Archive of Our Own

Satoru is too impatient to wait to be picked up. He shoots off a text to Ijichi, telling him not to bother pulling up to the airport’s pick-up area. Instead, he activates his cursed technique, and teleports home.

The space between him and the estate shrinks, and the scenery around him is compressed and distorted. In a handful of steps, he’s home. It is dark; there’s a light on near the kitchens, but it isn’t Suguru whose silhouette moves behind the screen. Through their bond, Satoru can feel the beat of his mate’s heart as though it were in his own chest, the quietness of his thoughts. He missed being able to feel what he was feeling while he was traveling, with an ocean between them. With that distance of kilometers reduced to meters, even without seeing him, Satoru can reach out, and know his mate is safe in their bed.

There’s a servant waiting to greet him at the door, but he brushes her off. Kicks his shoes off at the entrance and exchanges them for a pair of plain, white slippers. Though the halls are dark, he doesn’t need light to navigate. Even if his cursed technique didn’t show him the obstacles in his path, where to turn around corners, he would have the route committed to memory. His feet carry him to their bedroom.

Suguru is tucked under the covers of the bed, his breathing slow and even. He looks just the same as when Satoru left him, though the swell of his stomach is rounder, where it rests on the c-shaped pillow he holds. Scattered around him are scraps of clothing; one of Satoru’s work jackets rests over him, and his head rests on a sweater. Socks and scarves and pants form a makeshift nest. In Satoru’s absence, it seems, this is what brings him comfort, though the scent on them is so faint, Satoru can barely smell it. He shouldn’t have had all of his clothes laundered before he left, he thinks.

“Suguru,” he whispers, kneeling on the edge of the bed. He takes the jacket, and tosses it to the floor, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Suguru—”

In his chest, the second heartbeat lurches. Suguru stiffens under his touch, but he doesn’t respond.

“Suguru—”

Suguru sits up in bed, and the burst of white-hot anger in Satoru’s chest feels like he’s been shot. He leans over the edge of the bed in silence, snatches up the discarded jacket, and pulls it back over himself. His sandalwood and cedar scent has turned rotten with his frustration, so thick in the air Satoru could gag on it. What little Satoru can see of his face is a bright red, from his cheeks to his ears. Satoru tries to find his voice, to ask what the hell just happened, but his mind is too occupied going over the past few weeks’ events, searching for an event or memory that could explain it, that he can’t manage to get out the words.

Instead, Satoru stands, silent, and heads out of the bedroom, to go find a couch or a spare bed to sleep on. Outside of the room, though, he finds he can’t take another step. He’ll wait outside the bedroom, he decides, until morning. With reverse cursed energy, he doesn’t have to sleep anyways. It’s something he chooses to do, to spend all night with Suguru in their bed, holding him in his arms.

Slumping against the wall, he slides down to the floor, letting his head fall back. Maybe he’ll be calmer in the morning…

***

“I don’t get it, Shoko,” Satoru groans, head thumping against the table. Thunk, thunk. thunk—

A hand slides between his brow and the wood. “Protect that brain of yours, or you never will.”

He slumps, and Shoko pulls her hand back, letting him collapse onto the tabletop. While the beta’s apartment is a hovel compared to the luxury of the Gojo Clan’s estate, it’s comfortable, and located on the school’s grounds so she’s accessible when she needs to be. Her long shifts in the morgue and proximity to the school means that Satoru goes to her apartment more often than she visits the estate. When she does, it’s to visit Suguru, who can’t leave the grounds, contained there by Satoru’s wards.

“He was fine before I left on the trip,” Satoru mumbles. Suguru had helped Satoru pack, and had walked with him to the car. He’d been smiling when Satoru drove off, one hand on his belly and the other waving to him. “He sounded fine on the phone, too.” Satoru called him every day of his trip, morning and night, whenever he got the chance, and his mate never seemed upset. He talked about wanting him to be home soon, but he’d sounded more eager than melancholic. “Have you talked to him since I came back?”

“Only to schedule another ultrasound.”

Suguru is thirty-six weeks along now, and the twins could come at any time. For the first few appointments, Shoko would take all of her obstetric equipment to the estate in the back of her car. Satoru bought equipment of his own to turn one of the estate’s spare rooms into a makeshift medical office when he got tired of her complaining about the effort involved in transporting her supplies.

“You could ask the twins,” Shoko suggests.

“I already did.” As part of their arrangement, Suguru isn’t allowed to see Mimiko and Nanako unsupervised, not until the girls are adults, but he is allowed to call them, so long as the girls’ current guardian is present. He thought Suguru might have told them something, but neither of them knew what could have caused Suguru’s sudden change in mood. Or rather, Nanako didn’t know. In the time since he met the girls, following Suguru’s arrest and the dissolution of his cult, Mimiko has refused to talk to him, other than to ask when she can see Suguru again. Nanako was more forthcoming.

“And you’ve already asked him, right—”

“You think I’m stupid?” Satoru grouses. He spent hour  bugging Suguru about why he was so upset.

“Don’t pretend like you’ve always been that attentive,” Shoko scolds.

Ouch. Satoru’s frown deepens. “I tried, back during our time at the college. And I’m still trying.”

“I know you’re trying.” Shoko pats his shoulder. “But I also think you want to pretend you know what’s going on in his head just because you’re mates. I don’t think even he knows, not since we were all teenagers.”

Satoru supposes she has a point. He gets impressions of Suguru’s feelings, shares his heartbeat, but he can’t read his mind. If only that were a power of the Six Eyes, he never would have let Suguru leave in the first place. The wound that Riko’s death left on him would never have festered as it did, all of his resentment and fear and hatred. But that wound is healing, or so he thought.

“He wouldn’t talk to me at all. I could wait until he gets over whatever it is that’s bothering him, but…”

“He could hold a grudge until the world ends,” Shoko snorts. “I agree, it’s better to figure out what it is now, and apologize for it. Though maybe all this effort is pointless, and it’s just his hormones affecting him.”

“And if it’s not?” Satoru asks.

Shoko retracts her hand. “He’s not going to leave again, Gojo. Not that he could, even if he wanted to.”

Suguru left when they were teenagers because Satoru couldn’t tell that he was hurting. Now, he can feel his pain, as sharp as a knife in his chest, and Satoru can’t figure out how to make him feel better. He can’t fix the problem without knowing what it is, and Suguru has refused to tell him. He wheedled and begged, brought him his favorite breakfast in bed, offered to take him on a walk through the gardens, suggested he do a video call with the twins. None of his attempts to raise his mood or make him open up about his feelings worked. And now, he’s sulking at home while Satoru begs their friend for advice.

“Let’s go over what happened again,” Shoko suggests. “Maybe there’s something there that we didn’t see, that we’ll see now.”

Satoru sighs, and slumps back into his chair. “The elders asked me to go and meet with some exorcists overseas—”

“And he didn’t want you to go,” Shoko interrupts.

“He was worried that I’d be gone when the babies come,” Satoru corrects, “but I wouldn’t have missed the birth. I would have come straight home, if he texted, and told me they were coming. And I’m here now.”

“He had a list of sorcerers he suggested go instead—”

“None of which could have handled the situation as well as I could,” Satoru reminds her. There was a massive spike in cursed spirit activity without a clear cause. He handled the extra work, for a short time, until the situation resolved itself. “Suguru didn’t think there was someone better for the task. He just wanted me home.”

“Don’t you think that could be the problem?” Shoko prods.

“No. Not unless I stayed a day too long.” It has to have been something that happened in the past twenty four hours, while he was traveling and out of communication. Satoru leans back in his seat, and combs his hair with his hands, pushing back his bangs. “Do you think it’s that I woke him up late last night?”

Shoko laughs in his face. “Have you tried apologizing for it?”

“Yes.”

“Then that can’t be it,” Shoko assures. It’s true. Suguru is weak to Satoru’s apologies, when he’s being sincere. He can tell the difference when he’s doing it to placate. “You’ll have to think harder than that, Gojo.”

Satoru groans. “I flew home. I went straight to the bedroom when I got to the house, and he was in bed—”

“Has he been nesting?”

“He raided our closet for my clothes, and made a nest with them.” Most nests would be made with more substantial textiles, thick blankets designed for the purpose, and when Suguru complained over the phone that his instincts were starting to kick in, Satoru ordered a bunch to be sent to the house. Suguru didn’t appear to have used them in his nest’s construction. “But he hasn’t made a real nest.”

“Gojo,” Shoko says, and her sharp tone makes him jerk his head to look at her. The bored, uninterested expression she’d been wearing throughout the conversation has been replaced with one of incredulity. “You didn’t think to tell me that before?”

***

“It’s the nest, isn’t it?”

It doesn’t get an outright denial. Suguru’s thin lips press together into a line, and he turns to look out the window; hiding his face doesn’t hide the surprise that Satoru can feel across the bond. He sits on the couch with a fan in hand; this summer has been hotter and more humid than usual, and the pregnancy makes him overheat easily. “You were rude, when you came home.”

“I shouldn’t have moved things without asking,” Satoru agrees. “I’m sorry for it.”

The tightness in his chest relaxes, and Satoru thinks he’s resolved the issue. Except the grip around his heart tightens again a moment later. Suguru worries the ring around his finger, twisting it and pulling on it, but never taking it off. Suguru won’t leave him, Shoko was right about that, but Satoru can’t help but worry that he wants to, sometimes. That their life together is something he settled for.

“Satoru,” he says, as if he’s about to ask a question, but he doesn’t. He leaves his name hanging in the air.

Satoru tries waiting him out. And when he doesn’t finish what he was going to tell him, he kneels down on the ground in front of his mate, and reaches for his hands. Suguru lets him clasp them; he rubs his thumb across Suguru’s ring, which matches the silver band around his own finger. “Tell me what you need from me, Suguru, and I’ll do my best to provide it. I would do anything, if you asked it of me.”

Suguru looks at him down the high bridge of his nose, his dark lashes fluttering against his cheeks. Both of them are nearing their thirties, and Suguru’s face has matured with age, but looking at him inspires the same, bright affection that it did their first spring, when Satoru learned what it felt like to be in love. He never stopped loving him, in the years they were apart. He’s never asked Suguru whether he fell out of love with him, not because he’s embarrassed to ask, but because he doesn’t want to know the answer.

“You were honest with me when you said that you wanted a home with me,” Suguru says, his voice halting, “right? That you would put our family above everything else. Even jujutsu society, and the school…”

“I meant it,” Satoru answers in a heartbeat.

But the corners of Suguru’s pressed lips turn downward, his eyes hardening. “I miss my girls, Satoru.”

Satoru doesn’t like the direction the conversation has taken. “We could give them a call.”

“No,” Suguru insists, “I don’t want them attending the Kyoto school anymore.”

“Where has this come from?” Satoru asks, thinking back to the last time they spoke about Mimiko and Nanako. The twins are living in Kyoto with their foster parents, and were doing well with their training, last he heard. Satoru’s own students will be competing against them soon, in the coming goodwill event.

“I’ve been thinking about why you let the higher-ups assign them to Kyoto.”

“Because they wanted to continue their education,” Satoru reminds him. It was the twins’ choice. Satoru wouldn’t have let them be forced into it if they didn’t want to, but it was Suguru that taught them to embrace their cursed techniques, and with him unable to keep teaching them, and the higher-ups’ reluctance to let Satoru be their teacher, their remaining option was to attend the Kyoto school.

Suguru’s frown deepens. “I’m not upset about that.”

Satoru groans. “Then what are you upset with?”

“You promised me that you would put me and our family first, when I agreed to be your mate.” In his hospital bed, bandages wrapped around his waist and head, Suguru had seemed so frail. And the higher-ups were threatening to have him executed if Satoru couldn’t find a way to rein him in. The solution was to marry him; he would be saving Suguru’s life and bonding himself to his best friend. Suguru had been hard to convince, but he’d wanted it, too. Had wanted the life Satoru offered him, even if it was one overseen by the council, and stuck in the Gojo Clan’s estate until he’s found to be rehabilitated. “But you’re still doing whatever the elders tell you to do. Going on missions for them, letting them arrange things according to their plans. None of them are interested in protecting my girls.”

“Your girls have me,” Satoru reminds him, but Suguru shakes his head.

“A mission was assigned to them, without an adult overseeing it. It was while you were overseas.”

There’s anger pulsing across the bond again. He says the word, overseas, with palpable resentment. Suguru is gripping his fingers tight enough to make his joints ache, but Satoru doesn’t pry his hands out of his grasp. It wasn’t the trip itself, then, but something that happened while he was on it, as he thought. While messing with his nest made him angrier with him, as Shoko thought, it wasn’t the main reason.

“The girls agreed not to tell me, but Nanako slipped up, the night you were flying home,” Suguru explains. Satoru wishes they could have told him that, when they must have known Suguru would be angry with him over it. “You promised me you wouldn’t let them send them on missions alone. That there would be some sort of oversight—”

“The higher-ups went behind my back, then,” Satoru insists. Half of his anger is his own, now. He agreed to stop pushing the issue of the girls’ living situation so long as the higher-ups agreed not to put them in danger. At least, no more danger than what’s needed for them to be trained as sorcerers. “Because I made our expectations of them clear.”

“Not clear enough, evidently.” Suguru pulls his hands back, resting them on the swell of his belly. “Are you going to let them put our twins in danger, too, and use them for missions? They care nothing for the future generation, either.”

“They won’t have to become sorcerers if they don’t want to,” Satoru reminds him.

Suguru sighs. “With you as their father, they will. But the system hasn’t changed,” Suguru covers his face, “not since we were in school.”

Not since Haibara was killed. Not since Riko caught a bullet to the head. Not since Satoru himself almost met his end.

“Most of the elders will be dead by the time the little ones are ready to start their training.” Satoru reaches out, and touches Suguru’s belly. A kick meets his palm; his son, he thinks, sensing the cursed energy surrounding him. “We’ll be the ones in charge by then.”

“You know they will never let me on the council,” Suguru reminds him. “I’m counting on you, Satoru, to protect them.” His hand shifts, so it’s covering Satoru’s. “Please, don’t let me down. I don’t want to be left with an empty nest.”

You wouldn’t be, Satoru wants to tell him, but even if he puts his foot in his mouth sometimes, he’s aware that that would be the wrong thing to say. He’s the strongest sorcerer in the world, and it’s up to the strong to protect the weak. Suguru is strong, but he won’t be allowed to return to sorcerer work for a long time, if he ever is, and so Satoru will carry the burden of protecting the next generation for both of them.

“I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again, Suguru,” Satoru promises. I’ll protect all of you, he thinks, sending a pulse of cursed energy to the babes in Suguru’s womb. “Put your trust in me again.”

Suguru narrows his eyes at him, suspicious. “Don’t do anything drastic, please.”

“I won’t,” Satoru assures. It’s telling that Suguru feels like he even has to say it. Satoru’s not the same reckless kid he once was. But Suguru has spent the last year getting to know him again, and the ways his defection changed him. “Not unless you asked.”

At last, Suguru’s expression softens. He smiles, though it’s still not with all his heart. “I’ll trust you, then.”

Suguru doesn’t stop him as Satoru sits on the couch next to him, nor does he push him away as he wraps his arms around his shoulders and pulls him against his chest, pressing his nose into his hair. Suguru’s belly comes between them, but he doesn’t mind it. He knows that Suguru’s girls, and the children inside of him, are his whole world; Satoru has just recently started to make himself a part of it again. It has been wearing on Suguru, being separated from Nanako and Mimiko, and if that separation has become too much for him, then it’s time for it to end. Next time, he won’t be left in an empty nest when Satoru leaves.

Breathing in Suguru’s scent, calm and content again, he’s able to relax for the first time since returning home. He’d missed having his mate in his arms; it will be a long time before he agrees to travel internationally for the higher-ups again. He’s traveled before, in the year since Suguru re-entered his life, but he’s found the limit, he thinks, for Suguru’s patience. And for the amount of time he can spend away before the higher-ups start acting behind his back. He’ll need to determine whether it was intentional or not, timing the girls’ mission to when he would be away long enough for them to get away with it.

There’s an obvious path forward, he thinks. It’s just up to whether or not he can pull it off without ruining the fragile peace he’s created. It took a lot of maneuvering to get himself and Suguru to where they are, and he doesn’t want to mess it up. But it’s not fair to keep Suguru’s daughters from him, not when their occupation is inherently a dangerous one. It will be another two years before they are allowed to visit him.

Which means that Satoru will have to change the terms of their agreement with the higher-ups.

***

Ijichi looked so exhausted when the girls clamber out of his car, Satoru took pity on him, and sent him back to the school with the rest of the day off. He lugged the girls’ suitcases into the house himself, ignoring the help that’s offered to him by servants, and led them to their rooms. Nanako’s belongings fit into four suitcases, while her sister brought two, and a large wooden chest that Satoru did leave to the staff. He’s surprised Ijichi managed to fit it all in the car’s trunk.

Mimiko is currently unpacking her belongings in the room adjacent to her twin’s, all of her books and dolls and clothes, things Suguru must have bought for her, over the years since he rescued them from their village. But while Mimiko immediately set to making the room her own, Nanako has taken her time to examine the room that’s been given to her. She stands in the window and looks out into the courtyard, and Satoru can tell she’s impressed, given she has nothing negative to say about it. She wouldn’t be afraid to voice her complaints if she had them. She flops into her pink bedsheets, snatching a pillow to hold against her chest.

“You really outdid yourself,” Nanako declares. She kicks her legs against the comforter on top of it, and rolls, testing the softness of the mattress. “It reminds me of our old house.”

It wasn’t a house, not really, but Satoru doesn’t correct her. The twins have only ever known one home in their life, and it was with Suguru. It doesn’t matter that it was Suguru’s cult compound. He made the twins feel safe there.

The twins had to share a bedroom in their foster home. He asked her for a shortlist of things she’d want in a room of her own, and got a much longer list than he’d expected. It was a lot to pull together in such a short amount of time, but his students were more than willing to go shopping with him for their teacher’s pregnant mate’s daughters; he didn’t mention to them that those same girls would soon be their classmates. He would have taken the girls themselves, were they not so busy packing, and had he trusted them to get everything ready without making Suguru aware of their presence in the house. He paid a moving company instead, while he distracted his pregnant mate with a massage and a movie night.

He promised Suguru that he would take care of the situation, but he hadn’t wanted to promise him that he would bring his girls home. He would have killed all of the higher-ups without hesitation, if Suguru asked him to, but he didn’t. Suguru wouldn’t want that, not when it would just put a target on both of their backs, and prevent Satoru from protecting young sorcerers the way they both want to. And so he’d been forced to renegotiate with them, even though he could have used force to get his way.

Instead, he threatened to stop working for them, and that was just as effective. And if they ask him to go on more missions, to punish him for going against them, then so be it. With Okkotsu and the others learning so quickly, it won’t be long before he can start trusting easier missions to them, those he knows the kids will be capable of handling solo, so he can shift some of the workload onto them. He’s certain the twins will be annoyed with him once they realize he’s going to be their sitter from here on out. It will be a long time before Suguru decides he’s comfortable with them working on their own.

“You’re too slow. Hurry up and unpack,” Satoru scolds. “I still haven’t told Suguru you’re here.”

He can feel through their bond that the longer he’s out of his mate’s sight, the more anxious Suguru has become. And if he gets too anxious, he might brave the stairs alone and come down to check on him. 

Nanako rolls her eyes, and doesn’t move to get out of her new bed. “I didn’t know you could keep a secret for so long.”

Satoru ignores the jab. “You scented that blanket for me, right?”

There’s a blue one tucked beneath his arm. Nanako received a matching pink blanket in the mail, and was supposed to sleep with it in her bed long enough to make her scent cling to it. It’s a gift for Suguru; though the girls are too old to be sleeping in a nest with their adoptive mother, packs share clothing items and blankets for comfort, and Suguru has endured without his girls’ scents for long enough.

“It’s in the tote,” Nanako gestures lazily towards a pink bag tossed haphazardly near the door.

He opens it up, and one whiff of its contents tells him the girl did as he asked her to do. He tucks the pink blanket beneath his arm, the fabric crumpled. There’s a stain on it, coffee, he determines from its smell, but he can’t have the servants launder it, or it would ruin its purpose. At least Suguru won’t mind the stain, he’s certain, so long as it carries his daughter’s scent. Knowing how emotional Suguru has been as he’s neared the end of his pregnancy, receiving it will move him to tears, and that’s before Satoru reveals his true surprise. He broke his promise of keeping the girls safe at school, but he’s more than made up for it with what he’s managed to pull off for him now, he thinks. His guilt has been assuaged.

“How long until I get to see Geto-sama again?” Nanako whines, rolling onto her stomach and leaning on her hands.

She’s been pestering him about it since he told her about the plan, over texts and phone calls. While Satoru can understand that she’s impatient to see him, that impatience has been getting on his nerves.

“Not much longer,” Satoru assures.

He’s made Suguru wait to see the girls long enough, and he hasn’t even told him that’s what he’s waiting for. Suguru thinks he’s having a meeting with his students right now, not the twins, though it wasn’t technically a lie. The twins will be his students, once their break is over. It will be the largest class he’s had to handle, but as the teachers at the Kyoto school were their introduction to formal education, at least he won’t be responsible for teaching them how to sit still in lessons and follow instructions.

Suguru did well on his own, teaching the twins the math and literature and science he learned during his own time in public school, before he was recruited to become a sorcerer, but he was a cult’s leader. He knew how to make people listen to him when he spoke. Satoru is lucky to go a full lesson without interruptions from his students, wanting to ask clarifying questions or change the lesson’s topic.

“If you take longer than ten minutes,” Nanako warns, “I’ll find him myself.”

Satoru laughs at the threat. “Good luck finding your way around without a guide!”

He himself got lost often as a child, wandering the sprawling halls and rooms and gardens of the estate. It took Suguru weeks to learn it, as well. There’s no way Nanako is finding Suguru in his bedroom without someone to show her to it.

Satoru shuts the door behind him, and for good measure, puts a ward on it. Mimiko doesn’t need one, but he trusts that Nanako will make good on her threat, if it takes that long to bring Suguru to her. He’ll tolerate the scolding he’ll receive for it so long as it means he’s allowed his surprise. And she has her phone with her, if she needs something in the ten minutes it will take for him to fetch Suguru.

He hurries through the hall, taking the stairs two at a time. The servants he passes give him odd glances as he rushes past them, carrying the brightly colored blankets under his arms, but he’s single-minded in his race to reach his wife. He slams the door to their bedroom open, and though Suguru startles, almost throwing the book in his hands at Satoru, he softens when he realizes that it’s his husband that burst into the room, and not an intruder. He closes the book, and sets it on the nightstand.

Suguru has cleared out the clothes in his nest and replaced them with the other blankets Satoru bought for him, which he spent hours scenting for him. But his nesting instinct still isn’t satisfied. He looks at the blankets in Satoru’s arms with both suspicion and want, sitting up straighter in bed. He must recognize it as more nesting material. He’s right, though Satoru’s gift is far more than just scented blankets.

Suguru smiles brightly, reaching out in anticipation as Satoru approaches the bed. “What did you get me?”

He doesn’t need to explain. Satoru presses the blankets into his arms, and Suguru goes silent, nostrils flaring. He raises them to his face.

Suguru takes a long, deep breath, inhaling the scent that clings to the blankets. Both girls are betas, but their scents have saturated the fabric. “Satoru,” Suguru chokes out, and as he predicted, tears well up in his eyes. “You really did this for me…”

Satoru sits down on the edge of their bed with him, satisfied with himself. It was worth the preparation, to feel Suguru’s joy filling up his own chest, and to smell it in his scent, which has turned sweet and floral. He’s been happier these past few months than he was the first months they spent together, following Suguru’s attack on the school and their overdue reunion. But he hasn’t seen him as happy as he is now.

And Satoru is about to make him even happier. “I brought them here,” Satoru declares.

Suguru’s brows pull together, and his smile falters. “The blankets?”

Satoru’s grin widens. “Nanako and Mimiko. We can go and see them, if you want.”

In an instant, Suguru’s happiness is replaced with shock. “You went against the higher-ups for me?”

“I had their permission to bring them,” Satoru is quick to assure.

Suguru relaxes some, though he’s not nearly as excited to see them as Satoru thought he would be. He looks anxiously to the door, and clutches the blankets to his chest, chewing on his lip. “And the girls, they wanted to come here…”

“I wouldn’t have forced them, if they didn’t.” Of course the girls wanted to come live with their savior, their mother. They lived with Suguru for ten years of their lives after he rescued them from a life of abuse and squalor.

Suguru’s relief is obvious. Why he thinks Satoru would have forced the girls to live with them, he can’t imagine, but there will soon come a day when both of them know each other again. Until then, both of them will have to make an effort; Satoru feels privileged to even have this second chance, to relearn all of Suguru’s expressions, what annoys him, what his worries are. A year ago, he thought he’d never have this again. And here he is, with his pregnant mate, getting to build a family with him.

“You’re too good for me,” Suguru sighs, softening and relaxing. With his concern soothed, the giddiness Satoru expected from him returns.

With a groan of exertion, Suguru swings his legs out of bed. He’s thirty eight weeks along, now, and walking has become harder for him. Satoru follows him out of bed and holds out an arm for his mate, and he clutches it, leveraging himself to his feet. The blankets are left behind, forgotten in Suguru’s eagerness to see his girls in person. Satoru had worried for a moment that he’d be unhappy with his surprise, but he’s relieved that Suguru was so quick to adjust to his new reality. Yesterday, he was only allowed supervised contact with his girls, and after today, he will be able to see them every day.

Satoru leads him back through the hall and downstairs, Suguru careful with each step, without being able to see where he’s putting his feet. He keeps a hand under his belly, supporting it, but as soon as he reaches the bottom of the steps, he’s rushing ahead of Satoru without knowing where he’s going. Satoru has to steer him towards the twins’ new bedrooms; he almost goes straight past them, towards the sitting room.

“This is where I put them.” Satoru grabs Suguru’s shoulders, pulling him back against his chest. “I can move them upstairs, if you want, but I figured you’d want to keep the office and the nursery where they are—”

“I didn’t think these were guest rooms,” Suguru interrupts, brows pulling together again as he tries to recall what was there before. They sat empty before Satoru decided to give them to the twins. “There was nothing in them, just a few weeks ago.”

“I decorated them for the girls,” Satoru explains. At Suguru’s clear surprise, he elaborates, “I figured we’re close enough to the technical college for them to have rooms here to themselves..”

“Rooms to themselves,” Suguru repeats, his voice wet and hopeful, “are they going to visit often?”

It’s not a visit if they’re living there. Satoru grins. “They’re here to stay,” he tells him, and flings the door to Mimiko’s room open.

She’s kneeling on the ground, organizing a shelf of figurines, but looks up at the sound. Leaping to her feet without a word, she throws herself across the room, and if it weren’t for Satoru standing behind him, her embrace would have knocked him over. Before Satoru can scold her, Suguru pulls her hard against his chest, pushing his face into her neck and combing a hand through her hair. Satoru sees the shaking of his shoulders before he hears his sob of relief, and feels it in his own chest, a sudden lightness.

“I missed you so much, Geto-sama,” Mimiko sniffles.

Suguru looks to Satoru, for some sort of encouragement or explanation, but he’s already moving towards Nanako’s room, and opening her door, too. He was quick enough that she’s still in bed where he left her, but she leaps to her feet as soon as Satoru pokes his head in, beckoning her out. He barely remembers to take down the ward he’d placed on the door before she’s rushing out, throwing herself down the hall.

“Geto!” Nanako shouts.

Suguru throws out an arm, reaching for the girl before he’s even turned to look at her. She tucks herself beneath it, hugging Suguru and her sister, and instead of a sob, the next sound that comes out of him is laughter. He holds both of his girls against his sides, leaning down to scent them, and Satoru leans against the wall, content to watch their reunion. It’s been a year since Suguru has been able to hold his girls, and Satoru can be patient, waiting for his praise. He has to disentangle himself from the girls at some point.

Except he doesn’t. He spreads his arms even wider, and Satoru understands the invitation. His arms are long enough to wrap around his mate and both girls, though the twins stiffen under his touch. He’ll get them to like him soon enough. They like crepes, he recalls; he’ll make some for them in the morning, and bring them breakfast in bed, and that should be enough to win them over, he thinks. He’s already made a good impression on Nanako, he thinks, with the effort he went to in preparing her room. Mimiko will be harder to win over, given she’s been more hostile towards him in their previous interactions.

“Thank you, Satoru,” Suguru mumbles, voice muffled into his twins’ hair.

Their reunion is well worth the hassle it was to orchestrate. “I told you,” he reminds him, “I would do whatever you asked me to do.”

Suguru laughs, wet and pleased. “I didn’t think I was asking for this much.”

No. But he asked him to protect his girls, and Satoru will make sure he does. There’s no place safer than the estate for them.

***

“They’re so small,” Mimiko whispers, stroking her fingers across her sister’s downy white hair.

“Twins are usually smaller than single babies,” Suguru explains. Reclined in his nest, he holds their newborn twins in his arms, their older girls on either side of him. It’s been almost two full days since the twins were born, and though he’s still exhausted, the color has returned to his cheeks, and his smile is radiant. He has all four of his children with him. “You were probably the same size when you were born.”

Nanako takes her brother’s little hand in hers, rubbing the back of it with her thumb. He clutches at her on reflex, and her cheeks pinken. She was the more reluctant of the twins to meet them, but she seems just as smitten with them as her sister is.

“Can I hold him?” Nanako asks, far shier than the bold girl Satoru has come to know over the past few days.

Suguru is gentle as he lowers his arm, so Nanako can take her brother into her own arms. Of course, Mimiko wants to take her sister, too. The girls sit up in the nest, and move so they’re kneeling in front of each other, hunched over their little siblings. Suguru leans to the side, and holds out a hand; Satoru leans forward in his seat to reach for him, taking it. Their rings brush against each other.

“You can take them to the nursery now, and put them in their cribs,” Suguru encourages the twins. Satoru’s smile widens. “I’m too tired to keep holding them. Maybe you can read them a story, too.”

Nanako gets up, but Mimiko looks more uncertain. “I don’t want to drop her…”

“You won’t,” Suguru assures. As if he himself wasn’t worried about dropping the newborns. But Satoru chooses not to call him out on it. Suguru is anxious enough without Satoru reminding him of his worries.

Mimiko gets up, and follows her sister out the door, their little siblings in their arms. With both sets of twins gone, Suguru is able to relax, his eyes slipping shut. Satoru leans both elbows against the bed, and holds Suguru’s hand against his face, turning to press a kiss to the back of it. Suguru tightens his grip, and looks up at him through his long black lashes, his amber eyes filled with warmth. With his other hand, he pushes back the stray hairs that had fallen out of his bun, tucking them behind his ears.

“You don’t have to sit so far away,” he says softly. He pats the bed next to him. “Join me, Satoru.”

Satoru has been waiting for the invitation. He clambers into bed with him, into the nest he helped build, and folds his long limbs into it, curling around Suguru. His mate relaxes into his arms with a content sigh, and when Satoru places a hand over his belly, where their twins had been, just last week, Suguru covers it with his own. He fiddles with the dark material of his sweater, hand-knitted, he thinks. The girls have been hard at work, making sure Suguru is comfortable in his nest. He’s wearing soft socks, too, that rub against Satoru’s ankles as their legs tangle together in bed. Satoru rubs his face against his cheek.

More clothing has found its way back into Suguru’s nest, a scarf he recognizes from Nanako’s closet, a cardigan from Mimiko’s, socks from Satoru’s drawer. But he doesn’t complain. Suguru built his nest to feel safe in it, and if that means he has to drag half their wardrobes into bed with them, then Satoru will sleep on a pile of coats and pants. He’s content that Suguru used all the blankets he contributed.

“I’m glad you’re my mate,” Suguru breathes, and Satoru’s own breath hitches, “and that I chose to stay with you.”

“It’s not like you had much choice,” Satoru mumbles into his nape.

Suguru ignores him. “You managed to pull this off… maybe next year we could go to the beach. I’d wanted to be free before their graduation. We could all go to the coast, or an amusement park, or—”

“Don’t get too ambitious,” Satoru warns. There’s only so much he can pull off without going to lengths Suguru wouldn’t want him to. It’s one thing to let two girls live with him that wanted to live with him, and made their foster parent’s life insufferable until Satoru asked the higher-ups to let them move. Getting them to agree to his release would be nearly impossible. “Maybe we can go to the school first.”

The higher-ups would be more amenable to that, he thinks. There are other sorcerers there that could contain him if he tried to attack again, despite having only a handful of cursed spirits remaining inside him. Satoru knows he has no intention of harming the school again, or continuing to pursue his goals, but the higher-ups won’t ever believe he’s fit to be free. It will be up to Satoru to prove it.

Suguru laughs, shoulders shaking with it. “That’s not very romantic as a date.”

“Isn’t this romantic enough?” Satoru protests. “Laying here together, in the nest we built…”

“It’s romantic,” Suguru agrees. He turns to press a kiss to the corner of Satoru’s lips, chaste and sweet, and Satoru grins, tucking his face into Suguru’s shoulder and kissing the bonding mark he placed there.