Work Text:
Suguru always had the same dream. In that dream, he saw himself; badly wounded, bleeding, destroyed. He had an important battle and had lost. He felt, rather, resigned. Everything would end there, whether he wanted it to or not; it no longer depended on him.
No, his life was in someone else's hands. And he trusted that other person to do what he felt was right, just as he had done. It didn't matter if that included his own death; to die at their hands would be to touch the gates of heaven, and he, who had committed unforgivable sins, clearly didn't deserve that blessing. To die at his hands was his redemption, it was justice. It was the only way he could leave that world in peace.
He could not see his face clearly, and if he did, he never remembered it when he woke up. Nor did he know what was the last thing that person said to him before finishing with him. What he was always able to remember was that, in that dream, his last words were strange:
"At least curse me a little at the very end…"
When he woke up, a feeling of emptiness came over him completely, as if something of himself was lost.
He lived a quiet life. He had become independent shortly after finishing high school and now had a good job, which he interspersed with his university work. He had a small group of good friends he could count on and with whom he hung out when he had free time. He couldn't ask for more.
But that dream haunted him. And with it, emptiness. He felt he was going through life always searching, always waiting. What was he looking for? He did not know. He trusted that he would know when he found it —though sometimes he feared that it had escaped him, that through his ignorance of what he was waiting for he had lost it.
He walked through the huge library of his university, shouldering the bag in which he carried his books. He had an exam to study for and was almost out of time, though he wasn't feeling particularly stressed that day. He had had a dreamless night and the morning had been quiet, so he felt light. He had a strange conviction that this would be a good day.
He scanned the tables for a place to settle in and found an empty spot by a window. He started to walk towards that seat when suddenly his shoulder bumped against a hard surface and he had to take a step back.
He turned his gaze toward the person who had bumped him and his eyes met a pair of bright, blue eyes. The sun illuminated his features, his white hair and pallor highlighted by his black clothing. For a moment, neither of them said a word.
He wouldn't feel safe to admit it until much later, when that feeling was already a reality, but it was enough to see him for a feeling to be planted in his chest that would soon blossom, a conviction that he would be someone important. Possibly he already was, even if he didn't know it yet.
"I'm sorry," he said, smiling softly, and walked on.
The guy continued to stand there for a moment before continuing on his way. Suguru, even though he had to study, kept looking for him with his eyes, stealing glances. It seemed to him that the guy did the same, their gazes crossing from time to time, though he averted it so quickly that it was hard to discern whether that was happening or he was imagining it.
About an hour passed, reading a little, watching the albino some more, until the guy stood up and crossed the library to sit beside him.
"Excuse me," he muttered under his breath, trying not to be heard over the sound of footsteps and students turning pages, "but do we know each other from somewhere?"
Suguru blinked. He had him so close that he could see the way his eyelashes curled upward, and his eyes felt so familiar that his heart skipped a beat.
He didn't remember seeing him before, but...
"I was wondering the same thing."
"I knew it, then I've seen you before," the boy concluded, snapping his fingers as if he had guessed and raising his voice slightly; it caused several people around them to shush him. He bowed, smiling and joining his hands in apology, and returned to his confidential tone. "I'm Satoru Gojo. And you...?"
Suguru smiled, amused.
"Suguru Geto," he muttered, but those at the neighboring tables hissed again. "I don't think this is the best place for conversation."
"I'll take that as an invitation to the cafeteria."
"That would be nice, but..." He gestured toward the books he'd scattered on the table, the mess of notes and markers, and lifted his shoulders.
"You look like someone ready for a break. You can always keep studying later."
Suguru knew he didn't have much time, and it definitely wasn't the best time to take a break. That didn't stop him from agreeing. It wouldn't be the first time he had to take an exam again, and if he had to choose, the suffocating feeling of familiarity in his chest urged him to go with him, to discover what it was that united them.
He didn't discover it, at least not in that first moment together, but he discovered other things —like that Gojo studied physics even though he had always been passionate about medicine, that he "played model" for certain magazines and some advertisements, and that he liked milk with coffee more than coffee with milk. He could also discover that his laughter was a melody and his smile lit up his eyes, those ocean eyes. He allowed himself to laugh along, to tell him a little about himself, to let him discover him in the same way Satoru allowed himself to be discovered.
That night, Suguru closed his eyes and was shaken by dreams that sounded like fantasy and unreality. Dreams where his own strength was in the shared relationship with someone else, where the "we" mattered more than anything else. Could he survive the separation, if it happened? He thought not. Separation would be destructive, as if a piece of him soul was being ripped out. But he didn't feel that the thought of separation was necessary either, because Suguru would never be alone. His companion would always be there for him.
Who was that companion?
Someone he cherished, that was for sure. Perhaps, even, someone he loved. Love. That sounded like the right expression. Admiration and respect came close, too, though they weren't enough to describe the way his body reacted to this person's presence. The beating of his heart, the way his chest seemed to cry out, yearning.
When he woke up, he only remembered the color of the eyes of the person in that dream. Light blue eyes. Ocean eyes. He stared at the ceiling for longer than necessary, fantasizing about what he always felt lost when he woke up in his reality, where his companion was nothing more than a pure figment of his imagination.
When he went to the library that day, a part of himself had hoped to meet Satoru again. They hadn't arranged to see each other again, but that didn't take away his hope of crossing paths. He didn't understand it, and he didn't feel he had to understand it either; he could accept that the longing made no sense at all.
He had just settled down to study when someone sat down next to him and waved a hand in front of his eyes. When he raised his head, he saw Satoru there, dressed completely in black, wearing sunglasses —which he raised to rest them on his forehead as soon as Suguru looked at him— and smiling.
"Hey," he greeted in a cheerful whisper.
"Hey. Are you going to leave me without studying today too?"
"Oh, no, don't worry, I know you're on a tightrope," he teased, and Suguru had to do his best to pretend he was deeply bothered by that, though a small smile escaped him. "I just wanted to tell you that my friends and I are getting together this Saturday for drinks and stuff, and you're invited."
Suguru was taking his exam on Friday, so he would be free by then. He thought that he had told him that. He thought the idea that he'd keep it in mind was adorable.
"Okay," he murmured.
"Perfect," Satoru replied, leaning over his notes and taking the pencil Suguru held in his hand. Ignoring the grimace this provoked, he used the pencil to write his name between hearts and with a crown above and below his phone number. "Talk to me and I'll send you the details."
He walked out of there like a light, which was good, because he was beginning to attract annoyed looks. Suguru watched his handwriting with a very non-discreet smile that he took care to wipe off his expression as soon as he noticed it had shown up and, when a while later he wrote down the number on his phone, he decided to put a crown on his contact name. Just to play along.
Come the weekend, he met up with Satoru and his friends. His group of friends was not that large and they were curious people, to say the least, but were nice; Shoko and Utahime were a couple and both acted as if they despised Satoru deeply, although Utahime was the first to pull him away from the alcohol when she felt he was overdoing it and Shoko pressed her lips to his forehead when he dramatized that he thought he had a fever just because he was feeling hot. On the other side were Nanami and Haibara, who were not a couple, but Nanami watched his partner with striking admiration. Lastly, MeiMei and Yuki both seemed to be in other worlds, though they were funny and Yuki and Suguru instantly connected.
Suguru escorted Satoru back to his apartment —which was absurdly large for a student—, helped him change and ended up staying over, because it was late and he had nothing to do at home anyway and..., well, maybe the night was destined to end like that, with a drunk Satoru talking about nonsense and Suguru, barely more sober than him, lying next to him on his bed and listening to him with pretended attention, though he was more focused on his eyes, on the moles scattered over every visible patch of skin, in the pinkness of his lips.
Suguru, surprisingly, passed his exam. Satoru used that as an excuse to celebrate and took him out to eat one night at a fancy restaurant. He took care of the bill without any trouble even after his friend's insistence —were they friends already?— to help him and then took him out in his car for a drive and talk about life itself. Suguru had never enjoyed someone's company so much.
The dreams, meanwhile, were becoming more and more frequent. They made no sense, but Suguru always woke up overloaded, with a heavy feeling in his body and an emptiness in his chest that could only be explained by saying that a part of himself had been ripped out of him. It took him a moment to come back to reality and forget that feeling, but he always knew that it would not be long before he would relive it.
Although he had to admit that, as time went on, it felt less and less heavy. It was like watching a wound heal. Eventually, all that remained was a superficial mark, perhaps more sensitive, but no longer burning or hurting.
The months passed so quickly that Suguru didn't notice them slipping through his fingers. They finished that year at university and Satoru got it into his head to take a trip to the beach. He took the organisation into his own hands, made sure that everyone in the group did their part and, in the end, managed to spread the good cheer to the others, even though they pretended it wasn't the case.
The trip lasted seven days and six nights. On the second night, when they both lay on the sand, listening to the sound of the sea, Suguru realised that he liked Satoru.
Accepting the feeling was simple, almost natural. This was the way things were meant to be, and it was impossible to have it any other way. Flaws and all, Suguru considered this boy resting beside him in the sand to be the only person he could ever truly love. He didn't even care about being loved back; it was enough for him to admire him, like someone gazing at the sun from a distance. Having him in his life was miracle enough.
Two nights later, he woke up in a cold sweat, with a tightness in his chest, and as he left the room with his legs shaking and his hair tousled for air, he passed Satoru in the hallway.
He had had a dream. The dream was strange: it was as if it was a mixture of all the dreams he had ever had about this unknown boy, a compilation of the moments. He saw when he first met him, the moments of early friendship, how the two grew stronger together; he saw the high point of the relationship, when the love was so evident that it wasn't even necessary to put it into words, when everything was shared, the defeat and the victory; ge saw the break, the blood, the moment when the relationship suffered the first wound, the beginning of the end; he saw when they broke down altogether, the argument in the street ("Kill me, if you want to. At least there is meaning in that," he heard himself say, and it was the only time he came close to admitting the truth: that he would agree to die, if it was at his hands); he saw the final parting, when he was badly wounded and that other person took his life quickly, almost mercifully. In the dream, he kept thinking that he loved him even before his life was taken.
None of it was new in itself; almost all of it was stuff that had appeared in his dreams before. But something changed that night. That night, it was the first time he didn't forget his opponent's face when he woke up, nor his voice, nor his name.
"Satoru," he exhaled pathetically. He blinked, watching him with an expression of bewilderment similar to the one Suguru himself wore.
"Hey," the young man muttered, trying to smile in vain. His hand was still clutching the handle of his bedroom door and he was trembling slightly. "What are you doing up at this hour?"
Suguru swallowed, playing with his hair just to have something to do with his hands.
"I was going to get some water or something to drink. See, I had kind of a weird dream…"
Satoru took a breath and nodded, as if he understood.
"But then again, dreams are just that, aren't they?" Suguru muttered, more to convince himself than anything else, and started walking in the direction of the kitchen.
Before he could get too far away, he felt the opposite hand wrap around his wrist. His hand was icy cold and trembled barely perceptibly, clinging to him like one who clings to what really matters. He turned to look at him and tilted his head to one side, confused, but for a few seconds neither of them said anything.
"Actually, I had a strange dream too," he said quietly, perhaps even frightened. "Could you... tell me what you dreamt?"
They both went into the kitchen and sat facing each other, holding glasses of cold water. Suguru slid a finger around the rim of the glass, sighing, and soon began to narrate his dream.
Satoru watched him silently, attentively, his eyes shining. He was biting his lower lip and playing with his fingers, but he did not interrupt him at any point. He let him tell his dream from beginning to end, and the words flowed out of him naturally, as if they had been waiting to be released. He thought it would be difficult for him to express the ideas that ran through him almost violently, but once he began to speak, there was nothing to stop him; the barriers had fallen, the restrictions were gone. The only thing he kept to himself was what had really taken him by surprise: that, in his dreams, his companion was Satoru. Perhaps it always was, and he simply never noticed it before; whatever it was, there was no point in admitting it. That would be like making it clear that he was crazy, if it wasn't already obvious enough.
When he finished, he drank the water from the glass in small sips, averting his gaze. Once it was all said and done, he thought it was pointless to get so agitated over something so simple. Dreams never had to mean more than that.
At least that's what he thought until he looked back at Satoru to tell him it didn't matter and saw him, wild-eyed and biting his thumbnail in a ball of nerves.
"I..." he began, but paused. He took a sip of water under Geto's watchful eye and sighed, "From the first day, you seemed curiously familiar. It occurred to me that maybe we'd crossed paths once before and you'd simply stayed in my memory because you were cute, and little else, but that was just a weak excuse, an explanation that made no sense at all."
Suguru had to restrain himself from looking away; or worse, from getting up and running away in terror.
"I always felt you close. It didn't make sense, but whenever I saw you I couldn't stop thinking about you until I saw you again, and it felt as if something had connected us all along, as if we were bound together by something beyond us. I never said it because metaphysics is not my thing, you know, and it all sounds like an absurd attempt at poetry. I never understood how I could even think that souls can connect outside the bodies that contain them, meet and meet again eternally, but I felt you. It was as if you had come to fill an empty space that had always been reserved, that no one else could have filled in your place."
He bit his lip, nervous. Suguru reached across the table to take one of the other's hands, encouraging him to continue, even though he felt short of breath. He might faint. He'd been on the verge of fainting ever since Satoru started talking.
"I've had strange dreams since I was a child," Satoru continued, stroking the hand Suguru had extended in his direction. "Before I turned twelve, I told my mother about them because I felt kind of sad when I woke up. I was facing overwhelming loneliness, which I didn't know how to cope with, and my mother told me about reincarnation. She always believed in that kind of thing, and she told me that she thought souls never die. They leave behind mortal bodies and are reborn. She also told me that there are souls that are inseparable, that they are destined to meet for eternity. She thought my dreams were visions of a past life, and that comforted me for a long time. As I grew older, I thought it was idiotic and put those ideas aside, but the dreams..., the dreams never went away. Not them, not the emptiness."
"Until you met me," the jet-haired man interjected, looking down at his clasped hands because it was difficult to look him in the eye under the circumstances. "It happened to me that, after meeting you, the emptiness gradually began to heal. It happened with such subtlety that I didn't realise what was happening until the feeling was gone. The dreams never went away, but they no longer gave me an unpleasant feeling."
"Until today, right?" Satoru murmured, running his free hand over his face. "I saw you in those dreams today. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me, because these days you've been closer than ever before and that can be confusing, give rise to feelings. But when I passed you in the hallway and you said you'd had a weird dream, I just knew. That my mother was right, and our souls are intertwined, either because they belong to each other or simply because they have a special connection. Oh, shit. Does this even make sense?"
"It does," Suguru said, without a moment's hesitation. "Of course it does. I saw you in a dream today, and what I got from it wasn't an unpleasant feeling, but a strange state of full awareness of something I'd been suspecting: I belong to you in a way I'm not even able to comprehend. It's confusing and took me slightly by surprise, but it's not entirely unexpected. I had suspected it before, though I thought it was a side effect of..."
He paused. To say it was to give it materiality, and it was a bit scary. He didn't think this connection between them had to be necessarily romantic, but that they could be intertwined in a thousand different ways and what was happening to him was just his own, private exaggeration, because he had never felt anything like that connection before and didn't know how to interpret it otherwise. Maybe Satoru saw it differently. Perhaps...
"Of being in love," Satoru concluded on a sigh, as if short of breath. He clutched his hand in his and leaned forward slightly. "Tell me that you are, and that I haven't let these feelings bloom too soon. That I've given you time to feel it too."
He remembered him in his dreams, frail and desperate, and it seemed to him that they were in a rather similar sentimental situation. It wasn't a life and death situation now, but the desperation was the same. He begged for an answer, no matter whether it was positive or negative. His words were another way of saying Love me or break me, darling, but do it soon: nothing can be worse than uncertainty . Suguru would not die at his hands, not that night, but he did hold in his hands the power to exalt Satoru or reduce him to nothing. He would grant it to him, as he had done before and as he would possibly do again.
"Is that a confession?" he asked, and the question sounded absurd once it left his lips; he knew it was. He simply wanted to be sure.
"I'll put it another way: I'm in love with you. Possibly I have been since the first moment, if love at first sight really exists."
They both stood up at the same time and approached each other without ever letting go of each other's hands. When they were facing each other, Suguru's free hand went to the other's face, where he gently stroked his cheek.
"I am too," he murmured. He stroked his lower lip with his thumb, and Gojo parted his lips, breathing slowly. "I didn't think I'd admit it so soon because it sounded crazy. I thought it would scare you away."
Satoru let go of his hand just so he could cup his face with both hands. He watched him from above in awe, as if he had the greatest treasure life had to offer in front of him. He was. He was.
"As if you could scare me away so easily. Worse, as if we could run away from this."
Suguru laughed softly, and before he had time to react, the other broke the distance between them and kissed him. It was like putting the final piece in a jigsaw puzzle: everything was in place. This was the way it was supposed to be.
They had failed once before, but their souls, eternally bound, would not accept defeat so easily. They had armed themselves with a new opportunity, a chance to make things right.
They would. This time, they could afford to get it right.