fuck buddies don't act like this (Gojo x Reader)

Chapter 67

Unlike the day of othering where you were given the opportunity to finally ground yourself for your future, things with Gojo got a little... off; today you are spending it in the tranquil sanctity of the Tagata Shrine. Funnily enough you and Gojo are dancing upon a knife edge of this estranged relationship of tug of war, hot and cold, friendship and more. After another day of biting your lip and growing hot and bothered from his actions you bit the bullet and asked him out for today.

It's not a date of sorts but merely a day for research purposes whilst spending time with Gojo. Nothing to hide as the truth is clear and bright as day. Speaking of Gojo he's wandered off to pay his respects to the priest or monks waiting about at the gates and deeper inside the main shrine building. You didn't take him as someone to show respect to elderly figures in religion or authority but maybe his intentions are darker than what appears on the surface. Does it have something to do with his work and exorcising spirits, well, mainly cursed ones that he's briefly talked about with you.

As he's gone you have little reprieve with drawing inspiration from your surroundings as this shrine is merely a reference to what you really entail to do with it. Sinful, erotic Shunga themed pieces of work is what spirals inside your little working mind.

Discussions were made, Kim Lee-Ann and you agreed on the theme, eventually moving onto the inner workings for your pieces out of respect for the more conservative devout worshippers of the Shinto religion. The theme for your work and alike many others attending the upcoming art exhibition is Spirituality, and in a Shinto, Buddhist and Confucianism dominated country can be a slippery slope. Especially when you're tasked with painting erotic almost Shunga themed pieces of both the female and male body during sexually explicit acts.

The thought of painting another light on shrines and spirituality is exhilarating and a frightening thought all the same. You have no prejudice towards sexuality and religion seeing how free-spirited your mother once was especially with your upbringing. You aren't trying to sexually appropriate your culture nor explicitly depict sexual acts of both partners doing erotic plays in shrines and deface your culture. Shunga was your first model of inspiration to choose shrines especially since the work is so profound to Japanese history and coming to terms with sexuality in such celibate prudish times.

Your work will become a sexual scandal in the art world...

And you're somewhat okay with that and not at all.

You'll do what she wants, to see what you can truly do and maybe along the way free yourself from these chains and express what you want to say.

He was very much dancing on a knife's edge.

He wasn't allowed to work until someone calls him in and asks or he blatantly ignores everyone's better judgement and shows up at the school. He knows what he'll find there and it's why many want to keep him away. But he knows, he always does, before not so much as he was confined to an endless pit of time and bound to a box of his own foolishness. Now he knows, more than ever, more than everyone could ever comprehend and he's sick of knowing the truth, his students. Those that will never return or return the same as he had left them.

Knowing that he's not wanted in a world where he's revered as the greatest sorcerer in the world leaves him feeling like a weight has been lifted. He never really wanted the burden of undertaking all grades of curses and work him to his death, protect the innocent and vanquish the wrong. He's been frustrated for so long that he's forgotten what it feels like to take a deep breath and breathe.

For a long while his ribs ached and his eyes streamed as he looked too deeply into everyone's soul, only yours being the brightest and calmest out of all the oceans. He sought you out and found you broken and fierce all the same, he guesses that this his doing as much as you tell him so and as much as he fears that he could break you all over again. Love is a fierce nasty creature that he once called the greatest curse of them all and that she is, more wicked than fear and crueller than revenge. She is the knife that he treads upon so awkwardly that it's not the thought of nicking himself but bringing you down with him.