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Suguru is starfished out on his bed when Satoru comes in and doesn’t waste any time to march over and flop himself down on top of Suguru.
He’s heavy, heavier than he should be, considering that he’s all sticks and bones with no muscle or meat to speak of, and yet Suguru is pressed into the mattress. For a split second he fears he’s going to be crushed by Satoru but when he takes a gasping breath everything returns to normal.
“What are you so heavy for?” Suguru asks, his voice muffled by his pillow, even though right now Satoru isn’t all that heavy anymore.
Right now, he’s just a comfortable weight on top of Suguru.
“Are you calling me fat?” Satoru replies, just a beat too late and Suguru frowns.
“By all rights you should be,” Suguru gives back, because whenever he sees Satoru he’s snacking something, or stuffing his face with sweets.
Satoru should weigh a lot more than he does and it’s kind of unfair that he doesn’t, if Suguru is being honest.
“Rude,” Satoru mutters and squirms around on Suguru until he’s laying fully on top of him, his head on Suguru’s shoulder. “You want me to get off?” he then adds, uncharacteristically considerate and Suguru blinks up at him.
“Nah. You’re kind of the perfect weighted blanket,” he admits and when Satoru sighs out at that it feels as if he goes a little bit heavier again.
It’s just one of the many strange things about Satoru but Suguru is not going to complain. It serves him well, right now after all.
~*~*~
Suguru is squinting at Satoru. He’s without his glasses right now, his hair flopping down even more, Suguru thinks, and yet his ears are still sticking out.
“What has gotten into you?” Satoru asks, narrowing his eyes at Suguru. “Is there something on my face?” he wants to know, scrubbing a hand over his mouth as if that could get rid of the problem.
“No,” Suguru says and he can’t help himself he simply has to reach out and touch the tips of his fingers to Satoru’s ears.
They are more pointed than Suguru remembers them being and it’s intriguing.
Satoru slaps his hand away, jumping back a few steps and covering his ears with his hands.
“What are you doing?” he asks and Suguru frowns even harder when he hears the beginnings of panic laced in his voice.
“Have your ears always been this huge?” he asks, and watches how Satoru goes pale.
It’s a strange reaction, that much Suguru has to admit, but then again, Satoru is simply a strange person.
Suguru isn’t easily surprised anymore when it comes to him.
“Of course, haha, what are you even talking about?” Satoru laughs out, his voice strained and his hands still clasped over his ears and Suguru doesn’t believe him even a little bit but it’s clear Satoru is uncomfortable so he does what he can to get rid of the tension.
“It’s just surprising, because with ears that big you’d think you’d be better at listening,” Suguru teases him and it’s enough to get Satoru to puff up his cheeks, hands falling down and his panic forgotten.
Suguru allows himself a small smile, because he knows Satoru well enough to get him out of whatever panic he was talking himself into and then it’s back to their usual bickering.
Though Suguru does take note of the fact that Satoru’s ears seem to have gone back to normal.
~*~*~
Suguru watches fondly how Satoru laughs, his head thrown back and his whole body moving with it. Suguru can’t quite remember anymore what it is that Satoru finds so funny but he thinks that Satoru doesn’t laugh enough, so it’s nice to see him carefree like this.
Even if his mouth is a little wider than it probably should be.
Suguru watches him more closely, sees how the corners of his mouth spread wide and then wider still and for a fleeting moment he fears that Satoru’s face is going to split right open, intersected by his too wide mouth, by his too joyful laugh but then it stops.
It’s still a tad too wide, but his mouth stops growing until there’s no danger of it swallowing the entirety of Satoru’s face anymore.
“You are such a child,” Suguru mildly says when Satoru won’t stop laughing because for him to find something this funny it must be downright stupid.
“At least I know how to appreciate things,” Satoru chuckles, holding his side and he laughed so hard that Suguru spots tears in his eyes.
“Stupid things, maybe,” Suguru shoots back and then he can’t help himself, he has to reach out and touch the corner of Satoru’s mouth.
It’s back to normal—normal normal this time—and Satoru’s eyes go wide.
“What?” he asks, already leaning away from Suguru who follows him easily to flick his fingers against his forehead.
“Nothing,” Suguru replies and gives Satoru a smile. “It’s just nice, that’s all.”
“What is nice?” Satoru wants to know but Suguru is already walking away from him, giving Satoru the opportunity to drape himself all over Suguru’s back which he does almost instantly.
“Seeing you laugh like that. I like it,” Suguru admits, his heart beating loudly in his chest and he wonders if it will make Satoru pull away.
It is a confession of a kind, after all.
There’s a beat of silence before Satoru presses himself closer.
“You should make me laugh more often then,” Satoru mutters, and Suguru hums.
He really should. But only once he can be certain that Satoru’s smile is not going to make his head split wide open.
~*~*~
Sometimes Suguru wonders how Satoru doesn’t constantly trip over his own limbs, especially on days like today.
They have the day off for once, are allowed to lounge around and do whatever they want, but of course Satoru has too much energy to simply rest, so they are currently on the training field, getting ready for a spar.
Or they should be getting ready for a spar, if only Suguru could concentrate on anything other than Satoru’s too long limbs.
He’s certain he saw them bending in a strange way just a moment ago, as if there was a joint where none should be but between one blink and the next, everything is back to normal.
Until it happens again, and again, and again.
“Are you alright?” Suguru can’t help but to ask and Satoru freezes. “Are you hurt?”
Suguru doesn’t think so, not really, because they are always careful to not injure the other and their warm up spar can hardly even be called that.
Besides, Suguru didn’t hear any bones breaking and usually Satoru is quick to complain about any kind of pain anyway.
“Why would you ask that, you barely touched me,” Satoru gives back but his voice is strained, laced with that strange panic Suguru has noticed a few times already and he sighs.
“I’m just wondering. Your leg—”
“Is fine, it’s perfect, it’s a perfectly shaped leg, I don’t know what your problem is,” Satoru rambles out, making all of this even more suspicious than it already is but Suguru only huffs out a laugh.
“That it is indeed,” he mutters under his breath and allows himself a small grin when Satoru freezes in surprise before he goes bright red in the face.
“You—!” Satoru screeches out, his limbs gangling all around even more than before in his embarrassment but Suguru only shrugs, unrepentant.
“What? It’s true. You said it first. I’m just agreeing with you.”
“Yeah, well, you shouldn’t,” Satoru stammers out before he charges at Suguru as if he could take him off guard like that.
Satoru’s back hits the ground in less than a minute.
“There’s still much for you to learn,” Suguru tells him with a bright smile and then holds his hand out for Satoru.
There are definitely too many joints in his fingers when Satoru reaches up, but Suguru takes his hand anyway, because why wouldn’t he?
This might be strange, but it’s still Satoru after all.
~*~*~
Satoru laughs. He laughs and he laughs and he laughs, right in the face of the curse, a manic glint in his eyes.
It’s unsettling, to see Satoru like this, because it goes far beyond the satisfaction of exorcising a powerful curse.
“Satoru,” Suguru carefully says, for a moment uncertain if that manic need to kill will extend to him, but nothing happens, even when Satoru’s eyes turn to him.
“What?” he asks, a look of pure ecstasy on his face and Suguru can tell that he’s almost vibrating out of his skin with the need to get back into the fight, to smash this curse to pieces.
“Let’s finish this quickly, I’m hungry,” Suguru says and some of the manic glint leaves Satoru’s eyes.
“Oh, sure,” he says, now clearly brimming with the need to get this done as fast as possible.
Suguru has wondered before, about Satoru’s morals, and he continues to do so. He wonders if one day, Satoru will turn towards humans with that same manic glint in his eyes, with that same need to destroy, with the want to fight, and it makes a cold shudder run down his back.
But then Satoru finds his eyes, even during the fight with the curse and that, too, has always been like this.
Satoru is always looking at Suguru in these moments and Suguru finds himself thinking that as long as that happens, he doesn’t care if Satoru is a little bit more bloodthirsty than he should be.
As long as he still allows Suguru to guide him through it, it will be fine.
~*~*~
Suguru can hear Satoru pace in front of his door. He might think he’s being quiet about it, but he most definitely isn’t and Suguru wonders what’s upsetting him so much.
It’s unlike him to not simply barge into Suguru’s room, to claim it as his, act as if he has any right to it—which he very much does—and it has Suguru a little bit worried.
Worried enough, actually, that he gets up and throws his door open.
“Will you please just come in and tell me whatever it is that has you in this state?” he demands and instantly feels bad when Satoru stares at him with a complete deer in headlight expression.
“I—didn’t know you could hear me,” he weakly says and that makes Suguru snort.
“Please, Satoru, you are a lot of things, but quiet is not one of them. Come in here now and tell me what’s going on,” he says and reaches out to take Satoru’s hand in his so he can pull him into the room.
There are too many joints today as well and Satoru’s ears are sticking out more than they normally do, too. Suguru wonders if his mouth will be too wide today as well and vows to make Satoru laugh later to find out.
“So, what is it?” Suguru asks, sitting down on his bed and expectantly looking up at Satoru.
Whatever it is seems to really worry Satoru because he’s pale and sweaty and Suguru fears he’s going to bolt from his room any second now.
“I—” Satoru wrings his hands in front of his body and doesn’t actually say anything else.
“Satoru, it’s just me,” Suguru softly says, tries to settles his nerves with it but it seems to have been the wrong thing to say because Satoru starts to pace inside the room now.
“That’s what’s making this hard,” he breathes out, clearly unable to meet Suguru’s eyes at the moment and Suguru’s heart sinks in his chest.
Maybe he did go to far with his flirting; maybe Satoru is desperately trying to find out how to tell him to fuck off, that he doesn’t feel the same.
“I’m sorry,” Suguru says, looking down at the floor. “I won’t do it again.”
That makes Satoru stop in his pacing.
“You’re sorry? For what?”
“For my flirting. I’m sorry if it made you uncomfortable, I won’t do it again.”
“Your flirting? You were flirting with me?” Satoru’s voice is an octave higher than it usually is and Suguru winces.
So much for that theory, he thinks.
“Thanks for noticing, I guess,” he wryly says and looks back up. “If it isn’t about that, then what is going on?”
“No, no, wait, back up, can we go back to the fact that you’ve been flirting with me for a moment?” Satoru asks, clearly not upset by that at all and Suguru allows himself a small smile.
“We can, if you tell me what’s got you all worried.”
“Nothing has, nothing’s going on,” Satoru rushes out and Suguru rolls his eyes at him, letting him know just how unbelievable that is.
“You almost paced yourself right through the ground outside. Clearly something is going on. Just tell me, Satoru.”
Satoru slumps where he stands, drops down right to the floor until he sits with his legs tucked up close and his head in his hands.
This might be more serious than Suguru expected, and he slides down the bed to join Satoru on the floor.
“Hey, are you alright?” he asks and carefully touches Satoru’s knee.
Or where he thinks his knee should be, because there is a second joint where it’s not supposed to be, but Suguru doesn’t let that deter him.
Satoru is warm under his hand.
“Satoru,” Suguru whispers and Satoru heaves out a sigh.
“Something went wrong,” he quietly says and before Suguru can ask what he means, he goes on. “When I inherited both of these techniques, something went wrong. With me.”
“How so?” Suguru asks, seating himself more firmly in front of Satoru.
“I—you must have noticed by now,” Satoru huffs out. “I’m some kind of eldritch abomination wrapped into human skin and even that fails me more often than not.”
“Ah,” Suguru says, because he has noticed, of course. “So all these things I noticed—”
“Are just me being very much not human,” Satoru dejectedly says. “Like this?” he knocks his fingers against that strangely placed joint. “I just can’t get it right. I keep fucking up, especially in your presence.”
Suguru instantly decides to take it as a compliment and laughs softly.
“Yeah, I noticed,” he teases Satoru and brushes his hair back behind too pointed ears. “You’re not quite normal.”
“I’m sorry,” Satoru mutters, curling even tighter together and he makes such a picture of misery that Suguru’s heart aches.
“For what?” he asks and leans forward so he can pull Satoru into his arms. “What’s there to be sorry for?”
“For—not being human, I guess,” Satoru replies. “For being this kind of monster.”
“You hardly seem monstrous to me,” Suguru easily says, because despite Satoru’s peculiarities, he’s still painfully human in Suguru’s eyes, even when he pounds a curse into the ground and finds too much glee in it.
As long as he turns towards Suguru, he’ll always be human to him.
“I—don’t?” Satoru carefully asks and he loses some of the tension he held before.
“You don’t,” Suguru agrees and frowns again when Satoru shakes his head.
“You must not have noticed enough then, I’m—”
“Still the same Satoru? Still you? Still—” Suguru decides to take a leap of faith here, “mine?”
At that, Satoru’s head flies up.
“What?” he breathes out and under the shock and the disbelieve there’s the beginning of a smile on his face.
“About that flirting,” Suguru says and cups Satoru’s cheek in his hand, touching his thumb to the corner of Satoru’s mouth, which is turning bigger by the second.
“You really were? Flirting with me?”
“I sure was. Am, really,” Suguru admits and watches how Satoru’s smile splits his face neatly in half.
It’s not nearly as unsettling as it probably should be. In fact, it might be one of Suguru’s favourite things.
“If you’re receptible to it, of course,” Suguru adds belatedly and Satoru laughs, bright and happy, the corners of his mouth almost stretching all the way to his ears.
“Of course I am,” he tells Suguru, who smiles in return. “It’s just—you really don’t care?”
“I really don’t care,” Suguru confirms and kisses the corner of Satoru’s mouth, stretched wide as it is.
It makes Satoru’s eyes grow big, before he frantically tries to wrestle his mouth into something more normal.
“Don’t,” Suguru chides him. “I like it like that. It makes you look so happy.”
“It makes me look deranged and dangerous,” Satoru shoots back, his hand muffling his voice from where he’s trying to hide his mouth from Suguru.
“I don’t think the same, but either way, I like it,” Suguru tells him with a shrug. “That and the weight thing might be my favourites of the things I’ve noticed so far.”
“The weight thing? Are you calling me fat again?”
“You really are not fat, Satoru, will you stop that?” Suguru laughs out. “It’s just—sometimes you weigh more than you should. I like that, when you’re laying on top of me.”
“Oh,” Satoru breathes out and goes slightly red in the face. “I see.”
“Nothing to be worried about, okay?” Suguru asks and leans forward to claim Satoru’s now humanly shaped mouth in a kiss.
“Okay,” Satoru breathes against his lips and Suguru can’t help but to wonder what it would be like to kiss that inhumanly mouth.
He guesses he’s going to figure that one out in the future, and he’s honestly looking forward to it.