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seven degrees apart of venus they shared, bound to earth in capricorn with fingernails greened and eyes widened, wonder in dandelion seeds caught by the wind and finches on wire fences. the sun descended into a watercolor horizon, bleeding into the rest of the paper sky, hues of creamsicle and apricot pooling and satoru watched, watched the streaks drip into the heavens, and despite the energy coursing through his body he felt small, for once.
in this world you are acquainted with loss and not much room left for love, and when a relative dies at the hand of another, when the blood on your jacket is someone else’s, you don’t reach out for someone to comfort you, to kiss it all better. that’s how it used to be, at least.
satoru was gifted in a number of ways — blessed as a part of the gojo clan, as a jujutsu sorcerer, with his strength and intelligence. however, he was also blessed in the fact that he was able to love amidst the loss, for in his heart there’s a home made for a boy with hair of moonstone, eyes like wilting violets.
on empty days they often found themselves on this mountainside, a short hike and some rock hopping just for a place that was often only touched by them, a sort of sanctuary they’ve built apart from reality. satoru was not the part of the clan here, and suguru was not a curse manipulator, and they weren’t the strongest duo. they were just two boys, sixteen, and they fiddled with pebbles and made harmonicas out of blades of grass, laughing until their stomachs hurt and something about it was intrinsic, despite feeling so foreign to satoru.
he turned to suguru, whose skin caught the colors of the sky like a magnet, as if the golden hour were created just for him. satoru could not tear his eyes from the body that lay beside him, shining and admirable. when satoru felt a little too far from earth suguru was always there for grounding, might as well be the world himself, and in the times when his heart got a little bit too loud it was suguru who muffled it, even just for a little while. though satoru was the one born with both limitless and the six eyes, an occurrence rare enough to be worth studying, it was nothing compared to the galaxy that suguru contained. he was gentle but vast, knowledge weaving between webs of introspection, each beauty mark and freckle like the stars piled inside him, constellations embedded into his skin. he was understanding and, in ways, more mature than satoru could hope to be — his ideals were sturdy, unshakeable. if satoru could follow him to the ends of earth, hand in hand in a dawn that lasted forever, he would without a doubt. how fitting, that the strongest duo would fall victim to each other’s hearts.
he reached out with dirtied fingertips, tainted by the trek to their little hideaway, tracing circles on suguru’s arm, sun-kissed. he liked when they would sit like this without a word spoken, silences only broken by the birds twittering above them and the buzzing of their phones when being called back for a mission. it’s almost melancholy, how this was the only place he managed to find comfort in with the commotion that accompanied everyday life. he wished they could feel this at peace all the time, a temporary life without expectation.
“you’re thinking too much.”
satoru glanced up from the circles he was so intently drawing, up right into twilight irises. “hmm?”
“you’ve gotten all quiet, and you’re distracting yourself.” he pressed a kiss between satoru’s eyebrows, softly. “something’s on your mind.”
satoru shuffled, curling himself up and resting in the crook of suguru’s arm. “i was just thinking about how much i like it here. it’s quiet.”
“mm, was that all?”
“well, i was also thinking about you, and how i wish it could be like this forever. how safe i feel with you.”
“it could, you know. stay like this.” his voice was barely above a whisper, but each word hit satoru’s ears clear as day. he looked directly at suguru, cupping his jaw before saying, sarcastically, “oh, do enlighten me on this! tell me, how are we going to free ourselves from jujutsu society, my love?”
suguru laughed, a sound that satoru believed he could fall asleep to, deep and melodious and as smooth as buttercream. “it’s not like i have a plan yet, but someday we’ll do it. knowing us, we’ll figure it out, and we can be happy, no conditions. how does that sound, my love ?
the use of his own words against him made satoru falter, collapsing and finding solace once more in being held by suguru.
“works for me.”
he could’ve swore that the silence in that moment, in that pause, was enough to last a lifetime.
“i really would like to spend forever with you, satoru. only you.”, and the world was the brightest it’s ever been before slipping into darkness, taurus emerging from the clouds and radiating out of suguru’s heart.
you feel like home , satoru wanted to say. you are warm, and i have never been more loved than i am now.
instead, he said “i’ll hold you to that, suguru. the two of us, until the day we die.”
that summer, they failed a mission.
they were escorts for the star plasma vessel and her caretaker, meant to bring them back to campus. though they technically succeeded, the unprecedented appearance of toji fushiguro ultimately soiled their hard work, amassing casualties that included the vessel herself, as young as she was. satoru might as well have been on the welcome mat outside death’s door itself, suguru under the belief that he was undoubtedly deceased, and everything that followed in the sorcerer killer’s wake was skewed, the shell of the strongest duo cracking ever so slightly.
despite it all, that memory of their plans to run away lingered in both their minds, in their souls. on satoru’s birthday that year, they spoke of how they would decorate their future home with multicolored lights and tinsel iridescent like opalite for the holidays, conversation shared over hot chocolate with a few marshmallows too many, dusted with cinnamon. a candle scented like sugar cookie burned on suguru’s nightstand, a hint of vanilla resembling his aftershave that satoru was enamored with. it was as gentle a scent as his touch, hands that were often battered and calloused somehow delicate in the times when it mattered the most. his veins ran like the biblical rivers, full and holy under skin healed and reopened and healed again, blood dripping as celestial as the water bore by aquarius.
now, under the sun of sagittarius, a platinum-haired boy was seventeen, one year older until they could get out of this place. there’d be more exorcising, more loss — it was a given, and a ride satoru was prepared for if it meant the road to solace with his love was inching closer.
when it snowed on suguru’s birthday, poured from heaven’s basin, satoru promised him a feast of his favorite meals on this day some odd years into the future, an act of gratitude and the best way he could imagine saying i love you to the boy who deserved to hear it endlessly. he couldn’t provide it this year, and maybe not even the next, but just like all their promises there was always a someday, hope for what’s to come.
by the time they had become acquainted with the next summer’s heat, satoru learned that in this world, love can end up being the most twisted curse of all.
when you love too much, you think about what you could’ve done differently.
when you love too little, you wonder what you’ve taken for granted.
when you love just enough, you never expect it to be followed by loss.
twice, he loses suguru.
they never figure out a plan — they are the strongest until one of them reaches a bitter conclusion, a wits end, the thread that bound them to each other snapping as if it were made of spider’s silk. even if they built it all over again, took shelter in each other’s souls again, it wouldn’t be the same.
the first time he lost suguru, he found out that the only ones who could break them apart were each other.
the hands that satoru was blessed enough to be touched by, the fingers that liked to rest in the crevice above his hips and behind his jaw and on the small of his back, so paper delicate even with scarred flesh, now forever soiled by the reality of over a hundred civilians dead. satoru feared that if they were to lay on him again, he’d be tainted too.
they part, leaving behind three years on memory lane. suguru wants to change the world, create one in his image against the jujutsu world that satoru stays in, scattered words from last summer about how it is a sorcerer’s job to project non-shamans rattling his bones. the cathedral they built for the two of them, crumbling, the roof caving in and leaving satoru under the rubble.
the second time he loses suguru it is ten years later, by his own hand.
simply put, something about this ending was fateful; sorcery brings them together and brings them apart, their beginning and their end. satoru had been a million things in the time he spent with suguru, but not once could he ever imagine becoming his executioner.
sun of capricorn tied red to their little fingers, the same as the blood on suguru’s clothes, as the energy building in satoru’s fingers. saturn sheds a tear and venus smiles upon them, a string of destiny seemingly unbroken even in death. the light extinguishes from a heart of taurus, and another of pisces weeps for itself and for the other, unbeknownst to the tears already falling from apatite eyes of the body in which it resides. held in the depths of the stars and the colors of the sky, in the sunrays that pass through the stained glass of satoru’s lone cathedral, the memories of their youth lingered, clinging to universe, an empty seat reserved in the pews.