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The story of a lifetime: Satoru’s hands swatting at a sculpted face—fifteen and handsome already; really, it infuriates him. A lip splits under knuckles, blood pooling down the black-haired boy’s chin. Suguru coughs, spits, rounds on Satoru with a well-worn grin, one ripped from deep inside him and transplanted into Satoru’s chest messily.. He staggers over a mountain of his insides, coughing as Suguru’s punch lands in time with the smile, a resounding ache to his stomach. Sutures split before they’re even sewn up. Shoko’s scalpel would kill itself ten times over at the sight.
Black Flash. Oh, this kid is a dick, alright. Satoru should make him cry just for thinking about that.
“Bangs,” he heaves, and Suguru’s eyes grow wild.
“Getou to you.” Another punch, a crunch of bone as palm makes connection with Satoru’s nose. He hisses, drops, grabs Suguru by the knees and throws him.
They both skid across the dirt. Satoru ends up on top, elbow digging in deep to the soft, fleshy part of Suguru’s stomach, cold relish icing its way through him at the boy’s grimace, his panting, a sharp rasp that splits him in two.
“Fuck you,” Suguru mumbles, splatters of blood flying, staining Satoru’s shirt—and now dry cleaning, too, great.
“You wish,” he says with an evil grin, and Suguru kicks him off so hard he sees stars.
And it’s funny, almost, how in every lifetime of Satoru’s, there he is: Suguru.
The special-grade talks, of course. It’s been talking since they’d entered the building, Nanami hovering stubbornly at Satoru’s side, glasses pushed up high on his nose. His blunt sword taps against his knee as they walk, a nervous tick, a persistent tha-thump. Satoru kicks at loose concrete, powdery with age, and watches as it scatters through the silence. Tha-thump.
“Go left,” he says to Nanami once they reach a fork in the passageways, and because he’s still his junior, the blond-haired man does not put up a fight. He doesn’t bid Satoru goodbye, either, but he never does. Their relationship is working, professional. Neither of them do the whole friends thing.
“You look lonely,” the curse whispers when Satoru finds it, standing atop a half-crumbled wall with its hands folded behind its back, smile expectant. It had been waiting. “Your friend didn’t want to come say hi?”
Long black hair shimmers in the gloom. Its face is humanoid, sharp jawed and brown-eyed, skin tan against the chalk-white brick behind it. Not it—him, maybe. He looks more like a person than Satoru does.
“I like you,” says the curse. He tips his chin up, eyes narrowing. If Satoru were a stupider man, he’d say the thing looks playful, almost, cat-like in his smiles. “Usually the sorcerers they send are so boring. But you—” And then he’s in front of Satoru, suddenly, standing so that there’s only a foot of distance between them. “—you seem fun. I like you."
“You don’t know me at all,” Satoru says, and the curse’s eyes flash.
“That’s not true.”
When Hollow Purple hits its mark, the stone around them goes crimson. Satoru wipes his mouth as the figure sways, half its body now smoking in a pile far behind him. Odd. Usually these things don’t bleed the same color as humans do.
When the light in its eyes finally goes out, the curse is still smiling.
They’re too old to pretend to be pirates. All the other boys in their class have graduated from make-believe to Nintendos, titanium rectangles visible at every end of the playground during recess. But Satoru isn’t allowed toys like that, and Suguru has been faithful to his promise of not getting one in solidarity, either, so pirates it is.
Except Suguru is complaining about pirates in excess today, and it’s hot out, the September sun relentless. Satoru's uncharacteristically non-combative, his energy for arguing died somewhere during their math class earlier in the day. So they play Star Wars instead, having just watched the movies at Suguru’s the other weekend.
“I should be Obi-Wan,” Satoru announces, picking up his lightsaber: a splintery stick he’d made Suguru snap off the branch of a nearby tree for him. “‘Cause I’m older.”
“I don’t wanna be Anakin,” comes Suguru’s protest, but it’s half-hearted, weak. He knows Satoru will get his way.
Satoru raises his stick at Suguru’s chest, rumpled uniform shirt flapping in the breeze. “Anakin,” he says solemnly, pitching his voice down to match Obi-Wan’s gruff tone. “You were my brother.”
Suguru hides his giggle behind his hand. “You sound stupid.”
“We’d never be like them,” Satoru says later, once they’ve had their fill of hitting each other with sticks and have moved to one of the playground benches. He’s careful to sit close to Suguru, knees knocking together as they pool their snacks for the day: rice crackers and juice boxes from Suguru, and melon cubes and strawberry hard candy from Satoru. He takes one of the sweets, wrapper crinkling in sweaty hands as he pops it into his mouth. “Anakin and Obi-Wan.”
At his side, Suguru nods solemnly. His hair has grown long over the summer, scraping just past his chin, his fringe a sullen mass that shrouds his face most of the time; now, though, it’s pushed clean off his forehead, giving Satoru full view of the way his eyes glint in the afternoon sun. “Yeah,” is his quiet agreement, passing his rice cake from hand to hand. “I hope not.”
“Whaddya mean hope?” Satoru pokes him in the ribs, retracting his hand fast before the defensive swipe can land. “Star Wars isn’t real.”
“I know that.” Suguru scowls. “Just—you know. I hope we don’t fight like that. That’d be sad.”
Satoru bites down on the candy, sweet splinters crunching between incoming canines. “We won’t,” he says breezily, aiming another jab at his friend. “Don’t be an idiot.”
“You’re the idiot,” Suguru snaps, but he’s smiling, too.
“What’ll it be for you today?”
Satoru registers the crack in his voice a split second after Shoko passes behind him and snorts into her carton of milk. He wants to grimace, stick a long leg out to trip her up, but the customer has begun speaking already, no time for deliberation.
The voice-crack can’t be helped, really. It's not Satoru's fault: he’s really quite handsome, this customer. Satoru’s only seen him in passing, hiding out behind the espresso machines to scope him out while Shoko rings up his order with a bored smile; now, though, it’s his turn. Finally, a name to the face, the order, the guy he’s been thinking about more than he’d admit under duress.
It’s just a work crush, really. Not like there’s anything else interesting he can do to pass the time.
“Hey.” The man gives Satoru a polite smile. He’s dressed in a cable-knit sweater, the white collar of his shirt poking out over the top. Long black hair falls neatly over his shoulders, a glossy river of oil. He already has his wallet out, card dancing between fingers, and Satoru notes silently to himself the chipping nail polish, flaky and black as his hair. “Could I get a large cold brew, please?”
A horrible order, really. Just the thought of drinking a mouthful of that crap, never mind a large cup’s worth, is enough to make Satoru shudder with revulsion. But the man is polite, not to mention sexy—really sexy, painfully sexy—so he lets it slide with a small smile of his own.
“Sure,” he says, reaching to the stack of cups they have and plucking a large one off the rack. “Any milk with that?”
“Yeah, yes, please.”
“2% okay?”
The man tucks a strand of hair behind his ears, the motion practiced. “Yeah.”
“Cool.” From the pocket of his apron, Satoru brandishes a sharpie and holds it over the plastic. “Can I just get a name for the order?”
“Oh, yeah.” The man’s cheeks pinken, as if embarrassed he didn’t lead with that, or something. “Suguru.”
“Suguru,” Satoru echoes, savoring his chance to speak it out loud. He rolls the word around in his mouth like a piece of hard candy, addictively sweet. Suguru. Suguru . Then smiles, cheeks aching with the strength of the gesture—Shoko is in the back, now, restocking grounds, but if she were not, she’d undeniably be laughing at him again. “That’ll be right out.”
And the man—Suguru—smiles once more.
Suguru kneels at his feet, rain soaking his clothes. His hair sticks to his forehead, droplets catching on long lashes as he looks up through them, up to where Satoru stands, gun in hand.
Gun in hand, muzzle locked on solidly to his forehead.
“Go on,” Suguru rasps, a hint of blood in his mouth, staining his teeth. He doesn’t smile, quite, but there’s a grimace on his face that could be called that, in a certain light.
But not this one. When Satoru pulls the trigger, he gets the odd feeling that he’s done this a million times before.
“The proposition is simple.”
From his place across the table from Satoru, the bounty-hunter arches one neat, perfect eyebrow, a hint of a smirk playing across his lips. Satoru has to bite back a roll of his eyes—he knew the shades today were a mistake; he should’ve just gone with the blindfold like usual, free to conduct insolent gestures to his heart’s content behind impermeable layers of cloth.
Though, perhaps, insolent is not the right word here. Insolence implies that the man before him is deserving of respect, which Getou Suguru is undeniably not. Privately, Satoru thinks this is an awful idea—outside contracting? Really? Has Yaga lost his mind? Publicly, he thinks this, too, having spent now the last four staff meetings bitching about it to high heaven. Now he’s the one welcoming this crank into Jujutsu High. Go figure.
Suguru is dressed, stupidly, in all black. Black sweater, black pants, black combat boots that tap incessantly against the hardwood floor underneath him. Even his earrings are black. The only hint of color visible in his entire outfit can barely even be called that: Satoru can just see a hint of an odd, grayish-green shirt poking above the collar of his sweater.
One of Japan’s only special-grade sorcerers, and this guy spends his time doing other people’s dirty work. Now, Jujutsu High wants him to come work here. What a fucking joke.
“Oh?” The bounty-hunter reaches for the cup of water Satoru had unceremoniously deposited in front of him, sips at it thoughtfully. “Well, then, I guess I must accept.”
Sardonicism drips from his voice, pooling at their feet. Satoru ignores it.
“You are, I assume, aware of the certain objects Jujutsu High has come into possession of over the course of the past few weeks.”
Suguru tips his head to the side. Satoru’s near-certain his confusion is only feigned, some part of him enjoying the process of dragging this out, making Satoru get on his hands and knees and really beg for it—which he will not be doing, thank you very much—but still, he sighs, and obliges.
“Sukuna’s fingers,” Satoru says.
Suguru grins. “Quite. I can imagine that’s making you some enemies.”
Satoru doesn’t dignify that with a response. “We—the school—would like to strike a deal with you.”
The bounty-hunter sips his drink again. “The terms and conditions being what, exactly?”
“You look after the fingers in exchange for money. A lot of money.”
Satoru watches as the corner of Suguru’s lips twitches, his gaze shifting from languidly amused to something harder, sharper. God, he’s so money-hungry, it’s almost hilarious. “I find it suspicious that Jujutsu High would want to work with me, given our—” He sucks in a breath through gritted teeth. “—how should I say? Contentious history.”
Five years prior, the first and only other time Satoru had come into contact with the bounty-hunter, he had shot and killed one of the first-years then-enrolled at the school. A contract killing, of course. No mess, no remorse.
Well, there had been plenty of mess, just none that Suguru had dealt with. Satoru, on the other hand, had gotten his fair share of it: he had been the one to deliver the news, along with the body, to the kid's parents.
“It’s what the school has decided,” Satoru says aloud, careful to keep his tone flat, calm. “You are, of course, free to decline the offer. I don’t particularly care.”
“You don’t think the school needs me?” Suguru leans in, resting his chin on his hand. “I am quite strong, you know.”
There’s an edge with which he says that last part, and Satoru has to grit his teeth around the retort bubbling up in his throat. “What I think is of no consequence here. I’m just the messenger.”
“Right,” Suguru says, and leans back in his seat. “How much money is a lot?”
“How much money is a lot to you?”
Suguru arches those eyebrows again. “A hundred million,” he says, offhandedly, and Satoru lets himself relax. It’s pricey, but doable. He had been expecting a figure in the billions—this, though, he can work with, and more importantly, Yaga can, too. Satoru can wash his hands of this whole affair and go back to his job of teaching students and staying far, far away from the likes of Getou Suguru.
“Deal.” He says, folding his hands in his lap.
“That simple?” Suguru smirks. “You guys must really be desperate."
Satoru breathes in deep and slow. "You fit our profile, is all."
Suguru gives a knowing nod. "And how do you know I’m to be trusted?” he asks.
“I don’t.” Satoru shrugs. “Which is why I’ll be keeping tabs on you.”
“Oh, you will?” Suguru’s smirk turns playful, a purr crowding the edges of his voice. Satoru closes his eyes, just for a second. “What if I eat the fingers?”
“You’ll die.”
“What if I don’t?”
“Then I’ll kill you.”
“You really think you could take me on if Sukuna was inhabiting my body?” Suguru huffs, leaning forward once more. Satoru finds himself mimicking the gesture despite his best efforts, getting close enough to Suguru to reach out and touch him, slap him in the face, whatever. “Like I said, I’m strong.”
“I’m stronger,” Satoru says, simply, and Suguru lets out a laugh that sounds more like a Doberman’s bark than an expression of amusement.
“I’m sure you believe that,” he says, shoulders still shaking. Then, suddenly, he extends a hand, offering it out for Satoru to take it. “To the start of a long and fruitful partnership, then.”
With gritted teeth, a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, Satoru takes it.
The things Satoru notices fall in a quick sequence: first, bangs. Loose, dark bangs that flop over the boy’s forehead, shadowing his eyes in impermeable curtains. The second: earrings. Two, to be specific, neat gauges as black as his hair, stretching pink-tinted earlobes. The third: eyes. Brown like silty river water; chocolate, maybe, if he was feeling kinder.
The fourth: smile, a calm expression, a crack in the boulder-face facade. He looks like the type of boy to be serious, but he shares private grins with the girl next to him, half-hidden behind their hands. Satoru stares for too long, catches the girl’s inquisitive eye, and sits at his own desk with a flush.
The fifth: nails. Neat and painted black, drumming a tattoo against his notebook.
The sixth: the notebook in question. It’s open to the first page; Satoru can see, already, doodles scoring the margin, messy scribbles of black ink that sit, half-hidden, under folded hands.
The seventh: again, smile. Again and again.
The suffering is technicolor: a boot crunching down on exposed knuckles, dirt rubbing in the wound. It’s the hardest blow he’s handed today, and Satoru hears its impact through hissed breath, lips grimacing against the ground as Suguru writhes, pinned to the floor by Satoru’s knees.
They fight too much. Yaga says it’s getting past the point of utility, the two of them ending up in Shoko’s office every other day with a laundry-list of injuries that didn’t have to be there in the first place. She’s growing tired of it, too, her gaze far too all-knowing each time she rests her hands on broken, bloodied skin, tongue trapped between her teeth.
They fight too much, but they’ve always fought too much. What does it matter if it's hands or words? Satoru likes it better this way and, judging by the way Suguru’s grimace flips to a grin, just for a split second, he does, too.
The thing that has built up between them over the past decade is too much to put into words now, anyways. There is no room for love in jujutsu, barely even room for beating each other senseless into the dirt, what with the missions upon missions they have on their dockets. Being the school’s best sorcerers does not come without its price, and Satoru has known this since he was a boy, staring down curtain bangs with a pencil gripped between his teeth all those years ago.
“Yield?” he whispers in Suguru’s ear, letting his lips get too close, always too close. He feels the man under him shudder despite the heat, broad shoulders twitching. The day they’d graduated, Suguru had kissed him, drunk and stupid while walking home from a bar. He had tasted like oranges.
“Fuck you,” Suguru hisses, muscles spasming.
“You wish,” Satoru says, and rolls off him.
Before he can fully stand, though, a hand snakes out. Blood-crusted nails bite into his skin as Suguru grips his wrist, pupils blown wide as he stares, lips parted in silence.
Would he still taste like oranges, now, if they kissed again? It’s been years, but Satoru would be willing to bet not much has changed, really.
“What?” he rasped, voice treacherous in his throat.
Suguru says nothing. He holds him there for a second longer before dropping his wrist like a hot coal.
“What?” Satoru repeats, more urgently.
But the moment is gone. With a groan, Suguru rotates stiffly onto his back. In the light from the setting sun, the sweat on his temples glistens, neat tracks running down to the neck of his shirt.
Slowly, silently, he closes his eyes.
Satoru hadn’t liked the man much in the meeting rooms. Tailored suit, wristwatch flashing as he’d passed around the latest memos to be addressed, shareholders’ complaints no one really wanted to think about. He was smarmy, arrogant. Full of himself. A degree from the Tokyo Institute of Technology—of course—visible in every smile, every nod of the head.
Truthfully, he was not arrogant, nor was he very full of himself. He was actually quite polite, mild-mannered, and maybe that’s what had gotten under Satoru’s skin as much as it did. Men like that—impressive men, smart men, handsome men—had no business walking around pretending as if they were the same as everyone else. It felt more insulting that way, somehow.
He can’t deny, though, that he likes the man just fine now, four cups of sake in and drunk, embarrassingly drunk for an end-of-the-week work function. The occasion for celebration: none other than the man himself, his first week at the company successfully completed. No slip ups. No incidents. No PR shitfests.
They’re standing close, Satoru and the man, elbows propped up against the bar, shoulders near-brushing. They’ve both shed their jackets: Satoru somewhere back at the table where the rest of their coworkers still sit, and the man on the stool beside him, folded neatly over the cracked leather.
Not the man. Satoru sucks his teeth, lips buzzing. He shouldn't be so rude. It’s really making him enemies, Nanami says. But, of course, Nanami would say that—he’s Nanami. He is right though, unfortunately, so Satoru gives himself a mental slap on the wrist. Not the man . Suguru.
“I get the sense,” Suguru says, suddenly, as if tapped into Satoru’s thoughts—he shakes out of those instantly, starting a little, “that you don’t like me too much.”
Strangely candid. Then again, the sake had not just been Satoru’s. That had been their first point of bonding over the course of the night; now, here they stand, so close that if they both turned their faces, their noses might brush.
“Oh?” Satoru aches for another drink, though he knows that would be a mistake. “Why’s that?”
Suguru runs the edge of a nail along the rim of his glass. He isn’t arrogant at work, but he is confident, has full reason to be; now, though, he seems softer, more muted. His words are barely audible over the music that plays from the bar. “I don’t know,” he says simply, gaze unfocused. “Just—the way you speak.”
“The way I speak?”
“I’m aware that’s not a very helpful descriptor.” A wry smile twists across his face. “I’m sorry, though, if I’ve done anything to antagonize you.”
“Oh, forget it.” Satoru waves a sloppy hand, speaking louder than he should, as if to compensate for Suguru's quiet. “You haven’t. I’m just weird.”
Suguru’s smile becomes warmer. “Weird?”
“You know.” Another swipe of his hand, this one more erratic than the last. “Sometimes it takes me a sec, you know, to warm up to new people. So it’s not personal, if that's what you’re worried about.”
“Do you think the others feel the same?”
Satoru aims a furtive glance at the table behind them, and snorts. “Hell no. They all think the sun shines out of your ass, or something.”
“See, this is why I think you don’t like me.”
“Please.” Maybe he could take a sip of Suguru’s drink—would that be weird? That definitely would be weird, wouldn’t it? “This is just how I talk, really. If I didn’t like you, you’d be the first to know.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Satoru nods.
“Confrontational, huh?”
He shrugs. “Why do you think my job is yelling at rich old men over the phone all day long?”
Suguru snorts, the sound surprisingly inelegant coming from him. “Do you like it, then?” he says once he’s composed himself, twin splashes of red appearing high on his cheekbones. “Working here, I mean.”
Satoru drums his fingertips on the bar countertop. “Eh,” he says, finally. “Sure.”
“So you don’t like it, is what I’m hearing?” Suguru’s smile is ten different shades of knowing.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Anyone who actually liked working this job wouldn’t respond to my question with eh, I don't think.”
“I said eh, sure, actually.” Satoru waves a finger at him. “Get your facts right. Maybe what this is telling you is that I’m not like other people.” He allows himself a stupid grin here, leaning in close to Suguru. “I’m special.”
Suguru stares at him for a second, eyebrows raised, then the spell breaks. He reaches for his glass, laughing once more.
“Got that right,” he says, and Satoru grins.
Satoru is drunk, badly drunk. It’s all swimming around his stomach in the shape of cheap cans of corner-store beer, threatening to spill out from his mouth, flood the trampled carpet beneath him. The music is loud, a shitty dubstep that threatens him wherever he goes until he has no choice but to escape outside. The press through sweaty bodies half-entwined with each other is an unpleasant one, but as soon as he’s able to fumble the screen door open and step into the outside air, it’s all worth it.
Then he sees Suguru, and his elation crumples at his feet.
Well, it’s not Suguru that’s the problem—it’s the girl. It’s the same one as it has been for the past few parties: high cheekbones and glossy lips, long blonde hair that shimmers under the flickering porch light. Satoru wonders if he’s an asshole for not knowing her name still—surely Suguru has brought her up in passing, no? He definitely had, getting the scrunched-up look around the corners of his eyes he always gets when he reveals something sensitive to Satoru, as if seeking his approval in the matter.
Of course, Satoru doesn’t approve—no one is good enough for Suguru, certainly not this girl, but they haven’t quite gotten to that conversation yet. Usually, these things break off before Satoru has to barge in and lay down the law; this one, though, makes him nervous, gut churning as he watches the two of them speak in low, hushed voices. It seems serious.
“‘Toru!” Suguru exclaims, craning his head around the figure of the girl to lock eyes with him. His smile is sloppy around the edges, but he’s not as drunk as Satoru—never is. “Hey, c’mere. Emi, you met Satoru?”
Emi. Satoru manages a smile, the gesture feeling a little wild and misplaced. She gives him a quick once-over, awkward grin of her own playing across her face.
“Hey,” she says, wiggling her fingers in a wave, then turns back to Suguru. “I’m gonna get another drink inside, you want anything? Or—” She half-turns to Satoru, the offer weakly extended to him, and he nearly laughs.
“No,” he says instead, too loudly. It’s rude, but Suguru snorts all the same, smile hidden behind his fingers, and gives the girl—Emi—a shake of his head.
“All good,” he says. “See ya.”
“Bye,” Satoru drawls as she renters the house. God, he really is drunk.
“Hey,” Suguru says once they’re alone. He pats the now-empty space on the bench next to him and Satoru sits with a grunt. “How’re you doing?”
“Hey. Fine.”
“You sure?” Probing eyes meet his own, just for a second before he looks away, studying the dark backyard around them. “Hey, ‘Toru.”
Satoru tries not to scowl. Usually the fussing is sweet, but he can smell the fruity remnants of Emi’s perfume on the cushion behind him, souring the back of his mouth. “What?”
“What’s up?” Suguru lays a hand on his elbow, and Satoru wants to scream.
“Nothin'.”
“You’re such a bad liar, you know.”
“Whatever.” He wants to shrug Suguru’s grip off. He doesn’t want to do anything in the slightest. All his desires are selfish: they begin and end with the boy sitting in front of him, dark brows drawn together as he peers into Satoru’s face with the warmth of a thousand suns concentrated into two brown eyes. But Satoru has never claimed to be a giver. His thoughts, too, only really encompass Suguru; beyond that, and he couldn’t care less.
Though he cares, enough, just enough to stop himself from leaning forward, sealing the distance between them in the way he’s been dreaming of for weeks, months—hell, who is he kidding? Years, at this point. He cares enough about future-him to not ruin things, not yet. They still have the whole summer together before university. Maybe that’s when he’ll do it, when they’re really saying goodbye.
“Do you wanna head out?” Suguru’s voice is soft. “I’m good to leave whenever, really.”
“What about Emi?” Satoru is being petulant, he knows this. It’d be embarrassing if he was more with it, maybe. “She’s coming back, isn’t she?”
“Eh, maybe.” Suguru still hasn’t dropped his hands, long fingers slowly curling around the bone of Satoru’s elbow as if to affix themselves there, holding on for dear life. “But if we leave, we leave. I’ll see her later.”
“Are you two dating?”
Satoru regrets it as soon as he says it—not only because the question in and of itself is a pathetic one, but also because he doesn’t want to know the answer, not one bit. But Suguru leans in close, brows knitting tighter, if possible, and Satoru knows the damage is done.
“What?”
“Whatever.” Now Satoru does try to shake him off, but Suguru’s grip is stubborn, unmovable.
“No, you asked—”
“Man, forget it. Whatever.” Satoru’s cheeks burn. His throat, oddly, feels tight, constricting and he sniffs. He wants to go home. “Sorry I asked.”
“We’re not.” Suguru blinks at him a few times, eyes wide. “Are you—”
“I said forget it.”
“—jealous?”
Satoru almost chokes. “What?”
“We can find you someone, dude.” And now Suguru speaks with earnestness, a smile stretching across his face. “Emi—like, who cares? There’s a million other girls who like you.” He squeezes Satoru’s elbow, once. “Trust me, ‘Toru.”
And Satoru just has time to turn his head away from Suguru’s lap, angling himself towards the edge of the porch, before he throws up.
“You know what they want me to do.” A thumbnail bites into middle and ring fingers as Satoru stands poised, ready, the Hollow Purple burning underneath his skin. They’re not outside a KFC now, but they might as well be. Each of these moments, the meetings they’ve had since Suguru’s defection, have felt eerily similar. He could be doing this for the first time, he could be doing it for the hundredth. It’s all the same. “They—Suguru.”
“I know.” Suguru’s robes are stupid, flapping in the wind that buffets him as they stand there. There’s no sign of nervousness in his face, no sign of anything but dispassionate boredom, as if this a particularly dreary plotline in a show he’s seen too many times. “You say this each time we meet.”
“Because it’s fucking true, Suguru, I—”
“Then do it.” The man, the curse-user shrugs. He must be putting up a front—does he really care so little about his own life? The thought of that alone is enough to make Satoru sick. “Stop talking and do it.”
“I—”
“Do it.”
“Suguru.”
“Do it.”
A flash, an atom-bomb of purple that goes off more so in Satoru’s chest than anywhere else. Before it hits the target—and it will, it always will; Satoru is many things, but a bad shot is not one of them—he’s already started to cry.
“I think the TV will look nice there and—and then, look, and then we can put all your stupid plants right by the window instead of on the entry hall table! That’ll be much better.”
From his place leaned up against the countertop, takeout box of rice nestled securely in his hands, Suguru frowns. “My plants aren’t stupid,” he protests. “But sure, yeah, we can do that.”
Satoru pauses his self-appointed task of dragging all the unopened cardboard boxes into what will be their living room to huff, loudly. “That’s all the acknowledgement I get? Sure, yeah?”
Suguru snorts. “Sorry, ‘Toru, I meant wow, thank you so much for that genius feat of interior designing you just pulled off.” He clacks chopsticks together for emphasis. “Truly, what would we do without you.”
“Asshole,” Satoru snipes, but he’s already crossing the room to drape himself lazily over Suguru, chin jutting into his shoulders. He pokes at the firm muscles there with his jaw a few times. “Jeez, you’re tense. You should get a massage.”
“Ow, will you—that hurts.” But Suguru’s swipes are half-hearted, only meant to project annoyance, not actually remove Satoru from his person. If anything, he leans into the touch, his back pressed flush against Satoru’s chest as they stand there, swaying a bit. “It’s ‘cause you stress me out.”
“The move has stressed you out,” Satoru corrects, because it has. He’s done a decent job of hiding it, but not good enough to evade Satoru.
“Whatever,” Suguru says, which is his silent agreement. “It’s all finished now, anyways.”
“Think, if you hurried up and proposed to me already, we could get married and have everyone basically furnish this place with wedding gifts.”
Suguru snorts once more, pressing the side of his head into Satoru’s cheek. “You’re so weird,” he says, affection lacing his tone in a way that still—still—makes Satoru’s stomach flip-flop, a stupid kid with a stupid crush, even after all these years. “Besides, I think our problem is we have too much stuff, not that we don’t have enough.”
“So cash payments for the wedding gifts, then, got it.”
Suguru laughs openly this time. “I’ll send a message out to the masses.”
“Good.” Satoru presses a kiss to his cheek, then another one to the base of his neck, skin warm under his lips. “Maybe our wedding gift can be everyone coming over and setting this shit up for us.”
“Such a forward thinker you are,” Suguru says, a smile in his voice. “I’ll call Yu and Kento tomorrow, make them come help out. Shoko can come too and—I don’t know.”
“Criticize?” Satoru offers.
Suguru laughs again. “Sure, criticize.”
Satoru feels, all of a sudden, unbearably fond. He kisses Suguru once more, craning his neck awkwardly so he can just land one on the corner of his lips. “Welcome home,” he whispers.
Suguru turns, and they kiss once more, fully this time. It’s difficult to manage around the huge grins the both of them boast, but they manage okay. “Welcome home.”
“You know what they want me to do,” Satoru says. He wonders briefly if, in other lifetimes, too, they find themselves like this: Satoru the executioner, Suguru the target. He wonders if they will always kill each other, one way or another, if it will always end up like this.
It probably will. It’s all the same, after all.
“Then do it,” Suguru says, but he sounds small and scared. But he’s never been a coward—neither of them are—so he doesn’t run; he simply faces the priming gesture for Hollow Purple with his jaw set, chin held high. A million things dance through his eyes; all of them look too much like regret, and Satoru can’t.
“I have to,” he says, more so to convince himself, and Suguru blinks. He’s beautiful. Had Satoru really never told him that? He’s so beautiful it feels unfair.
“Then do it,” Suguru repeats. “Kill me.”
Satoru is not a coward, no. What he is is selfish.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and lowers his hand.
The story of a lifetime: a boy, sitting calmly in Satoru’s seat.
“You’re in my seat,” he points out, helpfully, looming above the desk. The boy looks up, caramel-colored eyes flashing in the early-morning sun. Bangs hang over his forehead, and he swipes them away with a practiced hand. Satoru realizes he’s staring and looks away for a second. Then, promptly, goes back to staring.
The kid is in his seat, after all. And Satoru had been the one to get to class before anyone else—arriving punctually to something for the first time in quite possibly forever. He’d even thrown his uniform jacket down across the back of the chair to stake his claim further—the boy, of course, had simply moved it a seat over.
Really, Satoru doesn’t care. It’s the principle that bothers him. It’s the bangs.
“You weren’t here, so.” The boy shrugs, and Satoru wants to slap him upside the head.
“Move,” he orders, pointing to the available desk to their left. “You can go there.”
“You can go there.” And the boy points to the right where he’d moved Satoru’s jacket. “I need to be close to the board or else I won’t be able to see.”
“What, you can’t see properly from four feet to the left?” The boy’s grin is shit-eating around the edges, and annoyance spikes in Satoru’s stomach. “Not like Yaga’ll be teaching us anything you need to pay attention to, anyways. Move.”
“Yaga-sensei,” the boy corrects, and folds his arms across his chest. “Speaking of him, I think he’ll be here soon. You should probably stop complaining and sit down unless you want detention on the first day.”
Satoru balks—Yaga wouldn’t do that, would he? But before he can get another word in, the door opens, and—of course—in walks Yaga, a stack of books in his arms.
“Morning, gentlemen,” he says, eyeing the two of them. “Your other classmate will be here in a few minutes. Take your seat, if you don't mind, Satoru.”
There’s a finality to his voice that leaves little room for debate. Glaring at the black-haired boy’s self-satisfied smirk, Satoru throws himself down into the chair next to him. Yaga turns his attention to his books, rifling through the stack, and the boy reaches into his bag and pulls out a notebook and pencil. Satoru just gets a glimpse at the name scrawled across the top corner before he turns it away: Getou Suguru.
Suguru.
Huffing under his breath, Satoru whips out his own notebook, turns to a blank page, and starts writing furiously. Then, when Yaga turns his back, now enraptured with the chalkboard, Satoru rips out the note he’d written and flicks it over to Suguru’s desk. The boy stares at it for a second, snorts once, and then, with a roll of his eyes, writes something in response.
“Idiot,” Satoru hears him whisper, low under his breath, as he passes it back.
Your bangs are stupid, reads Satoru’s message. And then, below it, in neat, refined script, is Suguru’s.
I wouldn’t talk if I were you, Glasses.
And so it begins.