Work Text:
Tuesday is Geto’s least favorite shift by a long shot.
He’s going on hour two without a single new customer walking through the door, and the old men nursing their beers and cigarettes in the single booths against the far wall have been camped out there since open. Most of his elderly regulars are widowed, he’s come to learn. Not quite broke enough to be spending their nights on the streets, too broke to lock down another wife to come home to instead. Abandoned by their children, who’ve shirked their traditional responsibilities as their elders’ keepers in favor of staying ahead of the pack in the rat race. So they come here.
The air is thick with their smoke, adding another layer to the permanent blanket of stale tobacco that emanates from the ancient and peeling drywall. It’s a smell that clings to Geto’s work shirts, his aprons, his hair, the insides of his nostrils, this entire row of dive bars on the outskirts of Shibuya’s red light district.
Minimum wage, a lung cancer diagnosis in fifteen years. Just another day in paradise.
He had a shitty shift earlier at his day job, too. The fresh bruise on his forearm throbs, tenderly exposed by his rolled-up sleeves. It was his fault – opening the walk-in cooler while holding a heavy cardboard box was his usual idea of multitasking, but today it backfired spectacularly – but in a good and decent world, he wouldn’t even have to punch time at a combini to pay rent, so… It’s about perspective.
One of the geriatrics lifts a saggy, wrinkled hand to get his attention; he wants a refill. Geto sets his book down on the bar and grabs a pint glass from the rack underneath, turning to the draft tap behind him and pouring another Kirin lager. He brings it over to the bar hatch, lifting it up so he can duck under it and carry it a handful of paces to the customer’s booth.
The guy’s got that day’s newspaper opened to the obituary section – a little too on the nose, Geto thinks – and he thanks him with a bow of the head as Geto sets the pint down on the table and takes the empty one back to the bar with him.
As he lifts the hatch again, the sound of cars rushing on the street outside wafts in from the just-opened door. Fucking finally – but with Geto’s luck, watch it be another geezer.
“Welcome in,” he calls out on reflex, pulling the dishwasher door open and setting the empty pint glass in one of the spots. The customer doesn’t greet him back, but Geto hears the scratch of one of the stools being pulled out from its spot under the bar. “What are you having?”
“I’m in the mood for a highball.”
Geto straightens back up and turns around, and it’s... it’s something, that’s for sure.
This guy is young, around Geto’s own age, can't be older than thirty. Tall. Pearl-colored hair styled down in a fringe. A crisp white button-up dress shirt that looks like it came straight from the dry cleaners. Dark round sunglasses, indoors. At night.
To put it plainly, he looks lost.
“I can do that,” is all Geto can manage at first.
The guy smiles, all teeth, reaches into his back pocket and sets his phone face down on the bar. The latest Samsung model. “I’m sure you can.”
According to the huge billboard Geto passes by every day on the train to work that’s been burned into his brain, that phone retails for double his rent. Meanwhile, he has a jailbroken iPhone he got for cheap from a university friend that they don’t even sell in stores anymore.
He exhales sharply through his nose before ducking his head to grab a highball glass from the rack. “I think you might be lost,” he says without really meaning to, now that his earlier thought has had enough time to marinade in his head. “The Cerulean is about twelve blocks that way.”
“And what if I don’t want to pay Cerulean prices tonight?” Geto watches the customer fold long gangly arms across his chest before he turns around to the high shelves of liquor bottles behind him. “Aren’t we always being nagged to support small business?”
Geto snorts. Even with his back turned, he feels eyes on him while he reaches for the generic-brand whisky. “Who’s ‘we?’”
There’s no answer, and he prepares the rest of the drink in silence.
Producing a tiny square napkin from the dispenser under the bar, he pops a straw into the highball glass he’s set on top of it and slides it towards the customer. “Tab open or closed?”
He takes it, and in the shitty dim light of the secondhand lamp above them, Geto can just barely make out the outline of his eyes from behind the sunglasses. “Open. Thanks.”
Geto raises his eyebrows at him before retreating back to his book a few meters down the bar, opening it back up to where he left off.
He’s at the part where the foreman ignores the SOS signal from the other ship, but he only gets in about half a sentence before he’s interrupted by a sharp guttural noise. He turns his head toward the customer, who’s whacking himself in the chest with his fist and coughing violently, drink grounded on the table in his other hand.
“Did I give you the arsenic instead of the Old Crow?”
He grimaces as he comes down from his hacking fit. “Old Crow?” he repeats dubiously, voice hoarse.
“It’s our well brand.” Geto points behind him to the bottle in question on the bottom liquor shelf. “It’s Scottish. It’s pretty shit.”
“Could've used a warning.”
Geto shrugs and goes back to his novel, but he’s still watching the customer out of the corner of his eye as he takes a few more tentative sips, his distaste subsiding with each one.
“Not so bad, actually,” he remarks, to no one in particular.
“Thank God,” Geto replies dryly, flipping the page. “I was worried sick.”
The guy smirks, stirs his drink with his straw pensively as he leans against the back of the stool.
“You’re funny,” he says after a long while. He tilts his chin down just a touch, his glasses sliding down his nose with it. Brilliant blue eyes peer at Geto appraisingly over the rims, deep and dimensional, like twin-cut sapphires. “Bringing out all your best lines just for me?”
Geto doesn’t even dignify that display with a response.
He doesn’t let up. “Whatcha reading?”
“Kanikōsen.”
“Which is about?”
“Workers on a crab cannery ship.”
He scrunches his nose up childishly, propping both elbows up on the bar. “Sounds boring.”
Geto rolls his eyes. “It’s proletariat literature.”
“As in the horse?”
He stifles a laugh. “As in, the Tokkō disappeared the author for being a communist.”
“Ah. I see.” The customer sits up straighter, splaying his arms out in mock triumph with a matching smile. “The glorious revolution!” He’s starting to draw stares from the regulars.
Then he leans closer. “Maybe he shouldn’t have been threatening the decent way of life.”
Someone must’ve turned on the burner in Geto’s aorta, from the way his blood is starting to simmer in his veins. “And what would that be?”
“You know. The natural order of things.”
In the four years since Yuki hired him, he’s never lost his cool on a customer, and he’s definitely not about to start now. And sure as hell not over this. He’s not like some other folks he engages with in his political arena; he’s learned that having the last word is overrated.
“Whatever you say.”
He finally leaves him to read in peace after that, thankfully. By the time Geto’s finished up the chapter, the customer is obnoxiously sucking loud air through the ice at the bottom of his empty drink.
“Another?”
He considers it, dragging his fingertips through the clouded condensation on the glass, leaving them glistening. “Nah. I’m a lightweight.” He winks, pushes the empty glass away from him. “You can close me out.”
Geto sets his book down, ringing up the ¥650 tab on the computer register as the customer produces a credit card from his wallet and holds it out to Geto. Their hands touch for barely half a second when he takes it; it’s matte jet-black, weighted down. Moves smoothly through the swipe mechanism.
When Geto prints the slip and lays it in front of him, along with the card and a pen, he reads the total amount and laughs. “Yup. Much better value than the Cerulean.”
“Glad we could measure up.”
He picks up the pen with one hand, fiddling with the card in between the thumb and forefinger of the other. With a slow, purposeful drag of his gaze up and down the length of Geto’s body: “Who’s ‘we?’”
Geto says nothing as he watches the customer sign the slip with a flourish. He sets the pen down and stands, pushing the stool behind him.
“Thank you very much." His eyes bore holes through Geto’s. “Do I get to know your name, or do I have to guess?”
“It’s Geto.”
He raises an eyebrow. “That’s all?”
“Geto Suguru.”
“Mmh. Until next time.”
Geto watches him leave, more specifically watches the curve of his ass in his tailored slacks as he walks.
Fuck that guy.
He lets go of a breath he didn’t know he was holding, grabbing the credit card slip from the bar and taking it to the computer to close out the transaction.
When he catches sight of the number written down, he has to blink three times before he can be sure he’s reading it right.
Seeing red, he checks the sloppy kanji on the signature line.
Gojo Satoru.
Fuck that guy.
He spends his next five shifts on pins and needles, half-hoping Gojo will come back to The Vessel and half-hoping he never sees his sorry condescending ass ever again. He wonders on a deeper level why he even gives a shit at all. It was free money, technically.
So when the next mind-numbingly slow Tuesday evening rolls around and a familiar mop of white hair takes a seat at the bar, in the exact same seat as last time, Geto’s disappointed in himself for ending up caring one way or the other.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“Hmm?” It would be easier to be pissed off at him if he weren’t so good-looking. “Whatever do you mean, Geto-san?”
This motherfucker. “I mean, you left a ¥20,000 tip on your tab last time. That was a joke, right? Because if it was, you’re a shit comedian.”
“Who said it was a joke? What, you can’t reward anyone for a job well done anymore?”
“Oh, fuck off. I don’t want your handouts.”
“Do you give all your customers this sort of VIP treatment? Or am I just special?”
“Yeah, looks like you’d know a thing or two about VIP treatments. What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Having another one of your delectable drinks, if you’d actually take my order.”
“No. I mean. What are you doing here.”
“You mean in the slums of Shibuya? That’s a little insensitive, don’t you think?”
“You said it, not me.” Geto grabs a highball glass, fills it with ice from the machine. “Shouldn’t you be wasting Daddy's money at a rooftop club?”
“I’m here,” Gojo replies cooly, still dodging the real question, “because I wanted something to drink. And I had a better time talking to you last week than I’ve ever had at any place like that.”
Geto feels his face redden against his will at the praise, and he hates how he’s playing right into Gojo’s hand, probably giving him the exact reaction he wants. He turns, directing his next sentence to the wall of spirit bottles behind him as he reaches for one on the top shelf. “I’d hardly call that talking. All you did was insult my taste in books.”
“Well, you weren’t being much of a conversationalist. That’s something a bartender's supposed to be good at, you know.” In the cold ensuing beat of silence, he watches Geto like a hawk as he pours a six-count of whisky into the glass. “Do you want my business or not?”
“I could take it or leave it.”
“Liar,” Gojo accuses through a smug smirk, throwing a vague glance around the sparsely-populated room. “Seems to me like you need the excitement around here.”
Geto takes the nozzle out of its dock and fills the glass to the top with soda water, doesn’t look him in the eye. “Seems to me like you think a little too highly of yourself.”
“I know my worth,” he replies matter-of-factly, and Geto doesn’t think he’s capable of the kind of tact to be speaking metaphorically. “But fine. I’ll just drink my drink and stare at my phone, if that’s what the boss really wants.”
Damn it. Why is that kind of hot?
Geto sets the finished highball down in front of him, no straw. No tiny napkin. Gojo’s eyes flick from the drink up to him, clearly pleased with himself.
“Can I buy you one, too? I think you’ve got a bigger edge to take off than me.”
“I don’t take drinks from patrons,” he lies, beginning to pour himself a ginger ale from the nozzle in a matching glass as if to prove a point. “Company policy.”
“What, you think I won’t pay the tab? You already know I’m good for it.”
He offers up his glass expectantly in a silent cheers; Geto reluctantly clinks his against it. They take a sip in tandem, and he feels pinned by Gojo’s gaze, as if by a heat lamp in an animal enclosure.
Gojo hums in pleasant surprise as he swallows. “A whole new well whisky just for me? You shouldn’t have.”
“It’s Hatozaki. Now that I know you can afford it and then some.”
“Couldn’t shell out for the extra-rare bottles?”
“If you want to make a donation to our collection, then by all means.”
“Tempting. Maybe when I get my next commission cut.” He takes another sip. “This really is good.”
“I’m sure you’ve had better.”
“Actually, no, I haven’t. Although I have gotten them from barkeeps who can take compliments.”
Geto doesn’t take that bait. “You an artist or something?”
“Hmm?”
“You just said you earn commission. I assume you’re self-employed.”
“Why’s that?”
“I can't imagine an office that could put up with you.”
“Rude!” Gojo gasps, but he looks far more delighted than offended, like he didn’t think Geto had it in him. “But no, I’m not an artist. I’m in advertising.”
It’s all Geto can do to bite back a laugh. “... advertising.”
“Things need to be advertised, you know.”
“Any clients I would know?”
“Just one. Big corporate firm. Is this lovely establishment yours?”
“It’s owned by a friend. I work every night except Mondays when we’re closed.”
“Where might I find you during the day, then?”
“Please don’t.” Then: “Combini down the street.”
“Mmm. I appreciate a hard worker.”
A flicker of a fantasy of wrapping his hands around Gojo’s throat suddenly becomes very, very alluring.
“If I wanted to be talked down to by a capitalist, I’d go to my mother’s house.”
Gojo smiles again, just a small upturn of his lips, but for once it’s sincere. “Sorry.” He bows his head in half-apology for a moment. “I hear you.”
He raises his head again, then reaches for his drink and takes a long, slow sip. Geto mirrors him reflexively, like how you tend to yawn when you see someone else yawn first.
“You single?”
That catches Geto off-guard.
“Technically.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He sighs, gripping his glass tighter, the cold moisture seeping into his palm. “Who’s asking?”
Gojo drops it just as quickly as he picked it up, suddenly disinterested. Geto’s got the urge to chase the thread.
“Are you?”
As if on cue, Gojo deftly removes his shades, folds them and sets them down on the bar. Like he was waiting for the right moment to pull out that move, the performative bastard. “Sure am. And I know you’re asking.”
Walked right into that one.
Another fifteen minutes pass in relative silence as Gojo finishes his drink; he pays his tab with the same conspicuous card, leaves another exorbitant tip on the receipt, makes another grand exit with a cavalier wave of his hand.
“Until next week, Geto-san!” he calls over his shoulder as he strides out the door, chipper like a primary school teacher.
When the door closes behind him, Geto makes eye contact with one of his regulars hunched over at his usual booth, a short guy with grey hair.
“What a brat that one is,” he croaks before draining his pint.
Geto’s inclined to agree.
Tuesdays are now Gojo days, whether Geto likes it or not. The jury’s still out.
He usually comes in around 9:30 or 10 and stays for exactly one highball. Sometimes unbearably obnoxious, sometimes oddly cagey, always chatty. They talk about TV, movies, sports, university, their friends, Geto’s bartending history, his day job misadventures. But never about what Gojo does for work, and that’s how Geto likes it. It’s already enough that he parades his excess wealth around like it’s a trophy wife.
They talk about their exes. Gojo’s dated some real creeps, which is hardly shocking. Rich people are all fucking creeps.
Geto loosely details his own relatively uneventful history, including the time when he and Yuki were both coming off of respective breakups and decided to give rebounding a futile, short-lived try. He also tells him about the technicality in his single status: Shoko.
“You don’t strike me as the casual type,” Gojo says appraisingly after Geto explains.
“Yeah, well,” he replies, squeezing a lime wedge into the plain soda he’d poured for himself. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
They do this little song and dance for five or six weeks, give or take. At the end of the hour, when Gojo takes his leave, Geto’s usually sitting with one of three emotions: agitated, perplexed, or uncomfortably turned on. The first and last often go hand in hand.
One Tuesday in October, things really start to get interesting.
“What’s with the briefcase?”
Gojo looks at the black leather bag he’s just set on the bar counter when he sat down, like he wishes he didn’t have it. “Late night at the office.”
“Anything to report?”
He picks at a loose chip of wood on the bar. His eyes are tired behind his shades. “Nope.”
This is not the aloof caginess Geto’s grown accustomed to. This is… something else. So, after he serves him up his usual, he gives him a wide berth, retreating to the other end of the bar to polish some rocks glasses.
Gojo doesn’t say a word for over thirty minutes, just sips his highball and stares at the tile floor behind the bar while Geto works through his checklist of closing tasks. It’s already later than usual, nearly a quarter to midnight, and the regulars had already cleared out long before he showed up.
“Last call?” Geto offers as a half-joke, already anticipating the answer.
But to his surprise, Gojo says low: “Make it two.”
Honestly, he’s a little intimidated. Not that he gives much of a shit about the kind of champagne problems Gojo could possibly be having that’ve got him like this, despite… whatever the hell this thing between them is. But still.
He unracks two highball glasses. “Wanna talk about it?”
“Make those first.”
Geto obliges, beginning a silent countdown in his head, seeing out a hunch.
Sure enough, as he pushes the two finished drinks across the bar – one in front of the empty stool to Gojo’s right – he gets down to 4, and Gojo mutters to the wall, “I fucking hate my dad.”
Geto only feels a little bad for laughing, because it’s just so par for the course. “Rich boy with daddy issues? Groundbreaking.”
“I swear he gets off on humiliating his own flesh and blood.”
“I think we’re veering dangerously into Sophocles territory.”
Gojo doesn’t get it, or maybe he’s too busy self-flagellating to laugh. “It’s just..I know I’ve been helped a lot. Been done a lot of favors. I’m not an idiot. And I really thought I’d earned something on my own for once, but I guess fucking not.”
As Geto lifts up the bar hatch and goes to take a seat on Gojo’s side of the counter, he doesn’t tell him that he has not, in fact, ever earned anything on his own and he never will, because the entire existence of the cushy upper class he’s enjoyed his whole life is built upon thinly-veiled state-sanctioned theft.
Instead he just lifts his drink to his mouth and says before taking a sip, “If you’re fishing for sympathy, you won’t catch it here.”
“Fair enough.”
He was wondering how morose Gojo’ll be after he finishes that second drink, but now he realizes dimly that he’s already halfway there when he brings a finger to the bottom of Geto’s glass and tips it up for a moment, forcing him to take faster gulps in response before he wrests back control. “Catch up.”
He sets the glass back down, coughing from the liquid gone down his windpipe, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Gojo watches him with intense eyes, a little bleary from the alcohol.
“You trying to kill me?” He doesn’t mean for it to sound so much like a dare.
“Depends how well you can hold your liquor.”
He smirks. “I’m the bartender here. Worry about yourself, lightweight.”
Little does he know that would be the final nail in their weird, sexually-charged coffin.
They talk about food, traffic, random shit, Geto doesn’t even remember what all but he does remember that eventually the Hatozaki bottle and double rocks glasses come out, and suddenly it’s nearly 2 a.m. and he’s drunker than he’s been in a long fucking time.
He’s also been half-hard for the better part of the evening, but that’s beside the point.
At some point there’s a lull in the conversation, and it gives Geto a chance to take stock of the way his vision is swimming and how his head feels like it’s full of cotton. He almost wants to close his eyes, shut out the fluorescent yellow light for a moment, but he knows if he does he’ll probably just pass out sitting up.
“You wanna know why I came here in the first place?”
Gojo’s face is flushed pink, eyes glazed over like blue and white porcelain. They’re trained on Geto like he wants to eat him alive.
“You… you mean the first time?”
He nods in bobblehead fashion. Fumbling with the clasp of his briefcase, he eventually pulls out a magazine and slaps it facedown on the bar.
Geto picks it up, turns it over. After his vision shifts into focus, he sees it’s an issue of Weekly Toyo Keizai, a finance magazine. The date is from about two months ago.
“I don’t get it. You think I actually read this rag?”
Gojo takes the magazine back, opens it up to a dog-eared page towards the end and lays it down flat. The spread is one of those photojournalism bits, titled Shibuya and Shinjuku in photos: the bedrock of Tokyo’s nightlife economy. Interior shots of different bars, clubs, and izakaya around town are plastered on the pages in a collage; he recognizes a few of the places from his binge-drinking sprees at university.
In the bottom right-hand corner of the page, even through the fog in his brain, he sees The Vessel. He squints harder.
In the photo, it’s him. He’s standing with Yuki behind the bar on what looks like a busy weekend night, both of them laughing with one of their Friday regulars as he shakes a martini over his shoulder. A perfect candid shot. He must not have noticed the photographer during the rush. Somehow it strikes him as an invasion of privacy, but whatever.
“My department runs ads in this magazine. I saw that,” Gojo points uncoordinatedly, his voice thick, “and I knew I had to find you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re stunning.” His lips split into a lazy grin. “And you looked like you were having fun. I wanted to come see for myself.”
Alongside the acute burn spreading up his neck and the stewing excitement in his gut, there’s also profound disenchantment, because Gojo just said the quiet part out loud: he came to The Vessel to gawk at Geto like a zoo animal, to get a leisurely glimpse at how the other half lives.
He still remembers his first year post-university, after he paid his rent a day late because his old boss went on vacation without mailing his paycheck but his cockroach of a landlord shut off his water and power anyway, sitting at his kitchen table in the freeze of January, nursing a brick of dry instant Machuran noodles by candlelight. Indulging himself in the sweet, sweet fantasy of burning it all to the ground.
Gojo comes here to drink cheap liquor and flirt with the bartender. Geto comes here after 8-hour shifts stocking convenience store shelves so he can keep the lights on in his apartment and the collectors off his back.
This shit – his life, the lives of millions of others like him – is not fun.
He spills a little whisky on the bar as he pours himself another finger from the bottle, downing it in one gulp. He knows better than to speak.
In the absence of attention, Gojo mumbles, “I thought I was doing it wrong this whole time.”
“Huh?”
“Having fun.” He stabs the ice at the bottom of his drink with his straw. “My friends… They’re not fun. At least not around me. Kinda seems like they only have fun when I’m not invited.”
“That tracks.”
He doesn’t even have it in him to fight back, so Geto just watches him stare absently into the centimeter of melted ice at the bottom of the glass, a modern-day Narcissus.
“And I used to think that what they did was so important, but it’s not. Brokers, investment bankers, corporate prosecutors, oil execs, whatever. Everything they do is for each other. If they dropped off the face of the earth tomorrow, nobody would give a shit. I hate them all.”
Geto fortifies his impaired self-control, resists firing back something along the lines of I hope you know nobody would give a shit if that happened to you, either.
“But I like you.”
Oh.
Well. He knows that much.
Long fingers unmistakably tighten on Geto’s knee. “I like that you don’t put up with my shit.” He clumsily drags them further up, where the skin of Geto’s inner thigh is live-wire sensitive. His pupils are blown out wide, irises more black than blue. “How you put me in my place.”
Geto stifles a groan, all the spiked blood in his body seeming to change course and make a beeline for his dick.
He slumps forward, buries his face in his palms out of the way of Gojo’s prying, piercing eyes, elbows propped up on the bar. He pushes the heels of his hands hard against his eyelids until he sees stars. “Gojo.”
He hears him swallow as his grip on Geto’s thigh slightly shifts, and when he speaks, it’s uncharacteristically modest. A mask removed. “We– if you wanted to, we could...”
He does want to. So bad. But there are lines he can’t cross, in more ways than one.
“I’m too drunk for this shit, man.” His own voice sounds distant in his ears. “We’re too drunk for this.”
“You wanna sleep it off at my place?”
Yes. “No.”
The world seems to buffer for a few long moments, and then Gojo is standing up, the legs of his bar stool skittering behind him.
“Until next week, Geto-san.”
Geto lifts his head to look at him, but Gojo’s already halfway to the door on unsteady legs. “Let me call you a cab.”
“No need. My ride’s already here.”
He stops, looks over his shoulder, swaying slightly. His eyes seem to gleam in the dim light.
“It’s… It’s an open invitation.”
Geto can’t form a response over the ringing in his ears.
Then Gojo’s turning and opening the door, taking a couple tries to get the latch. Through the porthole, Geto sees a sleek black sedan idling on the curb. He stares through its backseat blackout window until it pulls away.
He downs one more finger of whisky and stumbles home to jerk off.
“So this guy’s been coming into work lately. Every Tuesday.”
Shoko takes a final drag on the last dregs of her cigarette. A little clump of ash drops onto the sheets underneath her hand; she brushes it away. “Uh-huh.”
“And he’s loaded.”
“Is this at The Vessel or FamilyMart?”
“The Vessel.”
“Okay, so? Your drinks are cheap anyway.”
“He’s left me tips in the ten thousands on every tab.”
Shoko gives him a blank look, mouth falling slightly open. “So he wants to fuck you.”
“Well, he did come on to me the other night, so it’s a fair assumption.”
“Oh, my god. Is he hot?”
“Yeah. He’s fucking irritating, though.”
“Hot and loaded? Save some for the rest of us.”
“You forgot irritating.” He rolls over onto his stomach, the remnants of his post-sex haze smoothing out the rough edges of his vision. “His name’s Gojo Satoru.”
This has been their Friday night routine since last September; Shoko stops by the Vessel at closing time, he makes her a vodka soda, and then they head back to his apartment and have at it. She usually does nights at a children’s hospital across town, but lucky for him, Friday’s her day off. She was a friend of a friend, who became a friend with benefits, who’s now a best friend that he just happens to fuck on a regular schedule. Beautiful, smart, no bullshit, gives the best head he’s ever had. He figures they’d be going out for real if they weren’t both working themselves to death.
“Gojo. Why does that sound familiar?”
“Pretty sure a Gojo runs Infinity Corp.” He was actually just reading an exposé on them earlier that day, reposted by a blog he follows. Tech sector monopolization aided and abetted by the METI, labor rights violations in their factories, payoffs to government officials to seize federally-protected woodlands for a new HQ building in Kyoto. Not like that’s anything they haven’t been caught doing red-handed before, consequences wholly shirked. “But no relation, I would think. Or maybe he’s like, a second cousin.”
“Wait.” She sits up, fumbling for her phone on the nightstand as she makes quick work of the lockscreen password. Geto doesn’t like where this is going. “What does he look like? White hair? Black glasses? Sexy in like, an infuriating sort of way?”
“What the hell does that even mean?” But as soon as it leaves his mouth, he realizes that’s actually a perfect way to describe him.
“But this is him, right?”
She turns the screen around and holds it up to his face. It’s opened to a photo-sharing social media site, to a post by what appears to be a street fashion account. Geto recognizes the photo’s location as Omotesando, its telltale trees looming and flowering in the background. The ‘model’ in question, caught mid-stride by the photographer in a sharp three-piece suit and cobalt blue leather dress shoes, is strikingly handsome, and strikingly familiar.
“Dead to rights.” That vain asshole probably only cut through that crossing to get seen by the amateur paps.
She shakes the phone. “Suguru.”
He looks again. The caption at the bottom reads: SPOTTED IN SHIBUYA: THE DARLING OF JAPAN’S 50 RICHEST! HEIR TO THE GOJO FAMILY FORTUNE!
It’s exactly then that he realizes what a grave, grave mistake he’s made.
“Oh no.”
“He’s–”
“You’re lying.”
“You’re gonna–”
“Don’t say an–”
“You’re gonna fuck a billionaire!” she squeaks out faster than he can stop her.
He flops back against the pillow in defeat as she cackles. “This isn’t something to be proud of.” He feels a migraine coming on.
Everything he’s trained himself to pick apart and despise over the years - inexorbitant wealth, exploitation, corporate politics, insatiable privatization of public resources, disenfranchisement of collective power - Infinity Corp is the gargantuan, ugly face of it all. And Gojo is their beautiful fucking poster child. Apparently.
She pokes his bare arm with a sharp bony fingertip, interrupting his cognitive dissonance spiral. “Hey. I want a case of those really expensive Cuban cigars. The kind that comes with its own humidor.”
“I don’t think hooking up with rich people gets you a friends and family discount.”
“Well, can you at least try? Mei Mei brought one back for me from that weird diplomatic trip she took there a couple years ago. I think I dream about it once a week.”
“Can we focus? I can’t go through with this shit, Shoko. I have principles.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re one of those commie types. ‘Workers of the world, unite’ and all that shit, right?”
“I see I taught you something after all.”
“Well, something was bound to stick, since you love talking my ear off so much about it.” She discards her cigarette butt in the ashtray on the bedside table. “Maybe you should be a professor instead. You’d get paid to lecture people.”
“I don’t have the patience for academia.”
“You’re the one who’s always telling me if you’re good at something, never do it for free.” She’s got a point. “So you don’t want to sleep behind enemy lines?”
“No.”
“Then tell him no. Don’t worry about me, I’ll get my Cubans through other means.”
“Trust me, I wasn’t worrying.”
He strokes his thumb over the hem of the top sheet, thinking about Gojo’s fingers wrapped around highball glasses. Wrapped around him.
“On the other hand… capitalist bastards like him have been fucking me all my life. Maybe it’s only fair that they let me return the favor for once.”
Shoko sighs a deep, labored sigh. “I know you think you’re funny–”
“Because I am.”
“–but I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that’s the lamest shit you’ve ever said. And that’s really saying something.” She settles down on her side. “Anyway, you should be grateful. Do you have any idea how many people would kill to have a sugar daddy like that drop right into their lap?”
“He’s not my sugar daddy.”
“If you say so.”
He considers. “I bet that kind of thing turns him on, though. He seems to like parting with his assets when it comes to me.”
“Oh, I could think of some other assets he’s gonna part…” she drawls, exaggeratedly sexy, visibly trying not to crack up as she looks over her shoulder at him and spreads her asscheeks.
He breaks first, though. “You’re- you’re not as funny as you think you are either, for the record.”
“Fuck off, you’re laughing! And women are funnier than men, for the record,” she throws back at him. “It’s science.”
“Is it, though?”
“You can quote me on it, I’m a scientist.”
“Says the girl who cheated her way through med school.”
“Everyone cheats in med school.”
“Christ. Remind me to never let you near me with a scalpel.”
“I’m a GP, not a surgeon. So?” She side-eyes him expectantly. “Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Fucking him.”
“I don’t know. I feel like I’d be failing my fellow working man if I do. Marx would roll over in his grave.”
“Didn’t Marx just sit on his ass for most of his life, anyway?”
“He was disabled.”
“Whatever. Look…” She props herself up on her elbows, rests her chin in one hand while she traces circles on the center of Geto’s bare chest. “The way I see it, Gojo’s basically paying your bills. What’s the harm in letting him get you off?”
He knows that look on her face like the back of his hand. “Maybe I can make him do the work,” he muses, moving over her and guiding her with a hand on her waist so that she’s on her back again. “Turn the tables a little bit.”
His hair hangs down like a curtain, and she brushes it out of his face with both hands, letting her fingers ghost over the shells of his ears and down his neck. “Now there’s an idea.”
Her tits are fucking perfect, nipples still hard from their earlier round, but he only lets himself tease them for a moment or two before snaking a hand the rest of the way down her stomach, in between her legs. “Speaking of which…”
She sucks in a breath when his knuckles skim her folds. “Watch those nails,” she scolds without bite. “You already fucked me raw.”
He doesn’t reply, just smiles against her skin as he sucks underneath her jaw, rubbing his thumb in lazy circles against the hood of her clit, feeling her go relaxed and pliant underneath him. They build up a familiar rhythm, her hips fluttering in time with his touch, until she tenses up and comes with a soft high whine.
“No nails required,” he adds as a punchline, still smiling through the deep kiss he plants on her mouth. There’s a tobacco aftertaste from her last cigarette on his tongue.
“Showoff,” she mutters once he pulls away, still catching her breath.
He laps the taste of her off his fingers. “Are you complaining?”
“Well, now I am. I can’t believe I have to share you now. It’s making a girl feel a little left out.”
“You’re the only one who’s touched my dick in the past year, stop being selfish.”
She smirks. “Fair. At least you know you’re clean. Is he?”
“Didn’t ask.”
She halfheartedly punches him in the arm with a huff, and he swats her away fondly. “I swear, if I end up catching something from this silver-spoon pretty boy, you’re dead to me. And he’s paying for the treatment.”
He thinks about how Gojo’s family net worth could probably fund the cure for every sexually transmitted disease, with some cancers to spare. “Something tells me that won’t be a problem.”
Three nights later, when Gojo makes his regularly scheduled (albeit late) Tuesday appearance at The Vessel, Geto’s finally ready to take him up on his offer. But he’s not taking it lying down.
“You know that finance magazine you showed me last week?”
Gojo scoots his seat closer to the bar, like a little kid at a ramen house who’s too short for the counter. “What about it?”
“I bought this week’s issue earlier today at the station.”
He chuckles. He’s got one elbow propped up on the back of the stool. “Did you hit your head prior to this?”
“I was reading about Infinity Corp’s third-quarter performance.”
To Gojo’s credit, his expression is unreadable. “And? How was it?”
“Great. Never better, actually. Did you know that their founder is the third-richest man in Japan?”
Geto watches as Gojo’s jaw sets, almost imperceptibly. “How interesting.”
“I forget the guy’s name, though. I think the kanji was something like ‘Goj-’”
“What’s your point?” He’s impatient now, tightly wound.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because you’d be pissed off.”
“You piss me off already.”
“Well, now it’s all on the table. Happy?”
“Hardly. You have a ¥142 billion net worth. And it’ll be ten times that when your old man croaks.”
“So? Most of it’s tied up in investments, anyway.”
Geto presses his lips tight together. “When the class war breaks out, I’m killing you first.”
“I’m honored.”
It’s cute how he thinks Geto was joking.
“Your family, and all the other families like yours who treat the world like your own personal playground,” he says levelly, concocting an Old Crow highball for Gojo without him asking, “are literally everything that’s wrong with the world.”
“Quite the bold claim. In what way?”
“Let me count them. You underpay your foreign and domestic factory workers by at least 15% below industry standard at all your facilities. As if industry standard wasn’t already a joke.”
“Hey, they signed the contracts! If they wanted to get paid more, they could’ve kept walking.”
“You’re union crushers.”
“Well, that I don’t have control over,” he says, holding up his hands in defense. “I don’t deal with factory operations.”
“You claim to love the free market, but all your subsidiaries suggest otherwise.”
“It’s in our best interest to diversify our portfolio.”
“Your own employees are living out of their cars while you decide where to dock your third yacht.”
“I just have the one.” His tongue sticks out between his teeth when Geto rolls his eyes. “Any more than that is just excessive.”
It takes everything in Geto’s power to not throw the finished drink in Gojo’s entitled goddamn face.
He settles for pushing it across the bar with more force than usual, some of the liquid sloshing over the top onto the counter. No napkin, no straw. “Tell that to my defaulted loans.”
Gojo blinks at him, the ghost of last week’s desperation making a brief flickering appearance. But he smothers it again just as quickly, picking up the glass and stirring the cocktail with his finger in a way that suggests he knows something Geto doesn’t. “They’re saying a university degree is overrated now, you know.” He sucks the liquid off his finger with a pop.
In lieu of a reply, Geto makes the healthy choice and simply leans back against the wall behind the bar, watching him drink and wince at the taste of peasant booze, picturing how Gojo’s chest would look after he’s popped his tacky shirt buttons off, leaving careless red claw marks along his way.
He’s usually not so animalistic like that, but this is a special circumstance.
The hour hand of the novelty clock on the wall takes its sweet time walking to midnight, and then Geto’s waving away his last straggler as it finally reaches its destination.
As the guy’s leaving, Geto leans in close to Gojo. “Call your armored car, or whatever.”
Gojo’s expression falls open with glee at the realization. “Wait. Are we doing this?”
“Shut up before I change my mind.”
They wait for the chauffeur under the awning outside the locked building, Gojo with a hand in Geto’s back pocket, almost casual if not for the fondling of his ass through the denim.
“Handsy,” he chastises.
That only makes Gojo squeeze harder. “You love it.”
Again, it’s cute how he still thinks he has the upper hand here.
Soon the black sedan rolls up to the curb, and Gojo opens the door and pulls him into the backseat without a word. As soon as the door’s shut and the car starts moving, Gojo slams the partition closed, wasting no time swooping in and shoving their lips together.
He tastes like bad whisky and the slight bite of soda water. Moaning into Geto’s mouth, he moves halfway on top of him, straddling his thigh. He’s already hard, obvious even through the layers of fabric, rutting against him like a teenager.
“I’ll never need porn ever again,” he says in what he probably thinks is a whisper but definitely isn’t. Not that the driver didn’t already know exactly what was going on, anyway. His lips zero in on Geto’s neck without preamble; his saliva is cool on his feverish skin. “I’m gonna be getting off to this for weeks.”
“There won’t be a ‘this’ if you don’t calm the fuck down.”
Gojo’s not listening, too busy tonguing the tender spot under his ear. “Mmm,” he hums into the crook of his neck. “You taste good.”
“Am I an ice pop?”
His left hand palms the bulge in Geto’s slacks, like he can’t help himself, and Geto worries dimly whether he’s just agreed to get in bed with a nymphomaniac.
It’s good, it’s so good, but his arousal is getting away from him and he needs to pump the brakes before he completely loses it. Though he also supposes that’s sort of the point, isn’t it. “Seriously, if you come in your pants, I can’t be held responsible.”
Gojo pouts, pulling away. “Fine.” He slides off of Geto into his proper seat, and the loss is immediately agonizing. “We’re almost there, anyway.”
He settles for slipping his hands under Geto’s untucked shirt as they ride out the last couple minutes of the trip, fingers caressing the skin just below his waistband. The hedonistic part of Geto’s brain wants him to go back to what he was doing, wants to watch him hump himself to release, wants to strip him and lick him clean.
Gojo is going to kill him, probably. But not if he doesn’t beat him to it.
The car comes to a stop outside a huge modern high-rise that takes up nearly half a city block, with giant windows and a gilded facade. The door opens on the curbside, into a tented corridor that shields them from lowly pedestrian eyes.
Geto climbs out of the backseat and stands to the side while he waits for Gojo, nodding in acknowledgement at the uniformed stony-faced bellhop as he holds the door open. He gives Geto a judgemental up-down glance; shit, he forgot to take off his work apron before leaving the bar. Maybe he thinks he’s Gojo’s personal chef or some shit. Just as well.
“Morning, Ijichi!” Gojo sing-songs as he ducks his head under the doorframe of the car, like he wasn’t just thirty seconds away from making a mess in his designer slacks. “Looking good as always.”
“Gojo-san.” He looks 150% done with his bullshit. Geto likes him immediately.
Gojo leads him inside like he’s got a flight to catch. The door opens directly into a silver- and gold-plated elevator, covered in floor-to-ceiling mirrors. As they step inside, the doors shut behind them and the elevator begins to shoot up on its own accord.
“Something tells me this vanity project was your idea,” he says, addressing Gojo through his reflection as he moves in on him.
“Been thinking about this,” Gojo murmurs, slotting himself behind Geto, lips barely grazing his earlobe. “Thinking about you.” He wraps his arms around Geto’s chest, teasing his nipples through his shirt. “I want you to fuck me in here.”
“I’m not fucking you in an elevator.” Although his dick definitely isn’t disinterested in the idea. “I’m fucking you in your bed. I wanna see what kind of mattress a hundred billion yen can buy.”
“Yeah, okay.” He’s breathing hard as he nibbles on the cartilage, making Geto tip his head back against Gojo’s shoulder. “Whatever you want. We can do anything you want.”
Anything he wants.
Turns out the key to getting Gojo off his high horse and into submission is to get him hot. Easy enough.
The elevator comes to a stop, the doors sliding open soundlessly behind them, leading directly into a spacious open-concept apartment. The decor is surprisingly minimalistic - Geto was expecting a total mess, to be honest, or at least some violently garish interior design. Everything’s done up in black, white, and chrome, and the well-placed houseplants add a splash of green. The far wall is entirely glass, offering a stunning view of Tokyo’s night skyline.
“I like that vase,” he says nonchalantly after slipping off his shoes and apron at the door, pointing to the corner, just before Gojo grabs him by the hips and turns him around to pull him back so that he’s crowding Gojo up against the wall. Gojo’s taller, but not by much; Geto makes up for it by asserting one hand on his shoulder, the other fisting in his feathery hair. He bets Gojo uses ¥15,000 shampoo like the idiot he is.
“You’re so fucking hot,” Gojo slurs into his open mouth, delirious. “I can’t get you out of my head.”
Geto tightens his grip in Gojo’s hair, shoving the crown of his head hard against the wall, making him whine. “Shut the fuck up.”
He had never really seen the appeal of being dominant in this sense, exerting this kind of cruelty and control for the sake of getting off. He’s been asked to take the role before - by a handful of women and a couple men - but he usually just comes off stiff, like a bad porn actor.
One time when they were stoned, Shoko wanted him to degrade her - spank her, call her a whore, all of that - but he was so preoccupied with hurting her that after the fourth or fifth half-hearted smack she finally pity-laughed at him and told him to just forget about it. You know I’m the one who’s supposed to be in pain here, right?
But Gojo’s here now, so if that’s what he wants, he can have it. And Geto’s read too much political theory to not use this as an shameless opportunity to project. All his white-hot rage for this hellish world order, suppressed by his perpetual customer service façade, has finally found a worthy target.
“Where’s your bedroom?”
“Over here.”
Geto lets him lead the way down the hall, keeping a hand on his lower back as he trails behind him as a reminder, or maybe a warning.
“Here’s that mattress you wanted to see so badly,” Gojo says as he pushes the door open, a touch of his usual snark still present. “Hope it meets your expectations.”
His bedroom is definitely messier than the main space, with clothes strewn on the floor, but obviously still really fucking nice. The bed is king-sized, mahogany headboard so well-polished Geto can see himself clearly on its surface.
He turns to Gojo, who’s watching him, ravenous. “Lie down.”
He obeys instantly, crossing the room in a few quick strides and crawling across the mattress to the middle, rolling onto his back. His hard-on is on full display, and just as Geto sees his hand start to snake down, he snaps, “Not yet. ”
Gojo makes a pained little noise, but listens, crossing his wrists above his head. “Tease.”
Geto can make out the outline of his biceps stretching out the folds of his linen button-up, and the sight goes straight to his cock. “Take off your shirt.”
Gojo only undoes three of the top buttons in his impatience, shucking it off the rest of the way ungracefully and tossing it to the side. Geto realizes he forgot to manifest his earlier fabric-ripping fantasy, but it’s fine, he thinks as he lets himself appreciate the definition in Gojo’s torso, lean but cut. This is just as good.
“Are you gonna do anything, or are you just gonna stand there?”
“We’ll see.”
If he’s being honest, he has no fucking clue what he’s doing. This isn’t really him. He feels like he’s playing a character, maybe in an improv scene, filled with uneasy anticipation over where the narrative could go next. But it’s easier to get in the right headspace when he reminds himself of Gojo’s arrogance, his bratty entitlement, his flippant belittling, his pivotal role in the system that’s killed more people than any war, any disease. Whatever he could possibly inflict on him now, it would only be a drop in the bucket of what he actually deserves on a universal scale. Besides, Geto wouldn’t be caught dead doing improv anyway.
He approaches the foot of the bed and Gojo sits up, his gaze glued to Geto’s top button. “Can I touch you?”
Geto nearly rolls his eyes at the formality. He kind of already did that, a lot. “C’mere.”
He’s sitting over the edge of the mattress in a flash, knees bracketing Geto’s legs. The height of the bedframe puts them at eye-level, and Gojo kisses him hungrily as he makes quick work of his shirt and unbuckles his belt, pulling it out of the loops with a sharp crack.
He pulls back, belt in hand. “Let me suck your dick.”
“I think you’re forgetting something.”
He expects him to raise a big fuss about being made to beg, but it looks like his shame’s already been thrown out the enormous living room window.
“Please, Suguru.” Geto sucks in a breath in time with him. “I want it so bad.”
His cock pulses between his legs. He takes a step back. “On your knees.”
Gojo scrambles to the ground, dropping the belt. Even kneeling down he’s tall, and he nearly tears the zipper as he drags it open and pulls his jeans and briefs down at once until they pool around his ankles. The cool air against his bare cock sends a shiver through him; he’s so hard it hurts, but the pain is even sweeter when Gojo wraps those fingers around the base.
He grins as he slowly strokes him once, twice. “I got myself off last night thinking about choking on you.” He licks a stripe up the underside, tongue digging into the vein there, and Geto curses, head falling back as his hands find Gojo’s hair and sink into the strands.
He takes the head into his mouth, pursing his lips around it, flicking his tongue over the slit. “Good thing I don’t have a gag reflex.”
Geto’s fists tighten in Gojo’s hair. “So you’re saying I can fuck your face?”
“Let me warm up first.”
He hollows his cheeks and really starts to move, lips and tongue working in sync. Geto’s nerve endings feel like they’re on fire. He’s trying his best not to buck into Gojo’s mouth, but eventually the tip of his dick hits the back of his throat and he groans, hips stuttering forward compulsively.
Gojo pulls off with a cough, pinpricks of tears forming in the corners of his eyes.
“Shit. Sorry.”
He shakes his head, clouded eyes flicking up to meet Geto’s. His lopsided smile is lust-ridden, deranged. “Do it again.”
Geto doesn’t need to be told twice.
He starts fucking his mouth in earnest, and Gojo takes him beautifully, unhinging his jaw like one of those Amazonian snakes. His fingernails dig into the flesh of Geto’s ass, the pinpricks adding to the mix of overwhelming sensation; Geto’s nails are pressing half-moons into Gojo’s cheeks in return.
Just when Geto’s about to warn him he’s close, Gojo pulls off again, panting.
“You can come on my face.” He looks delighted by the possibility, even through the flushed cheeks and tear stains.
“Nah,” he plays it off as he slowly but surely feels his balls turning blue. Figuratively, but also probably literally, too. “I’m not done with you yet.”
He tugs upward on Gojo’s hair, motioning him to stand. “Back on the bed.”
He goes, peeling off his own slacks and boxers before taking his previous place. Now that he’s stripped, Geto can’t take his eyes off his swollen red dick, the tip leaking precum obscenely down his length. He’s working with some impressive hardware. All of him is gorgeous, really.
Gojo notices him staring, and then it’s like the switch is flipped again, from breezy and self-assured to desperate and compliant. “I swear if something doesn’t touch my dick soon, it’s gonna retract back into my body.”
Something like a switch flips in Geto’s brain, too. Or more like a dial being turned up. “Stop whining.”
“Fuck you, I just sucked you o–”
“I said, stop whining.”
He shuts up.
Geto joins him on the bed, crawling over him so that his body drapes over Gojo’s. They make out for a moment before Geto starts trailing kisses down Gojo’s neck, his chest. He tongues his nipples one at a time, savoring the way his chest rises and falls in erratic bursts.
He tracks his path lower, over his navel and all the way down to where his pubic hair starts. His chin just barely grazes Gojo’s dick, but he might as well have put his mouth directly on it from the way his hips jerk.
“Please don’t make me beg for it,” he hisses through gritted teeth and half-lidded eyes.
Geto feels his mouth curl into a smirk. Finally, he gives him a tiny taste of what he needs, taking the base of his cock in hand and giving it a single firm squeeze before letting go again. Gojo cries out, strangled, like a cat stuck in a tree. “You just did.”
He settles himself in between Gojo’s legs and manhandles his thighs for a second, propping them up over his shoulders, spreading him wide. With the pads of his thumbs, he stretches Gojo’s asscheeks apart, leaving him enough real estate to lick over his hole with a single broad tongue stroke.
If Gojo’s dick isn’t retracted yet, it should be now, from the way he moans.
“Top drawer.” He sounds possessed, beyond himself.
Geto crawls past him over to the bedside nightstand, fishing a condom and a discreet black bottle out of the drawer. He returns, setting the condom aside for now, uncapping the lube and drizzling a decent amount onto his fingers.
“You’ll tell me if you need me to slow down, yeah?”
Gojo nods vigorously, his expression pinched. He exhales shakily. “Won’t be an issue.”
Geto anchors his dry hand on Gojo’s hip and rests a lube-slick index finger against his entrance. Gojo tenses up for a moment, probably from the shock of the cold lube, and when his muscles relax again Geto ventures in past the threshold.
He gets about halfway, Gojo spasming deliciously around him. He can only imagine how that tightness is going to feel around his cock.
“More,” Gojo manages to choke out, grinding down on Geto’s finger. “I can take it.”
Geto obliges, stretching him out wide in a way that has him choking on a shout.
“You know,” he muses aloud, almost too conversational considering he’s got a finger two knuckles deep in Gojo’s ass, “in a perfect world, we would’ve never even met. Because I wouldn’t be tending bar, or working my day job.” He pushes in as far as he can go, curls his finger forward and earns a deep, guttural moan. Jackpot. “I’d be relaxing by the beach down south every day. Maybe Okinawa. Tending my little garden. Growing my own sweet potatoes.”
Gojo’s baring his teeth, breathing hard. “Wh- what the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’d be doing the shit you do all day.” He pulls out, adds a second finger. “Which is to say, not a goddamn thing. You’ve never really worked a day in your life, have you?”
“I… I-I do some work out of the office, and I freelance, and–”
“Don’t make me laugh. I mean a 9-to-5, 7-to-3, punch-in-punch-out real fucking job.” He brings his fingers together and rubs them hard against Gojo’s inner walls, and he honest-to-god screams. “Or has Daddy been footing your bills all this time? Who’s really been paying for those tips you leave me?”
Gojo can’t answer, too blissed-out rocking back and forth on Geto’s fingers. He moves his hips in desperate little circles, whimpering.
“What would his boardroom goons say if they could see you right now? Stretched out for me?”
Gojo’s eyes are watering again. “Fuck.”
“They’d probably think I’m your assistant if you brought me into the office with you.” He adds a third finger, Gojo groaning with relief at the fullness. “Your little handmaid. But really it’s the other way around, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He’s beside himself, lost to the sensation, clutching the duvet underneath them. There’s lube dripping onto it, ruining the linen. That’s gonna be one for the personal laundry service. “Yeah. Wanna make you feel good.”
After a while of fucking him open, he wipes the slickness off his hand onto the duvet, latching it to Gojo’s other hip. He digs his fingers into the skin there, hard enough to bruise. “What else do you want?”
“Want your cock,” Gojo nearly sobs. He cants his hips, grinding up desperately into nothing. There’s streaks of precum on his stomach. “Need you in me.”
“Yeah?” He feels drunk with this influence he has over him, this power. No one’s ever desired him this much, at least not openly. “Have you really earned it?”
“Suguru–”
“Don’t call me that,” he snaps, but his cheeks burn. He rears a hand back, brings it sharply against the side of Gojo’s upper thigh with a dull smack. “Show some fucking respect.”
That’s the ball game. Gojo moans low and deep, eyes wild. “Geto-san.”
“That’s better.”
If Shoko could see this right now, after Geto had embarrassed himself in his feeble attempt at the exact same thing not just a few months ago, she’d be laughing all the way to the bank. Maybe she’ll want to join them next time.
He motions Gojo to turn over, onto his hands and knees, and he does it so fast that Geto thinks he could spin out like an out-of-control car. The muscles in his back ripple beautifully the whole way down, and Geto grips his waist tight as he takes stock.
“Maybe if you’re good, I’ll let you come after I’m done.”
Gojo lets out a long cry face-down into the duvet, his cock looking like it’s about to burst, still leaking. “You’re fucking evil.”
“Don’t lie. You love this shit. Being somebody else’s bitch for once.” He smacks his ass properly this time, hard, and Gojo proves his point with a gasp.
He fumbles for the condom and rips the wrapper open, almost too wired to do it himself as he rolls it down with shaky fingers. Even the drag of latex against the head of his cock is enough to make him pause and collect himself.
Then he’s uncapping the lube bottle again, squeezing it into the palm. He strokes himself a few times to spread it; even with the barrier between his skin and hand, it’s a struggle to stop himself from selfishly finishing right then and there.
Finally he lines up, almost as impatient as Gojo, clinging to his waist for purchase. He breaks character for a second – although admittedly, it’s becoming less and less of an acting job by the minute – in order to ask, “Ready?”
Gojo lets out a noise somewhere between a scoff and a moan. “What do you fucking think?”
He smiles. What was he so worried about before? This is a blast.
“That’s what I thought.”
He pushes in, a beat slower than he’s craving, but it pays off when Gojo lets fly a string of curses directed weakly at the mattress. The tightness is almost overwhelming, but soon Geto finds his rhythm, hitting Gojo deeper and deeper with each stroke. Gojo’s meeting him halfway with greedy thrusts, working himself backwards until Geto finally, gloriously bottoms out.
“Fuck,” Gojo gasps, like Geto just knocked the wind right out of him. “Yeah, that’s it, right there, don’t fucking stop or I’ll kill you.”
That gives Geto some more unsavory ideas, but he gives Gojo what he’s begging for since he’s feeling nice. For the most part.
“Everything you own,” he tells him, voice shaking from the effort of catching his breath, punctuating each phrase with a thrust into Gojo’s prostate, “– your assets, your career, your chauffeur, this apartment, your yacht – it’s not yours. It was never yours. It’s mine.” He feels his release building fast, and he abandons his rhythm in favor of fucking Gojo harder, wilder, hands cemented to his hips and forcing himself deeper. “It’s everyone’s.”
Gojo turns to look at him, and his face is an absolute wreck. “I’ll- I’ll give you whatever you want. Anything. You can have the yacht, I don’t need it.”
He’s not getting it.
“Poor bastards like me, we built your life.” Geto’s rambling now, too close to the edge to shut his brain off. Gojo’s close too, he can tell, the muscles engulfing him tensing up impossibly tighter. “And sooner or later we’re gonna take back what’s ours.”
All Gojo can manage in response is: “I’m gonna come.”
Letting himself tip overboard, he reaches around and finally strokes Gojo’s cock in earnest for the first time all night, so wet with his own desperation he doesn’t even need the lube. “But this is second best.”
Another scream erupts from Gojo’s throat as he bursts almost instantly without barely even being touched, all over Geto’s hand and his own stomach. Geto jerks him through it, all the way to oversensitivity, his own orgasm following a moment after. His hips stutter to a stop inside Gojo as he freezes, letting the crushing tide of pleasure flood over him and recede, then pulling out unceremoniously.
Gojo flops onto his back against the duvet with the grace of a metric ton of bricks, hands flying up to cover his bright red face.
“I think you might be insane.” The mess on his stomach glistens like pastry glaze above his fast-waning erection. Geto wants to lick it off. “Like, clinically.”
He peels the condom off, ties it closed, tosses it across the room into the tiny metal wastebasket in the corner. He sinks the shot. “I’ll bill you for my therapy sessions.”
“And what the hell were you on about at the end? ‘Taking back what’s yours?’ You’re really gonna come rob my house with your little comrades?”
“I meant institutionally, idiot. But it’s not off the table.” When that day does come, Gojo will be lucky to walk away with his life. He probably won’t. “I kinda want that vase for my kitchen.”
Gojo points at him threateningly, or as threatening as a man can look a minute after blowing his load. “That vase cost more than your university tuition.”
Geto smirks. “That says a lot more about you than it does about me.”
“Does it?”
“Yeah.” He lays down propped up on one elbow, leans in to kiss him. Maybe a little too intimate for the way he just treated him while his dick was rearranging his organs, but Geto’s a man of habit and honor. “Same time next week?”
“Fuck no.” Gojo’s hair is clinging to his forehead from the sweat. “I’ll have a heart attack. I’m not spry like I used to be.”
He laughs. “Don’t be a baby. You took me just fine.”
“Well, at the very least, you wounded my pride.”
“That was sorely needed.”
There’s a strange weight behind Gojo’s eyes; he stares up at Geto like he wants to say something more, but can’t decide what.
Finally he frowns, shaking his head. “If, uh, if you don’t want me around the bar anymore…”
“I do,” Geto cuts in too fast. He coughs. “No. No, I do. My Tuesday shifts were always my slowest. I don’t know what I’d do if you stopped coming around.”
“You’d have to start fucking the elders,” Gojo says with a theatrical grimace. “The one with the big bald spot is the cutest of the bunch, I think.”
“You’re so gross. And talk about heart attacks.”
Later, as he washes his hands and face in Gojo’s ornate hotel-white bathroom, he wonders vaguely whether this, in a broader systemic sense, could be classified as class traitorism. Or even Stockholm syndrome.
Maybe there’s an essay out there he can consult on the ethics of fucking the one percent, but for the time being, he couldn’t care less.
When he unlocks The Vessel’s front door the next afternoon, there’s a package waiting for him in the receiving hall. He opens it on the bar with the rusty scissors they keep by the register.
Inside the box, cradled by delicate tissue paper, is a bottle of Yamazaki, the 12-year variety that they age in oak barrels.
There’s also a note written on baby blue cardstock, a raised monogram at the top.
A donation for your collection. Until next week.
He can’t wait.