Amava l'opera, Mavis Yaxley, e quando interpretava la parte del soprano dolce ed ingenuo – che coincidenza che proprio su quelle ottave si muovesse la sua voce! – sentiva di poter far commuovere anche lo spettatore più cinico. Era uno spettacolo che inscenava da quasi ventitré anni ed indipendentemente dal tipo di pubblico: oramai conosceva a memoria il libretto e le note, e non aveva più bisogno di adocchiare i movimenti delle mani del direttore d'orchestra per intonare la propria parte.
Oh, it's Ino, and some underdeveloped thoughts I had about the Ino - Yuuji - Haibara character type.
===============================
Junpei quietly launches himself off a wall and hauls himself up onto the narrow balcony of house where Ino should be, breathing slow and smooth. As he pulls himself to the top of the balustrade, Ino turns unerringly to look out at him, keen but calm. There's something familiar about it which makes him hang there for a moment like a cat unsure if they can jump all the way up, or if they should drop back down.
It's … he's reminded of Yuuji, which is. Embarrassing. This is not the time. Ino hangs up and comes to open the door for him while Junpei slings himself over the railing, kicking some mental carpets over his late acknowledgment. The similarities are superficial. Ino has always been pretty nice. Junpei has just overlooked it and taken it for granted the entirety of their acquaintanceship because, well, no need to harp any further on his shortcomings.
"What was that about?" Ino asks over his shoulder, playful. "You worried about me?"
As Junpei follows him in, he tries to imagine how Ino would react to the truth. Embarrassment fizzles on in the background of his mind.
"I guess this is just a weird one," he says in what is possibly a misguided attempt to be more honest.
This seems to go over well with Ino, though, who reseats himself at a window closer to the side where the fifteen year old Junpei and his mother live and turns a bright, interested gaze on him. "I don't think you've ever mentioned your family at all."
It's a peculiar atmosphere to be sure, both of them with their shoes on in the living room of a stranger's empty apartment. Can't be helped. Whoever ended up waiting here might have had to jump out the window in a hurry, and it'll be professionally cleaned afterwards, anyway.
"If everything goes well, we're gonna say that's my biological father's second family," Junpei responds after a moment, and watches Ino register the slight discrepancy there, something obvious only if he'd seen Nagi. How much Junpei resembles her. "But you already know this mission's kinda …"
He comes to stand beside Ino, looking through the window with him though there's nothing to see. Ino waits patiently, sure of him, that whatever explanation Junpei gives him will be fine. Just basically believing in people is one of those annoying, impossible qualities which technically accomplishes nothing and can barely be cultivated as a … skill or mindset or whatever, in ordinary people. In sorcerers, it's an even more fucked up matter.
Not in every instance, not day to day, necessarily. Junpei and his classmates trusted each other, or they did before it came out that Junpei hadn't told them basically anything about himself. Yuuji believed in Junpei quite baselessly, which sort of, somehow, made it true. Gojo believes in his students, except they're still too young or too weak for him to rely on as he would an adult. Something like that. Junpei can't quite imagine the time coming when Gojo would accept that's changed. And Ino believes in Nanami in a way that Junpei privately thinks Nanami doesn't even believe of himself, or rather, the origin of qualities that Ino admires about him aren't exactly … well, it's not like Junpei knows either of them well enough to say.
"That Junpei is me," he tells Ino. It would have been nice to tell Chizuko and the others. "When I was fifteen. Not figuratively."
"That's crazy," Ino says, plain and straightforward. But nothing in his voice suggests he doesn't believe Junpei. This too is an expression of the supposed insanity necessary for jujutsu, both thoughtless — something more reflexive and inborn than a conscious decision — and a more radical imposition of viewpoint than the utterly prosaic approach that Nanami, and to some degree, Megumi have. To face what everyone faces, and still use your heart for something, is beyond a lot of sorcerers.
After a pause that goes on a bit too long, Ino looks at him with some despair. Well. Whatever despair is for Ino, currently. He's generally an upbeat person, and it is honestly a funny look on him, beanie and comfortable clothes and all. "What, no more explanation?"
"We don't have one. Gojo never figured it out," Junpei says with a shrug. "Like him," he gestures at the house, "I didn't know anything about jujutsu. I had no idea about, like, anything that was going on, the past ten years. Except for this part."
With Junpei paying attention to the house, Ino is free to examine him closely and to think … more than he usually does? … about Junpei, he means. Ino isn't dumb. There's been nothing to think about, Junpei-wise, is all he means. He was just another guy until a minute ago.
Ino isn't stupid. Sometimes averting your eyes is more polite than inserting yourself into other people's business, though Junpei hardly knows when this is or isn't the case. Sometimes leaving shit alone is kinder than stirring it up.
"Nomura," Ino says, uncharacteristically reticent, "am I the first person you told about this? Other than Gojo?"
One day, Junpei intuits with unfortunate clarity, he may manage to meet again with Yuuji, the first Yuuji he ever knew, and account for all the decisions he made after coming here, for the lack of things changed because he didn't try hard enough. It might feel a little like this.
"Ieiri and Nanami know," he answers with his eyes fixed on his old house, which means yes, because while Ino might not have much to do with Gojo personally, he probably knows who mostly controlled the flow of information there. There's no need for Ino to hear that Junpei told Nanami everything in an unprecedented fit of optimism, which, from what Junpei could discern through observation, ruined Nanami's mental state for about a week.
Didn't that force him to hound Gojo for most of that week, though? Really, Gojo should thank Junpei for that. Once Gojo heard about the whole domain expansion situation, Junpei's sure he would have continued to harass Nanami about his, but Nanami wouldn't understand why unless someone explained the situation to him. And maybe Gojo would have, eventually. Junpei just hurried it up a few days, maybe?
What difference does a few days really make? It's been years since Nanami first tried working on his, and he can't imagine he wouldn't have heard if Nanami had succeeded. Which is a shame, considering Nanami might have to fight Mahito again tomorrow.
He hasn't made things … worse, surely?
"Ah …" Ino says, awkward and wise, as Junpei puts both hands over his mouth and doesn't scream because he's an adult. He already grew up! This was an extra eleven, one hundred percent free years that he didn't earn in any way! Well, nobody 'earns' them. You just live, or you don't.
WIP Wednesday - working title "the worst threesome" gojo/toji/kong (sfw)
This is not something I'm actively working on, but the concept amuses me. Medusozoa!Gojo menaces Kong attempts to negotiate a special present for Toji's birthday. He runs into one or two problems, such as having misread their past relationship.
"Never?" Gojo finally asks, a thin spread of embarrassment glazing his otherwise calm voice. "You said you worked together ten years? Never?"
What does the length of time have to do with it, Shi-Woo could ask, like you just hit the ten year mark and then every coworker who's stuck around that long is free game, but he sort of knows what Gojo means and it would be disingenuous to act like he doesn't.
Indeed, Gojo continues quite unnecessarily: "He killed me and I still let him hit it."
"Yeah, that's ..." Shi-Woo can tell Gojo is baiting him. They're in this together, though. He should play along a little. "... I'm sure that works super well for you two, but, you know, for the rest of humanity —"
"You don't like it?" Gojo echoes himself from the first night he broached this, and the tone is. Markedly different. He's relaxed, that's the most unnerving part. Simple and curious, like he's asking about Shi-Woo's family. His favorite food.
Except, Gojo says, "Didn't it feel good? Ramming us together like toy trucks?"
There was a sort of innocence to Gojo, once. He and Toji had observed it from the vantage point of a nearby building as Gojo and his friend effortlessly fended off two assassins, then swept off with Amanai Riko and her caretaker like everything would be okay, because until then, though they weren't yet aware of it, everything always had been. Arrogance in the young, earned arrogance especially, is a type of innocence.
And every now and then there's an echo of it in Gojo's upturned face, his deliberately higher and often melodic inflection. The way he's always seating himself around Shi-Woo to make himself less tall, though sometimes, like now, it backfires; this is like every time Shi-Woo was escorted into the office or personal study of someone too rich to dirty their hands, either to receive the job or to account for some fuck-up by one of his contractors. Never his own. Not until now.
Whatever Gojo sees in his face, the stiffness of how he's standing, he smiles, slight and gentle, as if touched by some sentiment Shi-Woo is not at all certain he's showing, let alone experiencing. "It'll feel good this time."
After testing the teleportation circle tattoo, it's all willemdafoeforeheadtap.gif oh right, the only person here who has a time/space technique is, in fact, Gojo.
===============================
It would be nice to blame it on Mahito. It's all too easy to believe that what Mahito did to him, his soul first and then his body, did twist something up and then set it in stone in some way that even his full resets can't undo. He sometimes thinks that's what Gojo saw when he first came creeping up the stairs to the school, wringing his hands. And he can't blame Gojo for being unforthcoming on this particular matter. Junpei has never asked about this, specifically.
He hesitates at the door out of Shoko's clinic, trying to decide if he should turn around and ask again what Gojo saw when he looked at the activated tattoo. Or he could ask about the past instead. If he wants to ask at all, he should go back before Gojo and Shoko finish their conversation, which they probably will soon if they haven't already — they've been friends for so long, through so much, that they sometimes barely need to speak — because Gojo might teleport out.
If Gojo doesn't want to talk about something, he'll avoid it forever. He has a Limitless for conversation, too. Has Junpei ever really tried, though? It's one thing if it has to do with Gojo's history or the way his techniques work. He has a bit more of a claim if it's about him, doesn't he? Can't he put his foot down?
Truthfully, Junpei has never done that. Or you could say that the last time he did it, it was just another mistake on top of a pile of more than enough. He's never exactly been bold, though he was probably less afraid before the bullying. And then … he came here, chastened, and no matter how much he trained and tried, he never got any stronger than grade two.
Grade two is fine, Junpei, he remembers Gojo saying, bonking him on the head with a fan he folded out of a document he very likely was supposed to keep, eyes bandaged, a close-mouthed smile that's small and, in retrospect, enigmatic. The important things about you can't be graded, haha. We don't even know what they are to begin with.
Enigmatic is an exaggeration, maybe. It's just that Gojo certainly doesn't tell anyone else it's fine to be a grade two. Naturally, Megumi's technique means that he'll surpass that soon, and both his first class of students and his second will be right there with him for the most part.
Well. Maybe he's said so to others. It's hard to imagine, somehow. Gojo used to weaponize his tactlessness; Junpei was incredibly irritated the first time he was subjected to the spectacle of Gojo interacting with Iori, though it does seem to be a thing for them, some aggravating relict of their time together as students. He doesn't do it to actual students, though. And Junpei may have been one of the first people Gojo mentally classified as a student, despite the fact they just barely escaped being enrolled at the same time. That's why he used to call Gojo senpai.
As in all things, though, a silent, mental classification inside Gojo's head is stronger than mere aspects of reality. It wasn't until after Gojo killed him that things loosened up a little. That's a … sort of bonding experience, he supposes. And even then, it wasn't until last year that Junpei would call them friends, although in practice, he wouldn't. Gojo and Shoko don't call each other friends. Gojo, who loves to hang off of Nanami's shoulders and pester him to hang out, doesn't call Nanami a friend. Ijichi runs a third of Gojo's life, bureaucratically speaking, and Gojo bullies him, sort of … affectionately? … at best. As if to bother to use a very normal word to describe each of these relationships is too sentimental. There are complications with each relationship, sure. Junpei is well aware of the weirdness he brings to the table.
He's never been as honest with his classmates, so maybe Chizuko is more than a little justified to feel the way she does. But he didn't exactly choose to be honest with Gojo. Gojo was there first, and he would have always seen something inside Junpei.
He'd been insightful enough as a seventeen-almost-eighteen year old, and he's worse now, standing in the doorway that leads back to the warren of examination and patient rooms that Shoko maintains in her clinic. One where he readied the bodies of dead sorcerers, one where Gojo ran his cursed technique through Junpei's body and did something he regrets, twice, and this time tried to hide it. Gojo looks at Junpei, blindfolded, and instantly sees the whole of what he wants merely because Junpei is here, dithering, and because though there are complicated things about who Junpei is, Junpei himself is simple. Emotionally speaking, a primitive organism, he's sure.
"Will you tell me?" Junpei says as quick as he can, because he won't ever be able to put his foot down with Gojo, or Yuuji, or anyone, probably. He can still do something. He can act first; he can prove he doesn't just go along with things. "Tell me what you think you did wrong."
That's what his intuition about Gojo's evasiveness, and perhaps some other lingering tidal factors, tells him is the problem. Indeed, Gojo grins with immediate humorlessness, teeth showing.
"A wide-ranging topic," he says as if quoting someone, if not something anyone said out loud. The projected assessment of someone like Nanami, Shoko, or Yaga, twirled on one of Gojo's massive property damage causing fingers like a hat.
Junpei doesn't say, you have never knowingly wronged me. The issue is not his opinion.
"You think the time travel is your fault," he says while Gojo still delays answering.
Gojo's smile turns wry and sincere, or anyway, that's how it looks with his eyes covered. "All that studying paid off."
WIP Wednesday: do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it (gojo/toji), ch2
Toji manages to get a little drunk, thanks to two beers and an unquantified amount of poison, courtesy of Moon Dregs. After Junpei departs ...
A lightly explicit if still NSFW portion is behind the "keep reading."
==============================
Yet no pressure ever comes, and Toji wonders if he's supposed to do it, if that's what Gojo expects from him. If he's being tested. He could ask. He should just ask.
Whatever poorly nurtured part of him is responsible for his aversion to that exact prospect, Toji can't fix it tonight. The next time Gojo pauses kissing him to breathe, Toji pushes him back by the shoulders, slow, one step, then two, until Gojo's back meets the door. He watches the whole time for the things he's seen his entire life, even if he doesn't truly expect some of them from Gojo — disgust, impatience, fear, detachment that can't be forced away and in its continued existence, implies judgments made and solidified about him in private, in places he'll never reach because he lacks the capacity.
What he sees is only Gojo watching him back, the way he lets the door take the easy lean of his body. The surprise that he shows in stillness when Toji kneels, dragging his sweater up with one hand to press his mouth against the soft-skinned, hard-muscled flat of his stomach. He keeps his eyes open and up with effort, blinking slow as he scrapes his teeth from right to left, too light and dull to do any more than suggest disembowelment in the remotest terms; Gojo's smile seems almost against his will, and falters when Toji brings his other hand up, massaging rough and too heavy over his groin. What starts out soft under his palm starts firming with satisfying promptness, and Toji smiles without meaning to as well, lazy, amused.
Gojo touches the corner of his mouth that's lifted, gaze fixed as his own mouth mirrors the angle. "You're cute like this."
Since it's clearly meant to rile him, Toji bites at his fingers, and when Gojo tries to grab his chin again, wrenches free with a reproachful flash of his eyes. One that's probably not very effective since he immediately noses into the sparse silvery trail of hair beneath Gojo's navel, finding it coarser against his lips than it was against his stomach the other night. The smell of his soap or shower gel is stronger like this, something more subdued than the sharp fruity gloss. The taste of human salt is trapped beneath it.
"You don't like that, huh," Gojo murmurs, and though the speaking to a pet tone is undeniably there, he strokes his hand into Toji's hair, nudges him like he actually wants an answer.
"It doesn't matter," Toji says obligingly, low, sleepy, unbothered because it doesn't. There's a little twitch of something in Gojo's expression too faint to be dismay the same way his occasional moments of self-consciousness aren't shame, and it's too much work to explain: it doesn't matter because you won't do it to me on purpose. And if you did do it, you wouldn't do it a lot because you don't have to, we both already know you're stronger. You'd only do it when I deserve it. And maybe when it's you it's not so bad. Maybe when it's you, I always deserve it, but I'll let you decide.
He's not too tired to understand that Gojo probably won't like that any better, and that it's also unfair in a way he needs to learn to grapple with as a human being and an adult or whatever. Fucking hell. Just not tonight.
"It doesn't matter," he repeats, gentler, and tries to make his case without the damning specifics. He drags Gojo's hand out of his hair and back to his chin, not going so far as to force Gojo to grip. He does press Gojo's fingers to the scar on his mouth, uses them to trace the shape of it, and while he'll never understand how exactly Gojo's brain works, he can track what's happening — the miniscule dilation of his pupils, the part of his lips, the insistent pulse of blood where his erection presses into Toji's hand through two layers of finely woven cloth.
For tonight, it doesn't matter. Toji can still beat Gojo sometimes, though this will never work again. He opens his mouth for Gojo and lets his fingers inside, and then, all of a sudden, he's reached the limit of his docility. He thrusts his tongue between Gojo's fingers, pushing them apart and testing the web of skin there with the tip; then he withdraws it, sucking hard without minding his teeth and feeling Gojo's hips jolt forward as they dig into the skin right before the knuckle.
WIP Wednesday: do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it (gojo/toji, gojo/nanami)
From a canon-adjacent series to the Human Jellyfish storyline where a more experienced time travelling Junpei makes actual changes ... and mostly just causes numerous unforeseen problems and weird situations. In this attempt, Junpei turns back time on Shibuya, but he can't pick and choose; it's either bring back everyone, or bring back no one.
Nobody is pleased about Toji being alive again, Gojo perhaps least of all. Toji himself suspects being rewound into somebody else's body that he forcibly took over is not a recipe for mental stability, something which wasn't his strong point to begin with. That would certainly explain the increasing obsessive thoughts about Gojo.
============================
But when he next wakes up, the jellyfish guy isn't there. It's the Six Eyes, and Toji has long ago lost whatever piece it is human beings normally have to experience fear. The last time he felt anything close to it was, very relevantly, the unease he experienced before deciding he could kill Gojo Satoru a second time.
There's something now, though. Because he's so tired, so out of it. Because he has no tools and no plans. Then again, even if he wasn't, and even if he had any, they both know how the last fight ended.
Gojo sits nonchalantly in a chair meant for visitors, long legs spread, slouched and shapeless in the Jujutsu Tech uniform jacket. It's been years, he knows that independently of jellyfish guy's ramblings about Megumi, and if he hadn't had either of those things, he could tell by looking at Gojo, who even now, obnoxiously aware, smiles at him, friendly, warm. No infinity, hands in his pockets. No eyes for the mere masses. He wears a blindfold now, the soft stretch of the fabric falsely demure.
Because between them, being cool and unbothered wouldn't be enough. Way too obvious. No matter how perfectly Gojo might execute it, Toji would immediately call it fake. If they were still enemies, which at the moment, they apparently are not.
"Missed you in Shibuya," Gojo says, lightly conspiratorial.
"Huh," Toji manages, mouth and voice dried up, unfamiliar. "Guess I do remember that. Looking for you."
And Gojo cocks his head, smile going secretive, a strong facsimile of flattered. "Mistook a big octopus guy for me, Fushiguro-san? Eesh. I know it's been a while, but …"
Listen to you, Toji doesn't say, all under control now, civil and shit. Like I'm meeting my son's high school teacher, at a normal school. He allows a chuckle, dessicated by who knows how long in this hospital bed.
Neither of them mentions Megumi.
"So what'd you dig me up for? Or whatever," he adds, uninterested in the specifics of his second or third life. Either they got him back out of that dead medium's dead grandson somehow, or some other bullshit is going on: it hardly matters. Gojo wasn't there in Shibuya, now he's wherever here is. Megumi's family name is Fushiguro, not Zenin, not Gojo.
Gojo stretches in his chair, undignified and sprawling. Not even a farce to show how untroubled he is. Judging by the crack or two from spine and other joints, he needed it. Maybe he'd been sitting in that chair a while. "Eh, wasn't on purpose, but since you are here, we could use your help. If you're up for that. Obviously nothing's stopping you from fucking off and doing whatever you want once you're on your feet …"
Nothing other than the person they aren't yet acknowledging. Toji wonders now if jellyfish guy's only real purpose was to mention Megumi first, to make sure Toji wouldn't disappear as soon as he could. If Gojo had been the one to bring up Megumi right out the gate, it would've been a threat no matter how he said it, no matter the context.
The threat is still there. It always will be, between them. But Gojo isn't bringing it up. There could be a lot of reasons for that. Toji doesn't really feel like trying to work it out right this second.
"Yeah?" Toji says with interest. "You'll be cool with me just walking?"
He can imagine Gojo might actually let it happen. If Megumi allows it, maybe Gojo wouldn't gainsay it. Wouldn't have him killed quietly once he was out of sight and out of mind. Who could he send for such a task? Maybe there are sorcerers able to keep up with him now. Toji doubts it. The whole point of Gojo sitting here, amiable and borderline suggestive with his ankle now propped against his knee and the toe of his expensive boot aimed at Toji, is that he doesn't require peace of mind anymore when it comes to him.
"Well," Gojo demures, coy as anything, "you're gonna have to shake Naoya-kun, but sure. If you wanted to go, you could go."
Is that what Gojo would prefer, Toji wonders.
There's probably some way to get the bed to sit up higher. Toji doesn't bother; he still feels pretty shitty, but it's all just nostalgia in the end. His body might have been someone else's body before. Now it's his and he sits back up every time, and the pain is as much a part of him as blood, lymph, and breath. Gojo watches the process with detached interest, his hands now clasped low and loose on his stomach.
"What's it been? Ten years?" Toji finally asks once he's upright, slumped over the cross of his legs, his knees testing the plastic guard rails on either side.
Gojo smiles at him brilliantly. "You judging from me or Megumi? Must be Megumi, huh? I haven't aged a day, right?"
The question has its subtextual demands. Look at me. Agree with him, sarcastically or otherwise. Disagree with honesty that acknowledges things made possible only by Toji's defeat and death, or dishonesty that suggests false indifference. And Megumi, finally, to deny that indifference. To test it, at least.
Toji obligingly looks at him though he's already seen everything he needed, and does not, in fact, care about the rest. He can play along, no problem. That's how he married both his wives. That's how he gets along with Kon and all kinds of troublesome older men who wanted him to behave various ways for various reasons, when he doesn't feel like making a mess.
Gojo has been honed with exacting subtlety. The absurd sweep of his hair emphasizes the sharper line of his face, the weird weight of his presence. No more soft cheeks to put on pouts for sheltered girls or stalwart friends. Nothing more to see of his eyes, his shape, but Toji can read bodies better than anyone. Under the jacket, he's filled out, packed on muscle. He's pristine as a mountain-locked deposit of marble, like Toji never laid a hand on him at all.
