Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

School is easy. Always has been, always will be. At least, for Suguru Geto. The concepts come easy to him, less than a few minutes and he's already gotten the hang of whatever it is the teacher is spouting about on the board. 

His grades, however, beg to differ. They stay at a healthy standstill of 'average'. It's honestly not much of a problem for him to purposely write down mistakes every once in a while. Put the wrong sign on number eight, 'forget' to divide on number twenty—it's alright. He's taken all the necessary steps that he thinks should be taken in order to remain average. 

So why the hell is this still happening? 

A grunt is punched out of his chest, back hitting the cement walls roughly. Suguru scowls, rubbing the spot where he got hit. "Ow."

He peers at the boys standing above him with muted interest. Three of them. They're named...er, well, he doesn't particularly care. Honestly, he should know by now, considering the amount of times they've beat him up, but it just doesn’t cross his mind. At all. Suguru thinks they want answers for the latest test, or perhaps his lunch money. Maybe they just don't like his general demeanor. Is it his hair? It's weird for guys to have long hair, but at least Suguru puts his in a bun. He quite likes his hair. He thinks he maintains it quite well—

"Hey! Are you even listening?" the grunt scowls. Unfortunately, Suguru's disinterest earns him another kick to the ribs. He sputters, frowning in disgust as he swallows back the blood in his throat. He's not too keen on dirtying the floors, thank you very much. 

"Sorry, what was that?" Suguru manages to say, blinking up at them. Oh, speaking of, it could be his eyes. They’re a lovely shade of purple, a color he’d gotten from his mother. Actually, he supposes he got most of his looks from his mother. He’s been told he looks a lot like his mother, past his nose and the shape of his face. There’s—

The sole of a shoe connects with his chest, and blood bubbles in his mouth. Ew. He swallows it back again. 

“Listen when we’re talking, you fucking—“ 

There’s a long pause, as if the guy couldn’t quite remember what he was about to say. Suguru looks up, expression prompting. “…fucking? Fucking what?”

Now that he thinks about it, there’s only one person now. Where are the other two? Hm. He must’ve gotten lost inside his own head. That could be part of the reason they pick on him so much. At least they have the decency to kick him in the chest—that way, his mother wouldn't worry. Plus, the twins. They wouldn't worry either. Though Nanako isn’t really the type to worry anymore. She gets mad a lot lately. 

“You look constipated.” Suguru remarks, staring up at the boy. Promptly, he falls over, a bump quickly forming on the back of his head. And— oh, there’s another person. He isn’t quite sure how he missed that. 

The first thing Suguru notices are his eyes; a brilliant shade of blue. Blue is quite an understatement, since they seem to shimmer in the sunlight, but that’s the best he can do, especially since, oddly, the guy is wearing sunglasses inside. Then his hair. Suguru’s never seen powder-white hair before, especially not on people less than fifty. 

Pretty.

Would be prettier if he stopped scowling though. Suguru doesn’t particularly care. It’s just a fact based on observation.

The new guy flexes his fingers, face twisted into a sneer. His brows are furrowed down, and he stuffs his hands in his pockets immediately, kicking the guy on the floor. The one that isn’t Suguru anyway. 

He rises to his feet, taking a moment to regain his breath. Getting kicked in the stomach isn’t all that pleasant, after all. Suguru turns to the other guy, smiling politely. “Thanks.”

The nasty expression doesn’t melt off his face. Ah, it seems he has an ego. 

“The hell were you doing there, gettin' beaten up?” he barks, before jutting his chin out in Suguru’s general direction. “Would’ve expected someone with those things to be the one doin’ the beating.” 

Suguru absentmindedly raises his hand to his ear. “Do you mean gauges?” 

A scoff. Suguru finds himself mildly ticked off by the noise. 

“Whatever.” the other snarks, peering at him with a frown, eyes squinted. 

“I’m Suguru Geto,” he offers. 

“I know.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“I was sort of hoping for your name too,” Suguru explains, as if speaking to a small child, busy with fixing up his bag to go. It seems to piss pretty eyes off, judging by the way his hand twitches within his pockets. 

With a rather arrogant expression, he retorts flippantly; “As if you don’t know my name.” 

Before Suguru can tell him that, yes, no, he doesn’t actually know his name, he moves to leave the classroom. Wow. Suguru has never met such an egotistical person. It’s interesting. Halfway through the conversation, Suguru would have liked to plunge his fist into that beautifully sculpted nose. 

Though, as per usual, Suguru is mature enough to disconnect his feelings from his actions, and goes on his merry way. Slipping his bag onto his shoulder with practiced ease, Suguru makes his way out of the classroom. 

“Oh, wait,” he murmurs, before rummaging around in his pocket. It doesn’t take much to pull out a small case usually for tic tacs. Suguru had filled it with his meds though. He’s certain that at some point, he founds it quite funny, but the sentiment doesn’t linger anymore. He pops one in his mouth, fishing his water bottle out to take a swig.

The journey home is pleasant as always. Halfway through, as the sun sinks below the horizon, his phone starts to buzz. 

“Hi Nanako,” greets Suguru, after sparing a quick glance at the caller ID. It’s labelled Nana. He finds it improper, though he was the one to set it, back when he’d just gotten his phone. Hm. 

“Hi.” she says shortly, voice tinny over the speaker. “What’s taking you so long? You’re usually home by now. Mom is worried.”

“School project.” 

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t need you to.” he answers simply, standing up as the bus pulls up to the stop, doors hissing as they open. Suguru can practically hear Nanako scowl over the phone as she hangs up without another word. 

He pockets his phone. Nanako’s been really temperamental, ever since last year. How old is she again? Suguru thinks she and Mimiko are around the age where they get those teenage mood swings. Figures.

”I’m home,” he calls out, unlacing his shoes before placing them on the rack. Nanako rounds the corner just as he finishes, eyes narrowing and scowling at the gesture. Suguru smiles at her politely. Her expression sours even more, and she strides towards the dining room. 

“Welcome back!” his mom calls from somewhere in the kitchen. Narumi Geto is a woman of mature beauty, and the parent from whom Suguru got most of his looks from. She's kind and passionate and annoying; but in the heartfelt way. Although lately she's always sad. Suguru's not quite sure why.

Mimiko follows from the same direction Nanako had come from, smiling at him with apprehension. Again, Suguru flashes her the same smile he gave Nanako. Instead of getting angry like her twin sister, Mimiko looks defeated, following into the dining room. Suguru shrugs, carefully placing his bag near the door of his room. 

"How was school?" his mother asks as he sits, sliding his chopsticks between his fingers. 

"It was alright." Suguru answers amicably, biting off a piece of his katsudon.

His mother smiles, though the gesture is quite strained. Nanako scoffs. Mimiko stays silent. Suguru continues eating. This is how their dynamic has gone on for quite a while now, and Suguru isn't quite sure what changed. He can clearly remember them being close—especially him and the twins. They used to spend a lot of time together, and he practically raised them for the first half of their lives. 

A piece of katsudon lodges itself in his throat, and Suguru attempts to cough it out. The gesture turns out to be a mistake, however, since his ribs start complaining. It seems he forgot about being beaten up earlier in the morning. Suguru bites his cheek, hand shooting to his side. 

"Suguru?" asks his mother, concern furrowing her brow. "What's wrong?"

Carefully, he removes his hand from his side. Thankfully, the piece of food had already left his throat, and he smiles. "Nothing, really. Just choked on food. Usual things." he lies easily. 

"Yeah, usual things," Nanako snarks from across the table, but is promptly silenced when Mimiko slaps at her forearm. They share a look; one of those looks that only twins can decipher. Suguru absentmindedly remembers being able to understand Mimiko and Nanako's "twin looks", but he supposes not anymore. Maybe he's grown out of it.

The rest of dinner finishes on a stale note. Nanako storms up to her room, and Mimiko tentatively follows. Suguru clears the table, and starts washing the dishes. 

"Suguru," his mother starts gently behind him. He turns off the tap. 

"Yes?"

His mother's expression is conflicted when he faces her. She's a proud woman, his mother, but a loving one all the same. It's almost wrong to see her look this worried and sad. She's been sad for a while now. Suguru supposes he should feel upset about that. 

"How are you?" she asks, after a long pause. It's an open-ended question. 

"I'm quite alright." 

Something passes through her gaze, but she nods all the same. "That's good."

She leaves Suguru to finish his work. 

Chapter Text

"Good morning class!"

Groggily, Suguru lifts his head from his desk, straightening out his back as Setsuna-sensei steps inside. He's developed the habit of sleeping in the mornings before class. He always does his work on time; during breaks or free periods, so he doesn't have to cram like the rest of his classmates. He's not interested in speaking to anyone either, so it's mostly light sleeping until he gets interrupted. 

The teacher starts writing immediately after setting her bag down, marker squeaking against the whiteboard. Suguru is quite fond of math, as well as his math teacher. She's always been tolerable. Not too loud or 'relatable', as some teachers try to be, and not too strict and stuffy. Professional. She cracks a joke here and there though. Suguru remembers finding her humor funny, earlier in the semester. 

"—activity sheet by pair. I'm sure you haven't forgotten?" she asks the class hypothetically, and only now does Suguru register what she's writing on the board. She's writing pair names. 

Suguru scans the board, then nods to himself contently as he spots his name. He's alone, which is good. The number of people in the class is uneven; it was bound to happen to someone. The topic is easy. Suguru will be fine.

Oh, he thinks, sitting up. I forgot to take my meds.

He starts to rummage in his pocket, but—

The door bangs open, and a number of students jump at the loud noise. Ryu-sensei, the other math teacher stomps in, scowling. He looks positively furious, which, Suguru supposes, isn't a new look for him. He's always been wound-up and strict. 

"Rayoko!" Ryu-sensei snaps at the woman, who frowns at the disturbance in her class. 

"I'm in class." she states dryly, gesturing towards her students. Ryu pays no mind to her words, before pointing at something in the hallway. 

"I don't want that goddamn kid—"

A few of his classmates gasp at the swear. Suguru just absentmindedly notes that, oh, he supposes that Ryu-sensei is pointing at someone, not something. 

"—in my class! You take him! I can take one of your kids just please, get him out of my class!" 

Setsuna hisses something to her coworker, before ushering him outside to speak. As soon as the door closes, the entire class starts speaking, voices overlapping. Suguru yawns, and settles his head back on the desk. 

The door opens, and the commotion dies down. Suguru doesn’t raise his head. As long as the activity hasn’t started yet, he’s going to sleep. 

Suguru can vaguely register that Setsuna is saying something, and that his seat-mate has stood up, but he doesn’t quite care. Hm. The activity sheet will probably be easy. It’s even better that he got picked to go alone. It’ll be faster. That way, he won’t have to sneak around making the activity sheet score average. 

“—is that okay with you, Geto?” 

He lifts his head to see Setsuna in front of him, beaming brightly. He blinks blearily.

“Pardon?” Suguru asks, a bit confused. “I didn’t quite hear what you said.”

”Oh, it’s not much. We have a new classmate, and I think you’ll be perfect to be his pair for the first time. How does that sound?”

Inconvenient, he thinks.

“Brilliant.” he tells her.

Setsuna beams at him, before going back to the front of the class. Suguru drops his head back down on the desk, before promptly getting whacked. 

“Oi!” 

Suguru furrows brows, sitting back up. When he turns his head to the left, sleepy purple meets pissed-off blue. The bluest of eyes. Powder-white hair. Ah. The arrogant guy from yesterday. Suguru knew that the boy was a bit of a delinquent, but he didn’t quite expect him to be so much that Ryu had him kicked out from his class. 

“Hello.” Suguru greets, finally accepting that he probably won’t get much sleep. The person in front of him passes the paper to the back, and Suguru takes it. Graphing. It’s easy. That’s point-slope intercept. That’s—

He turns towards the other. “Do you need help?” he offers. 

The other’s eye twitches. “Of course not!”

Nodding, Suguru wordlessly turns to his paper, pulling out a pencil. He’ll solve everything first, then he’ll figure out which questions to get wrong. Sometimes he alternates between getting the generic hard question wrong, or the easy ones. It’s a coin toss. He gets it done quickly, penning in most of the answers, and putting wrong answers on a few choice questions. Suguru meticulously makes up some solution for his ‘answer’. Setsuna-sensei is suffocatingly nice, and tends to give half points for solutions, even if you don’t write the correct answer.

Suguru leans back, peering over at his new seat-mate. He seems to be done as well, arms crossed over his chest. He spins a pencil between his fingers idly, looking bored out of his mind. Suguru scans the other’s uniform, and finds his ID peeking out, stuffed unceremoniously in his pocket. 

“Gojo. Is that your name?” Suguru reads off, turning to the other. 

“Yeah.” the guy—Gojo—answers without a second thought. It takes a few moments, but his eyes start to widen in disbelief. 

“Hah!? You’re tellin’ me you actually didn’t know who I was?” Gojo snaps, but his tone is more surprised, if anything. The curve of his brow downwards is genuine, and he doesn’t seem all that hostile. 

Suguru shrugs. 

“I don’t know much people.” he offers as a half-hearted apology.

Gojo sits back in his seat, long legs crossed. The anger melts off his face, and now he just looks genuinely confused. His chin is trapped between his pointer and his thumb, deep in thought. Suguru doesn’t quite mind that he didn't follow up with answer, because he gets to observe the white-haired boy. He never thought a guy could have such pretty eyelashes. 

“You’re weird.” Gojo finally says, after a moment of contemplation. 

“Disputable,” Suguru replies. 

With a tepid eyeroll, Gojo snatches his paper off his desk, eyes scanning over the pages. Suguru prays that he’s not good at math, and finds absolutely nothing wrong—or that Suguru made his handwriting indistinguishable. That last part is a lost cause. Suguru is quite proud of his neat handwriting. 

Sure enough, Gojo’s brows draw together, and he jabs his finger at number seventeen. “Are you dull? That’s literally the easiest question on the thing! Change that answer, this is pathetic.” 

Ah. Darn. 

“Sorry, just a small mistake.”

Suguru drags his correction tape across the paper, perfectly smooth despite his mild irritation. He doesn’t want a super high score. He just wants to be average at the worksheet, but Gojo seems to revel in making every answer on the page correct, successfully spotting—and forcing Suguru to change—the wrong answers on the paper. 

He purses his lips. Everything’s correct now. That’ll definitely mess with his grades. 

“Aren’t you thankful?” Gojo nags from next to him, an arrogant grin on his lips. Suguru would like to chuck a pencil at him. He bites the inside of his cheek instead.

Unfortunately, the silence seemed like enough of an answer for Gojo, and the grin quickly fades into a scowl. “The hell does that mean?”

”What does what mean?” Suguru asks back stiffly, packing his pencil case and putting away his intermediate pad.

Gojo gestures aggressively in Suguru’s general direction. “I fixed all the wrong answers!”

Oh, Suguru is this close to punching this guy. Seriously. He’s not even— it would be one stain on his otherwise average file. That wouldn’t amount to much.

Suddenly, from the side, a snap of fingers. Gojo looks like he’s realized something, and is now smirking smugly.

”You’re pissed cause you thought all your answers were right, but then I fixed it.” Gojo taunts, eyes glinting with as much malice as an average grade-schooler. Suguru is beginning to understand why Ryu-sensei kicked him out of his class. It is too goddamn early for this.

“I will punch you, and it will be painful.” he grits out, turning away from the white-haired little crap. 

A snort. “Doubt it.”

Suguru is not agitated. He will not give in to irrational thoughts. He’s a good student, and that’s what he always has been. 

"—has gotten into you! You're a brilliant student, Geto, I just don't understand why you would suddenly do something like that! It's unlike you!"

Suguru sits, hands on his lap and head bent down. He curls into himself, silently cursing Gojo for being such a little bitch. Speaking of the other—he's sat next to him, except he doesn't look the least bit concerned. He's even grinning, a bit, at the principal. What a prick. Suguru would punch him again if it wouldn't give his poor mother a heart attack. 

"Well?" Principal Yaga frowns, and Suguru looks up slightly. 

"Sorry, Principal Yaga. It won't happen again." he mumbles, but his fingers are crossed (rather childishly) into an x. He's going to do it again. Not on school premises, but Suguru Geto cannot live prosperously without punching Gojo again. Maybe if he punches him enough times it'll ruin his stupidly pretty face. Maybe he'll set his nose so far to the left it can't grow back properly. 

There's a snicker to his side. Suguru's fingers twitch with violence; sweet, sweet violence. 

Principal Yaga sighs, pinching the space between his brows. "I'm very disappointed."

Goddamn Gojo, Suguru thinks mournfully. This is all his fault. Now the principal of all people is disappointed in him. Gojo, when I catch you, Gojo.

Out the corner of his eye, he can still see that smug bastard grin. Blue eyes snag on purple, and Suguru scowls. He steals quick look at Yaga, deduces that he's not looking, and flips off the little bitch. The absolute biggest asshole he's ever met in his entire life. Who the hell cares if he's pretty—he's a nuisance! Suguru would be doing the world a favor by putting a belladonna nightshade into his lunch. 

"You're dismissed." Principal Yaga says, after a while. Suguru bows respectfully, grabbing his bag. He may or may have not kicked Gojo's chair on the way out, but that's nobody's business but his own. 

Suguru sends a dirty look at the closed door to the principal's office. Gojo's still in there. He better be getting a harsher lecture than Suguru did. The motherfucker. There should be a specific class specifically for him; The Art of Shutting the Fuck Up. 

"Didn't even get to..." Suguru mutters, a frown on his face as he finally remembers to take his meds. 

The tic-tac case makes him smile brightly. It's helping that he's away from the office as well. Before he can pop the pill into his mouth, his phone rings. Suguru swears, and fumbles with the buttons. 

Nana, the contact says, and he lights up.

"Hi Nana," Suguru answers chirpily as soon as the line picks up. There's silence on the other end for a moment, and when Nanako speaks, she sounds wary. 

"...Suguru?"

"The only one." he confirms, shuffling his bag. It's slipping off his shoulder slightly, which is pretty inconvenient if he wants to take his meds. Still, he can surely wait until Nana's done calling. 

"Huh." 

Despite the singular word, Suguru can hear a small smile through her voice. The  knowledge that she’s smiling (though he can't exactly see it) makes Suguru copy the gesture as well, no matter how small. "What's up, Nana? Why'd you call?"

"Have you checked the time?" 

Oh. Hm. Suguru hasn't, actually. 

He momentarily pulls the phone away from his ear, checking the top right corner of the—oh shit. 

"Oh shit." Suguru hisses to himself, breaking into a run. His bag completely falls off his other shoulder, and he has to suffer the miserable, miserable fate of shimmying it back on while in motion. If he doesn't hurry up, he'll miss the bus, then he'll have to walk home and it'll be quite damn near dreadful. 

"Oh shit." Nanako mimics cheerfully through the other end of the line. Suguru's glad she sounds lively. At the start of the call, Suguru could've sworn that she sounded...relieved, for whatever reason. It's a good contrast to the gloomy and pissy mood she's been stuck in lately.

Suguru takes the stairs two steps at a time, managing to get his bag back on and holding his phone properly. "I'll be home before dinner. I think. Don't count on it." 

"Cool." is all Nanako says, but she sounds fond. Happy. Suguru continues his race to the bus stop.

"Oh— sorry," he says, accidentally bumping into a student. She waves him off, tells him it's okay. He bends his head apologetically, then continues running. 

"Why are you even late?" 

Gojo’s stupid face flashes in his head. “There was a nuisance at school.”

The last person is getting on the bus as Suguru rounds the corner, which only spurs him to run even faster. Whoever is about to get on seems to notice him running, and full on stops in front of the doors, despite the driver complaining. Bless whoever that is. Good fortune and whatever upon that person who quite literally stopped getting on just so Suguru could catch up.

"Oh my god. Yes, hello, thanks—" Suguru starts, but then all of a sudden, he feels a hand pull at his collar, phone clattering on the asphalt, Nana’s voice cutting off sharply. The brown haired boy on the steps of the bus looks up, helplessly confused. 

"What the fuck!?" Suguru snaps, fists curled. 

He's fully ready to swing his arm, elbow cocked and brows set into a thin line, before it stops midway. 

Gojo's eyes are wide, hair messy; as if he'd just finished running an entire marathon. His breaths come out in little, short gasps of air and Suguru has to step back, scowling at the way his own cheeks flush. Cerulean eyes blink at him, before his mouth curls up into a grin. 

"Hi."

That's all Suguru needs to snap out of the haze that he'd been put into, firmly planting his palm against the other's chest to push him away. "Motherfucker! I'm going to miss the bus!" 

His feet plant one step against the sidewalk, then two—before he stops. He narrows his eyes, punching the side of Gojo's arm again for good measure before rushing up the steps just as the doors close. He sits on the closest seat available—which just happens to be the seat next to the boy who held the door open. 

"Thank you." he says, once the air had gotten back into his lungs. "I'm Suguru Geto, by the way."

The boy lights up; he looks younger than him, maybe a year down. Judging by his uniform, they go to the same school. "I'm Yu Haibara! It was no problem, really, I was getting on the bus anyways, and I thought that if I was the one who was running late, I'd really appreciate it if the door got held open for me—"

Suguru blinks at the sudden influx of words, a smile creeping up his lips. Cute kid. Like a little brother. Haibara reminds him of Nanako and Mimiko, a bit. 

"Oh," Haibara says suddenly, looking as if he's been struck. "Your phone. You dropped it on the ground earlier, when the other guy startled you."

"Hm?" he hums, shaking his head. "Oh, no, it's right here—"

He makes a show of putting his hand into his pants, before pausing. He frowns, digging around a bit more, but all he finds is lint at the bottom of his pocket. 

Oh shit.

Suguru digs deeper, as if that'll change the fact that his pockets are empty. No way. No way he dropped it. He turns to his other pockets, the front zipper of his bag—

"Sorry." Haibara offers, looking mildly concerned.

"I'm dead." Suguru whispers. "Oh, I'm so dead."

Chapter Text

Everyone knows the Gojo family name. Who wouldn't? They're one of the biggest influences in the entire country—no matter where you look, you'll eventually find their family crest stamped somewhere. G Beauty, G Electronics, G blah blah blah blah blah—

"Blah blah blah?" a grin twitches at the edges of his mother's lips. "Is that how you see the family business, Satoru?"

"Yes." he says easily, chewing on a spoonful of cereal. "Affirmative, mother."

Amane Gojo is a beautiful woman; she's actually where he got most of his looks. In contrast to the light-brown of the Gojo family men, both he and his mother have white hair. Instead of forest green, they both have a piercing blue eyes. Shoko jokes (on the off chance she accepts his invitation to his house) that they're like cats, when the lights are off, and swears up and down that their eyes glow in the dark. 

"Don't let your father hear that." she snorts, eating her own cereal. Satoru frowns, but continues his brilliant, brilliant quest of eating food. 

He likes moments like these the best, when it's just the two of them. Moments like these in the early mornings where they don't have to put up appearances for the rest of the family; where Satoru doesn't have to be away from his mother because apparently, men of the Gojo clan aren't supposed to need their mothers. 

"I don't care what he hears." Satoru murmurs finally, putting away his bowl. For a moment, only the clink of porcelain against the sink can be heard. He can hear the kitchen chair scrape against the floor, and then there's a hand ruffling his hair.

"You don't mean that." his mother says, handing him his backpack. "Off to school now, Satoru."

I mean it, he thinks, but Satoru smiles instead.

"Whatever you say, mom."

Satoru Gojo hates school with a burning passion. Honestly, if it weren't for his mother and Shoko, he'd probably have dropped out years ago. It's too easy, and everyone is stupid. They're either scared of his family name, or they're enticed by his money. Boring, disgusting, not worth his attention. The usual.

Thankfully though, he'd managed to shake the crowd of students away from him. He is not ashamed to admit that he climbed out of a window to get away from them. They’re just that much of a menace. Honestly, you’d think they have nothing better to do than to follow him around all day.

That’s how he finds himself walking along the corridors, hands stuffed into his pockets as he scans the rooms absentmindedly. They’re empty, as usual, and messy. Chairs are misaligned, the windows aren’t closed; normal highschool things. You can’t just stuff a bunch of sweaty meatheads into one room for more than one hour and expect them to clean up after themselves. 

Thud!

Satoru stops in his tracks, brows furrowing. Huh. 

Tracing his steps back, the snow-haired teen peeks into the classroom. You know, like the nosy person that he is. C’mon, he might consider most people in this school as nuisances, but sometimes it’s fun to poke around other people’s business and mess with them. It’s not like he has anything better to do—the later he gets home, the better. 

At first, Satoru only sees a crowd of three guys beating someone up. A foul expression twists its way onto his face—what the hell do they think they’re doing!? 

He stalks forward, face shadowed as he purposefully kicks a nearby table. It skids with a deafening screech, and two of the guys look up. None of them seem to be the leader, based on the way they both pale immediately, mouths hanging open in fear. Maybe the Gojo family name does come in handy sometimes. Either that, or the reputation that Satoru…accidentally built up by beating people up.

“Scram.” he hisses, and they turn tail immediately. Despite the situation, Satoru feels a prideful grin climb up his face. Take that, weirdos. Imagine beating people up. 

That’s hypocritical, a nagging voice tells him. It sounds suspiciously like Shoko. 

Shut up, he replies cheerfully. 

“Hey! Are you even listening?”

That’s enough to bring Satoru’s attention back to the situation, the grin melting off his face. Oh. Right. There’s one more kid left—apparently he has dull senses. Honestly, he’s not quite sure how he didn’t hear the screech of the table when Satoru kicked it. He supposes not everyone can be as cool as he is. 

“Sorry, what was that?” a voice says, and Satoru perks up, trying to get a good look at the guy on the floor. He knows that voice. Oh, he’d know that voice anywhere. The realization just makes him even angrier than before, and he smacks the kid around the crown of his head.  He stops mid sentence.

“You look constipated.” he says, and Satoru grins at the remark, before the other guy promptly falls over, revealing the boy on the floor. 

Now, before he says anything, Satoru is here to get two things straight—he’s not. He didn’t even know he had the ability to possess romantic attraction before him, which leads him to the second point; Satoru is definitely not a stalker, despite what Shoko tries to insist, because she’s a negative, negative person that serves only to spread doom and gloom. A real negative Nancy, if you will. 

You might be wondering, how does this all tie up? What is the point of giving all those seemingly disconnected points?

One very simple answer; Suguru Geto. Or, in other words (specifically Shoko’s words); Satoru Gojo’s gay awakening. 

It started sometime last year—near the start of the semester. Suguru Geto was an enigma the second he came into the school’s entrance, fresh into his transfer. Their first meeting was near the doors, actually. It went a little bit like—

“—hey!” Satoru yelps, nearly dropping his cup as someone roughly bumps into him. A scowl darkens his face immediately; no way he’s not giving this person a piece of his mind. It’s six in the morning, and he nearly spilled his drink! How will he get through his day without mass amounts of sugar!?

”Leave it, Satoru.” Shoko hums. Of course she’s unbothered. It wasn’t her drink that nearly got spilled. 

“No shot.” he huffs, roughly tapping the guy’s shoulder. He has a lot of things to say; Mainly, who do you think you are!? Look where you’re going! Don’t you know that it’s bad manners bump into someone like that? You nearly spilled my drink, and you didn’t even say sorry—

Unfortunately, all those words die on his tongue as soon as the guy turns. Only now does Satoru notice that his hair is tied into a messy bun, the rest of it cascading over his shoulders. A cardigan had been haphazardly thrown around his broad, broad shoulders, and he has gauges. Gauges! Slim eyes, perfect nose, he’s— there’s no way Satoru is actually looking at a person right now. Some god had materialized in front of him to test him or something. If the test is ‘don’t immediately want to keel over’ then Satoru is failing that. Oh, he is so failing that challenge. He’d be struck down by lightning in a heartbeat. 

“What?” the guy snaps, purple eyes flit in mild annoyance. His voice is so smooth. It’s so unbelievably smooth, and Satoru unfortunately cannot will a single thing out his mouth.

”Nothing,” Shoko says evenly, taking over the situation, but not before roughly bumping against Satoru’s shoulder. “Thought you were someone else. Sorry.”

Narrowing his eyes, the noirette turns and continues walking. His hips sway when he walks. Satoru may or may not just ascend into the heavens, thank you very much.

“Shoko.” Satoru says after a while, once his jaw decides to work again. “I think I’m—“

”Congratulations. Now you’re a rainbow denizen too.” Shoko cuts him off, dragging him by the sleeve of his jacket to class. Absentmindedly, he cranes his neck to look for the other guy. His insane height lets him peer over students’ heads, but he can’t spot him anywhere amongst the crowd. 

They settle back into a leisurely walk once Satoru’s chest had calmed down, letting him breathe properly again. Shoko decides to speak then, throwing her plastic-cup into a nearby bin. His own still has a way to go, since he got hot chocolate and he’s waiting for it to cool down. 

“I honestly didn’t expect delinquents to be your type.” she notes absentmindedly. Satoru sighs. 

“I didn’t either. Did you— Shoko, tell me you saw his jaw.” 

“Gay.”

Satoru sends her a look. “You’re gay too.”

Nodding solemnly, Shoko reaches over to take a sip of his hot chocolate. Satoru scowls, but lets her drink either way. It’d be unfair, since she’d let him drink out of her milkshake earlier today. “Boohoo. We’re both homosexual. Cry me a river.”

Despite the deadpan statement, a grin crawls its way up Satoru’s face. This is exactly why he likes Shoko—she’s never afraid to speak her mind, despite his family name. Honestly, Satoru’s not even sure she gives a shit about his family name. The thought delights him to no end.

And so begins the vicious cycle of observation. A few months into the endeavor, this is what Satoru has chalked up.

Geto is overall an explosive personality—on the inside. Outwardly, he just passes through and does his work. Not exactly the friendly, approachable type either, but not someone who would get mad at you for just existing. He is, however, someone who is scarily good at winning fights. 

“Gay.” Shoko sagely says to Satoru, observing his transfixed expression as he watches Geto beat someone up. 

“Hand-sculpted.” Satoru whispers, watching the way Suguru slams his fist against some random guy’s throat. “Hand-sculpted by whatever god that exists out there.”

You get the point. By then, Satoru had a vague outline of Suguru Geto. A picture in his head of how he is. 

It changes, however, after summer break. Diluted is the only way Satoru can describe it as.

That’s who he’s facing right now. The diluted version of Suguru Geto, who lets himself get beat up with a mildly interested expression.

”Thanks.” Geto says, rising to his feet. He smiles politely. Nothing like the smiles that Satoru notices when he speaks on his phone.

Satoru stills, not quite knowing what to do with himself. He can vaguely register that his own face still holds the nasty expression he was wearing when dealing with the thugs, but he’s frozen stock still. This is quite literally the first time Geto had ever paid attention to him past the first day at the gates.

Geto’s brow quirks slightly. Satoru curses himself internally. Fuck. He’d been quiet too long.

Trying to fix the hole that he’d dug himself into, Satoru gestures with his chin towards the area where Geto was getting beat up. “The hell were you were you doing there, getting beaten up?” 

Shit. Shoko told him to drop saying hell. It sounds rude. Oh, shit. Satoru has dug himself into a deeper hole and it is not good.

Here we go. He can fix it. He— what if he cracks a joke?

”Would’ve expected someone with—“ 

Blue eyes dart over to the circles on Geto’s ears. What were they called again? Shit, this is terrible! He’s making a terrible first impression!

”…those things to be doing the beating.”

The joke falls flat. Satoru is confident there must’ve been a thud sound from how flat the joke fell. It would be brilliant if the ground just disappeared and swallowed him whole, thanks. 

“You mean gauges?” 

Satoru lets out a laugh. Or what’s supposed to be a laugh. He cuts it off too soon, and it sounds strangled. 

“W- Whatever.” he tries, before cringing, eyes squinting. Whatever!? Who says whatever after that!

Geto turns to him and— okay. Illegal. That’s illegal. That’s an illegal, unfair, criminal move to give someone eyes as pretty as those. Purple eyes— Satoru might just fall over and die.

”I’m Suguru Geto.”

”I know.”

There’s a beat of silence. 

Satoru would very much like to die. 

Geto starts fixing his bag, while Satoru tries to think of a way to climb out of the hole he dug himself into. This is a terrible, miserable affair. Maybe he wronged some sort of god when he was born. Shoko is so going to make fun of him for this.

”I was sort of hoping for your name too.” Geto continues.

Aha! Brilliant opportunity to crack another joke. Satoru straightens up and with the best faux-arrogant expression he can muster; “As if you don’t know my name.”

Joke falls flat. Again. Geto doesn’t laugh. 

Fuck it.

Cheeks burning with embarrassment and self-depreciation, Satoru turns tail and speedwalks out of the room. 

As soon as he gets far enough into the hallway, he stops; takes a moment to breathe, before fishing his phone oit of his pocket.

Shoko answers before the first ring finishes. “Yo.”

”I made a fool out of myself.” he whispers, banging his head against the wall. “In front of Geto.”

There’s a rustle of plastic, then a crunch. Satoru’s brow quirks.

”Are you seriously eating while I’m going through agonizing pain!?”

“Don’t bring my Doritos into this. You always make a fool out of yourself. You did it in front of a guy you find hot. Bummer. I don’t suppose that’s my problem.” 

Satoru sighs, peeking out onto the roof. He grabs his bag from where he’d left it, praising the weather for not raining on it. “You’re so mean to me, Shoko.” 

“Mm. Sure. What’re you gonna do about it?” Shoko’s voice rings from the phone. There’s another crunch. 

Blue eyes track the entrance of the school. He can spot the limo his dad always sends to pick him up. “Apologize. Maybe. Tomorrow?”

”How, dipshit? You share zero classes together.” 

Slowly, a grin climbs its way onto his face. Long, long silence stretches over the phone call. 

"Thanks, Shoko." Satoru sing-songs. Before he turns the call off, he can hear her murmur "Oh no. What did I just do—" 

Satoru arrives at the limo, shuffling the door open with his foot. There's a thump as he unceremoniously throws his bags onto the car floor and slides into the backseat; shit-eating grin still prominent on his face. 

"Hi Ijichi." he greets the driver. His eyes glint.

Ijichi pales at his expression. He nods in greeting, before turning to the road. That expression on Satoru Gojo? Terrible. Terrible, terrible news. 

Chapter Text

"So what you're telling me," Shoko says, peering at him with a perplexed expression. "Is that you harassed your teacher until he kicked you out of the class,"

"Yes." Satoru confirms, nursing his jaw. Geto's a good puncher. That may or may not be really hot. 

She sighs, "And then for some reason—"

"Divine intervention."

"Shut up Satoru. For some reason, you managed to get yourself paired with him. Instead of acting like the normal variant of homosexual, you managed to piss him off so much that he socked you in the jaw. Am I getting this right?"

He shuffles under her gaze. Man. Shoko is scary. If looks could kill, he'd be six feet under right now. Maybe even twelve. Point is, there's no way he's surviving her wrath. 

"You make it sound worse than it was." he defends weakly. It falls under deaf ears. 

Shoko sighs, lighting a cigarette as she walks. Satoru wrinkles his nose at the gesture—she'd managed to nag him into trying it once, and it was on the harsher side of absolutely terrible. He's not quite sure how she can handle taking all that weird smoke in her lungs. He'd also tried telling her to quit, but the harsh reality is that Satoru Gojo is no match for the fierce fury of Shoko Ieri. 

They're walking side by side on the campus. She'd come to get him after he got throughly spoken to by Principal Yaga. Ijichi's not here yet—had some errand that Satoru's father had him do. He doesn't mind much, it just means more time to spend with Shoko. It's not like he does much at home anyways, when his mother isn't there. 

"I passed him earlier. Geto." Shoko mentions. He perks up. 

She continues. "He was rushing. On the phone with someone—running really fast. Bumped into me. Told him it was okay."

Sighing, Satoru pushes his glasses to the top of his head. He blinks; once, twice, getting used to the light. Unfortunately, his father's bloodline comes with stupid sensitivity to the eyes. He can only really see properly without glasses inside, or like now, in sunsets and evenings. 

For a while, they just walk in relative silence. 

"So how did your apology go?"

Satoru stops walking. 

Shoko looks at him. Her expression fades into one of deep, deep, disappointment. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she points. "He went that way."

Without further ado, Satoru breaks into a run. Okay, maybe it is a little bad that he forgot to apologize to Geto, but could you blame him? What he didn't know before he ever spoke to the guy that it's such a fun little ordeal pissing him off. He gets a little quirk in his brow, and his eyes narrow so thinly that Satoru nearly wants to laugh every time he does so. Although maybe some parts he does go too far—Shoko's right, he should really fix the way that he phrases things. He sounds like an asshole most of the time. Unfortunately, the phase where he'd completely changed his speech pattern (you could consider him a dramatic adolescent) during his 'rebellious' stage never really wore off. It pisses off his father to no end. 

He rounds the corner; nearly overestimating the space and catapulting himself straight into the road. 

There! he cheers, spotting Geto nearing the bus. He's still on the phone, like Shoko had mentioned to him early. 

Without thinking, he rushes forward, grabbing the collar of his uniform. Satoru regrets it nearly moments after he does it; Geto's steps faltering and his phone falling to the street. 

"What the fuck!?" Geto snarls, and oh, even when he's mad, he pronounces words so elegantly.

Satoru snaps back to himself, noticing Geto stopping mid-punch. His eyes are narrowed in equal parts frustration and confusion. His eyes look so nice in the fading light; the purple nearly looks magical. Satoru right then and there praises whatever genes gave this man a beautiful, beautiful combination of features—fuck, wait, he's here to apologize. 

He tries his best grin. 

I'm sorry, lies at the back of his throat. 

"Hi." he breathes out instead, sounding more windy that he intended. Geto is so pretty that it should be unfair. It should be criminally offensive to be able to render a person speechless just by being absolutely gorgeous. And angry. Oh. Shit. 

"Motherfucker! I'm going to miss the bus!"

Geto turns away with the (pretty) frustrated expression, before whirling around to sock Satoru on the arm. He doubles over, hand shooting to nurse his arm and the next time he looks up—the bus is gone, leaving a whirl of dust behind it. 

There's a beat of silence, before Satoru groans to himself, letting his shades fall over his eyes again. With the air of a soldier defeated, he sits on the sidewalk, before noticing a weird buzzing noise. Huh. 

Cerulean eyes track the street for movement, before they land on a sleek, black phone case. The back is clear, and it holds a picture of two girls; one blonde and one black-haired. Point is; this isn't Satoru's phone, and it's buzzing with the pattern of a phone call. 

For a few moments, he just stares at it, before picking it up. 

Nana, the screen says. He accepts the call. 

"Suguru, what the hell? Why'd the phone fall? I thought you died or something, you weren't speaking." a pissed off voice says; the voice of a young girl. Maybe one of the girls on the back of the phone case. With a start, Satoru realizes that she said Suguru. As in, Suguru Geto. He must've dropped his phone when Satoru had pulled him back. 

He winces; puts the phone to his ear. "Uh, hello?"

Silence. Satoru nearly thinks that she'd turned the phone off, before a scowl too menacing for a kid reverberates from the other end of the line. 

"Who are you? Why the hell do you have my brother's phone, huh? Are you a fucking kidnapper? Did you kidnap Suguru? You better fucking giving him back or so help me—"

"What!?" Satoru says, alarmed. Honestly, how many 'fuck's did this kid just drop in one sentence? "No! He dropped his phone, so I have it now. He went on the bus, so I kind of just have this."

Theres a grumble from the other line; it's weirdly disappointed for such a young kid. Satoru is nearly reminded of his mother. 

"Ma!" the girl (Nana?) calls out. The phone sounds like it had been put away from her ear. "Suguru dropped his phone like an idiot. Some rando has his phone now."

"Some rando," he repeats to himself, oddly offended at being called the title. Seriously. This kid might just be ruder than he was when he was a kid. Satoru shakes his head. Nope. He's nearly an adult. He will not be offended by some kid's mocking; even if it is Suguru Geto's younger sister. 

There's shuffling, some muffled conversation, as if the phone's being passed around. Then, a warm voice. Older, calmer. "Hello? This is Suguru's mother." 

"Hi. I—er, nice to meet you Mrs. Geto. I'm Satoru Gojo," he stammers, wincing at how small he sounds. How did he even get here? Less than an hour ago, he got his arse beat by Geto, and now he's speaking to his mother. The childish part (which, in Shoko's words, would be every part) of him finds that extremely funny. 

"Hello Gojo. Are you a friend of Suguru's?" she asks. Her voice is calming in the same way Geto's is; it's clear where he got his tone from. Satoru wonders if he looks like his mom. 

"N—"

"I'm glad his phone got left with a friend, instead of someone he doesn't know," Mrs. Geto continues gently, seeming to take the silence as a yes. Satoru idly notes that he's digging himself into a hole again. 

"Y- Yes, of course," he says, standing up, starting to walk back to the school. Ijichi's probably there already, based on the way his own phone keeps going off in his pocket. 

"Keep a secret, will you?"

Now, any decent person probably would've come clean at this point, but Satoru is—well, Satoru. He's nosy. He's so nosy that it'll probably be his downfall at some point. Maybe he'd sniff around shady areas and find himself kidnapped by the mafia somewhere in the future. 

"Sure." he croaks out, steps weighed with the conscience of a guilty man. He can already feel the phantom pains of Geto's fist to his jaw and his arm. 

There's silence on the other end for a good while, as if she's contemplating what to say. When she does speak, her voice is gentler than before. 

"I'm glad he has a friend, to take care of him. My Suguru hasn't really been..." she trails off, and Satoru can feel his heart sink; ever so slightly lower. Mrs. Geto sighs, seems to shake her head based on the shuffling around the other line. 

"Ah, well, that's that. I'm glad his phone is in good hands, you sound like a very kind boy." 

Despite the situation, Satoru finds himself preening at the compliment. It feels the same as when his own mother would praise him for something, and he shakes it away to answer her. "Yes. Yeah. Of course. Me and Ge— um, Suguru, really good friends. Hang out all the time. Yup."

Mrs. Geto expresses her happiness at the sentiment and hangs up a few moments later. 

Satoru stops, just outside the entrance of the school, Geto's phone in his hand. He inhales deeply, before slamming his head against the concrete of the school walls. 

"Ouch." he murmurs to himself, closing his eyes. Oh god. He's successfully dug himself into an even deeper hole. But what was he supposed to do? Tell Geto's mother that his phone had gotten to a complete stranger and make her worry even more? Okay. So he did it to spare her from worrying—it doesn't change the fact that Satoru had lied to Geto's mother, and now she thinks they're best friends when in fact, Geto had just finished punching him out before the call. Not to mention, he's also very gay for her son. How does he even address that? Hey, yeah, sorry, I have, according to one of my friends, a nearly stalker-ish crush on your son, and I find it hot when he's pissed off. Also I'm kind of the reason why he dropped his phone in the first place.

Satoru groans, slamming his forehead against the walls again, feeling the sting on his forehead. 

"Satoru!" Ijichi's voice invades his self deprecation, high and shrill with his usual worry. Satoru notices that he's been a bit wary since yesterday. Satoru's mother tells him that Ijichi can spot what she calls 'I'm going to be a little shit' face very well, and responds accordingly. He's one of the few staff that she'd picked out for him herself. 

"Hi Ijichi." he sighs dramatically, dropping his bag onto the backseat. He doesn't get in like he usually does, though, instead choosing to open the door to the front. Ijichi gives him a confused look—it's Satoru's first time sitting in front, after all, but he doesn't say anything. He just waits for Satoru to get in before locking the doors and setting off into a drive. 

"You know Suguru Geto, right, Ijichi?" Satoru laments, propping his elbow on the elbow rest, cheek flat against the car's tinted windows. 

"Yes. Ms. Shoko calls him your 'gay awakening'." he confirms. The words sound professional but weird when it's Ijichi saying it. 

"Right. So—"

More often that not, their drives back home usually go like this. Satoru tells Ijichi about whatever dumb thing that he'd done for the day, and Ijichi responds in turn. Back when his mother had just gotten Ijichi on the job, Satoru was a right asshole to him; as much of an asshole a pissed of ten year old can be. He kept slamming on the separator between the driver's seat and the backseat, he would spill juice over the white leather seats on purpose but...Ijichi stayed. He was patient, despite everything. Eventually, maybe around twelve, he realized that Ijichi would be there to stay. So he warmed up to him, and now Satoru tells him about nearly anything and everything. 

Including the hole that he's currently digging himself into. 

"What do you think?" he finishes, just as Ijichi parks. They're in the basement; they'll have to take the elevator before they get to the penthouse. Technically the entire apartment belongs to them, but Satoru likes to loosely refer to the place as the 'house'.

"I think that you should come clean." Ijichi says patiently, pressing the buttons for the top floor. Satoru groans. That's a very Ijichi-like answer, but it doesn’t help much.

They stand in comfortable silence as the elevator whirs, shifting slightly before starting to rise. 

"You won't tell my mom, right? That the guy I'm gay for has punched me twice already?”

"I might."

"Shit."

Chapter Text

"I'm home." Suguru calls out, mentally preparing himself to tell his mother that he'd managed to lose his phone, and he has no idea whether it's been picked up off the ground or if it's been run over by some car. Brilliant.

He unlaces one shoe, before giving in to the call of laziness and simply slipping it off his feet, laces still half-tied. That's a problem for tomorrow's Suguru. For today, he sets them on the rack. 

Since he managed to lose his phone, he has Haibara's number written on a small sticky note instead, clenched in the palm of his hand. In the short bus ride back to his stop, he'd gotten very fond of him. He's very bubbly and genuine, completely capable of filling the silence with entertaining stories about his sister or his classmates or his friend, Kento Nanami; a reoccurring topic in the boy's vocabulary. Suguru supposes they're close. It's sweet, the way Haibara lights up when he talks about his friend. 

His mother's head peeks around the corner, a smile on her face. It's brighter than usual, and Suguru perks up. Unconsciously, his face mimics the expression, a small smile playing at the corner of his lips. He forgets about his phone momentarily. "What?"

Nanako pops out from behind her suddenly, arms crossed and eyes squinting at him. "Who's Satoru Gojo? He speaks like he’s in a goddamn gang.”

The smile drops from Suguru's face immediately. Nanako's grin widens. His mother doesn't seem to notice, preoccupied with lightly scolding the other for dropping a ‘goddamn’ in the middle of her sentence.

"Oh, your phone, Suguru," his mother says, approaching. 

He blinks. "How did you know about my phone?"

"He answered Nana's call," Mimiko calls out from somewhere in the living room. Suguru moves to look; she's sat on the couch, scrolling idly on her own phone. Nanako promptly plops herself next to her twin sister, peering over her shoulder. Their mother is still beaming at him proudly. 

One by one, the dots painfully connect themselves in his head. Gojo had grabbed his collar, Suguru had punched his arm then...fuck. He'd dropped the phone on the ground; it must be with Gojo. Nana apparently called again, not surprising with how persistent she can be, and the motherfucker must have answered. 

"He was a really sweetie, Suguru. All polite and everything. He's a very nice boy, I'm glad you two are friends. 

Suguru pauses. 

Friends?

Gojo told his mother that they're friends?

He can already feel a headache forming at the back of his head. This is terrible. He's— god! Is Gojo really that determined to fuck up the trajectory of his life!? Suguru can feel his fists itching to break a nose.  

Denial lingers at the tip of his tongue—at least, before he takes another look at his mother's expression. Hope lingers in the lines of a smile that she doesn't quite show, feeling lighter than she's been in the past few months. 

Suguru falters. The rebuttal dies on his lips. 

"Yeah." Suguru tells her, and she finally lets the smile show. It's the most genuine he's seen in a while. 

"That's good, Suguru. I'm glad." she pats his cheek, before starting to set the table. 

Suguru waves as he watches her go, the smile slowly fading off of his face. Unconsciously, his eyes drift over to the twins. Nanako is focused on whatever is playing on Mimiko's phone, but her twin is quiet; eyes on Suguru instead of on the phone. There's no questioning in her eyes. It feels more like she's searching for something. 

Strangely, he feels the urge to squirm under her gaze. 

"Dinner," he says instead, gesturing lightly towards the table. 

Mimiko's expression immediately clears, and she pauses her phone. Nanako lets out a noise of complaint, before grumpily standing to leave. Mimiko lingers, just within arm's reach of Suguru. 

There's a careful consideration to the way that she speaks, words earnest and slow. "I'm glad you have a friend." she says, like it's a confession. 

All at once, Suguru feels terribly still. If there was any trace of telling his family that no, Gojo really isn't his friend, left in his head, it dies in this one instant, with Mimiko standing unsurely in front of him. Grief curls around the edges of his chest for a reason he can't place. 

Instead, Suguru reaches over. Ruffles her hair, puts on a smile. "Course I do. How lowly do you think of your brother, hm?”

She smiles, but it's muted. He ushers her to dinner.

"Don't be so fidgety," Shoko complains lightly, pushing at Satoru's shoulder. He scowls, pushing back on hers. 

"How could I not be fidgety? I'm about to return Geto's phone! Plus, did you forget the fact that he's drop dead gorgeous?" he shoots back. He's clutching the phone in his sweaty, sweaty palm, wiping it on the sleeve of his jacket every few minutes. 

"And, he's punched you twice." she adds, sipping on her milkshake. Satoru nods solemnly. 

"Yes, that too."

Honestly, Satoru has half a mind not to attend class today. At least, not to attend math class; which is the only one that he shares with Geto. Maybe he could just leave it on his desk or something—no, it could get stolen. Satoru could always just...drop it in his bag, but he doesn't quite know how to do that without Geto seeing it. 

But...he doesn't know what to do about this situation. Geto's mom sounded worried; more worried than a mother usually would. Call him a mama's boy for noticing it, but there's no way that she would be that concerned if Geto was okay. 

Fuck it. Satoru's always been good at poking his nose into things. 

Shoko punches his arm lightly (definiteliy lighter than what Geto did yesterday), before going off to her own class. A quick glance to see she enters the classroom properly, and Satoru does the same thing. 

"Good morning!" he sing-songs as he steps into the classroom, grinning at the way some people scowl. It's a brilliant, brilliant day to be scum of the earth. The teacher doesn't seem to be there yet—whatever her name is. Unlike Ryu from the other class, who always shows up devastatingly early. 

A quick scan immediately leads him to Geto, who's face down on his desk, arms framing his head, and the empty chair next to him; Satoru's chair. Uncertainty bubbles in the pit of his stomach, but he buries it down. He's going to figure out what's up with Geto if it kills him. 

All throughout weaving his way through rows of tables and chairs, Satoru's eyes remain glued to the ravenette. Halfway there, Geto sits up, blinking blearily. He's momentarily stunned by how serene he looks, having just woken up from a nap. His hair is slightly tousled near the front, and his eyes are still nearly closed. 

Then he takes a case of tic tacs out of his pocket, and pops one in his mouth, chugging water to follow it. That—wait, that's not a tic tac. It's not in the cylinder shape that tic tacs are usually in. Instead, they're circular, resembling real pills more than the minty candy. 

Unceremoniously, Satoru drops his bag on the floor. Geto startles, nearly dropping the case of tic tacs. He spots Satoru, gives him a scowl. But it doesn't look as...hostile, as yesterday. 

Diluted, Satoru thinks, faltering slightly. 

Before he forgets, Satoru fishes Geto's phone out of his pocket. It clatters when he places it onto Geto's table, setting it down far too rough than intended. 

"Thank you," Geto murmurs, and Satoru feels something stir in his chest. His hand twitches, still clutching the phone. Why isn't Geto...mad? He certainly looked mad, earlier, at least a little bit. 

Weird, Satoru thinks. His hand lingers on the phone. 

Geto, apparently still sleepy, reaches for the phone without looking at it properly. One thing leads to another and suddenly, warmth envelopes the entirety of Satoru's hand—and quickly spreads to his face. 

Satoru gapes at the contact. Geto's hand is bigger than his—not longer, but his palm is...oh, Satoru is not surviving today. He can already feel his stomach stirring, warmth spreading to the tips of his fingers. God—how can his hand be so warm? 

He pulls away his hand as if burnt, taking the phone with him. Geto blinks, looking more awake than before, but still with that weird, muted expression. Satoru doesn't like the look of it on his face.

"My phone." he says, slowly. Satoru can hear his heart thumping in his ears. 

"No," he blurts out. 

Geto pauses. 

"No?"

Feeling a terrible, terrible idea stirring in his head, Satoru repeats the word with more finality. "No."

Geto's brows furrow a minuscule amount, before the door opens. Quicker than he can think, Satoru puts the phone back in his pocket and sits straight, pointedly not looking at Geto's expression. He braces, nearly expecting a punch to his arm, a scowl then a grab for his phone—something, anything, but nothing comes. 

The teacher greets the class, and starts to teach. Some topic that Satoru's already seen before—point is, Geto is acting weird. Completely different to the spitfire of a person that he was yesterday, ready to throw a punch at a drop of a hat. It might be unfair for him to say, but this isn't how he usually asks. 

Class goes on without another hitch. Geto doesn't even try to get his phone back, just making notes methodically. Robotically. 

Satoru's stomach churns. The phone feels heavy in his pocket. 

The bell rings before he can even decide what to do, and Geto packs without another word. He doesn't ask for his phone. He just puts his things in his back and files them away in his bag. Satoru watches dazedly as Geto leaves the classroom, before scrambling to follow. 

"Hey!" Satoru calls out, but it's a half-hearted sound at best. Geto doesn't look back, and Satoru has his next class to catch. 

Fuck. 

The periods between Math and break pass by in a blur for him, spent entirely with his mind lingering on how strange Geto was acting. At some point during history, he'd gotten sent outside because he kept clicking the top of his pen. 

As soon as the bell rings again, Satoru shoots to his feet, haphazardly throwing his books into his bag as he bolts out the door. 

A familiar head of brown catches the corner of his eye, and Satoru makes a beeline straight for her.

"Shoko! We need to find Geto. Like, right now." Satoru insists, tugging on the sleeve of her uniform. 

"No." Shoko says plainly, dragging him to the cafeteria instead. Before he can continue, she cuts him off. "At least let me get food first."

It takes (what seems to be) an extremely long time for the line to move, despite them getting there amongst the first batch of hungry students. One thing about Shoko is that she's extremely healthy, past her thing with cigarettes. From the start of their friendship, Satoru had already noticed the way she would always eat three meals a day, would always shower, would always do stuff that most normal people would skip every once in a while. Satoru thinks that Shoko resembles a doctor. 

Shoko holds her bento, filled with the usual lunch stuff. Satoru crinkles his nose. She always refuses to let him bring food for her. Something about not associating with the bourgeoisies, whatever the hell that means.

"We can go now." she says boredly, poking his shoulder to let him lead the way. 

Without wasting any more time, Satoru weaves around the crowds, adopting the job of glowering at anyone that tries to suck up to him. Shoko follows along behind him, managing to steadily eat her food even while eating; which, pretty impressive, but Satoru's preoccupied right now so he'll appreciate her talent later. 

"He's at the roof, right?" Shoko pipes up from behind him after a mouthful of her food. 

"Yeah." Satoru confirms, shooting a glare at the nearest person who looked like they wanted to talk to him.

One perk of...normally observing Suguru Geto is knowing where he eats his lunch, which is the rooftop. It's pretty cliche, but Satoru supposes it's pretty nice and windy up there. He assumed it was because no one went up there at first, but eventually he realized that no one went up there because Geto is there. 

Listen, he wasn't really looking for Geto, during breaks; he just managed to spot him on the roof one day while he was walking with Shoko. No matter what Shoko says, it is not because he immediately recognized Geto. That's insane. False information. No one believe Shoko. 

Geto's phone feels heavy in his pocket. 

Honestly, Satoru knows he should've just given the phone back. Maybe if he gave the phone back, he'd be eating with Shoko right now, and he wouldn't have to drag her halfway across the campus just to look for the rooftop that Geto likes to sit on top of. Less stress, less effort, and it would've been the right thing to do. 

But. 

He really didn't like the look in Geto's expression; or, rather, the lack of one. For a split second, Satoru felt like Geto wasn't really...there. Wasn't in a place that Satoru could reach. He looked so diminished; so different from the image that Satoru had come to recognize in his head. And maybe that isn't fair—maybe it isn't right that he chose to just make this decision just because of a change in demeanor because Geto is not his business. But—

"I'm glad he has a friend, to take care of him. My Suguru hasn't really been..."

God. If Shoko could read minds, she'd call him a mama's boy. It's not his fault that he was raised with concern for mothers. He'll blame his father for that. 

"You're in your head again."

Shoko's expression isn't concerned, per se, it's...well. He can't describe it well. Shoko seems to have her own array of emotions. This one, he knows, is questioning. A weird mix of questioning and probing and all things Shoko. Shoko expressions. He's probably avoiding the question, now that he thinks about it. 

"I know. Geto's just..." Satoru starts, then gestures vaguely with his hands, nearly falling off the stairs to the roof in the process.

"Weird." he finishes. He only uses that for lack of a better word. He's never been all that eloquent, unlike Geto. 

Squinting, Shoko packs her bento. Apparently she'd finished it on the entire walk to the building, which is pretty brilliant. "Never thought I'd see the day where you'd call Geto weird."

A huff of laughter; Satoru smiles, then pushes the roof-door open with his shoulder. 

"Nice place." Shoko notes, and he can't help but agree. The wind blows freely, but not too hard that it would bring your things with it. Somehow, despite it being taller than most, it brings a slight smell of flowers. It's colder, too. Chatter from the lower floors can't be heard up here. 

Call him cheesy, but what Satoru likes the most about the rooftop is the person sitting near the wire fence, cross-legged on the floor. Even though Geto is acting strange, Satoru can't stop his heart from skipping a few beats when his eyes land on him. 

He's not finished eating, it seems, since his eating utensils are still out—lunch-bag on the floor next to him. His face looks passive, but it doesn't look as empty as it did earlier. A rush of relief fills Satoru's body, and he shakes it off. 

"Geto! Hi Geto!" Satoru calls out, letting Shoko step out into the roof before shutting the door behind both of them. 

Said teen stiffens, before the expression on his face is immediately replaced with a scowl. Satoru has never been so glad to see a scowl on his face. To be fair, he's nearly always glad to see it, because it's undeniably pretty hot, as he tells Shoko nearly every time they watch Geto beat someone up. 

"Fucking hell." Geto hisses, and Satoru can feel his stomach start doing flips. Angry Geto will quite literally kill him one day, and the snow-haired boy would probably just end up saying thank you. This is a problem, but he finds that he doesn't quite mind. 

Geto stands at an incredible pace, setting the cover down on his food. Satoru towers over him easily, but Geto has more of a build to him. Granted, Satoru is built incredible like a stick for the average teenager, but he simply doesn't address that. 

For a moment, Geto's pissed off expression melts off of his face, and he blinks, spotting Shoko. He seems to be thrown off by another person being there, prompting a slight hesitance. 

Without further ado, Satoru grabs the chance as fast as he can, taking wide strides (one of the only times that his long, long legs come in handy) that bring him just a few feet away from Geto. He digs around in his pocket, before handing him his phone. Maybe he does it with more giddiness than there normally should be, but he's not gonna mention that. 

"Your phone." he says, rocking on the balls of his heels. 

Geto's expression comes back in full force, snatching the phone off of his hands. Satoru pretends not to notice the way that their fingers brush momentarily.

There's a few moments of silence, punctuated only by Shoko boredly scuffing her shoe along the ground, as Geto scrolls through everything he missed on his phone. As time goes by, he looks considerably more distressed, but he does pocket his phone eventually. When he does, the full extent of his justified anger towards Satoru in the form of an accusatory finger. 

"You fucking—" Geto starts, before seeming to try and recollect himself. They're the closest that they've ever been, and that's putting a little spin to the way Satoru is thinking. Or maybe he isn't thinking at all. 

After a brief moment, Geto steps back, and Satoru briefly mourns the proximity. 

"You told my mother that we're friends." Geto states blandly, biting on the inside of his cheek. 

Satoru blinks in response. Honestly, he didn't expect Geto to ask about that part. He expected Geto to be mad that he didn't give the phone earlier, mad that Satoru had snatched it back—along the lines of that. Not the little fib he told while on the phone. 

"...yes." Satoru confirms, not quite sure where to go from there. "She. Er. She seemed concerned about you, and your phone being left with a stranger. Said it would make her feel better if the phone was with a friend, and I couldn't just not tell her that it wasn't with a friend, because that would make her worried, and what if she gets pissed at you when you get home because it's with a stranger—so I thought, if I tell her that it's with a friend, maybe she'd be less pissed that you—"

"Stop. Stop, stop, stop," Geto waves his hands, and Satoru promptly shuts up. He can hear Shoko snort from behind him. 

Geto inhales deeply, pinching the bridge of his nose. All of a sudden, Satoru feels very sheepish. Honestly, he didn't realize he was rambling. 

"You shouldn't have told her that."

He shifts. It feels like there's more to unpack from that sentence other than its surface value, but Satoru doesn't poke for once. Not with Geto. 

Not yet, pipes up his mind cheerfully. Satoru envisions himself slapping that part of his head with a fly swatter. 

"Didn't know what to tell her." is all that he says. It sounds rather lame, for a defense, but he doesn't quite know what else to say. If he's nosy, he'll scare Geto away, and if he scares Geto away, then he wouldn't want to be actual friends—

Hey. 

Oh. 

Somehow, probably between snatching the phone and speaking to Geto here on the roof, Satoru's intentions went from just returning the phone to...attempting to be Geto's friend. That sounds like a terrible plan, considering every single interaction that he's had with him so far, but Satoru can't help it; can't help the sudden burn in his chest every time that he remembers how empty Geto's expression looked, or how concerned his mother sounded, or how distant his sister felt on the phone. 

It's not his place to worry. But the emotions bubble inside his chest, popping and rising until he can't help but blurt out what's on his mind:

"I'm gonna be your friend."

Brought back to reality by his sudden revelation, Satoru looks up to see Geto. He looks like he's thinking, a mildly upset frown tugging the edges of his lips down. Even with the near-grimace, Satoru still thinks he looks unfairly pretty. 

"Fuck no. Not happening. In what universe do you think we'll be friends?" Geto hisses, but he's undeterred. As soon as the words pushed their way out of his lips, Satoru had made sure they became a promise.

"I'll try my best. Even if you don't want to," he insists, pinching lightly at the skin between  his pointer and his thumb. "I'm gonna— I'm gonna be so annoying that you can't get rid of me—"

"You already are," Geto cuts in.

"—and then we'd be friends. I'm not gonna stop trying."

He finishes with a flourish, feeling as if he'd run a full course marathon—even if he'd only just told the really pretty guy he'd been admiring for the better part of his highschool experience that he wants to be friends. Patting himself on the back right now. Baby steps for Satoru Gojo, but it'll turn into strides soon enough. At least, he hopes so. 

Meanwhile, Geto looks absolutely bewildered. Annoyance pinches his brows downwards, and his mouth is slightly hung open in shock. He looks at Satoru like he'd caused the entirety of global warming. 

"You're fucking insane." the other breathes out. 

"I agree." Shoko pipes up. Satoru shoots her a look of betrayal, and she just shrugs from her spot; cross-legged on the floor. 

Satoru turns back to Geto, fists curled with determination. "I'm gonna be your friend." he repeats with finality. 

"No fucking way." is all Geto says, before packing up his food. 

Satoru doesn't say anything as Geto pushes past him; doesn't say anything when the roof-door slams shut behind them. He's too busy coming to terms with the rapid pounding in his head, and the way the tips of his fingers won't cool down. 

While he is convinced that he really, genuinely, actually wants to be Geto's friend. Satoru isn't quite sure how he's going to do it when every time that Geto speaks, he's rendered speechless and dumbfounded for a good few seconds before his brain catches up, but he's going to do it, even when if within the vicinity of someone cool enough to have gauges and purple eyes and long hair, Satoru's cerebral functions seem intent on delaying his bodily functions. 

Eventually though, he does calm down, hands slowly unclenching as he turns towards Shoko. She's stood up by now; probably noticed the time. Just enough to get back to their building and back to their classes. 

She pats his shoulder condescendingly. "You're cooked."

Satoru groans.

"I know."

Chapter Text

Satoru Gojo is quite literally insane. 

That's a conclusion that Suguru reaches, right here, right now, leaning against the hallway to History class. The wall is cool against his forehead; it helps him ground himself against the swirling panic-annoyed-panic-pissed off-panic in his head that circles around Satoru Gojo, who apparently wants to be his friend after acting like a total stuck-up asshole. 

Where did that even come from? Actually, what was the point of not giving his phone back in the first place!? Suguru isn't sure why he didn't greet him with a fist to the face the second he snatched the phone back, or why he left him go the entire class without taking it back, but it was a mistake. Apparently, in the time before he'd climbed up to ambush him on the roof—which, how did he even know that Suguru eats there?—, Gojo had come to the insane, delusional conclusion that he wants to be Suguru's friend, of all things! 

"Geto." 

He turns to see his History teacher, face scrunched in mild confusion. "Are you alright?" he asks. 

Suguru pushes himself off the wall, attempting to smile. "Oh, no, it's okay."

Thankfully, he's spared from having to explain himself by the teacher nodding, walking in without another word. Good. Well, maybe if it was actually a sick student, it wouldn't be much good, but it's good in this situation. He's rambling. God. He's thinking too much, and it's making his head go all swirly. 

Right, Suguru remembers suddenly, walking to his seat. 

He shoves his hand into his pocket—takes out his meds. He pops one into his mouth, and waits for the class to start. 

What do friends do

What do new friends do

What do you do to be friends

What do you do when your friend doesnt like you

What do you do if your friend hates you

What do you do if 

"Hey!" 

Satoru scowls, making a reach for his phone as Shoko scrolls, looking increasingly more disappointed as she stares at his search history. There's a sort of sharpness to her gaze when she gives the phone back. 

"What are you trying to achieve, Satoru?" she flicks his forehead; pushes to make room next to him. Shoko is pushy, in that way. The way that makes you want to make space for her and her concern, the way that shows that she's worried for you without outwardly showing it. He sighs, pocketing the phone.

"I want to be his friend." he says, trying to see whether or not her wrath could be solved with an answer as shallow as that. Satoru turns to watch her expression change into one of mild disappointment. 

Ah. Apparently not this time. 

Satoru tugs on the string of his jacket, then pulls the back of the hood to bring it back to normal. "I just...I feel like there's more to him, no? Like yesterday. He was really off, Shoko."

Shoko regards him with a gaze that makes him shuffle. The thing with Shoko is that she seems to look past your expressions; past how your eyes skirt to the side, or how fidgety you are with your hands—sometimes, Satoru thinks, she can look into your head. Figure out how it works. It's almost clinical. 

"You're prying." drawing her eyes away from him, Shoko leans back on the bench, drawing out a cigarette from her pocket. Satoru scrunches his nose, but is relieved all the same. Her statement isn't exactly approval, but at least it isn't disapproval. 

"I know." 

Around seven is a near off-period, for the entire school. Every class starts at eight, so the few people that come by around this time are always more subdued. Basking in the slowness of misty mornings, watching the way mist pours out of your lips when you breath. Idly, he traces the wisps of heat his hot chocolate leaves in the air. 

"You can walk him to class." 

He startles. "Huh?"

Shoko jerks her head, and Satoru follows her gaze across the courtyard. 

There, looking nearly ethereal in the low sunlight is Suguru Geto in all his sleepy glory; hair hanging off his shoulders, only the top part pulled into half a bun. Perhaps Satoru would just faint on the spot, thank you very much. That would be a fitting end for him. 

"Oi," Shoko nags, punching his shoulder. 

"I get it! Fine, I'll go.”

Satoru zips his bag closed and swipes his hot chocolate off the seat. He swears he can hear his heart thumping in his ears and presses a shaky hand to his chest; as if to reassure himself that yes, his heart is inside his chest, it is well and beating, and he's alive. Alive, running to Suguru Geto, who probably wants nothing to do with him in the slightest.

Heart-pounding, sweat-palmed Satoru Gojo tries his best not to trip on anything on the way to Geto, no matter how much he would like to turn tail and go back to Shoko. Sure, he'd be faced with relentless mockery in terms of his confidence against extremely pretty men, but Shoko would also forget about it pretty fast. Which, you know, pretty good thing. 

But if he turns back, he wouldn't be making good on his promise to Geto—which would mean he spat his heart out on the rooftop yesterday for absolutely nothing. 

Dryly, Satoru swallows. I can do this. 

"Good morn— Good morning!" he greets, hand on Geto's shoulder, cringing at the way his voice cracks right in the middle. 

Before he can register a single thing, there's an elbow nearly an inch away from his face, and Satoru's heart is suddenly beating in his throat instead of his ears. What. What? 

The elbow lowers down to reveal Geto, face scrunched in annoyance. There's the quirk in his brow. That's— unfortunately, that's very cute. Satoru really needs to grow some self preservation. It'll be good for him, but also Geto's eyes are so pretty he could melt to the floor and die right now. 

"You." Geto growls, looking at him with utter, undiluted disdain. Satoru beams at him, keeping his hand on his shoulder. 

"Me," he agrees. 

Geto shoves his hand off his shoulder and starts to walk faster, clutching the straps of his bag. Despite them being nearly equal in height, Satoru skips over to match his steps with ease. Speaking of ease; it's a lot easier to speak to Geto when he's mad and actually speaking to Satoru, instead of being a cool person he's admiring from afar. 

"It's too early for your bullshit," says Geto snippily, shooting Satoru a look over his shoulder. All he responds with is a lopsided grin, matching his steps. With a roll of his eyes, Geto turns his gaze back in front of him. From the corner of his eye, Satoru can spot a dip in his face—like he's biting the inside of his cheek. 

Cute, he thinks in mild awe, before attempting to rub away the heat in his cheeks. 

"What's your first period, Geto?" he tries again. 

"None of your business."

That's how the next two weeks go, really. After walking him to his class, waving him goodbye, Satoru would attend the rest of his classes, then go back to constantly being around him every break and lunch. Maybe he started beating people up less often, or maybe he started reciting with a lot more fervor in class, but surely that can be excused. Satoru realizes brightly, walking Geto to yet another class, that it's genuinely enjoyable in Geto's company. The throat-constricting butterflies in his stomach have stopped appearing as often. Don't get him wrong; he still thinks Geto is extremely pretty, and it should be illegal to be that pretty—but it's not as...glorified? As before. 

Back then, it would be such a difficult affair, talking to Geto. He'd nag Shoko to change directions in the hallway just so they can see him—but never close enough to actually interact with him. Admiration from a distance. A happy crush, if anything. Satoru liked Geto because he was pretty and he was tough and he seemed like a brilliant person overall. 

He's still all of those things but...well. There's a lot that can be gained just by being in his general presence. Satoru finds that it's easy to talk to him about anything and everything because he'd just listen. At first, Satoru thought that he was just trying his very best to ignore him but eventually, after a few days of consistent nagging, Geto started making little quips at things he says, which means he's listening. He's listening to what Satoru is yapping about, even if he probably doesn't want to. 

One of the biggest accomplishments that Satoru is proud of the most, however, is the fact that Suguru Geto hasn't punched him once. Ever again. At first, he would try, but his fist would stop a few inches from Satoru's face, and he would reluctantly draw his elbow back with a sour expression. Satoru finds that it's better to leave him for a bit, after that. Like cooldowns in video games. 

"Either way," says Satoru cheerfully, leaned towards Shoko over the table, swirling around the reddish-green liquid in his beaker. He's not quite sure how those two are together in the same place, since they're on opposite sides of the colour wheel, but they are. "I'm making progress, aren't I?" 

"Think so. He tolerates you a lot more, at least. Still swears at you though, and tells you he hates you." Shoko hums. Her color is a nice lilac, and so is the rest of the class' liquid. 

Satoru frowns at his beaker, before turning to Shoko with a grin. 

The brunette pins him with a long-suffering deadpan, before passing over her beaker. 

"You're the coolest, Shoko," Satoru grabs her beaker and passes her his, unbeknownst to their snoring Chemistry teacher. If he were a lesser person, he'd be upset at the teacher leaving a bunch of meatheads in a room with potentially dangerous ingredients, but if it lets him switch with Shoko, then why not?

Shoko adds something to his amalgamation of an experiment; turns in a revolting shade of mustard yellow. She seems satisfied though, nodding to herself before turning to him. "You gonna walk him to class after this?" 

With his work already 'finished', Satoru sits on one of the metal stools, pushing his beaker away from the edge. "Obviously. Gotta build that friendship to the max."

At long last, the mustard-yellow shade turns into a similar shade of lilac, and Shoko passes it back to Satoru. He salutes her with a grin, passing her back her own and a strip of masking tape. He lets his own strip settle on the glass of the beaker, popping the cap of a marker off with his teeth, then writing his name down. 

Satoru passes the marker to Shoko. "Are you coming with?" 

She shakes her head; takes the marker and sticks the tape to her beaker. "Nah. Research has pair work. My pair said we'll go meet in the library."

Blue eyes slide up to meet hers. Shoko's gaze immediately turns deadpan. Ah. She caught on. 

"I'm not gonna ditch." she flicks his forehead, and he hisses, slapping her hand away with a sigh. "That's a dick move. Specifically, your dick move, you privileged bourgeoise-prodigy."

A laugh bubbles out of his chest, just as the bell rings. The class then proceeds to watch the teacher shoot up from his nap, head slamming straight into the blackboard. Brilliant, brilliant day to be alive, Satoru finds. 

"Eat well," Satoru sobs dramatically, draping himself over Shoko's shoulders. He has to bend his knees to keep up with the act—height differences and all that. "Since you seem so intent on leaving your bestest friend for whoever this Research pair is. I'm not betrayed, Shoko!"

With an equally dramatic groan, Shoko pushes him off. "Bye, idiot."

The smile lingers on Satoru's face all the way to the English room. Geto always has this class right before lunch, which makes it a lot easier to nag him into being his friend. So far, it seems like it's working so, you know, huge win for Satoru. Though nagging seems to be a bit far from what he's doing now, Satoru thinks. Lately, it's less steeling himself to speak to the prettiest guy he's ever seen and more of...he's around Suguru Geto because he likes his company. 

If he's being completely honest, he's not quite sure what he wanted, before. Obviously he'd admired Geto, but now that he's gotten to know him, Satoru's not sure if he was really looking for a relationship. Now, walking to his class, heart bumping in a gentle thud in his chest, Satoru thinks that he's content with just being his friend. That sounds quite nice. 

Satoru nods to himself, settling his back against the wall. A quick peek through the glass shows that they're packing up already and another shows Geto standing. He has his hair up, as usual, and he looks ethereal, again, as usual. 

As soon as Geto walks out of the room, Satoru makes a beeline straight for him, rocking on the balls of his heels. "Hi Geto!"

The other raises a brow at him. 

"Gojo." he addresses, before starting to walk. Satoru grins, and starts to follow without question. Eventually, they fall into step with each other. He spares a look at Geto at his side, and starts to speak. 

"What kind of cat do you think you would be, if you were one?" 

A huff. That's normal. Satoru just has to keep talking—

"Stupid question." Geto shoots back, and he brightens. Score! At least this time, he got a reaction! This is good, this is progress. 

Satoru carefully avoids one of the steps near the bottom, skewed at the side and never really fixed. When he isn't actively looking for it, he finds himself devastatingly held victim to its vicious foot-grabbing treachery.

"No, I don't think so," says Satoru cheerfully, skipping a few steps to get higher than Geto. He stops, though, so that they'll synchronize again. He finds it's nice, just to stand next to Geto. "I think if I were a cat, I'd be a mountain lion, you know? An albino one! Because I have white hair!" 

He pushes the roof door open and holds it, letting Geto pass. The other passes with nothing more than an unimpressed look, which is a stark contrast to the punch Satoru got on his shoulder for 'attempting to treat me like a princess, you motherfucker—' See? Progress! 

"I'd be so cool. The coolest mountain lion." he continues, plopping himself on the floor, legs crossed. Geto does the same, neatly lays out his food in front of him. Satoru is spared another raised brow before Geto starts to eat. 

He laughs, opening his own bento. "Don't look at me like that! I would be such a cool—"

"Bullshit." Geto says suddenly, swallowing down his food. He pins him with a disbelieving expression, before gesturing the Satoru with his chopsticks. "You'd be one of those cats with long hair. The clingy, annoying ones. Ragdolls."

And for a good moment, Satoru's words are stuck in his throat. All he can do his stare, gaping with his mouth left at the start of a grin. Geto responded. Geto responded to him! This is revolutionary! This is the greatest— wait, no, Satoru needs to answer him. If he's silent for any longer, Geto's going to realize exactly what he did. 

"No, no, I'd be a mountain lion," he insists, chest feeling tremendously full, expression swelling to a beam. "I'll hunt and eat...other mountain lions. Because obviously, I'm the strongest lion."

"Dumbass. Mountain lions eat deer." Geto shoots back, and if Satoru looks close enough, his mouth isn't thinned into its signature scowl. And Satoru feels so, so cramped, in his chest. A way that both chokes him and makes the edges of his grin rise even further upwards and he can't wipe the smile off his face. 

Satoru stands; stands because he feels like he'll just explode if he keeps himself down. He physically cannot keep himself down, afraid that all the toe-curling, hair-raising thought of—there you are, Suguru Geto—would overflow into something he can't take back with another loose-lipped insistence. "I'm just built different. I'm a different mountain lion." 

Geto stares back up at him. His brows are furrowed, his mouth not quite smiling but still. Still. Call him delusional, call him hopeless but he swears up and down that Geto doesn't look annoyed. Exasperated, maybe, but in the same way Shoko is when Satoru's doing something he knows is dumb and isn't that just something? 

There you are, Suguru Geto, says his mind; a flurry of different things altogether.

He can feel the words ballooning inside his ribcage, pushing at the back of his heart, and Geto gestures a little bit wilder with his chopsticks. "More like a ragdoll. You're clingy, and you have the same stupid hair texture. Therefore, I'm correct, and you're just stupid."

"Oh!" Satoru gasps, buckling his knees to theatrically bring himself to a kneel, hand clutching the front of his uniform. He sobs; loud and obnoxious into his hand. "Oh, the misery! How could you accuse me of such, Suguru Geto!? You dare insult my unparalleled genius!?" 

Sudden and unbidden, a snort finds its way out of Geto's throat. From the way the other doesn't react, face remaining a canvas of exasperation and downturned brows, he didn't notice that he'd done it. But by whatever god that exists out there, Satoru did. And he's so, so fond of it that he can't help but press his forehead to the ground. It probably looks like another step to his dramatic act, but Satoru just can't stop the too-wide, too-giddy grin from spreading across his face. 

"Get up, goddammit," Geto huffs, lightly shoving at his shoulder. 

"Can't." Satoru groans, but the sound comes out too delighted to be considered a noise of pain. "Too heartbroken. You hurt the vicious mountain lion that resides within my soul."

Click. click. click. Geto is packing up the bentos, snapping the clasps to keep them in place, then dull thuds as he stacks them. Squeaking as he tugs on the metal frame that keeps them together and Satoru's heart feels so so full. 

I want to be your friend, he thinks, over and over again in his head, words repeating like a prayer. 

"Tell your internal ragdoll to shove its pride up its ass. Class is starting in ten." 

Satoru looks up, shifting his head out of his hands. Smile's not completely gone, but he doesn't think that it'll ever be completely gone, with Geto around. Eventually he does stand, dusting off his pants, before reaching over to pack his bento. Except it's already packed, chopsticks pushed neatly back into the case, and metal already fastened. 

"You—" 

But Geto is already out, roof door slamming behind him. 

Satoru stands, bento held to his chest and a stupid grin crawling up his face once more. 

"I want to be your friend." he whispers to the wind, words caught in its gentle sway and rushed off somewhere else. It doesn't reach Geto. As Satoru makes his way down the stairs to walk Geto to his next class he thinks, maybe a tad bit too hopeful, that someday it will. 

For now, though, he's content to stand next to Geto. 

"Watch your step, dickhead."

"What—"

Satoru's foot catches on the thrice-godsdamned step and makes a wild grab for the railing. Unfortunately, it's an inch out of his reach, and he grabbles down to the second landing. Geto looks at him from the steps leading down, expression disappointed. 

Geto looks light though. Satoru smiles. The stairs might have said no to standing next to Geto, but Satoru is nothing if not extremely pushy.

Chapter Text

"Do you need a refill, Suguru?" his mother asks, patting his cheek gently as he passes her. Suguru blinks, half-pinning his hair up and half trying to tug on his shoes—which, annoyingly, still has the laces tied—in the middle of the hall. 

"Huh?" 

She smiles at him, gathering his hair in her palms so he can focus on his shoes. His mother is always thoughtful like that. Sometimes Suguru wonders if he got any of the way her eyes would soften, looking at something that no one can quite see. Looking so, so sad or so, so happy at times when there's nothing really happening, as if she's reading between lines that Suguru doesn't even know are there.

"Your meds. The one you keep inside your little tic tac case?" 

Suguru's hands still. 

Then he starts to untangle his laces again, slower than before. With time, he has the separated nylon in his palms. 

"No, it's okay. I still have a few."

"Geto!" 

Suguru raises his head, brushes his hair to the side. Usually, he has a few more minutes of quiet walking before he gets bugged. His mornings have always been quiet, laced with drowsiness the night leaves behind. There's almost a sort of timelessness to it. It feels like waking up to the sounds of his mother in the kitchen, or of his sisters watching TV in the living room. 

"Hello, Gojo," Suguru responds, not looking at him. Because lately, early mornings feel like a warm hand on his shoulder or spiky hair tickling his cheek; sounds like aimless chatter about anything and everything because Gojo is pointless like that. Annoying. A pain in his side. A forceful crack in his routine. 

Despite it all, a smile threatens to tug his lips upwards. Suguru hates it. Suguru likes it. Whatever. 

"So essentially right, me and Shoko, we were in the line at the cafe—" Gojo starts, rapid-fire despite it being—what, six thirty in the morning? He gestures wildly with one hand, cradling a cup of steaming hot chocolate in the other. "—and this lady behind us in the line, she went 'hey, aren't you kids too young for caffeine?' and I said no, no ma'am, it's not caffeine, we're only gonna get chocolate. We, referring to me, because Shoko is an caffeine addict, so I'm basically lying for her. Anyways, the lady gets pissed and she goes 'I know you're lying to me!' and then I say, like a liar, I say no I'm not, sorry, but really, I'm not and she keeps— Geto, imagine this—"

Gojo likes to do that; addressing Suguru every once in a while in the middle of his rants, blue eyes flicking up to see if he's listening, tugging on his sleeve if he isn't. Like a child. Suguru nods either way to let him know he's still listening. That usually placates the other, and he starts his story back up again. 

"—she pushes Shoko to the side."

"No way," punches out of Suguru's throat, and he genuinely turns to stare at Gojo. Gojo nods wildly. 

"Right!? Of all the people you could push! So Shoko's turns to her with the most deadpan expression I've ever seen and pushes her back! And I think, oh shit, so I go to pull out my phone but we get to the front of the line. Thankfully, Shoko prefers her morning coffee over domestic violence and makes a beeline towards the cashier. So it's just me and the lady and she looks pissed, but Shoko drags me out of there before we do anything else. Lucky we went a bit earlier than usual, otherwise I would've missed you and—"

All of a sudden, Gojo stops in the middle of his sentence, blinking. The sharp silence is jarring and Suguru turns to look, lips tugging downwards. "And?" 

Quick as lightning, Gojo seems to light up. "I forgot! I— er, well, me and Shoko got you a thing." 

He hands over a paper bag that Suguru didn't even notice he was holding, looking ecstatic as he sneaks not-so-discreet looks to the side, watching with a barely contained grin as Suguru opens it. 

With all honesty, considering Gojo and Ieri apparently went to a coffee shop, he expected a dessert. Not that he cares for dessert, or sweet things in general, but it was one of the most probable things that the paper bag could contain. Instead of something like a sandwich or a donut or anything else though, there's a plastic tupperware, chopsticks wrapped in plastic and a few pieces of tissue. Suguru blinks. 

"What is this?" 

Eyes cast to the side, Suguru finds that Gojo is uncharacteristically quiet, hands alternating between twiddling his thumbs and tugging at the hem of his shirt. When he speaks, his head tilts to the right slightly, looking anywhere and everywhere except for at Suguru. 

"It's. Well. Zaru soba."

What.

"What?"

"I can take it back!" Gojo hurriedly says, hands flailing around; reaching for the paper bag but not taking, trying to gauge his reaction with a few quick glances. Without thinking, Suguru yanks the paper bag away from his grip. It leaves both of them shell-shocked—Gojo the most. His eyes are wide, mouth parted into a slight 'o'. 

Scrambling to fill the silence, Suguru starts to speak. "I— no, thank you, it's just that. How did you know I like zaru soba?" 

There's another bout of awkward silence. Gojo shuffles, hand cupping the back of his own neck. 

"I...guessed." 

He raises a brow, pushing his hand through the paper bag's straps. "Bullshit." 

Either way, he leaves it alone and eventually, Gojo comes back to himself, spouting another one of his stupid rants. Everything he says is honestly pointless, but Suguru finds himself dragged into tales of cute cats on the street and getting locked outside of his apartment and it's so...strange, to be next to Gojo like this. Suguru can't remember the last time he felt this at ease with anyone that wasn't the twins or his mother. 

Suguru watches him speak with tepid interest, unfathomably curious, brimming with something that he can't name; something that curls around the idea of Gojo, around the way he speaks and talks and moves and the way he's always so light. Always so full of life, shouting 'Here! I'm here, can you see me? Are you listening?' with so much enthusiasm that Suguru can't help but be strung along. As much as he hates to admit it, he's been smiling a lot recently. Small things, barely-there tugs of his lips upwards and most of the time it surprises both him and Gojo. 

Why? he thinks, peering a bit harder at Gojo as if that'll reveal some sort of secret, some sort of hidden reason as to why he feels so curious about this random guy. Two weeks ago, he was dead pissed at the mere sight of him; the audacity to declare himself a friend to Suguru's family, the audacity to hang around him even when he'd explicitly expressed his dislike for him, the audacity to be so genuine and pestering. 

Gojo catches his eye at that moment, startling at Suguru's intent gaze. By the way his hand hovers in the air between them, it's obvious that he was about to check if Suguru was still listening. In the past two weeks, that had turned into something unspoken between them. Gojo would talk and talk and talk, and occasionally, Suguru would listen. When he'd drift off, there would always be a tug to his sleeve, and then they're back in their little orbit. 

Now, though, Gojo doesn't talk; stunned by catching Suguru aware for once. A few days ago, he'd expressed his pride in being able to tell whether or not Suguru was listening—in being able to tell whether or not Suguru is thinking of something different than what Gojo's talking about. Most of the time, his 'sense' is annoyingly accurate. But this time, Suguru isn't thinking about his classes or what time the coffee shop opens; today, he's thinking about Gojo. 

Curious. 

"What?" there's a stammer to the way Gojo speaks, put there evidently by Suguru not looking away, even after being caught. Coming back to himself, Suguru shakes his head, stuffs his hands in his pockets, gaze back in front of him. 

"Nothing. Keep talking about that Digimon thing."

Predictably, Gojo lights up at the mention, always so stupidly enthusiastic when he notices that Suguru is paying attention. Suguru doesn't know what he feels about that. He tells himself it's stupid, but lets Gojo talk anyways. The weight of the zaru soba's paper-bag feels oddly comforting against Suguru's hand. 

Gojo waves him goodbye when Math class finishes. It's the only one they have together. Suguru waves back, watches his face brighten as he saunters off to whatever class he has next. Suguru tells himself he doesn't care about what class it is. He knows that it's Science. 

Either way, he enters the classroom again after waving the other off. Setsuna-sensei asked, with shining eyes, for him to stay back today. He can't think of anything that he's done wrong lately, but something might've slipped his mind. Is it his grades? Everything's still as easy as it always was, so he has no idea what this could be about. His hair? His gauges? His general appearance? No, Setsuna-sensei never had a problem with it before—

"Your grades have increased. Like a lot, Geto." Setsuna says cheerfully once spotting him. "That's very good. I just wanted to inform you."

Suguru's hand twitches. 

"...what?" 

For a moment, she looks confused, leaning forward on her desk to peer at him. The blinding beam on her face simmers to a hesitant smile. "Your grades, Geto. They've gotten substantially better."

"That can't be right," punches out of his chest, the words feeling like barbed wire against his throat, knuckles turning ivory with the amount of strain he his knees, back ram-rod straight as he repeats with more finality— "That can't be right. I'm sorry, Setsuna-sensei. You must have mistaken me for someone else." 

 Setsuna frowns at his reaction and hands him a stack of papers pinned together with a paperclip. His tests, Suguru recognizes, by the way his name is scrawled neatly on the pristine paper. Not a single speck of eraser dust or pencil-marks and it's perfectly balanced. Routined. That's what he was instructed, to remain balanced. He remembers in the hazy blur of summer break that he is to remain balanced, lest you spiral into another one of your episodes, Suguru, and you don't want that, right? You don't want to act like your father? It'll worry your mother and your sisters. Don't you see how afraid of you they are? So it'll be better for you to sit down and lay low, Suguru. You need to be—

"—balanced, average, even, so I— I don't understand how it could suddenly do that."

Heart pounding in his head and in his chest and Suguru's fingers feel hot and cold at the same time he doesn't quite know what to do in this situation what does he do if he lapses back into another episode that wouldn't be good for his sister or his mother and god forbid he end up like his father so Suguru needs to stay balanced balanced balanced balanced needs his routine back why is what happened what changed in the span of a few weeks he knows it wasn't like this at the start of the semester he was doing good he was doing well what changed what changed what changed what—

"This is a good thing, Geto, I'm not quite sure I understand." Setsuna frowns and she doesn't understand. He said that it's likely that only Suguru would be able to perceive his situation correctly, would know what to do about it as long as he just listens. "Ever since I paired you with Gojo, your grades have only been going up—"

Smash!

Pencils and pens and markers and whatever else rolls on the floor. Suguru nearly trips on them, trying to help pick them up. He doesn't know how the mug fell. He feels like it was his fault. Was it his fault? What did he do? Did he—

"No, no, it's okay."

There's gentle pressure on his shoulder, dragging him to stand. Setsuna-sensei looks confused. Afraid, nearly. Suguru doesn't think he's anything to be afraid of, not anymore. He'd gotten fixed; he knows he'd gotten fixed. So. So. So there shouldn't be any reason to be afraid of him. 

"I can handle it. Your hand's bleeding, you have to get that checked by the school nurse. I'll clean this up." 

Suguru is quietly ushered out of the classroom. He only realizes now that there are shards of glass on the floor. He'd nearly stepped on one. There's a cut on his palm, oozing blood in tiny rivulets. They pattern like flowers when he pushes at it lightly with his thumb. Where is the nurse's office again? 

Here. Maybe. There's a turn in the hallway. Suguru thinks that the walls are a different color. Too greyish. Too bright? That's not right. That's not balanced. He doesn't think that's right. Everything's kind of hazy. That's not right either. Right right right right right right, right? It can't be too bright and too grey at the same time, that's not how it goes. It should be one thing, never simultaneous, never stacking. If it stacks, it's unbalanced. What should he do with the wall? He can. He. Suguru doesn't quite know. Where is he going again?

There's someone calling him. 

Without prior warning Suguru turns, facing whoever it is, gaze laser-sharp. There's a yelp. They step back. They don't look quite right. Hazy. Like something ripped apart and put back together. Looks right. Doesn't feel right. Does it look right? It feels right. What?

Suguru thinks they're saying something. That's. Who's this? He knows these people. They're. Oh. They're from. From when? When he met Satoru Gojo. Satoru Gojo. Setsuna-sensei paired him with Satoru Gojo, and now he's not balanced. Suguru is angry. Is he? Is he angry? Is that right? How should Suguru know if he's angry or not? He wishes someone would just tell him whether or not he's angry. Is that right? Is that what he wishes for? How would he even know what he's wishing for? He—

Oh. 

Blood. There's blood trickling down his nose. The droplets are making little flowers on the floor. They're a bit too small. Flowers are bigger than that. That's not right. They're coming from his nose. From inside his body. Blood. His nose hurts. Suguru clutches it, turns to look at the...how many are there? Sometimes there's two of them four of them five of the only one of them. One of them punched his nose. Maybe. Suguru can see their lips moving and parting to show the inside of their mouth and the ivory teeth lining the sides. Pink and fleshy. Nearly red on the inside.

Would they make flowers on the floor too?

Takes a step forward. Swings his fist. There's a yelp, but it doesn't sound quite right. Muted. Sounds aren't supposed to be muted. If he does it again, maybe it'll be louder?

Again. They're wiggling. They're not supposed to. Suguru just wants to make it right. Why is isn't it right? 

Again. 

Flowers. There's flowers on the floor. Suguru watches, mesmerized. Drags his fingers across it. Flower's gone. Just a smudge. That's not right. 

Suguru swings again. Louder yelp. He thinks that's right. There's more flowers. It's too small. Swings again. Harder this time. Louder. More flowers. That's right. That's. Oh. They're. There's a lot of them. Is this the same person? Is he making flowers out of just one person? This is. That's blonde hair. The other one had brown. Oh. Okay. There's. Oh. It's a bit loud. Kind of loud. Sort of that's not right it's not supposed to be that loud. 

"I know what I'm supposed to be mad at," he tells the person, making bigger and bigger flowers on the floor. Is this the same person? Suguru can't tell. White hair and blue eyes. Because. He's Unbalanced? Said he was supposed to be balance but now he's not and it's because of him Suguru thinks that's what Setsuna-sensei said she said that his grades were getting higher and that's not supposed to happen because it's important for Suguru to remain in balance so he doesn't make his mother sad and angry and mad again and the twins are going to be scared of him, he's going to—

Suguru wants more flowers. Hits down into the ground faster. Something cracks and— someone's yelling. Different kind. Doesn't sound scared. Sounds. Different. 

Oh. That's a lot of people. They're hazy. Like they're just one big wall of flesh and meat. The school uniform is brown. That's. Monkeys are brown? Right. A big wall of monkeys. Suguru laughs at the thought. The wall backs away. They look scared. When they back away, one person is left behind. Trying to get dragged. Suguru knows that jacket. Knows that spiky messy mass of hair and those blue blue blue blue eyes. They're framed by his lashes; so long, even for a boy. It looks like a flower in its own right. Prettier than the flowers on the floor. 

That's not right. Suguru's supposed to be angry at Satoru Gojo. 

"GO GETO!" Gojo yells, cheering and pumping his fist. Ieri's dragging him into the crowd, looking like she'd rather be anywhere else. Still, he cheers and jumps, waving at him through the mass of the crowd. That's strange. He doesn't sound very muted. "BEAT 'EM UP! YEAH!" 

Suguru's hands still, vision laser-focused. He meets Gojo's eyes, and everything seems to unblur. Suddenly, there's the chatter of fearful and crying students. Not from the wall of students—monkeys? Suguru thinks he called them monkeys earlier, he doesn't quite know why he finds the sickening urge to laugh—, but from under him. Suguru looks down, all of a sudden painfully aware of a collar in his grip. His hands are stained red, and he tries to gingerly rub them on the other person's uniform. 

Mom's going to be upset, he thinks mutely, surrounded by crying students in varying stages of injury. Broken noses, broken arms, broken legs. Did...Suguru do this? 

He stares at his palm. The cut from the mug is still there, but there's more blood. Blood, not flowers. What is he...what the hell was he thinking?

"GETO!" 

Suguru looks up, eyes wide and fearful. That's— That's Yaga; Principal Yaga. He'd told him that he wouldn't hurt any other student again. What was he thinking!? He's already on probation as it is, especially since last year. What had gotten into him?

Yaga's saying something. Suguru can't quite decipher it in his head. There's a crowd of teachers trying to usher students back to their respective classes, and one of them is dialing the ambulance. Was it really that bad? 

"Can't I come with him?" 

Suguru knows that voice, traces over the lines and lines of students until he finds Gojo, struggling to negotiate with some teacher. Their eyes meet, and Gojo grins at him, the expression lopsided. He waves enthusiastically. Suguru can't help himself; a small grin tugs his lips up, and he waves back at him. 

He looks at his hands. Red. Suguru wipes his palms against his pants and follows Yaga out. Absentmindedly, Suguru grieves the zaru soba he left in his bag.

Chapter Text

SATORU GOJO

9:17 AM

heyyyyyyyy :D
getoooooo
u were super cool beating up the guys 
im gonna fix the thingy
the 
the situation
sit tight
im gonna do damage control
dw ur gonna be outta there in a jiffy

Gojo, what the hell
How did you even get my number
What do you mean you're going to do damage control?
Principal Yaga told me I beat up twelve kids
I don't think you can control that particular branch of damage
Seriously, don't do anything. I'll take any punishment
Go to class. You can't afford to get even dumber than you already are

11:03 AM

u wound me
im not dumb :C
anyways
nah
id win

[Image Attachment: A picture of Gojo holding
up a peace sign, grinning wildly. His 
background is an official looking office, where
there are about twenty very pissed-looking
businessmen in varying stages of anger] 

What the fuck
Where are you
What is that place
Who are those
Gojo?
Gojo, I'm serious
Don't do anything stupid
I beat up kids for fuck's sake
Get out of there and leave it alone

noooooo
i dont wanna
im gonna fix the thing geto
promise
im gonna get shoko to get u the zaru soba from ur bag
the medic thingy has a microwave right
a heater thingy
i land in there like a bunch of the time
anyways meetings starting 
wish me luck :3

Motherfucker.

11:36 AM

Thank you for the soba, by the way
Ieri's with me
I think she fell asleep

[Image Attachment: Shoko is sprawled out
on the other bed, looking strangely like
some sort of starfish, rather than a person]

Good luck. Even though you're fucking stupid
And even though I don't quite know what you're doing in there
I appreciate your effort
Thank you

12:55 AM

awwwwwww
geto thats so sweet geto

Kill yourself

:C
anyways the meeting was so boring
old men are cringe
old men suck
old men suck ass
anyways ur gonna be out in a bit
i think
were on lunch break

*We're, you mean

grammar nerd 
wh
dont leave me on seeeeen
ill be a good person
promise
getoooooo
getoooooooooo :CCCC
ok meetings starting again
bye bye

Good luck

<333

2:37 PM

omfg thsi old ass man
everyoheb elsoee already agrred toi let ypu go?????
he keepsn yapping 
imngonna clart thos man tp the moon
mimimimimi satoru gojob are yoy lisytenint 
kysssss omg

[Image Attachment: Gojo's middle finger is
in focus, and in the background is a blurry,
old looking man]

gasukajni sucks
*gakuganki
*gajuganki
GODDMAMIT
*GAKUGANJI
r u asleep
geto
getooooooo
suguru getoooo
aw
awww :C
meetings going again
im gonna shut this old mf down

girlboss (gaslight)

2:41 PM

shoko

Huh

getos asleep?

Yes
What do u want

picture
:3 

I hate ur emojis
They suck literally stop sending them

[Image Attachment: Geto tucked under the clinic sheets,
sound asleep]

ur my savior
ily
<333

Go beat up some old men u stalker
Im going to get him snacks before he wakes up
Using your card

o7
get me candy
and kikufuku

Suguru scratches at the bandages wrapped around his knuckles, nibbling on the inside of his cheek. If he's been keeping track of the time correctly, then he's been in here about...seven hours. He'd been pulled out of the crime scene just a little before the first break, which is nine to ten. First period was math, seven to eight, where he'd lost his shit, meaning he'd spent an hour beating up other students. It's four, now, an hour before dismissal. So in total, he is right. Seven hours in the school's medical room, where Principal Yaga had firmly told him not to leave unless he said so. 

He can't hear much from inside the room, alternating between sitting and lying down on the stiff bed. It's pretty far away from the rest of the campus, something about sick people needing rest and relaxation. Either way, Suguru can't really figure anything out for himself. As of right now, his only connection to the outside world is his phone and Ieri. She's been staying with him, ushering him to finish his soba despite his stomach turning. He's told her she can leave whenever she wants, of course, but she insisted in that weirdy, non-pushy way she seems to hold. 

Gaze dragging to the side, where Ieri sits cross-legged on the other bed, Suguru can't help a small smile. She's good company. Not pushy, not mean, she's just...Ieri. A comforting, grounding presence. Lately, though he hates to admit, he's been smiling a lot around Ieri and Gojo. Maybe it's not a bad thing. 

Ieri looks up at that moment, and Suguru gives her a little wave. 

"Cool. You're awake," she addresses, before bending over the side of the bed, pulling up a plastic bag when she comes back up. "Here."

Without much fanfare, Ieri tosses it at him. Suguru barely catches it, caught by surprise and mild shock that she threw something at him, even if it's only a few minutes since he's woken up. Either way, he tilts his head at her in gratitude, and carefully unties the sloppy knot. 

"It's takoyaki. There's soda in there too. The rest is for the dumbass."

Suguru shovels around the plastic bag, humming as he observes the contents. There's the takoyaki, like Ieri said—he takes that, and a can of soda out of the bag—a box of kikufuku, and a deathly amount of sweets piled at the bottom of the bag. Suguru scrunches his nose. "That's...a lot of candy."

Ieri laughs; the sound is more of a breath, if anything. She lies on her back, gesturing vaguely at the door as she speaks. "I'm glad you can see sense. That's all Satoru's; unless he manages to suppress his internal five year old enough to share. He's gonna die of diabetes, mark my words." 

Despite her words being comprised of mockery for Gojo, Suguru can spot the fond way her mouth twitches upwards—the gesture makes him smile too. It's easier to smile these days, he finds. Either way, he tucks the knowledge of Gojo's—extremely unhealthy—sweet tooth in the corner of his mind. 

Idly passing time with Ieri is a remarkably pleasant affair. Where there's usually Gojo and his stupid, teasing remarks and childish humor and his infuriating habit of pissing Suguru off, Ieri leaves him choking with shocked laughter with just a dry quip or an underhanded one-liner. She's funny without smiles and witty without fail. All in all, Suguru finds himself gravitating towards her like he did with Gojo. 

Maybe I like her, Suguru muses internally, peering at her to see if anything happens. Not a single thing stirs inside his chest. 

Or maybe not, he amends, taking a sip out of his soda. It's cola, which he usually forsakes in favor of melon ramune, so it must be Gojo's usual choice. The thought nearly brings an involuntary smile to his lips again until—

“I’m here!” Gojo announces grandly, clinic’s door slamming harshly against the wall behind it. Suguru chokes harshly on his drink, slamming a fist into his own chest in an attempt to dislodge whatever got stuck. Because apparently the world favors the unrelentlessly unbothered, Ieri is spared from choking on her own drink. Instead, she raises up her middle finger at the powder-haired boy.

Blue eyes seem to scan the room, landing on Suguru immediately. His grand façade drops as soon as the coughing reaches his ears, hands quickly rushing to close the door, making a beeline straight for him.

”Oh, I’m— shit, sorry, did I startle you? I just thought, I dunno, thought it’d be funny, sorry—“

Satoru Gojo speaks like he’s on a deadline, words tumbling one after the other like he can’t decide which one should come first; which order he’d have to arrange his words into to get his point across. He makes up for it with exaggerated flourishes and colorful tones, lilting up and turning down depending on what he wants to convey. Suguru thinks —while recovering from his choking stunt— he admires that about him. The way that what he can’t speak with his words he weaves with his hands and his voice and his eyes. Suguru doesn’t think he could ever replicate a habit that pretty. Usually, he turns everything over in his head before he speaks, mapping out where everything is supposed to fall into place. He doesn’t have Gojo’s reckless enjoyment of life. 

With a tinge of bitterness, coughing finally dying down, Suguru supposes he has too much to lose. Unlike Gojo.

Gojo’s eyes are wide and rounded when he finally looks up. Sat on the edge of the bed, the teen plays with his thumbs. ”Are you good?” 

Suguru scoffs, lightly punching his shoulder, their own little ritual, effective though unspoken, as if to say— it’s okay, I don’t mind, carry on. “I should be asking you that, dumb shit. Where’d you run off to?”

“Yeah,” Ieri interjects, wriggling herself a spot near them. Despite the abundance of beds, they’ve found themselves crammed tightly into the same space, plastic bag of candy and kikufuku and a singular soda in the middle of the mess of limbs and Suguru feels so, so warm. “C’mon, tell us what your oh-so-glorious dumbass has done this time.”

The moment his great ‘escapade’ is mentioned, Gojo lights up— his eyes comically begin to shimmer and his back quite literally shoots up. His hands are already poised in the air before he even opens his mouth. Ieri and Suguru share a look; all twitching smiles and feigned exasperation.

And so it goes; Gojo recounts—with much more theatrics than necessary, probably—how he’d absolutely ‘decimated’ those old men in terms of Suguru’s damage control, how this specific Gakuganji (“—he’s a total suck-up for my dad, it’s so fucking dumb, but he’s an absolute bitch out of his sight—“) was extremely against Gojo fixing the situation. On and on, speaking with his hands and his face and his expressions and everything feels so nice, in their little bubble of solidarity. Suguru watches Ieri huff through her nose, smiles that lilt upwards only at the sides, masked fondness for the other. 

“You really didn’t have to,” Suguru says softly, after Gojo has finished, happily munching on the sweets in the bag. The other furrows his brows, abruptly pausing the unwrapping of his candy.

”Hah? ‘Course I had to! I told you, you’re my friend,” Gojo chastises, gesturing at him with a vaguely accusatory finger, partly unwrapped candy pinched between his pinky and his palm. 

Heart burning and voice caught in his throat, Suguru pushes at his shoulder. “You’re insane.”

The words 'you're my friend' echo in his head. He isn't sure whether it's a blessing or a curse.

”You’ll get used to it,” Ieri pipes up. Somewhere along the lines of Gojo’s yapping, she’d shifted to drape herself across most of the bed, tapping away on her phone screen, head propped in Gojo's lap and knee under Suguru's arm. It reminds Suguru of Nanako; comfortable everywhere and no concept of personal space. Ieri radiates the impression of being a lot more mature than either of them, but in the little time that Suguru's gotten to know her, she's really just indifferent to most things. 

Ieri reaches up to pull on a piece of stray hair hanging over Gojo's face, making the other squawk. "I'm not rich, he says, getting away with stuff that'll get normal people on a missing poster," she mocks, pulling a bit harder. Gojo swats her hand away. 

Suguru huffs out a laugh—despite it all, there's a sinking sensation in his chest. It swells uncomfortably in the back of his throat, watching Gojo and Ieri bicker, her head in his lap. It's very domestic, and they seem molded to each other. He can't find anything inherently wrong with it but for some godforsaken reason, he can't quell the disturbance to his gut. 

"I want to repay you. I— I don't have much, but I have to do something at least, to make up for it," Suguru stammers instead, distracting himself with a shake of his head. Gojo stops, Ieri's wrist in a soft grip within his fingers. She drags it out as soon as he gets distracted and as Gojo's gaze focuses on him, Suguru feels the stirring feeling in his chest quell. 

"Huh?" frowns the teen, looking at Suguru as if he's grown two more heads. "Didn't we just go over this? I told you, you're my friend."

"That doesn't mean I should take advantage of you," Suguru insists, hand pulling at the loose threads of the blanket under him. He shuffles forward, and Ieri makes space for him, perpetually unbothered by anything and everything. 

Gojo frowns, popping his momentarily forgotten candy in his mouth. He swirls it around his mouth, before pushing it to the corner of his cheek. "You're not takin' advantage of me. I don't wanna extort you. Last I checked, friends don't do that. I don't want anything from you, Geto, least of all mone—"

He pauses in the middle of his sentence, looking very much like a lightbulb had gone off behind his eyes. Gaze suddenly bright, a smile curves its way up Gojo's lips. Suguru narrows his eyes and crosses his arms. He wants to repay Gojo, obviously, but if Suguru's learned anything in the few weeks that Gojo had (forcefully) dug a space in Suguru's life—is that look means nothing but trouble. 

Pushing Ieri's head off his lap slowly, Gojo repositions his lanky-ass legs, crossed like a toddler on top of the clinic bed. He props his elbows on either knee, bringing his hands together in a business-like position. Once again, Suguru is reminded of the twins. Idly, he thinks they'd either get along swimmingly, or either the twins or Gojo would end up committing murder. 

"Business proposition," Gojo says seriously. 

"...what is it?" asks Suguru carefully, eyes narrowed. 

For a moment, Gojo's entire face is concealed by shadow. Seconds tick on, time momentarily suspended in infinity. There's not a single sound in the room past their labored breaths and Suguru feels, with the entire weight of the world, that Gojo is about to ask for something serious. Dread pools in the hollow of his stomach, and a near-plea for a light sentence hovers at the tip of his tongue. Nothing good could come out of that stance; those furrowed brows and covered expression. 

Then Gojo looks up with the expression of an excited puppy, practically vibrating where he sits; eyes shining with all the light of a thousand suns as he speaks—

"Will you call me Satoru?"

Suguru's mouth drops.

"Huh?"

"Y'know," punches out of Gojo's mouth. He's a sight to behold all on his own, looking extremely bashful, fiddling his thumbs together in his lap before his hands rise to the air, making wild gestures. His blue eyes flit everywhere except for Suguru's own. "'Cause I thought, we're friends, yeah? And I call Shoko Shoko, so I thought, maybe you could call me Satoru, and I could call you..."

Gojo doesn't finish his sentence. His hands had wound down from their frenzied state and now they sit back in his lap as he looks up, smiling hesitantly and Suguru feels so, so indescribably warm. He doesn't know when he'd started feeling like this, really, as if he'd been stuck in perpetual winter unknowingly and Gojo's presence brought unexpected spring. It feels like sunshine and grass and flowers in bloom and—

"Sure, Satoru," Suguru says, tasting the feel on his tongue. Satoru. It rolls off nicely, like it was always meant to be there. 

The moment it's out of his mouth, Gojo— well, Satoru turns an unexplainable shade of pink, head turning away from him. Suguru laughs at his reaction; laughs like he doesn't feel so mellow for the first time in a long while, like he doesn't feel at home surrounded by two people he'd met less than a month ago. 

Satoru beams at the sound. "Okay. Suguru. Suguru. Su-gu-ru, Suguru—" 

"Stop it. I'll revoke your name first-name basis rights," Suguru scowls, as if he'll ever do that. It's nothing but an empty promise and by the way Satoru's lips twist into a lopsided smile, he can tell. The powder-haired boy holds his pointer and his thumb at the edge of his lips, and swiftly swipes it across, making a poor imitation at a zipper. 

"I want first-name basis rights," Ieri pipes up from the bed, blinking at both of them blearily. Somehow, while they were speaking, she'd fallen asleep. 

"Got it, Shoko."

"Many thanks, Suguru."

For some reason, the sarcasm sends Suguru into peals of laughter, clutching his stomach as he bends. It's not rational, really, for his heart to feel this full just from these two. He hasn't felt like this in a while, whatever this even is. Either way, he can't help but feel grateful for it. 

Suguru opens his eyes, the smile still lingering on his face despite the laughter fading away, then purple meets blue. Satoru looks so...captivated, for some reason, and Suguru instinctively looks around for whatever he's looking at. But when his gaze returns, finding nothing, he finds that Satoru's looked away. 

"We should take a picture," Satoru says suddenly, shuffling over into Suguru's personal space. Not that he minds. He doesn't mind a lot of things around him. "To commemorate the first-name basis!"

"Lame," Ieri says, but pokes her head into the frame when Satoru raises his—well, technically Suguru's, he's not quite sure when Satoru had gotten hold of it—phone to take the picture, teeth bared in a grin. Last minute, Satoru flings an arm over his shoulders and Suguru can't help but smile at the gesture as the flash goes off, his eyes on the camera and smile impossibly wide.

As soon as it's done, he reaches over for the phone. "Give it, hand it over—" 

"Do we have a group chat? Satoru, make a group chat," Shoko nags, peering over Suguru's shoulder as he checks out the photo. 

It's a nice photo. The light strikes them all perfectly. Ieri is perfectly slotted into the photo despite her lying down, looking absolutely stunning without much effort. Satoru's...Satoru's arm is slung around Suguru's shoulders, and he's not looking at the camera. Suguru finds, with a swampy, cottony kind of realization, that he isn't even looking at the camera. His face is turned towards the camera, yes, but Satoru's eyes are slid to the side, a sort of soft (fond, his mind tells him, and Suguru waves it off) smile on his lips. Suguru follows his gaze and finds with a jolt of shock, himself, looking happy. He doesn't find this kind of joy in his own face; rarely ever captured on camera, and usually only with the twins. It's nearly jarring; to see it here, laid bare for all to see. 

"I'm so good at taking pictures," Satoru brags, chin suddenly propped on Suguru's shoulder. He startles, nearly jabbing into Satoru's jaw. The other only laughs, before insisting that he send it to his newly-made group chat. 

As Shoko and Satoru bicker on who looks better in the picture, Suguru takes another look at the picture, feeling impossibly gentle. With a quick look at the two, he sets it as his wallpaper and turns it off. 

They spend another hour or so lazing around, seeing as Yaga hadn't come in to tell Suguru he's in the clear yet. At some point Shoko drifts back to sleep, head on Suguru's stomach this time. Satoru is squished into Suguru's side, eyes drooping. He's been rambling incessantly about anything and everything like he always does, but his voice is muddled with sleep. Tired, probably, from meddling in whatever affairs avoided Suguru from going to juvenile detention. Satoru's head is tucked under his arm, drifting aimlessly. 

Clingy, Suguru thinks, eyes drifting to where Satoru has a gentle grip on his sweater, fiddling absentmindedly with the fabric. There's that feeling again, the one he can't quite decipher. It feels heavy and warm and suffocating and gentle all at once. 

His phone pings. It's a message, something about an appointment from...oh. 

"Fuck," Suguru mutters.

Satoru's lashes flutter as he opens his eyes, head shifting to look at him. Voice sleep-addled and scratchy, he murmurs a small "Huh?"

Like clockwork, Suguru lightly pushes his head back, soothing like he does with Nanako and Mimiko. It works, better than he thought, as Satoru immediately folds back into himself comfortably. "Nothing. I have therapy...er, what's eight days from now?"

"Saturday," Satoru answers, reaching up idly. Suguru catches his palm, holds it absentmindedly. "Therapy with who?"

"Dr. Kamo. Met him a few times before," A few times is really an understatement, but Satoru doesn't particularly need to know that. 

The boy hums from under him, and Suguru finds himself terribly, terribly fond. It stirs in his heart, feeling like thawing something frozen. Feels like coming undone for some inexplicable reason that Suguru can't quite place, no matter how hard he tries. Or maybe he's just not letting himself place it, afraid of everything and anything. 

Satoru shrugs, burying his face near Suguru's side, tipping into sleep. "Kamo? Huh. My family says they're some sort of elite something, best doctor family in the entire country, you'll be okay, I think."

Suguru feels his breaths even out, can feel the pulse within his wrist. He's still holding his hand, he finds. Even while asleep, Satoru's hand is somewhat curled around Suguru's own fingers, grip comforting. 

"Maybe," he murmurs to himself. "I hope so." 

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. 

The long hand snaps to eight, but the second hand continues its voyage around the clock, ticking incessantly as it goes. 

Suguru clenches the cap of his knees.

He wants to shatter that clock. 

Despite it only being eight in the morning, the lobby already has quite a few people in it. A nervous looking mother, and her son dozing off beside her, a fidget toy in his hands. There’s a small old lady off to the side, knitting what looks to be a misshapen scarf, or the starts of a sweater. Just looking at the scratchy yarn that she’s using prompts Suguru to itch at his own arm, scooting away from her general direction. It reminds him of the stupid hospital bandages. There’s a few more, but these are the only people in Suguru’s general vicinity. Everyone else is either halfway across the—admittedly cramped—room, or are nondescript enough not to garner his attention. 

Suguru scratches at his bandages. The school's clinic hasn't allowed him to take it off yet, considering the number he'd done on those students. They'd shown him pictures and Suguru had flinched, head hung low. None of them had white hair and blue eyes though, not like he'd seen in the muddy haze he'd been in. Maybe he'd been thinking of Satoru so often he'd showed up in his head. 

Speaking of Satoru. 

The past eight days have been some sort of...limbo, for the two of them. Obviously, all three of them have gotten closer after that stunt, and Suguru doesn't have to pretend to drag his heels whenever Satoru insists on eating with him. There's a lot of easy banter and jabs and jokes but there's also...something. Suguru notices a sort of shift, whenever he's with Satoru. It's not even that big; it's just that their hands seem to brush more often than not, their shoulders seem to bump more times than he can count, and sometimes he finds Satoru's eyes wandering over to him—or his own eyes wandering over to Satoru. Suguru doesn't suppose that's normal, really, to do that. They're friends, of course they are, but Suguru doesn't think friends have whatever this in-between that they have is. Whatever. Suguru doesn't want to think about it. Does he really need to think about it?

Another thing he's noticed is that Satoru really does have nice eyes. Suguru already knew that, but he's had more of an opportunity to observe this time, when they're speaking. Despite his sunglasses when they're outside, Satoru seems to be quite fond of eye contact. Maybe it's because of his sunglasses that he likes it. Some sort of genetic sensitivity to his eyes, he says. Either way, the way they seem to change color in the light is fascinating, really. Satoru's fond of physical touch, too; especially fond of his hair being ruffled, no matter how loudly and embarrassingly he squawks in public whenever either he or Shoko does it—

“Excuse me,” the old lady says to him, and Suguru jolts, turning to face her. Her hands haven’t loosened around the knitting needles. He feels like he’s being dissected as she peers at him with comically circular glasses, thick enough to magnify her eyes, nearly frog-like in nature. 

She doesn't say anything more, just drags her gaze to the floor. Suguru follows suit and finds that his foot has been tapping against the floor in an annoying staccato—which he immediately stops with an apologetic expression. The lady turns back to her knitting.

”Sorry,” Suguru blurts out, wincing when he gets ignored. He doesn’t like being here. It’s never pleasant being here. Tends to claw the worst period of his life back into light, where he would rather it not be. Being here, in this lobby, in this building, means there’s something wrong with him again, despite his constant attempts at fixing himself. He thought he’d been fixed already. 

Apparently not, Suguru thinks miserably, eyes flitting to the closed office door. The second the door opens, it’s his turn next. It’s not that…he is mean, considering the Kamo family line is famous for being extremely good healers. If anything, Suguru feels extremely at ease with him, it’s just that—he hates that he needs to come here. Hates the stupid walls plastered with stupid slogans, hates the way the curtains are pulled enough to send rays of light directly into Suguru’s eye but not enough to illuminate the entire room, hates how his mother is scared of him, hates how the twins are scared of him, hates that Suguru is someone to be scared of, hates the constant ticking of that godforsaken clock—

“Mr. Geto?” 

“That’s me,” Suguru rushes to stand, foot catching where he had it wound around the chair leg. It drags forward with a screech, and Suguru winces, gingerly pushing it back into place. He doesn’t look at anyone else in the room. He doesn’t like the secretary—his smile is always too wide and too happy and too disoriented, as if he’s constantly on something.

The office door shuts behind him. Suguru doesn’t look up, but he knows everything will be the same. The mahogany desk, meticulously organized, file after file piled upon it. The wide, rectangular window that spanned nearly the entire back wall, except for a space on either side for two bookshelves. There are picture frames hung on the wall, but there are nothing but geometric shapes or lines in the shape of stitches decorating them. Everything is perfectly furnished, but painfully sterile. 

“Take a seat, Suguru.”

In the middle of it all, sat leisurely behind the table, looking otherwordly as the sun shines behind his back, Dr. Kamo smiles at him. He doesn’t like being called that, though. He always insists on being called—

“Kenjaku,” Suguru slides into his seat, palms clammy. He smiles hesitantly, briefly checking the time on his phone. Satoru and Shoko and Suguru himself smile back at him from the screen, and he feels a sudden rush of confidence.

Eight thirty. Another hour to go.

“It’s…nice to see you again.” 

“Suguru is different again,” Nanako blurts out, slamming her phone down. There’s a muted thump! as it bounces on the bedsheets.

Tiredly, Mimiko looks at her twin. 

“You see it too, right? Ever since a month ago when he—“ 

“Beat up twelve kids?” Mimiko cuts in. 

Nanako regards her with a glance. “I was gonna say when he had that dumb appointment, but whatever, that works too. Anyways. He’s gotten weirder. Like, weirder than he usually gets when he’s on those things. He doesn’t snap out of it as often.”

”Like a zombie.”

”Yes, like a zombie.”

Sighing, Mimiko puts her own phone down, lying on her belly. She snags Nanako’s phone, stacking them together. “Not like we can do anything about it. He gets that scared look in his eyes when we try to. Like this.”

She widens her eyes, opening her mouth in an exaggerated manner. It’s a joke, really, a poor imitation of their brother’s expression. Mimiko can’t find it within herself to make fun of his real expression. It’s too hurt; too loaded with guilt and self-hatred to be considered funny in any way. 

Her sisters smacks the crown of her head, and Mimiko smiles. Comfort between twins, each a half of a whole. Suguru was part of their little bubble, once, when he wasn’t so dead. 

“Anyway,” there’s an oomph sound as Nanako belly flops onto the bed, cheek pressed against Mimiko’s stomach. “I have an idea.”

”Spill.” 

Grandly, Nanako spreads her arms towards the ceiling, rolling onto her back. In a booming voice— “That stupid Satoru Gojo guy! The one that speaks like a baboon!” 

For a moment, all Mimiko can do is stare incredulously at her twin, before bursting into laughter. “What’s he gonna do?”

As if infectious, the grin spreads up Nanako’s lips too, swatting her side in an attempt to smack her sister’s face. “C’mon, I’m being serious, Mimi.”

All of a sudden, she sits up, legs crossed, smacking her twin sister until she does the same. Nanako looks at her seriously, hands pressed together as if in a business meeting. Not quite knowing what her sister is taking this, Mimiko copies the gesture.

”So,” says Nanako.

”So,” Mimiko repeats.

With a deep inhale, Nanako flattens her palms, parting them with solemnity. “We are ninety percent sure that Suguru is gay, correct?”

Mimiko nods. “Correct.”

Nanako continues. “Satoru Gojo is a boy.”

”Correct.”

”Before that dumb Kenjaku meeting, his wallpaper was…?”

Mimiko scrunches her nose. “I dunno. Didn’t he keep it blank?” 

Nanako’s business-like stature crumbles at the question, her own face mirroring Mimiko’s confusion. “Huh? Didn’t I tell you? It was a selfie of him, the weirdo, and this pretty brown-haired girl lying down. Gojo wasn't even looking at the camera, he was just making goo-goo eyes at Suguru with a stupid look."

Making a noise of understanding, Mimiko ushers Nanako to continue. 

“Okay. And who’s arm was slung over Suguru’s shoulder?”

”Gojo’s,” Mimiko answers, and the blonde nods. 

“Yes. So. Our plan of action,” Nanako holds out her hand in a firm, business-like handshake.

Mimiko shakes her hand, nodding. ”Recruit the dumbass to get our dumbass back.” 

Chapter Text

It’s been a month. A full, excruciating month that he’s been ignored, and Satoru doesn’t care one bit. He already knew Sugu— Geto hated him, so who cares? No one, actually, and it’s not a very care-able thing. End of conversation. It doesn’t matter, and everyone sucks. 

I apologize. I don’t tolerate nuisances into my schedule. 

Blank smile, blank look, Suguru godforsaken Geto looked him in the eye and told him he was a nuisance. Satoru doesn’t care. Really, his father has called him worse. Useless, undeserving, disgusting, and recently, as a delightful addition, faggo—

His spoon rattles against the dining table. It makes a dull sound. The clattering in the kitchen momentarily stops, before starting up again. Satoru sighs, propping his head on the wooden surface, tracing patterns into the table.

Call him delusional, but he really did hope that Suguru had finally warmed up to them. He certainly acted like it; smiled more often, willingly hung out with him and Shoko, and Satoru remembers—cheeks burning—that he kept sweets around in his pocket. He’d asked him why he carried them around, considering Suguru said he liked savory things, and he’d said he carries them around for Satoru. He’d said it so effortlessly, as if he didn’t hold the entirety of Satoru’s heart in his palm right then and there in that very moment.

His friend. All Satoru wanted was for Suguru to be his friend and he really, genuinely thought he’d succeeded. Sure he let himself wish for a little more in those little off moments, when everything was quiet and sometimes—just sometimes, Suguru would reach over to card his hand through Satoru’s hair or play with his fingers. Absentmindedly, of course, as if it were a force of habit. Was it really so bad? 

Fuck whatever inter-dimensional space being exists out there, Satoru sighs miserably, turning the forgotten spoon around in his fingers. His ice cream is already half-melted. He can’t find it within himself to care.

”Okay, that’s it.”

There’s a shift as his mother enters the room, arms crossed across her chest and a deep frown etched into her face. She gestures at Satoru’s general being. “What’s up with all— this, huh? You’re letting your ice cream melt, and no one’s gonna eat it considering how sweet you make it all the time.”

”Nothing’s up,” he mutters, pushing the bowl away from his general direction. He’ll put it back in the freezer, maybe. 

She raises a brow—drags a chair out to sit across him. “Hm. Sure. You’ve been sighing for the past hour, don’t think I didn’t hear you.”

Satoru looks up at her, but doesn’t lift his head up his table. His mom’s hair is pinned in a bun today, like Suguru’s usually is. His expression crumples at the comparison; turns his face the other way.

Then there’s a hand in his hair, lightly scratching and it’s comforting but all Satoru can think in a dreadful, screaming cacophony in his head is Suguru Suguru Suguru Suguru—

“Cut it out,” he croaks, half-heartedly batting her hand away.

”I spent twelve hours in labor birthing you, you cut it out,” she snaps back, but there’s really no bite to it. She stops either way, lightly cupping the part of Satoru’s cheek not smushed into the table. “Now, what’s wrong, ‘Toru?”

Satoru glares at her. “Told you to stop calling me that. It’s a dumb nickname. I’m not six anymore.”

A snort, then a light flick to his forehead. “You still act like you’re six. Stop changing the subject.”

Silence. 

Then—

“Y’know Suguru?” he asks, voice smaller than he’d like it to be. 

“Guy that punched you?”

“I told Ijichi not to tell you that part!”

”Sh, I made him. Go on.”

Satoru tentatively lifts his head off the table, only getting as far as to resting his face against his palm. “It’s just— he’s acting really weird. Like really weird. I mean he was already weird, at the start, but it wasn’t this bad. Me and Shoko got through, we started hanging around but then, you know how I— how I um, I held that meeting last month?”

Absentmindedly, his mother spoons herself a bit of his ice cream. No matter how much she denies it, it’s clear he got his sweet tooth from her. “Uh huh. Your dad was real pissed, but luckily that old bat—“ (Satoru’s grandmother) “—has a bias for you. Still, Gakuganji filed about seventeen complaints.”

Minutely, a smile twitches at the corner of Satoru’s mouth. “That one, yeah. It was for Suguru, so he wouldn’t get expelled and stuff. He beat up twelve kids, you know? He was super—“ Hot, says his head, but Satoru bites his tongue in front of his mother. “—cool, doing it, so I cheered him on but he looked out of it, like really out of it, until like the end. I think he saw me at the end, and he was a sight— beating people up, then he turns to me, and it’s like his eyes cleared and there was, there was this piece of hair in front of his eyes? Usually his hair’s in a bun, right, and I have ties for him because he loses them a lot—he must’ve managed to knock his hair around because it was framing his face really well—“

Satoru is startled out of his spiel by his mother coughing, rather pointedly, into her own fist. There’s a grin on her lips though and as soon as Satoru figures out why, his face burns red.

”Sorry,” he mumbles sheepishly, winding down. “Okay. In summary, Suguru’s gotten weirder since then. I don’t know why. He went in for a check-up and came back really distant. He’s been ignoring me and Shoko since last month.” 

Blue eyes run up to watch his mother’s expression. She's swirling the spoon around the now-finished bowl of ‘wretchedly sweet’ ice cream (I’ve got to mock her for that later, Satoru thinks gleefully), seeming to be mulling everything over. 

“Maybe it’s got something to do with the check-up,” she suggests after a while. 

“I agree,” Shoko says, nodding. Wait. Huh?

”When did you get here?” Satoru sputters, turning to point at her accusingly. Shoko is sitting at the table, blinking sleep out of her eyes as if she’s been there the entire time. Her parents are out for a month, something about their wedding anniversary, so she’s been sleeping over. 

”I’ve been here the entire time,” she says blandly. “Just in the kitchen.”

”She’s been washing the dishes with me, since you were too busy moping over this Suguru,” his mother adds helpfully, as if the aren’t ganging up on him. The absolute nerve to criticize him in his own home. He should ring up a lawsuit on these two. Shame on them.

“Anyways,” Shoko interjects, as if sensing that Satoru’s going to say something—which, rude—, gesturing in his mom’s general direction. “Suguru got real weird after his appointment, right? He said he went to this Kamo guy.”

Satoru, about to say something, is interrupted by his own mother this time. Shame, shame, shame. Is there any decency in this house?

“Kamo? A Kamo specifically, not just one of their hospital branches or employees?”

”No. Suguru said his therapist was a Kamo,” Satoru confirms, still feeling a bit miffed about being cut off. 

“That’s bad,” his mother murmurs quietly and then suddenly, both he and Shoko are all ears. They share a look, mirroring frowns. “Kamos only personally attend to patients they consider important. But there’s never been a mention of any Geto in the clan meetings, so I don’t really know why Suguru’s being personally tended to.” 

Shoko slaps his wrist lightly and Satoru recoils, frowning. She gestures to his hands and he follows her gaze. His knuckles have turned ivory from how tightly he’s been gripping the edge of the table. 

Satoru opens his mouth—

—and gets interrupted for the third time this morning, except this time, it’s by the ringing of his phone. Miffed, Satoru swipes it off the table and answers it, aggressively putting it on speaker. “Who the hell—“

”Who put your panties in a twist? It’s like, eight. Old man,” a familiar voice snarks from the either end of the line. Satoru stops, narrows his eyes.

”Nanako?”

”Yeah. Hi bitch.” 

Satoru’s mother snorts, and he looks up at her, betrayed. 

“What do you… did Suguru have you call me?” Hope bleeds into his tone like poison; manifesting in the way his fingers curl, just ever so slightly, tighter around the phone and—

“Dude shut up. You sound super needy right now. Simp. Cringe. Knock it off.” 

Satoru looks at the phone out the corner of his eye, slowly drops it down to the table. A beat passes—then another. Shoko narrows her eyes.

”Satoru, don’t—“

He drops the call. 

The entire room is silent, then the phone starts ringing again. Satoru reaches for the end-call button, but his hand is unceremoniously slapped away by none other than Shoko herself. His mother grins.

“Hi, sorry. Continue,” Shoko answers the phone, puts it on speaker for everyone to hear.

”No, it’s okay, Nana’s been super pissy lately. Okay so, you’re the pretty girl in Suguru’s wallpaper, right? Brown hair? Lying down?”

Shoko looks undeniably smug as she answers, “Yeah, that’s me. What’s up?”

”We need help. Suguru’s…I mean, surely you noticed it too?” 

This time, Satoru is the one doing the interrupting. Before anyone can say a single thing, he snatches the phone from Shoko, pulls it closer to his lips.

”And? What should we do about it?” 

Shoko sends him a look, one that clearly says I can’t believe you’re beefing with twelve year olds, but Satoru does not care in the slightest. 

For a moment, there’s nothing but hushed conversation over the line. There's a pitched, angry sound, then—

"We'll send you our address," Mimiko promises.

 There is a table and on either end; children. Absolute children. One is just significantly taller than the other one, but all in all, the same degree of immaturity. They even have nearly matching crossed-arms. 

"I don't think we need to keep doing this," Shoko frowns, hands laid in front of her, settled on the wooden table. She's in the middle, and directly across Mimiko Geto; who seems as exasperated with her twin sister's behavior as Shoko is with Satoru. 

"I'm not needy," Satoru spits from across the table, making Nanako straighten her back. 

"Oh yeah? What was that on the phone earlier then, did Suguru have you call me? Did he? Does he miss me? Did he say anything about me—" 

Mimiko raps a knuckle against the table and Shoko watches, with sizeable interest, as she levels Nanako with a look scarily similar to the one Suguru pulls when Satoru hasn't been shutting up for a good while. All at once, Nanako sinks back into her seat, a petulant frown twitching at her mouth. 

With a deep breath, Mimiko starts to speak. "Okay, thank you for coming here. Gojo, I'm sorry about her. You are definitely not needy. Our topic of interest today is our brother and your friend, Suguru Geto." 

Suddenly, Mimiko bends over the side of her chair. It takes a few minutes of shuffling, before she puts on the table what looks to be a prescription from...actually, Shoko doesn't know where. Her shorts don't seem to have any pockets, much less her shirt, and the floor was clear too. 

"This is Suguru's latest prescription from Kenjaku, his—"

"Stupid-ass, bitch-ass," Nanako interjects, and Mimiko nods. 

"—therapist. Four weeks that he hasn't been taking his pills. In this period of time, he'd been more of himself, and it was around this time that he started finishing his lunches." 

Shoko turns to Satoru, watching as his eyes soften with fondness, arms uncrossing from his chest. He leans over, lanky arms reaching to grab the prescription, mouthing the dates and the unintelligible doctor's notes written on it, thumb caressing the edge of it. "That's around the time we started eating lunch on the roof together, and I started walking him to class."

Mimiko shares a look with her twin, before nodding. "That seems to line up with our theory. Me and Nana think that the reason he stopped taking his pills is because of you two."

Screech! 

Satoru's chair jostles backwards, making a near-defeaning noise against the tiles. Nanako glares at him, and he glares back. 

"That's not a bad thing," Mimiko follows up immediately. "Those pills have never been good news, he just...always took them. Honestly, I'm glad that he stopped, but the dependency on them—" 

"—is essentially why he beat up those kids, right?" Shoko murmurs, peering at the twins. 

"Bingo," Nanako hums, fist tapping rhythms into the table. "So we're gonna fuckin'...spy on him. Capiche? We're gonna figure out the deal with this stupid Kenjaku, and everything's gonna be cool, we—" she gestures towards herself, then jabs a thumb in Mimiko's direction. "—get to have our brother back, you—" to Shoko, this time, and the the brunette gives a little wave. "—get your friend back, and that dickhead—" this time, she doesn't even bother addressing Satoru. "—gets to be clingy and shit again. Okay? Okay. Out. We'll make a groupchat. It'll be great and cool, and I can't stand to have old, white-haired little rat in my house for another second." 

Unceremoniously, Satoru and Shoko get dragged outside by a pissed-off looking Nanako, the door slammed on them with a bang. Shoko shuffles on her feet. The door opens an inch. 

"Hey, sorry," Mimiko murmurs through the crack in the door, smiling at them. "Have a safe trip home. Thanks for coming." 

She gives them a last wave, before closing the door a lot gentler than her twin. 

"Kids," Satoru scoffs, before stomping petulantly down the cobbled steps, kicking a stray pebble with as much ferocity feral cat. Shoko huffs, bumping shoulders with him briefly, a questioning look on her face. For a few seconds, his face stubbornly remains annoyed and childish but eventually, it simmers down into something more...human, Shoko supposes. 

The car door closes with a soft thump, and Ijichi starts the car up. Satoru takes a deep breath; settles the back of his head against the car-seat. He's sat in the back, today, instead of the front like he usually likes. "Pills. Suguru was on pills, probably something to change his behavior, and he stopped them when we started being frie..."

He trails off. The car thrums; once, twice, before moving. They pull out of the driveway and start off down back home. Shoko watches Satoru slip out of his shoes, gangly legs drawing up to his chin, equally long arms wrapped around like a cage. He doesn't look at her when he whispers, near silent; "I'm worried, Shoko." 

Wordlessly, she scoots over. She doesn't look at him either when she leans against his shoulder. Rain starts to patter against the side of the window, steadily swelling as the drive goes on. 

"I know," she murmurs. "I am too. We'll get him back."

Chapter Text

The house is quiet. It looks—even feels like summer break last year. Everything is stale and cold, shrouded in something that Nanako can’t quite place. Their mother has started crying again. Suguru is different. Always so goddamn fucking different when he’s on those things. After all the progress and improvements that they’ve gone through this past month, they’re back at square one. Absolutely fucking brilliant. 

Maybe it’s some fucked up sort of karma for believing that Suguru was really back. Divine-whatever-punishment because she had the audacity to hope that, for one second, she could have her brother back. Hell, their mom even started laughing again! When she sat with her twin and her brother and her mom at the table it felt like she was ten years old again, when their dad still gave a single shit about them.

“Nanako.”

She looks up, meets the eyes of her twin sister in the bunk above her, hand dangling down. Nanako reaches up to hold it without a word. “Yeah?” 

“Gojo made a way. You know the secretary, the weird one?” 

“Mahito,” Nanako hisses, scrunching at the memory. Honestly, he always looked high. Too happy, loopy and shit. She wouldn’t be surprised if he was on drugs too. 

There’s a shuffle, and Mimiko tosses her phone down the side of the bed. Nanako wordlessly catches it, peering at the too-dim phone screen. Mimiko always likes her phone screen too dark, like Suguru. In Nanako’s oh-humble-opinion, they’re both on the near damning side of insane. Eyes flitting right to left, she eventually nods, renaming Gojo to dumb shit before reaching her sister’s phone back up.

“Ieri looks like she’d be up for the job. Hey, how’d Gojo get Mahito to call in sick?” she chides, idly kicking the top bunk. Eventually, Mimiko looks down at her, scowling. 

“Stop kicking my— oh my god, Nana. I don’t know, his family’s super rich, they must’ve done something,” she swats at Nanako’s foot, nearly falling off the side of her bunk in the process. She’s stopped by, apparently, her own thoughts, face scrunching up in contemplation. “D’you think they got a hitman to take him out?”

Nanako mulls it over for a moment, still lightly kicking Mimiko’s bunk, before shrugging. “Dumb shit doesn’t have enough braincells for that. Probably not. You know how self-righteous Suguru—“

Then it’s silent again, the rest of her sentence dying on her tongue. As if Suguru’s mere name curdled the rest of what she’s saying and this— it’s so fucked up, she shouldn’t. She shouldn’t be hesitating to say her brother’s name. It’s not fair, because Suguru was only ever kind to them, was the only person who put up juggling his twin sisters and their unstable mother and it’s not fair, because he deserves to be out and make stupid friends like Satoru Gojo and good friends like Shoko Ieri, deserves to live normally instead of being holed up like there’s something wrong with him. It’s not—

Mimiko’s fingers are in hers, and she’s untangling Nanako’s hand. Looking down gives her a clear view of her own palm, crimson indents where nails pierced skin. Nanako doesn’t know when Mimi climbed down the bunk, or when she’d sat next to her.

Her hands are covered in red, and they itch to hit. Nanako supposes this is one thing she got from her brother. 

“I’m gonna wash this,” she murmurs, pushing her sister, standing gingerly. Nanako needs to leave. It’s happened before— snapping, coming close to hitting her sister or her brother or her mom and she can’t do that. 

Cold. The water is startlingly cold when she spins the tap, watching it stain pink and trickle down the drain. It’s near midnight now, she thinks, casting a sidewards glance out into the hallway. There isn’t any light under Suguru’s door, but their mother’s is propped open. Crying again.

Nanako grips the sink with the hand not under tap. Always crying, never coming up with anything for Suguru past those godforsaken pills that she thinks will solve jack shit. 

She should stop. She’s gonna drive up the water bill.

It takes somewhere between an eternity and a split-second to turn off the tap, something, somewhere, whatever, but it’s enough time for Nanako to turn around and bump into someone in the doorway, sending them stumbling back.

A beat of silence; Nanako tries to get her eyes used to the darkness in the hall, a silhouette eventually outlined into view.

“Mom?”

She startles, as if she didn’t notice that Nanako was there. Now that she’s stepped forward, bathed in the bathroom’s fluorescence, Nanako can pick out her ruddy cheeks and the tear tracks that stain it; the way she hiccups with a leftover sob, ever so slightly. 

Her fists itch. She waves instead, with the hand lightly bleeding.

Nanako is regarded with a shaky smile. Her mother doesn’t notice the wound. 

Here’s the thing; Nanako could easily push past her mother, offer her a muttered goodnight and leave her be. She could retreat back to her room, flick the lights off and go to bed. 

But then again, she’s never been good at letting things go so she stops at the crest of the doorway, hand lingering on the frame. Nanako doesn’t look back when she blurts— “What do you think about Suguru these days?” 

All of a sudden, there's change in atmosphere, air dipping into something stale and bitter on the tongue. Her mother stops, the tap still running, water cupped between her palms where she would’ve splashed it onto her on face. Red, always red these days, crying because she can’t do anything else and Nanako— Nanako knows, deep inside herself, that she shouldn’t be so angry at her mother. Shouldn’t hate her for something that she can’t control or criticize her for things she has no knowledge in but sometimes, when all her mother does is cry and cry and cry about everything that goes wrong in her life, Nanako feels so angry. Wants grab her by the shoulders and ask her; what are you doing? Why aren’t you thinking about your children? 

Nanako watches her mother swallow, shoulders shuddering, before she answers. “I think Suguru is a very…complicated boy, which is why he has his medicine—“

“His drugs,” Nanako cuts in, voice harder than she intends it to be. A flinch from the woman opposite her. “You mean his drugs, right? Y’know, the ones that make him all loopy. You see it too, right? Sure, he stops beating up kids but in exchange, we get this lifeless hollow of a—“

Skin swipes against rusted metal too-fast and too-harshly as the tap stops running, leaving a screech in the air, lingering even after her mother takes her hand away from the sink, clutching her fingers to her own chest. If it’s to hide the trembling in them then, Nanako thinks, she’s doing a shit job. Like with everything else. 

“I think we should turn in for the night,” her mother whispers, voice quiet and scratchy and small, as if she isn’t the older one in the situation, looking so fucking infuriatingly like a child getting scolded and Nanako can’t help but retort, “No, I don’t think so. Let’s talk, come on, mom!”

Purple, her mother’s eyes are purple and glassy and teary and Nanako fucking hates how small she looks. Purple, the same colour as Suguru’s, but completely devoid of the confidence and responsibility her brother has and— shouldn’t it be the other way around? 

“I don’t—“ it comes out more of a warble, if anything, and Nanako feels her blood boil at the sound of her mother’s voice for the first time in a while. “I don’t want to talk about this, Nana, please, can we just turn in for the night? Tomorrow, we can get ice cr—“ 

And Nanako’s so tired of skirting around topics, walking on eggshells in her own house because her brother’s being given drugs and her mother is so fucking weak-willed and Mimiko’s the younger twin, younger only by a few minutes but they’re just kids, for shit’s sake and Nanako’s always been so, so angry, too angry for her age, nearly second nature when she slams the side of her fist against the bathroom walls— “God-fucking-dammit, mom, I don’t want ice cream! I want my brother, because he’s the only person that gives a single living shit about me and Mimiko! I want someone who is stable and safe and doesn’t fucking cry all the time instead of doing anything and now— fuck, we had Suguru back, couldn’t you have just looked the other way!? It’s not like those kids were goin’ to fucking die, you— you put him back on those drugs. Fuck, mom, do you really trust that stupid Kenjaku guy? Huh?” 

Vaguely, Nanako can register that her knuckles are bleeding. Some of them, near the edge, when she’d slammed it into the wall. Can register that her mother’s lip is wobbling again, the tell-tale tremble of tears starting back up and for a split second, the thought of storming into her room burns through her mind. It disappears as quickly as she comes and Nanako stands her ground, ramrod-straight as she stands in the doorway of the bathroom. 

“Kenjaku helped us at— at our lowest point, when your dad—“ She stops suddenly, choking on her own tears. Nanako allows her mother a short respite, glowering at the wall instead. I’m taller than her now, Nanako registers suddenly, the sentiment hitting her like a truck. How long it’s been like that, she doesn’t know. Nanako doesn’t like standing next to her mother lately, doesn’t like looking in her direction lest she sees how small she looks, or how often she cries. 

Continuing, her mom wrings her fingers together. A habit Nanako knows well; passed down to Mimiko and, on rare occasion, Suguru. “Suguru is sick, Nana, which is why we’re working hard to help him. He used to be violent, you remember? With his classmates? When your dad left? And then— Kenjaku helped him, helped him sort out his state of mind.”

”You don’t seriously believe that?” Nanako whispers incredulously, one second from tipping point because she can spot how her mother’s eyes flit, ever so slightly to the side and Nanako knows she doesn’t— but for some fucking reason, she’s not doing anything about it.

Silence speaks in multitudes and eventually, Nanako snaps the stretch of it with a scoff. “Fine. Fine! Run away again for all I care, but me and Mimiko are going to do something about it.”

A hand grips her sleeve as she turns to leave; Nanako meets her mother’s eyes, swirling with alarm. “Y- You’re what? Don’t do anything dangerous, Nanako, please, I already lost one child—“

”You didn’t lose jack shit!” Nanako snarls, pushing her hand off as if it burns. “Suguru is still here! And if you don’t want to do anything then fine! But don’t fucking stop me and Mimiko, because we actually care about him.” 

Before her mother can say a single word, Nanako slams the bathroom door behind her, chest heaving, eyes wide. Someone taps her shoulder, and she slaps the hand away.

”Are you alright?” asks Suguru, eyes misty, voice even. He has a placating smile on his face and Nanako tears away, stepping back. He still smiles.

”Good night.” He walks away, as if nothing happened. Steps perfectly measured, the water in his glass barely moving as he retreats into his room. The lights aren’t even on and it’s so unnatural that Nanako just wants to sit down and cry. 

"Fuck,” she curses, stomping back into her room.

”Gojo.”

Satoru nearly falls off his chair, rushing to slam his notebook shut. His notebook, which is incriminatingly filled with little doodles of Suguru Geto, because goddammit he misses him, even though he is sitting in the seat right over. It doesn’t count, because he’s acting weird and brainwashed.

 Blue eyes flit to and fro, before eventually landing on Kento Nanami.

In retrospect, there is absolutely no reason why Kento Nanami would be speaking to him, considering that they’re not particularly friends, considering Satoru barged himself into this particular Math class by force a month ago and, therefore, has never interacted with him before then. All he knows about him is that he’s pretty good for his age, accelerating a year up to get into their level’s class.

”Hello.” He sits up straight, dropping the notebook into his open bag. Nanami regards him with a slightly off-put expression, something that looks to be a disappointed frown twitching at his lips. Which, rude. 

“Hello,” Nanami eventually greets back, expression straightening into polite indifference. "I was told that you're acquainted with Suguru Geto?" 

Blinks. Blinks again. Satoru blinks a third time, before his mouth twists into a confused frown. "Um. He's right there." He gestures with his shoulder, eyes flitting over. Blank-expression. Satoru looks back at Nanami. 

"Yes, I know, but Haibara said to speak to you instead. There's something wrong with him, isn't there?"

The bluntness takes Satoru by surprise, and so does the statement. "There's— how did you—"

"Haibara is a friend of his. He said Geto stopped speaking to him, and it's worrying him." 

Haibara. Haibara? Suguru's never said anything about a Haibara before. Has Satoru ever met a Haibara? He doesn't know who Haibara is, and Suguru's never told him about anyone named Haibara, and Satoru is...unnecessarily upset about this. Suguru has friends outside of him and Shoko, which is a good thing, and he should really stop tapping his foot against the floor. 

Satoru stills his leg, peering at Nanami. "Number?"

Nanami stares at him, staggered. "Excuse me?"

"Haibara's number," he concedes. "We have a kind of save-Geto groupchat, because he's..."

Trailing off, Satoru's eyes are drawn towards Suguru, who takes two pills at that exact moment. Satoru bites his lip and continues. "...a bit, off. I'll take your number too, if you wanna come in."

And so it goes. Nanami, after jotting down his and Haibara's number in astonishingly neat handwriting, returns to his seat at the front of the class, notebook open dutifully. Notes that, honestly, Satoru has no idea are about. It's math. What do you take notes about in math?

Setsuna enters the room within a few seconds, loud and cheerful so early in the morning. As usual. 

Satoru settles his hand on his hand and buckles into the rest of the class. 

"Huh?" Haibara blinks, looking helplessly lost, and Satoru is surprised he saw him as a nuisance less than seven hours ago. And for absolutely no good reason, because he's perfectly content being Suguru's friend, and therefore should garner absolutely no negativity towards any partner that he might have. 

"We put a little something in his lunch," Satoru repeats patiently. "So that he's sick for the rest of the day, and Shoko can pop in as that damn therapist's assistant." 

"That's..." Haibara looks extremely concerned, and Nanami is frowning at them like they just committed a felony. 

"Efficient." Satoru grins at them, finishing the sentence for him. 

"Concerning," hisses Nanami, eyes narrowed into slits. 

"Efficient," Satoru says again, because Nanami is completely wrong. "There's no way they're gonna refuse a recommendation from the Gojo line, even if they find it suspicious."

Haibara looks heartbroken, face twisting in a nearly child-like expression of upset. "This is so illegal."

"Law is a social construct," says Satoru cheerfully. "It is an outlier, and therefore shouldn't be counted."

Nanami sighs, before stopping dumb in front of the entrance gates, along with Haibara. Satoru frowns as he opens the door to Ijichi's car, peering at them. "What?"

"Is that a limousine?" 

"Ah!" Satoru perks up. "Yeah! This is Ijichi's car. Ijichi is the driver." 

Ijichi waves through the front-seat window. 

Shaking his head, Nanami takes Haibara's hand to drag him over to the open limousine door, Haibara in the middle, Satoru and Nanami on either side. 

Satoru shuffles uncomfortably. Satoru really doesn't like Suguru's friend. Wait, Nanami doesn't seem to know Suguru. Rephrase; he really doesn't like Suguru's friend's friend. 

"Our magical plan of action," Satoru begins, hands poised together at the head of the table. Nanako tried to fight him for the seat, but unfortunately for the scrambling tiny little weasel, it's his house and therefore, he gets to sit at the head of the table. 

He pauses to take a bite of his ice cream, before continuing. 

"Shoko," he points. Shoko waves, grabs for a piece of pizza on the table. "Is gonna dress up as an assistant, and we're gonna spy on Suguru's therapy session."

"We?" Nanako cuts in, and Satoru gives her a glare. She scowls right back at him, and promptly gets smacked over the crown of her head by her twin sister. 

"Yes, we, obviously, we're gonna put a wiretap in there so we can hear. Duh."

Nanami points out, ever the party-pooper, "Is there no sensible adult in this house? Someone that can convince us not to partake in illegal activities?" 

Satoru stares at him, and Nanako gives him an equally withering glance. Satoru supposes that's one thing that they both agree on. 

"My mom's out, and you're a party pooper."

Nanami opens his mouth to retort.

"Anyways!" Satoru starts back up again, clapping his hands. "That's that. We're going in tomorrow. For now, we just eat." 

Grandly, he stands on his table, gesturing at the piles and piles of food that they ordered an hour ago. The meeting didn't start immediately, since apparently, no one in the room past Nanami and Mimiko had taste and tried to contest ordering pizza with pineapples. Nanako called him a 'filthy old man that insists on having disgusting old fruits on his pizza' and Satoru was, very unfortunately, thwarted by Shoko in his brilliant plan of partaking in child murder. 

They ended up arguing for a latter part of thirty minutes before Mimiko piped up 'are you or are you not rich? Order whatever you want'. Smartest person in the room, in Satoru's opinion. There are a grand total of two pizza boxes for each flavor, and a helping of carbonara upon Nanami's insistence for 'much healthier options.' 

An hour later, the first boxes of pizza are nearly finished, and everyone is holed up in the living room. How To Train Your Dragon plays, the screen the only light-source in the room. Both the twins are asleep, along with Satoru and Haibara. 

Shoko stands, leaving the movie running as she starts to tidy up. She notices Nanami do the same, nodding her head at her. 

"Your sisters?" he asks her, gesturing towards Nanako and Mimiko. 

Draping a blanket over them, she shakes her head. "Suguru's."

Nanami scrunches his nose, frowning. Concerned, even, nearly soft in the way he stares at them. "Why are they here?" 

"Hell if I know. They just showed up. Didn't talk about it. I think Suguru was the closest thing they had to a guardian." Shoko pauses, before taking the rest of the pizza and dividing it amongst the two boxes, picking up the others to put in the trash. "I know they have a mom. Dunno what happened, but I know they really look up to Suguru. They hate being called kids. Act older than they are."

Quietly, they tidy up the rest of the living room. Shoko calls over Ijichi for help halfway through. The older man looks at the scene in the room, ushering Nanami and Shoko to join them before snapping a picture. 

"His mom'll be delighted," Ijichi hums, gesturing at Satoru. "He barely has friends over. Usually, it's just Shoko." 

Ijichi handles the rest of the cleaning, shooing the both of them off every time they try to help, packing everything in black trash bags. 

"Let's get Geto-san back quickly," says Nanami, when Ijichi has left the penthouse to throw the trash down the chute. Shoko is surprised by the honorific; before this moment, Nanami hasn't used any honorifics for anyone. 

"Yeah, I'm gonna get the twins to bed first though," Shoko says, tilting her head. She watches Nanami struggle to lift even one twin and chuckles to herself. Stick-boy. Serious, serious stick-boy. 

"Being a child isn't a sin," starts the other carefully, grunting as he lifts Mimiko. Shoko lifts Nanako in tandem, mentally preparing herself to drag Satoru back to his room for the umpteenth time since she's been staying here. 

Nanami looks fond. Or Shoko's looking into things too deeply, and it's just a trick of the light. "They deserve to be kids."

She hums, pressing a fist to his head lightly. "You're a kid too, you know."

Scowling, he slaps her hand away, and nearly drops Mimiko in the process. Hah. Stick. 

Chapter Text

Walls, in Suguru's opinion, shouldn't particularly be moving in strange directions. Up, down, left, right, diagonally; that is...not supposed to happen. Normally, they're not painted a strange array of colors either, unless the construction team is feeling particularly artistic. He thinks that in terms of the state of walls, his judgement is pretty sound. After all, in order to sustain the roofs propped atop of them, they have to remain stable, else it all comes crashing down. 

So. Walls. 

Or, perhaps, this is not a wall at all. This might be another sound judgement, or it could just be a bout of gibberish. Suguru's mind has been spouting gibberish most of the time, ever since he...er. He doesn't quite remember, actually. It feels vaguely like walking through thick, dense fog; so dense that it nearly gives off the illusion of touch—then you push through and realize, no, it's just terribly heavy. He can still see, of course, but also...not quite. Nothing seems to be registering at the moment, just a haze of everything and nothing at the same time.

Suguru attempts to interact with the haziness. His hand twitches on his desk and oh, yes, this isn't a wall; it's just his vision. His desk, Setsuna-sensei and his classmates and— Suguru wants to look to the side. It's a prodding feeling, as if he'll find something there, but apparently his head prefers not to comply. Which, okay. But it's pretty annoying that his own body isn't listening to him. 

His desk, Suguru realizes with a start, has a piece of paper on it. Specifically, a test: Math, which has always been abysmally easy. There are answers in his handwriting which, honestly, he doesn't quite remember settling onto the paper. He supposes he can't say anything about it, considering that less than a few minutes ago, he regarded his own vision as some sort of strange wall. 

I'm doing a shit at this quiz, Suguru thinks idly, gaze dragging down the mess of answers, as if his own life is nothing but a movie for him to spectate. Hah. That might be a little funny, if it weren't for the constant haze that blocks him from thinking much of anything. Either way, he's doing shit at the quiz, and Suguru vaguely registers that he's supposed to be doing shit at the quiz. He was told to, he thinks, and orders are easy to follow. So. There's that, he supposes.

Piss and shit, he tries to say, if only to interrupt the jarring stretch of silence in his own head. Judging by the way his classmates don't even look at him, it didn't leave his mouth at all. Rude. This is Suguru's body. 

Out of the corner of his eye, there's a tuft of white hair. Suguru really wants to look to the side, but it's like he's been stripped of all bodily autonomy. Should he be more concerned about this? He is vaguely convinced he should be more concerned about this. Either way, apparently, he's not concerned and—

And oh. He doesn't know when he got to Setsuna-sensei's office. She's speaking, he can hear her, but he can't quite register what she's saying. Suguru can tell her lips are moving, can tell her expression is worried, but he can only catch a few wisps of what she's telling the...not-him?

Something, something grades, lower, quizzes, something wrong at home?, are you okay and ah, Suguru— Suguru thinks, carefully, tries to sort his thoughts.

My mind's a bit fuzzy, he tries to tell her. Tries to open up his mouth again to follow up with: Everything feels hazy. You don't look real. I don't feel real. I think I might be dead. 

"I'm perfectly alright," speaks his mouth, and Suguru thinks that's not quite right, and that's awfully rude for his own body to answer for him. His legs move, and suddenly everything is hazy again. He can swear he hears a voice, every now and then, amongst the sea of blur-students-blur in the hallway. Hand on his shoulder, warm, soft, familiar, tugging, sunglasses—

Huh?

Suguru blinks. Tries to, anyway. He doesn't know what's happening with his face his body his legs arms eyes whatever else parts of his body he can't seem to quite connect to, and everything feels perpetually hazy.

Blinks.

Blinks again.

Oh.

Where is he?

"Suguru."

He startles, then comes face-to-face with Kenjaku. He sports an amiable, unassuming smile on his face, hands clasped together atop his wooden desk. There are stitches across his forehead, as per usual. Suguru's always found them unnerving, and Kenjaku would always skirt around the topic of why he had them. 

"Yes, hello, I'm sorry," Suguru blinks, shakes his head, then rushes to speak. Seriously, he's better at articulating words than this. "I don't— I don't know how I got here."

An assistant comes in, but not Mahito, which is a pleasant surprise. He's always been a bit of a creep. New assistant sends him a look, expression curious, as she puts a small paperweight onto the table. There's something in her gaze that makes Suguru wonder, phone suddenly feeling heavier in his pocket. 

Wallpaper.

Suguru bites his cheek, brow furrowing slightly. That is a...weird thought to suddenly have. Though it's not quite out of place, considering that he was thinking about walls earlier.

Instead of concern, or curiosity, what blooms on Kenjaku's face is an...unusual sort of satisfaction, fingers tightening against each other. He leans forward minutely, and Suguru leans back. "Oh? You can't remember?" says Kenjaku, eyes glinting in a way that makes something in Suguru's chest stagger. "That's good."

Huh?

"Re—"

"—eally?" 

The speaker crackles when it picks up Suguru's voice and Satoru stills, mind jarringly quiet. It's the first trace of Suguru's voice that the paperweight-device had picked up, and it's the first time that he's heard Suguru's voice in a month, away from whatever influence those drugs had on his head. 

Everyone leans in close, suspended in anticipation. Shoko's put the device in the office without being detected. 

In the hotel room — which they booked right across the office, just in case things go to shit — there are two major devices for a few reasons. Nanako and Mimiko's seem to be blowing up with cryptic messages saying 'Go home' from their mother so neither of their phones are being used, and Nanami said he's the only one with all the health and safety number shit so they can't use his.

Anyways. Two devices. First: Satoru's phone, which is connected to a speaker, and is linked to the wiretap they sent Shoko and, second: Haibara's phone, which is connected to a spy-like headphone device that Shoko has on, which they bought (read: haggled) at a nearby electronics store. 

("Huh?" Satoru frowns, glowering at Nanako. "What do you mean we need one of those spy things? I don't think we do."

Nanako opens her mouth, probably to say something nasty like she always does, when Haibara cuts in with a radiant smile. "Yeah! Ieri can't hold her phone to her ear the entire time, it'll be suspicious. We need to be able to talk to her, since she won't be in the room with the wiretap."

 Everyone nods in tandem. Satoru dons a petulant expression, scowling at the way Nanako's face contorts into one of smug satisfaction. 

"Fuckin— fine. Fine! Okay!") 

"Really," affirms Kenjaku's voice, sounding elated. Smug in a skin-shiftingly threatening manner. "Moving on—" 

After that, the only things that Kenjaku talks about are things you'd expect a therapist to talk about. He asks about Suguru's conditions at home, he asks about his sisters, he asks about his mother, he asks about school — deceptively calm. But there's an undertone in it, something that makes Satoru's skin crawl. It's not long before he can't stop shifting in his seat, can't stop tapping his blunt nails against the wooden tabletop and—

"We should—" Satoru blurts out, throat dry as sand. He clears his throat before continuing, "We should go. I think we should go there." 

Foot tapping against the carpet in a dull thud, thud, thud — Satoru feels an uneasy swirl of terror in the pit of his stomach. It churns and churns and churns until he can't help but stand up, hands scrambling for his phone, disconnecting it from the speaker. The wiretap continues, softer than before, but still loud. At every cadence of Kenjaku's voice, he jolts, and— and he's never felt such a strong spike of dread his entire life. 

He looks around helplessly, hands twitching. 

"I agree," says Mimiko quietly, standing up and thank god— 

Nanako, despite the beginnings of a frown curling at the edges of her lips, stands as well, moving to grip the girl's hand in her own. Soon enough, everyone follows suit and they're rushing out of the hotel room. Satoru can vaguely register that someone — Nanami? — is telling him to slow down, stop running, but the air feels terribly heavy and he can't breathe right, he should be able to breathe right, shouldn't he?

"Hey," someone says, and Satoru's eyes flit about until they land on the clinic receptionist. She eyes them skeptically. "Do you have an appointment?" 

Words get stuck in his throat, I don't have time for this, Satoru can't— he doesn't know, he doesn't think so, but Suguru is...on the fourth floor? That's where Shoko went, she told them, just in case they had to follow and there's no reason to follow now, nothing out of place past the way the air is so fucking heavy and there's something wrong, Satoru knows, so why can't this fucking lady just let them—

"Dumb shit," someone snarls.

Satoru blinks. It's Nanako, waggling a finger at the receptionist with an expression entirely too wrathful for a girl who is only twelve years old. For once, Mimiko isn't dragging her back and the blonde continues angrily— "Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me right now? Are you literally stopping the fucking heir to the Gojo company? Are you literally asking him about an appointment?"

If they were in any other situation, Satoru laugh about how quickly the woman's face pales at her words, eyes darting over to him as if to confirm her statement — if Suguru were here, Satoru thinks hazily, he would reprimand her for the amount of fucks she dropped in there — before nodding frantically, shrinking back. 

They scuttle to the elevator at top speed, sneakers skidding against the vinyl floors and with a cheerful ding! the elevator doors close.

Then—

"I just wanna be part of your symphony! Will you hold me tight and not let go?"

This time, Satoru really does laugh; a displaced sound in the strained atmosphere in the elevator. The fucking elevator music is so anticlimactic and it's sending him, apparently, into peals of laughter that probably shouldn't be present in this situation. Haibara cracks a smile and Satoru keeps laughing, tears bubbling at the edges of his eyes and oh, Satoru doesn't think he's just laughing. 

He tries his best to make it look like he's just laughing though. Satoru really, really tries his best. It seems to pass for everyone bar Nanami, who looks at him with an astoundingly piercing gaze for someone a year younger than him. Shrinking under the stare, Satoru shuffles his attention to Nanako. 

"Gojo heir, huh? Namedropping? I thought you hated me," and as soon as that's out of his mouth Nanako reddens with fury, poking a nail against his chest. It feels more like a tiny bop if anything but the intent is clear in the way her nose flares and the way she looks ready to murder him. 

"You motherfucking—"

As soon as the elevator doors open, Satoru makes a beeline towards Shoko, who sits at the assistant's desk as if she belongs there, listening. They'd managed to neglect the wiretap the entire way there, considering Satoru chucked his phone into his pocket. He takes it out now, his phone's audio no longer muffled, just in time to catch:

"Do you have any friends at school, Suguru?" 

Satoru stills. Stills, because it takes nearly all of him to quench the flutter of blistering optimism in his chest. It spreads; curls into words floating, unsure, in his head— surely, we're friends now, right? Me and you and Shoko? 

"I don't know," says Suguru. 

Oh. All of a sudden, Satoru's heart seems to drop somewhere past his ankles. He opens his mouth to say something, anything— but not a single sound emanates past his lips, knuckles a ghastly shade of white from how hard he's gripping the edge of the table. But—

("Will you call me Satoru?"

"Huh?"

"Y'know, 'cause I thought, we're friends, yeah? And I call Shoko Shoko, so I thought, maybe you could call me Satoru, and I could call you..."

"Sure, Satoru.") 

Are they not friends? 

"That's good," Kenjaku's voice crackles from the speakers and, all at once, Satoru feels an spike of fury run down his veins. All-consuming, lava-hot and Satoru grits his teeth, trying not to let it slip into words because who knows what he'll say if he speaks. Fuck. God-fucking-damn everything. 

"Don't be so prissy," Nanako mutters and, okay, Satoru is really going to slap her over the head this time. Before he can give in to the violent bout of child abuse, she continues, eyes dragging on the grout accumulated between the tiles, petulantly kicking the foot of the desk. "He doesn't mean it. Kenjaku's...I don't fucking know. He's doing something."

Something in Satoru thaws, then, loosening his grip on the edge of the table. He gives Nanako a once-over, taking in the way she swallows nervously, eyes glinting with rage that Satoru has seen before — albeit harsher — in Suguru's own eyes. The way she gnaws at the bottom of her lip and how her nails are bitten down to the quick as well. She's worried. 

With a shuddering sigh, Satoru sits, crumpling in one motion next to Haibara, Nanami, and Mimiko, who had taken the liberty of sitting down on the seats near the assistant's desk. 

"Okay," says Satoru quietly, and he doesn't fail to notice how Nanako looks at him, skeptical. It nearly pushes a smile out of him — nearly. 

"Did you know what your father did for work, Suguru?" 

Nanako and Mimiko stiffen visibly, obviously thrown off-guard by the question. By the way Suguru responds, he was thrown as well, a long pause before he responds, "He was a doctor. He made medicine, before he died"

"Not quite. He made medicine, yes, but not your conventional antibiotics or cough syrups. He was making revolutionary medicine, really, ones that could addle your mind. Make someone unstable." 

A chill runs up Satoru's spine. Unstable. Unstable, like how Suguru is right now. Is it his father that's making him like this, then? But that's— that's not right, because Suguru says his father's dead. So- So how— 

"Me and him, we were partners. But the higher-ups recognized only his brilliance, not mine. Offered him to chance to rise up in the ranks, a once in a lifetime opportunity, but he declined it. For his family, he said. He said, he just wanted to be on the surface of our line of work, he didn't want to drag his family into it—of course not, they didn't even know his real name, all they knew was his pen-name. But they didn't offer the promotion to me, the next in line. Do you know how important that would have been, Suguru? Do you know how powerful they are?" 

"I don't know what you're talking about," Suguru's voice trembles when he answers, and there's the sound of chair screeching against the floor. 

"Sit down, Suguru." 

"I don't know what you're talking about," Suguru repeats, shaky, presumably still standing. "He was just...just a doctor. He came home every day and one day he didn't—"

"Exactly!" Kenjaku says, his voice rising in cheer. "One day, he didn't come home. Because one day, Kenjaku accepted the offer. That was your dad's pen name, see, Suguru. I could just take it if he died, which, you know, he did. Isn't that convenient? A month before, last summer, what was happening? What was happening, Suguru?" 

Nanako and Mimiko look like they've been shot. It's clear that they didn't talk about their father often.

"He was talking about curses. About...seeing curses. Humanoid things, I don't fucking know, why are we talking about this? What do you mean my dad was Kenjaku, you're Kenjaku! I don't—" 

There's a pitchy laugh from the speakers. Satoru stands, panic ebbing at the edges of his vision and he has to he he has to he has to open the door he has to open the door because Suguru's in danger and fuck god please they only just became friends n—

"—o, I'm not really Kenjaku, I just took that from your dad after I gave him his own drugs! Wasn't it fun? It worked perfectly even on himself, that's how talented your father was. Made him hallucinate things and then oops, he doesn't come home. But he fought back, y'know, that's why I have these stitches on my forehead. Ha! He tried to claw my skull open while I injected rat poison into him—which I played with a bit, by the way, it can clot blood up in a manner of seconds. I got so mad, I got so mad that I smashed his skull even after he died. But, you know, I thought hell, why not go after the family he tried so hard to protect? One last fuck you to the man who refused everything I ever wanted."

Kenjaku laughs and Suguru doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about, because that's not right. It's not— his dad was a goddamn pharmacist, for god's sake, he wouldn't mix up with dangerous people, not like how Kenjaku is fucking monologuing like some sort of third-rate villain. 

For some reason, Suguru can't move when Kenjaku stands to lock the door. Can't move when he pulls out a syringe, filled with something sickly green and can't move when he watches Kenjaku's face split into a grin, flicking it until all the bubbles disappear and Suguru feels like he's already been injected with something cold, trickling faintly down his spine. Dread, maybe, he thinks and all he can do is press against the wall against him, heart beating in his ears. 

Faintly, Suguru can register that the door starts heaving as soon as Kenjaku clicks it shut, screaming under the force of someone on the other side banging, frantic, and it sounds so much like Suguru's own heartbeat that he nearly laughs—nearly laughs, while faced with a needle pointed towards him. Poison, god, fuck, rat poison, goddammit, he supposes he always has been scum on earth; it's only rational that he gets to die the same way. 

"It would be so poetic," Kenjaku says, faintly. "If you died the same way your father did."

Fuck, he thinks, watching the needle glint in dull lighting. Really? Not now, please, please, goddammit.

"What about Nana and Mimi?" he says, quiet. They're at home, he thinks, with his mom but fuck. Fuck everything, actually. 

"Ah," Kenjaku blinks. "Well. As far as I know, they're not in your house. I sent someone over, but they only managed to kill your mom. They've been blowing up the twins' phones using your mom's number with calls and texts, so I think they're not there. Teenage rebellion;  ran away, presumably.” 

Suguru laughs. He shouldn't, really, but everything feels so unreal. Fuck. Ha. That’s funny, his mom’s dead, the twins are god-knows-where, maybe dead and rotting in an alley somewhere, beaten up by some drunk bastard and now Suguru’s gonna join the rest of his family. Fucking hilarious. 

“Don’t laugh, now,” Kenjaku murmurs, stepping closer, gripping his arm, needle ready to puncture. “I’m the only one having fun here.”

Fuck you, Suguru thinks but doesn’t say, trying to get his own arm to move, dammit, anything to bring him out of the predicament he’s in right now. Hah. He supposes he really is about to die.

What kind of cat would you be, if you were one?

 Suguru had told Gojo it was a stupid question. As of present, it remains a stupid question—but for some reason, probably as stupid as the question itself, Suguru is perched, phone in hand, one of those crappy quizzes open on his phone. Wide, bouncy lettering across the top of it reads ‘TAKE THIS TEST TO FIND OUT WHAT CAT YOU ARE!’ in a rather revolting shade of orange.

I have better things to do than this, Suguru tells himself internally, setting the phone down and standing up. Without another word, he stands, exiting the room. Because obviously, taking that test would be dumb and a complete waste of his time. 

He gets as far as the kitchen before turning back. 

“I have better things to do than this,” he repeats, starting the test. 

It’s oddly specific; ranging from things like the color of his hair and his eyes to his opinion on different times of the day. Seventy-five stupidly detailed questions—just to figure out what kind of cat he is. The longer Suguru keeps answering options and clicking buttons, the more he feels like this is an absolute waste of his time. Which he’s said multiple times in the past thirty minutes that he’s been answering the quiz and yet, he still hasn’t stopped. Goddamn Gojo. 

The result is…well, it’s accurate, he supposes. Suguru blinks at the screen, then shuts his phone off. That’s half an hour of his life spent on something dumb. At least he has an answer if Gojo ever decides to ask the stupid question again. 

The door crashes in.

Kenjaku is launched to the side by a blur of white and blue, rolling, pinned against the far side of the room. Kenjaku and— and Satoru (oh fuck god shit Satoru came to help him and Suguru can’t fucking believe this shit but god oh god Satoru is here) struggle in a tangle of limbs. Satoru’s leg swings an arc; it misses, launches against the bookshelf behind them. Picture frames and encyclopedias come spilling down Kenjaku’s head but he’s undeterred, hands flailing.

Suguru can’t believe his own eyes. He has to blink once, twice, another five times before he can fully comprehend that Satoru is here, with him, here, fighting some fucking man he doesn’t even know because Suguru was pinned against the wall, needle aimed at his—

—throat. 

The thought finishes almost lamely in Suguru’s head, preceded by purple eyes tracing the wooden floor. Looking, searching, until he spots a glint under the table. Green capsulated in glass, bubbly and sickly and deadly in its solitude. 

He killed my parents.

Suguru swallows roughly, hands twitching. There’s voices outside; it grabs his attention. Shoko is stood at the door with a blonde boy and…Yu Haibara? All three of them are standing in arms in front of the door, blocking the way from—

“Let me in, Ieri! Fuck, my brother’s in there!”

”Move out of the way! We have to help, we have to help them!

Nanako and Mimiko. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck shit god thank god thank everything because Suguru’s throat closes up, eyes welling up with tears because the twins are here and they’re not dead. Thank god they’re not dead. His little sisters, girls he held when they were born—fuck they’re not dead and Suguru could cry. 

He nearly stands, runs towards them, completely forgetting about the syringe under the table, before a sharp yelp cuts him out of the all-consuming relief. 

Satoru.

Satoru Satoru Satoru Sato—

“—ru? Satoru?” Suguru can hear himself speak, head snapping towards the source of the yell and oh. Oh fuck. 

Kenjaku’s fist is curled around a small dagger, buried hilt deep in Satoru’s thigh. Satoru’s eyes are wide, sunglasses shattered to pieces on the floor. His hands are trembling, raised in front of his face and Kenjaku is too close—too fucking close, eyes trained on Satoru’s without distraction, and there’s a manic grin spread across the entirety of his face. 

There’s a sick squelch! as he wrenches the knife out, then plunges it back into Satoru’s thigh. The boy cries out, and Suguru sees tears bubble at the corner of his eyes. 

It only takes a split second. 

Suguru dives under the table, fingers miraculously wrapping around the glass without delay. He stumbles, nearly falls flat on his face, nearly drops the needle as he runs— runs as fast as he can across the room. Kenjaku raises his dagger again. The entire blade is red and the entire room might as well be too, or fuck it might just be Suguru’s own vision, because Satoru looks so small under Kenjaku, hands helplessly trembling around the gaping wound in his thigh. He’s not supposed to look this small, dammit, because he’s Satoru Gojo and he’s fucking loud and he’s fucking annoying and he’s fucking crying—

Suguru’s always had anger issues. 

The dagger clatters to the ground.

Satoru watches in mute horror as Kenjaku tries to swallow, letting out a strangled noise when the muscles of his throat constrict against the needle in his throat. Then he gags, green and red slipping down his chin and shit, through the scorching pain he watches it drip onto his own pants, and Satoru hazily thinks, that’s fucking disgusting. 

Satoru watches him spasm, gripping at his throat, choking out blood before he falls forward. Yelping, Satoru dives to the side, blinded momentarily by the pain in his thigh. Lodged in the back of Kenjaku’s throat is a syringe, pushed to the paramount, the entire needle buried into his throat and isn’t that insane? How the hell did—

His eyes shift, move, hazy and land on Suguru. 

Oh.

Blue meets a hazy, diluted purple. Satoru can tell he isn’t— can’t register it yet and damn if Satoru isn’t going to let it stay that way. 

Pain near-blinds him again when he launches forward, gathering Suguru into his arms. He shifts their positions, whimpering with the white-hot spikes that run from his thigh every time he moves but eventually Suguru’s back faces Kenjaku’s body—away from how he bleeds from the mouth on the floor.

“Hey, hey, hey, Suguru?” Satoru starts, voice shaking, hands gripping the back of the other boy’s head, sweaty fingers tangled in his hair. He tucks Suguru’s head into his shoulder. “It’s— okay, okay, fuck, okay. Let’s talk? Let’s talk, come on.” 

Satoru lifts Suguru, hands on either side of his cheeks, tipping his head up. Suguru’s wide eyes meet Satoru’s own, glassy, not really comprehending much of anything and fuck, Satoru is not equipped to deal with this. 

Then, he starts to try and turn his head. “Where’s…Kenjaku? What happened with—“

Panic flaring in his chest, Satoru grabs his jaw, turning it back in his direction, his own head feeling light and hazy. “Don’t think about that for a moment, okay? Suguru, Suguru listen to me—“ he dips his head until their foreheads touch, sweat and hot breaths mixing and fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Suguru looks like he’s starting to panic, grasping at something he can’t quite accept that he did. “—that was self defense, okay? Okay. You protected me, Suguru, you saved me. I was about to die, so— so, don’t look behind you, okay? Just look at me.”

”Okay,” Suguru repeats, eyes wide, lip trembling. One hand reaches up to grip shakily at Satoru’s fingers, at the left hand gripping his jaw. “Is it bad? Was it bad? Did— Is Kenjaku—“

Satoru rears his head back and slams it into Suguru’s own forehead, trying his hardest not to flinch when his thigh shifts, hearing the way Suguru lets out a yelp of hurt. While Satoru doesn’t flinch, he shudders out a strangled gasp instead, feeling distressingly like lava is being poured into his veins. Vaguely, he can hear Shoko swear as she steps into the room, then drag something down with a shattering clatter, making the room brighter. Nanami and Haibara are probably keeping the kids out. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck, Satoru can’t afford to think about cleanup right now. 

“Don’t think about that,” Satoru repeats, rubbing Suguru’s forehead with his thumb. Suguru looks on the verge of tears, confused, shaking, repeatedly clenching and unclenching his fingers around Satoru’s own. 

“I…fuck, Satoru, did I actually—“

”Hey!” he cuts in when Suguru’s voice raises an octave, shaking like he’s dying and Satoru bops his forehead against his again, softer this time. Satoru grins, hoping to high hell that his nerves aren’t displayed on his face as much as he thinks they might be. “Aren’t you being insensitive? I kind of got stabbed, you know.”

That seems to strike a nerve with Suguru. He immediately straightens up, gripping Satoru’s finger so hard they go white, eyes darting to his thigh and oh. Oh that is bad. Satoru isn’t quite sure it should be oozing out so much blood. Maybe that’s why he feels so dizzy; slamming his head against Suguru’s wouldn’t have helped his case either. 

“You’re bleeding,” Suguru says, voice another two octaves higher than it usually is, and Satoru can’t help but snort. 

“Yes. Astute observation,” he responds dryly, despite the way his eyes well up with tears when Suguru suddenly slams the heels of his palms against the wound, presumably attempting to stall the bleeding. Suguru begins to look around again, probably for something to make a tourniquet with. Alarms start blaring in Satoru’s head when Suguru’s head twists in the direction of Kenjaku’s body and fuck, Satoru knows what kind of person Suguru is—knows that he wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt of it and if he sees the body, Satoru knows for goddamn sure that it’s going to show up in his dreams and he can’t let that happen, Satoru absolutely cannot let that happen. 

Godfuckingdammit, we’re only seventeen, I haven’t even had my birthday yet so I’m not even eighteen, I’m not fucking legal yet and there is a fucking stab wound in my thigh and I cannot, for the love of whatever goddamn god exists out there, let Suguru see that body. 

In a rush of delirious adrenaline, Satoru leans forward with the only solution he can think of on the spot. 

Fingers outstretch, pointer and thumb roughly snapping Suguru’s head back to meet his gaze; lilac on the sea. Satoru drags him forward, head tilting—

NORITOSHI KAMO; THE PRETEND-DOCTOR (Published: XX - XX - 20XX/1:10 PM)

Exactly one week ago, Noritoshi Kamo, a male in his forties who ran an unlicensed clinic, was exposed for having apparently been scamming citizens for years. His patients, after thorough interview by the authorities have shown signs of mental instability, further aggravated by his passive manipulation.

His corruption was uncovered by none other than the heir of Gojo Inc. — Satoru Gojo, seventeen years old, eighteen in the seventh of December. His brief interview reveals that his close friend (which he refuses to name) had been one of Noritoshi’s victims. They had confronted the man, causing him to take off. As of present, he is considered missing. 

Furthermore, there have been rumors that he was part of the underground yakuza—hired to make mind altering drugs. But, at 9:05 AM this morning, Gojo Inc. alongside the Kamo Medical Services had provided the public with a press release, swiftly shutting down all of these claims as baseless accusations. Noritoshi Kamo has also been disowned from the Kamo clan.

Please call the number on the bottom of the page if you spot Noritoshi Kamo. Attached is an image of the man.

GOJO INC. CEO: DIAGNOSED WITH FATAL ILLNESS? (Published: XX - XX - 20XX/7:00 PM)

Shortly after the press release about Noritoshi Kamo, Gojo Inc. had declared another. The patriarch of Gojo Inc. has announced (through his wife as representative) that he will be slowly passing the torch to his heir, Satoru Gojo, due to an illness that he has been diagnosed with earlier that morning.

Curious reporters ask about the heir’s future, due to the fact that he is only on the last year of his high school education. None of these questions were answered. No other questions were entertained. 

It’s been seven days. A week, if you will, and only now does Suguru appear at the threshold of his hospital door, looking nervous and out of place.

Satoru stares.

”You didn’t visit me,” he blurts out. Then adds— “Earlier. You didn’t visit me earlier.”

Suguru winces but doesn’t say much more. Satoru continues, “I got stabbed, as you are aware of. And I’m fond of your company. So.”

Despite being passive-aggressively insulted, Suguru remains hovering near the door, looking as if he’s a second away from bolting. The nerve of him, looking like that, after Satoru busted in to save his sorry arse and got stabbed in the process. Honestly! Though, it is wildly unfair that Suguru still looks pretty, nervous like this.

Frustration bubbles in Satoru’s gut the longer Suguru goes without speaking. He leans over the edge of his hospital bed, stuffs his hand into one of his mom’s complimentary gift baskets, and chucks an apple at the boy. It ends up hitting him squarely in the chest. Suguru looks at the apple rolling on the floor, then at Satoru, laughably stunned.

”You suck,” Satoru spits, but it comes out a lot more childish than he would like it to be. “You suck, Suguru.” 

He grabs a banana out of the gift basket, arm poised threateningly. Suguru looks equal parts confused and exasperated, letting out a quiet sigh as he closes the hospital door. Slowly, cautiously, he starts forward until he’s an arm’s length away. 

Satoru halfheartedly lobs the banana at him. Suguru catches it. 

“Sorry,” the other finally says, shrugging lamely, eyes cast downwards. It pisses Satoru off so much he reaches for a pineapple, which is a lot more troubling than an apple or a banana. Suguru’s catches sight of it, eyes widening before— “Okay! Okay! I’m really sorry I didn’t visit you, but I had a lot of things to sort out! Like Nana and Mimi, and y’know, my mom’s kind of dead, Satoru!”

With that, Satoru pauses, slowly lowering his pineapple projectile to his chest. Now that he looks at Suguru properly, he can spot bags like bruises under his eyes, mouth twitched into something stressed, brows furrowed. 

There’s a stretch of silence, before Satoru speaks.

”Have you been sleeping?” Satoru asks meekly, pineapple still cradled to his chest. 

Suguru looks at him, wry. “What do you think?”

Satoru lifts the pineapple threateningly. Suguru’s expression breaks out into a laugh and he waves his hand, settling himself on the side of the bed. When Satoru goes back to carrying his pineapple like a baby, Suguru quiets. Then, carefully, he takes a small tic tac case out of his pocket. 

“It’s my pills,” says Suguru, awkward. “I thought…you know, since you cared enough to save my life, you’d want to get rid of them with me. Only if you want to. I can do it myself—“

”Do you even have to ask?”

Satoru snatches the box, jiggling it, pills clacking inside. He beams at Suguru. Suguru beams right back, albeit a lot gentler. 

Satoru ignores the flutter in his chest.

Three of them, squeezed into the big-ass bathroom stall for handicapped people. Satoru, Suguru, and Shoko—who decided that watching them flush the pills was more important than gender-constraints of hospital bathrooms. 

“Do you…do you think we have to perform like, some sort of ritual? Say anything?” Satoru asks from where he’s seated on his hospital-assigned wheelchair, condemned to being on a wheeled chair because he got poked with a very sharp kitchen utensil. Sucks. 

Shoko looks doubtful. Suguru also looks doubtful, but starts nonetheless. He stares at the container, wiggling it to make the pills sound, before saying a very quiet but very determined, “Fuck you. You really suck. Go rot in medicinal inferno, asshat. With weed and cocaine and meth and the rest.”

Satoru nods. “Yeah, that checks out.” 

He wheels himself closer to the toilet, and the two others walk closer. Suguru grimly pops the small tab-lid open and pours it all down the toilet. Satoru reaches over and slams the flush. 

From seemingly out of nowhere, Shoko cracks a small party popper, confetti fluttering out in the bathroom stall. “Huzzah.”

”Huzzah,” Satoru repeats, cheerful. 

“Huzzah,” Suguru also repeats, amused. 

A clatter from the stall over, then someone’s voice calling out. “I’ve tried to be really quiet, but what the fuck is happening?”

There’s a little while of silence, before the entirety of their little trio burst into laughter. 

Shoko leaves to pick her parents up from the airport, leaving Satoru and Suguru in the hospital room. 

Courtesy of Satoru’s family being filthy rich, his room has a gorgeous view of the city below; neon lights flickering on as the sky bleeds into dark purple, looking like stars on earth. 

Satoru’s eyes, however, linger not on the blinking citylights, but at Suguru. He sits cross-legged atop Satoru’s hospital bed, twisted sideways to watch the setting sun. Orange dapples his skin, gentle as a feather, shadowed with purple near the edges and Satoru feels, so, so in lo—

 “We kissed,” Suguru says suddenly, eyes still trained on the window, before he reaches up and starts nervously fiddling with his gauges. “Didn’t we?”

Satoru stills. 

Fingers outstretch, pointer and thumb roughly snapping Suguru’s head back to meet his gaze; lilac on the sea. Satoru drags him forward, head tilting—

Satoru feels like he might’ve been shot. The kiss is messy, barely saved from noses smashing, teeth clacking together and god, Satoru is really bad at kissing. 

He pulls away after a beat, head spinning, vision hazy. After a beat, he lowers his hand from Suguru’s jaw. Satoru must be losing a lot of blood.

Suguru looks starstruck—cheeks flushed, eyes just as dazed as Satoru’s despite the awful kiss Satoru had failed to pull of. His lips are slightly parted, and it’s clear he wants to say something, mind successfully dragged away from Kenjaku’s body. 

Under his gaze, Satoru feels small, his own cheeks dappled red. Seriously, his first kiss with Suguru was atrocious. He’s absolutely dogwater  at it. Honestly, Satoru would have preferred doing this at virtually anywhere else and for a different reason that wasn’t distracting Suguru from a corpse.

The awkwardness finally catches up to him and Satoru opens his mouth, nervous, “I’m sorry. I know I’m really bad at kissing, I just—“

Then Suguru fists the front of his shirt and hauls him forward again and—

Oh, Satoru thinks, shoulders slackening. Suguru’s a much better kisser than I am.

Satoru feels like he’s gonna become a puddle of himself, falling lax under the way Suguru loosens his grip on his collar in favor of reaching out, tantalizingly gentle, to cup his cheek. His lips are chapped, tinted with a taste of something cool, like mint. 

Fuck, Satoru thinks, eyes fluttering closed, leaning into the way Suguru thumbs his cheek, other hand settling over the dip of his waist. Fuck fuck fuck. 

Suguru kisses like he’s relieved, fingers barely touching, nervous yet confident in the way he presses against Satoru’s lips, dizzyingly lovely. Or maybe it’s just the blood loss. It could also be both.

His head feels like it’s filling up with cotton and his thigh is burning with the stab wound, but Satoru really doesn’t want to stop kissing. His lungs are practically having a fit from how long they’ve been going like this, Suguru’s hand on his cheek and his waist, Satoru gripping his wrist like he’d die if he wouldn’t.

Too soon, Suguru pulls away with a shuddering gasp. He looks at Satoru with something that reads, heart-wrenchingly and terrifyingly like- like—

(Love.)

“That was nice,” Satoru says faintly, still reeling from the tender way Suguru stares at him, before his head lolls forward and the world blacks out.

Satoru swallows, cheeks burning. “Um. Yes. That is a thing that happened.”

Then Suguru turns towards him, expression teary, nibbling on the crest of his lip. His fingers still haven’t stopped playing with his gauges. “Then you passed out,” he croaks. “From blood loss.”

Oh. Satoru winces. Wait. Wait!

He sits up straight suddenly, then shrinks into himself when his thigh aches. “Ouch. Did you see the—?”

”No,” Suguru says, rubbing his eyes. “Shoko covered it with the curtain.” 

Right! That’s why the room suddenly got brighter—Satoru didn’t quite register it in the moment. Thank god for Shoko Ieri. When she gets back from picking her parents up, Satoru literally swears he’s going to get her a car. Like a whole, brand new car—a Rolls Royce, if she asks for it. Praise Shoko for the act of her mere existence and foresight to cover the body. He might even install a Shoko Ieri Appreciation Cult. SIAC for short. 

Suguru’s quiet again. Satoru winds down from his momentary devotion to Shoko, shoulders slackening. The silence spans into something heavy, and Satoru does the one thing he does best; yap.

“Hey, um. I’m sorry I kissed you without, er, consent. I just…didn’t want you to see the body—not that I didn’t want to kiss you besides that! Actually, I really liked it, and I’ve been wanting to kiss you for a good long while now, and I’m really sorry it had to happen like that. I mean, I didn’t even ask you, and I have no idea if you even like me back? Plus, you’re a really good kisser, in comparison to me just kind of smushing our faces together—“

Satoru is immediately shut up by lips pressing against his own and oh, there he goes, he’s a puddle of a person again. 

He gasps when Suguru pulls away, cheeks burning, dazed from the pure bliss he’d felt and…and Suguru’s crying. 

“Oh,” Satoru murmurs, leaning his hand up to brush the tears away. “Suguru?” 

He doesn’t answer, curling into himself in a mess of stifled sobs and choking hiccups—as if he’s trying his best not to be noisy. Satoru feels his heart shatter in two. Gingerly, he takes Suguru’s hand, and clasps it between his palms. Satoru bops his forehead against Suguru’s, smiling hesitantly. He…he has a feeling he might know what this is about. 

Satoru thinks about how heavy Suguru looks, thinks about the bags under his eyes. About the way his mouth is pressed into a thin line when he thinks no one is looking at him, or how there seems to be an ever-present tick in his brow. 

“Suguru,” he starts, careful, gentle as he can manage. “You don’t have to force yourself, you know.”

”Stop it,” Suguru finally speaks, voice wavering. He grips Satoru’s palms. “I’m not, I swear, I’m not.”

Satoru doesn’t pull his hands away, even when Suguru digs his nails in. “You’re not obligated to, just cause I pushed Kenjaku off. I did that because you’re my friend and I care about you, not because I wanted something from you. A lot of things are happening right now. Your mom’s just passed, there’s the twins, and you just found out that your dad was apparently mafia. Plus, you’ve just stopped taking those dumb drugs after so long depending on them. So— so don’t force yourself, Suguru.” 

It brings Suguru past muffled sobs to full on shaking and crying, hunched in on himself on the hospital bed. Satoru wraps him up gently, thanking god for the first time about giving him lanky limbs. Suguru cries into his shoulder and Satoru holds him through it.

Once Suguru had quieted down, coaxed into a state of semi-peace, punctuated only by sniffles—Satoru speaks again, an age-old question. 

“What kind of cat do you think you would be, if you were one?”

Suguru laughs wetly and untangles himself from Satoru’s grip. “A bombay cat. They’re mostly black cats, and they have really sleek fur, according to the quiz.”

Tangling their fingers together, Satoru laughs too. “A quiz? You actually took a quiz?”

”I did,” Suguru hums, then sniffles. They lapse back into silence, one that is laden with quiet comfort. Suguru plays with Satoru’s fingers, running over the knuckles with his thumbs. He still looks tired.

”I really like you too, you know,” Suguru says, quiet. “I just…”

”I know.” 

“Is it okay?”

Satoru smiles. “Of course it’s okay. I’ll wait for you. Even if it takes fifty million billion years!”

Again, Suguru laughs. It sounds like a million tiny bells in Satoru’s ears, chiming gently. He laughs like the wind, dusting autumn leaves from cobbled pavements and shedding trees. I could spend my life hearing only this, Satoru thinks, endlessly fond. 

Suguru threads their fingers together, gaze dragging upwards. “Can we just be this, for a while? Whatever this is?” 

All at once, Satoru feels inexplicably warm, the feeling stemming from the way Suguru’s hand feels in his down to the tips of his toes to the top of his head. Suguru looks so pretty, speckled with the setting sun and Satoru feels so, so full, just looking at him. He meant it, when he said he would wait. He can feel the weight of his own words now, nestled true in the crook of his chest.

”Yeah,” Satoru says, squeezing his hand, bopping their foreheads together. “That sounds nice.” 

(And it reads, heart-wrenchingly and tenderly, like love)

Chapter Text

A/N: 

I’M DONEEEEE I’M DONE GUYS JULY 5, 2024 10:49 PM AND I AM FINISHED‼️‼️‼️ Hasn’t been published yet though. Later, I’m going to fix up the format of the spaces in the earlier chapters, because I read through and it looks like dogwater. 

Anyways I’m very fond of tic tac. It’s the first time I finished a fic where there wasn’t any suicide attempt like, at all. For a big big while I couldn’t write a fic without one and it was very Problematic(TM). In terms of that, tic tac is my beautiful, beautiful magnum opus. 

At present, my mother is next to me asking us to please, please sleep, do you know what time it is, but I remain undeterred. Unfortunately for my sleep schedule, I’ve just finished writing the last chapter for tic tac and I remain very positive and hyped. 

Plans for this!!!! I’m working on tic tac becoming a universe thingy with a bunch of other fics. Well, maybe not a bunch, but I have ideas for a few oneshots. I hope they’ll be funnier than tic tac, which I originally designed to be a lot more funny than how it ended. 

ANYWAYS! MY ENTIRE OUTLINE FOR THE STORY! Behind the scenes and stuff here we go guys

first draft of the idea:

geto has pills in a tictac container, gojo is both bewildered and amused. wants to befriend him now. it's the common case of im interested now i wanna be friends im unrelenting and we'll be friends before you know it and suguru is just like. oh. i've never had this before. i guess it's amusing, i'll let it slide—oh shit there's feelings involved now. oh uh wow. 

song title chapters:

Chp 1: Welcome to the Internet by Bo Burnham

Chp 2: Juliet by Cavetown

Chp 3: The Story of Us by Taylor Swift

Chp 4: i cannot for the life of me remember where this is from, the closest thing in my playlist is Things To Do by Alex G but the lyrics are different there

Chp 5: Mr Loverman by Ricky Montgomery (because of course)

Chp 6: Like or Like Like by Miniature Tigers

Chp 7: Pretend by Alex G

Chp 8: Pretend by Alex G

Chp 9: Cigarette Daydreams by Cage the Elephant

Chp 10: Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? by She & He

Chp 11: Vampire Empire by Big Thief

random notes i put around scattered across the chapters:

-what you need to do, essentially, is subtly show how geto is different through the pills. you can't just make him have mood swings—he needs that delicious delicious withdrawal.

-suguru takes his pills twice a day: one in the morning just before math class starts, and one in the afternoon after lunch (pre kenjaku therapist session, but thats near the end so it doesnt matter anyways cause he'll stop taking them after he gets saved and stuff)

-put a throwback somewhere. where gojo tells suguru what kind of cat he’d thin suguru would be as a throwback to chapter six

-(insert oh uh well theyre my pills. plus suguru takes his pills before math starts and after lunch— which means, satoru gets to see an unfiltered version of him, since they see each orher at breaks and lunches and before class.

this is me figuring out the plot:

-what happens is summer break. i think. they knew each other before summer break. what went down is essentially suguru well i dunno. ill think of that

something academic related. something. dunno

gets into fights and stuff and he's pretty cool, but he gets kind of spiralling. i don't know why he's spiraling im trying to think of a reason for that. something somethimg i really have no idea dude. why didnt i think about this

OKAY. his dad leaves at the start of the semester before. that's a thing and his mother spirals, and suguru's taking care of nana and mimi and his mother's spiraled before, but this time it's a bit too much. his mother has a friend named noritoshi kamo (kenjaku) and he was 'helping' her through it (read: making it hella worse)

suguru starts fighting kids at school and he gets the reputation of that for like a year. and then kenjaku gets the trust of narumi geto and she goes hey. suguru :) here's my friend kenjaku, he can be your therapist. and kenjaku just makes it Worse(TM)

kay. theres that

HERE. OKAY. HERE HERE HERE HERE HERE HERE HERE HERE HERE HERE. okay. i have the story i have the backstory.

kenjaku and whoever the hell suguru's dad is i haven't thought of a name yet. they were buddies in making some sort of medicine for the MAFIA (to make it bigger in the tic tac universe). kenjaku was suguru's dad's pen name or something. (what the hell make a family tree future me)

anyways kenjaku poison's geto's dad slowly and makes him hallucinate 'curses' in his head, so he eventually lashes out at his family and stuff (ergo, suguru's trauma and stuff) and eventually kenjaku detains him and then bam he's dead. he takes geto's dad's pen name because the other wanted to be private for his family reasons and stuff. he's kenjaku now, isn't that cool haha.

then kenjaku goes over to geto's family after finding them and makes their life a Living Hell(TM) for the funsies

-regarding: chapter, made a bloody mess
plan for here to continue adter smash: setsuna’s mug of pencils and stuff smashes to the floor and um. i dont know. she dismisses suguru cause she’s shocked and stuff and lets him go. apparently he’d been ther elong enpugh for the firet break to go and he’s kind of woozy. thinks about gojo. gwts mad mad mad mad mad and the bullies from earlier make an appearance. theyre new and used to meek geto not on his pills. they dont expect it when they get pumeled ina heap and suguru beats up so many people and he sees gojo in the crowd. sees his eyes shining with concern and adoration and he’s cheering him on and suguru cant find it in himsef to be angry. gets restrained and then cut to nexr chapter. goes to kenjaku

-regarding: chapter, leave your body, leave your mind
trip to kenjaku is done here, and continues along the lines of geto being put on more meds perchance. that or he just breaks away from gojo suddenly and becomes colder instead of mad. gojo is helpless. mahbe asks his fanily for help, wheedles out info from somewhere and makes the plan to visit the kamo family medicine thingy.
nevermind. nah. nana and mimi are masterminds. they decide to take matters into their own hands lmao
[insert gojo and shoko visitis sugu, sugu thanks bro for saving his arae from getting expelled, and satoru says theres one condition; cal him satoru and shoko shoko. suguru says okay and says call him suguru. therefore, they take a selfie, gojo arm around suguru’s shoulders and laughinhrg and giggling and suguru sets it as his phone wallpaper. talks about hisnappoijt with the kamo family, and gojo offhandedly goes huh? yeah no the kamos, they’re good i think. one of the cool guys]

-including: the attempts to make a school schedule for a semblance of normality. unfortunately, it didn't work, so i tried to mention it approximately never
7:00 - 8:00
8:00 - 9:00
9:00 - 10:00 break
10:00 - 11:00
11:00 - 12:00
12:00 - 1:00 lunch
1:00 - 2:00
2:00 - 3:00
3:00 - 4:00
4:00 - 5:00

-regarding: chapter, you were looking out of place
uhhh insert gojo is sulking, maybe a flashback to like suguru being a dick(TM), his experience with sugu being a bad person and shoko is kind of just there giving comfort, but she is also very girlboss. there is an attempt to call him geto in his head and it just. doesnt work actually
anyways
nana and mimi appearance
if its not long enough, get them to invite gojo in the house w/o suguru and their mother there. gojo is gonna read a prescription on the fridge that says suguru's dose was upped and a small note under it saying (not taken for however many weeks he started talking to gojo i dunno compute it)

-two week mark: suguru packs satoru's lunch and it's cool

approximate: around three weeks when he beats up kids, two weeks he stopped taking his stuff

plus eight days = one week (the limbo in between??? thingy something thingy. suguru and satoru get close and it's cool <333)

so that's um. three weeks + eight days = four weeksish that he hasnt been taking his goods

-regarding: chapter, i'm nothing, you are nothing, we are nothing with the pills

plan plan plan plan plan plan plan plan chapter plan goes:

-i want shoko to be like, wiretapping already. i have no concrete idea as to how exactly they save geto, just what geto does after he's saved so im cooked. im cooked unless i think of a reason as to how and why and what they hear exactly in kenjaku's office. 

-perchance i can put a like. flashback? geto? geto flashback? geto flashback thing? geto being kind of. right. so. geto being really hazy and stuff like he's in a daze, describe the guy kind of floating around in his own consciousness. and then kenjaku telling him to keep his grades going lower and lower and lower and lower and lower and stuff! yippee! wait before that, right, we're gonna have geto being talked to by setsuna about his grades. because background building is cool and important for scenes. 

anyways ive decided that shoko's gonna hear how it all goes down and so are the rest through the wiretap thingy. kenjaku goes all giggly and stuff and surprise he's gonna kill geto. but before that he goes on a monologue about geto's dad and the backstory i came up with a little bit ago. 

i was gonna have the mom come in a save geto at some point but i really really want tic tac to end, i dont want it to be super duper long and stretched out like hidden in the sand and sunstorm and stuff. okay. plan done. i dont wanna do it yet. ill do it at some point. i could like killer her off screen to tie up loose ends + more in incentive for suguru to rebellion falling out with satoru later on in a future(?) fic

put a reference here? gojo rushing over and shaking geto out of his thingy. out of his trance in reference to my six eyes tells me you're suguru geto, but my soul tells me otherwise! because i love that scene anyways (ended up not putting it :CCC im gonna cry)

-guess who accidentally made parallels to first love, late spring by cityboys for the 'no rush intobrelationship  yet guys you gotta focus on yourself bossman' satosugu interaction and then another vague one to Caesura by cielelyse with the kiss being cut out and then being circled back to in a flashback + satoru in the hospital and suguru avoiding him. god those two fics broke me let me yap about them for a moment. first love, late spring is itafushi and it's beautiful, it's so beautiful and it has such deep thingymajigs about love and stuff. if you're nosy enough you can spot me in the bookmarks yelling about it. same for caesura, actually, if you're nosy enough to search in the bookmarks for me. caesura is a canon-compliant one, its satosugu, they go on a mission together and they ahted each other before and goddamn the plot twist in that one was phenomenal GO CHECK IT OUT

(if you are nosy enough, my bookmark for caesura is dated june 13, 2024 and the one for first love, late spring is dated may 4, 2024)

the original start of i am nothing, you are nothing, we are nothing with the pills before i rewrote it:

[Suguru, in all honesty, thinks that he might be dead. 

Which in retrospect, isn't something that's possible. After all, he's still walking around, attending class, answering quizzes and speaking to people, the lot of it. School, school, school, as it has always been and always will be. 

But. 

But. 

It feels vaguely like walking through thick, dense fog; so dense that it nearly gives off the illusion of touch—then you push through and realize, no, it's just terribly heavy. He can still see, of course, but also...not quite. Nothing seems to be registering at the moment, just a haze of everything and nothing at the same time. Sure, he knows he's at school, or in the bathroom, or at home, or anywhere else, but he can't quite...interact. 

He thinks he's doing quite a shit job explaining all of this, actually. 

Oddly, Suguru feels like he's forgetting a number of important things, as he watches his not-body go through the usual motions of schooling. Nothing feels quite real, lately. 

I'm doing a shit at this quiz, Suguru thinks idly, watching, as if his own life is nothing but a movie for him to spectate. Hah. That might be a little funny, if it weren't for the constant haze that blocks him from thinking much of anything. Either way, he's doing shit at the quiz, and Suguru vaguely registers that he's supposed to be doing shit at the quiz. So. 

Walk, eat, breath, cycle around, Suguru can feel the pump of his heart in his chest and nothing else. He can tell that something's wrong, but he can't find it in himself to care all that much. 

And oh. He doesn't know when he got to Setsuna-sensei's office. She's speaking, he can hear her, but he can't quite register what she's saying. Suguru can tell her lips are moving, can tell her expression is worried, but he can only catch a few whisps of what she's telling the...not-him?

Something, something grades, lower, quizzes, something wrong at home?, are you okay and ah, Suguru— Suguru thinks, carefully. 

My mind's a bit fuzzy, he tries to tell her. Tries to open his mouth again, to follow up with: Everything feels hazy. You don't look real. I don't feel real. I think I might be dead. 

"I'm perfectly alright," speaks his mouth, and Suguru thinks that's not quite right. His legs move, and suddenly everything is hazy again. He can swear he hears his voice, every now and then, amongst the sea of blur-students-blur in the hallway. Hand on his shoulder, warm, soft, familiar, tugging, sunglasses—

What was he talking about again?

Suguru blinks. Tries to, anyway. He doesn't know what's happening with his face his body his legs arms eyes whatever else parts of his body he can't seem to quite connect to, and everything feels perpetually hazy.

Blinks.

Blinks again.

Oh.

Where is he?

"Suguru."

He startles, then comes face-to-face with Kenjaku. He sports an amiable smile on his face, hands clasped together atop his wooden desk. There are stitches across his forehead, as per usual. Suguru's always found them unnerving, and Kenjaku would always skirt around the topic of why he had them. 

An assistant comes in, but not the same one as usual. Not Mahito. She sends him a look, expression curious, as she puts a small paperweight onto the table. There's something in her gaze that makes Suguru wonder, phone suddenly feeling heavier in his pocket. If he...opens his phone, what'll—

"Yes, hello, I'm sorry," Suguru blinks, shakes his head, rushes to speak. "I don't— I don't know how I got here."

Instead of concern, or curiosity, what blooms on Kenjaku's face is a...jilted sort of satisfaction, fingers tightening against each other. He leans forward minutely, and Suguru leans back. "Oh?" says Kenjaku, eyes glinting with something that makes Suguru stagger. "That's good."

Huh?

"Re—"

"—ally?" crackles out of the speakers. Everyone leans in close. They're in a hotel room they bought out for the day, just a street across the clinic. 

Satoru's phone is connected to the speaker, the wiretap they sent Shoko ringing out the entire room. On Haibara's phone is Shoko with a speaker that they bought (haggled) at a nearby electronics store. 

("Huh?" Satoru frowns, peering at Nanako. "What do you mean we need one of those spy things? I don't think we do."

Nanako opens her mouth, probably to say something nasty again, when Haibara cuts in with a smile. "Yeah! Ieri can't hold her phone to hear ear the entire time, it'll be suspicious. We need to be able to talk to her, aside from just the wiretap."

 Everyone nods in tandem, but Satoru dons a petulant expression, scowling at the way Nanako's face contorts into one of smug satisfaction. 

"Fuckin— fine. Fine! Okay!") 

"Really," comes Kenjaku's voice, sounding elated. Smug in a way that makes Satoru's skin crawl. "Moving on—" 

Normal therapist things. After that, all Kenjaku asks about, talks about are normal things that a therapist would. But there's an undertone in it, something that makes Satoru's skin crawl. It feels dangerous, an air of something wrong—

"We should," Satoru starts, swallowing dryly. "We should go. I think we should go there." 

Blue eyes trace over the gaggle of people around him and— Satoru can feel an uneasy swirl at the pit of his stomach. It churns and churns and churns until he can't help but stand up, hands scrambling over the edges of the table. He doesn't think he's ever felt such a prominent spike of dread in his entire life and— 

"I think we should," Mimiko says quietly, standing up. Nanako stands too and eventually, everyone's stood up. The air feels heavy. Satoru can't— Satoru doesn't know what's wrong but he knows something is wrong. Something's going to be wrong.]

ends there. you can probs see where i took stuff and added stuff from this part. i cut a lot out and kept some of them in (or added to it) because i didn't feel like it was linear. or at least, as linear as i wanted it to be

ANYWAYS THAT’S THAT i should really sleep now. i should really sleep now it’ll be good for me. 

I suppose I need ending remarks??? Um. Well. 

Thank you to: 

-my besto friendo my wifey eggnogciraptor, who listens to me lament about how im not done writing long chapters, and who i send tidbits of stuff i find really funny

-and my mother, at this present moment, who is growing aggravated since i haven’t slept yet. thank you foe birthing me, therefore i can write this

-EVERYONE WHO EVER COMMENTED BOOKMARKED KUDOS-ED OR EVEN PRESSED ON THIS FIC <3333 YOU GUYS ARE VERY COOL

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