Chapter Text
She’s on her bathroom floor again, the cold tiles never less forgiving. Between the drone of the fan overhead and the throbbing pulse in her ears, there isn’t much for her to grab onto to bring her back from the pitiful retching. Another day, another curse, another pushback from her blessed technique. She doesn’t get paid enough for this.
An impatient knock on her front door.
A beat.
A small pop; the Listerine on the sink shakes, then light footsteps.
“You crying?” Gojo asks.
She groans and hides her face in the crook of her arm. She doesn’t need more to add to her headache. A rustle of fabric and he squats down in front of her, elbows perched on his knees, looking as carefree as a street side delinquent.
“I need you to take in one of my kids for me,” he continues.
“I don’t do kids.”
“I’ll co-sign for that shiny new condo you want,” he adds cheerily.
“Pass. They still wouldn’t let me in.”
“It’s not my fault you look shady.”
She groans and shifts to sit up. Gojo makes no move to help. She braces herself up with one arm and waits.
“Fine, I’ll get Ijichi to clean up your paperwork, make you into an upstanding citizen like me.”
She eyes his outstretched hand warily. If it’s the Sukuna vessel, she’s too risky for anyone to let that happen. If it’s that Kugisaki girl though, it’s a maybe.
“Megumi.”
Hard pass. Crazy fucking Zen’ins. To top it off Gojo raised him, and she doesn’t have it in her to deal with another precocious smug bastard. She’d seen the kid once, he looked so fucking bored it made her feel like a joke to have to try so hard every day.
“He knows you’ve killed people,” Gojo offers.
“You’ve killed people,” she counters.
“But not in my free time.” He’s relentless. It’s a low blow too, given that it’s a past she’s trying to make up for with the aftermath he’s witnessing right now in her current state.
She feels lightheaded. She knows her knees will give out if she tries to stand up and she just wants him to go away.
“Why me?” she asks, fumbling around for another reason to say no.
“So that he can see what he’ll turn out like if he doesn’t stop,” Gojo says, cold and steady. “And,” he adds, leaning in to push away the bangs stuck to her sweat-chilled skin, “he’s scared of you.”
Megumi’s eyes dart around the living room. The couch is a two-seater and the coffee table a flimsy afterthought. There’s a TV and books on two shelves, a normal living room, albeit furniture sparse and built to discourage company. As a sorcerer though, he’s drawn to the garland of shrunken heads hanging from a hook on the right, grave wax sealing their eternal screams, an unidentifiable wrapped object the size of his hand on the shelf blessing the room with an acrid scent, and lastly, whatever’s in the jar, black and gooey, infinitely curling in on itself.
The woman comes back in with a tray of tea.
“I don’t know what Gojo-sensei said, but I’m old enough and I’m ready to be promoted. I don’t need a sponsor.”
She sits down on the chair she’s pulled in from her dining table and takes a long sip. Her eyes flick up and down, taking in her latest charge. Her gaze deadens and he tries to ignore the fluttering in his stomach, he feels as if she’s looking right through him. A déjà vu to the day he met Gojo.
“You will be accompanying me for three weeks, the first week you’ll observe, the second you will be permitted to assist, and the third I will evaluate your solo missions,” she says, ignoring what he said earlier.
“Gojo-sensei knows I’m powerful enough,” Megumi interjects.
“Yes, but you need more experience,” she replies.
“I’ve taken out two special grade curses.” He flexes his fingers.
“And you’ve nearly taken yourself out with them.”
Megumi startles. He sucks in a breath then looks away.
She sighs and puts her cup down, fingers lightly massaging her temple. “It’s not like I want to be here either, but that bastard insisted. He claims my fringe missions and ‘special circumstances’ will help you.” He wants his boy to see a fractured thing like her, someone who’s given up, who instead gets hung up on the wounds, pathetic, curdling mewls on the floor after every mission because she’s not brave enough to see her powers through.
“But Gojo-sensei’s sent me out alone before, on harder things,” Megumi adds, a confused frown.
Megumi doesn’t really want to be here. On the surface he thinks it’s unnecessary, but deeper, this woman disturbs him. The apartment’s clean but something buzzes underneath his skin, the place is rife with the undercurrent of a recent exorcism. Frequent recent exorcisms. A sneak at the viscous moving creature in the jar and he swallows thickly.
Harder things, she bites her tongue. An ugly rancid thing curls up in her throat.
“I know you want to go back to Daddy, but you’re going to have to tough this out like the rest of us,” she says, voice pitching up to feigned wryness.
“Daddy?” Megumi’s stomach flips.
“Gojo wanted me to take special care of his precious Megumi. And after seeing you, no wonder he hasn’t been around any women lately,” she crosses her legs and leans back.
“What are you insinuating?” Megumi asks, voice faltering with growing indignation.
“I bet those pretty pink lips of yours suck Daddy off well every night, I bet that’s why he slapped on some extra money to make sure I’m not too rough with you,” she taunts.
“That’s perverse,” Megumi says through clenched teeth. “You should apologize.”
“Say that again when you rank first grade, brat.” She stands up quickly before he can make another retort. Another growing migraine, she sees he’s demanding enough already. She sighs, she doesn’t want to be crass, but his types always need a bad push. Three weeks. “Ten minutes and meet me in the lobby.”
Megumi’s used to the curse ridden bowels of civilization, but she haunts the especially dreadful places. Retirement homes, suicide hotspots, palliative care – it seems she deals in end-of-life regrets of those forgotten by society, and those curses are especially malicious.
She makes him summon his hounds first thing; insistent he needs the protection even though he’s only watching from afar.
The first place they visit is a retirement home, it’s on the higher end with freshly painted walls and good ventilation. The caretakers are young, and their smiles reach their eyes. The elderly look a tad more alert, shuffling through the bridge tables, the entertainment, the attached garden.
“This looks comfortable,” Megumi comments offhandedly.
“On the surface yes. That woman over there had to give up the necklace her first love got her to pay for this place or else she’d be kicked out, that man over there hasn’t seen his grandchildren in years, and that nurse is tired of getting groped every day.”
Megumi scowls.
She flashes a card, and the guard lets them through. They make their way deeper into the facility until they’re in a quieter hallway. She gives him a look and he mutters some words to let down a curtain.
After a moment, a loud wail, a mockery of a human voice, fills the air. A large wormlike curse slithers around the corner. Flesh pale yellow and skin stretched tight over its pulsing meat, an overgrown maggot with a deformed human face and sharp tessellating teeth. It leaves a trail of viscous green slime. She brings out a hand to stop Megumi then flicks out a short knife from her coat. A jump and a slash and a layer of the face slides off and falls to the ground with a wet thump.
She hopes that’d bring it down. The eyeballs twist in their sockets, even more unsettling without eyelids. Another tongue slithers out through what was the orifice of its nostril, blue and long and snaking out towards her.
She curses under her breath and jumps back. She bites her fingertip, drawing blood. She uses it to draw an intricate pattern on her right arm, ending at the fingertips. She closes her eyes and channels her cursed energy to it.
The worm approaches, undeterred. Its jaws snap in the air, again and again, closer, and closer until it reaches her neck. Megumi’s breath hitches, she’s stock still and makes no attempt to dodge. It closes in and clenches tight, a terrible squelch, the force of it sending ripples through its wriggling body, and Megumi’s stomach drops. She’s picked up and shaken, a rag doll, and fuck, fuck, it’s only their first day and he doesn’t like her, but she doesn’t deserve this.
Before he can step forward, she raises her right arm, now glowing blue, and sinks it into the creature’s neck. She pushes it in until she’s elbow deep. She twists her body, a painful unnatural bend, and shakes herself free. Her left side is bleeding profusely, a waterfall of red staining her black uniform even darker. She staggers then catches herself, anchored by her arm deep in the curse. It wails again, “Help me, help me,” a garbled high-pitched voice of a child. She braces her knees then pushes her legs forward, right arm following and cutting through the length of the maggot’s body. Its entrails spill onto the off-white tiles, intestines still pulsing grotesquely. She bends down to pick up a bit of it and stuffs it in a plastic baggie with a seal. The rest of the curse explodes into black rain, the goo soiling the rest of her body.
She sways on her feet and Megumi finally unfreezes and lurches forward to catch her.
“What the hell was that? We have to get back to Jujutsu Tech right now,” Megumi says, voice harried.
“No,” she mutters, breath shallow. “Give me a minute. Can’t let them undo it.” Her tone brooked no argument. She shifts away from Megumi to lean against the wall instead.
Megumi wrings his hands and sits back on his heels. He dismisses his shikigami and waits. Watches her chest nervously until finally, her breath deepens.
The next mission’s no better. She lets the curses come at her and then, only then, she strikes. She’s a bloody mess after. Megumi doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be learning from this. He knows that she doesn’t think he hears her retching in the bathroom after they get back to her apartment.
He wants to ask, but he feels bad when she looks this bad. Less intimidating than their first meeting. (Oh, he’s going to eat his words later.)
One day he’s fixing tea when she says, “I need them to poison me.”
Megumi stops to look at her.
“My curse energy can only be activated after they poison my blood. I keep extras and eat them to charge up before my next exorcism.” She’s staring into nothing.
“Isn’t there another way?” He asks quietly.
“I’ve used mediums before,” is all she says.
Megumi says nothing. He adds more honey to the tea. Sure, his skin crawls less after seeing her at her weakest, but he will never get over her mangled flesh. Her raw iron tainting the air, her muscles convulsing out in the open. It’s those moments when her eyes deaden again, and the only part that seems alive is whatever blood-stained body part she’s blessed as her weapon for the fight, crazed and charged, and it’s those moments that makes him curl his toes.
“We can start training tomorrow in the evening, I’m done with missions for this week.”
Her training is relentless. He gets thrown to the floor just as often as when he’s with Gojo. The only thing that makes him smug is the fleck of blood she’s coughed up at the corner of her mouth, she’s had to use her cursed energy while he’s been fine without.
Regardless, she’s critical and unforgiving.
“Did Gojo teach you nothing? Those curses will eat you alive.”
Another grapple, another impact against the floor.
“Are you honestly crying? It might work on your Daddy, but it won’t work with me, princess,” she’s scathing and cold. Megumi’s not crying, she’s just thrown a nasty slug that caught him off guard and his eye’s just watering, it’s a perfectly natural response.
“Ten laps. Then practice with these weights.”
Megumi holds in a groan. He watches her straighten up, and his eyes follows the bead of sweat trickling down from her collarbone to the crevice between her breasts. He swallows. Outside of training, she has never touched him. The room’s hot and his balls stick to his pants. She unnerves him but seeing her with more skin today, it’s adding a hazy cloud over his unease, and he curses whatever about that that has his hormones raging. After spending time with a very touchy Gojo, this is a reprieve. A welcome reprieve, he insists to himself, as his eyes trail over her neck. It’s smooth and whole but he can’t tamp down the stray thought of it raw and bleeding.
She sighs when she’s alone, a deep weary exhale that she hasn’t felt in ages. Megumi’s asleep in the guest room and she finally has a moment of peace. Almost all jujutsu sorcerers are terribly physically gifted, and Megumi, as a long-range fighter with his shikigami, has been slacking off on that end.
She’s not used to company, she’s brief and awkward around him, and she curses for making it more uncomfortable for herself at the end of the day. Megumi’s much too quiet, and dinner, often a relaxing time, has turned into a stiff and formal affair. She mulls over the idea of being a little more friendly with him, or at least just physically closer, counting the fact that he'll be her back up soon and they'll need to learn each other's reflexes.
Three weeks.
Megumi wakes up with two very annoying things, a hard on and a toothache. He’d love to get rid of the former first before he has breakfast with her, but a slight shift and he feels the pain slice through his jaw. He tongues at the throbbing spot, it’s on his upper row of teeth, a budding wisdom tooth that’s too far up from the rest.
After a while he gets out of bed and make his way to the kitchen. He holds the left side of his face carefully as he roots through the freezer for an ice pack.
She tilts her head at the usually unflappable Megumi. “What’s wrong?” she asks, even though she already suspects. Her eye flicks down to the tent in his pants.
“Toofhache,” he mutters. He exhales in relief when he finds an ice pack at the back. He pulls it out and sits in the chair across her.
“Hm.” Facing him now she sees how miserable he looks. He looks even paler than usual, eyes slightly watery as he presses the ice pack against his cheek. “I have something better.” She gets up to root around a drawer.
She harrumphs as she brandishes a small green tube, white letters boldly promising instant relief. She throws it at him. “It’s numbing gel, it’ll help until you can get to your dentist.”
His eyes widen and he sets down the ice pack. He unscrews the cap, squirts a bit of it on his index and sticks it up in his mouth. He pokes around a bit, shifts, frowns, and pushes his finger in deeper but to no avail. The tooth throbs at the aggravation. He inadvertently lets out a whine.
She watches him struggle for a minute then sighs. “Here, let me,” and gets up and walks to his side. She plucks the tube from him and squeezes a little onto her own finger. She presses his forehead back gently and asks, “Where is it?”
“Wisdom tooth, upper left,” he mutters quietly, freezing at her sudden proximity.
She hums and pokes her finger in, and he tries very hard not to breathe hard on it. She cups his jaw with her other hand while her finger goes in deeper and further up. This close he can smell her sweat, sickly sweet, always sweet after another curse. He supposes he’s a little messed for enjoying it. She taps her finger on his gums, the slight taps leaving cool residue from the gel. “Here?” she asks quietly, her hair a curtain around his face. He tries to swallow.
“No, a little further up,” he says. His breath tickles her finger.
She nods and trails her finger up higher, deeper in his wet mouth. He whimpers when she reaches the spot, shakes a bit once she’s gently spreading the gel on top. She retracts her finger and wipes off his saliva on the corner of his mouth. Because it’s dirty, I’m dirty, he thinks, and some more blood rushes to his dick.
She adds more gel to her finger and enters his mouth again, this time the movement more fluid and confident since she knows exactly where it hurts now. This time she massages the area gently, soft squelching noises from his overflowing spit. Slow little circles and he instinctively presses himself closer, almost purring as the pain recedes. Her eyes shift to meet his, and even though the rest of him is kept painfully in control, she feels the walls of his cheek flex against her finger.
She continues to massage his gum painstakingly slow and adds another digit to widen his mouth a little, pretext being making it easier to access his toothache, but the real reason is she just wants to see if that’s enough to make him drool. His eyes are glassy, and he looks blissed out, relaxed except for the hard length that’s rubbing against her thigh. He’s pliant, normal boys shouldn’t be okay with strangers sticking their fingers in his mouth, and she wonders if Gojo’s trained him to be like this.
She voices the last thought which has him instantly furrowing his brows and light returning to his eyes. He pushes her away and her finger slides out, with a dripping viscous web between them.
“Stop saying such obscene things,” he says angrily. “I’m going to say this now, Gojo-sensei and I aren’t like that.”
She bites down a laugh. “Alright Megumi, my bad,” she says, lip quirked up. The tent growing in his pants make her disbelieve, and she teases him just to check, “Do you need me to help you with anything else?” Her eyes cast down-ward and he follows her gaze. His cheeks immediately dust pink and he places a hand against it, and scrambles to stand. He wipes away the drool with a fist and shakes his head adamantly.
He rushes to his room and shuts the door with a slam behind him. Once inside he leans against the door and closes his eyes. A flash of her face so terribly to close to his, the ghost of her finger in him – he palms himself through his pants. She never touches him, but this morning she’s so close, and he let her get this close and he remembers the look in her eyes when he started drooling, dark and hungry and just slight shade different from that first day when she was dissecting him, and fuck, he shoves his waist band down and grips his cock. His hands lower to cup his balls, another flash to her calling him “princess”, and he squeezes them, hard. The pain travels up to the base of his stomach and almost makes him sick, he suppresses a whine because she’s still just right beyond that door.
He lets out a shaky exhale and thinks about her staccato pulse through her burning hot skin, those short moments when she’s injured before she shoves him off, and he strokes himself, once, twice, then faster, faster, he wonders if he’d be able to feel her heart even harder if it was his lips pressed against her instead of her fingertips, he wonders what it’s like to choke on her fingers, he frantically picks up the pace, he imagines her all around him – and his hips stutters wildly as he cums, ropes of his seed overflowing on his hand.
He keeps pumping even though he’s sensitive, because part of him feels like she would, and he bites down a cry.
Only when he comes down, ass against the cold wooden floor, flaccid cock in hand, does his heart drop.
This is going to be messy.