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Time passes differently here. It’s dark all around, oppressive and endless like the yawning maw of the void. His powers don’t work, not that he had expected them to. Six Eyes is always activated, of course, though he can’t see cursed energy anymore.
And for the first time since he was eighteen and he mastered the automatic self-renewing Limitless, he’s cut off from the protection of the barrier he’s erected around himself. It had taken some getting used to existing without his technique humming along passively in the background, like he’s been plunged underwater, the only sounds coming through muffled and distorted.
Nothing has been able to touch him for ten years, not unless he’s allowed it. It’s a precaution, a preemptive measure taken to ward off against things that might slip through the cracks. But Satoru is self-aware enough to recognize that it’s far too late. The one thing, the one person who matters most to him has already long made a home for himself in the marrows of his bones.
Loving Suguru was an inevitability. It’s impossible to untangle what he feels for Suguru, still, even after all this time. Exorcising those feelings means exorcising his own heart, and Satoru can never allow that to happen.
Ergo, his current situation.
He’s examined every inch of this prison, but even with the help of his Six-Eyes-enhanced vision, he doesn’t see a way out of here without outside assistance.
What use is all that power, when he’s trapped in here, unable to do anything?
“I’m the strongest,” he repeats to himself like a mantra, a wry, self-deprecating smile on his face. The skulls that surround him, rictus smiles forever stretched across their faces, don’t answer.
In the silence, Satoru has taken to treating his memories like well-loved books, indulging himself in them again and again and again. It’s not like there’s anything else for him to do here.
One in particular floats to the front of his mind, and he smiles at the warmth it exudes.
Satoru closes his eyes, and allows himself to fall.
***
“He’s gonna be late,” Satoru says as he snaps the phone shut with a huff, “the meeting’s been pushed to tomorrow.”
By his side, Suguru makes a noncommittal noise. Why Principal Yaga decided to send both of them to meet with some French sorcerer, when just one of them would have been more than sufficient, he will never know. But he was not about to pass up the opportunity for a free trip to Paris with his boyfriend on the school’s dime.
Paris in the fall is nothing short of immaculate. The crush of summertime tourists has dwindled away to a trickle, most of them long gone back home in time to catch the beginning of a new academic year.
Not that Satoru can claim to be a local, either, no matter how many times he’s visited. But when the line to pick up his morning coffee at Saint Pearl is shortened from thirty minutes to five, he’s not one to examine the gift horse too closely.
The leaves of the trees in the Jardin des Tuileries have started to change color, drifting through the air to carpet the sidewalks in patterns of red and gold. Satoru delights in the crunch of his loafers over the foliage as he meanders through the gravel walkways, one hand shoved impertinently into the pockets of his slacks, the other curled around a to-go cup.
The residual warmth of the latte—double shot, oat milk, extra sugar—seeps through the thin paper walls to warm his hand, and steam wafts in white curlicules from the small opening in the plastic lid.
Beside him, Suguru scoffs, hand firmly clutching his own paper cup. His drink is simple—just a double shot of espresso, no milk, no extra trimmings—a perfect contrast to Satoru’s own.
“I don’t know how you stand to ruin a perfectly good espresso like that,” Suguru sniffs, gazing at Satoru out of the corner of his eye to gauge his reaction.
It’s an age-old argument with them, the contours of it warm and comfortable like a well-worn item of clothing. Still, because Satoru will always be Satoru, he sticks his tongue out at his companion, taking an extra large gulp of his drink in retaliation.
There is a small mustache of foam on his lip when he pulls the cup away.
“Wait, you’ve got—” Suguru moves on instinct, lifting his thumb to brush it away before Satoru has a chance to.
“Thanks,” he says, and Suguru smiles, before pressing a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth.
His bad mood from earlier is all but dissipated, the postponed meeting with Pierre all but forgotten. Now that they have the rest of the day to do as they please, Satoru is looking forward to spending the rest of the day playing tourist.
“Come on,” he says, tugging at Suguru’s hand, “I want to see Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss.”
“Alright,” Suguru says, smiling indulgently. He doesn’t let go of Satoru’s hand the rest of the way there.
***
Several hours later, Satoru has come to the devastating conclusion that he will not be able to see everything on this trip. He had not counted on just how big the Louvre is; he and Suguru have wandered through what seems like endless hallways filled with statues, paintings and art of all sorts, and he knows that he’s barely scratched the surface of what the entire museum contains.
Satoru sighs, shoving his hands in the pockets of his slacks. He’s wandered back to the Grande Galerie, having long since abandoned trying to work his way through the museum in any particular order, simply going where his feet take him.
Suguru glances at his watch.
“Satoru, we should go soon,” he says, when he takes note of the time.
“Fine, fine,” Satoru says, but makes no move to start looking for the exit.
Several minutes pass, before he finally, reluctantly, steps away from the painting he had been examining.
“Alright, let's go.”
The walk back to the main entrance seems longer than usual. Satoru hums quietly to himself, lost in thought as he mulls over all the artwork he had been able to see today.
“Have you ever thought about,” Suguru asks, with a pensive air about him, “if we weren’t who we are and everything, and jujutsu sorcerers didn’t exist, what you would do with your life instead?”
Satoru makes a non-committal noise, before shrugging. “Not really. I mean, all my life has been tied up in this jujutsu sorcerer business, I can’t really imagine what I’d do otherwise,” he says, with a small huff of laughter. “Why, do you know what you’d do?”
“I was thinking I could probably make a living as an artist.”
Satoru nods in assent. He’s seen the little doodles that Suguru draws in the margins of his school notebooks, anything from diagrams to help him understand a concept better to small sketches that, more often than not, depict Satoru himself.
“And I’d be your muse, of course,” he says, batting his eyelashes at the other man.
Suguru rolls his eyes, but his smile never wavers. “Of course,” he agrees, easily.
Satoru winks, and they continue on their way.
This wing of the museum seems to be much less popularly traversed than the larger hall they were in before. It’s quiet, broken only by the clicking of their shoes over the marble floors.
The walls are stark white, and with the ever-lengthening shadows, the corridor seems longer than it is, almost impossibly so. The silence stretches out, and Satoru and Suguru glance at each other before continuing onwards.
It’s not until he’s several dozen feet down that Satoru realizes he hasn’t seen a single piece of art on the walls.
Finally, about halfway down the hall, hangs a single painting.
Huh, Satoru thinks, as he leans in closer to examine it. That kinda looks like—
He turns to talk to Suguru about it, but there’s nobody around. There’s only himself, standing alone in the hallway. And out of the corners of his eyes, a multitude of skulls grin at him from the shadows of the walls.
He’s there, somehow, inside his memory.
Satoru glances down at his body, and he is at once seventeen and twenty eight. It’s strange, the overlay between his memory-self, and his present-self.
When he blinks, Suguru stands at his side once again, only this time he’s changed into the priest uniform he wore the last time Satoru saw him, before he was sealed.
Satoru knows the man next to him, knows him like he knows his own reflection that he sees in the bathroom mirror every morning, and this facsimile, this pretender is not Suguru.
The shadows are creeping closer now.
“Did you have a lovely time?” The thing wearing Suguru’s body says, and he smiles.
***
Every lover thinks that their love is unique. That theirs is one for the ages, that the two of them will be remembered forever, that theirs is the greatest love story ever told.
But that isn’t true.
Sometimes, all that’s left is a painting, collecting dust down a forgotten corridor of a museum.
***
Reluctantly, Satoru opens his eyes.
Love is indeed the greatest curse of them all.
He closes them again.