Chapter Text
“Trust?”
The venom in your voice took him by surprise. It is felt from the tension in his muscles - a slither of frozen surprise woven in his ligaments. You could not help but laugh. It sits bitter on your tongue, and it spreads within you. You feel it soil your spirit; you hear it leak into your hollow chest.
“Trust?”
The strange man does not respond. You have lulled him into a silence as you approach with words that slice, eyes that strip him to his core. He is lost in his own observation of you, taking in the sight of you in your most hideous hour. But that was what made you angry: there is an intruder. There is a witness to these silent hours you bear by yourself. You slowly walk over to him, the white-haired man who thought it okay to intrude your small but humble abode, and your gruesome routine.
It was a routine – there is a routine to your filth and mess. He does not take a step back as you approach, for the both of you knew from experience that he can wipe your existence off the earth if he saw fit. But that meant nothing to you, as your own life means nothing more to yourself. Just like him, you do not fear death. But unlike him, your reason differed vastly. The silence between you gauges that mutual recognition down to almost an eerie level of comfort.
“Are you really the beholder of The Six Eyes that you’re supposed to be, my dear?” You drawl with so much spite in your last words that you wanted to spit the over produced saliva that attempted to coat and soften them.
You were now close enough to breathe his scent. An earth tone with a dabble of patchouli – the type of sweet scent that you used to enjoy yourself. You looked up at him, at the blindfold that masks his eyes. You watch, wondering with intense focus if you can see any movement under them, wondered if the piece of cloth was as thin and as delicate as an extra pair of eyelids, showing and telling of the things they try to hide beneath. Your jaw clenches before you continue.
“Do you yourself understand what you are asking?”
Exhaustion seeps into you but simultaneously fuels your irritation. You were tired. You wanted to wash up, scrub yourself clean, and head to bed. You wanted this intruder out your safe place you worked so hard to build for yourself. A place for you to rest your eyes for at least half an hour on a lucky night.
He allows you to place a hand to his chest, and he allows you to softly push him onto your small couch and it makes you all the angrier. Despite being able to shake him off earlier this evening, your rage had washed over your exhausted body twice as hard when you found him sitting in the darkness of your home, unfazed and not a single scratch on him.
Just minutes ago, he was rambling on about something regarding an execution or recruitment of sorts that you could care less of, all the while completely disregarding that you were unashamedly and slowly peeling your soaked, tethered clothes off your filthy skin, discarding them at the entrance of your dark home. Just like you, he was a grown adult. A naked body was nothing to be distracted by, when there was much more to behold the eye.
He allows his body to sink back into the seat, his face cold and expressionless. He was still observing you, most likely amused with your audacity to manhandle him when, technically, your life was in his hands. You can see an eyebrow raise, the entertainment in his voice so threateningly flirtatious.
“’Dear’? Has a nice ring to it.”
Yes. Within one statement, this stranger, who had invaded into your quiet and pathetic life within the past twenty four hours, had shown you exactly how minute your threat was. Confirmed to you how small you are. Your blood boils even more. You tower over him, one naked knee on one side of him as you lean towards him, grabbing the collar of his black uniform. You are tired. Enough.
Enough.
“In order to trust, I must fear the idea of losing something or someone of value, Mr. Gojo,” your formal voice comes out in a bare whisper, dead and empty. Your own coarseness disgustingly rattles and rings in your ears.
“So one would trust - a mental deception to prepare and ease our burden of loss. Because that is what we humans do when we trust, isn’t it? We gamble with the stakes.”
Your eyes glance down at your own arm that gripped him, stained with both human blood and something darker, because the clothes you previously donned did a terrible job in protecting your arm from it. You finally feel your fingers; they twitch with each renewed, reviving nerve. The dried stains on your skin are vivid under this moonlight. You wear colors darker than darkness itself, competing in contrast to the whites of his hair. For a split second, you wonder how hideous you must look before this person, towering over him. You wonder what hideous things he was also hiding for him to wear a blindfold like that.
Your fingers continue to twitch as if they receive your impulsive thoughts faster than your brain – your free hand shoots up and reaches out towards his face. You did not care if another fight ensues with this stranger, because you can barely remember it – everything is always in such a painfully numbing haze. Your body no longer understood danger. That was the issue, wasn’t it?
“But Gojo…sama,” You speak out softly, feeling your poison in the food you fed to this man’s ego.
Your voice reveals ages of exhaustion, but the grip on his collar does not loosen. The amount of sarcasm and spite behind your honorifics does not dilute in potency. You see his eye sockets widen under the fabric. You hear another pause in his breathing.
A second later, the twitch in the corners of his mouth does not slip past you and you frown, the delight ghosting his cheekbones not sitting well with you. In that moment, the moonlight from outside re-emerges from the thick clouds, illuminating the both of you in the dark and exposing you in all your horror and ugly. You gingerly let your dirty fingertips hover, ghosting the fabric, your little shadows cascading over his face as you trace in the air his orbital bone. An empty and small smile forms on your lips, presenting your question to him in all its potent truth. You can feel the thin trickle of blood that discreetly trailed down your temple, airing and drying itself onto your skin.
“What am I entrusting you with when I have nothing to lose?”
As the man sits under you in silence, you realize that his blindfold is indeed like a second pair of eyelids. You see the slightest movement where his eyes are, as if just looking at you - the entirety of you as you hovered so closely over him. A faint smile continues tugging the corners of his mouth and dread begins to grow in the pit of your stomach. His pale, large hand slowly reaches up to take your hand, gingerly guiding your finger to hook under his blindfold. Ice cold. Soft. Your surroundings fall silent around you as the fabric slowly lifts.
Before the fabric can reveal anything, a chill runs down your spine as your eyes glaze over to his parting lips, speaking something that makes your eyes widen. For the slightest second – you were sure it was in a fraction of a second, actually – you swore your heart skipped a beat at his next words, feeling his own potency in the food he will feed to your newly found purpose.
The last of the clouds clear way for the full moon, at the seal of his lips.
You meet his eyes.
At the call of your name, you snapped out of your thoughts. You are met with black cloth and a mess of white hair.
“I said zunda fresh cream or hojicha tea fresh cream?”
Your peer pouts when he sees you recollect your thoughts. He goes back to scrolling through his phone. “Even you are not giving me attention, huh? Does anyone miss me here?”
“I doubt it,” you hear Megumi mutter close to you on your right.
You turn your direction to the sight of the said student. You feel yourself huff as your arms extend out to him again, pressing another soaked gauze on a cut near his bleeding mouth. You pull yourself out of your thoughts from what you had learned: someone became Sukuna’s vessel. You watch Megumi wince and hiss at the sting of alcohol on his cut, and you suck your teeth at his reaction. The young man reddens in the face as you lean closer to him, focusing on tending to his injuries.
“Your student is right,” you mutter out loud. “But your student needs more training if he always ends up beaten up like this. Zunda fresh cream.”
You are now nagging the young man now, completely cutting off Gojo’s attempt to retort. Megumi, still flustered by how close you were in his face, was still defending himself, persistent that he was fine. His brows knit in frustration.
Your motions still as quietly as you know Gojo’s eyes behind those blindfolds were glued onto you, even if the two men had picked back up the conversation again. You watch Megumi talk. His lips were moving, but his voice was muted. He was in the middle of asking what was to happen from here on out, how Gojo is going to go about it. You gently pull yourself away from Megumi and straighten up. You remained calm as you pay attention to Megumi, watching his face as he spoke to the man a few feet away from you while eyes continued to be felt on you. You were too occupied by your observations of Megumi. His own insecurities and worries weighed so heavy, it dragged your hair and saturated the air.
The second your silent focus was almost sensed by the young student, Gojo’s voice is heard in an even more playful and cocky tone. It is lively, indulging – distracting. He converses with Megumi, steering the room to make sure it was a conversation kept by the two of them, shunning you out. And you gratefully embrace this as you lull over this new information tonight. It sat in you, numb and unrecognizable for now. Your eyes drift to the body still carelessly laid at Gojo’s feet. Such a young boy around Megumi’s age. Laid out unconscious, not aware that he will now walk down such a dark path. You wonder if he too, made a pact with Death. How many years? How grand is the dance floor he will spend the rest of his life dancing with the devil on? Running on?
You sit there in your patience, in your stillness. Listening, nodding, understanding, diverting your attention back to the young, injured man before you, who is straining for the energy to keep up with Gojo’s. For you, time can almost be felt against your skin. Your movements slowed, dragging against the friction of it. The distance in Megumi’s eyes drifts in and out, zoning and distracted by thoughts and exhaustion. The adrenaline in him is wearing off. You reach down beside you for a bandage. Once peeled, you paste it onto the cleaned cut on Megumi’s cheek, startling him.
“Enough,” you interrupt. “Go rest. You can indulge with this tourist tomorrow. I will call for someone to tend to your more serious injuries, so rest. You did a good job today.”
At your last concluding compliment, Megumi’s eyes narrow in self-doubt and blatant disbelief. He immediately looks away to mask any unintentional disrespect you may pick up in his doubting eyes, but bows to you softly in gratitude, finally given the chance to seclude himself for the rest of the night. You knew he was swimming with worries because normally, the Megumi you know would have walked away from Gojo in search for the confines of his own room. An exhausted Megumi indulging Gojo’s banter is a distracted Megumi, slightly lost but more so troubled. As you lean back and straighten up once more, you could not help but steal another glance at the pink-haired kid on the floor. You can’t read him. Gojo had put him in an intense sleep.
As you watch Megumi walk away, you hear Gojo’s voice as he sits beside you, his shoulder bumping into yours. His cologne teases your senses, his paper gift bag crinkling with him. To this day, his carefree attitude despite such serious situations never fails to amaze you. All the time in the world seems to heed before him. And if it did not, you would believe him if he told you he could make it so.
“You could’ve been a tourist too, you know. Sendai was great.”
Your eyes roll in response and you ignore him. You look down at your hands, marked with old bruises and scars. You took a deep breath and slowly let it out before looking up at the clear, cloudless sky. The air tonight smells like it was just about to rain.
“So,” you continue. You look down at the young man apparently named Itadori Yuji. “You’re fulfilling Megumi’s request, right? Can’t possibly say no to him.”
You look over at Gojo, up at his grin. Of course.
Your eyes return to the full moon. “Good.”
The both of you sit in the silence that follows your word. Any more obvious questions from you would have irritated him, for he had long decided that you know how to read him like a book. And because of this rare fact, he does not like explaining when it was unnecessary, particularly with you. You out of all the people in the world, he had concluded in his head, should not need explaining of trivial things when you understand him at his level, more than he would like. He is a spoiled man, you thought. Absolutely spoiled by his own demanded comforts. When he finds a luxury he likes, he will never let go. Instinctively, you reach up to your heavy pendant hidden underneath your uniform.
“No worries,” Gojo spoke out, the nonchalant tone in his voice long gone the moment the two of you were left alone. An octave lower reveals he is calm, but a level of wicked excitement trails under it with softness.
Curiosity. Curiosity was his favorite chess game.
“It’ll be worth the risk.”
“A risk, huh,” you repeat to yourself in wonder. Your gaze at the moon never falters – it is bright in all its glory, withholding every single secret its silver light touches in this world. You let your hand fall back on your lap.
Then, you feel something placed onto your lap, sitting lightly atop of your hands. A small box with the image of Kikusuian’s zundai and cream flavor mochi. But the package was already opened, and only one remained. You frown.
“You couldn’t wait?”
Gojo got up and stretched. You thought of how you were not going to see him for the next few days if things go as planned for him and Sukuna’s vessel. Which it will.
“Told you. Should’ve came with me.”
As he walks away with the young student being carried with one arm, he lightly waves a hand to you as he looks back, bidding you goodnight. With that stupid grin and that honey-like voice, he spoke one last time before he was gone.
“Your loss.”