#spine defect

[cpunkwitch]

Hi I need people to remember scoliosis isn't the only back issue that exists

I've had multiple instances where I talked about my back issue, stating a defect in my spine causes me chronic pain, and people respond with "so do you have a form of scoliosis?"

NO. not only does this show how little people understand scoliosis but that scoliosis being the first thing to come to mind means other back problems and spine conditions are not known well enough and we need to fix that.

Start talking about your conditions, talk about your back problems, explain what you experience and listen when people talk about theirs.

Don't let the world continue to be ignorant and assume there's only one condition for you to have, don't let peoples ignorance out you in a box, that happens way too often and the only way we can solve and prevent it is if we don't stop talking about it.

Bringing awareness to things is the only way we can stop having to deal with situations like this where people are ignorant and make assumptions about our bodies based on our age, appearance and their limited knowledge.

And for the able bodied folk, don't talk over us, listen and learn and help us spread awareness. PLEASE

[ronsenburg]

love the little notes I leave for myself on my wips:

[crazycatsiren]

Well, today the ortho doc prescribed me a custom back brace.

[boydykedevo]

Sick and twisted that my necks too short to ever be able to wear a cool punk collar my brain would be fixed if only I 1. Had cool punk collar and 2. Had a neck that’s not so fucking short

[dustyskies747]

Currently 10 doctors deep into trying to find a doctor with experience with my birth defect/disability. We love being disabled/s

[finsterhund]

Younger Me: this horrible problem is so agonizingly wretched to me. But it seems like something that can potentially be fixed with modern innovation (it can, absolutely, 100%. And it probably could have been prevented altogether also if somebody cared) you are the adult in my life. I am pleading for a solution.

My mom: No. That's just the way the world works. You just have to put up with it. You were born to put up with it. Other people also put up with it. That's life. Life isn't fair.

Younger Me: *is suicidal*

My mom: surprised Pikachu face

[foone]

So you find a robodoc from the far future, but the only problem is that the battery is nearly dead. It says it can fix one problem, but then it will power off forever, and you gotta use it now, no saving it until you get cancer or something.

[gojonanami]

MEANT TO BE ✴︎ SUGURU GETO

✴︎ summary: when Suguru defects, he asks you to come with him -- but he's not going to take no for an answer. ✴︎ cw: 18+, dead dove, do not eat, smut, dub/con, degradation (use of "monkeys"), kidnapping, hostage, yandere(?)! geto, mentions of violence (no graphic descriptions), fingering, (afab!receiving), oral (afab!receiving), reader is a follow sorcerer at jujutsu tech. ✴︎ wc: 6,046

“Come with me,” when those words left Geto’s mouth, you knew he had truly lost his mind. 

“Come with you?” You repeat, as you turn slowly from your kitchen sink, your muscles tense — your cursed weapon was in your bedroom, your cursed technique wouldn’t be enough to stop him, and your cellphone was on the counter between the two of you, “Suguru, I just got a call from Satoru, not twenty minutes ago about what you’ve done-"

“And what have I done, besides try to do what’s right?” And he steps towards you, one hand in his pocket, and you step back, reaching for your phone that you thought laid on the counter behind your bag, only for him to wave it in front of you, “I thought you of all people would see that,” 

Your face twists in disgust, “You killed innocent people—" 

“I killed monkeys,” he spits through gritted teeth, “I killed monkeys who do nothing but produce curses and kill sorcerers. Why should the strong live subservient to a race of lower beings?” 

You blink, “Do you hear yourself, Suguru? What happened to the strong have to protect the weak?” 

“Why should the strong have to watch all the people they care about die, only to die at the hands of the supposed weak?” his gaze is dark, eyebrows knit together, “if you join me—"

“I’m not joining you—"

“—we can be together,” you stare at him, and he steps closer, again, and this time you don’t step away, “in a new world, we could rule over a new age,” 

“Fuck you,” you scoff, as you move towards the door, “I thought Satoru was the one with a god complex, not you,”

And in a moment, he has you pinned against the wall, arms above your head, “I’ve been patient with you, love, but unfortunately I’m not in the business of taking no for an answer,” and he presses a kiss to your neck, making you shiver, “either you come with me, or I’ll let Satoru find your remains splattered against your walls,” 

Your heart lurches, fear slowly settling in, as you realize this wasn’t Suguru - your Suguru who you spent afternoons with messing with Satoru, your Suguru that waited for you with an umbrella to walk back to Jujutsu High when it was raining, your Suguru that gently kissed you in a classroom when you were being far too hard on yourself — no, this was Geto, a special grace curse user. 

“Will you really kill me?” You ask slowly, willing your voice to stay even, “after everything, you’ll make the choice to kill me, and no one else from Jujutsu High,” 

“I don’t want to, sweetheart. There’s no meaning, no meaning without you,” his lips curl in a cruel imitation of what his smile was, “but if you leave me no choice because, I can’t let you live if you’re not by my side,” 

A bitter chuckle leaves your throat, “Is this supposed to be romantic? Am I supposed to fall into your arms at the prospect of living?” you spit in his face, “fuck you.” 

He flinches, his mouth agape, as he wipes the spit from his cheek with his thumb, “I thought you’d say that,” and then the plane of existence is cracked open behind him, as a swirl of curses manifest and you close your eyes, and wait. 

You had no regrets. 

But you do when you wake. 

Your head aches, fuck, and you can’t get your bearings, your ears are ringing — a jolt shoots up your spine, as your eyes adjust to the darkness. A curse? An enemy? 

No, it was both. 

Suguru stands in front of you, hands in his pocket, “Hello my love,” 

“Fuck you,” you spit with as much venom as you can muster, as you struggle to move, your hands chained down in bindings that restricted your cursed energy, “fuck-"

“Don’t be in such a rush, we’ll get to that part,” and his voice is so lilting, it sends a chill down your spine. 

“You touch me, and I’ll break every bone in your body,” you say through gritted teeth, and his lips curl into a smile, a small chuckle parting his lips. 

“And how could you do that, my love?” He steps forward, as his fingers hold your chin, “you’re mine to do with what I wish,” and your voice catches in your throat, as real fear crawls it’s way up your stomach, “but I don’t care to force my affection into you, I’ll have you begging for it soon enough,”  

And your stomach turns, as he steps away from you again, “so what do you call this?” You ask quietly, as you lift your chained wrists. 

“A matter of circumstance,” he frowns, as he holds his head, “I hate to do this, but I must remind you of how much you love me, how much we love each other, and until you remember, I cannot allow you out of those restraints.” 

“I’ll never love you, with or without them,” you surge forward, the  restraints grating against your skin, “I never loved you to begin with,” 

He looks at you, with almost pity, “We both know that’s not true,” you waver under the weight of his gaze and you despise how you can’t deny it, “was the first time we shared a kiss a lie? After we had gone on that mission where we saw far too many horrors for children to see? Was it a lie those nights you came to my dorm to sleep in my arms when you couldn’t otherwise? Was it-“ 

“I loved you,” you whisper, “the you were before - the you that wasn’t a murderer, the you that—"

“The me that was allowing us to live under the thumb of these disgusting monkeys, the ones who kill us and let us be killed for their sake, while the corpses of my friends and sorcerers pile up like sacrifices on a pyre,” and you know he’s talking about Haibara now, “I couldn’t continue to live for a world like that, and I couldn’t allow you to continue living in it either,” 

“Haibara would hate who you’ve become,” you whisper quietly into the darkness, as he glances back at you, no emotion stirring in his expression, as if he’s already thought this a million times before. 

“But at least he would be alive,” your mouth open and closes, as tears burn at your eyes, “and I couldn’t stand to watch a world where more of my comrades would die for a cause that was setting them up for failure — I couldn’t stand for a world where I would lose you—"

His voice breaks, and you shake your head. 

“You lost me sooner, by leaving, by killing innocent people-“ 

“No one is innocent in this world,” he cuts you off, “everyone’s hands are bloodied one way or another - just by living, humans contribute to the death of sorcerers, creating curses that inevitably lead to someone’s demise - whether it’s another human or a sorcerer,” 

“It’s not their fault that they create curses—"

And he gives a bitter laugh, “Then whose fault is it? I never took you to be naive, my love,” 

“Don’t call me that,” and he gives a twisted smile. 

“Why wouldn’t I? When I love you,” he steps closer, holding your chin, “I love you so much I’m willing to risk you despising me, just so I can call you mine,” 

“I’ll never be yours,” and he leans forward, making you squeeze your eyes shut, but he presses his lips to your forehead. 

“You already are,” and he turns to leave, his robes sweeping behind him, “and I’ll get your heart too — one way or another.” 

You only can keep track of the days by Geto’s visits. He is sure to visit you in the evenings, after his work is done. And each day he comes back more bloodied than the one previously. He always washes himself with the sink in your cell, before he turns to you. 

“I want you to see what these people are — nothing more than animals. Animals that make money or curses or both - tools that run their course,” 

“Just because you keep me chained up in here doesn’t mean you have to bore me to death as well,” you hang your head, and he looks at you, tilting your chin up with his fingers. 

And he tries a different tactic, “You have been refusing your food for days, when are you going to eat? You can’t go on like this,” his voice has an edge of concern, “there’s nothing in the food that can harm you,” 

“Says the kidnapper,” you mutter, “I’m not hungry,” and your stomach almost growls on cue, and a chuckle escapes his lips. 

“Your body tends to betray you, my love,” and he  grabs your food, lifting a spoonful of fried rice to your lips, “eat,” 

“I’m not—“ and he raises an eyebrow — and you scowl, “I don’t want to be fed by you,” 

“You didn’t mind before - you insisted I feed you between classes. Always vending machine junk too—" 

“It wasn’t junk—it was—" 

“An acquired taste,” he waves you off, his lips curling into a smile, “well, I always fed you, and I always will, so please?” And he offers you the spoon. You glance at him, before taking the spoonful. 

And you note the bags under his eyes, and the shallowness of his face, “Have you been eating? Or sleeping?” 

And he looks up, offering you another spoon, “I-"

“You haven’t been,” you shake your head, “and yet you have the gall to tell me to eat,” and you take the spoon from his hand, offering it to him, “it’s not poison, right?” 

And he cracks a small smile, taking the spoonful, “you don’t have a poison cursed technique that I don’t know about?” 

“You wouldn’t be alive still if I did,” and he laughs at that, and the sound makes your stomach flip — just like the first time you heard him make it for you when you had one-upped Satoru. The first time that you realized you wanted to be the one to always make him laugh like that. 

Days pass, and his visits become more frequent. He doesn’t tell you of the people he murders - he learns better than to tell you - but the blood on his clothes doesn’t escape your notice. But he tells you of the sorcerers he finds that are oppressed — tells you of the two girls he’s taken under his wing. But each day, he looks more tired than the next, until you call him over to you. 

“Lay down,” and he blinks, “you need to sleep,” 

“I-" 

“You look terrible,” you say bluntly, “lie down,” and he glances at your bed that you sat on the edge of, the chains around your wrists.  

He moves towards the bed, lying down, but his head doesn’t lay on the pillow, but instead your lap, “Geto-"

“Suguru,” he corrects, peering up at you, his eyes barely staying open, “please,” and your resistance breaks, the exhaustion of being alone, the need for human contact, the softness of his body against yours - sends your walls crumbling to dust. Your fingers comb through his dark locks, softly undoing the tangles in them. And his breathing evens with time, as you lie back against the wall. 

“Suguru,” you whisper into the darkness, as your eyes shut as well, and you don’t see his lips curl into a smile. 

You don’t realize you fall asleep as well, until you wake a few hours later, and you’re asleep against his chest, his warm arms engulfing you. And you could swear the two of you were napping in an empty classroom, hiding from Yaga and Satoru, on a warm afternoon. And he’d whisper in your ear, pressing a kiss to your forehead. 

But it wasn’t a classroom, it was a cell. And those hands no longer exorcised curses — they murdered humans. 

But you could pretend. Just this once. You bury your head in his chest, and let yourself drift. But only this one time. 

When you wake next, he’s gone, the only memory of him is the unchained bindings on your wrists, the faint smell of him on your clothes, and the ghost of his touch still clinging to you.

The next few days his visits grew more frequent, but only for sleep, as he nestled beside you, as you pretended to be asleep. It became routine. At first, you would sleep turned away, but by morning, you were sleeping nestled in his chest. And then you dared to ask, “why do you come here to sleep? You must have a better bed somewhere else,” 

And he gives a phantom of a chuckle, “Well, that bed doesn’t have you, does it?” 

And his hand dares to breach your skin before sleep steals away your consciousness, and you can’t help but let it happen — because it hurts too much to pull away. 

And you don’t know why.  

He doesn’t come back for several days. The only interaction you have is one of his followers bringing you food each day, and they don’t answer your questions regarding their ‘lord.’ And each day you grow more anxious, picking at your nerves like you picked at your scabs — incessantly and unnecessarily. 

What if he was dead? What did it matter? All the more quickly you could return to jujutsu high, you could return to your life - a life without Geto. But the same question remained posed in your head — what if he was dead? 

Would you see his dead body before jujutsu high disposed of it? Before they forced Shoko to autopsy it for any secrets the higher ups could lock away - as if he were a failed experiment rather than a person. 

But he had killed so many - wouldn’t death only be right? Would that bring justice? Would that be peace? But the question remained, hanging in the forefront of your head, like a dead body from the rafters, a rope tied around their neck—

What if he was dead? 

But days later, your door swings open and it’s him — “Suguru,” you nearly all but tumble out of your bed, scrambling to his side as your gaze swept over his form. Scarlet ran down his body, cuts, bruises, and scratches littered what was visible of his skin, “what happened?” 

He doesn’t answer, a blank expression on his face, his hair come loose from his usual bun, bags under his eyes that tell tales of what he saw without him speaking a word of them. You reach for him tentatively, words scattered on the floor of your mind that you were desperately trying to collect, “is this your blood or someone else’s?” 

“Both,” he murmurs, his eyes still far gone, as his gaze shifts to the floor, “I have no right to ask — but can you—I can’t stand to have anyone else touch me—“ and his voice breaks, breaks for the first time — the same voice that didn’t break after Riko’s death, the same voice that didn’t break after Satoru was taken away from him, the same voice that didn’t break after Haibara — it broke. 

And it broke you. 

“Strip,” you say simply, but you undo his robes for him, “I need to see what damage you’ve done to your body,” you busy yourself with undressing him to escape the fact that you’re undressing him. You had seen his body times before, at first in dorm rooms late at night, when you cuddled next to him, desperate for a comfort he could only provide, and then between heated kisses and intimate touches that left you near breathless and needy for him, and then distant embraces that left you feeling more lonely and far from him than before. But this was different. 

He was different. 

You stripped away the clothing to find him bloodied and bruised to an almost impressive, but terrifying extent. The blood smeared on his skin was mostly another’s — you learned once you started to clean his cuts and bruises with a damp rag, “Do you want to talk about it?” 

His eyes slowly glide to you, cold as glaciers, “Do you want to hear about it?” 

“I’m asking, aren't I?” you sigh, as his gaze drops once again, and your hands still, one of your hands drifting to his chin, tilting his eyes to meet yours, “Suguru-” 

And he’s kissing you. 

His lips are soft, just as you remembered. You remember the first moment you noticed his lips — it was when you had fed him a pocky after he had swallowed a curse, his brow scrunching with slight disgust — never quite getting used to the taste, but having grown as accustomed to it as he could (as far as someone could grow accustomed to swallowing what was akin to a vomit soaked rag used clean shit). You sat beside him, a pocky between your lips, as you offered him one in your hand. And his gaze softened, leaning down and biting the one between your lips instead. And then you couldn’t stop staring at his lips — wondering how they felt against yours. 

He tasted like blood now, metallic and sharp as his jaw was now — no longer having the soft curve of childhood it was maybe a year ago. He swallows your gasp eagerly, giving you leeway to pull away, but you don’t. You can’t. Your lips press back into his, and he smirks against your lips, his arm wrapping around the middle of your back, so he was engulfing you even as he sat. His teeth bare down on your bottom lip, making you moan lightly, and his tongue sneaks between your lips with practiced ease, but it's no longer the sweet assault it once was — it's an onslaught, a razing of your defenses, and he knows the weaknesses of each curtain wall and bastion. 

“Suguru, wait—” but he’s impatient, he’s always so impatient — the first time you had kissed, he couldn’t stop at just one kiss, he needed your lips to be kiss bitten red until he was satisfied. His hands are so large and calloused, gliding up your sides, as he pulls you into his lap, “we were talking,” you protest, but he empties the words from your head with his lips pressed to your jaw, “Why are you—” 

“I don’t want to talk,” his raven locks fall in front of his face, his eyes somehow even darker, “I just want you, please,” 

And your heart squeezes and breaks, the walls crumbling to nothing, as you lean in and kiss him this time, fingers threading through his his hair, while your other hand rests on his bare chest, if only to feel his heartbeat under your touch. 

He was alive. Alive. 

“Please,” you sigh, as he toys with the hem of your shirt, “don’t tease me,” 

“Like you haven’t teased me with your existence each and every day I’ve known you, my love,” he chuckles, a noise deep from his chest that rumbles against your palm and sends a shiver down your spine, and he lifts your hand, kissing your wrist, his nose pressed against your pulse, “Do you know how much I want you? How much I need you?” and he answers the question for you, as he leans forward, his teeth graze your neck, pain and pleasure mixing in a twisted way. 

“Suguru—“ 

He rises from his seat, looming over you, his arms sweeping — one behind you and the other holding your chin — it sends a chill down your spine, “I just arrived at a village where a child was being held - said to be cursed. But those monkeys were the ones who were—“ he cuts off, “I came too late. They had killed her - sacrificed her to purge their village of their curses - a five year old girl,” he frowns, his gaze falling, “they failed to realize they were the true curses. So I purged the world of their existence,” 

You’re quiet for a moment, as he speaks, “she was a child and they ripped her to shreds,” and a tear slips down his cheek. 

Your fingers brush away his tear, before you lean up and kiss him. Your lips glide against his lightly, “it’s not your fault,” 

“I am always too late - I was there - I couldn’t-“ and you know he isn’t just talking about the girl anymore. 

Or at least this one. 

“What happened to Riko wasn’t-" 

“He shot her right through the head in front of me,” 

“You couldn’t sense him - Satoru could barely sense him with his six eyes—"

“Satoru could have stopped it—" 

“Satoru died and came back trying to stop Toji,” you crush your lips to Suguru, if only to get him to stop talking, “there was nothing more you could do,” 

“But I couldn’t stay,” he whispered, “I couldn’t watch more people die - more of my friends die, piled up like offerings on a pyre for animals who only kill us in the end,” 

“I know,” you whisper, “I know-" 

“You don’t,” his voice breaks, “all I could think about was finding your dead body one day,” you cup his cheeks again, pressing your lips to his forehead. 

“I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere,” you murmur, and he kisses you — and he tastes less like blood and more like him — his arms wrapping around your waist, as he pulls you closer, “Suguru,” you shouldn’t be doing this. 

“I just want to feel good,” he murmurs, his eyes lidded with lust, “let me make you feel good, love,” 

His lips brush yours, and the ravine between you shrinks to a crack, as your bodies bridge the gap, before tumbling over the cliff. 

His hands are everywhere. His hands have mapped your body times before, but the gentle and awkwardness had all but faded, only leaving hunger. Already, his fingers are sliding under your shirt, calloused hands sliding over your bare skin. 

His lips only pause when his hands run over a new scar you had gotten right before he had gone rogue, “How did you get this?” 

And his eyes are dark, “I was on that mission, with Nanami and Haibara,” your gaze falls, as his fingers trace the scar, raised and angry still - just as he was, “we got separated. There was two grade 1s instead just the one we were told. I got this when it caught me by surprise,” you swallow thickly, “but I was lucky it was all I got,” you squeeze your eyes shut, “I sometimes wish it was me instead of-" 

“Don’t say that,” his words are as sharp as they always were, sharp as his touch, sharp as the curses that he pushed past his lips and the ones that left them, “don’t ever say that,” 

And his palm curls around your neck, “but-" 

He yanks you into a brutal kiss, forcing you swallow his words, and his tongue, as you moan, as he tastes you, “Still the sweetest thing I’ve tasted, even with the stupid things that leave your mouth,” he almost growls, as he lifts you onto the bed. 

“Suguru,” your back hits the mattress, barely bouncing against the springs before he looms over you - his smile was the same as it always was, but it sent a shiver down your spine - because you realize now how predatory it was, “are we—" 

“You’re mine, love,” his lips hover over yours, teasingly so, as his fingers cup your chin and his breath warms your skin, sending heat to the tips to your already curling toes, “even if I did, we’d find our way back; one way or another,” his lips brush gently over the nape of your neck, “I’d always come for you — one way or another,” 

Your lips meet again, and again, as his hands slide up your sides, but this time bringing your shirt with them, as he lifts it over your head. Your skin prickles at the cold air in the room and at his hot gaze dragging up your body. 

“You’re still the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,” he whispers, as his hands gently traces the curves of your body, and it makes you shiver - the hands that had slaughtered people earlier today could be this gentle with you. 

“And I still think you’re far more beautiful than I am,” your fingers run through his jet-black locks, “everyone had a crush on you,” 

He snorts, “Everyone?” 

“You should have seen the looks you and Satoru always got,” you roll your eyes, “the two princes of Jujutsu High - and you, you had the personality to match,”

“Well I wasn’t concerned about everyone,” his hands slip over his waist, “I only had eyes for one other,” 

“Satoru?” And he rolls his eyes. 

“Okay two others,” and your hand reaches to smack him, but he’s got both your hands pinned, before he’s leaning down to kiss your neck, “so temperamental,” he chides, “what am I going to do with you, Princess?” 

His other hand slips down your body, past the waistband of your shorts, ripping a gasp from your lips, “already so wet f’me,” his voice rasps with a chuckle, “you’ve been needing me for a while, haven’t you, baby?” 

“Suguru—“ and his fingers between to tease your leaking folds, making you squirm under his touch. 

“So perfect,” his long and lithe finger teases your lips apart, “I’m surprised you haven’t soaked through your shorts, probably thought about me every night I slept next to you - you were waiting for me to roll over and take you, weren’t you, baby?” And his finger finally slips in, your back arching and mouth in a silent ‘o.’ 

And he hums, as he begins to pump his finger, slowly at first, but it isn’t long before another joins, scissoring and stretching you, “you’re soaking the sheets, baby, such a dirty girl,” He leans down taking a nipple between his teeth, sucking harshly. 

“Please,” it was too much, too soon, and he’s grinning as his teeth dig into your soft skin, a soft groan as he feels you clench around his fingers. He holds your legs down in place, humming as they shake under his touch. 

“So fucking tight, can’t wait to feel you around my cock, Princess,” and you’re so fuckin’ close - wound too tight by his touch, by his presence, by him - and when his thumb rubs circles on your clit, your hips begin to ride his fingers. He chuckles, as he leans down to kiss you, “what would the people at Jujutsu High think? Seeing you ride my fingers like a slut? Probably think you’re locked away, waiting for them to save you, not begging for me to fuck you,” 

“Sugu,” and he curls his fingers just right, just as he bends down to suck on your clit. You moan his name, as you fall apart, back arching as you make a mess all over his hand, but his mouth is there to clean it up. His hot breath is the only warning you get before his tongue begins to lap at your drenched folds. 

“Never get enough of you creamin’ all over my fingers for me, pretty girl,” the noises he made as he licked, slurped, and sucked were enough to make you a mess, his lips shiny with your release, “how did I go so long without tasting you, baby? Almost makes swallowing curses worth it if I can eat you out after,” his words were as lewd as the sounds you made, your hips involuntarily fucking his mouth, as he moved his mouth to your clit again, and slipped two fingers in, “tasted so good the first time, gotta have another taste baby,” 

And your initial whine turns into a moan, your fingers finding refuge in the soft locks of his hair, tugging him impossibly closer, as he’s bullying your overstimulated clit with his mouth. And he enjoys it as much as you do, grinding his aching erection into the mattress, his jaw aching as he’s desperate to taste every inch of you and slurp every drop of your pussy will give him. Your thighs close in on him, as he tongue fucks you over and over, gushing as he draws another orgasm from you. 

“Sugu, oh my god-“ and that’s all the warning he gets before your back arches and your toes curl. He’s grinning against your folds as he eagerly swallows your release. The tension snapped like a wire that had been on the last fringes of holding you together, and you fell completely apart. 

Luckily, Suguru was there to put you back together. 

You’re panting, utterly blissed out as you watch him tug off his boxers, his dick already red and so pretty, pearly white bead of pre cum nearly dripping from the tip. You lick your lips looking at him, and he smiles, so sweetly that it sent a shiver down your spine. 

“So needy for me, the man you had refused to love, and now look at you,” he leans down to kiss you, letting you taste the sweet and bitter taste of your release, “such a little slut for me, aren’t you sweetheart? What happened to that mouth on you?” 

He drags his thumb down your bottom lip, as your eyes flutter down to his cock again, “I have better uses for my mouth,” you kiss his chest, teasing his skin with your tongue. 

And then he’s shifting you, your legs pushed up and over his shoulders, as he drags his tip over your dripping folds, “I think I’ll have you use my mouth after I use this naughty cunt, let you clean our cum off me,”

“Sugu, please, fuck,” you cry, and god he can’t wait to see your pretty face cry, as he stuffs your mouth with his dick, but he had patience. He could wait - he had waited long enough. 

“Gonna need you to beg for it,” he murmurs, groaning as your cunt nearly sucking his cock in, “you fought me so long and so hard and now here you are, so pliant f’me, so I need to hear it — who do you belong to?” 

“Suguru—“ and his lips press to yours, sloppily and rough, as if he wants to steal the logic from your mind, but he already had from the moment his lips touched yours, “please,” you whimper, and he’s spanking your cunt. 

“Please, what?” And his lips are curled in a grin as his lips trail kisses along your jaw, “gonna have to hear the words, my filthy girl,” 

And you can’t - you need him, “I’m yours,” your legs lock around his shoulders, “I belong to you, you own me,” 

Your words slip from a whine to a moan, as he sinks his length into you, inch by inch, and it’s enough for him to groan, fuck, it’s enough to make him cum on the spot, “you’re so tight, baby - it’s been too long since I’ve had you, gotta make this cunt remember my shape,”

“I wanted you so bad,” you gasp, as his hands grasp at your thighs, fingernails digging into your soft flesh, “but you kept getting farther away from me, and then you were gone,” and his gaze soften, even as you moan when he bottoms out, “I loved you - I love you—" 

“I love you too - I always have,” his teeth drags into his thigh, sucking and soothing the mark, he presses his cheek to the skin, “I left because I didn’t want to hurt you - and I couldn’t rise to your level,” his fingers tilt your chin to meet his, “so I had to drag you down to mine,” 

You moan as he gives a sharp thrust, “Fuck, Sugu,” as his hips slap against yours, all thoughts evaporating from your mind, as he fucks you, hard and fast, any words you knew dissolve away, leaving only his name behind (and a few choice swear words). 

Meanwhile, Suguru can’t stop speaking, “Never gonna want to leave me again, my sweet girl,” he purrs, “look at this sweet cunt, it doesn’t even want let my cock go without sucking me back in,” his words nearly drowned out by the sloppy noises of both of your cum soaked skin meeting together in thrusts, “tell me you’ll never leave, tell me you’ll stay,” and his movements slow to a stop, as you whine, “tell me,” 

“I’ll never leave you, I can’t,” you look up with eyes glassy with need, “can’t ever leave you, I love you,” and he’s fucking you harder, feeling your walls clench around him as you’re moaning his name as you cum. He comes undone too as you squeeze him, painting your insides with his thick cum. And you’re arching your back as you feel yourself full of him - so fucking good and full — as you come down from your high. 

And then all too soon, he’s pulling out, only to flip you over, on all fours, “Not done yet,” he only murmurs, leaning forward over you, as his still hardening cock bumps against your sensitive clit, “gonna make sure you never forget who you belong to,” his fingers collect your mixed cum dripping down your thighs to only shove it back in your still overly sensitive cunt. 

You lurch forward, knees buckling, as his fingers working you, “still so fucking tight even after I fucked you so good, Princess? Your cunt is still so needy for my cock,” he kisses your clit, before slapping it, the wet squelch enough to make you throb, “you ready for me, my love?” He grunts, raspy and raw. 

“Please,” you whine, and he doesn’t sink in slowly this time - your cunt nearly sucks him in, your mixed releases letting him slip in with ease, “f-fuck,” 

And Suguru hums, all too pleased, “Not so defiant now that you’re fucked out for me, baby,” his hips piston into you, and all you can feel, smell, and taste is him, all you can hear is your blood in your ears and the sloppy noises of Suguru fucking you. 

You were so close — you were so stretched out, his thrusts balls deep, as his hand reached around to turn your face to his to kiss your lips. It was sloppy, his calloused hand gripping your neck, lightly squeezing, as his tongue tasted your mouth, intent on having all of you, swallowing your moans eagerly. 

“Doing so well for me, Princess,” he praises, his jaw set as your walls clench at his cock, “such a fucking good girl for me,” It was as lewd as his other hand reaching around to to rub roughly at your folds, “need you to squirt for me, need you to drench me,” and it’s too much for you. 

You moan his name, shaking as you cum, squirting all over his cock as your release slides down your thighs, and Suguru follows shortly after, with a few rough thrusts, his hands grabbing your shaking hips to hold in place as he spurts his cum again inside you. 

He’s panting and groaning, as he slips from you, a swear leaving his lips as he pulls out, his seed dripping down your thighs as well. 

And you’re slumping on the bed, your sheets sticky with your release and sweat, as he gently turns you over, your chest rising and falling as he settles on top of you. His fingers brush your hair from your face, “Can we discuss moving you to the main house with me now?” He asks softly, as he presses sweet kisses to your flushed skin. 

“Yes,” you murmur, your lips slowly meeting his in a soft kiss, “as much as I don’t agree with your methods still, I can’t live a day without you,” and he smiles, “I can’t help but be drawn to you,” 

“And that’s why I couldn’t let you go - there has to have been a meaning to this,” he smiles, his fingers tracing the curve of your jaw, before he’s guiding your body so that you’re settled between his thighs, his cock brushing against your lips, “and now there always will be.”

✴︎ a/n: so this was inspired by a character ai (which i wanted to credit the creator but i can't find), but this was dark, so read the content warnings. i'm trying out different formats for my fics so excuse the changes. also i never was into geto until season 2 straight up hit me like the isekai truck.

[shotmrmiller]

Not a dog, but a rat pt.II

2,3k nsfw mdni

This is home now.

The stale odor of sweat that once assaulted your senses is now familiar. The biting tang of iron no longer constricts your throat with its pungency. The dim lights that flicker overhead, bathing both spectators and fighters in a sickly glow doesn't leave you lightheaded anymore.

It's a constant. Adaptation is the first word that comes to mind— a process that's helped you survive in this new environment— but then Simon turns his attention to you from across the room.

He sits on a bench, a solitary figure amidst the chaos of this rowdy place. His knuckles are wrapped in tape and has got white buds in his ears— the way he channels his focus, a barrier between him and everything else. His stare is heavy, thick with an emotion you can't, or won't, name. But you can feel it. It pricks at your nerve endings, like tiny claws. It stirs within your chest, sending your heart aflutter with anticipation, tinged with a hint of fear. A wave of heat washes over you, blooming in your cheeks and warming your stomach; an admission.

Acceptance.

You break away from his intense gaze with your bottom lip pinched between your teeth.

This is your reality.

The fighters, the brawls, the dirty money, the blood— it's no longer just Simon's world. It's yours too. It's crusted beneath your fingernails and stuffed inside the pull-out couch you sleep on.

(Day number: ??? of begging Simon to buy you a proper mattress since he won't get a flat of his own)

It's waking every morning to soothe battered skin, fix broken noses, and ice black eyes.

Home— something brushes the tip of your ear, getting your attention— sweet...

home.

"What's a kleine maus like you doing in a gritty place like this?" His voice cuts through the cacophony of sounds that resound in the pit. A giant among men. Pallid skin, sinewy muscle taut over bone. A network of blue rivers runs through his arm, visible under the light as he reaches out to coil a lock of your hair around his long finger that resembles bare branches in winter.

"Katze got your tongue?" His grin sends a shiver up your spine. It lacks the warmth of life as if someone carved it out of frost-bitten marble. Fissure-like scars stretch across his face, bisecting a thick brow. Jagged lines of silver on his gaunt cheeks, the corner of his mouth and chin.

And one scar runs from the base of his aquiline nose— a thin, rosy mark, strangely delicate looking— down to his thin upper lip. The result of a congenital defect. Human. Unlike his eyes: a cold, stark blue devoid of light.

Your instincts scream, to run, to flee but deep-seated fear has you paralyzed, like gnarled roots snaking around your ankles, gripping tight, holding you captive. An even smaller part of your mind tells you that it'd be futile. There's no escaping this predator.

His eyes narrow a whit, the corners of his inhumane smile dropping. Anxiety has your thoughts in a Gordian knot— unease twisting and looping in the pit of your belly. You can feel the beginning pricks of pain on your scalp, the strands of hair he's got a hold of being pulled taut, stretched like a bridge.

Tears well up in your eyes unbidden.

"If you won't talk, then you'll sing." A threat. You're a marionette in his hands, and he's about to jerk the strings.

A gloved hand shoots out like a coiled snake, encircling his wrist, the leather groaning under the strain of his iron grip. "I'd let go o' her if I were you."

The grip on your hair slackens, relief flowing through you, thick and palpable. John stands in front of you with squared, broad shoulders and a set jaw— a shield between the stranger and you. It doesn't matter, however, because the stranger's towering stature is surreal, dwarfing even John's considerable height.

"König. Where is your handler? Wretched mongrels like you ought to remain leashed." John spits out, his facial hair contorting as he sneers. Your hand tentatively seeks his and you draw a shuddering breath when the comforting warmth of his presence seeps through the fabric of his gloves and melts into your clammy skin.

"Horangi?" He cocks his head, sunken eyes flashing to yours. A faint whimper escapes your tightly sealed lips and an amused look dances across his features. "Around looking for you, I imagine. I am not my inhaber's keeper." The mocking lilt in his gravelly tone doesn't go unnoticed. John's hand tightens around yours. "Besides. I was merely," he pauses, licking the front of his crooked teeth, "meeting her acquaintance. Ja, Fräulein?"

Your heart races, pounding against your ribcage as he addresses you, but John remains the immovable object. "Don't." His voice is a barely contained growl. "I won't be tellin' you again."

The authority in John's words is unignorable. It wipes the remnants of König's mirth off his face. There's a shift in the air then, electricity prickling at your nerves, raising the hair on the back of your neck. A storm is brewing. Your shoulders tighten, as does your hand, awaiting the impending crack of thunder.

"Boss." Just like that, the singular word cuts through the thickened atmosphere, lightening the oppressive tension between them two. "Problem?"

Simon comes to stand next to John, shoulder to shoulder. Reinforcing the wall you're hidden behind.

John sucks his teeth. "I don't think so. König?" It's not a question.

"Nein. No problem." Your eyes are lowered to the mud-slick floor as he leaves. You counted 14 littered betting slips.

John's grip loosens around your hand, leaning in to murmur something into Simon's ear before turning to you. "Gotta be careful 'round these types. Best stick with one of us, eh?" Another not a question.

It doesn't take much to guess what exactly he told him, not with that wild glint in his eye that he's currently looking at you with. It burns with ferocity, untamed and fervent. Simon wraps an arm around your waist and swiftly lifts you over his shoulder and carves a path through the drunken onlookers, ignoring the stares and taunting cat whistles as he heads towards the locker room.

The door slams against the wall as he kicks it open, the sound reverberating through the room. placing you down on one of the benches roughly, making you grimace at the jolt of brief pain that shoots up your back on impact.

"Simon!" His long strides already have him rounding the corner towards the showers, out of sight. "Arsehole. Tossing me around like some—" you startle when he suddenly reappears, the rest of the sentence sinking into your stomach, his face twisted with rage.

"Where'd he touch you?" He demands, casting a dark shadow over you as he looms.

His arrogant tone snaps the wisp-thin thread of patience you dangled from. "Listen, Ghost, I—" Your words are cut short as his large hand wraps around the underside of your jaw, fingers dimpling your cheeks with an unforgiving grip.

"No lip from you. Not right now." His command is final. Powerless in his hold, you can only gaze up at him with eyes wide with incredulity and a slightly puckered mouth.

"'M no' askin' again. Did he touch you here?" His other hand grazes the side of your head, featherlight, by your ear.

A nod.

"Wha' about 'ere?" Fingertips trail lines of intimacy from your cheek straight down to the column of your neck, lingering by your fluttering pulse.

A shake.

"'S good. I'd be obligated to erase 'is touch with my own. Isn't tha' right, pet? Only I get to touch you. Eh?" He rumbles, his words laced with a proprietary edge that tangle around your spine.

Heat licks up the sides of your jaw. The implication is clear. It's a claim, a brand on your flesh, a line drawn in the sand no one will ever dare cross.

Exclusive.

You made your choice long ago; it only took you this long to come to terms with it. It's bittersweet as it goes down your throat.

A slow nod.

"Good girl." His hand falls away from your face as he leans in. "Now remind me. Where else he touch ya?" Possessive. Intense. All-consuming.

Your eyes flick to the door with no lock and he gets your wordless message. "Kyle's on standby. No one's allowed t'see you like this but me."

The bench creaks under the shift of weight as he sits on it. His hands, firm and assertive, pull you across the wooden surface with ease, draping your legs over his own.

"Talk to me or I leave you here," his gaze drags down from the smooth skin of your neck down the swell of your chest, to your clothed sex. It's like an oil spill, spreading unchecked, leaving behind a slick residue of heat. "Wantin'. I can smell it fr'm 'ere."

Ironic how he barely says a word any other time, but apparently will chat up a storm during this poor excuse of foreplay.

"He—," you choke out, "he didn't touch me anywhere else."

Simon looks at you through half-lidded eyes as his steady hand disappears beneath the fabric of your shirt. "Didn't touch ya here?" His fingers teasingly follow the curve of your bare breast. You shake your head mutedly.

"No? How about 'ere?" The pad of his thumb brushes against your stiffened peak, swirling it once, twice. You clench your jaw to keep from making a sound. Another shake.

He pinches it lightly before rolling it between his thumb and index. "'S good." He moves down to just below your navel, the whisper of contact trailing fire on your tender flesh. "I know he didn't touch 'ere."

No, he didn't. Neither has Simon, until now.

"Nor here." He unbuttons the front of your jeans and grabs the pull of your zipper, the clicking of the metal teeth like the ticking of a clock, counting down to what's about to happen. The damp air in the showers is thick with anticipation. His eyes never leave yours, pinning you in place like a butterfly on display, as he curls his fingers around the waistband of both your jeans and knickers.

You only get a moment's pause, to stop this train in its tracks but it's fleeting, like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands.

He pulls down, taking everything off of one leg completely and letting it bunch up around the other, pooling at your ankle. He exhales a sharp, ragged breath.

"I'd fuck you, but this isn't the place f'r it." Simon spits on his fingers and lightly drags them along your folds, lathering your cunt with his makeshift lube.

You gasp sharply when he catches your pearl, flicking it gently with a tip of his finger. Your back arches at the startling sensation. "Should've let me see this pretty pussy months ago, pet. Would've made your life and mine a hell of a lot easier."

He continues moving his hand along your wet heat, a torturously slow drag that kindles the fire in your belly, the occasional swirl of your pearl stoking it expertly.

"Barely doin' a thing 'nd you're already drippin' onto the bench." You don't look between your legs, refuse to actually, because you know that there's a puddle of arousal pooling beneath you. You can feel it; slick. slippery. warm.

Simon sinks a finger into you, down to the knuckle and oh, that pinprick of pain that sinks its sharp teeth around the pleasure he's built up is exquisite.

"Fuck," he groans, reflexively bucking his hips up into nothing. "Little prick ex of yours also had a tiny cock. Bloody tight." His impossibly long finger brushes over the rough patch of skin, somewhere you can never reach on your own, stealing the breath from your lungs. "I'll 'ave to stretch ya open," he adds a second finger, this time the burn flares. It doesn't stop until it's all the way in, where the ache finally fades, only leaving behind a residual warmth that throbs gently in the aftermath. "I'll make my cock fit." The usual deep timbre of his voice sounds rougher, huskier. Heady arousal barely restrained.

Another graze over your sweet spot, and this time, a high-pitched mewl spills from your lips. "Tha' it?" He hits it with pinpoint accuracy, over and over again, until your cunt begins to squelch lewdly; an obscene, sticky sound that somehow bounces off the grimy tile walls.

"Gonna cum f'me?" Your core constricts, vise-like around him, muscles tensing tight. Teasing, taunting, against the push and pull of his thick fingers, caught between surrender and defiance. But his rhythm insists and persists.

You bob your head stupidly, a jerky up and down. The room around you is spinning, arousal the wine that trickles through your system, usual sharpened edges blurring.

You're lost, but sure.

"Let me have it, then." Your thighs quiver atop his, trying to squeeze together, to keep him right there, right there, there—

All you ever have to do is ask him, pet.

There's a snap, a feeling of something giving way, and your mind floods white.

All you've ever got to do is ask.

It takes you a bit to come back to earth from the dizzying heights you were launched to. The buzzing in your mind, your ears, beneath your skin, begins to quiet. Vivid turns muted, colors and sounds dull.

Simon quickly lowers his joggers, just enough to take himself out and tugs his painfully hardened cock a couple of times, an unsteady twist of his wrist and he lets out a groan behind grit teeth as he comes. Warmth coats your puffy cunt, dribbling down your thighs and onto the bench.

When Simon leads you out of the locker room, Kyle looks at the both of you with a solemn expression on his face. His stance is rigid, the lines of his body drawn taut. It sets you on edge.

"Ghost," he nods. "Johnny's fightin' the big freak that had his paws all over your girl. Tried to talkin' him out o' it, but you know better than anyone how he is."

You know Johnny can handle his own. Always has. But this time, it feels different. Inevitable. Why?

[haruchi-slit]

"WHAT GOES AROUND

COMES AROUND"

synopsis: you're a strong love curse who loves to manipulate her opponents mind and emotions and satoru and suguru who was meant to take you out for good but things change..

warnings: p in v, mouth fucking, cunnilingus, threesome, geto never defected, suguru and satoru as teachers

the two men were supposed to be in their vacation but no, no, no, the higher ups said: "fuck your vacation, exorcize this curse instead" and they had to do it.

satoru and suguru were called and got assigned to take you down by end of the day, for you wreak havoc and disturbance to the civilians and other exorcists around japan, you were jumping city by city in order to not be caught but, they got tipped by a civilian that you're near their location after you had been seen fighting a sorcerer, the two men took the mission with no other options left, they took the folder containing your information...and your weakness.

you were feared by many for your ability to manipulate your opponents minds. you were known for your skills not only in combat but also in reading and exploiting your opponents thoughts and emotions.

one of your favorite techniques was to make your opponents sexually aroused. It was a simple yet effective way to distract and weaken your foes.

by using seductive words and gestures to make them lose control of their desires, yeah it was one to make your opponents lose.

however, there were consequences...it was your weakness, everytime you overuse your curse technique the effect of your power reflects to you.

you might be powerful, but luck isn't always on your side.

"fuck-!" you huff as you clenched your hands into a fist. you have just knocked out an above average sorcer, you pulled your hair back and started to catch your breath, you were preparing for your escape until you heard cackling voices and distant murmuring, it made your ears perk up, before roaming your eyes to your surrounding,

"show your self, fool!" you shout, which only made the chuckling voices louder, you feel your sweat trickling down your spine as you shout, you were nervous and definitely vulnerable right now, you knew you should've not overused your curse technique.

as you huff heavily, two figures stepped out off the bushes near you, you tried to stand properly but to no avail you dropped on your knees. they were there the whole time, watching you fight their kind, they emerge with a annoying smirk plastered on their stupid faces.

"no need to stress, babe" the man with snowy locks teased, which made you cringe "how long have you been there?" you struggled, with your voice shaking almost uncontrollably, "long enough to see you struggle with your own curse technique" the raven haired man shrugs, still smirking like an idiot while your body was getting hotter and hotter while the interaction flows thru, you knew you couldn't fight right now but there was no choice.

you need to escape,

so you punched their guts to make a distraction and ran for your dear life, you tried to run as fast as you can but only to be cornered by them, "what the fuck do you want!" you shout, "you've been literally causing disturbance and sucking souls from our sorcerers" the long haired guy sassed with furrowed brows "and you're telling us what do we want?" the white haired man adds,

"I'll kill you both" you threaten, "but you can't your powers are useless" the man with white hair spoke once more, "let me go, can you? i r-really need to go" you used your cursed technique as your last resort and it's the worst idea you've done, I can't blame you though you didn't have any choice.

you flicked your eyelashes at them, as your irises formed into a whirlpool, trying to control their mind- but they remained unfazed. They could see through your every move and were not affected by your words or actions. your curse technique reflected back to you, making you much vulnerable than before, you dropped down to your knees as you feel your cursed technique effect your body badly and there's only one way to get out off this and it's a really bad idea.

you are fucked, literally.

some moments past...

"anghn~ fuck! " you'd stammer as the two men nibble on the valleys of your neck, leaving passionate marks, while the atmosphere gets thicker and thicker with your arousal,

"no more actin' though?" the long haired man laughs, "could've told us you're feeling some..." the white haired man pauses, "things earlier instead of trying to suck our souls" he continues, with attitude, continuing to nibble on your plump skin.

"you fuck-ing! humans-ack!" you winced, once you felt someone bite your neck, "we have a name, you horny little curse." the long haired man stated, "he's suguru, I'm satoru. I'm sure you already heard of us" the white haired man said, yanking your skirt up, "you're so fucking wet..." he grumbles, tugging your panties off, your breathing became uneven, while your pussy pulsed and gripped around nothing, your eyes became hazy and you felt your head almost spinning.

your body shivered as soon as satoru laid his tongue on your cunt,

"ahghh-!" you squeaked, barely standing on the ground, satoru notices it, and quickly placed your thigh on his shoulder. it feels so good, it felt so deadly, your body tingled everytime suguru trails kisses on your neck, it was electric, it felt unreal.

"mgh- don't! don't stop!" you'd wept, as you subconsciously jerk and buck your hips on the bridge of his nose-

"enjoying it?" suguru teased, drawing his calloused fingers on your perked nipples, earning a satisfied moaned from you, "d-don't stop- please.." you begged desperately. satoru gripped your shivering thigh on his shoulder before lifting it up and adjusting his mouth to your clit, once he was satisfied, he drew tight little circles and made sure he never missed a spot, your eyes flutter shut, as your eyeballs falls deep- deep in your skull, "so-" satoru pauses, sucking your juices dry, "fucking-" he pauses again, letting his tongue feast on your luscious cunt, "sweet.." he closed his eyes looking like the luckiest man on earth, as you came. hard. your juices dripped so appetizing, he looked so appetizing.

suguru reaches down on your sopped pussy scooping every cum he can gather on his finger tips, you flinched on his touch, he then placed his finger tips that's dripping with your cum in his mouth, swirling his tongue on his finger tips making sure he savors every last bit of it, "you're right. she's sweet" suguru agrees.

"bend over, curse" suguru commands with a smooth and suave tone as your body quickly moved on it's own, it felt good, too good even.

you placed your hands in a tree nearby before spreading your legs evenly, "good girl.." he purrs before unbuttoning his pants off, revealing his raging pale pink tip, he lets his pants pool down on his knees before he grabbed a handful of your ass, he slides his cock up and down, painfully slow as your body jerked on it's own before he finally aligned his member on your entrance, slowly sliding his cock gently in your gummy walls, "hmff!-" you'd try to suppress your moans as suguru continues to slide his thick cock in, "goodness" he huffs "you're so fucking tight" his face contorts into a pleased emotion, as you feel him fill your cervix, you felt satoru come to your side with his leaking tip out, his uniform tugged between his mouth, revealing his chiseled abs, "don't forgewt mfh", he teased, but you barely understood what he said, you glide your free hand to his cock, palming his cock back and forth, while suguru pounds you with no remorse, that you struggled to stand properly, "ahm!" suguru pounds hard and again and again and again that you've lost count.

you can see satoru's face contort into a fucked out state, his abs flexing and bulging as your hand moved up and down, "k-keep goin'" he struggled to talk, his eyes fluttering shut, damn he's so fucking gorgeous.

as suguru feels your walls clench harder and harder he grips your waist, supporting your body as he pounds deep, so deep in your hungry cunt, "fuck, fuck- ahmn!" you moaned as suguru lifts your leg in the air placing it in his waist, "fuck- you're soo fucking deep- ahg!" you wailed, as suguru reaches the deepest spots of your pussy, as satoru took the opportunity to shove his cock in your mouth,

"mmn! -nnm!" you gawked as satoru pushes his hips with caution, "breathe, baby- fuck your mouth feels so good.."

suguru places your leg down gently before grabbing both of your arms behind your back before pounding once more, "I'm gonna come", "I'm gonna come" was all you can chant in your pretty head as you clenched suguru's dick, you can feel your abdomen move and clench and with suguru's final thrust you came, cum gushes down to your leg as both men continued to thrusts in sync, "you're so cute.." suguru murmurs, "wonder if curses can get pregnant" he banters, with satoru responding with a chuckle, "i hope s-so", and with satoru's last trust he came, inside your mouth, "mhmmnn-!" he hums in pleasure, letting his cock rest in you for a while, while suguru cums soon after, "s-shit.." he grunts, before thrusting in you again pushing back his cum in you, satoru takes his member out your mouth, the three of you catched breaths, before satoru kneeled down to kiss you.

... moments later after satoru and suguru arrived in the school...

"WHAT?! YOU LET HER GET AWAY!?" principal yaga shouts, "we'll catch them, don't worry" satoru assures, chuckling

[cpunkwitch]

Oo!! Show us the funky skeleton :D /lh

Here he is!

That's the fucker that causes me the ouchies

The culprit of the aches and pains

[bkgexe]

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!

[crazycatsiren]

Me: "So is a back brace going to help?"

Ortho doc: "I don't know, my dear. You'll have to tell me that when I see you again in a month or so."

I love the ortho doc for so many reasons.

[gabriellerudessa]

Just started my third rewatch of the Fallout series, and something that just stuck out to me, in retrospect, about Cooper and how he later is as The Ghoul. Don't know if anyone pointed it out before.

When Janey asks about the thumbs up thing... Coop is gentle but sincere. If smaller than your thumb, run away. When she asks if bigger, again he's sincere but gentle: there's no point in running.

Why stuck out to me? Because at the same time the mother of the birthday boy is all around being like "only happy thoughts", changing the TV to a channel that doesn't talk about the war and such. And actually, the protecting of kids and saying everything will be okay and not talking about danger and how things really are is commonly depicted, as if they can't and should not deal with this type of knowledge. Protected to a point of being detrimental. (also, like the Vault was, oops)

This moment talks a lot about Coop's character and who he is as a person. He may not go into extensive details, but he respects his daughter enough to be frank but gentle; when she asks if he thinks it's going to happen, he doesn't say a certain "no", he says "I certainly hope not". That's monumental compared to how it's usually depicted.

This shows, before EVERYTHING ELSE, at the very start, before we are shown what he discovers about Barb and Vault Tec and so on, how Coop values sincerity and truth, how he loves his daughter enough to not lie to her about the cloud and the bombs. Heck, chronologically this happens after his discovery, so it's probably even more pronounced.

After the bombs, after becoming a ghoul? It's pronounced, extremely, this trait of sincerity and truth. But it lost the edge of respect for the person on the other side and in being taught with gentleness, as seen in how he treats Lucy - a respect that briefly appears when he mercy-kills the other ghoul going feral -; he's still truthful in telling and teaching about the Wasteland and how it's mostly a kill-or-be-killed word, but unlike with Janey, there's no worry if the lesson comes out as harsh and cruel or what will happen with the other person.

Coop never shied away from harsh truths. He knew the cruelty of the world, he had been a soldier; a great part of his dislike for Bud was how Bud didn't care about how a defective product caused deaths for other soldiers with whom Coop fought, and if I'm not mistaken he's vocal about it directly to Bud and to Barb.

The thing is, he thought things were better and that his wife had his back. Then he discovered that no to both. And once he discovered, it appears he didn't put his head to the sand like that mother on the birthday. We don't know the details, but we can see that Coop had enough of a spine to deny the thumbs up and to be truthful with Janey. And this explains a lot of his development in the post-war and as a The Ghoul.

[yuanology]

thinking about 'hate' sex with geto suguru after he defects as his past lover before everything happened except it doesn't go the way you think it would.

the way you fuck him is practically the same as how you would take him before. he still takes your cock so well, and you always fuck him slow and hard instead of fast and sloppy just as he likes it. you still check in after entering him and you always give him time to readjust before you start fucking into him with intent. you still make sure that he comes before he does, that he's satisfied by the end of each session.

except, it's now missing the familiarity it once held. you don't hold his hands anymore, fingers interlacing and pressed against the mattress as he takes you so well, choosing instead to press your palm over the expanse of his hips instead. you never fuck him on his back anymore, keeping his face pressed against the pillows so that you don't look at his face. you always wear a condom so that he can't feel you — or, on the days when he can convince you to bypass that (because he's not a whore. he's only yours, always has been. he's clean for you, okay?), you always pull out before you can fill him up to the brim.

and, look, he can cope with that, okay? he knows he messed up. it's good enough that you even want to see him at all.

but he's also so terribly selfish. and if there's anything he can't live with in this current arrangement, it's two things: one, the fact that you never kiss him anymore when you used to pepper so much of that all over his skin, his face, his lips until he suffocated on your taste, and; two, the fact that you never call him suguru anymore.

"shit." your voice is a low grunt, hovering over the shell of his ear. your breath is ragged, and he can tell that you're already getting close. he's already come earlier and now, he's just lying on his front, taking your attempts to chase after your own high like the good boy that he is.

he whines past the overstimulation, clawing at the sheets. he's glad that you made him fold his knees underneath his chest so now, he doesn't have to hold himself upright. he just has to let himself be pulled in by you, used by you, held up and fucked thoroughly by you. his entire world comes down to just you; the feeling of you inside him, around him, suffocating him.

(but never with him.)

"i'm close," you warn him. as if it matters. as if you'll let him take it the way he used to. you're not wearing a condom, which means that he can feel your pre-cum dripping inside him. he whines once again at the feeling, his hips moving to meet your every thrust.

he takes it as an opportunity to beg anyway. "inside," he gasps out. "i want you inside, please."

you don't listen to him. "fuck, geto." and there it is again, his name but not his given name. never his given anymore. he has given you everything—his heart, his future, his name—but you never want it. no, you don't want it anymore.

you don't want him anymore.

as if you want to rub more salt into the wound, you pull out right as he finishes that line of thought. his hole gapes at the sudden emptiness, twitching as it begs to be filled once again — to be filled by you.

however, you ignore his wants. he hears you wrap your hand around your cock, tugging once, twice, before you're spilling all over his hole, dripping into it, but never inside him.

a choked sound escapes his throat, a sob and a moan all at once. he claws at the sheets one more time, his face burying in the pillow to hide the ugly want and hurt painted all over his face. it shouldn't hurt anymore. this is something that's already been established. you don't want him, you won't even use him to find your own pleasure, won't even stain him and fill him up with your cum despite how often you used to tell him that you loved coming inside of him.

his body shakes and he feels your hand coming to rest on his shoulders, running a smooth line down the length of his spine. you're talking, but he can't hear you with the way that the entire world feels as if it's underwater. he understands what you're telling him all the same. stay here. i'll be back. he's still shaking when you leave, the hotel room he's rented for this very purpose tonight feeling emptier than ever.

he still doesn't move.

stay here.

you didn't kiss him before you went.

but he's not your suguru anymore, and he has long lost the right to being yours.

i'll be back.

[danacaptus]

𝐊𝐈𝐃𝐍𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐑!𝐊𝐀𝐈𝐒𝐄𝐑 .ᐟ

kinda dark, kidnap, ex!Michael x reader, short

Boyfriend!kaiser who got dumped by his girlfriend for getting too aggressive and scary :o

kidnapper!kaiser who couldn't move on :(

ᡣ𐭩.𖥔 ݁ ˖�� ࣪₊ ⊹ The cold of the floor sent chills up your spine, The punishment was definitely working, because you were feeling a bit of regret right now. Maybe If you hadn't tried to escape this wouldn't be happening :(

When you broke up with Kaiser you were genuinely scared. You just packed up and left his place when he was in his practice, went to your apartment and texted him a simple message saying that he was getting a little bit "too aggressive" and that he was scaring you off. But you didn't expect him to freak out so much─ You hoped that maybe he would apologize, maybe beg a bit? But that was just a hope, and he clearly wasn't begging for your forgiveness in his replies. You were acting like he beat you up, like─ maybe he slapped you sometimes, and a time or another he punched you... But he didn't use all his strength─ at least no most of the time! You were just exaggerating

"???"

"the fuck?"

"You are a drama queen, im going home right now."

Oh, he was ready to show you how stupid you were, to slap some sense into you─but then, you weren't at home, and none of your things were here. He hopes this is some kind of joke because now, he DOES feel like beating you up. He is definitely not panicking!

"Where are you?"

"Now you're going out without even telling me?"

"Where are your things? What is your problem?"

"."

"Reply, bitch"

It actually made you a bit sad to see him all confused while spamming you messages, so you decided to reply one last time, for the sake of your new old relationship

"I told you we breaking up, im sorry"

With that, You muted his messages and let him spam. You really thought that was the start of a new stage in your life; even when you missed him everyday, everytime he showed up to your apartment you ignored him; then you changed the lock of your house, letting him bang your door till he was fighting with a neighbor who told him to stop making so much noise in a apartments complex.

Kaiser couldn't believe this, you were LEAVING him? You told him you would love him forever even with his small flaws, in fact, he thought he had you thinking that you were the one with defects in the relationship; everytime he hurt you was your fault, you were dumb and annoying, even when that was exactly how he wanted you to be. But now you were acting like you were too clever, you should have known you were lucky to have someone like him, someone who put up with you even if you were an idiot. And he would never find someone like you, and realizing that even more everyday was killing him. You were his, you would always be. So he didn't think that lockpicking your apartment door at night is a big deal, and tying you in his room is not a big deal either, after some weeks he even let you walk around the rooms the house! Obviously not out the house though.

But you didn't know how to appreciate his kindness, and thats how you ended tied in a dark empty room; hungry, dressed only in your underwear, an AC blasting freezing cold air and a ridiculously thin but warm blanket threw teasingly in the other side of the room, out of your reach. He left you here after last night he caught you red-handed─ He was kind enough to let you go wander around, but you had to try to open the window and leave, You couldn't just stay there, waiting for him─ He took the time to give you a few hits before leaving you in that room.

You just hoped that it was already getting later, that michael would finally arrive and forgive you, take you out from this room. Your eyes were fluttering shut; daydreaming about going out here, eating a delicious meal and putting on some warm clothes. You were almost asleep when Kaiser finally burst in, the warmth from outside and the sudden sound of the door waking you up.

"M-Michael!" You felt strangely glad, inmediately trying to go to him when the ropes yanked you back, leaving you like a whining mess. "M-Michael! Please, forgive me! Im not trying to scape again" you sniffed, wiping the tears away from your eyes to see him clearly, he could save you from here even if he was the one who put you in this situation. He was still annoyed but he held back a smirk, bending down to untie your ropes. You tried to hug him, to make him forgive you, but he just pushed you away. "You are a pathetic bitch, trying to scape and then acting like this. I hope you learned a lesson" he grabbed your arm and pulled you out of the room, closing the door behind him. "You better be glad i just locked you up here, if you make something like that again i doubt you'll make out alive" he lied, he obviously would never kill you on purpose. You just needed a little scare.

"Y-yes, Michael... Im sorry" he dragged you to his bedroom, throwing you some clothes. "Yeah, whatever, i forgive you. Get dressed and make me some dinner, quick" he said with arrogance, condescension dripping from his voice. He was happy that you were finally noticing that you shouldn't be stubborn with him

𝐃𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝓑𝗒 @lil-liaa