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“Hey Suguru.”
Suguru twitches and digs his nails into his arm. That’s not his voice speaking for once, it’s Satoru’s. Has Kenjaku decided to switch things up?
For over a year, his voice was the only one he heard but never in his own words. For a year, disoriented and gaged and trapped. Until Satoru. Until that horrible day.
He’s always the exception.
How dare he use Satoru’s voice how dare he use me against him how dare he how dare he—
Suguru gouges his nails into his harm against the caustic anger welling up in him. There’s no need to get so angry, a removed part of him says. The rest of him doesn’t listen. Anger won’t do him any good. Anger only attracts Kenjaku’s attention.
He’s punishing Suguru. Everytime he detects a drip of anger from him, Kenjaku swoops in and rubs his failure in his face.
“Look, Geto,” Kenjaku would purr, twisting Satoru’s prison in his hand. It doesn’t seem fair that it’s such a tiny, innocuous thing. It could be a weird paperweight. “Look where your little tantrum got him. And you, actually.”
Suguru knows he’s trying to sap Kenjaku of his will and make him docile again. He hates that it’s working.
Anger allowed him to see Satoru again, even if for a brief moment of peril, and it allowed him to choke Kenjaku. But what’s the point anymore? It’s over. He can do nothing for Satoru anymore.
He wants so badly to free him, but how can he get the jump on Kenjaku if they share a body? Still, Kenjaku is a planner. If Suguru gets an opening, he doesn’t want Suguru to have an ounce of willpower left to take it.
Suguru is tired of it. He’s tired of Kenjaku and he’s tired of existing like this. Helplessness. It’s disgustingly familiar.
It’s just a memory. Just an echo, wishful thinking, anything. He wants to see Satoru so badly, it’s completely possible that this place is responding to that.
Useless. What he wishes is that Satoru didn’t use his last moments free to yell for a dead man.
Is Suguru touched that’s how Satoru spent his last free moments? Yes. Was he elated to hear his voice again after so long alone with Kenjaku? Yes. Does he wish Satoru didn’t waste his last moments on him? Of fucking course.
Suguru tried to help. He tried to help him until it hurt, until it was obvious it was far, far too late.
Suguru holds onto those few moments Satoru’s face was visible to him, but what the ever-living fuck was he thinking?
He had to have known that Suguru wouldn’t be able to do anything for him. Satoru isn’t stupid. If Suguru was able to do anything besides seethe, doesn’t he know he wouldn’t have already fucking done it?
Then again, Suguru never tried to help himself too much, did he? No reason to. But the moment Satoru comes up, suddenly he can choke Kenjaku out. Maybe Satoru is right. If anything that’s worse.
Guilt, anger, fury, fear, exhaustion, frustration, it all whips up inside him into a caustic mess that threatens to burn him from the inside out. He’s so tired of feeling things. It’s a good thing this place isn’t real enough for his scratches to get infected. He doesn’t wanna stop scratching his arms.
Hearing Satoru telling him to wake up was the first time he felt alive since he stopped being dead.
Suguru has no idea where that energy came from (he’d given up) but he’d wanted Satoru. Satoru free, Satoru fine and in one piece. It was less of a jailbreak like Kenjaku says, and more of a furious scramble.
The first time he sees Satoru in an eternity and it’s when Kenjaku is using Suguru to fuck him over.
Kenjaku won. That’s it.
Suguru fluctuates between feeling hollow or so strongly that it tires him out. From the first moment Suguru came conscious, he dreaded it.
He was supposed to be dead. Done, finally allowed to rest in peace. He was so confused and frustrated.
Suguru gouges at his arms harder, willing Kenjaku to leave him alone.
Then he understood what had happened and he decided to wait to die again.
Suguru’s back there again. Waiting to die— like he’s spent so much of his life.
“Suguru! Are you ignoring me? Hey, stop that.” Someone pushes his hands away from his arms. “C’mon, you’re hurting yourself, Suguru. What’s wrong?”
Suguru smacks the hands away.
“Hey!” the voice says, sounding hurt.
Suguru picks up his head to glare. Two eyes like a clear sky stare back at him, looking slightly offended. The nerve. For once in his life, he’s jealous of Six Eyes. This man looks like Satoru, his heart even responds to him like Satoru.
Suguru has long since stopped talking to Kenjaku, but…. Well. Satoru.
“Don’t touch me,” Suguru rasps. Satoru stares back, face hard. “Fuck off, Kenjaku. Satoru is gone. I’m not stupid.” He lets his face sink back into his arms, where they’re resting on his drawn up knees.
Satoru scoffs. “I’m not dead, Suguru. Just benched. Did dying scramble your brains or somethin’? Are you okay?” He frowns at the gouges on his arm.
Suguru’s heart twists. It’s been so long since he’s heard Satoru speak to him that way, so long. Yet it feels like it never stopped— the blunt remarks wrapping up real concern.
Suguru, did you lose weight? Are you okay?
Suguru keeps his face in his arms. “I don’t know if you’re real.” The words feel hollow as soon as he says them. Kenjaku doesn’t need to pull elaborate stunts like this. If he wants to rub Satoru’s fate in his face, he just gets the cube out.
“Would Kenjaku know that when we were in second year, we tried to sneak out to see Pirates of the Caribbean and you got us caught because you kept kicking me?” Satoru says, and Suguru can hear the smug fucking “innocent” face he’s making right now.
He picks up his head to glare at him. “ You got us caught because you kept talking.” Satoru grins, because he got a rise out of him. Suguru rolls his eyes. “And yeah, he would, dumbass. He lives in my head.”
Satoru doesn’t have anything to say to that, which unsettles him. That’s how he looked at him before he killed him.
Suguru looks down at his arms, and the bleeding gashes on his arms. “You’re not real.”
“Real,” Satoru repeats with disdain. “What does ‘real’ matter anymore? Who knows where we even are.”
He has a point. Suguru doesn’t know, mostly because he doesn’t give a shit. It doesn’t matter where his consciousness is, his being is trapped.
This place of limbo is made of dreams and broken memories— a waiting room, essentially. Sometimes, he can break through to his body's senses (when he feels like it), but mostly he’s here, in an in-between. This should be impossible. But resurrection is impossible too, isn’t it? And yet here he is.
Suguru lets himself look at Satoru properly. His blindfold is pulled down around his neck, and he’s still in his uniform. The blindfold is different from the one he recognizes. Suguru wonders what else about him is unrecognizable.
Still, he can’t help but smile a bit. “I wish I could say it’s good to see you again, Satoru.”
Satoru’s face barely changes (it’s still unsettlingly stony), but Suguru’s known him much too long to not know how he works. Those eyes don’t search him anymore, like they’re trying to see straight inside to his soul. He fiddles with his blindfold, like he wants to pull it up. Avoid him again. Why did he even come to him? “Better get used to it, Suguru. We’re gonna be here for a while.”
And just like that, Suguru feels heavy again. He sits up, propping his head up to face Satoru. “Not what I meant.”
Satoru looks at him, and Suguru sees the strongest sorcerer alive. That face has callously dispatched countless people like him. Him as well, actually. Suguru doesn’t know what to make of how he’s looking at him. What does that look mean?
When he was dying, he wondered that too, but he didn’t care that much. Now though, he wonders. Is it resignation? Disdain? Frustration? Suguru doesn’t know.
He wants to go back to sleep. “You were supposed to be the last of us left standing. And yet despite everything I did, everything you did… we meet the exact same fate. This world is shit.”
Satoru looks tired. Does he need to sleep in the prison realm? Can he? “Is it really that bad?”
Suguru sneers. “You’re not stupid, Satoru. Don’t act like it. I betrayed all of you. I tried to commit genocide. I got my daughters slaughtered. You’ve dedicated your life to saving ungrateful children and swine. And we get the exact. Same. Fucking. Fate. Tell me how that’s fair.”
Satoru’s stone mask of a face falters. His eyes widen. It’s the first expression he believes isn’t put-on. “What happened to your daughters?”
Suguru grimaces. Right. Satoru got shut away before Mimiko and Nanako were murdered. He digs his nails into his skin again. Mercifully, he can feel pain in this place. “Sukuna was unleashed after you were shut away. He murdered my daughters. Kenjaku made sure I knew.”
Despair flashes across his face for only a moment before he frowns. “And that’s your fault?”
Suguru sighs. “I’m not arguing about this with you, Satoru. I’m their only parent.”
“You were supposed to be dead.”
“I promised to protect them and I failed them!” he snaps, anger slipping beyond the wall of indifference in his voice for the first time. Satoru’s frown doesn’t falter, but he doesn’t argue. He doesn’t say anything else about it. Suguru is glad.
“Anyway, who says I’m so different from you? That I didn’t land myself here fair and square?”
“ Excuse me?”
Satoru crosses his arms across his chest. “I have blood on my hands. I murdered my best friend.”
“Don’t feel guilty for clearing the world of a monster.”
“That’s not the point. I can’t take it back. Point is, I made the choice— my heart or the world. I chose the world. I stand by the choice, but who am I to play god? Look where it got us.”
Suguru doesn’t know what to do with that. Those eyes compromise nothing and allow no hiding places. Suguru has spent years with layers of misdirects and lies in his feelings, yet Satoru rips it all down like it’s nothing. So he gives him a cold look. “Is your life really so empty that someone like me gets that spot?”
He hates and relishes the twist of anger on Satoru’s face. It feels right. He resents that fact. “You’re an asshole.”
Suguru rolls his eyes. “You’re delusional. You say things like that and expect me to believe you’re real?” Even though he does believe Satoru is real.
Satoru’s face sets in a way Suguru recognizes. “You know what? You want real? Let’s test how real this place is.”
Suguru watches him with removed curiosity. He recognizes that set of his shoulders. With the countless times they’ve sparred, he knows how Satoru moves. And he can’t bring himself to do anything about it. Suguru lets his eyes fall closed, waiting for the fist slamming into his face or the lance of cursed energy.
Satoru shoves Suguru hard on the chest, sending Suguru sprawling. Suguru relishes the pain of slamming into the ground, and even if brief, the feeling of Satoru’s skin on his.
“That feel real enough for you?” Satoru snaps, then he sits on Suguru’s hips so his weight pins Suguru in place without giving him a chance to react. It feels real, real enough that Suguru believes Satoru could kill him here for a moment, but when is the last time Satoru touched him voluntarily? And so much contact.
Satoru’s face is furious. It brings back memories. He wonders if he’ll punch him in the teeth. “Fight back.”
“No,” Suguru says calmly. It makes Satoru even angrier.
Satoru balls his fists in Suguru’s clothes. “It’s fine if you don’t give a shit about me anymore. But don’t you fucking dare look me in the eyes and that shit to me. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Do you really think my sins and yours carry the same weight? Nostalgia aside, my life does not carry that much weight,” he says, his voice cool. And it makes Satoru bare his teeth. Suguru watches his anger with a removed curiosity, like it’s a novelty. A part of him that’s not numbed over wonders if he only knows how to argue with Satoru anymore.
“Shut the fuck up.” Satoru’s fists tighten in his clothes. “You have no idea how hard it was to lose you. You have no idea how much it hurt Suguru, don’t you fucking dare call it nostalgia.”
“And yet it all could have been avoided if you stopped caring about me, as I’ve told you to time and time again. What business do you have holding onto something spoiled and rotten?” Satoru goes to shout at him, but Suguru can’t help himself. “And who said I didn’t care about you?”
That makes Satoru pause. Suguru waits with a twisting heart for his sneer, but it doesn’t come.
After a tense silence, he says, “That’s not fucking funny.”
Suguru scoffs. “No. It’s not. I used to hate it, you know? I don’t anymore. If it wasn’t you, you wouldn’t have been there in my last moments. There’s no one else I’d want to be killed by, you know? I’m glad it was you.”
For some reason, Satoru doesn’t look incredulous. He doesn’t look taken aback or put off, or any sort of reaction Suguru expected. He looks tired, and maybe sad. “But my feelings for you are nostalgia.”
“The version of me you hold in such high regard… Satoru, that person is long gone. I’m the twisted monstrosity left behind. You don’t know me anymore. Look at me, Satoru. My body isn’t even mine anymore.”
Satoru’s hands are still twisted in his inner robe. It’s bloody and shredded, just like it was when he died. “Is that what you think of me? That I’m a fucking saint who faints at a hint of impurity?”
“Satoru….”
“You know me better than that, Suguru. I have blood on my hands. I’ve seen some heinous shit and done worse.” Satoru’s gaze looks wild as he says all of this, frenzied, and Suguru can’t look away.
“Mmm, the heinous crime of slaying a monster.”
Satoru ignores him. “I care about people, but I’m not a saint, Suguru. I don’t care if you aren’t either.”
Suguru doesn’t know what to say to that. His heart aches. Everything feels heavy. “I wish you would just pick someone else. You’d be free. You’d be happy. I want you to be happy, Satoru. You’d get more than dropped and made into an executioner. I’m not trying to be difficult, Satoru. Maybe I just don’t have enough of me left to….” He can’t think of a word. Maybe that’s just it. There’s not enough of him left.
Satoru glares at him more, like he wants to tear him apart. The expression looks thrillingly neutral on him. “Enough left to be loved?”
Suguru winces. Always “take no prisoners” with him. “Sure. That works.”
Then he leans in, and Suguru braces himself. What is it going to be? Is he going to headbutt him? It’s been a while since he did that. Suguru remembers when he did that once because Suguru was winning their sparring match.
Satoru’s warm lips press against his.
Suguru’s eyes widen, but Satoru’s have fallen closed— all he can see are those pale eyelashes. His eyebrows are furrowed, like he’s very determined. In the back of all the too much going on in his head, he thinks it’s cute.
This is the most alive Suguru has felt since his consciousness first started to back ebb in.
No, since Satoru called for him.
Satoru kissing him feels like sinking into a hot bath after a horrible, horrible day. Well, more like being pushed into it. It’s shocking and Suguru is (internally) flailing around but he can’t help but sink into it.
It feels so good. It’s comforting.
It also hurts, in a way that feels like regret. If it was that easy for Satoru to just kiss him… how easy would it have been for Suguru to ask for a good-bye kiss before being killed? He wanted one, but he didn’t think it was worth asking. He could have asked.
And he hates his heart for this, because it’s not rotting and numb like it should be. He wants it to be that way. It would be so much easier to feel nothing, be nothing. But if his heart were as dead as he should be, he also wouldn’t enjoy this kiss as much as he is.
This was a mistake on Satoru’s part. Now that he’s felt it, Suguru doesn’t think he’ll ever get enough.
Then Satoru is pulling away, and Suguru almost chases after him. Almost, if not for the fact that he kissed him. It doesn’t make sense, not for how his brain understands him. It rattles around like a ricocheting bullet.
Satoru doesn’t care, he’s moved on, no one can love me because I have made myself unloveable in pursuit of stars that were always meant to burn me. But if that’s true, then why did Satoru kiss him like that?
“Do you feel that?”
Satoru stares at him with wide eyes. By the time his slow mind processes he’s expecting something from him— probably something other than a blank, slightly shell-shocked stare.
That’s all he gets though, so Satoru’s eyes harden and he’s sliding off of Suguru and scrunching himself in a sitting position. It’s how he sulks, Suguru remembers. He scrunches himself into a space and looks upset until he feels sufficiently pitied. There’s nothing for him to scrunch into here though.
Suguru wants to find it funny like he used to, but… he doesn’t even look sad. Just resigned.
“I miss you so much, Suguru. I was so happy when I saw you, and… I still miss you.” He tugs his blindfold back over his eyes, hiding the emotion they betray. “I’ve learned my lesson. If you don’t want to let me in, I’m not gonna break my bones trying. You’re not getting rid of me though. I’m staying with you.”
Suguru winces. He hates seeing Satoru sad. Usually it doesn’t stop him because he also hates himself. He pushes himself up to a sitting position. “It’s not that, Satoru. We made our choices years ago.”
“ You made your choices,” he mutters.
“Yes. I made choices, and you made choices. It's just….” He grimaces, but remembers the kiss and remembers how violently he reacted to Satoru in danger. “It doesn’t feel natural being with you anymore. I don’t feel like I fit anymore. And….”
“And?”
He slides over and tips his head against Satoru’s shoulder. Satoru stiffens. “I missed you so much. But I hate that you’re here with me. I can’t not blame myself, no matter what you say. You give so much Satoru, and I only take. Of all people, you should get better than this.”
Suguru thinks, unsurprised, that it wasn’t the right thing to say. Then he relaxes under Suguru’s touch. “You know, some people have rose-tinted glasses. You have black-tinted glasses. I think you forget that sometimes.”
Suguru huffs a laugh. “I think you’re right. I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It matters,” Satoru says peevishly. “You’ve been nothing but a dick to me since I got here because of it!”
“Sorry.”
“Eh. Anyway, we won’t be here forever. That’s not how life works.”
“Mm, right. Your Six Eyes tell you that?”
Satoru elbows him, and Suguru laughs. “Common sense, asshole. Nothing lasts forever.”
“Yeah. Right.”
Satoru tips his head against Suguru’s. “You really think it’s too late for us?”
Suguru knew he was going to ask something like that, because Satoru always asks the questions he wishes he wouldn’t. He’s thought about this question dozens and dozens of times. “Isn’t it? Look what we became. How many times did we choose separate paths? How many times did this rotten world just get in the way?”
Satoru suddenly stands up, leaving Suguru to scramble to prop himself up. He sweeps his arms around to gesture to everything. “Look around us, Suguru!”
Suguru looks. It’s still the strange, shifting limbo it was before. He raises an eyebrow at him.
“There’s nothing.” Satoru grins at him, looking proud. “No Higher-Ups, no sorcerers, no curses, no obligations, nothing. And nothing to stop us. Our situation sucks. Why not make the most of it? We’re alone. Together.”
He’s right. Almost. Nothing to stop them except Suguru. “This won’t last forever,” he murmurs.”
Satoru’s grin widens at the edges. “Yep!” He holds out a hand to Suguru. Suguru stares. “I’ve always wanted to dance with you, you know? Like in those American movies with proms.”
Suguru hesitates. He’s never danced before. But he can see the uncertainty beyond that bulletproof smile of Satoru’s. He’s trying to look confident, but his hand is twitching, like he’s about to retract it. He tells himself he has nothing better to do and takes it.
Satoru sweeps him up until they’re pressed together. One of Satoru’s hands is around his waist, the other clasping his hand. Suguru drapes his spare arm around Satoru’s shoulders and leans into him as he sways them around.
He’d always sneered at slow dancing. It looks so awkward. That’s barely dancing, what’s the point? But it’s nice. Unbelievably nice. Satoru is warm, and he handles him like he’s precious.
Honestly, it makes Suguru want to jump out of his own skin and set everything on fire but that’s because he’s not used to being treated with tenderness. There’s time. Not infinity, but a second chance of sorts. Maybe it’s their consolation prize.
He tips his forehead against Satoru’s. “This is nice.”
“Lot better than fighting, hm?”
It’s meant to be a dig, but too bad for him. “Eh. You gave me a death not many get. I love you and I love the twins. But I wouldn’t have wanted them to be there. I’m glad your face was the last I ever saw.”
“That was the worst day of my life, you know.”
Suguru feels a twinge of guilt. “I know the feeling. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I made my choice.” Satoru knocks his forehead against Suguru’s. “And their deaths weren't your fault. If anything, it was Kenjaku’s.”
Suguru huffs. “I want to believe that. I still wanna kill ‘im though.” Satoru looks like he wants to say more about this, but Suguru isn’t ready to talk about the twins’ deaths. Not yet. It doesn’t seem like he’s ready to talk about Suguru’s either. So he tugs down Satoru’s blindfold. “Do your eyes bother you here?”
Satoru shrugs. “Not much. Not in a way that matters.”
“Mm.” Suguru slides his hands up in Satoru’s hair, fluffing it out. “Good. Your eyes are pretty.” His hand slides down to the side of Satoru’s face. Those lips felt so warm.
They stretch into a smirk as Satoru notices where Suguru is looking. “There something you want?”
Suguru huffs, and looks up to meet his eyes. “You know, it wasn’t fair the last time. I wasn’t expecting it, how could I be expected to react properly? And you had the nerve to sulk about it.”
“Well who just stares? You looked like a fish.” Suguru rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. Satoru pulls him in closer with the hand on his waist. “You wanna try again?”
“Please.”
Satoru closes the scant distance between them and kisses Suguru again. This time, Suguru kisses back. He’s not sure he’s doing it right, but Satoru doesn’t seem to have any complaints and neither does he.
They kiss, and they keep kissing until Suguru gets absorbed in the press of Satoru’s lips and their dancing, more of a gentle sway back and forth at this point than a proper waltz.
Outside of this place of limbo, the world is chaos. Satoru is sealed away, and Suguru has met a fate worse than death. People have died, and more people will die by the time Satoru at least gets out. Suguru has no idea what’s in store for him, but he’s content with that. For now, at least.
`Nothing lasts forever, but this at least, will last for a while.
Kenjaku certainly has no plans of them being free anytime soon.
If it’s like this, with him, Suguru thinks to himself, as their kiss deepens. I wouldn’t mind waiting here for a bit longer.