Work Text:
Suguru just wants to get lunch. It’s been a long day and he’s a little tired and he’s itching to make it to the teachers’ lounge and rest, but as usual, his students are up to a scheme, and as usual, he’s too nosy to stay out of it.
“Gojou-sensei,” Kugisaki says, which, like always, is what draws his attention, “has a lover.”
Ah, Suguru realises. She’s gone insane.
“You’re insane,” says Fushiguro. He’s always been a favorite, Suguru thinks fondly.
“I’m not ,” Kugisaki snaps. She scribbles something onto a large whiteboard Suguru knows is supposed to be solely for biology. “He has a ring.”
“Why do we care?” Itadori asks. Kugisaki stares at him like he’s an idiot.
“It’s Gojou-sensei,” she says, and they all nod in unison. Suguru wonders what the hell he’s been doing during class to leave this poor of an impression upon the kids -- though, if it’s anything like how he acted during high school and how he continues to act at home, Suguru gets it.
Kugisaki draws a circle on the whiteboard -- from here, Suguru can make out the words Gojou-sensei, ring, and WHY -- before turning back to the other two. “We know he’s married. You don’t wear the ring if you’re not.”
“He could just be weird,” suggests Itadori. “It might be for no reason.”
“He would be the type,” says Fushiguro disdainfully. Kugisaki shakes her head.
“He’s not that weird,” she says confidently. Suguru feels a little wave of pride for the bit of respect his husband’s managed to scrounge before she adds, “Besides, it’s way too ugly to wear for fun.”
“It’s just a silver band,” Itadori says, looking both shaken and offended that her standards for rings are so high. Suguru’s a little offended too. It’s engraved with their names, simple and sweet, and after all, not everything has to be flashy to mean something. He then questions why he’s letting himself be bothered by the stray comments of a fifteen year old.
“Back on track.” Kugisaki taps the board twice. “He’s married for sure, and he only started wearing the ring last week, so it was recent. The only question is -- who in their right mind would marry Gojou-sensei?”
+
“Oh, we don’t have to tell them,” says Satoru in the break room as he throws marshmallows in the air and tries to catch them with his mouth. “It’s fun watching them do the detective work.”
“You only started wearing it last week?” Suguru asks, catching a marshmallow before Satoru can eat it.
Satoru frowns at him and picks the marshmallow out of his hands, popping it in his mouth. “They’ve been doing dissections with Shouko for, like, a million years now, and they come into my class right after. I’m not risking guts on my ring; it’s too nice for that.”
“Kugisaki said it was ugly.” Suguru grins at the ceiling. “Too ugly to wear for fun.”
“Well.” Satoru leans in and presses his lips to Suguru’s cheek, soft. “I thought it was fine.”
“Fine?”
“An eight out of ten, maybe. A strong eight.”
Suguru snorts. “You’re insufferable.”
“You married me,” says Satoru cheerfully, and Suguru’s struck with a warm sort of ache at the truth of it. “How long do you think it’s gonna take them to figure it out?”
Suguru taps his fingers against the table to a steady, thrumming rhythm of a song he no longer fully remembers. “They don’t even know it’s a teacher,” he points out. “I’m giving them at least four months.”
Satoru makes a long, disappointed huffing noise. “You have no faith in our lovely students,” he mourns. “Did you not teach them the deduction skills to succeed?” Suguru leans over and flicks Satoru’s forehead, ignoring his subsequent complaints of my husband is so mean to me; maybe I should file for divorce right now.
“If anything,” Suguru takes a long sip of his coffee before fixing his eyes on Satoru, “you failed. Deduction is a math thing.”
“I’ve never failed in my life.” Satoru grabs the cup from Suguru and takes a sip of his own before making a face. “Too bitter. Anyway, that’s why they’re gonna figure it out within two weeks.”
“Two weeks.”
“Have I ever been wrong before?”
Suguru wishes desperately that he could say yes. “Stop stealing my coffee,” he says instead, and Satoru smiles the way he always does when he knows he’s won. Before Suguru can lecture him about being a know-it-all again, the bell rings, and he habitually swoops in to kiss his cheek. “See you at home?”
Satoru tugs him in for a quick, proper kiss, grinning against his mouth. Suguru hears the distinct noise of Shouko gagging across the room. “Make sure that the kids don’t slack off during your class,” he murmurs, and Suguru just flips him off as he walks out, still smiling.
+
“There’s no way,” Kugisaki hisses. “She hates him.”
“Maybe it’s their way of flirting,” Itadori says. Suguru has half a mind to tell them to start on their homework, but it’s a work period and he’s curious about who’s flirting with who, anyway, so he just stares at his book harder and pretends to read.
“No, she just hates him,” Kugisaki insists. “She threatens to kill him, like, four times a week. So that leaves -- ”
“It’s not,” Itadori interrupts, horrified. “It couldn’t be.”
“They’re friends.” When Suguru glances up at the students, Kugisaki looks as if she’s found the answer to a mystery she never wanted to solve. “They talked about going out for brunch the other day, right?”
“Why would they need to go to brunch if they lived together?” Itadori asks.
Kugisaki goes silent for a long moment. “You’re right,” she says finally, immensely relieved. “Ieiri-sensei’s too cool for him, anyway.” Ah, Suguru realises. So that’s what this is about.
“It could be a man, you know,” Fushiguro suggests. He sounds exhausted. Given Kugisaki and Itadori’s admirable single-mindedness, Suguru suspects that this has been the only topic of conversation for days now. “That means five more options.”
There’s a quiet, pensive moment where Suguru’s a little afraid they’ve caught onto him already.
“You don’t think it’s Nanami-sensei, do you?”
Maybe his students aren’t as smart as he thought.
+
“Okay,” Satoru admits, “so I might have dropped a few hints here and there.”
“If I’d known you were gonna do that, I would’ve changed my guess,” Suguru complains, nudging Satoru to the side so he can reach the stove. “It’s unfair.”
“Sore loser.”
“I haven’t lost yet.” Suguru clicks his tongue against his teeth. “They thought it might be Nanami. Or Shouko.”
Satoru laughs aloud at that: a strange, ugly noise that sounds sort of like a squawk. Suguru’s hopelessly enamored. “We have matching rings,” he says after he’s calmed down. “I thought they’d at least notice that much.”
Suguru presses his lips together so that his smile doesn’t show as obnoxiously as it might otherwise. “I started taking it off during their class.” When Satoru makes a sound between a gasp and a scream, he continues, “Just so that it wouldn’t be too easy for them.”
“Unfair.”
“Sore loser,” Suguru mocks, and Satoru yanks on his hair.
“Then we’re even.” Satoru’s beam looks a little manic. Suguru wonders if he’s awakened some sort of monster within his husband -- competitions usually do that to them, so he doesn’t mind. “And I’ll still win.”
Suguru picks a shrimp off the stove and pops it in the mouth, batting Satoru’s hand away when he tries to grab one of his own. “We’ll see,” he says cryptically, and when Satoru sticks his tongue out, he just smiles.
+
“Getou-sensei,” says Itadori, lingering back after class with Kugisaki and Fushiguro behind him. “Can we ask a question?”
Suguru looks up from his papers. He has a sinking feeling he already knows what this’ll be about. “Go for it,” he replies anyway, because he’s in need of entertainment and he figures this’ll do for now.
“What’s your husband like?”
“ Spouse ,” Fushiguro hisses. Kugisaki throws him an incredulous look, but Itadori corrects himself anyway.
“What’s your spouse like, I meant,” he says awkwardly, like Suguru didn’t hear. “Haha.”
“Hm.” Suguru taps his index finger against his chin, wondering how to describe Satoru without being too obvious. He could just lie, he supposes, but that strays too far into actually cheating, which means Satoru will use it as guilt trip material for weeks. When he notices them all staring expectantly, he clears his throat. “He’s a pain in the ass.”
There, he thinks triumphantly. Honest, but not clear enough to get them to a proper conclusion. Once again, he’s won.
“Oh my god,” blurts Kugisaki, her eyes widening. “You’re Gojou-sensei’s husband.”
Suguru doesn’t know whether this says more about the students’ respect for Satoru or his own poor judgement. “I never thought it would be you,” Kugisaki continues thoughtfully. “You’re way out of his league.”
“Ah,” says Suguru. Satoru’s objectively a very beautiful man, so how awful do the kids think his personality is? “This is an inappropriate discussion.”
“Maybe he just has another annoying husband,” says Itadori, completely ignoring Suguru’s last comment. “Is it another annoying husband?”
“No, there’s no other annoying husband,” Suguru sighs, pinching the space between his brows.
Fushiguro, for one, doesn’t seem all that surprised. “You act different with each other,” he says by way of explanation. Suguru wonders why he’s been analysing how the teachers talk to each other, but he’s too distracted by the small sprout of affection blooming within his chest to linger on it.
“Well,” he says aloud. “Now that you’re done interrogating me about my private life, get out of my classroom.” The students grumble as they leave, and he calls, “And finish the readings for tomorrow; there’s a quiz!”
Satoru has a talent of materialising into his classroom seemingly out of nowhere. “I won,” he says smugly, and if Suguru were even a little more easily startled, he would have jumped back.
“If you hadn’t told them about it being another teacher, I would have.”
“Yeah,” Satoru admits easily, and then, “that’s why I told them.”
“You’re awful.”
“You love me,” Satoru sings. His ring glints under the light, letting Suguru’s name shine against his skin like a tattoo.
Suguru laughs, quiet. “I do.”