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The strongest writes L.O.V.E on the edge of a school book he won’t study’s translucent paper, fills the empty spaces of the title’s uppercase words with the blue ink of a pen he stole from Suguru, wishes he could kick his feet but his legs are too long to fit into these chairs and desks meant for students that are far less than what he is.
Psychologists say, he casually remember Shoko reading, the smoke of her and Suguru’s cigarettes filling his nostrils uncomfortably, that coloring written letters’ empty spaces means feeling unloved— this shit’s so funny. Maybe a guy’s just bored? Classes last forever.
Blue eyes look outside of windows and wish for a world in which he’s not the strongest, the heir, the bounty, the balance of a world he doesn’t like, a world Suguru doesn’t like either — he wishes he was shorter, smaller, even younger, gathering peaches from peach trees and making a mess of cheaper clothes and staining his mouth and staining his hands. Ripe peaches’ juice instead of blood, but it’s always blood, and Satoru isn’t just bored, and he hates secondhand smoke.
The first time Toji fucks him it hurts enough that Satoru stops wasting ink on paper to color empty letters by the next day. When he grips his waist just so, fingertips bruising and their healing long postponed because Satoru likes pretending there’s love on his skin, not hate, not violence, not the unshakable and uncontrollable consequence of trying to fill the void he’s carved in Toji too, there, where his soul is, where a phantom scar rests.
When he makes his space inside, when he bites down Satoru’s sweaty nape, the curve of his bloodied shoulder, but holds him between his arms and his embrace feels warmer than life, colder than death — there, Satoru is just a boy, just Satoru, and he cries, and Toji licks his tears up out of cruelty and not love but it feels like love and he feels there’s a knife pushing deeper in his head but there isn’t, it’s just them, and the loneliness that comes with being on the top of the world.
He saves Toji to save himself.
—
There’s peach juice dripping from his lips, from his chin, on his hands.
“So fuckin’ messy”, Toji mumbles around a lit cigarette. He’s staring like he’d want to chew and swallow him like that peach, have his core dribble down his chin, stain his clothes. It’s a sort of primal urge he only ever gets when he’s around him, when he thinks he should have killed him and now they’ve been fucking for months, hidden in dark corners, in bathroom stalls, in a disarranged apartment.
He’d kiss his lips and swallow his moans because Satoru’s loud as much as he’s messy, his personality a stain compared to the pureness he’s meant to represent.
Toji’s a sin in Satoru’s church.
“You like it”, Satoru replies. Extends long legs on the table, the only thing keeping the two of them separated for the time being. He’s wearing Toji’s open shirt and he’d want to rip it off of him and bruise his perfect skin and send him home with marks of a forbidden love, his hand print on the junction between his waist and his ass.
He’s twenty now and never grew out of the brattiness shaping his teenage years, so he figures this is just how he is, for Toji to fix, to tame, except he never does — handles him like a wild animal without a leash, puts himself at risk of being devoured.
“Whatever. C’mere”, Toji murmurs. He knows Satoru would fight it if only it hadn’t been a month since the last time he’s had him, since the last time he’s touched him.
He’s already hard in his pants with the stamina Toji no longer has, just from the simple command, the expectations — Toji’s chapped lips around a cigarette, peach juices and spit around Satoru’s mouth reminding him of when Toji fucks it, makes a mess of his pretty face.
Hard, just from this, because he’s needy, so he falls on his lap like he’s meant for that, a natural instinct. He doesn’t let go of the half peach in his hands, fingers’ grip getting tighter when Toji’s hand slides on his waist, dips inside his underwear.
He smokes into his face and Satoru hates it but a grimace’s quick to morph into something else when big, calloused fingers wrap around his dick, dry. It’s uncomfortable and scratches sensitive skin so Satoru’s thighs clench around the arm between them and he bucks up despite himself.
It’s always better if it isn’t nice.
“Daddy”, he whines. It’s not good enough yet for him to be sounding like this, he knows he’s exaggerating, he always does — but it gets Toji regardless, a small sigh leaving his tobacco laced mouth, the finger holding the cigarette carding through white hair and gripping harder than what’s needed, forcefully tearing his pretty mouth open.
Slender fingers dirty with fruit fly on his shoulders to hold onto them, like he’d fall apart and melt if he lets go. He’s writhing and whining like he’s in pain, overly sensitive, poetic to see, like observing a fly drowning in the honey it’s sought.
“So needy, baby”, he smiles, “So pretty”, a shower of praises that undoes Satoru so he knows he’ll have him pliant, crying and blushing and later hiding into the pillow like a little thing, his baby boy.
Satoru flushes and smiles and he pants into his mouth so Toji finally grants him some spit to make the slide easier — makes him lick his hand and Satoru does, no questioning, no brattiness, preens when a just like a kitten reaches his ear.
It’s what Satoru needs after days spent chasing after curses and blue after blue and controlling the world’s balance like a violin’s strings: to be touched, with care, to be loved, even if it’s just a lie.
When Toji’s hand finds his cock again, it’s to speed up, pumping him like he means to milk him dry with one single try.
“Toji, fuck— please, what the—ah”, he’s young, he’s needy, he’s about to come after a single minute, knows Toji will shame him for it.
“All it takes”, Toji starts, “Is a single hand on you for you to be like this. You let everybody do this? Like a whore? I fuck many of them. Aren’t you supposed to be special?”.
Satoru nods vehemently, means it.
Toji knows but pretends he doesn’t buy it and when he’s sure Satoru’s about to come, when he leaks more than a pussy would, and he tells him, goes, “You’re always so much wetter than all the women I fuck”, sure it’ll send Satoru spiraling, a repeated chant of fuck offs, eyes filling with tears — only then, he slows down. Pumps better, with intent, the promise of a peak ten times more intense, circular movements, a thumb playing with the slit, sensitive, fingers that know their way around a dick.
Spit leaving his mouth to land on the tip.
“Yeah— so good, fuck,” he whimpers, “Can’t fucking stand you”, a series of promises dipped in resentment.
“So prissy and bad-mouthed”, he manipulates, “Thought I was doing some good, but you’re impossible”.
He stops his ministrations on the verge of a pretty boy’s orgasm and has him sob, just for the sake of it. Just because if he’ll break it’s Toji he’ll seek to be fixed, put back together.
When he looks up, angry black pupils swallowing blue, he’s crying.
He looks beautiful, the most precious he’ll ever have. He doesn’t tell him, doesn’t ever tell him anything, but his lips brush against his like he’s about to kiss him.
When Satoru dives in to, Toji pulls back.
It’s easier to pretend he’s just one of many clinging to a love that isn’t there, now that the love’s there.
—
The strongest spills a cheap and unnecessarily sweet drink over a known face’s shirt. It’s on purpose and he laughs unfunny and annoying and he dances on his feet and holds the empty plastic cup in one hand — long, slender fingers wrapped around it, like the rest of him, undeniably pretty, undeniably him.
“Sorry”, he says, “Didn’t see you”, but Toji occupies the entire view when he’s in it, tall and big enough to make someone like Satoru look infinitely small. He’s twenty-eight now and he’s still his baby boy.
He grimaces, pins a wet shirt between two fingers to stare at it, and five minutes later grips soft white hair and fucks into a small but pliant mouth, honeyed saliva dribbling down his balls, Satoru’s chin, this bathroom’s unclean floor.
Everything Satoru represents is a stark contrast with this place, with the idea of sucking someone he should have killed off in a coffee shop’s bathroom stall.
His eyes are too blue and it’s not Toji’s favorite color but he comes under three minutes because Satoru takes cock like he only knows this and sugar in his drinks.
Satoru fixes Toji’s clothes for him like married couples do and they look ridiculous and ridiculously into each other, when Toji reaches out with one hand but Limitless is already up and Satoru is already far, far away, unreachable, like always.
Like every night he lets Toji hold him, take care of warm skin that doesn’t know touch, when he lets Toji fuck him and they pretend it’s not out of love but out of habit.
They walk to the door like it’s kilometers away, slow like they don’t want to separate, liars’ mouths spewing random words to hold themselves together.
“Town ain’t even that small and this place’s cheap for your spoiled cute ass. Did you follow me?”.
“Ah”, and then he giggles, and Toji reaches out to gather from the corner of his mouth spit he’s left there. He can’t touch him, he realizes, so Satoru’s laugh high pitches uncomfortably, “Yes, yes, I followed you. I always do”.
“Crazy”, Toji mumbles. It’s halfway through entertained and genuinely worried.
“Kept you alive for a reason, Toji-san”, Satoru replies. There’s a bag of souvenirs for a kid that is not his hooked in the crease of his elbow, “Now you live for me”.
He smiles bright and pretty and Toji would want to make him bleed, make his head hit the wall and his nose drip blood on perfect whites, on his neatly pressed shirt, wrinkled from activities they won’t mention because they never do.
He’d also want to wake up beside him every morning and serve him breakfast in bed because he’s good at it, cooking.
Bring him peaches even out of season.
“How’s Megumi?” Toji asks. It feels like small talk but he cares but it’s difficult to let people know there’s softness in a body built for violence, that hands that hurt can also graze, so he pretends.
“Better off without you”, Satoru replies. He’s not really smiling anymore and he’s already hiding behind dark glasses, because Toji can read into him in uncomfortable ways if he lets him look into his sensitive eyes for too long.
“I already know that”, Toji mutters, “I just wanna know, like… school, relationships… you know”.
“Megumi doesn’t really talk”, Satoru says, stops in front of a closed door, “Wish his dad was the same, but instead chats a whole lot of nothing. Genes work weird ways, or maybe it’s who you grow up with? I wonder! Ah, Toji”, he shakes his head, “He’s fifteen and already better than you and me will ever possibly be. He even reads a lot of books”.
Toji sighs and Satoru laughs so Toji does too. They laugh without sense like they’re not fucked up, like they’re not in love. Maybe in another life.
“I was just a teenager too”, Satoru says. He has one hand on the door and he’s about to push it open and they’ll go separate ways and pretend, “I won’t let you fuck him up too. I won’t let you”.
There’s a flare of cursed energy Toji can’t perceive but Satoru’s eyes get so bright over his sunglasses Toji wishes he could, just to die like this.
Just to die.
—
Toji fucks other people to forget he’s in love but he’s reminded of it when they don’t smile the same way, when their eyes aren’t as bright when he makes them cry with purpose, when they say their name and it never sounds as sweet, like the peaches Satoru brings him, like the lingering taste of candies on perfect lips.
He thinks of days he’s had a knife stuck into his throat, laid out, bleeding enough to make death knock at his door.
Of the hesitant trembling of Satoru’s young hands before the ecstasy subsided and he decided he couldn’t bring himself to kill him — remembers of having reached out to grab his arm, infinitely smaller, fingers belonging to a bigger hand wrapping around it, but no touch came, because Satoru is always so far away.
Of having watched Satoru grow throughout the years, broader shoulders, muscles where there was softness, stronger jaw.
Small details, but still his boy.
It doesn’t matter.
“What’s wrong?”, she asks.
Her eyes are as blue as Satoru’s but not as bright, and she’s all wrong. When he says his name and her hands brush over his shoulders, slide down his biceps to hold onto them, no fruit juice staining his clothes, nothing for him to reprimand.
When he turns her around so he doesn’t have to see her and he can pretend, mouthing Satoru’s name against her nape when he comes and the world feels cold and void, like it’s about to crumble on itself.
It doesn’t matter.
He remembers there are rotting peaches in his fridge’s bottom drawer because he forgot to eat them. He hasn’t seen Satoru in two months and no one brought peaches again.
It doesn’t matter.
Because Satoru is always so far away, even when he’s here, and he’s never here.
—
“What’s that?”, his blindfold’s off and when Toji reaches out to greet him with a forehead kiss, the usual, Infinity’s up.
There’s an itch in Satoru’s head, the desire to rip his own head open and scratch it off with his fingers, matter getting stuck under his nails. He knows it’s on purpose, they both do, and yet he falls regardless.
Toji sees the shadow of the teenager he used to hold during one of his many anxiety attacks in his blue eyes, older, but the same frown between his eyebrows, the slight trembling of his bottom lip.
“Don’t give me shit”, Toji mumbles, “Ain’t in the mood”. He leaves him making a choice on the doorframe, insecurity Toji won’t fix, voids Toji won’t fill, because he never does.
He’d want to hold his hand up and bend his fingers just what it takes to watch him die, to paint this apartment crimson.
The door shuts louder than intended behind. Him and Toji looks up with burning eyes, a promise of fight on his face.
“You’re a grown man”, he says, “Act like one”.
Satoru stands still and there are fruits in the bag he’s holding.
“Woman perfume doesn’t suit you”, he says. Drops the bag where it is, wherever it is, and all it takes is three seconds for Toji to know he can dodge, but he doesn’t, lets Satoru push him against the wall face first, arm bent painfully behind his back.
Satoru’s grip is far stronger than it used to be, when there’s anger leading his body, the usual.
Toji grins with his cheek smushed against popcorn walls.
“You try to beat up all the guys you fuck?”, he chuckles, annoying enough for Satoru to pull him back and throw against the wall again, just to make a point, just to hope his nose will bleed, his scar standing out with crimson, “Didn’t strike you for the violent boyfriend”.
“It’s just you”, he whispers against his ear, “Just you”.
It’s a promise Toji doesn’t catch, and when Satoru lets go he doesn’t look at him. Sniffles like a stupid teen even if he’s all grown up now, still beautiful, standing taller and proud and with his uniform’s still on, for Toji to take off, maybe.
Leave it crumpled on the floor and hope the Jujutsu world burns with it.
“Fuck are you crying for?”, Toji sighs.
He doesn’t mean to be mean but it’s all he knows, when he wishes he could hold him and wishes he could prove he’s been loving him for longer he’s known, that he’s fallen for his own trap.
His words stumble out of his mouth uncomfortable and void of meaning and biting when he wouldn’t want to, never would want to.
He doesn’t know why.
“Don’t know”, he replies, stares at peaches scattered out of a paper bag.
They don’t talk about it, when Satoru sucks already bruised skin back into his mouth to cover up what he doesn’t like, what makes him want to watch the world burn.
Jealousy burns like fire under his fingertips when he slides his hands on Toji’s waist, kisses down the curve of his spine. Worships like Toji’s worth it, and Toji knows he isn’t, but drinks it up regardless.
“Sure you can do that?” Toji teases.
There’s fondness in his voice where he’d want arrogance to be, but when Satoru slides one single finger in, kisses a scarred shoulder, the world seems to move on his axis.
There’s the bitter taste of unshed tears in the back of his throat and he considers turning this into a fight, push Satoru back into the mattress where he always belonged, fuck into him with reckless abandon without seeing his face so it’s easier for the both of them.
Vulnerability renders him silent, a wave dragging him back to the wrong shore, where insecurities and trauma rest for Toji to never unpack.
“You’re not the only hole I fuck”, Satoru whispers against his ear, chin resting in the crook of his neck, a second finger pushing in and pumping a choked whine out of Toji’s mouth, “Remember when you told me that? I was twenty one”, I cried three days, killed more curses than needed and pretended they had your face, “Works for both of us”.
He fucks him like he means it but cries with his forehead resting between his shoulder blades. Tears’ salt burns on old, still open scars.
—
It’s a natural death, no blunt-force trauma.
Toji doesn’t love him but he fucks him like he does now and he should have died more than ten years ago, close to when Suguru left him because Satoru’s six eyes saw everything but didn’t ever sincerely see him.
His face is not pressed into the pillow this time, because Toji said he wanted him like this, wanted to see his pretty eyes, or so he had said, and Satoru had felt like crying for the first time but laid down regardless, bare for him to take (not only his body), but never gave Toji the chance to look, no.
He’s looking outside the window and his emotions override the pleasure and he’s scared he’ll cry not because Toji’s cock fills his body in ways he didn’t think were possible, but because this plastic love might fill his heart and soul, and he can’t take it, he can’t. Toji would ask what’s wrong but everything’s wrong, they’re wrong, so it doesn’t matter. Does it?
You feel too much, let him go.
Thick fingers are intertwining with his, a secure balance for Toji to hold onto as he slides right inside him, home, a memorized chorus. He expects Toji to ramble about how he’s still unsurprisingly tight for a whore like he always does, any reiteration of that, but nothing comes and nothing hurts.
“Satoru”, he never calls him that, he never does, “C’mon baby boy, look at me”. He wishes his face was impersonally pressed into the pillow and Toji was carving insults in his ear, but he’s stopped really doing so since he stopped being a teenager and Toji gave up on killing because— no, he never told him why.
When he finally looks at Toji he notices how his pace falters, Satoru’s blue burning with tears because there’s fondness in green eyes that have always been so empty when looking in his direction he doesn’t even know what to do with this now that he’s facing it.
They’re still, for a second — Toji’s eyes widening just slightly, a settling realization.
Love takes shapes where there’s no space for it to fit.
There’s a thread embodied with unspoken words that suddenly snaps and Satoru sighs in relief when he’s turned around and his face hits the pillow, and Toji fucks him like he hates him, this time, and maybe he does, maybe they both do. Maybe they both should.
What follows is the natural consequence of being dishonest.
“Why?”, Satoru asks, “Why now?”.
He’s sitting on a cheap apartment’s window and his legs aren’t short enough for him to kick his feet, so he curls up and his cheek meets his knees when they meet his chest and Toji sees someone as fragile as the kid he killed more than eleven years ago, except he’s alive and breathing and has his infinity set on him.
He’s as pretty as he was back then, when he was baring his teeth, ecstasy shaking his core, blood staining white hair Toji wishes he could ruffle instead of pulling like Satoru is nothing but a doll to throw around— but he is, he corrects his thoughts.
“What?”, he replies. It’s almost a snap, almost irritated, maybe he is.
Satoru’s implying more than either of them can handle, the desperate attempt to find something that will hurt him just right, have Toji confirm it was nothing, that Satoru’s nothing except the nights they share when the sorcerers’ society can’t watch, won’t watch, because you don’t look in the direction of a God, you just wait for judgement at their feet.
“Toji”, he mutters.
It’s low enough no one else but Toji would catch it — when he’s around, he’s back to the teenager he was and there’s no singsong in his voice, no plastered politeness, no glasses and blindfolds, and Toji hates looking into his eyes but has made him promise not to take any fuckin’ mask with him when he’s here, in this corner of personal hell, just as a punishment, for them both — because Satoru’s eyes are sensitive and he cries more, cries better, when there’s nothing here to protect him.
When he’s forced to seek for protection directly, quiet admission, have Toji drag his head back by his hair so that it hurts but then kiss his eyelids with affection Satoru’s convinced he doesn't really feel, but it’s nice to pretend.
When his headaches get so strong and Toji cradles him and then they forget and never talk about it, never talk about anything.
“Had too much to drink”, it’s true, more than just a couple beers with Satoru drinking overly sweet tea before moving on to what they know best, the violence of their sex, the only thing able to strip the leaves of a rotting peach tree away.
He’s not looking at him anymore, didn’t since then, “Wanted to try something different out. God, fuck type of question is that”, he doesn’t look at him when he lies, he never does, “You came plenty of times, didn’t you? We see each other every once in a while ’n you start asking all these stupid fuckin’ questions”, Toji’s lighting up a cigarette and Satoru still hates secondhand smoke because it makes his nose burn and his lungs hurt, so he sighs deeply and then inhales enough air to catch it all, “Why are you still here? Waitin’ for aftercare or cuddles? Not the type for that, you know. You let me fuck your mouth in bathrooms”, Toji snorts.
It’s all meant to hurt, maybe it does event though, Satoru knows he’s lying, he’s sure he is, wishes he could stand up and stride over and kill him again, have him kill him again, point a bent finger at him and force him to speak the truth if he doesn’t want to die, and Toji would choose to die.
“You know what I’m talking about”, Satoru says, we’re already lost, we’re already lost, “But why now?”.
“You know why”, Toji replies. He finds his gaze and they’re staring at each other and there’s anger filling the pupils that are swallowing Satoru’s bright blue, “You know why. Me and you”, he says, points with the fingers holding a cigarette, “We both fucked up. You can keep pretendin’ this whole… this whole fuckin’ being the strongest shit means anything and tell me fuck you, Toji, fuck off, Toji, you’re just a cheap fuck because everybody wants me but no one wants to hurt me, Toji, but it won’t change this”, he stares at the deep frown settling between white eyebrows, “You can go, you can even kill me, you know you can. You can leave me, or leave here a corpse, but it won’t change. If I’m not the one chasin’ you, the truth will. If I’m not chasin’ you, you’ll come back to me anyway”.
“The truth”, Satoru repeats, eyes wide and blue, blue, blue, it’s Toji’s favorite color now, always has been, and it’s like he wants to run away, or kill him. He’d come back.
“Want me to say it?”, Toji laughs, bitter, shakes his head, “I won’t say it, you know I won’t. We’re horrible people, we don’t deserve it”. Satoru thinks of Suguru, that slipped your Six Eyes make you blind, don’t they? during an argument, the first time Satoru has curled up on himself and cried, cried, and no one cradled him the way Toji does when it happens, kind, genuine, like love belongs to abuse.
“You kept me alive and now I live for you”, Toji isn’t looking at him because he doesn’t want to know if Satoru’s still there, “You know I do”.
Satoru still isn’t speaking.
“Just wanted to look at you while I had you with me, for me, ‘cause you’re no longer mine now, are you? Always busy with this fuckin’… fuckin’ world you don’t even like, Gojo-sensei? Is it? You don’t even like it”, he continues, rambles, like a dead man walking confessing his sins when God’s finally watching, to free his soul, free himself, “Wanted to see if I was going crazy, if I got soft with time, shit, fuck, if I made it all up. If maybe we fucked so good I… couldn’t even get you out of my head, but ’s not that. You know what this is”, a hand brushes over his face as he sighs, “Fuck. Should have killed me”, he laughs, difficult to swallow like unripe peaches, “But you kill me every time we see each other, anyway. Doesn’t even fucking matter”.
—
Shoko is smoking a cigarette and leaning on a blue banister, and Satoru still hates second-hand smoke but fills his lungs with it, comes closer.
She smiles but doesn’t look at him, doesn’t even reach out — Limitless has been up for long enough for Satoru to be forever, endlessly away form everyone, always close, always cheerful, but never really here, no.
Shoko knows and she doesn’t offer a cigarette the way she used to do with Suguru, but Satoru reads into the light tapping of her finger on cold metal that she would.
“Why did you save him, back then?”, she starts.
Satoru buttons the collar of his uniform when he realizes his mistake, when the shadow of a dead man walking is printed on his skin for the world to see.
She turns her head just slightly to catch the flush of his cheeks, worry in eyes she can’t see because they’re covered by a blindfold, now, so you can never really tell if Satoru is even real, if he even feels outside the show he puts up.
“You couldn’t save Suguru”, she continues, it’s not meant to hurt and yet it does, “I was there too. Revenge? Pity? Grace? You said yourself you can’t save people who don’t want to—”.
“To condemn him”, he interrupts.
Shoko’s expression falters because Satoru speaks in a way she can’t recognize, the same way he spoke when he cried on her shoulder under the pouring rain all the nights he asked her to stay around because Suguru wasn’t and life hurt more than death ever possibly could, but dying couldn’t possibly be his choice, doomed to live in a body meant to keep him alive.
He’s back to himself in an instant, a smile, one finger under his blindfold to play with it, “Don’t be silly, my dear Shoko. Toji Fushiguro is no longer alive, and if he is… Ah!”, he giggles, unnatural in ways that are eerie, mechanical, like a doll losing batteries, “Of course he isn’t, I’m the strongest! Were you about to fall for it?”, he dances on his feet, lightly taps at his now covered neck and goes, “Even the strongest entertains himself with carnal desires, can’t he?”, a lilt in his voice that breaks on the can’t he.
Shoko doesn’t look at him when she goes, “You’ll have to kill him, sooner or later. Secrets walk on very short legs”.
It’s snowing, like the day his hands got tainted with a lover’s blood. Satoru reminisces but there’s no pen to hold, this time.
His head hurts from where he lays, bare for Toji to take, but there’s uncertainty in his hands. When he sees Satoru bring trembling fingers to his own head, close his eyes and sigh, and that’s enough for Toji to stop. When warmth leaves his skin, panic fills a slit of deep blue, the strain it takes to keep them open against the dim light filtrating through the curtains.
“No”, Satoru whimpers, “Keep— Toji, please? Why?”, and his head pulsates when he talks, enough to make him flinch like he’s being hit, body instinctively curling up.
You kept me alive and now I live for you. This is your tragedy.
“How long have you forced yourself to keep your blindfold off today?”, Toji asks.
He’s standing up, pants hanging low from when he almost took them off, almost, because now he feels so far away to Satoru, now that he’s not in this mess of sheets and sweat and unshed tears, because what was yet to come never will.
“Irrelevant”, Satoru mutters.
His body shakes from being barely touched, and he can feel Toji staring from where he’s probably playing with his pack of cigarettes, and he looks unbothered, always does.
While Satoru melts into his hands the second they touch his skin, when Limitless is down and sensations burn deeper than they ever possibly could for someone leading a normal life, Toji speaks the way he spoke when he was hunting teenagers down for a living, no respect for himself, for life and sorcery, “You always tell me to keep my masks off, so what does it matter? What’s the fucking problem?”, ah, there’s the Satoru Suguru used to correct, impolite and bad-mouthed, arrogant, chasing after the world’s approval because he knows he has it anyway, “I’m not here to talk”, Satoru continues, a childish rambling Toji isn’t listening.
The sink’s running and when Toji’s back, wet cold touches his forehead from where he’s laying.
“We won’t fuck, either”, Toji replies.
A glass of water is set on the bedside table and a package of pills rests near it, not cigarettes, medicines — a sigh, and he’s back in bed. When he wraps one arm around him and pulls him closer, enough for Satoru’s head to rest on a broad shoulder, Satoru flinches.
Cursed energy flows uncertain until it settles, and he’s not fighting, and Limitless is still down.
“Close your eyes”, Toji murmurs. His lips are brushing against soft hair, and from the way Satoru’s breathing gets heavier he can tell he’s about to throw a fit — he moves just slightly, maybe to pull away, maybe to run away, coward, but Toji’s grip gets tighter.
“Stay still”, Toji huffs, “Don’t wanna deal with your bullshit, so do not even try, yeah?”, he fixes the cloth resting on Satoru’s head and his fingers trail up, through white locks, gentle, “I don’t have it in me, tonight”, to fight, to pretend to. Warm tears hit his naked shoulder and Toji pretends he doesn’t want to gather them up.
“It really hurts”, Satoru whispers, admits, “My head, all the time. I’m tired”, he’s smaller than he’ll ever possibly be. Thinks of gathering peaches from peach trees and offering one to Toji, and laughing honest and sincere when he makes a mess of his clothes, juices instead of blood.
With closed eyes, he can’t see storm in green, but he can feel his lips kiss the bridge of his nose, trying kindness out, his flushed cheeks, and then he’s hesitating.
Satoru understands not everything is violence. When Toji kisses him for the first time in eleven broken years, he wishes it was.
“Satoru?”, Shoko hesitates, she never does. Her cigarette’s to its end, so is Satoru.
“Don’t underestimate me”, Satoru mutters. He’s not smiling and there’s no brightness and his eyes are a dull grey under this sky, under a cold reality.
“It’s been over ten years”, she shakes his head, “And you never—”
“He’s dead”, it’s higher than intended, “I always do what I have to”, I’m the strongest, after all.
—
It takes a year for him to cross a simple apartment’s threshold again. He has his heart in his hands and Limitless is down in the only place in the whole world he knows he’ll find love, no matter how corrupt.
When Toji opens the door, Gojo-sensei smiles with eyes closed behind a dark curtain, a wave of his hand, a bag’s handle hooked in the crease of his elbow.
He usually always appears into his room, never at the door, and never quite surprising Toji, whose instincts recognize Satoru the same way they know how to kill. Second skin, soul made.
A couple moments of silence are filled with words they don’t say.
“Ah, Toji-san”, he’s still smiling, broken for Toji to pick up the pieces, “It’s been quite a few time”.
Satoru sees emotions on a face who usually doesn’t know any.
When a strong hand finds his face, it’s followed by still chapped lips slotting with his, despite Satoru’s repeated attempts to make him accept his lip balm, as a gift, back when he was a teenager seeking for warmth in the wrong arms.
Satoru isn’t the strongest when he lets Toji pick him up despite this foolishly makes it more difficult for them to kiss, him, who’s so tall and full of himself, and melts into his embrace back to who he used to be when life felt as heavy as it feels now, but pretending to be good wasn’t requested, expected — when he hears his foot kicking the door closed, when he finds himself pressed on a mattress he knows well, when Toji’s lips slide down and he can finally breathe again and it’s Toji he breathes in, the only scent that can lull to sleep someone who knows the moonlight’s shadows like the back of his hand.
“Don’t pull that shit on me”, Toji murmurs between the wet kisses he leaves, slower, kinder, just like last time, when it made Satoru run away, for as long as he could (as long as his soul let him), and absence could be filled with useless everything, the façade Gojo-sensei is as a whole, the cheerful brightness of bad liars.
“So, so rude”, Satoru singsongs, but his voice scratches where it’d want to high-pitch, “Come on, we’re here for a little selfish pleasure, are we not? Entertain me”.
Toji stops in his ministrations, forehead resting on a clothed shoulder.
When he finds long, slender fingers, like the rest of Satoru, undeniably him — he almost ends up intertwining them with his, holding his hand like broken lovers do, but a strong hand wraps around his wrist instead, up on the pillow, above a mess of white hair.
“Don’t pull this shit on me”, he repeats, “This little shitshow doesn’t work on me, and you know it, Satoru”.
When he pulls back to look at him, it’s to a wet blindfold staring back. Toji longs for reaching out and pulling it down, away, crumpling to crumple with it the pain Satoru carries, and have him back, not the strongest, not Six Eyes, not Gojo-sensei, just Satoru — but he won’t.
There’s a line that’s been crossed and pulled back in place so many times it can’t keep its shape any longer.
He’d want to ask where have you been, no, where are you, admit to the universe watching from where Satoru lays that there’s longing, yearning, the tremor of a feeling that brings people to say, maybe, I missed you.
Satoru does it for him, and when they’re looking at Toji, his eyes are as bright as the day he pronounced him dead with a twist of his fingers.
—
Toji doesn’t fuck him like he loves him, this time, but he does.
It’s in the way his always secure and confident hands tremble when they slide on Satoru’s skin, weeks of empty silences — the way his lips waver in the crook of his neck and he can hear him breathe him in, and he’s forcing violence out of a body that doesn’t reserve any more for the man it’s holding.
You’re the crack in the system, Satoru Gojo.
“Toji”, he whispers. He’s met with silence and green eyes, grey in hair he hasn’t touched in a while. He threads his fingers through them and smiles and Toji smiles back but he’d want to cry, probably.
You can go, you can even kill me, you know you can.
“I missed you”, it’s a whisper against his throat. It’s so low it’s meant not to be heard, but they both know.
When warm lips find his, when he starts rambling, “Missed you, all the time. Kept your lip balm, didn’t ever use it. It’s all… I had of you. You still have my shirt?”, he laughs, it’s a nice sound. Satoru loves it and loves him like he loves peach trees and a life he can’t have, “Found you several times, by your scent, y’know… ‘m older but Heaven still grants me this”, he knows, he’s felt him, soul ties, “I always let you go. Didn’t ever like to. Wanted you to be the one to come back. To end this properly”
To kill me.
He wishes they were planting a peach tree, waiting for it to grow over the months, gather the first peaches, proud and free from the shackle of a life they didn’t choose.
Toji never really thinks of peach trees, never really got to be a kid. Never got to look outside the window and wish the world was different, born to be the outcast, not to dream — but when Satoru’s around, sometimes he reminisces about memories that aren’t there. About the love he could have had and never got. Memories that aren’t there: gathering fruits, holding a loving parent’s hand, a forehead kiss. Breakfast not served cold but on a white plate decorated with painted blue flowers, like his eyes. Tucked in at the end of the day surrounded by some warmth, some love.
When he kisses Satoru, warmth tickles his fingers, his lips.
He looks into his eyes and wonders if anything even matters or if it’s just background noise, with a love like this.
It doesn’t really matter.
“Not an ounce of cursed energy in you and you cursed me regardless”, Satoru laughs, eyes bright, “Ah, so mean, so inconsiderate”. Toji snorts into his neck and bites down, so Satoru yelps and then they’re kissing, having each other again, eyes locked throughout all of it.
“So fuckin’ cheesy”, Toji sighs, “You wouldn’t believe it. Are there peaches in the bag?”, will you keep bringing them? Will you come back? Will this peach tree rot, will it bloom?
Satoru nods.
—
There’s silence and Toji peels a peach for him because it’s how Satoru likes them best.
He doesn’t know it’s a preference that died a long time ago, when he grew up and there was nothing worth going to waste anymore, no time to sit and peel peaches when death was fanning hot breath over his neck.
He likes the tensing of his fingers, the way its juices dribble down his index, his middle finger — when he brings them to his lips to lick them up and Satoru doesn’t feel lust but affection, thinks of nuzzling his cheek into those older, ruined hands, still willing to peel fruits for him.
He curls up and thinks of peach trees, a stolen youth, Suguru’s smile under a shared umbrella, Shoko’s short hair and her favorite brand of cigarettes. Thinks of his hands trembling when ready, unready to kill Suguru, to kill Toji, kill love and hate and ending up not killing at all — of wrong choices and choices he didn’t make.
Watches the knife in Toji’s hand, slicing peaches for him, serving them on a white plate decorated with blue flowers.
“Toji?”, he mutters. Toji doesn’t turn around but hums, a promise he’s listening, back turned to him, Satoru’s nail prints tattooed on his skin.
Confession stuck on the back of his throat, choking him, unkind.
His voice scratches when he says, “Love you”. There’s no I, because this love envelops everything, the space around him, where infinity secures him immortality — or maybe there’s no I because he’s a coward, can’t let him know it’s the strongest’s heart he has, what for ages they’ve been trying to pull out of his chest to serve it on a silver platter.
Toji smiles, doesn’t say it back.
He slides a plate full of fruit in front of him, and there’s not his bleeding heart on it but there might even be, and bends down enough to kiss his forehead, soft in ways no one’s ever really seen.
You can leave me, or leave here a corpse, but it won’t change.
Toji makes love to him and Satoru doesn’t leave a corpse behind because he’s not the strongest.
Cowardice and love walk the same path when he’s making his way home and peach trees are blooming again.
No, he’s not the strongest, when it’s Toji’s sweater he’s wearing and the world feels warmer, and he feels younger, and he didn’t wash peaches’ juice and Toji off his hands.