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He couldn’t sleep.
He stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom. He’d given up trying ages ago and resigned himself to staring at the grooves and ridges and scrapes on the walls.
It was too quiet.
He could hear Nanami’s music and him singing along softly. He could hear Haibara with him too—the two of them giggling and laughing at something. He could smell the strong scent of Shoko’s cigarettes and hear the video she was watching out on the balcony as she smoked.
But it was still too quiet.
Still too quiet without Satoru’s loud, chaotic presence.
Satoru wasn’t even loud at night. Sure, he snored, grumbled, and talked in his sleep, but that was usually below his normal noise levels.
Satoru filled space without trying. That was the problem. That was always the problem.
Suguru shifted onto his side, then his back, then his stomach, like maybe if he rearranged himself enough, sleep would get bored and show up out of pity. It didn’t. His sheets were cool where Satoru usually radiated heat like a human space heater. Annoying. Obnoxious. Missed.
He clenched his jaw.
He hated this. Hated the way his body had memorized Satoru’s presence, how it expected the weight of an arm thrown carelessly across his chest, the knee that would knock into his thigh sometime after midnight. Hated that his breathing felt wrong without that familiar presence beside him, like a song played half a beat off.
The room felt too big.
Or maybe it felt hollow.
Somewhere down the hall, Nanami laughed—sharp and surprised, like he hadn’t meant to—and Suguru felt a stupid, bitter twist in his chest. They all sounded so alive. So normal. Like they weren’t missing anything at all.
Suguru dragged a hand over his face and exhaled slowly, deliberately. Get a grip. This was pathetic. Satoru was gone for one night. One. He’d survived missions alone, injuries alone, grief alone. This shouldn’t bother him. This shouldn’t be this hard.
He squeezed his eyes shut, like that might knock something loose. It didn’t. The ceiling stayed exactly where it was. Silent. Unimpressed.
His chest felt too tight, like his ribs had forgotten how far they were supposed to expand. He pressed a hand there, grounding himself the way Shoko had taught him. In. Hold. Out. Again. His body complied mechanically, but it felt like someone else’s lungs doing the work.
This was the part he hated most—not the missing, but the dependence. The way his nervous system had quietly rewired itself around one person and called it normal. The way peace now had a shape, a weight, a stupid amount of white hair shedding on his sheets.
He’d never agreed to that. He would’ve noticed. Wouldn’t he?
Somewhere, a door clicked shut. Nanami’s music stopped. The hallway settled. Even Shoko’s video cut off, the balcony door sliding closed with a soft finality.
Now it was truly quiet.
Suguru stared into the dark and swallowed hard.
His hand grabbed his phone without thinking. Punched in Satoru’s number like muscle memory.
His jaw tightened.
He shouldn’t call. He knew that. It was late. Satoru was on assignment. Probably fine. Definitely fine. Annoyingly, infuriatingly fine. Calling now would just—what? Prove the thing he was trying so hard to ignore?
He exhaled slowly through his nose and hit the button anyway.
It rang.
Once.
Twice.
Each ring stretched, elastic and unbearable, pulling his chest tighter with every second. He told himself he’d hang up before the fourth. That would be normal. Reasonable. He could still pretend this was nothing.
“Suguru?”
Satoru’s voice was rough with sleep and static, low and warm and there, and something in Suguru cracked so sharply it almost made him gasp.
“What’s wrong?” Satoru asked immediately, all joking gone like it had never existed. “Did something happen?”
Suguru closed his eyes and leaned back against the headboard, phone pressed to his ear like a lifeline he refused to acknowledge.
“…Nothing,” he said, a lie so thin it barely qualified as language.
There was a pause. Not the awkward kind. The Satoru kind, measured, listening, like he was already halfway across the distance.
“You don’t call me at this hour for nothing,” Satoru said gently. “You hate phones.”
Suguru huffed out a quiet, humorless breath. “I don’t hate phones.”
“You absolutely do.”
Silence settled between them, softer now. Less hostile. Suguru could hear fabric shifting on Satoru’s end, the faint hum of a place that wasn’t here.
“I can’t sleep,” Suguru admitted finally, voice low. Bare. The truth slid out easier than he wanted.
Another pause. Then—warmth, unmistakable even through a bad connection.
“...Yeah,” Satoru said, fond and quiet. “Me neither.”
Suguru’s grip on the phone tightened, heart doing something stupid and traitorous in his chest.
The room was still empty.
But it didn’t feel quite so hollow anymore.
They didn’t say anything for a moment after that. They didn’t need to. The silence had shifted, no longer sharp or oppressive, just present.
He focused on the sound of Satoru existing on the other end of the line, the faint rustle of sheets, a soft exhale, the barely-there hum of cursed energy that always clung to him like static.
“You pacing?” Satoru asked eventually, voice low. Smiling, Suguru could tell.
“No,” Suguru said. Then, after a beat, “I was.”
Satoru huffed quietly. “Thought so.”
“You’re not here.”
There it was. The thing. Suguru waited for Satoru to joke. To deflect. To make it lighter so he wouldn’t have to look at it too closely.
Instead—
“I know,” Satoru said. Soft. Solid. “I’m sorry.”
That was worse.
Suguru swallowed, throat tight. His fingers curled into the fabric of the sheets, gripping like they might float away if he didn’t anchor himself to something real. “I don’t like that it bothers me,” he said quietly. “This shouldn’t—”
“You don’t have to justify it,” Satoru cut in, gentle but firm. No room for argument. “You miss me. That’s allowed.”
Suguru almost laughed. Almost snapped back with something sharp and defensive. Instead, his chest gave a small, traitorous ache.
“It feels wrong,” he admitted. “Like my body forgot how to function without you in the room.”
On the other end of the line, Satoru went quiet. Really quiet.
Then—soft fabric sounds again. A shift, like he’d rolled onto his side.
“That’s kind of terrifying,” Satoru said after a moment. “Because same.”
Suguru’s breath hitched before he could stop it.
“You’re annoying,” he murmured, a reflex, a shield.
“Yeah,” Satoru agreed easily. “But you called me anyway.”
Suguru opened his eyes and stared at the dark ceiling. The grooves and cracks didn’t feel so wrong now. Still there. Still empty. But threaded with something warm, something alive, stretched thin between two places and humming with static.
“Stay on the line,” Suguru said, before he could think better of it.
Satoru didn’t hesitate. “Obviously.”
They breathed together for a while after that—two insomniacs, two idiots, tethered by distance and shared silence. It wasn’t sleep. It wasn’t even peace.
But it was close enough to survive the night.