Chapter Text
Haibara always came paired with a bounding smile and some kind of positive bright-eyed comment, paired with an invincible sense of optimism and determination that was empowering and oh so rare in the jujutsu community.
All of this made his dead body much more foreign and ugly to the eye.
Suguru had vomited the second he was out of the mortuary, throat dry and closed, Haibara’s dead body still incised into his vision. No curse, just pure disgust, and fear. No curse.
Well, maybe one.
He’d like to say that's where it all went wrong, but there’s no map or measurement to that sort of thing- things go wrong, eventually, gradually, and then, unquestionably. He used to roll with the punches and be so good at it, until he looked up and identified who was punching him. Until he looked around and saw the imprints of the fists in the walls, the damage that he just has to live with.
It should have been fine. People died all the time, right? Right. Especially in the sorcerer business. But god, why? Why did it have to be him? He could have been the best out of all of them with his spirit, good intentions, and eternal optimism. Will the purest always die first?
He promised to bring him back a souvenir. Suguru wondered if this was some sick joke.
At that point, he needed to get a grip. Haibara was dead, and he was alive, and it’s not fair, and nothing ever is. So, no used lingering over the subject. It's already been days.
He was seething to himself, curled up sweaty under thin sheets when his ears picked up a tentative knock at the door. He assumes it’s Shoko from the delicacy of it and sits up, frowning, until three louder knocks follow from a fist with too much restraint. Suguru stands up dizzily and falls on the door, opening it a crack. “What,” he hissed.
It’s Satoru, not smiling, somber. The sight of him so jarring but welcoming that Suguru opens the door wider. “Guessing you heard about Haibara.” Satoru said quietly.
“Yeah,” Suguru doesn’t want to talk about this, but he continued anyway. Mostly, he didn't want Satoru to go anymore. “I went to the morgue and I- I saw him.”
“Sorry you had to see him like that.”
Suguru shrugged it off. “I’ve seen worse.”
“I know, haven’t we all? Still. I know you always had a soft spot for him,”
And what do I have for you? For Shoko? For Nanami, even. Every soft spot he has is nothing but a mulchy weakness. A bruise in the fruit.
“Yeah, well,” Suguru opened the door wider. “That doesn’t mean anything, anymore.”
It was an invitation, and Satoru accepted it, walking in his room and surveying Suguru from the slivers of light from the outside streetlights, coming from his window. “I think he knew it. I mean, why else would he prefer you to me?” Suguru glared and punched Satoru in the arm, the subject still too raw. Satoru raised his hands and sat at the foot of his bed. “I was kidding, Getou. I prefer you to me, anyways.”
Suguru snorted, sitting against his headboard. “I don’t know how you do.”
Satoru scoots to face him.
“It’s easy,”
“I’m just as much of a bastard as you.”
“Yeah, but only I know that.”
Suguru laughed, and suddenly, began to cry. “Fuck!” It’s like the tears were waiting for him for him to fall into their trap of comfort.
“Yeah. I know,” Suddenly Satoru was pulling him to him, and Suguru had jerked away for a second, bitter. The two stared at each other- he wasn't wearing those stupid glasses for once. Suguru let out another cry and lets himself be pulled, wanting to be comforted.
“He was so good, Gojo,”
“He was,”
“So was R-Riko. She had so much life. She had a future,” Riko and Haibara were a lot alike. Bright-eyed and optimistic, promising, the future sprawling in front of them in waves. They deserved so much more than they got. An adolescent corpse. A sick feeling in his mouth.
“It’s not fair, is it?”
The anger comes back at the words and the tone, raging hot and fiery. “It’s not fucking fair!” He pushed Satoru away and stands up, kicks his chair to the other side of the room. “How many more, Gojo? How many more will have to die? When will we?”
“Getou,” Satoru said, awed, or irritated, he couldn't tell, he was too far gone to care.
Suguru just cried, on the floor, hands splayed out at his side helplessly. “I don’t want to do this anymore,”
“You don’t mean that,”
And suddenly, just like the tears, Suguru was furious at him, furious at how impassive and uncaring he was. Haibara died, Riko died, and Satoru watched him mourn them indifferently.
“I do! I do mean that! You never cared, did you?” Suguru sneered viciously. “As long as you’re alive and powerful, you’re not bothered. Death is just death to you.”
“Death is just death,” Satoru said, just as dispassionately. “We have to get used to it. You can’t break down like this every time someone dies, you’d be weak all the time. And I know you’re not weak.”
“He didn’t deserve it,” Suguru said. “Neither did she.”
“No one ever does.”
“Fuck you,” Satoru said nothing. Suguru took large, heaving breaths, cries still breaking through. “You don’t care, you never did. You held her dead body and-” he gasps out a cry. “Oh god,” The rage he felt in that moment, the pain and anger, comes washing over him in waves. The smiling, gleeful faces as Satoru held Riko. They swore to protect her, but it only meant so much in the long haul. He doesn't want this anymore.
“I do care, Getou. But caring has never done anything. You cared, and they’re still dead.”
Suguru turns on him bitterly “What if it was me? What if Zenin had killed me?”
“He wouldn’t. He couldn't,”
“But if he did.”
“Then I would kill him.”
“You killed him anyway. That doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Suguru looked up at him, tears escaping from the corners of his eyes. “Tell me how you would feel if I died.”
Immediately, Satoru said “Angry.”
“Angry.” Suguru repeats.
“Of course.”
Suguru can’t say he was satisfied with the answer, but he didn’t care enough at that point. He knew about the value he has to Satoru without words having to confirm it. Thats the thing about Satoru and Suguru, they didn't have to say things. They just looked at each other and knew.
“I don’t think you understand how impossible your death is to me. I wouldn’t let you die.” Satoru clarified at Suguru’s silence to his response.
And if he did, he would drag you back, a voice whispered. Satoru the strong, Satoru the mighty, Satoru Gojo, the honored one. And Suguru's death, impossible. Suguru wondered why Satoru wouldn't extend that kindness to people who are more deserving of it. Anyone is more deserving of his affection and loyalty then Suguru, but here he is, begging for evidence of it.
And then, he's wondering if it really is a kindness.
He takes large, heaving breaths as the heavy stream of tears subsides eventually, strays running down the rivets imprinted on his cheeks.
Satoru raised his eyebrows. “Better?”
“Fuck off.” Suguru gasped at him, not wanting to admit that yes, he feels better. Better then he has the whole week.
Satoru actually looks amused. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear so much. Especially at me.”
“I could do it a lot more if I wanted to. You're acting like an asshole.”
“Why, because I'm not tearing myself up? You know how I feel about crying. It doesn’t do anything.”
Suguru hated him, for the moment, because he was right. Riko was still dead. Haibara was still dead.
“It’s not fair.” He muttered.
And they sat like that for a while, Satoru with his face in his palms on his bed, Suguru sitting stooped on his wooden floor. The wind that had coursed through him has fallen, dusty and murdled.
Eventually, Satoru spoke. “It’s not fair. It’s not pretty. It’s life.”
Suguru stared up at him. “When did you become so cynical?” He knew the answer, so Satoru doesn't reply. He just stood and tossed him a bottle of water from under his nightstand. Suguru stubbornly batted it away, even though he could still feel the vomit in the back of his throat. He feels exhausted, so tired and weary. The thought of ever have to face, eat, digest, or produce another curse actually hurts him, and he slumped forward in exhaustion. Satoru catches him in one quick fluid move and Suguru’s forehead found his shoulder in something like an embrace.
And an apology from both of them, maybe.
Satoru knows that Suguru isn't always this emotional and angry, and Suguru knows that Satoru isn't always this cold and indifferent. It's just complicated right now. It'll get better.
It has to get better.
He eventually does drink water. Satoru lets go of him after what feels like forever, and Suguru wishes he wouldn't. He wishes that Satoru would stay, he hasn't seen him in so long, but asking is to push him away, so he doesn't. He knows Satoru enough to know that he's on the move, and he can't be compressed by things like the feeling in Suguru's chest when Satoru holds him.
He found his way to bed, eventually. He scooted his back to the wall so that Satoru has room to join if he’d like. Suguru had hoped he would, he doesn’t want to be alone, even if he has spent the better part of the night lashing out. And Satoru accepted, like he did earlier, bending his knees slightly so that he can fit, the tall ass.
“God, poor Nanami,” Shoko had said as the two surveyed the scene from the window. Haibara’s corpse, covered. Nanami, all alone in the white room, face dripping under the rag. “He’s the only one in his year now.”
“I know,” Suguru said, but what he wanted to really say was-
“Poor us.” Are they all destined to die young? Or will they grow old and bitter, like the Elders?
Satoru wiped a sweaty stand of hair from his forehead. “Pity gets us nowhere.”
And Suguru feels sorry for him, sorry for all of them. Sorry for Shoko, who smokes nearly a pack a day at the beginning of her life, Nanami, who’s witnessed his closest companion die undeservingly and who will surely carry around wounds for the two of them, and for himself, whose soft spots get punctured brutally. But most of all, he feels sorry for Satoru, who has taught himself that death at the ripe age of fifteen is something that can’t be helped. That all they can do is keep on going on, killing and dying. The strongest of them all, who will have to watch them all die or succumb to worse fates. How could he possibly sleep?
“Oh Gojo,” he mumbled, truly sad.
“Don’t start crying again,” Satoru warned, pulling a sheet over them.
“Why, would you leave?” Suguru asked, as the white fabric melded into their silhouettes.
“No, I wouldn’t,”
“Even if I cried?”
“I’ll be here tomorrow when you wake up,” Satoru said lowly, and the promise of it is what made Suguru finally close his eyes, knowing that when he opens them, he won’t be alone. He won’t be alone.
Looking back on it, he really should have treasured those moments more. Moments of safety, of something like love in Satoru’s presence, in his arms.
He doesn’t know. It could have been love. Neither of them stuck around long enough after that night to see if it ever could have been.