Work Text:
Even as the sun starts to dip towards the horizon, it’s hot at the end of summer. Too hot.
“It’ll be September in a few days.” Satoru tells him. “And then it won’t take long before it starts cooling down a bit.”
They’re in the empty third year classroom on a rare day where they have nothing to do. Nobody to save. Shoko is in the infirmary, or the morgue— she’s always away these days— and Nanami and Haibara have taken a joint mission that Suguru figures he and Satoru might’ve been sent on in their first or second year, but now they’re considered above something of that level. The world outside goes on without them for today, and Suguru wishes it wouldn’t at the same time as he wishes it could always be this way.
“Are you all right?” Satoru asks him, squinting over the top of his glasses and leaning forward in the wooden seat he’s been precariously reclining in.
He’s been asking this same question periodically over the past year or so, since the Amanai situation.
Satoru doesn’t act like it, but Suguru still wonders if he thinks he should be over it all by now. Maybe he should be. Maybe if he was stronger, like Satoru is, he wouldn’t be jolting awake in the middle of the night to the crack of a gun and the smack of skull hitting cement. Wouldn’t be stumbling to the bathroom to be sick, remembering the feeling of knowing Satoru is dead.
How? He wants to ask. How are you so fine with it all?
“You need to make sure you’re sleeping enough.”
He hears you screaming at night.
“Hm.” Suguru nods in acknowledgment.
Sleeping, eating, drinking water; it’s always these same things. Same questions.
Satoru cares, but he’s too trusting.
Or maybe he just really can’t see any deeper. It’d be ironic, for the six eyes user. Is Suguru hiding it that well?
He doesn’t think he is, when he watches himself in the mirror.
But Yaga hasn’t said anything, and neither has Shoko. In fact, nobody he’s met at the school or out on missions has seemed to find anything amiss.
But it’s difficult— entirely too difficult, now— to laugh the way he used to. To smile genuinely. And yet, nobody sees through the facade.
Maybe he is covering it up after all. He hadn’t realized he was that good of an actor.
Or maybe it’s just people’s ability to see what they want to see that’s better than he’d thought.
Whichever it is, it means Satoru doesn’t question him further. He tilts his head over the back of his chair and goes back to relaxing.
Suguru moves onto one of the desks, letting his feet swing off kilter in loose circles above the floor.
Outside, the bugs are chirping and the slightly too tall grass is swaying. Suguru listens to the slow shuffle of the leaves on tree branches against each other.
“Satoru?”
He waits for the telltale hum that indicates he’s being listened to.
“What would you do if you knew I was going to die on my next mission?”
Satoru cracks an eye open at that. “Huh?”
Suguru just stares, waiting for him to realize there isn’t any kind of catch to the question.
“What kind of—“ He frowns, blinking a couple of times. “I’d go with you, obviously.” He says. “And I’d exorcise whatever curse it was that was giving you problems. Not that anything even stands a chance against you, so I dunno why you’re asking me this.”
Suguru huffs something that feels a bit like a laugh. Of course Satoru thinks he can fix everything with a wave of his hand. It’s comforting, just not as much as it used to be.
“What if, no matter what mission, what curse, you knew I was going to die? If not the next one then the one after that. What if the higher ups sent you somewhere else, and you knew there would be nothing you could do about it?”
He waits, and the uncomfortable quiet grows. Satoru probably wants to ask him why he’s bringing this up, but he doesn’t. That’s not who he is. He’ll pretend to take things at face value. Suguru knows he does the same. There’s so much they should talk about, but this might be as close as they’re going to get. Maybe that’s okay.
“So we’d leave.” Satoru tells him, and Suguru can’t help but smile at that. “Yeah, we’d leave.”
He doesn’t imagine Gojo Satoru could ever escape the world of Jujutsu.
“Where would we go?”
“Hm,” Satoru thinks for a moment. “Okinawa, maybe.” He decides. “If you wanted. We’d live like farmers, and fishermen. And we’d never fight curses again.”
Suguru thinks there isn’t any Gojo Satoru if there aren’t any curses to exorcise. Or maybe there’s only Gojo Satoru, and just no undefeatable, six-eyed, limitless, Gojo clan kid.
Suguru thinks about how the sparkling blue of the sea in Okinawa matches Satoru’s eyes.
“Yeah,” he decides. “That sounds nice.”
The wind continues to blow softly outside, and Suguru remembers the lap of waves against sand. He hasn’t been back to the coast since last spring, and the thought of it brings a bittersweet feeling to his chest. Satoru, he thinks, would see things more colourfully than he would. Suguru only manages to separate the good from the grief for the brief few seconds he meets Satoru’s gaze.
“Do you want to know what I would do if I knew you were going to die?”
“Pfft,” Satoru huffs. “As if.”
Suguru humours him, but Satoru turns his head back to him after a few seconds.
“What would you do, though?”
“Anything.” He says. “Raze the school, the higher ups, the place you were supposed to go… whatever.”
Satoru is silent for a moment, regarding him, and then he lifts an eyebrow. “That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?”
It isn’t a confession, but it’s as close to one as Suguru’s ever gotten. Some time ago, it would have bothered him how cavalier Satoru is being about it. Now, he just shrugs.
Satoru says nothing to that.
Maybe Suguru’s been too honest. Too much. He’s supposed to be the level headed one of the two of them.
“I’m going to go to bed.” He says.
“That’s good.” Satoru tells him. “You look tired.”
He is.
“You have a mission tomorrow?” Suguru knows he does.
“Yeah,” Satoru nods. “You’re here for a few days?”
Suguru nods back at him. “Hm.”
The cicadas seem to grow in volume each time one of them finishes talking.
“Sorry you won’t have anybody to train with.” Satoru pouts, kicking his feet down from the desk they’re propped on and standing from his seat.
He stretches his arms over his head, and Suguru watches. It’s lonely at the school when he leaves. Especially when there isn’t anyone else for him to talk to. He hasn’t had class with Yaga since before summer break, and honestly, he doesn’t know if they’ll even have class again. By third year, they’re in the field more often than at the school, and really, what is there left for them to learn in a classroom that they don’t already know?
It’s just shit to be cooped up in the dorms, eating alone, doing his training by himself… though even when the others are around, he really hasn’t been spending much time with anyone but Satoru since the winter. And they’ve been separated more often than not.
At least Nanami and Haibara are due to be back tomorrow night; Suguru considers making an effort to eat with them. Knowing the speed and ease with which Satoru has been completing his missions recently, he’ll likely be back even before they are.
Suguru lets his mind trail thoughts of the kind of sweets Haibara might bring back. Despite his pessimism, it’ll be nice to have everyone at school again, even if just for a day. Maybe he’ll be able to sell them on a joint training session. He’s sure it would do them all some good to act like kids again. Satoru included.
Speaking of, Satoru is brushing past him, heading for the door.
“Wait—” Suguru pulls at his sleeve, bringing him back towards the desks.
He holds an arm half out before he can lose his nerve, reaching forward. Satoru gets the message.
“In case I die?” He teases, crude as ever, but he leans in, accepting the embrace.
Suguru feels cloth and skin— the barrier of infamous technique dissipated— but Satoru never turns it off these days, so it must be accommodating; fitting around the both of them.
He tries to relax. Thinks he feels Satoru doing the same. But it isn’t really his fault if he can’t— Satoru almost feels like more of a stranger to him than he did in their first year. Just, now, a stranger Suguru knows everything about. A stranger he’s in love with.
Suguru hangs on a little tighter than usual, and if Satoru notices, he doesn’t say anything. Nor does he let go.
Suguru breathes in at the nape of his neck, where soft skin meets pale, almost curling wisps of hair. The sun is nearly gone, and nobody can see them here.
So nobody will know if he lifts his head and places a tiny kiss there, just behind the shell of Satoru’s ear. Suguru imagines that it lingers back there, eternally protected by limitless, where it will sink into his skin and take root and fester, until Satoru can’t feel anything but love. Where no one will ever find it.
When they pull apart, Satoru is looking at him oddly, like he can’t decide if he’d felt the gentle press of lips to his neck or imagined it. Suguru doesn’t give him the time to figure it out.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” He says.
Tomorrow, he thinks, leaving Satoru in the room behind him without waiting for a response. Tomorrow, maybe I’ll wake up, and we’ll be how we used to be.
But, he reasons, there’s no conceivable way that either of them will die. They can continue this slow and aching divorce of emotion they’ve been enduring. There will be no running, or burning of anything to the ground. Tomorrow, he’s sure, Satoru will return from his mission, and things will be just as they were today.