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IS GETO SUGURU GAY?
The words are scribbled, bolded, underlined on the worn-out oak of the desk. This is far from the first time something like this has happened. A note in his locker, or some scribblings in his notebook, sure. Expected, even. It’s always been subtle, hushed, ashamed, almost. Never anything this blunt. The whispers have never, never dared step on the shadow of a shout.
Everyone knows. Or, everyone thinks that they do. The rumours have been flying off the rails the last few weeks, ever since Takeda Seiko decided to open his fucking mouth.
Suguru grew accustomed to playground taunts and teasing about his appearance growing up. Oh, Suguru, your hair is so long, like a girl, are you going to marry a boy too?
It toned down as years passed, as Suguru hit growth spurt after growth spurt and began to fill out his lanky frame. Girls began noticing him, and he began noticing girls, and any whispering that Geto Suguru was gay was buried. He’s tall, and masculine, and his voice rings smooth like a tenor saxophone. There’s no way that he’s gay.
And then, came along Takeda Seiko. Growing up in the sticks, Suguru has the displeasure of always being aware of absolutely everyone’s business. He grew up hearing about the Takeda family’s bad business endeavours, and their eldest son’s questionable choices in women, and the ugly flowers that they planted in their front yard that one time four years ago. Obviously, Geto had known Seiko since they were kids. Their town wasn’t big enough to have more than one or two classes for their year, so he’d been stuck with the same kids since elementary school.
They had never been particularly close, not until the spring after second year of middle school, when Seiko shoots up a foot in height and drops an octave in voice. He joins the soccer team too, and Suguru often finds himself spending lunch hour staring out the window at the adjacent field, searching.
But, he isn’t gay. Suguru is tall, and he’s building some pretty impressive muscles with all of his karate lessons. And girls notice him. They look at him and giggle and blush all the way up to their ears when he smiles. They leave notes in his locker and chocolates on his desk on Valentine's day. He’s not gay, and he doesn’t have a blooming crush on Seiko.
Two weeks before summer break, Seiko’s soccer team is short a player. Seiko asks Suguru to sub in because he’s “like, tall, and kinda athletic, and not a total pushover”. It’s the first time that Suguru realises that just seeing someone’s smile can make the entire world tilt on its axis. It’s also the first day that the feeling of shame worms its way into the back of Suguru’s brain, pressing on the nape of his head as a reminder that it’s wrong, and embarrassing, and it’s creepy to think of other boys that way.
Shame haunts Suguru after that, trailing behind him like a ball and chain. Suguru keeps playing soccer with Seiko and the other guys at lunch anyway, and he learns how to stomach every slap on the back from Seiko with a mouthful of acid.
Between long sessions at the dojo, Suguru spends his month off of school shooting a soccer ball between two soda cans in his backyard. Heavier than the shame, sits the ghost of Seiko’s hand on Suguru’s shoulder.
Suguru and Seiko hang out pretty often after that, playing soccer between classes and spending the afternoon studying. In the fall, they walk to the convenience school after school, or sometimes they stop by Suguru’s apartment and walk his dog around town.
The fall.
When winter rolls around, they spend most days buried in knee deep snow. On weekends, Suguru breaks his back shovelling the balcony and parking spot for his parents, then goes to Seiko’s house to play board games, sitting under the kotatsu. Seiko presses nimble fingers against the knots in Suguru’s back, working until they’re flat, then trails his hands higher until they’re carding through his hair. Looking back, Suguru can clearly identify these few weeks as the fall. Suguru’s first juvenile, clumsy, suffocating, world-ending fall into love.
The snow lets up in time for Christmas. Seiko and Suguru spend another quiet night under the kotatsu. They eat christmas cake, and listen to some of Suguru’s CDs, and when Suguru accidentally smears icing on his upper lip, Seiko doesn’t hesitate to swipe his thumb across Suguru’s lips before cleaning off his finger with his own lips. Suguru pretends like his heart isn’t in his throat and his mind isn’t racing and most shameful of all, he pretends that there isn’t a tiny, tiny spark of hope bounding around in his chest.
A few days after the start of the semester, Suguru and Seiko are walking Suguru’s dog, Yuki, as they always do. While Yuki is fetching a particularly interesting stick, she hits a pitch of ice, and slips right into the frigid waters. She’s young, and hasn’t quite had the chance to learn how to doggy paddle yet. Before Suguru has a chance to react, he hears the sound of a backpack hitting the ground. Then a splash, and before he knows what’s happened, he’s faced with something wonderful, and so, so ugly.
Seiko is standing there, and he’s holding Suguru’s puppy in his arms. They’re both shivering, clouds of frost forming around their breath, and still, he’s smiling. The world tilts so far that the shame falls right out of Suguru’s left ear.
He kisses Seiko.
He kisses Seiko, and Suguru abruptly wishes that he was the one that was plunged three metres under the ice. Suguru wishes that his body would sink to the bottom, and that they would never find it.
Then, Suguru pulls away from the kiss. He takes a moment to look at Seiko’s dumbfounded expression, and learns that a moment is all it takes to have your heart shattered. He scoops up his dog in both arms, turns around, and walks back home.
Suguru sits on his bed for a while, thinks about running away from home, then thinks about really, truly dying as a means of escape. He wonders if Seiko would tell anyone about this kiss after he died, wondering what his parents' reactions might be. How they would cope knowing that their son is dead, and he’s gay. Suguru pulls out his phone, and with shaking fingers types a message.
-Yo
-Sorry about earlier. Was just really worried about my dog.
-I’m not into guys like that
-You aren’t?
-To be honest, I wasn’t that surprised when you kissed me
-What are you talking about?
-Idk man
-I’m not gay
-What would you do if I kissed you?
-What??
-What are you even saying bro haha
-I’m just wondering
-Would you suck me off too??
-Like are you really gay?
Suguru’s fingers hover over his cellphone’s number pad. He’s never been a liar, not except for his one glaring secret, and oh, how good it would feel to find someone to finally confess in.
Then, Suguru thinks about the after. He wonders if his parents would be able to look at him the same way, if their love was truly unconditional. Suguru imagines going to karate, feeling his classmates shrink under his hold, flinching away from his touch.
Suguru flips his phone shut, and goes to sleep.
The rumours start the next day. Small towns are sneaky, and Suguru never catches more than two or three people staring at him at once. Of course, everyone still takes a turn, ogling like he’s an animal at the zoo.
The taunts mostly remain at, well, taunts behind his back. Because Suguru is still tall and built, and even if he doesn’t really notice girls, they notice him. He’s nearing his black belt in karate, and Suguru knows that even though he’s a pretty chill guy, some people still flinch when he raises his hand.
Suguru spends the winter of his last year in middle school fishing his gym clothes out of the school toilets and collecting notes stashed in his backpack with that one shameful, shameful word printed across the front.
If his parents notice the stress that has begun etching itself into Suguru’s eyes, sinking into his bones like liquid lead, they don’t say anything. Suguru has never been particularly close with his parents. The urge to share with them has never won over the urge to hide from them, and they’ve never really pushed back on that, so he’s begun feeling more and more like a tenant than a son in their home as time passes.
He ends up spending more time at the dojo than ever before. Suguru has always been somewhat of a golden boy when it came to karate, a frontrunner at regional tournaments. He was more dedicated than the other kids his age, but recently, he’s really throwing himself into it. Suguru attends as many classes as he can, spends extra hours running drills, on the bag, working on his flexibility and stamina.
Suguru doesn’t think that he’s changed that much. When he’s not doing karate, he’s walking Yuki, or doing whatever minimal studying he can scrape by with. It’s just that, recently, the world has been a bit quieter. He goes to bed a few hours earlier at night. Suguru can’t really remember the last time anything felt like more than a ripple in a pond, can’t remember the last time he felt anything with his whole heart.
Then, on the Tuesday before final exams began, Suguru walks into his classroom after lunch to find writing on his desk.
IS GETO SUGURU GAY?
Suguru stares down at the words, blinking once, twice, three times. It’s as if he’s suddenly struck with a spell of illiteracy, because no matter how many times he traces his gaze across the curve of the characters, he could not comprehend their meaning. His brain shut off, leaving him like a puppet, like a scarecrow hanging on a fence. He can only see, look, stare in horror as the whispers in the classroom grow louder and blur further into the static noise.
“Alright, everyone, take your seats.”
Suguru drags his chair back with an ear-splitting screech. The weight of burning gazes cripples him further. Every eye in the room is on him now.
Suguru swallows thickly and quickly grabs a binder to throw across the desk.
As soon as the words are covered up, all of the gravity on earth comes crashing down. The force is both grounding and paralysing and sends sparks flying up Suguru’s throat, ricocheting off his teeth. He buries the feeling, and begins to take notes.
Suguru is out of his seat as soon as the final bell rings, pushing his way through the halls, down the stairs, across roads until he makes it home.
Suguru’s teeth sink into his bottom lip.
Don’t cry.
He bites down harder. Blood spills into his mouth, coating his teeth like an oil spill.
Don’t cry.
IS GETO SUGURU GAY?
Suguru locks his bedroom door. He would do anything to relieve this shame, pressing him down like he’s sitting at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
He tangles his hands in his hair, and tugs. He pulls until clumps of black hair fall out of his palms and onto the ground.
Nothing. It’s still there. Following him, a silent haunting.
Suguru cries. He cries until his throat feels like sandpaper and his eyes are swollen shut. He cries until he’s too dehydrated to shed any more tears. Then, he walks to his kitchen, avoiding his parents’ concerned gazes, downs several glasses of water, and returns to his bedroom to cry some more.
By some miracle, Suguru passed all of his exams, and moved on to highschool. Last fall, Suguru’s coach applied to some sports scholarship at a boarding school in Tokyo, and by some bigger miracle, the recruiter who spent a few days hanging around the dojo liked Suguru more than the two hundred other kids he met, and offered him a scholarship.
Once spring blooms, Suguru is desperate to escape the sticks. He hops on the first bus to the city that he finds, barely giving his parents a proper goodbye before he’s gone.
Suguru almost coughs up a lung at his first inhale of Tokyo air, thicker and oily compared to the country, but honestly, it’s the easiest he’s found breathing in a long time.
Tokyo Tech is almost smaller than the highschool back home. Suguru hadn’t realised just how exclusive it really was until he was unpacking his duffel bag into what looked like a double dorm room, and realised that there was only one bed.
He calls out to the doorway as he hears footsteps shuffling closer to the door.
“Yo.”
The footsteps stop.
“Are you talking to me?”
A mop of white hair pokes through the door. Blue eyes peer at Suguru over a pair of shades, and before Suguru can even begin to question what kind of asshole wears inside sunglasses in April, the guy has already invited himself in, poking around Suguru’s room.
“Light packer, huh? Do you live nearby? Easy to commute back home and get whatever you need?”
“Not really,” Suguru shrugs. For some reason, he doesn’t stop the boy from rifling through his CDs and tracing his fingers down the posters on the wall. “It’s around four hours on the bus. I’m just a light packer. How about you, uh—”
“Gojo Satoru,” Gojo says, very, very slowly, like he’s expecting some kind of reaction. Suguru really has no idea why.
“Geto Suguru,” he replies, only realising how similar their names are after the syllables have left his mouth. He exhales in a sharp laugh. “They’re pretty similar, right?”
Gojo raises his eyebrows, looking up as if to replay both names in his head. Eventually, he looks back down at Suguru and grins, “They are, aren’t they? Maybe it’s a sign.”
Suguru ignores the sudden hammering in his chest, planting his gaze on the ground. “A sign of what?”
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out.”
Suguru lifts his gaze to Gojo’s smile one last time, and promptly forgets why he even called out to Gojo in the first place. He feels the urge to call every single person or thing he’s ever called beautiful and apologise to them for lying, because before now, he’s never understood beauty in its true intent. It’s never been so obvious, so tangible, so brilliant as it is in Gojo Satoru’s smile.
“Are you a first year, too?” Suguru asks, because nothing else is more important at this moment than finding out if he’s going to get to see more of this boy.
“Yup,” Gojo replies. “My family’s pretty into martial arts, so they sent me here for karate.”
What a wonderful coincidence. Or maybe, it’s something stronger pulling them together.
“Ah, me too. I’m on a scholarship.”
Gojo raises his eyebrows, like it’s something remarkable. “So you didn’t only impress these assholes enough for admission, but enough to get them to pay for you too?”
Suguru shrugs again.
“Listen, I gotta go like, unpack the rest of my shit. But, first thing after classes tomorrow we’re sparring, got it?”
“Sure.” Suguru agrees, and he finds the smallest corner of his heart hoping that Gojo will leave him with another smile.
Instead, he receives something even better.
“Okay, see you later Suguru.”
The male and female dorms are separate, but they join together to share a dining hall, and Suguru ends up eating dinner with another first year student, here to study sports medicine. Ireri Shoko drags every other syllable like it weighs a tonne, and the smell of cigarette smoke is caked onto her hair in layers, but honestly, she’s pretty chill. She carries a calm sort of energy that makes her easy to talk to.
During this meal, Suguru can’t help his eyes from wandering around, searching tables and scanning faces to try and catch a glimpse of Gojo once again. Shoko eventually notices his not-so-subtle surveillance, and asks him if he’s looking for someone. When she learns that it’s Gojo Satoru that Suguru is looking for, her eyebrows shoot up about half an inch, which Suguru imagines is the Shoko equivalent of pure shock.
“I didn’t take you as one of his fanboys.”
“What?”
“He’s like, a celebrity around here. The Gojo clan is this super old insane martial arts family, and Gojo Satoru is seen as a genius even among them. Won his weight class at nationals last year, and he was competing in the adult category.”
Suguru is impressed by this information, sure, but it isn’t life changing by any means. A boy is still a boy, no matter how strong a punch he can throw.
“That’s cool,” Suguru replies.
As promised, Sugugru spars with Gojo the next day. They’re horribly matched, as in, perfectly. Gojo, with his long legs and quick eyes is all agility, while Suguru balances him out using his strength, clean-cut moves, never an ounce of stamina wasted. The match is significantly more challenging than any one Suguru fought back home. He had always been able to read the other guys easily, see their exchanges play out in his head before they could even happen. Most guys had a point-scorer that they stuck to. Sora always tried to break the guard then go in for a punch. Kiyoshi liked the three-point head kicks, either directly, or with a fake two pointer to the abdomen.
With Gojo, it’s different. His movement is almost erratic, if not carried by grace. He has no problem switching and mixing moves, creating new combinations that Suguru had never imagined practicing in drills, yet Gojo pulls them off seamlessly.
Suguru ends up on the defence for most of the match, and though they only fought to six points, it eventually becomes a match of stamina. Sparring was a full body workout, mixing speed and strength and control into a tight bundle and polishing it into something wonderful.
Suguru knows that the match is over as soon as he sees this look in Gojo’s eyes, a brilliant light, like he knows a secret. Gojo catches Suguru’s foot in a trip, and before Suguru could raise his guard for the block, Gojo and his goddamn speed lands a punch right to his chest. Two points. The match is won. Six to three.
Gojo extends a hand to help haul Suguru off of the ground, which he accepts graciously. They bow, and shake hands, and Suguru pretends that it wasn’t electrifying, that this wasn’t the first time in months and months that he’s felt alive.
Gojo swings an arm around his shoulder as they walk to the locker room, and Suguru tries not to bristle at their contact between clothes. “Yo Suguru, I didn’t know they could like that out in the sticks. Did you spend afternoons herding cattle or something?”
Suguru grins, and the smile falls on his face easily, but it wobbles a bit when he tries to maintain it. “Not everyone can fight like that. Only I can.”
Suguru is the furthest thing from cocky, but it feels natural to use it to joke around with Gojo.
Gojo cackles, turning the arm around his shoulder into a loose, teasing headlock. Suguru can’t remember the last time it was so easy to joke around, so easy to live.
After they’ve showered and changed, Gojo invites Suguru to hang out in his room. Gojo has a pretty impressive collection of DVDs. They start playing some American blockbuster, Gojo’s pick, and Suguru realises quickly that he much prefers watching Gojo. His reactions are exaggerated, and though he bragged about seeing this movie like, a thousand times, he still tears up and laughs like it’s the first time.
It becomes a bit of a routine. After classes and training, they watch movies in Gojo’s room, or listen to music in Suguru’s room. Shoko shows when she’s not buried in books, and she’s a bit wary around Gojo at first. But Gojo is the sun, so Shoko can’t help but warm up to his presence quickly.
Gojo is often dragged back home on the weekends, to both his and Suguru’s dismay. He doesn’t talk about his family often, but when he does, it’s clipped complaints or sighs under his breath. From what Suguru can conjecture, they’re heavier on business than family, and the pressure is always on when it comes to Gojo.
Spring is slowly melting into summer when Shoko first brings it up. It’s a Sunday, so Gojo is gone. Shoko and Suguru are sitting in Suguru’s dorm room, Suguru on the bed, Shoko by the window, tapping her cigarette ashes through a hole that she ripped in his screen.
“Why is Satoru so different around you?”
Suguru glances up from his manga, fixing her with a frown. “What do you mean?”
“He’s like, a completely different guy when you’re not around. I was in the dining hall with Utahime the other day, and he was there, getting plates for both of you. A couple of guys from baseball kept trying to get him to sit with them, and he totally shut them down. If I hadn't known him already, I would have thought the rumours were true.”
Suguru stills. “The rumours?”
Shoko rolls her eyes. “Wow you really don’t ever leave your bubble, do you?”
Suguru doesn’t really know why he would. He has Gojo, and Shoko, and he’s happy. Or, as close as he can get to being happy these days.
“Anyway, Satoru isn’t known as being the friendliest of people. Utahime says that he’s known for being unapproachable. He would almost always show up to tournaments alone, and never talk to anyone.”
Suguru thinks that Utahime is full of shit, because Gojo is one of the friendliest people he’s ever met. He doesn’t really know why Shoko is telling him this in the first place, because it doesn’t really matter. If Gojo knew what Suguru was like before highschool, the things that he used to do, Gojo never would have spoken to him in the first place.
“Huh,” Suguru replies. He can feel Shoko studying his expression. He changes the subject. “Dining hall for dinner? Or should we split takeout?”
After summer vacation, Gojo begins staying at school more often on weekends, silencing his cell phone every time it starts to ring. He doesn’t lose weight, they’re both too rigorous in their diets and training to let something like that happen, but Suguru notices the stress etching itself into Gojo’s face. The corners of his lips are dragged lower, wrinkles from a frown forming between his eyebrows. It didn’t take a genius to see that Gojo was suffering some family problems, and it was even easier to see that he didn’t want to talk about it.
They’re halfway through Stand by Me when Suguru decides to extend a hand, the best way that he can. Gojo has his eyes fixed on the TV screen in his dorm room, glazed over, and Suguru doubts that he’s actually watching the movie at all.
“Hey, what are you doing for Christmas?”
“Ah, not sure. I might stay here.” Gojo doesn’t move his eyes from the TV as he replies. Suguru recognizes that type of exhaustion, and he wants to take it away. He wants to make Gojo feel better. He shuffles a bit closer, pressing their shoulders together.
“Do you want to stay at my place? We can spend a few days roughing it in the sticks.”
When Suguru looks over again, Gojo’s eyes are fixed on him, wide with surprise. “For real? Your parents are cool with that? I wouldn’t be a burden?”
Suguru hadn’t even asked his parents yet.
“Yeah. You—” Suguru pauses, clearing his throat. “It’s not a burden at all. They’re looking forward to meeting you.”
Gojo smiles, the brightest Suguru has seen him in weeks. He leans against Suguru’s shoulder where they touch. “Thanks, Suguru.”
“Sure, Satoru. No problem.”
The first snowfall touches ground a week before winter vacation, and Suguru learns that even if Satoru is the sun, he blossoms in winter. His pale skin glistens under the winter sun, nose and ears tinting pink as they’re nipped at by the cold. Suguru has always known what beauty was, but it wasn’t until he saw Satoru, teeth chattering, surrounded by a blanket of snow, that he understood what beauty truly is.
They leave for Suguru’s home as soon as their last class is out, backpacks full of warm sweaters and socks. Satoru was a true city boy, and Suguru had to take him shopping for a real pair of winter boots a few days earlier. Now, Satoru stomps off of the bus proudly, boots barely broken in.
It’s a short walk to Suguru’s apartment, and Satoru is all goofy smiles and polite greetings as he meets Suguru’s parents. His mother is delighted that Suguru brought a friend home, she calls him ‘ Satoru-kun ’ and cooks massive meals every night, doting over both boys at every chance he gets. Suguru couldn’t quite remember the last time this tiny town felt safe, warm even. The last time home felt like home.
Suguru brings Satoru to his home dojo, and his sensei fawns over Satoru for a little bit, but he’s mostly glad that Suguru is faring well at his new school. They stay for a class, because they’re fiends, never quite able to get enough. After that, they buy snacks at the convenience store and go back home to sit under the kotatsu. Yuki takes to Satoru quickly, and it almost leaves Suguru feeling betrayed, the way that she always goes to Satoru’s side to curl up.
At night, they share Suguru’s bed. They’re used to doing that in the dorms, and even though Suguru’s mom leaves a futon on his floor, they don’t bother to roll it out even once. Suguru’s mom just thinks that Satoru is diligent in cleaning up after himself.
“Suguru.”
A whisper in the crisp night air. Suguru turns to his side to face Satoru. They’re laying in bed, blankets pulled to their chins.
“Hm?” Suguru hums. His eyes are heavy with sleep, half drifting before Satoru called out.
“Thank you for inviting me.”
“It’s no problem, Satoru. You don’t need to thank me.” Suguru stretches a leg forward, foot accidentally skimming Satoru’s shin. He expects him to pull back, turn around and shuffle to the other side of the bed, but he doesn’t. Satoru shuffles closer.
“I like it when you call me that.”
“What?”
“Satoru.”
Suguru huffs out a laugh, “That’s your name.”
“I know. But it took you a while to start saying it.”
Suguru can feel Satoru’s breath fanning across his face with every word. At first, he thinks that his brain might just be playing tricks, because it’s dark, because he’s tired, but when Satoru’s lips finally meet his, there was no denying it. They were kissing.
Suguru wants more than anything to close his eyes, to tangle a hand in Satoru’s hair and lean into it. It would be so, so easy.
But he can’t.
Suguru scrambles backwards, grabbing Satoru’s shoulders and pushing him back.
“Stop. This isn’t right.”
Suguru can’t see a lot in the dark, but he notices how Satoru draws his gaze downward. Shame.
“Sorry, I think that I misread things.”
Suguru stills. “No, that’s not it. You— you don’t want this.”
Satoru doesn’t say anything, eyes now fixed on Suguru’s shaking form.
“Listen, this is my fault, okay? I— I shouldn’t take advantage of you like this. I’m sorry. I’m the one who should be sorry. It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”
Satoru doesn’t say anything, he just stands up and pulls on another sweater, opening Suguru’s bedroom door and stepping out. Suguru can’t stop shaking, but he can’t let Satoru leave him either. He can’t let the only light in his life get smothered.
“Wait.” He scrambles out of bed too, grabbing Satoru’s wrist gently. Don’t leave, he wants to say, but the words won’t form on his lips.
Satoru pulls his arm back, breaking his hold. His eyes are cold, colder than ice, and Suguru recalls that time Shoko tried to tell him that Satoru was different without him. He thought that she was lying, but now, he really understood.
“You know, Suguru, you could have just told me that you’re not interested. I can take the rejection. Would have hurt a lot less than whatever this is.”
Satoru is pulling on his boots, hand wrapped around the doorknob. He pauses, just for a moment. “I’m going to step out for a minute. Go get some sleep, Suguru.”
The door rattles gently behind Satoru as it’s closed. Suguru turns around just in time to catch sight of his mom making her way to the front door.
“Suguru? What’s going on?” She rubs her eyes, obviously woken by the ruckus.
Suguru feels his vision tunnel with every step she takes closer. He should have known this was coming. This was his fault. His fingers tangle in his hair, shame slivering under his skin like a shard of glass.
“Did something happen with Satoru-kun? Did he leave?” His mom is close now, reaching out to pull him into her hold. He knows that it’s a kind gesture, but Suguru thinks that her hands might get burned if she touches him. He takes a step back.
“It’s fine,” he says, but the words are choked.
“Where did he go? Did you have a fight? Is he coming back?”
His mom keeps asking questions, taking small, slow steps forward that have Suguru shuffling backwards to get some space between them. He feels berated, and clamped, and he can feel the walls of the apartment closing in with every passing second.
Then, his mom asks, “Should I call his mother?”
No. No, she can’t. Satoru has enough going on at home, he’s already crippling under the expectations. Suguru can’t be the reason that Satoru has an even harder time with his family. But, there’s the fire in his mom’s eyes, this conviction that Suguru knows won’t be easy to get her to shake.
Suguru takes another step back, and finds his fingers slipping against the balcony door. He eventually hooks a clammy thumb into the handle and tugs.
“Mom,” he starts, taking a step back. The cement is cold under the calluses on his bare feet. A chill wraps around his body like fire in a winter storm. “You’re not going to call his mother.”
“Suguru.” Her words are clipped short as she notices just how close her son is standing to the edge. “You really struggled last year, but we thought you were doing better with your new school. I’m not going to just sit back this time. You can tell mom if something is wrong. I’m here for you Suguru—”
“Mom,” he interrupts again. This time, his hands are gripping the ledge of the balcony. “Promise me, please, please just promise me that you’ll keep your mouth shut. You can’t make a big deal out of this.”
Suguru stills at the sound of a hollow weep. His blood runs cold when he realises that the pathetic noise is hiccuping from behind his own lips. He can’t cry. Not now. Not like this.
“Fuck.”
He exhales, and it sends a quiver through his body worse than a seizure. His back presses further against the balcony bars.
“Suguru, just come back inside, okay?”
“Promise me,” he repeats. “Swear to me, or I’ll jump.”
As soon as the threat leaves Suguru’s mouth, he’s shocked by how genuine he feels about it. He’s really ready to jump.
His mother glares at him with bloodshot eyes. When did she start crying? She looks furious, and terrified, and there’s a desperation behind her eyes that Suguru has never seen in a person before.
“Suguru,” a voice cuts through the air, and it roars with anger. His mother looks meek in comparison. “What the hell do you think that you’re doing?”
“Satoru.”
The word is pulled out of Suguru’s throat like there’s a chain attached to it. With it comes any of the remaining adrenaline pumping through Suguru’s bloodstream. His gaze drops to the floor. Suguru has never been good at looking Satoru in the eyes, too afraid that all it would take was one good glance for Satoru to peer in and see that there was something truly broken inside him.
Suguru doesn’t really know what’s going on anymore, why Satoru is back or why he looks so mad, but he does know that he needs to get out of this situation no matter what.
He brushes past Satoru as he storms out of the apartment, not even realising that he was followed until Satoru is grabbing at his elbow outside. His finger pads dig into his bone and his nails dig into Suguru’s skin and it’s scolding hot in the middle of winter and—
And the fall.
Satoru fell, and he’s naive because he hasn’t realised how doomed they are. It would never work between them. It would never work because Suguru knows how to fall and he’s still learning how to pick himself up. He still has bruises that need ice and scrapes that need bandages. Maybe they’ll never heal, and maybe Suguru is more comfortable being alone. Maybe Suguru doesn’t want the fall. Deep down Suguru knows that he’s been plummeting from the sky at the speed of sound since the moment that they met, but that doesn’t mean that he wants this. That he deserves this.
“Suguru. Sit down, please.”
Suguru is overcome with exhaustion, seeping deep into his bone marrow, so deep that he can’t stop his knees from crumbling.
“I’m sorry.” he says, but he doesn’t think that this is true. Not really, deep down. It doesn’t feel like the truth, not like when he threatened to jump.
“No, you’re not.”
“Okay. I’m not. But I didn’t want you to see that.”
“Suguru,” he starts. He pauses, to let it hang in the air for a moment, to let it warm the air.
“Are you gay?”
IS GETO SUGURU GAY?
“Yes,” he confesses. He keeps his eyes down.
“Okay,” Satoru says. He shuffles a bit closer to Suguru, and sits beside him. Satoru doesn’t pull away, or flinch when their shoulders touch. He just sits.
Then, “Do you guys have, like, cake in the sticks? It’s Christmas.”
“What?”
“What?” Satoru parrots.
“You’re not going to say anything else?”
Satoru shrugs. “I don’t think there’s anything I could say that’s going to make you feel any better right now.”
Suguru kicks at a pebble with his heel, “You could tell me that I’ve won the lottery.”
“Okay. You’ve won the lottery.”
“How big?”
“One billion yen.”
Suguru whistles low. “Wow, I’ve really hit the jackpot.”
A whisper of air rushes through their clothes. It was much too cold to be outside in nothing but sweaters.
“Do you feel any better?”
“Not really,” comes first. And then, “We do have cake.”
“Sweet. You hungry?”
“Yeah,” Suguru replies, and suddenly, it strikes him that Satoru knows. He knows that he’s gay, and the world isn’t over. The sky hasn’t collapsed, and acid isn’t raining down, and most importantly of all, Satoru is still here.
“That’s it?”
“What’s it?”
“You’re not leaving?”
“Why would I?”
Suguru stays silent. He’s never given voice to those ugly, ticking thoughts in his head, and he prefers it to stay that way. Especially in front of Satoru.
“I like you,” Satoru says, like it’s easy. Like it’s something he holds pride in. His feelings are something precious, to be nurtured and protected and not beaten and buried six feet under.
“I know you have your own shit to work out, but I like you. It’s enough for now, right?”
Suguru can’t quite communicate why, but it is. It feels like enough. “Yeah, yeah it is. Let’s go eat cake.”
Satoru holds out a hand, and Suguru grabs it. As he’s hauled up to a standing position, he locks eyes with Satoru, only for a fleeting moment, just as Satoru’s blinking away the last of his silent tears. Suguru had no idea they had fallen in the first place.
Suguru didn’t have a chance to put on shoes before he left, so his mother bandages the bleeding wounds on his feet when he returns. She cries as she wipes at the cuts with a towel, and tells him that they’ll be having a discussion later.
After that, they eat cake.
Two days later, Satoru and Suguru get on a bus back to Tokyo. Ever the late riser, Satoru falls asleep on Suguru’s shoulder for most of the ride back. Suguru’s heart beats like a galloping horse in his chest, and it’s mostly embarrassing, but it’s kind of nice too. That is, until Satoru starts snoring, and Suguru has to slap a hand over his mouth to not draw stares from the other passengers.
They spend New Year’s quietly with Shoko, burning sparklers, sharing a few of her cigarettes and passing around the bottle of wine Suguru swiped from his parents’ fridge before they left.
Class starts again two days after that, and every day when school is over, Satoru and Suguru slip away into the dojo to spar. Training until they’re tripping over their own feet, muscles sore down to the bone, ready to be taped and iced by Shoko.
At night, they listen to Suguru’s CDs while doing homework. On weekends, they watch DVDs from Satoru’s collection. They’ve gone through almost all of them, probably on their second or third rewatch of some of these films now.
Somewhere in between, Suguru heals from his last stumble, then falls ten feet deeper than before.
They’re grinding through two days worth of late math homework when Satoru flops over his books with a sigh. He glances at the alarm clock beside Suguru’s bed.
“Hey, I don’t think that the dining hall is open anymore. One of us has to sneak outside for pizza delivery, or it’s vending machine food for dinner again.
Suguru groans, tilting his head back to state at the ceiling. “I’ll buy it if you sneak out,” he offers.
Satoru scrunches his nose at the request, but Suguru knows that this is exactly what he was hoping for. Even if he had to work for it, Satoru was a firm believer that food bought with a friend’s money always tasted better.
Caught up in his own thoughts, Suguru hadn’t even realised that he was left staring at the crinkles in Satoru’s nose, which have long since smoothed out into an expression of embarrassment. A blush nipped at Satoru’s pale ears and cheeks, and it only made Suguru want to stare more. Before Suguru realises what he’s doing, he’s leaning in to get a better look. Their eyes meet, and Suguru almost scoffs at how easy it is to read Satoru.
“Stop that,” Suguru says.
Satoru tilts his head, feigning innocence. “Stop what?”
“Stop looking at me like you want to kiss me.”
Satoru smiles, “I can’t. I will never, never stop wanting to kiss you.”
Suguru knows that he’s telling the truth, because Satoru has never lied to him before. Not once.
Suguru doesn’t think, and finds his hand coming up to cup Satoru’s face, eyes closing gently, lips crashing forward as the fall makes impact. It’s bruising, and sweet, and it sends shivers tracing down every key of Suguru’s spine. And honestly, above all else, it’s wonderful.
"You look happy," Satoru says, later that night.
There's an empty pizza box in the corner of Suguru's room, and some indie rock band is playing through the stereo. Suguru found the CD at a thift store. It's quiet.
"I am happy," Suguru says. He means it.