Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The hotel room stinks of stale weed, perfume, and something sour that might be vomit or spilled alcohol. Satoru doesn’t breathe too deep.

He steps over a high heel lying crooked on the carpet like a discarded limb and keeps his eyes on the bed, where Suguru sprawls like he owns the ruin he’s made.

Shirtless. Pierced. Tattooed. Bruised-looking under the eyes. A smirk so forced it might as well be makeup.

Satoru’s seen a lot of trainwrecks in his life—afterparties, blown sets, even his own reflection post-tour—but this? This one knocks the air out of his lungs.

The girl slips past him without a word, like they both knew this wasn’t her scene anymore. Satoru doesn't watch her go.

"Stop looking at me like that," Suguru’s voice slithers out from the haze, rough and slurred. “Just say whatever you want to say and leave.”

Satoru stays silent. He moves to the window and pulls the curtain open like he’s letting in something holy. Morning light cuts through the haze, cruel and honest, dragging the truth into every corner of the room.

Suguru flinches.

There’s a long silence. Only the dull hum of the mini fridge, the occasional pop from the end of Suguru’s dying blunt.

“You’re not gonna yell?” Suguru asks, lips twitching like he’s half-amused and half-daring. “Tell me I fucked up? Say I’m wasting my talent? Tell me I should go back to rehab or whatever the fuck this is?”

Satoru turns, finally meeting his eyes. “What’s the point? You already know all of that.”

Suguru scoffs and lets the smoke trail from his mouth like he’s some tragic noir character. “Then why the fuck are you here, Gojo?”

He says the name like it’s a joke.

Satoru doesn’t flinch. “Because you’re still you. Somewhere under all this bullshit. And someone had to come pull you out before you drowned.”

“Save the Hallmark speech,” Suguru mutters. “You’re not a hero, and I’m not someone who gets rescued.”

Satoru’s jaw flexes. “No. You’re just someone who walked off stage last night mid-set and disappeared. Choso called me, said it was bad. So here I am.”

“That your job now?” Suguru sneers. “Band babysitter?”

“I’m your drummer,” Satoru says, voice cool. “And you’re about one blackout away from dragging us all down with you.”

Suguru laughs, but there’s no joy in it. “Please. You think I haven’t been dragging you for years?”

Satoru doesn’t answer. Doesn’t say he used to watch Suguru sleep with his fingers curled around a guitar neck like it was a lifeline. Doesn’t say he’s still waiting for the person who made music like it meant something.

“I didn’t come to fix you,” he says instead. “I came because I know what you look like when you care. And this? This isn’t that.”

Suguru reaches for the plastic bag on the nightstand, hands trembling.

Satoru steps forward and grabs his wrist.

“Let go.” Suguru yanks his arm, voice sharp.

“No,” Satoru says. “You’re not doing this. Not while I’m standing here.”

“What, you gonna sit on me until I get clean?” Suguru spits. “Gonna read me inspirational quotes ‘til I cry?”

“No,” Satoru snaps. “I’m gonna sit in this fucking room and make sure you don’t die. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.”

Silence stretches between them. Thick. Sour.

Suguru jerks his wrist free. “You think you’re better than me?”

“No,” Satoru says again, quieter. “I think I’m lucky I didn’t end up where you are.”

That stops him. Just for a second. Then Suguru shakes his head and flops back onto the bed.

“You’re still full of shit.”

Satoru doesn’t disagree.

He doesn’t move, either. Just stands there while Suguru closes his eyes and exhales smoke into the ceiling.

“You remember that garage?” Suguru mumbles. “Where we started?”

Satoru nods. “Yeah.”

“I hated how you always played too fast.”

“You never said anything.”

“Didn’t matter.”

Another silence.

Satoru sits on the edge of the bed, careful not to touch anything. “Let me stay. Just for now.”

Suguru opens one eye. “You think that’ll make a difference?”

“No,” Satoru says honestly. “But I’m staying anyway.”

Suguru doesn’t say yes. Doesn’t say no. Just rolls away from him and mutters, “Don’t talk.”

Satoru doesn’t.

He grabs the water bottle, hands it over. Watches Suguru drink with the reluctance of someone who doesn’t think they deserve it.

After a while, the silence softens. Not better, just quieter.

“I don’t love you,” Suguru says flatly.

Satoru lets the words settle. “I know.”

“Good.”

“Yeah.”

They don’t say anything else.

And for now, that’s the closest they’ll get to peace.

“SATORU! SATORU! ”

He regrets coming to this so-called ‘celebratory’ party the second the bass reverberates through the cheap floorboards and Satoru—blinding in more ways than one—starts throwing up gang signs from his self-appointed throne. Legs spread wide like he owns the universe, shades crooked on his nose despite the low lighting, the devil himself basking in the adoration of his fervent cult of classmates who chant his name like it’s sacred scripture.

Suguru flinches when a hand on his back shoves him forward. Hard. His knees bump into the edge of the couch, and he practically falls into Satoru’s lap with a graceless thud. The laughter around them spikes in pitch, a cruel, ecstatic cacophony that echoes in the too-small room and grates against his skull. The lights of countless phone cameras flash and flicker like lightning, strobes of white illuminating their flushed faces. He blinks against it, head ducking instinctively into the shadow of Satoru’s shoulder. It's not like this is the first time this has happened—but tonight, it feels particularly grotesque.

Videos are definitely being taken. Probably already posted. And if they’re not trending now, they will be by morning—clogging his timeline, clogging everyone’s timeline, after some bored Adamson kid trawls through Ateneo’s party-tagged stories for clout.

Satoru’s arm wraps tightly around his waist, the edge of it digging into his ribs possessively. His head drops back against the wall with a dull thunk, pale throat stretched as he opens his mouth in a lewd O-shape. Someone—some upperclassman with a smug grin and questionable taste—tilts a half-empty water bottle into it. The clear liquid sloshes onto his lips and down his chin, soaked into the collar of his Hawaiian shirt that’s already halfway unbuttoned.

Suguru averts his gaze. Covers his eyes with one hand, and with the other, pulls the hem of his hoodie up to hide the bottom half of his face. It doesn’t help. His ears are burning, his heart beating a little too fast, and not because of the music.

Girls have been throwing themselves at Satoru all night—cheerleaders, theater kids, a random exchange student who looked like she thought she’d seen God. It’s not like any of that’s new. But something about being in his lap, being in everyone’s line of sight, with Satoru’s arm snug around him and the scent of cheap vodka and expensive cologne curling in the air—makes something coil tight and awful in his stomach.

It gets worse when the repurposed vape pen—that stupid neon pink one with glitter inside—stops spinning. The room goes deadly quiet for half a second, everyone craning their necks to see where it’s pointed.

And then chaos erupts. Screaming. Laughter. Jeers.

The arrow lands squarely on him.

Hell. And paired with Satoru Gojo, no less—code name: the insufferable racer.

Satoru’s grinning when he leans forward and spits the mouthful of mixed drinks into a red Solo cup like it’s just part of the routine. He doesn’t miss a beat. His fingers find Suguru’s waist again, pressing there like it’s a comfort rather than a brand.

“Up you go, princess,” he murmurs just loud enough for Suguru to hear.

He helps him stand, almost too gently. Like he knows he’s overstepping. Like he knows what it means to be shoved under a spotlight Suguru never asked for. But it’s too late—people are chanting again, laughing again, hands pushing at their backs and crowding the hallway as they’re herded down like lambs to the slaughter.

“Janitor’s closet!” someone yells with unholy glee.

They’re forced through the narrow doorway and someone has the gall to film the whole thing—camera shoved in Satoru’s face like they’re recording a movie and he’s the star. And of course, Satoru smiles. Bright and toothy and friendly, like none of this fazes him. Like it’s all just another joke. Another party. Another night.

Then the door slams shut behind them with a click that echoes like a gunshot.

Silence. Thick. Heavy.

The closet is too small, the air already too warm. They’re standing too close, pressed against opposite walls—or what counts for opposite walls in a three-foot-wide closet with brooms poking their spines.

Suguru’s breath is shallow. His hands are fidgeting at the hem of his sleeves, nails tugging at loose threads. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even look up.

Then Satoru leans in—slowly, deliberately—until Suguru can feel the ghost of his breath against his cheek.

“Don’t worry, Sugaboo,” he says in that casual, lazy drawl that means he’s nervous but pretending not to be. “Won’t try anything. Not unless you want me to.”

Silence again. The heat between them is palpable now.

Satoru shifts his weight. There’s the faintest creak of floorboards, the rustle of his shirt brushing against Suguru’s hoodie.

“And for the record,” he adds, like an afterthought, “I don’t even drink. Hate the taste. Pass it off to whoever volunteers to let me spit it in their mouth.”

He grins.

“I think that’s romantic. Don’t you?”

Suguru stares at him. Flatly.

And Satoru? He just laughs—quiet, breathless—and leans back, arms behind his head, like he’s perfectly at peace in the dark, claustrophobic room that smells like mop water and Axe body spray.

Suguru, on the other hand, starts counting backwards from a hundred in his head. Because otherwise, he just might do something stupid.

Like kiss him.

Satoru wasn't always the brightest, and was in the mood for some stupidity.

Suguru comes to with his face mashed into something warm and unfamiliar. The room’s still dim, still sour with old smoke and sweat and shame, but the curtains are cracked, letting in the bite of afternoon light. His head is pounding—like there's static wrapped around his skull—and his throat tastes like ash.

He shifts, and the blanket falls off his shoulders.

Satoru’s jacket.

He jerks upright, pushing it off like it burns. His chest is tight, jaw clenched so hard it clicks. He’s sweating. Breathing too hard. His fists curl in the sheets before he realizes they’re damp with something. Maybe sweat. Maybe not.

His hands are shaking.

Two hours. That’s all it took to lose control again. He remembers the night in pieces—the party, the red cup, the cramped closet, Satoru’s ridiculous voice whispering Suguboo like they weren’t being filmed from five-thousand different angles. It used to be funny. It used to be easy. It used to be theirs.

Now it makes him want to throw something.

He drags himself off the bed, nearly trips over a broken hanger or a belt—doesn’t care. His foot knocks the mini fridge and the dull thud of it makes him flinch. The mirror across the room catches him mid-stagger. He stares. Hates it. The sweat-slick skin, the hollow under his eyes, the way the tattoos look like cracks on something already breaking.

“Fuck,” he spits. It echoes too loud in the cramped space.

He palms his face. He wants a cigarette, or a hit, or something to make this boil down to a numb simmer. His fingers fumble for the edge of the nightstand, but the bag’s gone.

“What the fuck—” he mutters, voice breaking halfway through.

There’s a post-it note on the counter in Satoru’s obnoxious all-caps handwriting:

WATER. REAL FOOD IN THE MINI FRIDGE.
NOT COMING TO YOUR FUNERAL, SO STAY ALIVE.

Suguru stares at it, chest heaving. The sheer fucking audacity of it. Of him.

It’s too much.

“Asshole,” he snarls, ripping the note and crumpling it into his palm like it might disappear if he crushes it hard enough. “Fucking prick. You don’t get to act like you care.”

He slams his hand against the wall, just to feel something. Just to make the shaking stop.

It doesn’t.

He stumbles into the bathroom, flicks the light on, then off again when the fluorescent hum makes him want to scream. He grips the sink, blood thudding in his ears, and stares down into the drain like it might give him answers.

“You’re not supposed to care anymore,” he hisses at no one. “I was fine. I was fine.”

But he wasn’t. And he isn’t.

Because it’s easier to snort the pain than say it.

It’s easier to fuck strangers than say I miss you.

It’s easier to rot slowly than open his mouth and let all the messy, aching, furious things spill out.

“I didn’t ask for help,” he says aloud, teeth bared.

But his voice cracks on help, and the mirror doesn’t flinch.

"Stupid fuckass bitch. I hate him. So why the hell doesn't he hate me..."

The mirror stood. 

It's ugly reflection staring back.

Chapter Text

Satoru doesn’t turn the lights on when he gets home.

He drops his keys on the counter and kicks off his shoes, the door closing behind him with the hollow click of solitude. It’s quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that doesn’t settle—it claws under his skin, crawls into his throat and makes it hard to swallow.

He sinks into the couch like gravity’s heavier than usual, limbs loose and aching in that post-adrenaline kind of way. His hands are still sticky with sweat, but he doesn’t move to clean them. Just sits there, hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, staring at the space between them like it might crack open and give him answers.

Suguru had said he didn’t love him.

Hadn’t even looked him in the eye when he said it. Just let it fall, quiet and casual, like it was obvious. Like it hadn’t been something they’d bled into each other for years.

Satoru swallows. The room is too dark.

The stupid, cheap lamp in the corner is still wrapped in tinsel from last year. There’s an empty bowl of ramen on the table, his hoodie crumpled on the floor. Everything’s a mess. Everything is always a mess now.

He leans back and lets his head hit the cushion, staring up at the ceiling like it’ll give him something better to think about.

Rooftops.

That’s what comes up.

The two of them, seventeen and too bright-eyed for their own good, lying side-by-side on some godforsaken tin roof of a music hall in Shibuya. They were tipsy on stolen wine coolers and high on the sheer audacity of dreaming too big. Suguru had been laughing about something—maybe Satoru’s impression of their math teacher, maybe just the shape of the moon.

“D’you love me?” Satoru had asked, half a joke, half a dare.

Suguru had glanced over, wide-eyed and sunburned, and answered without hesitation.

“Obviously, dumbass.”

Back then, the words came easy. Weightless. Tossed like spare change into each other’s hands. I love you. You’re the best part of my day. You’re my person. Don’t die before me, that’d be rude.

They didn’t mean anything.

Except they did. They meant everything.

Satoru exhales slowly. He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, trying to squeeze the pressure out before it swells into something messier. Something he won’t be able to fold back into place.

He knows Suguru’s fucked up. He knows this isn’t about him. But it still hurts—god, it hurts. Like watching someone tear up a house you helped build and then tell you it was never home in the first place.

He used to think there was a version of the future with Suguru in it. Not romantically, maybe. Not forever. Just… there. Close. Tethered by something that didn’t need a name.

Now?

Now, he’s not sure Suguru would even pick up the phone if it rang.

The silence folds tighter around him. His hand drifts to the arm of the couch, fingers tapping a rhythm without meaning. Like a phantom beat of a song they never finished. One Suguru used to hum under his breath when they were on tour, when the hotel lights were off and the world felt far away.

Satoru closes his eyes.

He doesn’t cry. He just sits there.

Maybe that's even worse.

The second the door clicks shut, sealing them into darkness, Satoru exhales a soft chuckle through his nose.

“Well,” he drawls, leaning back against the broom closet wall like it’s a hotel headboard, one foot planted casually behind Suguru’s ankle, “this is romantic.”

There’s maybe three square feet of space between them, and he’s not inclined to waste any of it. He watches Suguru from behind his shades—still on, despite the pitch-black room—and lets the silence stretch, heavy with implication and heat. The scent of Suguru’s cologne—cinnamon, clean sweat, maybe a hint of something smoky—hits him all at once, stronger in the confined air. God, he smells unfairly good.

Suguru doesn’t speak, just stares at him with those dark, annoyed eyes, arms crossed like a shield across his chest. But he doesn’t move away either. That’s promising.

“You know,” Satoru murmurs, tilting his head, “this game’s a little outdated. Seven minutes in heaven? What are we, in middle school?”

Still no answer. But Suguru shifts his weight just enough to brush his knee against Satoru’s.

He smiles.

“I could do a lot with seven minutes,” he says, tone low and teasing, just this side of obscene. “But I’ll behave. You looked like you were gonna set me on fire out there.”

Suguru sighs—deep, exasperated. “You’re drunk.”

“Not really,” Satoru says. He stretches lazily, letting his hand drift up to the back of his neck, tilting his chin toward Suguru with a grin. “Tipsy at best. But you in my lap? That sobered me right up.”

Suguru rolls his eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitches.

Satoru steps closer. Just a little. Just enough to fill the space.

“I mean, what else am I supposed to do when you fall into my arms like that?” His voice drops. “You should’ve seen your face. Poor baby looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him whole.”

“I did,” Suguru mutters, glaring. “Still do.”

Satoru laughs—low and warm, like it’s just for them. He leans in again, slower this time, until there’s barely an inch between their faces. His voice softens, almost serious.

“Tell me to back off, and I will. Say the word, Suguru.”

Silence.

Then—

“You’re annoying,” Suguru mutters, but he doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t even blink when Satoru slides two fingers under his chin, tipping his face upward.

“Yeah,” Satoru says, smile widening, “but I’m hot.”

And then he kisses him.

It’s not aggressive—he’s done that before, with people who didn’t matter. This is slower. Like testing the waters. Just enough pressure to make it real, to taste the mix of soda and something bitter on Suguru’s lips. One hand braces against the wall behind Suguru’s head, the other stays respectfully at his side.

He waits for pushback.

It doesn’t come.

Suguru’s mouth moves with his. Hesitant, at first—then deeper, hungrier. Like maybe he’d been waiting for this, too.

Satoru pulls back just enough to speak against his lips.

“See?” he whispers, smirking. “Told you I could make seven minutes feel like heaven.”

Suguru just huffs a breath against his cheek and fists a hand in the collar of his shirt, dragging him back in like he’s had enough of the talking.

And Satoru? Yeah, he’ll shut up now.

Because Satoru loves this boy, and he's pretty sure he loves him back.

Not that they would admit it to a crowd.

And then he kisses him again.

This time, it’s not playful. It’s not sweet.

It’s hungry.

Suguru’s mouth opens against his like it’s been waiting. Like something in him finally snapped. Satoru groans softly as their bodies press together, Suguru’s hands suddenly in his hair, dragging him down, crushing their mouths together like he’s trying to consume him. One of Satoru’s hands grabs Suguru’s hip and yanks him forward, closing the last gap between them, their chests pressed tight, breath short and hot and uneven.

It’s messy. Heated. A tangle of tongues and teeth. Suguru bites his bottom lip, and Satoru grins into the kiss, licking back into his mouth just to hear that quiet noise Suguru makes when he’s frustrated and turned on at the same time.

His hand slips beneath Suguru’s hoodie, palm splaying against bare skin. Warm. Smooth. Suguru gasps into his mouth, and Satoru shudders, curling his fingers at the dip of his waist.

“You’re not stopping me,” Satoru mutters between kisses, voice rough, lips dragging along the edge of Suguru’s jaw.

“You’re playing a dangerous game,” Suguru mutters into his mouth, breathless.

Satoru laughs, all teeth and heat. “Isn’t that the point of the game?”

His fingers sneak under Suguru’s hoodie, palming hot skin. The sharp rise of his ribs, the slope of his lower back—fuck, he’s burning up. Every place their bodies touch is alive with pressure and friction, a slow, torturous rhythm of give and take.

Suguru’s mouth moves to his jaw, teeth dragging just enough to sting. “We’re not doing this here,” he whispers. But his hands are fisted in Satoru’s shirt, dragging him closer anyway. Like he can’t help it. Like he wants this as badly as Satoru does and hates himself for it.

“Say the word,” Satoru murmurs, lips brushing his ear. “I’ll stop.”

“You won’t,” Suguru growls, rolling his hips up. “You’re fucking shameless.”

“And you’re hard,” Satoru breathes, with a grin that could split his face.

It’s filthy. The way they move—grinding slow, desperate, like they’re trying to carve the memory of this into each other’s skin. Like seven minutes is both too long and not nearly enough. Satoru’s hand moves lower, teasing just along the waistband of Suguru’s jeans, thumb slipping inside—

Click.

The door starts to open.

In an instant, they’re apart.

Suguru yanks his hoodie down, fast, dragging his fingers through his hair as if nothing happened. Satoru turns around, grabs his sunglasses off the floor, and slaps them back on his face. His shirt’s rumpled, collar twisted, but he doesn't fix it.

The light from the hallway floods in. The outline of someone's face appears in the doorway, phone camera already rolling.

Satoru stretches like he just woke from a nap and flashes his trademark, cocky grin.

“All that for a closet?” he jokes, voice breezy. “Was expecting a little more luxury.”

“Fucking boring,” someone in the crowd groans.

“Right?” Satoru shrugs. “He just stood there and glared at me the whole time. Waste of seven minutes.”

Suguru steps out first, stone-faced, hoodie sleeves pulled down to his knuckles. Someone makes a joke about how silent it was, and he flips them off without a word.

Satoru follows close behind, throwing a wink at the nearest girl before cracking open a bottle of soda and pretending like he wasn’t just on the verge of fucking his best friend in a janitor’s closet.

They don’t talk about it.

They don’t look at each other.

But Suguru’s lips are still red and swollen. And Satoru’s hand still tingles from the heat of Suguru’s skin.

Neither of them are already thinking about how to do it again. Alone. Where they won’t have to stop. Totally. Yeah.

They are so straight.

And so, so fucked.

Satoru doesn’t remember standing up.

One moment he’s on the couch, stiff and silent. The next, he’s pacing the kitchen barefoot, blinking through a blur he doesn’t want to name. The silence is too loud. The apartment feels like it’s shrinking around him.

He doesn’t want to cry.

He never really does. Not since he was a kid. Not since that day, years ago, when they lost a gig and Suguru snapped his guitar in half on the sidewalk, laughing with tears in his eyes. “We’ll get another one,” he’d said. “Fuck it. We’ll be legends one day.”

Satoru had believed him.

He presses a hand to his chest, trying to keep it together. But the memory—the one that hit him like a gut-punch—won’t stop playing on a loop.

Satoru on the couch, college party chaos all around, pulling Suguru into his lap. Suguru’s laughter, warm and loud, brighter than the disco lights overhead. The janitor’s closet. That soft, ridiculous: “Don’t worry, sugaboo.”
That gentleness. That playfulness. That care.

Back when everything felt stupid and young and theirs.

Satoru slams the side of his fist on the counter, not hard enough to break anything, just enough to make the glassware rattle. He exhales, choked and uneven, and leans forward, gripping the edge like it’ll keep him from falling.

“Fuck,” he whispers.

Then it happens.

The tears come quietly at first, sliding down without much fanfare. But then the breath punches out of him. His knees give a little. He sinks to the floor like someone cut the strings holding him up.

It’s not loud. Not the way people imagine heartbreak looks. It’s not a dramatic scream, or a shattered plate, or a fist through drywall.

It’s just a man boy on his kitchen floor, shaking and crying into the hem of his own shirt, clutching it like it might bring back the one person he doesn’t know how to stop loving.

He wants the good days back.

Their days.

The ones on rooftops with cheap drinks and sweeter laughs. The ones where Suguru would swing his guitar case over his shoulder and yell “race you!” and then trip over his own feet. The ones where Satoru would fall asleep on the studio couch and wake up to Suguru draping a hoodie over him without a word.

We were better back then, he thinks.

Back before the stadiums.
Before the drugs.
Before the hollow interviews and the PR smiles and the fuck-you money that never fixed anything.

Back when “I love you” was said too often and never felt heavy. When Suguru still meant it. When Satoru didn’t have to wonder if he’d ever hear it again.

Satoru cries until his voice breaks and his throat hurts and his skin feels raw from wiping at his face with the sleeve of a sweatshirt that doesn’t even smell like him anymore.

Chapter Text

They were still young enough to think they’d be infinite.
Still soft around the edges, still messy with hope.

Summer wrapped around them like a blanket—thick, sticky, and buzzing with cicadas—as they sat shoulder to shoulder on the sloped rooftop of Satoru’s house. The air was warm even at night, the kind of warmth that clung to skin and made everything feel slow and syrupy.

Below them, the city sprawled out in sleepy bursts of light, windows glowing amber and white like fireflies trapped in glass. It looked endless from up here, like a stage with no curtains. The streets, the homes, the lives—they didn’t matter. Not really. Not tonight. Not when the universe had shrunk to two bodies on a rooftop and the quiet space between them.

A half-empty bottle of cheap white wine sat between them, sweating against the shingles, the label curling at the edges. Neither of them really liked it—it was too sweet, too sharp—but they sipped it anyway, because it felt like the kind of thing you did when you were fifteen. When you wanted to pretend the world was yours to conquer, that your hearts would never break, that love was a mixtape and the summer would last forever.

Satoru was lying flat on his back, arms behind his head, legs stretched out like he owned the sky. His hair haloed around him in soft white tufts, catching the faint glow of the porch light like some lazy teenage god.

Suguru sat upright, knees pulled to his chest, sketchbook balanced on his thighs. He tapped a glittery pen against the page, frowning down at the lyrics he’d been scribbling and rewriting for an hour.

“Tell me,” Suguru mumbled, eyes narrowed, “does ‘I’d rather be deaf than hear anyone but you’ sound romantic… or, like, dangerously unwell?”

Satoru didn’t answer right away. He was too busy watching the clouds drift by like they might rearrange themselves into something useful. Then he grinned, slow and smug. “Romantic. Totally. Especially if the you is me.”

Suguru rolled his eyes. “Of course it’s you.”

“And maybe add something about how I play drums like a god.”

“You play drums like a raccoon in a trash can.”

“I play drums like your raccoon in a trash can,” Satoru shot back, nudging their knees together with a smirk. “Which is basically the same thing as being in love.”

Suguru tried not to smile. Failed completely. His cheeks flushed pink, and he hoped the wine would take the blame for it. (It wouldn’t. Satoru always noticed.)

“You’re so dumb,” Suguru muttered.

“But I’m your dumb,” Satoru said, like that settled it. Like it was carved into the roof tiles, into the chords of the half-written songs, into the skin of summer itself.

Suguru’s heart fluttered—soft and sudden, like a moth hitting a lightbulb.

He didn’t say anything. Just closed his sketchbook, let it rest in his lap, and leaned sideways to press a kiss to Satoru’s cheek. It was quick, barely more than a brush, but it left a shiver down both their spines.

Satoru blinked. Then frowned. “Hey.”

“What?” Suguru tried to act casual, but his voice cracked like old vinyl.

“That’s cheating.”

“Cheating at what?”

Satoru sat up, dramatic and bright-eyed, his whole body buzzing with that dumb, wild confidence he carried like a weapon. “At being the first one to kiss.”

“What are you—”

Before Suguru could finish, Satoru leaned in and kissed him.

On the mouth.

No preamble. No warning. Just lips on lips, awkward and electric, noses bumping, Suguru’s hand knocking the wine bottle as his fingers twitched.

Suguru made a surprised sound—half gasp, half laugh—and Satoru laughed too, lips still pressed against his. The kiss was messy. Clumsy. Wonderful.

When they pulled apart, breathless and stunned, they stared at each other for a long second. And then they kissed again. Slower this time. Curious. Lingering.

Suguru tasted like sugar and citrus and summer dreams.
Satoru tasted like wine and adrenaline and a promise he wasn’t ready to make.

Their hearts beat too loud. Their hands trembled. But they kept going. Kept kissing. Kept leaning in like if they got close enough, they could freeze this moment forever.

No one said anything about what it meant.
They didn’t have to.

Later, when the stars had tilted further across the sky, they climbed down the attic ladder in the dark and tiptoed barefoot into the garage like thieves of their own memory.

Satoru plugged in his amp. Suguru flipped through the pages of his sketchbook, fingers still shaking, lips still tingling.

They weren’t good. Not even close.
Satoru dropped a drumstick twice. Suguru forgot the lyrics to his own song and made up new ones.

But they played anyway.

Played until their fingers cramped and their voices cracked, until the garage was thick with heat and laughter and buzzing electricity.

Suguru sat cross-legged on the cold floor, doodling hearts around the word forever.
Satoru shouted his name between chords just to make him laugh.

They weren’t famous. They weren’t tragic.
They weren’t even close to grown.

But they were alive.

Two boys.
One rooftop.
A kiss that tasted like a future they believed in.

And now?

Now the club is too loud to think. Barely enough to breathe.

Suguru leans against the bar, all sharp lines and expensive fabric. The lights strobe violet and red across his face, catching on the sweat at his hairline, the glitter at his collarbone. He looks curated. Detached. Like a painting of someone in pain.

Someone touches his wrist. Whispers something he doesn’t hear. Doesn’t need to.

He turns anyway. Smiles like a blade. Lets them kiss him.

It’s wet. All tongue and teeth. Performed.

Their hand slides lower. He doesn’t flinch.

He closes his eyes and lets it happen. Not because he wants it. But because it’s something to do. Something to drown in.

He pretends it means something.
He pretends it’s love.

And for a second, it almost feels like it.

Until it doesn’t.

Later, he stumbles outside with a too-sweet drink still on his tongue and the ghost of someone else’s hands on his hips. He sits in the alley, head against the wall, breathing like he’s trying to hold something down.

His mouth is swollen.
His shirt is wrinkled.
His pulse is slow.

But in his ears, he still hears Satoru’s laugh.

In his chest, it still echoes.

No matter what he does—no matter who he kisses, or how many strangers say his name—nothing ever chases it away.

Chapter Text

Satoru was half-asleep on the couch, some old black-and-white film flickering across the TV in faint, flickering bursts. The dialogue was low, almost unintelligible, the volume turned down enough that it sounded like ghosts whispering across the room. He wasn’t really watching. Just drifting. Waiting for something to fill the silence, or maybe just to let it swallow him whole.

Then his phone buzzed.

He didn’t move.

It buzzed again. Then again. Short, sharp vibrations against the coffee table. Persistent. Needy.

Satoru sighed—more like a groan pulled from somewhere deep, somewhere tired—and reached for it without looking, thumb swiping the screen with the lazy muscle memory of someone who didn’t expect anything good at this hour.

Guru 💜🖤 (2:11 AM):
hey
come get me
im sorry just come please
corner of eldridge and 6th
idk where i left my wallet
cant find my coat either
i feel sick

He was already on his feet before his brain caught up with his body.

The club looked half-dead. One neon letter blinked in and out, stuttering like it had something stuck in its throat. The music had dulled into a low, pulsing throb behind the walls. The bouncer didn’t even glance up when Satoru asked, just waved him off with a muttered “Closed. Try the alley.”

He found Suguru behind the building, in a narrow space between two dumpsters, where the light from a busted security lamp flickered sickly yellow over the cracked pavement. Suguru was curled on the concrete, knees pulled in, arms wrapped around himself like he was trying to hold something broken together.

His hair was sticking to his cheeks. His shirt had a smear of something dark on it—spilled drink? Someone else’s makeup? Satoru didn’t want to know. Suguru looked small in a way that scared him. Like a ghost halfway done vanishing.

“Suguru,” Satoru said, gently, carefully, like the name might shatter him.

Suguru stirred, lifting his head just barely. His eyes were red. Wet. Not from crying, not recently—but from the kind of night that hurts too deep to show.

“You came,” Suguru slurred, the corner of his mouth twitching like he meant to smile but forgot how.

“You called.”

Suguru let out a weak laugh—if it could even be called that. “You always come when I call.”

Satoru didn’t answer. Just knelt beside him and guided Suguru’s arm around his shoulders, rising slowly as he pulled him up. Suguru leaned heavily into him, head lolling against Satoru’s collarbone, body limp like he didn’t care where he ended or where Satoru began.

“You smell like the worst night of someone’s life,” Satoru muttered, mostly to distract himself, mostly to pretend this was fine.

“You smell like home,” Suguru whispered back. Then, after a pause that cracked something open between them: “That’s worse.”

He got him home just before three. Barely.

The car ride was quiet. Suguru kept his face turned toward the window like he didn’t want to be seen, like the city outside had something more comforting to offer than the boy sitting beside him. Somewhere along the highway, the tears started. No sound. No shaking. Just a slow, steady trail down his cheeks—like it wasn’t even his first time crying like this in a stranger’s car.

Satoru didn’t ask. Didn’t flinch. Just tightened his grip on the steering wheel and blinked hard against the sting in his own eyes.

Inside the apartment, Suguru stumbled into the hallway like his body was hours behind him. Satoru led him to the bathroom, flicked on the dim light above the mirror. Suguru winced at the brightness, sinking onto the edge of the tub with his head in his hands, elbows on his knees like they were the only things keeping him upright.

“You okay?” Satoru asked.

“No,” Suguru muttered, voice muffled in his palms. “But I’ll throw up in your sink if you want.”

“You’ll sleep in my bed if you don’t shut up.”

That earned the smallest huff of laughter. Tired. Broken. Grateful.

Satoru handed him a shirt—one of his old ones, soft from too many washes, a faint stain on the hem that never quite came out. Suguru didn’t say thank you. Just changed slowly, mechanically, like he wasn’t fully there. Satoru turned around, even though he didn’t have to. Even though he’d already seen all the versions of Suguru there were to see—laughing, angry, wild, whole, ruined.

It didn’t matter.

None of those versions were this one.

Suguru didn’t say anything when he got into bed. Just lay down with his back to the room, to Satoru, to everything. Legs curled. Breathing still unsteady.

Satoru sat on the edge of the mattress. He didn’t lie down. Not yet.

He stared at the wall. At Suguru’s shoulders rising and falling. At the way the sheet barely moved when he breathed.

He wanted to say something. Anything.

Wanted to ask where he’d been tonight. Who he’d kissed. Who had kissed him like he mattered. Who had hurt him when they realized he didn’t.
Wanted to ask why he always waited until the breaking point to call.
Why Satoru only ever got the pieces.
Why he still came running.

But he didn’t ask. He never did.

Instead, he reached for the lamp—but paused, fingers hovering above the switch.

“Do you want me to leave the light on?” he asked quietly.

There was a pause.

“No,” Suguru said. Then, softer, like it wasn’t meant for him at all: “Just you.”

Satoru stayed.

And in the dark, where the air still smelled like sweat and perfume and the sickly-sweet rot of someone else's love, he leaned forward, close enough to feel Suguru’s heat even with space between them.

He whispered like a promise. Like a prayer. Like they were still seventeen and nothing had gone wrong yet—

“Try to sleep. I’ve got you.”

Just for tonight.

Just until the morning.

Just until Suguru inevitably stopped needing him again.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Suguru Geto actually had lots of feelings.
He only used the ones he wanted.

The rest were locked away, sealed under years of practice—practice that started when he was young and learned that showing too much meant giving people a weapon. He’d kept them in a place so deep and dark that even he sometimes forgot the exact path back. A vault built out of habit and self-preservation, the walls lined with every “too much” and “not enough” he’d ever been accused of.

The elevator doors slid shut in front of him with a hiss, and his own faint reflection stared back from the brushed metal. His hair was mussed, dark strands curling where the tie had loosened; his mouth was set in that calm, almost-bored line he’d perfected over the years. Only his eyes gave anything away—too sharp, too alive for someone who claimed not to care.

The overhead light flickered once, bathing him in sterile yellow. His hands stayed deep in his pockets, steady, while the inside of his chest felt like it had been scraped raw. He could still hear Satoru’s voice—rapid-fire, heated, a mix of hurt and accusation. Could still see the glint of his glasses catching the kitchen light as he’d thrown those words like they were the truth.

Suguru leaned his head against the cool elevator paneling, just for a moment, the faint hum of the machinery filling the cramped space. The chill seeped through his hair and into his skin, a stark contrast to the faint residual heat still clinging to him from the night before. He thought about last night—about being too tired to keep the armor on, about the way Satoru’s presence had been warm and unshakable in a way that made him feel both safe and unbearably exposed. It had been far too easy to fall into that comfort, to let himself rest in it for a few stolen hours before he tore it apart with his own hands. That was the pattern, wasn’t it? Always take apart what feels too much like home.

The elevator chimed, a sharp, sterile sound that snapped him upright like a marionette pulled taut.

The lobby was nearly deserted, the overhead lights casting long shadows across the polished floor. The muted chatter of a television spilled from the doorman’s desk—morning news anchors with voices too bright for the hour. Outside, the city was caught in the liminal space between night and morning. The streets shone slick and black from a recent drizzle, neon signs bleeding faint halos into the mist. The air was sharp and clean, tinged with that metallic bite that always followed rain, as if the whole city had been scrubbed raw.

Suguru lit a cigarette, the flare of the lighter briefly illuminating the hollows beneath his cheekbones, the faint tension in his jaw. The first drag filled his lungs, hot and acrid, and he let the smoke curl lazily from his lips before the cold air swallowed it whole. The nicotine didn’t steady him—never did—but it kept his fingers busy, gave his restless body something to focus on while his mind kept turning.

Satoru’s presence clung to him like a stubborn scent, impossible to wash out. Last night’s drunken warmth, the weight of a familiar body leaned against his, the quiet trust threaded through careless conversation. Then this morning’s fight—white-hot, sharp-edged, the kind of argument that left both of them raw. And finally, the cold vacuum after the door closed, a silence that felt heavier than any words could. It was still there, pressed into his skin, tangled in his hair, woven into the ache that throbbed just behind his eyes. It was everywhere, and it wouldn’t let go.

He hated it.
Or maybe he didn’t.
But that was the kind of feeling he’d trained himself not to use anymore—feelings that stuck, feelings that softened, feelings that asked you to stay.

So he kept walking. Down streets slick with rainwater, where his reflection warped and fractured in the puddles. Past the glow of early-open cafés, the scent of bread and coffee curling faintly into the cold. The occasional rumble of a delivery truck passed him, wheels hissing over wet asphalt. His footsteps were loud in the emptiness, a slow and steady rhythm meant to drown out the thoughts clawing at the back of his mind.

When he finally reached his apartment, the quiet hit him like a physical thing. He locked the door behind him, the click of the deadbolt far too loud in the stillness. His coat slid from his shoulders and landed carelessly across the chair. He crushed the cigarette into the ashtray until it was nothing but a smear of grey.

The couch caught him like an old habit—he dropped onto it heavily, elbows braced on his knees, head bowed into his hands. For a long time, he stayed there, the sound of his own breathing rough in his ears, working through the tightness that wound like wire in his chest.

The vault door rattled. Somewhere deep inside, the thing he kept locked away was pacing, restless. Scratching.

And Suguru, alone in the silence, cracked the door just enough to let it bleed through. Just enough to feel the sting. Not enough to let it mend.

Chapter Text

The pale blue of early morning crept in through the blinds, weak and watery, casting stripes across the floor. Suguru stirred, throat dry, limbs heavy, body still humming with the remnants of the night before. For a moment, he let himself linger in the warmth of the sheets, the faint ghost of Satoru’s touch still clinging to his skin.

Then he noticed the absence.

The other side of the bed was empty, the sheets still warm but cooling fast. Suguru blinked, pushing his hair from his face, squinting toward the faint glow that bled from the balcony door. It was cracked open, letting in the early chill of dawn. And there, outlined in the pale blue, was Satoru.

Leaning against the railing, shirtless, hair a mess, one long arm draped lazily over the edge of the balcony. Between his fingers, glowing faintly in the dim, was a cigarette.

Suguru sat up slowly, throat tightening in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. Satoru didn’t smoke. He’d always hated the smell, the way it clung to your clothes and hair, the way it tasted stale on your tongue. He used to mock anyone caught with one, call them an idiot for burning their lungs out. But here he was, tall and impossible, head tilted back as he exhaled a slow stream of smoke into the gray morning sky.

Suguru watched for a long moment before finding his voice. “You look like shit.”

Satoru’s head turned, those pale eyes finding him through the thin curtain of smoke. And then—of course—he smiled. That lazy, crooked, infuriating smile. “Morning, sunshine. Sleep well?”

The balcony light cast Satoru in pale gold, smoke curling lazy patterns from the cigarette balanced between his fingers. Dawn hadn’t broken yet, but the horizon was starting to shift, bruised purple edging toward gray.

Suguru blinked against the dimness, still groggy, blanket slipping off his bare shoulders as he sat up. His body ached in a familiar, bone-deep way, but it was the sight of Satoru outside that pulled him fully awake.

“You don’t smoke,” he rasped, voice heavy with sleep.

Satoru’s profile didn’t shift. His sunglasses were perched low on his nose despite the hour, hiding what little the dark hadn’t. He exhaled slowly, smoke drifting toward the street below. “Guess I do now.”

There was no humor in it. Just something flat. Controlled.

Suguru dragged himself up, padding barefoot to the doorway. The cool morning air met the heat clinging to his skin, goosebumps rising. He leaned against the frame, watching the way Satoru’s hand lingered by his mouth, how deliberate every motion was. Like he was keeping something steady, even if it meant burning his lungs to do it.

“You look like shit,” Suguru muttered, softer than the words suggested.

Satoru huffed a laugh that wasn’t a laugh, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Takes one to know one.”

They let the silence settle. Birds were starting up in the trees, sharp and insistent, the world waking in ways neither of them felt ready for.

Suguru pushed away from the frame, stepping close enough that the smoke brushed his face. He plucked the cigarette from Satoru’s fingers, brought it to his own lips. The drag was harsh, throat-stinging, but he didn’t cough. He just let the taste of ash sit on his tongue before exhaling in a thin stream.

Satoru finally looked at him. Really looked—like Suguru had just reminded him he was still there.

“You hate it,” Satoru said quietly.

“Not on you.”

The response hung between them, heavy. Suguru handed the cigarette back, their fingers brushing, too brief.

Satoru didn’t say a word. He only took it back with the same practiced calm, holding himself together in the smoke, in the silence, in the way he leaned just slightly toward Suguru without realizing it.

Suguru watched him, eyes sharp, knowing there was something unraveling beneath all that composure—and knowing Satoru would never let him see the full extent of it.

Not unless it broke.

Suguru exhaled slowly, the sound so soft it could’ve been mistaken for the morning breeze. “You don’t get it,” he said finally, voice hoarse, like it had been scraped raw from the inside.

Satoru’s jaw clenched. God, not this again. “Then make me get it.”

That earned him a sideways glance—just a flicker, but enough to knock the air out of him. Suguru’s eyes looked almost black in the weak dawn light, and Satoru hated how much he wanted to drown there, even when those same eyes were pulling farther and farther away.

“You think it’s about you,” Suguru murmured, almost too quiet to catch. “You think if you just hold on tighter, I’ll stop slipping. But I’m not—” He cut himself off, biting down on the rest.

Satoru took a step forward before he could stop himself, fists jammed deeper into his pockets. “Not what? Not worth saving?” His laugh cracked this time, not sharp, not controlled—just broken at the edges. “Too late for that, Suguru. You don’t get to decide whether you’re worth it. I already did.”

The air between them felt thin, stretched to breaking.

Suguru looked at him again, longer this time. His mouth parted like he was about to say something—something cruel, something final—but nothing came out. He just shook his head and let his gaze fall to the floorboards, like he couldn’t stand to hold Satoru’s weight any longer.

Satoru’s throat burned. He wanted to scream, to shake him, to beg him all over again like that night on the floor when he thought he’d already lost him. Instead, all that came out was a whisper. “I’m so fucking tired of being scared of losing you.”

For a heartbeat, Suguru’s expression softened—just a hair, just enough for Satoru to see the boy he used to know beneath the ruin. But then it was gone, shuttered off, replaced with that same hollow distance.

“Then maybe,” Suguru said, voice flat as ash, “you should let go.”

It felt like a punch straight through Satoru’s ribs.

He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Just stood there in the doorway, watching the horizon flare gold around the edges, watching Suguru turn his back on him again.

And in that silence, Satoru realized something he’d never dared admit before—maybe he’d already lost him.

Satoru didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, every word caught in the cage of his teeth. He lingered there another moment, gaze fixed on the curve of Suguru’s shoulders as they bowed slightly over the railing, as if the weight of dawn itself was pressing down on him.

Then, with a sharp inhale that tasted like smoke and regret, he turned away.

Inside, the apartment felt colder, emptier, like stepping into a place already abandoned. He moved on autopilot—shirt, jacket, shoes. Each piece of clothing tugged on like armor, hiding the hollow in his chest. His fingers fumbled with the buttons, clumsy where they should’ve been precise, but he didn’t stop. If he stopped, he’d think. If he thought, he’d turn back. And if he turned back, he’d only break himself further against Suguru’s silence.

The door clicked shut behind him with a finality that made his stomach twist. For a second, he stood in the hallway, pressing the heel of his hand to his eye like it might stop the sting. Then he shoved both hands into his pockets and walked, long strides carrying him anywhere but here.

Back on the balcony, Suguru didn’t flinch at the sound of the door. Didn’t call out. Didn’t even shift his weight. He just watched the horizon brighten until the sun edged higher, bleeding pale gold across the city. The silence swallowed everything, and for a moment, he let himself believe it was peace.

But the stillness never lasted.

Eventually, he pulled away from the railing and slipped back inside, bare feet soft against the worn floor. The air was heavier here, clinging with the faint smell of cigarettes and Satoru’s cologne, reminders that pressed against him like ghosts. He moved quickly, almost methodically, toward the place only he knew—the loose board beneath the bedframe, pried up with practiced fingers.

The stash was small, tucked away like a secret shrine to every terrible decision he refused to give up. Bottles, rolled paper, little baggies that whispered promises of numbness. He crouched there, staring down at the collection, a bitter smile tugging at his lips. This was what he had left. Not purpose, not hope. Just this.

His hands trembled as he reached for one of the bottles, the glass cool against his skin. For a heartbeat, he paused, eyes unfocused, hearing Satoru’s laugh in his head—the sharp, unbreakable kind he hadn’t heard in years. It made something ache, deep and raw.

He twisted the cap anyway.

The first swallow burned, searing down his throat like punishment. The second dulled it. By the third, the silence didn’t feel quite so suffocating.

Suguru leaned back against the bedframe, bottle balanced loosely in his hand, and let his head fall back. He stared at the ceiling, blank and white and merciless, and felt the edges of himself blur.

Out there, somewhere in the city, Satoru was walking off the weight of him. And in here, Suguru was letting himself vanish one swallow at a time.

Neither of them would call it giving up. But maybe, quietly, both of them already had.

Satoru slammed the door behind him hard enough to rattle the frame. His chest was heaving, breaths shallow, ragged, like he’d sprinted the whole way back even though he hadn’t. He’d walked. Walked and walked and walked until the silence pressed too close, until the echo of Suguru’s voice—then maybe you should let go—had crawled under his skin like a parasite.

Now, standing in the middle of his own living room, he didn’t know what to do with himself.

The place was too neat, too sterile, nothing out of place. It wasn’t a home; it was a box he existed in between battles. A box that suddenly felt too small, too empty. He yanked at his jacket, threw it to the floor, then his glasses, his shoes. Each thing hit the ground with a sharp clatter, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough.

“Fuck,” he rasped, dragging both hands down his face. His throat burned, his eyes stung, and still the word tore out again, louder, shaking the walls. “Fuck!”

He stumbled toward the couch and collapsed onto it, elbows digging into his knees, fingers clutching at his hair. He could feel it—that slow, relentless tremor in his body that had never really gone away since the first time Suguru had almost slipped from his grasp. He’d been shaking ever since, caught in that moment, the terror of almost losing him. And every day after had been another round of holding him together, watching him unravel, stitching him back up only for the seams to split all over again.

It was killing him.

But the thought of stopping—of letting go like Suguru had told him to—was worse. Impossible. Because he loved him. God, he loved him so much it made his chest ache like a cracked rib, like he couldn’t draw in a full breath without tasting it.

His vision blurred. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes until all he could see were stars bursting behind his lids. “Why the hell won’t you let me save you?” His voice broke apart halfway, the words catching in his throat. “Why do you make me… why do you make me watch you disappear?”

The silence gave him nothing back, only the faint hum of the fridge in the kitchen, the clock ticking on the wall. Mocking.

Satoru dropped back against the couch, head falling against the cushions. His hands fell limp at his sides, knuckles white where they’d curled into fists. He wanted to scream until his voice shredded. He wanted to rip down the walls, break every mirror, claw the hurt out of himself with his bare hands.

Instead, he sat there, trembling, tears streaking hot down his face, and whispered the same words he always did when no one was listening.

“I can’t lose you. I won’t. Even if it destroys me.”

And deep down, he knew—it already was.

Satoru slid off the couch and onto the floor, the strength leaving his legs all at once. He folded forward, forehead pressed to his knees, arms wrapped around himself like he could hold his body together before it split apart.

His breath came in broken stutters. Shallow, uneven. He wasn’t used to feeling small—he was Gojo Satoru, the best, the one who never bent, never broke. But here, in the suffocating quiet of his house, there was no mask left to wear. Just him. Just the boy who’d been trying his whole life to keep Suguru from drowning and was realizing, too late, that he might be drowning too.

“Fuck…” The word came out like a sob this time, ragged, catching in his throat. His nails dug crescents into his skin through the fabric of his shirt. “Why can’t I fix you? Why—” His voice cracked, splintered into silence, and he bit down hard on his lip until he tasted blood.

He tipped sideways, cheek pressing against the cold floorboards. His tears streaked hot against the wood, pooling beneath his temple. For a while, he just lay there, gasping quietly, chest convulsing like it didn’t remember how to breathe.

Memories reeled behind his eyes, merciless: Suguru laughing under the summer sun, Suguru’s hands steady against his, Suguru sprawled on the ground too still, lips pale and breath shallow. Satoru remembered shaking him, remembered the terror of that stillness, the way his heart had seized like he was the one dying. That memory never left. It lived in his bones, in every heartbeat since.

Now it pressed down on him like a weight too heavy to crawl out from under.

He curled tighter, voice muffled against the floor. “I can’t do this anymore… I can’t… but I have to.” His throat tore around the words, as if saying them was an act of violence against himself. “Because if I let go—if I let go, you’ll vanish. And I can’t—I can’t—”

He broke entirely then, body shaking, sobs ripping free. Not the neat, quiet kind—raw, ugly, loud. The kind he would never let anyone else hear. His fingers clawed at the floor, grasping at nothing, as if he could tear a hole in reality itself to keep Suguru here, tether him somehow.

Minutes blurred, maybe hours. He couldn’t tell. His body eventually betrayed him, the sobs dwindling to hiccups, his throat scraped raw, his chest aching like he’d been cracked open. He lay there, half-sprawled, staring at nothing through swollen eyes.

The house was still. Too still. And for the first time, he wondered if this was all his love would ever be—holding someone who refused to be held, giving until there was nothing left but the hollow echo of his own breaking.

And even then, even here, with his face pressed to the floor and his heart in ruins, the truth burned through every shattered piece of him:

He wasn’t going to stop. Not now. Not ever.

The floor was still cold beneath Satoru’s cheek, but his mind drifted far away from the empty house. Somewhere softer. Somewhere brighter.

He remembered Suguru before all of this—before the weight, before the smokes and the bottles and the endless silence that stretched between them now. Just kids. Just two dumb boys who thought the world was theirs for the taking.

Suguru with a cheap secondhand guitar slung across his chest, strings always slightly out of tune, grinning wide as he tried to play something he’d heard on the radio. Satoru banging away on an old drum kit in his parents’ garage, sticks flying, rhythm messy but loud, loud enough to drown out everything else.

They weren’t good—not then. Not really. But it didn’t matter. They were infinite in that way only kids could be, drunk on the idea that someday they’d get it. Someday they’d make it. The future stretched wide and endless, lit by neon dreams.

He could still hear Suguru’s voice, rough and unpolished, cracking when he tried to reach for notes too high. But he’d sing anyway, shameless, head thrown back like nothing in the world could touch him. And Satoru would laugh, joining in off-key, both of them collapsing into the kind of laughter that left their stomachs aching.

It was all so stupid, so simple—late nights in the garage, empty soda cans littering the floor, notebooks scrawled with half-finished lyrics that never made sense. Suguru would tease him about writing “love songs without ever having kissed anyone,” and Satoru would shove him, too embarrassed to admit every line was already about him.

Now the memory cut deeper than any blade.

He pressed a trembling hand to his face, teeth gritted, eyes burning. He missed it. Missed him. Not the ghost Suguru had become, not the man unraveling at the seams. Just the kid with calloused fingertips and a laugh that could fill a room, the one who looked at Satoru like he was the only person in the world worth making music with.

“Where’d you go, huh?” His voice cracked, hoarse from the breakdown that had gutted him minutes before. “We were supposed to… we were supposed to make it together.”

The silence swallowed his words, but in his head the echoes lingered, blending with the faint memory of Suguru’s chords, clumsy and earnest. Someday I’ll get it, someday I’ll get it, the kind of refrain they would’ve sung to each other, convinced the whole world was waiting for them.

Satoru curled his knees to his chest, chest aching with the kind of longing that tasted like grief. He wanted those nights back—the ones sticky with summer air and cheap strings, where nothing hurt yet, where nothing had broken. Where he hadn’t learned that sometimes, loving someone wasn’t enough to keep them whole.

He closed his eyes, and for a moment, in the haze of exhaustion and tears, he let himself believe he could still hear Suguru’s laugh from that garage.

It gutted him all over again.

Chapter Text

The house was so quiet it felt like it might swallow him whole. The kind of quiet that left every sob echoing back at him, bouncing off the walls until it was unbearable. Satoru sat hunched over the coffee table, pen digging into the paper, notebook spread wide like an open wound. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking, his chest wouldn’t stop heaving, but still—he wrote.

The words didn’t make sense. They weren’t neat or clever or polished. Just jagged lines spilling out of him, scratched through, rewritten, written again. Ink smeared where his hand dragged across wet paper, tears blotting into the mess until whole sentences were unreadable. He didn’t care. He just needed it out.

His breaths came uneven, sharp little gasps between strokes of the pen. Every so often he stopped to press the heel of his hand to his eyes, but it never worked—the tears kept coming, hot and endless. A choked laugh ripped out of him, raw and bitter, when he realized he was writing exactly the kind of love song Suguru used to mock him for.

But he couldn’t stop.

His hand cramped around the pen, nails biting into the plastic. He wrote about summers that felt infinite, about laughter that used to fill the spaces now left hollow. He wrote about the way Suguru looked when he played, head tilted down, fingers steady on the strings. He wrote about shaking him awake, about the terror of that stillness, about the way every breath since had carried the weight of that night.

The words blurred on the page, black ink bleeding into blacker smears. Satoru bent lower, forehead nearly touching the paper, shoulders shuddering with each ragged exhale.

It wasn’t a song yet. It wasn’t anything yet. But it was all he had—scratched-out lines and ruined pages, a desperate attempt to pin Suguru to paper before he vanished completely.

And even when the pen finally slipped from his grasp, clattering onto the floor, he stayed there—hands clutching the notebook like a lifeline, tears dripping onto the pages he could barely read.

Because as much as it hurt, as much as it tore him apart to write it, it was the only way he knew how to say what was killing him: that he still loved Suguru, even if it was the one thing he couldn’t save.

The pen trembled in his hand, leaving a blot of ink at the corner of the page. Satoru stared at it for a long moment, eyes stinging, before forcing himself to keep writing. The notebook was already a mess—lines scratched out, arrows pointing to half-finished verses, the paper warped and wrinkled where his tears had fallen. It didn’t look like much, but it was all he had.

He dragged his sleeve across his face, smearing the wetness away, and let out a broken laugh that dissolved almost immediately into a cough. God, he’d make fun of me for this. Suguru always had. Every time Satoru scribbled some sappy lyric in the corner of their setlist or strummed out a melody that sounded suspiciously like longing, Suguru would tilt his head and smirk: “Who’s the mystery girl, huh? You ever gonna fess up?”

Satoru would laugh, shove him in the shoulder, and dodge the question. He always dodged.

Now, hunched over the notebook with his chest still raw from sobbing, the thought twisted sharp in his ribs. Because this wasn’t some baseless love song. Every word bled Suguru. Every broken line was a piece of him Satoru couldn’t hold in anymore.

He tightened his grip on the pen and scrawled another verse, messier than the last, pressing hard enough to nearly tear through the paper. His mind wandered as he wrote, unspooling scenarios he’d never admit out loud. They’d play this on stage someday—Suguru on bass, chin dipped low, eyes closed like always. The crowd would sing it back, thinking it was just another aching love song for faceless strangers. They’d never know it was about the boy standing just feet away from him.

The thought almost gutted him. But it also… steadied him.

Because maybe that was the only way he could keep saying it. Maybe the only way he could keep Suguru tethered to him was through songs disguised as fiction, words he’d never be brave enough to say straight to his face.

His shoulders sagged. He pressed the pen to the page again, hand trembling less this time, and whispered to himself like it was a confession, “It’ll just be for the fans. Just another song.”

But his chest ached, because he knew—he’d know, Suguru would know, and maybe that was enough.

The pen scratched slow and uneven against the page, the notebook already warped from the tearstains that dotted its corners. Satoru bent low over it, white hair falling into his eyes, breath coming in little shudders as he fought to keep his hand steady. The words weren’t perfect, weren’t even fully formed, but they came anyway—like blood seeping through a bandage.

“And I swore I’d keep you steady,
But you keep slipping out my hands.
I can love you ‘til it kills me,
You’ll still call it circumstance.”

He let the line hang there, staring at it until the letters blurred. His throat clenched. He’d hear Suguru’s voice in his head, teasing: “Man, you really don’t hold back, do you? That’s not a song, that’s a diary entry.” He could almost see the smirk, the shake of his head. But beneath the teasing, Suguru always played along. Always sang the harmonies. Always gave Satoru’s messy words a backbone.

Satoru shut the notebook with a snap before the thought could fester too long. He shoved the pen under the cover and dragged both hands down his face, pressing until his eyes burned. Then he grabbed the notebook again, tighter this time, and stood. He wasn’t going to think—just move.

By the time he got to the rehearsal space, the others were already scattered around the stage. The room smelled faintly of stale beer and dust, amps buzzing low in the background. Sukuna sat cross-legged on an amp, cigarette dangling from his lips, lazily tuning his guitar. Choso was fiddling with the mic stand, testing levels, his voice murmuring low into the speakers. And Yuji—god, Yuji—was perched on the edge of the stage, kicking his legs and making ridiculous feedback noises into a spare mic like it was the funniest thing in the world.

“Oi, brat, knock it off before I feed you to the speakers,” Sukuna barked without looking up.

Yuji cackled and made another obnoxious reverb sound, earning himself a sharp glare. Choso swatted the mic out of his hand with brotherly irritation.

Satoru dropped his bag by the drum kit, shrugging out of his jacket. His whole body felt heavy, but his fingers itched to play. To drown the weight out. He hesitated a moment before pulling out the notebook, flipping it open to the newest page. The fresh ink still looked raw.

“Got something new,” he muttered, voice rougher than he intended.

Sukuna cocked an eyebrow, finally glancing up. “Another ballad?”

“Shut up and listen,” Satoru shot back, a little sharper than usual. He tapped the paper with his thumb, swallowing against the tightness in his throat. “It’s… not finished, but—”

He read off a couple of the lines, voice low, stumbling a little on the rhythm:

“If I could break myself to save you,
I would splinter bone to thread.
But every promise I ever gave you,
Just echoes in your head.”

Silence followed, heavier than the buzzing amps.

Choso was the first to speak, his tone unusually soft. “That’s… heavy.” He shifted closer, one hand adjusting the mic like it gave him something to do. “But it’s good. Really good. Feels real.”

Sukuna leaned back, smirking around the cigarette, but his eyes were sharper than his mouth. “Finally writing something the fans can cry to, huh?”

Satoru forced a laugh, though it cracked on the way out. He closed the notebook and waved it vaguely. “Yeah, just another baseless love song for the crowd. Eat your hearts out.”

Yuji piped up from the stage floor, grinning wide. “Nah, it’s gotta be about someone. You don’t write that kind of stuff unless you mean it.”

Satoru’s stomach clenched, but he smirked anyway, slipping back into the mask he knew best. “Or maybe I’m just a genius songwriter, ever think of that?”

Yuji laughed, Sukuna snorted, and Choso gave him one of those looks that lingered a little too long, like he wanted to ask but wouldn’t.

Satoru shoved the notebook back into his bag before anyone could press further. His pulse was still racing, chest still tight. The truth was scrawled across those pages, bleeding out in every line. He’d play it off as fiction, as always. But he knew—and deep down, he knew Suguru would too.

Because every song he wrote circled back to him. Always had. Always would.

The amp hum filled the air, strings buzzing as Sukuna leaned back in his chair, a cigarette dangling from his lips despite the no-smoking rule in the studio. Choso was working through a harmony line, his voice gravel-smooth over Satoru’s halting lyrics. Yuji was sitting cross-legged on the stage, tapping out a rhythm on his thighs and grinning whenever he threw Sukuna off beat. The space was alive with noise—messy, unfinished, but theirs.

Satoru was mid-verse, bent over the mic stand with his sunglasses slipping down his nose, hair damp with sweat. His voice cracked when he let out:

“I place the blame in every shadow,
But it’s your name that still won’t go—”

He cut himself off with a harsh laugh, shaking his head. “Fuck, that’s pathetic,” he muttered, dragging a hand over his face before scribbling out the lyric.

Sukuna barked out a laugh. “Finally, you write a love song and it sounds like you’re trying to fight it in the alley behind the bar.”

“Better than whatever shit you write about whiskey and car wrecks,” Satoru shot back, though his smile didn’t reach his eyes.

Choso just hummed, leaning over the mic stand. “I like it. Feels… honest.”

Satoru opened his mouth to say something—probably another deflection—but the sound of the rehearsal room door creaking open cut him off.

The laughter and chatter bled into silence.

Suguru stood in the doorway.

Or what was left of him.

His hair was a mess, like he’d run his hands through it a thousand times and given up. His shirt was wrinkled, hanging off his frame in a way that spoke of too many sleepless nights. His eyes were red, bloodshot and glassy, ringed with shadows that looked carved into his skin. And the smell hit before the door even shut—alcohol sharp and clinging, like it had seeped into his bones.

For a second, no one moved. Even Yuji stopped drumming his rhythm, his grin faltering as he stared.

Satoru’s throat closed. He’d rehearsed this moment a hundred times in his head—what he’d say if Suguru showed up, how he’d look, how he’d pretend it didn’t hurt. But none of those imagined versions lined up with the real man swaying slightly in the doorway, looking both too proud and too broken to ask for help.

Suguru’s gaze swept across the room, lingering on Satoru for only a heartbeat longer than the others. He gave a smile—thin, cracked, wrong—and it cut through Satoru like glass.

“Didn’t know you were holding auditions without me,” Suguru rasped, voice frayed at the edges.

Satoru’s hand tightened around his drum sticks. The words he wanted—where the hell have you been, why do you look like this, let me fix you—jammed in his chest, stuck behind years of Suguru’s walls.

Instead, all he managed was:
“You’re late.”

The room stayed suspended, all sound sucked out except for the low hum of the amp.

The room was still humming with tension when Suguru stepped further inside, the door clicking shut behind him. His movements were uneven but deliberate, like he was holding himself together out of stubborn pride more than balance. Without saying another word, he slung his battered guitar case from his shoulder and dropped it onto the nearest amp, fingers fumbling a little with the latches.

The sight of it—the old instrument he’d carried through dive bars, smoky basements, and every shitty venue they’d ever played—knocked the wind out of Satoru. Suguru pulled the guitar free and sat down on the edge of the stage like nothing was wrong, as if he hadn’t just walked in looking wrecked enough to make everyone stop breathing.

“What are we playing?” he asked, voice rough but steady, like he’d been talking all night and had no more softness left to spare.

Satoru’s mouth worked around empty air. Sukuna was the first to break the silence, snorting smoke out of his nose. “Kid strolls in late, half-dead, and wants to jump right in. Unbelievable.”

Suguru ignored him. He was already tuning, the metallic clicks sharp in the stillness. His eyes stayed low, fixed on the strings, but Satoru could see how his hands shook—barely, but enough.

Choso glanced at Satoru, waiting for a cue. Yuji had gone quiet, legs crossed tighter as he hugged his knees, watching Suguru like he was trying to decode him.

Satoru cleared his throat, forcing his voice not to crack. “New one. It’s called ‘I Still Want to Love You.’”

For a fraction of a second, Suguru froze. His fingers hovered on the fretboard, the weight of the title landing between them heavier than any chord. His eyes flicked up, just long enough for Satoru to catch it—that flicker of recognition, the silent accusation, the ghost of a smile that wasn’t joy but pain worn thin.

And then he nodded once, like the name didn’t matter at all, like he hadn’t already folded it into himself.
“Alright,” Suguru murmured. “Show me the first verse.”

Satoru’s grip on his drum sticks tightened until his knuckles ached. He strummed once, heart hammering, and started to play.

Suguru followed, even in his ruin, every note slotting perfectly into place.

The first chords echoed through the half-empty rehearsal space, sharp and raw in the rafters. Satoru kept his voice low, almost tentative, letting the melody stretch out long enough for Suguru to slip in behind it. He didn’t expect much—Suguru looked like he should be in bed, not cradling a guitar—but when his friend’s voice cut in, it was startling in its clarity.

Suguru didn’t sing like he usually did, polished and controlled, all smooth edges that could charm a crowd even when he was half-asleep. This time it was rough, drenched in whiskey and cigarettes, but so open it made the skin between Satoru’s shoulders tighten.

“I still want to love you…” Suguru sang, dragging the line out until it cracked into something more confession than lyric. His eyes were half-lidded, pupils blown, but there was no mistaking the weight behind it. It wasn’t for Sukuna, or Choso, or even the empty seats where fans would one day be. He sang like every word was aimed straight at Satoru, like the whole world narrowed to the inches between them.

The air in the room shifted. Yuji froze, his usual restless movements stilled. Even Sukuna, who never shut up, let the cigarette burn low between his fingers without comment. Choso’s mouth twitched like he wanted to interrupt, to cut the tension, but he stayed silent, gaze flicking between the two of them like he was watching a car crash he couldn’t look away from.

Suguru pressed forward, his voice trembling at the edges but stronger for it:

“Even when I don’t deserve it,
Even when I turn away,
Even when I can’t stand myself—
I still want to love you anyway.”

The words landed hard, clumsy in places but devastating in their nakedness. His guitar wavered as his fingers slipped, but he didn’t stop. He kept going, louder now, like he wanted to burn through the walls with nothing but sound.

Satoru’s chest ached. He had written the song as a mask, a love song vague enough to sell, safe enough to pass off as fiction. He hadn’t meant for Suguru to tear it wide open, to strip every layer of distance away until it was just the truth laid bare between them.

When the verse ended, Suguru let the final note ring until it dissolved into silence. His head tipped back, throat working like he was swallowing glass, and then he laughed—low, humorless, and frayed.

“That’s a good one,” he rasped, voice catching. “Real honest.”

Satoru didn’t trust himself to answer. His hands stayed braced on the strings, stiff and unmoving, while Suguru leaned into the mic again, too drunk to hold anything back, too far gone to care that everyone in the room had heard his heart break wide open.

The rehearsal room smelled faintly of sweat, cigarette smoke that clung to Suguru’s jacket, and the metallic tang of guitar strings. His voice still lingered in the air, raw and too real, rattling everyone’s ribs in the silence that followed. Even Yuji, who’d been bouncing around on the edge of the stage minutes ago, had gone quiet, staring at Suguru like he’d just cracked his chest open in front of them.

Suguru swayed where he sat, hunched over his guitar, fingers trembling as they tried to find another chord but landed wrong. The sound was jagged, ugly, nothing like the way he usually played.

Choso shifted from his perch on the amp, worry hard in his eyes. “He’s done,” he said flatly, flicking a glance toward Sukuna and then back at the man nearly sliding off his stool. “He needs to go home.”

“Home?” Suguru slurred, a bitter laugh crawling out of his throat. “Don’t even know where that is.”

Sukuna pinched the bridge of his nose, jaw flexing. “Not here. That’s for damn sure.” He looked at the others, then pointed the headstock of his guitar at Satoru like it was a weapon. “You. You’re the only one he listens to. You’re taking him.”

Satoru, lounging against the wall with his shades still on despite the dim lights, tipped his head back and let out an exaggerated groan. “Why me? He’s a whole disaster right now.”

“Exactly.” Sukuna’s voice was sharp. “And you’re the only one stubborn enough to drag his ass out without making it worse.”

Suguru lifted his head, eyes glassy, hair falling into his face. When he saw Satoru, his lips twitched like he wanted to grin but couldn’t quite manage. “’Course it’s you,” he mumbled, like it was some cosmic joke. “It’s always you.”

Yuji sat cross-legged on the stage, picking at his shoelaces, and looked between them nervously. “Man, just… just take him home, okay? He looks like he’s gonna keel over.”

Satoru sighed, pushing off the wall. His footsteps echoed on the concrete floor as he crossed to Suguru, crouching down to catch his shoulder before he tipped forward. Suguru’s skin was clammy, his whole body too loose, but the second Satoru touched him, he went pliant, head dropping to Satoru’s shoulder like it was the only solid place left in the room.

“Fine,” Satoru muttered, though his voice lacked its usual sharp edge. “I’ll take him.” He glanced over his shoulder at the others. “But if he pukes in my car, he’s your problem tomorrow.”

Sukuna snorted, but there was no bite to it. Choso just gave a small nod. Yuji’s face was pinched with worry.

And just like that, Suguru was Satoru’s responsibility again—like he always had been, like maybe he always would be.

The night air hit them hard the second they stepped out of the rehearsal space—cooler than inside, but heavy, damp with summer. Satoru had an arm hooked under Suguru’s as they staggered across the cracked parking lot. Suguru wasn’t putting up much of a fight, but his weight dragged at every step.

“C’mon, big guy,” Satoru muttered, fumbling his keys out of his pocket with one hand. “You’re not dying on me in a parking lot.”

Suguru made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan, his head lolling against Satoru’s shoulder. “Wouldn’t be the worst place.”

“Yeah, well,” Satoru said, unlocking the car and wrestling him into the passenger seat, “I’ve got better things to do than explain your corpse to the cops.”

Suguru slumped against the window, hair sticking to the glass, and closed his eyes. For a second, it was quiet—just the metallic slam of the door, the click of Satoru’s seatbelt. Then, halfway out of the lot, Suguru’s voice cut through the silence, softer than it had been all night.

“You know why it’s always you?”

Satoru tightened his grip on the wheel. “Don’t start, Suguru.”

“I mean it.” Suguru’s words dragged, but there was a thread of clarity in them, something heavy. “It’s always you, because no one else gets it. No one else even tries.”

The headlights washed over empty streets, neon signs flickering in the distance. Satoru kept his eyes fixed on the road, but his jaw was tight. “You’re drunk.”

“Maybe,” Suguru said, tipping his head back, eyes half-lidded. “But drunk me tells the truth. Drunk me says you’re the only thing I’ve got left that feels like home.”

Satoru’s hands whitened on the steering wheel. The words settled in the car like a weight, pressing into the vinyl seats, the dashboard, into him.

Suguru huffed out a laugh, dry and aching. “Pathetic, huh?”

Satoru swallowed hard, forcing his voice to stay light. “You said it, not me.”

But when the traffic light turned red, and he glanced over, Suguru was already half-asleep, lips parted, breathing uneven. The bravado had drained out of him, leaving something small and breakable in its place.

Satoru tapped his fingers against the wheel, staring at him, wondering how many times he could hold him like this before he broke, too.

By the time they pulled up outside Suguru’s place, the guy was dead weight. Satoru killed the engine and just sat there for a beat, staring at the slumped figure in the passenger seat. Suguru’s head had tipped back against the rest, hair spilling like ink, his mouth slack, breathing uneven.

“Christ,” Satoru muttered. “You couldn’t at least stay awake long enough to walk yourself up the stairs?”

No response. Just a low groan when Satoru nudged his shoulder.

Rolling his eyes, Satoru shoved open his own door and walked around. When he opened Suguru’s side, the humid night air rushed in, thick with the scent of asphalt and wet grass. He crouched, bracing himself.

“Alright, King of Tragedy. Guess it’s on me.”

With a grunt, he hooked an arm under Suguru’s knees and the other around his back, hauling him up in one clean motion. The guy was taller, broader, heavier—yet Satoru, all wiry frame and long limbs, managed to lift him bridal style without collapsing. Years of carrying amps and drum kits, apparently, had built something besides calluses.

Suguru’s head lolled against his chest, warm breath ghosting over Satoru’s collarbone. “You’re… so strong, Satoru,” he slurred, almost dreamlike.

“Don’t flirt with me when you’re unconscious,” Satoru hissed, even as his ears burned.

The hallway was a gauntlet—narrow, dim, reeking faintly of smoke and cheap detergent. Satoru’s sneakers squeaked against the linoleum as he maneuvered Suguru’s dead weight up the stairwell. By the time he fumbled the key into Suguru’s door, his arms were screaming, but he refused to give up the bit.

Inside, it was the usual disaster: guitar picks scattered like confetti, clothes draped over every surface, the faint stale scent of whiskey soaked into the walls. Satoru kicked the door shut behind him and made his way to the bedroom.

He lowered Suguru onto the mattress with exaggerated care, like setting down something fragile. Suguru made a soft sound—half sigh, half protest—and immediately curled toward the pillow.

Satoru crouched, brushing damp strands of hair out of his face. In the dim light, Suguru looked impossibly young, stripped of the sharp edges he carried when awake. Vulnerable.

“Idiot,” Satoru whispered. “You’re gonna be the death of me. And probably yourself, at this rate.”

For a moment, he just stayed there, watching the slow rise and fall of Suguru’s chest, his own heartbeat unsteady in his throat. Then he stood, yanked a blanket over him, and flopped into the chair across the room.

He’d stay the night. Just in case.

Chapter Text

The morning light was merciless. Thin blades of sun sliced through the blinds and fell across the mess of Suguru’s room—empty bottles on the nightstand, ash scattered across a chipped plate, notebooks crumpled and half-opened on the floor.

Suguru stirred with a groan, rolling onto his back. His face pinched like the daylight itself was a knife. When his eyes finally cracked open, the first thing he saw was Satoru slouched in the chair across from the bed, sunglasses already on, legs sprawled out like he owned the place.

“You’re staring,” Suguru rasped, voice sandpaper.

Satoru tilted his head lazily. “Yeah, and you’re alive. Guess I did my job.”

That earned him a sharp laugh, ugly and humorless. Suguru sat up too fast, clutching his temples, then spat: “Did I ask you to? I don’t need you hovering over me like some—some fucking guard dog.”

Satoru didn’t flinch. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Guard dog, huh? Cute. You should know by now I’m more of a wolf. And you—” his gaze flicked over Suguru, disheveled and shaking in the morning light—“you’re the kind that keeps throwing himself to the teeth.”

Suguru’s mouth curled into something venomous, even as his hands shook around the cigarette he tried to light. “What, you want me to bite you? That it? You want me to sink my teeth in until you finally get smart and leave?”

The lighter clicked, flame sputtering out. His jaw clenched.

Satoru rose from the chair, crossing the room with long, unhurried strides. He crouched at the edge of the bed, sunglasses slipping down just enough for Suguru to see his eyes—sharp, unguarded.

“Bite me, then,” Satoru murmured, voice low but steady. “Tear me up. Shred me. I’ll still come back.”

Suguru froze, cigarette trembling between his fingers. The silence buzzed like static, louder than the city outside.

He wanted to spit something cruel, wanted to push Satoru so far away he couldn’t be touched. But the words lodged in his throat. His lips trembled, and the only thing that came out was a broken laugh, thin and bitter.

“You’re an idiot.”

Satoru smirked, but it was tired, frayed at the edges. “Yeah. Your idiot, though.”

Suguru looked away, cigarette finally catching flame. The smoke curled between them, sharp and sour. He inhaled like it would steady him, like it would drown out the part of him that wanted to lean into Satoru’s hand instead of snapping at it.

And Satoru just stayed there, crouched by the bed, offering himself up to every wound Suguru had left to give.

Suguru exhaled smoke like a weapon, right into Satoru’s face. “You think you’re so goddamn loyal. So noble. But you’re just pathetic.”

Satoru didn’t blink.

“You hang around like a stray dog hoping I’ll throw you scraps. You know what you are to me, Satoru? A crutch. That’s it. Something to lean on when I’m too drunk to walk, too gone to keep from drowning. Nothing more.”

The words were acid, spilling fast, ugly. His voice shook with it, but he forced the knife in deeper. “I could replace you tomorrow. Any asshole on the street could play babysitter, could haul me home when I’ve had too much. You’re not special. You’re just convenient.”

Satoru’s jaw tightened—so subtle most people wouldn’t notice. But Suguru knew him too well. Knew it hit.

“And don’t give me that look,” Suguru sneered, stubbing his cigarette out half-finished. “Like you’re some martyr. Like you’re waiting for me to—what? Love you back? That it? You want me to admit you’re the best thing I’ve got?” He laughed, sharp and hollow. “Newsflash: you’re not. You’re just the one too stubborn to leave.”

For a moment, the room rang with silence, so heavy it could choke.

Satoru stayed crouched by the bed, shoulders stiff, hands clenched loosely at his knees. Sunglasses hid his eyes again, but Suguru didn’t need to see them. He could feel the weight of them.

Finally, Satoru spoke, voice flat. “If that’s what you need to believe, fine.”

Suguru opened his mouth, ready to twist the knife further—only to find nothing left but the bitter taste of ash in his throat.

Satoru stood, slow and deliberate, as though every movement weighed a hundred pounds. “Doesn’t change the fact I’ll still be here tomorrow.”

It landed not as devotion but as a wound—one Suguru himself had carved.

Suguru had run himself hoarse, the cigarette burned down to nothing in the tray, his throat scraped raw with venom he couldn’t reel back. His head throbbed, heavy with alcohol, heavy with regret—but he refused to let it show. He sprawled back into the sheets, glaring sideways at the ceiling, daring Satoru to crumble.

But Satoru didn’t.

He stood there for a long beat, still as stone, sunglasses a wall between them. Then, with no more than a sigh—sharp, controlled—he turned and walked out. No retort. No breaking. No crack in his voice to betray the way the words had sunk in.

Suguru hated that. Hated it more than if Satoru had shouted, more than if he’d slammed a fist into the wall. At least anger meant he cared. This—this calm—felt unbearable.

From the kitchen came the quiet clatter of cupboards, the hiss of a pan warming on the stove. The faint shuffle of someone too familiar with the space, moving like he owned it. Like nothing had been said at all.

Suguru pressed the heel of his palm into his eyes. He wanted to scream again, to drag Satoru back here and force him to break. To prove he wasn’t just some blank wall he could throw knives at forever.

The smell hit him first—eggs, the faint toast of bread, butter melting slow. Ordinary. Domestic. It twisted his gut in ways the alcohol hadn’t.

Minutes later, Satoru reappeared at the door with a plate in one hand, still refusing to look rattled. He set it down on the nightstand with mechanical care. “Eat something before you choke on your own bitterness,” he said, voice flat, even.

Suguru barked a laugh that came out too close to a sob. “What are you, my mother?”

Satoru didn’t rise to it. Just adjusted his sunglasses, shoved his hands into his pockets. “No,” he muttered. “She left.”

Suguru froze. The words landed heavier than any insult he’d thrown.

And Satoru left it at that, retreating back toward the kitchen without waiting for a reaction. No fight. No plea. Just breakfast cooling on the nightstand, a quiet offering he knew Suguru didn’t deserve—but gave anyway.

The kitchen had always been too small for two people, but that never stopped Satoru from planting himself in the middle of it like he owned the place. Barefoot, glasses slipping down his nose, shirt hanging loose on one shoulder—he moved like the world bent itself around him. Suguru tried not to watch, failed every time.

Satoru was stirring pasta in a pot that was way too big for two. He had music playing from his phone, something loud and chaotic, and was mouthing the words between exaggerated hip sways like he was on stage.

“Stop,” Suguru muttered, leaning against the counter with a knife in hand. He’d been chopping vegetables, or trying to, but watching Satoru perform like a drunken flamingo wasn’t exactly helping his concentration.

“Stop what?” Satoru smirked, twirling the spoon like a drumstick.

“You know what.”

“Uh, no, actually, I don’t. Please elaborate. Preferably with interpretive dance.”

Suguru threw a piece of zucchini at him. Satoru dodged dramatically, the spoon nearly slipping out of his hand, and then popped the zucchini in his mouth with a grin.

“Perfect aim, darling,” he said around it. “Could’ve gone pro with that arm.”

Darling. He tossed it out so easily, like it meant nothing. Suguru’s throat went tight around words he would never say. Instead, he clicked his tongue and went back to chopping, slower now, so he wouldn’t slice his fingers open while distracted by the way Satoru’s hair kept falling into his eyes.

It smelled like garlic and tomatoes and home. A strange kind of home, one they’d built between half-broken furniture and stacks of textbooks. Suguru had never thought about domesticity before Satoru. Never thought he’d crave the simple intimacy of someone leaning too close while reaching for the salt, of their elbows brushing when they moved around the same cramped space.

“You’re burning it,” Suguru said when Satoru got too distracted dancing again.

“I am not.”

“You are.”

Satoru peeked into the pot, swore under his breath, and scrambled to turn down the heat. Suguru snorted, biting back a smile. He liked catching him like this—unguarded, messy, human.

When Satoru turned back, he had sauce splattered on his cheekbone. Suguru reached out before he could think, thumb brushing it away. He meant to pull back immediately, but Satoru’s gaze caught his, sharp and bright even behind the fogged lenses.

“Thanks, mama,” Satoru teased, though his voice was softer than usual, like he’d noticed the slip in Suguru’s mask.

Suguru forced a scoff, forced his hand back to the knife. “You’re hopeless.”

The words left his mouth rougher than he meant, so he ducked his head to the cutting board, pretending to focus on the last of the zucchini. But his hand wasn’t steady, and his chest wasn’t steady, and the kitchen felt too full of Satoru—his humming, his clattering, his heat radiating like a second stove.

“Hopelessly handsome, you mean,” Satoru shot back without missing a beat, tossing in a fistful of basil like he’d just invented cooking.

Suguru wanted to roll his eyes, but all that came out was a laugh—small, unwilling, but real. It startled him. How easy it was, to laugh when he shouldn’t, when Satoru was around.

“Don’t laugh,” Satoru said, pointing the spoon at him like an accusation. “That’s encouragement. You’ll only make me worse.”

“You’re already the worst.”

“Correction: the best at being the worst.”

Suguru set the knife down, palms pressed flat against the counter, trying to ground himself. He told himself it was just another night, just another meal. But the truth was Satoru had a way of turning the ordinary into something unbearable—like every movement mattered, like every word could tip the scale between friendship and something deeper Suguru was terrified to name.

Satoru carried the pot to the sink with a triumphant flourish, steam fogging his glasses, curls sticking damp to his forehead. He looked ridiculous. He looked divine.

And Suguru, against his better judgment, wanted.

Wanted things he shouldn’t, wanted to press his face into the curve of Satoru’s neck, wanted to hold this stupid kitchen moment forever.

Instead, he leaned back against the counter and said, “You know, you cook like you fight.”

“Oh?” Satoru raised a brow.

“Reckless. Too loud. Absolutely convinced you’re winning even when you’re burning the pan.”

Satoru barked out a laugh, the sound filling every corner of the cramped apartment. Then he stepped closer, invading Suguru’s space the way he always did, grinning with that unbearable brightness.

“Good thing you’re here to save me then, huh?” he said, and it wasn’t a joke this time, not really.

Suguru swallowed hard, heat crawling up his throat. He couldn’t answer, not without saying too much. So he shoved past Satoru to grab plates from the cupboard, muttering, “Let’s just eat before you set the place on fire.”

Satoru let him go, but Suguru felt the weight of his gaze linger, heavier than any hand on his shoulder.

And for the rest of the night, every bite of pasta tasted like something he couldn’t admit out loud.

The pasta had gone cold in his memory by the time Suguru blinked himself back into the present. He could almost still hear Satoru laughing in that too-small kitchen, could still feel the way he used to be the one steadying him—cutting through the recklessness, dragging him back from the edge of his own chaos. Back then, Suguru had been the anchor. The one Satoru leaned toward when the noise got too loud, when the expectations threatened to drown him.

And now?

Now he was the storm.

The thought sank like a stone in his gut. He’d gone from being Satoru’s savior—the one person who could ground him—to the shadow that haunted him, the one Satoru never stopped trying to pull from the wreckage. Every sharp word, every bitter laugh, every night he stumbled home reeking of smoke and whiskey… each one was a new knife he pressed into Satoru’s open palms.

Suguru dragged a hand down his face, hating how hot his eyes burned. He could see it so clearly: Satoru standing at the stove this morning, pretending calm, pretending unshakable. The way he plated breakfast like it was armor, like scrambled eggs and toast could keep them from collapsing in on themselves.

Satoru didn’t break in front of him anymore. Maybe he’d learned not to.

And that cut deeper than any insult Suguru had ever thrown.

Because once upon a time, Suguru had been the one person who could make Satoru unravel, who could shoulder his weight and call it love. Now, he was the reason Satoru stayed standing—because if he didn’t, everything else would fall apart.

His savior days were gone. His reflection now was something uglier: a villain in the story they’d written together, the monster he’d forced Satoru to fight every single day.

Suguru pressed his forehead to the pillow, eyes shut tight, the memory of that cramped college kitchen mocking him. Garlic, laughter, the brush of a thumb against his cheek—it all felt like another life.

And maybe it was.

Suguru grunted before standing up and taking his breakfast to the kitchen. He isn't that pathetic. 

Satoru didn’t say anything. He just slid into the chair across from him, mug in hand, glasses perched crooked on his nose. His face gave nothing away, but his silence was louder than any accusation.

Suguru stared at the food. His stomach turned at the thought of eating, but the weight of Satoru’s eyes—steady, unyielding, waiting—was heavier.

With a sigh, he picked up the fork. The scrape of metal against porcelain was almost unbearable in the quiet. He stabbed at the eggs, brought a bite to his mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. Each motion felt like swallowing down guilt, like forcing down pieces of a life he didn’t deserve anymore.

Satoru didn’t comment, didn’t gloat, didn’t soften. He just sipped his coffee, watching with that unreadable calm.

“Happy now?” Suguru muttered, his voice rough.

“Not really,” Satoru said. No bite to it, no sharp edge. Just truth.

Suguru gritted his teeth and took another bite, slower this time. It tasted like memory—like their kitchen years ago, like mornings that used to be soft and unguarded. He hated it. He hated how much he wanted to keep tasting it, how much the normalcy clawed at him.

Halfway through the plate, he couldn’t stop himself. “You shouldn’t take care of me,” he said, the words cracking in his throat. “I don’t… I don’t deserve it.”

Satoru finally set his mug down. Leaned forward. His gaze caught Suguru like a fist around the throat.

“Tough luck,” he said simply. “I’m not stopping.”

Suguru looked down at his plate, blinking hard. The fork trembled in his hand, but he forced himself to lift another bite. Chewed. Swallowed. If he let himself cry, he’d choke.

So he kept eating. Because if he couldn’t be Satoru’s savior anymore, the least he could do was not spit out the food Satoru made with steady, shaking hands.

The fork clattered against the plate when Suguru shoved it away, half the food still untouched. His jaw worked, tight, restless. He didn’t look at Satoru, not when the silence pressed down so hard it felt like a second skin.

Satoru leaned forward anyway, elbows on the table, voice quieter than usual. “You should finish it. You’ll feel better if you eat something.”

That did it. Suguru’s head snapped up, eyes sharp and bloodshot, mouth twisting into a bitter grin. “You think breakfast fixes this? You think your eggs are enough to keep me together?”

Satoru didn’t flinch. He just held the look, steady and infuriatingly calm. “No. But it’s something.”

Suguru barked out a laugh, harsh and humorless. “God, you’re pathetic.” His voice cracked, but he bit down harder, forcing the venom through clenched teeth. “Always playing the martyr. Always cleaning up after me, like that’s all you’re good for. Maybe it is.”

The words hit sharp, and Suguru wanted them to. He wanted to see a crack in Satoru’s face, wanted to see him hurt the way he hurt.

But Satoru only exhaled, slow, as if he’d been expecting the bite all along. “If that’s all I’m good for, then fine,” he said. “I’ll keep doing it.”

“Stop it,” Suguru snapped, voice rising now. “Stop acting like you’re unshakable. Stop pretending you don’t care that I’m tearing us both apart.”

Satoru’s lips twitched into something almost like a smile, but it was worn, brittle. “I care,” he said. “More than anything. That’s why I’m still here.”

Suguru’s chest heaved, anger and grief knotted together until he could barely breathe. He wanted to throw the plate at the wall, wanted to grab Satoru by the collar and scream leave me the fuck alone. But he didn’t move. He just sat there, teeth bared like a dog too far gone to be tamed, furious at the one person who kept reaching his hand out anyway.

And Satoru let him. Took the bite, took the fury, without fighting back. Because if all Suguru had left in him was anger, Satoru would carry that too.

Suguru’s hands curled into fists on the table, nails biting crescents into his palms. His whole body buzzed with the urge to lash out, to push until Satoru finally broke. Because if he couldn’t save him, then maybe the only thing left was to destroy whatever tether still bound them together.

“You don’t get it,” Suguru spat, his voice raw, trembling with fury. “You don’t save me—you trap me. Every time you look at me like I’m worth something, you make it harder to walk away. Harder to just—” He cut himself off with a sharp inhale, chest heaving.

Satoru stayed quiet, gaze steady. Too steady.

“God, you’re pathetic,” Suguru hissed, the words sharper this time, meant to wound. “You think this—” he jabbed a finger at the plate of half-eaten eggs, at the quiet kitchen, at them—“means anything? It doesn’t. You don’t mean anything. You’re just… you’re just another chain around my fucking neck.”

Satoru blinked, slowly. His expression didn’t falter, but something in his eyes flickered.

Suguru saw it. Pressed harder.

“You were supposed to be my freedom, remember?” His voice cracked, bitter and aching, but he forced it sharper, crueler. “You were supposed to be the one person who didn’t make me feel like I was suffocating. And now? Now you’re worse than all of them. You’re the cage I can’t break out of. You’re the reason I can’t breathe.”

The words echoed in the quiet, ugly and final. Suguru’s chest hurt with every breath, but he didn’t take them back. He couldn’t.

Because in that moment, he wanted to hurt Satoru more than he wanted to save him.

And the silence that followed told him he’d succeeded.

The silence stretched until it felt unbearable, heavy as stone pressing on Suguru’s chest. He half expected Satoru to argue, to snap back, to throw something—anything—to prove he wasn’t the unshakable wall Suguru kept slamming himself against.

But Satoru didn’t.

He just set his coffee mug down with a quiet clink, the sound far too soft for the violence Suguru had just hurled at him. His chair scraped against the floor as he stood, every movement deliberate, controlled.

Suguru’s pulse spiked. “That’s it?” he demanded, though his throat was raw. “That’s all you’ve got?”

Satoru didn’t answer. He adjusted the sleeve of his shirt, pushed his glasses higher on his nose, and walked to the door. Not fast. Not slow. Just steady, the way he always was.

“Say something,” Suguru barked, almost panicked now. The anger had curdled into something sharp and desperate. “Don’t you fucking walk away from me!”

Satoru’s hand paused on the doorframe. For a second, Suguru thought he’d turn around, that he’d see fire in those pale eyes, that he’d finally get the explosion he was begging for.

But Satoru only said, voice low and even, “I’m not your cage.”

And then he was gone.

The door clicked shut, quiet as the end of a prayer.

Suguru sat alone at the table, the half-eaten breakfast cooling in front of him, the echo of his own words clawing up the walls until it was all he could hear.

Chapter Text

Suguru didn’t bother cleaning the plate. Didn’t bother turning off the lights or locking the door behind Satoru. He just stood there for a long moment, staring at the empty doorway, the faint smell of coffee and eggs still clinging to the air. It made him sick. It made him ache.

Eventually, he moved—slow, mechanical—back to the couch where he’d been earlier. The sheets were still rumpled from when Satoru had carried him there the night before, still faintly warm from where Satoru had sat. He lowered himself down, face pressed to the cushion, breathing in the scent of detergent and something softer—Satoru’s cologne, maybe. It hit him like a fist.

His body felt heavy, hollowed out. He wanted to scream, to break something, to undo what he’d just said, but he couldn’t move. His mouth was dry, his eyes burned, and he hated himself for how quiet the world felt without Satoru’s presence to fill it.

For a moment, he imagined the old days again—the kitchen, the laughter, Satoru bumping his hip into him just to get a rise out of him. The version of them before it all went wrong. The version where Satoru’s eyes lit up when he looked at him, not dimmed like they had this morning.

He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. The hum of the refrigerator filled the silence. He wanted to call out—to say come back, or I didn’t mean it, or I still love you, even when I don’t know how. But his throat closed around every word.

So he just shut his eyes and let the day pass over him, waiting for the sound of the door that never came.

Then, Suguru woke up, expecting a pounding headache but only being met with the soft sound of breathing and a gentle warmth pressed against his side. The world was tinted gold—the kind of sleepy morning light that filtered through sheer curtains and painted everything softer than it deserved to be. His body felt weightless, heavy with that post-sleep haze, the kind that made the edges between dream and memory blur.

It was warm. Too warm.

He blinked against the sunlight, head turning just enough to see the shape beside him—Satoru, sprawled out like he owned the bed, like he always did. His hair was a ridiculous mess, white strands falling over his forehead, and the sheet was draped dangerously low over his hips. He was shirtless, of course, because of course he was, and his pale skin caught the morning glow in a way that almost hurt to look at.

Satoru’s glasses sat crooked on the bridge of his nose, one arm hooked behind his head, the other holding open a book that he seemed completely absorbed in. His lips were parted slightly—just barely smiling, like he’d been reading something funny, or maybe like he’d been watching Suguru stir awake and was too amused to hide it.

For a moment, Suguru just… stared. The air felt thick and sweet, humming faintly with a quiet that was too fragile to disturb. It was familiar—the smell of the room, the soft buzz of cicadas outside, the faint ticking of a clock on the dresser. He knew this room. He knew this light. He knew this Satoru.

And yet, something didn’t add up. His body didn’t ache the way it should’ve after a night like last night. There wasn’t the dull throb of a hangover behind his eyes, no sour taste in his mouth, no evidence of the venom he’d spat hours ago. Just stillness. Just comfort. Just—

“Slept in again,” Satoru murmured without looking up from his book, his voice low, lazy, fond in a way Suguru hadn’t heard in years. “I was starting to think I’d have to kick you awake.”

Suguru’s throat tightened. That tone—playful, teasing, but utterly soft. The one Satoru used before life got loud. Before everything started breaking.

His mouth felt dry. “...What time is it?”

Satoru finally looked at him then, pushing his glasses up with one finger, that familiar grin curling across his face. “Almost noon. We were supposed to meet Shoko, remember?”

Shoko. Noon. Meet. Words that felt like pieces of something old. Something tender.

Suguru’s chest ached as he looked around again—the faint blue curtains fluttering by the window, the shelf cluttered with notebooks and old manga, the faint smell of sunscreen and laundry detergent. His pulse stumbled over itself.

Because this wasn’t their apartment.
This was Satoru’s old room.
And they weren’t twenty-two and falling apart.
They were fifteen.

Satoru’s voice pulled him back. “You drool in your sleep, y’know. It’s kinda gross.”

Suguru blinked at him, stunned for a moment, then scoffed—quiet, breathy, disbelieving. “You’re imagining things.”

“Am I?” Satoru shut his book, leaning onto one elbow and grinning like the sun itself. “Because I definitely felt you trying to steal my pillow last night.”

There was that same spark in his eyes—annoying, bright, stupidly alive. Suguru wanted to say something cruel, something to shatter the spell, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, he just stared at him, the way he used to before he learned how to look away.

And for a fleeting second—just one—he let himself believe this was real.
That there wasn’t a storm waiting for them.
That this was what morning was supposed to feel like.

The day unfolded like something stolen out of time—one of those endless teenage summers that felt like it could never break.

They’d eaten cereal straight from the box, Satoru crunching obnoxiously loud while sitting cross-legged on the kitchen counter, flicking pieces at Suguru whenever he said something sarcastic. The air smelled faintly of milk and sunlight. A radio played quietly in the background—something sugary and overplayed—but Satoru hummed along anyway, off-key and bright.

Suguru remembered this. The way their laughter bounced off the tile. The way Satoru’s grin made everything else seem small. The way mornings could feel like the beginning of forever.

He could feel himself easing into it without meaning to. His body remembering softness, even when his mind resisted.

“Hey,” Satoru said suddenly, grabbing Suguru’s wrist as he tried to escape the kitchen. “We should go to the river today.”

“The river?”

“Yeah. C’mon—it’s hot as hell out. We’ll grab shaved ice and hang out by the bank. You can pretend to hate it like you always do.”

Suguru snorted. “You’re delusional if you think I’m spending all day watching you cannonball into the water like a child.”

“You love it,” Satoru shot back, flashing that ridiculous grin again—the one that made his teeth look too sharp and his heart too open.

And maybe he did love it. Maybe he always had.

The day melted into gold and laughter. They sprawled out in the grass, shoes kicked off, their arms brushing every so often in a way that neither of them acknowledged. The cicadas screamed overhead, and the sky was too blue to look at for long. Satoru lay on his back, hair fanning out like a halo, sunglasses crooked on his nose.

Suguru had been sketching him once—he remembered that now. His younger self had a notebook open beside him, the corner of a page smudged with pencil. Satoru, oblivious, had been trying to skip stones and failing miserably.

“You’re staring,” Satoru said without looking up.

“You’re loud.”

“You love that too.”

Suguru rolled his eyes, but there was no bite in it. His chest hurt in that quiet, nostalgic way—the kind that came from remembering joy as if it were a ghost. Every part of this felt impossibly tender, like life had been kind to them once, and he’d forgotten what that felt like.

He wanted to reach out. To touch Satoru’s wrist. To feel the warmth of him, real and solid and alive.
But he didn’t. He just breathed, pretending it was enough.

The day drifted on—shaved ice melting too fast, their hands stained blue and red, Satoru laughing until he nearly fell into the water. When they finally walked home, barefoot and sun-drenched, the world felt smaller in the best possible way.

That night, they lay side by side again, the window cracked open to let the warm air in. Satoru was talking about constellations—how he could never actually find them but always pretended to for Suguru’s sake.

“See that one?” he said, pointing vaguely at nothing. “That’s us. The one that never burns out.”

Suguru smiled in the dark, faint and sad. “That’s not how stars work, idiot.”

“Then we’ll break the rule,” Satoru murmured, voice soft now. “We always do.”

The quiet between them was perfect. Suguru’s eyelids grew heavy, his body sinking into the mattress.

They fell asleep together. As always.

Then Suguru opened his eyes again, blinking blearily at the sunlight that so rudely blinded him.

The air was warm and still, filled with sunlight and the soft rustle of bedsheets as Satoru shifted beside him. Suguru blinked up at the ceiling, the plaster smooth and uncracked, painted a pale sky blue. He remembered this room—the posters of comic panels on the walls, the faint scent of laundry soap and lemon cleaner, the desk littered with homework and candy wrappers.

It was a summer morning. School was out, cicadas were screaming outside, and nothing hurt.

Satoru was humming under his breath, tapping a rhythm against his thigh, eyes half-lidded behind his glasses. “You’re spacing out again,” he said, the edge of a grin tugging at his mouth.

Suguru turned his head, blinking slowly. “Just tired.”

Satoru reached over and flicked his forehead. “You always say that when you’re thinking too hard.”

Suguru frowned but didn’t protest. There was no need. He felt the corners of his mouth twitch, unwilling but soft, and Satoru caught it—grinning fully now, all teeth and sunlight. He stretched like a cat, his arm brushing Suguru’s shoulder as he sat up.

“C’mon,” he said, standing in nothing but boxers and a lazy smile. “Let’s make breakfast before my mom comes in and realizes we ate all the cereal again.”

Suguru groaned, pulling the blanket up over his face. “You make it.”

“You burned toast *once* and now you think I’m your housewife.”

“I never said that,” Suguru said, voice muffled by the blanket.

“You implied it.”

He heard Satoru’s exaggerated sigh, the soft pad of his bare feet on the floor. The bed dipped when Satoru leaned back down and tugged at the blanket. “If you don’t get up, I’ll—”

“What?”

“I’ll tickle you.”

Suguru peeked out from under the blanket just in time to see that stupid smirk and those impossibly blue eyes. “You wouldn’t.”

“Oh, I *definitely* would.”

And he did.

It was chaos—laughter echoing off the walls, Suguru gasping and kicking at him, Satoru grinning like a maniac as he pinned him with ridiculous ease. They tumbled off the bed, sheets tangled around their legs, and Suguru’s breath hitched somewhere between a laugh and a gasp when Satoru landed on top of him, both of them flushed and breathless.

Satoru’s grin faltered for half a second. Just enough for Suguru to notice.

Then it was back again, and Satoru rolled off, flinging an arm over his eyes. “Okay, fine. You win. No breakfast for either of us.”

Suguru turned onto his side, the laughter still sitting in his chest like something alive. “You’re hopeless,” he murmured.

“Yeah,” Satoru said quietly, voice half-lost in the hum of summer. “But you still hang around.”

They made breakfast eventually. Burned the toast again. Got yelled at for leaving the stove on. Satoru teased him mercilessly for drinking milk straight from the carton, and Suguru threw a dish towel at him. It was all so simple—stupid, loud, and real. The kind of morning that stretched lazily into afternoon, where time didn’t matter and neither of them knew enough to fear the future.

They ended up on the couch, Satoru sprawled out with his legs over Suguru’s lap, flipping through channels. His hair was still damp from a shower, sticking up at odd angles, and Suguru had been pretending not to notice how easily his chest rose and fell.

“You ever think about the future?” Satoru asked suddenly, eyes still on the screen.

Suguru hesitated. “Sometimes.”

“Yeah? What’s it look like?”

Suguru shrugged. “Dunno. You’ll probably be some kind of scientist. Or an astronaut.”

Satoru laughed. “And you?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

It was quiet for a moment, the kind of quiet that wasn’t heavy—just full. Then Satoru shifted, resting his head against Suguru’s shoulder, the weight of it both grounding and unbearable.

“Stay there,” Suguru said softly, without thinking.

Satoru’s laugh came out small. “Where else would I go?”

The warmth of him pressed close, the rhythm of his breathing syncing with Suguru’s—it was too much. Suguru’s chest ached with something that didn’t have a name yet, something that felt too big for him to hold.

The sun began to sink outside, painting the room gold and pink. Satoru’s hair glowed in the light, and Suguru wanted to say something—anything—but instead he leaned back, closing his eyes.

The world felt steady. Safe. Unbreakable.

Until it wasn’t.

Suguru’s breath hitched. The warmth shifted. The sound of cicadas warped into something harsher—an echo, a buzz. When he opened his eyes again, the light was wrong. Too dark, too cold. The walls bled into shadows.

And then came the whisper.
Try it once. Just once.

His stomach dropped. The couch was gone. His Satoru was gone. He was back in an alley he didn’t remember walking into, standing with a handful of strangers whose faces blurred like smudged paint. Someone laughed. A lighter flicked. The smell of smoke and something chemical burned his nose.

He tried to step back, but his legs didn’t listen. His hand shook. His mouth was dry.
And then, before he could stop himself, he took it.

The warmth hit him first. Then the weightlessness. Then—
Nothing.

Suguru gasped, jerking upright. The world snapped back into focus.

He was back in the present—alone, drenched in sweat, the afternoon sun barely beginning to sink outside. The sheets were cold beside him.

Satoru was gone.

The clock on the wall ticked softly, mocking him. Two hours earlier than when he’d last seen him. Two hours before everything broke again.

He pressed his palms into his eyes, forcing his breath to steady, the taste of that old memory still thick on his tongue.

It wasn’t real.
It wasn’t real.
But God, it felt like it should’ve been.

Stupid Satoru and his stupid loving smile. 
Stupid Satoru and his stupid love for Suguru.

Satoru sat on the curb outside the studio, his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands. The concrete was hot even through his jeans, and the faint rumble of passing cars filled the silence he refused to break. His guitar pick still dangled from his wrist by a piece of red string — a habit he never outgrew, one Suguru used to tease him for.

He dragged in a slow breath and stared out at the empty street. The sun had dipped behind the neighboring buildings, the sky streaked in orange and violet, and everything smelled faintly of summer rain that hadn’t come yet.

He’d said nothing when Suguru snapped. Didn’t yell back. Didn’t slam the door. He’d just… left. Because if he stayed, he might’ve said something that couldn’t be unsaid. And God knew they’d done enough of that already.

Satoru rubbed his eyes, the motion more bone-deep exhaustion than anything else. He didn’t even know what he’d been hoping for anymore. Maybe that Suguru would let him in again. Maybe that the old Suguru — the one who laughed until he cried, who learned songs just to play them badly for attention, who used to curl against Satoru’s side and hum along to stupid pop ballads — would look up and *see* him.

Instead, all he saw now was a ghost of him.

A hand appeared in his peripheral vision, holding out a can of iced coffee. “You look like shit,” Sukuna said, sitting down beside him with a grunt.

Satoru huffed a quiet laugh, taking the can. “Thanks. That’s exactly what I was going for.”

Choso followed a second later, plopping down on his other side. He didn’t say anything, just leaned forward with his arms on his knees. Yuji was still inside, practicing chords on his bass, his laugh occasionally spilling out through the cracked door.

Satoru cracked the can open but didn’t drink. “He’s asleep,” he said quietly.

“Yeah?” Sukuna asked, lighting a cigarette.

“Yeah.” His voice came out rough. “If you can call it that.”

The flame clicked out. Smoke curled upward between them, soft and grey.

Sukuna studied him for a moment, then looked away. “He’s not your responsibility, you know.”

“I know.”

“You keep saying that,” Choso murmured.

Satoru didn’t reply. He just stared at the condensation sliding down the can in his hand.

The truth was, he couldn’t stop. He’d tried. God, he’d tried to cut the cord, to convince himself he wasn’t still that same kid waiting for Suguru to look back at him — but every time he saw him, every time he caught the edge of his smile or the tremor in his voice, he felt that same gravitational pull. Like Suguru was still the sun, even when he was burning himself out.

Sukuna exhaled, the smoke drifting toward the sky. “You ever think he’s doing this because he knows you’ll pick up the pieces?”

Satoru’s fingers tightened around the can. The metal creaked faintly. “Maybe.”

“Then stop picking them up.”

He gave a quiet laugh — humorless, tired. “And let him cut his hands on them?”

Sukuna looked at him, eyes narrowing. “You’re gonna bleed out trying to save him.”

“Then I’ll bleed,” Satoru said simply.

That shut them up.

The streetlight flickered on above them, bathing the curb in pale yellow. Yuji’s laughter echoed again from inside — bright, unbothered, young. It reminded Satoru of a time before things started to rot at the edges, when they were all just kids with big dreams and cheap instruments.

He sighed and leaned back against the curb, the night air cooling his skin. The coffee in his hand had gone warm, but he drank it anyway.

Maybe this was how it’d always be — him sitting outside on the curb, pretending to run errands, waiting for Suguru to stop burning.

He tilted his head back, watching the stars blink faintly overhead. “You ever think we peaked too early?” he asked softly.

Sukuna snorted. “You mean emotionally or career-wise?”

“Both,” Satoru said, lips twitching.

Choso glanced toward the studio, where Yuji’s off-key humming floated through the open window. “We’re not done yet,” he said quietly.

Satoru’s gaze softened. “No,” he agreed. “We’re not.”

But when he looked up again — at the quiet sky, at the open windows, at the ghost of laughter in his memory — he wasn’t sure if he was talking about the band or about Suguru.

And that uncertainty hurt more than anything else.

“Who’s with Yuji?” Satoru asked after a moment, his voice breaking the quiet. He tilted his head toward the studio door, where another round of laughter spilled out — bright, unrestrained, the kind that shook the walls. “He doesn’t laugh that much unless someone’s watching.”

Choso glanced toward the door, a knowing little smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Kid with the black hair,” he said. “Megumi, I think? Met him after our last gig. He’s been hanging around lately.”

Satoru blinked. “Megumi?”

“Yeah,” Sukuna said, flicking his ash into the gutter. “Yuji brought him. Quiet one. Stares a lot.”

“Like you used to,” Choso teased.

Satoru huffed out a small laugh through his nose, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He leaned back on his palms, gazing through the cracked door where the faint light from inside bled into the dark street.

He could just make them out — Yuji sitting cross-legged on the floor, Megumi sprawled next to him, his hair falling in his face as he tuned Yuji’s bass. Yuji was laughing about something, face flushed and open, and Megumi tried not to smile but failed miserably. It was soft, subtle — the kind of thing that didn’t need to be loud to mean everything.

Something in Satoru’s chest tightened.

It was stupid, maybe, to feel this much over a pair of kids. But watching them was like looking into a mirror — a cruel one that reflected all the things he used to have. Yuji with his open heart and his stupid, stubborn optimism; Megumi with his careful touch and quiet steadiness. It was him and Suguru, years ago, in the cracked mirror of memory — before the drugs, before the nights that ended in shouting and shaking hands and cigarette burns on the balcony. Before love turned into something sharp.

“Cute,” Sukuna muttered, smoke curling from his lips. “You think it’s new?”

“Brand new,” Choso said. “You can tell by the way Yuji keeps pretending to check his tuning. Kid’s glowing.”

Satoru smiled faintly, but it didn’t last. His fingers found the edge of his guitar pick again, rolling it between them like a nervous habit. “They’re gonna think it lasts forever,” he murmured.

Sukuna glanced at him. “You sound like an old man.”

“Yeah,” Satoru said quietly. “Feels like it, sometimes.”

He watched as Yuji leaned closer, their heads nearly touching, and something tender and unspoken passed between them. It wasn’t fireworks or grand gestures — just two people orbiting each other naturally, like they didn’t know how not to.

And God, it hurt.

Because that was him and Suguru once — two kids who thought the world couldn’t touch them, who sang love songs in the kitchen and burned pancakes, who believed music and laughter were enough to keep the dark out.

He could still see it: Suguru sitting cross-legged on his childhood bed, guitar in his lap, telling him he was too sentimental for writing lyrics that sounded like they believed in forever.

“Maybe I did,” Satoru whispered, half to himself.

“Hmm?” Choso asked.

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head with a tired smile. “Just… thinking about when I thought things were simple.”

Inside, Yuji was laughing again — loud and free and too young to know what kind of pain came after love like that.

Satoru took another sip of his now-lukewarm coffee, the bitter taste grounding him in the present. “Let them have it,” he murmured. “While it still feels like it’ll never end.”

Neither of the others replied, but they didn’t need to. The silence that followed was gentle this time — the kind that didn’t demand words.

And Satoru stayed there, listening to the muffled laughter through the open door, watching the faint outlines of two kids discovering what love felt like for the first time.

For just a second, he let himself believe that maybe, somewhere deep inside, a part of him and Suguru was still sitting in that same light — still laughing, still untouched, still whole.