As bland at it is bloody, it inhales people and expels machinery— trains and tangled electricity wires, rooted into the ground over the remains of Edo. At night, it simmers; this is what Sukuna likes; when the stark, bleached sky turns red and the tower's lights gleam over Roppongi, when Kabukicho becomes the floating world once again instead of a non-descript suburb of Shinjuku's downtown.
There are different kinds of Yakuza.
There are those who work as businessmen work; with their booming, ice-cold pachinko parlours, open 24 hours and carefully situated deep in the politician's pockets, attending strategy meetings with their staff as if they were an obscure and unimportant Olympic planning committee.
There are the old guard; the known names — the ones in sprawling estates with family characters carved onto their gates as naked as day; Gojou-gumi, Zenin-gumi — these are the sort who are called to attend political meetings, who bow to the emperor.
There are yakuza, and then there are yakuza.
Ryomen Sukuna is the latter.
Seven generations back, a blood relative had drawn his sword on bended knee and lobbed off the left hand of the emperor, and the bloodshed had begun there— and never ended.
There is no name for the clan, their name was struck off in disgrace. Instead, the name Sukuna has been held against the country's throat; the name of a minor deity, the name of a demon. They say he is the flesh of a god, the bloodline of a curse. No one is actually sure; everyone is superstitious enough to believe the rumours. Sukuna is not the sort to correct them, why would he when he himself feels the old line in his veins; when people bend to him with a glance. Who is he to say that a demon's blood doesn't spread through him?
It might as well.
He meets Gojou Satoru in Ginza, because the man loves a high class Kyabakura where the girls all wear kimono. Not like the flashy clubs in Sukuna's town Shinjuku, where their surgeries turn their eyes three times their original size, and they arrive in fur coats like reimagined Hollywood stars. But— taste is taste, he supposes.
There is a territory dispute to discuss and, as usual, Gojou owes him money. That's the old guard for you, he thinks, with a smirk at one of the girls; they blow everything on their estates and their hostesses and it's all a good show without any real bite. But, he appreciates theatricality, and Gojou certainly has a flair for it.
The boy is a nice touch.
He looks out of place in the club; brought in by Gojou with a flourish of his hand and a gleam of blue behind his sunglasses (what sort of yakuza acts like a celebrity host club's no.1? This one). Sukuna attends his meetings in a black kimono — the stripes of his tattoo run down his neck, across his face, around his forearms. He looks like a warlord at a council, like something from somewhere else, and from long, long ago.
The girls all know Gojou, and they know of Sukuna— this is a professional place, no need to make introductions or bow with the delivery of business cards. The mama-san waits their table herself.
Sukuna watches the boy.
Green eyes, he sees. Even in low light. Green as a gaijin's. He must be mixed or they are contacts; he wonders if Gojou had a doctor do it— he suspects a procedure would explain the blue of the clan head's own.
They talk shop and ignore the girls; Gojou's taste in alcohol is expensive, but Sukuna dislikes champagne so they drink the strong sake. Gojou's hand eventually finds the boy's knee and it is permitted; a faint tightening about the pretty mouth leads Sukuna to suspect that this has been a long-standing arrangement. He always heard that the head of the Gojou-gumi likes them young. He's not one to judge; after all, it's rumoured that Sukuna likes them dead and served at dinner.
"Megumi," Gojou slurs lightly, happily drunk. "Megumi, meet Sukuna-dono, Sukuna's our very gracious—" he winks, "—ally."
Gojou is never as drunk as he pretends to be, Sukuna knows.
He leans in close, smells sandalwood (like a temple monk, he wants to bark a laugh) and nods his head once in introduction; the dip of it like a snake's.
[ fushiguro megumi, once zen'in, and likely zen'in again if not for the events that are about to spiral from this night's meeting alone, is well acquainted with this underworld because no matter his name, the domain is not so changed. satoru's benefaction has seen him and tsumiki through many years and promises years ahead, supposing his sister ever wakes up to see them, supposing megumi himself does not die before they can happen. not that satoru would ever let that happen, but sometimes the pride of infinity is as much a weakness as a strength.
long fingers curl on his knee and he sighs. they've spoken about this before: it's childish and there isn't any need. satoru's way of reminding of a claim that goes deeper than convenient finance and choiceless blood; satoru's ...satoruness. megumi's sigh in this half-light is completely lost but it does happen and the slight pull of his expression is its substitute. it is not that he minds the touch; satoru is one of the few individuals, in fact, the only one left properly sentient on this plane, who he both permits and, privately, invites. an attempt at distance is futile with satoru who is the one to both make and break the rules whether of their own contract or that of one left behind upon megumi's shoulders by a father who died too young as if chasing the mother who died even earlier. rather than touch, it is satoru's falsified drunkenness. can he not tell that sukuna-dono can see through it? no. megumi is sure that he can. so why the farce?
a sigh dies premature again and when sukuna addresses him, megumi looks up at him through long lashes and a veil of green suited to winter more than summer. ]
I —
[ somehow the way that sukuna leans in is both slow and fast, composed, measured, reminiscent of certain animals megumi is familiar with because he has always gotten along better with them; understood them. megumi himself is reminiscent of a rabbit stunned or a deer in headlights, conscious somehow without thinking about it too much, that to not move is preferred. even his inhales and exhales have a stillness like some kind of externalized dead sea. he neither smiles back nor frowns despite feeling the inclination to do so. being brought into this life early, he does know vaguely how to keep up appearances, and when entering certain environments is prepared to do so. it is the opposite rather of how he is day-to-day, where caught off-guard, his lies are transparent, but more often than not, megumi simply does not traffic in them to begin with. ]
what does he know already of ryomen sukuna? not much. the man keeps his enigma only tandem with his power in the known circles as well as the lesser articulated. there is a reason satoru meets with him tonight and megumi knows before he is asked that he will be enlisted to do more than bow his head and say hello; not that he bows his head. sukuna is too close for that, and there is the excuse of decorum and the weird unwritten rule of who megumi 'belongs' to that both controls and protects him. but he is not newborn nor stupid. he lets his gaze fall in a way that somehow conveys the right amount of respect and acknowledgment, the calibre of elegance reserved in another life for a palace court. ]
There is nothing secretive about it, Sukuna-dono.
[ 'megumi'. blessing. he's not sure it suits him; but it is his, regardless. ]
And then, there is this too: Sukuna has owned many lovely things.
And, now they're all gone, so it's time for a new one. Over his sunglasses, Gojou watches the exchange between himself and this Megumi; Sukuna feels the man's gaze on the side of his face like the threat of a blade; he already knows something precious would not be given up with such ease. There must be a catch in this; he ought to wring the boy's neck where he sits, just to force it out of them. These clan heads with their subterfuge and their trickery; they think they can creep beneath his skin, into his bed like that?
Well. Perhaps he'll just let them. Then they'll see. ]
Megumi. [ He says it like he's trying it out, testing the word. Then, he says it again, and it's an invocation, the snap of a leash: ] Little Megumi.
[ Sukuna reaches out, something sharp about his fingers, calluses beneath them, and grips Megumi's jaw, forcing the boy's head sideways. Gojou does not react, however he seems as if he is about to; he has paused where he was refilling one of the woman's glasses (the hostess's job, however, it makes them laugh when he does it). ] That's a girl's name. Fitting, isn't it.
[ A wrinkle of his nose, and he sneers a smile. ]
Aren't you cute.
[ He lets go, finally, and his eyes narrow in a pleased, feline way at the livid marks that have been left behind, dark against the pale skin. He sees the glance that flickers from Gojou to the boy; so he cares about this one, then. Useful, Sukuna supposes, and picks up his own refilled sake cup, watching the pair of them over the brim and lounging back against the seat like a feudal lord; the picture of a different era, a different stretch of history.
He tilts his head back and yawns. ]
This is all very pleasant, Gojou, but— [ His gaze returns to Megumi and he smiles; wide and toothy. ] Make the boy strip.
[ to his credit or not, megumi neither flinches nor reels back. one might be as nervy to say he permits this action of sukuna's, somehow maintaining the balance of not going slack and yet deliberately not fighting him either, as if to say a shock of abruptness is not enough to fully debilitate him. perhaps it is the way sukuna initially leaned in so quickly, which was enough preparation for any other sudden movement, even one harsher such as this. yet the truth is the truth: over the years, at gojou satoru's side, megumi has experienced worse and he does not buy what he considers absolute bullshit: the notion that conflict and strife make an individual inherently stronger for having gone through it. but he does feel experience can lay groundwork, can give one more to find equilibrium with, and so he finds it true now too.
years ago, the comment about his name would have made him hiss like a stray cat.
tonight, he simply raises his gaze at the remark and holds it there, not a challenge but not quite clean acceptance either as if to say without saying: and what of it?
then sukuna lets go. megumi makes no move to touch where he can feel evidence of sukuna's interest and demonstration.
satoru on the other hand curves fingers at megumi's tapered waist and draws him close without looking at him, eyes still carefully on sukuna over the edge of his glasses, all of this expression hinged together and also held apart by a smile that is not a smile. if sukuna's was a baring of teeth, gojou's is less animal and no less deliberate glimmer of a knife. in another era and another world, this conversation would never happen. there is that sense of things; a liminal space for two improbably powerful beings, as well as megumi -- powerful in his own right but perhaps not fully realized despite satoru's best efforts.
the hand at megumi's waist tightens then slips away entirely as gojou affects a laugh that is cold and he says, all still while not glancing at megumi at all, "you heard him, megumi-chan."
but he does not have to signal or code anything for megumi to understand, megumi who unbuttons the single fastener of his suit jacket -- the silk of which would take care of a small country in cost -- then drapes it over his own arm as neat and unobtrusive as a serving towel. he stops there, pauses, then seems to reconsider and drapes it over the back of the chair he previously sat in.
there is no further move to disrobe and it may be clear there will be nothing else unless one counts the cheat of megumi's bare ankles at the perfectly cropped hem of his pants. his shirt is also black, and it's the kind of outfit with its polished shoes and the blue earrings (tiny diamond studs the color of satoru's eyes), that to a trained look would be shocking and to everyone else would look like nothing special. over the years, megumi has unintentionally gotten accustomed to a level of both comfort and wealth. even down to the food he eats. this is of course inclusive of his wardrobe. what he wears tonight isn't special but it is all made for him specifically, and that in and of itself says enough perhaps.
what sukuna receives for a removed jacket: the waist already mostly shown given the fit of the suit but a bit more-so now.
and megumi's green eyes, watchful.
he would suit the glade of a wood as soon as the artificial light of a metropolis, perhaps more than.
where sukuna touched him will bruise and megumi won't think of it as much as satoru will but that's between them.
[ As a narrow arm slips from a sleeve, and the perfect, mathematical subtlety of the waist's ogee curve is revealed, Sukuna's concern with Gojou, and with Gojou's hidden agenda abruptly dies. The blunt force of Sukuna's attention lands on Megumi now, his chin lowering, the room dissolving to nothing at all; as if anything outside of Sukuna's interest seemed to simply cease existing, cast aside with the blind disregard of a child. The honeyed light of the club catches the boy's eyes and stays within them, and Sukuna has never seen such a colour; not in combination with a thatch of black lashes, and a perfectly beautiful face. Sure, he hasn't stripped; at least not down to nakedness, but there will be time for all things, Sukuna supposes. He is not a patient man, but that does not mean that he cannot be patient.
His hand raises now, fingers unfurling in a gesture that commands and summons simultaneously; the black rings about his wrist showing dark and inky against his tanned forearm. ]
Come here.
[ Gojou watches, drinking with the hostess girls, and Sukuna keeps his hand held out, the palm open, fingers extended.
There are some people who fill a room with their smiles; Sukuna fills it to bursting, forces the air out of it, strangles it so that the attention of everyone is on him, and he reaches for Megumi now, and that attention turns to a vacuum, like dark water too thick to swim in. ]
My, my, [ He says, sidelong to Gojou, talking out of the side of his mouth in a comical little aside; the movement of his lip exposes a canine tooth, and while not remarkably shaped, the appearance of it at all is somewhat doggish. ] Where did you find this one.
[ it must come as no surprise when megumi's focus flickers to satoru for a second who inclines his head none too subtle, not wanting to be, wanting sukuna to know megumi goes to him because gojou satoru has indeed directly allowed him to do so. likewise it comes perhaps as no to little surprise when megumi stays silent, letting gojou answer: "would you believe, on the street?" what satoru does not say: that the child he picked up was the epitome of a bristling black kitten and that the megumi who stands here tonight is still that odd sort of feline finessed and hardened in his own right by the articulation of a world that requires his fluency.
in another time, megumi would have as soon been an untouchable courtesan and satoru has told him as much through jokes, and once, as a warning of what he could have become even now -- this modern ugly beautiful world of those who control and those who are controlled, whether they know it or not.
megumi goes to sukuna with steps not delicate yet somehow distinct, and the absolute purposefulness with which he stops just shy of easy reach is...well, not so much of a risk. he by no means is testing sukuna; it is more that he thinks this is good enough and knows already if it is not, he will be made informed s such. this is simply how the unwritten dynamics of such a meeting tend to go; he has been to enough that went actually south to know this is nowhere near that. satoru does want him to be liked, to be admired, and to be let in; it seems to be working; so? good enough. yet neither megumi nor satoru are blind; how much of this is sukuna also allowing them in return, they cannot say, but it is at least understood: no one here is as oblivious as they allow the cards to sometimes say.
it is not, however, megumi thinks, his fault if sukuna lets him in tonight or a month from now to his detriment. and maybe some of megumi's father yet exists in him whether he knows or remembers him or not: the sense that he can do something despite most odds saying otherwise. of course for fushiguro toji it ended in an early death.
for megumi?
he can't quite imagine a future, if he's honest.
it isn't as sad as it should be.
on the street satoru says and megumi thinks wryly: in an alley more like.
stray.
a soft inhale brings again sukuna's scent of sandalwood and something else almost more like fire. the taste is not unpleasant. and megumi's eyes end up focusing on the ink around sukuna's nearest bared wrist. he wonders if they mean anything or nothing; he wonders if it hurt; he wonders if anything hurts this man who is almost myth inside and outside of the city of gangs and people who pretend it is otherwise. ]
[ The boy comes to him willingly, and naturally, when given a hand, Sukuna takes the arm; he pulls Megumi into his lap none too gently with a yank on that wrist, and suddenly their faces are mere inches apart, and he can smell him; the clean, human scent of him, and he smiles wide in the boy's face. ]
Megumi-chan, hm? He calls you that? Funny. [ Sukuna adjusts him, so that he sits easily against him, the yakuza's teeth near his shoulder, a hand closing on Megumi's hip through the expensive fabric of those suit pants. It seems that Gojo likes to keep his pets well-clothed, and up close, the little glints of blue in the boy's ears catch his eye. A pet and not a pet then, perhaps; there is no way that Gojo Satoru would give something so precious with so little fight. A temptation? But no, they have agreed on Megumi's borrowing. How remarkable can the boy be, Sukuna thinks, and scores a gentle but deliberate line with his nail down the center of the boy's back, against the equally silken fabric of the shirt; from the first notch to the last. How remarkable does Gojo think the boy is, if he thinks that he'll have a hook in Sukuna after only a week?
He can see from here, so close, the fineness of the boy's bones; the jawline that is neither too strong nor too weak, but the perfect balance between delicate beauty and something masculine. Dark hair; his fingers drag upwards to touch it, and push beneath to the scalp, resting against the nape of his neck. ]
Satoru-san's little lost boy, are you? [ A faint sneer from Sukuna follows, and Gojo shrugs with a concessional: "Well, not anymore." ]
He passes the test. [ Sukuna tilts his head so that he's looking at Megumi's profile. He presses, fingers against the boy's skull to turn him so that they face each other, noses close. ] Would you like to spend some time with me hm, Megumi? Perhaps we can have some fun, you and I.
[ The lightness of his tone contains something a bit more sordid beneath it; he's got a very specific voice, and it never deviates too much from that baseline treacherous purr. He moves Megumi off his lap, but does not go further than that, encroaching on the boy's space entirely, a hand anchored on the back of his neck. Gojo's eyes follow them closely; Sukuna's eyes are on Megumi alone. ]
[ "fun" is not what megumi would call it but as satoru had already gone over it with him, he does not expect too different of an interaction. if anything, there is some soft relief that it isn't worse, though a very very well compartmentalized part of him whispers satoru would never do anything truly dangerous for him — of at the very least, not anything he could not handle in the end himself. just because megumi has never killed anyone does not mean he does not know how to; not that sukuna would or will make it easy, but then, this is not a short con. it isn't even a con, come to that. it feels, if anything, more akin to a game of chicken between these two. megumi just slightly laments having to be the bridge for each respective vehicle.
the scent of sandalwood wends with something like incense too and megumi focuses on that rather than the sharp of sukuna's nail down his spine like some kind of query more so than a warning.
and if that is not just the oddest thing so-far.
he knows sukuna is strong. one does not come by his kind of repute and fear by sheer dumb luck. satoru is not interested in the weak. these are simple truths.
listening, he only speaks once directly asked about time, fully ignoring the note about how satoru addresses him. how ridiculous it seems to him to have to explain to ryomen sukuna that more or less growing up under gojou satoru's eye and mouth means compromise because otherwise you will consistently be in a battle you cannot win. the pressure of sukuna's fingers against his head is not as rough as it could be; megumi finds himself feeling he should be more afraid, afraid at all, but he isn't and there is no particular time at the moment to mull over it; so he doesn't. instead, his expression stays neutral, borderline soft in a way that is out of place here. the shift from sukuna's lap to off is almost indiscernible, a certain invisible grace in motion megumi has had most of his life; like a shadow satoru once said and so it goes in the underworld that the head of the gojou sect has a green-eyed shadow. very few are given the honor of his name, which is only offered by satoru anyway.
there couldn't be a clearer way to say he doesn't expect sukuna to come out of this 'alive' but what that means remains gray at best.
death is not the only kind of silence and perhaps no one knows but satoru himself what he would give up for what his goals happen to be.
if megumi asked, satoru would tell him he belongs to him and what else does he need to know? but megumi will never ask and so, in essence, does satoru escape having to claim it as a truth rather than a game where real investment gets blurred with other things happening before megumi was even born, much less found in a dirty alley after the conspicuous death of the invisible man known as fushiguro toji — at satoru's own hand no less.
they don't speak of it.
at his nape, sukuna's hand rests heavier than satoru's ever has.
megumi wonders if it means anything and decides: probably not. ]
I believe it has been discussed prior, Sukuna-dono.
[ "a week, megumi. you can handle it." or so satoru had said, it megumi can never quite rid himself of this weakness: that being given responsibility feels like a kind of worth. a hand atop his head when he was seven. a hand between his shoulderblades at thirteen. a hand on his knee at sixteen. why do these things feel important? why does a quiet part of him wait for them? the diamonds in his ears are small because they are meant to make something flashy and abundant subtle to the point of being forgotten, just remembered in the moment when it counts. they weigh nothing but somehow feel heavy. none of this shows on megumi's face, and his hands fold politely in front of him. where in another life animals come to heel when he does this, in this life, nothing of the sort happens. instead there is simply the emanation of a calm that fits someone rather older; but then, 'years' in the underworld aren't what they say on paper, don't account for the way people truly grow: what happens to them, and how they happen to other people.
at sukuna's side, he does not try to wrest himself from his hand, but he meets satoru's eyes once more, a longer more obvious stare until satoru inclines his head, offset by how he adjusts his glasses; disappears behind them:
"that's right megumi. you'll be good for me, won't you?"
the reply is just a mild and slow blink of green eyes.
will satoru ever say he's his outside of a show for business and tact?
perhaps it is foolish to wonder.
he'll do what he can in the week allotted. though his directions leave something to be desired:
get to know him.
his gaze finally goes sidelong and, in doing so, meets sukuna's by mistake.
it is harder to look away this time and he does not know why. ]
[ It's there; Sukuna is brash and forceful but to know how to win wars, one must know how to win people and he knows when winning is on the table and when it is not. Megumi looks at him, catches him looking in return, and for the first time since they have met, it flares. Chemistry; nothing more complex than that, though still inexplicable, pure chance. Sukuna does not look away; there's no need tonight for polite, or coy, he holds the boy's eye, and smiles widely. There are two eyes beneath his own, tattooed onto his face; his ancestors spread a rumour that their line came from a great demon with two faces, so far be it from Sukuna to allow that particular romantic reading of history to die off.
There's a way to win here, he knows. Those little earrings are coming out first, he thinks. If he has to rip them out himself, with teeth alone.
His fingers move down each notch of Megumi's spinal column, as if counting, a touch to each vertebrae lingering one and then another second.
Tokyo's underbelly; the floating world, the world that they inhabit, tends to sit more closely alongside the plane of the imaginary, of fable. Just adjacent to it. It would not be so far removed to think that some magic still lives in Sukuna's hands; in far off forests, they still exorcise invisible demons. In Tokyo, the children throw soybeans at adults dressed as oni. Store owners leave their salt piles at the doors. Cups of sake are placed at the roadside statues of minor deities. This practice, this lingering of myth— something of that is where Sukuna belongs, even here, now.
His fingers linger, and in it, there is the echo of incantation; something from long ago, that no longer lives.
He turns and his mouth is right beside Megumi's ear. ] And who knows, perhaps I'll keep you longer.
[ Not quite a threat, but— also kind of a threat.
Gojou keeps watching them, but Sukuna seems unconcerned. His hand has found its way back to Megumi's waist, and he leans back in his seat, eyes hooded. ]
Tell me what you know of me.
[ Time to talk about his... favorite subject (again)... in every universe. Some things really don't change. At least Gojou seems relieved at the focus shifting slightly from Megumi to— Sukuna himself.
The yakuza's fingers find the delicate fabric of the shirt, and he tugs gently, glancing down with arched brows, interrupting before Megumi can even start speaking. ] You know I told you to strip, yes? For now, I'll let you be defiant because I've changed my mind. But— [ He— manages to untuck a corner of Megumi's shirt, a hand creeping beneath it to find skin. ] I'm not fond of attitude, unlike Satoru.
[ the threat that is not a threat but is also kind of a threat...does not do much for megumi in any way. "a week" is loose terms even with paper, and there wasn't a single sheet used in this case, not a tear-off scrawl, not a drop of ink. everything here is on some kind of honorless honor, integrity at its most primitive and yet organized too. in one life: an exorcist, in another a bird in a cage, still another: a boy who grows up almost normal with a father and a mother who love each other so much this time even death leaves them be for once. in this life: he doesn't know yet.
sukuna's fingertips along his spine make him feel strangely anchored and disconnected all at once. satoru has pressed those same divisions; but it felt rather different. like comparing the sky to a fire. atmosphere not yet burning, and the forest already asunder.
he doesn't move, not even with the warmth of those words against his ear. even when he feels sukuna's fingers and palm beneath his shirt, he doesn't move. it is only at the mention of stripping that he tilts his head softly, glancing over. ]
I did not realize how much you meant, Sukuna-dono.
[ not entirely a lie.
not the truth either. ]
'Attitude' was not my intention.
[ actually entirely the truth.
the feeling of simply being so close to sukuna is reminiscent of gojou in that they both have an undeniable presence of power. a certain sense of: what they will to be done, will be done. 'agreement' is not the point. obedience is. megumi does understand, and, though he does not recognize this completely about himself, the truth is something in him aligns with this. and though it is not so much about bowing his head, there is something to be said for having a clearly feasible function, a goal and a way to achieve it, and someone else in one's life to account for. the bottom line for megumi has always been tsumiki, still in her coma that doctors warn she may never wake from. but a hospital bed does not pay for itself.
if megumi had ever toyed with the thought of getting out of his contract with satoru, once tsumiki fell, that was no longer an option.
from childhood, megumi has a few memories that stand out: one winter going somewhere so far the city's lights didn't reach. tsumiki gifted him a book of stars and satoru knew each one by heart like he'd been there when they were hung in the sky. sometimes megumi feels like he was, this far-away look that belongs to no one because he refuses to; and if you cannot belong to anyone else can you truly possess another? megumi does try to stay within the boundaries of non-fiction. his real life is almost fictitious enough.
take sukuna for example.
a week.
or longer.
he lowers his gaze to the floor.
if he were to close his eyes, the presence of sukuna would be that of an old temple, kept by one person, rarely seen with the reverence of centuries.
[ The quiet obedience surprises him. Not because he does not expect it (he expects it from everyone, and always has), but because the boy wears it so well. The lowered head; deference, caution, whichever it is, Sukuna's eyes follow it, and he considers the boy's profile, the delicate features, not a single deviation in that careful bone structure. His gaze flicks over to Gojou, who smiles, and Sukuna has to give credit where it's due; the man knows how to pick them. Megumi truly must be the center of his collection; the most precious, the most lovely. It makes him want to wring the boy's neck so that Satoru can watch. His hand sits hot against the boy's skin beneath his shirt, and he feels the gentle swell of the lowermost rib, before his hand settles there, against his waist. It's invasive; they've just met— but Sukuna is invasive; everything in the air around him seems to tremble with it.
He likes this one.
Gojou knows it, he can see. He suspects the boy knows it too, but then again he cannot tell what this boy is thinking; he cannot see anything in him yet; everything is kept hidden behind that polite countenance, the careful, measured way that he holds himself even here as if formality was something that was even on the table. ]
Not attitude, is it. [ Sukuna hums to himself more than to anyone else, fingers pressing against Megumi's side, the scrape of nails light against the skin there, he's veritably ignoring Gojou again, but at least that is the upside to a hostess club; the women here love that guy, and Sukuna finds himself free to paw at Megumi at his leisure. ] You always do what you're told, hm, Megumi-chan? I like that.
[ An echo of Gojou in the diminutive, a bit of a barb, but he's smiling at least, eyes narrowed in interest, and he leans closer, a shoulder bracketing Megumi's, mouth pressing just about against the boy's ear as if there were a need to speak privately, or to speak over the music; which currently is low enough to permit talk across tables. No— Sukuna just likes to make himself known, likes to be the aggressor and the one to lean in and break the personal space.
There's more to this boy, he's certain of it.
A slight pull back, so that their eyes can meet again, and his head tilts in a jerk to the side, eyebrow cocking. ]
Not afraid, huh. Or— [ He leans in again, as if scenting something, eyes bloody red in the low light, his fingers moving against Megumi's skin. ] —only ever afraid, and used to it. Fear a friend of yours, Megumi-chan?
[ despite being able to tell he is by no means stronger than sukuna, megumi has the reflexes and the dexterity to at least reach a hand to grab at sukuna's wrist and pull his touch away; he could. he doesn't. it would not suit the present arrangement, the endgame of it all; it would if anything deter and that is the opposite of what megumi wants. tasked, he takes it seriously because if he doesn't then what precisely is he serious about? if he was not entirely prepared for how hands-on sukuna would be out of the gate, that is his own oversight.
he wants to blame satoru a little, for how receptive he is to touch, almost conditioned to take what he can get; something that blooms only in moonlight and moonlight is temperamental. "starved, are you?" he vaguely remembers those were his words and megumi did then what he even persists in doing now: said no. but sometimes we have to say something is not true even knowing it is, just to cope with it.
carefully. carefully. carefully. he lets his focus shift from sukuna to anywhere else, not moving away but not holding the contact either. the pinch of his brow is no more than a fraction of a second, the purse of his mouth the same before it smooths again to its neutrality that could as soon be taken for bored as demure as hollow as hiding something.
the list is perhaps unsurprisingly easy to build upon.
afraid? the fan of his lashes lowers in a slow blink at nothing. ]
I simply seek to achieve what is set before me, Sukuna-dono. And, [ his eyes clearly start to shift towards satoru before he equally obviously stops himself from seeking any approval and adds, quieter, in a way that truly could be missed if sukuna wasn't paying acute attention, ] ... I am not afraid often.
[ when tsumiki fell ill. it is the only time he can recall. if he had not buried it so deeply, perhaps he might also remember: a boy teaching himself not to expect the dead to come back, indeed to remember not to ask for such a haunted life, a boy with the names of stars on the back of his vision more so than the names of people, a boy not overwhelmed by fear but not immune to it either — that bizarre first empathetic understanding if not textual of that word: lonely. it is something gojou satoru saw in him before he even introduced himself and if he's played the line of it to his own benefit, it goes both ways perhaps; he cares, against all odds, and so all the more a risk and a bet to 'give' fushiguro megumi to ryomen sukuna.
but he trusts megumi even if the other was never an option, not even as a joke.
it's not the diamonds in megumi's ears that say it so much as how satoru despite the attention he's given by those tasked with him, only watches megumi through his glasses that never come off no matter the hour or location.
as one who watches satoru, it is a cosmic kind of irony that megumi doesn't notice he is being watched back not in so dissimilar a fashion.
the floor of this place is quite clean. this is what his line of sight tells him at present, and the nearness of sukuna is not enough to make him look at him again nor budge further or closer. he stays still, the kind of motionless expected of bond maids in old money clans, where one is as soon beautiful furniture as a person with more function outside of utility and aesthetic. ]
[ It's faint, but he scents it like a shark might sense a plume of blood in a far ocean; the boy bends to touch as easily as anything; allows it, even the invasive pawing, the pulling. Of course, Gojou would have known this, would have been aware that this suits Sukuna's tastes exactly, that he would take an interest the second that he met this strange boy. Sukuna knows very well when he is being lead into a plot, and it seems that the Gojou clan seeks to manufacture a weakness for him, to gift him with a blind spot. Well, they overestimate his heart, he supposes— it is the most insufficient of all his organs; there's only hunger in it, only consumption. They've put their worm on a hook— he'll capsize them before he allows himself to be taken in.
He can feel the boy's loneliness as surely as he can smell the perfume from the hostesses that sit near them. It's there, infusing the circumstances, every movement and gesture. He wonders if this is Gojou's way of spiting him, of saying here's something you'll like, we see through your bravado— you are no different to this boy, who will appeal to the lonely predator that you really are. You'll know yourself in him, and then—.
He wants to sneer across at Gojou.
But, he'll take it. Who is Sukuna to ever deny himself something that he wants, even if it is presented as bait by an enemy. He doesn't particularly care for subterfuge, if they try to kill him, he will destroy them. If he decides he wants the boy for himself, forever, then he will take him. Gojou Satoru's mistake is there; he does not abide by any rules other than his own.
Deliberately, he strokes his hand against Megumi's skin; his hands aren't cold, instead he seems to burn with a vague fever— always, even the air surrounding him ticks up a degree or two. ]
And what has been set before you, hm? [ His chin tips downwards, lighting for a moment on the boy's shoulder. He smells of earth; of clean, dark woods, but there is something beneath it, and he cannot place it, despite liking it. Perhaps a cologne that has faded on his skin. Sukuna inhales, shifts closer to him to speak into his ear again. ]
Gojou likes you all too much. Why is he letting me have you? You know I'll keep you if I feel inclined.
[ Around them, the club bustles with its usual fare of customers and patrons, the dim, warm lights and plush interior make it all seem expensive; the Japanese screens and kimono hangings equally lend it an air of something old, like a tea house in Gion. This is just like Satoru, he thinks, to bring him here, to deliver him this boy. He's not even displeased; they know his tastes.
[ different people burn differently. it goes without saying and yet when faced with it, megumi finds he does not quite know what to do with the reality versus the concept. if asked to explain how this is so, he could not; he simply knows that it is true — that one such as ryomen sukuna is a hell and heaven and earth apart from gojou satoru. which stands ahead or above, he cannot say and would not perhaps even if he could. his inclination is to claim he does not care and then, too self-aware to accept this, he would have to amend:i would rather not care. sukuna's hand against his skin is as though it might leave a burn scar the same dark and permanent of his own tattoos, and when megumi shivers, he burns too; an irritable red high in his cheeks, the hollow of his throat, the tips of his ears. even in the dark, it offsets the green of his eyes in a way that can only be described as 'pretty' and it is only the very truth of who and what the two men he stands close to signify, that keeps others from staring too long.
knowledge.
and fear.
yet he does not believe that sukuna could keep him from satoru. to fushiguro megumi, there is no one stronger than his benefactor.
he blinks once; slow; thoughtful. quiet. ]
You over-estimate me, Sukuna-dono.
[ simple, to the point. he does not reply to anything other than sukuna's perceived opinion of satoru's own opinion of him. because megumi honestly is not sure satoru 'likes' him so much as finds use in him, so much as to let him go now is the same as losing. which convinces him even more-so without arguing it, that this is not meant to be a indelible handoff. the child in him from nine years ago questions that of course; is still standing in that rundown alleyway staring up at the white-haired man with the sky for his eyes and the same breadth of promise; is still softly overwhelmed with terrible hope he then boxes neatly away into a room made entirely of shadows; still.
megumi was not lying.
he is not 'often' afraid.
but when he is, it is a deep and abiding sort of fear.
a child's fear.
it hurts to be alone but it hurts especially to be left behind as the cause.
to be found after that was more important than megumi today is able to look straight into the eyes of and yet the core of him understands.
unprompted, still not looking at sukuna at all, he finds himself surprised to wonder if sukuna has ever lost anything, if he knows what it even truly means, if he even is a person who could; some can't after all and megumi has met plenty of those too. the world has more and more people without an ounce of creativity to imagine or empathy to feel, than it has those with. and on the one hand megumi's compassion may kill him, but on the other, he has no patience for those who truly like a heart. having one does not automate good or bad. he does not especially think of satoru nor sukuna as 'good'. but they are quite real; real and formidable.
and sometimes, megumi feels, almost displaced in time and space.
sometimes he feels that way about himself too.
against his skin, sukuna is warm, almost too much so.
[ A bit of a wry look lifts one of his eyebrows, and the tattoos on his face move with it like the stripes on a very large cat. He removes his hand from beneath Megumi's shirt, slinging his arm now over the back of the couch that they share, one leg crossed over the other. Sukuna has the ability of most powerful men to look as if he is sitting in his living room in very nearly any space that he occupies; there is no care for his surroundings, nothing particularly alert, although he must be (he would have to be, considering his power and position). He knows full well that he has not underestimated the boy; this interaction would not be happening were Gojo not aware of this teenager's singularity, his effect. He knows what Sukuna likes, knows what he'll want. If nothing else, it's the smartest move on his part— why not dangle something he wants in front of his eyes, a loan, to go with the repayment (handled elsewhere, by their accountants).
Sukuna glances back, into the club, over his shoulder. A part of him wants to drag the boy around Tokyo; to have him at his side for his engagements, to put a brand on him, to tell him to wear his hair pushed away from his forehead so that his green eyes strike people more brilliantly; his rarest possession, no longer Megumi's own, but his. But— not yet. Gojo is still at the table opposite, and Sukuna draws a long breath, turning to the man. ]
A month, [ He says to Gojo, eyes lazy. ]
I'd like him for a month.
[ There is a shrug from the other yakuza, and he sips his drink, smiling at Megumi from over the rims of his sunglasses. "One month," Gojo echoes. "Megumi-chan, how does that sound?"
Sukuna knows care when he sees it; he knows concern. Despite being low on both himself, he can at least recognise it; it is not a spoken thing, but he can tell that Gojo has a stake in the boy, at heart does not want him hurt. He is worried about this deal, perhaps he is realising that a mistake has been made, that he may not get Megumi back, or may only after a bloody fight between their factions, which would result in more trouble than needed.
A month is far longer than a week; a lot more damage can be done over the course of a month. It's invasive too; a week could be planned for, a month ruins any plans. But— to Sukuna, other people's lives count for very little. If Megumi has friends, or duties, or whatever it is he does when he is not Gojo's pet, well. That's none of Sukuna's concern.
The backs of Sukuna's fingers touch Megumi's neck; not a brand, but good enough for now. It's intimate too; laying against the pulse point like a lover's might. ]
We'll get along just fine, you and I. [ He murmurs, but it's a pretty cold comfort. His reputation is well known. But still— the chemistry from earlier between them is there, like static where skin touches skin. ]
[ unsurprisingly, megumi says nothing; merely inclines his head a respectful angle towards gojou and then straightens up again, as if seamlessly in time for the touch of sukuna's fingers to his neck. he feels he should dislike it more, reject it on a near primitive level; he belongs to the gojou clan; he belongs to satoru. and yet that is as property belongs to someone perhaps more than anything more. don't put more into something than actually exists. he tried to remind himself over the years; he is still trying, especially when gojou shows him some concern now of all times when he should not show any such obvious hand. sukuna would have noticed anyway, it is quite possible. no one present has gotten where they are by luck except perhaps megumi himself.
and even then, he is not sure he would call what is transpiring now, 'luck'.
that he does not outright hate sukuna's touch or his stare says more than he would like as well, but some things cannot be wholly concealed without simply ceasing to exist.
precisely what satoru expects of him is yet to fully form itself. to observe, to collect information, to plant what he can if anything (probably nothing, megumi can already tell), and return. because at the very least, even if he does not know if satoru 'cares' about him beyond an adept tool loyal without trying, he knows what is expected of him. to not return would be as good as betrayal. the reason is invaluable. even death should not keep him and yet even without having known anything but his reputation, for some inexplicable reason, megumi has this thought:
he won't kill me.
just as soon as the thought comes, he compartmentalizes it away quietly. it feels dangerous to believe he is right about this sort of thing and megumi is reckless in many ways but also cautious in an equal number of others; a constantly balancing scale whose weights are fear, responsibility, need, and just enough selfish want that proves even shadows harbor fire. a subtly deeper breath has his throat keenly aware of sukuna's touch; still not hateful; he wishes almost that it was, that this would be simple insofar as any backwards arrangement such as this can be. ]
[ The evening continues much in the same way, except Sukuna touches a hand to Megumi's waist and murmurs against his ear in a voice that promises all too much: ] Wait for me.
[ And then, he is gone like a strange figure from a fox's wedding party, into the bar with Gojo; they're off to the main area of the club to talk business at the bar, and Sukuna's men close in on the table, their heads shaved in the way of a yakuza's henchmen; respectful and with eyes cast down.
Sukuna doesn't return to the table again, and neither does Gojo. Instead, Megumi is escorted outside to the bright, late night of the Ginza street. Geisha and hostesses alike pass by on their various ways to and from work; kimonos worn at night are far more jewel-toned and as multiform as the wings of butterflies— only ever at night, of course, which unlike butterflies, is when the floating world wakes. There are no day-lit hours here, it's the night's creatures and strange characters who populate the streets; and then of course, there is Ryomen Sukuna.
He pushes the car door open from the inside with a foot as it pulls up beside Megumi.
Something about him, despite the kimono that he wears (the neck of it gaping so much that his entire chest with all of its intricate tattoos is visible; strong muscles and the fine knit of ribs all on display like he cares next to nothing for any kind of propriety; like he disregards it on purpose, deliberately wanting to be contrary and cause people to turn and stare at him— first in surprise, and then in fear), seems so immediate and modern, as if the century had been born in anticipation of and for him, instead of the reverse. ]
Did you think I'd forget you? [ He asks, on a throaty burr, his tone low but it carries anyway; this is the way of men who are used to giving orders— he expects people to lean in to listen, instead of raising his voice to accommodate. ] I didn't.
[ Everyone knows that Sukuna lives in Kabukicho. It's well known that he has the best house in the worst, tackiest neighbourhood. It's a short taxi ride from Ginza over that way— but naturally there are no taxis for the yakuza kingpin. The black car is private, with a driver in the front.
The rumours of Sukuna are this: he stands at his vast window in his vast penthouse, right at the top of the tallest residential tower in Shinjuku, and he watches the bloodied lights of the town's nightlife that he owns, watches the figures of that world walking far beneath him like a feudal overlord from a thousand years ago.
This is also well known: people have entered his house and have not left.
This is rumoured, but not confirmed: he eats human flesh.
This is certain: he pays off the police, and would never be caught if he did.
He reaches out of the car now, and offers Megumi his hand.
He's missing neither of his pinky fingers; a yakuza in the prime of his career who has never knelt before another yakuza. He had lobbed off the left hand of his boss himself when told to kneel (this is common knowledge too). Kneeling before emperors, whatever form they take, regardless of the century, sets Sukuna's teeth on edge.
His hand is warm and gentle, though— like a silken pelt that hides venomous claws. ]
How lucky, I have you alone at last, Megumi-chan. [ The nickname said in an imitation of Gojo's voice. ]
[ ryomen sukuna exists like a real-life myth. the way people describe him is not unlike how people also speak of gojou satoru — "he who unbalanced the floating world" — but if gojou is the cancelling of its secret gravity then perhaps sukuna is the millennia old earth, its core in its roots neither trees nor blooms but something molten despite its darkness, a night-sun. most people in this world grow up knowing those names and the implications that come chained to them as shadows to the bodies in any given light.
megumi spent six years of his life before that knowing became his own as well.
at gojou's place — well, one of them, — are the animal vestiges of that childhood. he wonders if sukuna would let him have kon, and then he wonders if it would be safe for his oldest friend; by the time the car pulls up, he has already decided not to ask.
standing outside, it is an old practice at this point to ignore the stares. when they go out, business or otherwise, megumi submits himself to gojou's hand and tries not to look too closely at why. if it has anything to do with the rare and strangely gentle contact, if it has anything to do with the look of approval he always receives after, if there are these worn down stones in the river of himself that still want to feel like they serve a purpose; these are their own kinds of gravity and they pool in constant insistence on the subconscious of fushiguro megumi like a black hole.
his heart is conversely an anchor; his morals both dynamic and yet rigid all at once; his actions: decided. debt. proof. worth.
sukuna reminds him of a predatory cat somehow and he wonders if that would be offensive to a man so feared people go out of their ways not to be noticed by him (without success; everyone knows that the rumor that sukuna 'sees everything' is not without basis.) once in the car, megumi both permits and slightly ignores the way there is nothing else to focus on. sukuna and gojou are alike in that way too.
the deft sweep of eyeliner accentuates the shape of megumi's eyes, surprisingly large, unexpectedly green, and always a strange balance of perceived calm and too much thought. he was once told if he kept over-thinking things he would go bald, and that not everything in life had an answer; at the time, he agreed. come to it, he still agrees now, but his perspective has shifted. not everything has an answer, yes; but that does not mean he can stop seeking the chance of it. there are only a handful of things — less — that megumi must do: ensure tsumiki is taken care of, do his best for kon and the rare existence in this city of nue — a bird of prey so large only the gojou 'estate' befits him, despite not being in the city and meaning megumi rarely sees it, repay gojou satoru whatever the cost.
this, tonight, this week, this month, however long, falls into the last.
lowering his gaze to his folded hands, megumi says nothing in reply at first, only after a moment saying, quietly, ]
It is temporary.
[ though his words are polite and mild, the point is sharp and clear. a slight tilt of megumi's head causes the lights outside to catch on his earrings, the facets of them so many and meticulous the sky of them almost seems ablaze. it is at polar contrast with megumi's eyes, still downcast and fanned by his lashes in a way that makes them shadowed and a bit strange though no less pretty. once, gojou told him he couldn't stand to look at him because he looked so much like his father, but that was when megumi was six and things change over nine years.
whether or not megumi ever finds out it was gojou who killed fushiguro toji is yet to be seen.
a soft breath brings into his lungs again the old fire sukuna somehow scents of, like a fire in a forest that's just after rain, deep in the mountains older than any human being, tinged with something that reminds megumi of temples and folklore. he concedes this, however silently: sukuna is as impressive in presence as the hearsay would lead one to believe. but that given, he is still human.
sometimes megumi is not certain he entirely understands what that means either though, and perhaps that says something as to his absence of fear. what he 'recognizes' in sukuna are the animal likenesses and less the human politics of a world such as the one he reigns over.
the way megumi bends his head causes even his bespoke suit to gape at the back of his neck ("megumi-chan eat this, you're wasting away on me." - "shut up please.") and it is little things that often speak most loudly of wealth: take for example, the smoothness of the skin there, everywhere on him in truth, the moon quality of him, the neatly groomed part of his hair that somehow seems unruly but styled, softer in-person than photos seem to convey, trimmed neatly at the nape as if to show off that part of him; and in a way, it is, not so much when he wears the suit as kimono but perhaps that is neither here nor there. suffice to say: gojou takes care of what he deems his.
and megumi, because he cannot help certain parts of himself, holds onto that fact. ]
All things are temporary, [ Sukuna tells the boy, dropping his chin into his palm, and looking at him a bit flatly, though he can't stop one eyebrow from arching, the tattoos moving with it. ] We'll see just where on the scale this is.
[ It's clear enough in the way that the atmosphere of the car halts, that he's not all that pleased with that response. It's not a chill that runs through it so much as the air stops its lazy motion altogether; a feeling, a sense— Sukuna makes the spaces that he inhabits suit him, and they bend for him; turning silent or jovial by turns. The boy is not afraid of him in any way— it's a new thing for the yakuza, he's so inured to terror, used to people cowering from him when he passes, and he likes that; that is the sort of reaction he has worked long and hard to instil (but not so long, and not so hard— not really; the growth there was organic, earned media, if you will. You kill enough people, and the crowds sit up and take notice. He's not some baby bosuzoku with a motorcycle who causes the ojijis to cower at the convenience store counter; he has the city by its throat, the politicians on payroll; this is a career to him, a vocation).
This boy isn't afraid, he thinks. Spoilt in the laps of the Gojo-gumi, he must think he's the prize here.
One pair of green eyes, and a pair of blue diamond earrings, and the child thinks its a princeling. Sukuna has plans to change that view quickly.
He wonders what Gojo will think if he sends the boy back flayed and quartered.
A war would be refreshing, it's been too long since the old clans got to test their mettle in an outright gang war. The eighties were the real days, and the crash muzzled them in the nineties. What a pity, but who knows. He glances over at Megumi, eyeing the boy's fine features. An elegant set, an expensive looking thing. He wants him, naturally, but he wants him in the way that he wants things bought with such a conditional contract that the thing changes form in his hands.
He wants the boy to ask to be brought over, away from his handlers.
That's victory, that's loyalty. He wonders if it's best to win it with the usual cruelty. ]
You think I'll return you?
[ Something nasty enters his voice. The first real sound of the evening— a snarl; it curls in his throat like a claw.
He looks over, eyes catching the light of the passing nightlife: red. Bloodied and red. ]
I don't do business with the Gojo-gumi. There's no deal here.
[ A sneer, and he doesn't touch Megumi at all, chin raising with an imperious tilt. ]
I don't think business is necessary for him to reacquire me.
[ how megumi speaks of himself might be concerning to others, but to megumi himself it is merely fact. it helps in life to know 'what' one is, and if he has to choose a word it would sooner be property than person. if the forest could be contracted by the sea-sky then that would be him and gojou, at a constant proximity of vision, a given. the diamonds in his ears are reminders of it; to whom he belongs. other evidences always fade with time but in megumi's mind they are quite fresh. so sukuna speaks and he hears him, has no doubts that others bend before him with less.
but he is not 'others'.
he meets that gaze mildly with his own, unwavering for now. ]
Rudeness is not my intention. I just think it is important for all of us to be on the same page.
[ only then does he return his focus to the car window, watching lights and shadows as riveting as anything, his hands folded neat and polite in his lap, his back straight and poised in a manner that reeks of how he was 'raised' by gojou not because it is proper but because it is beautiful, and in the modern era — perhaps any era —, beauty is a form of power. not being afraid of sukuna is its own problem and curiosity. he supposes it could be simply explained away by his faith in gojou but somehow it does not feel like that alone.
he wonders what he has to glean in his time with sukuna, what he has to drag back with his own body, to be told he did well; then he loathes himself for wondering.
none of this shows, not exactly. unless sukuna is fluent in seemingly frenetic twitches of megumi's tapered fingers, or a flutter of lashes when he blinks a little too hard for the night hour, maybe some. but even then, not much. a stray versed in strays, in shadows, in quiet places, megumi too is a quiet place, glittering here and there with impressions of both those who are important to him as well as those who deem him important.
Well, then we're on the same page. [ A glance at Megumi, the lights of Shinjuku glancing off of Sukuna's as they drive past the entertainment district. ] See? I can be pleasant. We'll get along just fine.
[ Sukuna's brows arch, and he sits back in his seat, slouching like the oddly casual creature that he is, and his fingers steeple. Whatever that Gojo's lot are up to with this, he doesn't intend to find out. He'll have his fun with the boy, and if he develops a liking for him (too late for that, he supposes; it's the eyes), then he'll keep him. Whether or not Gojo wants him back is besides the point; he'll have to, in Megumi's words, reacquire him.
It's the twitch in the boy's hands that he notices.
Though they are not alike, not in any way— if anything, Sukuna would be the perfect converse to Megumi's gentle calm. Rooms flicker to life or dim as his mood changes; his impression of Megumi is that that atmosphere must turn to a lull; not one of boredom, but one of calm. Though they are not alike— Sukuna knows a stray when he sees one. Having no name himself, having come from a family without history, without a legacy, he was the violent converse of Megumi's path. He'd take it over this sort of un-resistance any day; Sukuna has only ever known how to be a bloodied sword in a crowd; it seems Megumi knows how to be whatever he must be. The twitch in the boy's hands is the quiet tell; he hates this, the whole thing, all of it— perhaps, Sukuna muses, even Sukuna himself. He wonders then, if it is Megumi who will be the one to slip the final knife between his second and third ribs; upward, and to the right.
He leans forwards; sitting up very suddenly, movement like an animal's; acting on a whim that came to him as quickly as the coil of muscle propelled him.
He speaks to the driver, only ever with that lilt of wryness in his tone: ] Take us to the Shinjuku place, not the house.
[ All good yakuza keep a grand estate just outside of Tokyo. He had assumed that Gojo would assume that he would take the boy out there; like a beast dragging something to its den. Well, not so.
Sitting back, he looks over at Megumi, and reaches out, a hand closing on the boy's hand, stilling that very slight tremor. ]
I'll show you the apartment instead. You must be tired of estates and lawns—
[ A beat, then, a stroke of his thumb against the boy's soft wrist. ]
—Gojo's property.
[ Bad joke. He smiles at it (no matter what, he always seems to find himself terribly funny). He takes up that hand in his own, but not to hold, to look at; as one would do with property, his words only ringing truer. ]
Well. Something you have in common with his house, I trust. You enjoy that?
[ there is a part of megumi that wants to answer. there is a part of megumi that never wants to answer. and then there is the space between these parts as if the division of one half of the body and the other, a part not apart. he has the wherewithal to wish he was more offended and the certainty of his debt to cement the fact that he simply is not. property. that is an old term. it seems almost as a criticism and a compliment from sukuna and he does not know why; others have used it and in those instances megumi cringed behind his neutrality and felt foolish for the reassurance of gojou's hand at his waist.
tsumiki once drew constellations on the soft pale flesh of his forearm. she made them up because she said they were his. gojou once made a line with his fingertip from the corner of megumi's eye down to the hollow of his throat and told him he shouldn't trust him. where the appraisal of red eyes and sharp nails falls amongst these memories has yet to be seen. there is no reason for megumi to believe sukuna is interested in him any other way than as a tool in regards to the ongoing not-quite hostility between gangs, clans, and whatever else goes on when he blinks.
he blinks now too, slow, unbothered to the inattentive eye. ]
Does it matter?
[ it ends up being more of a genuine question than he intended, which means he regrets those words; but he does not take them back, instead turning his head away again. to ask what is wanted of him feels pointless; he will find out inevitably or else why is he here to begin with? if he unfocuses his vision, things become soft shadows and lights and the faint presence of smoke or fire he knows is from sukuna, as if he harbors that kind of primordial heat like a mythical being. it is the kind of dark summer that draws shadows in as natural as a breath.
the only other presence as overwhelming as this that megumi has ever experienced was indeed gojou satoru, gojou with his sky eyes and gravityless sensibility of things, satoru who placed his earrings and told him to never take them out, benefactor and...what else? a constant in megumi's life that is neither dog nor bird nor the quiet sense of an empty place that might have been an apartment or an alley or a dark night where everything changed with that terrible silent lack of permission. yet gojou satoru makes sense; it has been nine years.
and despite his sometimes-efforts, megumi is the constellation tsumiki saw him for all those years: trying far out past his actual lifespan.
the vulnerability of caring.
none of it explains the odd draw he feels to the person beside him that is simultaneous to his rejection of him.
it is this awareness that has him leaning his forehead to the window, and when he exhales the window fogs softly like even megumi's breath would rather not be intrusive. this particular angle of his head causes the lights outside to throw the diamonds' refractions out in tiny lances of blue, as if in peculiar warning the way some animals use their colors to entice or discourage, audience depending. ]
[ When Sukuna raises an eyebrow; or actually, when he makes any expression at all (and he does— all the time; there is a multitude of Sukuna expressions in his repertoire; ranging from the bawdy to the outright ridiculous)—all of the tattoos on his face move along with it as if in emphases, like the sliding, rippling pelts of tigers. His eyebrow arches now, the strange, sharp symbol at the center of his forehead shifting over to one side along with the pull of skin. ]
Am I boring you, Fushiguro Megumi? [ He sits back in his seat, not even looking mad about it. He watches the boy breathe against the window, the faintest cloud blurring the glass as if he wishes to keep even his own breath to himself. Sukuna's lip curls; he doesn't take his eyes off the boy. ]
I suspect you're used to this sort of thing.
[ This sort of thing. He waves a hand in the air as if to encompass whatever exactly that means. Being sent home with the various clientele and allies and enemies of the Gojo clan. Being in cars with yakuza of ill-repute.
A shrug. ]
My, my. I suppose I'll have to work harder to entertain you.
[ With Sukuna: this could mean a whole array of things. Whether they are or aren't good— well. It would be a very small, very specific lot that would be pleased to hear that. Particularly given his reputation.
But still— there is no real compulsion in him to torment the boy; there's a quietness to Megumi that does not actually irritate or cause issue with him. It's quietness combined with gentleness that he senses from him; and some faint, near-dead part of his heart knows that the boy's hands would be cool and that he'd be kind and attentive, that he'd be able to lay his head in the boy's narrow lap and feel those hands on his face. Dangerous, he thinks. There's a good reason why Gojo is infatuated with him, why it's Megumi who is his trump card in the long-running cold war against Sukuna's faction.
The car pulls into a vast, upscale hotel building, driving through the below-ground tunnel with its golden lights, to the double doors that slide open; staff standing on either side. Sukuna's men are out first, to open the door.
The yakuza steps out with a roll of his shoulders, and offers a hand to help Megumi on the step down. ]
Don't think I forgot your question.
[ He's keeping his voice low; that treacherous, throaty purr, just for Megumi, hand still out in offer. ]
And yes, what you enjoy does matter.
[ There are two ways to say that; Sukuna chooses the latter: full of implication, and a smirking, teasing glint of teeth in his crook of a smile. ]
[ it is not his first time hearing those words. throughout his life, gojou satoru has said them to him almost like an incantation, as if he truly cares that megumi understand this on a level that goes beyond the textbook meaning and enters something more experiential. sometimes it would sound as if they were different words anyway, 'what you enjoy does matter' becoming 'you can be honest' becoming 'trust me'. it is not that megumi does not want to trust satoru; he already does in many ways, or he would not have entered the situation he has been in nor the one he is in now. the flicker flame of blue diamonds like not-yet dead stars is a physical acknowledgment of that trust. he can't say the same for how he feels regarding the offered hand, but that is not what troubles him most.
here and there, time and again, fushiguro megumi gets blindsided by something he cannot afford to name.
a memory buried: a man who megumi resembles holding him both tight and impossibly careful as if he's never been able to protect a single thing that truly mattered to him in his life. megumi does not recall. but the feeling remains. there is that phrase: sometimes even if the mind forgets, the body remembers. sometimes megumi wakes with his hand seeming to be reaching for that which has not been there for long enough to be forgotten; it hurts.
or: the curl of satoru's long slender fingers at the back of his neck grounding him rather than irritating him, suddenly so sharp and prevalent megumi can feel how he breathes and how he does not only look but truly sees him in a way that is so overwhelming as to thieve the breath out of him entirely. words that accompany such moments: "there you are." still here. still as close to belonging as he's ever been; a function and a role is as good as anyone gets in this world perhaps.
or: this, the lick of a flame at his ankles embodied in an outstretched hand and eyes that never seem to leave him.
if megumi were an animal, some would say he would be a dog and others a cat and neither would be wrong. some would say he would be extremely loyal and they would not be wrong. and some would say if you leave him alone in the truest sense of the word for long enough, he'll suffer even if he never says so, even if that life-or-death loyalty simply locks him into a self-possessed waiting room. a dog. a cat. a boy in an alley or in an estate or at the wealth clad foot of a yakuza's metropolitan domain. these are not different things and that is the problem.
that is the danger.
despite his best effort, megumi looks away. his hand reaches out not even a breath before retracting and letting himself out of the car, standing of his own accord, and managing with an old courtesan's grace to somehow step out in front of sukuna without conveying offense. pale hands stay folded behind his back and his head is inclined not so much in respect but an effort to keep his gaze somewhere away from that smile and the effect of a focus so singular impressed upon him. ]
I admit I don't follow. I am not here for you to entertain me, though I am here by your request.
[ this he says as quiet as a shrug, mild and true; the moon reflecting back the sun because that is what it does. at the same time, he does not outright offer to entertain the yakuza lord either. ]
[ Sukuna says, and his hand, just for a moment, touches very deliberately to the small of Megumi's back; just at the dip of his spine in a casual, though emphatic press. The doors to the building slide open; a private entryway, naturally— it looks more like a hotel lobby than anything else, though there's a curious minimalism to the architecture that invokes some hint of a temple in its lofty silence, but the dim, warm lights are those expensive finishes of first class restaurants. Sukuna waves off his cronies, and they disappear back to the car, effectively dismissed, and he steers Megumi, a hand briefly guiding him by the point of his shoulder, towards a line of tall elevator doors. ]
You're like those kabukicho girls, the hostesses.
[ He glances at Megumi, sidelong, and smiles; a little crooked, his tattoos shifting as he does, exaggerating his expressions to the point that they're nearly comical. ]
You're that type. You know, I heard a story—
[ The doors ping, and open to them; the interior of the elevator is no different to the rest of the building; all honeyed lights and a vague hint of some overpriced architect's portfolio. Seeming to feel that he might lose Megumi to a wrong turn, Sukuna steers him here, too, and presses the number for the penthouse (gone seem to be the rules of engagement; the superior is supposed to take the back of the elevator, supposed to leave the pressing of the floor number to the younger or the inferior— Sukuna does not have time for those who act like shoguns in their own houses; instead he takes over, wants to do everything himself, by his own hand). ]
A girl in that forty-something club— you know the one, the women all have the same surgery. Anyway, [ He— seems to like to talk; stories come naturally to Sukuna; his voice belongs to a different time, like an aural relic that does not belong in this modern elevator. ] —a girl gave a client her business card as he left the club, but it was the one that she'd written her customer schedule on the back of, for herself. All of the men had vulgar nicknames, and she'd made sarcastic notes of their conversations, right on the back of her meishi. The guy posted it on the internet because she'd called him baldy.
[ He hisses a soft sound of bemusement, and his hand finds Megumi's lower back again as the floors ping past. ]
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you were a woman, you'd have top spot at those clubs, by virtue of just how much you keep to yourself.
[ Sukuna seems to find this idea rather entertaining, and he eyes Megumi then with an arch look, mood still very agreeable for the moment; hand a warm, companionable slant against his back, thumb drawing back and forth against the fine fabric of the boy's jacket. ]
[ to repeat himself serves little to no purpose, but megumi ends up wondering it anyway: does it matter? he is not here to be known or recognized; he is not anywhere in time or place for such a thing. rather he exists on the stable anchor's curve of his sister's health and his long-lasting history with one gojou satoru. it is that the diamonds in his ears are blue, not zen'in green; it is that the books of stars in his room at any one of gojou's places are reliably from one or the other, with the rare outlier from the one called nanami. his world is small and that world exists in a much bigger marble of a thing the balance of which seems to oscillate in a way he does not care for but also cannot change.
i wonder if anyone in the world knows you at all.
it would not please sukuna to know satoru has already asked him this and that they both have spoken it similarly to him though at very different points in his life: the answer is no. perhaps not even himself, though at least one might argue that the self is often the last to be familiar because we can't help it. whatever the reason, it somehow has little bearing on megumi's answer, which, when he raises his head to glance up mildly, is the same soft-spoken neutrality as before. ]
How many people in the world know you?
[ how a question can be neutral, one would have to enact a conversation with megumi's tone incarnate. but somehow he manages, not stepping 'away' from sukuna's hand so much as stepping towards the elevator doors as they open.
a slight turn of his head has light catching on the blue in his ears as the green in his eyes, refracts the colors back into each other until they are casts of the originals. anything of sukuna's is neither impressive nor unimpressive. it is not like megumi has never been in the penthouse of someone with power and money; he is gojou satoru's ward after all. well. "ward". if anything bothers him now, it is how his own mind keeps returning to how satoru set this up despite asking him without asking: is this okay? does he not know him well enough now to understand? megumi who says 'no' day to day has done himself a disservice it may be, in that when it matters most, 'no' is not something in his wheelhouse, not in the position of one who may serve a purpose. how could he?
his preoccupation might do better to focus on the man behind him, but it is that distinct lack of fear in the ex-zen'in that keeps him from doing so. if the warmth of sukuna's hand at his back almost seemed to burn, well, no matter. and if the notion that he is not to be returned also felt too true than boast, well, he must handle that when it comes to pass.
megumi has a habit.
he tells himself things are fine. he tells himself things are fine. he tells himself things are fine.
it's fine.
outside, so high up, here is the delusion of touching the sky but megumi knows better than that.
[ And for an answer like that, he certainly does flash a grin that turns the whole thing on its head. The expression melts in a moment, turning into a put-upon moue. ]
Maybe I'll tell you a thing or two. If you ask me, very nicely.
[ And then, the boy is away from him; slippery thing, this one— he likes the idea of taking Gojo Satoru's toys, but he also doesn't like it when they don't play along. Or— well. He could learn to like this one, he supposes; he likes pretty things; likes collectables. But also the impression of gentleness has not faded yet, and he has the feeling that this boy is precious to the clan head for a reason that he has not yet fathomed, but has the outline of set in his mind. Some men do not understand what it is that they have; he suspects that this is the case here.
He wonders, if Megumi belonged to him in the way he does to the Gojo clan, if he would part from him so easily.
There's an answer for that almost immediately: what has Ryomen Sukuna ever let go of that does not have bloodied claw marks raked through it?
He's no bleeding heart, but he has always been a jealous man.
The doors open to reveal the penthouse; that same dim lighting stretching along the length of an open-plan, vast suite. It's rather showy, of course; the walls are hung with kimono and tapestries that probably were stolen from a museum, but also potentially bought on an auction so private that even the museums were unaware of them. There's a certain Japanese sensibility in the place; Sukuna seems fond of this— a lot of yakuza fancy themselves more modern, these days, like to parade around in suites at the Ritz-Carlton in Roppongi, or at the top of the Grand Hyatt, but his lair seems more like a transplant from an old temple; something cut from much older flesh and stitched a bit roughly into the facade of a very sleek Shinjuku skyscraper.
Well.
First thing's first.
He walks up, behind Megumi, closing the space between them to take his jacket. The mobster leans in, speaks against the boy's ear in his drawling, purred voice: ] I think it'll be better for you if you take out those earrings and put them somewhere for safe keeping.
[ The suit jacket he sets aside, over the back of an armchair (mid-century modern; he's got a few expensive looking pieces that don't appear to be antique).
He doesn't back off though, stalking in, close once more, but not touching. ]
Or I'll take them out for you.
[ Bloodied ears won't be as pretty, but hey. Anything to upset the Gojo lot. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
that yakuza au 👀👀
As bland at it is bloody, it inhales people and expels machinery— trains and tangled electricity wires, rooted into the ground over the remains of Edo. At night, it simmers; this is what Sukuna likes; when the stark, bleached sky turns red and the tower's lights gleam over Roppongi, when Kabukicho becomes the floating world once again instead of a non-descript suburb of Shinjuku's downtown.
There are different kinds of Yakuza.
There are those who work as businessmen work; with their booming, ice-cold pachinko parlours, open 24 hours and carefully situated deep in the politician's pockets, attending strategy meetings with their staff as if they were an obscure and unimportant Olympic planning committee.
There are the old guard; the known names — the ones in sprawling estates with family characters carved onto their gates as naked as day; Gojou-gumi, Zenin-gumi — these are the sort who are called to attend political meetings, who bow to the emperor.
There are yakuza, and then there are yakuza.
Ryomen Sukuna is the latter.
Seven generations back, a blood relative had drawn his sword on bended knee and lobbed off the left hand of the emperor, and the bloodshed had begun there— and never ended.
There is no name for the clan, their name was struck off in disgrace. Instead, the name Sukuna has been held against the country's throat; the name of a minor deity, the name of a demon. They say he is the flesh of a god, the bloodline of a curse. No one is actually sure; everyone is superstitious enough to believe the rumours. Sukuna is not the sort to correct them, why would he when he himself feels the old line in his veins; when people bend to him with a glance. Who is he to say that a demon's blood doesn't spread through him?
It might as well.
He meets Gojou Satoru in Ginza, because the man loves a high class Kyabakura where the girls all wear kimono. Not like the flashy clubs in Sukuna's town Shinjuku, where their surgeries turn their eyes three times their original size, and they arrive in fur coats like reimagined Hollywood stars. But— taste is taste, he supposes.
There is a territory dispute to discuss and, as usual, Gojou owes him money. That's the old guard for you, he thinks, with a smirk at one of the girls; they blow everything on their estates and their hostesses and it's all a good show without any real bite. But, he appreciates theatricality, and Gojou certainly has a flair for it.
The boy is a nice touch.
He looks out of place in the club; brought in by Gojou with a flourish of his hand and a gleam of blue behind his sunglasses (what sort of yakuza acts like a celebrity host club's no.1? This one). Sukuna attends his meetings in a black kimono — the stripes of his tattoo run down his neck, across his face, around his forearms. He looks like a warlord at a council, like something from somewhere else, and from long, long ago.
The girls all know Gojou, and they know of Sukuna— this is a professional place, no need to make introductions or bow with the delivery of business cards. The mama-san waits their table herself.
Sukuna watches the boy.
Green eyes, he sees. Even in low light. Green as a gaijin's. He must be mixed or they are contacts; he wonders if Gojou had a doctor do it— he suspects a procedure would explain the blue of the clan head's own.
They talk shop and ignore the girls; Gojou's taste in alcohol is expensive, but Sukuna dislikes champagne so they drink the strong sake. Gojou's hand eventually finds the boy's knee and it is permitted; a faint tightening about the pretty mouth leads Sukuna to suspect that this has been a long-standing arrangement. He always heard that the head of the Gojou-gumi likes them young. He's not one to judge; after all, it's rumoured that Sukuna likes them dead and served at dinner.
"Megumi," Gojou slurs lightly, happily drunk. "Megumi, meet Sukuna-dono, Sukuna's our very gracious—" he winks, "—ally."
Gojou is never as drunk as he pretends to be, Sukuna knows.
He leans in close, smells sandalwood (like a temple monk, he wants to bark a laugh) and nods his head once in introduction; the dip of it like a snake's.
When he smiles, it's as good as bared teeth. ]
You have my name, boy. And now I have yours.
y e s
long fingers curl on his knee and he sighs. they've spoken about this before: it's childish and there isn't any need. satoru's way of reminding of a claim that goes deeper than convenient finance and choiceless blood; satoru's ...satoruness. megumi's sigh in this half-light is completely lost but it does happen and the slight pull of his expression is its substitute. it is not that he minds the touch; satoru is one of the few individuals, in fact, the only one left properly sentient on this plane, who he both permits and, privately, invites. an attempt at distance is futile with satoru who is the one to both make and break the rules whether of their own contract or that of one left behind upon megumi's shoulders by a father who died too young as if chasing the mother who died even earlier. rather than touch, it is satoru's falsified drunkenness. can he not tell that sukuna-dono can see through it? no. megumi is sure that he can. so why the farce?
a sigh dies premature again and when sukuna addresses him, megumi looks up at him through long lashes and a veil of green suited to winter more than summer. ]
I —
[ somehow the way that sukuna leans in is both slow and fast, composed, measured, reminiscent of certain animals megumi is familiar with because he has always gotten along better with them; understood them. megumi himself is reminiscent of a rabbit stunned or a deer in headlights, conscious somehow without thinking about it too much, that to not move is preferred. even his inhales and exhales have a stillness like some kind of externalized dead sea. he neither smiles back nor frowns despite feeling the inclination to do so. being brought into this life early, he does know vaguely how to keep up appearances, and when entering certain environments is prepared to do so. it is the opposite rather of how he is day-to-day, where caught off-guard, his lies are transparent, but more often than not, megumi simply does not traffic in them to begin with. ]
what does he know already of ryomen sukuna? not much. the man keeps his enigma only tandem with his power in the known circles as well as the lesser articulated. there is a reason satoru meets with him tonight and megumi knows before he is asked that he will be enlisted to do more than bow his head and say hello; not that he bows his head. sukuna is too close for that, and there is the excuse of decorum and the weird unwritten rule of who megumi 'belongs' to that both controls and protects him. but he is not newborn nor stupid. he lets his gaze fall in a way that somehow conveys the right amount of respect and acknowledgment, the calibre of elegance reserved in another life for a palace court. ]
There is nothing secretive about it, Sukuna-dono.
[ 'megumi'. blessing. he's not sure it suits him; but it is his, regardless. ]
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And then, there is this too: Sukuna has owned many lovely things.
And, now they're all gone, so it's time for a new one. Over his sunglasses, Gojou watches the exchange between himself and this Megumi; Sukuna feels the man's gaze on the side of his face like the threat of a blade; he already knows something precious would not be given up with such ease. There must be a catch in this; he ought to wring the boy's neck where he sits, just to force it out of them. These clan heads with their subterfuge and their trickery; they think they can creep beneath his skin, into his bed like that?
Well. Perhaps he'll just let them. Then they'll see. ]
Megumi. [ He says it like he's trying it out, testing the word. Then, he says it again, and it's an invocation, the snap of a leash: ] Little Megumi.
[ Sukuna reaches out, something sharp about his fingers, calluses beneath them, and grips Megumi's jaw, forcing the boy's head sideways. Gojou does not react, however he seems as if he is about to; he has paused where he was refilling one of the woman's glasses (the hostess's job, however, it makes them laugh when he does it). ] That's a girl's name. Fitting, isn't it.
[ A wrinkle of his nose, and he sneers a smile. ]
Aren't you cute.
[ He lets go, finally, and his eyes narrow in a pleased, feline way at the livid marks that have been left behind, dark against the pale skin. He sees the glance that flickers from Gojou to the boy; so he cares about this one, then. Useful, Sukuna supposes, and picks up his own refilled sake cup, watching the pair of them over the brim and lounging back against the seat like a feudal lord; the picture of a different era, a different stretch of history.
He tilts his head back and yawns. ]
This is all very pleasant, Gojou, but— [ His gaze returns to Megumi and he smiles; wide and toothy. ] Make the boy strip.
no subject
years ago, the comment about his name would have made him hiss like a stray cat.
tonight, he simply raises his gaze at the remark and holds it there, not a challenge but not quite clean acceptance either as if to say without saying: and what of it?
then sukuna lets go. megumi makes no move to touch where he can feel evidence of sukuna's interest and demonstration.
satoru on the other hand curves fingers at megumi's tapered waist and draws him close without looking at him, eyes still carefully on sukuna over the edge of his glasses, all of this expression hinged together and also held apart by a smile that is not a smile. if sukuna's was a baring of teeth, gojou's is less animal and no less deliberate glimmer of a knife. in another era and another world, this conversation would never happen. there is that sense of things; a liminal space for two improbably powerful beings, as well as megumi -- powerful in his own right but perhaps not fully realized despite satoru's best efforts.
the hand at megumi's waist tightens then slips away entirely as gojou affects a laugh that is cold and he says, all still while not glancing at megumi at all, "you heard him, megumi-chan."
but he does not have to signal or code anything for megumi to understand, megumi who unbuttons the single fastener of his suit jacket -- the silk of which would take care of a small country in cost -- then drapes it over his own arm as neat and unobtrusive as a serving towel. he stops there, pauses, then seems to reconsider and drapes it over the back of the chair he previously sat in.
there is no further move to disrobe and it may be clear there will be nothing else unless one counts the cheat of megumi's bare ankles at the perfectly cropped hem of his pants. his shirt is also black, and it's the kind of outfit with its polished shoes and the blue earrings (tiny diamond studs the color of satoru's eyes), that to a trained look would be shocking and to everyone else would look like nothing special. over the years, megumi has unintentionally gotten accustomed to a level of both comfort and wealth. even down to the food he eats. this is of course inclusive of his wardrobe. what he wears tonight isn't special but it is all made for him specifically, and that in and of itself says enough perhaps.
what sukuna receives for a removed jacket: the waist already mostly shown given the fit of the suit but a bit more-so now.
and megumi's green eyes, watchful.
he would suit the glade of a wood as soon as the artificial light of a metropolis, perhaps more than.
where sukuna touched him will bruise and megumi won't think of it as much as satoru will but that's between them.
mostly. ]
no subject
His hand raises now, fingers unfurling in a gesture that commands and summons simultaneously; the black rings about his wrist showing dark and inky against his tanned forearm. ]
Come here.
[ Gojou watches, drinking with the hostess girls, and Sukuna keeps his hand held out, the palm open, fingers extended.
There are some people who fill a room with their smiles; Sukuna fills it to bursting, forces the air out of it, strangles it so that the attention of everyone is on him, and he reaches for Megumi now, and that attention turns to a vacuum, like dark water too thick to swim in. ]
My, my, [ He says, sidelong to Gojou, talking out of the side of his mouth in a comical little aside; the movement of his lip exposes a canine tooth, and while not remarkably shaped, the appearance of it at all is somewhat doggish. ] Where did you find this one.
[ Dark red eyes don't leave Megumi's. ]
Where did he find you, hm? Megumi-chan.
no subject
in another time, megumi would have as soon been an untouchable courtesan and satoru has told him as much through jokes, and once, as a warning of what he could have become even now -- this modern ugly beautiful world of those who control and those who are controlled, whether they know it or not.
megumi goes to sukuna with steps not delicate yet somehow distinct, and the absolute purposefulness with which he stops just shy of easy reach is...well, not so much of a risk. he by no means is testing sukuna; it is more that he thinks this is good enough and knows already if it is not, he will be made informed s such. this is simply how the unwritten dynamics of such a meeting tend to go; he has been to enough that went actually south to know this is nowhere near that. satoru does want him to be liked, to be admired, and to be let in; it seems to be working; so? good enough. yet neither megumi nor satoru are blind; how much of this is sukuna also allowing them in return, they cannot say, but it is at least understood: no one here is as oblivious as they allow the cards to sometimes say.
it is not, however, megumi thinks, his fault if sukuna lets him in tonight or a month from now to his detriment. and maybe some of megumi's father yet exists in him whether he knows or remembers him or not: the sense that he can do something despite most odds saying otherwise. of course for fushiguro toji it ended in an early death.
for megumi?
he can't quite imagine a future, if he's honest.
it isn't as sad as it should be.
on the street satoru says and megumi thinks wryly: in an alley more like.
stray.
a soft inhale brings again sukuna's scent of sandalwood and something else almost more like fire. the taste is not unpleasant. and megumi's eyes end up focusing on the ink around sukuna's nearest bared wrist. he wonders if they mean anything or nothing; he wonders if it hurt; he wonders if anything hurts this man who is almost myth inside and outside of the city of gangs and people who pretend it is otherwise. ]
no subject
Megumi-chan, hm? He calls you that? Funny. [ Sukuna adjusts him, so that he sits easily against him, the yakuza's teeth near his shoulder, a hand closing on Megumi's hip through the expensive fabric of those suit pants. It seems that Gojo likes to keep his pets well-clothed, and up close, the little glints of blue in the boy's ears catch his eye. A pet and not a pet then, perhaps; there is no way that Gojo Satoru would give something so precious with so little fight. A temptation? But no, they have agreed on Megumi's borrowing. How remarkable can the boy be, Sukuna thinks, and scores a gentle but deliberate line with his nail down the center of the boy's back, against the equally silken fabric of the shirt; from the first notch to the last. How remarkable does Gojo think the boy is, if he thinks that he'll have a hook in Sukuna after only a week?
He can see from here, so close, the fineness of the boy's bones; the jawline that is neither too strong nor too weak, but the perfect balance between delicate beauty and something masculine. Dark hair; his fingers drag upwards to touch it, and push beneath to the scalp, resting against the nape of his neck. ]
Satoru-san's little lost boy, are you? [ A faint sneer from Sukuna follows, and Gojo shrugs with a concessional: "Well, not anymore." ]
He passes the test. [ Sukuna tilts his head so that he's looking at Megumi's profile. He presses, fingers against the boy's skull to turn him so that they face each other, noses close. ] Would you like to spend some time with me hm, Megumi? Perhaps we can have some fun, you and I.
[ The lightness of his tone contains something a bit more sordid beneath it; he's got a very specific voice, and it never deviates too much from that baseline treacherous purr. He moves Megumi off his lap, but does not go further than that, encroaching on the boy's space entirely, a hand anchored on the back of his neck. Gojo's eyes follow them closely; Sukuna's eyes are on Megumi alone. ]
no subject
the scent of sandalwood wends with something like incense too and megumi focuses on that rather than the sharp of sukuna's nail down his spine like some kind of query more so than a warning.
and if that is not just the oddest thing so-far.
he knows sukuna is strong. one does not come by his kind of repute and fear by sheer dumb luck. satoru is not interested in the weak. these are simple truths.
listening, he only speaks once directly asked about time, fully ignoring the note about how satoru addresses him. how ridiculous it seems to him to have to explain to ryomen sukuna that more or less growing up under gojou satoru's eye and mouth means compromise because otherwise you will consistently be in a battle you cannot win. the pressure of sukuna's fingers against his head is not as rough as it could be; megumi finds himself feeling he should be more afraid, afraid at all, but he isn't and there is no particular time at the moment to mull over it; so he doesn't. instead, his expression stays neutral, borderline soft in a way that is out of place here. the shift from sukuna's lap to off is almost indiscernible, a certain invisible grace in motion megumi has had most of his life; like a shadow satoru once said and so it goes in the underworld that the head of the gojou sect has a green-eyed shadow. very few are given the honor of his name, which is only offered by satoru anyway.
there couldn't be a clearer way to say he doesn't expect sukuna to come out of this 'alive' but what that means remains gray at best.
death is not the only kind of silence and perhaps no one knows but satoru himself what he would give up for what his goals happen to be.
if megumi asked, satoru would tell him he belongs to him and what else does he need to know? but megumi will never ask and so, in essence, does satoru escape having to claim it as a truth rather than a game where real investment gets blurred with other things happening before megumi was even born, much less found in a dirty alley after the conspicuous death of the invisible man known as fushiguro toji — at satoru's own hand no less.
they don't speak of it.
at his nape, sukuna's hand rests heavier than satoru's ever has.
megumi wonders if it means anything and decides: probably not. ]
I believe it has been discussed prior, Sukuna-dono.
[ "a week, megumi. you can handle it." or so satoru had said, it megumi can never quite rid himself of this weakness: that being given responsibility feels like a kind of worth. a hand atop his head when he was seven. a hand between his shoulderblades at thirteen. a hand on his knee at sixteen. why do these things feel important? why does a quiet part of him wait for them? the diamonds in his ears are small because they are meant to make something flashy and abundant subtle to the point of being forgotten, just remembered in the moment when it counts. they weigh nothing but somehow feel heavy. none of this shows on megumi's face, and his hands fold politely in front of him. where in another life animals come to heel when he does this, in this life, nothing of the sort happens. instead there is simply the emanation of a calm that fits someone rather older; but then, 'years' in the underworld aren't what they say on paper, don't account for the way people truly grow: what happens to them, and how they happen to other people.
at sukuna's side, he does not try to wrest himself from his hand, but he meets satoru's eyes once more, a longer more obvious stare until satoru inclines his head, offset by how he adjusts his glasses; disappears behind them:
"that's right megumi. you'll be good for me, won't you?"
the reply is just a mild and slow blink of green eyes.
will satoru ever say he's his outside of a show for business and tact?
perhaps it is foolish to wonder.
he'll do what he can in the week allotted. though his directions leave something to be desired:
get to know him.
his gaze finally goes sidelong and, in doing so, meets sukuna's by mistake.
it is harder to look away this time and he does not know why. ]
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There's a way to win here, he knows. Those little earrings are coming out first, he thinks. If he has to rip them out himself, with teeth alone.
His fingers move down each notch of Megumi's spinal column, as if counting, a touch to each vertebrae lingering one and then another second.
Tokyo's underbelly; the floating world, the world that they inhabit, tends to sit more closely alongside the plane of the imaginary, of fable. Just adjacent to it. It would not be so far removed to think that some magic still lives in Sukuna's hands; in far off forests, they still exorcise invisible demons. In Tokyo, the children throw soybeans at adults dressed as oni. Store owners leave their salt piles at the doors. Cups of sake are placed at the roadside statues of minor deities. This practice, this lingering of myth— something of that is where Sukuna belongs, even here, now.
His fingers linger, and in it, there is the echo of incantation; something from long ago, that no longer lives.
He turns and his mouth is right beside Megumi's ear. ] And who knows, perhaps I'll keep you longer.
[ Not quite a threat, but— also kind of a threat.
Gojou keeps watching them, but Sukuna seems unconcerned. His hand has found its way back to Megumi's waist, and he leans back in his seat, eyes hooded. ]
Tell me what you know of me.
[ Time to talk about his... favorite subject (again)... in every universe. Some things really don't change. At least Gojou seems relieved at the focus shifting slightly from Megumi to— Sukuna himself.
The yakuza's fingers find the delicate fabric of the shirt, and he tugs gently, glancing down with arched brows, interrupting before Megumi can even start speaking. ] You know I told you to strip, yes? For now, I'll let you be defiant because I've changed my mind. But— [ He— manages to untuck a corner of Megumi's shirt, a hand creeping beneath it to find skin. ] I'm not fond of attitude, unlike Satoru.
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sukuna's fingertips along his spine make him feel strangely anchored and disconnected all at once. satoru has pressed those same divisions; but it felt rather different. like comparing the sky to a fire. atmosphere not yet burning, and the forest already asunder.
he doesn't move, not even with the warmth of those words against his ear. even when he feels sukuna's fingers and palm beneath his shirt, he doesn't move. it is only at the mention of stripping that he tilts his head softly, glancing over. ]
I did not realize how much you meant, Sukuna-dono.
[ not entirely a lie.
not the truth either. ]
'Attitude' was not my intention.
[ actually entirely the truth.
the feeling of simply being so close to sukuna is reminiscent of gojou in that they both have an undeniable presence of power. a certain sense of: what they will to be done, will be done. 'agreement' is not the point. obedience is. megumi does understand, and, though he does not recognize this completely about himself, the truth is something in him aligns with this. and though it is not so much about bowing his head, there is something to be said for having a clearly feasible function, a goal and a way to achieve it, and someone else in one's life to account for. the bottom line for megumi has always been tsumiki, still in her coma that doctors warn she may never wake from. but a hospital bed does not pay for itself.
if megumi had ever toyed with the thought of getting out of his contract with satoru, once tsumiki fell, that was no longer an option.
from childhood, megumi has a few memories that stand out: one winter going somewhere so far the city's lights didn't reach. tsumiki gifted him a book of stars and satoru knew each one by heart like he'd been there when they were hung in the sky. sometimes megumi feels like he was, this far-away look that belongs to no one because he refuses to; and if you cannot belong to anyone else can you truly possess another? megumi does try to stay within the boundaries of non-fiction. his real life is almost fictitious enough.
take sukuna for example.
a week.
or longer.
he lowers his gaze to the floor.
if he were to close his eyes, the presence of sukuna would be that of an old temple, kept by one person, rarely seen with the reverence of centuries.
but he keeps his eyes open.
for now. ]
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He likes this one.
Gojou knows it, he can see. He suspects the boy knows it too, but then again he cannot tell what this boy is thinking; he cannot see anything in him yet; everything is kept hidden behind that polite countenance, the careful, measured way that he holds himself even here as if formality was something that was even on the table. ]
Not attitude, is it. [ Sukuna hums to himself more than to anyone else, fingers pressing against Megumi's side, the scrape of nails light against the skin there, he's veritably ignoring Gojou again, but at least that is the upside to a hostess club; the women here love that guy, and Sukuna finds himself free to paw at Megumi at his leisure. ] You always do what you're told, hm, Megumi-chan? I like that.
[ An echo of Gojou in the diminutive, a bit of a barb, but he's smiling at least, eyes narrowed in interest, and he leans closer, a shoulder bracketing Megumi's, mouth pressing just about against the boy's ear as if there were a need to speak privately, or to speak over the music; which currently is low enough to permit talk across tables. No— Sukuna just likes to make himself known, likes to be the aggressor and the one to lean in and break the personal space.
There's more to this boy, he's certain of it.
A slight pull back, so that their eyes can meet again, and his head tilts in a jerk to the side, eyebrow cocking. ]
Not afraid, huh. Or— [ He leans in again, as if scenting something, eyes bloody red in the low light, his fingers moving against Megumi's skin. ] —only ever afraid, and used to it. Fear a friend of yours, Megumi-chan?
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he wants to blame satoru a little, for how receptive he is to touch, almost conditioned to take what he can get; something that blooms only in moonlight and moonlight is temperamental. "starved, are you?" he vaguely remembers those were his words and megumi did then what he even persists in doing now: said no. but sometimes we have to say something is not true even knowing it is, just to cope with it.
carefully. carefully. carefully. he lets his focus shift from sukuna to anywhere else, not moving away but not holding the contact either. the pinch of his brow is no more than a fraction of a second, the purse of his mouth the same before it smooths again to its neutrality that could as soon be taken for bored as demure as hollow as hiding something.
the list is perhaps unsurprisingly easy to build upon.
afraid? the fan of his lashes lowers in a slow blink at nothing. ]
I simply seek to achieve what is set before me, Sukuna-dono. And, [ his eyes clearly start to shift towards satoru before he equally obviously stops himself from seeking any approval and adds, quieter, in a way that truly could be missed if sukuna wasn't paying acute attention, ] ... I am not afraid often.
[ when tsumiki fell ill. it is the only time he can recall. if he had not buried it so deeply, perhaps he might also remember: a boy teaching himself not to expect the dead to come back, indeed to remember not to ask for such a haunted life, a boy with the names of stars on the back of his vision more so than the names of people, a boy not overwhelmed by fear but not immune to it either — that bizarre first empathetic understanding if not textual of that word: lonely. it is something gojou satoru saw in him before he even introduced himself and if he's played the line of it to his own benefit, it goes both ways perhaps; he cares, against all odds, and so all the more a risk and a bet to 'give' fushiguro megumi to ryomen sukuna.
but he trusts megumi even if the other was never an option, not even as a joke.
it's not the diamonds in megumi's ears that say it so much as how satoru despite the attention he's given by those tasked with him, only watches megumi through his glasses that never come off no matter the hour or location.
as one who watches satoru, it is a cosmic kind of irony that megumi doesn't notice he is being watched back not in so dissimilar a fashion.
the floor of this place is quite clean. this is what his line of sight tells him at present, and the nearness of sukuna is not enough to make him look at him again nor budge further or closer. he stays still, the kind of motionless expected of bond maids in old money clans, where one is as soon beautiful furniture as a person with more function outside of utility and aesthetic. ]
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He can feel the boy's loneliness as surely as he can smell the perfume from the hostesses that sit near them. It's there, infusing the circumstances, every movement and gesture. He wonders if this is Gojou's way of spiting him, of saying here's something you'll like, we see through your bravado— you are no different to this boy, who will appeal to the lonely predator that you really are. You'll know yourself in him, and then—.
He wants to sneer across at Gojou.
But, he'll take it. Who is Sukuna to ever deny himself something that he wants, even if it is presented as bait by an enemy. He doesn't particularly care for subterfuge, if they try to kill him, he will destroy them. If he decides he wants the boy for himself, forever, then he will take him. Gojou Satoru's mistake is there; he does not abide by any rules other than his own.
Deliberately, he strokes his hand against Megumi's skin; his hands aren't cold, instead he seems to burn with a vague fever— always, even the air surrounding him ticks up a degree or two. ]
And what has been set before you, hm? [ His chin tips downwards, lighting for a moment on the boy's shoulder. He smells of earth; of clean, dark woods, but there is something beneath it, and he cannot place it, despite liking it. Perhaps a cologne that has faded on his skin. Sukuna inhales, shifts closer to him to speak into his ear again. ]
Gojou likes you all too much. Why is he letting me have you? You know I'll keep you if I feel inclined.
[ Around them, the club bustles with its usual fare of customers and patrons, the dim, warm lights and plush interior make it all seem expensive; the Japanese screens and kimono hangings equally lend it an air of something old, like a tea house in Gion. This is just like Satoru, he thinks, to bring him here, to deliver him this boy. He's not even displeased; they know his tastes.
At least his reputation precedes him. ]
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knowledge.
and fear.
yet he does not believe that sukuna could keep him from satoru. to fushiguro megumi, there is no one stronger than his benefactor.
he blinks once; slow; thoughtful. quiet. ]
You over-estimate me, Sukuna-dono.
[ simple, to the point. he does not reply to anything other than sukuna's perceived opinion of satoru's own opinion of him. because megumi honestly is not sure satoru 'likes' him so much as finds use in him, so much as to let him go now is the same as losing. which convinces him even more-so without arguing it, that this is not meant to be a indelible handoff. the child in him from nine years ago questions that of course; is still standing in that rundown alleyway staring up at the white-haired man with the sky for his eyes and the same breadth of promise; is still softly overwhelmed with terrible hope he then boxes neatly away into a room made entirely of shadows; still.
megumi was not lying.
he is not 'often' afraid.
but when he is, it is a deep and abiding sort of fear.
a child's fear.
it hurts to be alone but it hurts especially to be left behind as the cause.
to be found after that was more important than megumi today is able to look straight into the eyes of and yet the core of him understands.
unprompted, still not looking at sukuna at all, he finds himself surprised to wonder if sukuna has ever lost anything, if he knows what it even truly means, if he even is a person who could; some can't after all and megumi has met plenty of those too. the world has more and more people without an ounce of creativity to imagine or empathy to feel, than it has those with. and on the one hand megumi's compassion may kill him, but on the other, he has no patience for those who truly like a heart. having one does not automate good or bad. he does not especially think of satoru nor sukuna as 'good'. but they are quite real; real and formidable.
and sometimes, megumi feels, almost displaced in time and space.
sometimes he feels that way about himself too.
against his skin, sukuna is warm, almost too much so.
he wishes he disliked it. ]
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[ A bit of a wry look lifts one of his eyebrows, and the tattoos on his face move with it like the stripes on a very large cat. He removes his hand from beneath Megumi's shirt, slinging his arm now over the back of the couch that they share, one leg crossed over the other. Sukuna has the ability of most powerful men to look as if he is sitting in his living room in very nearly any space that he occupies; there is no care for his surroundings, nothing particularly alert, although he must be (he would have to be, considering his power and position). He knows full well that he has not underestimated the boy; this interaction would not be happening were Gojo not aware of this teenager's singularity, his effect. He knows what Sukuna likes, knows what he'll want. If nothing else, it's the smartest move on his part— why not dangle something he wants in front of his eyes, a loan, to go with the repayment (handled elsewhere, by their accountants).
Sukuna glances back, into the club, over his shoulder. A part of him wants to drag the boy around Tokyo; to have him at his side for his engagements, to put a brand on him, to tell him to wear his hair pushed away from his forehead so that his green eyes strike people more brilliantly; his rarest possession, no longer Megumi's own, but his. But— not yet. Gojo is still at the table opposite, and Sukuna draws a long breath, turning to the man. ]
A month, [ He says to Gojo, eyes lazy. ]
I'd like him for a month.
[ There is a shrug from the other yakuza, and he sips his drink, smiling at Megumi from over the rims of his sunglasses. "One month," Gojo echoes. "Megumi-chan, how does that sound?"
Sukuna knows care when he sees it; he knows concern. Despite being low on both himself, he can at least recognise it; it is not a spoken thing, but he can tell that Gojo has a stake in the boy, at heart does not want him hurt. He is worried about this deal, perhaps he is realising that a mistake has been made, that he may not get Megumi back, or may only after a bloody fight between their factions, which would result in more trouble than needed.
A month is far longer than a week; a lot more damage can be done over the course of a month. It's invasive too; a week could be planned for, a month ruins any plans. But— to Sukuna, other people's lives count for very little. If Megumi has friends, or duties, or whatever it is he does when he is not Gojo's pet, well. That's none of Sukuna's concern.
The backs of Sukuna's fingers touch Megumi's neck; not a brand, but good enough for now. It's intimate too; laying against the pulse point like a lover's might. ]
We'll get along just fine, you and I. [ He murmurs, but it's a pretty cold comfort. His reputation is well known. But still— the chemistry from earlier between them is there, like static where skin touches skin. ]
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and even then, he is not sure he would call what is transpiring now, 'luck'.
that he does not outright hate sukuna's touch or his stare says more than he would like as well, but some things cannot be wholly concealed without simply ceasing to exist.
precisely what satoru expects of him is yet to fully form itself. to observe, to collect information, to plant what he can if anything (probably nothing, megumi can already tell), and return. because at the very least, even if he does not know if satoru 'cares' about him beyond an adept tool loyal without trying, he knows what is expected of him. to not return would be as good as betrayal. the reason is invaluable. even death should not keep him and yet even without having known anything but his reputation, for some inexplicable reason, megumi has this thought:
he won't kill me.
just as soon as the thought comes, he compartmentalizes it away quietly. it feels dangerous to believe he is right about this sort of thing and megumi is reckless in many ways but also cautious in an equal number of others; a constantly balancing scale whose weights are fear, responsibility, need, and just enough selfish want that proves even shadows harbor fire. a subtly deeper breath has his throat keenly aware of sukuna's touch; still not hateful; he wishes almost that it was, that this would be simple insofar as any backwards arrangement such as this can be. ]
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[ And then, he is gone like a strange figure from a fox's wedding party, into the bar with Gojo; they're off to the main area of the club to talk business at the bar, and Sukuna's men close in on the table, their heads shaved in the way of a yakuza's henchmen; respectful and with eyes cast down.
Sukuna doesn't return to the table again, and neither does Gojo. Instead, Megumi is escorted outside to the bright, late night of the Ginza street. Geisha and hostesses alike pass by on their various ways to and from work; kimonos worn at night are far more jewel-toned and as multiform as the wings of butterflies— only ever at night, of course, which unlike butterflies, is when the floating world wakes. There are no day-lit hours here, it's the night's creatures and strange characters who populate the streets; and then of course, there is Ryomen Sukuna.
He pushes the car door open from the inside with a foot as it pulls up beside Megumi.
Something about him, despite the kimono that he wears (the neck of it gaping so much that his entire chest with all of its intricate tattoos is visible; strong muscles and the fine knit of ribs all on display like he cares next to nothing for any kind of propriety; like he disregards it on purpose, deliberately wanting to be contrary and cause people to turn and stare at him— first in surprise, and then in fear), seems so immediate and modern, as if the century had been born in anticipation of and for him, instead of the reverse. ]
Did you think I'd forget you? [ He asks, on a throaty burr, his tone low but it carries anyway; this is the way of men who are used to giving orders— he expects people to lean in to listen, instead of raising his voice to accommodate. ] I didn't.
[ Everyone knows that Sukuna lives in Kabukicho. It's well known that he has the best house in the worst, tackiest neighbourhood. It's a short taxi ride from Ginza over that way— but naturally there are no taxis for the yakuza kingpin. The black car is private, with a driver in the front.
The rumours of Sukuna are this: he stands at his vast window in his vast penthouse, right at the top of the tallest residential tower in Shinjuku, and he watches the bloodied lights of the town's nightlife that he owns, watches the figures of that world walking far beneath him like a feudal overlord from a thousand years ago.
This is also well known: people have entered his house and have not left.
This is rumoured, but not confirmed: he eats human flesh.
This is certain: he pays off the police, and would never be caught if he did.
He reaches out of the car now, and offers Megumi his hand.
He's missing neither of his pinky fingers; a yakuza in the prime of his career who has never knelt before another yakuza. He had lobbed off the left hand of his boss himself when told to kneel (this is common knowledge too). Kneeling before emperors, whatever form they take, regardless of the century, sets Sukuna's teeth on edge.
His hand is warm and gentle, though— like a silken pelt that hides venomous claws. ]
How lucky, I have you alone at last, Megumi-chan. [ The nickname said in an imitation of Gojo's voice. ]
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megumi spent six years of his life before that knowing became his own as well.
at gojou's place — well, one of them, — are the animal vestiges of that childhood. he wonders if sukuna would let him have kon, and then he wonders if it would be safe for his oldest friend; by the time the car pulls up, he has already decided not to ask.
standing outside, it is an old practice at this point to ignore the stares. when they go out, business or otherwise, megumi submits himself to gojou's hand and tries not to look too closely at why. if it has anything to do with the rare and strangely gentle contact, if it has anything to do with the look of approval he always receives after, if there are these worn down stones in the river of himself that still want to feel like they serve a purpose; these are their own kinds of gravity and they pool in constant insistence on the subconscious of fushiguro megumi like a black hole.
his heart is conversely an anchor; his morals both dynamic and yet rigid all at once; his actions: decided. debt. proof. worth.
sukuna reminds him of a predatory cat somehow and he wonders if that would be offensive to a man so feared people go out of their ways not to be noticed by him (without success; everyone knows that the rumor that sukuna 'sees everything' is not without basis.) once in the car, megumi both permits and slightly ignores the way there is nothing else to focus on. sukuna and gojou are alike in that way too.
the deft sweep of eyeliner accentuates the shape of megumi's eyes, surprisingly large, unexpectedly green, and always a strange balance of perceived calm and too much thought. he was once told if he kept over-thinking things he would go bald, and that not everything in life had an answer; at the time, he agreed. come to it, he still agrees now, but his perspective has shifted. not everything has an answer, yes; but that does not mean he can stop seeking the chance of it. there are only a handful of things — less — that megumi must do: ensure tsumiki is taken care of, do his best for kon and the rare existence in this city of nue — a bird of prey so large only the gojou 'estate' befits him, despite not being in the city and meaning megumi rarely sees it, repay gojou satoru whatever the cost.
this, tonight, this week, this month, however long, falls into the last.
lowering his gaze to his folded hands, megumi says nothing in reply at first, only after a moment saying, quietly, ]
It is temporary.
[ though his words are polite and mild, the point is sharp and clear. a slight tilt of megumi's head causes the lights outside to catch on his earrings, the facets of them so many and meticulous the sky of them almost seems ablaze. it is at polar contrast with megumi's eyes, still downcast and fanned by his lashes in a way that makes them shadowed and a bit strange though no less pretty. once, gojou told him he couldn't stand to look at him because he looked so much like his father, but that was when megumi was six and things change over nine years.
whether or not megumi ever finds out it was gojou who killed fushiguro toji is yet to be seen.
a soft breath brings into his lungs again the old fire sukuna somehow scents of, like a fire in a forest that's just after rain, deep in the mountains older than any human being, tinged with something that reminds megumi of temples and folklore. he concedes this, however silently: sukuna is as impressive in presence as the hearsay would lead one to believe. but that given, he is still human.
sometimes megumi is not certain he entirely understands what that means either though, and perhaps that says something as to his absence of fear. what he 'recognizes' in sukuna are the animal likenesses and less the human politics of a world such as the one he reigns over.
the way megumi bends his head causes even his bespoke suit to gape at the back of his neck ("megumi-chan eat this, you're wasting away on me." - "shut up please.") and it is little things that often speak most loudly of wealth: take for example, the smoothness of the skin there, everywhere on him in truth, the moon quality of him, the neatly groomed part of his hair that somehow seems unruly but styled, softer in-person than photos seem to convey, trimmed neatly at the nape as if to show off that part of him; and in a way, it is, not so much when he wears the suit as kimono but perhaps that is neither here nor there. suffice to say: gojou takes care of what he deems his.
and megumi, because he cannot help certain parts of himself, holds onto that fact. ]
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[ It's clear enough in the way that the atmosphere of the car halts, that he's not all that pleased with that response. It's not a chill that runs through it so much as the air stops its lazy motion altogether; a feeling, a sense— Sukuna makes the spaces that he inhabits suit him, and they bend for him; turning silent or jovial by turns. The boy is not afraid of him in any way— it's a new thing for the yakuza, he's so inured to terror, used to people cowering from him when he passes, and he likes that; that is the sort of reaction he has worked long and hard to instil (but not so long, and not so hard— not really; the growth there was organic, earned media, if you will. You kill enough people, and the crowds sit up and take notice. He's not some baby bosuzoku with a motorcycle who causes the ojijis to cower at the convenience store counter; he has the city by its throat, the politicians on payroll; this is a career to him, a vocation).
This boy isn't afraid, he thinks. Spoilt in the laps of the Gojo-gumi, he must think he's the prize here.
One pair of green eyes, and a pair of blue diamond earrings, and the child thinks its a princeling. Sukuna has plans to change that view quickly.
He wonders what Gojo will think if he sends the boy back flayed and quartered.
A war would be refreshing, it's been too long since the old clans got to test their mettle in an outright gang war. The eighties were the real days, and the crash muzzled them in the nineties. What a pity, but who knows. He glances over at Megumi, eyeing the boy's fine features. An elegant set, an expensive looking thing. He wants him, naturally, but he wants him in the way that he wants things bought with such a conditional contract that the thing changes form in his hands.
He wants the boy to ask to be brought over, away from his handlers.
That's victory, that's loyalty. He wonders if it's best to win it with the usual cruelty. ]
You think I'll return you?
[ Something nasty enters his voice. The first real sound of the evening— a snarl; it curls in his throat like a claw.
He looks over, eyes catching the light of the passing nightlife: red. Bloodied and red. ]
I don't do business with the Gojo-gumi. There's no deal here.
[ A sneer, and he doesn't touch Megumi at all, chin raising with an imperious tilt. ]
You're out of luck, boy. You're mine.
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[ how megumi speaks of himself might be concerning to others, but to megumi himself it is merely fact. it helps in life to know 'what' one is, and if he has to choose a word it would sooner be property than person. if the forest could be contracted by the sea-sky then that would be him and gojou, at a constant proximity of vision, a given. the diamonds in his ears are reminders of it; to whom he belongs. other evidences always fade with time but in megumi's mind they are quite fresh. so sukuna speaks and he hears him, has no doubts that others bend before him with less.
but he is not 'others'.
he meets that gaze mildly with his own, unwavering for now. ]
Rudeness is not my intention. I just think it is important for all of us to be on the same page.
[ only then does he return his focus to the car window, watching lights and shadows as riveting as anything, his hands folded neat and polite in his lap, his back straight and poised in a manner that reeks of how he was 'raised' by gojou not because it is proper but because it is beautiful, and in the modern era — perhaps any era —, beauty is a form of power. not being afraid of sukuna is its own problem and curiosity. he supposes it could be simply explained away by his faith in gojou but somehow it does not feel like that alone.
he wonders what he has to glean in his time with sukuna, what he has to drag back with his own body, to be told he did well; then he loathes himself for wondering.
none of this shows, not exactly. unless sukuna is fluent in seemingly frenetic twitches of megumi's tapered fingers, or a flutter of lashes when he blinks a little too hard for the night hour, maybe some. but even then, not much. a stray versed in strays, in shadows, in quiet places, megumi too is a quiet place, glittering here and there with impressions of both those who are important to him as well as those who deem him important.
even if he does not know it. ]
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[ Sukuna's brows arch, and he sits back in his seat, slouching like the oddly casual creature that he is, and his fingers steeple. Whatever that Gojo's lot are up to with this, he doesn't intend to find out. He'll have his fun with the boy, and if he develops a liking for him (too late for that, he supposes; it's the eyes), then he'll keep him. Whether or not Gojo wants him back is besides the point; he'll have to, in Megumi's words, reacquire him.
It's the twitch in the boy's hands that he notices.
Though they are not alike, not in any way— if anything, Sukuna would be the perfect converse to Megumi's gentle calm. Rooms flicker to life or dim as his mood changes; his impression of Megumi is that that atmosphere must turn to a lull; not one of boredom, but one of calm. Though they are not alike— Sukuna knows a stray when he sees one. Having no name himself, having come from a family without history, without a legacy, he was the violent converse of Megumi's path. He'd take it over this sort of un-resistance any day; Sukuna has only ever known how to be a bloodied sword in a crowd; it seems Megumi knows how to be whatever he must be. The twitch in the boy's hands is the quiet tell; he hates this, the whole thing, all of it— perhaps, Sukuna muses, even Sukuna himself. He wonders then, if it is Megumi who will be the one to slip the final knife between his second and third ribs; upward, and to the right.
He leans forwards; sitting up very suddenly, movement like an animal's; acting on a whim that came to him as quickly as the coil of muscle propelled him.
He speaks to the driver, only ever with that lilt of wryness in his tone: ] Take us to the Shinjuku place, not the house.
[ All good yakuza keep a grand estate just outside of Tokyo. He had assumed that Gojo would assume that he would take the boy out there; like a beast dragging something to its den. Well, not so.
Sitting back, he looks over at Megumi, and reaches out, a hand closing on the boy's hand, stilling that very slight tremor. ]
I'll show you the apartment instead. You must be tired of estates and lawns—
[ A beat, then, a stroke of his thumb against the boy's soft wrist. ]
—Gojo's property.
[ Bad joke. He smiles at it (no matter what, he always seems to find himself terribly funny). He takes up that hand in his own, but not to hold, to look at; as one would do with property, his words only ringing truer. ]
Well. Something you have in common with his house, I trust. You enjoy that?
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tsumiki once drew constellations on the soft pale flesh of his forearm. she made them up because she said they were his. gojou once made a line with his fingertip from the corner of megumi's eye down to the hollow of his throat and told him he shouldn't trust him. where the appraisal of red eyes and sharp nails falls amongst these memories has yet to be seen. there is no reason for megumi to believe sukuna is interested in him any other way than as a tool in regards to the ongoing not-quite hostility between gangs, clans, and whatever else goes on when he blinks.
he blinks now too, slow, unbothered to the inattentive eye. ]
Does it matter?
[ it ends up being more of a genuine question than he intended, which means he regrets those words; but he does not take them back, instead turning his head away again. to ask what is wanted of him feels pointless; he will find out inevitably or else why is he here to begin with? if he unfocuses his vision, things become soft shadows and lights and the faint presence of smoke or fire he knows is from sukuna, as if he harbors that kind of primordial heat like a mythical being. it is the kind of dark summer that draws shadows in as natural as a breath.
the only other presence as overwhelming as this that megumi has ever experienced was indeed gojou satoru, gojou with his sky eyes and gravityless sensibility of things, satoru who placed his earrings and told him to never take them out, benefactor and...what else? a constant in megumi's life that is neither dog nor bird nor the quiet sense of an empty place that might have been an apartment or an alley or a dark night where everything changed with that terrible silent lack of permission. yet gojou satoru makes sense; it has been nine years.
and despite his sometimes-efforts, megumi is the constellation tsumiki saw him for all those years: trying far out past his actual lifespan.
the vulnerability of caring.
none of it explains the odd draw he feels to the person beside him that is simultaneous to his rejection of him.
it is this awareness that has him leaning his forehead to the window, and when he exhales the window fogs softly like even megumi's breath would rather not be intrusive. this particular angle of his head causes the lights outside to throw the diamonds' refractions out in tiny lances of blue, as if in peculiar warning the way some animals use their colors to entice or discourage, audience depending. ]
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Am I boring you, Fushiguro Megumi? [ He sits back in his seat, not even looking mad about it. He watches the boy breathe against the window, the faintest cloud blurring the glass as if he wishes to keep even his own breath to himself. Sukuna's lip curls; he doesn't take his eyes off the boy. ]
I suspect you're used to this sort of thing.
[ This sort of thing. He waves a hand in the air as if to encompass whatever exactly that means. Being sent home with the various clientele and allies and enemies of the Gojo clan. Being in cars with yakuza of ill-repute.
A shrug. ]
My, my. I suppose I'll have to work harder to entertain you.
[ With Sukuna: this could mean a whole array of things. Whether they are or aren't good— well. It would be a very small, very specific lot that would be pleased to hear that. Particularly given his reputation.
But still— there is no real compulsion in him to torment the boy; there's a quietness to Megumi that does not actually irritate or cause issue with him. It's quietness combined with gentleness that he senses from him; and some faint, near-dead part of his heart knows that the boy's hands would be cool and that he'd be kind and attentive, that he'd be able to lay his head in the boy's narrow lap and feel those hands on his face. Dangerous, he thinks. There's a good reason why Gojo is infatuated with him, why it's Megumi who is his trump card in the long-running cold war against Sukuna's faction.
The car pulls into a vast, upscale hotel building, driving through the below-ground tunnel with its golden lights, to the double doors that slide open; staff standing on either side. Sukuna's men are out first, to open the door.
The yakuza steps out with a roll of his shoulders, and offers a hand to help Megumi on the step down. ]
Don't think I forgot your question.
[ He's keeping his voice low; that treacherous, throaty purr, just for Megumi, hand still out in offer. ]
And yes, what you enjoy does matter.
[ There are two ways to say that; Sukuna chooses the latter: full of implication, and a smirking, teasing glint of teeth in his crook of a smile. ]
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here and there, time and again, fushiguro megumi gets blindsided by something he cannot afford to name.
a memory buried: a man who megumi resembles holding him both tight and impossibly careful as if he's never been able to protect a single thing that truly mattered to him in his life. megumi does not recall. but the feeling remains. there is that phrase: sometimes even if the mind forgets, the body remembers. sometimes megumi wakes with his hand seeming to be reaching for that which has not been there for long enough to be forgotten; it hurts.
or: the curl of satoru's long slender fingers at the back of his neck grounding him rather than irritating him, suddenly so sharp and prevalent megumi can feel how he breathes and how he does not only look but truly sees him in a way that is so overwhelming as to thieve the breath out of him entirely. words that accompany such moments: "there you are." still here. still as close to belonging as he's ever been; a function and a role is as good as anyone gets in this world perhaps.
or: this, the lick of a flame at his ankles embodied in an outstretched hand and eyes that never seem to leave him.
if megumi were an animal, some would say he would be a dog and others a cat and neither would be wrong. some would say he would be extremely loyal and they would not be wrong. and some would say if you leave him alone in the truest sense of the word for long enough, he'll suffer even if he never says so, even if that life-or-death loyalty simply locks him into a self-possessed waiting room. a dog. a cat. a boy in an alley or in an estate or at the wealth clad foot of a yakuza's metropolitan domain. these are not different things and that is the problem.
that is the danger.
despite his best effort, megumi looks away. his hand reaches out not even a breath before retracting and letting himself out of the car, standing of his own accord, and managing with an old courtesan's grace to somehow step out in front of sukuna without conveying offense. pale hands stay folded behind his back and his head is inclined not so much in respect but an effort to keep his gaze somewhere away from that smile and the effect of a focus so singular impressed upon him. ]
I admit I don't follow. I am not here for you to entertain me, though I am here by your request.
[ this he says as quiet as a shrug, mild and true; the moon reflecting back the sun because that is what it does. at the same time, he does not outright offer to entertain the yakuza lord either. ]
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[ Sukuna says, and his hand, just for a moment, touches very deliberately to the small of Megumi's back; just at the dip of his spine in a casual, though emphatic press. The doors to the building slide open; a private entryway, naturally— it looks more like a hotel lobby than anything else, though there's a curious minimalism to the architecture that invokes some hint of a temple in its lofty silence, but the dim, warm lights are those expensive finishes of first class restaurants. Sukuna waves off his cronies, and they disappear back to the car, effectively dismissed, and he steers Megumi, a hand briefly guiding him by the point of his shoulder, towards a line of tall elevator doors. ]
You're like those kabukicho girls, the hostesses.
[ He glances at Megumi, sidelong, and smiles; a little crooked, his tattoos shifting as he does, exaggerating his expressions to the point that they're nearly comical. ]
You're that type. You know, I heard a story—
[ The doors ping, and open to them; the interior of the elevator is no different to the rest of the building; all honeyed lights and a vague hint of some overpriced architect's portfolio. Seeming to feel that he might lose Megumi to a wrong turn, Sukuna steers him here, too, and presses the number for the penthouse (gone seem to be the rules of engagement; the superior is supposed to take the back of the elevator, supposed to leave the pressing of the floor number to the younger or the inferior— Sukuna does not have time for those who act like shoguns in their own houses; instead he takes over, wants to do everything himself, by his own hand). ]
A girl in that forty-something club— you know the one, the women all have the same surgery. Anyway, [ He— seems to like to talk; stories come naturally to Sukuna; his voice belongs to a different time, like an aural relic that does not belong in this modern elevator. ] —a girl gave a client her business card as he left the club, but it was the one that she'd written her customer schedule on the back of, for herself. All of the men had vulgar nicknames, and she'd made sarcastic notes of their conversations, right on the back of her meishi. The guy posted it on the internet because she'd called him baldy.
[ He hisses a soft sound of bemusement, and his hand finds Megumi's lower back again as the floors ping past. ]
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you were a woman, you'd have top spot at those clubs, by virtue of just how much you keep to yourself.
[ Sukuna seems to find this idea rather entertaining, and he eyes Megumi then with an arch look, mood still very agreeable for the moment; hand a warm, companionable slant against his back, thumb drawing back and forth against the fine fabric of the boy's jacket. ]
I wonder if anyone in the world knows you at all.
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i wonder if anyone in the world knows you at all.
it would not please sukuna to know satoru has already asked him this and that they both have spoken it similarly to him though at very different points in his life: the answer is no. perhaps not even himself, though at least one might argue that the self is often the last to be familiar because we can't help it. whatever the reason, it somehow has little bearing on megumi's answer, which, when he raises his head to glance up mildly, is the same soft-spoken neutrality as before. ]
How many people in the world know you?
[ how a question can be neutral, one would have to enact a conversation with megumi's tone incarnate. but somehow he manages, not stepping 'away' from sukuna's hand so much as stepping towards the elevator doors as they open.
a slight turn of his head has light catching on the blue in his ears as the green in his eyes, refracts the colors back into each other until they are casts of the originals. anything of sukuna's is neither impressive nor unimpressive. it is not like megumi has never been in the penthouse of someone with power and money; he is gojou satoru's ward after all. well. "ward". if anything bothers him now, it is how his own mind keeps returning to how satoru set this up despite asking him without asking: is this okay? does he not know him well enough now to understand? megumi who says 'no' day to day has done himself a disservice it may be, in that when it matters most, 'no' is not something in his wheelhouse, not in the position of one who may serve a purpose. how could he?
his preoccupation might do better to focus on the man behind him, but it is that distinct lack of fear in the ex-zen'in that keeps him from doing so. if the warmth of sukuna's hand at his back almost seemed to burn, well, no matter. and if the notion that he is not to be returned also felt too true than boast, well, he must handle that when it comes to pass.
megumi has a habit.
he tells himself things are fine. he tells himself things are fine. he tells himself things are fine.
it's fine.
outside, so high up, here is the delusion of touching the sky but megumi knows better than that.
and it's fine.
it's all fine. ]
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[ And for an answer like that, he certainly does flash a grin that turns the whole thing on its head. The expression melts in a moment, turning into a put-upon moue. ]
Maybe I'll tell you a thing or two. If you ask me, very nicely.
[ And then, the boy is away from him; slippery thing, this one— he likes the idea of taking Gojo Satoru's toys, but he also doesn't like it when they don't play along. Or— well. He could learn to like this one, he supposes; he likes pretty things; likes collectables. But also the impression of gentleness has not faded yet, and he has the feeling that this boy is precious to the clan head for a reason that he has not yet fathomed, but has the outline of set in his mind. Some men do not understand what it is that they have; he suspects that this is the case here.
He wonders, if Megumi belonged to him in the way he does to the Gojo clan, if he would part from him so easily.
There's an answer for that almost immediately: what has Ryomen Sukuna ever let go of that does not have bloodied claw marks raked through it?
He's no bleeding heart, but he has always been a jealous man.
The doors open to reveal the penthouse; that same dim lighting stretching along the length of an open-plan, vast suite. It's rather showy, of course; the walls are hung with kimono and tapestries that probably were stolen from a museum, but also potentially bought on an auction so private that even the museums were unaware of them. There's a certain Japanese sensibility in the place; Sukuna seems fond of this— a lot of yakuza fancy themselves more modern, these days, like to parade around in suites at the Ritz-Carlton in Roppongi, or at the top of the Grand Hyatt, but his lair seems more like a transplant from an old temple; something cut from much older flesh and stitched a bit roughly into the facade of a very sleek Shinjuku skyscraper.
Well.
First thing's first.
He walks up, behind Megumi, closing the space between them to take his jacket. The mobster leans in, speaks against the boy's ear in his drawling, purred voice: ] I think it'll be better for you if you take out those earrings and put them somewhere for safe keeping.
[ The suit jacket he sets aside, over the back of an armchair (mid-century modern; he's got a few expensive looking pieces that don't appear to be antique).
He doesn't back off though, stalking in, close once more, but not touching. ]
Or I'll take them out for you.
[ Bloodied ears won't be as pretty, but hey. Anything to upset the Gojo lot. ]
And neither of us will like that.