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Sticky summer heat lingers outside his room when he gets woken up – read: ripped out of floating in non-existence neither asleep nor awake – by the one and only Satoru Gojo.
It's three hours past midnight, Geto thinks. At least, that's what he assumes based on context clues: the moon is still strung up high, but the sky clashes in ink and fire. Sun will rise soon and shine on Satoru's blessed head, who will in turn complain about his eyes hurting. Geto knows this play by heart. They go through it so much that he might as well take the starring role.
"Suguru," Gojo greets, voice tinged with raspiness that only seems to cling to him on nights like these, "I didn't wake you up, did I?"
Geto thinks about the last hours spent in a borderline feverish daze, tossing and turning in his bed like a writhing cockroach on a hot frying pan. He doesn't think he got a wink of sleep the past few days.
"Would my answer change anything?" he asks instead, rhetorical jab without much bitterness, "You're already here, anyway."
He steps away and hears the door click shut behind him. He doesn't turn on the light, both out of mercy for Gojo's sleep-deprived sensitivity and for his own sake.
His room is dirtier than he usually lets it get before the inevitable cleaning session. His bed is in disarray, unmade, a blanket bunched up in a giant pile on the floor and a bed sheet that leaves one half of his mattress exposed. Various junk is strewn across the space in a chaotic fashion that some people call an "organized mess", but Geto fails to see the resemblance. Gojo unceremoniously falls face-first onto his pillow, either not noticing, not caring, or simply deciding to not comment.
Suguru settles on a chair, stretching out his legs in a fruitless attempt to get rid of the stiffness his body seems to harbor these days. It doesn't help. Then again, it's not like anything does.
Gojo lifts his head to look at him in what he only assumes is exasperation, because in a shroud of darkness Satoru looks like a floating blob of white hair and piercing eyes. Sometimes he thinks his irises might as well be luminescent, a beacon of brilliant sky blue, from the way he never seems to have trouble finding them from wherever he looks. It wouldn't be too out of character for Gojo, he decides, to have glowing eyes. A man of many talents, as they say.
"What are you doing over there?" he asks, and scoots closer to the wall, "Come on."
"Are you inviting me into my own bed?" Suguru teases, and, to his credit, his voice almost doesn't waver. He relents, and lets his heart stutter for however much it wants to. He can always blame it on the summer's scalding heat, making his mind
all fuzzy, can't he? It's not like Satoru will question.
Sweat pools on the back of his neck. Gojo is, undoubtedly, just as hot as he is right now, and lying in such close proximity to each other would do nothing good to help that. Still, he only hesitates for a long, brief moment, then worms his way back down on the bed. Gojo's breaths are the only thing that disturbs the silence. And, perhaps, his hammering heart.
The bed is way too small for two whole people. The night settles over them again, and Suguru resumes his previous attempts to discern a pattern on a dark ceiling. Gojo's palm lies unassumingly on his forearm.
This, Geto thinks, is where his life ends. He yearns for this to be his softer epilogue. Gojo could ask a thousand things for him, and Geto would give them all and then some more. And, childishly, would sneak in his heart.
But Gojo doesn't ask, and Geto keeps silent. Keeps still, as if in fear for this to end. He lets his breath even out, and then his heart to still. Gojo snores, ever so quietly, fast asleep.
Suguru wonders if he should be grateful for this. Something like misery crawls up his throat, the kind that only rears its' ugly head in the middle of the night, grotesque and desperate. The world, if possible, grows duller. Streaks of fresh sunlight dance above him. He drifts, and lets the feeling overtake him, phantom ache snaking around his body, inside his skin and around his bones. And heart, traitorous, traitorous heart.
And then Gojo shifts, his hand momentarily leaving his body only to return full force as he throws his entire arm around him. Heat sticks to them both, he's sure, but there is something else in the way his head reels, dizzy on something out of his grasp.
Half an hour later, Geto falls asleep. Tomorrow their routine resumes, not like it was disturbed, and Gojo complains about the lack of sleep. And Geto, foolishly, hopes that he never sees the way his eyes always seem to find Satoru’s.