Work Text:
“This place looks haunted,” mumbles a girl who's stepping out a car parked a space next to his. He's pretty sure she's the only other car parked in this cramped and weedy lot, anyways.
Itadori blinks, glancing out his car window and at the McDonalds.
It sure does. No wonder his brother complained about this specific restaurant a lot.
What consumer-dependent business is out in the middle of nowhere, anyways?
However, it’s still reliably open, given that it’s three in the morning, and even from here, the nasty yellow lights from the stomach of the building glow bright through the dusty windows. It reminds Itadori of a sick lightning bug.
He steps out of his own car, locking the door after him.
It's fine- he's not particularly picky since he just needs to use the bathroom. Though, he’ll probably buy something as well just out of courtesy.
He falls into a steady pace behind the girl who’s making her way towards the front door as well, only for his tempo to falter as he walks by the side of the building. The light from the inside cracks, scattering in an odd but almost invisible way as it seeps through the large window, and he steps a bit closer to it.
And oh. He finds the source of the spiderweb of cracks. It's spun from a hole in the corner of the thick window, fragments missing near the impact point.
Suddenly, Itadori feels mildly more concerned about finding littered heroin needles in the bathroom.
“Crap.” He mutters, because the last thing he needs to do is walk into a bathroom needing to use it and walk back out with a blood disease, or open a toilet seat and find it clogged with toilet paper and a raccoon skull again. His words must’ve caught the attention of the girl who's near the front door, as she leaves the steps to approach him.
“What?” She asks with zero introduction, sidling up next to him in the cold desert parking lot. Stranger danger, but honestly, he's glad that there's someone else here. Standing next to the building, he can see the way the yellow highlights her cropped, orange hair.
“That.” He points.
“Is that a bullet hole?” The girl raises an eyebrow, sounding less distraught, more astonished. “Geez. I guess the city really isn’t that different from the countryside.” She scowls, clearly dissatisfied with this conclusion.
“Oh, I’m from the countryside too!” Itadori gasps. According to the most recent and unannounced bailout bill Sukuna had sent to him, his brother should be at least somewhere near this city. Which is why he’s here, since there’s no reason to stay out in the countryside after his grandpa passed.
“For real? Farming countryside or village countryside?”
“Farming!” He hums, eyes wide and unblinking as he reels through every flashback of internalised death from when he had to duke it out with the cows and stop the chickens from colonising his grandpa’s unlocked basement that the nearby cultists kept breaking into.
“Mm.” She glances at him. “I’m just from a town. Not as interesting, though, we do have neighbours who somehow have acquired guns despite the law, and talk with gunshots like a version of morse code.” She then holds out a hand. “Kugisaki Nobara.” She presents, not at all giving Itadori time to ask how does gunshot morse code even effectively work.
"Uh. Itadori. Itadori Yuuji," he stumbles, slightly dazed by the setting of his current situation. She snorts at the way he stammers out his own name, and he flushes at her jaunty laugh. “So. What possessed you to stop by this sucker?” And the building looks sick and ghostly at night, with its neon yellow luminescence casting long shadows of everything within its light's vicinity.
“Every other shop around here is closed.” Itadori jerks to all the buildings crammed up against this one. Besides, all the other shops look equally shady- at least this one looks less likely to knock him out in their backrooms. “And I gotta pee real bad.”
“Mm.” She’s now toeing a rock with a scrappy shoe, glancing at the handle of the door. “This place is sketchy as shit, but I’m really hungry.”
Itadori peers through the grimy window, trying to see if there are any employees standing out there right now. “I feel like if you eat anything in here from midnight to morning, you’ll be contracted to stay.”
“Like that western myth with Hades and the pomegranates?”
Itadori nods, even though he has no idea what she’s saying.
“If I eat something here, think I’ll end up drugged, or with parasites?” She asks.
“Parasites.” He estimates.
“I’ll go with ‘drugged’, then. Loser pays a cent!” Kugisaki hums. “Going in?” She nods at the door.
“Well. I feel better knowing I’m not going to be the only outsider entering.” He exhales, smiling at her, and she smirks. “Let’s go.”
It looks mildly normal.
“There aren’t any chairs. Or seats. Or tables .” Kugisaki hisses to him.
So less mildly normal. Maybe they’re just cleaning up. He glances at the chipped tiled floor and atmosphere of grease diluted with the smell of Febreze. Cleaning up.
The fluorescent lights broil his scleras, and he has to squint to adjust to the lighting in comparison to the darkness outside. If outside was sleepy, then inside isn't even awake- it's jumped on instant espresso powder brewed with Redbull.
A bell had jingled above them when they'd shuffled in, and the only other noise is a low hum that's radiating throughout the McDonalds, tickling his spine.
“Welcome to McDonalds. Can I get you anything?” Grunts an employee at the front.
It’s a boy, who’s around Itadori’s height, with capped messy black hair, sallow skin, and a dreary expression.
And Itadori has no reason to approach the front- he’s just here to take a piss, but he doesn’t want to ditch Kugisaki out here alone, so he simply stamps his feet on the ground, glancing around.
“Yeah. Can I get a quarter-pound cheeseburger?” Kugisaki says, walking forward to the counter.
He looks around, eyes hiccuping over the sight of a couple cameras in the corners of the ceiling, but with the actual body of the device ripped off, leaving behind only wires and its stem.
“And coke?” The boy’s voice cuts through the atmosphere, and Itadori rounds to the cashier, startled by the alertness in his tone.
“Uh.” Kugisaki says. “Yeah?”
Now the minor, who looks like a high school student in the middle of exam week, is standing more upright like his teacher just told him that actually, every week was finals week. “Iced...coke?”
Itadori glances around. There’s a self-serving pop machine. He frowns, at this observation. It doesn’t-
It doesn’t line up. Why order for a specific pop and whether or not you want ice, if it’s self-serving?
He walks up to Kugisaki, and makes eye contact with the boy, whose eyes skitter past him, focusing on Kugisaki.
He has a scratched out name tag.
Weirdo.
“Oh. Someone’s collapsed in the back!” Itadori gasps, pointing over the boy’s shoulder as from this distance, he can see a pair of legs, barely hidden behind a wheeled fryer.
“Oh shit wait you’re right should I call the ambulance-” Kugisaki gasps.
“I- oh.” The cashier glances over his shoulder. “Yeah.” His eyes slowly slide to the side, before reluctantly making eye contact with the two of them. “So about that. Just ignore it.”
Itadori and Kugisaki stare at him.
“Dude.” Itadori finally says when he can’t think of any societally appropriate response to his statement. “Is that blood?” He squints, attempting to identify the stain underneath where the legs lay.
“No.” The cashier says.
“You're not even trying to hide it.” Kugisaki mumbles.
“Don’t worry. Our employee insurance will hide it for us.” the cashier guarantees.
Itadori blinks, and then glances back behind him. And that certainly doesn’t look like an employee, given the heels on their two feet.
“I think they’re dead.” He finally concludes.
“That’s rough.” Says the boy. “May I have your name for your order?”
“I what? There’s a literal body in the back-” Kugisaki intervenes. "Listen, I don't know why you're playing us right now, but I'll pulverise your organs through your broken softserve machine-"
“Yeah. Don’t worry, Maki will take care of them.” The boy finally says, looking at them impatiently. “So what’s your name?”
Kugisaki looks at him for a Very long Moment. “I mean. I’m the only one here, right?” She reasons, finally dropping the topic, even though Itadori thinks that something about an unmoving body on the floor, laying in a pool of blood, feels important.
The boy’s expression sharpens, and Itadori jerks his focus back to him, tensing slightly by the sudden blockiness in the atmosphere. He can sense Kugisaki’s gradual wariness, the way she’s clearly thrown off by his sudden attitude. Itadori purses his lips, and hopes Kugisaki will let it go- from what he’s seen from her, she feels like the stubbornly argumentative type. But to his relief, she answers testily with: “Kugisaki.”
“Thank you.” The boy turns to Itadori. “And you?”
“Me? I’m not ordering.”
“Just out of precaution.”
Itadori turns to meet Kugisaki’s gaze, and Kugisaki’s now glaring at the boy.
Well, this place is mad sketchy, so Itadori guesses he should really stop holding this diner to a certain standard of normalcy. “Itadori.”
“Oh. Itadori? Not...” The boy mumbles, seemingly more to himself than not. His eyes flit back up to him again, and Itadori freezes underneath his gaze. “I see. Thank you.” He rounds to Kugisaki. “So to review your order, you want a quarter-pound cheeseburger, and iced coke?”
Itadori feels like they should address the really suspicious attitude the boy has been projecting the entire time, but it’s also three in the morning, and Itadori’s ready to chalk all of this up to a fever dream, with the body in the back being reasoned through some understandable and legal explanation. Like. Ketchup on the floor and someone knocked out by slipping on it. Or something because yeah, the city’s probably really weird especially if Sukuna’s living in it, but surely it can’t be as lawless as their large plot of farming land that holds more secrets and bodies than this entire city population (really, they can probably clear so many of their neighbours’ missing-person’s posters if Sukuna would just properly till the land).
Besides, he’s honestly starting to feel a mental vibration forming between him and the cashier (it’s called ‘pity’), the way he earlier matched wavelengths with Kugisaki, solely because they’re all residing in their personal artificial hell of three a.m. city life, and the boy literally looks like he’s functioning on crushed Smarties stirred into icy cold Sprite that’s been snorted up through his nose with a plastic straw.
“Yeah. Oh, and fries,” Kugisaki confirms, already digging through her pockets and retrieving a wallet.
“Wait, you can pay in the back. We’ll process your order later.” The cashier says, as if he literally doesn’t have a cash register right there.
Itadori stares at the incredulity of it all.
Maybe it’s just how the city works.
Whatever. He turns to Kugisaki. “I’m heading to the bathroom.”
“Oh. Sure.”
Itadori walks to the back, and finds a unisex bathroom, and opens the door.
He stares.
He walks back out and quietly closes the door.
He returns to Kugisaki’s side.
“I thought you were using the bathroom?” She hisses, before recoiling. “Dude, did you not wash your hands-”
“Oh, I didn’t use it.” Itadori explains.
“Why not go right now?” Kugisaki inquires, and the cashier’s glancing at her, eyes darting between them.
Seems like he can maintain proper focus and three percent of his brain power at this time when the situation calls for it (such as having actual customers during Witching Hour), even upon their initial meeting he looked like his entire brain has been marinating in pickle juice.
However, it’s unnerving how much the boy’s eyes seem specifically latched onto him. He purposefully ignores it. Maybe some people are just weird.
“The bathroom’s occupied.” Itadori answers vaguely.
“There are other customers at this time?” Kugisaki muses, sounding more thoughtful than disturbed.
“Blacked out college students.” Itadori explains shortly.
“Your order will be ready soon. Wait in the back.” The cashier gestures, and Itadori realises it's not a request- it's a demand.
They look at him. “Shit. Am I going to get kidnapped?” Kugisaki asks, sounding more annoyed than disturbed.
“Uh.” He thinks about how technically, there are two bodies laying on the cracked tiled floor of this entire building with a questionable set-up. Then there’s the fact that one of the windows has a bullet wound. “Mm. Maybe?”
“Wanna come to the back with me?” Kugisaki asks.
“No. Not really.” Curiosity is a strong force, but even innate motivators can’t cancel out primal urges such as the need for urination.
Kugisaki glares. “Oh. Guess you owe me a penny then, for bailing out on our earlier bet.” He gasps, recalling that entire scenario. He doesn’t have a penny on him, since he only carries around a card after he learned they existed at the old age of fifteen. “Fine.”
“You two, stop stalling,” snaps the cashier, and Itadori sticks his tongue out as the boy turns his back to them to unlock a door. There's a sheet of metal bolted to the front of the door, and it rattles as the boy roughly jams a key into its hole. The metal sheet has the words ‘employees only except Satoru' burnt into it. "Get in." He points when he finally yanks the key back out.
Kugisaki looks ready to crack open his sternum like a pinata filled with flies, so Itadori quickly steps forward before Kugisaki can either (1) have a lawsuit on hand, or (2) end up as a missing persons case.
“This is so weird,” Kugisaki grumbles from beside him, at least not verbalising the homicidal intent screwing up her expression.
“Yeah,” he admits unabashedly.
This place is so-
It’s peculiar, for sure. Not like it bothers him enough to leave; he doesn’t want to leave behind Kugisaki, another fellow countrysider as well as a person who’s not trying to mug him in an alleyway.
It’s just that this place-
He thinks about Sukuna. It can’t be.
He thinks about Sukuna but a little bit longer. Okay. So maybe it can be.
"They're probably done with your order.” The cashier gestures at the unlocked door, and Kugisaki and Itadori make eye contact, before stepping in.
They look at the scene.
A table full of adults holding playing cards look back at them.
Kugisaki automatically steps in front of him, and almost reflexively, Itadori places an arm in front of her.
“Oh shit. That’s adorable.” Says the closest man, a man with shockingly white hair and really suspicious glasses, who’s setting down his fan of cards. “Defending each other. Together?” He points to them, and Itadori doesn't miss the way the man’s crooked finger pause on him longer than it did on Kugisaki.
“Uh. We just met.” Itadori admits.
"I have standards." Kugisaki remarks, insulted.
Itadori looks at her from his awkward position, feeling vaguely offended.
“So. Where’s my cheeseburger and coke?” She demands, absolutely undeterred by his glare. Then, quieter but certainly no less aggressive: “no wonder there’s no one in the kitchen, they’re all here.”
“Mm. Feisty. I want to end her,” mumbles a pretty lady with a curious hairstyle, her braids hanging in front and behind of her.
“Fushiguro, they asked for ice?” States a man with goggles, who walks towards them, and Itadori swiftly moves upwards right next to Kugisaki.
"Yep." Responds the cashier. Fushiguro. Solid. Itadori's not good with names, but seeing how this is going, he feels like he should remember it if he ends up having to carve a tombstone for him if Kugisaki begins throwing hands. "Also, Nanami-san, when's Maki getting back? It's getting late and we still haven't properly cleaned up."
"Soon," the goggled man replies shortly, as he stops in front of Kugisaki. Itadori fixates his eyes onto him, his joints creaking by how intimidatingly unreadable Nanami's expression is. He then lifts a fist clenched around a bag. “Hand.” And almost reflexively, he and Kugisaki both jerk their palms open wide. He drops the bag in only her hand.
It’s full of white stuff.
“Your gram of ice.” The man states. “That’ll be forty dollars.”
Kugisaki and Itadori stare at the bag.
“That’s not a cheeseburger.” Itadori finally says while Kugisaki manages a: “what the fuck.”
Kugisaki looks up, expression blank and eyes unnaturally wide, pupils dark and pinpricks in a sea of white. “Hey,” she addresses the man directly, voice low. “Is this a joke?”
Nanami squints, and Itadori squawks, grabbing her wrist because yeah, they just met and he has no obligation of making sure she doesn’t end up with a smiling throat in the sewer the next day, but call it countryside-solidarity and the vibes of seriously not wanting to be charged with assisted murder, he feels like he should stop her. Years of living with Sukuna and dealing with weirdos on his farm has resulted in a honed sixth sense of detecting danger, a survival instinct sharpened through natural selection placed on two-times speed. It became the only reason why someone has yet to bury a hatchet in his skull.
Nanami's slow glare has mentally rung that alarm to the point where his blood pressure rose as his heartbeat attempted to match its tempo.
“What the livid hell is this? I asked for a cheeseburger and I get what? Sugar? For forty bucks? This small packet?” Kugisaki hisses, either having no sense of danger or even more impressively terrifying, no concept of fear, glowers back at Nanami, her eyes cracked with pulsating capillaries.
Behind Nanami, the gramps with the suspicious glasses is cackling, toppling out of his seat, and the lady who previously voiced her murderous intent is smiling, obviously amused.
Itadori accidentally makes eye contact with her, and her thin, razor-blade smile simply widens.
He quickly averts his gaze.
“I think you just purchased drugs.” Itadori finally explains.
“Says who I literally asked for a cheeseburger-” Kugisaki whips around to Fushiguro, who now looks equally startled. “Hey, bitchboy.” She barks, and Itadori pinches his lips together in an effort not to choke out a noise of shock.
Meanwhile, the table is in an uproar of laughter.
Itadori flushes, feeling mildly flustered by all the attention.
“Explain yourself in ten words or less before I pierce your ears with my bobbypins.” She leers.
“In my defense,” Fushiguro answers passively, hands raised. “Everyone literally knows this McDonalds is a mafia front who deals heavily with drugs. Like. Everyone. So I just assumed you knew already and ordered with all the keywords.”
"That was more than ten words, you chapstick-brained dolt -"
Itadori stares. “This can’t be real.” He finally concludes, glancing at the stupidly satirical plastic bag, then to the table of adults who’re playing cards. “Isn’t this like. A movie shoot? C’mon.” He chuckles out a noise of bluebells and disbelief. What type of mafia decides they’re just going to let everyone know they push drugs, with the whole town knowing? Ones he sees in movies.
He then freezes as a sudden detail of this entire situation feels off. What feels more cartoonish than the drugs? The bodies. “Hey. So that guy in the bathroom-” He begins, directing his question at no one in particular.
“Oh shit. He’s talking about Junpei.” Says a lady at the table who’s shuffling out a cigarette from a carton, and everyone falls quiet at her grim tone.
“Is he dead?” Itadori gasps quietly.
The entire table looks at him strangely.
“What the fuck? That’s so dark,” exclaims one of the men who looks unsettled by Itadori, appearing almost mortified even, and Itadori feels simultaneously distressed and indignant.
“What the heck goes on in your head?” Laughs Glasses Guy, being the only one to respond positively (but still very inappropriately and Itadori is extremely lost-). “Who do you think we are?”
“You literally just said called yourselves the mafi-”
“Junpei blacks out from exhaustion and existential crises every time his shift ends at one, and enters a comatose state for a couple of weeks.” The cigarette lady explains, before she turns her empty gaze to Itadori. The way it appears to sharpen, while it makes her appear more alive and substantial than before, makes him feel worse- her gaze grounding and condescending. “Why would you think something as messed up as that?”
“Oh.” He doesn’t know what to say. “Okay. So uh. Would it be considered disrespectful if I like. Took a piss in the bathroom while he hibernates there?” He finally asks.
The lady looks up once more, eyes stabbing him to death with the impassiveness of a person who’s been pushed to the circumference of the seventh circle of hell.
"This boy, he scary. A scary one," points a guy at the table, joking the way that Sukuna does before he clocks someone in the face with an iron pipe.
“What the hell sorta farm were you working on before?” He hears Kugisaki sneer, and Itadori blinks. Her hands are fisting their cashier’s collar, the boy himself looking particularly resigned to his fate, staring ahead into nothingness. And Fushiguro now looks exactly like Itadori’s first impression of him: tired, probably overworked and breaking some sort of labor law (then again they’re selling drugs), and looking like he Does Not Want to Be Here.
“Like an animal farm,” he shrugs. He pauses, a sudden realisation cracking open his skull. “Every once in a while, people come over and disappear.” He muses aloud, before shrugging it off.
Kugisaki has stopped throttling the boy (not like that was going to do any good in the first place- he’s clearly given up on existing before this, anyways), and is now squinting hard at him. “What the fuck.”
And the table’s erupting with snickers once more, and someone even shouts “Go Fish!” As they slap a card onto the table.
“I knew it. You looked familiar.” Chirps the white-haired male as he switches a card with someone else without even looking at them. “So, kid. Ryomen sent you, didn’t you?”
And the laughter suddenly stutters to a terribly unified stop, the sudden silence past the echoes of the previous atmosphere, shocking Itadori’s nerves with frostbite.
The table looks less friendly, now. Then again, Itadori has already realised after conversing with them for less than five minutes, that these are the type of people who’d laugh if they slapped his back hard enough to rattle his sense of balance, and then shatter his solar plexus if he punched them in the shoulder.
Sukuna-vibes.
“Ryomen?” He blinks. “What the heck is a Ryomen?”
“Nah, looks just like him. He knows who Ryomen is.” States a man with a beanie. “Torture it outta him.”
“Wait.” Itadori reflexively spits out in a futile attempt to stall some time to process his words.
“Mm. We could just lock him in the fridge until he spills.” Suggests Cigarette Chick.
“Wait-”
“The meat hooks.” Suggests Nanami, who’s still standing in front of him and Kugisaki, Kugisaki who looks like she wants to peel Fushiguro like his muscles are sticks of string cheese.
Itadori swallows at the glint in the man’s eyes, before feeling desperately ticked off because he just came here to pee, but now he’s brought into some back, was roped into a drug scheme, and is now being linked to a Ramen-men guy like- what -
“I don’t know who’s Ryom-”
“We don’t know for sure.” Interrupts another figure, a lady with a scar, who’s trying to yank her thumb out of a glass pop bottle opening. Itadori stares. It’s stuck. “At least the girl seems clean, the boy however…” she trails her words off into a tangled tune of suspicion.
Itadori glares back, slightly miffed by her indifference to accusing him of something that he's not quite understanding.
“Maybe he’s involved with Getou?” Drawls her neighbour, Cigarette Chick. “Utahime, got a light?” And she’s handing a stick over to Utahime, but faces the man in front of her. “Gojo, you knew Getou the best. Would he do something like this?”
“Ha!” Snorts Gojo the Glassed Grandpa who could really use a redye. “I think it’s been proven that I clearly didn’t know him as well as I thought,” he snorts, smile bolted and unhinged with something akin to glee. “But. I know Ryomen, and I know he looks exactly like that,” he swings a finger over at Itadori without even looking at him.
“Oi, Itadori, who’s Ryomen?” He hears Kugisaki demand from beside him.
“Didn’t I say I don’t know?” He seethes back through his gated teeth. “But. I do have a brother who looks just like me. But he’s still an Itadori. I don’t have family under Ryomen.”
“A brother?” Gojo presses. “Looks like you but taller, with certain tribal tattoos, kind of a bitch?” Itadori shrugs- that doesn’t have to be Sukuna. Sure it sounds like him, but still. “Psychopathic tendencies?” He makes a tone of uneasy agreement. It sounds more like him. “Would probably leave dead animals in your bed at night?” Gojo adds.
“Oh wait yeah that’s Sukuna.” Itadori snaps his fingers.
“That’s your brother?” Kugisaki wheezes out words laced with absent-minded shock.
“Yeah. I haven’t seen him in years, but I know he’s still alive because the loansharks won’t stop calling our residence for a continously growing chain of debts.” Itadori informs helpfully, and Kugisaki makes a peculiar expression upon hearing that. “And the gang members and drug customers keep showing up at my farm asking about Sukuna’s whereabouts. They’re nice. They always visit and they help out around the farm every once in a while.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Kugisaki presses, tone grating and raspy with disdain.
“Mm. If they get physical or if they start bothering us, my grandpa tells them off.”
“Oh yeah, your grandpa tells them off-” she sputters, “what’d he do? Fight them off with his cane? Had them packing their merry-way with homemade apple pies?”
“No. He ran them over with his tractor.”
Kugisaki looks at him, quiet for once.
“Oh!” He gasps, clasping his hands together at a fuzzy and buzzingly dim light-bulb of a thought. “He’s like actually a good person, though. Sukuna really isn’t, I guess,” he shrugs. “But my grandpa’s essentially a pacifist.”
“You just said your grandpa made hit-and-run victims with his tractor-”
“Yeah, but that’s just because they were really persistent,” Itadori babbles, only for his explanation to be stunted by a hyenic, sharp laugh from the side.
He looks over. It’s Gojo, cackling.
“He could be lying.” Nanami says. "He could still be sent here on Sukuna's orders."
“Nanami, lay off,” commands Shoko. “Even if he was, it doesn’t really matter. It’s not like he’s doing anything. The most he can do is scope out our temporary base, as if this place matters.”
“Why not wait until Yaga returns before we do anything?” Suggests a man with large eyes and a bowlcut.
“Uh, no, I have places to be!” Kugisaki snarls, tensing and now mopping the floor with the buckled knees of the boy she has yet to release.
“I still have to pee.” Itadori says.
“Pee, then.” Gojo advises with a serious tone.
Itadori stares at him. Gojo does not elaborate further. “I’m not peeing on the floor.” He finally says.
“Honestly, do it and it’d probably make the floor cleaner,” Kugisaki grumbles. “Anyways. If I’m going to stay here, I want a cheeseburger. And coke. Actual coke.”
“Well. In that case.” Nanami begins hesitantly. "I don't see why not. Until Yaga gets back, at least."
“Hey,” intervenes Cigarette Girl. “Can you play ‘Go Fish’?”
“You guys are the yakuza?” Itadori reiterates.
“Why? Scared?” Gojo hums smugly, clearly pleased by the recognition.
Itadori and Kugisaki glance at each other. “It’s a lot more cliche than I imagined, but in the most awfully unreasonable ways.” Itadori immediately states.
Mei Mei shakes so hard from repressed laughter, that she nearly shoots Nanami in the foot with the gun she’s been playing Russian Roulette on all of them with.
Itadori still refuses to make eye contact with her.
“That’s it. Torture chamber, now,” Gojo stands up.
“Gojo, sit down-”
“Gojo-san, no."
“You guys are interesting.”
Itadori blinks from where he’s splitting fries with Kugisaki. Gojo grins gleefully at capturing their attention.
“Why?” Itadori asks.
“I mean. I get him,” Kugisaki jerks a thumb in his direction, and he feels vaguely offended. “but what did I do?”
“You guys both can’t play ‘Go Fish’, you guys are both anomalies to the normal human population,” scowls Shoko-san.
"Sorry I never learned," Itadori grumbles. His card games consisted of Sukuna’s variation of Strip Poker, except instead of stripping clothes, whoever loses a round shaved a strip of hair off of their head.
At this sudden recollection, Itadori inwardly gasps-
Because wow.
Sukuna's kind of a massive dick, he’s starting to realise.
“I might not be able to play Go Fish,” Kugisaki’s low muttering reels him out of his shallow puddle of intangible thoughts. “But I’m not the one who has a potential murderer for a brother.”
“You nearly strangled Megumi!” Itadori accuses, pointing at Fushiguro who’s seated beside them, looking very disgruntled at being forced to stay with them after Kugisaki refused to uncuff her steel hands from his throat.
“Stop using my first name.” Fushiguro says.
“Megumi forgave me already!” Kugisaki snarls.
“No I didn’t.”
“Megumi didn’t say anything , he was literally mentally disassociated for the next ten minutes after you finally stopped shaking him!”
“Oh, yeah, it’s Fushiguro’s honed operational response to any stimuli he deems annoying, as he always mentally checks out when Gojo breaches a five-mile radius of him.” Shoko informs.
“See, Megumi finds you annoying.” Kugisaki scowls.
“Megumi finds you annoying, you were closer and throttling him like this was Tom and Jerry -”
“Stop calling me by my first name, I’ve met you guys for a total of ten minutes.” Fushiguro looks at them pointedly.
“Yeah, like I thought. You two are funny .” Gojo comments appreciatively, and as he leans forward into their space, he and Kugisaki fall quiet, sensitive to his movements.
Gojo’s glasses slide down slightly at his action, and two supernova bright eyes wink stars back at them.
White hair? Blue eyes?
“Oh. You’re Gojo Satoru!” Itadori gasps.
“Hm. He recognises you? No surprise there, given your reputation,” Haibara, the man who was the one who actually cooked their food, praises.
“Yeah! Sukuna talked about you all the time!” Itadori reminisces.
“Ryomen? The King of Curses and underworld’s most expensive assassin? Talks about Gojo Satoru specifically?” Shoko snorts with obvious disbelief. She slaps another card down. “Go Fish.” She says. “I mean. The Gojo Household is rather reputable, but Satoru specifically?”
“Yeah!” Itadori nods, swiping more ketchup onto one of the limper fries. “I definitely remember him saying ‘Satoru’ before.”
“Oh. Gojo, seems like you’ve caught Ryomen’s eye. Then again, you were always his one that got away.” Mei Mei giggles. “Murder is always romantic, isn’t it?”
“Are we going to ignore the fact that there’s a dead person in the kitchen and you just cooked food in there?” Kugisaki questions no one in particular. She's still eating the fries, though.
“Ah. So, Itadori-kun, what did Ryomen- or Sukuna, say about me?” Gojo hums, sounding pleased with himself. “That we had sexual tension? Intense rivalry? Or that I’m better than him? That he’ll never be able to kill me no matter what?”
“Yeah, he talked about you lots,” Itadori says, taking a sip out of Kugisaki’s coke. “He said you were annoying.”
Kugisaki chokes on her chicken nugget.
A beat of silence. Even the sound of cards patting the table stop.
“And that you had no sense of boundaries.”
An unceasably loud and sudden bark of laughter snaps from the other side of the room, startling him for a moment. It’s Mei Mei, and now her thin-lipped smile has parted to reveal a jagged grin of candid amusement.
“He said you didn’t get social cues, too, but in the worst ways possible because you purposefully ignore them. And that even if you escaped all his perfected assassination techniques, you were going to die a pitiful death one day out of recklessness and an inability to learn the concept of consequences and self-restraint.” Itadori hums. “Oh! Something about how even god vibe-checked himself with the Sabbath, and that Satoru is going to kill himself out of irresponsibility and an unchecked god-complex.”
Shoko slaps her cards against the table, and Itadori looks, concerned (and shit, maybe it's because he used Gojo's first name? Or maybe he shouldn’t have just prattled off the list of insults that his brother shouted down the well of their farm that’s been poisoned multiple times by Sukuna’s circle), but he then realises her shoulders are racking, a hand gripping her mouth tightly. She’s laughing, then.
“He’s right.” Fushiguro states coldly. “Also, Gojo-san, give me your eight.”
“I don’t have an eight- Go Fish-”
“Gojo-san. I can see your cards reflected in your glasses.” His listless voice, lost of character, regains a flash of personality through conscious coldness as he echoes: “give me you eight.”
“But.” Itadori continues as he buzzes the game into white noise, while recalling Shoko’s previous statement. “I never heard Sukuna talk about the Gojo household, though. Is it big?”
“This guy’s in a mafia household?” Kugisaki points a hard finger at Gojo Satoru, the Sukuna-proclaimed dumbass with the survival instincts of an exfoliated stick of licorice, who’s currently losing at a match of Go Fish against a sixteen-year-old kid who looks like he doesn’t even want to be here. “Why? He got in trouble with y’all or something and now you’re forcing him to work as a henchman?”
Itadori’s eyebrows pinch together. Something’s off, ranging from the way Shoko coughs even though the cigarette’s not in her mouth, and Utahime’s face is now in her hands. Nanami clears his throat. “Gojo Satoru here, has over two-hundred and twenty-seven certified kills, making him our most valuable asset with the highest potential. He’s also the only child of the Gojo household, a large mafia that started off with just family.”
Itadori and Kugisaki watch as Gojo accidentally drops half his cards.
“You’re kidding,” Itadori finally settles with.
“Wow. You guys must be understaffed, if Gojo-san is your most valuable asset.” Kugisaki says.
“Yeah, we’re understaffed. You wanna join us?” Haibara intervenes cheerfully.
Itadori holds out a hand. “Sorry, my family already has one unethical brotherly assassin running around. I’m good.”
Kugisaki stretches her hand flat-out in front of her, “I came here for my chicken nuggets.” She glares. “Not for a job.”
“I’m just saying. If you get involved underneath my family name, you’ll be paid richly,” Gojo croons.
Kugisaki and Itadori watch as the infamous heir of a household from the underworld, accidentally reveals his whole deck.
Shoko looks Gojo dead in the eyes. “Do you have a six?”
“No.”
“Gojo-san, I know you have one.”
“No you don’t.”
“Yes I do. You just revealed your whole deck-”
Itadori smirks. “Yeah! Sukuna also said you were childish, too!”
And Fushiguro’s hands are trembling as he raises his fanned cards to cover his mouth.
“Well. I mean. If Sukuna has said more, don’t stop there,” Nanami says from the side.
Itadori grins.
“I mean. It wasn’t all that bad,” he attempts to console Gojo, though, Gojo surprisingly appears less offended than Itadori thought he would be. His smile isn’t sharp and wicked the way Sukuna’s was whenever he encountered a severely inconvenient situation (read: clogged toilet or a dead body contaminating their well water again). Rather, he appears genuinely amused by this turn of events. “He said some good things, too. I think. Well he didn’t say them, but I think he was definitely the most entertained by you. And it’s hard to entertain Sukuna, or get him to pay attention to you. So I think you must be a very special person for him for even someone as picky as Sukuna, to complain about.”
He doesn’t know if he envies the type of person Gojo is, or not. Really, the balance comes between how much he really wants Sukuna’s acknowledgment (and does he, especially knowing the type of person he is?), versus what type of person Gojo Satoru is, as well.
“Wow, peak romantic tension. Almost as strong as the one between him and Getou.” Shoko deadpans. “It’s almost as if Gojo’s incapable of having healthy relationships whose sexual charge isn’t set in a hate-love atmosphere with their lives on the line.”
“He also said you were really strong, that it was irritating. Something about wanting to assassinate you, but I thought he was joking but now that I’m here, wow holy crap oh my god-” Itadori rambles off the railroad track of his train of thought. Because oh , he’s now stumbling into certain pitstops of realisations that could hold him liable for assisting a murderer by not reporting everything Sukuna’s said to him in the passing. “Guys, I’m now realising all these cool fighting stories Sukuna tells me about the city are real and oh my god Sukuna’s a murderer-”
“So is your grandpa .” Kugisaki snarls.
“Yeah, but those victims were murderers in their own way, too. Not justifying the act in the first place or dismissing it, but.” He shrugs. “You know.”
She looks at him. “No. No I don’t know.” When he blinks, she simply lowers her browline into a glower. “What type of countryside are you from?” she stresses, a moist click of judgment ricocheting out her mouth.
“Probably the south.” Ino smirks. “The souther you go, the souther your rationale. Think Texas and Australia.”
Itadori inclines his head. “I’m from the east. Also. I don’t even know what rationale my brother follows. Guys. Do you think I’m going to be arrested for not reporting a possible murder?” He pauses. “Or fifty-seven?”
"You think that's his whole bodycount?" Nanami mumbles. "What job do you think your brother has?"
"War criminal." Kugisaki says confidently.
"Assassin?" Itadori says, recalling what Shoko earlier mentioned.
“Your brother’s a monster.” Kugisaki sighs while Gojo indulges him with: “your brother is a mercenary.”
“Oh.” Itadori frowns. “I mean. You both are probably right.”
“He’s especially fond of assassinations.” Shoko informs.
“Oh.” He repeats, unsure what else he should say. He takes one of the chicken nuggets that Haibara was nice enough to give them. “Sounds about right.”
Gojo’s crooked grin only expands at this, to Itadori’s mild confusion. At first he liked all the laughter, all the positive responses. But with the way it feels misplaced and almost inappropriate, it only churns the instinct of reproachfulness and alarm in his gut.
Whatever. Free food.
Still gotta pee, but whatever.
It’s not like they’ll keep him here. If they do, they’ll soon realise he doesn’t really know anything about his brother’s lifestyle.
“He said that you were the toughest target,” he continues talking, helping Kugisaki finish her large platter of fries. “Especially with someone called Suguru- that you guys were the most annoying pair he’s ever encountered.” He looks up when he doesn’t hear laughter, not even from Mei Mei, whose unhinged cackle was the only thing telling him he’s not crossing the fine line that he’s not even sure of.
Gojo’s smiling.
It’s one of Sukuna’s Smiles.
Shit.
Shoko isn’t even looking at him anymore, and Kugisaki, clearly sensing the change in atmosphere, stiffens beside him.
“He said that?” Gojo finally says, voice calculatively impassive.
“Mhm.” Itadori answers, deciding fuck it , he’s just going to play dumb to the obvious tension.
“Well, I’m honoured!” Gojo clasps his hands together, the clap ringing hollow from the quietness of the room. “Ah. Praise from the lone mercenary, nicknamed King of Curses since every target he’s encountered barely had a moment to curse him till their last breath. What prestige!”
“Oh. What. I thought he’d be called ‘King of Curses because of his foul mouth,” Itadori confesses sheepishly.
“I thought it was a name he gave to a DeviantArt OC when he was eleven,” Kugisaki admits, unashamed and unimpressed.
Silence.
Then: “are you sure you don’t want a job here? You have the attitude fit for here.” Fushiguro says earnestly, and Itadori snatches another bundle of fries off of her tray as she makes a lunge for his throat.
“See. Instinctive killer. Born for this,” Shoko taps a cigarette in her direction.
"Why is Gojo-san not allowed here?" Itadori asks curiously.
"Huh?" Shoko blinks, clearly startled he's even addressing her as Gojo was the only one maintaining a conversation between the table and Itadori and Kugisaki, and since he's left for 'unfinished business', they've let the background chatter fill in the holes. "What do you mean?"
"The sign. The employee's only message." Itadori says. Maybe Gojo did a big 'no-no' that even the mafia can't accept. Traitorous thoughts? Accidentally spilling drugs over the floor? Guiding the cops back into the back?"
"Because he's chronically annoying."
"Oh." Itadori replies.
"I see it." Kugisaki mutters into her palm. When Shoko doesn't continue, Kugisaki does. "For a mafia front, you guys cook instant-fast food pretty well."
"Yeah. Pre-made food does wonders," Shoko responds dryly. "You know. I'm just saying. You two definitely have what it takes to work here. Not even as a part of the mafia- just as a part-timer for McDonald's. You guys are the only youngsters with guts who don't have a drug addiction or direct ties to the mafia. Well." She looks at Itadori.
"Oh. Sukuna's legally disowned, so I don't!" He informs brightly.
Shoko looks at him for a concerningly long second. "Right." She finally says. "Well. If I were you two, I'd consider. Just working as cashiers as Fushiguro does."
"As if." Kugisaki leans farther back into her chair. "I have bigger dreams than working at a McDonalds with a butchery in the back. I'm not working here-"
“How did we get a job here?” Kugisaki deadpans.
“Well,” Itadori exhales tiredly. “It’s not like we’ve actually joined the yakuza. We’re technically still working at a McDonalds.”
The two of them pretend like they can’t hear screaming from the back.
Itadori hasn’t even met Inumaki yet, but he’s noticed he’s only ever heard drastic yelling whenever it was him finishing off a job.
“I just wanted to move into the city. Grandpa, grandma, I’m sorry. Your foolish and naive and insanely awesomely pretty granddaughter is now working at a fast food restaurant that’s acting as a mafia front , for minimum wage.” She groans into her clasped hands, as if god will save her now.
Itadori rotates his marbled gaze to the front. “I told my passing grandpa that I wouldn’t turn out to be a second Sukuna,” he sighs, collapsing his chin against his hand as he thinks about his older brother with the moral compass pointing to the four directions of wet one-ply toilet paper, the occasional murder, skinned fish, and disposable cameras with no more film.
“And yet here you are.” Maki, another employee here, says with a tired yet playfully sarcastic grin.
“Oh my god, please, save me!”
“Uh.” Itadori says while Kugisaki rounds to the source of the noise.
“You'll get used to it.” Maki reassures, and she hadn’t even turned around at the scream.
“What’d the screamer do?” Itadori inquires curiously while Kugisaki looks at him in disgust.
“Oh. That’s just Satoshi. Don’t worry about him, he’s probably getting punished for trying to shoplift the soft serve machine again.” Maki reassures.
“I see.” Kugisaki says slowly.
“Oh.” Itadori replies, shrugging. Makes sense.
“So this is the city.” Kugisaki mumbles. She then groans loudly, and screams into her open palms. “Oh God , why would you let this happen to me?”
“Yeah, don’t worry,” Maki sighs. “I don’t want to be here, either.”
“Why work here, then?” Kugisaki moans into her hands, not bothering to look up.
“Family business. A lot of the underworld families entwine, including the Gojo and Zenin household.” Maki explains, stretching her arms over her head. “Well.” She glances at them with a wain smile. “In that case, welcome to the family.”