head above water

[gimu]

WHO: Choso & YOU
WHAT: CATCH-ALL log for the next indeterminate while!
WHERE: Main Base; Neo-Tokyo & Surrounding Areas; 12am shower thoughts psyche plane
WHEN: Time is irrelevant & shall be labelled as needed
WARNINGS: Jujutsu Kaisen spoilers up to AT LEAST current canon (just in case). Further warnings will be labelled in relevant threads as needed

Comments

[eyescar]

Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry Choso!

[ Fingers stroke gently through his hair, arms draw him closer, dragging, stealing, keeping him close like an anchor. Stupid, of all the people in the world to say this kind of thing to, stupid to say it to Choso, one of the few who would feel wounded and broken by it. This bond between them, blood that he doesn't understand, making it ache all the more, his exhausted body limp and unsure.

Yuji lets Choso do what he wants. Crush him, devour him, cherish him or loathe him, whatever his brother wants. Yuji can carry the burden of Choso's feelings as much as he carries his own, will allow himself to bear this weight as he does others, because he loves; his mortal failing, he loves so desperately, he would look back, should someone he loved stumble, he would look back and damn himself to hell.

Leaning forward, he sniffles, the tears burning like pinpricks in his eyes. ]

It's okay. We're together, it's fine, I'm staying here. We're here.

[gimu]

[ it’s fine, it’s fine, he’s staying here, they were both here. execution could not be carried out where the law was dead and obsolete. here, yuji is no criminal. here, sukuna could not twist yuji’s fate.

defeated, choso collapses back onto his side, bones settling into his sprawl with arms tucked in close to his torso, hair come free from one pigtail to spill messily over what passed for sheets in the medbay. his mark oozes slow, ichorous, at odds with how freely the tears drip from sticky lashes to soak the bedspread. ]

Forgive me, Yuji.

[eyescar]

[ Yuji keeps reaching, reaching and holding and bringing his brother close, feeling a little - a lot - awkward about it but also not wanting to let him go. This is his own fault for bringing up the stupid execution anyway, and with the higher ups gone and Sukuna elsewhere, can he really still be killed?

Does any of that stuff matter now, considering?

Leaning in, he touches his forehead to Choso's, closing his eyes. ]

You don't need to be forgiven. I know that... Brothers are really important to you.

[gimu]

[ this close, he can pick out each individual lash, see where the blood has dried and caked in to the fissures around yuji’s eyes. this close, choso can see the tracks left behind from yuji’s tears. this, too, is an agony: these tears were shed because of him, in some way. ]

They are everything.

[ rasped, shameful. shameful how choso can only reach in turn, pitiful creature, curling into yuji’s warmth.

this close, it almost feels like it did that first day when all three of them were together, new, alive.

here, all eight two of them where still together, battered, worn, alive. ]

You are everything. Do not be so eager to die so soon.

[eyescar]

[ Yuji leans in, closing his eyes, lets himself bask in this. Allows himself to feel as if he is special, for once, and not... Some creature that needs to be put down. That needs to be killed. A monster made flesh, carrying a demon inside o fit. ]

Brother...

[ He doesn't deserve this. He doesn't deserve this kindness, this tenderness, when he had killed so many, hurt so many, when it was at his hands that their brothers had died.

There's no way he deserves Choso's devotion.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he grips Choso a little harder, unconscious of his strength, grip tight, unfleeting, as if afraid to lose him. ]

I'm not eager, I'm just... Ready.

[gimu]

Here… with you…

[ barely a month in each other’s company and yuji’s ready for death, is this what anyone should want for their precious family?

of everyone, who is choso to judge?

he holds onto yuji in turn, hands curling around his little brother’s sides as the boy crushes the rest of the audacity out of choso’s body with his perfect hug.

perhaps it’s choso accepting this simple fact of life: yuji loves, yuji bleeds, and yuji will die when it comes time. perhaps it is the exhaustion of the day caught up all at once. perhaps it is simply that yuji squeezed the remaining daylights out of him. regardless the reason, choso is Out, clutching white-knuckled even in oblivion to what he can of his beloved and doomed little brother. ]