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Satoru is sixteen when it first happens.
He's leaning back against a roughened tree bark, angling his head to soak in the balmy glow of sunlight. It's so much easier to listen with your eyes closed. There's a steady trickle of water in a nearby pond, a birdsong calling overhead. A flurried beating of a pigeon's wings as it ascends from a wayward branch. The smell of grass. Satoru's soothed enough to feel drowsy.
He's on the verge of sinking into a dream when a hand touches him lightly on his shoulder. Satoru's sleepy enough, pacified and safe within the confines of a frequented park, that it is not at all startling. He manages to slowly open his eyes, not surprised by how heavy his lids are, weighted from what is probably half an hour of having them closed.
What he finds surprising, however, is the expression on Suguru's face when he turns his head to look.
Suguru's posture is stiff, mouth set into a thin line. The pupils of his eyes are faintly dilated. Satoru angles his head back and squints at the thin afternoon sun glancing off the length of Suguru's neck, his ear, his uniform. It's lighting the fringes of Suguru's hair into flecks of copper.
Satoru can't help but grin.
“You look like shit,” he says.
Suguru doesn't react as quickly as he usually does. Satoru barely has time to think on it, though, before Suguru finally clears his throat — a bit too loudly — and seems to shake himself out of an indecipherable trance.
“You too,” he says, rather hoarsely.
“Did you wake me up just to insult me?” Satoru untucks his sunglasses from the throat of his shirt and puts them on. “My ego isn't easily bruised, you know! Besides my personality, I'm perfect in every way.”
“Have you no shame,” Suguru scoffs, but he's smiling, a little fond. His tone is teasing when he says, “I think Satoru needs to learn some humility. His arrogance will only cause him trouble.”
Satoru. Satoru. One day, he'll be able to hear his own name from Suguru's mouth without feeling light on his heels, without hoarding the sound like some precious secret.
“Fuck off,” he says. “I'm out here being tasty mosquito delicacy, Suguru, and you won't even spare me.”
“How nice,” says Suguru. “The only things attracted to you are blood-sucking flies.” And he dodges the kick Satoru aims at him.
“Asshole,” says Satoru.
“You could’ve used Infinity on the poor mosquitoes,” says Suguru. “Spare them of your bad blood. They have terrible taste in men.”
Satoru grins. He tilts his head to the side, puts his chin on his hand. Half of his face is warm where it is bathed in the grid of sunlight.
“Yet Suguru is here, isn’t he?” he says, drawling, restrained delight seeping through his words. “Keeping me company.”
Something halts in Suguru’s expression. Something coy, but it was there and gone too quickly for Satoru to give chase.
“Don’t think it doesn’t pain me,” Suguru says, swallowing.
“Well,” says Satoru. “Why are you here then?”
Suguru keeps his eyes on him for a moment before reaching into his pocket. When he takes his hand back out, his smile is warm.
“I woke you up to see if you wanted candy before it melts,” he says, and there, nestled in his palm, are two pieces of bow-wrapped candies: strawberry and lemon. Satoru lets out a joyous yelp and takes the former.
God, this is just how Suguru is. Always forging the extra mile to think about what Satoru wants. This boy who has been by Satoru's side ever since they set foot in Masamichi's office and donned their black uniforms; ever since they locked eyes and snickered at something Masamichi said, getting both a knuckle for it. A clash of ideologies does nothing to sunder their friendship. Suguru will always put Satoru's happiness alongside his, and it’s tugging at Satoru the way all strong emotions do— pressuring to burst from every crevice in him, prising the urge to sing his heart right then and there.
So he says, “Suguru spoils me! Maybe as an expression of my gratitude, I should sing him something!”
“Uh,” says Suguru, “there's really no nee—”
Satoru grabs the sleeve of Suguru's arm and yanks. Suguru lets out an indignant squawk and tumbles to the grass, elbows braced against the earth to prevent his face from slamming into the ground.
“Hey!” he says, amidst Satoru's laughter. It's light, so light. The sun is slanting through the latticework of tree leaves above them, the breeze soft on their skin, slow in the foliage. Satoru feels like he could fly.
“I'm an amazing singer!” he yips, and then bellows, “INSTRUMENTALS—"
“Suguru-kun!”
Satoru snaps his mouth shut.
The voice is familiar. High, sultry, seeped with honey. He narrows his eyes and looks.
Two girls are jogging toward them — hair tumbling in silken curls around their uniforms, slim bracelets jangling around their wrists — and Satoru grumbles through a string of swears in his head when he recognizes who they are.
Well, not their names. Hana, maybe, for one of them? The one who's waving much too enthusiastically; beaming in a way that makes Satoru want to kick a pebble at her.
They’ve seen these girls around often, due to the vicinity of the non-shaman high school and the park Suguru and Satoru like to lounge in. Nothing harmless, but it's always the same: invitations to karaoke, eyelashes fluttering, a playful push on Suguru's arm. Satoru inwardly rolls his eyes. The first time they met, the girls had fawned over both of them. Then Satoru had opened his mouth, and Suguru's number was the only one they asked for. So much for charm.
“What are you doing?” Hana, Maybe calls. “Come join us!” And Satoru actually does kick a pebble this time, although he gathers enough self-control for it to land in the other direction.
Suguru sends Satoru a brief, complacent glance: Don't be rude. Then he rises to his feet, dusts off the grass clinging to his clothes, and turns toward her.
“Yukie-chan,” he says, plastering on that insane smile of his that is simultaneously genuine and distant. It's politeness at its most indulgent. Impersonal as a handful of change, but still warm enough for you to want to get close. This is what draws the girls to him, Satoru thinks, pulled under like drowning. In the scant afternoon light speckled all around them, flakes of dust scattershot in the air, Suguru is smiling at them, staring at them, touching—
Something claws at the center of Satoru's chest.
Fuck? he thinks.
.
“Why are you sulking?” Suguru asks, once they've said their farewells to Yukie-chan and her friend. He's walking at a brisk pace to match Satoru's, who's venting out the — what, anger? — scratching at his stomach. Whatever the emotion is, it feels like he's been done a disservice.
“Figure it out yourself,” says Satoru, because that's mature.
“Are you twelve,” says Suguru. “Is it your eyes? Is it the candy? I could swear those are your favourite flavours.”
It's not the candy, Satoru means to say. With nerves fraying at the corners of his jaw, though, it comes out more like a mumbled, “Iss not hn kundi.”
“Right,” says Suguru, “well. That doesn't exactly…”
He trails off. Satoru — eyes resolutely trained elsewhere — only knows that Suguru has stopped in his tracks due to the absence of warmth beside him. When he turns around, annoyed and irked and not at all in any mood, there's something a bit unsettling at the expression on Suguru's face.
“Heh,” Suguru says, and — oh god — he's smirking. “Is Satoru jealous?”
Satoru wants to die. Cold panic rises to his skin, bare like a target for darts. Honestly, if he knocks Suguru out right now and flies away screaming, no one will know.
“I am not.”
Suguru's grin only widens. It’s transformed from being carefully pleased to outright smug now. Satoru will definitely let him fend for himself on the next mission.
“Satoru thinks the world revolves around him, doesn't he,” Suguru says slowly, a teasing lilt in his voice. “Seriously, girls can flirt with you, but when it’s my turn, your ego is bruised?”
“It's—” Satoru stops short, hand instinctively reaching to scratch the back of his head. God, fuck, maybe if he tears his entire scalp off, they will both be so distracted by the shock and pain and baldness that Satoru won't have to say anything. There's an ocean of something strange lurking underneath his words, and he's afraid that if he opts for honesty, everything will come pouring out in a torrent.
So all he says is, “Gimme a break,” and starts walking away. His steps are more like petulant stomps, for emphasis.
The amusement is clear in Suguru's voice. “I'm kidding,” he says, catching pace in no time. “You're being more of a brat today than usual.”
“I will feed you to your own spirits,” says Satoru.
“Sorry, sorry,” says Suguru, not looking sorry at all by the way he's smiling. His eyes are positively dancing, arms held up in defense. He looks like he's enjoying this way too much. Satoru wants to clock him.
But all he does, of course, is let out a huff and continue walking. He can hear Suguru chuckling beside him, as they match stride.
Evening is casting its orange hues now, the sky bruised red and purple overhead. The sun is low enough to be halved and yet larger than your thumb, low enough for the air to take a tinge of chill. There's a brisk wind stirring the dead leaves upon the ground they tread, autumn crunching underfoot. Someone is whistling at the crossing ahead— some hellish bellsong that Satoru can't place.
“By the way,” says Suguru, “I overheard Yaga-sensei talking to someone about our next mission the other day. Apparently it's important.”
Satoru looks at him through the aperture of his glasses. Suguru is staring straight ahead, gaze fixed on something faraway. In the reddened glow of dusk, Suguru is less the perfect caricature of the upstanding, neat-jacketed young man he carries himself to be— he looks more like Satoru's best friend. Sly, wry, laced with mischief. With a silver tongue that can spin anything to gold, if he wills it.
Satoru wonders, vaguely, if any girl out there will eventually see Suguru for the boy Satoru knows he is. But following this train of thought will inevitably skirt too near to the bone, so Satoru steers away; folds it into a corner of his mind.
“What’s the mission?” he says.
“I don't know,” says Suguru. He lifts his eyes up toward the sky, shading his eyes to watch the clouds pass. “Something about a vessel.”
.