Thursday Night Comedy Hour - Goneagon (orphan_account) - 呪術廻戦 (2024)

Chapter Text

1978

“Don’t be stupid.”

“You’re stupid,” Satoru grumbles, “We’re hiding behind a dumpster.”

Two days ago, Suguru nudged a knobby elbow into Satoru’s side in the middle of a lesson he noticed the white-haired teen was dozing off at. It was enough to stir him, squinted eyes half-lifted behind eclipsing sunglasses as he looked to see what prize Suguru had gotten.

Sunglasses weren’t part of the school’s uniform, but starting this year Satoru got a doctor’s note with a go-ahead. It was a minor solution to absolutely crippling migraines, citing very sensitive and extreme retinal light sensitivity. It’s become something of a badge of honor, the little laminated paper he’s got looped on a blue string that he thrusts out of his bag every time a teacher who doesn’t know him tries to scold him for wearing them.

'I have a certificate,’ he says while shoving it right up to their faces, and sometimes Suguru says it for him just to be a dick. Sometimes, they trick the catholic girls across the street into feeling sorry enough for them so that they’ll shell out money to buy the two boys ice cream from the shop around the corner. Suguru thinks of some new ideas when he sees the small slip to Satoru’s glasses, his friend looking about ready to fade away at any moment.

“What?” Satoru mutters, not trying to speak too loudly over their hotheaded sensei’s lesson. He’s also still half-asleep, but Suguru doesn’t say anything when he subtly nods down to the hand he suddenly extends out in Satoru’s direction. There’s a small movement in the wrist, the faint sound of moving pieces inside the small box that drops into his open palm like a magic trick: a pack of half-full cigarettes hidden up his sleeve. Suguru stole them from his mom’s purse, making it up to her by slipping 1,000¥ in her pocketbook. It’s for her to find when she wakes up in a couple hours.

It was the first time Satoru ever smoked a cigarette. He did it after school with Suguru, inside an abandoned club room with all the wide open windows drafting too much air inside. It tasted awful.

Now they’re behind a dumpster after half-assing their classroom chores, Satoru having a million troubles with the cheap zippo in his hands as his eyebrows knit to a deep, concentrating furrow. He’s having a lot of trouble, and when Suguru observes him he notes that the two cigarettes Satoru’s got in his mouth only serve to make him look more stupid. Suguru is the one who suggested the back of the dumpster, but he would certainly argue that between the two of them, Satoru deserves the crown for the boy with the stupidest idea right now. Suguru makes a face, finally plucking the lighter and the second cigarette out from Satoru’s mouth. The action paints his friend surprised, has him squawking open his mouth which makes the lonesome little cigarette he had left between his lips now fall to the ground.

“Hey--!”

“Shut up,” Suguru swiftly interrupts, not doing well to hide his amused smile as he places the cigarette he picked from between Satoru’s lips into his own mouth. He lights the lighter on his first try, looking like an expert when he brings the flame to light it. “You would’ve passed out.”

“No way,” Satoru huffs, poutily staring down to the cigarette he let drop onto the ground. It’s in some kind of puddle, a puddle that’s always there with or without rain. Garbage juice, the damp white stick is better off in the lowest depths of a trash can. He leans against the dumpster itself, knowing whatever smoke that clings to his clothes will cling there better than sewage. “I can handle anything-- give me another one.”

Suguru thinks right now that perhaps introducing Satoru to nicotine was a bad idea, or perhaps just cigarettes in general. He’s a born-again chainsmoker Satoru says, saying he ‘did a whole pack yesterday’ even when Suguru snorted and huffed ‘yeah right’. Satoru didn’t put up much of a fight in defending himself, it was clear that he was bullsh*tting for the sake of nothing. They’ve only come to know each other again for about three months now, which is sort of still within ‘new friend’ territory, even if Satoru’s already started to heavily rely on his attention. But what he’s learning from all the little things he uses to impress Suguru is that his new friend simply doesn’t care. He doesn’t care if Satoru’s a chainsmoker or if he can drag two cigarettes at once-- all Satoru will get out of it is a laugh when he hacks up a lung because Suguru knows he doesn’t like cigarettes. It’s a bit silly, Suguru can’t figure him out at all. He’s not sure if Satoru’s trying to impress him or be better than him.

And yet, he hands Satoru another cigarette, extending the lighter with a lit flame as Satoru grabs his wrist with both hands and buggy eyes over his sunglasses while he tries to steady the fire to the end of his cigarette. As expected, he coughs his insides out when he tries taking the first drag.

“Hey Suguru,” Satoru pokes when he perches his cigarette between two fingers, weight shifting from left to right foot as he blows smoke too fast from between his lips. “You know that catholic girl with the weird bangs?”

Satoru’s ‘girlfriend’, something Suguru won’t admit to his face that he finds absolutely hilarious. What’s even more funny is how rude Satoru is, how he doesn’t even call her by her name but rather by the two features of hers that seem to have caught his eyes. It’s amusing now to watch him talk about her as he acts fidgety over the cigarette in his hand, looking every which way as the nicotine coursing through him makes him jumpy and wired. Suguru hums in response, egging him on to elaborate further on the point he’s trying to make. The embers at the end of Satoru’s cigarette light up with an awkward drag that has him coughing low from his chest, smoke leaving his mouth in a plume.

“I did her.”

Now, Suguru for real laughs. He laughs so hard, he curses f*ck when he coughs around his interrupted cigarette drag. It’s Satoru’s co*cksure tone of voice, the way he avoids using the much-more crude word in favor of something that actually seems far more stupid. Satoru had smirked when he proclaimed the statement, but now when he sees Suguru laugh at him he inexplicably frowns, small and confused before he very quickly realizes he’s laughing at him. Gojo’s eyes narrow, then he strikes Suguru on the shoulder with his hand in an effort to get him to stop.

“Why’re you laughing? I’m serious!” Satoru’s voice raises in tone and pitch. Suguru would know he’s lying by body language alone, but that seals the deal.

“Yeah? Do you know anything about catholics, Satoru? They don’t f*ck until marriage, or believe in condoms. She might’ve poked a hole in yours if you weren’t careful. Hey-- haven’t you only been dating for two days?” Suguru poses humorously, a smile forming around his warm cigarette as he enjoys the way Satoru’s face goes red. He can see the gears turning behind his eyes, like a mix of disbelief and anger and embarrassment. It’s what makes this more hilarious, he already knows Satoru is full of crap. Satoru didn’t count on not having his friend’s support.

“I’m just that good! You’ve never believed in me, Suguru. Also it doesn’t count ‘cuz I f*cked her from behind, she told me God’s not gonna care.” Satoru says too quickly, shaking his head with a jittery drag of his cigarette. Suguru snickers loudly, and Satoru lamely keeps his pointed gaze all the way down to his shoes as a pathetic little stream of smoke rises from his burning cigarette.

“Who the f*ck says that it doesn’t count?”

“Lotsa girls, you’d know if you knew any.”

“I think I know a few,” Suguru’s thin smile grows wider, it’s a fact that Satoru can’t refute and he revels in it, “So I guess since it doesn’t count that there’s nothing to celebrate, right?”

There’s a long pause before Satoru flicks down his cigarette, the second one he’s wasted for the day. Brief annoyance aside, Suguru knows what’s coming next. He’s simply gone too far and Satoru’s going to try and jump him now, so Suguru prepares for the lunge that’s soon to come his way. These scuffles have happened often enough to where Suguru knows that when Satoru fights, he always goes for the face. It’s a move that surprised Suguru the first time they met again a few months back and didn’t really hit it off right away, Satoru threw him down for saying his atomic structure drawing for Chemistry looked like a little alien. Satoru always goes for the face , Suguru remembers the feeling of red-hot on his skin that day, the place where Satoru got him on the cheek. Suguru got him worse in the stomach, Satoru acted like he’d killed him.

It’s the exact same formula this time, Satoru aims a flat palm for Suguru’s face and in return, Suguru gets a good grip on both his forearms just in time to pin him hard to the back of the dumpster. The metal makes a comically loud thud sound when Satoru’s back hits it and phase two of Suguru’s counter-attack begins when he controls Satoru’s hands to go in the opposite direction, repeatedly hitting himself. Satoru’s face flashes an expression of surprise, then registers a moment later when his glasses fall lopsided on his face and Suguru can see the pinched white of his flinching eyelashes.

“Ow--! sh*t-- stop! I didn’t do her! Okay-- I didn’t do her!”

Suguru already knew that, and Satoru’s whole elaborate lie has him lowering his defense in favor of laughing at him. Satoru takes this opportunity to wrench his hands free and pull on Suguru’s ears, the laughing getting cut off once he feels the sensitive area being stretched back like taffy. He slaps away Satoru’s assault, figuring it’s decent enough payback for his own teasing.

“Ow-- don’t do that--” Suguru says defensively, rubbing his sore ears as Satoru straightens his glasses and snickers at his discomfort. Both his hands shove into his pockets, he bends his torso down so he can look up into Suguru’s eyes as his left foot comes up to rest against the dumpster with a low bang that has Suguru raising an eyebrow. Gojo’s up to no good.

“I’m gonna kiss her for real tomorrow,” Satoru states boldly, pushing off the rodent-infested metal wall of the dump as he grins, teeth shining as white as his hair, “And when I do, I’ll tell ya all about it so you don’t miss much.”

They don’t talk for two days after that first kiss.

The ride home isn’t awkward, but they do sleep in separate rooms.When Satoru wakes up that morning, he sees Suguru already dressed.

“Where’re you going?” Satoru asks with a heavy tongue, words a pitch quieter than normal. It’s fine, neither of them acknowledge or think too hard on it, but Suguru does smile when he sees Satoru comb through his insatiable bedhead with his hand, flinching when he catches on a knot.

“My mom wants me to help her move stuff from my aunt’s house,” Suguru says, just finishing up spreading butter on toast as he takes an immediate, crunchy bite. Satoru moves into the kitchen, going to the pantry to see what he’s got left in terms of awful breakfast choices. Suguru isn’t much better, he looks like he’s leaving in a hurry. “She’s gonna sell whatever’s left.”

Suguru speaks with his mouth half-full, mostly attempting to gloss over what is the most obvious right in this moment. What’s obvious, is the fact that both of them are trying to pretend like last night never happened. Suguru mulls over the half-mushed bread in his mouth as he spares a glance towards Satoru with a colorful cereal box in his hand, looking back owlishly when Suguru mentions where he’s going.

“Wha--? Your aunt? Didn’t she die, like, a year ago?” Satoru asks honestly, and Suguru snorts rudely (rude on his dead aunt’s behalf) when Satoru says it so crassly. He grabs the gym bag he stuffed full of clothes for the weekend trip, bringing it up to his shoulder and hooking it there as he watches Satoru put too much cereal inside of a bowl too small to fit the heaping proportion.

“Nine months, but close.” Suguru leans up his side against the counter, watching Suguru go for the milk in their fridge next. He pops open the cap and smells it. “They need the house cleared out before the end of the year. She’s been wanting me to go for months and I’ve been blowing her off.”

The milk must still be good because Satoru sets the milk on the counter like it’s no problem, but his eyes still look up and meet Suguru across the counter, an unreadable expression on either of their faces. It’s hard to tell what the other’s thinking, and it makes it horrible because Suguru is very much used to being able to read Satoru’s rapid-fire thoughts. He’s expressive, he’s not wishy-washy and he’s rude and obnoxious and bad-mannered but right now he’s not greeting Suguru like he usually does in the morning. Conversation has always come easy to them, and it’s still easy but it’s also like they’re mirroring stone walls to each other.

It’s what Suguru doesn’t say about visiting his parents that has Satoru frozen in place, looking at Suguru’s gym bag like a casket: ‘Now I have an excuse to go. I don’t really want to be here right now.’

“How long are you going to be gone?”

“I’ll be back on Sunday,” Suguru answers, a small knit to his brow when he sort of realizes that he’s not really making anything better for Satoru’s sake. They’ve never hidden anything from each other, and what makes this awkwardness all the more daunting is that neither of them are hiding anything.

What they did is in plain sight. It’s in the way Suguru’s lips still feel tingly, and he remembers that Satoru tasted like cherry cola when he kissed his cold lips. There’s a silence between his words, he struggles to reconcile.

“You’re not missing much. My parents are a handful.”

“Mm.” Satoru makes an agreeable hum, and it may as well be shrapnel to Suguru’s heart because Satoru is such a child sometimes in the way he pouts and displays his emotions so big. Right now he’s just pouring milk into his cereal bowl, and Suguru listens to the droning tune of rice puffs crackling from the liquid and his lips press into a firm line. He hates this. He doesn’t regret it, he doesn’t think Satoru does either.

“Get me something sweet,” Satoru says suddenly, still not quite looking at Suguru but there’s something hidden on his face, he can see it. “It’s gotta have cream. Or else I’ll kill you.”

Suguru’s eyes widen, not for the death threat but for the fact that he can see now that there’s a reason why Satoru’s not looking at him. A red flush on his high cheeks as he fishes in the drawer beside his hand for a bendy straw he plucks and sticks down into his cereal bowl (Suguru is used to it by now, he likes drinking his milk that way). He makes the demanding request with a hidden smile, he can see him trying to hide it but it’s shown in full now that he turns his head up and they look at each other like real human beings do. Suguru feels like he’s been punched in the chest, mainly because Satoru’s ocean-glass eyes waver like a receding coastline. Satoru had an awful time looking people in the eye when he was a kid, he still does. But he’s managed for Suguru, the only one who can really look at him this way.

A small huff leaves Suguru’s nose, a humorous smile rising to the corners of his mouth as he thinks they’re both just being incredibly stupid. It’s heartwarming, Satoru brings up the bowl in his hand and curls the straw into his mouth for a sip. Suguru can hear a couple small burbles, Satoru awkwardly blowing bubbles inside the sugary soup. He just can’t help himself, Suguru makes a subtle move by rounding the granite corner of their kitchen island, Satoru’s playtime coming to a stop as he pulls away from the straw and looks wide-eyed at Suguru.

“Stop acting like you’re not going to miss me,” Suguru scolds him while smiling good-naturedly, now on the same side of the counter with his weight half-leaned against it, “It’s pissing me off.”

“Yup,” Satoru says defiantly, “I’ll make good money pawning off all your weird movie collectables.”

Suguru snorts, Satoru looks at him for real now and he’s smiling.

“You’re breaking my heart, Satoru,” Suguru smiles softly, feeling that creeping redness up the back of his neck. “Aren’t you going to be lonely?”

“No way, I’ll be celebrating.”

“Big party?”

“The biggest.” Satoru answers, his voice sounding like it’s starting to wilt. That almost-nasally lilt his voice takes on when he gets too nervous as the distance between them breaches a wavering line.

An invisible wire made up of six years of memories and birthdays celebrated together when they were too far from home for anyone else to care. It makes them both nervous, but what happened last night was not coincidence and it was not a hiccup or lapse of judgment, they both know it. He wasn’t drunk, Satoru doesn’t drink, it meant something. And Suguru feels grateful, feels like he can finally f*cking breathe after years of staring at that wire line between them and wondering when or if something would ever come to snip it. He had to do it, he would’ve died otherwise. And now when he needs to go, all he wants to do is stay. He doesn’t know when he got so close, when Satoru became his definition of home.

It’s love not in the way that he adores him, but in the way that Suguru finds there is just so much to discover about Satoru. Wonderful things, interesting things, things he thinks other people are stupid for not noticing but at the same time the thought of anyone knowing these hidden little secrets makes his stomach turn. It’s possessiveness, a little bit, but also the fact that as a reject himself, the world isn’t entitled to know a single thing about them. They can coexist in this space, they could kiss each other and love each other for the fact that no one else will feel the same. The emptiness was never filled, not with girls or sex or cigarettes-- it’s only ever been filled when he was on stage. When the extension of Geto Suguru to Gojo Satoru feels blurred. When Suguru would fall asleep facing him, waking up unsure whether the hand he was touching was Satoru’s or his own.

Suguru decided many years ago that what the world thought of him did not matter, it’s what made it so easy to do what he did on Thursday night. To Suguru, the world has no business knowing what they do together. Satoru likes to preach that he doesn't care about judgment or any other pair of eyes on him, but he’s still sensitive. Something like this, all of the feelings he has, it means more than just a simple schoolyard crush. If the wrong people find out, they can be hurt or even killed. The weight of that, the chance they would have to take on this, it’s heavy. It’s why he expects nothing, it’s why he hopes for everything. That one day they can breach this shallow distance in between them. That maybe they could stop fooling themselves.

“Can I kiss you?”

“No.” Satoru answers immediately, Suguru’s own gaze moving straight to his eyes when he sees panic glint across Satoru’s wobbly gaze. Ripples in the water, a quaking black hole in the center of both his irises and a sharp clench in his jaw when he seems ready to pick up and run. It’s genuine surprise on both their faces.

It’s an unwelcome sight, not for the answer to the question but for the fact that Suguru can’t recall a single other time where Satoru looked so scared. The brief flicker is enough to make Suguru question if he was actually entirely wrong. Something blunt and uncomfortable presses between his ribs, hot pins of regret that simultaneously make him feel like he’s been drowned in ice. But it’s not about him, it’s never been about him. He doesn’t think about the instant denial, the fear on his face or how Satoru’s body responded negatively to the subtle way in which Suguru tried to ease in closer. Suguru forgot just how vulnerable he was last night-- how he is right now-- he needs to bring him back.

“Hey now,” Suguru begins softly, loosening the gym bag full of clothes off his shoulder to catch it down into his hand and carefully set it onto the ground. “Take a breath, I’m not going to kill you for saying no.”

Suguru smiles to help reassure Satoru, experimentally extending a hand just to test how jumpy Satoru is, if he’s going to flinch away from simple touch too. He doesn’t, and it’s a relief when Suguru can rest a soothing hand on his right shoulder, though he’s still very tense. Rigid like a statue, eyes fixated on the ground as his cereal gets soggy in the bowl. Suguru’s expression wavers a bit, a small frown when Satoru doesn’t say anything witty or lighthearted back to him. In the back of his mind, he wonders if he f*cked up badly.

“I’m sorry--” Satoru says unevenly, his breathing starting to sound a bit too fast, a bit too heavy. “f*ck--”

It feels too familiar now, the way Suguru invites him into the small bubble the two of them can share together. The way his hand moves up and over his shoulder to his back, welcoming him in closer as their bodies pressed together and Suguru needs to ignore just how desperate Satoru feels when both his hands come up to Suguru’s jacket. He clings and grips him like a wooden spoke tethered into the ground. Down to earth, don’t you dare leave me alone. It’s warm and it’s confusing, they embrace each other and he feels naked when he thinks of last night, all the nights before and every little thing Satoru has said to him to make him feel unequivocally infatuated with the other male’s cosmic existence. Sometimes, Satoru just feels a little too big for this world.

“Are you leaving because of me?” Satoru asks breathily, his face not fully buried into Suguru’s chest as he gives himself clearance to speak.

The question makes Suguru open his eyes, the echo of his early childhood ringing in his ears when he would be sitting in the living room, hearing the loud thudding of footsteps rushing down the stairs. From the living room-- the front door is right there too-- he had a perfect seat to watch his father storm out once, twice, many times. He pretended not to hear the sound of his mother crying upstairs, perhaps that was wrong of him. Are you leaving because of me?

“I need to sort some things out,” Suguru speaks with regret, downturned eyes staring at the lonesome cereal bowl when his hand finds soft, short strands of stark white hair. Satoru’s taller than him, really f*cking stupidly tall, but Suguru’s noticed the past two times they’ve hugged like this Satoru always folds himself inwards, making himself smaller than he actually is. A big, needy dog that still thinks he’s a puppy. “I figured you did too.”

Even hugging right now, as pleasant as it is, doesn’t solve anything. Suguru starts pulling away, keeping his hands tethered to Satoru’s shoulders and taking some relief in the fact that his breathing sounds like it’s calmed down somewhat. His face doesn’t look quite so convincing though, and Suguru’s own mouth remains a line.

“I’ve already decided how I want to live my life, but I don’t want you rushing into conclusions for my sake. That’s not like you.” Suguru reminds him, that soft smile returning to his face once Satoru looks at him. A bit doe-eyed, but hopeful nonetheless. “I think I just got a bit carried away. My mom also tells me I don’t visit enough.”

“I’m not rushing into anything, though.” Satoru defends himself pretty fiercely, almost immediately and with a fervor that Suguru wishes he wasn’t so stupidly attracted to. “I was-- I was fine with it. I just--”

“Satoru,” Suguru remarks seriously, a steady deadpan to his voice, calling attention to just how much weight the other male’s words really hold. “Please. For my sake, just think about it first before you say anything.”

Satoru shuts up, he does so immediately as he meets Suguru’s intense gaze. It’s reserved, slightly pleading for the sake of his own sanity that he’ll need to maintain for the next couple of days. Satoru looks a bit stumped, looking on the verge of pouting because this is confusing and weird for the both of them. It’s hard to acknowledge what exactly they did, for whatever reason why and how they somehow ended up there. Burning questions they already know the answer to: it’s always been there. Brimming beneath the surface, subtleties only a looking eye would think to notice. Suguru only got to that point fairly recently, he realized it on the last normal day of their lives together when Satoru frowned at a broth stain he noticed on his white shirt, grumbling to himself. He tried wiping it instead of dabbing which only made it worse; Suguru had thought to himself back then that it would be a lot easier if Satoru was a girl.

“Think about it,” Suguru repeats, sensing the time to get going lest he wait a whole hour for a different train. He softly smiles to ease away the tension on Satoru’s face, though it doesn’t help all that much. “If you’re serious, I sorta plan to give it my all.”

Suguru sheepishly rubs at the stray hairs on the back of his neck, a look of some sort of realization flashing across Satoru’s face. Some sort of ‘ah-ha’ Suguru doesn’t really have the time for. He’s giving Satoru time to figure that out on his own, what exactly he means when he says that he’s going to give it his all. I will dedicate myself to you and only to you. If you ever end up in that same place you were last night, I will never forgive myself if it’s because of me.

When thinking back on it, the saddest sight he’s seen so far in his short lifetime can be defined by a red-faced Satoru. Choking on saliva and a constricting throat, weeping into his arms with mind-numbing hysterics. It was beautifully solemn and simultaneously the single most awful feeling Suguru ever felt in his life when knowing that he was the one who caused that.

Satoru’s quiet now, Suguru picks up his bag and resists the urge to pull Satoru’s head down so he can kiss feather-white hair, reassuring him that everything will figure itself out. Yes or no, they’ll still be friends. But Suguru knows he doesn’t need the reassurance, Satoru isn’t an idiot, the two of them have always operated on a one-track mind. For all their awful habits, they’re strikingly honest with one another. The complete picture of what Satoru feels is still unclear, but the bundles and knots in the strings between them will soon flatten themselves out, Suguru can only hope. It’s been a long time since he’s prayed, he often wonders if God is to him as he is to his mother. Pretending not to hear wailing through the walls.

“Please eat your breakfast, I left you my mom’s landline number. Please call me if you need anything.”

Suguru leaves, Satoru is alone.

It is best to make the most out of a bad time, Satoru breaks half of his promise to Suguru by allowing half his cereal to go soggy. It’s the off-brand stuff anyway, Suguru wouldn’t get it. He keeps expecting the door to open.

It’s a lonesome Friday afternoon, there are things to get done. After flipping through mindless TV for about six hours, he checks the time to find it’s only been less than one. There’s no f*cking way, Suguru’s must be some kinda time hopper like the ones on the TV, or maybe an alien from another planet who’s decided to play with his heart and now his entire sense of reality. There is laundry to be folded but he hates doing laundry, which is why he has Suguru do it. He also has him do the dishes, and in return Satoru makes sure that their rooms don’t become trash heaps. He vacuums and puts things back, Suguru does laundry and they often share the load of putting away dishes after he washes them. It feels wrong to fold the hoodie sleeves back, fold it in half on top of itself. He stops midway through the chore, opting to dig through their various misplaced junk for some of the posters they haven’t hung up yet. He focuses on that instead.

Satoru is no professional, but his plan J if comedy didn’t work out was to be an interior decorator. He’s got an eye for style, fashion and otherwise. At least, that's what Suguru says when he buys a bold new jacket and Satoru asks him what he thinks. Takes one good look and puts on a non-committal smile when he tells him ‘looks good.’ Looks good, so it must be good and must be great, Satoru’s confident in his ability to place lame movie posters in their high-rise apartment. It takes him an hour, and by the time he’s done he’s carefully rubbing toothpaste into the (roughly) twenty pushpin holes he managed to make on their priorly perfect wall. It was due to all the shifting, when the picture would just be slightly crooked and he needed to fix it lest Suguru notice and change his mind about Satoru being a good decorator.

Satoru’s index finger smooths over the last little bit of toothpaste, his lips press into a line and he takes a small step back, head tilting left and right. It’s too quiet, home is just now a house.

There’s a knock on his door.

Suguru has been gone for less than a day and he’s already gone delirious. Satoru didn’t think that he would hit this wall so soon, or ever at all. It’s not a visitor because they don’t get visitors, it’s not Suguru (or maybe it is and he decided that going to his parents wasn’t a good idea so he turned right back around and got a bus back home--), so he must be losing it. It still causes him to pause, makes him consider what it means. Maybe he’s lucid dreaming.

Then there’s a second, much more impatient knock on the door.

“Anyone home?” It’s a muffled, feminine voice. Satoru realizes with horrible dread that he’s not actually off the wall, but there’s actually someone there. Two’s too much to be a coincidence, and he’s not lost his rockers just yet because reality still resonates itself as normal. He lifts both hands and clenches his fingers just to be sure of that, looking at the door with a low brow and a pout forming solidly on his face. He’s not into people trying to sell them things-- how’d she even get inside the building? Probably paid off the front desk clerk, it won’t be long for him to send her off to try and sell things to some poor half-deaf sap downstairs. His footsteps are loud when he walks to the door, mostly because of how fast the fleeting thought of Suguru returning home fled his head the moment he heard the voice behind the door.

He shunts open the door, confronting the issue head-on so no one alive will think of testing his fragile patience, neither up or downstairs. The stranger looks up (higher than where she was looking before), and all the awful words Satoru had listed in his brain now get lodged in his throat the moment he sees who it is. Not a stranger, a familiar face. Probably the only face he thinks to himself that he could tolerate seeing right now.

“Yo, Gojo,” Shoko says, sounding pleasantly surprised. Her hair is longer than the last time he’s seen her, a thin and dead-pale finger coming up so she can play with a strand of it. She has that tired look in her eyes that she always does, a lazy smile that looks almost like it could be mocking someone. “Is Geto here? I have some stuff to give back to him.”

Shoko raises a plastic convenience store bag filled mostly with what looks like a jacket, but with the amount of times Suguru has hooked up with Shoko, he wouldn’t be surprised if there was more. She must’ve seen the subconscious way he frowned, because when she looks up again, her expression becomes softer.

“You look like sh*t,” well, at least she’s never been dishonest with him, “Bad time? I can come back later.”

“No, it’s okay,” Satoru finds his voice, only a little bit scattered, “Wanna come in?”

Shoko looks surprised by that offer, normally Satoru isn’t so generous. If he were to place a ranking on all of Suguru’s weird little girlfriends, Shoko would definitely be at the top of that list. Mostly because she’s never once tried to be something she’s not, which sounds a bit awful in the back of his head but it’s true, she’s not annoyingly gazing at Suguru or blowing off Satoru like he may as well not exist. Luckily those interactions are few and far in between, mostly because Satoru has barked at Suguru after the fact that all the girls he’s into majorly suck. But not Shoko, she doesn’t like Suguru that way. He can’t recall the amount of times she’s called him a loser. The look of surprise fades, something more affable.

“Sure, I hope you don’t mind if I use your coffee maker, though.” Shoko smiles, her hand lowering from her hair as she steps inside and begins to remove her shoes. Time suddenly feels like it’s started again, that he can feign normalcy just a bit easier for now. He goes to start on her coffee, he doesn’t use the machine anyway.

They don’t usually have guests, but Satoru doesn’t apologize for how things are just a bit disorderly. In his mind it’s justified by the off-end to this strange week, an off-end Shoko doesn’t need insight for. She’s having a coffee and setting the plastic grocery bag on their living room table while Satoru tries to decide which brand of snack cake he wants to shove in his mouth to diffuse the awkwardness he feels. The presence of a second body that doesn’t belong to Suguru, but Shoko’s okay. It’s alright enough for now.

Satoru takes up far too much space for what he’s worth, he rests awkwardly on the other end of the couch with the TV flipped onto solemn news of an important person’s passing, some kind of doctor. His main focus is on opening the finicky packaging he’s been presented with while Shoko works their coffee maker better than he’s ever managed before. Caffeine makes him too wiry, a silver key in his back that winds him way too tight and makes him feel sick to his stomach, he steers clear. The clinking of a spoon is the only sound that resonates in his ears, Shoko mixing sugar and milk into the boiling mug as she navigates her way to sit on the opposite end of the couch.

“Is Geto out shopping?” she asks conversationally, though little does she know that Satoru is one forehead flick away from shattering like glass. He’s not subtle at all, the plastic casing around the snack cake splits far too loud, lip jut out just a bit too far.

“He’s out of town, you just missed him.” Gojo answers shortly with an ankle folding over his knee, knobby elbow digging into his thigh as he perches a cheek into his hand. Reminiscent of some kind of thinker statue; Shoko looks up from her coffee, only mildly stunned by the sudden attitude that’s been thrust into her face.

“Huh? Where?” she asks.

“His mom’s, looting around his dead aunt’s place. Mmph-- Don’t ask me the specifics, he didn’t give me any.” Gojo talks with a mouth half-full of sugary white cream, fluffy white cake and thick vanilla frosting that’s coated along the outside of the cake. His molars grind a sprinkle, he thinks of how much he hates Suguru right now. He thinks of how much he misses him.

“You seem hardly pleased about that-- did you two get in some kind of argument?” Shoko speaks calmly, more or less smiling at Gojo’s misery and placing abstract pieces together in this weird puzzle. It’s almost a flick, almost enough to shatter him like glass. When he remembers last night.

The smell of gasoline, the off-clean smell of entering a train car and the feeling of liminal singularity that thrusts the reality of the world into his face. Traveling with someone has always felt better than being alone. When he and Suguru got on that train home last night, he purposefully put his head onto his shoulder and thought about how there’s not a single other place in the world he’d rather be. No other person he’d rather be with. It felt fine last night, it felt fine when they shared that space together and conquered the abstract loneliness that clings to airplanes and train cars like a taint. And he remembers the feeling of how Suguru’s lips slotted against his, how it feels like a ghost now and how he f*cking wishes he was home right now. He wants him home and he needs him home and he doesn’t need anymore time to think through what he already knows. He wants to spit out the slop in his mouth, he wants to shrink into the furthest hole in the ground and bury himself alive.

“Something like that.” Is all he says, setting the half-eaten cake onto the small table in front of him, staring at the cheap coasters Suguru bought in Osaka that litter the table like fragmented memories. He faces the door, unsure what exactly draws his gaze there at the moment. Somewhere in the back of his mind he understands his own shortcomings when it comes to his irrationality in social circ*mstances like these, and whatever self-preservation is still lingering in the far-away corners of his head still reminds him of the annoying importance of words.

“Hey.”

Shoko pauses when she goes to sip her coffee, raises her head and offers her full attention to him.

“How did you feel… after your first kiss?”

There’s a reason why Satoru’s lonesome family of fools always had bones to pick with him. Suguru thinks it's funny when Satoru tells him that he was a very quiet child, almost selectively mute up until he turned six. The pressure got to him and he folded, but still, words have never ever been a good thing. It’s funny in comparison to how he is now, Suguru is the one who reminds him to use his inside voice. But it’s comfort and it’s trust, when he can’t talk all that clearly for himself or he loses his footing, acts too impolite on accident. Suguru picks up the pieces, he kisses him when he loses himself and lets him sleep on his shoulder on the train ride home then leaves the very next day-

These rotten words hang in the air, such an odd thing to ask a girl he once tried to hate purely for the fact that she was getting too close to his best friend. It’s the only thing he can think to ask, the only advice he wants right now. To not be thrust into this liminal space and to feel like there’s someone else traveling right beside him. He can tell she’s looking at him, staring and probably waiting for some kind of punchline.

…

It’s f*cking awkward!

“Well,” Shoko begins, sounding almost fully collected while all the heat contained inside Satoru’s body rushes all at once to his face, “If you want me to be honest, I was pretty grossed out. He liked sardines and didn’t brush his teeth before doing it. I thought he just liked smoking with me but he thought we’d been dating for months. Sorta always thought those things were dumb anyway, not kissing per se but placing loads of value onto something you can feel on your own if you just did it to your hand instead. Of course, you should probably only kiss people you like, but you also don’t have to beat yourself up over a few bad times. It’s how it goes.”

Satoru tries to imagine how life would be different if he knew all he knows now five years ago. If he made his own move on Suguru, what would he have done? If he told him honestly he doesn’t like girls all that much, if Suguru would’ve told him it was okay. If Suguru tasted like sardines and nicotine and put his hands all over Satoru and told him he thought they’d been dating for months.

“I see.” Satoru sighs, cheek smushing further into his hand as he finds a place to stare at the carpet. His face is still hot, and he’s just lied because no, it’s not ‘how it goes’ and he doesn’t understand a single thing. But Shoko is also not necessarily trying to give him advice, he probably shouldn’t ask for any either.

Distantly, he hears her sip her coffee. Swallow, lower the mug in your hands, news channel of someone important dying in the hospital.

“So, how was the kiss between you two?” she asks.

“Huh?”

“You and Geto,” she asks casually. “Was it any good?”

Satoru can only seem to recall one other time he was stunned into such vicarious silence (That one drama him and Suguru used to tune in for every week, when it got revealed the sister was secretly the heroine’s mother the entire time, pregnant with the child of her ex lover who amazingly dies at the end of the episode). This time, he’s caught inside of a vice. His head is raised, body still frozen like the shadow of his ex-misery. There’s a new misery now, a dread that wells itself up inside his chest as his mind rears to wonder whether exactly Shoko Ieiri is saying this as a friend or as an individual with new ideas on how to ruin his life. It’s not like it doesn’t feel partially ruined already, and it’s not like Shoko’s a malicious-type individual. There’s nothing much he can hide, not right now while she’s read him so clearly. The energy to create an elaborate lie has dissipated, and instead he straightens, arms and legs and all and he looks into the eyes of all the shame he’s felt for the past six years.

“What gave it away?” Satoru asks genuinely, more so morose at her deduction than mortified at the current predicament he’s become wedged in. She tilts her head with a smile.

“You know Gojo, you two are really f*cking annoying. Do you mind if I smoke?” she asks, already taking out her cigarettes. Satoru’s eyes widen suddenly, lips pressed into a shocked line before his eyebrows knit down and he’s bracing two hands on his knees, standing tall with two hands coming to perch on his waist.

“Hey junkie, remember whose house you’re in.” Satoru pecks a cigarette from the paper container Shoko already has in her hand, and he takes it without any objection from her. “Veranda.”

Satoru hates smoking, but it comes in handy during a crisis.

Shoko is so collected, it makes Satoru’s fidgeting even more apparent, how he looks like he’s tiptoeing on the edge of a far-off building. Shoko takes a seat; they got an actual seat on this patio. A wicker chair the two of them found at a thrift sale; Suguru still talks about how he misses the stray cats he used to feed early every morning-- that makes Satoru wish they never got this big break in the first place. A wish along with a multitude of other minor regrets. Both a blessing and a curse, there was always some serenity in watching Suguru peel open a can of tuna for the chorus of meows that all pooled around his feet. There’s more than that though-- every little thing Satoru misses about their old life-- but he can’t doubt all the good that’s come from this large-scale opportunity.

Satoru wonders if Suguru still would have kissed him back then, or if all the faith he tried instilling into him and proved true in a fluke was actually worth something in the end. Despite everything, this feels worth it.

“I sort of realized early-on that the two of you were different from most guys I’ve known.” Shoko seems to contemplate her words around her cigarette, and it rustles Satoru out of the near-feverish way he’s trying to smoke right now. “Well, I don’t know many guys in the first place, but I can say pretty confidently that you’re both lame to the bone.”

“Is there a point to this?” Satoru asks sardonically, half-lidded eyes only serving to make him look more tired than he actually is.

“Yeah, and a meaning too,” Shoko smiles, drawing her cigarette away from her mouth to allow the smoke to plume up into the air. Snaking upward, dissipating into clear skies they never had on their old balcony, the view of the building next door that didn’t seem as grim as the wide-open horizon they’re presented with now. There’s no cats anymore, or clothes hanging on a wire. “I learned it a long time ago. Do you know why we stopped hooking up? I couldn’t get him to shut up about his roommate.”

It paints a very dangerous mental image in Satoru’s head: Suguru talking about him when he’s f*cking girls. Something short circuits, ash flecks off the edge of his untouched and burning cigarette as he stares directly at Shoko. It’s like he’s waiting for a punchline, but she goes right back to smoking like she didn’t say the single most mind-numbing thing he’s ever heard.

“For real?”

“Mm, for real,” she confirms without missing a beat, letting out a small cough towards the end of her affirmation, “I think I know more about you than you give me credit for, actually. I put on a nice lip balm for him one time and he told me that it was the same kind you like. He just kept kissing me, not really doing anything else, it was pretty awkward. I was ready to go down on him too--”

Uneasy, uneasy, gross gross gross-- The vivid image of Shoko’s face pressed against Suguru’s crotch, wearing his favorite coin-cheap lip balm that tastes like a cherry lollipop. Suguru kissing her again and again and again-

“Whoa, hold up,” Satoru physically sticks his hand up, eyes shunted shut as if to shield himself from whatever dirty commentary Shoko was ready to make, “I don’t wanna know what kinda weird things you guys did with each other. Save that for the memory palace.”

“Why? Are you jealous?” Shoko’s quick to tease him, head chidingly tilting into the perch of her open palm.

It’s an instant recoil like pollen up his nose, an open-mouthed grimace classified by the fact that somewhere in his brain, Suguru is still just his best friend. The notion of doing explicit things with his best friend who’s also a guy is a call for overt disgust that’s been hammered into the back of his skull for years. He reacts, sucks in a breath, conjures an unwilling image of himself being in that intimate place minus Shoko. The two of them alone, the barriers gone and without any big ideas in their head for what exactly it means in the grander scheme of things. Normal people don’t have to worry about that, the people outside of them who f*ck how they please don’t need to fret over whether or not the people through the walls will hear them and decide they wish to make an example. It’s a cold chill up his spine, a startling realization: I want what you have, whatever that may be.

In a way, it is a bit of jealousy. If he were a girl like Shoko, this would be a lot easier.

In the small corners of his mind, he recognizes the fact that he can’t recount Shoko ever using his first name in a conversation before. It’s a recognition from his heart; part of him doesn’t want to answer her question in fear that voicing it will only make it true.

“If something bad happens to him because of this, I’d never forgive myself.” Satoru states plainly, a downturned gaze moving to the veranda’s edge as he steps to it, folds both arms over the railing as he thinks on it while the cigarette burns. He thinks of more kisses, an intimacy he’s subtly desired for all his life that he’s sworn off because girls are scary and being with his best friend always just felt good enough. And it’s odd being as old as he is, coming to realize now that a true relationship like that can be had, but not without risks. Before it was an impossibility as real as waking up one morning to a neon green sky, but it’s not so far-off anymore. Or at least, it doesn’t feel that way. Suguru weighed his own options and made his move and now it’s Satoru’s turn, but he has nothing to show for all the time spent between them when he could’ve been thinking instead of regretting .

There’s a warmth that comes with that, to place himself within the once-solemn fantasy of Suguru someday settling down with someone. Satoru remembers what it felt like to kiss him, to be held by him, to not have a single expectation placed onto him rather than just being himself. He wants him, he wants him all to himself. After shows, before shows, every moment of every day for the rest of his life to be spent with Suguru. It’s a bit scary, what possessiveness he feels over him despite his current hesitancy to commit to any real idea of what a relationship between them could be like. The scariest part is just how much he wants it, how much that motion last night jump-started his heart into the hypothetical rest of his life. Something as simple as a head resting on his shoulder, what it’d be like to love in all the ways he’s been denied throughout his life. To smell him in the bedsheets.

“If sacrificing a future like that is what it takes to ensure that, then I’d-- I’d do that. I’d give up everything.”

It’s a bold statement, one that feels like something acidic. It’s enough for him to flick his cigarette off the veranda, to take a deep breath and look up at the gray clouds that sting the corners of his eyes more than tears could because he’s sick of crying. It’s pathetic to cry over a hypothetical future he doesn’t even have yet, the kind of future that could get one or both of them killed or if Suguru’s family finds out and decides they don’t love him anymore. And what a waste it is to hate Suguru, it’s not something he deserves, he’s a good person who used to feed the stray cats that are going hungry now because Satoru wanted to move to somewhere with more space that they don’t even f*cking use. He deserved everything that happened last night, he deserved to be pinned a queer by Yuki Tsukumo and he deserved to get left behind at that nightclub.

“We should go in, I think it’s gonna rain--”

Satoru doesn’t recall hearing her stand up, but he feels the hand come to rest on his back and it’s enough for him to forget all about the world for a minute. It’s colder than the one he’s used to, but no less placative. He shrinks into it nonetheless, shoulders hunching with crescent-shaped indentations forming on his palm where he squeezes his hands into fists. She rubs over the bumps of his spine, he shuts his eyes and holds it all together, charging the pain into all the intensity he feels at this moment. It doesn’t rain; the girl he once thought had potential to be his worst enemy has now become something closer to a friend.

These things never last too long, Shoko is telling him she needs to hit the road when Satoru’s body starts becoming less tense beneath her hand. He’s not sure what time it is, but he’s okay with it. He helps her get her things, and shows her to the door.

“Thanks for the coffee,” Shoko is the one who sees herself to the door, no-less smiling calmly as she begins to collect the loose ends of her hair into a ponytail, “I’m sorry for being so short. I got a date tonight and I haven’t washed the dead body smell off yet.”

“Really? I couldn’t smell anything.” Satoru says genuinely, taking an extra sniff of the air around her just to be sure he really didn’t miss anything.

“Can’t be too careful.” she smiles, pulling two ends of the ponytail to tighten it with a soft sigh, her back straightening as she lets her gaze stick on him for just a bit longer. “Are you going to be okay?”

It’s a bit of a loaded question, one that’s normally always asked half-in jest. He thinks about it no less though, lets it ponder on his face as he thinks of all the many hundred miles Suguru is gone from him. No, he thinks, I’m not going to be okay if I stay here alone. Can I come on that date with you? But individuals have a life outside of him, so does Suguru. The whole world can’t slow down because he’s in a tizzy, nor can he expect everyone around him to give a sh*t about his struggles. It’s a bit unfair, mostly because he knows that if he were to die tomorrow, everyone who’s ever known his name would come out of the woodwork to capitalize off his demise. Satoru thinks that when he dies, he should make a specific list of people who have the right to mourn him. Everyone else can serve twenty-four hours in their nearest jail cell. Maybe, he’s thinking a bit too deeply about this.

“Yeah,” Satoru answers, knocking his fist twice on the wall just for a bit of good luck, “I’ll be good. Suguru should be home in a couple of days, don’t send any wellness checks.”

“It’s fine to not be okay, you know,” she says suddenly, almost as if reading his mind, “I know it’s tough for you right now. Whatever worries you might have, satisfaction and risks, you don’t have to be okay, Gojo.”

It’s an off-putting reassurance, skewing his balance only in the way that Shoko has managed to read him so clearly it has him visibly falter. Mostly, because he truly isn’t okay, and what rests in the pit of his stomach is a swirl of anger, longing, the feeling like he’s got a fleshy open-wound in his side. It chokes up his throat and makes him feel like he’s got worms beneath his skin.

“Try to get in touch if you need anything. Don’t lose your head over some boy.”

Suguru, right now, would surely keep his head on straight. He wonders about the opposite end of their small little world, if he’s just as miserable as he is. He feels pathetic; perhaps this is what teen girls feel when they get noticed across a room. When Shoko leaves, he looks at the plastic bag she left behind on the sofa as his feet move on his own to approach in a way not unlike that of a wind-up robot toy. Satoru plants himself on the couch, puts the bag on his lap and begins rifling through it. He takes out a comb first, a few expired train tickets, a pair of gloves (from last winter?) and a plain black sweatshirt. At the bottom of the bag, there’s three ponytails and a couple pairs of socks, a small haul of all the little things Suguru places little care in to leave behind. The sweatshirt remains in his hands, and amidst the melting of his brain tissue he decides to inspect a bit more of it.

Slipping a hand inside, it’s not soft anymore. The fabric is worn out, there are stray hairs clinging to the surface that he picks off one by one, even smaller ones that look like cat hairs (it’s a bitter reminder, he tries not to think too hard about it). Then, curiously, he flips up the white tag, running his thumb over the dry-cleaning instructions before--

Suddenly, it becomes apparent. He pulls up the tag right towards his bad eyes, each of them swimming and wobbly in large seas of wide sclera. Yes, it’s exactly how it says it is.

“You asshole!” Satoru exclaims suddenly, appalled. “This is my sweatshirt!”

Suguru isn’t home to hear him call him an asshole, but pretending he is makes it just a bit better. Pretending that Suguru lives inside their phone is also something that brings him a small bit of comfort, with his body having migrated to the table where they keep the little thing they hardly use. Satoru touches all the parts of it in the meantime, when the sun goes down and hours go by and the TV still drones on in the back of his mind. Call me if you need anything. Satoru ghosts his fingers over the number pad, silently reciting the phone number he has clutched tight in one hand, the other entertaining the idea of calling him. It wouldn’t be so bad, a phone call to be sure that he’s alive. Or maybe, this is a scenario where it’s a test, who will fold first and admit to the other that they miss them. Satoru smiles when he thinks of that, a huff shaking up his throat in a lame attempt at a laugh for the sake of his own misery. He should be working-- he should be showering.

Satoru’s finger curls into the landline chord like a strand of hair; their phone is black, and it feels just a bit too ironic. The hours go by, he makes sure to eat dinner, waits for the shrill ring that never comes. Suguru is a lofty competitor, holding out this long. But Satoru isn’t a loser, and he doesn’t need a thing.

…

(Can I kiss you?)

(No.)

Satoru sleeps in Suguru’s bed that night. Getting up the next day feels a bit easier.

“Did you find everything alright today?” the kind cashier asks him, unshaken by the enormity of Satoru’s overflowing shopping basket that rattles the counter he sets it on. It must be some kind of record.

“H’yeah,” Satoru’s voice muffles around the colorful gummy candy package he’s got his teeth clamped around, leaning over to release the candy down into the basket once her quick hands begin unloading the overflowing contents. He suddenly remembers, “Oh, grab me a pack of Mild Seven when you get the chance.”

“Sure, can I see your ID first?” she asks.

“Seriously.”

He gets the cigarettes, and a roll of cash later he’s out the door of the Lawson and starting the short walk back to the apartment building. Having gotten a whole five hours of sleep, Satoru garnered enough energy to get dressed and go outside for the sake of preparing for Suguru’s return. Perhaps it was the week they had, but when opening the pantry this morning he realized their snack supply was running dangerously low, and it was in their normal day-to-day life that they go out of their way to poison their bodies with colorful preservatives.

There’s a stride to his step, a renewed confidence and an epiphany he had in the shower this morning after he scrubbed soap out of his eyes: Satoru has decided how he wants to live his life. Wishiness and washiness is in the old era and trapped in a long-abandoned boys-only high school, there’s no f*cking way he will do that again. It would feel a bit easier if they were both kids again, mostly, because Satoru cared even less about things back then. He has his prerogative and his beliefs, and what Shoko says rings true in his mind for the fact that no, he’s not f*cking okay. And he’s never quite been so okay, not since the days of his youth where he could run away as he pleased.

Where he ran straight into Suguru.

Running away isn’t as therapeutic as it once was-- visiting a long-forgotten home isn’t as cathartic as he chalked it up to be. But it was never for himself; what home he left this time was a home worth staying in.

Going to an old home is never as good as he glorifies it to be, he knows this. Suguru blesses his life for the fact that he still has two parents, but what comes with homemade food and hugs to his mother’s side (she wraps both arms around him when he’s sitting down for dinner, brings him in close like she’s trying to remember a time when he was smaller than her) isn’t the fulfillment he thought he was going to get. Though it was never about fulfillment, he just needed Satoru to figure things out himself. Suguru is the one ahead of the curb this time in the way that he’s known what he feels for his partner since before these odd life-changes. The roles are reversed, Satoru’s normally the one who’s headstrong and stubborn, and while Suguru lacks the boisterousness Satoru displays he makes up for it by being strong in his beliefs.

A vacation, ultimately, does nothing for him. His mother gets misty-eyed when showing him old photo albums, and when he looks back at himself from a third perspective he finds that he can't muster the will to care as much as she does. The fact being that he can live with a single phone call once a month, while she rots away in the ghost of a home once filled with a single child. Yet still, he sends her a small envelope with money once every couple of months, if only to justify to himself that he’s playing a good role in being her bright son. She tells him he doesn’t need to, but Suguru feels like something inside of him would surely die if he listened to her. It’s a slow-burning fire, the fact that somewhere deep inside him he feels as though he has every single thing he could ever possibly need-- right now, in this moment.

He kisses her goodbye anyway, lets his father pat his shoulder, and ignores the lingering emptiness he feels as a result ( though it’s always been there, not as a result but as an intrinsic part of your being-- the fact that ‘family’ has never quite felt like a family ). The emptiness follows him back to Tokyo, up until the wholeness returns in the form of a red door that leads directly into his shared apartment. A long journey, and what a waste it was, truly in the end of all grander things. Perhaps he should’ve listened to Satoru when he said he was fine with the kiss, with everything, let him be awkward and jumpy for the sake of Suguru’s own sanity. But he’s a nice person, and knowing Satoru, he would shatter like glass.

It’s the afternoon, he expects to find his friend on the couch, but the house echoes his footsteps when he walks inside. The lights are dimmed, and it’s more than just a mild disappointment when he thinks of Satoru further avoiding him by going outside than to meet him at home. It’s wishful to think he’s probably running late with takeout, but what distinguishes Satoru from the remainder of earth’s population is the fact that Suguru will always grant him the benefit of the doubt. He tries not to take it personally, tries to imagine a flustered Satoru waiting in a held-up line for some cold somen he can bring home as a surprise. Perhaps that’s just a bit too wishful, but he smiles anyway when he takes off his shoes and hoists his heavy bag back over his shoulder. It’s packed with two days worth of dirty clothes and a tin of cookies from the local bakery back at home-- Satoru never stayed too long in that small town before his family whisked him to Tokyo, he draws blanks whenever Suguru names off the best local cuisines he still feels nostalgia for.

Suguru steps into his bedroom, flips the light, and feels all the blood drain from his face the moment he sees the bedsheet move-

“Hey,” Satoru grumbles-- his voice, his voice, no sound for the past two days-- “Turn that off.”

Suguru flips the switch immediately, something in his brain falls short of piecing together sense because all he can focus on right now is the shape of Satoru’s abnormally long legs folded into his bedsheets. Fluffy white hair sticks out from the comforter he has pulled halfway up his face, sporting the horrendously ugly eye mask he always wears with the two comically buggy eyes detailed on the fabric (all for the sake of those sensitive eyes). Suguru flips the switch for the sake of his fragile retinas, he thinks back to when they both slept in the living room of their old apartment. Satoru demanded complete darkness in the room for him to manage even a wink of sleep. It’s why they have blackout curtains, why Satoru buries his face further into his pillow-

“Hey, Satoru,” Suguru starts, sounding surprisingly collected given the fact that he’s walked right into a fantasy he’s positive he’s conjured up before, “You’re in my bed.”

Suguru suddenly feels too hot in his jacket. He drops the bag’s strap into his hand, tentatively setting it down by his feet. It’s the afternoon, he’s wholly floored by this sudden development he’s been faced with. It’s nearly-infuriating, Satoru’s spontaneity catches him off his guard at the worst possible moments when he’s woefully underprepared. Part of this doesn’t feel real, but it’s mostly the swell in his chest of being home and seeing and hearing Satoru that has his heart in fractals right now. Such a harsh contrast from where he just came from, absence making his heart grow fonder-- maybe. It feels more than fondness though, like he’s transported into a different realm entirely. It’s Satoru’s otherworldliness, the fact that his existence in of itself is something cosmic.

Suguru’s reply must’ve shaken him, because the eye mask acts as a headband when he pushes it up towards his hairline. His eyes are closed, one of the many uncanny habits he has, and he peels them open just enough to look at Suguru through thin slits.

“So it goes,” Satoru answers, coy enough to deserve a slap to the face as he uses an elbow to perch himself up. “You mad?”

f*ck, he’s insufferable. It’s quite obvious he wants some kind of attention, and Suguru greedily takes the bait because he missed him. Suguru breathes in something sharp, a swift breath before a deep dive into whatever mess Satoru is inviting him into. It’s different than before, not like the tense reunion they had after sleeping through what exactly they did on Thursday night. There’s no shame in folding, Suguru can’t help but feel like a winner when he closes the distance between the door and his bed.

“No,” he answers easily, a comfortable smile on his face. “I’m a bit surprised. I thought you weren’t home.”

Suguru’s heart is pounding a mile a minute, solely for the fact that he can’t remove his eyes from Satoru. No, not while he’s like this. He’s got a knee braced on the bed, hands moving next so he can comfortably slide into the space beside Satoru where he lowers onto his side. There’s a flurry of feeling, sporadic thoughts and things he wants to say like how I missed you so much, did you think about anything incredible while I was gone? It’s another thing to admire, Satoru’s drive to do more outside of his very tangible intellect-- the fact that he understands astro-physics to a cognitive degree and that at any given moment, he can eye out the distance between physical objects. It’s a neat party trick, one that would come more in handy if those kinds of people were the ones they were trying to impress.

Satoru catches him off-guard amidst his thinking, suddenly emerging from the covers as he grabs Suguru’s disparate body parts as a tether to pull himself out of his prior sleeping position. It happens too fast for him to protest: Satoru’s pointy elbows and knees jabbing into various parts of his body as he unceremoniously climbs onto Suguru and forces him onto his back. His eyes widen, he forgets how to breathe.

“What are you--”

“Shut up-” Satoru snaps at him immediately, “-and listen to me. You gave me no room to talk before, so let me say what I need to say to you.”

The cheap bento he ate on the train doesn’t seem like such a good idea anymore, mainly because the gag reflex he’s never had an issue with before suddenly tenses like he’s going to be sick. It’s a pointy object tapping right against his heart, the assuredness of Satoru’s words that are scary on their own. Satoru is stubborn, and not very flaky when it comes to grand decisions he makes-- if he’s anything, it’s reliable. Reliable in the sense that he’s not privy to flipping like a switch, so whatever he has to say regarding this whole thing is sure to make or break what Suguru has built up in his head for over a year.

This elaborate what-if- regarding Satoru, how he’s always sort of known that he lies about girls and that he’s possessive of Suguru’s attention like he’s got some sort of claim on him. It keeps his heart racing, makes him frustrated, and has him chasing after girls for no real reason in the ultimate scheme of things. He does it to feel something, he leaves feeling worse. What Suguru never wanted to do was freak him out, mostly because Suguru doesn’t think Satoru has ever thought deeply about guys or girls. And that was fine, but Satoru always disillusioned himself and lied about one day meeting a girl he might settle with. Suguru was hardly a good influence, and part of his own self-doubt was encouraging Satoru to seek those dates and that connection only to find that the idea of some guy or some girl putting their hands on him is sick. It would be to use him, no one would treat Satoru the right way. People find him loud, they find him annoying, he would make those hasty connections and someday, someone will hurt him. If Satoru ever lost a part of himself, if he changed himself-

“I’m listening.” Suguru breathes, like the heavy exhale that comes after breathing in a cigarette. Both of Satoru’s hands pinning his shoulders (his form is a bit sloppy, Suguru could easily knock him over) with their gazes interlocked at this halfway point. Strands of hair slip from his already-half-assed bun, Suguru looks into Satoru’s eyes, his own claim being that he’s privileged enough to witness this sight for however long he pleases. In the dim light of his bedroom, they do look better in the daytime. Otherworldly, like a kaleidoscope toy. His stare is wobbly, but Suguru can see the way color fills his cheeks and he wants to reach out and hold him in the palms of his hands.

“No secrets. We tell each other everything, got it?” Satoru asks firmly, and try as he might it’s hard for Suguru to ignore the way he feels the spider fingers dig into the meat of his shoulders.

His head tilts just a bit, his voice is no-less genuine than Satoru’s is, “Don’t we already do that? Last week you dragged me into the bathroom to show me your ear wax-”

“You f*cked Yuki Tsukumo,” Satoru immediately interjects, a very strong index finger jabbing down into the bridge of Suguru’s nose that does it’s job in inflicting momentary pain. Satoru is pouting, not quite on the bridge to being mad but he’s surely on some kind of edge. “And didn’t tell me. That makes you a traitor.”

Suguru can hear the slight waver in his voice, it’s still a sensitive subject. It’s his turn to frown now, Satoru drawing back his finger and giving Suguru enough leeway to catch the expression he has on his face. This is serious for both of them, and Satoru’s current expression belongs to that worst feeling in the world category when he sees a shadow of Thursday night’s grief on his face. The word ‘traitor’ rings cold in his ears, and he forgets the weight on his shoulders as Satoru’s scrunched face ponders some more.

“No more lies.” Suguru hastily agrees, if only to get him to stop looking like that. But there’s also honesty, something pulled from the center of his chest because he does sporadically lie to Satoru. In the smallest, most nonconsequential ways. It’s something selfish he does, with his picked-up knowledge of Satoru’s affections for him he doesn’t want him to know just how much he messes around. It’s so that he stays close to him, they stay close together, he doesn’t go away-- the dirty secret he’s kept for this past year, how awful that is to do to Satoru. But he’s found no other way to cope with this revelation and it’s selfish, childish and bad, for everyone involved. It’s what he does to try and imagine the real thing, a rotten practice where he pretends the girl he spends an hour with is someone else entirely different.

Suguru is tired of it. He’s really f*cking tired of it. Satoru’s face right now, how awful it feels to see him like this. It’s the cause and effect of trying to have meaningless sex when such a thing is wholly unachievable. Not unless he feels nothing inside to begin with, and he feels plenty of things. Thursday night’s kiss was the apex of every single word that he’s left unsaid. It was one of the many firsts that should have happened years ago, an end to all the precious time they’ve wasted between each other.

“You promise?” Satoru asks, those tapered fingers of his suddenly snaking around Suguru’s neck as he leers closer, their noses touching when Satoru flattens out his legs. He’s laying on him, tilting the right side of his head down the furthest it can go until their skulls collide and his eye is staring a hole into Suguru’s left one. Their eyes are so close, it’s like Satoru is attempting to catch a glimpse inside his soul.

“I promise.” Suguru doesn’t hesitate.

The fingers move to his hair just a bit, Satoru holding him in the palms of his hands as the staredown continues. Suddenly, it softens, his heavy eyelashes eclipse half his eye. Suguru can feel the heat radiating off his face.

“I want to give this my all too, Suguru,” Satoru begins, “I want to. It’s scary, I don’t know how these things are supposed to go. But I missed you. Even if this doesn’t work out, please don’t ever do that to me again.”

There’s something cosmic about Satoru Gojo. It’s in his fingers, the curl of his lip and the way his eyes seem to shine even in the dark. In the darkness of this room, otherworldly and alien, and in the fact that every single notion Suguru once had of Satoru is wholly incorrect. There’s nothing else he cares about as much as Suguru, and no matter how many awful things he did, he would still stick by him through it. Through everything. Satoru, he realizes, decided a very long time ago that Suguru would be his end-all be-all, and he wonders what sort of plans he had for the possibility of Suguru getting a wife someday. Not that it was much of a possibility in the first place, but it’s a revelation nonetheless, and it sparks something cataclysmic in the center of his chest. The beginning of a fall, to wherever that may be.

It’s always been Satoru, somewhere in his mind he knows he has felt that instinct since the two of them first met one another. He wants it, craves it, needs it in the palm of his hands more than anything else in the world. “Are you sure this is what you want, Satoru?”

It’s always been for him. Everything.

Satoru curls his fingers, the closeness becomes apparent now when Satoru begins breaching the distance. In the quiet of the room-- all of the otherworldly senses surrounding Satoru-- it’s a gentle kiss, their eyes simultaneously closing. Suguru’s heavy hands find a small waist, he holds him and he can hear the way Satoru sucks in a breath through his nose. It’s the sense of rightness in his chest, the way his brain stops buzzing for these perfect beats of time. It’s like valium. It’s still, it’s quiet, Satoru’s fidgety even now when he kisses him once, twice, a third time, and there’s no premonition of wrongness. Stigma and lofty importance all placed onto something so stupid, the only difference between kissing a girl and kissing Satoru is the fact that this feels better. Unfiltered admiration, the fact that he can do this a million times over with him and never get sick of it.

Satoru kisses him like a porcelain doll, Suguru can’t help but start grinning when each one starts feeling lighter and lighter. The kiss breaks when the corners of Suguru’s mouth stretch a bit too wide and Satoru pulls away with a face that has bright heat emanating off its surface. The cheeks only grow redder.

“What’s so funny?” he asks tensely, his pout and the great offense tethering on his voice only serving to make Suguru feel more tickled. Before he can frown too much, Suguru brings a hand up to touch the warmth on his cheek for himself. It slots perfectly in his palm, he tries not to think about it too much.

“Nothing.” Suguru reassures, his thumb stroking over the soft corner of his left eye. “You’re cute, Satoru.”

There’s an awash of clarity, something that flickers over Satoru’s eyes and settles on his face. He looks almost ready to cry, Suguru feels a similar vice grip in his throat. Holding him this way, gently in the palm of his hand, has always been an unachievable dream.

Then, a hand plasters itself on his face.

“You smell like a train station-- when was the last time you washed your grime off?” Satoru snaps suddenly, off-key and loud and woefully full of embarrassment. “Don’t even think of getting close to me again until you shower!”

Satoru pushes off of him, stomps to the door as Suguru dizzily recovers from the sudden weight off his body. He raises himself with his elbows, watches Satoru from behind and just now notices what exactly he’s wearing. A kitschy tourist shirt and no pants, his long legs taking him to the door before he stops short of going out just yet. He stops, and then his attention darts down to Suguru’s lame excuse for ‘packing’. The worn-out gym bag with all his dirty clothes that still smell like his mother’s house. Satoru stops and stares, looking with cat-like inspection as he pokes it with his foot.

“Did you bring back souvenirs?” he asks tentatively, still wavering on that careful edge.

“Yeah,” Suguru affirms, a well-known comfortable smile on his flushed face, “Cookies from the bakery. Don’t eat them all in one--”

Satoru, once he sets his eyes on something, is quite insatiable. He bends all the way down to unzip the bag, rifle through for his prize before he clamps his hands around the colorful tin like a f*cking claw machine. He pries open the lid that hits the soft carpet before he grabs the first peanut cookie he sees in order to shove it halfway into his mouth like a goddamn coin dispenser. The door opens next, he’s waving a hand as he darts away. Suguru thinks he hears a muffled ‘thank you~!’, but the silly display is enough to make him fully sit up now.

“... yeah, okay.” Suguru finishes, putting an end to his train of thought as his mind mulls over all the new possibilities. The warmth in his face, the sweet cherry on his lips and the echo of Satoru promising to give it his all as well. Suguru smiles serenely then, feels like this is a good and alright enough time that he can let everything ease off his shoulders. Once and for all, the incessant nagging ceases to exist-- the immediate guilt, and the mountains of shame. He still has a lot to do and to learn and much more in order to truly make it up to Satoru for everything he did.

Suguru brings a hand to his hair, loosening the hair tie from it in order to ruffle it out somewhat. He does need a shower, a pretty cold one.

They never quite get ‘back to normal’. There’s a new normal now.

After their agreements with each other, it was easy to slip back into their roles given the fact that they needed a new set written for the upcoming week. They were two days short of a two-week creation period and they both scrambled for new material, nothing quite sticking right. Suguru’s room-- their room becomes a cluttered mess as a result of scrapped ideas and old takeout containers. If the cabin fever was good for anything, it was good for the fact that they both got so sick of easy food that Satoru vowed to start cooking his own meals. He also threatened Suguru to join him on the journey to healthy eating or else he would toss him to the non-existent wolves. It sent a clear message; Suguru was fine with meal-making.

At night they’d sleep on discarded paper, and in the morning Satoru would do sit-ups on their veranda while Suguru had his first cigarette of the day. Naming topics, bouncing ideas back and forth, it becomes their routine for over a week as they slowly lose their minds. It’s two days to the deadline, Satoru having sprawled himself all the way over Suguru with his head coming to rest on his chest. He’s given up for the night.

“Let’s look at what we have so far,” Suguru tries his best to stay on-course, and Satoru groans from his comfortable place set squarely on Suguru’s chest. There’s a hand that comes to rest feather-white head of hair, two fingers tapping against his skull. “Don’t fade on me yet.”

“I’m not.” Satoru grunts, turning his tired eyes up to narrow them at Suguru. His partner flatters him for a couple moments, feigning kindness when he caresses a strand of hair before tugging it and making him flinch. “Ow--!”

“Just humor me for a second-- it’s part of the job.” Suguru remarks innocently, acting none the wiser to Satoru’s pouty lips as he rubs the new sore spot on his head. Satoru decides to indulge him for a minute, sitting himself up just enough so that he can slide in beside Suguru with his head coming to rest on his shoulder. These subtle intimacies, they’ve become a part of their natural day-to-day. A readjustment that became a subconscious thing the moment they both decided to give it their all.

Suguru pulls out their little ruined journal of ideas, nearing the end of its short lifespan as only twenty or so pages remain. Suguru flips open to where the ribbon marks the newest page, and Satoru watches his fingers move and feels the warmth that radiates off his shoulder. It’s right where he needs to be, it’s that sense of rightness that drove him to crawl up beside him in the first place.

“Mm, we should do the salmon roe joke.” Satoru wistfully suggests, eyes dopily closing against his shoulder.

“We are not doing the salmon roe joke.”

Practice for them is always hasty, mostly because they’re good at bullsh*tting. Well, it’s less ‘bullsh*tting’ and more to do with the fact that they just work well together. In tandem like a true team, going so far with their brain waves as to know what the other is thinking through simple expressions or actions alone. It freaked people out when they were in high school, but now they only have Shoko to annoy. It’s plenty enough, her eye rolls are just as good.

Their practices aren’t so much of a practice rather than just being a pre-game rundown over what material they’ve solidly determined to use. Quick notes, any extra inputs. These quick meetings most often take place in the bougie restrooms located behind the center performing stage. The large backstage, and then the back rooms that are allotted to guests and regular performers. Satoru prefers the restrooms because the hand soap always smells so good. Right when he gets in, he hops up and takes a seat onto the clean sink and his free hand darts for the pink hand soap that rests perfectly on its tiny marble perch. It’s really bougie, and Suguru follows right in after him only to notice what Satoru has in his hands, what he’s pressing right to his nose. He’s no stranger to this, it makes him smile when he hears Satoru loudly inhale it like it's some sort of drug.

“Put it back.” he says, reaching out for it.

“No way,” Satoru says immediately, leaning his body away from Suguru’s probing hand, “This one’s all smooth, that means it’s straight out of the box-- hey!”

Suguru is quick, he’s always far too fast. He snatches the soap for himself, looking wholly unimpressed now as he sees Satoru puff his cheeks over it. Satoru doesn’t fight him though, and doesn’t bother taking it back when he places it back onto its marble perch.

“Don’t we already have five unopened boxes of those at home? Do you not remember? You took them from the storage closet the last two times we were here.” Suguru says, if only to placate his partner’s attitude somewhat. His smile easily returns and he places both hands on either side of him, clasping the marble sink that Satoru has taken purchase on. It’s a long one-- one long slab with a couple centralized drains. No place for a man of Satoru’s height to sit on, but it’s not like Suguru has ever told him no. “Besides, you’ll get lightheaded if you inhale those fumes for too long.”

“Or maybe I’ll become a genius.” Satoru smiles back, returning the small tease with equal force. He doesn’t waste time to mull over what-if consequences, he’s mostly focused on how Suguru is looking at him. How he’s got him trapped with both hands on either side of him. It’s subtle enough that if someone barged in, they could play it off as meaningless.

“You’re already a genius,” Suguru says earnestly, with such generosity to his voice that it has Satoru struck, “You took astrophysics in high school.”

It’s a lofty conclusion from that evidence alone, but it’s endearing enough to have both of Satoru’s ears creeping red. Satoru tries to believe it’s the heat from the lightbulbs glowing above the mirror behind his head.

“So? It’s just numbers. Any person can do numbers.” Satoru’s sentence turns to a mumble, his shaded eyes looking downward towards the tips of his shoes tapping together a couple times. Suguru snorts and Satoru knows when he does that, he also rolls his eyes. “What? It’s true.”

“The majority of the world’s population does not understand astrophysics, lame ass. You should learn to take compliments.” Suguru insists, bringing a hand to Satoru’s right thigh and simply just resting it there. Right over his fancy dress pants, the fabric molding around his fingers and moving into the territory of danger as he challenges Satoru with a steady look in his eyes. Satoru stops breathing for a minute, a tingly feeling running down the length of his leg in spider webs of electricity as he forgets the function of his lungs. One breath, two, they restart like a chugging generator as he tries not to get too overexcited. Tries to equal the playing field.

“It’s not about the rest of the world, it’s like a grade school kid learning how to multiply-- and what’s with the groping? Someone’s gonna walk in and think you’re a total creep .” Satoru whispers discouragingly, the flush in his cheeks not doing well to support his stance. It doesn’t work at all, Suguru squeezes the meat of his thigh and Satoru’s knees knock together so fast that he almost flinches. There’s a stifled squeak lodged somewhere in his throat.

“That’s not too bad. It’d give people a good enough reason to stay away from you.” Suguru smiles lazily, sounding totally not aware but totally f*cking aware of what kind of impact his words are having on Satoru. He kindly strokes his thigh with his thumb, and Satoru flushes a shade darker when the underlying possessiveness of it all starts clogging his ears. Into his brain, makes it feel way too fuzzy.

There’s a safety net here, it feels like. Satoru’s hands tentatively rest on Suguru’s shoulders, he’s thankful for the round sunglasses over his guilty eyes. There’s no way he can be subtle right now, his eyes are wobbling like dewdrops in his skull and his head feels surrounded by words, feelings, numeric equations and cataclysmic star death. If this is what having a crush feels like-- if Suguru breaks his heart-- then he’s swearing off romance for the rest of his life if only to save himself from these sensations.

“Am I gonna be your only one now, Suguru?” Satoru asks in soft silence, his hands crossing at the wrists behind Suguru’s neck when their foreheads gently collide. He’s being far more dangerous than Suguru is, white hair melding into black as the glasses slip down the bridge of his nose just enough for Suguru to stare back into those eyes. Like some sort of galactic collision.

For them both, they have never stuck a label on what this means to them. It seemed obvious at first when they both said they’d give it their all, but Satoru feels a bit too fidgety. It seems so obvious, and it’s a feeling that’s only been conveyed through looks and simple actions but never concrete conversation. They’re just not really like that, and going so far as to call Suguru a ‘boyfriend’ or a ‘partner’ still feels far too scary. They feel like words he shouldn’t use, not words to describe his relationship with Suguru (no matter how innocent, those words still settle like led in his throat). He wants the reassurance that they’re a set deal, not something whimsy and up in the air. It’s not hooking up, it’s not comparable to any other kind of relationship either of them have had.

“Yeah,” Suguru says without missing a beat, two hands coming to rest fully on Satoru’s narrow hips. That old jacket he still wears. “I told you I’d give it my all. There’s no need to be jealous.”

Satoru feels the strokes through his shirt, slight pressure that rubs soft fabric against his skin. There’s no need to be jealous , Suguru says that with such generosity in his eyes that Satoru can’t wrap his brain or mind around the possibility of feeling any other way. No, he shouldn’t be jealous. Not by anyone. Suguru likes being concrete though, precise and calculative where it counts and Satoru knows sooner or later, they’re going to reach more frayed lines and boundaries. It’s what comes with this whole thing, the fact that they’re trying to even make this work in the first place.

Suguru’s hair is really nice right now-- he always makes sure it’s neat before they leave for a big show-- but with his hands so close like this around his neck, he feels a bit of an itch to untie his perfectly-kept bun if only to run his fingers through his hair. Suguru’s a real charmer, he makes Satoru sit forward some more with a soft chorus of happy hums and a stretched smile that reaches his eyes. He wants to kiss him, a new good luck charm for the sake of their silly shows. It’s a private paradise and it smells like nice hand soap, Satoru feels giddy all the way to his chest and perfect and overflowing. He wonders if this is what other people feel too: the catholic school girls who break the rules and the guys who smoke behind dumpsters.

The door opens. Two sets of footsteps and two broad-shouldered men moving into the now-cramped bathroom.

“Jeez, I gotta stop hitting the hard stuff after the shows.”

A loud sigh, followed by a second voice and the wafting smell of a burning cigarette.

“Hah, don’t flatter yourself. You got f*cked up on all the cheap-”

It suddenly comes to their attention, the two other men in the bathroom with them.

Suguru, within the fraction of a moment the two of them had to prepare for the intrusion (legally, bathrooms are public property, but it’s neither here nor there) firstly tightened both his arms around Satoru’s thin waist, much to his immediate panic for the fact that he initially tried pushing Suguru away. It’s ultimately for nothing, because Suguru’s grand plan has suddenly come into action and Satoru doesn’t have more than a couple brief seconds to prepare for when Suguru throws his one-hundred and ninety centimeter (and then some) body over his shoulder like a ragdoll. He holds him there with a hand on his bony ass like he’s a sack of flour. Like the sacks of flour that Satoru used to have to drive across town to deliver.

“... stuff.” The man meekly finishes, blinks, and meets Suguru’s owlish eyes when they turn to face each other. There’s a silent pause that seems louder than a gunshot. “Um.. is everything alright?”

“Just fine,” Suguru answers swiftly, in that coy tone voice he always uses when he’s smiling like a maneki-neko, “He nearly fell over himself. He’s hardly coherent; I always have to babysit him when he’s like this or he’ll end up hurting himself.”

Satoru’s face is burning so red that he brings his hands over his mouth, eyes pinched completely shut until Suguru starts fabricating a story neither of them agreed on! His eyes open wide and he removes his hands from his mouth to protest before gravity causes a big lurch in his stomach. Like the most awful kind of acid reflux. His groan echoes in the bathroom, and being upside down is making him dizzy.

“Please excuse us.” Suguru speaks first, maneuvering past the two awestruck gentlemen as they witness Suguru carry an impossibly long Satoru over one shoulder like he weighs nothing. It’s a spectacle to behold, and for the drunk man with a daunting headache pressing to the back of his head, his bewildered gaze follows the two comedians right out the door.

The hallway’s coast is clear, when Suguru does a quick once-over with his eyes his hand comes down to chidingly smack against the ass over his shoulder. Satoru squawks way too loud at that, a heightened ‘ah!’ that reverberates through the empty hallway and makes Suguru bend over to drop him right onto his unsteady feet. Satoru doesn’t catch his footing, he runs right into the wall with a comically loud thud.

“You should be more careful,” Suguru derides, arms crossing loosely as he leans against the opposite wall and takes great pleasure in watching Satoru find his balance again. “It’s bad manners to do those kinds of things in public.”

“What’re you-- you got no mouth to talk about manners! What the hell is wrong with you!? Did you get brain damage overnight?” Satoru talks fast, an accusing finger and lopsided sunglasses turning to two hands patting down his unruly hair. His pursed lips and that pout he does makes Suguru laugh, good-naturedly enough as he bumps a gentle fist to his shoulder, turning to walk the hall.

“Are you feeling dizzy? I can buy you a soda.” he bargains, Satoru not appreciating the genuine tone in his voice. Nicely evil, a switch turned so fast that no one will believe him when he says Suguru is the meanest one in their relationship.

“No way am I taking charity from you. Not for the rest of your life; those guys were total losers.” Satoru grumbles, visibly grumpy now that they merge in with the rest of the meandering performers behind the stage. His hands stuff into his pockets, looking like some sort of derelict high schooler. Similar to when he was.

Suguru just looks at him, the way his lips press into a downturned line and how his gaze is always a bit squinty behind the frames of his sunglasses when he can see those bright eyes through the gaps. It’s like he wants to close them, like he’d be better off blind. Suguru never wants to be interrupted, not when it comes to Satoru, and he thinks of what they’ve talked about and how much things have changed and he wonders where it all started. How he came to be here, and when his vision of Satoru warped into something pink. And Satoru-- even now when he notices the way Suguru is staring at him before his ear twitches at the more-notable silence-- he’s always been quite attentive. Suguru wonders if he’s ever changed in those eyes.

“What?” Satoru asks, simmered down and looking a bit expectantly at Suguru when he turns his body to face down towards him. It’s a bad angle, Suguru can’t see his eyes anymore this way. He smiles anyway.

“Nothing.” he says dubiously, already walking to the vending machine to leave Satoru in the awkward dust. The taller man tenses, straight like a pole in all his limbs and joints as he looks abnormally curious towards his friend’s departing figure.

There’s a lofty pause, and a burning heat that starts rising up Satoru’s face the longer he watches Suguru walk away from him. It’s like his switch has turned off, he’s powerless for a few seconds before he regains his stride. There’s the roaring sound of applause, the intermission curtain drawing as a subtle cue for the both of them. The fact that they’re the opening act once those curtains come back up.

“Wah--? Whaddya mean ‘nothing’? You look like a creeping weirdo--!” Satoru exclaims, feet moving on his own as he dips past singers and instruments and something that meows before he can manage to catch up behind Suguru. His hand reaches out to grab his sleeve when they reach the neon machine, if only to stop the horrid feeling that sinks in the pit of his stomach every time Suguru turns his back to walk away from him.

It’s foul. It’s familiar.

-

“We have a big party coming up, don’t we?” Satoru asks Suguru. His partner looks attentive towards him, then nods.

“Yes yes, our mutual friend’s twenty-third birthday. You got all the things at the store, right?” Suguru replies, looking to Satoru for an answer.

Satoru only nods his head like a munching bird, something about the way he doesn’t speak paints a guilt that has the audience snickering.

“Right?” Suguru asks again.

“Yeah yeah, jeez, I got all the stuff. It’s a miracle ‘cuz your shopping list was as long as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.” Satoru complains with a far-off gaze that’s nearly completely detached from Suguru. The display itself has Suguru grabbing an earlobe from him, pinched between his thumb and forefinger and making him cry out an ‘ow!’

“You got the cake mix?” Suguru asks.

“Yes!”

“Candles?”

“Ow-- Yeah!” Satoru’s expression pinches into wobbly discomfort as his neck is craned down to Suguru’s level.

“What about the pork buns? Did you get those?” Suguru asks firmly.

Silence. Satoru’s bright blue eyes go wide like full moons behind his slanted glasses before they both turn to look at each other. A mutual understanding, a foreboding consequence for Satoru that causes a loud uproar in laughter.

Then, finally and meekly from Satoru’s mouth, “I couldn’t find them.”

Suguru’s loud sigh is heard by everyone, the pause waiting until the new stream of laughter ends.

“Honest! I looked everywhere!” Satoru exclaims, holding up his hands innocently as Suguru harshly pulls his hand away from Satoru’s ear. The white-haired man pouts, puts both raised hands to the abused appendage.

“Did you ask Mizuki-san?” Suguru asks firstly. Satoru’s face recoils, confusion in the knit of his brow.

“Who the hell is ‘Mizuki-san?’”

“The store’s cookie decorator.” Suguru enunciates, giving Satoru a very pointed ‘you-should-know-this’ look that has his expression warping into pure bewilderment. As if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, as if Satoru himself is the dumb one.

“You know, it never occured to me to ask the cookie decorator about PORK buns! ”

-

The people who leave the venue are mostly the ones there solely for performance reasons, it’s not a public club. It’s why all the drinks at the bar are crazy expensive, around half the club leaves and the other half that stays are there until last call, mostly just enjoying the ambient music performance by the club’s staple bend. Although the best part about being a performer means that they get discounts, also the pleasure of praise once they get down to the main floor. It gets a bit much for them, usually, having experienced their fair share of mixed reviews (mostly positive) from drunk upper class people who didn’t like their jokes about hating upper class people. It’s a fair tossup, and normally they each smoke a cigarette outside then leave shortly after. But Suguru wants a beer tonight and Satoru instead continues sucking down on his flat cherry soda Suguru got him before the show started.

“Can you open this for me?” Suguru asks Satoru, holding the beer towards him as they step away from the bar. Satoru stops blowing bubbles into his half-full soda before he looks acutely at Suguru.

He snatches the bottle, unsealing his lips from the straw that’s disjointed and completely crumpled with bite marks near the sipping tip. Satoru looks around, finds the nearest table that’s currently seating two pretty girls at it before he completely interrupts their conversation by slamming down the bottle cap against the corner of the table. The closest girl yelps and jumps in surprise, wincing and covering her head as the cap flings itself into the air and lands squarely into her colorful co*cktail. The meaner-looking girl glares, but Satoru’s mostly concerned about how the frothy beer has dribbled out the top and started dripping onto his shoes.

“Whoops, sorry.” Satoru apologizes disingenuously, turning instead to smile pleasantly at Suguru who he hands the beer off to like he’s done a magic trick. His sleeve is grabbed, Suguru flashing an apologetic smile to the girls as Satoru is whisked away to the opposite end of the room with him.

“Satoru,” Suguru begins seriously, loosening the hold on his sleeve as they near a fairly secluded wall, “Are you listening? We got to talk about your attitude.”

Satoru was not listening, instead believing they simply just found a new place to stand for the plain sake of it instead of for the sake of a private conversation. He’s sipping on his drink, stopping only to give Suguru a crooked and mostly-confused look.

“Huh?” he asks, sounding genuinely surprised by the change in tone between them. A casual frown on his face only from being caught off-guard this way.

To further accentuate his own innate brattiness, Satoru bravely sticks out his tongue as if to tease at the fact that he doesn’t have to beat around the bush about whether or not he likes girls. What matters is that he likes Suguru, and the object of affection himself sighs when Satoru says that but he smiles nevertheless. It’s bad form, like a pet owner smiling at a disobedient dog because it looks silly when it does bad things. Satoru’s not a dog and Suguru has no ownership over him, but he’s well-aware that his own influence is definitely noted by Satoru. Whatever he does, Satoru will follow right with him. If he honestly tells him to stop being so f*cking rude, he’ll stop, but then where’s the fun in that? One of his biggest hypocrisies is feigning to be a model citizen.

Something is wrong.

Suguru notices it immediately, and it starts in Satoru’s eyes. The way they sharpen suddenly, how he sucks in a breath like a punch in the gut and how his gaze immediately darts to the left, then to Suguru. His mouth opens like he wants to say something, and Suguru feels something awful settle at the base of his throat, ready to sink down into his stomach.

“What’s wrong?” Suguru asks in a hushed whisper, urgent. Satoru’s tense gaze looks at him, slightly unbalanced.

But they have a new reason to worry about eyes. Satoru is much more paranoid than him, so his gaze remains tethered to Suguru despite how he feels it’s best to confront these things rather than to let them fester. He tries sneaking a peak over Satoru’s tall shoulder.

“I just said ‘don’t look’!” Satoru hisses like a fluffed-up kitten would, small and acting even less nonchalant in the way that he suddenly flaps his arms, tilting his body in order to block Suguru’s prying vision. His narrow eyes squint, partially annoyed at his frantic partner’s display as he brings a hand to one of his flailing arms as he guides it back to his side.

“What’s the point? You’re always headstrong-- you love telling rich folks to f*ck off.” Suguru says, letting his eyes scan the general well-lit bar sprawl in search of prying eyes.

“But this is different! Suguru, put me over your shoulder again and whisk me away-- ack!” Satoru chokes when Suguru hooks two fingers into his tight shirt collar to tug him, forcing him to face the prying eyes. Satoru makes an unsure sound in his throat, and when Suguru removes his fingers from the collar the heat still permeates his skin. Satoru is getting red, because the eyes that are staring at them make themselves highly obvious.

Two guys who don’t look quite as old as them but who don’t look quite so young for high school. One is staring with stars in his eyes and hands folded behind his back roughly two and a half meters away with another guy standing beside him. This one doesn’t seem to be looking at them, but rather at his friend beside him. The sullen one looks like a foreigner with his blond hair swept to the side, but people also say the same thing about Satoru. It’s all genetics, but the blond’s friend with the big brown eyes moves forward without giving either of them time to thoughtfully react to the fact that Big Eyes was ogling at them like a sideshow attraction.

“It’s an honor to meet you two!” he exclaims, bowing a whole entire ninety-degree angle before he raises his head swiftly and attentively like a plastic bird-feeder toy. His dark eyes sparkle-- he really looks like a kid-- and in the next moment there’s something being thrust into both their faces. A year calendar planner with a black ballpoint pen, and suddenly this feels a bit too unreal. “Could I trouble you both for an autograph?”

It’s a sheepish request, and when they both catch a glimpse at his face he’s red to his ears and trembling in the hands like he’s really spent minutes getting the nerve to approach them. It catches them both by pure shock, mostly Suguru, and once a few beats of silence pass over Satoru bounces back immediately. Suguru is left to play catch up while long spider-like fingers snatch the cluttered planner to rifle through it for a blank page.

“Anything for a diehard fan-- hey, does this mean you’re gonna buy us drinks-- geh !” Satoru’s body folds at the hip when Suguru jabs his side with his elbow in the midst of Satoru signing off his signature. His penmanship suffers because of it, one line skewing way too far to the right.

“Please don’t listen to him.” Suguru smiles with all the good manners Satoru lacks, all the while his partner tries walking off the harsh pain with a limp in his leg and elbows bunched higher up his chest. Suguru is the one who signs next, the beaming boy not looking any bit deterred; instead, he lets out a flustered laugh.

“Me and my partner, we’re from Mizuho. Ever since we found out about you guys in the paper, we’ve wanted to see you perform! We’re aspiring in a bit of comedy ourselves-- I wanted to see how the pros do it.” the young man smiles sheepishly, not annoyingly shy but more so looking just a bit fidgety. Meanwhile, the striking blond beside him has yet to look any different than how he approached them. Whether a partner in crime or in business, the two of them couldn’t be anymore different. Suguru hands back the small book in which he takes it with two hands and a grateful bow of his head.

“Hey, blondie, you want a signature too?” Satoru asks with his arm perching on Suguru’s shoulder as he uses the leverage to slouch down to a level-headed height difference. The blondie meets his eyes, he blinks once, resembles some kind of tamed mammal behind glass with that near-empty look in his eyes. But, it’s less emptiness and more or less that there isn’t a single ounce of decent respect to be found anywhere in his gaze.

“I’m not interested in autographs. Please do not call me names like that.” he says shortly, and pretty firmly. It catches Gojo off-guard and his face recoils like he’s whiffed something rotten, one hand scratching idly at the back of his head.

“Jeez, tough crowd. You guys do comedy nights at the funeral parlors?” Satoru huffs, mostly a jab at the morose blond. His friend laughs though, big and bright in response to Satoru’s half-baked insult.

“No no, we’ve only managed to get small venues. We’re both still in school, it’s more of a hobby just for now. There’s an open mic place nearby that lets us go on for free, we try to make it at least once a month.” he smiles, answering the question with such wholehearted genuinity that it has both Satoru and Suguru a bit stunned.

Maybe it’s because neither of them are the best people in the world, but they can scarcely remember a time when they were ever so humble. Satoru thinks Suguru probably could, because in his mind Suguru has always been a very honest person. He’s not malicious or deceptive, he just cares about presentation and doing the right thing when it’s due, in his mind. It’s a bit striking to meet someone who radiates so much good, a comedy duo from a separate world that’s not too far gone from the one they lived before. How the two of them sometimes need to humble themselves by realizing that they’re the lucky ones, that if Satoru hadn’t had that chance encounter that one day then none of this would have ever happened.

For better or for worse: when Suguru was gone, he thought it was for the worst. Now he doesn’t quite know, mostly because he’s happy with how they are. It’s the where that Satoru still gets stuck on, if Suguru secretly hates how things have changed-- it comes full circle. It always comes back to Suguru.

Satoru’s unearthly eyes peer at him from the gaps in his glasses; he watches him smile at them.

“You should keep in touch to let us know when you go on next. Let me give you our landline.” Suguru says thoughtfully and effortlessly, a seamless new connection that has Satoru suddenly feeling a bit more alert. Not out of fear but rather for the fact that they each mutually only have one friend their age who happens to be a girl that can’t stand either of them for very extended periods of time. The bright-eyed boy gasps and lights up again, eagerly handing back the note planner and chatterboxing away at how he’ll be sure to keep in contact with them both.

“Hey kid,” Satoru suddenly says, catching both of their immediate attentions, “Don’t be a stranger. What’re all your names?”

The doe-eyed boy blinks and then ripples all at once, an eager little tremor all the way to his fingers and the stretch of his smile when he remembers that he has yet to make an introduction.

“Haibara Yu! And this is my aspiring business-fanatic partner Nanami Kento!” Haibara grins, an arm coming around the stoic blond’s shoulder as the other hand comes up to poke him chidingly in the chest. He’s stiff like a tree, and maybe just as wise, Satoru can’t really figure him out. He’s got the attitude of a totally-lame substitute teacher.

“Please do not call me that.” Nanami replies mundanely, though not shying away from the iron grip his friend has over his shoulders.

“Business-fanatic? Is that why you look so soulless?” Satoru asks bewilderedly, his own arm loosening from around Suguru so he can lean further into their personal spaces. Way too close, bright blue eyes gazing into Nanami Kento’s soul. If he’s surprised, disgusted, or off-put, he doesn’t show it.

Instead, he says, “I will punch you.”

At night, they come home exhausted. It’s just like every other night before it, when they take off their shoes and clothes and Suguru draws a hot bath while Satoru makes them a snack. It’s the privacy they both can easily slip into, at times it feels a bit cross-dimensional. It’s purely away from the outside world, and they’re afforded even the most simple of luxuries that they never indulge in outside these walls. When they go to the cinema, they try to sit as far back in the nosebleeds as they can to avoid anyone prying into the fact that they would like to hold hands with each other. The view is sh*t, but Satoru doesn’t want it any other way. Though when they’re home, it’s safe enough to where they can actually hold each other.

“The bath is ready.” Suguru tells him when he comes into the kitchen, standing in the doorway as he mildly tousles a hand through his long hair. Satoru catches his gaze for a moment, then looks back to his small art project with his tongue stuck slightly out the corner of his mouth. Suguru’s eyes draw there, Satoru can feel them on the back of his neck.

“What are you making?” Suguru asks pryingly, and Satoru shuts him up with his free hand sticking far back behind him as he hears Suguru’s footsteps trying to come closer. Satoru’s face turns over his shoulder, his eyes narrowing in a way that puts a full-stop to Suguru’s movements.

“No peeking, I’m making something very special tonight and I don’t want any prying eyes.” Satoru says snootily, turning back around to mask what exactly he’s doing as Suguru sees him shake up a can of store-bought whipped cream. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out from sound and movement alone that Satoru is spraying a very generous helping of whipped cream over whatever he’s making. Suguru clicks his tongue, sighs and understands his presence isn’t wanted right now.

“Fine, I’ll grab the radio then--”

When Suguru turns, he feels a sudden constriction around his waist. Something wrapped firmly there-- arms, a chin perching on his shoulder and ogling blue eyes cemented at the corner of his vision. Satoru clinging onto him like a spider monkey, a big frown on his face and tufts of white hair mingling with silken black from how their heads press together. Satoru is fast, he flips like a switch and clings onto Suguru for dear life as he rests a hand over the ones around his waist. It’s cute, endearing and it’s attention he readily soaks up like a sponge because there’s a sick little satisfaction in knowing that Satoru isn’t this clingy with anyone else.

“Suguru?”

Satoru whispers even though it’s only the two of them; it’s innocent and remarkably delightful.

“Yeah?” Suguru replies.

“Can you put in some bath salt?” Satoru asks, pleading just enough for Suguru to momentarily consider being just a little bit mean, “The lavender kind?”

A small laugh huffs through his nostrils, mostly because Satoru’s asking like it’s some lofty request and not just something he sprinkles in bathwater. He uses the hand over Satoru’s left arm to slowly peel his grip away, enough to allow him to turn and face him eye-to-eye. That catches Suguru’s attention enough, and he snakes his own hand around Satoru’s neck so he can press a few fingers down into the bumps of vertebrae at the back of his neck. The effect is instant, Satoru straightening to his full height like a stretching cat.

“You’re slouching.” Suguru notes after the fact, smiling at the way Satoru immediately pouts when he doesn’t agree or deny his request and instead turns to walk away. It’s half-heartedly in jest though, mostly because he knows that Suguru is weak to his nagging and begging. It goes both ways.

Satoru misses their old garden tub, the big one that both of them would use for bathing and showering. A large reserve of water they’d steadily take from to clean themselves, and now they take baths freely without fretting over the water bill. This tub is bigger in length but not depth-- it’s one of his many regrets, all the things they left behind when they moved here.

The water smells of fresh lavender, Suguru had set their portable radio on the sink counter and turned on low to the Pop station. Mariya Takeuchi plays her new single and tea candles are the only thing that gives the room its glow. Satoru made the two of them his own homemade version of an ‘orange parfait’. Canned oranges with ice cream and whipped cream, two whole slices garnishing the fluffy edges of the cream. After they wash each other’s hair, they dig into the refreshing snack that contrasts real nice to the steamy feeling of the warm water, how Satoru’s limbs feel just a bit detached.

They sit against each other, Satoru with his back to Suguru’s chest and his legs folded over because they’re just a bit too long to fit comfortably into the bathtub. It’s alright enough, his eyes feeling more awake with his hair slicked back and Suguru’s breathing right against him. It smells nice, smells great and wonderful and Satoru reaches his hand over to the parfait in the ceramic bowl with ducks painted all in a row. From smallest to biggest; Satoru plucks one of the two whole orange slices out from the cream, bringing it to his mouth to lick that off first.

“Oranges taste better when you eat them in the shower, you know.” Satoru says with a soft grunt that comes from readjusting in Suguru’s arms. The water shifts, and he thinks Suguru may have fallen asleep for a minute because he suddenly takes in a deep breath through his nose, tightening his hold around Satoru’s waist. He sounds just a bit groggy when he speaks.

“Yeah? You made that up just now?” Suguru asks half-heartedly. The deep echo of his low voice in the four corner bathroom compliments the low-volume music, and Satoru thinks that this is the definition of paradise on earth.

“What? It’s true! It’s not science, it’s just somethin’ you know once you try it. Go ahead.” Satoru urges, bringing the orange right up to Suguru’s lips as he annoyingly presses it there. Suguru sinks his teeth into the pulpy edge and breaks off a decently-sized chunk to chew and swallow. Satoru smiles in satisfaction, the stark-white of his eyelashes even more noticeable without the curtain of bangs over his face. Suguru smiles when he sees it, and he hands back the half-eaten slice for Satoru to polish off.

“Good, right? A nanny taught me that once-- hey, if you’re not gonna touch the rest of the ice cream can I finish it?” Satoru asks next, tilting his head back to look towards Suguru while he awaits approval.

“Sure.” Suguru allows, smiling more once he hears a small little cheer come from Satoru when he picks up the bowl and brings it to his chest so he can finish it. The wet smacking of his lips is drowned out by the music, and Suguru’s arms tighten once more around Satoru’s torso, his lips pressing warm kisses to his lavender-soaked neck. One, two, then three-- Suguru is going slow, almost like he’s savoring him. He can feel Satoru shudder all the way up his spine, tensing mildly before he can feel him turn his head quizzically.

“What’s the occasion?” Satoru smiles, and Suguru wants to pull his ear for thinking that there needs to be an occasion to show him affection like this. The spoon clinks in the bowl, Satoru setting it aside once he finishes up the sweet treat and offers Suguru his full attention.

“Nothing,” Suguru replies, unfurling one arm so he can perch it on one of Satoru’s muscular shoulders. He strokes down over his bicep, down his forearm, framing Satoru’s large hands with his own. It’s a slow, sensual touch, like Suguru is trying to memorize the bumps and curves of his body. It’s a bit foreign to Satoru, he knows this, and Suguru can feel him trying not to squirm and he’s always so noisy, breathing sharp and shallow when he takes to feeling over one of his thighs. “I’m just feeling a bit sentimental.”

“About feeling me up?” Satoru jokes, a wistful smile to his voice no-doubt classified by the red flush that takes over his body. Their cheeks slot together when Suguru starts feeling a bit sentimental, he can feel the heat radiating off.

“Don’t be stupid,” Suguru says, his hand resting comfortably on his inner thigh, just above his knee as his mind takes over and he starts recounting everything that’s led to this point. “Do you feel it too?”

“Feel what?” Satoru asks quietly, his head turned just slightly so his lips brush his cheek. He kisses there, like embedding a jewel. To Suguru, it’s all so priceless.

It all feels so wonderful. There’s not a singular word Suguru could use to describe what feeling he gets when he’s with Satoru like this. He describes it in action, soft touches and warm water and the fresh residual taste of orange on his tongue. Satoru was right when he said that eating oranges when submerged underwater feels better than being anywhere else in the world and doing the same thing. It’s a bit of the same feeling he gets with Satoru, nothing else can come close. Fleeting touches here and there, kissing in public restrooms or in the far corners where eyes don’t pry never feels as good as the real thing. He went years without this, so f*cking long he denied himself the simple pleasure of the intimacy he always wanted. The intimacy with someone he actually likes; someone who he respects. Someone who he believes in, and who he loves.

Suguru’s other hand comes above water, touches the planes of Satoru’s chest and the junction where his collar meets his neck. The slope of his throat, how something about here feels much more personal than any other disparate part of his body.

“Suguru?”

Cold lips brush his cheek. That same cold as the first day they kissed one another. It’s absent of rain, it’s only sweet. When Suguru turns his head, when their noses touch alongside each other and he briefly opens his eyes to look into Satoru’s, it feels quiet. It’s a feeling he searched his whole life for, sometimes through girls, sometimes through alcohol or lame drugs that offered him nothing more than a mechanical buzz. What this is, it’s so quiet. There’s no crying upstairs, there’s no superfluous thoughts on when his next date will be so he can get his next fix of unreality. There’s no need. There’s something cosmic when he looks into Satoru's eyes, like the promise of a new day or a tsunami he can see in the receding tides, the barren ocean floor. Satoru’s eyes, in the glow of the tea candles, glimmer like a burning star.

Words feel so rotten sometimes. All he can do is kiss him with everything that knots itself inside his chest. They become slowly undone, one by one, and his roaming hands explore further, if only to map out all the secrets of the universe.

“What was that blue thing you were eating?” she asks suddenly, during the first leg of their journey into nowhere. The tomboy girl with the old rickety bike, walking alongside him in the semi-crowded streets. It’s the weekend, which means special deals on yams and poultry, people rush past them and sometimes through them like ants awash in activity. Satoru looks up at the girl, a blue stain still painting his lips from his earlier snack.

“Huh?” Satoru’s mind needs to play a bit of catch up, “Oh, just ice cream. I got it from the corner store.”

It’s hard talking to someone his own age, he realizes. He doesn’t make eye contact, and he’s already not thrilled about the idea of running away to wherever with some lame girl his parents would never like. Though it’s never been about what they think, Satoru himself just thinks that if his parents do find him today then they’ll totally embarrass him in front of her. Drive up in fancy cars, fancy pearls and ugly earrings worth the same as some of the houses here. If he screamed loud enough, maybe he could make them all go away and never want to be near him again. He files that plan along with all the others that collect dust in the far corners of his near-decrepit memory palace.

“You should be a bit more careful,” she says, shockingly earnest as she looks at Satoru, “You might swallow a razor blade.”

It begins with denial, Satoru’s face scrunching when he thinks of how lame of a joke it is. He looks at her face for the telltale signs of lying, but what only makes him more annoyed with the statement is the fact that she’s talking almost gravely . Like it’s a genuine warning he should be worried about right after he just ate some ice cream-

“What’s with the face? I’m serious. They’re doing the same with candy; it’s sickos trying to kill kids because they’re more vulnerable. They don’t pay close attention to that stuff, it’s what my mom told me.” she tells him like it’s some sort of lesson. And it is, he knows it’s supposed to be and that she’s only trying to be genuine, but his overactive mind takes that new revelation of ‘things-to-worry-about’ and conjures a full-blown image.

It starts with an initial shock, Satoru’s mind picturing the edges of a serrated blade scratching down the edges of his throat, what that’d feel like. He inhales a sharp breath, winces when he swallows completely normal and his feet firmly take root in the ground as frustration comes next. His hands go to his puff of dandelion-white hair, eyes widened when he can’t shake the feeling of something horrible traveling down his throat and tearing up his insides. The taste of blood or how swallowing would only make it lodge further-- There’s a panicked noise that rises from the back of his throat, a striking fear that he may have already swallowed one without even realizing.

“Are you mentally ill? Why would you say something like that?! No way that’s true!” he barks, attracting all the closest eyes directly to the voice that squeaks like a toy and cracks in embarrassing, disparate places due to his tonal variety. The girl looks beside herself in shock, seemingly unaware that her words would have had this effect.

“What’re you acting all crazy for? It’s not like you’ve swallowed any.” she says level-headedly, mostly in an attempt to get Satoru to ease down.

“But now I can’t stop thinking about it!” Satoru brattily whines, eyes squinted at the edges before they shut completely when two firm hands grip either side of his head. He whines again, this time because his cheeks are being squished along with the sides of his head and it hurts like when relatives decide to pinch them. The girl uses the new grip she has in order to wobble Satoru’s head side-to-side like a fluffy, whiny little snowglobe. He hears her let out a laugh, an airy and warm sound that only serves in making him feel embarrassed.

Satoru can hear the smile in her voice, “ Then stop thinking about it!”

Two months later, the club they perform at doesn’t have Cola in a glass bottle, so it’s tap rootbeer for the night.

“You’d think they’d overstock on that stuff! We come here every few weeks…” Satoru sighs into his drink, lips sealing around the straw as he blows a flurry of bubbles into his lame rootbeer. Suguru can only smile, mostly because he knows Satoru’s bad attitude will be gone once they get out of here and go down the street for some gyoza. Then it’s the train back home.

“Contrary to your belief, you aren’t the only person in the world who drinks Cola.” Suguru says, gently knocking his elbow into Satoru’s side as he stands from the bar stool with his own drink. It’s nothing crazy-- lychee chuhai over ice, he doesn’t drink to win anymore. Especially since he got together with Satoru, their nightly routines after a performance have changed to accommodate their mostly-lazy lifestyle. Going home and watching B-rated movies has become their new normal, and if Suguru gets too buzzed then it makes concentrating on things way too hard. Sex with a mild buzz f*cking sucks too; he says too much and Satoru embarrasses him when he’s trying to be sexy and make room between his legs. Maybe they’re just getting older.

Satoru grumbles around the straw he’s already starting to chew up, and Suguru is the leader through the crowd. Bobbing and weaving, Satoru follows behind him as they aim to go outside and enjoy a cigarette.

“Leaving so soon?”

He knows that voice. A good eye spots the two of them near one of the club’s exits, or maybe she’s been watching them the whole time. Suguru hesitates to look at her, but when he spots a glance in Satoru’s direction he doesn’t do very well at all to hide how his lip curves into a bratty grimace. His glasses aren’t pushed all the way up either, it makes his glare obvious.

Yuki Tsukumo sits in a rounded booth with a stoic man beside her, taking up loads of space with her presence alone and a couple drinks between her and the man. It’s an audience seat, and it becomes apparent that she watched the show the two of them just put on. It doesn’t quite elicit discomfort, but he can feel a certain aura radiating from Satoru that beckons trouble.

Still though, it’d be rude to not say hi, at least. She f*cks off when she pleases, after all. This could very-well be a goodbye. Suguru sighs.

“Give me a minute with her.” Suguru excuses himself, setting his glass on the small table the two of them stand by. He’s already flinching mildly, mostly because he already anticipates the shrill sound of Satoru’s voice in reaction.

“Are you kidding?!” Satoru asks, dumbfounded as he watches Suguru walk away. Suguru slows, if only to turn his head and offer an apologetic look on his face as Satoru just gawks at him for his audacity. It pulls a guilty chord in his chest, but he’s not planning on getting comfortable, he really truly means that it’ll only take a minute. He turns his attention back to Yuki only when he sees Satoru pout and blow bubbles in his lame soda.

“Could you get me another drink?” Yuki asks her booth-partner kindly, both of her hands making room to fit her cheeks when she uses it as a perch for her head.

The man beside her looks straight out of some kind of rock magazine, dressed darkly and looking like he’s come straight out of Buck-Tick . There’s dark bags beneath his eyes, his long hair tied in two separate buns with various pieces still falling over his face. What’s most striking is the black streaks of makeup he has painted on his face, an intricate pattern that goes over the bridge of his nose and feathers out into pointed ends. He’s deathly pale, he looks like he doesn’t get a wink of sleep. He’s as striking as he is intimidating, he’s no small fry that someone would dare to pick on in the streets. In some ways, Suguru feels just a bit envious.

The man silently nods, removes himself from the booth as Yuki places her gaze onto Suguru, invites him to sit down without needing to share words. He takes his seat at the farthest end, regards her with an amiable attitude.

“He’s new,” Suguru states the obvious, his eyes mildly wandering towards the tall dark figure currently asking for drinks at the bar, “When did you meet?”

“About a month ago,” Yuki fawns, her hands still squishing her cheeks, “He’s cute, isn’t he? Met him at some underground concert, he gave me a ride home on his motorcycle and told me that he can’t stay to hook up ‘cause he needs to make sure his little brother gets to bed on time. I think I might keep him for a while.” she says with genuine honesty, both her arms coming to fold down on the table.

She looks at Suguru, and there’s a certain unspoken fondness there. It’s not attraction, or affection, but there’s a respectable look in her eyes when she takes in how much he’s changed as well. It makes the hairs at the back of his neck stand, the ones that have managed to escape his once-neat bun, mostly because it’s uncomfortable to look at the grander scale of how much he’s changed. He sees in her eyes, something there has changed as well. He wonders if her fondness means anything, if she sees the same in his eyes.

“I guess it’s safe to say you’re staying home for a bit longer? I thought you’d already ditched.” Suguru says, not unkindly.

“Would you miss me?” Yuki smiles with a chiding narrow to her already-deceptive eyes.

“You’re hard to forget.” Suguru says instead, narrowly avoiding the question by answering with the most honesty he can place to such an absurd question. His knuckles knock slightly on the table, Yuki lets out a raspberry of air in disappointment at his answer. Suddenly a presence looms, the tall and solar matter that makes up all one-hundred and ninety (and then some) inches of Satoru’s body. He’s abandoned his lame drink so he can cross his arms, saddle up right next to Suguru.

“You done harassing him?” Satoru asks rudely, although without the malicious bite that normally accompanies a full-body displeasure. He doesn’t hate Yuki Tsukumo, but she has a penchant for f*cking up people’s lives.

“Yo Gojo! You come up with an answer to my question yet? It’s rude to leave a woman waiting, you know.” she says coyly, catching Satoru in his sour mood as he purses his lips and takes a deep breath through his nose. Once, just enough to steel himself.

“I’m really not a bad guy,” Satoru claims his innocence, raising his right hand as if swearing on it, “But it’s hard taking you seriously. Some yoga might do you good.”

“Look who’s talking,” Yuki takes the bait, smiling like a snake that sleeps beneath it’s beautiful flower, “You know Gojo, if you can’t get it up with a girl, there’s medicine to cure that stuff--”

“I think this is a good enough how-do-you-do,” Suguru says before Satoru can say something worse, his hand coming to his partner’s arm before he stands as he remarks distantly in the back of his mind just how tense he feels. Like a violently-tugged fishing wire, Satoru’s one more inch closer to falling off some sort of edge. Suguru is unsure whether or not he would win against Yuki Tsukumo: the two of them are not cut far from the same branch. They share a certain flavor of impassiveness, highly intelligent but not very sociable. Go-getters with a sh*t attitude, the stubbornness to not be wishy-washy and to speak their minds even if it gets them in trouble. It’s why Suguru liked to f*ck her. “We have a train to catch.”

“Don’t be such strangers,” Yuki gives a noncommittal wave, seemingly already resigned to the fact that this is just how the two of them behave, “You guys are big shots now, just like me. Let’s all get along.”

It’s hard to deny the truth of Yuki’s words. The truth lies in the fact that Satoru and Suguru have very much become even more stranger than the strangers they were before. It doesn’t feel as crippling as what T.V. would make it out to be, being a hermit isn’t so bad when there’s someone else to cohabitate with. Satoru is on a slippery path, one where he will surely become awfully codependent if Suguru keeps encouraging the behavior. But perhaps maybe that’s what he wants, it feels almost like he’s already started on that downward spiral by himself alone. And like everything they do, Satoru will follow him.

One mean glare from Satoru and a couple more rude remarks, they’re on their way again, Satoru picking up their drinks where he set them even though Suguru doesn’t really have a taste for the chuhai anymore. Suguru makes a sidelong glance, mostly because of Satoru’s poor manners in leaving their drinks out in the open, but it seems fine enough. They stake out in the farthest corners the world can’t reach them, and Suguru thinks no sensible person would try spiking rootbeer. Maybe the chuhai though-- definitely the chuhai. The chewed-up straw in Satoru’s drink slots perfectly into his mouth again, and for all the drama he stirred up with Yuki Tsukumo he looks remarkably innocent when he looks at Suguru’s abandoned drink.

“Do you want something else?” he asks, half-muffled around his abused straw. Suguru offers a small shake of his head and a reassuring smile, giving a playful tug to his sleeve.

“I’m good.” Suguru replies, his eyes moving towards the stage where a woman stands to perform. Her singing voice is like velvet, her sparkling dress like fractals of glass. There’s something entrapping about it, almost hypnotic, Satoru can see how Suguru’s eyes don’t leave, and he instead slots his hand into Satoru’s free one.

In the darkened corners of the club, one of the way-off corners with no one in sight, their fingers intertwined behind their backs. It’s a little secret intimacy, the pinky squeeze around Satoru’s ring finger signaling something purely unsaid, something that has his eyes darting aside to look at Suguru. Their gazes meet, and something about Satoru’s red-faced and nearly-lovestruck look combined with the goofy straw in his mouth has Suguru laughing modestly. A similar flush paints his cheeks as well, he squeezes Satoru’s hand more snugly.

It’s reassurance, partially, and a lame apology for speaking to Satoru’s ‘worst enemy’. It’s a reminder for how much he loves him.

For Satoru, he feels caught in a hypnotic spiral. Everything seems to become as pretty as a picture.

Satoru thinks this may very well be one of the most perfect moments in his entire life. The woman’s song is like a spell, there’s something about it that tickles his inner ear and makes it feel like he’s got fuzzy pipe cleaners wedged in between them. The lights seem to dance over Suguru’s face in abject patterns, it all suddenly seems too perfect. What Satoru wants, more than anything, is to press a kiss to each of those lights. Like melting pots of pearlescent gold.

“Are you ready?” Suguru asks him suddenly, and it feels about as alarming as fingers snapping in his face. He blinks once, straightens up, overwhelmingly alert all the sudden and feeling a bit too dumb.

“Ready for what?” Satoru asks, just a bit breathless. Almost unsteady.

“To leave?” Suguru smiles a bit teasingly, if only to poke fun at just how flustered Satoru looks. Patchy from his neck to his cheeks like he’s coming down with some kind of fever. “Come on, let’s grab our jackets.”

If Suguru had looked a bit closer at the signs, maybe he could have saved Satoru from all that pain.

Their hands leave each other as they once again join the sea of the real world. Like a saw to a useless limb, it feels like a severed bone and Satoru’s sudden whine is drowned inside the music. He’s starting to get a headache. Suguru leads the two of them towards the stage door that’s located near the back of the building. It’s where they drop their jackets off before they grab drinks and head home. Suguru’s presence alone, his steady pace parts the bodies in the crowd, and Satoru follows with his pinpointed gaze following the back of his head. Suguru’s broad back, the baby hairs at the back of his neck, the way it all forms together.

And it feels too familiar.

Suguru starts disappearing through a field of bodies as his feet move with the left foot over the right foot, just like he was raised to do. To knot his shoelaces, don’t slouch, keep his eyes open, don’t f*cking slouch-- his back is as straight as a tree firmly rooted in the ground. As graceful as a ballerina, standing on his toes. The world seems to come to a halt then, when he slowly lowers his gaze and sees his feet have broken into the tile floors. Marble sink countertop, sweet and sour hand soap- He stands rooted in the ground, something tall and something proud., unable to move. Perhaps he should be grateful, but Suguru seems to only disappear further out of sight. Melding into the sea of humanity that stretches out to infinity before him, too far along the horizon for him to really catch sight of an end to. It makes him pause, his cotton-mouthed tongue rolling fat and lazy in his mouth like a stuffed lizard. It’s something that makes him wish he were dead. Suguru is going too far away.

“Wait-” his lips move, Satoru can feel his vocal chords struck like the strings of a guitar. They produce sound, he hears it muffled in both his ears, and what a sound it is. It echoes in a ripple all around his head, making him feel suddenly thrust head-first into water as he stands alone, having lost Suguru somewhere along the way.

Satoru is alone.

Something uproots him from the ground, a hand tethering itself to his arm, dragging him off, away. It f*cking hurts, it will blossom bruises. He’s forced against the current, it feels like needles to his skin. Something about it feels wrong, or rather, nothing about it feels right. His face becomes numb, the air around him becomes thick as water and there’s not a single pocket of oxygen. He’s suffocating, his eyes trying to find his starting place in order to get back on track. Though there’s not a single other track anywhere else in the world. It’s a mortifying realization, one that shocks him just as bad as the force that hits his back suddenly, shoving him out some doorway and into the chill breeze of the world that exists outside that box. This world is only a new box. Box after box after box like a f*cking matryoshka doll. He’s thrust into a new one, inhaling a mouthful of dirty air that he can feel rotting away the insides of his lungs as his ears pick up on deep echoes of laughter swim around his head like schools of dead fish. Shut up.

Satoru feels he may as well die alongside them. The world has suddenly lost its taste, its color, and Suguru. His eyes search for a way out, and he’s surrounded by a looming shadow that won’t stop following him. He finds the door, he needs to get back before-

Satoru’s hands find the door handle and both brace in order to open it. It becomes a struggle, one he’s losing against as the frustration begins in the center of his stomach. Boiling, festering like an open flame, doused by gasoline with whatever ridicule he’s been put on the receiving end of. It feels like poison; Satoru tries running his weight into the door in order to try and shatter it like glass. It’s as firm as a brick wall, and his fruitless efforts are rewarded with something winding like a weed in his hair. It tugs and pulls at his scalp like an icy-hot strike of lightning, and he’s forced to bear witness to the shadow that haunts him. With a man’s arm attached, and eyes through the haze that resemble muck.

____? He asks him.

Satoru only realizes that he’s been crying when he wonders whether that warm-wet feeling is his face is melting off or saltwater tears. Some of them drip into his mouth, he’s reminded of that trip to the beach-- summer break, four years ago-- and he thinks that these may as well be tears. Or maybe there’s an ecosystem that lives inside of him, the ocean blue one can see from his eyes alone like a portal into a different world. The saltwater clogs his throat, blurs his eyes, he chokes and sputters and waterfalls form in the clots of his sticky white eyelashes. And it seems so obvious to him at this moment, where exactly he’s trying to go. Because the whole world has gone quiet like a bell has sealed its way into a jar, and no matter how many times he’s shaken there’s nothing. His skin is made of glass, it feels like some sort of government conspiracy. The simulation of death.

Words have always felt so awfully inconvenient. When he’ll later try to recount the events of what exactly happened here tonight, he’ll remember what he answered.

The answer that earned him a broken pair of sunglasses and a bad cut into his eyebrow. A black eye, a half-stolen wallet and whatever sorry feelings of generosity he still had left for the world at large. It never felt too good after that, it left a stain on him, mostly because his mind can’t connect pain to those bruises. It’s long forgotten, like that memory got sealed away. It feels like the edges of an angry wound, serrated and burning like hell.

"Suguru’s-- gonna die without me-”

The fist feels about as firm as a rock, bludgeoned against the side of his head. He stops talking after that; he wishes he would've stopped breathing instead.

By the time Suguru gets to the back door to open it for the both of them, the freakishly tall comedian has left his side. He looks into the crowd, quick eyes darting to see if he could see a dandelion over the blades of insignificant grass. It's confusing, at first, and like everything else that night he doesn't think about it much at first. He doesn't think about it until he doesn'tsee him, and Suguru suddenly cannot recall a single instance where he's been unable to find Satoru in a crowded room.

"Satoru..?"

Satoru’s disappearing act has certainly burned itself into Suguru’s memory. Nothing comparable could come close to the horrific realization that he wasn’t being followed. Satoru was as good as a memory, there wasn’t a single sign of him within any of the nearest proximities. It was almost like he vanished, purely gone and plucked out of thin air. He’d disappeared like a ghost, it was something awful, because Satoru has never been easy to lose. He would know him across a crowded room, in a line up of billions there’s only a single Satoru Gojo who shines brighter than any of the rest.

Suguru only truly begins losing his mind when the possibility of never seeing him again brushes the forefront of his mind. The idea of finding him dead and miles away.

“Satoru!”

If somebody didn’t know Satoru’s name before the night, the three syllables that belong to his name will be etched into the memory of everyone close enough to Suguru’s hysterics. He asks everyone he comes into contact with, all about the ‘ he’s tall, a little over one-hundred ninety centimeters, he has white hair and he should be wearing glasses-- please, f*ck, tell me if you see him’ guy.

There’s vague recognition for the fact that they performed tonight, but what awful epiphany Suguru has amidst his frantic search is that when taking a step back, he realizes he is the only person who cares. Those who tell him they’ll keep an eye out, as genuine as they pretend to be, go on drinking like normal. Leaving, never coming back, awful awful awful--

Suguru ends up eating Yuki Tsukumo’s words when he asks for her help, far too soon after leaving her.

“I need you--” he sounds asthmatic, unable to catch his breath or to center his eyes on any particular point. "He's not f*cking here.He's not here--"

Something flickers over her eyes, he can tell, that had failed to show in all the other eyes he’s come into contact with tonight. It’s a realization just as startling as his own had been, as if she’s the only person in the entire f*cking world who can see what he sees. As if the problems of people like them are somehow so infinitesimal that may as well be ants. Or maybe puppets-- they seemed to care when they had something to give back to the world for jack sh*t in return.

It makes Suguru want to get rid of all those carefree faces. He's frantic, people give him weird looks, he resists the urge to scream for the fact that not a single person outside of Yuki Tsukumo and her weird boyfriend have listened to him. He feels like an outsider in his own body. Nobody cares.

Forty-five minutes after Satoru disappears, it's pure chance Suguru finds him wedged in an alleyway about as frail and pale as a newborn bird (there’s the thread-wire of a moment where he thinks maybe he’s too late, and maybe Satoru is just a ghost now). Suguru doesn’t give anything much thought, if only because if it proves to be true, it will push him off a bottomless ledge. And if the pearly gates are real, he won’t be seeing them. His reaction is instant, a gut reflex that makes his feet traverse on his own like a magnetic pull. Two steps into a walk, then a feverishrun.

“Satoru!”

Satoru is so pale, he really does look like a doll. When Suguru can get on his hands and knees to look at him and see what damage he sustained for the mere moment he turned his back on him. For the fact that he couldn’t hold his hand to guide him through a dense crowd. How he knows right when he sees the blue rim of Satoru’s iris line his engorged pupil like the moon’s halo that he was drugged.

Satoru responds to his touch in a recoil that has Suguru’s heart constricting to his throat, and there’s a high-pitched, crying protest when he puts his hands on either side of Satoru’s face. Despite the heart-breaking sound, Satoru doesn’t pull away. His left eye is swollen shut, blood coagulated beneath his left nostril and smeared over his lips slightly. There’s a pretty nasty cut to his eyebrow that stains the feather-white ends of his hair into an angry red. Satoru’s face is wet, patchily flushed red in his cheekbones and nose as evidence for however long he’s been crying. His left cheek feels swollen in his hand, bruises are a dark purple and jaundice yellow. Satoru lets Suguru hold his face, swallowing unevenly and squinty-eyes seeming to register who exactly is keeping him tethered down to earth.

It’s Suguru, so he doesn’t feel so alone anymore.

“I don’--” Satoru swallows hard, followed by a sharp inhale and a twitch of discomfort, like he’s swallowing a razor blade, “I don’t think I have-- the pizza money, anymore.”

Right, they were going to buy pizza when they got back home. Suddenly, everything else in the world feels so small and pointless.

Satoru’s shirt is splattered with blood from his dropping nose, his cuff painted red from where he probably tried to stop the bleeding. His voice sounds too fragile, too meek, too vulnerable. And for all of his pain, Suguru can’t help but feel responsible. For the fact that he left him for Yuki Tsukumo in the first place, and for the fact that he turned his back on him because no matter how much he loves Satoru that shame still exists and will always exist. No matter what he does to change himself, or how much he tells himself he doesn’t care for the world outside of them, he will turn his back and let go of Satoru’s hand if it means that no one will try inserting themselves into their private lives.

“Don’t talk like that--” Suguru breathes hastily, and it’s when he realizes with a foreboding feeling that his throat’s gone tight and he’s going to start crying too. “You’re okay-- you’re okay now--”

He holds his face more firmly, if only to emphasize the true and honest weight to his words. Damp flesh and knotted bruises, Satoru’s breath hitching and his twitchy hands trying to right themselves up enough to grab Suguru’s arms. He can’t, Satoru can’t grab a hold of him, he just whines softly, his head feeling about as heavy as a bowling ball in Suguru’s shaky palms. He kisses his head, strokes his hand over the back of his head twice to cement the fact that he is real and he is alive. He does it to make drawing back easier, so he can maybe lift Satoru onto his feet.

But what stops him is an alarming sound, and it comes from Satoru.

“Don’t let me go.” Satoru pleads, in a broken and sorry voice when he sees Suguru trying to pull away steadily for the fact that he was going to attempt to stand up with Satoru. His breathing stops for that moment, eyes feeling wide and stuck in place on the way Satoru can’t lift his hands right enough to touch Suguru. His mind conjures the image, the sight of somebody taking advantage of Satoru’s vulnerability in order to take money and his will to fight them back. He wouldn’t be able to lift his hands, he would just have to take it and everything else. Satoru trying to fight back, thinking Suguru left him--

It feels like a nightmare, he doesn’t dare to move. What guilt wells up inside of him is monumental, the feeling that he’s solely responsible for Satoru’s wounded face. As bad as if he inflicted them, for the fact that he betrayed Satoru a second time by leaving him to the wills of the awful world. Solely for the reason that he didn’t think twice about it, he forgets that Satoru is fragile.

Suguru embraces him as if his bones are made of folded paper. It’s all too familiar, like on that first night when they ended up in a similar position. Only difference is, with Satoru’s heavy body leaning against him, Suguru chokes up. Deep in the back of his throat, like swallowing spoonful's of wet sand. His eyes burn like they're pressed to an open flame, and for whatever reason on earth he still tries to hold it all in. For whose sake? Suguru told himself that he would never make him feel so awful like this, never again. I willneverforgive myself.What an awful reminder it is.

Suguru takes them to Shoko’s place, it’s only a few stops away from where they live, and there’s no f*cking way Suguru is going to pay thousands for the doctors at a hospital to give Satoru an IV drip and a gold star before sending him on his way. Satoru also cried hysterically when Suguru finally did put him on his feet, saying he didn’t wanna go to the doctor. It bent his already-feeble heart, and Shoko was just as good as any doctor. He makes sure to call her beforehand to let her know, all the while he lugs Satoru along his feet and impossibly close to his body like he’s suffused there. He will not let him go.

Of course, Satoru has always hated doctors, and Shoko’s not quite an exception when she’s trying her best to keep him hydrated and to flush the drug out of his system. Suguru tries not to think of what would’ve happened if he drank his stale chuhai, if neither of them were aware of their own bodies. The world already turned their backs on Satoru; Suguru would be no different.

“Hey, Suguru.”

Suguru opens his eyes, and he’s unsure of when exactly he decided to crawl into Shoko’s spare bed beside Satoru. They’re sprawled here together, in the closed-door guest room as the smell of salmon wafts through the house. Shoko is cooking for all of them, for the fact that she has guests and for the fact that neither he or Satoru have eaten anything more than breakfast today. Not once has he left Satoru’s side.

The best part about having a friend like Shoko is that she collects medical equipment like an antique dealer. Old and still-working products that are tossed in favor of the newer technology. Satoru’s clean now, wearing one of Shoko’s sweaters she said was too big for her and yet still rides up Satoru’s flat belly. Perhaps it’s because he’s impossibly long, or maybe Shoko’s just short. More likely, it’s both. His eye is still f*cked up, he needed a couple of stitches but his face is free of blood and he’s got an IV drip in one arm. Suguru wondered out loud where she got that from, she told him that the hospital tossed it along with the elderly patient it was attached to when he kicked the bucket. Suguru is still not quite sure if she’s lying about that one or not.

But still, Satoru’s voice warms his heart. It’s still slurred, but not so cloudy. He’s safe. Suguru Inhales slowly, snakes a careful hand around his waist before moving in just a bit closer, his warm breath against Satoru’s neck. Suguru moves carefully, if only for the fact that touching Satoru in this state feels irrevocably wrong.

Suguru won’t push his careful limits.

“Hm?”

Satoru’s heavy head turns against the pillow, looks at Suguru with a wistful look that would be cute if he knew it wasn’t from Satoru being drugged out of his f*cking mind. There’s also the fact that Suguru is ninety-nine percent sure Satoru doesn’t know there’s a needle in his arm, and he thinks he would be a lot less placant if he was made aware of that fact.

“Mm, I want a house.” Satoru proposes, slurred and sounding half-hearted with how his syllables melt into each other. Suguru thinks he’s probably just dreaming aloud.

“Yeah? What kind of house?” He decides to flatter the idea, seeing nothing inherently wrong with a bit of dreaming.

“I’m serious,” Satoru’s clear voice rings so loud that it stuns Suguru for a moment. The hand he has around his waist tightens for a moment, steely and locked into place. “I want.. a house in our old neighborhood. No more apartments. I wanna make a home together.”

There’s something in the way that Satoru half-mewls his whiny words, it’s remarkably honest. It’s like a window into his deepest desires, a look into his heart that catches Suguru’s breath because he almost wants to tell him to stop, you don’t know what you’re talking about. But he does, he knows he does, and it’s frightening. Frightening for the fact that it could become something of a curse-- a little unachievable dream. They’d be left to yearn over it, and yet, Suguru wonders when they’ll ever get to that point. If ever, a home for their own. Walls they can paint together and a private paradise they can spend the rest of their life in. That old neighborhood, the one with all the stray cats-

Suguru swallows loudly, he feels like the one who’s on the edge of that serrated blade now. His touch is as light as a butterfly, the faintest of tiny strokes he brings up to Satoru’s half-broken face. Like a doll; his eyes are like glossy blue agate, and equally as indestructible.

“Promise me we’ll make a home together someday, Suguru…”

Satoru is something truly celestial. He evokes something so youthful in Suguru’s heart, the giddiness of goals and of promise. Like exploring the moon, or Mars and the remainder of the untouched galaxy. Satoru himself is something to explore, he carries his own gravitation and drags Suguru into his orbit. It’s always been this way-- it’s that dependency he’s always placed on Satoru’s whims that comes right back to him. Like a Möbius strip. There’s never quite an end or a beginning to either of them, he touches Satoru now and feels an unwavering fondness in the core of his chest. It’s fate, corny and completely f*cking unreal. He would die without Satoru. He felt that way tonight.

To make a home with him, to complete his life with him, however long that may be. Suguru can’t deny himself that; no matter where he goes, above ground or six feet below, his soul could never deny Satoru. For the simple fact that he made this connection years ago, drawn to the lonesome kid who was just as lonely as he was-- it’s always been that way. Suguru was born only two months shy of Satoru’s birthday, there’s something about it that seems comically coincidental, at times. It’s their shared wavelength, there’s something especially beautiful about Satoru at this moment. The muffled sizzle of fish fat and the dull red glow of an alarm clock that’s time is two minutes short. The lights would hurt his eyes, but Satoru’s eyes shine even in the dark, in the hazy red glow. Suguru already knows-- knew it from the very moment he met Satoru for the second time in his life-- he won’t ever be able to quit him.

For as long as he lives, even if God’s eyes closed years ago.

“I promise.”

For as long as they live.