Work Text:
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to Inuyasha or Jujutsu Kaisen. All characters depicted belong to their respective owners.
"Hey."
Trying not to roll her eyes, Kagome hardly spared him a glance. Her pen scratched through another equation, her frustration on the rise, as she once again questioned why she had agreed to this so called "study session." Or thought for even a minute that Gojo Satoru, spoiled brat that he was, hadn't simply suggested it so he could feel like the center of attention after she had supposedly been "ignoring" him for weeks.
Weeks.
That singular word made her want to scoff, remembering how he'd ambushed her outside of school with it. His sob story alone would have been enough to gain sympathy from her overly zealous friends, but then he had started to pout. Actually pout. They'd nearly shoved her at him with stars in their eyes. All three of them going on about how they'd be more than happy to explain her absence at cram school if anyone bothered to ask and how nice it was that she had finally found a "respectable boyfriend."
Respectable.
Boyfriend.
Her pen practically brutalized the paper beneath.
"I guess that answers that question."
"What?" Kagome didn't bother looking up, choosing to glare at the math equation he hadn't bothered to explain properly instead.
"Just whether or not you'd eaten yet," Satoru chuckled from across the table. His hands went up in mock surrender the moment her gaze snapped to him. Her eyes conveyed one silent, vicious thought. Idiot. "I know, I know," he sighed, waving his hand dramatically, "you've been with me this whole time and I haven't bothered to feed you yet like I should have." He grinned much like a cat then, adding, "But that doesn't explain why you skipped lunch. Probably even breakfast."
Wrinkling her nose a bit, she said, "I didn't skip breakfast."
"Ehh," he nodded, "so just lunch then."
"Unlike you," Kagome reminded him slowly, punctuating every word, "some of us have to study, Satoru-kun. We don't all have fancy tutors or a private school to attend." She shut him down before he had the chance to speak again, forcing him to snap his mouth closed when she added, "And no, I don't want yours. Thanks for the offer."
The pout was quick to return. "You're so mean to me sometimes, Kagome," he told her, putting his hand over his heart. His blue eyes sparkled over the top of his glasses, glossy and bright, as if he were on the verge of tears. "It almost feels like you don't want me around half the time."
Her expression flattening, the raven haired girl finally gave into the urge to roll her eyes.
"Seee!"
"You're being, well," Kagome paused, pursing her lips, "you." She gestured at him with her pen then, making it a point to ignore the way he cried out in offense at her assessment. "It's a wonder how Suguru puts up with you everyday at school, honestly." Tipping her head a bit, she nodded solemnly and said, "I'll have to ask him the next time I see him," before returning her attention to the practice sheet in front of her.
Satoru muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, "Suguru loves me."
"Mmhmm."
His head dropped onto the table with her indifferent hum. Hunched over, he appeared sad and dejected. The perfect picture of devastation. "You're just saying that because you haven't eaten in so long," he sniffled. His white lashes fluttered, glittering like a thousand tiny stars as they moistened. "Don't worry, though, Kagome," he pressed his cheek harder against the table, shifting his glasses with the movement, "I'll forgive you like any respectable and patient boyfriend should."
"Oh." Kagome's laugh caught halfway in her throat, overpowered by the scoff that followed in its wake. Certain that her face was turning pink from his behavior alone, she decided not to think about the heat that rushed across her nose too much. "You're respectable and patient now?" She tapped the math equation she'd been struggling to solve with her pen, not bothering to touch the word "boyfriend" with a ten foot pole. They both knew it was ridiculous. "Is that why you haven't bothered to actually help me with any of this?"
"I've helped you!" He popped right back up at that, leaning over to tap the paper himself with his index finger. "This is like the easiest equation to solve out of all of them." Satoru leaned back again, waving his hand in front of his face. "If you just solved it the way I showed you, you wouldn't be cryin' about it still."
She wanted to smack him so bad it almost hurt to restrain herself. Especially when he tipped his chin into his hand, rolled his eyes, and rattled off some mathematical explanation that sounded like it had come from another planet. Her grip tightened around her pen the longer he spoke. Silently telling herself not to throw the thing at his head on repeat, she began to count to one hundred after it became apparent that he didn't plan to stop any time soon.
"Again." Satoru sighed after a solid minute, before grumbling, "You're not paying attention, again."
"No!" Kagome quickly shot back. She fully expected him to argue when she said, "You're just bad at explaining this."
"Tch." Clicking his tongue, the white haired boy surprised her by instead fishing out his phone and flipping it open. The screen lit up against his features, as he suggested, "Maybe we should take a break. I need to feed you before you accidentally scare the shit out of the elders again and cause them to go on another manhunt."
"That's not…" He'd said it so casually, his focus fixated upon his phone, and yet Kagome knew that there was nothing casual about what he'd said when it came to sorcerers. She flinched a little, dropping her head further. "I didn't mean to do that."
"Yeah, I know."
Kagome sighed at the flippant response, having expected it. Twirling her pen between her fingers, she flicked her gaze across the table toward him. The boy who'd been harboring her secret like it was some kind of joke he was planning to pull someday. Suguru knew, too, of course. They'd been dispatched together in an effort to understand and contain the anomaly that had occurred in Edogawa. No questions. No trial. A rather simple mission with a clear objective, and yet they'd walked away "empty handed" when they finally found her.
The distraught girl who'd purified an entire district after she'd discovered the world had been turned upside down with one single wish.
But it was easy to walk away, apparently. Nearly two years had passed since the incident, and not even Satoru's rather frequent visits were enough to raise any alarms. She was like a ghost, hidden in plain sight, as Suguru had once put it. And from what she understood, given Satoru's track record of poor explanations, even they wouldn't have been able to find her if it hadn't been for his specific clan's cursed technique. His Six Eyes allowed him to perceive things beyond the natural flow of the world, but without it she was any other normal girl on the street.
Suguru liked to describe it as being easily overlooked. Not that she was complaining about that in the slightest. It was better to be overlooked than have her head on a chopping block simply because a bunch of old men deemed it necessary for the greater good of society. As if they themselves weren't the ones sending teenagers out to do their dirty work on a daily basis.
Kagome tapped the end of her pen against her worksheet with the thought. Her eyes lingered on the sorcerer for longer than necessary, knowing that that particular argument was already dead and buried. Satoru had been adamant the last time that, as the "strongest," he didn't need any help. Not from his best friend, who'd rolled his eyes the moment Satoru had mentioned him, and certainly not from a "bow wielding maiden" that'd practically been a curse related virgin the first time they met. Kagome distinctly remembered rolling her eyes at that one, too, but…
Satoru clicked his tongue and snapped his phone closed in the same instance.
Kagome dropped her gaze almost immediately, trying to ignore the flush across her cheeks. The subject of her thoughts didn't matter in the slightest when it came to Gojo Satoru. She knew him well enough to know that she'd never hear the end of it if he caught her staring, and especially not after he'd accused her of not paying attention enough to solve such an "easy" equation. If anything, it'd just be more fuel for him to throw around the word "boyfriend," as absolutely ridiculous as that was.
"So?"
"Hm?" Her blue eyes met his, blinking in confusion. While Kagome was almost certain that she hadn't missed anything, she began to have her doubts when Satoru sighed like she'd wasted five years of his life and put him in massive debt in the process. Her cheeks darkened with the sound. Unable to help herself with the look on his face, she snapped, "What?"
Leaning his chair back until it was on two legs, Satoru rolled his eyes over the top of his shaded glasses. "I knew you weren't paying attention, but damn," he muttered mostly to himself, "I guess that's proof of how little you actually love me." He ignored the cry of denial that rose in her throat, waving his hand between them, as he said, "Do you wanna come over and eat what my mom made or not? I can take you out somewhere, but the last time we did that, you bitched about how long it took to get a decent outfit first."
The question itself made her falter. The sudden burst of anger fizzling out into quiet, flustered bewilderment instead. Her mouth snapping closed, Kagome shook her head briefly and tried to focus on the question rather than everything else he'd thrown at her. "Your…?" She paused to take a deep breath, before asking, "Your mom's… around?"
"You mean 'alive?'" Satoru huffed quietly. "You can just say it. And yeah, she's alive."
"No, I didn't think she was…" Kagome pursued her lips, trying desperately to ignore how red she had become. "Just, well," she tried again, knowing her own mother would be disappointed if she didn't handle such a topic with some delicacy, "I didn't know if she was really around. I don't know much about how clan dynamics go, but every time it's brought up it seems very… It's an old way of thinking, that's all, so."
"That's putting it mildly," he chuckled in response. "The Gojo clan isn't nearly as bad as some of the others, though. Thanks to me, of course."
Oh, of course.
It was hard not to roll her eyes again.
"But, yeah," Satoru swept his hand through his bangs, "my mom's still around. If I was part of the Zen'in or whatever, then, sure, she'd probably be dead by now. Or just used up. Whichever came first with those guys, I guess."
The Higurashi girl only blinked at him, unsure how to respond to that.
"So?" Satoru asked again.
The entire conversation was throwing her for a loop, and yet there was one thing that stuck out to her. "Sorry." Kagome's nose wrinkled at the way his face fell, despite how quickly she went on by saying, "You've just never really mentioned your mom before, so I just… anyway." She gave him an incredulous look then. "She… cooks?"
"Yeah."
She still wasn't convinced. "Like, actually cooks? For you?"
"Duh." Satoru tipped his head onto his shoulder in her direction, staring at her with those piercing eyes. He didn't look away for a second, as if trying to will her into answering the question with an actual response rather than more questions with his Six Eyes alone. "If you asked me, I'd give her a shining review. Five stars. She's just that good."
"Mmm." That sounded… Kagome nodded after a solid minute, finally relenting a little. "Okay," she said, "but what did she make?"
"Why," his grin curled up like a cat's, as he practically purred, "she made me, of course."
Her mouth fell open and her ears went red. "You…!"
"So, you wanna come over or not?"
"You… idiot!"
Satoru yelped as the pen hit him square in the forehead.
Kagome huffed in rage.
Some "respectable boyfriend" he was.
fin