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“You’re really giving me free reign to terrorize and agitate your parents?”
“They spent 21 years terrorizing and agitating me, it’s only fair.”
“Ah, good, cause I was going to do it anyways!” Satoru cheers, eyes squinting closed in a huge smile. His sunglasses are pushed up onto his head, holding his hair back from his perfect face in an effortlessly stylish way. Suguru has to keep the disgusted look off of his face—Satoru is too handsome for his own good; it lets him get away with all sorts of things he shouldn’t be able to.
“Okay, just remember—they’re still waiting for me to come around and stop being the familial outcast. They wholeheartedly believe I’ll shape up to their standards,” Suguru explains.
“And we want to remind them that you’ll always be a big, gay disappointment to the family! Got it!”
“Exactly,” Suguru confirms, nodding gravely.
“Cool,” Satoru nods, and jerks his chin down in a stupid movement so his sunglasses fall into place across the bridge of his nose. “Anyways, let’s watch Jojo, you know how it gets my creative juices flowing.” He crosses his legs up on the coffee table and grabs for the remote. “Five minutes in and I’ll already have generated 30-40 foolproof phrases guaranteed to send at least one of them to an early grave.”
“Perfect.”
--
Suguru’s boyfriend is a ridiculous person.
It’s a charming quality much of the time, though it does tend to get him into unprecedented situations. Spontaneity and excitement were distinctly lacking throughout most of Suguru’s upbringing, though, so Satoru is a breath of fresh air.
People seem to think of Suguru as the sensible, type A guy, and Satoru his ridiculous, troublemaking counterpart, because they all forget that Suguru is also a little bit insane. But when he met Satoru, things just clicked. His insanity and Satoru’s insanity lined up.
They’ve been together for a few months when his parents start getting antsy that they haven’t met him yet. Suguru had been putting it off as long as possible, as he tends to do with all things involving his parents. Most interactions with them these days consist of numerous reminders of all the ways he’s failed them, paired with attempts to set him up with the barely-legal daughters of their friends and colleagues.
Suguru’s not really interested in that song and dance, so after a call from his mother insisting that he bring this mystery partner to get their approval, he resolves to take matters into his own hands.
And Satoru is just what he needs to pull it off. If things go as Suguru expects them to, he won’t even have to lift a finger, just sit back and let his boyfriend work magic. Satoru will be not only the dinner guest, but the cast and crew of an absolute shitshow.
--
When Satoru comes to pick him up on the day of the dinner, he’s driving a windowless jeep. Suguru has not the slightest idea where to obtained the thing. To his knowledge, none of their friends own such a car, and Satoru is too young to get one from a car rental agency.
“Where the hell did you get this behemoth?” He calls out over the roaring of the engine as Satoru drives them into the suburbs. The jeep also seems to have no muffler, or maybe it’s just in need of some serious engine maintenance.
“I have my ways, babe,” he laughs and winks as if that doesn’t exponentially increase Suguru’s confusion. He glances over, seeing the incredulous look on Suguru’s face, and shrugs. “It’s from a used car dealership downtown. I asked the guy if I could test drive it and he said the time limit was twenty minutes, so I slipped him a fiver, threw in those Olive Garden coupons I found in my mom’s purse—and now this baby—” he slaps the dashboard for emphasis. “—is mine for the evening! Suguru, say hello to Beelzebub.”
“Hello, Beelzebub,” Suguru chimes in at Satoru’s direction, like they’re sitting across from each other at a group therapy session.
Satoru’s driving is that of a purebred city boy—way too fast and aggressive, with little regard for his own safety or that of others. Suguru always takes it as a little miracle every time they arrive unscathed with Satoru behind the wheel. The four-wheel-drive and extra horsepower of the current vehicle certainly do nothing to tone him down in the slightest.
Suguru can relax finally and take his hands off the dashboard when they pull up outside his parent’s house—large lawn, tasteful exterior paint selection, three-car garage. There’s a twitch in the curtains at the front bay window, and Suguru’s residual adrenaline from the way over is replaced by satisfaction. They haven’t even met his parents, and things are already going as planned.
Suguru doesn’t realize that Satoru is wearing crocs until they’re approaching the door. Not even regular crocs—one has an image of Shrek and the other one Donkey. He’s paired it with unassuming jeans (that fit him very well in the leg and ass region, for better or for worse) and a simple jacket. From the ankle up, he looks unfairly attractive.
Suguru had expected Satoru to maybe go for a more bad boy persona to shock and dismay his upstanding middle class parents. Maybe some fake facial piercings and a biker jacket. He’s pretty sure there’s a pair of leather pants in Satoru’s closet that are studded with silver spikes, no don’t ask him why.
It seems like he’s gone for his true form for the occasion, however. Chaos and unexpected twists—nothing more, nothing less.
When Suguru’s mother answers the door, she hugs him stiffly with a cordial welcome home, and then turns to Satoru. “And you must be Suguru’s boyfriend,” she smiles. “Satoru, right?” She’s trying for civil today, that’s cute.
“Yes, ma’am,” Satoru says, then licks his lips and lowers his sunglasses to look her up and down, slow and deliberate before he grins. “And may I just say…woof.” Her eyebrows fly up nearly to her hairline, expression going from confused to bordering on appalled in an instant, and Suguru is reminded of how much he fucking loves his boyfriend.
His mother laughs uncomfortably, clearly unsure what is happening. “Well, boys, come on in. We’re just getting everything finished up. Suguru, maybe you and Satoru can help set the table.”
Satoru leaves his crocs on despite the obvious line of shoes and house slippers in the entryway, and wanders in after her.
“Wow, babycakes,” Satoru addresses him far too loudly as he mimes a camera zoom on his mother’s lower body. Suguru wants to gag; he sincerely hopes Satoru never calls him that again. “Now I see where you get that bangin’ ass of yours.” Never one to miss out on an opportunity, he winds up and smacks Suguru’s ass with enough force to make an audible slapping sound.
It’s at this moment that Suguru’s father enters from the dining room just off the entryway. He seems unsure of what he’s just walked into, and probably questioning whether or not he heard that right. “Hello there, welcome,” he greets, unsure, and holds out his arm in Satoru’s direction.
“Ah, Mr. Geto!” Satoru beams, reaching to shake the extended hand. Satoru grabs it with both of his in his enthusiasm, clasping them and shaking it with vigor. “It’s a pleasure, truly, a pleasure.” There’s something off-putting and devious about his smile. “It’s so nice to meet the other man Suguru calls daddy.” His father splutters, and when Suguru glances over, his mother is beet red.
“Hah…” Suguru’s dad laughs breathily, once. He gives Suguru a disgruntled look, and they head into the kitchen without further discussion.
“Alright, plates are here, if you want to take those into the dining room,” his mother says with a wave in the direction of the cabinet. Satoru strides forward before Suguru can even respond.
“Oh, I just have the best party trick with these!”
Suguru almost stops him—the plates are from his deceased grandmother’s china collection—but then he waits. She was a bitch too, and if Suguru flushed a handful of her ashes down the toilet without telling his parents, well, that’s neither here nor there. Satoru grabs three of the ornate porcelain dishes precariously in his hands, and Suguru hears his mother’s gasp.
“Oh, dear, be careful, those are antiques—”
“Sometimes it takes me a couple tries,” Satoru is talking over her, bouncing his hands like he’s getting into the rhythm and building momentum. He throws two in the air, as Suguru’s mother lunges across the kitchen, and one of the plates crashes onto the ground. Satoru catches the other one with just the fingertips of his right hand. “Hey, look at that, I think I’m getting better!” he cheers, waving the plate victoriously. “1 for 2, okay, next round—”
“I think that’s quite enough—” Suguru’s mother snatches the plates away, ushering Satoru to the other side of the kitchen. “Suguru, set the table now. Satoru can just wait here.”
Satoru finds the Bluetooth speaker on the kitchen island while he and his mother are distracted with other tasks, and by the time his father is coming up from the beer fridge in the basement with drinks, a bass-boosted trap remix of the Spongebob Squarepants theme song is booming over the sound system. Smiling gleefully, he bobs his head and snaps along with the music, and then to Suguru’s horror and amazement, the choreography—if one could call it that—starts to move into his hips. Pretty soon, the exaggerated body rolling and hip circling is impossible to ignore. It looks more like hula hooping than anything else, really.
“Learned this one at a Magic Mike Live show!” Satoru shouts over the music, then attempts a handstand, trying to descend into some sort of floor grinding motion. His arms collapse under his own bodyweight, and he sprawls on the floor, tripping Suguru’s dad.
The man curses as he goes down, but it’s no use; he lands across Satoru’s prone body like a perfect rom-com scene. “Perfect timing!” Satoru shouts, the breakdown of the trap music nearly drowning him out. “I was just about to ask for a volunteer from the audience for my next move!”
Suguru’s mother leans down to help drag him off just as Satoru begins some wildly uncoordinated hip thrusting motion from underneath. “Nooo,” he whines, “I really needed audience participation! Suguru, my sexy little dolphin, come ride these waves, baby.”
Suguru’s parents both look like they’re clinging onto the edge of completely snapping, and when Suguru glances at the time on his phone, he realizes Satoru has been in their presence for all of four and a half minutes.
--
When they manage to actually sit down to dinner without further incident, Satoru remarks about the warm weather and unzips his jacket to shrug out of it. His t-shirt is a little hard to see from where Suguru is seated next to him, but his parents will have a perfect view. His dad seems troubled by it for some reason.
Leaning forward carefully to catch a glimpse, Suguru realizes it’s Satoru’s Danny shirt. A pixelated image of Danny Phantom, and then one of Danny Devito’s face, with ‘MY FAVORITE DANNYS <3’ in cursive font across the top. It’s homemade.
He fans himself dramatically. “Whew, it’s hot it here, isn’t it? Or is that just you, sugar dick?” It’s the first Suguru has heard of that particular nickname, and it takes everything in him to hold a straight face. Satoru leans forward conspiratorially and pauses for dramatic effect, glancing around the table and holding one finger in the air. “In case anyone is wondering, I have in fact found how many licks it takes to get to the tootsie-roll center—”
“Satoru, dear, our family usually refrains from using that type of language at the dinner table,” his mother says, clipped and short.
“Oh!” Satoru gasps in a poor imitation of sheepish horror. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to offend!” He presses his hands to face and casts his eyes down like he’s embarrassed. “I’m just…not familiar with social conventions like that,” he does an impressively convincing nervous laugh, and looks down at his lap, pressing his lips together seriously and swallowing hard. “You see, I grew up on the streets with wild dogs.” Satoru sniffs, and dabs at his bone-dry eyes with the corner of his linen napkin.
“Oh…” Suguru’s mother clearly doesn’t know what to make of the statement, and a second of awkward silence lapses before Suguru’s father offers everyone bread rolls.
“Oh thank you, I’ll have another,” Satoru says eagerly. “I’ve been doing an experiment to see if eating bread every day will in fact turn you into Jesus,” he says, gleefully taking a bite. “Mmm,” he moans dramatically. “Fuck. I can really taste the holy spirit in there.” He nods. “Mm-hm, mm-hmm. This bread was baptized, right? I only eat kosher, I should have mentioned that before I came over.” Suguru doesn’t know a whole lot about religion, but he does at least know that there is a clear distinction between Judaism and Christianity, and that kosher foods have fuck all to do with baptismal fonts, but he also doesn’t give a fuck. Satoru is moaning again, just a little bit over the top, and his parents both look hideously uncomfortable, and Suguru is so in love with his unhinged gremlin of a boyfriend.
“So, Satoru, what do you do for a living?” his father interjects firmly, clearing his throat and offering up a pinched smile.
“Well, I used to be a financial analyst at J.P. Morgan, but I quit a while back,” he says, laughing casually and waving a hand. It’s utterly ridiculous, the idea of Satoru even pretending to do something so stuffy. “My heart wasn’t in it, you know?”
“Oh, well, that’s an important thing to recognize,” Suguru’s mother says tightly, but there’s a little note of understanding in her voice, like he might actually be managing to draw her in with this bullshit.
“Yes, exactly,” Satoru nods along and gestures with his fork. “You can learn finance, but you can’t learn passion for it,” he sighs. “But I’m pursuing my ambitions now, and I’m much happier!”
“Ah, so…” Suguru’s father clears his throat awkwardly again. “So, what is it, then? Your current job?”
“Oh, silly me, I didn’t even say!” Satoru knocks the side of his head with his palm and wobbles his head back and forth, laughing. “I work for Purina, I’m a dog food taster.”
Out of all the things Satoru’s said, that one hits Suguru the hardest, because fuck, he wishes Satoru was joking. It might be the only true statement he’s made this entire evening.
“Oh,” his mother says, inclining her head and raising her eyebrows, a bewildered smile on her face.
“How…unique,” his father remarks. “That must be a…lucrative profession?”
“Oh, no, unfortunately I make minimum wage,” Satoru shakes his head, mournful, before he’s back to his chipper attitude. “But luckily I have my side hustle, and that pays the bills, let me tell you.” On the last part, he leans forward, wiggling his eyebrows and biting his lip suggestively. “And they said that learning to walk in heels would never pay off...hah! Showed them, didn’t I?”
When his mother sends around the serving dish for seconds, Satoru declines. “Oh I couldn’t, I’m just stuffed,” he groans. “Almost as stuffed as I was last night, right sugarmuffin?” There’s not even any time to process that one, because as soon as he ends that, Satoru takes out a pack of rolling paper and a small grinder full of indica. “You guys don’t mind, right? There’s plenty to go around, I was taught that it’s rude to bring treats if you don’t plan to share with the class!” He smiles at his own generous offer.
Suguru’s parents blink absently. It’s sort of magnificent that they haven’t cracked at this point—the twists around every corner must be preventing them from recovering from their shock. Suguru’s not sure if his parents have ever even seen weed in real life before.
“Oh, Suguru, you didn't tell them how we met, did you?” Satoru asks as he pokes the ground up weed down with one of the tines of his fork so it’s neatly packed, smiling at Suguru with hearts in his eyes. He seals the rolling paper and hums a jaunty little tune, fishing around in his pocket. “Aw, fuck, I think I left my lighter in Beelzebub. Good thing you guys have these candles here!”
Suguru sees in his peripheral vision his father mouthing Beelzebub in silence. Satoru, humming again, plucks his mother’s tonka and oud scented decorative candle from the table centerpiece and lights up his joint. “Anyways, what was I saying?” he pouts his lips out and thinks. “Oh! Our first meeting! Do you want to tell them the story, boo bear?”
“Uh…no, no. You can, I don’t mind.” Suguru smiles. It’s actually not difficult to sell the smitten expression on his face—Satoru’s really going for boyfriend of the year. And Suguru wants to hear what Satoru’s cooked up for the fictional story of their first encounter.
“Well,” he starts matter-of-factly. “I was at my friend Shoko’s house, she needed someone to get her absolutely blasted, you know?” Evidently, Suguru’s parents do not know, if their blank faces are anything to go off of. “And Suguru was there. I saw him from across the room, and I just couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. He looked exactly like a young Keanu Reeves, if young Keanu Reeves had a man bun.” He seems to be glossing over the fact that Suguru is not white, and looks nothing like Keanu Reeves. He supposes it’s not an unflattering comparison, though, so he’ll take it.
“And everyone who knows me knows that my celebrity exception is young Keanu Reeves! So I just had to shoot my shot. Hit him with the ‘I’ve been looking for you all my life, Mr. Anderson. Wanna come to the interrogation room with me?’ I was pretty smooth, wasn’t I, my scrumptious little cupcake?”
“Satoru,” Suguru’s mother interjects primly. “You certainly have a number of interesting forms of address for our Suguru, don’t you?” Well, that question was certainly a mistake on her part.
“Oh, yeah!” Satoru launches into it, no hesitation. “Snoogly boogly, babycakes, dog treat, sugar dick, sugar lips, sugar tits—oh, I think you heard once of my favorites already! You know, Suguru just loves dolphins so much, I started calling him my sexy little dolphin.” Suguru doesn’t particularly care for dolphins. “You have to admit, he’s pretty sexy. Almost up to the impeccable standard you’ve set, Mrs. Geto. Or should I say, Mrs. Get-on-my-lap.” Satoru holds his arms out, grinning, waiting for applause. There’s dead silence aside from the sound of him chortling. Suguru almost can’t stop himself from braking into deranged laughter himself. This is the most fun he has had in months, probably. “Ah-hah,” Satoru sighs after a long moment with no response. “Good one, Satoru.” He high-fives himself.
It makes the joint fall from his hand, and it burns a small hole into the starched tablecloth before he picks it up again. “Oops! Don't worry, that should wash out.”
“Satoru, kid, I think I’m gonna have to ask you to put the substances away while you’re in my house,” Satoru’s dad breaks the momentary quiet, fist clenched and lips flattened into a tense line.
“Oh, love muffin, did you hear that?” Satoru gasps, turning to him with a hand over his heart. “Kid. Oh, he already thinks of me as his own son.” His chair scrapes loudly as he stands, reaching across the starched tablecloth to shake Suguru’s father’s hand with even more vigor than before. “Really, it means so much that you’ve accepted me into the family, Mr. Geto—or—no. Dad.”
Satoru drops his hand, which thuds onto the table, unable to support its own weight due to the shock. Suguru’s mother laughs incredulously, looking around between the three of them.
“I think this calls for celebration,” Satoru says, gearing up for something. “And a nod to the joining of families in bonds not only determined by blood, but by love beyond such a contrived, silly thing.” He pulls out a plastic bag full of something, which Suguru is praying doesn’t involve more drug use. Thankfully, it’s only dog food.
“The wild dogs that raised me—while not related by blood—taught me the value of connection. I hope someday I can introduce you all to my family.” His smile is so convincing in its shy, genuine quality that Suguru is mildly alarmed. “But for now, a toast to them in their absence!” He holds up the bag of dog food and shakes it. “I thought it would be fun if instead of dessert, we do a blind taste test! This is comparing the old recipe for our adult skin and coat formula, and the new and improved batch—still in the testing phase, actually. You guys are gonna get the inside scoop!”
--
In the end, it’s a small thing that cracks them. The metaphorical straw breaking the camel’s back.
After correcting his mother on the correct way to do laundry (washing machines are harmful to the clothes, they should be soaked in vinegar and air dried only after being worn five times), referring to his father’s haircut as “more effective than an IUD”, and regaling them with stories about when he used to pose as a nude model for children’s art classes, it’s almost unreal that the actual last straw is unintentional on Satoru’s part—at least at first.
Suguru’s father, at a loss as to what topic of conversation could possibly be safe from Satoru’s degeneracy, makes the mistake of bringing up sports.
“Did either of you catch the game last week?” he says through a tight-lipped smile. “The Cardinals beat the Twins, it was a close call though.”
Satoru looks up with a thoughtful tilt of his head, brows furrowed and lips pouted out. “The Cardinals?” he asks, then shovels cake into his mouth and talks through it. “Is that a soccer team?”
Suguru isn’t able to suppress the visceral, physical cringe that overtakes him. If there’s one thing his father truly loves in this world, it’s baseball. He had played since he could remember, all the way through high school and college and into the minor leagues, until he got injured and real life set in; that’s when he had to stop going for the majors and settle down into a 9-5 and married life, and he had never gotten over it, not really.
He’d lost his shit on Suguru in eleventh grade when he refused to try out for the baseball team that year, saying he wanted to join the literature club instead.
His face now looks as if Satoru has just committed the gravest of sins—a crime against his very being and everything he stood for, an unforgiveable transgression.
Completely unbothered, Satoru crams in more dessert and blinks expectantly. Everyone around the table watches in various states of distress (or lack thereof, in Satoru’s case) as Suguru’s father opens a closes his mouth like a fish, face turning red with anger.
“What the fuck did you just say?” he finally spits out, and the sheer malice makes even Satoru’s expression twitch. There’s a vein pulsing in the side of his forehead.
“I said—” Satoru speaks, muffled through his mouthful of strawberry and whipped cream topping, then chokes a little and hurriedly swallows. His eyes glint suddenly, seeing the opportunity laid before him. He dabs at his mouth with the napkin, then looks up innocently. “Is that a soccer team? I’ve never heard of them.”
His father stands up with such force that his chair scrapes and fall backwards, tipping onto the wood floor with a raucous thud. “I think I’ve had just about enough of you,” he seethes, finger pointed accusingly at Satoru. “You make comments of a crude nature about my wife, you attempt to perform some kind of homosexual courting dance upon me, you bring illegal substances into my home, and now! You have the gall to blatantly disrespect the pride of this nation?”
“And don’t forget that he damaged my mother’s antique porcelain plates!” Suguru’s mother adds in, face alight with fury and voice shrill. “Those are worth a fortune, young man, more money than you’ve ever seen in your life.”
“Ah, no, no!” Satoru says cheerfully. “Remember, I was an analyst at J.P. Morgan! I’ve seen lots of money—big piles of cash, they keep ‘em stacked up in vaults, and every year we let the summer interns go down through the high-security tunnel system and see! I was a guide for the internship program—”
“Silence!” Suguru’s dad shouts, rattling the glasses on the table when he slams his hand down onto it. “You imbecile.” His voice is frigid, and he glares at Satoru with contempt.
“I know you are, but what am I?!” Satoru shrieks, standing up and slamming his hand down in a perfect mirror image. Suguru’s dad is neatly purple with rage at this point.
“Do not disrespect my husband, you childish son of a bitch,” his mother stands as she cries out indignantly.
“Thank you for remembering my upbringing, it’s a source of great pride for me, and my wild dog mother is a bitch!” Satoru says.
“Be silent!” Suguru’s father yells once more. “You cretin, you absolute mongrel, I should have never let you step foot into my home! And you, Suguru, I was prepared to give you one last chance to make amends with your parents!”
“I don’t want to make amends with you, jackass,” Suguru says calmly, leaning back in his chair and settling with his arms crossed to watch the show unfold. His mother gasps in horror.
“Suguru! You take that back!”
“No, I won’t.”
“Yes, boo bear, you tell them, babe. God, you’re so hot when you’re assertive!”
“Shut up, you loathsome—”
“Suguru, I don't know what your father and I are expected to do in this situation—”
“This whole evening has been a test of my patience! I will no longer tolerate—”
“Some-BODY ONCE TOLD ME, THE WORLD—”
The shouting match comes to a feverish pitch as Satoru, for no reason obvious to anyone aside from him, begins to sing Smash Mouth’s All Star a capella at maximum volume.
For a while, the intensity of the shouting continues, only snatches of words discernable through the din of the impromptu musical act.
“—this moronic slug—”
“—can't believe you let them—”
“—tearing this family apart!”
“Me?! You think I’m—”
“—fuck yourself, you piece of—”
“—never loved you anyways—”
“Fuck your mother and her antique porcelain too! I didn’t want any part—”
“—see how it is—”
“—constant nagging, I haven’t been happy in years—”
“—go call your fucking lawyer and see if I care!”
“—those divorce papers on your desk—”
“—get fucked, Daiki, you’ve never made me climax, not even once—”
“—you filthy liar—”
“YES, I faked every single one! You—”
“—HEY NOW, YOU’RE AN ALL STAR, GET YOUR GAME ON—”
Satoru’s singing has become so disruptive that it overshadows the screeching, despite his parents’ best efforts to the contrary. It eventually gets to a point where it’s less singing and more just senseless screaming, because the words aren’t identifiable anymore amongst the sheer cacophony.
When Suguru’s parents, stunned out of their argument, trail off to watch in abject horror with their hands over their ears, Satoru stops, clears his throat, and picks up his notched crystal drinking glass to sip it delicately.
“Ahh,” he breathes out. “Hydrating after a good vocal warmup is just as important as the musical exercise itself!” he chirps. Beaming under the weight of their shocked expressions, Satoru stretches across the table to where Suguru’s dad’s glass rests, and clinks them together in a one-sided cheers. “A final toast, to the meeting of new friends.”
Suguru’s brain is buzzing with the way this evening just imploded. Satoru, his glimmering beacon of light, only smiles.
“One can never be too sure.” He laughs, and Suguru joins him a second too late, breathy and dazed.
Holy fuck. He asked for an evening of chaotic disruption, and boy has Satoru delivered tenfold. Suguru’s parents look destroyed right now. His mother’s hair is mussed, her skin flushed with anger, eyes wild and posture tensed like she’s poised to attack. His father is sweating and still beet red in the face, the whites of his eyes showing as they remain fixed on Satoru.
“Well!” Satoru claps his hands together and grins around at them all. “I’m terribly sorry to leave when there’s still so much fun to be had, but it’s getting a bit late and I do have a very important dick appointment, isn’t that right, sugar tits?”
Smiling as widely as he maybe ever has in the presence of his parents, Suguru straightens up and steps up to Satoru’s side. “Sure is, sweetiekins,” he declares, and then leans in to kiss him with way more tongue that is ever appropriate. He doesn’t even like kissing with that much tongue, and neither does Satoru, but Suguru would like to continue to scar his parents’ eyes as deeply and irreparably as possible.
Swinging an arm over Suguru’s shoulder and pivoting the two of them smoothly toward the door, Satoru marches them out of the room, whistling. Suguru’s parents stand frozen with shock and staring after them without a word.
Just before the door shuts behind them, Suguru sees his mother collapse to the floor in a dead faint.
--
“Well I would classify that as a resounding success!” Satoru announces proudly when they’re back in Beelzebub and roaring down the expressway. Windowless jeeps are hideously impractical at highway speeds, but Suguru just nods and grins at his boyfriend from behind the sheet of hair plastered over his face by the wind.
“I think it really ruined any semblance of good left in their lives!” he agrees, unable to hold back his enthusiasm any longer. “That was amazing, babe.”
“Aw, don’t flatter me too much, lovemuffin,” Satoru bats his eyelashes in a mockery of flirtation, pretending to twirl a stand of hair around his finger. “It will all go to my head.”
“At least there would be something up there,” he knocks on the side of Satoru’s skull, gentle and affectionate. “Sounds pretty empty to me.” He gives Satoru a smitten smile that he has wholeheartedly deserved after today’s performance. Although how much of it was really a performance is still up for debate—“Hey, hold on, you can drop the dumbass nicknames now.”
“Oh no, I think I’m keeping those, that was the best part of the night—”
“Oh fuck off, you’re not calling me sugar tits if you ever wanna touch them again.”
“Hm, I could live without them,” Satoru muses, and gets a shove to the shoulder in response. “Wait! Hold up, does that principle apply to other names, for example, sugar dick—”
“Yes, Satoru.”
“Damn. Probably can’t live without that…”
Shaking his head and still grinning, Suguru reclines back against the car seat, sighing. He’s definitely cemented himself as the irredeemable familial outcast now, hah. No more stupid family reunions to suffer through, where his parents spend the whole time unfavorably comparing him to everyone else and pretending they didn’t treat him like shit his whole life.
“Oh, fuck, when do we need to return this behemoth by?” Suguru looks to Satoru, and waves a hand to indicate the jeep, remembering suddenly that Satoru had used bribery to borrow it for the occasion.
“Oh, Beelzebub?” Satoru looks almost offended by the implication that they would be returning the vehicle. “Suguru, you silly goose! You didn’t actually believe that story, did you? I wouldn’t stoop so low as to try to bribe a car salesman, the tricksy bastards.” He shakes his head, tutting, and strokes the dashboard lovingly. “I traded in my Honda for this baby, so get used to him.”