Chapter Text
"The moon
And the stars
Tried their best,
But I couldn't
Look away
From you."
[Autumn, 2006]
Suguru is lactose intolerant. He knows, since he was a child, that just a little dot of milk is enough to shatter his intestines and leave him in the bathroom for incalculable hours. He also knows he's missing his nine o'clock class because he had a latte by mistake, and he hates shitting in public toilets, but he doesn't have another choice. He's hugging his abdomen vehemently while he tilts his mop of dark hair downwards, as if praying, as if in a predicament, as if asking for mercy.
But the gods (and the saints and the fairies and the universe) have no good plans for Suguru that morning. Not when the college bathrooms are so crowded, and when there's only one working stall in that mezzanine powder room. Between heavy breaths and salty sweat, Suguru hears footsteps. Agile, noisy steps, the kind that dent cars at dawn. Someone kicks open the bathroom entrance door, and in just a couple of seconds, Suguru witnesses a cherub come down from heaven.
(Someone enters the bathroom stall without even knowing that it's taken, but Suguru doesn't process it instantly, and the young man in front of him leans his head against the door and breathes tiredly for a good couple of seconds)
When the cherub turns around (ah, he has white hair, he's like an angel) his eyes are as surprised as Suguru's. The young man has no longer time to change cubicles "Someone is after me!" He says in his infinite divinity and Suguru foolishly thinks that surely someone as evil as the devil wants to trap him.
"Please open your legs." The next thing he sees are two hands at the level of his face, clasped like when ladies go to pray at church. But this is not a church, it's a bathroom.
"Open my legs!?" Suguru covers his dick with the bottom part of his black shirt, and is the spectator numer one of the most desperate look he has ever seen in his life. He thinks about pearls, ah, pearly eyes, dipped in crack. He writes it down in his head for later.
"A guy is chasing me, he wants to kill me. I need to put my feet on the toilet so that he doesn't see them from below the stall, please! I'll pay you, I do whatever you want, but please open your legs!!!"
Suguru tries not to think about how bizarre the situation is, really. While he opens his legs, the only thing his head says is "this is a serious mistake, you shouldn't open your legs, you shouldn't open anything". But he does, Suguru does it, as if he were lost among the angelic songs he heard as a child in church.
The young man immediately places his feet on the toilet seat and leans his back against the door. Suguru can only think about his presence, he feels it even within his fingerprints. The cherub is... strange. Extravagant? Fresh from another world? Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Suguru thinks that if they have a conversation he wouldn't be able to understand a word. He has on tight black pants, a pair of fishnet stockings that come up to his waist and he's not wearing any shirt, but a leopard skin coat. Beyond how well he dresses (because he looks like he just walked off a catwalk) Suguru sees bruises on his chest.
Suguru widens his eyes, did he say someone wants to kill him?
He doesn't have much time to think about it, because immediately the main bathroom door is thrown open with the force of a vicious kick.
If there's one thing Suguru has to admit, it's that the young man knows how to hide his tracks. His breathing, previously agitated and painful, almost disappears in the silence of the mosaics. Suguru can't see the guy who is now in front of his stall, but he pictures him with no hair and a gun in each hand.
The guy checks the stall from below and only sees Suguru's feet.
"Boy, did you see a little bitch around here? White hair, blue eyes, tall, quite of a slut.”
The guy's voice isn't thick or thuggish, just raspy. The cherub between his legs sticks out his tongue in a mocking gesture. Suguru opens his mouth in rapture.
“I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm just trying to shit, leave me alone." Leave me alone, leave me alone.
"You are very aggressive baby, sure you don't know anything?"
"All I know is I want to shit. I've been here for about ten minutes. Do you think I wouldn't remember if I saw a white-haired whore?" Suguru hates aggressive talking, he hates pushing bad people away, but it's something he learned from his younger years (unfortunately)
"Tsk… I'm sure that bitch went into the women's bathroom."
The cherub laughs quietly. There are almost deadly footsteps on the other side of the door, and then nothing.
In the cubicle, they both stand still for several more seconds. Suguru clears his throat, “I don't want to be a party pooper, but could you get out? I'm in the middle of something here.”
Immediately, the light blue eyes widen in surprise and the cherub recites “My God! Sorry, sorry, sorry.” It only takes a few seconds for him to swing his legs off the toilet and out of the bathroom stall. Suguru knows he's not going to come out of the bathroom yet, but is surprised when he hears the cherub locking the front door. “I hope you don't get scared, it's just for safety. I don't want this guy back in."
“I don't want to sound too nosy, but who is he? Why does he want to kill you?"
“The word kill is very strong, I think I exaggerated a bit. He is my dealer, I owe him a few dollars and I can't pay him back."
Suguru envisions the cherub, in his divine splendor, sitting in the bathroom sink, with his long, scandalous legs crossed. There's no way he's not a model (or an angel). He has the attitude, the smile and the drugs.
"I don't think someone will chase you for a few bucks." Suguru sees a hand reaching over the stall door, it's the cherub giving him toilet paper. He feels he could start reciting Gregorian chant.
"Well... A few thousands dollars..." There's a mischief in his voice that's intoxicating, almost forbidden.
As he cleans himself, Suguru thinks of a bunch of words that jumble in his head and form nonsense. The feeling is growing, especially when he opens the cubicle door and sees the cherub sitting in all his glory, his coat falling from one of his shoulders and a bubblegum balloon between his lips.
"I want to apologize, it's terrible when people interrupts you in the bathroom. It happened to me thousands of times, it's the worst. Anyway, thanks for scaring him off. He seems tough, but when he's alone he freaks out fast. Not everyone helps a stranger stuck in his bathroom, it's… Wow." The cherub watches him with huge, expectant eyes, as if Suguru contained all the unanswered questions in the universe. Suguru feels small and almost naked at his gaze. "Thanks."
“I don't think there's anything to be thankful for. “
Suguru washes his hands, his body is very close to the cherub. He almost feels how the white feathered wings brushes against his skin (figuratively, because the young man is not really that close).
“Just… I hope that guy doesn't do anything to you. Are you going to be able to afford the debt?”
The sincerity of his words astound the cherub.
"Of course I'll be able to paid it! If it's not with money, it will have to be in another way."
Suguru doesn't understand.
"You don't have to put on that fresh-from-a-funeral face. Really, thank you very much. If you ever need a favor…you know who to call." The cherub winks when he says the word favor, Suguru thinks (and doesn't understand) "I should go, but I don't know how."
Suguru leads his gaze to the back of the bathroom, where there's a window with a lattice quite far apart. He's sure he can get over there, but he'd have to help him up.
"That window." Suguru points, and the sky-colored eyes light up again. “I can lift you with my hands so you can climb up and go out."
The young man jumps down the sink and hugs Suguru around the shoulders, something that freezes him in place. He's a stranger, he doesn't know Suguru doesn't like to be hugged, he has no bad intentions. Suguru bites his lip, he doesn't know. The cherub smiles as gigantic as the waves of the sea caused by the Moon. He walks away to the window at the end of the bathroom, saying “I met a guardian angel today! I'm going to owe you one for the rest of my life, pretty boy."
"Ah yes, he's a prostitute."
Shoko isn't gentle when she talks. Suguru knows. Haibara, who is sitting next to her at the cafeteria table, also knows this. However, Suguru can't help but feel these words come out too abruptly.
Also, Shoko doesn't need a very precise description of the young man (white hair, blue eyes, angel aura) to immediately know that he is Gojo Satoru.
"Your names are similar and everything." She comments before Suguru could say anything. He's drinking hot coffee, but his fingertips are icy to the touch. "I don't have good references about him, to be honest. Mei Mei always talks shit about Gojo, says he sells drugs to minors, he has AIDS and he had sex with half the campus. The last one may be true, the others I don't know. She likes to be a bitch sometimes."
Shoko loves post-punk and dressing in black. Her huge eye bags merge with the lost and poorly washed make up from his skin. She has a chocolate milkshake between her black fingernails and her dark eyes focus intently on Suguru. Suguru has known her for two years, like Haibara, who eats a muffing and wears a Fall Out Boy t-shirt.
"What?" It's the only thing Suguru can say.
Haibara swallows. "I don't like Mei Mei, she always has bad things to say about people she doesn't know. She's a bad person."
Shoko nods "Exactly! I have this horrible image of Gojo in my head because she's so obsessed with him! with someone who's not even in her life!"
"She's super obsessed, do you remember that time..."
Sometimes Suguru falls behind in conversations, but not because he doesn't care, but because his only two friends talk too fast. Sometimes they follow a coherent route, like a train, but other times they talk and talk about people he don't know, or music he don't listen to, and all he can do is keep quiet.
But this time, Suguru knows the cherub.
Well, Gojo.
"Suguru?" Shoko waves her hand in front of his face "Hey, Suguru, I know you're very interested in this but your mouth is open and your eyes are unfocused. You're going to swallow a fly."
"Sorry."
Haibara shakes his head. "No need to say sorry man."
"Something happens?" Shoko asks, now more attentive to Suguru's reactions.
"It's just... I'm surprised. You know. The Gojo thing."
Suguru knows he's nobody to judge other people's life choices, he knows he's nobody to judge, he knows he's nobody. But he kind of remembers the fear Gojo had when he thought he was alone in the bathroom. (It was only a second, maybe a microsecond, where he saw his rigid back, his terrified half-profile, his trembling hands, and his ragged breathing. All of that was lost when he turned and saw he wasn't alone in the bathroom stall) He also remembers the bruises on his chest and his debt to the dealer. Ah shit, he barely knows his name and he's already thinking about his problems.
Saying "The Gojo thing" also feels a bit insulting. Why can't he name it with words? Well, Suguru knows, but he doesn't want to think about it.
"I'm surprised you talked to Gojo! I've always wanted to know what he's really like, you know? He's a micro-celebrity on campus."
Haibara raises an eyebrow "But he doesn't study here, right?"
Shoko shakes her head. "No, he doesn't. But people say he lives near the campus and almost all of his clients are students. Last year they fired a professor because they caught him having sex, remember? The economics one."
Suguru nods, his fingernails feeling the chill of the boiling pottery.
"Well, I heard they found him having sex with Gojo."
Suguru drinks the coffee. He shouldn't, because it has caffeine and makes him more prone to having anxiety, but he lets it go because he's been feeling better lately.
Everything is better lately.
Nothing to worry about.
"Sugu, how was the talk? Did he treat you well?" Shoko no longer has milkshake in her hands. It's funny to see how she sucks and sucks, because nothing comes out anymore. "I've always been very conditioned by the things Mei Mei says about Gojo, I want to know what your opinion is."
Suguru thinks.
Saying that he thought he saw a pair of wings on his back is probably too much. Saying he's beautiful would be a no-brainer. Saying that he can't stop thinking about him might sound harsh. Suguru has no strong emotions in his life, and he likes that. It's a feature he had to orchestrate a lot of painstakingly, so for him, meeting Gojo feels like a bit of a catastrophe.
"He is polite. I helped him with something and he thanked me several times. He smiles a lot too." Suguru can't help but think about the fear. He omits it. "I found him very sweet."
Haibara nods with his mouth full of food. Shoko slurps her empty milkshake again.
"I believe you man. I believe you with every inch of my soul. I don't care if Mei Mei keep talking shit, because if Suguru says Gojo is sweet, then Gojo is sweet."
Haibara agrees, Suguru laughs a little. "Suguru always tells the truth."
Suguru's hands are too big for that small cup of cold coffee, his body is also huge for those cafe seats. But Suguru is like that, so huge that he surpasses, so impossible to ignore that he is the only one to do it.
Two weeks later, Suguru goes to a party.
He's not a party person, but sometimes he wants to have fun. He also knows it's necessary to expose himself to situations that make him uncomfortable (he lives his entire young adulthood trying to break the shell).
When he barely arrives, he loses Shoko and Haibara. He knows they are surely dancing with his classmates so he plays it down. His plan is simple: have a few drinks to loosen up, find his friends, dance shamelessly and sleep in his bed. But his schemes are broken (again) when he sees the cherub... Gojo at the bar. But Gojo is not happy, Gojo doesn't dance, Gojo doesn't smile. His body is totally covered by another wider one, who presses him against the bar and doesn't let him breathe. Gojo moves abruptly looking for an escape, he also screams and calls for help, but no one hears him. (No one wants to listen)
Luckily for him, Suguru is crazy.
"...come on angel, I know what you want."
"I said no."
Suddenly the guy (the disgusting one, the giant, the rapist) stops, that throws Gojo off balance, but helps him to pull himself together a bit over the bar. The guy is now two or three steps away, until his breath finally stops mixing with the cherub's air.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Suguru doesn't recognize his own voice
.
"I... I…"
"He fucking said no."
Suguru has a gun resting on his lower back.
(There are reasons on why Suguru is armed, but now he doesn't want to think about them. The gun is small, he keeps it close to his ankle when he goes out to big places, full of people and degenerates)
"You thought you were going to get away with it? Scumbags like you deserve to be dead. Do you think we need to end the problem here? I don't mind killing another one."
"Sorry, sorry…"
"If you come near him again, I'm going to kill you." Suguru feels his own hot breath bouncing off the guy's ear.
"Yeah... yeah... sorry..." the guy runs. He runs so fast it looks like he leaves a trail, like a damn bug. Suguru puts the gun away before anyone notices the situation.
Gojo, then, sees his savior with lost eyes.
"What…what the hell did you do to scare him away?" Gojo grins hugely, his teeth gleaming with the charm of a lost and found child. Suguru takes a deep breath to try to control the nerves that have formed all this time in his ribs. He laughs at it, he laughs so hard he feels it's a bad joke.
"I think it was magic." Gojo's eyes light up with the blue, red, and purple lights that dance across his skin. Suguru knows Gojo is not sober at all. "Are you okay?"
"Oh I don't fucking know… my head is spinning a lot. I don't understand anything."
"Let's go to the bathroom. Do you want me to help you? I can offer you my hand."
Gojo takes it and smiles weakly. "Have people ever told you you are a gentleman?"
Gojo's hand feels wet against Suguru's. Wet and cold, almost distant. But he takes it with incredible force (the gesture screams he doesn't want to lose him on the way). Gojo's head feels psychedelic and his eyes are lost in the emptiness of the lights as they walk. Suguru thinks the music is too loud, and it is too hot in there, and the cherub's fingers could burn his mundane flesh.
"My sweet princeeee…" Gojo says when they reach the bathroom, which is miraculously empty. "My sweet prince... how come you have saved me twice?"
Suguru knows Gojo is very drunk, but he can't help but feel the summer heat on his cheeks. He gives him a small smile before placing the cherub in front of the mirror, where he starts to wet his face and head to help him come to real world again.
"I'm not a prince."
"You are, it's the second time you've helped me and I don't even know your name."
Before he can answer, he notices Gojo is still talking.
"I've been thinking about you, you know? I told people about you…I told them that you have long, long, long hair like Rapunzel. And that you have dark eyes, and I love dark eyes."
"Really?" Suguru smiles a bit more because he's sure he's just drunk. But Gojo seems to want to convince him of his nightlife delirium.
"Of course! I couldn't lie to you." Suguru's rough hand runs full of water over Gojo's face again, leaving him speechless for a few seconds. "I even feel baptized."
Suguru laughs out loud this time, Gojo follows him.
"You should pee." Suguru points to the urinal.
"You should tell me your name."
"Suguru, Geto Suguru. Now go to…"
"It's just like mine! Satoru...Suguru...Satoru...Suguru..." his playful tongue repeats, savors and vomits his names for what seems like a whole minute. Suguru can't stop smiling.
"Yeah, I know, they are similar. Why don't you go pee? I'm sure that will make you feel better."
"Yeah, that..." Gojo can't finish speaking, because he immediately has to run to a bathroom stall. He finds a toilet just in time. Gojo vomits too much, it comes out of his nose and causes chest pains. Suguru witnesses everything, because Gojo's body prevents the door from closing.
Suguru hears Satoru ask for water at some point. Water. Water. He runs out to steal a bottle from some dancing girl and returns in the speed of light. The bottle is still sealed. It's a gift from the universe.
Suguru enters to the bathroom stall just to hand him the bottle, but just before leaving he feels a hand on his pants. Satoru grips it hard and looks at him kneeling on the floor, the pearls in his eyes are bathed in tears and he feels the smell of misery in the whole place. "Don't go."
Suguru raises both eyebrows, impressed. "Are you sure?"
"I don't want to be alone."
Gojo kicks the door shut and stretches so he can flush the toilet. He then sits on the floor, on one side of the cubicle. Suguru follows him, on the opposite side.
“That son of a bitch… I'm sure if I had taken the drink he gave me this would end very badly. I spit it all out, but there's always something left inside, right? Ah, I hate when things stay inside."
Suguru thinks about the "things (from) inside".
"Are you sure you don't want more water?" He says seeing Satoru's empty bottle.
"Nah, I'm fine, and I don't want you to leave. That guy isn't exactly nice. I've seen him here once or twice, I'd recommend you not come to the club for a while…"
Suguru doesn't remember the guy's face. That's bad.
Satoru repeats "Ah, son of a bitch." And he twists the bottle between his pearly white fingers. Suguru frowns.
"You are very pale."
"It's okay, it's normal."
"Normal?"
"Yeah, I'm talking about the bastards who put drugs in drinks. Today I was a little more careless than usual, I think I was a little distracted. But it's okay, I'm fine."
Satoru tries to stand up. He fails miserably.
"Maybe I'm not."
Suguru wants to stop him. He doesn't want him to go. It wouldn't be good to let him go in this state, yes, that's it.
Is that.
"Stay down a little longer."
The background music makes the walls vibrate. At some point some very famous song from Fall Out Boy plays and he's surprised to see how Gojo shakes his head animatedly. Recognizing songs is very good, it means he's awake, perhaps more alert.
"So Suguru huh? I'm embarrassed to admit I was trying to guess your name. But I never thought it would be one so similar to mine."
Well, Suguru would never admit that for two weeks he called him cherub in his head. It could be one of those secrets that goes with him to the grave.
"It's similar." Suguru doesn't know what the fuck to say. His social skills are already terrible, but that percentage of decline increases exponentially if he thinks about how beautiful Gojo is and how nervous makes him feel.
"I've never seen you on campus before, I'd remember you. I haven't seen you at parties either. You are the type of boy who stays inside?"
Suguru suddenly notices all of his dark hair coming loose. Surely his hair band had come slack with all the mess.
He clears his throat at the entranced look Satoru gives him "There are many things I don't do."
"And what things do you do?"
Shit. Gojo wants to meet him? Really?
"I don't know… study? I guess." He thinks about tying his hair back up, but his hands are trembling so it's not a good idea. Gojo whispers "Let it loose, looks cuter." And then he says:
"There's no way you're just doing that!" Gojo smiles. God. Suguru thinks that surely God is very angry with him for stealing one of his angels.
"I j-just don't know!"
"You're lying to me!"
"No! Or yeah, I guess, sorry." They both laugh at the absurdity of the conversation. Gojo's clothed foot slowly taps Suguru's thigh on the ground.
"Really, I'd like to know where you've been hiding all this time. Don't be so mysterious." There's something in the way Gojo's look. Suguru doesn't want to admit, or assume, that it's interest. He thinks, instead, that he is drunk. Either way, he grabs the feeling and hugs it, because he's feeling a little drunk too (without having had a drop of alcohol).
"Well…I play the guitar and .. I like photography i guess. I also cook sweet things. So... that's what I do, so yeah, I spend a lot of time inside."
Gojo takes one of his knees with his arms, rests his chin and smiles golden in color.
"I love sweet things, and the guitar, and..."
"You might try my food some day." Suguru thinks it's the stupidest comment in the world, but Gojo seems to take it well.
"I'd love to! But it's a shame, I really don't have… I don't have anything to offer you."
There's something about that comment that leaves Suguru a bit off-kilter. The bathroom lights are very cold, constantly failing, and Fall Out Boy is replaced several minutes (or hours) ago by more schizophrenic pop. It seems the bathroom stall is a small world, forged by vomit, water and words that say more than they seem.
Satoru then whispers "Maybe I have something."
"Did you say something?"
"No, nothing."
Gojo tries to stand up again. He fails. His knees hit the ground with a horrible sound and Suguru puts on a concerned face.
"Hey, are you okay?" He offers him his hand (the one that's too big for the coffee cup) and Gojo takes it for help in the odyssey called standing up.
"I'm fine." He leans half of his body against Suguru. Ah, Suguru hates being touched, but he can make an exception. Really. (He doesn't feel uncomfortable, it's weird, maybe he really is drunk)
"You almost fell. I think it would be a good idea for you to go back to your house."
At that comment, Gojo's face transforms. There's a kind of swift melancholy that creeps over his features, but then he smiles at him, almost real, almost fake.
"I don't have a place to stay tonight. I was going to try to get a place with some client, but this son of a bitch screwed up my night. I still have to make a lot of money for next week, but I don't think I can work today."
Suguru's tongue acts on its own, as does his vocal cords and all the stale air in the bathroom, to say the most daring words of the whole night.
"Maybe I could help."
Gojo raises an eyebrow.
"How?"
"Well…you could come to my house."
There is something that Suguru doesn't understand. He doesn't expect Gojo to kneel down and pray to thank him for his generosity, but he's definitely surprised to receive a gesture akin to disappointment, to sadness.
Gojo playfully taps his shoulder and bites down on his lower lip, in a gesture that sounds almost empty.
"Really? Your house? I..."
Gojo shakes his head and tries to remove the hint of sadness a bit, he gives him another one of those fake pane smiles. Suguru notices the cracks in the glass. There's something wrong.
"Okay, that's a good idea. Thanks for the help."
Satoru bites his thumbnail in the taxi. Suguru notices Satoru spiyng on his cell phone when he sends a text message to Shoko. The icy eyes almost freeze his hot veins. God. Something is happening.
Suguru understands it a little to late.
He gets it when Satoru takes off his croptop in the middle of his living room.
And when he unzips his jeans with an almost mischievous, almost hellish half smile.
Suguru, still holding the keys of the front door in his hand, stands still.
There's skin. There's a lot of skin. That's probably why he felt drunk before, drunk on cells and blood and hair of the color of the snow. But he never really liked this feeling of drunkness, Suguru hates the smell of vomit and alcohol, and he hates everything that makes him remember his thirteen years old self.
But Satoru doesn't know this. Satoru thinks Suguru wants to spend the night with him. He thinks he wants to be a customer. God. God. God.
Suguru knows he was always bad at communicating his ideas, his wishes and his desires. This is his fault. He definitely wasn't clear with what he said to Satoru in the bathroom.
"Honestly, it bothered me a bit that you did the nice guy act and then did the same as everyone else. You can be direct, you know? I hate when men try too hard." Satoru is pulling down his pants. God, Suguru has to stop this before he has a heart attack. Skin, skin, skin. Just skin and bones and gristle and Suguru doesn't want to look but he wants to. It's terrible.
"Satoru...I-"
"I don't mind doing it, you know. It's always like meh with the clients, but I wasn't lying when I said I've been thinking about your hair all week. Of course not just your hair, dah. You're beautiful, so I hope you'll keep calling me after tonight." Satoru approaches and smiles lightly, but that smile doesn't reach his eyes. It seems an incompatible addition to his face, that face doesn't want to smile.
Satoru is very close. Suguru knows he's blushing even in places of his body he doesn't know, because it has been years since someone has been so direct with him, or with his wishes towards him. It's weird not to feel disgusted, anyway. At least not in that sense. Knowing Satoru wants him gives him a positive warmth.
But, the rest of the situation? No, definitely not. He doesn't like this. He doesn't want this. Suguru knows how to say no (he didn't know before), Suguru learned to say no, why the fuck doesn't come out then?
Only when Satoru manages to brush his face with his fingertips, Suguru moves away until he leans against the front door.
Satoru looks a bit confused. His silhouette is illuminated by the low light coming from the window, and Suguru could swear that, for a moment, he sees angel wings.
"Are you nervous? It's okay, I guess it's your first time in a situation like this."
Satoru smiles again and Suguru can't stand it.
"No."
His voice comes out as dry as a handful of sand.
Satoru widens his eyes, surprised.
"I don't want it. I don't want this."
Finally.
Suguru sighs and brings his big hands to his face. He has too much hair on his skin, it's weird, but then remembers his hair is still loose.
"But... did you change your mind?" Satoru asks, almost worried.
"No. I never wanted this. I asked if you wanted to come to my house so you could rest."
Satoru's face looks like a poem. There's surprise, there's something similar to illusion and a new brilliance that returns to fill his sorrowful face with light. He can't believe it.
"Are you for real?" Satoru has one of his hands on his bare chest, it seems he wants to feel his own heartbeat.
"Yeah, sorry for not being clear with my words. But this…no." Suguru points both bodies repeatedly and then bites his lip very hard. He knows that if his teeth keep pressing down, he's going to make them bleed. "You're very drunk and you told me you didn't have a place to spend the night. So… that's it."
Suguru watches as Satoru covers his face with both hands, then shakes his head, then nods and smiles. He also watches how his fingers, now pinkish in color, nervously scratch different parts of his skin. His long, beautiful skin. It gives him chills just thinking about what his touch would be like. Shit. Satoru suddenly looks happy.
"You're sure, right? This is not normal. It never happened to me. I can't stay the night for free, it's impossible, I have to do something."
"Satoru, really, is not a problem."
Suguru's feet finally move. He walks towards his room while Satoru is still totally impressed in the middle of his living room. It's very strange to see him on his yellow carpet and among his Christmas lights. He looks like he belongs there, but at the same time, he looks like a complete stranger.
Suguru takes a blanket and a pillow. When he returns, he finds Satoru watching the place carefully. (Surely looking for signs of if it's safe to stay under these "crazy" circumstances)
"The sofa turns into a bed." Satoru's eyes focus on him again. "And you're still half naked."
"God, sorry." Satoru covers himself first with his hands, then with the blanket that Suguru gives to him.
When Satoru is lying on the sofa, with the Christmas lights dimly illuminating his face and surprise still marked on his features, he clicks his tongue.
"So... You really are a prince then. I hope to keep having the same opinion when I wake up tomorrow." He smiles, closes his eyes and sleeps.
That night, Suguru is unable to fall asleep. He ends up doing it only because he's tired, and when he leaves his room to see what condition Satoru is in, he finds the couch pulled up, the blanket folded, and a note on the coffee table.
"You're a weird guy Suguru. I think you come from another world, and if we ever have a real conversation, I don't know if I'll understand a word. But different is good sometimes. It's cute. I like it. Thanks for the thing in the bathroom, and thanks for the other thing in the other bathroom. It's weird we always meet in bathrooms, I hope that, if I see you again, the third meeting will be in a less shitty place.
Thanks.
Satoru."
Suguru smiles.
He smiles so much his eyelids droop.
His fingertips taste the letters, caress them and almost feel them as Satoru's skin. That skin gives him terror, but also an unstoppable curiosity. Suguru thinks about what he said to Shoko two weeks ago at the cafe. Satoru is sweet, he's sweet, he's sweet. He can almost feel it on his palate, he can almost touch him and he can almost swallow him, despite being far away from him.