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mossmurdock · 9 months

Text

MORE THAN LIVING

✿ ao3 ✿

geto suguru/reader

summary: A year of retirement from being a jujutsu sorcerer finally pushes you to call someone you willed yourself to leave behind. Groceries are bought, a meal is shared, teeth are bared inches from skin, and hands are held back from tearing apart. Reunions have never been either of your strong suits.

tags: Mentioned Gojo Satoru, Mentioned Ieiri Shoko, Mentioned Nanami Kento, Mentioned Haibara Yu, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Codependency, Pining, but make it gross and a little scary, Past Relationship(s), Complicated Relationships, blood and teeth and love

notes: hello! thank you for reading. this one took some time but im liking it lots. suguru is so fun to write for, ive really liked exploring him so far. always feel free to leave any questions or comments, they always make me happy!

Resigning from jujutsu society is easy enough to have you second-guessing yourself. It frightens you a little, how easy the process is; you almost turn to the nearest suit to ask if this is really allowed.

Sign here, don’t forget to perform an exit interview tomorrow afternoon, and make sure to resubmit all the cursed tools you may have checked out of the armoury; negligence to do so will be considered a severe infraction. Remember that you can always come back to us.

In the span of a day, you quietly retire at the age of twenty. The first thing you do is your laundry. The dried blood washes out nicely enough; you throw away the uniform all the same.

Retired life is easy. You eat, you drink, and you try to live. Maybe you dream about killing. You rise out of bed every morning without sparing a glance at your hands until you’ve reached the bathroom and thoroughly scrubbed them in the sink. It makes you remember him as a clean slate, something you never touched.

It really is no use, you think of him all the same, but tradition only dies with someone.

A year into this and you still manage to forget to go grocery shopping at the end of each month. You’ve once more run out of money for takeout and the fridge has been empty for two weeks. All that sits inside are bottles of your favorite drink and the brand of candy Satoru handed you the night you retired. It was his favorite so naturally he thought it was your favorite too.

The candy is too sweet and too waxy, but you shove it down for breakfast before starting your day. The bag is empty before you know it, light enough in your hand to be blown away with a breath. You lick at the sugar stuck to your lips before trading the empty bag for your phone.

This should feel like a horrible idea, but your hands all too eagerly wrap around the frame of your phone, the pads of your finger pressing into the screen like they were meant to leave marks on skin. You pretend you aren’t sure what it is about this morning that has you wanting to hear his voice.

The ring only echoes once.

“Suguru,” you greet familiarly. He had always said your voice came out scratchy over the phone, arguing with you for years about getting a new one because he never heard you clearly when you delivered information about missions. You argued that it was just the way he chose to hear you. Eventually, you both settled on messaging each other instead. You wonder if you sound any different now, if he’s even searching for that sort of thing after so long.

He says your name back. So neutral that it's polite, so detached from himself that you’re starting to think he might be back to normal. Your mind flashes to the night of your retirement, the awkward shapes of his hands, and how they’d tried to bite into the fat of your arms: desperate. It feels important to remember that you couldn’t completely decipher him in your last moments.

It’s been a year since then.

“Come shopping with me,” you propose. “I’ll cook for you.”

You never cooked much in your life, things never exactly called for that sort of thing. Though, Haibara would always praise you for your simple meals. The two of you had picked up the nasty habit of heading to bed too late, often caught in meaningless conversations in the kitchen.

Suguru has never had any of your cooking before, always so polite to refuse.

“Is retired life really that lonely so soon?” he asks.

“You sound like Satoru,” you note, more to yourself than anything, but you’re aware of how it will irk him.

“It was just a simple question.” An unkind one, but he chooses not to mention that part when he pauses and lets a silence hang in the static. “I can find some time to come along, but there’s no need to cook for me.”

To anyone, it would seem like he’s saying it to be kind, but, deep down, he says it so that he can get away from you more quickly. The idea of him sharing a meal with you sticks to the front of your mind all the same.

You pick at the leftover candy stuck between your teeth with your tongue and swallow the leftover pieces away. “Ok,” you say. “I’ll send my address.”

“Alright,” he bids simply. Then, almost as a calculated afterthought, “See you.”

“See you.”

You hang up and maybe that’s finally living.

The pants you decide on wearing tend to drag along the floor even after you cuff them. They’re well-loved because you take good care of them. There’s a stain on the left side of the waistband, a mended hole in one of the pockets, and the fabric is soft enough to want to drown in. They weren’t always yours, it’s what makes them even better.

The sky is gray tonight and matches the color of Suguru’s loose shirt well. You bite down the urge to tell him he looks good, and that the two of you are matching. It would have been easier over the phone, with him not being able to hear your voice as much as your own. He could mistake you as a stranger and start all over again instead of seeing something so rundown and full and yet completely barren.

“The supermarket’s only open for another hour, let’s be quick and not inconvenience the workers.” Suguru walks through the automatic doors and is immediately illuminated by the fluorescent lights. The bags under his eyes are highlighted enough to seem like they were painted on. The suggestion is more of his polite code: Let’s make this quick so we can head back to our separate lives.

Because how wrong of you was it to have called him after an entire year of no contact? How wrong was it to want to have the weight of his arm against yours while you both stared at different kinds of produce you aren’t able to afford? You wanted to see him again. You want to ask why he looks so tired, why he keeps looking down at your shoes and not at your eyes.

Why is it that ever since leaving all you have been able to do properly is reminisce? You must have forgotten how to make anything new of yourself, how to hold anything softly.

“Hey.” You find Suguru in the candy aisle. He’s staring at the same brand of candy you grabbed out of your fridge this morning. “I’m ready to leave. You done?”

Despite your words, he doesn’t move, and you only walk to stare at the rows with him. It’s colorful, full of bright cyans, electric yellows, and eye-straining magentas. It’s almost funny, the way the two of you look so dull in comparison; the gray of his shirt and the black of your sweats are bland in comparison.

Your arm extends against your will, grabbing a random brand and unceremoniously chucking it into your own hand-held basket. You then reach again to pick Satoru’s favorite flavor and gently place it into Suguru’s.

If he looks at you any differently, you miss it completely while turning toward the cashier.

Suguru must forget about not accompanying you back to your apartment. The way he extends his hand out for you to offer him the keys is natural and fluid.

He had carried your grocery bags along with his own the entire walk back, silent, only looking back at you when he was unsure of where to go. The only words out of you were directions, niceties, and asking if he’s sure about carrying all those bags for so long feels out of place. You’ve seen him lift heavier with just one finger.

The sound of the door closing should shift something in the atmosphere, it should make things feel heavier. The sound of it locking should have you wondering why this man is in your house, why this stranger has invited himself in. You catch his eye as you're slipping off your shoes. He’s in your kitchen, organizing things like he belongs there, like this is his hundredth time visiting instead of his first. Your grocery bags are already separated from his and halfway into the fridge. Your shared look is just that: shared, nothing else, and nothing more.

The two of you fall into preparing a meal without noticing.

Your rice cooker is ancient and covered in stickers that have no coherent theme. What looks like hundreds of awful renditions of cartoon characters you no longer recognize and fading “THANK YOU FOR SHOPPING WITH US!” labels cover the appliance like armor. It makes it look even more aged. You push down the itch to scratch away at them, telling yourself you don’t want to deal with all that leftover sticky residue. But really, you just like to remember who placed them there.

The cloudy water of the washed rice pours out into the sink loudly. You hear Suguru cutting something but don’t remember giving him a knife or a cutting board. He must have found them on his own. The both of you move around each other like second nature.

He’s cutting the sausage he bought into small slices. They look like red blood cells.

“Planning on cooking those?” It’s the first thing you say after what feels like hours.

“You never ate them raw,” he recalls. He’s right. You find a pan for him and place it on the small stove. But before he can turn anything on you stop him.

“The smell. It’ll get in your hair,” you caution. Have you been speaking in whispers this entire time?

Suguru only brushes his bangs aside, not looking at you as he slides the cut-up meat into the pan and lets the stove warm. “I’ll just shower after. You have one, don’t you?”

You’re struck dumb for only a second; the eggs you’re whisking are beginning to foam up from your non-stop whisking. “Ok then.” Your voice comes out a little flat.

The both of you end up with bowls of food and on the couch. Rice and eggs and cut sausage. It reminds you of being in school. Your tiny television feels like a much-needed buffer, there's a movie playing that you two have watched at least ten times already. You put it on purposefully because it leaves room to talk.

When your bowl is half empty, Suguru finally picks up the conversation by the arms and drags it from one grave to another. It distracts you from the fact that he’s hardly touched his own food.

“The apartment suits you,” he compliments.

“Does it?” It’s rhetorical, but you know he’ll give half of an elaboration.

He hums, makes a point of looking around and then at you. “It's nice.”

“I am nice,” you agree.

“A little selfish, too,” he adds bluntly. “But yes, nice.”

And there’s that word. Selfish. After years of the word lingering at the edge of your tongue, he ripped it away from you in a breath, like it was never yours.

“That’s alright. I like the sound of both.” You set your half finished bowl of food on the coffee table, next to the old bag of candy you completely forgot to trash this morning.

You look at him. His expression is back on the screen. He’s glowing and you’re trying to remember how to look at him normally, not like he’s just dropped from the sky and offered you a ride home.

“Is that why you think I left, because I’m selfish?” you ask. The taste of that candy sticks into the roof of your mouth.

He stirs, still not looking at you. When he speaks you barely hear any of the sound or dialogue playing on your TV. “I think leaving was the best way for you to forget.”

“No,” you correct. The tremor in your voice finally has him turning. The left side of his face is lit up by a scene you have memorized. The protagonist is on the verge of tears as she is forced to choose between love and power. The people around her are yelling about which one they want her to choose. The coloring of the terrain she is stuck in splashes across Suguru’s face like paint. You can make out the trees and the sky on his skin, the blood on the protagonist’s hands stands out the most on his cheeks. She will choose love, and it might kill people.

“Selfishness had something to do with it, but I never wanted to forget anyone.” You look at him, pushing him to look back before confessing. “I never wanted to forget what you were before me.”

You remember countless late nights and even earlier mornings, the way your hands felt after a difficult day, Satoru making you laugh so unexpectedly that you coughed up blood, Suguru handing you a tide pen to get the mess off your uniform sleeves. You remember the streamers that were hung up when Haibara and Nanami were introduced as first years, the confetti you had to pick out of Shoko’s hair.

You burned your bloodied uniform the first day you left but kept the buttons. You kept all the clothes Suguru let you borrow and you pretended to forget to give them back. An old digital camera sits on your bedside table, filled with photos of Suguru and the mundane. Of him simply walking ahead of you, having a conversation with someone else, of his wrists, his eyes, of him smiling, of him sleeping: just him. Maybe that’s when your hands started to itch a little more; could anyone blame you for wanting to reimagine the circumstances a little?

The sewn initials of Suguru’s name scratch at your ankle, the pants had become uncuffed since the walk back from the grocery store. The tag is branded into the fabric forever, having survived multiple wash cycles at your laundromat. Moving to tuck your legs beneath your weight, you swiftly cuff them again and watch him catch the movement. He hadn’t been staring at your shoes. Before he turns his head, you catch him biting his lip with enough force to draw blood.

Hypocrites, both of you.

Your eyes swerve back to the bag of candy, crumpled and a husk of what it used to be. You ravaged it after a year of letting it sit in your fridge, after a year of only remembering. You wish Suguru could have seen you do it. Maybe you did kill something today. Would a softer love be easier to reject?

When he gets up from his seat, it startles you. He takes both bowls to the kitchen. The realness of his body has you somewhat hyperaware, too mindful of the fact that he’s no longer a picture at the top of your desk drawer. You watch him like a movie, afraid of missing a detail and wishing so terribly that you could reach out to him like it was nothing; lunge out just to keep him in your hands. The faucet turns on and it nearly sounds like the beginning of an abstract soundtrack, like someone behind the scenes finally realized that only hearing your voices amongst the silence of the room was too overwhelming.

“You sounded different on the phone.” He speaks over the white noise of the running water. If you didn’t know any better you might have missed the way he masked his voice. It’s almost funny; nostalgia always seemed like something too juvenile for him to entertain. Mature Suguru: you’ll never catch him looking back at the camera when he’s walking away.

“What was different?” you ask, basked in a suspense that has you reeling.

The faucet cuts and you see Suguru’s shoulders tense up over the sink. His palms dig into the metal, and you can’t see it, but you imagine he’s gripping the edge of the counter tightly enough to leave a brand, heated with his youth.

Then his shoulders drop, you aren’t sure where his energy goes, if he’s just pushed it somewhere else or if it expelled from him in a way you couldn’t see. He moves back to the couch, back to you. You twist your body then, meeting him halfway, your ribs digging into the hard back of your cheap furniture. You feel like a siren calling him out to sea, except what you’re offering isn’t anywhere near as pretty, and he actually might be drowning without your help.

His hands, large and wet, cup around your damp cheeks. His thumb brushes at something underneath your eye and things are more right than they are wrong, not perfect, but right.

“You sounded like you missed me,” he says finally. His head is bowed, inches from your own and you can sense the sincerity on his lips, the subtle catch in his breath before his eyes squeeze shut and he continues. “Apologize.”

“For what?” you whisper, not challenging, simply begging for a chance to do it perfectly.

He finally looks at you dead on, the color of his eyes going dark with the rest of the room: they’re infested with you.

“For a while, it really did feel like I had everything figured out,” he says instead. His thumb doesn’t stop its insistent caress, his hands have begun to dry onto your skin. “If you had called sooner, I might have thought of you less.”

Your ribs hurt, a dull pain that you’re sure has made your chest red. And Suguru, his neck must hurt from bending down this low. All of this is very taxing.

“I’m sorry,” you apologize.

“Don’t,” he chokes out, even though he had just told you the opposite. His forehead collides with your own and your noses brush against each other. His eyes glide, pulled by a gravity you know too well, and land on your lips. His hands have cupped over your ears and tangled in your hair.

Suguru kisses you like he’s starved and you kiss back. He drags your bottom lip through his teeth, something you’d only seen in movies. Things are wrong, things are right, and things aren’t perfect; you’re afraid your hands have been drenched in blood, a permanent splatter of paint. They’re hidden underneath your own weight, trapped, held back until Suguru’s hand leaves your face and melts into the curve of your neck; he drags you impossibly closer, enough to have you nearly falling.

“Your hands,” he demands softly, almost dazed. “Hold onto me.”

But you feel just as drunk, so what comes out of your mouth is protest, completely contradictory of your body throwing itself onto him and letting him lift you over the wall of the couch and onto your feet. He kisses you while you’re up in the air, while you’re half in the middle of your sentence, while your hands wrap around his neck for support and squeeze. All of it’s engulfing enough to have you spinning at the thought of his strength. You never used to think of it much.

“I think I might be killing you,” you warn him deliriously, once he leaves enough room for you to breathe.

You think he might have not heard you if not for the look you catch on his face. Suddenly— alarmingly—it becomes so full of love that it feels like you’re being devoured whole. You don’t know how you’ve missed this starved expression for so long. It matches the intent of your hands: both are guilty, both are lovers, and both are a little violent.

“Yeah,” he replies hoarsely. He says it plainly, like you’ve just told him the weather, like you’re not obviously holding back from touching him again.

“Yeah?” you echo, a little more than mocking at his answer.

“Yes,” he replies more formally. His face pulls away from yours, and all his bending makes you forget how tall he really is. He grips your arms and puts some distance between the two of you, it feels like miles. There’s that bite in his hands again, awkward, too wretched for even him to hold onto on his own. “I don’t want to stop,” he declares. His grip tightens, a comforting gnaw, and he bends down to ghost your lips; Suguru swallows your breath of surprise like it might be his last meal on this Earth.

And maybe you need him because the two of you are able to kill and be killed a little more easily than most. Maybe you need him because he remembers how you like things cooked and answers all your calls. Maybe you need him because that’s a simpler part of living.

#starts bouncing around #i hope yall like LMAO #i was considering just leaving this up on ao3 but it was only one chapter so i thought why not #idk what it is about suguru that always makes me want him and the reader to kiss in the final part #this is the second time its happened now <3 #jjk x reader #geto suguru x reader #geto x reader #getou suguru x reader #suguru x reader #moss writes

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