Work Text:
Well, fuck you, too, I guess… Satoru thinks as his calculator spits an error at him. AP Calculus BC was out to kill him, but not before Satoru throttled his calculator at the wall. Not actually, he didn’t want to disturb the class and take away from precious learning time to figure out what the ever loving fuck partial fractions were. Luckily, though, today was just a review day and he could take as much or as little time as he needed to get through these practice problems.
He speeds through the easy problems so he didn’t need to worry about getting them completed later, and moved his attention to whatever the fuck was going on with trig sub. The teacher, blessedly, was already working through some of the easier problems for those who had already completed them to check their work. He was guessing and checking against his notes from the past week of lessons to at least have some semblance of understanding for this concept.
His brain started hurting as he kept staring at nonsensical variables and half-assed right triangles to try and figure out what was happening in regards to any of these terrible, terrible integrals. He put his pen down to rub at his eyes, trying to clear his mind if only for a moment of reprieve. His mind wandered to one and only Geto Suguru.
High school heartthrob Geto Suguru, bassist, lead singer, and lyricist (God what all can one man do…) for the local alternative indie band in the city, All-Consuming. (If you asked Satoru, he would tell you that they deserved to get global recognition with the genius that was behind their songs.) The same Geto Suguru just so happened to go to the same high school as Satoru. Satoru only has the most massive crush on him. It’s honestly embarrassing how hard he’s crushing on a man that probably doesn’t even know he exists. He starts thinking of the lyrics to their B-side tracks and how much he loves and adores the sheer poetry of them. Suguru just had such a way with words that has Satoru melting every time he hears the deep, smooth voice play over his car speakers.
He starts thinking of the song “32” which was clearly modeled as though it were a response to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s work. The narrator calls back to his lover that they were enough and that if they thought their inadequacies would ruin his song, he’d gladly let it be ruined. That there is beauty in imperfections.
Satoru picks up one of his many colored pens and starts writing in the margins of his homework page the words to Sonnet 32.
The first time that the sun rose on thine oath
To love me, I looked forward to the moon
To slacken all those bonds which seemed too soon
And quickly tied to make the lasting troth.
Quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly loathe;
And, looking on myself, I seemed not one
For such man’s love—more like an out-of-tune
He ran out of space on the top and right margins, he flipped to the back of the page just so he could keep reminiscing on the meaning of the poem.
Worn viol, a good singer would be wroth
To spoil his song with, and which, snatched in haste,
Is laid down at the first ill-sounding note.
I did not wrong myself so, but I placed
A wrong on thee . For thine perfect strains may float
‘Neath master-hands, from instruments defaced,—
And great souls, at one stroke, may do and dote.
Satoru sighs wistfully, remembering when he became so obsessed with this poem. Imagining he was the original author and Suguru was responding to him, to his insecurities and self doubts. This is what sent him to his local used book store to buy whatever poetry anthologies they may have picked up from old dead people’s abandoned homes. He starts writing in a different pen one of the poems he found in the anthologies that he only hoped a lover might one day say to him.
My lover asks me:
"What is the difference between me and the sky?"
The difference, my love,
Is that when you laugh,
I forget about the sky.
-Nizar Qabbani
He looked up from where he was staring at the script on the page to see that the teacher was moving on to the more complex problems for the practice sheet. He looks down at his page and decides he needs to start a new page, he can’t turn in this work with sappy scrawl covering the margins.
Satoru quickly tears out the pages he wrote on and starts copying down the work he already had completed. He starts scribbling down the problem on the board. Luckily, he gets all the problems down, he only understands half of them, but he can figure out what’s going on later. He slaps one of his bright pink “FINISH THIS” sticky notes on it and shoves his notebook into his schoolwork pile.
When the bell finally rings to signal the end of class, he shoves the illicit page into the cover of his notebook and heads off to his next class.
In his haste to get to the complete other side of the goddamn school (on numerous occasions he’s found himself cursing out whoever made the schedules to the tune of “Stupid fucking admins not thinking about how long passing period is…”) he fully runs head first into someone, dropping all his things to the floor. runs head first into… awfully familiar looking broad pectorals…
He looks up from his shock to be face to face with… Geto Suguru… Fuck, shit, fuck, hell! Of all the people I could’ve run into… fuck!
He quickly goes to pick up all of his things from their disarray on the floor.
“Oh! Sorry, didn’t see you there,” Suguru says. “Here, let me help.” He bends down to help Satoru gather the numerous folders and pens that have scattered across the tile flooring.
“No, no, no, it’s fine, it was my fault,” Satoru manages to say without screaming. Of all the people to run into, it had to be just about the hottest and most popular guy in school. As soon as he thinks he has all of his things, Satoru springs up and starts back on his path toward his next class.
“Hey, you didn’t get…” Satoru hears behind him, not even considering looking back for fear of making even more of a fool of himself.
~~~
Suguru looks down at the things in his hands. There were a handful of colored pens and highlighters that surely cost the other boy a pretty penny. There were also a few worksheets and notebook pages that had stellar marks scrawled on the tops of the pages in stark red pen. There’s also a stray stray sticky note that’s covered in hearts surrounding his name, the background looks like it repeatedly says “RANDOM” faintly across the paper. Not a particularly uncommon sight, his name surrounded by hearts, given his popularity, but then he notices matching sticky notes among the other boy’s things with similar text saying “FINISHED” or “BIG PROJECT”.
Suguru looks at the worksheets to find out the other boy’s name. “Gojo Satoru,” he reads off the page. “Fun to find a fan.”. The name seemed vaguely familiar in a way he couldn’t remember. His friends look over his shoulders at what he’s looking at.
“Oh hey! That was the guy that tutored me through Geometry last year!” he exclaims.
Oh so that’s why his name is familiar… Suguru thinks. He can’t help but think the other boy, Satoru , was cute. The way blood rushed to his face to paint his cheeks an adorable pink after he ran face first into Suguru’s chest, his captivating blue eyes that he couldn’t shake the idea of staring into them for hours.
He flips through the papers to see what classes he could maybe try to catch him in to return his things and comes across a page covered in words inked in light blue pen. He sees the words to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's “Sonnet 32,” a personal favorite of his; he wrote a song about it for a reason. And then he sees another poem, this one in a bright red gel pen.
“Nizar Qibbani, huh?” he mutters to himself.
Later that night, Suguru finds himself searching Nizar Qabbani’s poetry to see what he could draw from. There was so much inspiration to be found.
~~~
Satoru leaves school the next day, glad to finally be going home. Ever since yesterday when he made an absolute fucking disaster of himself in front of the hottest guy in school, he’d been really in the dumps. Well, part of it was due to making a fool of himself, the other part was having lost so many of his nice pens! He had to go to the store after school and drop some of his precious, limited disposable cash to replace them. He had to replace them, they were an integral part of making his notes pretty enough that he cares to look at them again later, and there was no way in hell that he was going to hunt Suguru down to ask for any of it back.
He also lost his AP Calc homework, but that wasn’t even due for a couple days, so he would be fine .
He pulls up at his house and quickly heads upstairs to study. Midterm exams were coming up and he could not fail. These were a whopping 25% of his grade in most classes! He moves to turn on some ambient music so the silence in his room wouldn’t drive him half mad when he sees that Geto Suguru posted on social media a post of the recording room they would only post when they had something in the works.
Satoru couldn’t repost faster if he tried. On his All-Consuming fanpage he reposts the photo with a lot of keyboard spam since words couldn’t fully encapsulate how excited he was to hear another masterpiece by his favorite band and favorite singer. He couldn’t wait to get some potentially knock-off tickets off of some scraper in the back of the school parking lot for whatever live performance the band would inevitably hold. One of the perks to being in the same immediate community as the band is the small, limited local venues they would perform at.
~~~
Over the next few days, Satoru completely forgot about his run in with Suguru after Calculus, instead screaming to all of his online friends about how much he was looking forward to hearing the new song in the next couple days.
When the song finally dropped at 5pm on Saturday he nearly jumped through his ceiling in excitement. The song was called “N.Q” and Satoru wondered what it could mean.
His burning curiosity was quickly distinguished when he heard the first line purr out of Suguru’s lips through his phone speakers.
“ The difference between you and the sky, my love… ” the man sang. “ The blue of the sky cannot compare to the blue of your eyes.”
The Calculus homework… Satoru realizes in that moment, a furious blush beginning to bloom over his cheeks. He can't believe that Suguru not only still has his papers, but read them. He’s mortified! Satoru lets out a real visceral scream. The whole song is littered with references to Nizar Qibbani’s poetry.
“Satoru, honey, are you okay?” his mother calls from downstairs.
“Yea, mom, I’m fine!” he responds, trying to collect himself. Surely there’s a better explanation as to why Suguru would use this poetry. Someone as well versed in poetry must be familiar with it already? Especially considering Suguru’s penchant for drawing heavily from famous love poems .
Satoru screams again, this time in his pillow so as to not alarm his mother anymore. He pulls his laptop from his desk to begin what might be the stupidest plan of his life.
Hey Suguru,
I think you may have some of my things after our run-in the other day. I would really appreciate it if you returned them to me! My phone number is (XXX) XXX-XXXX, feel free to reach out with a time that works for you!
Best,
Gojo Satoru.
Satoru stares at the email he just drafted a million and one times to make sure he doesn’t come off as any amount of annoying or needy or obsessive. After finally coming to the conclusion that it isn’t any of those things, he hits send before he can overthink it anymore.
Satoru spends the next few hours agonizing over whether or not he’ll even get a response. Suguru seemed to really be dedicated to his art and his studies which makes Satoru believe he’d barely look twice at an email from someone whose name he didn’t even recognize.
Satoru almost falls flat on his face when he hears his phone ping with a text notification. Scrambling to see who it was from and almost blowing his head off with all the pressure built up from holding in a scream when he saw it was an unfamiliar local number texting him.
From: Unknown
Hey, this is Suguru, what time works for you?
I can make just about any time work
“Okay, Satoru, stay calm, it’s just another kid from school,” Satoru tries to convince himself to not freak out.
To: Suguru
Hey Suguru! What time is your lunch?
Mine is at 11:30 if that works for you?
Satoru knew when Suguru’s lunch was, would sit all the way on the other side of the cafeteria just to stare at his stupidly perfect face. He didn't have too much time to think about that, though when his phone pinged again with a text from Suguru.
From: Suguru
That works for me
By the way, what’d you think of the song? :)