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Suguru tried to focus on the ground in front of him. The soft rattle of stones rolling on the pavement as he kicked them, the gentle breeze rustling the summer leaves, the bustling of the crowd around them, a decent amount of stragglers left doing last minute shopping before the street closed with the setting sun.
He tried to focus on everything else, anything else .
Anything except the boy at his side.
The boy at his side who, frustratingly, is glancing around with wild curiosity twinkling behind his glasses. They’re too dark for Suguru to see his actual irises, but he can tell regardless. His head looked like it was on a swivel, taking in every loud sight with eyes eager to learn, and Suguru was not a willing teacher.
So he simply shut up, took several large steps forward that Satoru’s tiny legs couldn’t match, and shoved his clenching hands into his pockets. He was not a babysitter, no thank you.
The sky above Harajuku was painted gold, swirling cotton clouds of orange and purple, caging the setting sun like a rib cage over a pulsing heart, beating red and pink. Glancing downwards, Suguru can see the rosy dusting of Satoru’s mess of white hair, melting into the sky like a blank canvas.
Or maybe it looked pink because of the banner above him.
“What the—“ he heard Satoru mumble, the matching set of footsteps beside him halting. He had a passing thought that maybe, possibly, this is the chance he’s been waiting for, that ditching Satoru will be easy, but felt his own feet stop. Frustratingly.
“What is it?” Suguru hummed, hands still firmly in his pockets as he turned to stare at the boy from over his shoulder, whose gaze was drawn fiercely toward the pink banner across from him. “Is there a curse or something?”
“No,” Satoru answered, his bangs bouncing with the gentle shake of his head. “I just… What's a creep? ”
Suguru paused. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously, because Satoru had to be messing with him. The guy was a sucker for pranks, this had to be one of them, right?
“Do you…” Suguru trailed off, scratching the back of his head, just below his bun. “Do you mean crepe? ”
Satoru blinked at that, batting full lashes with eyes that held no single thought behind them. Suguru cleared his throat, feeling the slight itch of a smile at the corners of his mouth.
“You’ve had a crepe before, right?” It was a shot in the dark, really. He was entirely prepared to deck Satoru in the face if he laughed and called Suguru gullible, but perked up as the pinkish glow reflecting from Satoru’s pale skin spread. Suddenly, it dawned on him.
“No way.”
“Shut up.”
“How have you—?”
“I said shut up! ” Satoru groaned, hands curled in tiny furious fists at his sides, his shoulders bunched up high, practically reaching his tomato-red ears. “Forget I asked.”
Honestly, Suguru should have just dropped it. He should have turned back towards the road and followed Satoru all the way back toward the car waiting for them, but he didn’t. Instead, he grabbed Satoru’s wrist as the boy tried to slink away, and pulled him back with ease.
“You’re not escaping that easily,” Suguru huffed, yanking a gawking and indignant Satoru toward the crepe stand, entirely determined to get this boy some sugar for reasons that escaped him. “Pick one that you want.”
Satoru stared at him, and suddenly Suguru felt small. His glasses had slipped down the soft curve of his nose, flushed a gentle red in harsh contrast to the cool blue of the eyes that met his own. And Suguru, who’d only known this boy for about two months now, was still not prepared for the sensation of those famous eyes boring straight through him.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Suguru winced, letting go of Satoru’s wrist in favor of hiding his hands again, ignoring the weird thumping in his chest. “It’s creepy.”
“But I don't even know where to start,” Satoru breathed, his boisterous and energetic voice uncharacteristically soft, shifting that hypnotic gaze toward the cutesy menu, fancy teal text plastered against a pink background. “What’s chocolate?”
Suguru had to look at him again, had to flash his wild eyes and agape mouth, because Satoru had to be joking now. There was no way this kid had never heard of chocolate.
“Didn’t your parents ever buy you candy?” Suguru asked, probably much too loud because they were starting to get weird stares, but Suguru could care less about the people around them who would never understand.
Satoru’s face sank, and Suguru immediately felt like the biggest dick on the face of the earth.
Gojo Satoru, the boy who completely altered the balance of the jujutsu world just by being born, the boy destined to be the strongest sorcerer of their generation, the boy who Suguru had literally just watched destroy a grade one curse with the flick of his wrist, had never had candy. His parents, who had to be proud of their son just for existing, had never treated him to the sugary delicacies this world had to offer.
Gojo Satoru had never had a caramel apple in the fall, never had carnival cotton candy, or a simple damn chocolate bar. Instead he was here, in Harajuku at sunset, looking so close to tears at just a simple crepe menu that something in Suguru’s chest just snapped.
And Suguru, a simple boy from the countryside who happened to be scouted for his promising abilities, absolutely could not accept that.
“Here, I’ll pick for you,” he offered, hoping his voice wouldn’t betray the steady anger rising in his throat (which was strange — why was he so upset about this?), and took a quick glance over the display case of fake crepes, their innards exposed for Suguru to peruse and analyze.
After a couple moments of silent consideration, Suguru straightened, took a single step forward, and pointed to the display case, an employee eagerly leaning over the elevated counter to hear his order.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could spot Satoru, peering out at the employee like a frightened child hiding behind a parent. Like this, their slight height difference seemed all the more drastic, Suguru towering over the poor guy.
He didn’t feel his heart skip because of it. Not at all.
“Here you boys go,” the woman spoke, her smile kind and warm as she handed Suguru the crepes he’d ordered in exchange for the couple hundred yen he owed.
Suddenly, he was very glad he’d listened to Yaga’s suggestion to bring money on their mission. He’d have to remember to thank him later.
Handing Satoru his dessert seemed to be a whole challenge in itself, the poor boy eyeing the crepe like it would eat him instead of the other way around. Suguru frowned, urging it closer toward his recoiling face with an impatient scowl.
“Satoru, it’s not going to kill you.”
“But it looks weird,” he grimaced, finally taking the treat in his hands, swallowing loudly with a dry throat. “Are you sure it won't kill me?”
“If I wanted to kill you I’d have done it with my bare hands already,” Suguru threatened, returning to his original plan of abandoning Satoru on the corner of Harajuku, taking a bite of his own crepe. “And I’m still mulling it over, so hurry up.”
“You’re so mean to me!” Satoru whined, but ran to catch up anyway, staring at the dessert in his hands like he was really making sure it wouldn’t kill him. Like he hadn’t had to deal with horrifying curses every day of his life that would actually pose him a threat if he wasn’t born stupidly strong.
“That sure is a weird way to say thank you.”
Behind his sarcastic droning, Suguru really hoped it wouldn’t kill him. It was his first experience with sweets, and Suguru would be damned if he let his own lack of experience in picking desserts for others be the reason for Satoru’s downfall.
Plus, Suguru thought he’d stayed pretty tame. It was a classic crepe; whipped cream with strawberries, drizzled with warm chocolate and wrapped tight in flaky dough. If Satoru didn’t like it, he’d never try again.
Suguru watched, waiting with bated breath, as Satoru finally stopped having a staring contest with his crepe, and opened his mouth to take the first bite. His first taste of dessert, of sugar, of the finer things in life.
Suguru would never forget the way Satoru’s eyes twinkled, his sullied face melting away into pure, unadulterated joy. His smile was so bright it made the world feel more alive, saturated with the childlike wonder of a boy who was free to eat what he pleased.
The crepe never stood a chance.
“Holy shit, did you even breathe?” Suguru gaped, Satoru humming with a full mouth and an empty crepe wrapper wrinkled between his messy little fingers.
Satoru chirped something that maybe was supposed to resemble an understandable language, but just sounded like garbled nonsense spewed by a man with a full mouth, and Suguru couldn't help but snort. Of course, Satoru, who’d never once experience sugar, would devour it all in minutes and try to speak before swallowing. It was all the telltale signs of being freed from the shackles of strict parenting — Suguru loathed the fact he hadn’t noticed it sooner.
Suguru dreaded the oncoming sugar high, though.
“You’re a mess. I can’t take you anywhere,” Suguru huffed, and before his mind could conjure a single lucid thought, his hand moved without him. He thumbed at the corner of Satoru’s mouth, swiping away the chocolate that gathered there in a single motion.
At that moment, time seemed to freeze. Satoru looked up at him, rosy cheeks puffed out and stuffed with sweets, his impossibly long lashes fluttering as his crystal eyes flickered between Suguru’s hand and his face.
It was like they were back at the crepe shop, surrounded by giant pink hearts outlined by blinking gold bulbs, and Suguru couldn’t ignore how his heart jackhammered against his ribs.
And, in that single moment of frozen time, a single word appeared in Suguru’s mind, echoing in the empty chamber of his skull as he cleaned Satoru’s mouth.
Cute.
Then that single moment passed, and reality hit Suguru like a double-decker bus.
It had been an innocent move, a helpful gesture between two friends, but Suguru’s hand recoiled like he’d touched a hot stove palm first, and his face felt like it exploded with that same heat all at once.
What the hell was he doing? What was he thinking? Just now, did he—
“You okay?” Satoru asked, swallowing his final mouthful of crepe to be able to speak again. “Are you choking or something? I’m not very good at the heimlich, so…”
“I’m fine, ” Suguru lied, because what else was he supposed to say? He turned his head away, because even looking at Satoru right now was not helping clear his head of the fuzzy, pink heart, golden bulbed fantasy montage swirling around Satoru at that moment.
He would not admit that Satoru was cute, not even a little, not in this situation or ever, opting to stare directly out of the window and nowhere else on the drive back to campus.
He’d die with that knowledge. Satoru could never know.
Except he did. Because he always did.
“Is that really when you started crushing on me?” Satoru asked, leaning over his strawberry parfait with a stupid, smug smile, shirt as pink as his cheeks had been that day, ring finger twinkling as gold as those crepe sign bulbs. “That’s embarrassing.”
“ You’re embarrassing,” Suguru retorted, wearing a terribly fond scowl as he leaned forward, taking the napkin the table so eloquently provided to wipe a dollop of cream from Satoru’s cheek. “You’re pushing thirty and you still haven’t learned to eat without wearing your food.”
“Yeah, but you love me, ” he grinned, cooing in a sing-song voice that should’ve made Suguru curl away, but only widened his dumb, awful smile.
Satoru, now twenty-eight years old and tall, still terribly skinny for his height but built with lean muscles now, long having replaced those dark shades with an equally dark blindfold, in charge of children, had the biggest sweet tooth Suguru had ever seen.
And it was all Suguru’s fault.