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Suguru always smells Shoko before he sees her, and never holds her until after she's showered. He can't stand her cloud of smoke and chemicals, the bitter-powder tang of medicine, the sterile-sharp chemtrail of alcohol and formaldehyde and a too-clean death; Suguru prefers her own soft astringence, all silver, bitter orange, and clover; subtle and unchanging, it suits her.
But when she comes home, she reeks of the morgue, and on the days she doesn't, she reeks of other people.
Today, it's the second.
Satoru is with her, and Suguru needs far less than his own oversensitive nose to tell — Satoru, he would know instantly, no matter his state. He could be nearly dead, entirely insensate, and some part of him would register Satoru's presence and relax, unwinding like an animal before the warmth of the sun.
"Welcome back," Suguru says once the door to the genkan creaks open — the sound is grating, and has been for the past eight months, only none of them can be bothered to fix it, and Satoru's yet to get the courage up to ask Nanami to come over and do it.
"We're home!" Satoru calls back, singsong and pleasant. His scent, always expansive, perfuses through the air like a thunderstorm. Suguru can barely smell Shoko beneath him, only hear her quiet murmur and then her footsteps as she takes herself to the shower.
"She's in a bad mood," Satoru confides as he strides into the living room where Suguru is laid out on the couch. It's too big for their space, one of the shell-like, impersonal residences for the staff on campus, but it's an indulgence Shoko had not so much insisted on as she'd simply purchased one day in a fit of spontaneity that's more like Satoru than anything else. It does, however, fit all three of them comfortably — and Nanami, on the rare occasion he visits, as well as Nanako and Mimiko and Larue and Miguel on the even rarer occasion when they visit, usually clandestine, usually carefully planned.
There is no compromise without sacrifice, but in the end, there is very little that Suguru would not sacrifice for his family.
"I can tell," Suguru answers. He doesn't move, just lets Satoru sprawl out over him, all elbows and silver hair and then a cold nose tucked into his neck, so he can breathe in his scent. He strokes down Satoru's spine and feels him relax. "Though that's because she usually is. And half the time you're responsible for it."
"I am not. I never get hurt, it's impossible for me to be her problem," Satoru mutters, petulant.
"You make up for it in other ways," Suguru tells him wryly. "Why do you think the two of us started smoking?"
"I cannot believe that I, the great Gojo Satoru, come home to my beloved, and get bullied like this for no reason at all. Not even a 'Oh, Satoru, darling, how was your day? How many times did you save the world? Did you eat lunch?'" Satoru whines, his breath warm against Suguru's skin. He tries not to squirm, mostly fails; Suguru has never liked teeth at his neck, even his claim-marks are lower down, one on his inner thigh, the other right at his collarbone.
"Poor, neglected baby," Suguru coos, deciding he's in an indulgent mood today. "Are we not spoiling you enough? Two entire alphas at your beck and call?"
"At my beck and call." Satoru scoffs a little. "The only way you could be less at my beck and call was if you were one of the higher ups. Or Nanami. Or Kusakabe. Ijichi is the only one around here who respects me, actually, I should just go to him."
Suguru settles his hand on the nape of Satoru's neck, fingers curled around to feel his pulse. He hears the shower turn on, a squeak of the tap and then the muted rush of water.
"Only if you want him to die of a heart attack," Suguru says. "Which I wouldn't mind, given how much he keeps eyeing Shoko."
"I would have thought she's a little too alpha for him," Satoru remarks. "She settled that way in the end, even though she leans more beta when it's the three of us alone."
"She feels she has to mediate sometimes," Suguru tells him. Satoru only grimaces. They've taken to resolving some problems through sparring, the kind that lets Satoru bare his teeth more, the kind that Suguru has worked hard to convince himself he doesn't need. He does. They all know this. When he was in the field, it was no problem — now, at home, he rarely allows himself this outside of his ruts. Satoru was always the flashy one, the one unquestionably dominant. Quintessential alpha, it'd been a surprise to almost everyone when he presented, but Suguru had an entire year of gentle pseudo-heats when they were in school, before his endotype had stabilized more. He'd always been more prone to fluctuation than the others — still is. Suguru had never minded, and still doesn't. It matters less when there are only a handful of people he sees on a regular basis, two his mates, the rest pack.
"Well, she shouldn't! We never fight, except for when the both of you are horrible and cruel and gang up on me. Everyone wants to bully me! My kouhai, my partners, my students!" Satoru's grimace shifts seamless into a pout, and he drapes himself all over Suguru.
"It's because you're so fun to bully," Shoko chimes in, stepping out from the shower. Still damp and ensconced in a bathrobe three sizes too big for her, she nuzzles into Suguru's neck in greeting. He presses a kiss to the top of her head in return, breathing in her quiet scent, and the scent of their home. Much better.
"I am not."
"You are. Now stop hogging Suguru, I'm hungry and I want to eat, and have a glass of wine or two with it."
"Bad day?"
"Long," she shrugs. "But nobody died, so I'm celebrating. Drink with me?"
"Only since it's wine. You know I can't stand that beer you always order," Suguru says. He can't be bothered to disentangle from them, so he begins edging to the kitchen, moving the whole mass of them over. It would be difficult, had he not partially raised two children who were clinging to him almost all the time; Satoru is about the same, though with slightly more mass. Shoko, at least, will stay close and move under her own power.
She even pours them the wine, filling her own glass nearly to the brim with a smirk, and giving Suguru a much more reasonable portion.
"Hey," Satoru protests, still engaging in his best impression of a limpet. "What about me?"
"Oh, of course. How could I forget." Shoko abandons the wine bottle, and sets a juice box in front of Satoru with great aplomb. It isn't even one of the ones Suguru keeps cool in the fridge.
"Shoko," he sighs.
"Alright," she grumbles, deigning to unwrap the straw, jam it in, and hold the box up to Satoru's mouth. He hollows his cheeks and downs the entire thing in a single go, then winks saucily at the both of them, mouth still full of juice.
"Ugh. Disgusting," Shoko pronounces.
"No manners," Suguru agrees, and then gets juice down his sleeve as punishment when Satoru starts to protest. It's indeed disgusting, makes him feel sticky, the artificial fruit scent cloying, but Satoru kisses at his neck with sticky lips and suffuses the air with the chill of fresh snow, and it's all alright, the stress melting away.
"Reheat dinner, Shoko?" Suguru requests. "I'll set the table, Satoru will do the dishes."
"Still being bullied," Satoru mutters.
"Someone has to keep you in check," Shoko replies, light. "And the higher ups don't do a good job at it, you'll forgive your students anything, and neither of us want you getting all obsessive over poor Nanami again. That's why he won't come over often, you know."
Both Suguru and Satoru frown at that.
"Since when does he tell you things like that?" Satoru demands.
"Satoru hasn't matured, but Nanami should trust that we can keep him in check," Suguru counters.
"Hey."
"True. We manage him just fine, don't we," Shoko muses. "And I'd like to talk to a real adult every so often, instead of watching him make worse and worse excuses as to why he'll make sure I get to my house, but not my actual door. Oh, well. At least I can still go over to his."
Suguru mulls this over, finally dislodging Satoru to go set the table — he's protesting loudly, now, about how nobody is meant to know where Nanami lives, and that Nanami is meant to hang like a bat from one of the beams in the school staff room. No wonder, Suguru thinks, Nanami is so cagey. He'd been like that ever since they were younger, not just a beta, but entirely unreadable to almost all of them.
Suguru had understood him somewhat; Shoko'd understood him the best, and vice versa, and then he'd left.
Well. It's not as if Suguru can fault anyone for that.
Leaving was hard. Coming back was worse.
The plates have already been set out, pristine white china that Suguru would rather know the cost of; they're one of the few things in the house that have come from the Gojo clan estate, a sprawling complex that Suguru has been to precisely twice in his life. Once for Satoru's heat, another while hidden away for months as Satoru and Shoko and Yaga laid the groundwork that would allow him to return.
Their vows had happened at the school. Their first time, too, and all the important times. It is not Satoru's home; he would never bring his pack there unless forced.
The chopsticks rest on mismatched ceramic pieces Shoko bought at a craft fair; the chopsticks themselves, Suguru had picked up in Kyoto a few years ago. He'd liked their weight in his hand, just heavy enough to be grounding. The table, he and Shoko had picked out together, Western-style since they had the space, beautiful dark wood; the chairs came with it, but Satoru had shown up after a mission to somewhere on the continent with a series of bright, woven cushions to go on them. In winter, they eat at the kotatsu, Suguru often whiling the days away beneath it, and Shoko joining as soon as she showers. In a month, it'll be warm enough for that again — he's looking forward to it.
Shoko and Satoru join him, her carrying the drinks and a fresh juice box for Satoru, him with the food, still bickering gently.
There was a time once where Suguru only hand silence in his heart, and emptiness all around him. He doesn't miss it.
It's a peaceful evening all the same, the type that Suguru still cannot quite believe he gets to have, or how easily he could have lost it. A single left turn. A single sentence different, and he wouldn't be here. None of them would be here with one another. They eat dinner — Suguru has made curry, nothing elaborate, but Satoru exclaims over at all the same.
Satoru falls asleep after dinner, almost between breaths, five minutes into a movie he'd argued they watch for a full half an hour over text this afternoon. It was, apparently, a marvel of modern horror cinema. It is about a man who's been bitten by a were-beetle, and turns into a beetle at the full moon. Suguru doesn't even try to pay attention to it.
"He's going to complain so much about his neck hurting," Shoko mutters, disapproving as she looks at him. Suguru can't disagree; Satoru's head is almost at a ninety degree angle, dangling off the back of the couch.
"Not going to get some rest?" Suguru asks her quietly.
"He has an earlier start than me," she answers. "And I'm not that tired. One of us may as well watch this stupid movie, with how hard he campaigned for it. You'd have thought he was running for fucking Prime Minister."
Suguru stifles a laugh. Satoru's distaste for politics – even non-sorcerer politics – is something that Shoko has found laughable, and he has always found more endearing than anything else. It's difficult not to, when Satoru routinely suggests duels to resolve elections.
"They're working him hard," he says instead, discarding levity. "I don't like it."
Shoko hums, noncommittal. "They're working us all hard."
It isn't a barb directed at him, but Suguru feels the sting nonetheless.
"They shouldn't."
"It's dangerous to be a sorcerer; they might make it more so, and a bigger pain in the ass, but they don't make curses form," Shoko tells him. The skeleton of an old argument, shoved in their closet. They take it out occasionally and dust it off, examine the teeth, the poorly healed fractures, the missing phalanges from the crack that split them when Nanami left, and never quite healed even after he came back. Two arguments there. No winner for either.
"Sometimes I think that he should kill them all," Suguru murmurs, softly.
"Sometimes I agree with you. Sometimes I think he agrees with you," Shoko adds. Her voice is grim. Suguru does not quite see it as she does — as a bad thing. He barely sees it as Satoru does, but there's no denying that the students now are different. Stronger in some ways, than Nanami and Haibara were, than the class before him and Shoko and Satoru were. Weaker in others, but they shine bright with potential for the future, and hum with quiet rage and disdain for the higher ups. Maki Zen'in, Panda, even the Inumaki child; Hakari and Kirara especially. Those two are trouble, Suguru knows, and he relishes it even more than Satoru does.
"One day," Suguru says, and moves to lay down against Satoru's side. Bracketing him with his body, soaking in his scent, all soft with sleep. Shoko mirrors him, doing the same on Satoru's other side, only she drapes an arm around his waist.
"I hope not."
Suguru disagrees, but closes his eyes instead. It's not worth an argument. Things rarely are, these days.