Archive of Our Own ^beta

Shortly after whispers of a newly born, vexingly dangerous cursed spirit reach Suguru’s ears, he steps away from his family and takes flight.

Not far from Shibuya, his manta ray swoops low between rows of tall, stone gravemarkers, scuttling just above the ground while he slips down from its back. His robes swish heavily around his ankles as he proceeds through the empty cemetery, every sense keenly directed to sussing out what will likely be a jewel-piece for his ever-expanding collection of cursed spirits.

Details have been hard to come by, but one thing is certain: the cursed spirit lurking among the graves here at night has already vanished several late night wanderers, including a Kamo clan-affiliated sorcerer who’d sought it out. It’s intriguing, and intriguing cursed spirits are often powerful. A grade one, maybe. Or something more special.

A night breeze howls as it carries through the cemetery, rustling brittle, fading leaves from their branches. The darkness here is deeper than it ought to be, considering that the bustle of late night clubs and restaurants is not far off at all. Something is certainly here. Hiding, it seems, and doing it well. Cleverer than many cursed spirits, then. Useful, potentially.

Suguru doesn’t even have a chance to set up a curtain or summon a curse of his own before a scent carried in the wind raises goosepimples along the back of his neck.

It’s not that of a deadly and unknown cursed spirit looming close, nor is it the faint burn of another’s cursed energy… though Suguru catches that quickly after, an undercurrent to the scent that first caught his attention: warm, summery, and sweet, its lighter notes cut with something reminiscent of bruleed, blackened sugar.

It’s enough to rivet him in place. 

In the eight long years since his break from jujutsu society, one thing became undeniably clear: Satoru is not coming for him. Not to punish him. Not to see him. Not to kill him. Not to rekindle anything.

Which means that his presence here is only due to the cursed spirit that’s recently made a name for itself.

Suguru sighs, having hoped to beat Jujutsu High—and, in particular, its strongest sorcerer—to the punch. He balls up his fists and then loosens them, flexing his clammy hands, hoping to dispel some of the tension already knitting into his nerves.

“Satoru,” he playfully calls before he even sees him, knowing Satoru is always a step ahead in that regard.

He turns his head in the direction he thinks Satoru’s scent is carrying from, the dense curtain of his hair sliding across his shoulder with the movement. It’s a dead, dark hour of night. The cemetery’s lights are weak and thinly spread, and Satoru is good at going unnoticed when he isn’t preening and flailing for attention.

“Suguru.”

Suguru’s head swivels in the other direction, surprised—and then surprised twice over as Satoru emerges out of unnaturally black shadow no more than three or four meters from him.

They are face to face for the first time in close to ten years. Longer apart than they were together.

Suguru swallows thickly at the twenty-five-year-old Gojo Satoru looming among the headstones: grown even taller than he was in high school, his broad upper body filled out, his long limbs more muscular than lanky. As physically imposing now as he always has been in jujutsu. An unmistakably alpha air to him. More overtly lethal than playfully coy about it.

Probably something to be expected, yet Suguru finds himself staring. Some part of himself he’s kept safely sealed away is still searching for the brash boy of seventeen, with his round glasses and cheeky smile.

Suguru recovers, a veneer of false cheer covering his rattled nerves as he smiles, makes a little wave, and calls, “Long time no see!”

Satoru stands there with his hands in his pockets, hip cocked where his weight rests on one foot. Half his expression is masked by white bandages woven over his eyes and around his head. The bare bottom half of his face reveals only a slanted, unamused frown and a tightly clenched jaw.

Suguru slowly drops his wave.

Oh, whatever was between them in high school is deader than the people interred around them, isn’t it?

The flicker of surprise he feels is unwarranted, as is the sting of it. Suguru is the one who left Satoru screaming at him, wild-eyed, in the middle of a Shinjuku street, so furious that he’d gone straight for his hollow technique even with dozens of people milling around them.

Before that, they’d been best friends. They’d wound themselves so close around each other in those three short years that their mingled scent was more recognizable to each other—and Shoko, and Yaga, and the first-years—than either of theirs alone. They’d been each other’s family, in lieu of Suguru’s absent one and Satoru’s overbearing one. They were each other's first real friend. First real crush. First kiss. First fumblings to second- and third-base.

They’d never shared one of his heats, though. As a third-year, Suguru had been on the verge of working up the nerve to ask; gnawing doubt got its hooks in him first.

He began wasting away as he walked the narrow edge of his two minds toward non-sorcerers, in mind and body. His heat became perpetually delayed—skipped, basically, while he struggled with stress and missed meals and the lingering effects of his cursed technique. So, it just never came up. Satoru was gone so much of the time, anyway. And then he himself left for the mission to Nanako and Mimiko’s village, and then…

But before. Before the dread and isolation came, Suguru had easily let himself believe they’d be mates one day. Even when their secondary sexes manifested, they were just that—secondary. Satoru treated him no differently as an omega, whether in training or sparring or real combat. He never doubted in Suguru’s strength; he encouraged it, even, not displeased in the slightest as their physical training shaped his lither body into one nearly as well-muscled as Satoru’s, his arms as sturdy as any alpha’s their age.

So many other alphas found that off-putting, even just in passing: a teenage omega standing a hundred and eighty centimeters tall, shockingly strong under his unflatteringly loose clothing, too judgy and cocky beneath his veneer of polite consideration, any prettiness in his dark, delicate features undercut by how sharp his tongue could be, intended or not. Not the most appealing qualities for an omega to possess… although, he did get the caring, nurturing tendency in spades.

Now, in the unavoidable present, Satoru is as repelled by his nature as any other alpha might be.

Suguru’s smile collapses into a thin line. He’s grown accustomed to putting on a performance, but what point is there in pretending to be at ease when Satoru can’t muster a flicker of emotion toward him at all?

“I got here first, so I’ve got dibs on this one,” he announces in flat, unyielding terms, arms crossed and hands hidden in his sleeves. Satoru has made a deliberate point of avoiding him all this time; perhaps he’ll take off rather than fight him on it, too disgusted to even share the same rotting graveyard air. “You can run along to your next errand for the higher-ups. I’m sure they have your schedule packed, as always.”

“Oh? You think I’m going to let you take a special grade cursed spirit and waddle back to your annoying little cult, just like that?” It’s not quite a laugh that follows, but some amused sort of derision. “Nah. No fucking way.”

“Satoru.” Annoyance carries in his tone, prickles under his skin, agitates his mind. Had he left home an hour or two sooner, he could’ve gotten here and absconded before Jujutsu High sicced Satoru on the same curse. “Are you really so petty?”

“Yeah. Big time. I’m about to exorcise this thing into smithereens,” Satoru crows, a little more animated now, working himself up. With a sharp, mean little smile that shows his fangs, he adds, “You’re welcome to watch.”

There’s a faint, phantom taste of bile at the back of Suguru’s throat as he summons a chittering cursed spirit to his side, the thousands of legs along its armored, sectioned body flexing. “Hah! You really think—”

The earth under his feet vanishes and for one startling moment, Suguru hangs in a black void—feet treading in air, the voluminous fabric of his robes beginning to billow, his arms outstretched as he remembers the fucking cursed spirit!

The one each of them came seeking! The one they were just talking about, yet both somehow forgot to pay attention to as soon as they laid eyes on each other.

Just as suddenly, an unseen lash cinches around Suguru’s waist and rips him forward. His abrupt momentum is cut short as he smacks into something with enough force to send his head swinging, all the air dashed from his lungs. There’s his grunt and another that must be Satoru’s, although it’s dark as pitch and Suguru cannot even see past his nose.

His right arm is bent awkwardly in front of himself, trapped against something warm. The left is jammed to one side, but he can wiggle it a bit. With every attempt at movement, Suguru winces as he’s prodded painfully in the ribs or the jaw or the belly.

“Suguru?”

His voice is so close it makes Suguru’s heart jump to the base of his throat. Eight-ish years of no contact and now he can hear the slight wheeze of Satoru’s breath and the soft, minute sounds of his wet tongue and lips. The alpha’s scent permeates the air, thick and almost cloyingly strong, the only kind of sweetness Suguru’s ever really craved.

It’s too much like old times.

“Satoru,” he grits out in reply, finding he cannot take a full breath thanks to how tightly they’re squeezed together.

In pitch black darkness, he strains and struggles against the confines around him—and Satoru, who is doing the same, the two of them blindly smacking and jamming into one another with every move. Well, Suguru is blind, at least.

“Blaming you for this one,” Satoru grits out, and Suguru thinks he can hear his molars grinding. “Yap, yap, yapping away at me while a cursed spirit outmaneuvers us.”

“You were standing right there with me, Mr. Six Eyes. How did you miss what it was doing?”

An indignant scoff. “Because you distracted me.”

Suguru could strangle him, if his arms weren’t caught at such awkward angles. He groans in frustration.

“What’s this thing capable of doing, anyway?” At the resounding silence from Satoru, Suguru tries, “Did the report you got from HQ mention anything about its special abilities?”

His own network of curse users is small and thinly spread—a tight-knit group he cares for too much to risk their lives scouting out every pertinent detail concerning high-grade cursed spirits. Jujutsu High isn’t quite so precious about its sorcerers and assistant managers, though. Their riskier reconnaissance nets them better info and allows higher-valued sorcerers to go in better prepared. It’s certainly a way of doing things.

“Didn’t read that far.”

Suguru can’t even move his hand far enough to massage his temple and assuage the headache already coming on. With the same measured voice he’d used when the twins drained his account for phone games, he asks, “What do you mean you didn’t read it that far?”

He feels Satoru try to shrug, the movement nearly bumping his chin.

“It’s more fun if there’s an element of surprise,” Satoru defensively explains, and Suguru is already rolling his eyes. “It’s a little self-imposed handicap so I’m not too bored on missions. I gotta get my blood pumping somehow and if I know everything going in, it’s too easy to one-shot them.”

A Satoru solution for a Satoru problem. Of course.

“Well, maybe if you’d actually read the mission file in full, we—”

“Well, maybe if you didn’t run off to start a fucking cult, you could still be the one reading the reports and filling me in,” Satoru snaps before Suguru can even finish, the sharp heat in his voice perhaps more intimidating to betas and omegas unused to him. “We wouldn’t even be here in this—this…”

Suguru maneuvers one hand enough to feel around himself, beyond the way they’re tangled together. It’s wood under his fingertips—planks of it, studded with nailheads.

“Coffin.”

“Great, great. And it couldn’t give us separate ones, at least?” Satoru complains as he tries to draw back, to shift away from Suguru within what little space they have. “Shitty ass domain for a shitty ass cursed spirit.”

Suguru’s outlook is even bleaker. Trapped in a coffin box with his former best friend who currently hates him. The very sorcerer tasked with killing him, or bringing him in for execution, or at the very least discouraging his flippant whittling away of curse-causing monkeys. The one person Suguru misses most, and is probably loathed by most.

Maybe there are gods sitting up there somewhere, doling out judgment. Maybe this is a divine punishment, and they’re all having a laugh at his expense. How else does something so perfectly tailored to screw him happen?

“Obviously, I’m not thrilled about this, either,” Suguru supplies.

Satoru barks a laugh, the sound obnoxiously loud in the tiny space they’re both squeezed into. Dryly, he scoffs, “Yeah. Duh. Same boat.”

Same coffin.

“No Infinity?” Suguru questions, realizing that no buffer sits between them whatsoever, aside from the fabric they’re wearing.

“Uh, no. This thing is actively feeding on and reflecting cursed energy as part of its domain. The more we expend trying to get out, the stronger the barrier keeping us in becomes,” Satoru explains. “So, tighten up. Gotta starve it.”

Suguru sighs. It’s not what he wanted to hear. “And you can’t bypass it by teleporting?”

“If I could, I’d already have peaced out and left you here.”

Suguru’s jaw tightens, but his spite fizzles into something messily self-deprecating. Of course Satoru would rather be anywhere but locked in here with him. And that’s good! It’s the outcome he’d wanted when he left Satoru behind, hoping he’d find his own way forward—a better one, less likely to ruin him.

But that’s been so much easier to tell himself when they were kilometers, cities, worlds apart. Now, unceremoniously thrown back into Satoru’s orbit, everything that had made it so painful to rip himself out of Satoru’s life is stirring to life again inside him.

He misses Satoru’s casual scenting of him, his tendency to swap their worn-in jackets around when they left for separate missions, the playful bantering that had Shoko and their juniors convinced they were dating long before it occurred to either of them. It was a natural progression. A slow growing thing with deep roots—perennial, fresh shoots of it reemerging even years later, when everything between them’s already withered. Even with how preoccupied they always were with stupid antics and arguing and training, it would’ve eventually bloomed, if not for… well. Everything.

Suguru misses the simplicity of it. It doesn’t seem like Satoru’s missed him at all.

“At least I’d have more room to myself, then,” Suguru mutters under his breath. Not that it matters, the whispering. This close, there is nothing they can say or do that the other will not hear.

“Yeah?”

Something hits Suguru’s cheek, smushing into his face and pushing his head back until it meets the sturdy wooden wall of the coffin they’re confined in; it’s Satoru, the asshole deliberately taking up more space, crowding his long limbs and broad shoulders around and into Suguru.

“Yeah!” Suguru pushes back, unwilling to be cowed into a corner—not by any alpha, and certainly not by Satoru.

It’s not a fair contest, given the mackerel tin-like size of their arena, but it’s viscerally pleasing to know that Satoru still has to strain a bit to keep him at bay. They try to shove each other back, kick at each other’s ankles, step on each other’s toes.

Satoru finally succeeds in seizing Suguru’s wrist mid-grinding poke into his chest, nails digging in like the teeth of a fox trap. He’s two centimeters from Suguru’s face and snarling when he says, “Watch it, Suguru, or you’re going to regret—”

The coffin gives a sudden lurch, as if tipping onto its side from all their thrashing. Suguru winces as his hip hits the wall and his skull thwacks against Satoru’s jaw.

Now underneath him, Satoru whines through his teeth. “Your knee!”

“Oh. Oops.” Suguru takes his sweet time straightening his leg and withdrawing the knee he’d inadvertently driven between Satoru’s thighs as they landed. He braces his feet along the wooden planks and pushes up on his toes, making a sliver of space between them. “Better? Or are you going to cry?”

“Nm.” There’s an angry, wet little spitting sound just under him. Satoru writhes like he’s trapped in some personal hell, which… close enough, probably. Sputtering, he manages, “Your hair inth my mouth.”

Suguru’s not sure what the hell he can do about that, confined as they are. His hair is nearly down to his waist now, spilling wherever it pleases; he gathers what he can and flips it back over his shoulders, but silky strands immediately slide right off and down onto Satoru’s face again.

The bitching and grumbling from below has Suguru rolling his eyes. Given their current predicament, his hair is the least of their troubles. It’s freshly washed and treated with hinoki scented oil, which compliments his own natural aroma, so it isn’t as if Satoru is being subjected to poor hygiene.

Satoru wriggles under him, at times knocking into Suguru’s arms and stomach, before finally settling down and accepting their present fate.

“So, now what?” Suguru is flustered from the shakeup and deeply conscious of the fact that he’s on top of Satoru, forced to arch his back up just to put a few centimeters of space between them. “We just play the waiting game until this thing is starved of cursed energy?”

Resigned, Satoru says, “Seems that way.”

“Are we talking hours, days, longer?” he pesters further, certain Satoru’s Six Eyes are giving him a better read on their situation.

“A few hours, maybe, at the rate it seems to be going. Get comfortable.”

Suguru is tempted to drop the entirety of his weight onto Satoru, elbow-first. Get comfortable. Get comfortable? How can he?

He works up a sweat trying to find a bearable position that doesn’t leave him fully draped atop Satoru. After twenty minutes—or so Suguru wildly guesses, given that his phone is buried deep in an unreachable inner pocket right now and his watch is useless in the dark—his arms are straining. Fighting this hard to maintain such measly separation feels pointlessly silly.

Satoru isn’t helpful at all, of course. He’s been strangely quiet, too… probably snoozing their prison time away while Suguru does all the work of keeping him comfortable. Typical!

With instant resolve, Suguru lets go.

A puff of air escapes Satoru as the cursed spirit manipulator’s full weight drops down onto him. It’s a short height, of course, given their small cage, but he’s not a light sorcerer.

“That was the longest you could hold out?” Satoru complains, shifting to accommodate the body resting heavily atop his. “Pathetic.”

“I’m not going to exhaust myself for no good reason, especially if we need to fight this thing once we’re out,” Suguru counters, too sweaty and weary to care how much Satoru hates him being this close. “Or is the strongest sorcerer of the modern age so easily crushed? And by an omega besides? I might take pity on you, then.”

Satoru is quiet underneath him. Probably incensed.

It’s far too warm in here already—uncomfortably stuffy, such that every breath feels thick in his lungs. Suguru squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to dwell on the little rivulets of sweat starting to snake down his back and collar. It’s their building body heat. It’s Satoru’s moist breath hitting him square in the face. It’s the multiple layers underneath his full robes; committing to the bit is really biting him in the ass right now.

Suguru shifts in place, narrowly staving off a cramp in his calf, and realizes with some concern that proximity to Satoru is affecting him beyond discomfort and sweat.

Well, shit. He clenches his thighs together, praying Satoru neither smells nor feels even a hint of what’s happening between his legs, and rolls a smidge onto his side.

“Making yourself awfully comfortable,” Satoru complains, grunting and shifting in response.

One of his knees slides up and knocks Suguru’s thighs apart, rubbing—inadvertently, he’s sure—firmly enough in that one pass to almost take his breath away. Then it straightens out again, Satoru kicking and stomping irritably at the bottom of the coffin as if he can bypass the nature of the domain and barge their way out.

Suguru is suddenly grateful that monk garb entails so much fabric. The sweat is well worth the certainty that Satoru hadn’t felt any of the slick starting to make the insides of his underwear sticky.

“You told me to, remember?” Suguru pokes a finger down into whatever portion of Satoru is under him—the sudden squirming and little gasp of surprise tells him belly—and chides, “So stop moving around so much.”

With a huff from Satoru, they settle uncomfortably back into their cramped, awkward positions.

Suguru’s breathing slows as the silence grows. He can hear and feel Satoru’s heartbeat under his own, quick from agitation and the lack of easy air here.

Though his eyes have adjusted to the dark, faintly able to make out shades and shapes, his other senses aren’t faring so well. Touch is a landmine right now. They can hear nothing beyond the coffin’s walls; within them, there is just their breathing and occasional grumblings of discontent. All he can smell is Satoru—that sweetness with a depth to it, a muskiness, a sharp singe running under that honeyed scent most would think belonged to an omega at first whiff.

His eyes flutter closed. He resists the urge to angle his head into Satoru and bury himself in the feel and smell of him like he used to without a second thought at all.

“So,” Suguru eventually broaches, finding the warm, dense silence unbearable, “you’re teaching, right? How is that going?”

He’d been shocked to first hear it, a fleeting, misplaced sense of affection weakening his knees at the thought of Gojo ‘no more babysitting’ Satoru taking responsibility for young, vulnerable sorcerers.

“Fine.” Sulkily, Satoru asks, “How’s the family?”

“Oh, fine.” Then he expands, hoping to fill the stilted air between them with something, anything. “We’re in a little bit of a fundraising slump lately, actually. But the twins are doing well in school and after the summer we’ve had, there are still plenty of cursed spirits ripe for the picking. Can’t complain. Well, actually… this one is starting to feel like it’s not worth the trouble,” he softly laughs.

“Is that right?” Satoru’s expression might be lost in the dark, but his voice is derisively, witheringly dry.

Suguru’s lips make a soft, wet pop as he gives up on making conversation.

He’s not sure why he bothered trying. If Satoru could, he’d have already teleported out of this coffin box and left Suguru to deal with it on his own. He’d avoid Suguru as thoroughly as he’s avoided him for the past eight years. 

Which is fine, he forces himself to accept. It’s how it ought to be. It doesn’t take profound wisdom to know that he is on a path that will end ugly—it’s why he makes no demands of his family to adhere to it the same way he does. The further Satoru stays from him, the better.

Satoru lets out a long-suffering sigh underneath him. Suguru rolls his eyes, finally unable to ignore the bruise forming along his ribs.

“Could you please retract your elbow?” he bites out, swatting blindly at what he hopes is Satoru’s arm. The contact feels more like face, maybe.

He grimaces as he twists and turns in place, not waiting for Satoru to accommodate him, trying to escape whatever bony part of Satoru is poking into his ribs.

“Hey.” Satoru’s low, warning tone quickly turns urgent. “Hey, hey, hey! Stop moving around, would you?”

Suguru rolls his hips to the side in spite of Satoru’s complaining—or directly because of it, actually—and could just about pop a vein in anger when Satoru starts moving under him again, legs jostling, knee punching him in the gut, until they end up slotted together again and—

He freezes, trying to figure out in the dark where exactly he is in relation to Satoru.

Is… is that?

He clicks his tongue, full of mock sympathy. “Having a hard time, Satoru?”

He has no right to find it so amusing, considering he himself is both hard and embarrassingly wet under his vestments and kesa. But that’s for him to know and Satoru to never find out, if he can help it.

The tension in the silence that follows is a clear enough answer. In his mind’s eye, Suguru can perfectly picture the furious set of Satoru’s mouth and the red cresting his ears.

It’s not anything special—a natural reaction any alpha would have if caught in the same situation. Most would be salivating over themselves, honestly, to have a caged omega trapped with them in total darkness and perfect seclusion. That Satoru is responding at all is more a testament to his biology still having an interest in Suguru than his heart.

Perhaps pathetically, Suguru will take it as a small reassurance. If nothing else, Satoru still wants him the way any indiscriminate alpha would. Against his better judgment, even.

At last, Satoru snaps. “Doesn’t help that you keep writhing around to top of me every ten seconds—”

“What? I have not—”

“And wafting your scent around,” he keeps complaining, pushing up at Suguru, trying to get him off, “until I’m choking on it. My head is—it’s—it’s making me crazy. I need some fresh air or I’m going to—”

“You’re one to talk,” Suguru cuts in, sneering, grappling blindly at Satoru’s face and trying to push his head aside. “Yours just keeps getting worse by the minute, you know. It’s like I’m stuck at the intersection of an aggressive perfume counter and a bakery. Like you’re… like…”

The realization dries the words on his tongue.

Satoru’d never had a rut in all the time they were in school. A late bloomer. All his energy devoted to sorcery, which simply left no time to be debilitated for days on end. But if he had gone through one back then, it'd would've been accompanied with what Suguru is facing now: overpowering scent, sharper and richer than usual, all fine-tuned to affect any nearby omega as well.

“Not so funny now, is it?” Satoru wryly questions from underneath him.

Trapped with an unfriendly alpha going into rut. Unplanned. In a coffin, within a cursed spirit’s domain.

“Well, you’re the one that’s miserable, so it’s still a little funny,” Suguru murmurs, unsurprised when Satoru deigns not to respond. “What’s your read on how much time is left in here?”

Satoru’s swallow is audible. Sticky. “Three-ish hours.”

He’ll be in the thick of it before they’re out, then. If it’s just starting. If it’s moving this fast.

Suguru chews his bottom lip for a moment. “Think you can keep yourself in check for that long, Satoru?”

There is a lengthy pause.

It’s so rare to hear Satoru wavering on his ability to do something. Anything. But he doesn’t even sound like he’s convinced himself when he says, “Yeah. Easy.”

“Is that so?” Suguru scoffs.

“Yeah. No sweat,” Satoru says, shoring up his previous sentiment with more confidence. “Can you?”

“Hah! Of course. It hasn’t affected me at all yet.”

He’s a better liar than Satoru, he thinks. Or Satoru’s just worse at seeing through them.

They’re grown men, anyway. They can resist this, if they need to. And it would be smart to, even if it’ll leave Satoru in agony for the next few hours—which some small part of Suguru wouldn’t mind seeing, either, after Satoru thoroughly ignored his antics and well-publicized murders. After he let things lie where Suguru left them, unquestioned. Unpursued.

Suguru breathes out and in, eyes closed, thinking of anything but the fact that he’s lying on top of Satoru and Satoru’s in rut and if it were only eight or nine years ago, they’d already be twined together for it. He has cursed spirits to gather and hoard until the time is right. Bills to pay, money to collect, monkeys to direct into being useful in some way, and blood to spill if they cannot serve. Nanako and Mimiko have their recitals coming up for dance and piano. Manami’s going to be on his ass about meeting with those big ticket donors still expecting to see him in person.

Despite the lack of room, Satoru manages to run a hand up Suguru’s left flank, over layers and layers of robes, aggravation clear in the way he squeezes into the fabric after. It’s in the way of what he—or the alpha part of him, at least—wants.

Suguru would smack it aside, if he had the reach. All he can do is shrug it off and whisper, “I thought you had yourself under control? Or is being the strongest limited to jujutsu?”

Satoru’s touch wilts. For now.

Maybe ten more minutes pass. Suguru agonizes over Satoru’s building, sharpening, overwhelming scent all the while… and the way it’s affecting him in turn, arousing him to the point that he’s going to be waddling off in uncomfortably wet underwear by the time they’re out of here. He can feel the agitation brimming in Satoru in the way he tenses, then makes himself relax, then tenses up again; little lapses in judgment, or self-control, where his hips tilt up into Suguru or his fingers inch along Suguru’s side.

It’s not making things easy for Suguru.

“Would it help if I…” Suguru trails off, unsure where he’d been going with that. Even if he wanted to… to lend Satoru a helping hand, to take the edge off for both of their sake’s, there’s hardly any way to get his hand in between them and do it. Not while keeping some degree of separation for their continued sanity. “I could… some relief would—”

“First you abandon me, now you’re, what, throwing yourself at me?” Satoru growls out. Snappy. Riled. “You can’t—you can’t fuck around with me like this, Suguru. Not now, of all times,” he almost whines.

“I was offering to be nice.” He scoffs. Unbelievable. No good deed, or whatever. Let Satoru suffer it out on his own, then. “You’re the one getting handsy with me after going no contact for the better part of a decade.”

Satoru snorts. “That’s the rut hormones.”

“Control them better, then.” It’s half an admonishment to himself, too.

Now the silence is thick with the potency of Satoru’s rut and simmering anger. Great. A miserable stew for the both of them.

It doesn’t stop Satoru’s fingers from toying with the front of his vestments within a few minutes, clearly incapable of keeping his hands to himself.

“Suguru,” he murmurs, a vein of something low and heated and attention-seeking in it. “Hey, Suguru, I—”

Satoru chokes off whatever comes next as the coffin moves around them, flipping once more, this time without any of their doing.

Suguru’s head smacks into a wooden panel as they roll seven or eight times, the two of them banging into each other and against the walls; when the coffin slowly tips to a stop at last, their positions are reversed, Suguru laying on the bottom and Satoru sprawled on top of him.

God, he’s heavy. Suguru wheezes under him.

“Trying to prod us into expending cursed energy to escape, I’d wager,” Suguru hisses out, a soft ringing in his ears from the back of his skull getting slammed into. 

The cursed spirit’s usual prey of non-sorcerers would’ve succumbed already, uncontrollably shedding cursed energy the way they always do, feeding into the curse as it withers them within the coffin. Inexperienced or panicking, unobservant sorcerers would’ve perished, too, after draining their cursed energy in attempts to escape. The cursed spirit may not know what to do with two occupants of its domain lingering this long, feeding it nothing…

“Satoru?”

From the breath warming his shoulder, he can tell Satoru’s head is slumped forward against him, face buried there. Suguru winces as he works his arm free of where it’s pinned between Satoru and the coffin wall, then pats his his way up Satoru’s spine and into his hair, feeling for blood or a lump or—

All of Satoru shudders against him.

“Sa—”

Satoru’s hips roll downward, the whole of his body flexing down against Suguru.

“I can smell it on you,” he pants heavily into Suguru’s ear, undeterred by the hands trying to shove him aside.

Suguru clenches his teeth as he feels exactly what Satoru’s talking about—damp fabric between his legs, warm and sticky with every little motion he makes. It feels silly, now, to have thought he wouldn’t eventually pick up on it.

“Ugh, stop moving like that,” Satoru snaps, the harsh click of his teeth audible. Then they almost chatter together as he’s wracked again, convulsing against Suguru before he can stop himself. “Or, actually… keep moving like that. You smell so good, Suguru. I could just—”

Suguru flinches at the wet crawl of a tongue along his jaw. Satoru’s hand plasters over his face and gives his head a sharp turn, greedily licking up the side of his neck.

“Satoru!” He wrinkles his nose and nips at the meat of Satoru’s palm, forcing him to withdraw it. The suckling along his throat almost has him keening, but he keeps himself in check. “Thought you said it’d be easy to keep yourself together, hm?”

An unseen hand strums its way up the outside of Suguru’s thigh, firming up when it reaches his hip.

“I did… I did say that,” Satoru’s voice is low but dreamy. That he manages to pull himself back from the thickening mental haze of his rut is likely thanks to sheer stubbornness alone. His mouth is still hanging next to Suguru’s ear when he makes a reedy sound and admits, “I’m losing it a little, Suguru.”

Hah.

“Really? I couldn’t tell,” Suguru mumbles back.

He breathes out. He breathes in. But instead of calming him, every breath just makes Suguru feel like he’s slowly burning up, caught up in Satoru’s spiraling nosedive.

Suguru has always considered himself a model of temperance. Especially in comparison to Satoru, which is how he’d existed in the jujutsu world: in relation to Satoru.

He can make himself do terrible, disgusting things: first for non-sorcerers, now for the dream of an ideal world for sorcerers. He can deny himself what he wants most—namely, Satoru’s friendship, Satoru’s presence, and everything to do with Satoru, really. Never let it be said that Suguru Geto is lukewarm in adhering to his beliefs, or unwilling to sacrifice, or unwilling to suffer.

But in the isolation of their little coffin prison, barraged on every side by the feel and scent of Satoru’s arousal, Suguru is left to contend with the kind of want he hasn’t let himself feel for years. Not even during his own heats, which he approaches with a monk’s asceticism and self-denial, the longing and pain and incompleteness of each one serving as a reminder of what he’d given up any hope of having in order to do right by his chosen family—which still includes Satoru, whether he realizes or accepts that the world Suguru wants would mean a kind of freedom for him, too.

“It’s only… what did you say, again?” Suguru asks, the inescapable weight of the situation—and Satoru—increasingly apparent to him. “Another few hours?”

Satoru’s pained groan could rattle the coffin walls. It’s that dire then.

With forced, raspy levity, he whispers, “Hey. Suguru. I have a little idea on how we could pass the time.”

Hot, uncomfortable excitement prickles under Suguru’s skin.

Even if they’re not what they used to be—what do you call someone who knows your recurring dreams and the precise placement of the moles on the back of your neck, but you haven’t spoken with in close to ten years?—they could still have this. For a little while.

“Is that right?” He feigns some kind of nonchalance, as if he’s not having to squeeze his thighs together and think of the least arousing things imaginable—Gakuganji, that one donor who transparently stares at his feet, eating cursed spirits—just to maintain a leg up on Satoru. “Seems like I’d be doing you an awfully big favor.”

“Hahhh,” Satoru breathes out, his hand a little too firm where it fumbles to find Suguru’s waist and squeeze around it, bunching the fabric between his long fingers. They curl, nails digging in to hold Suguru in place while he rocks down into him. “I’d owe you one, then.”

It’s a helpful excuse to give in. They’ll both get some relief, pass some time, and if nothing else, Suguru can count on Satoru being obligated to see him again when he calls in that favor.

“You would. But in practical terms, I just can’t see how this will work,” he says in place of outright acquiescing, because he can’t in good conscience want this more. Or let Satoru know he wants it more. Not after being the one to walk away.

“I’ll make it work,” Satoru growls, already surging against him.

Suguru’s shoulder blades push into the wooden coffin wall underneath himself as Satoru bears down on him, and there’s the telltale rut aggression he’s been expecting.

In the blinding dark, Suguru angles his head, hoping to find—ah, Satoru finds him first. That figures, Six Eyes and all. Peering straight through him like always, effortlessly charting his outline without even seeing him, in the conventional sense.

Hunger is a tame word for the appetite in Satoru’s kiss. He plies his mouth against Suguru’s like he’s been starved since the last one, sometime in their third year, and will suffocate if not able to steal Suguru’s breath. It’s not gentle. His fangs catch on the full parts of Suguru’s lips and scrape along his tongue. Satoru bleeds him, just a little.

Suguru has to fight to meet him halfway in intensity, barely able to keep from being smothered in kisses that are barely kisses and rather more like open-mouthed ravishing. There is a need to open up Suguru and taste him from the inside—to get his own scent and saliva in there, to touch over all the places he’d so briefly explored when they were teenagers.

It excites him more than it should, being caught under Satoru while he’s like this. With the way Satoru falls on him, moans for him, grinds against him, Suguru could be forgiven if he read into it as more than just being rut-wild and penned up with an omega.

He arches his body up and into Satoru’s as well as he can, trying to get his feet braced in a good place for the leverage to really push. As is, Satoru is too busy hunching and clawing to get at his face for Suguru to get the right kind of contact below the waist, where he’s wet and hard and feeling a kind of need that’s almost foreign after being so long denied.

There’s only so much room to work with here, though, and almost none to maneuver. But they have desperation on their side, along with the ravenous, forceful aggression Satoru’s finally letting loose.

The top of Suguru’s head bumps into the top of the coffin as he stretches his neck and lets Satoru kiss and lick and mark him up there, too. Just vicious little lovebites, not marking marking. Even out of his mind, there’s no way Satoru would make the mistake of claiming him—not with how Suguru left things between them, and how Satoru’s let them lie there for years.

Suguru’s whole body jerks as his kesa is ripped at in the fervor to unclothe him, Satoru lifting and slamming him back down in frustration. In his ear, Satoru issues a grumbling, furious stream of words, all of them directed at Suguru’s vestments and what a nuisance they are.

“For a fucking gimmick,” he hisses, shifting around atop Suguru as he pushes fabric up and aside and worms his hand under all those layers, desperate to get his robes open.

“It’s—people eat it up, you know.”

He really shouldn’t have to be defending his grift now, of all times. And it’s the wrong thing to say, apparently… presumably because Satoru is of the mind only he is allowed to eat up Suguru.

Breath falls hot over Suguru’s chest as the neckline of his vestments are viciously yanked open, exposing his collarbone and flushed chest. Satoru’s hand finally makes it all the way up under his robes and pulls at the waist of the loose trousers work under them, unceremoniously tugging them down around Suguru’s legs. 

His hand wedges in between Suguru’s thighs, fingers slipping over the soaked material of his underwear, teasing along the sensitive lips right behind it.

Suguru’s back bows, hips off the wood and shoulders planted down into it.

Satoru is busy running his tongue up Suguru’s neck and along his jaw and over his cheek, the slick, possessive stripe of saliva left behind tingling where warm air rustles over it. Two of his fingers crook their way into Suguru’s underwear and run through the abundance of slick trapped there, a satisfied hum reverberating through the spot where he’s making a hickey.

“This wet from being stuck with me?” The mouth against Suguru’s adam’s apple grins, sly and cocksure. “Need me, huh? My knot in you? Begging for it, except you’re too good to beg. That’s okay. I wouldn’t make you wait, anyway.”

Long fingers nudge the soaked-through fabric aside and push in, slick coating them up to the knuckle and dripping along Satoru’s hand. He spreads them inside, laughing when it makes Suguru jump and then clench—the sound of it falls somewhere in Suguru’s hair, husky, pleased, and heavy in intention.

“I’ll knot you every chance I get until this thing spits us out. I’ll—I’ll keep you on it, keep you full,” he’s panting out, less composed with every word. Shamelessly, he rocks down into Suguru’s front, pressure squeezing along the length of Suguru’s achingly hard cock while simultaneously stroking along his insides. “Won’t let you go anywhere this time.”

Suguru shudders and splays his hand out against the wooden panels above his head, helpless, while his other arm squeezes around Satoru. With his head swimming in Satoru’s scent, the width of just two fingers is more frustrating than anything else. He’s not even the one who’s supposed to be needy, here.

“I thought,” he gasps, “you said you wouldn’t keep me waiting.”

He gets a rough, sloppy kiss in reply.

Within the narrow confines of the coffin, there is scarcely any wiggle room. It slows them, keeps Satoru’s motions limited, makes it tricky to move without throwing each other off. There’s just no good, easy angle here. Suguru can hardly even open his legs, his knees bumping into either Satoru’s unyielding form or a coffin wall each time he tries.

With a grunt, Satoru runs his wet hand along Suguru’s thigh and under his knee, hiking it up, bending Suguru to make room for himself. He’s not gentle with his movements, but they’re quick, forceful as needed to get themselves aligned, and Suguru can appreciate his efficiency.

His brow furrows at the stretch, at the shift of fabric and Satoru’s weight across his front, at the awkward position he’s folded into—one knee hooked up over Satoru’s arm, his other leg pinned between the wooden slats and Satoru’s side as he clambers in between them, thighs parted as far as they can possibly go between the coffin’s walls.

Satoru’s not the wiry, lanky boy he remembers from their last encounter all those years ago. His broad shoulders thump against the sides of their prison, and his burly upper arms cage Suguru in, and his weight crushes in his haste to get his hips against Suguru’s.

The stifling heat, the heaviness of their breathing, the contortion of their tight confines… Suguru feels like he might pass out. It’s all he can do to press his palms up into Satoru’s chest and make a little space for himself, whimpering past his bitten lip as Satoru forcefully squeezes into his space and spreads him apart.

His soaked, ruined underwear are tugged loose and off to one side. Blind, desperate thrusts have the head of Satoru’s cock rubbing along his inner thighs and slipping off wet lips. Frustration mounts in Satoru as he fumbles for an angle; as he tries lifting Suguru at the waist and getting his hips a little higher, a rumbling discontent growing in his throat.

“Satoru.” Suguru doesn’t mean to whine. He means to tell Satoru that it’s fine, to take his time, to collect himself instead of rutting between his legs like an animal—though that’s sort of the order of the day. Instead, he is open-mouthed sighing his name, mouth sticky, nails dragging up the back of Satoru’s neck, letting him go at it. “Almost, Satoru, almost, that’s—just a little—ah, Satoru, please. I need it, Satoru, hurry, I can’t wait anymore, I’m tired of waiting—”

It’s that last rush of words that gets Satoru bucking down into him forcefully enough to have the wood under Suguru squeal. And it works. The instant Satoru’s cock slips in between his folds and catches there, he drives in before another second can be wasted. 

For all his begging for it, Suguru isn’t ready. Satoru is big—bigger even than he’d imagined from the times they’d seen each other in baths or wrapped around each other in CQC training—and he realizes it three times over, when Satoru repeatedly gets stuck between his tight walls, held fast, and then somehow rams himself in deeper anyway.

Suguru squirms on it, stuffed to the point that it aches and he needs off, but he’s hemmed in on all sides by Satoru and the coffin itself. And then Satoru is pulling out—too soon, too soon for that, too, no easier going without it than taking it in—and Suguru’s leg smacks the wooden planks beside them as he spasms from the sudden movement.

His whole body tenses up as Satoru thrusts back in and makes a rough pace of it, spine arching his front up into Satoru and his head thrown back against the coffin, fingers clawing daggerlike into a uniformed shoulder.

There’s just the dark and Satoru’s ragged breathing and the noises Suguru can’t stop himself making every time the thickest part of his cock slips in, even when he cups a hand over his own mouth. There’s no room left in him for doubts or second guesses, all of that shoved aside to make way for Satoru. This is ruining him. How he’ll ever be able to subject himself to another heat alone after this is beyond Suguru, beyond consideration.

Satoru will owe him one. Hah. It won’t be enough. He’s going to be the one forever caught on Satoru’s chain because of this.

The top of Suguru’s head thumps against the coffin more than once as Satoru is particularly forceful, braced against the walls for leverage while he ruts into him. On every thrust now, there’s a slight catch. The first hint of Satoru’s knot slips easily in and out, resistance building as it grows, right up until it’s too big to glide in along with the rest of his length.

The nearly full swell of it meets Suguru’s entrance over and over and over, pounding hard against him, impossible to ignore in its insistence. But there’s just no getting it in, between the girth of it and the stilted position they’re stuck in. 

Wood is scraping and shaving into curls under Satoru’s hard nails as he fights for centimeters that will not give. Sweat drips from him in his desperation, compelled to chase the release they’re both expecting now. They’re pitiful, the noises coming out of him; it’s almost frightening, how badly he needs it.

And Suguru needs it, too, or else all of this just feels fruitless. Satoru slamming into him makes it hard to move counter to him, but he tries, the both of them struggling with and against each other. Suguru has to twist at the waist, gnawing on his own lip as he feels the stretch of Satoru’s knot breach him—but only just. Frantic, he pushes against Satoru in and the walls, twisting a little more to get the right angle for it to pop inside and yelping out the moment it does.

His nails dig into the coffin’s wooden boards and whatever part of Satoru is within reach. Suguru’s mouth is caught open, frozen in sharp intake of breath, all at once realizing he’s bitten off more than he can chew. Even being made for this kind of thing, it’s too much—and every little move of Satoru’s hips exacerbates it, makes him squeeze around it in tight little pulses.

“Satoruuu,” he whines out, “I lo—”

That’s his feelings talking, drunk on nostalgia and pleasure and some half-baked hope that Satoru’s not entirely over him. That’s too honest. He hiccups the rest of the word down and thinks of nothing but Satoru in him, on him, trying to fit the two of them deeply, inseparably together.

Teeth sink into his shoulder, somewhere safe to bite without leading to anything permanent. Contented sounds pass through his mouth and into Suguru, vibrating softly through his flesh. There’s a muffled moan shaped like his name.

As soon as his jaws loosen, saliva dripping hot on Suguru’s bruised skin, it all spills out of him, whispered, mumbled, repeated like a litany. “Suguru, Suguru, Suguru, Suguru.” 

Satoru’s lost in it, satiated in having gotten what he needed—temporarily content, grinning mouthily against his omega, gone overbearingly, possessively clingy in the wake of successfully knotting him.

It dawns late on Suguru just how full he feels, low in his belly. How feverishly warm. How much Satoru must’ve come inside him. Might still be coming even now, and Suguru’s just too overstimulated already to feel it.

But the heat of it soothes, a little. The satisfaction—of coming himself, off of pressure within and friction along his cock, and in having seen Satoru through the first round of whatever this is—is what takes the edge off. Having been stuck on it for a couple of minutes now, the bulge of Satoru’s knot inside him approaches something like a comfortable ache.

Forehead to forehead, dripping with sweat, heady off each other’s scent, they kiss. Suguru blinks slowly, just able to make out the faint glint of Satoru’s eyes in the dark, his blindfold ripped away at some point. He wishes he could see them better, misses them, wants it all back: the way Satoru looked at him when they’d spar or get giggly after staying up until three a.m. watching movies, back when they could exchange a single look behind Yaga’s back and know the same gameplan to get out of class.

“Suguru.” His nose presses into the corner of Suguru’s jaw, just below his ear, breathing in deep before he runs his mouth with, “Please, let me have you, let me mark you, let me be your mate, your one and only, Suguru, you’re mine, no one else can have you. They can’t.”

That snaps Suguru halfway out of his stupor. “Satoru?”

“I’d kill them.”

Suguru’s spine tingles from the timbre of Satoru’s low, almost-growl, rut-stoked aggression suddenly flaring hot at some imagined competition.

“Satoru,” Suguru tries again, still parsing Satoru’s words. Almost deliriously, he asks, “Wh-what are you talking about? We’re not even friends.”

Even without being able to see Satoru’s expression, Suguru can tell it darkens.

“Because you already went and replaced me with one of your cult worshippers?” Jealousy bleeds into every sneered word.

“Replaced you?” He swallows, still more confused. What they had is broken, but there’s no replacing someone like Satoru—just a lingering void in Suguru’s life where he used to be. “Satoru, you can’t even stand me.”

“Suguru. You’re literally sitting on my knot right now,” Satoru reminds him, as if Suguru can somehow forget the massive amount of Satoru currently stuffed inside him and leaking down his legs. “And you will be for a while. All thanks to a rut you triggered.”

Suguru flushes hotter. He really will pass out if this keeps up. “So, what? That doesn’t mean anything. People sleep with people they hate all the time.”

There’s a sharp intake of air. Then silence. Then, “You hate me?”

“No. No, but… we fought.” And even before that, they’d already begun to grow distant, pulled apart as Satoru thrived in doing his duty and Suguru crumbled under it. “You must hate me, for…”

Ah, where to start? He doesn’t bother trying. Satoru surely knows the score.

“Have I ever come after you?” He shifts forward, making Suguru whimper from the tug where they’re connected, and the slight push in right after. “Threatened your shitty little cult? Curbed your killing? Done a single thing the higher-ups have asked me to do to you?”

Suguru’s sore jaw works soundlessly until he finds it in himself to complain, “Yes, exactly. You never came after me. I mean… to talk, even. I’ve never been subtle about my comings and goings.”

“You're the one who dumped me! I didn’t know how you'd react to seeing me and I didn't want to be put in a position where I’d have to fight you for… for real real,” Satoru murmurs. “But you’re my best friend, Suguru. Still. Always. You think just because you’re not around anymore, that spot’s been retired?”

Fondness carries in Satoru’s words, but what kind of friends don’t even talk? What friends take opposing ideological sides and last through it?

“I’m allowed to be a little pissed at you, too,” Satoru quickly adds, more heated. “Ditched me and picked up a bunch of weirdos instead—”

“Hey, they’re my—”

“Your family, right,” Satoru mocks. He squeezes himself up against Suguru, making him sigh as his knot shifts inside him. “I was your family, first. It was me. We were—we were supposed to be that. This. Best friends. Mates. All of it together. Don’t tell me you didn’t feel it, too.”

It makes Suguru’s insides gooey, hearing that.

“You really mean it,” he realizes. “In spite of…”

God, everything.

“Yeah. Yes.” His hips nudge up into Suguru, his slightly softened knot pushing in a smidge further; he’s quick to pepper kisses along the side of Suguru’s face, laying on the affection. “Come on, Suguru. Don’t you still want this? Us?”

“I—”

“Me?”

“Badly,” he admits, keeping it brief. His face is burning hot, but hopefully the total darkness spares him the worst of Satoru’s knowing gaze. “But how does that work with everything else? Being mates when I’m wanted dead, and you’re the one that’s supposed to do it?”

A grumbling sound settles in Satoru’s throat. His hands are wandering. “Just—shhh. We’ll figure it out.”

He’s already amorous again, thinking with his heart, among other parts, rather than his head.

Suguru doesn’t expect anything more, at the moment. That little window of satisfied clarity is quickly shrinking, Satoru already getting lost in tasting up the side of his throat and slowly fucking him on his knot.

He’d like to be lost in Satoru for a while, too, truthfully.

They don’t use cursed energy, but they certainly test the strength of the coffin domain in ways that make the wooden boards around them squeak and bend.

With a lot of squeezing and thrashing and turning, Suguru manages to get turned around, his front pressed to the side of the coffin and Satoru flush against his back.

It’s a little less of a fight positioned this way, given there’s not much room to spread his legs. It’s easier for Satoru to put his knot in, rest against him, and then do it all over again.

“Mine,” Satoru pants somewhere between the third and fourth time, a predatory grin pressed to the back of Suguru’s neck, nose in his hair, delirious and dangerously close to fitting his teeth over the little gland where he’d make a lasting, binding mark. “Still mine, Suguru. Always.”

He doesn’t do it. But each and every time Satoru takes him, Suguru is left wondering if he might.

Some hours later, the cursed spirit finally tires of holding them captive without receiving any cursed energy to feed on.

The wooden walls pressed in around them vanish, leaving the both of them hanging in a pitch black void before slowly beginning to fall. For the first time in hours, Satoru slips all the way out of him; a flood of warm, wet come follows, leaving Suguru’s face pinched with faint disgust after he hits the earthen ground of the cemetery they’d first arrived in.

He’s a mess. Mercifully, his heavy robes—even pulled loose and torn along the seams in places—shroud around him, hiding the fact that he has to tug his loosely fitted pants back up around his waist as he wobbles to stand. There was no way in which he was walking out of here remotely pulled together, but still…

Suguru is even more annoyed to look up and see Satoru’s hand positioned with a flicker of purple forming along his fingers.

“Ah, wait!” He extends the hand that isn’t currently holding the front of his robes closed. “Wait, Satoru, let me have it!”

The cursed spirit in question watches the two of them warily, seemingly hesitant to throw further attacks against the pair that already outlasted its domain.

“Please, Satoru? It’s too unique to pass up. Please? I think I deserve it after tonight.”

He plies his sweetest purr against Satoru, knowing he’s in an especially manipulable state at the moment, and watches as those pale cheeks turn slightly red.

It’s a miraculous save, considering that in every other respect he looks like he just rolled out of a ditch after wrestling an octopus’ suckers off of himself. His hair is fully loose and disheveled with static and sweat and Satoru’s dried spit. His lips feel bruised. He’s probably still gleaming with sweat, his skin flushed, tender bite marks riddled up his throat and across his bare shoulders.

Satoru drops his arm to his side, his Hollow Purple never coming to fruition.

“Yeah. Okay. Whatever.” He digs the toe of his shoe into the earth, hands on his hips, given up on actually stopping Suguru from gaining another powerful cursed spirit. Then he nods to himself. “I’ll weaken it for you, then. But let’s keep things rolling after that, alright? We’ve got an hour max before I lose my mind again and I’d really like to squeeze in a meal first.”

Suguru nods, voice a little too scratchy to do more.

He watches from afar as Satoru nearly takes the curse apart with his bare hands.

Suguru could almost forget what he came here for in the first place as his eyes follow the sharp, unforgiving movements of Satoru in the moonlight. Love to the strongest, indeed. He’s only gotten more impressive in the years they’ve been apart.

But that’s Satoru for you.

He drops the feebled curse unceremoniously at Suguru’s feet.

Suguru pockets the balled up essence of the coffin spirit for now, not wanting the taste to tank his mood or leave him nauseous for the next however many hours. Not when he’s already going to be put through the wringer.

“Everything back at my place is sweet, so we’ll have to stop somewhere on the way for you,” Satoru continues, eager, hovering right by Suguru’s side. “You’re gonna need the calories. I’ll go inside and grab you something since you’re looking… uh…”

“Like a rutting alpha got ahold of me?” he dryly asks.

“Exactly like that, funnily enough,” Satoru grins. “C’mon, let’s go find somewhere that’s open.”

His impatience is understandable, but Suguru’s the one worse for wear after their stint in the coffin—bruised, bitten, sore, sticky. Every step has him cursing Satoru for leaving him dripping like this. “I can only move so fast in my current state. Thanks to someone.”

Satoru gives him a shrug. “Well, clock’s ticking, Suguru. Don’t have time to waste unless you want to spend the next few hours in an alley.”

Suguru doesn’t even have the energy to attempt evasion as Satoru doubles back, swoops in, and scoops him up, easily hefting Suguru into his arms, tattered robes and all.

“Ugh, you reek,” Suguru says, holding his nose and leaning away as if that will spare him the effects of a renewed round of the rutting alpha’s heightened scent.

As if he isn’t already completely gone for Satoru and in for the long haul, though it might take days. As if he himself smells any better, really, drenched in sweat and sex and sporting what he’s nervous to admit might be the first stirrings of his own oncoming heat.

“Nah, you like it.” Satoru is smug now. Annoyingly so. Charmingly so, as much as it pains Suguru to admit it. “And I like you.”

Suguru has no idea what to say to that. He huffs, lets himself be carried, and eventually gives in and winds his arms around Satoru’s shoulders.

“I still like you, too,” he murmurs, quiet as can be, and glances up just in time to see the curl at the corner of Satoru’s mouth.

In a week’s time, when they’ve both gotten this out of their systems and reality settles back in with all its hard, unyielding edges, it won’t be so easy to push everything else aside for each other and pretend it can work out.

But that can wait.