. It can only be Kento. Your heart still beats violently against your ribs, bruising bone.

His shoulder is a mess. Dress shirt torn, blood adorning the fabric and the shiny plastic buttons, face haggard—he’s in pain, and the sight sends you back to your youth as quick as a fist to the face. Group missions, Kento’s injuries, your injuries, the way you started always wearing black because it hid bloodstains most effectively.

You’re at his side quickly, a hand gingerly against his shoulder, checking for damage. He groans. His shoulder is dislocated, but he already knows this. “Help me get it back in,” he tells you. His shirt is still intact enough that you won’t have to touch his skin, which is good. You can’t risk being weakened right now.

Shoulders always relocate with a sickening crack, as if a bone that had been broken is being rebroken and set. A badly healed bone is a liability, Ieiri has told you. Dislocation is easier to fix. You feel a little less sick when the sight of distended skin and incorrectly puzzled bone is straightened out, set right.

“Details,” you demand.

“A semi-first grade, four-legged,” he says, taking his cleaver from you. “It’s using whatever’s on the floor—sticks you in place. Its left flank is injured.”

The one question that Kento doesn’t seem to be able to answer: where is it?

Sound Eater answers that question for you in the span of seconds, buzzing against your palm, shocks working their way down your fingers. You nod your head towards the north entrance to the production facility, where your weapon is attempting to drag you. Once it gets close enough to a curse, its energy begins to magnetize. The stronger the curse, the stronger the magnetization. You try to ignore the way your hands shake with effort to keep Sound Eater in place.

Kento is up, breathing labored. You hate this for him—that he feels like it’s his duty to deal with this, that his purpose is nothing more than being a jujutsu sorcerer. That knowing what it feels like to exorcise a curse makes it nearly impossible to want to do anything else.

You understand. This is the most alive you’ve felt in years.

In the abridged sign that you and he used to employ during group missions, he tells you, Go right. Distract.

You dart into the clearing, the curse’s eyes immediately finding you from across the large room. They’re yellow, the familiar color of bile, and they shine out from its gray body, the blob-like consistency of a snail on top of four muscled legs, identical to those of a wolf.

Which means it’s fast.

Your shoulder takes the brunt of the pressure as you roll out of the way of the curse’s first strike. It crosses ground more quickly than you can comprehend. When you right yourself, you can see just how grotesque the creature really is. Its mouth is a wide wound stuffed with teeth. Its eyes are scared, childlike. In its twisted voice, it says hello hello hello? hello who's there hello? and Sound Killer wants to taste its skin.

As it readies its weight on its back legs to strike again, Kento comes down from above, his cleaver hitting the back of the curse’s neck with intense force—almost 7:3. You hear a crack, a hiss, but the curse backs up, head still attached to its body by a thread.

The floor is suddenly very cold. It radiates up through your feet, spiking into your calves, your thighs. You try to move and fail. Sound Eater begs you to let it get closer to its target.

You’re not sure if the curse can only freeze one person at a time. Kento tries to move forward to strike again and his body jerks and stills, glued to its vulnerable position. The curse readies itself again to strike, its head knitting itself back onto its body. Its wound-mouth opens wide, ready for an offering.

Sound Eater whistles as you lift it to shoulder-level, as you aim to throw it into the curse’s open mouth before it consumes Kento.

It’s stupid, Gojo once told you, to lose your weapon on the field if your cursed technique is useless. You got very good at throwing weapons with dead aim, taking out curses with a single slice, Sound Eater a perfect match for you because of its draw to the cores of such curses. Part of you got good at this to spite him. You’ll continue to spite him, even now.

The curse lunges. Sound Eater slices through air. An echoing click fills the chamber as the cursed tool hits tooth, cracking bone but doing no more. The curse halts its attack, scared yellow eyes focused on you now.

And your cursed tool lays beneath its feet, glittering under a layer of pungent slime. You briefly try to appreciate the irony of the situation: if you hadn’t left the jujutsu world, you wouldn’t be as rusty as you are now, and maybe you would have lived.

Your feet are unlocked so suddenly that you fall to your knees, slime coating your pants, your legs, your hands as you push yourself back up. The curse lies inert in between you and Kento—clearly breathing, but nowhere near conscious. Asleep.

It’s like you can sense him before he speaks, your blood chilling in its well-traveled arteries.

“I’m glad you’re both okay,” he says. Grins without teeth. The same way Gojo grins—confident and so hopelessly self-impressed. There’s a curse beside him, one that he controls, its energy definitely potent but not malicious towards you. It’s familiar, in a way—eyes that crackle with electricity, sparking skin, long claws. You’ve seen it before, but not personally. Geto’s gaze flits between you and Sound Eater on the ground next to the downed curse. “Did Nanami call you out of retirement? Or were you just having a little fun?”

Kento says Geto’s name—a warning. He’s injured, hurting. He doesn’t have patience for games.

“It doesn’t matter why I’m here,” you say, offering Kento help to stand. His body is a heavy weight that pulls at your shoulder, activating muscles you haven’t used since right after high school. “Ieiri still runs the clinic at school, right?”

“Of course,” Geto responds, all fox teeth. He points at the unconscious curse. “First, though.”

You’ve never seen Geto absorb a curse before. You know some details about the process, mostly from Kento and Yu telling you stories about happenings in the field, but you’d never actually witnessed it. It amazes you how the body curls up into such a compact ball of shadow, how it can be contained within the walls of Geto’s cursed energy. The expression he makes while he consumes it is familiar to you. You know that strain, that effort put into controlling every single muscle in your face, veins in the neck straining hard against skin. They must taste awful. You think about the gum he offered you at the vivarium—wonder if he carries it for purposes you hadn’t considered until now.

He dismisses the other curse with a small movement of his hand, and the energy in the room evens out so quickly that your head feels full of falling sand. Sound Eater goes quiet, and you collect it from beneath a viscous layer of filth. “We should go,” Geto says, gesturing to one of the entrances to the production facility. Knowing him, he probably has the entire compound mapped out in his head.

“Did you call a car?” you ask.

“I already have one waiting. Figured we might need a quick exit.”

You nod. He still unnerves you, but you’re not entirely without manners. “Thank you.”

He looks at you for a moment longer than you’re comfortable with. Everything seems calculated in his eyes. He never simply sees things—he analyzes them. “My pleasure,” he says. You can't read his tone because he always keeps it even, friendly. But you’re sure that there’s something to read in those words that you can’t quite see right now. “Shall we?”

Despite the way you feel about him, you allow enough tentative trust for him to lead you out of the darkness and back into the sun.

✾

He insists on escorting you home from the school.

There are company cars you could’ve requested rides from—the higher-ups at least owe you a free ride home for everything you’ve done today—but you don’t want to take anything from them that they haven’t already offered. They can be tricky about which of their favors require repayment.

This leaves you and Geto on the last train of the night, alone. He stands despite the long rows of empty seats, leaning back against the Do Not Lean On Doors sign, arms crossed. There’s not even a hint of him trying to hide that he’s watching you intently.

On any other day, you would stand, unwilling to give him any advantage—but you’re exhausted. You need a shower so badly. Layers of slime have dried on you and you feel more disgusting than you ever knew was possible. You sit opposite him, leaning back in the uncomfortable plasticky chair. Meeting his eyes feels foolish. Taking your attention off of him feels even more foolish. Staring at his shoes is a happy medium.

The car rolls steady across its tracks, its wheels whistling slightly when the train reaches top speed between stations.

“Do you ever see things you don’t want to?” he asks after a three-stop stretch of silence.

All the time. It seems you’ll always be stuck in this cycle of attempting normalcy only to be tasked with experiencing the unpleasant wants and memories of people you don’t know. You’re not going to tell him that, though. Him asking you questions makes you queasy. Your knees feel weak even though you’re sitting down. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“You’re very good at avoiding my questions.”

“You don’t make it hard.”

The train rolls on, and on, and on.

He hooks his arm around the closest stanchion pole, then leans in your direction. The strand of hair that hangs loose against his face sways alongside the train's ebbs and flows. Blinding brightness from the overhead LEDs paint his face in baroque shadows. He could be a devil, or a killer, or simply a man. “Does it scare you?”

Many things about this situation scare you. You ask him to clarify.

“When you read people. I’m sure you’ve seen some… unsavory things.” You think: bodies. You think: blood and muscle and sinew and bone. “It would make sense if those things scared you.”

“They don’t,” you lie.

He considers you for a long moment, seeming to lean even farther forward, and the idea of him getting closer pierces your stomach like a nail. But the train once again sways on its tracks and his body follows, leaning back on his heels and removing himself from what could have almost been your space. “I always wondered what it was you saw.”

“What do you mean?” you ask. You know what he means.

He smiles, almost condescending—an expression that says come now, are we really going to play this game? The way he says your name in response, so pleasant and even-keeled, makes you feel like a cold stone. Prey trapped in a small space with its most vicious predator. You go so still your blood stops flowing.

Until now, you’d never been sure whether he actually knew that you’d read him. You’re positive he doesn’t want anyone to know what’s inside his head. He paints an image of himself over what he really is, but it’s a faulty veneer. Apply enough pressure and it’ll fracture in all the little places that hold the worst rotted of the flesh beneath.

You know he would do anything to keep this image of himself spotless, whole. You’re sure of it. “Kento will know something’s wrong if I don’t talk to him in the next few days.”

His brows draw low over his dark eyes—first in confusion, and then in a sort of amused incredulity. “You think I’m going to kill you.”

“I think you want to.”

The lights flash in the car as it passes under a tunnel. “What is it that defines a good person?”

“...why are you asking me?”

He grins, and your stomach constricts. “Good and bad are large concepts in a small world. They touch and overlap in more places than any of us could ever anticipate. But we’re supposed to fit neatly into one or the other.”

You don’t respond. You’re too focused on the stretch of his lips.

“So what defines a good person?”

“The things they’ve done,” you say, more to get him to stop asking you questions than anything.

“I don’t remember doing anything particularly harmful to you,” he says—and here it is. What he really wants from you. “It can’t be my actions. So is it my desires that define me as a bad person in your eyes, or my memories?”

Your stomach constricts tighter. Painfully. You’re still four stops away from the one by your apartment. “Geto.”

“It has to be one or the other. Those are the two categories that you can read, right?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Ten years,” he says. “And you can barely look me in the eye.”

You try, as if you could prove him wrong, but you can’t maintain eye contact with him for more than a moment before you feel a terrible coldness in your gut.

“I’d always wondered if you read me that night, but I was never sure.” He wraps his loose strand of hair around a long finger, then unwraps it. Repeats these movements like a question and answer, like a catechism. “Not until I saw you again.”

“The second time you called me out to the village—you were lying to me.”

“We’ve established that.”

“You put that man in a coma,” you say. "You absorbed the curse that was at the power plant."

He nods, face calm, as if altering someone’s state of being is a normal thing to do. “But I woke him up right after you left and he was unharmed. I paid him for his time.”

“Why?”

“I needed to know what it was that scared you. The situation itself…” he says, holding out one hand flat—and then the other, his hands mimicking the sides of a scale, the second option heavier than the first. “Or me.”

“I’d have told you that if you asked,” you say, and you would have. No point in keeping it from him. “You didn’t have to lie. That was underhanded.”

“I think reading me without my consent counts as underhanded.”

Bone, muscle, blood, sinew. Bone-white beneath his uniform. And the blood, the blood, the blood, orange-peel thick. “I didn’t want to. You don’t understand, you were—I could see your ribs. It was—we didn’t think—”

“I understand,” he says.

“I know you do,” you concede. Because he was there for it all. He experienced it all. He woke up when he was healed and immediately went to search for the body of his best friend, not knowing that Gojo had already woken himself up from the brink of death. “I wish it happened differently.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” he asks, parroting your response from earlier.

Maybe they do. Maybe things could have gone much differently—worse, even. You could know more than his wants. You could have seen them realized.

“What did you see?” he asks, careful. Quiet. There's a weight to his voice you're unfamiliar with. It sounds like more than passing curiosity.

It’s what makes you answer honestly. “Blood. Bodies.” Finally. “Relief.”

“Which of those scared you the most?”

You look at him, jaw tight, because he knows which one it was.

“And that makes me a bad person?” he asks.

“I never said you were a bad person.”

“You just thought it.”

You have. You’ve thought it every day since seeing his true desires. You’re not sure that you’re a good person either, but your hidden wants will never be as gruesome as his. “It’s not that simple.”

“Of course it’s not.” Again, he smiles—but there’s something brittle to it. Gojo, in your office when you pushed too hard. A mask beginning to crack.

The train stills, doors opening. You're still a few stops away from home. No one gets on, no one gets off. It's just you and Geto on the car, filling its silence with more than words.

“If I asked you to read me now,” he asks, “would you?”

Your head jerks up, and you look past him, at the closing doors, at the windows of the train car. The whistling starts again, the train gaining speed. You’re between stops. There’s no exit. “No.”

“It could be different than last time.”

“You don’t know that,” you say, but what you really want to tell him is that it won’t be.

“What if it is?” he asks. “Maybe you have the wrong idea of me.”

You don’t think that’s the case. You’re not going to tell him this.

“I was angry. Hurt. I thought Satoru had just been murdered.” He says these things like easy facts. His tone takes the emotion out of them entirely, as if those factors didn’t contribute to what you’re sure is massive unresolved trauma. “I thought I was going to die.”

“You didn’t.”

“No,” he says—and here you get a flash of something deeper, again unfamiliar. Because he won’t look at you, even though he’s the kind of person that always makes eye contact. He leans back, distancing himself. “Have you ever experienced that? A moment where you know you’re going to die?”

“I haven’t.”

His lips twist into a muted frown. He looks young, the way he used to in high school. He stares out of the darkened window at nothing. At the walls of the underground tunnels. At blackness, pure and complete. The bags under his eyes are more prominent. Because of the lighting, maybe. “You think a lot of things. You realize a lot of things. And none of it is particularly fair.”

This has to be manipulation. He’s good at that. He always has been. But—something about this moment feels vulnerable, and you’ve never known Geto to be vulnerable. Not with anyone. Even on the brink of death, even just recovered, his chest still terribly scarred—there was nothing. He smiled at you and Ieiri before he left, that fox-teeth smile you hate so much. I’ll be back shortly, he told the two of you, as if his blood wasn’t coating the bottom of your shoes, staining the skin of your knees, clotting underneath your fingernails.

You’ve read people for long enough that you’re sure: this moment is different. “Why do you want me to read you?” you ask, so quiet that your voice is nearly swallowed by the sound of the train wheels scrolling across their metal track.

“Because I want to know,” he says, his voice a little hoarse at its core, “what you see.”

You shouldn’t. You’re too kind. Kento tells you this often.

You shouldn’t.

When you put your hand out, palm up, Geto places his fingers atop yours so gently—a breeze of a touch. And then: bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. suguru should we kill these guys ? bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. it could’ve been different i could’ve been different bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. we could do it together no. i could do it alone bodies. bodies. bodies— You vomit onto the floor of the train.

Geto is on his knees in front of you, clear of the mess, and your fingers are tangled in his shirt, fists bunching the material at each shoulder. You want to let go so badly but you can’t—you’re heaving, sobbing, your forehead pressed against your fist, tears running hot onto the back of your hand.

It’s just so bad. It’s so terrible. He wants this to happen. He feels like people deserve this. You never should have let him convince you to read him. You shouldn’t have been drawn in by the vulnerability. Not when—not when it’s that in his head, still, a decade later.

You can’t stop heaving, nearly retching. You can’t stop pulling in breaths too quickly, not deep enough. Your forehead is flush against his shoulder now, and your tears are staining his shirt, and you can’t let go. You’re paralyzed.

He holds you while you cry. Only touches your back, your arms. Not your hair or face or hands. You couldn’t handle it again. You couldn’t handle it again but you can’t move right now.

As you quiet, as your breaths turn slow, heavier, you realize he’s been speaking to you. Maybe the whole time—you’re not sure. Quiet reassurance. It’s okay, you’re okay. Breathe.

You don’t feel okay. You feel more sick than you ever have. “Why would you want that?” you ask, and your words blend into tears. Into panic.

He’s quiet, one large hand smoothing down your back over and over, as if reassuring you that you’re safe. Safe in the arms of someone with that many bodies in his head. He sighs, tired, and his breath makes your hair flutter, caresses the curve of your ear.

The shock of fear to your system from realizing just how close he is gives you the strength to pull away—to sit back in the seat again, untwine your fingers from his shirt. It’s creased on each shoulder from your vice grip. There’s vomit on the floor of the train to the right of him. He’s on both knees in front of you, hands in his lap now that you’ve freed yourself from his grasp.

Was it real? The vulnerability? The hoarseness to his voice when he told you that he wanted to know what you would see?

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Why would you want that?” you repeat.

He sighs again. Sits back on his heels, begins running his hand through his hair before remembering it’s tied up. He just leaves his hand on the top of his head, fingers curling inwards until he’s gripping his hair, and you wonder if it feels the same as it did on the night you read him for the first time. “I don’t know,” he tells you.

The train stops again. The voice says something you don't hear. You can't get up. “That’s not true.”

The doors close and there's the whistling once again, the darkness that surrounds the both of you, the speed you can just hardly feel. “Why did you decide to quit being a sorcerer?” he asks.

You don’t want to tell him. “There were a lot of reasons.”

“How is it fair?” He drops his hand. His hair is disheveled, just like his shirt. He looks so un-put together that he hardly resembles the Geto you’ve always had an image of in your head. “So many of us die. So many of us have injuries that take years to really heal. And it’s their fault. Humans.”

“You’re human.”

“I’m a sorcerer.”

“They’re not mutually exclusive.”

“I’m the one that has to deal with the consequences of their actions,” he says, as if that means something. As if that puts him in a different group from them entirely.

“So you want to kill them?”

“No,” he says, quick—because that’s what he’s supposed to say, you think. Then he quiets for a moment and seems to actually consider your question. “No. But—I do think about it.”

You both sit with the admission. Though the train car is empty, you feel cloistered, walls too tight around you.

“It makes me worry that I’m not a good person anymore,” he tells you.

“Did you want me to read you so you could decide whether you’re good or not?”

“I wanted you to read me because when I heard about those little girls that died, Satoru had to talk me down from going to that village and killing everyone.”

The conductor comes on the speakers, announcing the last few stops. It's both shocking and reassuring to have another person so close. You can't believe this conversation is happening in such close proximity to a person that couldn't even begin to understand the nature of its contents. Strangely enough, the admission quiets some of the fear inside you. Because you can understand it, on some level. Those girls were sorcerers. They were also nine.

“I had to see if there was anything inside me that didn’t want to do it,” he says. “Because—if there’s not—”

“I don’t see everything,” you tell him. There's more you could say, but you've never been comfortable revealing the true extent of what you can do. You've been a tool for long enough that you know being more effective begets more use. “I don’t think you should use me as a metric.”

“It’s obvious that what you saw wasn’t very good.”

“They starved to death,” you say. “I’d be angry too.”

And you're not angry, you realize. Not in the way that he is. Two little girls were starved to death for being somewhat different, and you can't get yourself to feel more than disgust. More than frustration. Parts of you have been quelled over time—being a jujutsu sorcerer necessitates this. You can't get angry over everything because everything is unjust, and everything is unfair, and eventually it'll all build up. Maybe into what Geto is experiencing now. If you hadn't desensitized yourself like this, maybe you would have bodies in your head.

It's unlikely. Not to the extent he does. But it's not like you're a stranger to violence.

“Maybe I’m not a good person because I’m not angry the way that you are,” you say.

“I don't think that's true,” he says, smiling, a little slight and a little sad.

It's the only time since you'd read him at the edge of death that you don't see fox teeth—but the smile is still not entirely kind. His words don't speak of reassurance. Perhaps a sort of envy. You're familiar with want. Uncomfortably so. You recognize it even when you try not to. Maybe he wants to feel the way you do. Less angry. Or maybe he does truly see you as good, in a certain context, and he wants to be there on that level with you.

“The first time I ingested a curse," he tells you, “I was so sick I couldn’t stand. I didn’t realize how awful it would taste. There’s nothing I could compare it to. After it was done, I threw up until my stomach was empty, and then kept going. The stomach acid burned my throat so badly that I had to go to the hospital. I was still young.”

You stay still and quiet. You don't want to relate to him so you try not to.

“And sometimes I wonder—would any non-sorcerer ever understand that? Could they?”

You try not to, and you fail at it. “Will you show me?”

He looks at you in askance. You don't tell people that you can do this. Only Kento knows. It's not something you should allow Geto. Not when he scares you the way he does.

“The first time,” you say, because despite knowing you shouldn't do this, it's that sick curiosity again that pushes you forward. And maybe something else—a want. A need to relate. To be sure that someone else has known what you've felt your entire life. “If you really concentrate on the memory—I want to see it.”

To show you, he touches your face: it’s so dark and i’m scared. and mom said to come home soon. but i saw this thing and i want to see if i can beat it no. i’m lying to you. there is a way i want this memory to go. i am a good child and i want to go home to my mother but i am so curious. i am so curious i am so curious. i want to see what that thing looks like when i kill it. i know i can. i know i am different. i scare my mother and father and they still love me very much because it is so dark and i am so scared and i am just a child. but i am not scared. i follow the thing into dense trees that shadow the park. i play here with my friends. i kill it. i don’t know how i know what to do but i do and !!! oh !!! god !!! oh god please. please. please. don’t make me do it again don’t make me do it again don’t make me do it again i want to go home i want to see my mother i do i’m sorry it hurts it hurts oh god oh i want to be good. i’m sorry. i want to be good. i’m sorry. i want to be sorry. i’m god.

The way you come out of a reading is usually like a free-fall without a parachute. One second you’re tumbling through the air, and the next you’ve been abruptly stopped. Being shown something is different. Kento would show you his childhood when you asked, moments with his family, bad parts of missions that he didn't want to voice but still wanted to share. It’s a little easier to stomach.

Usually.

His hand lingers near your face, resting on your shoulder. He’s so close to you and he smells like very expensive cologne and you suddenly see how tired he is. His smile hides more than you thought it did. Maybe more than you had been looking for.

“Do you have a final verdict?” he asks. “Or should I decide for myself?”

There’s a predilection in him, you think. He’s predisposed to anger, the self-righteous kind. So is every other sorcerer you’ve ever met. And yet it’s different with him—more complex. Something else is very wrong with him. Deeply.

“I don’t like it when people touch my face.”

“I can keep that in mind.”

“I want you to apologize.”

“Of course,” he says, gentle. Was his voice always this gentle? Or is it because of all he’s shared with you on this train? “I’m sorry.”

The doors of the train open and a tinny voice announces that you’ve reached the last stop of the night. You missed your station a long time ago. You’ll have to pay for a cab. “I don’t think you’re a bad person,” you tell him. “But I'm afraid of you.”

He nods. Sits back on his heels again. “Will you be okay getting home?”

“Yes,” you say. “Thank you.”

You make it home just after one in the morning and lay in your bed with your clothes on and you don’t sleep. You don’t sleep at all.

i will link part two here when it is posted!

#geto x reader #suguru geto x reader #fics #this took me forever to write that's why im posting part one im like this will actually make me finish part two #geto is just SOOOOO hard to write #like incredibly. i am like. hope i did. at least a little justice lmao #if there is anything I forgot that I should put in the tw or the info pls lmk!!!

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sentientcave · 7 months ago

Text

Retirement Party

Chapter 6 - The Butterfly Effect

Read on AO3

<<First Chapter - < Prev Chapter - Next Chapter >

Contains: No Y/N (2nd POV but Reader is an OC), Kidnapping, Forcible relocation, Dubcon, Plus-sized Reader/OC, female Reader/OC, Everyone learns new things about each other, Manipulation, PTSD, Doll has a tragic backstory, Poorly translated Spanish, Lots of introspection

~4.2k - MDNI - Dark fic! Please mind the content warning above but honestly nothing particularly bad happens this chapter.

John gives you space for the next few days, letting you settle in around the edges of his own routine. You’ve always been an early riser, and so is he, but he starts every day with a run, and you prefer a slower pace. You’ve taken to coming downstairs after you hear the front door close, and stretch on the living room floor (you wouldn’t call it yoga, but you’ve spent the last few years keeping up with the Kinsey kids, and you know how important it is to maintain flexibility), and make coffee before you go back upstairs to get dressed and ready for the day. John always showers first thing after his run, but after the second day he starts taking off his shirt before he drinks a glass of water at the sink, watching you from the corner of his eye to see if you’re looking.

And maybe sometimes you are. It would be a useless endeavour, pretending that he’s not nice to look at. He’s big, barrel-chested, with thick, muscular arms, and he’s hairy in a way that’s unbelievably attractive, and he gleams with sweat after his runs. If he didn’t look so damn smug every time he catches you looking, you’d probably gladly spend a few long minutes studying him. Something about the man makes your fingers itch to pick up a pencil.

You just orbit around each other for those first few days. He’s working on some project outside, and you putter around the house a bit and look for new jobs online. You were surprised that he didn’t confiscate your laptop to keep you from calling for a rescue, but he made no effort to stop you from using your laptop or your phone. Perhaps he’d really listened when you’d tried to set boundaries. He’s certainly given you space to adjust.

On Wednesday, you video call your Lola— It’s been routine for ages, since you always had Sundays and Wednesdays off from work— and catch up. You start the call shortly after John leaves, to give yourself some time to talk privately. It’s nice to see her familiar, wrinkled brown face, even if she’s half the world away from you.

She clocks that you’re not at home right away, and gets that sly, knowing smile when you tell her you’re staying with a friend. “¿Estás viendo a alguien?” she asks. “¿Un joven tal vez?” Are you seeing someone? A young man perhaps?

“No nada de eso. Sólo quedarme con un amigo.” No, nothing like that. Just staying with a friend. Once again, lying to make it seem like you’re not in trouble. It’s not like your Lola would be able to do anything about your situation anyway. You would just worry her.

Of course, Lola is much too observant not to see that you're hiding something-- Even if all she sees of you is a video call once a week, you're her granddaughter and she knows you. "Dalisay," she says, her tone a mocking approximation of sternness. "Eres una mujer adulta. Me gustaría saber que eres feliz, que estás saliendo con alguien agradable. No tienes que mentirme. Mientele a tu otra abuela.” You are a grown woman. I would like to know you're happy, that you’re seeing someone kind. You don't have to lie to me. Lie to your other grandmother.

You laugh. "¡Es complicado Lola! Él es—" It's complicated Lola! He's—

The door opens, and John limps back in, early. "Rolled my ankle," he explains, taking your wide-eyed look as concern. "Just need some ice."

"Muéstramelo," Lola demands, laughing. "Tiene una voz hermosa.” Show him to me. He has a handsome voice.

John turns toward you, frowning. "I'm sorry, am I interrupting something?"

"I always call Lola on Wednesdays-- John, sit down, you need to ice your ankle, what are you doing?"

He's standing on one leg, in the middle of the kitchen, fishing a mug out of the cupboard rather than getting something cold and sitting right down. "I--"

You're not sure what possesses you, but you get up, and you make him sit, and you go to make him his coffee and wrap a bag of frozen peas in a tea towel. When you turn around, he's reached across the table to pull your laptop closer, smiling at the camera when Lola claps he hands together, beaming.

"Es guapo, Dalisay. Pero no joven, ¿eh?" She says, laughing. He's handsome, Dalisay. But not young, huh?

"No," he agrees, "soy demasiado viejo para ella. Todavía soy lo suficientemente egoísta como para intentarlo de todos modos.” I'm too old for her. I'm still selfish enough to try anyway. Lola laughs at his honesty, pleased with John already.

You set down the coffee and glare at him. But you gently set the ice pack on his raised ankle. He pulls you into his lap, sitting you on his other thigh. "John!" You protest.

"Oh, relájate, apo,” Lola chides, unhelpfully reading the situation just the way John wants her to. She seems impressed by John's accented Spanish, happy to not need to translate her words to English to speak with him. She speaks English perfectly well, but she prefers Spanish, calls English clunky and ungraceful. "Yo también fui joven una vez. Me preocupaba que ella nunca encontrara a alguien.” Oh lighten up, apo. I was young once too. I was worried she would never find someone.

"No es que ella no pudiera,” John says. "Ella es tan hermosa, pero mantiene la distancia." It's not that she couldn't. She's so beautiful, but she keeps her distance.

“John, stop that,” you say, and you do mean the way he’s talking, but you also mean the hand that’s firmly gripping your hip, kneading your soft flesh. It’s not hard enough to bruise, not even enough to hurt, but it’s distracting, and makes your heart flutter. The movement is also hitching your skirt up a little higher on your thighs.

The innocent, laughing look he gives you is no help. “Sorry, love.” He kisses your shoulder, his hand sliding up to your waist instead.

You glance over at the screen, wincing when you see two of your cousins crowded into the screen with Lola, all of them stifling laughter and one of them holding a chubby baby.

“He needs to buy you a ring, cuz,” Ligaya says, waving her baby’s chubby hand at you. “Say hello Berting, that’s your auntie Dalisay and her boyfriend.” She and her sister, Ceci dissolve into giggles. The baby laughs too, although he doesn’t have any idea what’s going on around him.

“He’s too old to be anyone’s boyfriend,” you grouse.

“He looks more like husband material to me,” Ceci crows. She points a threatening finger at the webcam. “You’d better be good to her! She’s our favourite cousin.”

“Y mi nieta favorita,” Lola says, And my favourite granddaughter, cupping her hand around her mouth as if that would keep Ligaya and Ceci from hearing her. They both laugh, unoffended, Ceci batting Lola’s shoulder lightly.

“I will,” John promises. “She makes it easy. She’s much too good for the likes of me.”

“And don’t you forget it, English!” Ligaya agrees. “Are you coming to see us for Christmas this year, Lisay? There’s at least four babies you haven’t met yet.”

“I’m not sure I can afford to this year. We’ll see if I can find work—”

“¿Qué pasó? ¿Perdiste tu trabajo?” Lola asks. What happened? Did you lose your job?

“You practically raised those niños!” Ligaya protests, as if that would change the facts of the matter. “They love you!”

You grimace, and haltingly explain that Mr. Kinsey had made a pass at you, and you’d been fired so that he and his wife could work out their marital issues. Apparently you’d been just too tempting to have around, despite the fact that you had less than zero interest in your former employer. By the end of your explanation, Lola looks ready to fight, and Ligaya and Ceci both look furious too. “It’s alright,” you say, trying to convince yourself as much as you are them. “I wouldn’t have been able to leave if they didn’t fire me. And I didn’t want to be raising someone else's’ kids forever.”

Ceci wiggles her eyebrows at you. “Yeah, Lisay, you want your own babies, eh?”

“You should start painting again,” Ligaya suggested, flicking Ceci with the hand not currently supporting her son. “You could sell prints online, portrait commissions. You’re as good as your mother, and she made it into that London Gallery.”

Lola notices the way your smile strains and shoos your cousins away. “El consejo es bueno aunque graznan,” she says. “Eres demasiado buena para dejar de pintar.” The advice is good, even if they quack. You’re too good to stop painting.

You change the subject, and Lola talks some about the children, about neighbourhood gossip, catching you up on everything before you end the call. You sigh, sinking into John unconsciously. He’s so big, and so solid, you wish you could do away with that undercurrent of fear ruining the little comfort his arms would provide you otherwise.

“Why’d you stop painting?” he asks.

“It’s not the same anymore.”

“Is anything ever the same?”

You twist to look at him. His eyes are too blue, piercing though you like he’s able to read the thoughts in your head. You have to remind yourself that he can’t, that he doesn’t know you well enough even to guess. You’re getting to know him pretty well though, and you recognize this earnestness, this plea to let him in, to let him help. John is a man who needs to do something all the time, that needs to focus on a task. You wonder what it is that nips at his heels so sharply— Is is inherent, genetic, something unavoidable, written in the core of his very deepest, truest self? Or is it just that he’s running from something, and must stay in motion, driving himself ever forward to keep it from catching up?

“Have you ever lost anyone, John?”

Surprise widens his eyes for a flickering second, before he hides it behind a tight smile. “Think we’re talking about you, Doll.”

“You don’t have to answer. I think it’s just easier to understand, when you have. Painting just reminds me of my mam. It’s like trying to swim with lead shoes on. It’s so hard to keep my head above the water that it’s easier just not to swim.”

“Maybe you could try takin’ off the lead shoes,” he suggested, his arms tightening around you. Levity and reassurance, like he knows exactly what you need. “Or maybe you just shouldn’t go swimmin’ alone.”

“A lifeguard,” you say, rolling the thought around in your head. Maybe that was the problem, the empty space was too apparent when there was no one around to fill it. You’d painted the flowers on the credenza with Ripley there, and that had even been nice. You’d thought it was just a fluke, but you hadn’t really thought about why it had been different. “That’s an interesting thought.”

“Did you have everything you’d need? We can look through the boxes for your supplies.”

You shake your head. “No. Yes. I have watercolours somewhere. Just no acrylics. But I could start with watercolours.”

“Yeah? We can look now, if you like.”

“Maybe in a bit. I’ll make breakfast first.”

“I can do it,” he offers quickly. “I want to take care of you.”

As much as you aren’t quite ready to admit it, he already is. “No, I think it’s my turn. Just give me a minute. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, but this is kind of nice.”

He hums his agreement, picking up his coffee. You think he’s doing it so he can’t kiss you, and you’re so pleased that he’s starting to get it that you almost consider kissing him instead.

But you don’t. You just let yourself enjoy the moment.

Maybe that’s enough, for now.

You decide that having him sit and watch you painting would be awkward, so once you hunt down your watercolours and a sketchbook with heavy paper, you set up outside while he works. He’s constructing some kind of frame over a concrete pad, a covered porch, you think. You sit out of the way, facing the copse of trees that surround the house, and the overgrown, weedy garden. It looks like it had been set up early in the season with the best of intentions, but you suspect that it was too hard on his knees and back. He’d made the mistake of planting everything straight in the ground— You probably would have suggested planter boxes, if you’d been here in the spring. Then he could have sat on a stool— It would have helped keep the bunnies out too. The few tomatoes left on an abandoned vine have little bites nibbled out of them— Almost everything has little bites taken out of it.

It makes you smother a laugh. It’s easy to imagine John railing against nature— He’s so stubborn, there’s no way he gave up for a good long time— Cursing the rabbits and deer, leaning over the once-neat rows until his back ached. There’s a pair of rusting garden shears stuck out of the ground, evidence that he quit in a fit of pique some months ago.

He’s looking at you— He has a sense for when you let happiness slip through, like a hound picking up a rabbit’s trail in the woods. You can feel the burn of those bright blue eyes on you, the heavy weight of his attention. Does he make note of everything you smile at? You wonder how long the list is now. Puppies, the Stuart kids, Lola and your cousins, and now his poor attempts at gardening. You haven’t really let much else get past your careful, polite mask, knowing full well that stone-walling him is your best defence. He’s searching for an opening, and once he finds it, he’ll pop you open like a clam.

It seems inevitable. Still, he’ll have to work for it, if he wants you to let him in. He’s already set himself the first of his Herculean tasks, to get you painting again. It would be easier to face the Nemean lion. Your grief has sharp teeth, unblunted even after a decade, still dug deep into your heart.

“You aren’t painting,” John says in your ear. His hands settle on your shoulders, holding you in your seat when surprise would launch you a few centimetres into the air.

You turn your head to look at him, and he’s far too close. “You aren’t working.”

“Takin’ a break. You look like you’re thinkin’ hard about something. What’s on your mind, Doll?”

“Your garden. Must have been a storm of misfortunes to make you give up.”

“Few things get the better of me, but this was one of ‘em. Have to settle for buyin’ produce at the shops like everyone else.”

“It’s not really so hard.”

“You the expert in gardening?”

“No, I just used to help my gran with her garden. Picked up a thing or two about keeping green things alive.” You take a dry paintbrush and dust it over his fingertips idly.

“That the one we talked to today?” he asks.

“No, that’s Lola. Gran is the Scottish one.”

He hums, smooths out tension in your shoulders with his thumbs, catching the slightest touch of your skin at the collar of your sweater. "Didn't think you had family in the UK."

You tip your head back, looking up at him. He shifts, leaning his forearms on the back of the chair, hanging over you. "Just my Gran, she got remarried a bit before we moved to Manchester. She thought her husbands-- Well, I'll say kids, but they were full adults, older than my mam already-- She thought they were more respectable than my parents. Wouldn't categorize her as a real warm and fuzzy lady."

"You don't talk then?"

"No. Not since my parents died. We had a proper row at the funeral and she's never apologized, and I'm certainly not going to."

"Learnin' a lot about you today, Doll."

“That I’m stubborn and that I distance myself from the people that love me?” you ask, flicking the paintbrush at the tip of his nose. His whole face scrunches, and it’s kind of endearing. You’re already feeling soft about him from this morning, because Lola liked him, and because he didn’t ask if she spoke English, just launched right into Spanish that was a maybe a little rough around the edges, but good enough.

“That,” he agrees. “But I think it’s good that you hold your ground. You’re not stubborn for the sake of it, you say what needs to be said. I’d bet good money that you were in the right.”

“It doesn’t always matter who’s right and who’s wrong, John. Sometimes you have to set aside ego to make things right.”

“Tryin’ to teach an old dog new tricks?” he asks.

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll teach yourself. Now go on, get. You’re distracting me.” You wrap your hands around one of his, and press a fleeting kiss to a spot between his thumb and his wrist before releasing him. “And be careful of your ankle. If you need to carry something heavy, let me help you.”

He laughs and withdraws, his shadow sliding over your page as he moves away. “Yes ma’am. You’re pretty cute when you’re bossy.”

“I’m always cute,” you say blithely.

You don’t look at him, so you miss the way he glances back over his shoulder, blue eyes burning. “You’re damn right about that.”

Ducking your head down to hide your smile, you pick your pencil up and look back to the garden. Something about the red-handled shears stuck in the soil speaks to you, so you lightly sketch it out on the page, humming to yourself quietly. The next things you need to hunt down are your headphones and the old mp3 player so you can listen to music while you paint.

There’s something soothing about hearing John work anyway. The whirr of his drill as he screwed framing lumber into place, or the buzz of his saw when he cuts pieces to size. He’s methodical, exacting— What makes him so good at building probably made him a poor gardener too. He can cut and fit pieces of wood together to make any shape he pleases, he can make a plan and nothing will fight back against it, beyond a warped bit of lumber here and there, but a garden grows as it will, and there’s no controlling the wind or the sun or the rain, let alone the creatures that might come looking for something tender and green.

That same struggle plays out between the two of you. He sees a map and a destination where you see a landscape. The journey, the exploration, is what matters to you, the light and shadow, the soft growing things and the hungry teeth that nip at the roots. In his mind he’s already built a house at the top of the hill, and he wants to pull you inside, lay you down, plant his seeds in a different garden, watch something new grow. It’s not simply impatience, but a need for control, for surety.

He exerts that control outwards, bending the world to the shape he likes. You��ve always turned it inwards, pulling in on yourself, turning your life into a safe little cocoon, turning deprivation and isolation into an art. Constructing masks to get you through, reliable scripts, being whomever you need to be to make things easier.

And perhaps it was easy, but it was lonely too.

Maybe they really had done you a favour. By pulling you out of your comfortable routine, they’ve forced you to face yourself, for the first time in ages, to ask yourself what it is that you want, to see who you are.

You feel like a butterfly, wings still damp and unfurling, perched in John’s hand. He could risk letting you fly away, or he could force you to stay by destroying some integral part of you. There’s no telling which path he intends to take, not yet.

You can just hope.

It might be insane— It certainly feels insane— but you really want him to be a good man. Not just out of self-preservation, although it probably weighs something in the equation, but because you want him. He’s right when he says there’s something here, something that’s been rolling around in the back of your mind since Ghost dumped you in his lap. It hasn’t even been a week, but it feels longer.

You keep half an eye on him while you put the first pale washes of colour onto paper. A few small versions first, to get a handle on light and shadow, colour values, just to remember how to mix colours the way you want to, and then start on the larger version, feeling a little more confident.

You’ve just blocked in the base colours when you notice that John’s limping again, and showing no sign of stopping his work. Sighing, you set your paintbrush down and stand. “John,” you say gently, putting yourself in the path between the saw set up and his lumber pile. “It’s time to take a break.”

“No, I’m fine, Doll. Get back to your painting.” He tries to move around you, but you side-step and block his path again. “It’s just a sprain,” he says, exasperated. “I’ve worked through worse.”

As if that was a good reason to ignore pain. “And you never considered that maybe you shouldn’t have had to?”

He frowns down at you. The difference in your heights has to be at least a foot, but he has a funny way of tucking in his chin and hanging his head when you’re standing close like this, and looking at you straight on anyway. A soft little hand settles on his stomach, unbidden— You’re not sure that you’ve instigated contact with him before, it’s always been him reaching out for you, his big hands achingly gentle. Is anyone ever gentle with him? Is he ever gentle with himself?

“The work will still be here tomorrow,” you remind him. “You have time to rest.”

A raindrop splashes on your outstretching arm. The two of you look up in tandem, at a heavy grey cloud that’s rolled over head— It hasn’t blocked out the sun yet, and neither of you had noticed it creeping up— and then at each other. “Guess the weather agrees with you,” John says.

You both scramble apart and into action. John covers the pile of lumber and the saw with tarps, weighed down with a few odd bricks so they won’t blow away, and you quickly pack up the water colours and your paintings. You don’t get there in time to stop a few splashes of rain from hitting the page, but you get everything inside before it’s completely soaked and set it on the kitchen table for the moment.

While you’re filling the kettle and looking outside, watching the rain splash against the window, John comes in too, and looks at your work. “The rain ruined it,” he says. “I should have been paying more attention to the weather.” There’s guilt in his voice, as if it’s his fault that the rain chose to fall where and when it did.

You set the kettle to boil, and join him, studying the paintings. Each of them unrefined— The smaller ones are just work-ups anyway, but the raindrops have warped the colours, creating voids with saturated edges. You wouldn’t say they’re ruined. There’s an artistry to incident, story preserved on paper in a way that your art wouldn’t do alone.

“No, I like it better this way,” you say decisively. “It underlines the theme of futility, don’t you think? How we’re at the mercy of the weather, whether we like it or not.”

“S’pose so,” he admits grudgingly.

His mouth is set so it almost disappears under his moustache. He really does hate the reminder that he has no control over some things. You dash upstairs and grab a couple of towels and tuck them under your arm, and take John’s hand, leading him out onto the front porch.

He follows you without resistance, although there’s a funny, curious look on his face. “What’re you doing?”

You let go, and put the towels down on the bench. “What does it look like I’m doing?” The rain is coming steadily now, the sky turned darker, sun all but blotted out, and it’s cold on your skin when you step out from the shelter and into the downpour. You throw your arms out and spin, laughing.

There are many things in this life that you can’t control. Things that are fixed, unchanged and immovable, laws of nature, the whims of weather, and Captain John Price. But you have choices too. You can try to move a mountain, but you’d be better climbing over it. You can choose to struggle against the current, or let it sweep you along. You can dance in the rain rather than wish it were sunny.

And you can hold out your hand, and invite John to dance with you.

Image Credits: Banner Dividers

#Cave Writing #Retirement Party #RP Chapter 6 - The Butterfly Effect #John Price x OC #OC: Doll #John Price x Reader #x reader #call of duty modern warfare fanfiction #It's funny to tag it that when it is like sooooo far removed from the source material #Thanks for your patience everyone! This chapter kicked my ass #transitions are hard #If the Spanish is bad please let me know it is google translated and only slightly peer reviewed

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