Chapter Text
Now, Suguru faces him again, like he once did on his side in his bed at the school. But there are two many things in between them, and none of them are necessarily soft and loving.
It had been three years and Suguru can still see Satoru in white bed sheets and the sky, pineapples in stars, freshly sharpened wooden pencils and in the lenses of stupid sunglasses. His presence is unavoidable, Suguru realizes. No one ever says his first name, not like Satoru did. And sometimes it feels like they’re both friends again, like, Satoru will loudly parade through his door, like those two years of distance between Riko’s death and Suguru finally giving up didn’t happen.
Suguru was buying things for dinner. Parsley, salmon, rice, chicken broth, and green onions. But, he looked up from examining onions, into a face he mapped out years ago. And somehow, he wasn’t surprised. It was like he knew the whole time he would find him again.
They didn’t fight, surprisingly, like Suguru had thought. Maybe the sight of Suguru simply shopping, like a normal person, was too jarring. It had been years.
Presently, he and Satoru are leaning against opposite ends of an alley, much too close, all the things unsaid bunched in between them. Suguru wonders why he doesn’t just leave, or attack him. He wonders the same for his opposite. But then, he speaks.
“It doesn't have to be like this,” Satoru says. He’s too proud to beg, always has been; but also too desperate to say nothing and let him go again. “We could leave this place, go somewhere where it’s just the two of us. Like we used to talk about.”
They did use to talk about running away, from a due assignment or mission in a dirty town, trivial things that didn't weigh as much as what they would be running from now.
Suguru frowns. His first words towards Satoru in years are: “I don’t trust that.”
“How could you refuse?”
“Because I have something to accomplish, a purpose and goal. And I very much doubt you’d be able to put away all the power in the world so you could run away and live on the beach with me.”
“I never said anything about the beach.” Satoru observes, raising an eyebrow.
Suguru blinks, then smiles, catching himself. Satoru. Always watching his words wide-eyed. “You didn’t need to,”
Satoru stared at him. “So this is it then. You’re staying, and I’m staying.”
“I guess so,”
“I can’t keep on letting you go, Geto.”
“I know. You should stop running into me.”
“You should stop making yourself easy to find.”
Suguru laughed.
“What?” Satoru demanded, bristling.
“Don’t you see? I’m not. There’s a reason no sorcerer can track me down, why to everyone I’ve disappeared. It’s because it’s you , Gojo.”
Because Satoru will always be able to find him. Because he and Satoru will always be drawn to each other, and they can’t help the attraction between them. Sooner or later, no matter the distance, they’ll snap together. And Suguru has not learned how to sever that connection.
“I can’t say that running away with you doesn’t sound… nice. Because it does,” It does. “But we're not kids anymore. It’s too late, Gojo. You know what I’ve done, and you’ve already proved you don’t need anyone else.”
“That’s not true-” Satoru begins to say, but trails off, because it is. “Are you saying that we could do that if things were different? Because I could fix it all. If you were willing to walk away from your religious group, from your agenda, I could still fix everything you’ve done.”
“Even you don’t have that power, Gojo. I know what I’ve done, and I don't want to fix it,” Suguru replies. He adds, without thinking, “I have some things I can’t walk just away from now.” He raises his paper grocery bag to his chest. Satoru catches on too quickly.
“You’re kidding.”
Shit, why did he tell him, why did he tell him, why the fuck did he tell him ? Satoru isn’t his friend anymore, nothing closer, and he doesn’t know why he forgets this when Satoru is promising a future for them.
His girls- well, his girls are childhood innocence personified. It’s still odd to call them ‘his girls’ (it's like the words don’t belong to him) but he doesn’t know what else to call them, and he rather likes the phrase. He sometimes looks for ways to slip it into his speech. As for what they call him, father feels too intimate, so he allows them to call him by his given name, paired with Sensei or Master; whichever they prefer. (Mimiko prefers sensei. Naniko, oyaji. His girls.)
And it’s awful, but sometimes he looks at them and sees his failure and possible redemption in their deep innocent eyes. That maybe since he couldn’t save them, he could save them. And if anything were to corrupt them, he'd kill everything all over again.
Suguru says nothing, pissed at himself.
“You’re telling me,” Satoru begins, heatedly. “That since I’ve seen you, you’ve taken over an extremist religious group, killed thousands, if not millions of humans…. and then proceeded to get married and have a kid?”
“I said nothing about marriage.”
“I like how you don’t deny the kid thing.” Satoru observes, voice almost teasing, if not for the malice Suguru can make out. It makes him unbelievably angry, like Satoru is implying he doesn’t deserve to have children. Suguru has to pace himself, thats what he wants. Satoru always wants the upper hand- he must feel quite unbalanced and shaken right now, Suguru thinks, pleased.
“I haven’t had any children,” Suguru calmly responds. The idea isn’t displeasing though, and this isn’t his first time thinking that. He’d like to have a child, but he doesn’t want to put his child through curses and sorcery. He'd like to bring a child into a world that he can make safe for them. A world where they won't have to go through what he and other children went through.
“Then what the fuck am I supposed to think?”
Suguru flinches. This somehow feels familiar. “I don't care what you think.”
“You used to,” Satoru says, quietly.
“So did you,” Suguru returns.
Satoru shoves his fists into his pockets. “So did you?”
“What?”
Satoru grits his teeth but speaks nonetheless. “Get married?”
Suguru snorts. “What makes you think I have time for marriage?”
Satoru casts a meaningful look at his grocery bags. Suguru pulls at the side of his mouth, so he doesn't end up saying something he regrets. His girls enjoy domestic pleasantries they didn’t get in the village, and Suguru can’t say he doesn’t enjoy the same, and it’s little things like shopping and cooking, their little hands under his while he guides them on how to chop misshapen vegetables. Combing and tying their hair and sitting in their room before their bedtime, letting them talk about their days. He wishes there was a way for him to share these things with Satoru, things that make him inexplicably happy like he used to.
And Satoru lunges forward and kisses him, brief and hard.
Suguru doesn't have the time to respond, something he hesitates to be grateful for. The second he registers it and his eyes widen, Satoru is jerking back. “ Shit ,”
Suguru drops his grocery bags. Parsely, the works, spill out.
“Fuck,” Satoru curses, again. “Just… I.. fuck.”
It's not that Suguru hasn't thought about kissing Satoru before, because he has. He used to think of Satoru coming back from a mission and running to him and pressing his mouth to his, furious and passionate at their once distance. He used to think about Satoru cupping his face, telling him little lovely things, even though Satoru would never. Satoru loving him despite, despite, despite.
But well, they were friends before that, then best friends, the top two, perfectly synced and paired. Then Riko died and Satoru got stronger, and Suguru began to see the fissures, and it's something that never got much thought in the wake of death and growth and missions. And then he left, and then, Satoru keeps on finding him, and now, apparently the knowledge that he's not married is something that does something to Satoru.
“You love me, don't you?” Suguru dares to ask. Satoru looks to the right.
“I don't know you anymore,” Satoru replies. “How could I love you?”
“You know me better than anyone on this Earth. That isn't something that can change.”
“You left,”
Suguru laughs. “I left? No, no. You left. And when I realized I couldn't sit around waiting for you, I left. You…” he swallows. “You only want me when you can't have me.”
Satoru always makes him weak, reduces him from his proud, confident, haughty self. Why can’t he just sever this goddamn line?
“Geto,” Satoru says, suddenly tender.
“Don’t call me that,”
“I didn’t mean to do that,” Satoru says. “You know I didn’t mean to do that.”
“Do you mean anything you do?” Suguru asks. “I think life is a game to you. I have yet to see you truly care about something.”
Satoru doesn’t say anything. Suguru picks up his groceries.
“Would you tell me, if you meant it?” He asks, because he can’t help it.
“No,” Satoru says honestly.
“Ah,” Suguru says. “Figures.” He doesn’t know what he expected.
“I thought you would know.”
“Me too,”
They finally met eyes. Or, almost. “Take them off,”
He does. He looks tired, impassive. Defensive. Suguru doesn’t know how he looks to him, doesn’t know how he feels. In one night, Satoru was lovable. The next, gone.
“I have orders to kill you the next I come into contact with you, you know.”
“You were never very good with those.”
“Out of the two of us, I’d say I’m doing well.”
“You won’t,” Suguru says, because he knows it’s true. They’ll dance around each other until one of them, most likely Suguru, dies, and then they’ll still find a way to dance around each other. How exhausting.
He wasn’t the only one with soft spots that corrupted. Like a ripe fruit, they can only go bad.
And Satoru doesn’t.
“And I thought I was the weak one,” Suguru says.
“You are,” Satoru snaps. “Why do you do this to me? Why did you do that ? I don’t understand you anymore.”
God, Satoru, can’t you see? Neither can he. Suguru lingers, hesitant, even though he knows that he can leave. Something feels unfulfilled.
“What do you want?” Satoru asks, taking a breath.
And what he wants is complicated.
Suguru wants to go to sleep with the promise that Satoru will be there in the morning, and it’ll all be alright from there. He wants to wake up where he is. And he wants it back, everything he’s lost, everyone he’s lost, and what everyone he’s lost lost in the first place.
But more prominently, he wants to kill what killed Rika and Haibara and dozens of other sorcerer children, he wants it as bad as he wants back who he was.
“You couldn’t give it to me,” Suguru says.
The scary thing is, maybe he could.
Satoru steps back, and he looks disappointed. In who, he doesn’t know. “I won't let you go next time.”
“There won't be a next time,” Suguru replies evenly. Satoru snorts.
“You and I both know there will be.”
And he's right, again. They will keep colliding and crashing together and repelling. Like magnets.
“You should leave,” Satoru says.
“And turn my back to you?”
“You’ve never hesitated to in the past.”
Satoru looks truly sad.
But he turns, nonetheless, shoulders down. Suguru suspects that he was waiting for Suguru to dismiss him, because Satoru wants to be the one rejected. Satoru doesn’t want to be the one to blame.
Suguru picks up a pebble, smooth like it was in the ocean for years, being washed over by the waves. He throws it, familiar, at Satoru’s retreating frame.
It deflects.
Satoru pauses, shoulders high. There are countless things he could say, do. He could blabber out how much he hates eating alone, how he still brings him back souvenirs after every mission, even though they sit and waste in his room. Bring up how every time he hears about a curse outbreak, he shuts his eyes tight behind his mask and wonders how he is. How the old woman at the dessert shop down in Tokyo still asks about his little friend with the bangs, and Satoru lies every time. Mention how Shoko wakes him up at one am to go get nicotine patches from a convenience store, and they reminisce about him, sitting on the sidewalk. He could slip in the fact he wouldn’t mind Suguru’s children. He wouldn’t mind being a team again. Maybe take Suguru’s jaw in his hand, like he used to always think about.
But what would he do, with Suguru’s uncontrollable heart in his hand? What could he do, to this man behind him? He couldn’t return his heart, once he had it. And Satoru knows his own wouldn’t be enough. He keeps on walking.
One foot in front of the other (you could have loved him). One foot in front of the other (he could have loved you). One foot, one foot (you’ll see him again).
And he doesn’t stop, because if there is one thing Satoru has never learned, it’s how to stop.
When the sheet folded into their matching silhouettes, a bond was made, the type that weaves and bobs through distance and differences and weather. Satoru said he’d be there when Suguru woke up, and that he promised, and he was.
But he didn’t stick around after that.