Curate, connect, and discover
[ slap ] sender slaps receiver in the face ( gojo @ geto. make it hurt )
a shadow crosses his face, then, like clouds passing over the sun. he tastes blood numbing the back row of his teeth, he testes the joints, thumb and index finger pressed around his jaw. everything seems back place. save for the hair that sticks to his sweat-damped forehead, he’s the perfect image of nonchalance. suguru laughs only after he’s made stock of it, a shallow rumble, humorless. “did it make you feel better? i hope it did. there won’t be a second time.”
he could hear the flickering lights, electricity’s vibrations as though every lightbulb was close to give out at any moment and submerge them in total darkness. that would make it easy, should he opt to kill satoru here. but he figures he’d prefer watching it, make sure their eyes meet before one of them huffs out their last breath. the bandages around his knuckles are tight as they were from the beginning, satoru’s shirtless frame bathed in the dim lights and a perfect contrast to the concrete walls closing in around them, the longer their attention remained on each other. suguru’s sides are bruised, he can feel it as he swallows in air. not a ruptured rib but something else. as for his face… well, all he had left was the vague hope that it wouldn’t swell come morning.
“isn’t it a tragedy? that we couldn’t do this when we were younger.” he recalls in that moment how many times they’d come close to defeat one another.
though the competition was a half-hearted attempt at showing off their prowess, the confrontation never escalated into anything worthy worrying about by the standers. for masamichi, however, it was the source of many headaches. looking back now, and their current positions, sizing each other up within the limits of their territories, blooded and dirty, anything from years past might as well have been a childish dream. it hurt, because deep down they wanted it to hurt. if that was satoru’s attempt - suguru’s own attempt at channeling misery elsewhere, the broken shards, he wasn’t exactly sure what to do once the feeling had been conveyed. the only thing he’s sure of, and the reason they’re here, exchanging blows, is that he wants satoru to look nowhere else. focus on me.
“try to get your memories back, satoru. when have you ever defeated me in hand-to-hand combat?” a sharp kick, a flip in the air, and his other heel connects with satoru’s jaw. “an eye for an eye.”
suddenly they’re seventeen again, his cocky grin and the raised fists taunting him, goading satoru into something harsher, because jumping head on to a challenge has always been his virtue and his biggest weakness. suguru laughed, again, the sound echoing in the vacant room in a way that the previous one hadn’t. suguru lures him in, flitting two fingers at satoru’s wide-eyed expression. “try even closer, satoru. i have yet to pay you back for the headlock from earlier.”
@koseigu