Work Text:
Suguru walked into the kitchen with a box of food in his arms.
In the corner of the room, Nanako and Mimiko are playing another one of their child’s games; he takes his time to watch them play with a fond smile on his face before actually moving from where he’s standing.
“Mimiko! You can't make the dolls kiss yet!” Nanako stands on her feet with the angriest pout a 7 year old girl can make.
“Why not? They were looking like they wanted to kiss!”
Suguru laughs, he steps aside and starts placing meat into the kitchen counter.
The water is boiling and the potatoes are already pealed when he hears a knock in the door he recognizes by its bitterness.
Because Shoko has been acting like he’s a monster ever since they turned 20 and the darkness of his behavior were no longer a joke she could laugh at like she did when she was 17.
“I don’t remember calling you to check on the kids?” is the first thing Shoko hears.
She looks at him before making her way through the door, she sits on the table with her legs crossed and that’s how he knows they’re gonna have a talk whether he likes it or not.
Nanako and Mimiko greet their doctor respectfully before looking at him waiting for indications.
“We’re feeling okay.” Nanako says.
“We’re not checking you today” says Shoko “I’m gonna be checking on the big guy over there” she moves her head in his direction with a smile that’s sarcastic for an adult and nice for a kid.
“Why? Is Geto-Sama not feeling okay?”
Suguru starts walking to the table.
“Yeah, he needs to get a check on the head”
He frowns.
Nanako and Mimiko look at him then, innocently asking for a silent confirmation, when he nods and smiles, they understand it as a command.
“See you, Ieiri-san!”
Shoko waves her hand at them before they disappear into their room. “They’re trained.”
“They’re not dogs, they’re just behaved.”
“Unlike you, it seems.”
Suguru sighs, he decides right there and then that he doesn’t want Shoko to be their doctor anymore and that he can definitely find someone else that won’t get their nose on his business as much as she does.
But before the knives get sharpened in his throat, Shoko speaks again.
“You don’t need to pull a Shinjuku with me too, you know?”
She’s talking about Satoru.
“What do you want?” Three years ago, when he left, he would have never met Shoko with the bitterness he’s meeting her now. But after his trip on the ocean, after eating more curses than food, he's starting to feel as gross and inedible as them; and so, all he can feel right now is hate .
Shoko pulls out a folded, small piece of paper and slams it onto the table aggressively , but it’s not the way it’s folded nor the way she presented it what shakes his word, is what she says after.
“ It’s from Gojo. ”
He remembers, and he’s suddenly silent. The anger does no longer ring in his head and the taste of curses in his mind seems to disappear.
“He found out i’m seeing you.” She crosses her arms, and she tries to mask it, but there are little tears in her eyes, her mouth opens and closes more times than he’s able to count before she continues. “He was devastated.” it’s a whisper, and probably a secret, too.
He looks at the paper and then at his friend again, wondering if she told him anything, wondering if he’s gonna cross the door at any moment too, and suddenly he’s having the type of anxiety you get when you have to tell your mom you broke something, the type of anxiety you get when you broke something, someone .
“Don’t worry, he didn’t come with me.” She answers like she can read him. “He just wanted me to give you this.”
There’s a moment of silence there, a loud silence.
The paper alone it’s quietly meeting him with tons of memories and a little taste of guilt that he doesn’t like. Suguru keeps his mind busy most of the days, he has buried his head in his work hoping he wouldn’t have to face it. And it feels like a punishment when he’s being forced to do it.
“I won’t come back to check on the girls. Unlike you, i do choose my friends over my morals ” she pauses “or whatever you call it.”
He doesn’t hear when the door closes, he doesn’t recall the twins checking on him secretly over the door, not the water evaporating into the saucepan and he doesn’t notice when morning turns into afternoon.
The sun is still shining.
He looks at the paper and thinks about reading it. He doesn’t want to. He is probably (most likely) going to regret it, but he reads it.
He unfolds it carefully, as if someone else could see him picking where he shouldn’t.
It smells like him.
He frowns when he notices that that’s not his handwriting, though. It’s Shoko’s. And he laughs a little at the mental imagen of what could’ve possibly happened.
Because of course Gojo Satoru wouldn’t take the time to write something , that’s too cheesy for someone as proud as him. So he imagines him talking and Shoko writing and it kind of makes sense now.
He sighs, and with a weird unknown feeling, he starts reading.
“ DOD. PRESCRIPTION.
FOR (Full name, address & phone number) (if under 12 give age)
MEDICAL FACILITY DATE
i miss you,
just a little bit. nothing at all. i hate you.
i don’t want to know anything about you, even though i keep looking at the places you’re at. i’m glad things seem to be getting in order for you.
it’s just sad i’m not there to witness it.
but if you’re reading this, it must be because you do want to know about me.
so, recently, i discovered i’m a naive person (which seemed as something certainly impossible, for someone like me), it took me by surprise too.
i can see things other people can’t, i know people before i meet them. everyone’s an open book when you’re looking from behind with too many eyes. if life were a game, i’m speed-running it with an unfair amount of dirty tricks.
and even so. i sometimes choose to ignore that knowledge.
i kept being around you, even though i knew we were too different. i kept you close, and as stupid as it's going to sound, i kind of knew the end before we started.
i always knew we were going to drift apart.
back then, i thought that if you ever leave i’d simply accept it as a matter of fact.
when you hugged me and held me close, i internally made fun of it, he’s gonna regret it.
when you laughed a little bit louder with me, and when you started saying weird things, i made fun of it too, oh. he’s so gonna regret this.
what a surprise it was when it did hurt.
and i was the one regretting it.
when i noticed that the space you have in my heart was a little bit too big.
i cared. all of the sudden.
and then, when you looked at me one last time before turning your back, i had to made fun of me.
why am i reacting as if this was a surprise?
i expected this ending. i knew it was doomed to happen.
so why am i reacting? was i subconsciously expecting me to be wrong? was there a part of me who knew things i didn’t? did i hide the love i had for you behind the carpet hoping it wouldn’t come back to bite me later?
i don’t understand, why is my heart breaking like this?
why am i missing a part of me that i didn’t know it was there? why there’s a hole in myself with the shape of a person that i was making fun of?
i’m a naive person.
i silently deluded myself into believing that it wasn’t a big deal. that the way you looked at me didn’t mean anything, anything at all. that the way your hand caressed mine when something was off in me wasn’t something to point out.
i deluded myself, i believed in lies my own mind made. i turned my head when shoko told me it was strange. i smiled fondly at you when you told me you had the same issues; and i’d made my place in your bed and covered myself with your blankets, i'd smelled your shampoo bottles to feel closeness, and i’d been eager to know more about you as if i were starving for pieces of information i didn’t know i was laking, and i never ever suspected a thing.
when you held my hand that night and whispered secret nothings i thought to myself that i lo—enjoyed being around you,
when you made a face at my bad behavior and at the same time tried to add to it,
when you were simply there and for some reason i was expecting to be in the same place as you, i wonder why i never realized. why i never suspected a thing.
i laughed at you.
i looked at you from the corner of my eye and thought what a fool .
and now im surprising myself in the dark of my room trying to put together the pieces of a heart i didn’t know i had.
every corner of this room smell like us.
every letter of this paper is drawn with a tint that reminds me of you .
i didn’t know you were this special to me.
and i don’t know why im shaking the way i’m shaking while my mind re-plays a scene that’s already printed on my skin.
i have questions that are build of other questions and all of those are going to be unanswered but the one i keep repeating myself mostly these past few days is,
was i,
am i in love with you? “
Satoru didn’t ask Shoko to deliver that letter.
From that one time Satoru realized he had feelings for Suguru.
— Some random day of July, 2011.