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“What ‘cha doin’ out here?” Satoru’s voice seemed like a dim light in the dullness of blackened sky. The moon cleared of clouds as the shining silver pressured the edges of his face gently.
Suguru sheepishly tore his gaze from his own shadow, wind pushing his body towards the stars, hands wrapped around the ice-cold chains of the swing. He didn’t answer immediately, wavering between reality and liquified ink drenching his clothes black, mind pale of emotions, eyes blurred around the white hair and its accompanied stars.
Satoru had been spilled across his bed; legs entangled in his blanket with Suguru’s fingers barely brushing along his frown. There was no peace in the way his lips trembled, uneven breaths agonizing his golden eyes. Suguru resisted the urge to flick his finger against his brows, drawn close, to stop his breathing for a moment and return him to the present. If he could. If there only wasn’t an infinitely small space between them halting his touch from reaching Satoru, a vhmm sound marking a zone he shouldn’t be allowed to come close to. Suguru carefully withdrew his fingers, feeling the whiteness of Satoru’s hair lifelessly brushing against his forehead. Satoru’s eyelids were creased with unease; chest heavy as if restrained with glassy poison tanks, pouring open if he made the slightest movements.
In these moments, all he could do was clasp his hands in front of his mouth, lips writhing painfully, without the ability to stop the scene in its motions. The only thing Suguru could ever do was to make sure that he was present, that he wouldn’t let Satoru’s heart beat by itself. That Suguru wouldn’t leave. That he was there, hand resting on his head, distress stirring underneath his palm. His mind desperately fighting the urge to interfere in his fantasy, with death embraided on Suguru’s blade as he draws it. A grey storm of miserable thoughts inside Satoru’s mind that he wouldn’t dare to share with him, the curves of his mouth thinning out, forcibly sucking in a breath and titling it ‘Nevermind’.
Suguru remembered, because the moment he woke up, there was no angelic blue in his eyes – they were endless dull oceans filled with far more than he could heave onto his shoulders alone to keep him afloat. In a way, Satoru seemed as if he was drowning right before Suguru’s presence, saying goodbye even though he was alive, holding his breath even though his lungs screamed for it. Satoru’s white lashes were lightning. Lightning, when he locked eyes with Suguru. His crystal returned, rainbow colours mixing into a fuzzy joy when he intertwined their hands, mouth forming loud less words. Suguru waited until he had dozed off again, heartbeat steady under his fingertips.
Suguru had wrapped his arms around his torso, a weak attempt to keep himself warm, the cold embracing him as if he were snow. Satoru slumped down onto the swing next to him, legs uncomfortably folding under the short distance to the floor.
“Thinking,” Suguru settled. Tongue tasting the air as if it were an ice cube melting, squirming in his lungs, feeling the pollens inside his lungs blooming painfully.
Suguru briefly registered a flashing purple being launched at him before his cheeks felt the contact with the fabric softener. Satoru’s face was shamefully directed at his feet, pooling holes into the dirt with the tips of his sneakers.
“Satoru,” Suguru huffed out, stretching his hand out, “you’re going to freeze. I’m not the one who’s cold in mid-July weather, and it’s March.”
Suguru could make out the way Satoru’s arms shuffled closer to his body in protest of the warmth leaving his body, the white shirt baring him in front of the wall of cold wind whipping around his hair as an easy prey for it to hunt. Still, he persistently shook his head, white, pearly hair strands dancing, frosty red snowflakes painted onto his cheeks.
“’m fine, you forgot your jacket.” The moonlight suggested the faintest amount of a crooked smile, quickly widening when Suguru gave into Satoru’s purple warmth.
Satoru popped a bonbon into his mouth, pushing the wrapping paper into his jeans pocket, legs stretched out like a cat.
“You know your teeth will rot at some point if you keep eating sweets.”
“Doesn’t matter,” He chewed loudly, “You’re not gonna leave me for some rotten teeth, are ya?”
Suguru’s lungs escaped a weak chuckle, pulling his sleeves over his ice-ridden fingers. He could inhale a whiff of Satoru’s cologne, mixing vividly with the scent of spring. Suguru pulled out a package of cigarettes he snatched from Shoko earlier this afternoon. He let it dangle between his lips, eyeing Satoru’s derogatory look as he let the flame dance inside his palm.
“You’re not–”
Satoru waved him off before he could finish: “Yeah, yeah I’m not leavin’ ya just ‘cuz you inhale some toxins, got it.”
The silence between them thickened into a blanket, wrapping around them as if it were worth the knock of protection, of whatever words were to come. Somehow, comforting.
Suguru wondered about things. Many things. About Satoru, and why he put on the act of the gamemaster, porcelain skin presented with a smile inked into his face, loud laughter filling their breaths. With him. Why was there panic in his eyes, the short flinching and knife-sharp inhale at his deafened vocal cords? Why was there agony spiralling in the abyss of his orbs, panic holding his breath tight like hands crushing his throat? Somehow, Satoru had managed. He had managed all these years, until the point where he stood in front of him, sunglasses sliding on the tip of his nose, eyes shining as if he were alive.
“What?” Suguru stretched the syllable like chewing gum. He grinned when he saw Satoru’s faint attempt to suppress an embarrassed smile.
And still, there was this force pulling inside him, sucking his soul into his core. A feeling of unease not leaving their gazes. A sensation of blood drawn between them, something about their bond in this moment, changing. Switching, twisting his heart into a direction he’d never thought Satoru could manage to force it into.
Oddness filled Suguru when Satoru nervously rubbed his hand against his neck, clearing his throat of the chuckle that got stuck halfway through it. Clean folds falling into the direction of the wind, eyes avoiding Suguru’s like a curse. His hands desperately clutching onto the cold chains for support, swinging forth, Satoru’s comforting scent playing around his nose. Suguru could see Satoru’s arms slightly shaking from March nights’ cruelty.
“This is… good,” he raised his head, sunglasses sliding down the slope of his nose. Trees rustling its leaves as if they were trying to keep each other warm “I mean, good.”
Satoru paused, emphasizing the last word with emotion he wouldn’t show often – genuine care. Not honesty, not the horrible sarcasm he used to bully the first years with, earning eye rolls from Nanami. Not genuine in a sense that it came from his tongue, genuine in a sense that it came from the warmth surrounding his soul.
“As good as it gets for us, right?” Suguru’s eyes curved into a softened smile, awaiting Satoru to look him into the eye.
“Yeah,” the sentence felt unfulfilled, Satoru’s lips parting as if he were too afraid to speak, blood pooling at the corners of his mouth to halt his words from leaving.
“You can tell me.”
“I know.”
The wind ripped at his ebony hair.
“What if something happens?” silence fell between them like snowflakes, light and iron cold stinging his hands, watching him clutch onto the chains “I can’t understand why but it feels like this is limited. It’s finite, today. I don’t want that, Suguru.”
Satoru’s voice staggered at his own name, as if it was an unexpected miscalculation in his feelings.
“Limited?” The words sounded silly in his mouth, a joke they’d laugh at, Satoru’s lips resting with the corners curved towards the sky. Yet the sensation that he’d be able to turn the hourglass towards hell’s gates itched Suguru’s throat with dryness.
Satoru paused his breathing.
“You won’t leave me, right?” The sound of Satoru’s voice was raw flesh inside Suguru’s ears.
Satoru’s eyes were glass, too fragile to hold them in his hands.
There were worlds crashing into him, splinters of porcelain ripping his skin open and blood escaping from the cage of his body. Because he didn’t know. He didn’t know whether he would stay or leave. He wouldn’t know whether he’d be alive tomorrow or the day after. It felt like his chest was being torn into ghostly pieces, only for him to decide which way to go because either one was death’s door. Suguru’s soul pierced him with questions he couldn’t answer, breath stuck between his lips and his hand hovering above the core of his soul, mind racing.
His eyes saw Satoru’s. Innocent, see-through glass, pure diamonds’ reflecting emotions in a hexagonal shape, showing how many memories there were borne in front of him like he deserved to see his vulnerability. Like he deserved to see why he looked at him, pleading, eyebrows restrictively twitching from an expression which made Suguru’s stomach turn in disgust at himself. Because he didn’t know. Because he thought he could answer everything with a nod or a ‘no’, but he couldn’t. Perhaps, in this way, it was Satoru altering his opinion, even though they were one. They were the strongest.
Satoru. Satoru was.
Suguru was someone, next to him, smiling up at him, with Satoru’s neck straightened like he could reach for universes if he would just try to. And Suguru was next to him. He was next to him on the ground, holding his tender soul inside his warm palms, calloused fingers protecting it of a feather’s touch. Satoru was small, he was a child next to him. Though he was the strongest alone.
And somewhere, deep, deep inside his mind, Suguru’s heart twisted, eyes smiling with Satoru. Smiling at him, lips playing with the thought of voicing that he didn’t know. Just until the second he noticed the spring blooming inside his hands. Spring, that he wanted to last. A Spring that he wanted to carry on, with sunshine warming his skin and laughter brighter than the reflection of Satoru’s eyes. And even though he was just barely an armlength apart from him, he could reach out an feel his hands entangled with his fingers, his eyes felt distant, as if miles away.
“I don’t–” Satoru’s breath got stuck in his throat “I don’t know what to do,” his voice softly fell apart, like bits of pieces crinkling from dried roses, petals dusting your fingertips a faded red, – “I won’t know what to do without you, Suguru.” – Just until the petal broke under the pressure of thin air.
There was a break in his voice. Suguru hadn’t known it was difficult to talk, though it was hard to listen. It was difficult to listen to his eyes yearning for closeness, to his fingers digging into his arms hugging himself. To listen to the twinge of agony of drowning his teeth into his bottom lip. Suguru didn’t want him to continue, but he knew it was harder to stop. Suguru could see how he barely encompassed the bowl of emotions inside him to form it into sentences. To get feelings across that not even Suguru understood.
“You’re–” Satoru’s words clawed at his emotions, presented to Suguru as if he had ripped his heart out, pulsing with blood inside his palms, to trust him enough to speak, to clasp his life within his own palms, to give up on everything, “You’re all I have.”
And there was all inside his voice. Everything, future, present, past ripped open, stripped naked in front of him like this everything depended on his life to continue. To be together. To never separate. To scream inside his head, knuckles white with anger, because everything mattered. Mattered so much that Suguru could see Satoru slamming life against the chest of the corpse of human he was, pale with fear, eyes forcing Suguru’s to stay, body bristling when he could sense hesitation.
The everything Satoru put into it, Suguru didn’t know if he could hold it. Not inside his hands. Not alone.
“Satoru…” the first word that left his lips, unable to form the loose, entangled threads into a woven piece.
Suguru stood up, pulling back his sweater paws to grasp the chains on Satoru’s swing, dazzled look behind his dark lenses.
“What’re you–” he could sense Satoru heavily gulping when Suguru clumsily put his leg through the swing’s chains and Satoru. He could feel his icy hands of support on his waist, so cold it soaked through his clothes when he inched closer on his lap.
“You’re cold,” Suguru’s hands felt like hot pockets against Satoru’s pale skin, softly removing his glasses, crystal eyes shining into his soul with the persistence of the sun on his skin. It was warmth, drenched in fascination as Suguru brushed along his cheekbones. He could sense the wind rushing between them, pulling at their clothes and shifting Suguru’s hair. In that single moment it was just them in a sense there would only ever be them.
“Satoru,” he savoured his name like the last cold of the winter, “I’m here.”
Suguru was close, almost feeling the words on his lips as he leaned into the cold.
Uneasiness in Satoru’s visage, a nervous tremble of his lashes, pacing up and down on Suguru’s eyes, his nose, drawing lines on his lips with his eyes.
He smiled, feeling a cold rush when he could sense Satoru’s sticky sweet chap stick melodiously moving against his lips, sickly sugary coating the inside of his mouth.
Suguru’s breath got caught between the gates of heaven and the golden honey pouring into his throat, feeling heat inside his mouth, cold hands pushing into his neck. It was just this moment he had savoured, and this moment, just the second–
“Satoru,” he mumbled against his lips, numb and reddened, “I can’t,” Satoru pulled him back in by his neck, tongue pressing against the roof of his mouth, caging his words inside his mind before he could barely grasp the opportunity and– “I can’t breathe.” Hands flat on Satoru’s chest, heaving up and down, heart thrumming under his fingertips. Satoru’s flushed face barely flashed him for a second, half-lidded eyes fixing on his lips before he connected them again.
“Slow down,” Suguru’s voice cracked embarrassingly obvious, the command scratching at the back of his throat.
They paused in the present, wind hissing along with their senses.
“Was that,” Suguru paused, face big at his hoarse voice, index finger circling a white hair strand, warm knuckles brushing against his heated skin “Your first kiss?” Satoru visibly pressed his lips into a thin line, eyebrows apologetically drawn together, eyes briefly averting his gaze before Suguru tapped his chin, “How’d ya’ know” he slurred, voice levels deeper, maturity drenched with sugary sirup left on his lips.
Suguru’s lips were numb, muscles weak for giving into a smoothened smile “You’re impatient” Suguru’s eyes were crescent, cheeks burning with heat feeling Satoru’s thumb running along his jaw, softly feeling his way towards the sides. Satoru cupped his face as if it were running water, cradling his hands around the feeling of safety inside his hands, inhaling when he relaxed his lips against Suguru’s.
“Suguru, you’re comfortable” Satoru murmured quietly, head resting in the crook of Suguru’s neck, hand stroking his back.
Suguru smiled when Satoru’s arms tightly wrapped around him, as if he were running out of time, as if he were to deem this their last touch.
“Don’t,” Satoru croaked, voice brittle with oceans of emotion, halting the flow between Suguru’s humming accompanying wind, “don’t leave me.”
Something pulled at Suguru. The deeply rooted agony inside Satoru’s voice, stemming of the blood flooded with guilt where nails pierced through his lips. It was pouring into his mouth, suffocating the thoughts in his throat. And it pulled strings at Suguru’s heart, so tightly he imagined there must be a time limit to this. To them.And somehow, with the hand of agony that crushed his heart to push it to its limits, Suguru understood.
Suguru understood Satoru’s everything.
Suguru’s fingers ran along his jaw, flowing through his hair, palm warming his cheek before he pressed his lips against Satoru’s forehead. Satoru’s arms weakly held Suguru together, slender fingers drowning in the fabric, clinging onto him as if he could dissipate into smoke. Almost as if nothing could hold him together if he’d leave, not even the thin thread of fate. As if nothing could hold them together except for the pair of arms, grasping onto the embarrassingly small bits of hope to the gates of heaven.
If.
The taste of absence was bitter on his tongue. Satoru’s lashes trembled.
“Where would I go without you?” He could feel a smile pressing against the snowflakes raining down on them, ocean’s rushing along them, skin’s heat exhaling with relief, cool against the moon.
Yeah. Where would Suguru go without him?