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It was Satoru’s insistence that you and Geto Suguru should meet.
“A blast from my past, meeting my present, how crazy would that be?” is what Satoru said to Suguru and Shoko as some sort of shoddy sales pitch to convince them to meet his ‘long-lost childhood friend’. He remembers the way Shoko rolled her eyes at Satoru and the obvious scepticism on both their faces at his idea, the two of them brushing it off as another one of Satoru’s hare-brained schemes. Contrary to Satoru’s dramatic retellings involving far-fetched fairytales of missed connections, the reality was that you moved abroad with your parents for a while, and now you’ve finally returned. And as luck would have it, you’ve decided to come here, to Tokyo Jujutsu High.
The first meeting went off without a hitch; you fell into an easy rhythm with all of them. Unlike others, you weren’t turned off by Satoru’s teasing condescension or Shoko’s dry humour. Instead of cowering or cursing them out as people would usually do, you threw back your own biting retorts like it was second nature, and the grin Satoru and Shoko shared just cemented your place amongst them. Then one outing evolved into two, then five, and soon it was like you were always there, the missing oil to make their cogs turn even better, the days without you now a long forgotten past.
Well, you got along with all of them except Suguru. It wasn’t like he was openly antagonising you. Still, for some reason, there was always a distance between the two of you – like some sort of invisible wall that prevented you from getting close to him. Even when you were sitting next to him, he wouldn’t throw himself onto your lap the way Satoru would or even how Shoko would sometimes rest her head on your shoulders. Instead, the closest he would ever allow himself to get to you was sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, fingers twitching nervously at his side in contrast to the aloof expression he wears.
He’s caught your eyes drifting a few times to his fingers, the way they drum absent-mindedly against the hard surface of the wooden bench, and how they betray the front he puts on. But strangely enough, for someone so ready to call people out on their bullshit, you don’t say anything, and he’s not sure if he wants to count that as a blessing in his favour.
He doesn’t want to say it’s a competition. Suguru wants to sneer at the thought of that alone. It sickens him to think of the possibility of him unwillingly competing with you for Satoru’s affection, like he’s some prize to be won (as if the thought of that alone wouldn’t make the snowy-haired man’s ego grow impossibly bigger than it already is). But when you and Satoru share a secret smile over an inside joke from your childhood, a reminder of the past that the two of you share – something he’ll never be a part of no matter how hard he tries, he has to bite down on his tongue in an effort to quell the storm brewing inside of him.
The worst of it was the fact that he understood why Satoru’s gaze lingered on you longer than what was normal for a friend to do because he felt drawn to you for the exact same reasons, whether he wanted to acknowledge them or not.
You’re a hurricane; so beautifully terrifying in your own right that no one wants to look away from, despite the dangers. Suguru has never heard of a person having two cursed techniques, let alone one that can charm people, but he wouldn’t be surprised if, by some miraculous measure, it turns out that you had it, considering the way you seemed to draw everyone in without even breaking a sweat (him included). He wouldn’t expect anything less of Satoru’s fabled childhood friend. It makes sense that you, too, would be a force of nature on your own to be able to keep up with him; the thunder to his lightning. (he muses what that would make him, the pouring rain that follows?)
His nights of lazing around in Satoru’s room soon become nights where the three of you push the limits of logic and reason under the guise of teenage stupidity. With how loud the three of you, mainly you and Satoru, tend towards being, he’s surprised that they haven’t gotten a noise complaint yet from any of the staff or students who have the unfortunate burden of being stuck in the same space as you all.
Tonight, however, is one of the quieter nights, where instead of impromptu pillow fights, you, Satoru, and Suguru are all sprawled out on top of each other in some way, shape or form as a movie plays on in front of you. technically, this movie is still showing in cinemas, so he’s not exactly sure how satoru has managed to get a copy of it to play it on the projector, but the two of you seem content to just watch instead of asking questions like that – perhaps he should take that as a sign to quiet his overthinking mind and to just “shut up and enjoy the movie” (as satoru would put it).
Halfway through the movie, you announced that you were getting tired of leaning on the cold wall behind you before unceremoniously plopping yourself down on Satoru’s lap, legs sprawled out on top of Suguru’s. His treacherous heart skips a beat when you shift legs in an attempt to get comfortable, completely unaware of the effect that you have on him. Despite Satoru’s whiny complaints about you being a nuisance and that “you’re interrupting the movie”, he doesn’t push you off; instead, he leans back and silently moves around his legs to better accommodate your head. He even stops bouncing his leg, a bad habit of Satoru’s, only shaking it occasionally to jostle your head a bit and annoy you.
Suguru doesn’t know what he hates more: the fact that you’re here or the fact that he doesn’t hate that you’re here. Quite the opposite, actually, he thinks he might desire it, and for some reason, this thought scares him more than he would care to admit.
Satoru leans down to loudly whisper a presumably stupid joke about the scene right now, one that elicits a laugh from your place on his lap. You reach out a hand to playfully shove his face out of the way, bright grins plastered on both your faces and the knot in Suguru’s stomach twists tighter.
Maybe the real thing that he hates is that neither of you is looking at him right now.
The credits soon roll, and Satoru remarks that he’s gonna head out to the vending machines for a bit, clearly itching after something sugary to satisfy that insatiable sweet tooth of his. he does offer to get you and Suguru something, which the two of you quickly turn down, and the door creaks closed as he leaves. You’re back to sitting against the white wall behind you, your legs are no longer on his lap, and he doesn’t want to acknowledge the pang he feels when the familiar warmth of your body slips out of his grasp.
He turns over to look at you. Your eyes are transfixed on the words in front of you, the glow of the projection illuminating the two of you against the backdrop of the night. In that light, he realises that you’re crying, or at the very least, your eyes are watering as you watch on, but you don’t try to blink them away. Instead, you let them fall silently, and he thinks how unfair it is that you look so heavenly even when tears are rolling down your cheeks.
Before he can stop himself, Suguru reaches out to wipe away a tear with a soft swipe of his thumb. The touch is gentle and delicate, like how one would handle a baby deer – tenderly and carefully to make sure you don’t scare it away. You don’t bat his hand away, and he takes that as an opportunity to let himself linger and feel the warmth radiate off your cheek; how you burn up under his touch and how he wonders if he’s sporting a matching flush.
A beat passes, and when he comes back to his senses, as if horrified by his actions, he jerks his hand away from your face like someone who got too close to a raging wildfire. His shoulders jump up, ready for some sort of divine retribution for his actions, like how Icarus’s wings melted when he flew too close to the sun – but much to his surprise, nothing happens.
You don’t scream bloody murder, you don’t shove him off, nor do you run for the hills; instead, you just look at him all doe-like with those pretty eyes of yours staring back expectantly into his, lips slightly ajar. He muses that he must really like testing fate because he finds himself reaching his hand back once again to caress your face. His thumb accidentally catches the corner of your lip, but instead of pulling away, you lean into his touch, so soft and pliant he wonders if this might be a dream. Your eyes, now wholly focused on him, drop to his lips, and his breath hitches for a second.
For the first time in a while, his mind is finally quiet, and he takes that as a sign to lean forward and press his lips against yours in a chaste kiss before pulling away. Though the kiss is fleeting, it’s enough to already have him hooked; you taste so, so, so divine, and he wonders if he’s been a secret masochist this whole time for depriving himself of you for so long.
If this is the fall, he hopes he never hits the ground.
Like a man possessed, his lips find their way back to yours with a renewed fervour, a second hand moving around to the back of your head in the hopes of keeping you tethered to him. Suguru is everywhere in your senses: his soft lips against yours that taste like the long forgotten coke that he was drinking during the movie, his hands that are intent on committing you to memory, the faint scent of sandalwood and incense emanating off of him like a warm blanket you want to tuck yourself into. He feels you bite down softly on his bottom lip, not hard enough to draw blood, but sharp enough to remind him that you’re there, and he moves to deepen the kiss.
Reaching out to tangle your fist in his shirt only serves to spur him on even more, tilting his head slightly to the side as his tongue darts between your lips. You welcome this intrusion gladly with a quiet moan of your own, your jaw going slack under his touch. Neither of you wants to break for air, as if scared of not having the other’s lips on them for even a split second, settling for shallow gasps instead as you dive back into each other, hands tightening their clutches with lips moving in sync – sucking and biting like that was all that mattered.
“Fuck.” He pants out, chest heaving like he’s just run a marathon. You’re practically huffing for oxygen by this point, kiss-swollen lips agape as you try to come down from it all. Your pupils are so dilated, he feels like he’s staring into a black hole. He doesn’t even want to imagine what he looks like right now. His neat raven hair is probably a nest from the way you ran your fingers through it, but that’s the least of his worries. When your lips start to curve upwards, he feels a similar euphoric smile start to tug on the corners of his mouth, and an easy giggle escapes you.
Your hand is still tangled in his shirt, and he’s sure you can practically feel the erratic beat of his heart. Like two opposing poles, the two of you start moving back towards each other, lips barely ghosting the other’s until you’re jolted apart by the sound of ever-approaching footsteps. Suddenly, Suguru scrambles away from you and stands up like he’s been snapped out of a trance.
“Shit, I– I have to go.” He splutters out pathetically, panicked glances dart between you and the door as he stumbles towards the exit in a daze. Your pleas for him to stay just fall on deaf ears; he’s already too far gone down the hallways to the point they’ve faded into the night. A million thoughts run through his head, some good though most of them are bad, and his hand drifts up to touch his lips, still slightly swollen from the kiss. Instinctually, he wets them with his tongue, and he finds that they still taste like you – the feeling of your lips lingering like an aftershock.
When he’s managed to get far enough away that the only thing he sees when he turns back is the endless darkness of the dorm hallways, only one thought rings true in his head. What has he done?