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You make a mental note. This one is called, Vices. Scratch that, Reasons for waking up in the morning. Scratch that, too.
Intrusive thoughts.
Uncomfortable truths.
Five things you can’t even tell your best friend.
You still aren’t satisfied. Do mental notes even have titles? Yours do, and this one does, but you’re still in the lying to yourself stage. There’s a word on the tip of your tongue, but you keep finding synonyms instead.
Obsession. Infatuation. Longing.
You should just file it under his name, but that would be tantamount to confession, and you’re so not ready.
You settle on, Dear Diary.
Mentally, you add, Burn after reading.
i.
Suguru was the first friend you ever had.
How long had you waited for someone to match your stride, to keep pace with your mental leaps and rapid detours, to humor your impulses?
He didn’t want to humor you, at first. You had to wear him down, like water to an unsuspecting boulder. But as you did just that, and all along the way, something in you sang with satisfaction.
You didn’t mean to make this all about you. It actually isn’t at all. The point is that Suguru shone all on his own, and you befriended him like lichen grows on a big old beech tree, and he let you. That’s gotta count for something.
Maybe he’d also been lonely, like you.
ii.
There’s this thing Suguru does with his mouth. Everyone knows what thing that is, right? Well, maybe not everyone… because no one ever watched as closely as you.
Maybe they would, if they knew.
It’s the slightly parted lips. Not always, but at moments— specifically the moment when Suguru’s concentration peaks and his focus narrows down, down, down until he’s probably not aware of what he’s doing, or how much he’s giving away.
It’s the roll of his tongue against the inside of his teeth, tracing a path along the edge of his bite like a tiger pacing her enclosure.
Like a captive animal.
And that one time, when you caught him with a pen raised to his lips? The pen shaft fit neatly there between his teeth, his lips moist as the tip of his tongue caressed the length, and for a moment it looked like it belonged there. It looked to you like it had always been there.
He caught you staring. Felt your eyes on him and the pen evaporated, sublimated, spontaneously combusted— that’s how quickly it vanished into the curl of his fist, as though it was never there at all.
Usually you would tease Suguru about his habits. Usually you’re hoping to see him blush, though he rarely ever does. Just the chance of it makes you hungry.
Mostly, it’s a chance to say, I see you.
Except you know he saw you looking. Except you don’t know what you’d say that doesn’t expose you in return. Except that this feels too fragile a thing, too delicate to hold your weight.
So for once in your life, you didn’t mention it.
You’ve never seen Suguru nibble on a pen again. But your eyes are very good, and the slow slide of his tongue is imprinted on your memory. You’ve seen the ghost of that pen every day since in the unconscious movement of his mouth, so many times that you’ve memorized that, too. You know its path by heart.
iii.
How can someone so hot be so shy?
Suguru has it all. He’s the whole package. Cool and clever, he could be the bad boy, the heartbreaker. But he’s actually the one you want to take home to your parents. (Or something like that, you automatically deflect… however that’s supposed to work with normal, nuclear families.) He’s the one who flusters with little compliments. He’s the one you want to hold your hand.
It’s like… he has no idea. Suguru doesn’t know he’s handsome, or he doesn’t think it matters. He doesn’t know he’s clever, doesn’t believe he has something valuable to say. He doesn’t like attention and shifts away from the limelight like it’s foreign stuff that burns his skin.
What makes Geto Suguru doubt himself so very much?
Has no one ever told him he could have anything he asked for?
Has he ever asked for anything at all?
iv.
It’s the hair. Mr. Tall, Dark and Mysterious, Magical Girl, Disney Princess, Rapunzel Let Down Your Hair, just. Hair.
It isn’t even just that he has all that long, flowing hair— the abundance, the luxury! You would hardly have noticed that all on its own.
No. It’s how he holds it. How he finger-combs it. How the hair tie hangs from between his teeth as Suguru arranges the thick, dark strands, fashioning it all into a bun that would absolutely survive a nuclear winter. At the end of days, it’ll be a bunch of city rats and Suguru’s tidy bun that survived doomsday.
And you, of course.
You like it best when he takes it out. When he changes before a workout and the hair comes down for a minute. A moment of rest, a full reset. When he runs his fingers through the damp curtain of it after bathing.
You like it best when his hair is still drying so he wears it down for a while longer. You wonder how Suguru looks in the morning, hair splayed on his pillow. Hanging over his shoulders as he leans up against the headboard, those minutes before he gets up from his futon and sets himself in order.
You wonder how it would feel between your fingers. That most of all.
v.
Patience is a virtue, but it isn’t one of yours. And for each and every one of the virtues you lack, Suguru makes up the difference.
He’s… good. Better than you will ever be. Not in terms of strength or skill or anything like that, but goodness or whatever self-important prattle. The thing is, Suguru actually believes in goodness. You aren’t so sure, but if Suguru believes in something— that it’s possible, even attainable through hard work— then you decided many months ago, practically on the first day of school, to place your bets with him.
Suguru is the yardstick, you know? And without him, you would be… lost.
+
“Satoru,” he purrs your name. Shit. That should be illegal, a form of unauthorized entry, one where you and even your Limitless technique are caught out and floundering. You have no defense against it. The sound of Suguru’s voice slips right under your skin.
Maybe add that to the list.
“Lost in thought again?”
“Me? Nah,” you laugh, the rubber tires of your mind spinning lightly, seeking traction. Ah. “Do you think that giraffes get hit by lightning more than, like, any other animals? More than humans for sure.”
“You weren’t thinking about that.”
“Yes I was!”
You don’t turn to see Suguru’s expression. You don’t really need to yet; you can practically taste it, the calculating look that bores into the side of your head, right through your temple. You catch a whiff of his eyebrow raise on the breeze.
The look is skeptical, you decide, and then you decide to check your work. You never have needed to before, but then again, why do you need a reason?
You like looking at Suguru.
You don’t actually need to explain it— why he’s stuck in your mind, like the scratched part of a record. Why you’re drawing little mental hearts around the imagined shape of his name. You don’t need to understand it. You don’t need to question it.
You trust that part of yourself that says you should just keep him talking. Forever, if you have to.
“I just think, if I invented giraffes, I’d wanna give them a way to retract their necks.”
And Suguru laughs, and you realize that’s what you really wanted.
That smile is reason enough.