Chapter Text
January 2019
“You look as good as the day I met you
I forget just why I left you, I was insane
Stay and play that Blink-182 song
That we beat to death in Tucson, OKAY!”
Satoru belts out the last note like it’s his fucking job. It absolutely isn’t; no one would ever pay him to screech off key Chainsmokers lyrics unless he was facilitating torture. However, in this case he’s taken it on himself to inflict as much harm as he can on the three teenagers in his vehicle, so he lets his voice warble. Louder is always better.
“Please stop!” Yuuji groans, sinking further into the backseat as if he can escape the broken notes if he borrows deep enough into the leather.
“We ain't ever getting olDER!” Is the surrender that grinds against Satoru’s vocal cords as he bounces a finger flamboyantly around the car, pointing to each of the kids on what he assumes is the beat.
“This is sooooo messed up,” Yuuji mutters, then sticks a hand on the shoulder of the passenger seat in front of him. “All we did was try and help our sick friend.”
“If he points that finger in my direction again and I’m gonna bite him,” Nobara huffs under her breath.
“Gross—“
“First off,” Satoru croons over the next shitty pop song, his voice still gritty with the sugary sweetness of the performance. “I am a fantastic singer— You’re welcome for the free concert, by the way— Second off, Choso found you in a dinner. Megumi wasn’t sick—“
Megumi butts in, talking over him. “But I wasn’t eating anything!”
“Doesn’t matter! They skipped school. You ran off; no one knew where any of you were.” His hand flops around like a dying fish as he continues to point at his students. “We adults can’t trust you to get yourself to school anymore, so you’re stuck with me and in-car concerts dedicated directly to you.”
“This has gotta be against the Genoa Convention or something.”
The music drones hollowly over the engine before Satoru prompts, “Yuuji?” Megumi stirs in the seat next to him to twist around.
“Yeah?” From the rearview mirror, Satoru sees that Yuuji’s eyes are cast out the window affixed on the colorful procession of cars leaving the school after dropping students off, unbothered and unaware that everyone is now staring at him.
“Geneva.”
“What about it?” He ask.
“Moron!” Announces Nobara.
“You mean Geneva, Yuuji,” Megumi states, gently handing him the words through the gap between the headrest and the seat. “It’s The Geneva Convention. Genoa is a Salami.”
“What’s it matter?” Yuuji frowns, kicking his bookbag at his feet, “It’s all just European bullshit.”
“I’m snitching!” Satoru sing-songs. “I’m telling Namani you’re talking crap on his culture.”
“Nanami’s Danish.” Megumi scoffs. “Genoa is Italian, and Geneva is—“
No one notices the song fade out, but it takes Satoru one note for him to howl out: “OH MY GOD!” over Megumi as he turns the volume dial up higher, breaking into the open vocalizations of Gwen Stefani’s “Sweet Escape.”
He doesn’t hear the complaints of the kids over the sound of the music and the gentle buzz in his pocket that thrums into his veins. Suguru had appeared in his doorway at the end of yesterday’s school day, as he was trying to drag up some anger to chew Megumi out for running off when he was supposed to be at home resting. The man didn’t even need to open his mouth. Satoru saw the way he rocked on his heels with his thumbs hooked in his pockets to keep his hands from fidgeting. Suguru wanted something, and Satoru was ready to give it to him, instantly offering up any evening for a dinner together.
Suguru had actually only needed another copy of the worksheet. He spilled coffee on the other one. But the blush that smeared across his cheeks told Satoru that he didn’t make the wrong choice.
“And I could be your favorite girl
Forever, perfectly together
And tell me, boy, now wouldn't that be sweet?”
——
Satoru loves the murmur of voices overlapping across each other heard through walls, the scuff of shoes across floors, the gentle squeak of chairs; he appreciates all the little noises of humanity that scatter around like buckshot. He couldn’t articulate it in high school, but that’s why he thrives in this environment. Sure, it’s fucking annoying sometimes, but anythings better than an all-consuming silence. Lack of noise always feels infinite, like his childhood homes, rarely filled with anything other than the heel clicks of nannies and maids and firm, expensive furniture. Every fixture needing to be new and spotless and hard. He knows now that soft things wear down to lived-in and homey, the carpet showing where Tsumiki spilled milk while eating cereal in the night and a chipped coffee table from an accidental encounter with a bat, preceding Megumi’s short-lived foray into baseball. Even at school, the table tops revealing the fossils of schoolwork from years past, back when everything wasn’t digital. He could totally apply for a grant to have those replaced, but he doesn’t.
He spends his days artificially recreating the energy of a full space: ambient TV, podcasts, and playlists coating everything he does like syrup. Silence, to him, is a curse. However, in a high school, there is a pattern to the chaos. It’s definitely not controlled, but there’s a consistent ebb and flow of energy and sound. When this pattern breaks, is when teachers start to worry.
Satoru feels it before he sees it. It permeates his brain, working past the Charli XCX song tunneling into his gray matter and to-do list of ways to bully his students. Megumi functions as a coat rack as he tosses shit on to him, lanyard catching on his ear, resulting in a yelp caused by the recently fixed piercing.
“Gojo!” Utahime yells over the cacophony of jeers and shouts. She looks so small amongst the crowd as she tries to shove the onlookers back from the two students who are now on the floor, knuckles deep in each other’s hair. He heaves up a sigh from deep in his chest. At least it will be easy to pluck the girl off the top of the other. Growing up, he never cared to notice that it was always the male teacher who broke up fights. In his first week, Yaga pulled him aside and coached him through breaking up fights. Things like keep your hands where everyone can see, try and use as little force as possible, which continues to be so paradoxical to him, and never let anyone smaller than you try and help. The last one leaves him and Nanami often running through the school to play referee for an event where they are the only ones with rules. As he pushes through kids like they’re made out of cardboard, the thought occurs to him that he doesn’t remember who yanked him off that one kid he found in his senior year.
Fought is the wrong word. Beat up, pummeled, merked (even though Megumi told him ages ago, merked is dead) might cut it close.
At 29, it scares him looking back on how much he lost of himself in that moment. His dumb ass should’ve gone to jail for that shit. But instead of cuffs, gleaning in the office light, it was his father’s gold vermeil Rolex that peeked out as he rolled up his sleeves. He can still conjure the feeling of the kid’s nose cracking against his knuckles and blood spilling across his fingers, all of it becoming a fireworks show that stained across his vision. Every punch resonated warmly through his chest like a hot shower after a long run.
Satoru snatches the girl off the other. The muscles in his leg tighten and threaten to snap as he pulls the writhing wild animal towards the office. Girls always fight meaner. When he was yanked off the kid, he didn’t struggle against the teacher. He was still in engrossed with the blood, how quickly it cooled on his hands without being recoated with each blow, and the feeling of his heart pounding out of sync against the chest of whoever yanked him away.
It all felt the same. From blood squelching between fingers to Suguru’s hair flowing through his hands like water. The back hand as he accidentally punched Nanami away, bumping into Suguru as they walk, the strained breathing from the teacher’s chest as he dragged him away, and the feeling of him and Suguru’s feet knocking against each other as they did warm-ups before practice— it all feels felt the same like blood rushing back into abandoned capillaries and air escaping his chest. It all felt like Suguru, so of course he craved it.
It takes him less than a minute to drag the girl into Yaga’s office, and all of the fight has gone out of her. She’s left behind, covered in tears, with the other girl’s hair still knotted between her fingers. When Satoru lets her go, she shouts, “No!” And it echos in the vaults of his heart. No. No. NO!
What the fuck did that kid even say to him? The words squelch distantly through his brain like his muddy footsteps through an empty hallway. He wants to say it shouldn’t matter what was said, but he remembers the ice cold fear that came with the exposure of his sexuality. He spent far too long scared to lose everything, that by the time he told his parents at 25, it didn’t fucking matter anyways because he’d stopped talking to them and taking money from them (except for his iron-clad trust fund that was once meager in his eyes).
“Noooo,” Satoru proclaims from the doorway of his classroom as if chastising a toddler. Shaking off the memories that collect in the corners of the campus like dust bunny familiars.
“No, what?” Nobara asks, looking at him, then turning back to her peers across the table.
“Noooo, you guys are not sitting there.”
“But we’ve sat here all year,” Yuuji protests, continuing to pull out his laptop while Nobara groans way louder than necessary.
Satoru drops himself into his chair, letting his limbs splay out. “Not anymore!” He declares, leaning over to power on his computer. “Each of you pick your own corner to sit in.”
Megumi slumps onto the table as if the life has been sucked out of him. “On god?” He seemingly asks the tabletop that Satoru has never cleaned.
He pauses his work on the computer and cranes around to look at the kids, lifting up his glasses as he lets his eyes roll with the motion. “Megumi, you don’t even believe in god. Try swearing on something else.”
“You’re really moving us?! We didn’t do anything!” He protests, still not looking up.
“Megumi, but we did totally skip school,” Yuuji attempts to whisper privately to Megumi as the other boy continues his tirade.
“We, the students, didn’t do anything to you, Gojo Sensei. Sure, you’re pissed—“
“Megumi.”
“— that we skipped school. But that’s Gojo Satoru, my legal guardian’s problem. Gojo Sensei shouldn’t be punishing us, his students— we’re not his wards.”
Megumi shifts his hands around to help establish the distinction between the two groups in the narrative he’s trying to carve. But each frantic wave makes the grin on Satoru’s face grow. He loves how feisty Megumi is, but, damn, he picked the wrong person to try.
“So, Mr. Fushiguro,” Satoru shifts into English, to further solidify the teacher persona he cloaks himself in. “Your guardian, Gojo Satoru, called me, Gojo Sensei, last night and demanded I move you away from the students who you skipped school with. Additionally, Yuuji, Choso told me to reprimand you however I see fit, so that’s why every one of my students is sitting in separate corners for the time being.”
Megumi’s response is quick. He picks up his crap and drops it in the corner closest to the door before walking right on out of it. Satoru has to swallow down the fear that he pushed Megumi too far— the kid literally ran off without telling him where he was going— before looking at his students, who also appear stunned.
After a pause just long enough for the air to become thick with shock, Satoru mutters, “Just because he walked out doesn’t mean you don’t have to move. He’s not a martyr.”
“You should give him a detention,” Nobara suggests as she moves stuff.
“Nahhhh, I’m just gonna call Principle Yaga to go get him,” Satoru says, evoking an ‘oooh’ from Nobara. But it has no bite. His words have no bark; the last thing he wants is for Megumi to be formally displined. He doesn’t want him to have a disciplinary record. Colleges aren’t supposed to discriminate against students who receive special education services, but Satoru doesn’t buy it. Fortunately, his students don’t call his bluff. He sees Yuuji’s phone light up under the table as he sends Megumi a warning text.
Megumi returns shortly, occupying the table in the corner furthest from Satoru. He tries scolding the boy with a “Welcome back” dripping with sarcasm.
When Megumi snaps, “I just had to piss. Get off my back.” Satoru knows he’s taken it too far but doesn’t know how to back down. He spends the class period nipping at the dry skin on his bottom lip as he tries to spit out some sort of comfort with the same intensity that he vomited up bubble gum pop songs in the car. As Yuuji puts his head down with a frown, Satoru lets it be.
——
The bell no longer scares Satoru, or at least that’s what he tells himself. His heart betrays him by echoing through his chest. Neither speaks about their upcoming dinner, but Satoru can see it in the water line of Suguru’s eyes, where thick lashes spring forward and tangle with each other more and more in the corners when he laughs at Satoru’s jokes. He can see it in Suguru’s shoulders. Satoru thought it was just muscle and age that pinned Suguru to the earth, but ever since their last conversation, he seems lighter. If Suguru is almost floating then Satoru must look like he’s fighting to hold himself down. He ran down Todo, trying to get out to see Suguru. As his books and pencils scatter across the hallway, Satoru smiles and tells Suguru, “He deserves it; trying to read anything he writes is beyond tedious.”
——
September 2009
“Sacrum.”
“Sacrum,” Suguru repeats. He is not just watching Shoko point out the anatomical terms on a blank worksheet; he’s watching her lips as well. The way they curve around the words like a debutant easing her way through a crowd as her tongue flexes around teeth.
“Coccyx.”
“You’re fucking with me,” he groans, flopping back on her dorm bed. Up on the ceiling, there are glow in the dark stars left by the previous resident. Shoko tried to take them down, but it ripped off a piece of the drop ceiling.
“Nope, couldn’t make that name up.” She holds the diagram up higher so that he can see it. A new ceiling to hold him down. “Someone thought it’d be a good idea to name, what is essentially your butt-bone the coccyx.”
“Fuck it! Coccyx!” He repeats. “If you are fucking with me, I know where you live and— and— I’ll let Satoru think of something weird and fucked up to do to you.”
“Suguru,” she scolds. “I wouldn’t fuck around about your grades.”
Suguru only took anatomy because of Shoko. She loved it in high school and got really good grades— that— and it seemed better than physics, which Satoru excelled at. When he was picking out his classes, he knew he’d struggle in his one required science class, so he decided to pick one that allowed him to coerce one of his friends to tutor him.
He’d tested out of the English as a Second Language program in his last year of high school— not that his college had an equivalent program, but Suguru knew he’d still struggle. Subjects that forced him into contact with words he’d never been educated on in Japanese were the worst. One would think it’d be easy to learn the words for the first time alongside his English peers, but it sucked. He needed to process and push everything through the Japanese part of his brain first. Without an equivalent term, it felt like all the words just slipped out of him because he had no set frame of reference to place them with.
So he’s stuck with anatomy. Satoru would've been a shit tutor anyways.
He follows her lips through the waltz. And imagines each of the words, sounds that bounce off the calendar, and sticky-note covered cinder block walls as Satoru’s bones specifically. His lips wrapped around Satoru’s clavicle, cajoling little bruises on taunt skin. Placing his hand across the length of Satoru’s sternum and feeling the genesis of his quickening breath.
Missing Satoru was a certainty in high school. Actually, missing him when he galavanted around the world on school breaks. And missing him as he sat right next to Suguru. No words to explain how he drew him in, like every atom that surrounded Satoru was electric and constantly reaching out to pull him, making his hair stand on end. He didn’t even know there was a language to explain this. Now, he misses Satoru while he’s right next to him. It’s as if everything in the world is plotting to keep them apart and centrifugal force that keeps him stuck in this rotation of work, school, practice, study. Work. School. Practice. Study. Makes him want to throw up. But he’s too tired for that, so Suguru shoves Satoru over in bed and counts down each of his ribs until their rise and fall assimilate onto his own.
——
October 2009
“You’re gonna get me fired if you don’t stop that!” Suguru groans, his voice cracking on that and undermining any sense of authority he has.
“Stop what?” Satoru says in a strained ignorance as he reaches down into the lobby’s water feature to pull out another stone to stack on top of the tower he has crafted. An architect of chaos at work.
As a student, Suguru is entitled to first dibs at on-campus jobs. Being a student of a certain income bracket and one with work experience allowed him to pick one of the more highly sought-out positions: front desk at the expensive upperclassmen dorms. All he has to do is accept packages and occasionally help a student who loses their key, leaving him with a plush chair and a quiet study space for the rest of the time. The downside he faces for being fresh meat on campus: the worst shifts. Suguru gets the Friday afternoons, the Saturday night shifts. Never a Monday mid-day in sight. If one of those shifts appeared on his schedule, he’d be worried that one of his coworkers, whom he only meets in passing, has died. But it would be like this anywhere. His youth is inescapable and exhausting.
“Stop fucking with the rocks in the water feature or I’m gonna have to kick you out,” Suguru grits the swear out through his teeth to prevent the cameras from picking it up. “You’re not even supposed to be here anyways.”
“I don’t know,” Satoru says, words dripping with innocence as he wipes the water off on his jeans. “The kid at the front desk let us in.”
“Ha- ha.” He deadpans.
“Come on, Satoru,” Shoko scolds, waving from a plush couch across the room. “You can only break one rule at a time. Much easier not to get caught.”
“Oh, come on,” Satoru groans, obeying as he flops down on the couch across from her. Suguru rises to dismantle Satoru’s rock formations. “We’re wasting our youth here! It’s our first year in college; they make all the classes super easy so we can get shitfaced every other night and enjoy our youth! We’ll study when we are upperclassmen.”
“Except that’s literally how college work,” Shoko complains as Riko mutters, “Speak for yourself.”
“Come on guys?” His pleas echo hollowly around them.
“Satoru,” Suguru answers, sitting back behind the desk and his anatomy textbook on top of it. “Just because you don’t have to study doesn’t mean that we don’t.”
“You’re telling me that you guys don’t feel like everything is speeding past you as you waste your time sitting around. We are meant to be having fun; that’s why we are in college, right?! And here we are— inside— studying with our time slipping through our fingers!”
Satoru’s speech slips into the air, dancing around them like extinguished candle smoke before the three of them burst out laughing.
“I’m not wasting time; I’m making money,” Suguru says more to himself than his boyfriend.
“Satoru, you-u-u need to learn to be bored,” Shoko chokes out around giggles.
“We’re here to learn,” Riko joins in the dogpile on Satoru. “Not all of us have a plan B if something goes wrong. We weren’t blessed with a company to inherit.” Satoru looks at the girls on the couch across from him, mouth agape, before he crosses his arms and pouts at the ceiling.
“Sorry guys, was that too much?” She asks cautiously.
Shoko affirms, “No, it was perfect, Riko.”
“Yup,” he adds. “Satoru, I need the money; I can’t just bail on my job.”
“You don’t need the money,” Satoru rises from the couch to face him.
“You’ve seen my wallet. You know I need—“
“You don’t need the money.” Satoru reiterates. “You know I’d take care of everything for you.”
“I can’t take your money— Also, you were just worried about your parents finding out you are gay and disowning you.” The panic in Satoru’s eyes that day nips into his sides. He focuses on that, trying to forget the sharp hole in his chest left by his own parents’ leaving.
“Yeah,” Satoru waves the air as if the concern is a gnat he can swat away. “But you spend so little they’d never notice.”
Phone bill, food, second-hand clothes (because he’s already grown too tall for the pants he bought last year), all of the possible little emergencies life could pelt at him, hang off his shoulders. At least he doesn’t have to worry about Christmas gifts for his family. All of his expenses that keep him up at night, running his fingers through Satoru’s hair and tossing and turning with murmured ‘sorrys’ when Satoru stirs against him. Every. Single. One. Satoru could pay for and his parents would never notice. It makes his teeth hurt with need for cavities to etch their way in as he indulges on things like down time and not shopping based on what’s cheapest.
“Not gonna happen, Satoru,” Suguru objects to Satoru and the greed rumbling inside him.
“Why no—“
“Satoru, you ass,” Shoko swats at him from across the coffee table with a stack of papers. “You have plenty of time to pay for all his shit when you’re married. For now, let him be his own person.”
“You guys are lame,” Satoru proclaims, rising. “I’m going back to the dorm to watch a movie or something. You guys are welcome to join me if you want to have fun.”
Shoko’s haphazard “We are having fun.” Meets that hearty slam and instant lock of a heavy campus door. Probably worth more than Suguru makes all year with its thick glass and new digital key system, so Mommy and Daddy can feel safe about leaving their baby here.
Mommy and Daddy.
Fuck. Suguru slumps his head back into the text book where all the viscera that makes up him and Satoru, his mother and his father, the twins— it all blurs together on the page as he tries not to think about how on the inside they are all the same. He is a byproduct of his parents that was snapped away as fast as these tears are starting to form at the corners of his eyes. They look just like his father’s, except his never distorted and warbled under droplets that highlight curved, swollen veins. Suguru cannot stop them. No hyper-specific diagrams of various entrails can substitute the warm pulse of his mother’s hug or perpetual snotty-nosed breathing from his sisters. Fuck.
“If anyone needs anything, tell them I had to step away to the bathroom for a second,” he hollers, his back already to Shoko and Riko, the desk chair rotating slowly in his wake.
——
November 2009
“Okay, okay! Guys, guys, guys!” Satoru’s words clatter around them, desperately trying to collect their attention.
Suguru pitches over as a sinking ship would, slouching from Shoko’s shoulder to Satoru’s, where he capsizes in an even sway that follows his vision sloshing about.
“GUYS!” In response, Suguru pulls Shoko and tries to tap Riko but instead ends up patting her on the cheek.
“You slapped me!” She accuses, turning up the theatrics over the looping movie menu. The credits died unnoticed over an hour ago. “I’m calling the resident advisor; the campus police; the real police—
His “Do it! I’m not scared of the cops!” Is drowned out by Shoko’s “The campus police are real pol—” boring attempts to correct her, but Riko spins around and throws her hand over Shoko’s mouth. She’s remarkably steady for the three Satoru Standard Drinks™ she’s metabolizing inside her tiny body.
“I’m calling the dean of the school; I’m calling President Barack Obama!” She’s shifted to loom over him. Her eyebrows knit together in a determination that is anything but fictitious. However, she is like an actress on a stage in the way the spotlight just follows her. She’s working her ass off to fit in with everyone and stand out for her own merit at the same time, like some kind of fucking weird chameleon. Maybe it comes with her being the youngest, but Suguru is in awe of it because on anyone else it would be so disingenuous. This, especially, includes himself.
Suguru leaps up, grabbing the frame of the lofted bunk to steady himself. With his other hand, he ruffles her hair before flopping down on to him and Satoru’s twin LX bed. At this point, neither of them can remember whose it was supposed to be.
“GUYS!” This time Satoru screeches so loudly the whole floor hears. Shoko, who, without Suguru, flopped over limply, quickly pulls herself away from him. Disgust creases the corners of her eyes as she sneers, “What? Not sure anything can be that important, Satoru.”
“I just remembered something I learned in class today that I needed to tell you!”
“Good, you’re supposed to remember the things you learn in class. Good job, Satoru,” Riko patronizes, putting a hand on his knee as she shoves in beside him.
“So,” Satoru hiccups. “What’s the difference between a chickpea and a garbanzo bean?”
“Satoru, I don’t know what either of those things are,” Suguru reals from the jarring smack of Satoru’s English words that drip from his mouth like syrup.
Switching back, Satoru explains, “They’re those beans in that soup you hate.”
“Okay, rich people food. Got it.”
“They aren’t rich people food.”
“Shitty rich people food.”
“Nooo!”
“Satoru,” Shoko snaps, kicking at him as she extends back again across the futon couch, this time her head facing away from him. “What the fuck does this have to do with class?”
“I learned it in class,” he declares.
“Yeah,” the word rolls out of her at the same cadence as the eye roll she casts his away. “But why was your professor making a joke about beans?”
“Oh no, the professor didn’t make any jokes. He’s boring. I found it on the internet.”
Suguru contributes to the chorus of groans and reaches out his hand towards Riko, flexing it open and closed in a grabby hand motion. She placates him with a cup that he discovers was Satoru’s unfinished drink when he gets a mouthful of flat soda and vodka.
“I’m starting over! I’m starting over!” Satoru grumbles over their complaints. “So what’s the difference between a chickpea and a garbanzo bean?”
Suguru takes another swig of Satoru’s drink, draining the plastic cup, then conceding a “What?” in perfect chorus with the plastic cup that rattles against the floor next to the trash can.
“I’ve never had a garbanzo bean pee on me before!”
The girls scurry up in the bed with Suguru. Stepping on shins and releasing a raucous series of compliments about his boyfriend as Satoru’s English words stick to the periphery of his brain and slowly emulsify.
“Satoru?” He challenges slowly, testing the validity of the words. “You’ve never had a girl pee on you, right?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Satoru taunts as he stretches out on the futon.
Suguru turns to the girls and declares, “He’s going home with you. He’s not staying here.”
They squeal at his statement so loudly that Suguru thinks the knocking is emanating from his head. It’s Satoru that tucks the bottle of vodka back in the underwear drawer, grabbing them and mouthing: “Look sober!” Before opening the door.
“Y’all are being way too loud.” The drawl in the resident advisor’s voice is so thick that Suguru’s shocked he follows any of it.
“Sorry,” Satoru grovels. “We were just about to go to bed.”
“Sure.” The RA’s flat effect makes him want to scream. Stop, god, this is the only fucking night of the week I get to have fun. Just piss off! Instead of letting rage consume him, rolls over, closing his eyes. His brain continues to whirl behind his eyelids. He trucks his face into the pillow and huffs the smell of Satoru, wondering when their scents will merge together.
“Look, I’m not gonna fine y’all, but— I need to give y’all a formal warning. In addition to that, I need to escort the girls out of the building.”
Shoko and Riko refrain from grumbling, but he can sense Shoko’s desperation for a cigarette, and it creeps into him too, like an infection.
“Okay,” Shoko groans, helping Riko crawl over Suguru’s slumped form. “We’ll leave. Let the boys go to bed. Don’t forget to shower and brush your teeth, boys.” Her voice starts to echo into the hallway.
“Yeah—“ laughs Riko distantly before her voice pops back into the room. “A golden shower.”
Suguru swears he can hear the RA sigh all the way down the hall.
——
January 2019
Discrete was the word Satoru used to describe the date dinner he wanted with Suguru. Suguru texted back quickly: done! They agreed to skip town, head somewhere where they couldn’t be stumbled upon by any students, and sent a convoluted series of emojis back and forth to convey how they’d feel if they ran into a student at dinner. After Satoru sent him the Easter Island head emoji (🗿), his phone lit up with a call. “What the fuck does that mean?” Greeted him, and Satoru got butterflies as he taunted, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Uhhhh, yes. That’s why I called you.”
The butterflies have taken up residence in his torso, roosting on his ribs and fluttering their wings to stir up sighs within him as he waits, leaning against the kitchen counter, for Suguru’s text.
“Megumi! I’m about to head out.” He says it more for practice at sounding normal, not letting the nerves fly out of his mouth like party streamers.
The silence lingers before he shuffles towards Megumi’s room. He usually expects some sass. “Wear protection!” (Picked up from Shoko) Or more often than not, “You actually have a date!” Being some of Megumi’s go-to responses.
When he opens the door, the boy is curled in bed with headphones on. Sunken in eyes, gauzy with blue light shadows, don’t move from the screen. “Megumi, I am leaving.” Satoru makes his voice small enough that it struggles to close the gap between them.
“Okay.”
“Maybe I can bring you back something from the restaurant. I’ll text you—“
“You don’t need to let me interrupt your date,” Megumi mutters, yanking the headphones off, causing the hair to explode out from his head. It’s not a date but the less you know, the better sooo— “I am on a call with Yuuji and Nobara right now. Since you won’t let us hang out together— so if you don’t mind.” He punctuates his statement with a wave of his hand.
Satoru wants to say something. To insist on bringing him a meal, but time has not tempered his anger, and the room is thick with it. He plants himself on the bench in the foyer to tie on his Sambas before the text even comes through.
In the mirror, he pushes gelled-up hair back into place; it’s a light hold that’s prone to allowing his hair to descend into madness as a night progresses. Despite the implications that there would be sex, Satoru still considers this a hopeful choice. He hasn’t seen anything but work clothes or sweats on his body since summer. Too tight black jeans and a white t-shirt with a denim jacket, is what he selected after destroying his bedroom. How revolutionary of him! But he feels good, and he thinks that’s what counts.
The text comes through when he’s adjusting his collar for the third time. Suguru doesn’t get out of the car, so Satoru gets to take him in fully as he sits cradled in the front seat of an all too small early 2010s Gojo brand car. Knees clad in black denim as he spreads them across the tight space. One propped against the door’s storage so it vibrates with the pop punk from the speakers, the other against the gear shift, denim fraying so close to him. He wants to put at the threads.
Fuck, Satoru doesn’t let himself look past the knees, skipping up to the smiling face that chirps, “Hello, Satoru! Get in; you’re letting out the warm air.” He tosses himself in, folding and adjusting to figure out how much space he can take up. He wants Suguru to take up all of it, wants the hand on the console inches away from him to slip and clasp his thigh.
“Sorry, I’m late!” Suguru offers, ensconced in the golden glow of suffocating daylight. “I practically had to beat Nanako and Mimiko off of me. They had wayyyy too many questions.”
“You’re good,” Satoru leans into the conversation as Suguru’s eyes remain primarily on the road. “I didn’t even notice you were late.”
“I wasn’t quite— but almost. Did Megumi give you shit before you left?”
“Nahhhh,” Satoru shrugs, simultaneously not wanting to think about Megumi and wanting to not shut up about Megumi. “He’s still mad that he’s grounded. He’s usually all over me about dates.”
“He’ll get over,” Suguru throws a smile at him before giggling out. “Sooo you’ve been on a few dates.”
“Yeah,” Satoru adds confessionally. “Shoko used to give me so much hell, and then Tsumiki and Megumi picked up on it. They always used to hound me for information and make shit up about the guys they thought I was dating.”
“Anyone special?”
“Nope,” pops Satoru. “Unless you count the time Tsumiki was convinced that I was dating a rockstar.”
“Were you?”
“No! It was a guy I went on a few dates with soon after I took them in, and her imagination kinda just went wild because I wouldn’t give her any information on him that wasn’t a boldfaced lie.”
“Nanako and Mimiko used to romanticize my life in Japan to me all the time. It was always nicer to pretend that I was going out and eating at cool restaurants with cheese cakes shaped like cats and every flavor of onigiri imaginable rather than working late and living in a 30 square meter apartment with a bed loft I couldn’t sit up in.”
Satoru wants to circle back. Ask Suguru about his love life. Dissect the years that separated them— but he can’t. It’s not that he’s scared of what he’s going to find (anything is better than his imagination); he doesn’t want to drag a scalpel down the corpse of his past, exposing Suguru too much of the cold air of his operating room. Thinking about how he nearly fucked everything up after learning about his dad’s death makes him hesitate to pry.
“You look nice,” Satoru notes, trying to fill the space. It’s been so long since he’s been on a date, he can’t remember what he’s supposed to say on a regular one— much less a date where he’s probably going to get to fuck his ex-boyfriend that he was head-over-heals in love with before he got abandoned.
Satoru cannot think about all that right now. He lets his eyes trace the red cable knit of Suguru’s sweater all the way up to the thin smile that morphs into, “Thank you, Satoru! You look nice as well.”
“Thanks!”
“Teaching has corrupted my sense of fashion. I’ve been trying to heal myself by taking advantage of the American education system’s casual dress code, but it’s like if I’m not in slacks, I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Satoru laughs and without thinking about it, grabs Suguru’s hand. “I was just thinking about—“ He tries not to stumble as Suguru laces his fingers through his. “That. I tore up my room while getting ready. It’s like, my job has started to define me instead of being mine.”
“We’re getting old, Satoru.” Suguru tilts his head toward him, rogue bangs caressing his cheek.
“Yup.” Satoru sniffles around the word. He wanted to get old with him. He wanted to get old with all of them.
It’s not exactly “date talk.” If Satoru went on a date with any other guy and he spent the whole time talking about his sisters, he’d be so turned off from the date as a whole. But, fuck, with Suguru, it’s different. As a kid, he thought it was sweet to the point of being almost corny how much he loved his family. But now, it’s almost like Suguru has invited them to the table. He can envision the twins braiding Suguru’s hair into the tassels of a pillow. Long fingers, less sturdy than Suguru’s but distinctly of the Getou family, weaving from hair to tassels to mouths as they suppress giggles at the thought of their brother rising from a nap and being frightened by the pillow ensuing chase (that never occurred; Suguru “woke up” and laid there for an hour chatting with them as they waited for their plan to come to fruition before Suguru requested they untangle him).
Then Suguru stops and pulls up chairs for Tsumiki and Megumi and all his English as a Second Language students. They are both bright and smiling, and, sure, sadness crinkles at the corners of their eyes, but Suguru doesn’t let it run down their faces in streaks. He doesn’t ask about their early childhood or bring up Megumi’s failure and subsequent grounding. He lets Satoru talk about the boring things like Megumi’s mile times and how Tsumiki is thinking about changing her major to journalism.
It’s not a flirty conversation that’s fun for a few weeks. This is how he wants every subsequent holiday. Not just the Kugisaki’s or Ieiri’s taking pity on Satoru and his wards, but a real family gathering.
He wants to be here when Suguru pulls up a chair for the young versions of themselves. The versions that never met, the angry, scared, small versions of themselves that were still too tangled together to function separately. He wants to be here when eventually Suguru pulls up a chair for Riko.
Satoru enjoys hearing about all the little pieces that shape this new Suguru. Seeing the picture of him fill in, all the pieces he missed out on (even though neither of them rub that fact in each other’s face) as the pizza between them slowly disappears between them.
They have seen no students and add it to the list, still fresh and doused in afterbirth, of acceptable spots for them to get dinner. The question left to be answered is not whether they will fuck; it’s where. Suguru’s fingers leap from the gear shift to his thigh and have been slowly working their way up his leg on the highway back into town.
“I think you know, my house is off the table.” Suguru briefly lifts his hand from him to wipe nothing physical from the lower part of his face. A preparation for whatever touch Satoru plans to throw his way. “So I’ll pay for the hotel because I’m the one who suggested it.”
“No way.”
“Way. It was my idea.”
“I’ve definitely been thinking about it long enough to count as the one that’s to blame,” Satoru remarks, leaning into Suguru’s touch. Resting his arm on the console, unable and uncaring, about restraining himself any more.
“Oh really, how long you been thinking about me?” Suguru smirks at him.
“Since the moment you stepped out of the classroom across the hall.”
Suguru laughs out, “Sounds like we’re even. It’s gonna sound mean, but I mean it in a nice way. When I first started at Jujutsu High, I was glad I sort of spooked you. It was hard to look at how hot you’d gotten.” His fingers start to knead into Satoru. “Like— I always imagined you as 19 and the kind of perfect where I had to fight to remember why you weren’t.”
“Oh—“ Satoru yanks himself away in phony offense. “So I am not perfect.”
Suguru reaches over and pulls Satoru back to him, fingers digging into the muscle of his thigh. It’s just his thigh, but his stomach becomes alight with a melting nausea of want. Relief starts to crystallize into his every motion. “To think, I was gonna invite you back to my place— you were going to have to sneak in— but it wouldn’t be a problem.” Satoru lets his words nip at Suguru.
“Hmmmmm, sneak into my grown dat—“
“It’s not a date.”
“Hmmmmmmm, sneak into my grown hook-up’s bedroom.” Suguru cocks an eyebrow at him and the passing headlights highlight the ridge lines of his face. “Enticing— I’m sorry Satoru. Nineteen-year-old Satoru was the closest to perfect I’ve ever encountered, but I think you’re gonna top that.”
“I’m not gonna top anything,” Satoru purrs, listing back into his previous position, this time ever closer to Satoru accepting his apology in the form of instructions.
Satoru comes through the front door alone to an empty living room. There’s a new cereal bowl in the sink, and the light is off beneath Megumi’s door. It’s not that late, so he knocks and gets no response. The moment soaks into him. Suguru is waiting outside in the cold, but he opens Megumi’s door slowly. Suguru will understand waiting. The boy is still wrapped in his comforter and headphones; this time his iPad is propped up near him.
“Hey, Megumi,” Satoru tries as if trying to take a step on an icy lake that he’s already in the middle of.
Megumi doesn’t look up at him. “How was your date?”
“It’s sucked.” Evokes a dry chuckle from the boy. “Thanks. I’m going to bed.”
“‘night,” Megumi mutters, shifting deeper into his duvet.
Satoru shuts the door gently before springing to life and running silently to his bedroom window, where Suguru stands, elbows propped up on the ledge, and Satoru gets the exhibitionist vision of a lifetime: Suguru sucking him off from this position.
“Hello, Romeo. Or should I say Romemo,” Satoru almost chokes out emo as he tries to retain the suave motherfucker persona.
“Romeo’s ass was already emo,” Suguru smirks, reaching out to Satoru, letting his fingers climb their way up his forearms. “Help me up; I’m getting cold out here.”
Satoru feels Suguru’s fingers tighten, and he leans backwards to help Suguru balance as he crawls in through the window.
“Sorry, I was checking on Megumi.”
Suguru lets his momentum take him away and topple over Satoru as the two fall on the bed. “How is he?” Suguru asks. There’s genuine concern in his voice, but it’s being edged out by the lust simmering in the room.
“He’s okay, but he’s still here and awake so—“ Satoru launches up against Suguru’s weight to “shhhhh” directly into his face.
Suguru shuts him up with a kiss. Whispering into him, “Quiet, Megumi’s still awake.”
However, he pulls away quickly, and Satoru swears he feels the pounding of his heart shake the mattress, until Suguru lifts the glasses from his face, prompting his smile to grow wider, and kisses him in between his widened eyes. The glasses are placed safely on the nightstand before Suguru dives back in. This time cradling his face properly between his hands, foreheads pressing against each other.
Satoru’s expecting the lack of metal and dissolving into Suguru without the barriers for this kiss. Age has made him wider; he no longer retains the scrawny runner’s built that matched Satoru. All of his muscles have fortified impressively. Satoru inspects them, running his palms up his arms and down his back. He wants to pitch a tent (he’s definitely already done that) and camp out in the valley of his shoulder blades. Weather out every storm in the sanctity of Suguru’s topography.
Suguru grins down on him, and Satoru responds by nipping at his lip. Regardless of expectations, the years have not exorcized the phantom feeling of a metal ring clenched between his teeth.
“Owww!” Suguru squeals.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” He flinches, trying to reel back into the mattress.
“Fuck, you can bite me a little,” Suguru slurs against the finger he rubs against his mouth. “Just don’t take your revenge on me in bed. Do it another time— Perhaps, the third hookup?”
“Sorry! I just am used to the lip rings.”
“It’s been eight years; who else have you been fucking with lip rings?”
“No one!” Satoru raises his hand and cups Suguru’s face before dragging his thumb along scars that are only visible because Satoru knows where to look. “Why’d you take them out?”
Suguru kisses into him, forcing his head back onto the mattress before taking his bottom lip between his teeth and holding it.“You never let them heal!” Is spit out with his lip.
“Me? You never complained about how I kissed you.”
“You’re right.” Suguru tilts his head into Satoru’s hand that absently twirls in his hair. “Kissing you was way more important than the lip rings ever were.”
“So why didn’t you let them heal in Japan?”
Suguru shifts away, glancing around the room. Satoru admires the sharp jawline cutting through the air above him. He wants to reach out and touch the missed spot of stubble. “No one else had them in Japan.” A vein in Suguru’s neck twitches.
“Really, that’s why you took them out?” Satoru is thankful that he stifles the laughter that wants to erupt from his chest when he sees the light glint against Suguru’s eyes as he stares at the ceiling. “Suguru, who came to America knowing no English—“
“I didn’t have any choice in that.”
“Who went on to become the fastest person in the school? The guy who only got DIY piercings and wore all black half the time? The one with crazy long hair.” Satoru gives it a tug to emphasize the point that is no longer his, but consuming him. “That guy’s who took his piercings out because no one else had them. Barely anyone here was pierced growing up! Fuck, dude. You wore eyeliner a few times in college! When did you start caring about what people think?”
Suguru deflates and places his forehead on Satoru’s chest. “I always did.” It’s beyond the breathy whispers that they fling at each other. “I tried so hard to fit in America, and I was just never right— so I gave up. I didn’t understand it then, but it was easier to blend in if I stood out a bit because there wasn’t really a wrong way to do it. If you get what I mean. I was somehow a lot more of an outcast if I tried to shove myself into a mold that everyone saw I didn’t fit in.”
Satoru caresses Suguru’s face, coaxing it back towards him.
“I figured I’d give fitting in a try in Japan, where at least at first glance I could look like everyone else.” Suguru chuckles, shaking his head, “I even cut my hair—“
“No, not your hair!” Satoru gasps, clutching at the other man’s hair unabashedly.
“Yeah, that didn’t last long.” Suguru smiles at him, and it feels like a homecoming when he’s never even known what home was. “Also, I chipped a tooth on one of my lip rings when I tripped walking down a flight of stairs like my first month there.” He gnashes his teeth, opening them slightly to reveal a clean asymmetry running along the side of a canine.
“Fuck, that’s gnarly. Did it bleed?”
“Satoru!?”
“Suguru!?”
The heater clicks on the silencer of their questions.
“Satoru, don’t you have to teach kids like high school science?! Teeth don’t bleed.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” he sing songs in mock offense as he waves his hands at their bodies pressed against each other at the groin, legs tied together. “I am not on the clock right now, and there’s kind of a really hot guy just sitting on me right now, and my brain is short circuiting.”
Suguru clicks his tongue. “Shame. A guy just sitting on you. You sound a little impatient. A lot of guys would love to have a hot guy just sitting on them.” Suguru’s hand creeps along the waistband of his pants before hooking into them to grasp at the top button with the words: “Guess we’ll just have to fuck so we can have an intelligent conversation.”
“Fuck, what a tragedy,” Satoru groans as slowly warming fingers curl around him.
“I know right,” Suguru grunts, settling into a mellow rhythm before stopping abruptly and rattling around Satoru’s nightstand, pulling out a bottle of lube. He cocks a smile before saturating his fingers.
Consent is the bat of lash and the nod of a head in between the yanking off of different articles of clothing that speckle the floor like confetti. Satoru doesn’t think he could bring himself to say no if he wanted to. It doesn’t cross his mind how he’ll sob into his pillow later. Desperately wadding up linens and pressing them to his face as they do a twofold job of muffling his wails and providing him with scraps of Suguru’s scent. Then he’ll cry harder because at one point in time there was no distinction between their smell.
But future him wouldn’t want him to say no. Even when Shoko meets him at his front door with Tsumiki and breakfast for all of them. When she whispers quiet questions to him, disguised by the sounds of washing dishes, lips barely moving as the siblings sit in the living room, he realizes Megumi heard him. The lie will sting at the corners of his eyes, and the fresh coat of paint doused across him will threaten to crack. He still won’t regret it.
Satoru pulls the hair tie from Suguru’s hair slowly, watching the hair unspool in a silky mess. It’s not the same hair that once cascaded through his knuckles. He knots his hands tighter at the root. He doesn’t know if he’s in control or just hanging on.
“Let go.” And he listens, allowing Suguru to place a hand on the edge of his bed and lean down to the floor, pulling up discarded jeans. He pulls a condom from deep in his wallet, hidden between an old library card and folded yen. Suguru probably just didn’t want anyone to see it; keep it classy, but Satoru chooses to believe that Suguru didn’t want to think about it either.
The sound of the wrapper shatters between them. A task too utilitarian to call for any moaning, even of the dramatized variety. Satoru doesn’t touch it; he wants to pretend it’s not there. That after eight years everything can go back to what it once was instead of culminating in the form of a thin piece of latex between them designed for maximum sensation. Suguru, ever pragmatic, always needing a job or plan B, would of course want to have “safe” sex with him.
Satoru’s thankful that Suguru presses into him when he does because this is when emotional whiplash decides to settle into his gut, picking a fight with the arousal that, earlier in the evening, he thought would never be quenched. He’ll retch up the tears later until he’s just a sniveling mess, exhausted, dry-heaving sobs as he smashes his eyelids together, hoping for more tears to expel as he tries to spit out the contaminate. But for now, this is the rancid bite that he swallows with a smile.
Their moans and the sensation of his entire world being rearranged around this moment, obscures the hesitation that crops up in Satoru’s demeanor.
He holds each of his unsteady movements with the quivering rhythm they find. Letting himself prematurely descend into overwhelm. When he looks down at Suguru’s cruel body pressed between his legs, he stares at washboard abs or the tensed sinew of Suguru’s arms, and pretends the condom isn’t there and that this is a true homecoming to the dorm or apartment where no condoms ever existed.
He wants to whisper, “Suguru, you will always fit in with me. This is where you belong.” But the only thing that finds its way out amongst groans is “Suguru!”
——
November 2009
Suguru’s mouth is dry, and everything is sticking together. His tongue to the roof of his mouth, his lips, fuck, he is not sure of it, but he thinks Satoru drooled on him.
Ring! Ring! Ring!
The alarm chimes on the end table unsympathetically. Fuck! Suguru unpeels Satoru’s cheek from his chest and pretends the crust of spit isn’t there.
Ring! Ring! Ring!
It’s starting to thrum in rhythm with his head. Suguru tries to slam the alarm but misses and sends everything else on the table scattering. He’s not sure what god he pissed off to have 8ams every day, but he kills the alarm on the second try. Satoru stirs to curl further into himself, cold from Suguru’s abandonment.
Suguru’s jealous. The floor is cold on his bare feet. He sits for a minute, letting the room swirl and pulse with his dehydration. His stomach turns over once— then twice— and settles with a roiling crash. If he doesn’t move too fast, he probably won’t throw up— which was his personal goal for last night. Let loose as much as he could without rendering him useless in the morning.
He has to bend down slowly and breathe through his mouth to bend down and pick up him and Satoru’s cellphones. The napkins, empty cup, and economics textbook can be picked up later— or fuck it— Satoru can pick it up.
Suguru’s cellphone vibrates with a text absently in his hand. He flips it open, hoping it’s a coworker that did get to drink themselves sick, offering up an extra shift. The sacrificial lamb for a resurrection from a youthful evening.
Mom:
- What are your plans for the holiday break?
- You should come home
- Bring Satoru
FUCK! Everything lurches up, and Suguru just barely makes it to the waste basket. At least now there’s an excuse for tears and snot that streaks down his face when Satoru shortly rises, still half drunk.