Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nineteen days

A lot can happen in nineteen days. Or twenty seven. Or three. Five months. Ten minutes. Satoru has little concept of the passage of time, besides that he’s breathing, and that’s about three seconds with every exhale, right?

He puckers his lips, counting the time as he blows out in a steady stream— one and two— and pretending it helps makes sense of this place. How secluded and endless it seems. Is that what it feels like to get trapped inside his domain? The uselessness of being stripped to your thoughts until there’s nothing left but a blank slate, dead or crazy upon escape? What does it take to get out? Killing oneself? He smiles. Leave it to Suguru.

And then he doesn’t. Suguru. That was not Suguru, despite what his eyes assured him. It was a body, puppeteered by something else. Something small and weak and easily smashed beneath the heel of a shoe but smart enough not to get caught there.

Satoru, it had said, and its voice had been so soft, so sweet, so familiar. And it had looked pleased, when Satoru turned around, and its eyes had closed when his smile reached them and his fingers had splayed in that way they always did when the two of them met again and hey, what are you doing later—?

Satoru sits up, ignoring the skulls that clatter around him and batting at them with enough force to send them exploding into dry shrapnel. Pain lances up his arm, and Satoru squeezes his hand into a fist. Limitless does not apply here. He’s been cut.

He reaches up, grabbing at the blindfold over his eyes and dragging it off, ignoring the way it catches in his hair and tugs when the tie doesn’t come undone as easily as he expects it to.

It wasn’t Suguru. It was Suguru’s body and nothing else, a shell. Empty. Lifeless.

And it had still reached up when Satoru had called out to it, and grabbed its own neck until the skin pricked with blood.

Satoru bends over his knees, turning his face up, and sighs. It isn’t two seconds.

-

He makes a decision, in that nineteen—twenty seven—three day period. It takes longer than he thinks, which is to say it isn’t a split second answer the way it always is.

Satoru thinks about how it will be to be released, to walk upon the earth, to bend the world until he’s standing above it amongst the clouds. How fresh the air will be, how bright the sun. Will it be daytime? It doesn’t matter. The inside of the prison realm is thick and moist and writhing like a creature alive, and anything will be relief next to it.

-

Even after the decision is made he still has to wait, and Satoru toys with the idea of what his cursed energy will feel like when he makes his attempt. He grounds himself, amidst the crunch of bones beneath his feet, and stretches his arms out, and thinks.

It should be about his students, his peers. Worry for them. Plans to help, wherever they are, if they still need it. They still need it, he thinks, and it doesn’t come from a place of self-absorption but something factual. Kenjaku, that thing had called itself. This is more than they thought it was.

Except he isn’t. Satoru entertains the idea of playing savior for all of a heartbeat, and then drives his focus into his new plan. A plan that will not simply pave the way forward, but raze the entire earth, and start from scratch.

-

The prison realm shifts, and it’s barely a tickle at the back of his mind, but Satoru inhales before he even considers why.

And then he’s free; at the bottom of the ocean.

It isn’t hard to make his way up. Perhaps Kenjaku thought he would drown, after pulling out all the stops. Hit him with the most mundane of deaths, drowning him like some exhausted sailor shipwrecked, let his body settle at the bottom of the Japan Trench.

It isn’t daytime when he reaches the surface, and Satoru yawns, taking the moment to acclimate to his surroundings. The moon is high, land little more than pinpricks of light in the distance, and water sloshes around his feet. He runs his fingers through his bangs, pushing them away from his face, and turns his eyes up to admire the stars. He is alone.

Cursed energy ripples under his skin, and Satoru closes his eyes, smiling.

The air around him distorts, and he’s gone.

-

Satoru knows where Sukuna is. He knows where Kenjaku is. He knows where everyone is.

A deep, furious thing inside him has him pausing high above Shinjuku, wind whistling in his ears and whipping his hair about his face. There is a massive pit in Shibuya, a black hole surrounded by the twinkle of the city lights, and he wonders on that. A base part of him, the good part of him, the part of him that endlessly wants to help people, rears its head, fighting to be at the forefront. He clenches his fist, taking the time to consider what it would be like to watch the light leave Kenjaku’s eyes. He hardly needs to wonder. He’s seen it before. He had begged for it, then.

No. Something has changed, and he knows someone else is aware of his newfound freedom. Whatever he walks into would not be a surprise.

But he hovers there, watching the dark flare of energy moving about hundreds of feet below him, hidden under rubble and toppled buildings. A different part of him aches—the furious thing—and sits like a weight under his skin, driving him to fall back to the earth. To chase after it. To kill Kenjaku, and finally have the opportunity to mourn.

No, he thinks again, forcing his gaze away. Satoru is sick of grieving. He surveys the city at large, ignoring the energy he recognizes, the distant shapes of people he knows, and stops on a single ripple of cursed energy.

-

Space bends around him, and Satoru steps out into a kitchen. There is no indication of his arrival, no breeze, no sound. Someone is talking on the television, soft-voiced with exhaustion. The news.

The faucet turns off, and the room is quiet besides a puff of breath behind him. It smells like smoke.

“I have a door,” Shoko says.

When Satoru turns around he’s grinning, and he opens his arms. “Shoko! Long time, no see! I think. What’s the date?”

Shoko looks even more tired than usual, eyes half-lidded and face sallow. She drops her hand to the counter, and doesn’t look as she flicks the end of her cigarette with her thumb, knocking ashes into a tray painted with birds. “The nineteenth. Are you hurt?”

Yes. No. Satoru’s mouth opens, but he only stares. Something strained flickers under the surface of Shoko’s expression, and she rests the cigarette in the divot of the tray, coming toward him. His smile starts to fall, just a tick, and he closes his mouth, nailing it in place. A light scoff lifts from his throat. “Me?”

“You’re covered in blood.”

He allows her to come closer. For once she isn’t wearing the lab coat, just a pair of regular lounge clothes, and Satoru’s mind runs rampant with memories of their time in high school. So close. So far. Her hand drifts toward his hand, where he’d busted his knuckles against a skull a day or nineteen ago. Her fingers press against a barrier, caught an inch away from skin.

“Working hard,” is all he says. It doesn’t feel like it. Two and a half weeks, they’ve been at this. At what? He has no concept of the world at large.

“Masamichi is dead,” she says.

Satoru’s smile wavers, no longer reaching his eyes. “You—”

“They declared it a crime to free you,” she says, “punishable by death.”

“Shoko—”

“They said he was down there. With you. That he’s the one that did all of this—”

“Are you safe?” Satoru asks, and there’s no lightness to his voice anymore. He catches her hand where it’s hovering by his, squeezing her fingers. They seem very small, very delicate.

It takes her a moment to speak, but she looks up to him, and her eyes are so, so tired. “They won't kill me, if that's what you mean.”

It is, in a way. Satoru has spared as much energy for this conversation as he can manage, spurred on by the decision he'd made not five minutes prior. The prison realm already seems an eternity away. “You're too important an asset to dispose of.” They both know how to read between the lines.

Something on the counter sputters, maybe a coffee machine, and there's a recap on the TV that's littered with screams. The overwhelming sound of foundations splitting apart. He doesn't even bother looking.

She says, “You're saying goodbye.”

It's not accusation. Shoko has never been that type. Always the flow of the river, running between the banks of Satoru and Suguru. Connecting them. Keeping them apart. Always flowing, even when they were too stubborn to follow.

“It was him,” he answers.

“You killed him.”

Even when you thought you couldn't, goes unsaid. She had never judged him for the struggle, even though it took years and another person's dirty work to finish the job.

“It wasn't him,” she says.

Satoru makes an amused sound through his nose, mostly air, but the smile that finds his lips is graceless and aching and real. “Perceptive as always.”

She smiles back. “How would you make it without me?”

“I wouldn't.”

“But you did.” Her smile softens. “And you will. Where are you going?”

It's too much. Satoru has never been one for the deep and meaningful, for bearing his heart even when the anguish is so all-consuming that it turns him into a cold and distant shell of himself just to hide the tempest under his skin.

Are you the strongest because you're Satoru Gojo, or are you Satoru Gojo because you're the strongest?

He hadn't known then. He isn't sure he knows now.

He drops Shoko's hand, but she lowers it without care, knowing him, even as he looks away. It's so dark outside, between the residential buildings of the academy. The distant city is a dark mar on the skyline. It all seems fake, in this moment, with his mind made up. A fantasy. Just another possibility where someone's choices split off from the reality he's caught himself in.

“I think,” he starts, distant. The uncertainty is unusual, “I know how to fix this.”

Shoko just looks at him, placid. Patient. Flowing onward. “You're not going to fight Sukuna.”

“Are you sure you can't read minds?”

“It's written all over your face.”

“Oh, yeah?” He looks back down at her, and his usual toothy grin is back, brows raised. “What am I thinking.”

The shades of brown in her eyes are brighter, in the harsh overhead lighting of the kitchen. The TV says, We are unsure about the possibility of survivors. Shoko says, “About how you can save Suguru.”

-

They don't have enough time.

Satoru likely tripped a thousand wards on his way in here, and if the crime of his freedom is punishable by death, he has no idea what the crime of being Satoru Gojo could be.

They both know it wouldn't be a contest, but he wants to avoid fingers pointing at Shoko. The fact that the principal was killed by association doesn't bode well with him, but he doesn't ask about his students or his peers. It doesn't matter. Or, it does—but it won't.

I'm surprised you made it this long, to tell you the truth, Shoko says, following him into the living room with a mug of coffee in one hand and her half-finished cigarette in the other. Her mug says, ‘My day begins when yours ends’. Ten years of watching you struggle to push forward as one half.

He doesn't ask what she means, stopping in the middle of the room where the furniture is sparse. She grabs the coffee table anyway, dragging it aside. He puts his hands on his hips. People are swarming from every direction, but he has a minute. Maybe two. The only sound is the TV, still droning about the death count. It does, but it won't.

It is a goodbye, isn't it? Has he ever said goodbye? Family—killed. Classmates—killed. Friends, students, teachers—killed. Everyone dies, and Satoru never gets to say goodbye because he's always left behind.

He swallows, looking at Shoko, and that unsurety is back. He can feel it first in the furrow of his upturned brows, the tension in his shoulders. And then it sinks in his belly like he accidentally swallowed the stone of a fruit.

Shoko smiles, body swelling as she takes a tug of the cigarette, and the end burns and burns and burns until she snuffs it directly in the ashtray. “Cold feet? That's not like you.”

None of this is. The words settle him somewhat, however, and he breathes a laugh. He feels strangely small. “If this kills me?”

“I'll mourn you.”

“That's not very reassuring.” He spreads his feet shoulder-width, turning ahead and shifting his weight. Opening his palms by his thighs and feeling the cursed energy there. Feeling the potential of it. “Have them erect a statue of me, or something.”

“Oh, that's definitely something I have the power to do.”

He laughs again, but there's something shaky to it. The bodies outside are growing ever closer. The world is bright, dark, vivid, overwhelming. Would closing his eyes be weak? Does he care? I don't. He does. “Shoko—”

“Don't make him wait,” she says, cutting him off, and he looks to her so quickly his neck twinges. “It was always Suguru. We both know that. Everything.”

His best friend. The first person who understood him, who saw him for what he was, who wanted to be by his side not because of power but because of substance. Satoru had never felt like a protector. He had felt like the protected.

“He was the beginning of the end,” she finishes. For the world. For you. “Fix this.”

Closer, still. Someone's foot catches on a tile a half mile away, and Satoru hears it clatter to the ground. His mouth is so dry. Somehow, he smiles. “I thought you stopped smoking.”

She smiles back. “You can't be the only one reliving our younger years.”

And for a moment they're children, standing on the basketball court and laughing about nothing. Tossing a ball back and forth—he was always gentle, when it was her. She was never gentle, when it was him. A distraction, and before he could raise Limitless, she was knocking him in the head with a water bottle. Laughter. The doors opening between them, sun shining through, black hair damp with sweat at the brow and eyes closing around a smile, you finally got him?

Footsteps, now. He can hear them properly. Shoko has no idea.

Satoru says, “I'll fix this.”

Shoko says, “I love you, too.”

The glass window next to the TV shatters, and Satoru is sucked through the hole he's rent apart in the fabric of the world.

Chapter Text

They had spoken once, when they were first years. It was late, and they toiled over paper homework that seemed utterly useless compared to the looming duty that lay just out of reach. What point was there in studying for tests on history or language or humanities when next week they would be stalking back alleys and slaughtering curses?

At least, he thought so. Suguru was studious, respectful, always listened and always did as he was told. Not without some back-talk, when the time and person was right, but he was the only one doing any real studying. Satoru was simply extending Limitless and nudging his eraser around in circles, trying to erase the date he’d written at the top of his paper before he’d given up writing entirely.

Do you have a domain? Suguru had asked, finger pressed into the text of a book to keep his place as he wrote and wrote and wrote about Hitobashira.

And Satoru had shifted his head where it was laying on the table, looking up at him. His sunglasses slid, sitting askew on his nose. He had smiled. Almost. I’m Satoru Gojo, he hadn’t said. Everyone knew who he was, and how powerful. 

Suguru hadn’t even looked at him, just made a noncommittal sound to show he had heard. It sat awkwardly in Satoru’s chest—the indifference. His smile had wavered. Did he dislike that Suguru didn’t care? Did he like it? They had known each other for a month and two days, and it was still too new to put to words.

The conversation was over as quickly as it had started. Satoru was beginning to realize he wasn’t very good at this sort of conversation, easy and flowing and capable of forging meaningful connection.

Crickets chirp outside, and Satoru had sighed, letting himself fall away from the short table to lay flat on his back. His clothes slid against the worn wood. An owl hooted, and Satoru arched a finger up, drawing his eraser into the air above him. Separating the little paper cover from the outside. Spinning them around each other. Nobody understands, he had thought, selfish.

And then Suguru had breathed in, and said, Einstein says space and time are one and the same.

Satoru had looked up at him from the floor, glasses so far down his nose it was exposing his eyes, and thought perhaps Suguru understood him a little more than he thought.

-

The cicadas are singing.

Satoru is standing in a clearing, and when he inhales he smells earth, trees, damp stone. He’s on a mountainside, surrounded by the sounds of the forest. His eyes flutter open, covered, now, by a pair of sunglasses. He blinks.

His body is different. Softer, in a way. Willowy. He stretches, rolling his neck, and tries to bridge the gap between mind and muscle. His cursed energy writhes like a thing alive, uncertain of its place; to be continuously powerful, or come to a sudden understanding of a decade’s worth of training and self-cognizance?

Energy flares under his skin, and then snaps into place. A thousand things Satoru should not be able to do are possible in the space of a breath, and he squeezes his palms, shifting his weight. Had he always been so thin?

“Help me…”

Ah. Satoru sets his hands on his hips, looking up to the sky between the thick branches of summer-green trees. He remembers where he is.

“Please,” the curse begs in the voice of a child. It coughs, wet. “I want my mommy…”

It wasn’t even a special grade that took him away from Jujutsu High. It was a first grade, manifested from hundreds of years of horror stories and the accumulation of fear from the nearby village. The shrine here was long abandoned because of it. It had only killed one person.

When Satoru turns, he’s smiling, but it doesn’t feel right on his face. Maybe it’s because his body is different; maybe it’s because of the thing clawing at his insides, hope manifesting so strongly it’s rising like bile in his throat, savage and tameless.

“You,” he says. A boy stands before him, small hands knotted together at his chest, face tracked with tears. He’s dirtied, and blood has dried on his cheek. The outline around him is bulbous, a mass of energy, and a mouth opens like a snake, oozing around teeth. The boy’s mouth opens at the same time, and the sound is gentle and hurt, “are wasting my time.”

August of 2007. Satoru is seventeen years old, and the world is whole.

-

It’s easier than he thinks, to manipulate the universe. Satoru’s fingers slip through the fabric of space, and then he’s half a continent away, floating high above Tokyo. He’d gone partially out of curiosity and partially to prove something to himself. Having his old body wasn’t enough—he needed to see.

It’s late afternoon, and Satoru stuffs his hands in his pockets, turning in a lazy circle. Shibuya is still in one piece, alive with distant sound and the constant crush of bodies. The corner of his mouth lifts.

His fingers brush against hard plastic and rubber, and he hums, lifting his phone from his pocket. It flips open, and the motion is so nostalgic that he makes a humored sound. It feels so at home in the cup of his palm. The background is Waka Inoue.

Geez, he thinks, amused with himself. It seems so childish to have a picture of a model as his wallpaper.

He taps his fingers against the side, nervous, but he pushes through it, opening his messages with no small amount of trouble. How the hell do you work this thing…?

suguru (—w—l/l): Don’t forget to bring back a pack of shiroi koibito for Shoko. She’s still mad that you ate that whole box of chocolates she bought.

Satoru is grinning, and he reaches up absentmindedly to push his glasses away from his eyes, as though that will help him feel closer to the name behind the screen. His gaze flickers to the date and time next to the message. Two weeks ago. He had never responded.

Until it was too late. Masamichi had cornered him in a hallway and told him that Suguru had abandoned them—( him)— and Satoru had whipped his phone out and smeared blood all over the buttons. That time Suguru had never answered. Was this his last text?

Again, that bile cresting against the back of his tongue. His stomach turns. His chest aches.

His fingers fold over the buttons, and Satoru sends the same text he had before.

where are you?

-

This time, he answers.

Suguru might as well be here, standing directly before Satoru and laughing at his perceived capriciousness. Satoru is waiting in the line at 7/11 with a milk cream roll in one hand, and he’s checked his phone about a thousand times. It buzzes repeatedly, and he realizes he’s accidentally left his chauffeur alone in the countryside near Hokkaido. Whoops. He hadn’t been able to teleport like this when he was young.

im ok! he texts back, lifting the cake to hold it in his teeth by the plastic. An older woman side-eyes him. found a nice onsen! all is well and exorcised! (>v<)

It takes longer for Suguru, but that’s what has Satoru dragging his phone clear up to his face, breath catching. The cashier scans the barcode, and then says something. There’s a line behind him.

suguru (—w—l/l): First grade. Almost there. Can’t answer calls.

“Excuse me,” the cashier says, and his voice is cordial.

Satoru stares, but this isn’t a time with text bubbles, and he has no idea if anything else is coming. Hadn’t Suguru texted faster than this in the past? He’s talking to me.

The thought is near traitorous in its desperation, and Satoru gives up on waiting. lol yeah, but where

“Sir?” the cashier says.

Someone clears their throat behind him. “You gonna pay, man?”

His phone buzzes.

suguru (—w—l/l): Do you ever listen to Yaga sensei?

Satoru grabs the wad of cash in his pocket, not bothering to check if it’s six hundred yen or six thousand, and throws it on the counter, eyes on his phone. The cake is still in between his teeth as he leaves.

-

It takes longer than he’s proud of to find the village Suguru tells him about, but he finds it.

It’s been years since he perfected the technique of teleportation, but it seems like he’s doing something taboo, employing it here. It makes him feel larger than ever before, struggling under the weight of some massive secret. A fun little undisclosed footnote at the bottom of the history page he’s rewriting.

I wonder what Suguru will think. He had never got to show it off to him. Not as a friend. Or red. Or Limitless. He can even take Suguru with him, or move him separately. Satoru feels young again, mind giddy with thoughts of he’s going to be so impressed.

He sees, feels, the swell of Suguru’s cursed energy, and watches him step into a building, flanked by a man and a woman. Satoru’s breath is stuttering. Excited. Terrified. He’s going to kill every single person in this town.  

-

Suguru’s energy has flared and swelled and roiled, and when it’s suddenly evened out again Satoru knows he’s about to snap. The two humans step out of the building, and Satoru is on the ground in an instant. Suguru has only just stepped past the threshold as he appears, and the air splits, allowing a white-scaled nose to peek out.

He wants to smile. He wants to call out, just as he always has, turning Suguru's name into something light and airy and playful. Pouring all of his own happiness into it because that's why it's welled up in the first place. He wants to run up to him, wants to skip, wave. Make a show of knowing him.

He lays a hand on the snout before its nostrils have fully manifested. The rainbow dragon. Its scales are silken against Satoru’s palm, and all he manages is, “Suguru.”

It comes out terribly weak, rattling in his throat, a decade's worth of anguish twisting his name into a single fractal of light at the end of the world.

And Suguru's entire body snaps taut like a rubber band. There's nothing measured about the way his head whips to the side to look at Satoru—Satoru who should be far away, texting from a thousand miles away because he got curious enough to ask where Suguru was. Satoru who should be on his own mission. Satoru who should not be here in the first place. Satoru, who is here anyway.

“S—” Suguru says, face illuminated by the lanterns on either side of the door to the house. The lines under his eyes are dark and deep. How had Satoru never noticed? No, he had—he just hadn't pursued why. The shock has made him even paler than before. “Satoru.”

And gods above, how good it sounds; even horrified. Satoru has appeared as though out of thin air, fist in the back of Suguru's shirt where he's balanced on the razor's edge of despair and pulling him back just as his foot has slipped. Caught in the act of a decision that will alter the course of life itself. Satoru thinks of Shibuya; of the curses there; of Sukuna; the prison realm, the dampness and darkness and depth. Kenjaku never said my name like this.

He wishes he’d worn his glasses. He’s thankful he hadn’t. Every curve and line of Suguru is on display before his eyes, every flutter of his energy. Every crack in his expression. His skin is faintly red over the bridge of his nose where he was likely rubbing at it, brown eyes red-rimmed from exhaustion. His bangs have fallen somewhat messily over his cheek, freed by the pass of anxious fingers. His hair is warmed by the lamplight, but it doesn't take away from the deep black. His eyes are pinned on Satoru. He is so very alive.

Satoru could stare at him for an eternity. Admire the space he takes up, the air that touches his throat. The weariness of him. This Suguru has not smiled at Satoru and asked to be killed.

Somehow, gods above somehow, he smiles. “Surprised?”

Suguru is frozen in place, lips parted but breath caught somewhere between his chest and mouth. Floundering in stasis. Satoru knows exactly how he feels.

“Did—?” Suguru manages.

“No,” Satoru says, because even after all this time he knows what's going to be said. “I wanted to.”

“You—” And finally, Suguru sighs so heavily he looks all the more wan for it. “ How?”

A question for another time. The rainbow dragon huffs against Satoru's hand, but he swears he feels the way it settles under his touch. Suguru's energy evens out much the same.

“I'll tell you later,” Satoru says, and it's blasé again, although he hasn't quite found himself yet.

It's hard to take his eyes off Suguru, who has turned forward to the two humans, both of them looking on in nervous curiosity. The rainbow dragon slowly melts away, and the hole in the shadows closes up. Suguru clears his throat, voice soft and distant as he says, “Forgive me, I…needed air.”

The woman scoffs— I’m not surprised. Those girls carry evil like a stench you can't wash out!— and Satoru steps closer. Suguru's hair is up in its tight bun, his nape exposed, offering up the weakest part of his body to Satoru without thought. Not even considering what he could do. How many different ways he could kill him, in this instant, and save Japan from a slow crumble into chaos.

All he wants to do is brush his fingers over the slight bumps of Suguru's spine, and say, I'm here, now.

When he steps up just behind Suguru he feels the sag of him, leaning into Satoru's energy unconsciously, and Shibuya may as well be a fading dream.

-

“You're quiet.”

Satoru blinks, reeled back into his body. He's sitting in a chair against the wall of their hotel room, twirling his glasses around in his fingers and trying to stay grounded. The last time he had gotten this lost in thought he had been imprisoned, and Kenjaku had been the one smiling at him with Suguru's face.

“Am I?” he asks, and the upturn of his lips is like second nature. I can't stop looking at you.

Suguru has a suitcase. Half are pajamas, the other half professional clothes. Satoru thinks he sees a single sweater. He takes it so seriously.

He always has. Suguru is all logic, putting meaning to everything they do, rationalizing things that will never make sense. Always why, why, why. Yet he always does what he's told.

But that's falling apart. Satoru sees it now, face to face with it. It's different dissecting his memories and watching the tight way Suguru lays his clothes out. The gauntness of his hands as he reaches back over his shoulders and pulls his shirt from his body. Satoru looks away and he isn't sure why.

“Yes,” Suguru says, muffled inside his shirt. He gets it off, and it gets folded and set aside. Satoru looks back at him, sees him flick open the button of his pants, and looks away a second time, cheeks hot. “It's not like you.”

Don't get caught, he thinks, instinctive. And then, How would he even know? He wouldn't.

Satoru crosses his legs, but that smile doesn't come back. “What do you want me to say?”

“Honestly?”

“Sure!”

Suguru turns to him, and he's undressed down to his briefs. It should be unserious, but the expression on his face is flattened by some unspoken emotion. “I want you to tell me why you're here.”

Discomfort sloshes around Satoru's stomach. “Not even going to ask how?”

“How?”

“It's a secret!”

Frustration flickers in Suguru's eyes, and then fizzles out. There's something else there—maybe resignation—and then a touch of hesitant happiness. Satoru feels sick.

Suguru shakes his head, taking his clothes from the bed and making his way to the bathroom. Satoru almost shortens the space between them, so eager to be at his side that he's willing to crash into him if he has to, but he stands like a normal person and walks the four steps it takes.

“Suguru—” he says, and it's too real. Too serious. Too authentic.

Suguru's eyes are warm, this close. They widen, brows lifting, as he stops to let Satoru closer. Satoru keeps expecting him to surge back, or run. He only looks at him, gaze worn and irises like sunlight spilling through the autumnal foliage.

A second passes, and then two, and Suguru inclines his head just so. He's thin, Satoru thinks. “Are you OK, Satoru?”

No. Recently he's wondered if he ever will be. A long life of fake smiles and happy facades awaits him, and he's losing interest in pretending but he doesn't know what being authentic looks like. But this will fix it. I'll fix it.

“Just,” he says, and there's that tickle in his throat, rattling. Choking the honesty out of the words. The first step in making up for his mistakes, “happy to see you. Suguru.” The second time he's said it. It's even weaker than the first.

For a split second, he's looking at the sixteen year old version of Suguru. The one who wasn't suffering, struggling with an internal battle he tamped down until the pressure built up enough to blow. The sixteen year old who smiled when he saw Satoru already in the room. The Suguru who was happy just to stand next to each other.

The hardness of Suguru's face cracks, and then softens. One side of his mouth quirks up, and it feels like Suguru has thrust his hand forward and punched it right through Satoru's chest to get a vice grip on his lungs and everything in between.

“I'm happy to see you, too, idiot,” Suguru says, a breath. He looks away, and walks to the bathroom, setting his clothes on the sink. As the door closes he adds, out of sight, “Even though I don't really understand how you're here.”

The door closes, and even though the smile that's found Satoru's face is real, his eyes still burn.

-

Suguru has to lend Satoru clothes. He complains as they're offered, and Satoru chuckles and pretends the tension between them isn't a livewire. When he closes the bathroom door behind himself, he leans his weight against the wall, looking down at the pajamas in his hands.

The pants are baggy, and in neutral tones. Soft, when he drags his finger over the hem. Two laces hang out of the front, one a centimeter longer than the other. He can remember, viscerally, how Suguru hooks his thumbs on either side, sliding between skin and elastic, and drags them up over the curve of his hips. How many times had Satoru's gaze fallen; how many times had it gotten caught on the unmarked run of skin where Suguru's hip bones slanted inward before they were hidden by the drooping fabric of his night shirts? He always wears these pants so low…

Satoru's body thrums, heat flaring under his skin. Freshly awakened after years of neglected emotions and barely realized needs. He is young, wonderfully young, with the world at his fingertips, fabric like physical nostalgia in his hands. Suguru gave him the sweater.

His hands shake, taboo sitting like ice in his veins and turning his stomach into a gnawing pit. Again, his eyes burn. Ten years—eleven. It was nearly his birthday, and Kenjaku had smiled and Satoru had ached so desperately to have what he has now that it had led to the beginning of the end of the world.

His eyes flutter closed, eyelashes fanning over his cheeks, and he steadies himself enough to lift Suguru's sweater to his nose.

-

“You're supposed to be in Hokkaido.”

Satoru leans back into the back seat of the car, and when he feels Suguru's eyes on him he slouches further, trying to recall on the fly how his body used to move, how it used to act. He isn't supposed to care, and in a way he doesn't—besides the overwhelming pressure of knowing none of this is real.

No, that isn't right—it’s real, but different. Satoru knows too much, and all he can think about is that the simple fact of his presence has kept Suguru from drowning himself. All he can think about is Suguru himself.

“Crazy, right?” he says, and his voice sounds distant to his own ears. He's smiling, though, laughing. Instinctual. Masamichi is dead, Shoko had said, hollow. Masamichi is on the phone with him right now. “You know, it's really not all that far when you think about it—”

“Gojo,” Masamichi says, hard, “you were sent out on a mission.”

“And it's done! Easy peasy!”

“You took out a first grade within five minutes of arriving on site?”

Was that all it was? Satoru pauses, tapping his finger on his knee. How did it feel when he did it the first time? Did he struggle with it? Or had he toyed with it? Does it even matter now? That Satoru is gone—the world he's created is his own. And I'm too powerful for it.

The hesitation is wrapped up in an instant, and he forgets himself, falling into something dangerously cavalier. “If you wanted me to fake a struggle, you should've found me a special grade.”

There's a pause on the line, and then some grumbling. “So you let your arrogance get the best of you, and took over Geto's mission.”

“Whoa!” Satoru scoffs, splaying himself out in the back seat and talking as though Masamichi is here in the car with them. He puts a hand to his chest. The driver stiffens, almost slamming on the brake, and she looks back at him through the rearview mirror. “He settled it all himself! I just stopped by to say hello!”

“You are being a nuisance.”

“Suguru loves me.” Silence, from the seat beside him. Satoru's cheeks are warm.

“Be tha t as it may,” Masamichi says, too used to this attitude to pay it any real mind, “are you going to explain to me how you even got to him?”

Satoru purses his lips. “He texted me his location.”

“How did you get to him, Gojo.”

Oh. A beat, and Satoru swallows, rolling his eyes behind his sunglasses. It's dark, ready to storm. They've been driving for two hours now, and it leaves seven to go until they're back in Tokyo. When Satoru calculates the time, approximately, it should have taken him more than a day to get from where he was to where he is. Maybe a few hours less if he took the train instead of his chauffeur. 

He says, “Oh, you know.”

“Just another fun perk of being Satoru Gojo, is it?”

An out. Satoru smiles, and his laugh is light. “You got it, sensei!”

Suguru looks away.

-

It's storming properly when they finally make it back to Jujutsu High, and Satoru has decided he hates cars. What a waste of time. The only bright side was that he got to sit next to Suguru all day and struggle not to stare. He only wishes Suguru hadn't demanded his clothes back this morning, although Satoru isn't sure how he would've stayed sane if he'd been allowed to wear them all afternoon.

“Seems like you're not having much trouble with Limitless,” Suguru says.

Satoru, who had been staring, jolts, and looks away. He doesn't have any bags, and his cell phone is dead, although he has little interest in that. “Hm?”

“Last time we saw each other, you were trying to perfect it.”

Satoru raises his hand, turning his palm up, and the downpour of rain hits about an inch above skin, and splashes away. “Oh, yeah.” He doesn't remember.

When Suguru doesn't say anything else, Satoru looks to him, craving his attention—only to find him already looking back. His eyes are black in the shadow of his umbrella. “Finally clicked?”

The entryway to their dorm is silent when they step inside, but the storm outside swells with noise as rain beats against the windows. The hall is lit with lightning. Thunder follows a few moments after. This is the most they've spoken since Satoru found him.

Something is off. Maybe it's the way Suguru is standing, the way he's looking at him. It isn't so neutral as it was yesterday, or faintly relieved or crinkling around his eyes with I'm happy to see you, too, idiot. Satoru's heart is thrust into his throat, body snapping taut like threads on a loom preparing to be twisted into another, unrecognizable, shape.

Suguru is dangerous—potentially a few missteps away from bedlam—and for this split second Satoru is nothing but a body standing in the way.

They're staring. Suguru is damp from the waist down, and his suitcase is splattered with raindrops. The umbrella in his other hand drips steadily against the hardwood, once, twice, a third time.

Suguru's fingers let go of the umbrella, and Satoru slams into him with his palm.

It's all instinct, muscle memory, and despite the fact that this body still hasn't quite come to terms with the raw power Satoru possesses, it does a fantastic job of keeping up.

They're no longer in the hallway, no longer by the entrance. The room he's forced them to is familiar, but he's shoved Suguru against the wall and that’s all Satoru has eyes for.

“Masamichi is gonna be pissed if you trip those wards again,” he says, and the words well up with the same familiarity that his body had moved.

Suguru's eyes are wide, jaw tight. Both of his hands are on Satoru's arm, squeezing, but neither of them make an attempt to move. To hurt one another. I can't, Satoru thinks, emotions cresting and thrashing like waves in a storm. Not again, I can't.

But Suguru had been about to. He knows it. Satoru had been in the way once, and although Suguru— Kenjaku— hadn’t laid a finger on him, the overall purpose had been the same: remove him.

“Who the hell are you?” Suguru asks, gritted out between clenched teeth.

“I— huh?” 

It isn’t what he expects. Not at all. Really, he hadn’t expected anything at all—Satoru had felt for a single moment that his life was in danger, and that was enough for his body to move in response. Ready to protect itself without questioning why.

His fist is white-knuckled on the front of Suguru’s uniform, and he pauses just long enough to loosen his grip, turning the question over. He glances down at his own hand. This is awful suspicious, isn’t it?

So he smiles, letting go of Suguru and raising both of his hands. “You mean you don’t recognize your—”

A blade shoots forward, and Satoru stops mid-sentence when it comes to an abrupt stop an inch from his eye.

Satoru cocks his head to see around the blade, looking over the rim of his glasses. His smile isn’t so playful anymore. His heartbeat is a heavy tattoo in his chest, and he has no idea why. “You’ve barely looked at me since last night.” And now this?

Suguru’s knees are bent, arms up to protect his chest but fingers splayed in preparation for a fight. They both know he wouldn’t win, but Satoru has always liked that about Suguru—a master of defying expectations and playing coy.

Suguru says, “And you haven’t stopped.”

Of everything those words could do to him, Satoru is mildly surprised with his body for the way it warms. Embarrassment, or delight at being noticed? Both options are unacceptable.

Satoru rolls his eyes, batting at the blade and ignoring the way it shoots into the wall at his side, cracking through the wood. “Suguru—”

“Don’t,” Suguru says, “call me that.”

“What would you—”

“Who the fuck are you? How do you have his abilities?”

It’s harder than the first time, and again, it gives Satoru pause. He settles his hands on his hips, one brow cocked. “Is this a serious question?”

He knows it is, but he can’t help it. They’re talking, really talking, for the first time in a decade. A decade without riling Suguru up beyond belief, pushing him until they’re having a proper fight.

Thunder booms overhead again, and lightning flashes through the windows on one side of the room, throwing half of Suguru’s face into vivid color. He’s quiet, so quiet, but Satoru can see the flare of his energy. Can smell it. He would know it at the end of the world. Thunder, again.

“I wanted,” Suguru says, and the aggressiveness of his voice is gone, leaving him reedy, “it to be you.”

Satoru’s smile wavers, brows furrowing. His mouth feels dry. His heart is pounding harder—can Suguru hear it? He doesn’t understand how he couldn’t. His lips part, but no words come.

“Last night,” Suguru continues. “I wanted it to be you.”

But, Satoru thinks. It’s all he can make out. There’s a ‘but’ coming. He wants to say something. He should say something. Anything. Even the stupidest, least important thing on earth.

“But it’s not.” Suguru’s hand flicks, and there’s another blade. Shorter than the last, more of a dagger than anything else. Satoru knows he doesn’t need it. “I knew for certain this morning.”

Shit, Satoru thinks, lips raising at one corner in an awkward, caught smile. Shit. What did I say?

“You’re too quiet,” Suguru says, slipping to the side. Inching around Satoru. His eyes flick from top to bottom, searching for an opening. “You’ve been staring. Haven’t touched your phone… You couldn’t even remember Abiko’s name.”

Abiko. The window that had driven them today, for hours and hours and hours. If Suguru asked right now, Satoru wouldn’t even remember what haircut she had. You’ve been staring.

“You jump to me from Hokkaido, after complaining how you needed practice to even teleport across town?” Suguru blows a breath through his nose, shaking his head. “And you expect me to brush it under the rug just because you look like Satoru Gojo? ”

And then the warmth clicks: Satoru is flushed because Suguru knows him. Really and truly, inside and out. The same way Satoru had looked at Kenjaku, betrayed by his own eyes, and had known in his heart that it was not his best friend. Suguru is staring at him now in much the same way, and Satoru can’t even be bothered that he’s trying to kill him because it means he cares.

He’s smiling again, relieved, and he turns with Suguru, too pleased to take his eyes off him.

“There were—a billion things you didn’t do,” Suguru says, and the knife shifts to the side, catching the glare of a small lamp in the corner. Lightning flashes outside again, directly on Suguru’s face, and he looks just as dangerous as the blade in his hand. 

And Suguru says, “But I knew it wasn’t you as soon as you showed up last night, because Satoru would never have come for me.”

Satoru’s smile falls. Oh. 

Thunder booms, and a cup rattles on the nearby desk. The rain beats against the walls, wind singing as it rushes between the buildings, beating against the foliage. Blood is rushing in Satoru’s ears.

Oh.

The pain that swells inside him expands into every available space, pushing until his heart is forced up into his throat and weighing him down as it saps the energy from his muscles. It hurts, aches in a way that it hasn’t before. Suguru had abandoned him, left him behind. Forced Satoru’s hand for the final time. He had never accused Satoru of indifference.

It was Suguru . Suguru , that left; Suguru , that didn’t care; Suguru , who had moved on. Except he hadn’t. Satoru had always believed as much. Despite everything, there had never been a time where Satoru considered him a man capable of hurting him.

Has he, he thinks, drowning. He may as well be standing in front of the prison realm again, the way his thoughts are running away and dragging him along for the ride, always felt this way?

Suguru rushes in suddenly, knife up, and Satoru flinches. The blade, again, stops an inch away, and Satoru can’t move. Can’t think. Can’t breathe. What is this? He swallows around the lump in his throat, wondering if he’s actually choking on something.

Suguru attacks, and attacks, and just as he splays his fingers and starts to draw forth a curse, Satoru is in front of him in the blink of an eye. He grabs his wrist, but it isn’t remotely hard. Just holding.

“It’s me,” he says, and his voice comes out just as hollow as Suguru’s had. “It’s me, Suguru—”

“Don’t—” Suguru snaps, jerking his hand back. Satoru just catches it again.

“It’s me—”

“Let me—”

“Suguru—”

“You’re not—”

“Listen to me!”

And Suguru stops.

This isn't a fight. Suguru is moving under the pretense of practice, or focus, but he may as well be driving his fists into a wall, seeking nothing but the mindless relief of busted skin and bloodied knuckles.

This isn't a fight, and Suguru's hand trembles in Satoru's grip, fingers loosening. The knife clatters to the floor.

“It's me,” Satoru says, and looking at Suguru isn't enough, so he reaches up and tears his glasses off. The world, already vivid, becomes sharp and all-consuming. He can see every individual color in Suguru's eyes: the ambers, the umbers, the ochres, “Suguru. It's me.”

Lightning, again. For a brief moment there is nothing but horror on Suguru's face, and he seems so young. So lost. Afraid of himself. Were the bags under his eyes always this dark? When's the last time you slept?

“It's OK,” he adds, softer than he can ever remember being. This is not a voice he's ever had to use, but it's one he's practiced countless times in the darkness of his bedroom for the last ten years. Trying to make up for everything he never said.

Suguru's shoulders shudder with his breath. “You don't know anything.”

Satoru's brows furrow, but it's remorseful. “I know everything.”

Chapter Text

It's the hardest conversation he's ever had in his life.

Of course Suguru would figure him out. No one else on earth would have batted an eye, but Suguru sits with him in the car and decides he's a fake.

His reasoning still hurts.

Satoru lets go of him completely and, in a show of faith, releases Limitless. It's been years since he dropped it, and it leaves him feeling open, jumpy, naked, but he holds out a hand and when Suguru glances their fingers some of the tension leaves his shoulders. The knife, at least, is small enough that he would survive the wound. Probably.

It's Suguru's room that Satoru jumped to, decorated with lights and posters and nostalgic to a fault. Both of them are too anxious to look away from each other, but Suguru perches tentatively on the end of his bed and says, I don't understand.

So Satoru sits at the desk nearby, and works his mouth. His palms are sweating. After some struggle, he says the only thing that makes sense: I jumped through time.

And Suguru looks at him. Just looks. His eyes are sunken beneath the weight of his stress, and Satoru swallows, mouth dry. It's a ridiculous notion, a science fiction plot. Something to be pondered, but never considered.

Then the hard line of Suguru's shoulders breaks, and he smiles. It's weak, worn, but his tone is humored when he says, Of course you did.

That's it. There's no question of how, no doubt, no disbelief. Just Suguru dropping his head down and running his fingers up into his messy bangs and saying, You're Satoru Gojo.

-

It should make things weird, uncomfortable, tense. Maybe it does. Satoru has no idea because they don’t talk about it.

Suguru is quiet for the rest of the evening, and when he settles down for bed Satoru leaves him only because he can see the shape of his energy even in his own bedroom. Can smell him, even, on his things.

His room is…empty. It’s cluttered beyond belief, decorated with knickknacks and souvenirs on every available surface. His blankets are strewn about, mostly shoved down to the bottom of his bed where he never made it the last time he left. Clothes, too, everywhere. It looks like the bedroom of a teenage boy.

Satoru never stopped being messy, but after he showers he finds himself too on edge to sleep, so he starts to pick up after himself. Throwing out food he’s left open for—hopefully—only a day or two. Tossing all of his dirty clothes into the hamper. Putting pencils and pens back where they should be.

And every few seconds he stops to look up, checking to make sure Suguru is there. He’s in bed, still, and Satoru can see the rise of his body, the fall, watching him breathe. Asleep.

Satoru hasn’t slept since— When was it? The night before Shibuya. Technically twenty days ago, now. He’s worn thin, thinner than he can remember, but he isn’t sure he can close his eyes if it means Suguru could slip out of sight.

Twenty minutes passes, and then an hour, and Suguru still sleeps. The storm is still raging outside, but it doesn’t light up Satoru’s window the same way—the overhead light is on, in here. It makes it all incredibly bright, overwhelming.

When he runs out of things to clean he starts pulling things down off the wall. Old posters, pictures of random women he had found attractive. A thought niggles in the back of his mind as he folds them to throw them in the trash, I’d bet Yuji would like these. It gives him pause. He crumples them, leaving them in a heap at the bottom of the bin.

The light is in his eyes when he turns, and he squeezes them closed when pain lances through his temple. His head is pounding, and he grumbles, turning around in a circle to find his glasses. Fuck. He left them in Suguru’s room.

Liquid drips down from his nose, and Satoru reaches up, tapping at it. The pad of his finger comes away a shiny crimson. Lovely. So his body hasn’t quite acclimated to his power, yet.

A fitting drawback. Will he be punished if he uses too much cursed energy? He isn’t eager to find out, if this is coming from his Six Eyes alone.

Thankfully there is a tissue box, and he doesn’t think about why it’s so empty when he shoves both ends of the tissue into either nostril. He doesn’t have any bandages around, so he uses a winter scarf— I’ve been wondering where this went— and ties it around his eyes, sighing at the relief. It doesn’t impede his vision in any way, even on top of his closed eyes, but it takes away the sting of the lights.

Half of his bedroom is in a pile by the door in the early hours of the morning, and he feels like a predator stalking the dark hallways of the dormitories in his quest to find trash bags. He’ll drop it off at a thrift store or something. Start over fresh. Maybe he can make a dent in his bank account. Yeah, right.

He can’t shake the thoughts of Yuji, however, and then along come Nobara and Megumi. They’re too young to go after right now, but he’ll have to go fetch Megumi soon. It makes him smile. They’ll get to meet Suguru.

-

If he can keep a leash on him.

Satoru has almost entirely cleared out his room when he finally sits down to rest. Anxiety has him up all night, though, and as soon as the sun rises he trudges to the kitchen to make something to drink.

Suguru is rising as he starts brewing his tea, and he pauses, hovering over the mugs. There are only a handful. Not many people to entertain, here. Most of them are free use, except for Nanami’s, which has been nudged slightly to the side.

There is a single mug, however, that’s handmade clay. Matte, where the others are shiny and glazed. He remembers visiting Nagasaki with Shoko and Suguru in their first year, and Suguru had taken a liking to it. A hasami.

Satoru grabs it, and starts to steep the tea Suguru likes.

There’s a table here that he remembers sitting at with both of them, and he stands by the window, leaning against the sill and watching the rain. It isn’t storming anymore, but it’s still dark. He taps his finger against the glass, using blue to drag the rain around through the glass. He’s taking forever.

But he does come. Satoru turns around maybe a bit too quickly when the door slides open, grinning. “Morning!”

Suguru stops by the door, looking at him, and his brows draw ever so slightly together. There is a massive crevasse between them, and Satoru wants to jump across it and slam into Suguru.

A moment, and then Suguru walks to the kitchenette. “You left your glasses in my room, Satoru.”

“Didn’t wanna bother you,” Satoru says, taking the few steps over.

Their mugs are next to one another’s, and Suguru reaches out to grab a fresh one before staring at the hasami mug. His hand twitches, as though doubting itself, and then takes it, pulling it closer to himself. Furthering the distance.

“It’s summer.”

The scarf has snowflakes on it. He reaches up to touch it, smiling. “If you don’t like it, don’t be shy.”

Suguru side-eyes him, and then looks down at his tea. For a moment, Satoru thinks he might ask something, but he simply says, “Did you set a timer?”

Satoru’s mouth opens, silent, and then he smiles. Whoops. How long had he been standing there, staring out the window? It had felt like eternity for Suguru to come out of his room.

Suguru lifts the mug to his mouth, taking a sip, and purses his lips. He walks to the sink, pouring it out, and leaves the mug on his way out of the room.

-

They meet with Masamichi to go over their missions, and Satoru gets chewed out for some time, but he doesn’t fight it. They explain themselves, all the details, if anything unexpected happened, and Satoru looks over at Suguru when he hesitates. Two girls, he says, blamed by the humans for their cursed energy.

The two children we brought, Masamichi says.

Yes. Mimiko and Nanako. They were being abused by those m—by the humans.

Satoru glances over at him, and yet another thing clicks into place. Was this the turning point? His undoing? The final straw on the camel’s back? It would make sense. His sense of justice was always more intense, before it disappeared entirely. What drove you here?

Gojo, Masamichi says, all sense of irritation gone under the weight of concern, are you alright?

And Satoru smiles, because even though he’s spilled the truth to Suguru, he isn’t keen to give it up to just everyone. With great power comes great responsibility, sensei, and I don’t think any of us want my eyes to fall out of my head!

Masamichi just stares, unimpressed and understanding, but Suguru sighs next to him, and turns to the window.

-

Satoru tries to think of some way to talk to Suguru again, but nothing comes to him. Should they go out? Walk around? Get food? Drinks? Hang out by the river? Are these even interesting possibilities to someone who’s genuinely struggling with the desire for mass genocide?

By the time he thinks to ask, Suguru has already made it back to his room.

-

They don’t pass in the kitchen again. They don’t pass on the training ground—someone whisks Suguru away before Satory can make a move. They don’t see each other in the hall. By the time Satoru realizes Suguru is in the showers, he’s already packing up to leave, and Satoru thinks it would be a rather strange way to start a conversation regardless. Both of them in a state of undressed, lathered up with soap and beyond exhausted, Hey, listen, I know this is weird, but I care about you!

His head is pounding. So long without sleep, nothing but focus, focus, focus, and when the door closes to Suguru’s room for the second time today, Satoru just sighs, and dabs at the blood that oozes from his nose.

-

“Suguru.”

Suguru stops, head tilting up from where he was staring at the floor on his way to the kitchens.

Satoru has practically materialized out of thin air, having jumped from his own room in a fit of absolute desperation. He’s twitchy, nearly shaking from the intensity of his own emotions.

“Can we,” he says, stilted, “talk?”

Suguru’s energy swells, and then evens out again. His back is still to Satoru.

Satoru takes a breath. “Please, Suguru.”

Each second is its own individual eternity, and just as Satoru considers forcing his way in front of Suguru, he turns. 

His eyes are, somehow, even darker than they were the day before. “Don’t try to stop me again, Satoru.”

OK…, he thinks. He had expected some pushback,  but not so immediately. “I'm not trying to—”

“Yes you are,” Suguru says, spinning to look at him. There's fire in his eyes, but his stance is haughty, unshakeable. All too familiar. “You came here to fix what I did. Apparently I successfully set off the beginning of the end of humanity, and you defied the laws of physics to stop me.”

“That isn't—”

“Then what was it?”

“Will you let me talk?” Satoru snaps, frustrated. “Jesus, Suguru, you say that and you don't, for one second, think: Oh, wow, Satoru, that's actually really cool! You went back in time, just like we talked about when we were first years!”

Suguru's gaze hardens. “Did you come all the way back here just to remind me about the power imbalance between us?”

“Wh—” Satoru splutters, hands opening up. Offended right off the bat. “No.”

“I get it,” Suguru says, walking past him. Abandoning whatever craving he had, “you're strong. You're the strongest. Not a day has gone by where you haven't been self-absorbed enough to let anyone else forget it.”

The words strike hard and fast, and Satoru stares, mouth-agape. It isn't like he hasn't heard it before, but Satoru isn't like that anymore. Not really. Mostly. He's different, different enough that the negative aspects of his personality have mostly been remedied.

Suguru gets to his door, opening it, and for a moment the hallway is just like that crowded street. Satoru's hand twitches. If you want to kill me, then kill me. There would be a point to that. Satoru had been mad enough to, back then, and had nearly killed every single human in the street in a fit of anguish. If Satoru couldn't have Suguru, then neither could the world.

He lurches forward just as the door starts to close, slamming his palm into it. Before Suguru can move to force him out, Satoru pushes in.

“I don't know what you're going through,” Satoru says, honesty pouring out of him as the floodgates open. His eyes prick with heat, and he reaches up to drag the scarf off so he can see Suguru with every vivid detail of his face on display. So Suguru can see Satoru's eyes, and know he means every word. “I don't know what you're feeling. I don't know if—you’re hurting or just angry or what. You never told me.

“But that's why I'm here now, Suguru. That's why I'm here, right now . With you. I'm not even here to stop you. If I wanted to save people the way you think I do, I would've just killed you right then and there, and we both know I could've.”

Suguru has paused in the middle of his room, eyes wide and brows raised, and it's the first time he's listened. This is what Satoru couldn't manage that day in Shinjuku. Then, it had been Satoru standing there, at a loss, forced to watch Suguru leave him behind. Now Suguru is being forced to let Satoru stay.

Suguru swallows, and the distant expression that's been pasted to his face for the last two days crumbles. Satoru remembers walking out of a crowd, arms heavy with a masked body, and seeing this look on Suguru's face as he opened the doors before him.

Suguru's voice wavers. “I almost did something that would have ruined hundreds more lives than just the ones I would've taken, and you're saying you don't care?”

Satoru's priorities aren't straight. They never were. His anger at Suguru had never been a product of the decisions he made, it had been at the fact that Suguru was suffering for months and never told him. That he left Satoru behind, and shut him out. That he punched down and down and down to keep him away. Suguru felt that his decision was doing right by himself, and let Satoru's entire world fall apart around him.

“There was a time,” Satoru says, and he isn't sure where all these meaningful words are coming from, but he doesn't fight it, “when I asked you to be my moral compass, because I was so blinded by anger that I couldn't think straight. And what did you do?”

“I—it was—”

“What did you do, Suguru?”

“I told you not to,” Suguru says, weaker than before. He looks terribly small, as though the four inches between them have become a foot.

He looks small, and Satoru aches for him. When Suguru had confronted him, he had left Satoru behind. Now, contronting Suguru, Satoru steps forward, pushing the door closed behind him. Encouraging a feeling a safety, of belonging, with the careful way he pushes into Suguru's space. I won't leave you.

Satoru takes a breath, voice nearly a whisper when he says, “Let me be your moral compass this time.”

He expects obstanacy, again. A fight. Not the tremble of Suguru's hands, the red rimming his eyes. Sometimes, in the wake of everything they've been through, Satoru forgets that they are only children.

The breath that rattles in Suguru's throat is barely audible, but Satoru takes the last step between them, and wraps Suguru in his arms.

Have they hugged like this before? No, Satoru is certain he would remember it. It's only ever been an arm around shoulders, a hand on the small of someone's back, the brush of fingers against an arm. Offering security with a touch. They've spent years worrying over each other, and never once have they sat down and said I'm here. Always the strongest, never nourishing the place where that strength was founded.

Suguru's chest crumples around the hitch of his breath. “I don't know what to do, Satoru.”

Satoru squeezes his eyes shut, one hand tight on Suguru's back, and the other lifting to curl around the nape of his neck. Surprisingly, Suguru falls into him, head on his shoulder. He doesn't reach up to hug him back, doesn't touch him at all, just shakes.

How long, Satoru thinks, sighing. He's found the crack inside Suguru that's been widening in Satoru's absence, and has thrust his fingers inside it. Not just forcing it back together, or pasting a bandaid over top, but searching for the core of it. How long have you hurt like this, and smiled in my face?

It doesn't matter anymore. All that matters is the warmth of Suguru's skin, the softness of his hair, the shudder of his back. The fact of him at all, here, in Satoru's embrace.

But he's no good with words, so he just murmurs, “Then let me decide.”

Chapter Text

He sleeps.

At some point they end up in Suguru's bed, wrapped up in each other the way Satoru always imagined when he was alone in his own bedroom consumed by thoughts of missed chances and an indescribable need to be at Suguru's side. Suguru is in between him and the wall, hair a mess where it's thrown over Satoru's arm and eyes puffy, even in the low light of morning. Old tear tracks litter his cheeks, but the expression on his face is peaceful. His breathing is soft.

Satoru stares at him, in the half-light, surrounded by the smell of him. Warm, thick, tinged with the scent of his laundry detergent. He had never had this, in his other life. Not once. It seems like a crime.

-

Suguru wakes up, and this time when Satoru makes tea, he remembers to set a timer.

-

They move as a unit. Where Suguru goes, Satoru is sure to follow. Breakfast? Why not share? Class? They'll end up there together, anyway. Break by the treeline? Satoru will bring snacks—from his personal stash, of course. Training? Why not work against each other?

There is a danger to that. If Suguru does find out any way to negate Satoru's Limitless, or tackle one of his non-existent weak points, the tides could change drastically if he can't keep Suguru tethered. At the very least they both know now that Satoru can jump as far across the globe as he needs to, and all it would take is a bit of distortion for Satoru to start it all over again.

But he really doesn't want to. This is stressful enough as it is; having to do it three or five or ten more times would wear him down to the bone emotionally.

It's better than killing him. Anything is. Everything. As long as he gets to see Suguru—healthy and alive— at the end of each day, Satoru could die happy.

-

Shoko comes back two days later, and she senses the change but seems pleased enough. Satoru feels her gaze more, but she never speaks on it.

It's nice to see the two of you hanging out again, she says, flicking the butt of her cigarette. Her eyes are soft. I was starting to worry.

No need for that, Satoru exclaims, throwing his arm around Suguru's shoulders. Suguru rocks with the motion, and he rolls his eyes off to the side, but there's a tenderness to him that keeps Satoru smiling. I got my head out of my ass! Right, Suguru?

He shakes him a little, bending his head to grin in Suguru's face. Shoko looks between them, and Suguru's lips twitch, and then bend into a slow smile. He puts a hand in Satoru's face, shoving him off.

We'll see about that.

-

They don't talk. Again.

Another day and a half. They only split to go to their separate rooms, but Satoru always looks back. Always. One night he finds Suguru paused by his open door, staring at him, and Satoru smiles and waves and exclaims like a fool to hide the heat in his face and the slam of his heart. He feels like a schoolboy. He looked at me.

It could have almost been a dream that Satoru comforted him if not for the fact that they're attached at the hip again. The distance between them is massive, but it isn't expanding. It's just impossible to traverse.

Until Shoko decides it's been too long without a group hangout, and their proximity becomes forced.

Not that Satoru is complaining. They've been assigned new missions already, and he'd much rather walk the streets of Tokyo with his friends than mull over the next place he's being shipped off to.

Suguru looks…unsettled. The three of them chat on their walk, mostly Satoru and Shoko, but in the silence of the train ride he glances over and sees the tension in Suguru's body. The way his eyes flicker from person to person. Monkeys, he had called them, in Satoru's other life. He's pressed as close to the wall as he can manage.

Satoru watches him from beneath the safety of his scarf, and then slides closer. He has a few inches on Suguru, who looks up at him in surprise when Satoru places a hand on the wall and blocks Suguru into the corner by the door with his body. Effectively hiding him from view, and hiding everyone else from Suguru.

Shoko is on her phone, but Satoru wouldn't care even if she noticed as he murmurs, “Ignore them. They don't matter. It's just us.”

Suguru looks up at him, and then down, tension breaking as he sighs. He nods, eyes closing, and Satoru pretends he doesn't notice the way his stomach flips and flops at the lack of space between them and the faint pink on Suguru's face.

-

Neither Shoko nor Suguru have any real desire to shop, but Satoru has never been one to pass up an excuse to buy things, and they entertain him—as always. Is it a shopping addiction? Maybe. Is he beginning to realize, now that the rest of his world is falling into place, that this was one of the only real ways he was able to find a source of happiness after Suguru, even briefly? Definitely.

But Suguru is here now, where he wasn’t before, touching sweaters and sweatpants as though he needs anymore. Shoko is hanging off his arm, and she points idly at one that says ‘My people skills are just fine. It’s my tolerance to idiots that needs work’. She says, I think that would look good on you.

For the first time since Satoru found him, Suguru snorts, shoving at her, but she only rocks with it. If you ever find me in something like that, just put me out of my misery.

And Shoko laughs, which is, as always, a rather pretty sound. The laughter is nice, and warm, and Satoru smiles until he sees Suguru looking down at Shoko before laughing, too. The look in his eyes is kind and friendly, and Satoru feels jealous in a way he hasn’t in a very long time.

-

Is it fair of him? Perhaps not. There is an uncertainty between them, but he can’t blame Suguru. Satoru is an unknown. He’s shown up out of the blue and turned everything Suguru knew on its head. A version of him existed in this time, with all its flaws, and Satoru has popped his head back in and proclaimed himself fixed.

Fixed is probably not the best word to use. Clearly self-indulgence rules him, his one hubris.

That isn’t true, either. If there was only one, it would likely be Suguru himself.

They leave the first store without buying anything, and then the next, and in the third Shoko keeps pausing by a single pair of pants as Satoru walks up and down the aisle to watch himself walk in front of the mirror with a coat. He needs a new wardrobe, but fashion is not what he is used to.

“Want it?” he asks, pausing behind her.

Shoko stares, fingering the tag. “They would get ruined.”

“By what? Blood? Get them in black.” Satoru grabs the tag before she can see the price, smiling at her. “Don’t look at that.”

“If you wanna buy it for me, be my guest.”

“Alright!” he says, grinning, and grabs them from the rack with a spin. “Help me choose a coat, now!”

She scoffs, but follows after him dutifully. “Don’t you have enough clothes?”

His smile is real. Shoko had not changed in ten years, besides her silent animosity toward the higher-ups. Of course, they were always the same in that way.

Still, Satoru finds himself dancing around her a bit awkwardly, although he hopes she doesn’t notice. He wasn’t around for a long time, and although he spent a decade convincing himself it was because distancing himself from those he cared about would keep them safe, he knows deep down it was really because he was too consumed with the loss of Suguru to try to make their trio a duo. It was easier to break it all apart at the same time, and let things drift naturally.

He won’t let that happen again. Suguru will stay, and Satoru will pour his energy into the people around him rather than just himself.

“Suguru, get something,” Satoru says as they pass him on their way back to the winter section.

Their gaze meets, and he knows Suguru can’t see his eyes, but Satoru is staring at him. Drinking down the facets of his face that can be gleaned from perception alone, rather than his raw vision. It would break the perfect illusion if Satoru’s nose started dripping in the middle of the shopping center, so he keeps the blindfold on, despite the fact that he already misses seeing him properly.

And Suguru is looking at him in that way he has been. Familiar, knowing, but wild, beneath the veneer. An animal trapped in a corner, waiting for the cage looming overhead to drop down on him.

Satoru’s hand reaches out, muscle memory, but he stops himself before touching Suguru. His fingers curl, and he drops his hand. He smiles. “Or we can get food?”

Suguru glances over to Shoko, and then smiles, small. It’s the look he’s used to—what was pasted on his face for the last year before he left. Satoru knows everything, but Shoko does not. The facade must be maintained. “I can do food.”

Shoko links all their arms, and Satoru sighs through his own smile.

-

“Are you going to tell her, too?”

Satoru, who had been staring rather intensely at a bakery down the street, looks back at Suguru.

He’s staring forward, watching Shoko tap idly on her phone where she’s standing in line to order for them. The two of them are standing back by the tables in the small shop they’ve come into, and Satoru is leaning heavily against a counter while Suguru stands stiff at his side.

He swallows. Now? Seriously? “I wasn’t planning on it, to tell you the truth.”

“Did you plan any of this?”

“Uh,” Satoru says, succinct. “I was kind of pressed for time.” I wasn’t really thinking.

Suguru’s gaze stays stubbornly forward. “You can’t keep it from her forever. She’ll figure it out, too. If she hasn’t already.”

Satoru scoffs, frustrated at himself. Am I that transparent? “What’s giving me away?”

“Everything.” Suguru takes a breath, hands dipping into his pockets and posture slouching. The only thing Satoru thinks is, he’s more comfortable. “She heard about your massive jump from Hokkaido.”

“So?”

“So, you haven’t bragged about it once.”

Satoru’s lips part, and then close again. Ah. He rocks forward, hunched over in an unconscious mockery of Suguru. “Do I need to?”

Suguru glances over at him, and his eyes aren’t so walled-off. They flicker over Satoru’s posture. “You don’t want to?”

“Not really,” Satoru breathes, a chuckle. Embarrassed, that this is what he’s seen as. “Is that weird?”

“Yeah,” Suguru says, immediate. There’s an uptick to the corner of his lips, “yeah, it’s really weird.”

Satoru laughs, but it’s gentle. A secret, between them. “Sorry to disappoint.”

Suguru looks away from him, away from Shoko, to the window. People are walking by in droves, but when Satoru leans forward he sees there’s a real smile on his face. “I’m not disappointed.”

-

Shoko gets a call halfway through dinner that she’s needed back at campus, and both Suguru and Satoru complain, but she just smiles and waves off their worries. Satoru laments his half-eaten meal, starting to stand, but Suguru says, We’re gonna stay a bit longer.

Both Shoko and Satoru pause, looking at him, and before Satoru can think otherwise, he blurts out, We are?

Is he in trouble? Always, but this time he isn’t sure why. Maybe Suguru wants to talk more in depth, and although Satoru had been trying to initiate it for days, it just serves to make his stomach turn in knots. I’m not ready. He’d better figure out how to be.

Shoko leaves, and she throws them both a look that they ignore. Their late lunch is finished in silence, and Satoru feels pale and sweaty. It’s uncomfortable. All of these emotions are new to him, unwelcome and distressing. Suguru has all the power in the world over him; a single word could have him crumbling to his knees.

Say something, he thinks, as they eat. Say something, as they clean up. Say something, walking down the busy street. Say something, say something, say something.

Suguru turns them into a shop, and Satoru has just enough time to look up and see the name. It’s one of his favorite brands.

Suguru leads, and Satoru follows, close. He keeps people away with a nasty look when they get too close, aware of Suguru’s flaring energy. The village sits heavy in his heart, Satoru thinks. A missed opportunity that he could return to, but isn’t. For Satoru’s sake. I see you.

“You’re quiet again,” Suguru says, weaving through the racks of clothing and pausing in random places to look.

Satoru bends close, peering around Suguru’s shoulders. “I can sing, if you’re feeling lonely.”

A snort, but Suguru only shakes his head a bit. “It’s just…odd.”

“You’re making me self-conscious, here.”

“I didn't know that was possible.”

Suguru stops suddenly, and Satoru bumps into him, taking a step back. He looks around them, at the make-up and hair products. A woman walks by with her son, who points up and laughs, saying, Mommy, why does that man have a scarf on his face?

The mother flushes, tugging at him, and smiles awkwardly at the two of them. She seems minutely shocked when Satoru looks at her, waving her off before she can speak.

Satoru thinks of Shoko earlier, her laughter, Suguru’s smile, and stuffs his hands in his pockets, looking away. Overexaggerating his boredom. Hiding the jealousy. Pay attention to me, he thinks, brusque. Look at me. Shoko doesn’t even buy stuff here.

They stand for a moment as Suguru looks at everything, and Satoru rolls his gaze away beneath closed eyes and the thickly-wound scarf. The song changes on the speakers overheard, and he blows air through his lips in a bored raspberry, content with the level of noise he’s making.

“That’s more like it,” Suguru says, distracted.

“If you’re looking for something for Shoko,” he says, terse, “she doesn’t use this brand. And she only buys face wash and lotion.”

Suguru stops, looking back at him, and Satoru regards him with a half-moue. “You still remember that?”

“She never stopped.” He takes a step forward, toward the hair products, and runs his finger along the shelf, reading everything quickly. A few seconds pass, and he lifts up a bottle of shampoo. “And you use this. Right?”

The singer hits the chorus, and someone in the next aisle sings along under their breath. Suguru smiles a bit. “I do. Creep.”

Satoru barks out a laugh before he can think, surprising even himself. “I'll bet you don't know what I use.”

“Obviously not. With your luck, they probably discontinued your favorite products.”

They did, actually. “Fine—what did I used to use?”

Suguru hums, stepping forward in a slouch with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. Satoru gives him space, looking him over top to bottom. Recognizing the way the air around him has lightened. For a moment they're close enough that he finds that smell of Suguru, warm. One of the few things that never started to fade in his memory.

“It's,” Suguru stops by a bottle, brown, with a white label. He starts to pull it from the shelf, and Satoru gets a rush of superiority— wrong scent!— but Suguru pushes it back and grabs the one next to it, “this one.”

Satoru looks at it, and then crosses his arms, turning his head away. He sticks his tongue out, making a sound. “Whatever.”

Suguru chuckles, putting it back. “Sore loser.”

“It was a tie.”

“You're not acting like it.”

Before Satoru can start to complain properly, Suguru pulls something off a hook, and says, “Here.”

“Hm?” Satoru looks down at it, and takes it as it's offered.

It's a face mask. Black, simple, but the quality is good. It's meant for sleeping, of course, but the outside looks shockingly similar to the one he had as an adult. He runs his thumb over it.

“What…?” is all he manages.

Suguru is quiet for a moment. “Your eyes have been bothering you. And the scarf isn't exactly a fashion statement.”

Satoru looks up at him, stunned. Speechless. The bulk of his time here has had him desperately clawing for Suguru's attention, and now he's been stolen away for this private moment.

It's still attached to a cardboard hook, and Satoru's eyes burn just a little as he pulls the mask open to see the back. You didn't have to do this.

“Here,” Suguru says again, and his voice is softer as he crosses the space between them, and reaches up to remove the scarf from Satoru's head.

It isn't something he needs to do. Satoru is perfectly capable. He lets it happen anyway, though, and marvels at the softness of Suguru's skin for the brief moment it touches his temple. “Try it on.”

And then his eyes are exposed. He's ready, but it doesn't negate the sting of the overhead lights, the vibrancy of the colors, intensity of sharp lines as his mind tries to process it all at once. It will take time for his body to adjust.

He blinks, and there is Suguru in front of him, soft around the eyes. The eyebags aren't so dark from this angle, but Satoru's gaze is caught on his, a fish on a hook. Being reeled in, but all the more pleased for it.

They're close, and Suguru's eyes flicker between Satoru's, and for the first time in this life he's nervous. About everything: their proximity, the look on Suguru's face, the moment itself. Most of all that Suguru is able to clearly see the details of Satoru's eyes, and that, for some reason, is when it becomes too much.

He closes his eyes, and hates himself a little for it.

Suguru doesn't say anything. He lifts the mask, and Satoru takes it, affixing it to his face. Once it's on he splays his hands with a grin and says, “What's the verdict!” His cheeks are a little warm.

Suguru steps back, looking him over with a tilt of his head. He says, “You look good.”

Satoru's stomach knots in what is becoming a somewhat familiar manner, hot and nervous and beating with butterflies.

It feels like the start of something.

-

Satoru pulls Suguru into an alley on their way out of the store, and spirits them both away to the school so Suguru won't have to weather the train again.

-

Shoko is washing up when they get back, but they have tea ready for her when she's finished, and she smiles when she sees the two of them sitting together in the kitchen. Her hair is damp, her clothes loose and comfortable, and the first thing she says is, It was a really mushy cadaver.

Wonderful, Suguru says. Satoru just throws an arm around her and asks if she ruined her pants already.

She looks at him, at the mask, and then at Suguru. Did you choose it, she asks.

Suguru is drinking from his mug, but he glances up over the rim, and there's a twinkle in his eye. Satoru grins, heat flaring under his skin. He says, in a mock whisper, He knows how to color match, doesn't he?

Shoko just laughs, and says, He knows you.

Chapter Text

Suguru had been rather strange, at the end.

Satoru cleans up for bed that night in higher spirits than he’s been in some time, humming along to some song that hasn’t been written yet and admiring himself in the bathroom mirror. He looks good with the mask, as was to be expected. It’s a simple piece of cloth, meant to be comfortable while blocking all light and keeping pressure off his eyes.

But Satoru tilts his head, and looks at the side of his face, and thinks of soft fingers and a gentle smile and try this on.

It gives him pause, and he pulls the mask off, keeping his eyes closed. His face is warm. His stomach is warm. They’ve been doing that a lot recently.

Suguru had been rather strange at the end, and Satoru doesn’t quite understand how things fell apart the way that they did. He’s on the edge right now, had almost tilted all the way forward, but Satoru has caught him and trapped him in stasis.

That being said, there isn’t a very large dichotomy between the Suguru Satoru had known as a child, and the Suguru here, in this moment. They are both logical, respectful, thoughtful. Soft. So soft.

At the end Suguru had been manic, fueled by bloodlust and the idea of a perfect world that went against everything he used to be. Satoru had wondered on that for a long time.

He’s here now, he tells himself, sighing. Scrubbing the day from his skin under the burn of too-hot water. He’s here now, and he’s listening to me.

That doesn’t make the past hurt any less, however, and Satoru slams his hand on the knob, turning it higher.

-

“Where’s Suguru?”

Shoko pauses where she’s sitting on the floor, her breakfast in front of her on its little table. The birds are singing, and the sound travels unimpeded into the open room. An animal tramples through the foliage, snuffling.

She picks up her chopsticks. “Good morning to you, too.”

It isn’t a good morning. He had slept in, lulled into a false sense of security by the night’s small successes, and when he had awoken Suguru’s energy wasn’t in his room. Or the kitchen. Or sitting here, with Shoko, sharing a meal.

It’s somewhere further away on campus, and he had thought about chasing him down, but had figured it was much less suspicious to come here, to Shoko. “Where is he?”

She leans back, yawning. “You could pretend you aren’t favoring one of us.”

Satoru groans, falling to his knees, but it’s controlled. Almost graceful, with the way his power lowers him. “Shoko,” he says, pitiful, “please.”

“He’s with Yaga sensei,” she says, snickering at the display.

“Thank you,” he says, bowing at her feet like a peasant.

As he stands to leave, however, she catches his ankle. Her grip is firm, belying a greater strength than she lets on.

“Satoru,” she says, and it’s harder than he expects.

His heartbeat stutters. “Shoko.”

“Is he alright?”

It’s spoken softly, as though Suguru himself may be listening. He’s at least a mile away, and, from what Satoru can tell based on energy alone, he is preoccupied. A lump rises in Satoru’s throat.

“I don’t know,” he says, honest. Too honest, perhaps, for who he’s meant to be. His voice is quiet.

Shoko stares at him. The sunlight filtering through the trees breaks through the foliage, and when it hits her eyes they turn to honey.

“I don’t know what’s changed,” she says, and Satoru knows she means him, “but don’t leave him again. OK?”

It shouldn’t be his burden to carry, nor should he have to hold the stress of trying to fix all of this on his own. But Satoru wants to. He wants to take all of this on, he wants to lift the weight on Suguru’s shoulders, he wants to be the person that fixes everything. Once upon a time that was because of his own petty ideas of power; now it’s because Satoru knows he was the one who never offered strength when it was actually necessary.

He can’t save people who aren’t ready to be saved. All of the prowess in the world would do him no good if the hand he held out was never taken.

Things are different, now. He had shown up just when Suguru needed him most, and when he had taken Suguru’s hand, Suguru had followed him.

“I won’t,” he says, and it’s too somber for who he is, but Satoru can’t help every miserable day he’d spent mourning the loss of Suguru from crashing to the forefront. I need him. I can’t do this without him.

For a moment Shoko is not herself, either, but the one he had left behind, when she says, “You need each other.”

Satoru nods, a bit warm in the cheeks, and slips through space.

I know.

-

“Uh,” Satoru says, blank, “who are they?”

“This is Nanako,” Suguru says, and the hand that falls to the back of the young girl’s shoulders is so, so gentle. She’s small, five or six, and her tawny hair is cut into a neat bob.

The girl on Suguru’s other side looks almost identical, besides her darker, longer hair. Suguru lays a hand on her shoulders, too, and it gives him an almost fatherly energy. “And this is Mimiko.”

The girls he saved from the village. Satoru steps closer, and then sinks into a squat. “Isn’t Masa—Yaga sensei moving them somewhere else?”

One of the girls, Nanako, clings to Suguru's leg. He chuckles, hand cupping the back of her head when she turns her face into his pants, sniffling. She grumbles something wet that sounds like, don't wanna go.

“Until they can attend, yes,” Suguru says.

When Satoru looks up he sees he's smiling. Nanako hiccups a little. Mimiko clings to Suguru similarly, but she stares at Satoru.

“You said they were,” Satoru starts, but it runs off. Little ears are listening. It's only been a few days.

Suguru's mouth flattens into a line. “Their cursed techniques were starting to manifest.”

Nothing more needs to be said. Satoru hadn't seen the girls himself—he'd been too preoccupied with the presence of Suguru—but Suguru had helped free them, and helped them into the car on their way out, promising safety. He had been this gentle with them, then, too.

It softens Satoru, and he stands again, towering. “Small villages breed small-minded people.”

The words are spoken offhandedly, careless, but it's a slight even through his smile. An emotion flickers in Suguru's eyes, and when he smiles shortly after Satoru thinks it may be relief. Mimiko tugs at Suguru's pants, and he unconsciously strokes her hair. “Unfortunately you're right for once.”

“For once?”

Suguru chuckles, and Satoru feels a haughty satisfaction take him over. Mimiko tugs again. “What are you doing here, Satoru?”

“Wondering where you ran off to. I see why it was a pressing matter.”

“They're good kids.”

“They didn't deserve what happened to them,” Satoru says, just as Suguru's mouth opens to continue.

And Suguru pauses. That same interest crosses his face, a minor connection, but Mimiko tugs again and Suguru looks down at her. He smoothes her hair back again, fixing the back. Satoru's heart lurches, fluttering. “Are you alright?”

Mimiko stops, glancing at Satoru, who raises his eyebrows. She stares, and then turns her head to talk to Suguru. She's still watching. “Does that man have eyes?”

“Yes,” Suguru breathes, laughing.

Mimiko's eyes flick to Suguru, lips tight in a pout. “Why are they covered?”

“He gets headaches.” Suguru squats down next to her. “But he can still see.”

Mimiko looks at Satoru like he's an animal at a zoo, and he cocks his hips, hands falling to his waist. “Wanna find out if he's telling the truth?”

She's quiet, but as all children are, she is also honest. “Yes.”

Satoru smiles, reaching up and hooking his thumb into the mask to expose one eye. He lets the tension run on, and then pops his eye open. “Ta-da!”

“It's weird!” Mimiko says, expression twisted.

“Wh—” Satoru scoffs, flustered and mildly offended. He drags the mask back down, folding his arms. “ Maybe you should be sent off, kid.”

But Suguru bursts into a sudden fit of laughter, and maybe the insult isn't so bad.

-

Things change slowly. At first Satoru is stalking Suguru around campus, but he asks Satoru if he wants tea. Asks if he wants to spar again. Does he want to do homework together? Maybe they can play video games later, if Suguru isn't too tired.

It feels like they're children again. Proper children. Like they haven't fought for their lives, haven't been at death's door, haven't had their flesh ripped apart and put back together enough times that the sight of blood was beginning to lose its weight.

Now that Satoru knows what he lost, he can truly enjoy it. Each time Suguru sort-of-smiles or sort-of-laughs. When he leans his chin into his hand and reads about the new place he's heading off to on his mission. When it's late, and he says, nearly a purr, Satoru.

That, in particular, takes his breath away. Every hour lessens the tensions between them, and when they're all three sitting in front of the TV one evening, and Suguru leans in to make a joke about the movie they're watching, Satoru could forget they were ever at odds to begin with.

-

Suguru is sitting on the floor of the dining area, legs dangling over the side where the wall is open onto the forested part of campus, and he asks, into the silence, “Why did you come back?”

Satoru has only just made it into the room, one mug in each hand. They're both steaming—the air is cold, this late in the evening. It's raining, but it comes down almost delicately, imbuing the air with the scent of damp earth.

He works his mouth, easy mood dropping. It takes him a moment to find his feet, and walk forward again. “I thought I was being quiet.”

“Answer the question, Satoru.”

Fuck. It's that kind of mood. In the past few days, things had gone so smoothly that Satoru had started to forget that they had never really talked about anything that needed to be talked about. Satoru had been so focused on ensuring Suguru’s wellbeing that he had neglected to face the creature between them.

He stops at Suguru’s side, dressed in slippers and loose pajamas. Suguru is wearing a lounge shirt, but his uniform pants. The tea smells almost woody.

“To bring tea,” he says, in one last ditch effort to dance around the subject.

He smiles when Suguru looks up, but Suguru’s brown eyes are dark and unimpressed. Satoru’s smile bleeds away, and he sighs, letting go of Suguru’s tea. It drifts slowly to the ground, and Suguru looks at it, and then away again.

“You act like you aren’t happy that I’m here,” Satoru says, falling back. His body also defies gravity, catching in mid air as though he’s been supported by a chaise.

The rain patters against the earth, tinkling in little puddles. Suguru is tense. “I’m not.”

“You are.”

“Why should I be?” Suguru asks, turning to look at him again.

Satoru pauses, mouth at the lip of his mug. He can smell the sugar cubes he’s dropped into it—at least seven. “Because I’m your favorite person?”

There’s a pause, and Satoru’s gaze flicks over to Suguru from under the blindfold. Suguru’s lips are parted. A second passes, and then two, and Satoru looks at him properly, stomach knotting with warmth.

And then, again, Suguru looks away. “How am I supposed to be happy knowing you only came back to stop me?”

Satoru’s jaw clenches. “You aren’t a dog on a leash, Suguru.”

“I may as well be, the way you’ve been trying to keep me at your heel.”

That creature between them writhes, brought to life by the influx of tension, and Satoru is very aware of why non-jujutsu users seem to create curses just by breathing. He lowers his tea, staring out at the forest. “I’m not trying to control you.”

“You came here to save people,” Suguru says, and Satoru sighs very audibly, letting his head loll back in clear irritation. They just had this conversation. “It didn’t matter where I sat in that plan, as long as you didn’t let me finish what I started.”

“You piss me off,” is all Satoru says. He takes a sip of his tea, but it’s scalding, and he smacks his lips.

Suguru’s energy flares, unstoppered. “Why are you here, then?”

You’re such a child, sometimes. Every fight they had is parsed through in a single moment, all over stupid, meaningless things. All because they never listened to each other. All because Satoru never let himself communicate properly.

“Because I wanted to have a reason to come sit with you,” he says, and he’s angry enough that the words come easily. He isn’t angry enough that they don’t still make his throat close up. “And you like tea this time of day. Especially when it rains. Green tea in the morning; black tea at night, or in the morning if the weather is bad.”

Suguru’s energy is abruptly swallowed, but he doesn’t move besides to stiffen somewhat. Yeah, Satoru thinks, haughty. Frustrated, I listen. I pay attention. Only to Suguru. Nothing else had ever mattered.

The trees rattle in the breeze, and Satoru abandons his tea to cross his arms behind his head. The tea stays stubbornly where he had been holding it, suspended. It's a struggle to find the words.

“We talked about this,” he says.

Suguru takes a breath, and Satoru can't place the emotion behind it. “Not really.”

Satoru sits up. “What do you want me to say? You want me to spill every little detail? Life was hell without you, Suguru, and it never stopped falling apart after you left. You—you said—”

You said you couldn't live in a world like this. Except he didn't, or he hasn't yet. Satoru grits his teeth, crossing his arms and tapping his foot against the air. The scenery before them no longer seems so appetizing.

It's quiet, for a time. The birds are quieted for the night, but the frogs are croaking, the crickets chirping. Suguru shifts, looking down at his tea. After a moment he slides his palm over the ceramic, and lifts it.

“I left you,” he says, and his voice is soft. A question.

It burns, and Satoru works his mouth when bile rises in his throat. “You were planning to.” Again.

Another moment. “And you didn't stop me, then?”

“I wasn't there.”

“I mean after.”

Satoru closes his eyes, but nobody would know. It doesn't help the world from being in high definition before him. “They wanted me to kill you.”

Suguru wraps his fingers around the mug, cradling it. “But you didn't.”

“No, Suguru. I didn't.”

“Why?”

Satoru is sitting on the steps, mourning the lose of something integral to his person, and Masamichi steps down beside him, Why?

“Are you seriously asking me that?” he asks, and for a moment both of Satoru's worlds perfectly align.

But Suguru is not Masamichi, and he looks back at him. There's a hesitant curiosity to him. “Yes.”

Satoru looks at him. He feels small, young, delicate. There are only so many times he can be broken and put back together, and this conversation is edging into something dangerously vulnerable. “The world wasn't the same without you.”

“The world wasn't the same with me,” Suguru says, and even though there's a faint quirk of his lips, Satoru only sees his dead colleagues and hundreds of slaughtered humans.

This is where Satoru makes a joke. Where he leans back and smiles and says You're pretty bloodthirsty for a high school student! But Suguru's gaze is a deep brown, his skin soft and pale and bruised under the eyes, and Satoru says, horribly honest, “You were everything.”

Suguru stops smiling. His eyes widen, brows lifting, and the waver of his energy is nearly attractive, a swell and pull. His lips part, but he doesn't say anything.

Satoru just stares. “That's why I came back.”

It feels good to say out loud, a secret kept for years let out alongside a different truth. You couldn't live in a world like this, and I couldn't live in a world without you. He had tried. It wasn't worth it. 

He had taken Suguru out of it. What would have happened if he had ran with Suguru? Stolen him away? Hidden him, until he was healed and sobered and remembered that Satoru was more important than any of his disillusionments with the jujutsu world? He remembers that dark alley, heart lurching so hard in his chest that it had nearly come up his throat but had shoved up with it, I loved you.

“Enjoy the tea,” he says, terse, and he slips back to his room before Suguru can speak. I know I made it right.

Satoru's suspended tea, forgotten, spills on the wood.

Chapter Text

Suguru knocks on the door that night, and Satoru ignores him.

The next morning he waits until Suguru is gone to go to the kitchens, and disappears before he can come back. It's petty, childish, and as Satoru sits alone in his room snacking on a half-stale danish he thinks he never matured much at all.

Shoko swings by while he's mulling about some actual homework they're meant to be doing, and when she knocks he calls her into his room. She only leans against the doorway and says, Did you guys fight again?

Not really. It hadn't been much in the way of complaining. Still, Satoru turns over onto his belly, mid-morning sun spilling over his back, and says, He's being stubborn.

And you aren't? Shoko's brows lift. You're both sulking.

And Satoru looks up, interest written in every inch of his body. He's sulking?

Shoko snorts, starting to close the door. Go see for yourself.

-

Satoru doesn't even have time to go looking, because early the next day he wakes to Suguru's energy missing from down the hall.

He finds it moments later, on the other side of campus, surrounded by a few figures he doesn't care about. Satoru dresses in a rush, and just as they start to walk toward the pick up area he teleports over there.

Suguru is just in front of him, and when Satoru lays a hand on his shoulder he doesn't even jump. “Where are we heading?”

Suguru looks back at him, hair pulled up neatly. “Finally giving me the time of day?”

An immediate rush of annoyance. “You were pissing me off.”

“I tried to come talk to you.”

“You've done nothing but shut me out since I came to find you.”

Satoru is smiling, casual, and Suguru's expression is as placid as ever. Yet both of their energies are roiling beneath the surface, and a few more words might urge it into spilling over. It's been a while since they've fought properly. And you're the only one who could ever keep up.

“Satoru—”

But the conversation is already driving itself somewhere he isn't ready for, and he shoves his hands in his pockets, smiling at the window they're walking towards. He's at the driver's side of the car, keys in hand.

“Where are we heading?” Satoru asks, leaning forward with a grin.

The man blinks, glancing to Suguru. “Geto is going on a mission near Okinawa—”

Standing on a beach, shirt open to the cool summer breeze, surf lapping at his ankles. Exhausted, and knowing he had another night to keep this up. Suguru, at least, is at his back. Watching just as raptly. And there, dark hair glossy under her sunhat, Riko—admiring a shell with Kuroi.

When he turns, Suguru is not looking at Riko, but at him.

—Satoru whistles, looking at Suguru, who regards him with a flat look. His heart is fluttering, but he bears it with a smile. “That's pretty far!”

“Yes,” the window says, clearly discomforted by both Satoru's energy and his presence. “It's going to be a rather long trip—”

“So everything's in order?” Satoru says, cutting him off again. He throws his arm around Suguru. “Wonderful.”

The air is whipping around them, then, the sunlight blistering in its consumption. They're clear up in the sky, air freezing, and Satoru is grinning with such vigor that it's growing uncanny. The world is spread out below them, a living map, and Satoru holds Suguru easily with that arm around his shoulder.

“Ah,” Satoru says, smile dropping. Suguru makes a panicked sound, grabbing for Satoru with a single hand before gathering himself. He's still stiff. “I forgot to ask where the hotel was…”

“Satoru—” The wind blusters them, and Suguru recoils, bangs fluttering around his face. He coughs, hand gripping at Satoru’s shirt.

“Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure I have my card!”

“Satoru!”

He stops, looking at Suguru. The sun is too bright for the bags under his eyes, and it makes him look younger, smoothed out by clear air and daylight. Satoru’s eyes widen, heartbeat kicking up. Oh, he thinks. Oh.

“Put us down!” Suguru shouts, over the sound of the wind. “Someone is going to see!”

It jerks Satoru out of his head, and he snaps to attention, smiling again. “Sorry!”

The world shifts around them, and they’re standing in the first place Satoru thinks of—their old hotel, from eleven years ago. One year ago. Once, Satoru had come back here, and found it repainted, the style inside changed to reflect modern tastes. It looks kitschy, again.

He withdraws himself, shoving his hands into his pocket because his palms have started to sweat. The image of Suguru, under the sun, flashes behind his eyes again, and his stomach beats with butterflies. Stop. Stop, stop, stop. “Forgot we were all work and no play.”

Suguru is staring at the hotel, and the color that had found his face a thousand feet above them is lost again. Perhaps because of the situation. “Why here?”

His voice is flat, gaze somewhere else entirely. Satoru swallows. He misses the days when he ran about with abandon, careless and knowing Suguru would always be at his side. And then he wasn’t, and Satoru feels the loss of his presence as a deep apprehension creeping about under his skin, driving him towards people-pleasing tendencies.

Satoru starts to walk toward it backwards, watching Suguru. “Doesn’t the school have a contract with them?”

It’s true. An easy cop-out. Suguru looks at him, withering, and the fluttering in Satoru’s belly becomes thick and slimy. He doesn’t stop smiling.

-

Satoru has enough money for the entire hotel, but the receptionist takes one look at their uniforms and hands over the room key. The single room key.

Didn’t have much on you, huh! Satoru says, when they get up to the room. It has two beds, and an expensive view of the beach front. He feels nauseous, remembering everything that’s come to pass here. It looks just like the room they had before, all those years ago—last year. He passes his fingers over the back of the chair in the common area, and remembers the way it felt to sit in it, awake all night. Waiting.

Suguru has nothing to set on the table besides his phone, and he doesn’t look at Satoru as he says, Everything was packed in the car to take to the airport. 

Whoops. Satoru grins at him, bent over where his hands are shoved in his pockets again. Should he run back, or should they go shopping?

Neither. Suguru gets a quick drink, and says he’s going right to the area he’s been dispatched to.

-

Satoru, of course, follows him.

It's a simple dispatch. Years have passed since the last time he actually went on a mission with Suguru, however, and Satoru watches him closely. His phone has been buzzing all afternoon, and he knows it's Masamichi, but he doesn't care. Probably complaining about Satoru's actions. Again. I'm an adult, he thinks. He isn't. 

Suguru has it handled, of course. He doesn't speak on Satoru's presence—doesn’t pay him much mind at all. Doesn't even look at him.

But Satoru sees. He sees the way Suguru's entire body recoils as he pushes the curse's energy past his lips. Sees the way his nose scrunches. It's all so very subtle, and Satoru had noticed it all before, but he's watching now—he’s seeing it. He had thought Suguru didn't like it, and that was all. It's disgusting, he had told Satoru once.

But Suguru rolls his jaw, after, and that distant look in his eye is back. Far away, in a valley, standing at the doorway of a hut on the edge of a forgotten village. Making a decision that will bring about the beginning of the end.

-

They're strolling back to the hotel when Suguru says, so quiet Satoru almost doesn't hear it, “Take me back.”

Satoru pauses, hand around a can of sprite. He had bought one for Suguru, as well, but he's only holding it; unopened. 

“You wanna go back to the hotel?” Satoru asks, glancing up at the sky. The sun is setting. He has a feeling he knows what Suguru means. “We should grab some clothes—”

“To campus,” Suguru says, and it's in that same flat tone.

The drink is no longer appetizing, and Satoru lowers it to his hip with a sigh, tapping it against his thigh. Swirling the contents. “Already? Don't you wanna see the ocean—”

“We've seen the ocean here, Satoru.”

This again. Satoru purses his lips. He wishes he could read Suguru's mind, sometimes, and he looks the other way, grinding his teeth. Why can't things just snap back into place? Why can't he know exactly what to do? Why can't Suguru make it easy?

His head is pounding. From the stress of the situation to the strain on his body, which is only just starting to catch up to the power he's exerting. Trying not to, really, to avoid these situations.

Suguru isn't making it easy, but neither is Satoru. He's trying, in this moment, not to be selfish. To not only think about what Suguru is feeling and how to fix it, but why. Why is he feeling this way? Why does Satoru want to fix it? So this will just stop. It isn't a good enough reason.

The crowd is thick on this strip, and Satoru grabs Suguru's arm, teleporting them both back to their room in the hotel.

It turns the pounding of his head into a sharp throb, and he drops his gaze, hands up before Suguru can even think to speak. Trying to think.

“I know you wanna leave,” he says, and it already sounds like I'm not gonna let you. Another lance of pain behind his eyes.

Suguru's expression is stony, and he shakes his head minutely, stepping around Satoru. “Do what you want.”

Weren't we just friends? he thinks. and it's almost spit out. It isn't conducive. It isn't a healthy way to ease into what's going to be a difficult conversation. A conversation with a resolution. We were, until I decided to run away. Just like always.

Now Suguru, walking away. They were at the cusp of something, and the crack had widened enough that they're slipping apart again.

“Suguru, please—” stay, I want you to stay with me.

The word is garbled when he coughs, and it's wet. There's a tickle in the back of his throat, and Satoru coughs again, lifting a hand to cover his mouth. Suguru stops, looking back at him.

Satoru's nose is bleeding. Again. It's a heavy pour, and he only recognizes it's dripping down his throat when he sees the splatter on his hand. He's getting lightheaded.

“Satoru,” Suguru says, and the tone change is sweet as honey to Satoru's frayed nerves. The worry, the genuine care. Yes, yes, yes, he thinks, greedy, as Suguru walks back to him.

“Oh,” he says, useless. He looks around the room, hand to his face, but the world is blurred. “Shit.”

“Hey.” Suguru is there, then, and he presses tissues to Satoru's hand where blood is dripping past his palm. “Come here, stop— stop moving—”

“—’s bleeding,” he mumbles, hands moving to grab the tissues and only succeeding in smearing blood over Suguru's fingers. The pounding is worse. A jump from Tokyo to Okinawa, then a jump what should be an hour away, and then back, and then to the hotel. He feels a little nauseous.

Suguru makes a sound, frustrated and worried, and presses the tissues into Satoru's face, wiping. “I noticed.”

The attention feels good, but Satoru accidentally coughs again and it dots his hastily raised palm with fat globs of red. It's a rare thing, for him to bleed in any capacity. This, by far, is the most uncomfortable. His head is spinning.

“What happened?” Suguru wipes, presses, but the flow is steady, and he tosses the tissues onto the table, leaving to grab more. “Is this—is it because of the time travel?”

It sounds ridiculous, to hear out loud, and Satoru smiles even though his skull feels like it might split in half right around the eyes. Blood dribbles over his lips. “Yeah. Crazy, right?”

Suguru makes him sit on one of the beds, and when the bleeding stops he lays, legs dangling. His face is sticky with dried blood, but the pain is intense and Suguru's fretting is worth every second.

Once he's certain Satoru isn't about to pass right in front of him, Suguru calms, although he moves with some irritation. He brings a wet rag back, and lays it, cool, over Satoru's forehead. Satoru sighs. His lips are sticky when they part.

For once, the splitting is enough that Satoru isn't perceiving the world around him, but just his own body. The blindfold, and the rag, block out everything else. He is on the bed, air conditioner blowing at his side, chest lifting with his breaths. Suguru is here. Peace, at last.

And then Suguru sits, and sighs, and Satoru doesn't even have to look to know he's scrubbing his hand over his face.

“Mad that I got you to stay?” he asks, goading. Utterly and completely pleased with himself. His words still sound a bit thick.

The air conditioner clicks as it shuts off. Suguru sighs, “I don't like seeing you bleed.”

There's an ache there that steals away Satoru's smile, and he sinks into the bed fully. Hurting in his own way.

“I didn't want you to go,” he says, and it sounds stiff. There's a tightness in his throat that he's straining against, forcing the words out with all the effort of Sisyphus; pushing the lump in his throat like an uphill bolder. “I'm sorry I'm…bad at communicating.” Or whatever. It's another battle not to add that.

Suguru's bed shifts. Turning, maybe, to look at him. “Here?”

“Back.”

A sigh. “You ignored me all day yesterday.”

“You keep accusing me of holding you down!”

Satoru sits up, and the rag falls off his face and into his waiting hand. He's frowning, when he looks at Suguru, the outline of his soul a lovely purple. His energy is even.

They stare at one another, and then Satoru cracks, reaching up to push the meat of his palm into his eye where it hurts the worst. They're supposed to be talking. Not fighting. Not fighting. I can do this. “Sorry.”

Suguru must know he's trying, because his voice is softer when he says, “I'm sorry, too.”

It's quiet in the room after that, and Satoru drops his hand. They're facing each other, but not quite looking. He tugs at a loose thread in the rag.

“Why?”

“You first,” Suguru says.

 Satoru hates him. He loves him. The corner of his lip tilts up. “For…not being there when you needed me. For being here now and,” he shrugs, “still not knowing how to be here, anyway.”

Suguru shifts, and they’re closer, now. There’s two feet between their beds, and with their legs out it’s barely a half a foot between them. The only sound is the buzz of the refrigerator around the bend. The world is them, and them only.

“I’m sorry,” Suguru says, eyes down, “for not giving you the benefit of the doubt. I thought—you didn’t understand.”

“I don’t,” Satoru says, honest.

Suguru breathes through his nose, humored. “I thought you didn’t care.”

The quiet is quickly becoming oppressive, in the wake of all this sincerity. Satoru’s heart is slamming, face warm. He doesn’t want to talk like this anymore, and he wants it more desperately than he’s ever wanted anything.

“I,” he says, pushing through the bulwark around his heart, “always cared.”

It might be the most forthright thing he’s ever said in his life. He rubs his palms on his thighs, tapping his fingers to hide how sweaty his palms are, how nervous he is.

He takes another breath, and his voice is awkwardly small when he adds, “About you.”

Every second of silence is its own personal hell, and Satoru’s cheeks burn. Too much? Not enough? I don’t want to lie. He doesn’t want to pretend anymore, either.

Suguru’s hands are resting on his own thighs, and his fingers twitch. “You’re not very good at showing it.”

Fuck, he thinks, shame hitting hard and low. He takes a breath through his mouth to fight off the bile in his throat, and shakes his head. Agreeing. Unable to say it out loud.

“But,” Suguru continues, and Satoru looks at him from under the blindfold, thankful of the way it hides most of the emotion on his face, “I know, now.”

Satoru’s lips part, waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it doesn’t, he says, “You do?”

Suguru sighs, but he’s smiling. “I do.”

Satoru nods. Subconsciously craving his approval. Yes, he thinks, and he wants to say it out loud but the words don’t come. Yes. I do. I do. So much. 

“You came back.”

“I did,” Satoru says, and the words flow.

“For me.”

“Yes.” Even faster, now. Look at me, see me.

“After you,” Suguru says, and Satoru sees that he’s trying to meet him halfway. Trying to encourage him to talk, in a way that’s comfortable. Showing him that he’s safe, here,with Suguru, “suffered. From what I did.”

The blindfold is tight on his eyes—closed—but heat still pricks there. Pooling in the corners. He has to purse his lips to stop the wobble. Hearing it out loud is a different beast entirely. How long? How long had he gone to bed, wishing to hear this? To be validated, by the very person who hurt him in the first place.

The first day after hearing Suguru left. The second, when he had come to terms with the fact that he was expected to kill Suguru. The week after, standing on that busy street in Shinjuku—fleeing to an empty alley with his arms so tightly around himself that he bruised his own skin, wondering why it hurt so badly and not understanding how it was possible for someone else to cause such pain without even looking back.

Every year after, every day, every night, smiling because if he didn’t people would start to wonder if Satoru was ever the strongest at all.

“I kept thinking,” Satoru says, and there’s a warble there. Weakness, plain and simple, “if I waited long enough, you would come back. That you would—that you would miss me as much as I missed you.”

He makes a sound, foreign—a hiccup, of sorts. A cough. A laugh. His throat is thick, his words wet. The blindfold is starting to dampen. Suguru stops smiling, sitting forward. “Satoru—”

“But you didn’t.” Now that he’s started, he can’t stop. “They told me I needed to kill you, and I couldn’t. And you kept—gathering curses, and didn’t even try to hide your residuals from me. And I just,” he makes a motion with his hand, “kept pretending.”

“Satoru—”

“And then,” he’s smiling. Why is he smiling? “you came back . And I still couldn’t kill you. Until I didn’t have a choice. And you smiled—”

“Satoru,” Suguru says, and he says it so sweetly. A balm, to each of Satoru’s aches. “Look at me.”

So Satoru does. Suguru leans forward, hands cupping Satoru’s face. His palms are callused, his fingers strong—yet they lay softly. Satoru’s smile wavers, and his lip wobbles, and he feels very, very small.

“Ten years,” he whispers, and the anguish is there, “without you.”

They’re close. Satoru can see every detail of Suguru’s face, every outline, every curve of his soul. He’s beautiful, in the lamplight. Softened by his youth, hair pulled back besides the fall of his bangs. You left. You left and I didn’t even chase you.

He sees the curiosity, the surprise, in Suguru’s eyes. They hadn’t talked about the details. About the time, about what Satoru had done in his absence. Perhaps he had thought it had only been a year, or a few months. Not a decade of slow horrors.

“That was before,” Suguru says, in that gentle and easing way.

“Please just stay, Suguru,” he begs, and his voice cracks.

He’s crying. Really and truly, finally splitting right down the center. Suguru’s fingers shift on his cheeks, and then his thumbs stroke. He sighs, and there’s a pause, before he murmurs, “I will, Satoru.”

“I can’t—”

“I will,” he says, again, and there’s more surety to it.

It feels good. Great. Amazing, to be comforted. Was this always so easily accessed? So easily received? All he had needed to do was ask, and Suguru would have done this? For a moment Satoru mourns for everything he didn’t do, but Suguru murmurs something in his warm voice and Satoru sniffles.

Suguru’s thumb shifts, pushing up, and Satoru stares at him when he hooks it in the bottom of the blindfold. “Let me look at you.”

Satoru’s skin iis wet, tacky, but he makes a face, starting to pull away. Self-conscious. “Suguru—”

But Suguru still pulls the blindfold up, and then off. Satoru’s eyes stay stubbornly closed, embarrassed of himself. His feelings. The amount of tears. The ruddiness of his cheeks.

Suguru presses against his jaw, urging Satoru to face him again. “Open them.”

“Suguru—”

“Come on, ‘toru.”

The breath rushes out of him at the nickname, and all of the tension leaves him in an instant. Powerless to everything that is Suguru.

He sniffles again, eyes fluttering open. The world is thrown into overwhelming vividity, and he squints for a moment at the rush of light. It makes the pounding of his head worse.

But there is Suguru, closer to Satoru than he’s ever been. Inches from his face. Every fleck of honey-gold in his eyes on display. Every eyelash fanning each time he blinks. The slight uneven tilt of his smile.

“I—” love you. It doesn’t make it all the way out.

Suguru’s smile reaches his eyes, sharp on the one side. He says, “Look at you. Crying over me. Bloody because of me.”

Satoru scoffs, eyes rolling away with the rush of irritated embarrassment. His lips twist in a scowl. Seriously? “Fuck y—”

But Suguru tilts his face back a second time, and kisses him.

There’s not even a second of hesitation before Satoru’s eyes flutter closed, allowing Suguru the freedom to do whatever he pleases. He’s frozen in place, pliant, heat flaring under his skin. Suguru’s breath is a butterfly’s wing against his cheek. His lips are soft. The world is this.

It ends faster than he’s ready for, and Satoru reaches up without thought, tangling his fingers in the front of Suguru’s shirt. His eyes are glossy when they open, lost in the feeling blooming in his chest.

Suguru’s cheeks are dark. He looks at Satoru with apprehension that lingers only a fraction of a second, and then he smiles again. Giddy, almost. Boyish. The hand on Satoru’s cheek is trembling just so.

The air conditioner turns back on with a click, and Satoru jumps. Suguru smiles.

Satoru flushes, belated, and stumbles over his words. Nothing makes sense. There’s nothing to say. He’s brimming with questions. “Why—”

“You dropped your technique,” Suguru answers, too fast to be normal. He doesn’t stop touching Satoru. Satoru doesn’t stop touching him. “You’ve done that, recently, when you—want me close.”

Satoru’s face burns. I had no idea. Even subconsciously, his body had yearned. “Oh.”

Suguru’s smile grows, and grows, and then he laughs. It’s happy, high, welling up from somewhere deep inside him. It’s just that, in a world like this, I can’t laugh from my heart at all, he had said. It’s the most wonderful sound in the world.

“You—” Suguru starts.

“You’re—” beautiful, Satoru says, in the space he’s been left between Suguru’s laughter.

“You came back for me.”

Satoru’s face is ruddy and wet, his eyes still stinging, his lips and chin still tacky with blood. Yet he feels like something special, something to behold, and he breathes, “I always will.”

They don’t talk, as they often don’t. They don’t question it, or wonder. Don’t hesitate. Satoru’s hand is fisted in the front of Suguru’s shirt, and when he tugs him back, Suguru is smiling against his mouth.

Chapter Text

Once, when they were younger, Haibara had asked if he liked anyone.

Satoru hadn’t entertained the question for very long. Haibara had had stars in his eyes when it came to Suguru, an eagerness to prove himself, and Satoru only knew as much because he was jealous.

Not because Haibara had chosen Suguru regardless of the fact that Satoru was the strongest—and he was. The strongest—but because Suguru gave him the time of day. More than the time of day. He coached Haibara, helped him learn to be a better fighter, encouraged him to push himself. He smiled, at Haibara, and laughed. 

The question followed him through his classes, through dinner, all the way until he was laying in his bed.

What did it matter if he liked anyone? He had better things to focus on. Getting stronger, perfecting his abilities.

And then what? It had stopped him. What would he do after that? What was his overall goal? Strength was everything. Except when it wasn’t.

And then he had thought, It doesn’t matter. Suguru will be there. They would figure things out—everything would be OK so long as they were together.

Maybe Haibara was onto something.

-

They stay in Okinawa.

“I would say you can drop your technique,” Suguru says, stretching out on his beach towel. The sun is warm, the ocean breeze cool. He has a pair of sunglasses on, “but you figured out how to keep it up all the time now, didn’t you.”

“Mhmm,” Satoru hums, only hearing half of it. He’s on his side, face propped up on his elbow. Staring.

They’re both in swim trunks, and Satoru has a proper shirt on, loose. Suguru has a button up, but it’s only undone down to his mid chest. His hair is undone, spilling around him into the sand. His chest rises with his breaths.

“Do you want to swim?” Suguru asks. His eyes are closed, and he starts to smile.

“Mm.”

Satoru’s eyes rake over him, admiring him openly. Not even pretending shame could be on the table. He thinks of that first night, watching Suguru dress and trying not to. He wonders if Suguru would let him push the shirt aside to ogle a little.

The waves burst along the shore, pushing the surf up, and children run past, screaming. It devolves into laughter. Suguru takes a breath, and then sighs. Satoru stares at his mouth. He knows what his lips feel like, now, knows intimately the way they brush against his own. How Suguru moves into him, just so. Satoru had been too nervous to kiss him this morning, when they had woken up, but he’s been thinking about it ever since.

“Should we get shaved ice? It’s getting a little warm.”

Satoru moves his head. “Mhmm.”

Suguru sits up, and his grin shows off all of his teeth. “Are you listening to me?”

Satoru looks up from his lips. “Yeah.”

“Stop staring at my mouth, you creep.”

“You can’t even see my eyes.”

Suguru sits forward a bit, peeking over his sunglasses. “I can see your intentions.”

“Cannot,” Satoru says, chuckling. He bats some sand Suguru’s way, face flushed. “Weirdo.”

“Oh, I’m weird?” Suguru leans closer to him.

Satoru laughs more, falling onto his back. “Get away from me.”

“Alright.” Suguru stands, stretching, and when his shirt rides up Satoru’s gaze drops right to the small of his back. “Guess I’ll get shaved ice for just me.”

Satoru lurches to his feet, following after him. “Wait, wait!”

Suguru laughs again, and they walk to the small stand just off the beach front. There are people everywhere, and Satoru watches carefully, but Suguru doesn’t seem to be as on edge. It’s been wavering, the longer he’s been here. On the way up the beach Suguru even talks briefly with a woman when her child runs into his legs.

It makes him proud, and when they’re alone again he leans in and murmurs, “You’re doing great.”

Suguru stiffens, but when he looks at Satoru his expression is wide open. Easily read. Thank you, his eyes say. Satoru’s smile is soft.

Things are different, now, after their talk. Good. It’s easier to bare himself knowing that Suguru will take all of him, even the messy parts, even the selfish and sometimes even mean parts. And Satoru takes every part of him, regardless of how much or little there is.

-

He decides, while they’re on their way out of the ocean, that he’s just going to go for it.

“Suguru,” he says, shoving through the surf. He’s let down Limitless enough to get soaked, but the water doesn’t touch his calves, circling around him.

Suguru, however, is rocking as it splashes against him. He raises his brows, looking over. “Hmm?”

And that’s all it takes. There’s some hesitance in the way Satoru cranes in, but Suguru realizes what’s happening and he smiles, eyes fluttering closed for the short kiss Satoru presses to his lips.

“Getting brave,” Suguru says, cheeks pink. “In public?”

Satoru is grinning, reckless. His cheeks burn, too. “Would you rather take this somewhere private?”

Goading him, as always. Suguru is still smiling, staring in the way he often used to, and Satoru wonders if he’d liked him longer than he knew. If Suguru ever knew Satoru liked him back. We’re idiots.

Suguru leans in further, bumping their shoulders together, and to an outsider it looks like two friends teasing each other. Maybe lovers, if they caught the kiss. Suguru’s eyes flick down to Satoru’s lips, and he says, lower, “I bet you’d love that.”

A flush rises hot and fast in Satoru’s face at the promise in his tone, and he says something that doesn’t make sense just before tripping on a divot in the sand.

Suguru laughs, and when Satoru spits profanities at him Suguru just kicks the surf into his face. Satoru doesn’t think he’s ever wanted someone more.

-

They spend the evening shopping for souvenirs to bring back for Shoko, and one thing turns into three bags, but they tell each other it’s definitely what she needs.

-

The night passes, and Satoru reluctantly takes them back to campus. Shoko seems happier than usual to see them, and he thinks it’s because she’s immediately read the energy change between them. They’re smiling at each other, following the other with their eyes, bumping together. It may as well be their second year again, the way they jostle and tease each other, staring when they think they won’t get caught.

Did you talk to him? Shoko asks, when Suguru heads off to meet with Masamichi.

Satoru leans back in his chair, watching Shoko parse through her snacks. She seems in good spirits, but tired. One of the first years came back from a mission badly wounded, and she spent the afternoon tending to him.

Yeah, he says, tilting his head back and staring at the ceiling.

She chews on a truffle. Yeah? Just yeah?

He can’t help his smile. Just yeah.

A few seconds pass. Crickets are chirping outside. And then, You’re together, now?

Satoru looks at her quickly, flushing, but she just smiles in that knowing way of hers and says, About time.

-

Things go back to normal, besides when they aren’t at all, which is almost exclusive, anymore.

They bicker more. They laugh more. Even Masamichi notices the difference, and any of his irritation at Satoru going places he shouldn’t be is worn away by Suguru’s clear comfort at having him there. They finish missions together. How terrible.

It’s the last thing on his mind. Satoru’s waking thoughts are consumed with Suguru, which isn’t in and of itself unusual, but the intention is. The desire. They lock eyes between classes and both of them smile and Satoru manages to surge in for a small brush of their lips.

Together, Shoko had said. Boyfriends.

Satoru, Suguru says, sometimes, throwing him a look, focus.

How can he? The world is falling into place around him, and Satoru is flowing with the stream.

But he wants more. He wants to fulfill his daydreams, wants to lay in Suguru’s bed again and talk until the sun rises. Reduce the world again to the space between their breathing.

-

“So,” Suguru says, facing Satoru on his bed, “you’re, like, an old man.”

Satoru, who has removed his blindfold because he knows Suguru likes it, frowns at him. “Shut up.”

“Sensitive? What were you? Twenty eight?”

It’s night, not terribly late but late enough to warrant being in bed. Warm, freshly showered. Smashed into Satoru’s bed this time. He leans back against the wall, lips pursed. “So what?”

Suguru smiles, tired and crooked. “Pervert.”

Satoru shoves at his face, and Suguru grunts with effort, pushing back at him. His face is warm. It’s been doing that a lot recently. “Shut up.”

They tussle a bit, fighting but not, and when they settle again Satoru’s lips are pursed. “Is it weird?”

Suguru hums, rubbing at his cheek where Satoru had pulled at the skin. “Not really, no. You're still…you. Different, but in a good way.”

A relief. It makes him smile, and he sinks into the bed a bit more. His hand is on the mattress between them, next to Suguru's, and when he sticks his pinky out their fingers brush.

Suguru extends his own pinky, laying it over Satoru's. “Is it weird for you?”

“No,” Satoru says, eyes down. He rubs their fingers together, admiring the way they slide. “It's like…a daydream. I'm happy.”

“Me, too.”

“Are you? Really?”

There are so many unknowns, and Satoru wants to know everything. The why's and the how's, the plans that Suguru might have made. In a way he has forced Suguru's cooperation, but it was a necessity. They're here, because of that choice.

“I…” Suguru trails off, watching their fingers. His hair is down, again, and Satoru likes it like that. He'd never gotten the chance to tell him, but when he left Satoru had liked what he'd done with it—half up and half down. It suited him. “I think so. On my way, at least.”

“OK.”

It's all he can ask. Change will happen slowly, but he has Suguru with him now, and that's enough.

“I fell for you,” Suguru says.

The topic change makes Satoru blink, and he looks up at him, mouth opening to speak and then closing when he takes the extra second to process the words.

“As a first year,” Suguru continues. He lifts his hand, dragging patterns over Satoru's knuckles. “When we were second years, I thought about telling you, but—I started to think maybe you weren't interested. I felt like you were stringing me along.”

“Why?” Satoru asks, mind reeling. Struggling to dredge up memories from their younger years. It's a muddied mess, besides flashes of Suguru's face. Nothing to pick from.

Suguru shrugs. He's confident in himself, in his ability to talk, spill his emotions. Satoru envies it. “You always wanted to hang out. You always asked me. If other people tagged along it was fine, but you always asked me. You seemed like you preferred it alone. I thought you talked to me the most.”

“I did.”

“You did what?”

“All of it. I preferred you.”

“You say it like nobody else matters,” Suguru says, snorting. There's a glitter to his eyes, though. Pleased, perhaps.

Selfish, as always, Satoru says, “Nobody does.”

“Satoru.”

“What?”

“What about Nanami? Utahime? Mei—?”

Satoru scoffs, rolling onto his back. “What about them?”

“Shoko?”

“Shoko's our best friend,” he says, waving his hand in the air above him in a so-what manner.

“Exactly.”

“OK?”

“So, she matters, too.”

“But you matter the most.”

“Oh my god,” Suguru says, pushing himself up. “You're annoying.”

Satoru looks up at him, cocky. “But you still fell for me.”

Suguru shifts, placing a hand on either side of Satoru's head to look down at him. Satoru's heartbeat picks up a heavy, even tattoo. “Unfortunately.”

The air between them is warm, and Satoru's eyes, uncovered and obvious, flick down to Suguru's mouth. He swallows, eager as a schoolboy. He is a schoolboy. “I fell for you, too.”

The look on Suguru's face softens. “I know.”

“I wanted you,” he says, wetting his lips. “I didn't know it, until it was too late.”

Suguru's brows furrow just so, hair spilling over his shoulder. He's a thing of beauty, a god given human form, a muse, a masterwork. Satoru reaches up, and Limitless brushes a few stray hairs before bleeding away entirely, allowing his palm to slide over Suguru's jaw. The very fact of him seems like myth.

“I think,” he breathes, “I fell harder.”

It's romantic to a fault, and he sees the words hit Suguru in the slight widening of his eyes. He smiles, tilting his face into Satoru's hand. They seem so delicate like this, despite the way they've beat each other to a pulp in the past. You're the only one who can keep up.

“You think?” Suguru asks. Before Satoru can speak, he says, “You chased me through time. Sort of obsessive, if you ask me.”

Satoru scowls, and his hand flattens to shove Suguru off. “You—”

Suguru grabs his wrist just as he starts to push, slamming it back down on the mattress. Satoru is ready to fight, and he tenses, but Suguru's grip changes, his other hand sliding over Satoru's arm to ease the other wrist into the same position. Effectively pinning him down.

Satoru's breath is caught high in his chest, eyes wide and cheeks warm. Blood is rushing in his ears, but it isn't all staying in his cheeks. He swallows, fingers clenching into fists as his heart slams in his chest.

Suguru makes a curious sound, brows raising but eyes stubbornly half-lidded. “Oh?” It's soft, and he lifts his knee, placing it between Satoru's. Leaning over him. His weight sinks into the mattress, putting pressure on Satoru's wrists. Fire lights in every nerve, making his body swell up into a subtle arch, and Suguru cocks his head. His eyes are dark, hair sliding over his neck. “Do you like that?”

Fuck, Satoru thinks. If he can even consider it thinking. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Every wet dream has coalesced here, in the way Suguru’s body shifts above his, heated, shirt hanging away from his torso to reveal the sharp lines of his collarbones. Every stray thought, every wish.

Satoru takes a breath, and says, “Drop the god complex.”

Suguru looks at him, and then laughs. He leans in closer, and Satoru can smell his shampoo. His skin. “You do.”

It’s nearly a purr, and Satoru feels a growing ache in his belly. The world is in sharper focus than usual, eyes overwhelmed with the vision before him. His throat bobs with a swallow. “You gonna let me go?” Don’t.

“You gonna answer me?”

“Suguru—” A warning. Please don’t let go.

Suguru has a self-satisfied grin on his face, and he pushes his knee up.

The burst of pleasure is immediate, hot, and Satoru hisses, body following the curve of Suguru’s thigh.

Their eyes meet, both widening. Expressions slack. Satoru tenses as a flush rises up his neck, making his ears burn, and Suguru just looks at him. Devouring him, with his gaze. His back arches, head dropping to look between them. Down.

“Oh,” he says, pleasantly surprised. Satoru can hear the smile, and embarrassment balloons in his chest. He tenses his hands, struggling but not. “You’re—”

He tears one of his hands free, slapping it over Suguru’s mouth. His heart is slamming.

“Shut up,” he grits out. It sounds almost like begging.

Suguru is smiling against his palm, brown eyes shining with mirth. He chuckles, breath warm against Satoru’s skin. He hums, words Satoru can’t make out, and then he nudges his knee forward again.

He’s ready for the pleasure, this time, but it doesn’t make it any easier to work through. It bursts under his skin, lighting him on fire from the inside, and he sighs despite his reluctance to give in, eyes fluttering. Suguru’s pupils swell, brown eyes turning black.

When his hand lifts to take Satoru’s wrist again, it’s pushed easily back into the bed, and held there.

“You like it,” Suguru says, lower still, hips rolling as he slides his knee forward again, gentle pressure against the stiffness between Satoru’s legs. His fingers tighten around Satoru’s wrists, and Satoru drops his head back fully onto his pillow, straining against himself. Hot all over. “Say it.”

“Su—” He makes a sound, another sigh that’s almost more, lips parted and damp from his breath.

Suguru hums, and Satoru watches him just long enough to see his head drop before he feels the first press of Suguru’s mouth to his jaw. His lips are soft, nearly plush, and Satoru’s eyes roll back with a barely contained groan when they slip down to the sensitive skin just below his ear.

“What?” Suguru murmurs, lips brushing soft as flower petals. His knee is moving slow, holding an even pace. Urging every ounce of blood downward. A kiss, just behind Satoru's jaw. “Were you going to say something?”

Maybe. Not anymore. This is mean, poking into Satoru's singular weakness and exploiting it, leaving him breathing deep and affected, head turning away to allow Suguru more room. Everything is hot.

Suguru makes another sound, curious, and Satoru turns his face away entirely. He can feel Suguru smiling against his throat, breath warm just before a deeper press of his lips. More open. A scrape of teeth, in time with a slow roll of Suguru's knee. Satoru's brows draw together, lips parted around a fragile sound that catches halfway off his tongue. His stomach is in knots, tightening with every passing second. Awash with pleasure.

“Hmm?” Suguru hums, drawing the sound out. He squeezes Satoru's wrists, pushing him harder into the bed, and Satoru's back arches just so, heat lancing down his spine. “Say it.”

“Fuck,” Satoru manages, breath picking up. It's impossible to hold back, the way Suguru is toying with him, laying attention over him. Satoru is at his mercy, and isn't fighting it at all.

“You like it,” Suguru emphasizes each syllable against the hollow of Satoru's throat. Mean. So mean. “Say it.”

There's not enough air in the room to fill Satoru's lungs, and each exhale carries the softest moan at the end. He's hard, aching, and he lets his hips cant upward. The slide of their bodies is a reward in and of itself. “Suguru.”

Breath catches in Suguru's throat, a surprised, pleased sound, subtle and nearly inaudible. One of his hands shifts, fingers splaying. Dragging down Satoru's arm. He's dizzy with want. “That's good, too.”

Satoru wants Suguru. Needs him. Desires him in a way that he's never felt about anyone else. It's so easy, to tease and to be teased, to let down his guard entirely, to give every ounce of trust to the way Suguru has bared him here. Reduced him. Made him something small, something that needs to be taken care of, spoiled, rent apart and pieced back together.

Suguru's hand slides down his arm, and Satoru isn't pretending he doesn't want it anymore. His body moves with a mind of its own, rutting with a base need against Suguru's thigh. It feels good. Everything feels good.

“Suguru,” he breathes, and the hum that lifts from Suguru's throat is sweet as honey. His hand dips over Satoru's chest, fingers brushing delicately. “Don't—”

It's too much. The heat. The need. The desperation inside him. Suguru's teeth scrape the crook of his neck, and he murmurs, “Is this what you want?”

Fingers, following the elastic band of his pajama pants. The scrape of nails, as they pause and curl. Brushing the trail of hair under his navel. Suguru's body moves to the side, and his hand turns, palm flat and fingertips splaying over the intimate, heated skin just under the start of his clothes.

Suguru inhales, teeth catching enough to sting. “Satoru?”

Satoru's body stutters, curling in on itself, and his mouth opens around a soundless groan, free hand grabbing Suguru's shoulder and digging in there. Warmth, everywhere, an explosion. White, behind his closed eyes. Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure.

Suguru's leg stops moving abruptly, but Satoru can't control the jerk of his hips, and he chases the feeling with aborted, messy rutting against Suguru's thigh. His hand tightens, flexing, and then trembles weakly against Suguru's shoulder.

Everything is good. Perfect. He's on a high, finding his way down from climax, and when his eyes flutter open he sees Suguru staring down at him. Smiling. Satoru blinks, brows starting to furrow. It isn't a kind smile.

Suguru's eyes rake over his face, his neck. His hand is still just beneath the band of Satoru's pants. His skin has a light sheen to it. “Did you—?”

Reality comes crashing down on him with all the force of a plane in a swan dive, and Satoru thrusts his hands up, covering Suguru’s mouth a second time. His skin is warm and buzzing, alive. He’s never felt so good in his life, and Suguru is smiling against his palm, eyes pupil-dark and ravaging.

Satoru’s flushed skin burns on his face, and his already stuttering heart lodges in his throat. Oh my god, he thinks, mind privately supplying whatever words Suguru had almost gotten out. Oh my god. He shifts his hips, and his briefs stick to the hot skin of his cock. Wet. Fuck.

“Mm mm,” Suguru tries to speak. Satoru understands.

He wiggles out, freeing himself messily when Suguru grabs for him, laughing in the back of his throat. “Shut up—!”

“Holy shit,” Suguru chuckles, stumbling after Satoru when he stands. “Come back—”

Satoru is grabbing clothes, moving erratically, and Suguru gets close. Too close. “I literally cannot stand you—”

“Oh,” Suguru’s voice drops, and his hands slide around Satoru’s waist from behind. Fingers curling around Satoru’s hips. Somehow it still threatens to get him going again, “I think you can do more than that…”

Satoru’s thoughts stutter to a halt when Suguru leans in and kisses the back of his neck, but then Suguru laughs and says, “That was sort of pathetic, ‘toru,” and the moment is broken.

Satoru breaks away, cursing briefly, and then jumps straight to the shower. It’s cold, and blessedly empty, but he doesn’t have a towel and he steels himself, jumping back again.

He’s scowling, but Suguru is standing still, and he holds out one of Satoru’s towels, expression oozing satisfaction. “Don’t take too long.”

Satoru tears the towel out of his hand, but when he gets back to the showers his chest is fluttering.

-

Suguru is already in bed, room darkened, when Satoru gets back. He throws his clothes into the hamper so it clatters against the wall, and Suguru just lays through it, one eye peeking open. Unimpressed.

He still welcomes Satoru into his own bed warmly, arms open and eyes closing again. Satoru folds into him, huffing, embarrassment reignited now that he’s stepped back into the room and smelled the faint, lingering scent of his own orgasm. When he nudges his leg up between Suguru’s, he finds that he’s soft. Satoru wonders if he got hard at all.

And then Suguru shifts forward, kissing him, and murmurs, “You did good. Was it OK?”

And Satoru’s expression mellows into bashfulness, and he murmurs back, “Yeah.”

Suguru’s hand lifts, fingers pushing at the damp hair by Satoru’s ear and then following the shape of his jaw. “Are you alright?”

Satoru settles, tucking closer, and he means it when he says, softer than before, “Yeah.”

Chapter Text

“Yaga sensei.”

Masamichi looks up from his desk, papers strewn about him. Some of them necessities—paperwork regarding his position shift, queries about potential curses, mail from the district about the school itself. Less important things, as well, which Masamichi is holding a red pen over. A paper, from one of the second years.

Satoru is fully dressed, blindfold on and stance not so lax as it usually is. He’s here on business.

“Gojo,” Masamichi says, sitting up straight. There’s a faint furrow between his brows. “You’re awake.”

Satoru’s posture is tense. “It’s morning.” He isn’t smiling.

“Before Geto?” Masamichi leans back, and his chair creaks.

“You’re surprised?”

“Of course I am.”

A fair enough sentiment. Satoru had never been an early riser, always late in every sense. Moving by a time of his own making.

“I need to talk to you,” he says.

Masamichi reaches up, and when he takes off his glasses his eyes are dark. Sensing the difference in demeanor. “Everyone is safe?”

Of course that’s the first thing he would say. Satoru’s lips quirk up at one corner, and he takes a breath, head lolling to the side. Thinking of the curses he had met again, only a few weeks ago. It seems like years, anymore. It was. Ten years in the future. Why hadn’t he thought to do this earlier?

Because this wasn’t for the world. It was for me.

Satoru is trying hard to pretend that he’s doing this for the good of everyone at large, and not just because he wants to preserve the life he’s creating here.

So he tells Masamichi about the curses in Shibuya. He doesn’t tell him where he found them, or how; just what they look like, their strength. They were capable of speech, he says, and organized an attack.

Masamichi asks him once, for proper details, but Satoru declines. He’s trustworthy. He is a student, and has only done right by the community, despite his mistakes. What need does he have to lie?

The pictures he provides are poorly drawn but clear enough, and the notes on the back are excessively detailed. Masamichi accepts them with as much dignity as he can, but he sighs when he sees the information there.

All of them, Satoru thinks, arms crossing, led by Suguru’s body. But that was then, and this is now.

-

“What are you doing up?” Suguru asks, scrubbing his palm over the side of his face. His hair is a mess around his shoulders, and when he stretches his muscles tug at the fabric of his shirt. Satoru looks a second too long.

“Just went to talk to Masamichi,” he says, easy. The sun is barely peeking over the horizon.

His room is dark, still, but it’s softened by Suguru’s presence in his bed, still half-covered by his blankets. Sleep mussed and squinting.

Suguru blinks at him. His head turns so far to the side it’s almost laying lazily against his shoulder. “Willingly?”

Satoru snorts, running his hands up into his mussed bangs. He decides he can’t see Suguru well enough, and slips the blindfold off, laying it on the desk on his way. Suguru’s gaze follow him, and when Satoru is close enough his head tilts even further, watching him like a predator out of the corner of one eye. “Hmm?”

He knows what Satoru is here for before he’s even leaned down. Something viciously rebellious in him wants to deny Suguru the satisfaction of doing what he thinks is coming, but Satoru can’t help but eye the smooth skin of Suguru’s neck, and he’s spe nt far too many years denying himself to do it a single time more.

He climbs into the bed, and Suguru makes another soft sound, falling back into the pillows when Satoru climbs over him. The bed gives, sighing at the press of weight, and Satoru sighs the same. Suguru's hands raise to curl around his sides.

“What did you talk about?” he asks, yawning.

“Nothing,” Satoru grumbles, kissing Suguru's cheek. He gets a heavy sigh in return.

“You were awake before me for nothing?” Suguru's hand slides down Satoru's chest. He fingers the first button he finds. “You’re dressed.”

 “Just shut up,” Satoru says, low, pressing the words into Suguru's lips. They're plush under Satoru's, pliant and soft, and Suguru inhales and then sighs through his nose.

It's slow and unhurried, and Satoru's hands lift to curl around Suguru's neck. He settles his weight on Suguru's hips, and gets yet another noise for his efforts; this one surprised but pleased.

“Al—” Suguru swallows the word when Satoru works their mouths, teeth scraping against Suguru's lip. “Already?”

“Lost time, or whatever,” Satoru says, body already lit up and ready to go. He's in a bit of a mood this morning, but Suguru yawns again when Satoru's kisses shift to his jaw and it's so endearing he's destroying himself on the inside for not going after him sooner.

“Mm,” is all Suguru says.

There's still a question there, however, and Satoru sighs, letting his forehead knock into Suguru's shoulder. Suguru's hand slides up from his side to flatten against the space between his shoulder blades.

“I was warning him,” he says, staring at the pattern on Suguru’s shirt. Each individual thread is on display before his eyes, and he lets them close. “Preparing him, for what happens in the future.”

“Mm,” again. This time understanding. “You told him?”

“Of course not.”

A laugh. “You’re awful.”

Satoru smiles, just a bit. He nudges his head into Suguru's jaw. “I don't need him questioning me.”

“Worried your reasoning won't be widely appreciated?”

“I could not care less,” Satoru says, sitting up again. Suguru's eyes flutter open, and they’re still drowsy. A bit warm. Satoru sits his weight back just a bit more, and Suguru's eyes widen a fraction, dangerous. There's a new tension to him. “I got what I wanted.”

Suguru laughs, one hand coming down to lay high on Satoru's thigh. “You always do, don't you?”

-

They have to say goodbye to the girls, and Satoru feels just a bit bad. Suguru seems to have taken a liking to them. He squats when they talk to him, and both of them come in to cling to his clothes. Crying. Scared, to be separated.

I'll come visit you, he says, soft and secret. Satoru hears, and he tries not to watch but his heart is doing that unhealthy thing it's been doing since he first arrived here. His cheeks are warm. As often as I can.

Every day, the girls demand. Every day, three times, you said we could learn to protect ourselves, I want to be like you, I want to stay, can you please brush my hair again, Geto? It's too tangled.

It most certainly is not, but Suguru smiles so much his eyes pinch closed, and Satoru thinks he could watch him eternally. He abides, and Satoru can't remember their names or differentiate between them, but he finds himself starting to care. Starting to want to, if it means this will never end.

-

It's not perfect. There are days when Suguru starts to walk toward that spiral, but Satoru takes him by the hand and guides him back again. He doesn’t have to absorb every curse—although he almost always does. Satoru is there, though, and sometimes when he lays a hand on Suguru's shoulder he's rewarded with a slight shudder, a relenting of the facade.

It's worse than tasting bad, he learns, and over time Suguru shares more. The toll of his cursed technique, the mental struggle of facing it every day. The hatred he had birthed for humans; he suffered to save them, and in return they mindlessly flooded him with more of that suffering. Cyclical, hellish, miserable. Satoru can't judge him for his desires. He understands. Without the egg, there would be no chicken, and Suguru could find peace.

So Satoru does what he can to ease that. They find new answers, different morals to adhere to—Suguru is a man of structure and logic, and it isn't so easy to accept indifference the way Satoru does.

They also go out to eat, with every successful mission. Suguru's favorite things and even the things he's impartial to, new things and familiar. Anything to wash away the taste, and remind Suguru of what's waiting at the end: Shoko, Satoru, Nanami, Utahime, Mei. They're safe. They're here. They need him.

It keeps Suguru settled, and as the weeks pass, Satoru watches the bags under his eyes soften.

-

Late one evening in February, Satoru slips out to Sugisawa High, and brings back a single finger wrapped in yellowed paper.

-

He dreams, in the spring, of a slow and seemingly endless walk across campus. At first the road is torn apart, rent from the earth, stone littering the ground in piles. And then, in the half-light, it becomes whole again, cool and even.

There is blood. A lot of it. Satoru could easily use his Six Eyes, or even his nose to trace the residuals, but the splatters are a string leading Satoru to an exit he doesn't want to use.

He doesn't come up behind, and he tells himself it's because he doesn't want to seem like he's following, but it's because he's hoping it will leave time. That if he's slow enough the blood will stopper, and he will have nothing to track.

But Suguru is sitting on the ground, hand cupping the space where his arm once was, and speaking in the same sweetened voice he always reserved for Satoru, and Satoru alone.

I love you, Satoru tells him, and it's the hardest thing in the world to watch him smile, and then steal the life from him with a flick of his wrist.

That should be it. He should walk away, should take Suguru's body back to Shoko. Should let someone else deal with it. Should check on his students.

He should, but his legs turn to jelly when Suguru's body starts to slide to one side, and Satoru hits his knees to catch him.

He's warm. So warm. His eyes are closed, but the smile is gone, his face empty. When shifted his head lolls to the side, hitting Satoru's chest, and his hair is soft, speckled with debris and smelling very faintly of cedar. His shampoo. He'd always liked the smell of cedar.

Satoru's eyes burn, welling until the world blurs, and he buries his face in Suguru's hair and screams.

When he wakes it's with a start, heart slamming and stomach pushing bile up his throat. He's breathing fast, eyes wide, and when he shoves roughly at the bed sheets to stave off the feeling of choking, he’s met with warm skin and gentle hands.

“Shh, shh,” Suguru whispers, cupping Satoru's face and brushing his fingers over the tears there. “It was a dream. It was a dream, ‘toru. Just a dream. You're—I know, I know, breathe—”

And he does. He breathes, and it's awful and aching and brimming with a storm of emotion, but it's in time with the soft and overexaggerated sighs of Suguru's breath, and when Satoru falls asleep again it's to unwavering black.

-

Of everything that could be different, there’s something soothing in the way finding Megumi Fushiguro is exactly the same.

-

The girls are a twice a week commitment. Satoru is annoyed at first, but he teleports Suguru there so he can visit them as often as he pleases. At first he leaves and comes back, but over time he stays a few minutes longer, and then a half hour, and then Mimiko sees a stuffed animal in a window when they’re out and Satoru’s legs move before he can think on it.

He’d never had an interest in kids. They were loud, messy, annoying, needy. I’m surprised you don’t have a kinship with every child you meet, Suguru had said, and Satoru had scowled and exclaimed and cursed but the girls had laughed and it hadn’t really been so bad.

They’re good kids. Scared, traumatized, but they love Suguru and Satoru can’t fault them for anything beyond that.

So it becomes a three times a week commitment. Then four, then five, and then why not stop by every morning at least to say hello. They run and scream with Satoru, throw waterballoons, let Satoru wing them into the surf when they go to the beach, help him steal cookies that none of them need. They’re fun.

It makes him realize what he’s denied Megumi. The school had ensured his safety and Satoru had made himself a benefactor—had only sought him out when he was old enough to think about training. How many years had he sat alone with his sister, and then alone without, with Satoru only dropping by when it was absolutely necessary?

When did he start to care at all?

Perhaps it’s in the way he scrubs at the girl’s hair just a little too roughly, shoving their heads as he walks by and listening to them giggle. The way Suguru always looks back at him, smile soft and eyes warm. They are adults, now, on the cusp of twenty, and they’re adoptees of three.

You’ve changed, Suguru says, lighting a candle and sliding it onto the counter of their apartment kitchen. The kettle hisses, starting to warm.

Satoru’s fingers are twined together, and he rests his chin on them, admiring Suguru freely. So you’ve said.

Did you think it would ever be like this?

Satoru is quiet; pensive, even. He unfolds his hands, turning one over to rest his chin on it. No. How could he have? The world was a cruel thing, and it had a way of reminding him of that over and over until he finally found his own way to defy it. Suguru had told him he always got what he wanted. Maybe he was right.

I knew I would have you, he says, eyes flicking back up to Suguru from behind his glasses. They’re perched lazily on his nose. He wants to see Suguru, as he walks about their kitchen, knocking tea leaves into an infuser.

And Suguru smiles, because he always does when Satoru is up front about his desires. His gaze is downcast, on his hands. Did you think we would be where we were?

No. That, an easy answer. Never thought I’d have kids in the mix.

Suguru laughs. You act like they’re ours.

Satoru leans back in his chair, arms hooking over the back and legs spread. Aren’t they? I buy them whatever they want, you give them love or whatever.

I know you love them, too, Suguru says, setting the mugs aside while the water warms. He comes to Satoru, who smiles, letting his head loll back.

And Satoru hums, because it’s wonderful to see Suguru looking down at him like this. He worries his lips and says, easy as breathing, I love you .

Suguru chuckles, leaning down, and brushes Satoru’s hair from his forehead, kissing him. It’s warm, delicate, familiar. Satoru sighs through his nose. The water is bubbling, close to hissing. The room is starting to smell like cedar. Suguru says, I love you, too. 

-

In 2018, Satoru steps onto school grounds, hands tucked in his pocket and eyes scanning behind his blindfold. Teenagers step around him, wary and whispering, but they’re ignored. The air is warm, the cicadas singing. The first day of class—or something like that. He’d lost track of time.

It takes a few minutes. The grounds are densely populated with kids milling about their extra curriculars, and Satoru hums to himself as he makes his way down a less traveled hallway. A few students are leaving this way, and he walks directly down the center of the hallway, forcing them to avoid him.

And then, last, a boy steps out of a small storage room, smiling. His eyes are bright, unbothered, and Satoru stares a moment too long, taking in this version he’s never seen before.

He, too, goes to step around Satoru, but Satoru ducks in font of him, smiling when he stiffens, eyes raising. “Uh—hey.” Even his voice is upbeat, as it always was, nothing but curiosity.

Satoru is endlessly pleased. This, too, hasn’t changed. He hopes that now it never will.

“Yo!” he says, waving a hand. “Itadori Yuji, right?”