Chapter Text
They were like a flock of crows.
All clustered together at the gutter on the street, talking shit, kicking rocks, and killing time. Young punks looking for odd jobs and a way to get their foot in the door. Drop outs, delinquents, and anyone that didn’t have anywhere else to go, and even here there was a hierarchy. Hierarchy of power, and Sukuna was sitting on a precarious edge; not quite like the others, not yet brought into the fold. Standing apart and blinking in the sharp orange light of the late autumn sunset, waiting to see how the night would unfold.
The door of the machiya house behind them slid open.
Just crows on the street, pecking at what was offered.
“Boss needs smokes.”
Sukuna didn’t know the name of the man that stepped outside, which meant his name probably didn’t matter.
The others scoffed, sure and solid in their assessment that this kind of thing was beneath them, not real work worth doing, but it was irrelevant because the man’s eyes were on Sukuna anyway. Knowing he’d get it done. Knowing that as long as he stood outside he’d take whatever scraps were thrown his way, and with a resigned nod, Sukuna took off walking to the corner store down the block, squinting the whole way there.
Routine and regular, all of it, from the request to the price of cigarettes, Sukuna tossing coins in the tray on the counter and leaving while thinking nothing of it. Routine right up until he came back to the nondescript house, and instead of shooing him away again, the man at the door looked him up and down and then let him inside.
And this… was uncharted territory. The eyes on his back from the others while he was ushered in, the lack of an explanation, but Sukuna knew better than to question when he’d get his answers soon enough.
Because when it came to Fushiguro Toji, his expectations, his operations, one was best off keeping quiet until he deigned to tell you what to do. And it meant something of respect that Sukuna was willing to play by those rules for someone he’d decided was worthy of doling them out.
In the center of an empty room he sat, only company a low table and the bottle of sake he was pouring from, easy and casual, sprawled out in a loosened yukata and looking right at home here as he would have been a hundred years ago as the scoundrel son of a royal family. They were left alone, just Sukuna and Toji, and Sukuna knew better than to speak unless spoken to as the door slid shut behind him, and Toji took another sip from his cup.
His sleeve, loose and leaving his chest wide open, had slid down over a shoulder, looking more threatening than sultry with the peek of his tattoo. A worm curved over his shoulder; foul thing, bloated face, ugly and unlike any of the more traditional displays of power to be found in the higher ups of families, oni and dragons and anything else to show their status. A blatant eschewing of tradition, something Toji had been known to do, and all irrelevant information where Sukuna was concerned.
There were greater families to lick the boots of. Larger, more powerful, whose names carried a weight that Fushiguro didn’t. If the rumors were to be believed— which they weren’t— then Fushiguro Toji had once been a Zenin, now a fracture, a shard from a family. A family that had reach to compete with the best of them, Gojo or Kamo, or any of the rest, and Toji had spat in their faces. Not just to leave but to make his own, an insult in the highest regard, particularly when his pisspoor excuse of a gang went from a thorn in the Zenin’s side, to a massive, uncontrollable predator of a problem.
Irrelevant sidestory; inconsequential facts.
Sukuna followed power, and power meant Toji. Family names meant less to Sukuna than any of the pomp and musty history that went along with them. Old blood didn’t stop someone from growing up a coward.
“Tueday night. You were there?”
Toji sipped on his sake.
It wasn’t really a question. Not a question he would ask without knowing the answer to.
“Yes.”
“You were the one to hold Mahito off?”
“Yes.”
Toji’s lips split open, like skin over an overripe fruit, exposing teeth.
Tuesday night: a deal, an exchange between Toji and Geto Suguru and the gods only knew how they’d come to an agreement in the first place, but that wasn’t for Sukuna to know. What Sukuna did know was while Toji’s van drove away, a group of rats that sniffed out a leak led by Mahito had been there to stop him, but Sukuna had stopped them first.
Not without a little bloodshed.
Not without getting his hands dirty.
They never made it past him to Toji’s van.
“My son…”
There was a pregnant pause, long enough that Sukuna thought instead of an opening statement Toji had only been making a comment, but he stopped, drank more, tilted his head back around to Sukuna and pinned him with a feral look, “My wayward son needs a bodyguard.”
“Are you asking me?”
Sukuna had never not been blunt.
He could see Toji taking him in, assessing, judging. This was their first time speaking, but he must have known enough to know who Sukuna was to have him brought here for a proposal. It felt like he’d walked straight into a trap, but Toji wouldn’t have wasted time playing around if he wanted Sukuna gone. Didn’t think he’d drag his son into the charade either, enigmatic shadow that he was.
“You don’t have to accept,” Toji said, mocking him. Who in their right mind would say no, why else would he bother huddling around the periphery of Toji’s circle, picking up scraps of shit work whenever it was thrown their way. What else could they be searching for but a way in, a foot in the door with the family, and now Sukuna had been handed his golden opportunity. Equal parts prestigious and insane because messing this up meant messing up the boss's son, meant getting his goddamn skull crushed in.
“I’ll do it.”
“Good,” Toji said, knowing full well there couldn’t have been any other answer, but looking entertained by how things had played out all the same.
“If you can handle Mahito, you can handle keeping Megumi out of trouble. Probably.”
Toji downed the rest of the sake in his cup, then held out his hand.
“Now give me my fucking cigs.”
With enough asking around Sukuna got the name of a club and a fair guess to where Megumi was.
He was afforded all the hospitality of an unwanted outsider, but the begrudging answers were more than any of the shitkickers outside would be privy to meaning the news of his role had spread. Spread the way that gossip did in tight knit groups, faster than wildfire but without leaving the same trail.
He’d never met Fushiguro Megumi before— technically.
They all knew who he was.
The resemblance to Toji was undeniable even without an introduction, while he wandered in and out of the house, past Toji’s dogs, doing as he pleased. Sukuna had never seen him at an operation, but it seemed he wasn’t entirely uninvolved either. Chances were his entanglement would only grow with time, and even as unconcerned with blood as Toji was, it was hard to imagine a future where the father didn’t pass his family business down to the son.
Night was barely starting when Sukuna arrived, but the club was still full and lively, too loud and on the cusp of contained chaos that would only grow. Not completely foreign, not entirely Sukuna’s scene either, and he took a long look at the bar wondering if he could swing back a shot before slugging on. It would make whatever was to come more bearable, that was a sure thing, but it turned out he didn’t have the chance.
Fushiguro Megumi, there at the bar, finishing off the last of his drink with a sly smile and a man in front of him, close in his personal space. Sukuna didn’t think it would be that easy, thought he’d have a harder time spotting his charge, but he was struck again by the family resemblance. Not through appearance alone, not just the unruly hair, the sharp eyes, but behind the smiles he threw out there was a vein of danger that ran through them both.
Sukuna pushed forward, Megumi backed away.
Not conscious; the music morphed and changed, the other man finished his drink and they were backing away from the bar to the crowd of dancers, bodies moving like liquid in the flashing lights. He was wrapped up in his own world, unaware of his silent observer.
Sukuna could watch and wait until the end of the night, when Megumi was done having his fun, or he could push forward like a bull. Neither felt appealing, and wading into the dance floor made Sukuna regret not getting that shot.
Megumi spun.
Megumi danced and threw his arms around a stranger. Megumi tugged them close and looked coy, telling Sukuna what he came here to do. Pick someone up, get fucked.
But as he got closer Sukuna saw it. The flirting, the dancing, how something about it felt forced, not the natural state of things. There were sharp edges there, in the smiles that didn’t reach his eyes, in the way he swooned that said he wasn’t really charmed, only playing the part.
My wayward son…
Of course the son of a Yakuza would live a life with the rest of the misfits, outside of polite society, and of course the misfits all tended to find their fun in the darker places, and all in all getting drunk and picking up nobodies wasn’t the worst he could do. It just opened him up for trouble. So pushing forward was the option he took, standing out as a statue, not dancing in the crowd, working his way close.
Megumi spun.
And it was Sukuna’s neck he wrapped his arms around, an easy target within reach as he was ablaze with mirth. The kind of humor that thought it was funny to watch people squirm. Megumi leaned in, fast and swift, on his toes to reach as he swept in for a kiss, but Sukuna turned his head, avoiding it deftly. It made the venom in Megumi grow, smile sharp as a cat’s claw when he pressed his whole body against Sukuna, burning hot. His mouth came to Sukuna’s ear, and still he yelled to make sure he was heard.
“What’s wrong, not here to have fun?”
Sukuna returned the favor, hands on his waist, but to push him back instead of pull him close, leaning down to Megumi’s ear to make sure he was heard back.
“Your dad sent me.”
Megumi looked at him, all smiles gone faster than a horse at the races, all flirtiness wiped away faster than booze spilled at the bar.
Megumi looked at him and said, “Fuck.”