Chapter Text
The curse they’re fighting is a monstrous thing that’s taken the form of a pelican. It’s almost at the end of its rope when it gets a lucky hit on Suguru, its sharp talons nicking Suguru’s arm as he is a split second too late to dodge the creature’s lunge towards him.
Suguru moves to retaliate, but he doesn’t get the chance before Satoru’s Blue obliterates the curse. Suguru turns to meet Satoru’s wild eyes. For a split second, Suguru looks at Satoru exactly how the rest of the world does, but then Satoru trips over a gnarled tree root on his path towards Suguru, and Suguru’s back to looking at him as just Satoru again. Suguru tries and fails to stop himself from laughing at Satoru’s affronted look at the offending object, so Satoru turns his accusing gaze towards Suguru instead.
‘Hey, you cant get mad at me. I’m an invalid,’ Suguru says, raising his arms up in mock defeat. He motions towards the truly insignificant cut on the side of his arm.
‘Oh, of course. I’ll show compassion to the weak, then. Just like you’re always pestering me to do.’
‘You lost to me every sparring session this week. Who’re you calling weak?’
Suguru is correct. Suguru has, in fact, come out triumphant in every spar so far this week, and by this point is generally on the same level as Satoru for most things regarding combat. Satoru pretends to be peeved about the competition sometimes. He’s pretty sure his glee at having someone who can keep up with him is obvious, though, if the fond looks Suguru is always giving him are anything to go off.
‘Here look, I’ll bandage it for you, remember when Shoko gave us those little first aid kits last Christmas? She’ll be so proud they’re getting used. It’s like her spirit is with us cheering us on.’
‘I think if Shoko heard you say that she’d gut you with a scalpel. Also, you don’t know first aid.’
‘Yeah, I do. Watch this.’
The cut is not deep enough to need stitches, and really, it’s the sort of injury that neither of them would usually even bother to treat in the field. Shoko will heal it in two seconds flat when they get back to the school, though she will definitely complain about them wasting her time. But nevertheless, Satoru has committed to carrying out this first aid on principle.
Satoru fumbles around in his backpack, which has just been retrieved by one of Suguru’s flying curses from wherever he’d flung it at the start of the mission. He pulls out a slightly crumpled metal tin with a red cross painted on the top and picks out the supplies that look right- gauze, a roll of bandages and some tape. He’s seen people do this on TV. He can figure it out.
Satoru makes a big show of cleaning the wound with an antiseptic wipe.
‘We’re going to need a tourniquet, I think. It’ll have to be an on field amputation.’
‘Oh really. Do you think I’ll make it,’ Suguru says flatly.
‘We’ll have to see,’ Satoru says in mock contemplation.
He rips a pad of gauze in half haphazardly and presses it to the wound before wrapping a bandage around it to keep the gauze in place, fastening the bandage with a bit of tape.
‘There you are,’ he says, beaming up at Suguru, ‘All better.’
─── ꩜ ⋅ ❤︎ ⋅ ✴︎ ──── ꩜ ⋅ ❤︎ ⋅ ✴︎ ───
There were no drivers available and the mission didn’t take them too far away from Jujutsu Tech, only ten minutes by train, so they’ve been made responsible for finding their own way back. That ten minute long train journey is starting to feel like a lifetime, though. The heat is stifling, and that isn’t helped by the fact that they’ve both just spent approximately an hour chasing an oversized pelican through the streets of Shinjuku.
The inside of the train is muggy and overcrowded, as it’s rush hour. As they walk in, Satoru can feel every heavy particle of air brushing into him and is soon enveloped into the crowd of people.- he kicks himself for overusing his technique during the mission, he’d usually have infinity on during situations like this. He gets an elbow dug into his side and several people stepping on his feet from the masses jostling around, and the swarm of people still pouring onto the train ends up separating him from Suguru.
Someone nearby him has over-applied perfume, in an effort to cover up body odour- which, incidentally, was a wholly unsuccessful endeavour, and has only made the smell worse. The perfume’s sweet, heady scent- vanilla and almond, he thinks- wraps around the carriage, permeating every nook and cranny.
The cloying scent slows down his senses like his nervous system is clogged up with treacle. The smell has already triggered the beginnings of a headache. Perhaps the ancient Europeans were onto something with the miasma theory of disease, Satoru thinks bitterly.
Bright sunlight beams in through the wide windows of the train. As his eyes water, he squints in a vain effort to block out the harsh, burning sensation. The carriage, jam packed with people as it is, has immobilised him, so he isn’t able to reach for where his sunglasses are in his back pocket, if they haven’t fallen out by now. His already overworked technique is, as usual, feeding him a constant stream of information.
A woman down the end of the carriage is arguing passionately on a call with someone, clutching her cracked phone to her ear. She has a novelty phone case shaped like a Sanrio character. A little girl wearing a princess dress drops a bouncy ball and cries for her. The girl has the heightened curse energy levels that signify a sorcerer. A salaryman in the carriage- two meters to the east and one meter north- has a grade four curse digging its claws into his shoulder.
Suguru is to Satoru’s left, hanging onto one of the overhead rails and appearing supremely unbothered by the disastrous situation. Satoru wishes Suguru was closer. Suguru always lets Satoru hold his hand in a (probably painfully) tight grip in situations like this. It doesn’t exactly make the light and sound stop hurting, per se, but somehow the contact still always makes Satoru feel marginally better. His head is pounding now, a persistent dull pain that’s impossible to ignore. The connection between brain and body frays as he starts to feel lightheaded.
It’s been a while since he had an episode like this, but he hasn’t slept properly in days- there’s been lots of assignments due recently. The extra workload and lack of sleep left him already feeling particularly crummy. He could pull himself out of it, force the fog in his mind away, but he almost wants the catharsis.
─── ꩜ ⋅ ❤︎ ⋅ ✴︎ ──── ꩜ ⋅ ❤︎ ⋅ ✴︎ ───
The headache is unbearable by the time they’re walking up the steps to the Jujutsu Tech, every sharp movement sending another jolt of pain ricocheting through Satoru’s skull.
Suguru takes one look at him and must decide that Satoru is going to be too useless to help with the report to Yaga, as he doesn’t even bother trying to coerce Satoru into fulfilling his responsibilities like he usually would. Instead, he softly instructs Satoru to go lie down in his room, tells him that he’ll be there soon.
Satoru’s a little too out of it to even really know what words are coming out of his mouth, but he thinks he complains a little bit about Suguru abandoning him in his time of need. Suguru pushes him lightly in the direction of the dorms.
Satoru heads off to the dorms in a daze, following the familiar route unconsciously. The fluorescent lighting in the hallway is almost as bad as the sunlight. He distantly wonders how anyone at the school manages to cope with them. Though, he’s always been bad with bright lights. When he was a much younger child, before he had mastered the six eyes well enough to be allowed to wear sunglasses, any sunny summer’s day was a tortuously long slog. He’d be lucky if the headache it caused didn’t last all the way through the week.
He stumbles slightly as he trudges through the door of Suguru’s room, which is blissfully cool compared to the horrors of the outside world. He doesn’t have the energy to close the curtains, instead simply collapsing onto Suguru’s bed and burying his face in the thin summer duvet.
Now that he’s further removed from the sensations of the outside world, he’s even more painfully aware of the splitting headache. The flimsy sheets offer some small relief from the bright light, but his head still throbs with every small movement, so he quickly gives up on trying to move around. The afterimages of the all the bright lights from outside cloud his vision, filling it with pulsating blotches that shift colours from blue to green to purple as they slowly fade. His ears are ringing slightly.
The fatigue making it hard to even think about doing anything besides lying prone on Suguru’s bed. He sits wallowing in his misery until finally he hears Suguru open the door to the room.
‘I don’t like the train,’ Satoru announces petulantly, voice cracking, ‘Or the heat.’
‘I can see that. Headache?’ Suguru doesn’t really need to ask. Over the last two years, this- Suguru helping Satoru through everything ranging from actual episodes like this one to mild annoyances- has become a familiar routine. Satoru wonders sometimes if he regrets telling Satoru to come to him when he felt bad, because Satoru pesters him constantly.
‘You know, when I told you to go lie down, I meant for you to lie down on your own bed, not mine,’ Suguru says mildly as he walks through the dorm.
‘What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is yours.’
‘You are incorrigible,’ Suguru mutters under his breath.
Satoru hears the quiet creaking sound of Suguru pulling the cord of the blinds and letting them down- finally plunging the room into darkness.
Suguru sits down at the side of the bed, pressing lightly on Satoru’s side to coax him to turn around. Satoru obliges mindlessly, rolling over towards where he thinks Suguru is. He turns a little too abruptly and knocks his forehead against Suguru’s knee, which Suguru snickers at. Satoru doesn’t have time to complain about Suguru’s callous and uncaring treatment of his languishing best friend before the callous monster in question rests a soothing hand over Satoru’s eyes.
Satoru’s vision being covered doesn’t stop him from being able to see things in the room, but it does allow him to sink into the familiar vision of his six eyes. Instead of the overwhelming abundance of lights and colours, everything within his field of view appears as calculable energy signifiers. This type of seeing has never overwhelmed Satoru the way regular sight does. It’s predictable, and familiar.
At least, for a few blissful seconds before Suguru moves his hand away. Satoru whines in protest, but the hand is quickly replaced by a cool damp flannel over his eyes and gentle fingers running through his hair, lightly massaging his temples.
Focusing on the steady hum of Suguru’s cursed energy, Satoru slips back into a meditative state, the steady pain in his head beginning to ebb away slowly, from the sharp pain to a duller, more manageable, ache.
When Satoru thinks he can handle seeing normally again, he tilts his head to the side cracks open an eye, expecting to see Suguru scrolling through his phone, but Suguru’s gaze is fixed attentively on Satoru. He shuts the eye again before Suguru’s steady gaze makes him start feeling weird. That’s been happening a lot more recently. It’s one of the only things he hasn’t ever talked to Suguru about- and Satoru tells him everything, so that’s saying something. It would just feel wrong, for some reason. Like bringing it up would break something irreparable between them.
‘Lie down with me,’ he says, instead.
‘Aren’t you too warm already? How do you suppose that’ll help you?’ Suguru asks, and Satoru can hear the smile in his voice
‘Worthy trade off. C’mere,’ Satoru says, stretching out an arm to grab blindly at where he thinks Suguru’s hand might be right now.
‘Okay, okay, calm down,’ Suguru says, catching Satoru’s hand in his own and holding it loosely as he moves closer.
Satoru feels the mattress dip as Suguru settles down beside him. He throws an arm over Suguru and embraces him as tightly as is humanly possible, burying his face somewhere he thinks might be Suguru’s neck. It’s true that it is a bit too warm now, but Suguru is like an anchor. The mild discomfort from the heat is offset by the instant peace Satoru feels now that he’s as close as he can possibly be to Suguru. He wriggles around, turning his face to the side so he canpress his ear to Suguru’s heart. When he’s finally comfortable, Satoru sighs over-dramatically. He can feel Suguru’s chest shaking in silent laughter.
‘You are ridiculous,’ Suguru says, but he strokes through Satoru’s hair and runs a placating hand up and down his back, so he can’t be too upset. He goes back to gently massaging Satoru’s head, scratching at his scalp in the way that always somehow makes Satoru’s headaches feel better.
Satoru sinks into the feeling, eyes shut contentedly, completely pliant under Suguru’s steady hands. Satoru is like a particularly malleable variety of clay. Or one of Suguru’s curses, absorbed easily into a harmless orb. Satoru would probably be a really cool curse. Like Gravimon with more eyes, he thinks nonsensically.
‘Feel better now?’
Satoru lets a couple of seconds elapse, lingering just a little while longer in the pleasant bubble before he finally lifts his head up.
Suguru runs a thumb lightly under Satoru’s eye.
‘You haven’t been sleeping well,’ he accuses.
Satoru drops his face back down.
‘Well, we had that mission that had us out until 4 am on Saturday, and then I forgot to do that essay on Monday, so I had to stay up late. Then the new volume of Naruto came out on Tuesday, and I had to read that, obviously, and since this school is Machiavellian, my free time eats into my sleeping time. It can’t be helped,’ Satoru says, voice muffled.
‘I feel like there are definitely better ways for you to manage your time, but alright. Let’s circle back to that later. No reading for you tonight, you should go to bed early,’ Suguru decides.
‘Oh, and do I not get a say in that?’
Suguru ignores him.
‘You should shower first, though, I think theres still some blood on you,’ Suguru says, rubbing harshly at a spot on Satoru’s arm.
Satoru rolls off of Suguru and stretches lazily.
‘Can you wash my hair?’ Satoru wheedles. His headache has gone down enough that he’s probably capable of doing it himself, but Suguru has washed his hair for him a couple times before, when Satoru had one of the really bad migraines that he gets every so often, and he had very much enjoyed it. Tragically, Suguru has been very firm on refusing to let Satoru return the favour, citing Satoru’s “appalling lack of knowledge on hair care,” which is ridiculous. Satoru is sure he’d do just fine.
‘You leech. I’ll leave you here,’ Suguru threatens, but it’s an empty threat, because Satoru knows like he knows the back of his own hand that Suguru would never abandon him, even when it comes to something as trivial as this. Satoru gives Suguru one of those looks, widening his eyes and looking up through his lashes, that generally makes Suguru agree to whatever Satoru is asking with a pink tinge to his face.
Suguru gives him an unimpressed look, but he acquiesces anyway. Score.
─── ꩜ ⋅ ❤︎ ⋅ ✴︎ ──── ꩜ ⋅ ❤︎ ⋅ ✴︎ ───
Satoru tilts his head back, resting it on the cool porcelain edge of the bathtub as Suguru lathers shampoo through Satoru’s hair.
‘Your hair’s getting long,’ Suguru says appraisingly, running his fingers through it,‘You need a trim, I think.’
‘You’re one to talk,’ Satoru cackles.
Suguru tips a full beaker of water directly over Satoru’s face, effectively shutting him up.
‘Hey!’ Satoru splutters indignantly. He flails his hands around, breaking off parts of the towers of bubbles covering the surface of the water and sending them flying through the air.
‘Clearly, you’re feeling much better.’
Satoru settles back down, letting Suguru get back to work.
‘Yeah. It’s fully gone now.’
‘What was it this time? Bright lights?’
Satoru hums in contemplation.
‘It was that perfume on the train that gave me a headache to start with. Could you smell it? I swear, it was so potent that woman must have taken a bath in it. It was this horrendous sickly-sweet scent. Vanilla and almond I think, but whatever it was, it was dreadful. Don’t ever start wearing perfume,’ he instructs Suguru severely, ‘I think we’d have to stop being friends.’
‘Sure, Satoru,’ Suguru says, laughing again.
Satoru doesn’t know why he’s laughing. This is a very serious subject.
‘Anyway you’re right, the sun was really bright, too,’ he muses. And rush hour numbers of people crammed into that carriage, and I was jammed between people so I couldn’t even reach my sunglasses.’
‘You really do need to be more careful with those.’
‘God, you sound like Shoko.’
‘Shoko’s studying medicine and she knows what she’s talking about, so I fail to see how that’s a negative,’ Suguru says snarkily, ‘And she’s right, you really should look into a better way of covering those eyes of yours. Those glasses fall of and break all the time. What about a blindfold or something?’
‘Eh. I’ll think about it. A blindfold would be a bit too attention catching, don’t you think?’
‘I think being six foot three with bright white hair and neon eyes ruins any chance you have at ever not being attention catching, so you might as well go all the way.’
Suguru has moved on to applying conditioner through the ends of Satoru’s hair. Satoru is still not convinced on the necessity of such practises. He’d had a very passionate argument about it with Suguru once. It had escalated into a brawl in the middle of the courtyard that had resulted in the tragic loss of one of the trees due to a slightly unwise application of Blue.
He had a long time to reflect on the topic during detention, but Satoru still doesn’t really see the point. Suguru does have very nice hair, so Satoru supposes he’s not completely full of shit.
Suguru pours a final cup of water over Satoru’s hair to rinse out the conditioner, this time in a much more controlled manner. Satoru hears Suguru’s knee clicking as he moves to stand up. Suguru’s probably saying something, but Satoru has begun to sink through the thick layer of bubbles into the now lukewarm water. He sits up abruptly when he can’t hold his breath any longer, and he does not gasp for air in an undignified manner. Suguru watches with raised eyebrows.
‘...Do you think you can manage not to drown in my absence?’
‘Aww, you don’t want me to wash your hair for you?’ Satoru says, wiping clumps of bubbles off his face.
‘No. I think you’d manage to fry it off somehow.’
‘I wouldn’t. You think so little of me,’ Satoru sniffs.
‘Yeah, right. Get out,’ Suguru says, cuffing the side of Satoru’s head affectionately as he makes his exit.
Eventually Satoru does clamber out of the tub and dry himself off. The towel is white- or, formerly white. It is stained with several conspicuous splotches from a yellow hair dye related incident that happened during their first year. He lost a bet. It’s a long story. The dye, advertised as temporary, was a little bit longer lasting than expected, and Satoru’s hair was tinted yellow for weeks. He had never seen such genuine happiness from Shoko until the day he had shown up to class with buttercup yellow hair. She still hasn’t let him forget about it.
Not able to muster up the will to make the long, arduous, 5 metre journey to his own dorm, Satoru decides to just stay in Suguru’s room. It isn’t like Suguru has specifically told him not to, so its probably fine. He yanks open the wardrobe doors and studies the contents appraisingly. He wasn’t kidding when he told Suguru that what is Suguru’s is Satoru’s and what is Satoru’s is Suguru’s. Over the last year, approximately half of Satoru’s clothes have migrated into Suguru’s wardrobe, and a similar phenomenon has taken place within Satoru’s room. He pulls on a T-shirt with a large print of a cartoon octopus on the front that he’s certain is one of his, and some soft tartan pyjama trousers that he’s significantly less sure originally belonged to him. Oh well. What’s Suguru going to do about it?
He sprawls out in the middle of the bed, too lazy to slip under the covers. Night has long since fallen, and the residual heat from the hot summer’s day has all but fully faded, leaving a pleasant cool breeze coming in through the window that Suguru must have opened on his way out. Clear, warbling bird song drifts into the room with the breeze, too. It takes Satoru a few seconds to recognise the birdsong as grey thrush.
When they’d first become friends, Satoru found himself fascinated by Suguru’s almost uncanny ability to instantly identify birds. He had, of course, pestered Suguru into teaching Satoru his ways and Satoru had picked the skill up easily.
They’d made it into a competition, like they always do, of who could identify any given bird that appears the fastest. It keeps them entertained during long hours spent in class. Satoru is winning, with 236 birds so far this term compared with Suguru’s 230. Suguru claims that Satoru has an unfair advantage due to the six eyes, and Satoru claims that Suguru is a sore loser.
He casts his gaze absent mindedly around Suguru’s room. The Jujutsu Tech dorms are pretty plain to begin with, furnished with a standard-issue desk, a large wardrobe against one wall, a chest of drawers, and a bed. When they move into the school, each student can decorate their dorm how they please, usually with items and mementos from their childhood bedrooms. Satoru’s dorm was almost completely barren when he first arrived. It’s become a lot more vibrant since then, walls plastered haphazardly with posters from shows and games and shelves stocked with memorabilia and random souvenirs he buys on impulse.
Suguru has posters and prints too, but they’re a little more organised. From where Satoru lies, he can see posters from two of the bands Suguru likes- L'Arc-en-Ciel and the Stone Roses- taped to the wall above the desk with Digimon themed masking tape. Suguru’s school backpack has been tossed in the corner of the room, the screen of the tamagotchi charm that’s clipped to it glowing faintly. Half finished homework is spread over Suguru’s desk- Satoru is pretty sure it’s the essay on the persecution of sorcerers in foreign countries set by their English teacher. Satoru hasn’t started it. It’s due at the end of the day tomorrow. It’ll be fine, probably. He always works it out somehow.
Satoru doesn’t have to look to know that on the bedside table is a framed photograph. It’s a picture of Suguru and his parents on a holiday somewhere sunny and bright, a slightly out of focus seaside landscape stretching out behind them as they grin into the camera. Suguru looks a lot like his parents. He has his mother’s warm eyes, and his wide smile is a carbon copy of his father’s.
Lulled by the steady song of the grey thrush, Satoru finds himself drifting into sleep.
Satoru met Suguru’s parents once, during the summer break at the end of first year. Shoko was going back to her family in Yokohama two hours away from Tokyo, and Suguru was visiting his parents too. Satoru had told Shoko and Suguru that he, too, was going back to see his family for the whole break.
Satoru had, in actuality, patently refused to go back to his clan for the entire summer. He went back for a week to appease the elders and keep up appearances, and then planned to stay at the school for the rest of the holidays. Lying to his friends meant he just didn’t want to face the inevitable questions from them about why he had chosen to stay at the school. Apart from one time early on in first year, he had never let much information slip about his family, or lack thereof, to his friends. The little scraps of information he did share with them always elicited strangely sympathetic reactions from them, that he didn’t understand. Satoru didn’t want to be pitied.
He had half considered actually committing to the lie and returning to the clan grounds for the full duration of the holiday, but Satoru would possibly rather do anything else than go back to his clan for over a month. Even a fight to the death in a gladiator ring. That would be exciting, at least. His clan was dull, full of the snottiest, most insufferable people Satoru’s ever had the misfortune of dealing with. If he stayed there the whole time they’d probably try to set him up in an arranged marriage by the end of it. No, thank you.
Satoru had told himself that he would busy himself with training, and phone calls would be enough to stave off the loneliness. They weren’t, really. During the holiday, Jujutsu Tech was eerily empty aside from cleaners. There had never been any second years enrolled at Jujutsu Tech and the two remaining third years had died in October, so with the rest of the school population away, Satoru was the only inhabitant. It was disconcerting to spend so much time existing in still, silent rooms and corridors, the only other movement dust motes floating through the air. And so dull.
He made it halfway through the remaining summer break before he accidentally let the truth slip out whilst on a phone call to Suguru. Suguru hadn’t questioned Satoru about his lie, somehow sensing that it wasn’t something Satoru was ready to share. He had simply offered Satoru a place to stay for the last three weeks.
The walls in the hallway of the Geto household were garnished with rows upon rows of photos documenting Suguru’s childhood; innocuous mundane moments and holidays and birthday parties. The fridge still had a few primary school art projects displayed with pride, that Suguru had laughed sheepishly about when he noticed Satoru looking at them. Almost all meals were made at home, served on a lifetime’s collection of mismatched crockery. Every action from Suguru’s parents so clearly spelled out the immense care they held for their son. It felt wrong somehow to be so integrated into Suguru’s family whilst keeping his own secret, so, the evening before they drove back to school, Satoru had finally told Suguru more about his past.
They sat on the old wooden porch as the sun sank below the horizon. Satoru picked at the splintering wood until his fingertips were red raw and he told Suguru about how he’d spent much of his childhood training, or running away from his handlers. How he’d never known his own parents beyond a few scattered and faded early childhood memories, so distant he isn’t sure if he dreamed them or not. How he’d been raised by an ever-rotating roster of nannies and handlers, meals cooked by nameless and faceless servants eaten in silence in perfectly arranged dining rooms. How he’d had to fight bitterly to be allowed to study at jujutsu tech in the first place, and all the conditions that his clan placed upon his enrolment.
The information he shared had upset Suguru in a way that Satoru didn’t quite understand at the time. He hadn’t quite seemed to know what to say, and he’d hugged Satoru as tightly as he had after the first honest conversation between the two of them. Of course Satoru didn’t harbour any love for his clan, or think his rather clinical experience of childhood was particularly pleasant, but he hadn’t ever viewed it as something that was explicitly negative or harmful.
Only more recently has Satoru been able to understand Suguru’s reaction. At the start of second year, Suguru had encouraged Satoru to tell Shoko everything, too. She’d flipped through one of her textbooks to a page with a whole lot of awfully severe looking information. This is you, she’d said simply, her fingertips tapping the page beside the word “Neglect.” This is you and that shitty clan of yours. I know you’re strong and all that, but you were still a kid.
The three of them had watched the rest of season one of Naruto that night, and Shoko hadn’t complained once, though he could tell she was holding back some choice words. Satoru told her to knock that off. He didn’t want his friends to suddenly start handling him with kid gloves just because his childhood was apparently damaging.
The dream fades into incoherence, snippets of memories of golden sunsets and strange, pitying eyes consuming his mind.
Satoru wakes up to the duvet being pulled out from under him.
The perpetrator continues to yank the cover further over himself, tugging it out from under Satoru. Satoru cant stop himself from smiling as he’s dragged across the bed like a sack of potatoes.
‘I know you’re awake now,’ Suguru whispers as he gets comfortable, ‘Get under the covers, idiot.’
With feigned effort, Satoru rolls over to face Suguru. Suguru’s hair, ever so slightly frizzy from using the hair dryer, drapes over the pillowcase. His honey-brown eyes are mellow, and there’s a hint of a gentle smile playing at the corner of his lips. Satoru’s heart does this funny lurching thing.
Instead of dwelling on that, Satoru manoeuvrers himself under the covers, not-so surreptitiously gravitating closer to Suguru as he does. He curls on his side facing Suguru. Even as he feels his eyes almost immediately drooping with fatigue again, he keeps his unflinching gaze trained on Suguru’s face, as he’s hit with a sudden desire to study all of Suguru’s unfairly perfect features, commit them to memory.
Suguru goes pink again, breaking the eye contact by looking away from Satoru. That’s two times in one day. Maybe he’s sick.
‘Are you sick?’ Satoru asks, reaching out both hands to cup Suguru’s face.
‘Your face is really hot, I think you’re sick. Do you need to talk to Shoko? Do you have a fever? Are you dying? Suguru, are you about to be taken out by the common cold? Wow. I thought you were better than that.’
‘Satoru, oh my god, I’m fine,’ Suguru says, pushing Satoru’s hands away from his face, ‘You are a terror. No wonder Yaga’s going grey already.’
‘Yaga’s going grey because he’s ancient. It’s not my fault.’
‘He’s, like, thirty.’
‘Yeah. Ancient.’
‘You’ll be thirty, one day. And then one day you’ll be a wrinkly old man,’ Suguru says in the tone that he uses to tell ghost stories late at night during sleepovers.
‘Well, I’ll never be like one of those crotchety old clan elders. And I’m sure I’ll be a really good looking old man anyway. You will too, I think. You’ll have grey hair, but your face would make up for it, don’t worry,’ Satoru says generously.
‘Thanks, I guess,’ Suguru says after a second, still not making eye contact.
On an impulse, maybe due to some kind of subconscious effort to break the weird tension that’s settled in the room, Satoru reaches out a hand to pull Suguru’s sleeve up. Trailing a hand up Suguru’s forearm, his hands find the stretch of skin that was cut open just hours before. It’s completely healed now, thanks to Shoko’s RCT.
‘What did Shoko think about my first aid skills?’ Satoru asks.
‘She said they were passable.’
‘Disrespectful. My work is nothing but the best,’ Satoru says, yawning.
‘Your god complex really needs work.’
Satoru doesn’t deign to give that a response, the fatigue of the day finally catching up to him again. He wraps himself around Suguru, falls asleep almost instantly, and all is right with the world.