Archive of Our Own ^beta

Satoru is running late. He’s not worried about it; it’s not like he paid for the plane ticket. If he had, he definitely would have at least sprung for first class, not this second-rate, general boarding nonsense he’s stuck with. He’s in no rush. It’s not like he’ll be worried if he has to buy another one, for that matter. Mostly, he’s annoyed that the Higher-Ups don’t have the confidence in his teleportation or flight to believe he can make it from Tokyo to Seoul. Something about him traveling over open seawater has always made the Higher-Ups nervous.

Whatever.

Satoru mentally sticks his tongue out at them.

Either way, it’s only a two-hour trip. He’s not worried about it. Satoru doesn’t know much about the mission outside of it being a Special Grade Curse; apparently their contact in South Korea only wanted to talk details in person. The paranoid sort, according to Ijichi. So, Satoru is here, with way too much luggage, fiddling with his passport, squinting up at the departure sign in the terrible overhead lighting, pushing his sunglasses even higher up his nose in a futile attempt to keep the light away.

Infinity is pressed tightly against his skin, hardly a millimeter’s worth of a barrier between him and the rest of the world. There are just too many people to have a bigger buffer. It’s putting Satoru on edge, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. Since his death, he’s kept Infinity a good five centimeters thick at all times, much to Shoko’s continued chagrin. Not that he’s seen her much since about a week after that mission.

Satoru hardly sees anyone outside of whoever hands him his next assignment these days. If Satoru didn’t already have a lifetime of practice getting four to five hours of sleep a night, he thinks the sudden jump in work would surely be getting to him. If he didn’t already have a lifetime spent on his own, the loneliness might have gotten him, too.

But that’s beside the point. Satoru does have practice performing at his best while chronically under sleeping; he does have practice going on missions alone, eating his meals alone, wandering busy city streets and isolated forest paths alike with nothing but his own charming personality to keep him company.

Two and a half years of being lovingly bullied into a halfway decent sleep schedule, of having someone at his side, of finally finding an equal, of finding someone who understood him, for the first time maybe ever , doesn’t change that.

All this to say that Satoru is a little nervous. He hasn’t slept since his last mission, figuring that he could catch two hours of sleep on the flight and be good by the time the plane touches down in Seoul. Finding his gate at last, he saunters off, spinning his passport idly in his hands as his eyes graze over the hundreds of heads that slip past him, doing his best to ignore all the information the Six Eyes are pumping into his brain.

Airports are the worst. Too many bodies crammed into one place, too many of them stressed out, all of them buzzing with negative energy. He thinks the only reason airports aren’t a hotspot of curse activity is that no one stays here long enough for all that negative energy to manifest. Real liminal spaces, and all that.

A family rushes past him, buzzing frustration so loud Satoru winces. The fuzzy outline of a fly head is starting to form on the arm of one of the adults; Satoru watches its almost liquid form wiggling before they all pile into one of the airport restaurants, their collective curse energy mixing in with all the rest.

Satoru turns into his gate crowded with people beginning to queue up for boarding, and stops in his tracks.

Distinct curse energy, vibrating at a frequency Satoru would recognize anywhere. He cranes his neck and spots him, sitting on the floor against the glass wall, as far as possible from the crowd forming around the gate. Suguru is wearing a pair of old sweats, a huge, shapeless sweater, and a simple black mask. His hair is in a messy knot above his head, already wisps of his dark hair are falling out of the bun and framing his face. He looks paler than Satoru remembers, and the bags under his eyes could give Shoko a run for her money.

All at once, Satoru realizes he isn’t sure when the last time he saw Suguru in person, or when they last spoke.

Suguru hasn’t noticed him yet. Satoru considers turning tail and running back to Jujutsu Tech. Surely this mission wouldn’t need two special grade sorcerers, right? It for sure would have been mentioned in the report Satoru didn’t read.

Suguru’s shoulders move, as if he’s sighing, and he hauls himself up, pulling a blue backpack over his shoulder as he goes. It’s only then that his eyes catch onto Satoru, standing on the opposite side of a wall of people and gawking at him like a creep. Suguru’s expression doesn’t change for a long, awful moment, but then his hand raises in acknowledgment. From this far away, he can’t see the telltale crinkle at the edges of his eyes that means he’s smiling under his mask. Satoru hopes it’s there.

Tension Satoru doesn’t know he’s been holding suddenly melts out of him, and he grins back under his own mask, feeling silly. They’ve both been busy, after all. Satoru doesn’t think he even knows where his phone is right now, with how focused on work he’s become. No doubt Suguru has been the same. They’ve both just been too busy to call, is all.

Nothing to worry about, right?

Suguru doesn’t say anything when he slips into the end of the line beside him. He only tilts his head towards Satoru. Satoru wants to sling his arm over Suguru’s shoulder like he used to do not even a year ago. It feels like it’s not allowed, now.

“Didn’t know they wanted backup on this mission,” Suguru says lightly. “It wasn’t in the report.”

“You still read the reports?”

Suguru’s eyes slant his way, just a flicker of movement.

“Be serious, Satoru.”

They slowly make their way to the front. Satoru waits until the frazzled-looking flight attendant has scanned their tickets, and the two of them are in that rickety hallway connecting the building to the plane before he says anything at all.

“Seems like everyone’s been run ragged lately,” Satoru says carefully. “Normally Yaga hands off my missions, but today it was Ijichi. It seems strange that there would be a duplicate mission.”

“Or two special grade missions in Seoul,” Suguru agrees. “You sure they didn’t reassign the mission to you without telling me? What did Ijichi say?”

“I wouldn’t steal a mission from you!” Satoru squawks, offended at the idea. “Why would they reassign your mission? There’s no mission that I could complete that you couldn’t do just as well!”

“I don’t know about that, Satoru,” Suguru says, his voice low. “You’re The Strongest, after all.”

“We’re— ” Satoru begins, but stops short once he steps foot on the airplane.

At once, Satoru feels it when the curtain springs up around them. Suguru looks over his shoulder at him, a question in his eyes as he walks down the aisle to their seats. Satoru squints at him, but Suguru doesn’t seem to notice anything amiss. So, something meant just for Satoru, huh?

Interesting. He bets that if the two of them compared their mission reports with a keen eye, Satoru’s would be the duplicate.

“You’re holding up the queue, Satoru,” Suguru calls, and that breaks Satoru out of his musings long enough to bound towards him.

Right now, he’s just glad that their seats are together, even if they have to cram their legs awkwardly into the too-small seats. Suguru has the window seat, and his legs are almost comically squished as he tries to find a comfortable position. Satoru hooks his knee over Suguru’s when he crams into his own seat, and he’s surprised and delighted when Suguru only rolls his eyes and lets him leave his knee there.

Satoru tries to ignore the way his stomach flutters. He hesitates for a second, then lets Infinity disappear, just to feel more firmly the press of Suguru’s knee under his. Suguru’s eyes slant his way, but he doesn’t say anything. Satoru smiles to himself, grateful for the mask and the sunglasses that hide almost the entirety of his face.

They sit together in silence, watching the passengers take their seats. Suguru turns to look out the window after a while, and Satoru turns his attention to staring at Suguru’s profile, instead.

“Did you feel the curtain surrounding the plane?” Satoru can’t help but ask when the engines start to roar with their takeoff.

The plane shakes under them. Satoru clenches his fists until it lifts off. Suguru turns to him again. The plane is facing away from the sun, so Suguru for a second has a brilliant halo of light behind him while they climb into the sky. Satoru feels himself swoon, helplessly.

“I didn’t,” he admits. “You think it’s something specific to you?” Satoru nods, glad that even after all this time, the two of them still think the same. Suguru’s brows crinkle. “One would think, after literally coming back from the dead, that bounty hunters would lay off for a bit.”

“That would require them to use their brains for once,” Satoru says. “We both know any bounty hunter who thinks they could take on me has incurable Missing Brain Disease.”

Suguru laughs, and it’s only then that something twists in his chest, painfully. When was the last time he’s heard Suguru laugh like that?

The plane stabilizes, and the captain’s voice over the speakers says they’ll be in Seoul in about two hours, some turbulence expected as they fly over a storm near Osaka. Sunny. A balmy twenty-seven degrees. Sit back and enjoy the flight.

“It should be easy enough to find the Bounty Hunter,” Suguru says. He crosses his arms over his chest and sits back in his chair heavily, closing his eyes for a moment. “Once we’re high enough that the Captain can’t easily turn around, I’m sure they’ll show their face.”

Satoru hadn’t noticed how much he missed Suguru until he watches Suguru almost instantly drift into sleep. His head tilts towards Satoru, not quite leaning on his shoulder. Satoru is tempted to mirror the movement, to feign sleep if only for an excuse for another point of contact.

A sudden change in the air gets Satoru’s attention. From the back of the cabin, someone has released a curse; just the faintest hiss of displaced curse energy, followed by a powerful curse slipping in. Satoru sits up, peeking over the back of his chair, half expecting some bounty hunter to be pointing a weapon at him, only to find it completely normal. Most of the passengers are already asleep.

It’s only been about ten minutes.

“Hmm.”

Suguru is still asleep in his seat as well, not having noticed the sudden release of cursed energy. He must be tired. Satoru’s only ever seen him fall asleep so quickly after a series of difficult missions, when they’d come back to the dorms at four in the morning and collapsed onto the couch together. Satoru swallows down the syrupy sweet memory of Suguru’s weight pressing him down into the couch cushions.

He wants to let Suguru sleep; he certainly looks like he could use it. And anyway, the Bounty Hunter is here for Satoru specifically. Once Satoru deals with them, he’ll let Suguru deal with the actual problem in Seoul.

Mind made up, Satoru unbuckles himself and pushes out of his seat, down the aisle to the bathroom at the back. Satoru doesn’t think he’s seen a group of people ever fall asleep so fast on a two-hour flight. Come to think of it, it is suspicious, isn’t it? Especially when Satoru looks more closely at the sleeping passengers and sees residuals all over them.

After that, things happen almost too quickly for him to catch. The quick unfurling of several other lower-level curses he tracks almost unconsciously, a voice that seems to come from everywhere at once saying “I’ve got you, Six Eyes,” and a feather-soft dusting of pink powder covers him, head-to-toe.

Satoru takes a breath in–he’s forgotten to put up Infinity again, stupid, rookie mistake–the powder smells like cotton candy–and before he knows it, he slumps to the floor, asleep.

Suguru wakes suddenly, unsure of where he is. The cloying humid heat tells him a storm is on its way. Stiff, overly-formal fabric sits awkwardly on his frame, especially since he remembers putting on more comfortable clothes for the plane ride.

But Suguru wakes under the shade of an ancient oak tree, the overly-warm heat (of spring? summer?) making the hairs at the nape of his neck stick to the skin there. He sits up, stiff from a long nap, and frowns. There’s a lush green field before him, with a gaggle of young students clumped together at the bottom of the hill. Suguru stares at the crowd, confused. He’s sure that, only moments before, he had boarded an airplane with Satoru, but now—

“Suguru!” Satoru chimes, close enough that it startles him. He turns and sees Satoru’s Cheshire grin peeking out from behind the tree, his sunglasses drooping down his nose. “I knew you’d snuck away to nap while I did all the work! No fair!”

“Where—what? Weren’t we just… somewhere else?”

Satoru tilts his head, the sunlight glinting off his silver-white hair nearly blinding. He steps around the tree to reveal he’s wearing a pale blue button-down, the sleeves rolled up to show off his biceps, and a set of loose grey slacks. His shoes shine almost as brightly as his hair. When he looks down at himself, he sees he’s wearing a dark grey Yukata, formally done up with a pale blue Obi.

His Obi matches Satoru’s shirt (and his eyes).

“Where else would we be?” Satoru asks. He holds his hand out, palm up, for Suguru. Suguru looks at it, dumbfounded. “We promised Riko we’d be at her middle school graduation, didn’t we? I had to pay off Mei Mei to take one of my missions just to be here.”

Suguru scrambles up on his own (he doesn’t quite miss the put-upon frown on Satoru’s face as he shoves his hands into his pockets).

“What?”

A ringing starts up in Suguru’s ears. Faint, awful, tinged with the faint clatter of applause. Satoru’s head is still tilted to the side, his grin shrinking though never quite disappearing from his face. It’s unbearably cute.

“Come on, don’t act like you’ve forgotten,” Satoru replies, sly. “You and Haibara have been planning her surprise party for weeks.”

“Oi! Gojo!” A voice calls, “Hurry up! They’re starting any minute now!”

“Come on, Suguru,” Satoru says.

He doesn’t bother to wait for Suguru to catch up to whatever is happening. Instead, he grabs Suguru’s hand and drags him down the hill, towards the gaggle kids, their parents, and even Haibara, Nanami, and Shoko.

“Satoru,” Suguru starts, embarrassed to find that his voice is wavering. “Satoru, what’s today?”

“Riko’s graduation day, of course!”

“No, I mean. The date. The year .”

Satoru blinks and slows to a normal person’s gait. With a twitch of his wrist, he slides his palm alongside Suguru’s and clasps their fingers together.

“March 16th,” he replies. “2007. Are you feeling okay? You didn’t get heat stroke sleeping under that tree, did you?”

“No,” Suguru says.

March 16, 2007. Suguru remembers taking three missions that day, two grade ones and a semi-grade two, and spending the afternoon facedown in his bed, trying to will away the nausea. He remembers getting an hour of sleep before waking for another day of missions. Exorcise. Consume. 

But today is March 16. He'd thought it was July, for some reason.

He smiles, forced. Satoru keeps looking at him with a funny, worried expression on his face before he pulls them all the way into the crowd and into a set of seats just beside Shoko. Shoko stares pointedly at their still-entwined hands before turning back to the front, where a line of kids has formed before a makeshift, outdoor stage. Suguru flushes but clings to Satoru’s hand even tighter.

He spots Riko instantly, wearing a sunflower in her hair and practically bouncing off the walls as she talks to the kid at her side. She tilts her head up and laughs, the sound of it joyous, loud enough to reach them at their seats, and when she looks up, her gaze lands almost instantly on Suguru. She practically glows while she stands there, waving at them maniacally, until one of the teachers watching the line scolds her and she pouts, turning back to the line.

Beside him, Satoru nudges him in the side. His smile is soft when he says, “Look at you. You look like a proud father or something.”

“What?” Suguru rubs at his eyes and sees some wetness has gathered at the ends of his eyelashes.

He looks, disbelieving, at Satoru. For a second, he wants to tell Satoru that something’s happened, although he's not sure what. He wants to say that a curse has gotten the best of them, no doubt, that just ten minutes ago they were practically estranged, boarding a plane with a trap laid specifically for Satoru. 

But just for a second.

“We’re way too old to be parents,” he says instead, smiling knowingly at Satoru. “Proud big brothers, maybe.”

“Yeah,” Satoru breathes, his grin stretching up his face. “That’s our little sister out there. All grown up. Isn’t it lovely?”

Satoru feigns weeping, gripping Suguru’s hand tighter beside them, where no one can see. He sticks his tongue out at Suguru and Suguru can’t help but elbow him.

Then, a teacher walks onto the stage, and the ceremony begins.

By virtue of Riko’s last name, she’s one of the first on and off the stage. Their whole row of Jujutsu Tech students jumps up and cheers when she walks across the stage, beaming and flushed in embarrassment and pride both. Satoru takes a video and Haibara snaps about a thousand pictures with his new camera. Suguru may or may not cry, even if he can't decide whether this is real or not.

After that, while the other students are crossing the stage, Suguru has lots of time to think.

He’d woken up this morning exhausted. A series of back-to-back missions across town had left him with little to no sleep. He might have consumed at least six curses over the course of the day, which had left him in a foul mood. He’d barely gotten through the tori gates when Yaga had handed him a mission, this time all the way in South Korea.

“Get packed,” Yaga had said, unsympathetic to Suguru’s unkempt hair or the way he was practically dragging himself up the steps. “A window will take you to the airport in about an hour.”

But had that really happened? The longer Suguru sits here, the more he wonders about it. Satoru’s hand is warm in his, sweaty; his grip sure. The sun is beating down on their heads. At his side, Shoko blows a bubble with some pink gum and pops it obnoxiously.

Not a hundred meters away, Riko is alive. Three seats down, Haibara is alive.

“Satoru,” Suguru says, tilting his head. Satoru tilts his in response, until their temples are touching. “When is the surprise party? Can you take me there?”

“Are you sure you didn’t spend too long out in the sun?” Satoru frowns again, but Suguru doesn’t miss the way he nuzzles against Suguru’s temple, ever so slightly. “Of course I’ll take you. We’re supposed to get there first, anyway. Don’t worry. I’ve finally figured out how to teleport something with me without accidentally separating them at the atomic level. We’ll get there so fast.”

“I’d rather take the train,” Suguru says, just to hear the way Satoru giggles at him.

They sneak away before the closing remarks, just behind one of the gates that lead back out to the parking lot. Satoru wraps his arms snugly around Suguru’s waist, smirking when he says, “Hold onto me tight, okay, Suguru? I haven’t actually tried this with a living person.”

“Are you kidding?” Suguru asks, trying to sound worried but failing when Satoru’s infectious grin spreads to him. Obligingly, Suguru wraps his arms around Satoru’s neck, letting Satoru take some of his weight. “If you turn me into a pile of ground meat, I’ll never forgive you.”

When Satoru laughs, it makes something bubble up his chest in a way Suguru has been trying to ignore since they first met. Helplessly, he squeezes his eyes shut against it. It feels like falling backward into a pile of down pillows, Satoru’s technique, or maybe it’s just Suguru’s cursed heart swooning at Satoru’s easy disregard for the laws of physics.

The world falls away, and when he opens his eyes again, the two of them are back at school, in one of the smaller, unused classrooms. Satoru has leaned into his space, his pretty pink mouth almost dangerously close to Suguru’s own, breathing quickly, as if he’s out of breath.

“See?” Satoru says, not quite panting but pretty close to it. “Easy.”

“You’re a bad liar, Satoru,” he teases, sliding one of his hands down from around Satoru’s neck to press against his chest, where Satoru’s heart is beating at a frantic pace. “I can feel your heart racing.”

Satoru tugs him impossibly closer. He watches the way Satoru’s Adam’s Apple bobs as he swallows.

“It isn’t my technique that’s doing that,” he practically purrs.

Suguru pulls away just enough to look up into Satoru’s shining, too-blue eyes. His insides are doing the fluttering, bubbling thing again, trying to jump right out of his body. Breathing in, he tries not to think about the over-warm skin of his palm where it gently caresses Satoru’s neck, or where Satoru’s hands are gripping onto his waist oh-so tenderly.

“Break it up, you two,” Yaga’s voice calls from farther off. “The rest of the party will be here any minute! Aren’t you supposed to be helping, not goofing around?”

Suguru pulls away with a nervous huff of laughter, watching Satoru’s grin fall dramatically into a pout as he goes.

For the sake of his own sanity, Suguru heads over to Yaga, who clasps his hand on his shoulder in welcome and hands Suguru a stack of a dozen or so brightly colored party hats. He waves Suguru over to the desk at the front of the classroom, currently re-purposed into a cake table and covered in bright pink table covers.

“Put these next to the cake,” he says, then adds with a playful grin he rarely ever sees on Yaga, “If you can get photographic evidence of Nanami and Shoko in one of these, I’ll guarantee you graduate valedictorian.”

“Hey! That’s not fair!”

“Deal,” Suguru says while Satoru scoffs in outrage behind them.

Yaga winks once, then turns and starts scolding Satoru about something Suguru doesn’t quite catch. Suguru looks down at the party hats in his hands and feels a bit like he’s forgotten something.

Something important.

The cheap party hats are stiff in his hands: thin, waxy plastic with balloons, stars, and confetti drawn along the surface. The colors clash horribly. He’s willing to bet money that Satoru saw them instantly and fell in love.

They feel real in his hands. The white elastic bands dangle when he tilts the stacks up and down. Why does he suddenly feel like they’re not?

Impulsively, Suguru takes one out of the stack and crushes it in his grip, just to see what it will feel like. He figures he should have expected the sharp sting of a papercut on his palm from the act.

“What, you don’t like them?” Satoru drapes himself over Suguru’s shoulder, frowning down at the tiny smear of blood on his hand. “You don’t have to destroy them, you know! If you just told me, maybe I’d be nice and say you don’t have to wear one!”

“When have you ever been nice, Satoru?” Suguru can’t help but tease, then snaps a party hat onto Satoru’s head while he’s busy pouting.

He laughs, helpless against the image of Satoru looking absolutely ridiculous. It only makes Satoru whine at him.

“Suguru is so mean to meeee,” he whines, and in retaliation Suguru snaps the elastic band under his chin to make him wince. “Suguru!”

Suguru laughs again. He leaves Satoru to his temper tantrum and lets himself be bossed around by Yaga until everyone shows up, about an hour later.

Time must pass. It must. He knows it must.

But suddenly Suguru is standing just outside of the classroom, on the wooden engawa surrounding the building, leaning against one of the pillars and watching the sun set. A faint breeze ruffles Suguru’s hair, warm but still welcome against the sweaty nape of his neck.

The sun has only just finished setting, and the school grounds are awash in a grey-purple shadow–the last little brightness before night settles in proper. It’s Suguru’s favorite time of day.

From farther off, the faintest whisper of thunder rumbles. The accompanying clouds are just wisps on the horizon for now. Maybe later tonight, the rain will come pouring down. For now, the humidity hangs like a second skin around him.

“I knew I’d find you out here.”

The warm press of Satoru’s body at his side has him tilting his head. Satoru is watching him, his sunglasses nowhere to be found. His eyes are almost iridescent in the evening glow, his hair limned in amethyst and silver from the lengthening shadows.

Suguru loves him. All at once, the feeling nearly overwhelms him. He’s gotten so used to it over the years, but it still manages to catch him off guard at the strangest of moments. Suguru wants to wrap his arms around Satoru’s neck again and maybe this time, never let go.

“I needed some air. I’ll be back in a minute. Go back inside, Satoru.”

Satoru pouts at him. He leans, jostling him with his hip lightly.

“Why would I do that?” Satoru asks quietly. “You’re out here.”

“Riko can’t go ten minutes without criticizing you,” Suguru manages to say around the breathless, shocked hope that Satoru’s words cause. “She’ll drag you back inside anyway.”

Satoru pouts again. At some point in the night, he’s undone the top three buttons of his dress shirt, so that Suguru can see the absurdly pale skin of his chest. It’s a good look for him.

Anything is a good look on Satoru, though.

“We haven’t gotten to hang out together once since the party started,” Satoru pouts. “She’ll be fine for ten minutes.”

Suguru despairs, just a little.

“We see each other all the time,” Suguru says. “We hardly ever go on missions apart anymore. One would think you’d be sick of me by now.”

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, Suguru frowns in confusion. It feels true, but it also feels untrue. He seems to remember a never-ending slog of solo missions (Exorcise, consume. Exorcise consume. Exorcise, consume) , of getting too little sleep, of isolation (part self-inflicted), and grief. But, grief for what? Why was he grieving for almost a full year? What–

“I’d never get sick of you, Suguru,” Satoru whispers, dragging him out of his confusing thoughts. Satoru is watching him, so soft, so tender that Suguru almost can’t bear to look at him. “You know that by now, right? I’d stay by your side forever if you’d let me.”

“Who said I wouldn’t let you?” Suguru finds himself saying.

Satoru grins at him, so wide it looks like it might jump off of his face, and then he’s swaying back into Suguru’s personal space, until he’s nuzzling his nose against Suguru’s, and then he sways forward even more, just enough to tilt his head just so, and then–

Satoru tastes like strawberry cake and cotton candy, almost too sweet to bear. With a sharp intake of air, Suguru wraps his hands around Satoru’s neck like he’s wanted to for years, burying his fingers in Satoru’s too-soft hair, and kisses him back.

Tears spring up in the corners of his eyes as he opens his mouth and presses his tongue into Satoru’s mouth. He isn’t sure why.

His grip on Satoru’s hair tightens, enough to make Satoru whine against him, and Satoru’s hands are hot against the cotton of his yukata.

“Suguru, I–”

Which is when, all at once, Suguru remembers that this is all a dream, and that none of this is real.

Suguru pushes away from Satoru roughly, hard enough that he overbalances on the railing and nearly falls. Satoru’s arm around him keeps him from falling into the grass. He frowns down at Suguru, concerned.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “No one’s looking our way.”

“You’re not real,” Suguru says aloud, hoping that will make the hallucination, the dream, whatever it is, go away.

Satoru stares at him, still frowning. Worried, now. Suguru manages to pull himself out of Satoru’s warm embrace. He stares at Satoru, his pleading eyes almost glowing in the low light, the glow from the open door carving half of him out of solid gold. He’s the most beautiful thing Suguru has ever seen.

He isn’t real.

He’d felt real. This feels real. Could it be he’s confused?

“I love you, Satoru,” he says, braver in this moment than he’s ever been in his life, still feeling the echoing sweetness of Satoru’s mouth on his.

The frown on his face instantly disappears, his smile almost blinding.

“I love you too!” he says.

Suguru summons one of his flying curses, watching the smile on Satoru’s face slowly melt away again.

“I’m sorry,” Suguru says. “But I think this is a dream.”

“Why would it–Suguru!”

Satoru calls after him as he takes off into the night sky, as fast as his curse can go, heading towards the edge of Tengen’s barrier. The alarm isn’t blaring yet, which could mean anything. It could mean nothing. His curse feels real under him; the wind feels real as it whips through his hair.

He remembers Riko dying. He remembers watching her graduate. Which is the truth?

Satoru would never kiss him. He would never fall in love with someone like Suguru. That feels true. 

When he’s high enough up that the school is little more than the size of his thumb, Suguru dissipates his curse, and he hurtles toward the ground.

He squeezes his eyes closed. This is a dream. This is a dream. This is–

Suguru wakes with a start, his neck aching from the awkward way it tilts against the window in his cramped seat. Stale, sterilized air blows into his face weakly. Sweat is pouring down his temple, still feeling the awful careening speed of himself falling face-first into the ground. His heart hammers in his chest, all lingering sleep quickly jolts away when he notices the distinct downward tilt of the plane.

Instantly, he summons Rainbow Dragon, who erupts into being floating alongside his window. Suguru presses his hand to the glass.

“Keep the plane afloat,” he tells her, and even through the glass, with the wind no doubt roaring in her ears, the curse snaps her giant maw once and disappears.

He feels the plane right itself moments later, a quick lurch that rumbles through the aircraft, the shift in air pressure making his eardrums pop.

Unbidden, grief strikes his heart like lightning. Awful, nearly all-consuming grief remembering Riko happy, her chin tilted up to catch the sun directly onto her face while she stood waiting for her name to be called. A wound in his chest that never quite healed all the way rips open again. Suguru breathes around it, trying to quell it, for a long moment.

“Satoru–” he starts, turning to his right only to find–

The seat beside him is empty.

Suguru’s lips tingle at the memory of the kiss–of his dream–and he tries to swallow down the lurching nausea in his gut.

For a second, he wonders if Satoru was actually in that strange dream with him, if he’d seen all of that, if he’d been part of that kiss.

It had felt so real.

Just his luck that his first kiss is some curse-induced hallucination with his best friend.

Then he swallows down the grief; he swallows down the disappointment; he swallows down the fear like he does to his curses. He can’t let any of that distract him right now.

Suguru sits up, already expecting it when he crawls out of the tiny space and finds the entire plane is fast asleep. The plane is full to bursting; over two hundred non-curse users are passed out in various positions all around him: a mother with her head bowed almost to touching the child she’s clutching in her lap, grip still sure even in sleep. A pair of kids collapsed one atop the other, both snoring raucously. Dozens of men and women with their heads pressed against the windows.

Towards the front of the plane, one of the stewards is crumpled up by the Captain’s cabin, a small blue tray spilling packets of snacks onto the floor.

At the back of the plane, he sees a crumpled mass of white and black.

Try as he might, he can’t keep the fear from coating the back of his throat. He jumps out of his seat and staggers towards it, hardly daring to breathe.

“Satoru,” he says again, turning the body by the shoulders.

Satoru’s face is pretty when he sleeps, sweet and innocent with none of the brattiness that some people find grating. His glasses are askew and his eyes shut, his long eyelashes kissing the apples of his cheeks. His mask has slipped off of one of his ears, partly revealing his slack lips. He takes a deep breath when Suguru shakes him slightly, but doesn’t wake.

Suguru sighs in relief, unsure why he half-expected Satoru to be dead (eyes staring unseeing at the ceiling; dried blood a tacky mass along his chest and neck; his throat slashed open clear through to the bone. Who is he kidding; Suguru knows why.)

He shakes Satoru one more time, rougher than before, but Satoru doesn’t so much as wrinkle his nose.

Satoru is a notoriously light sleeper. He doesn’t get much sleep to begin with, an old argument that Suguru is sure he’s fallen back into the habit of without him around to nag him into a full 8 hours of rest. Still, even when he does snatch more than two or three hours of sleep, he’ll still wake at the lightest of touches, as if the barest whisper of feet is enough to do harm. As if even in his sleep, he has his guard up.

Right.

Weird dreams and a Satoru so deep in sleep Suguru can’t wake him? It must be the work of a curse of some sort. Suguru thinks back to just before he’d fallen asleep, how Satoru had mentioned a curtain around the plane, something Suguru hadn’t felt. Surely this is related? Someone is here specifically targeting Satoru, who was obviously caught off guard, who is–

Who doesn’t have Infinity up.

Suguru’s fingers trace a delicate pattern along the arch of Satoru’s brow, feeling the tickle of his hair, the cool press of his skin. Satoru doesn’t have Infinity up.

That’s what scares him the most. Infinity is never down anymore, not since Satoru mastered RCT and left Suguru in the metaphorical dust. Suguru summons a curse: a massive grade one, all fur and teeth and blood-red eyes, that snarls as it materializes out of a dense grey-green fog.  Her palm-length claws pop holes in the vinyl of the chairs she’s using to loom over him.

“Protect Satoru, Matcha,” Suguru tells her, as if she needs to be told.

Matcha, of course, was named by Satoru; only Satoru would look at the manifestation of the fear of the unknown and think to name it Matcha. And, of course it had instantly loved him.

(It’s not Matcha’s fault that Satoru is too easy to love.)

With an eerie, echoing growl, Matcha hops down to settle practically on top of Satoru, glaring ominously after Suguru. Her beady, red eyes watch him sharply, even as her ears swivel, searching for danger.

He gives himself one last second to stare at Satoru’s slack face, then he pulls away, standing and closing his eyes. He takes a deep breath and focuses on the swirl of energy around him: the familiar shape of Matcha beside him, Satoru’s tightly leashed energy, anxiety and heartbreak and frustration from a handful of non-sorcerers, and at the front of the cabin, the heavy presence of a powerful curse.

Suguru sprints the length of the plane, easily kicking through the door to the Captain’s cabin. It reeks of cursed energy and stale blood. The Captain’s chair is empty save for a steaming pile of blood and gore; hardly a corpse when its entrails are splattered all over the door Suguru’s just kicked through. The copilot is passed out on the controls, looking more or less fine.

Sitting on the control panel is a small, almost humanoid curse; its skin is a leathery gray, ash-pale, pulled taught around frail-looking bones, and it has a bloated, unnaturally distended belly. It has no eyelids or lips, and stares down Suguru with a grotesque grin, baring its yellow teeth in a sallow, lipless grimace. Bulging, black eyes stare him down, its sclera bloodshot.

“I didn’t expect a spare,” it says in a reedy, wavering voice. It raises one bony hand–hardly more than skin stretched thin over bone with yellowed, claw-like nails–and snaps its fingers. “No matter. I’m not here for trifles like you.”

It disappears in a haze of sickly sweet gas. Suguru might have been offended if six snake-like curses didn’t slither into the cockpit in its absence.

Unregistered special grade, he has time to think, watching the snakes coil up and hiss at him, ready to strike. It has to have been. A snake snaps at him, but Suguru easily tilts out of its way, grabbing it around the neck to keep it subdued.

The snakes, on the other hand, are hardly more than semi-grade two. Suguru is offended now, that the stupid curse thinks a handful of low-level curses could keep him at bay. He grabs the curse with both hands and snaps its neck, dropping it to the floor when it stops writhing.

It takes less than a minute to dispel the rest of them, except for one quick bastard that slithers between his legs and disappears back to the main cabin before he can stop it. Suguru curses under his breath, leaping through the mess he’d made earlier, cringing inwardly at the sparking wires and broken door that he’ll have to explain later.

But the main cabin has changed now: in place of the narrow aisle between the rows of sleeping passengers, a cavernous wooden nave meets him, complete with christian iconography on the sloping ceilings. A few candles flicker along the walls, sputtering dim orange light into the almost empty room.

In the center of the room sits the snake, rapidly growing as he watches. Once the length of his arm, now it’s easily several meters long, its body thicker around than Suguru, its fangs easily longer than his leg.

Knee-jerk, Suguru opens his mouth and says, “I’m tired of these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane,” without any input from his brain.

Days before the Star Plasma Vessel mission, Satoru had dragged both him and Shoko to watch a terrible horror movie in theaters. Even after everything, there still seems to be a little gremlin-voice in his head that sounds too much like Satoru.

The curse snaps its jaws at him threateningly, spitting foul-smelling ooze at him. Suguru sidesteps it easily and watches it sizzle on the wooden floors, eating through it slowly.

Right then.

He summons a pair of grade twos, tiny little things with skeletal wings and shrill caws. They buzz around its head like annoying flies, just enough of a distraction for Suguru to build up his energy into his leg, a black flash with a well-placed roundhouse kick that bursts a hole through its coils. It shrieks, a strange, grating sound that rattles the walls around them, thrashing as his birds dive in and pluck out its eyes.

Suguru raises his hand and it easily swirls into his palms like all the others. (Exorcise. Consume. Exorcise. Consume. Exorcise–)

He hesitates, wondering if it’s worth the nausea when he still has a higher grade, sentient curse to fight. His eyes flicker to the candles still flickering around him. One that can make an innate domain even.

He pockets the snake-orb for now, choosing to prioritize escaping the domain if only to check that Matcha still has Satoru.

He’ll know, of course, the moment that Matcha is dispersed, or if she’s injured enough to return to him. Matcha would never leave Satoru’s side for anything less than total annihilation; she’s protective of him that way. But he’ll still feel better if he can see Satoru safe with his own eyes.

“You might as well give up,” Suguru calls into the empty room with more confidence than he feels.

“You think too highly of yourself, Spare,” the curse’s voice cackles from everywhere at once. “You think you can defeat Hunger? Fear and pain and anger and jealousy? I am the longing, the pain, the manifestation of human famine, child.”

Suguru rolls his eyes, turning slowly in a circle to see if he can pinpoint the curse’s energy.

“Right,” he says, frantically trying to remember how Satoru keeps the curses talking. “Nice party trick, with the snakes.”

“Fodder,” the curse says, and Suguru turns slowly, feeling the pulse of its energy behind him. “A human idea.”

Suguru tilts his head, his curiosity piqued. Remembers Satoru’s leg draped over his knee, the casual way he’d described the trap set just for him.

“Is it a human idea to take Satoru, as well? Surely a curse like you isn’t picky.”

The curse laughs, a high-pitched, awful sound. More like the clanging of cables together than anything else.

“Clever little thing,” the curse says. “Your dreams were so tasty. If not for the Binding Vow, I’d take you with us as well.”

Privately, Suguru thinks it would have had a better time trying to take the both of them instead of just Satoru. He closes his eyes to concentrate more, hoping to look vulnerable as a way to lure the curse out as well.

Satoru has always been better at reading curse energy, even if Suguru hates to admit it. Another thing that Satoru is the best at, even when Suguru is literally built to consume them. He pushes that away, when he feels the flicker of energy at his elbow, turning and striking before he has time to think.

His fist meets air, but then he feels it distinctly when the curse manifests farther off, as if running from the hit. Its emaciated face scowls at him, its bone-thin shoulders trembling in anger.

“Unregistered Special Grade,” Suguru says, hoping it’s prideful enough to give him its name. “Tell me who sent you.”

The curse laughs at him again, and disappears in a mist of grey. Now that he’s seen it, however, he can follow its energy easier.

“Powerful little thing, the Six Eyes,” the curse whispers. “Its dreams are tastier than the rest of my victims combined. A shame to give him up to a human.”

Suguru isn’t an expert on domains; so he’s not entirely sure if the curse can mask its energy within one or not. He guesses it can, from the difficulty Suguru has been having tracking it. He isn’t quite confident enough to summon a curse right now, not with its own energy muddling things up further for him.

Annoying, he thinks to himself. Suguru turns on his heel, a quick pivot to scan the cavernous room again, hating the feeling of being a sitting duck, completely exposed to an unseen enemy just waiting for a hit.

A shift of energy to his left, and Suguru shifts his weight, his arms coming up to block on instinct. The curse rips through the skin of his forearms easily with its fingernails, a necessary sacrifice for Suguru to redirect its trajectory and send it hurtling to the ground with a sharp twist of his shoulders. Before it has a chance to disappear again, Suguru aims a kick to its ribs, the crack of bone echoing in the domain.

Blood drips onto his shirt, stark against the white cotton. He regrets not putting on the school uniform for the plane ride, even if at the time it had seemed exhausting to do up the buttons. The thick canvas of the uniform jacket might have been enough to keep his blood from spilling, certainly more than the soft fabric of his sweater.

“Too easy,” Suguru says aloud, shaking both his arms to try to distract from the pain, watching his blood paint the wooden floorboards. “You call yourself a Special Grade?”

“You think too highly of yourself, Spare,” the curse’s voice calls out from the shadows. “With you gone, what will happen to your pet guarding the Six Eyes, I wonder?”

“As if you could kill me,” Suguru snaps back, even as he thinks of Satoru’s unconscious body.

Who knows what would happen to him if he gets caught up with those bounty hunters? The curse makes a strange, quivering sound, maybe a giggle of some sort.

“So you say.”

The curse takes another hit at him, its gnarled fingers clipping him in the shoulder and ripping his sleeve almost clear off. Suguru hates that he could very well be defeated by a curse like this because of its stupid guarantee-hit status.

Suguru needs to break out of this domain. Sooner, rather than later. There’s a slim chance Satoru will wake on his own, the same way Suguru did, but he’s not counting on it. He thinks that if Satoru would have broken out of the dream, he would have done so already. In Suguru’s dream (don’t think about the kiss, don’t think about the kiss, don’t think—), the longer he’d been in the dream, the more he’d forgotten he was dreaming.

Suguru clenches his fist. He summons a few flyheads; fodder for when the curse inevitably strikes again. He closes his eyes, trusting his small curses to keep him safe for just a few moments, while he focuses.

“New Shadow Technique, Simple Domain,” he says under his breath, watching the gleam of pale grey that is the curse rip apart his Flyheads like they were paper dolls.

“Easy,” the curse drawls. Suguru forces his energy into his fists, closing his eyes and listening for the telltale movement of energy.

When it lunges for him this time, Suguru catches it by the ankle. Eyes closed, he spins and slams the thing into the ground so hard the wood breaks under its back. Suguru lifts his fist, glowing with another black flash that he can feel collapses its ribs, hitting the weak point he'd created earlier.

The domain erupts, shards of energy shaped like beams of wood spinning off into the ether, the force of it pushing Suguru onto the ground. Then, he’s sitting in the aisle of the plane again, almost blinded by the bright lights after the dimness of the domain.

The curse, when Suguru can finally use his eyes again, is grimacing at him, clutching at its side where blue-black blood sluggishly drips onto blue vinyl. It’s sitting on the top of one of the seats, an empty one as near as it can probably get to Satoru and Matcha. Just outside of Matcha’s reach without her abandoning her post above Satoru; just outside of Suguru’s reach.

Matcha is still standing, blood pouring from a wound on her neck, another snake clamped tightly in her jaws.

“Troublesome,” the curse wheezes. Its bulging eyes linger on Matcha curved protectively over a still-sleeping Satoru, before it grins its awful grimace again. “I don’t kill humans often, you know. I feed on the emotions in their dreams, and the energy produced from them. And the Six Eyes is having a very good dream. Would you like to see it? Do you want to know what the Six Eyes dreams of, when he dreams of his perfect world?”

Suguru thinks of his own dream, Riko and Haibara alive, the whole group of them laughing and joyous. Satoru’s arms around him. Satoru’s lips on his.

“Fuck off and die,” Suguru says, lunging at the curse.

His fist glows black again, probably the last Black Flash he can make today, ready to pummel the thing into the ground and be done with this once and for all. Suguru catches it and they tumble back down to the ground, the impact of his fist cracking against the curse’s skull. For a moment, Suguru thinks it’s over. Then the curse opens its skeletal mouth and exhales a cloud of sickly sweet gas.

It smells of cotton candy.

Suguru crumples above it, instantly asleep.

The curse cackles. On the other side of the aisle, a hulking wolf-like curse growls at it. It hovers protectively over this curse’s prize. Troublesome , it thinks. With the Curse Manipulator knocked out, the curse should have vanished. The wolf-curse snarles at it, as if sensing its thoughts. Things would be simpler if it did not need to take the Six Eyes back to the homeland, but such is the nature of a Binding Vow.

The curse observes the wolf, the Six Eyes under it. Surely, with its owner asleep, it will at least be easier to deal with.

Suguru wakes to a honey-gold sunrise, the bed feather-soft under him. He inhales sharply, sitting up and looking around the foreign (familiar?) room.

Walls painted a soft bably blue, with a set of sliding doors that have been outfitted with a set of fluttery white curtains. The doors are open and the curtains gauze-thin so Suguru can see that it leads out to a balcony of sorts. A fuzzy shape is visible, a small table maybe, and out of sight someone clinking china.

Birdsong, the birds Suguru remembers from his youth, greet his ears.

“Not now, Bird-chan,” says a devastatingly familiar voice. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“Satoru?”

Still feeling disoriented, Suguru doesn’t move. He’d just been doing…something important, he thinks. Fighting a curse? But why would he wake up again in a bed? In…in his bed?

Satoru comes bounding in, eyes wide and a happy grin on his face.

“Suguru!” he chirps, then rearranges his face until he’s pouting. “You’re not supposed to be awake for another fifteen minutes, at least! After all the trouble I went through to change your alarm last night without you getting suspicious, too. So mean.”

“I’m sorry?” Suguru replies, a touch baffled. Satoru huffs, sitting on the edge of the bed and watching him.

He looks different, somehow. Although the more Suguru thinks it, the more it seems bizarre that Suguru should think so. Satoru is older than what he remembers, maybe by a few years. He’s not the skinny bean pole that Suguru always made fun of him for in high school. He’s filled out in the shoulders, although his waist is as small as ever. Suguru’s mouth goes dry, watching Satoru watch him in his casual yukata, a faded-looking thing Satoru clearly wears to sleep.

“You should be,” Satoru huffs, but the pout melts off his face easily enough. “I suppose the surprise isn’t completely ruined, though…”

“I had a–strange dream, I guess,” Suguru says, still feeling muddled and out-of-sorts. He blinks, and some of the confusion disappears. “What do you mean you changed my alarm? Satoru–”

Satoru jumps onto him immediately, a tangle of limbs and bedding, wrapping his arms around Suguru’s middle and burying his head in Suguru’s chest. His nose is cold from the early morning chill outside where it presses against Suguru’s collar bone.

“Don’t say it’s controlling and weird,” Satoru mumbles. “Of course I know that. But you wake up too early! How was I supposed to get your surprise ready if you’re up before I am?”

He pulls away, resurfacing and pressing the full weight of his body along Suguru’s.

“Happy birthday, Suguru,” Satoru breathes, his smile soft and warm and precious. “We have about an hour before the kids wake up. I made you breakfast.”

Suguru stares helplessly into Satoru’s bright eyes; sees himself reflected in their blue depths. The miniature Sugurus are shocked, his hair longer than ever, spread messily onto a set of pale gray sheets.

Suguru loves him. There is no force on earth that would keep him from loving him. For a moment, doubt winds up his spine, sure it had been summer for some reason. But Satoru is watching him, waiting for something from him, so Suguru pushes the thought aside.

“Is it pancakes?” he finds himself asking.

“Of course it’s pancakes!” Satoru chirps with a teasing smile. “They’re your favorite!”

“They’re your favorite, Satoru,” Suguru says, unable to keep the indulgent smile off his face.

He pushes Satoru’s face away with his left hand just so that he can think straight for a moment. A flash of silver on his finger; a ring he doesn’t recognize, but leaves him feeling breathless for an endless moment. He's frozen, staring at his hand, and Satoru must notice.

All he does, though, is slip his fingers in between Suguru’s own, showing off a matching silver band on Satoru’s own finger as well.

“It’s still hard to believe, huh,” Satoru whispers. Suguru runs his thumb along the band, swallowing down a directionless, terrible grief. Satoru brings their hands up to his mouth, gently kissing Suguru’s ring. His eyes are shining almost silver in the early morning light; the most beautiful thing Suguru’s ever seen in his life. “Come have breakfast with me, Suguru.”

Helpless, Suguru lets himself be pulled out of bed. He has no choice in the matter, not when Satoru is looking at him like that.

Breakfast is a stack of blueberry pancakes almost completely saturated in syrup and whipped cream. But it’s also a small tray with a full breakfast platter: miso soup and grilled tuna, rice and seaweed salad, even a tiny bowl of natto sitting with the pickled onions. A cup of delicate, white-gold tea sits off to the side, waiting for him.

Satoru’s huge eyes watch him like a bird of prey; it would be unnerving if Suguru wasn’t so used to it.

“Who taught you how to make natto?” Suguru asks faintly, unsure where to even start.

Satoru puffs out his cheeks, a flush staining them biteably pink.

“I bought it,” he says with a pout. “I know how much you like it, but it always looks so gross! So I never bothered to learn how to make it. Of course that’s the first thing you notice. I grilled the fish myself you know. But does Suguru care? No, of course it’s–”

“Don’t be such a brat,” Suguru laughs, charmed despite himself. He slips his arms around Satoru’s neck, whose pout immediately becomes more forced than genuine. Suguru can tell. “I’m so impressed, Satoru. This all looks delicious.”

He’s watching the flush on Satoru’s cheeks more than the meal, and they only flush a deeper pink at his words. Before he can get himself distracted, Suguru pulls away, choosing to take a seat at the little table and daintily pick up the set of chopsticks laid out for him. He grabs a thin slice of fish and the bowl of miso soup. Satoru is smiling at himself, always so easy for praise, and Suguru can’t quite help himself.

“My Satoru is such a good cook! Spending all this time on a breakfast just for me. I’m so lucky.” Satoru sits in the opposite seat, smiling down at his hideous pile of pancakes like a lovesick fool. “Is that better?”

“Hmm,” Satoru hums, pretending to think about it. When he finally looks back up, his eyes are bright, his smile blinding. “For now, I guess.”

Satoru inhales his pancakes in record time, checking his watch every now and then, as if waiting for something. Suguru drinks his tea after a surprisingly delicious breakfast, admiring the early morning sunlight glinting off of his ring, trying to figure out why it feels like he’s forgotten something.

Why, if he skirts around the thought, his heart feels like it’s ripping itself to pieces.

From somewhere deep in the house, a puppy howls.

“Megumi is up, then,” Satoru says with a smile, setting his fork down with a clatter. “He’s got a surprise for you. He’s been conspiring with Tsumiki all last month.”

Suguru doesn’t recognize those names, although they leave Satoru’s mouth with easy care and familiarity. Still, when Satoru extends his hand, Suguru doesn’t hesitate to clasp it. He lets himself be led back into the bedroom, down a short hallway that leads out to a set of stairs, down to a spacious living room where–

There are two children sitting patiently on a sumptuous-looking grey couch. Suguru doesn’t have enough brain space to notice anything else.

The girl is maybe twelve or thirteen, with her hair tied up in a neat ponytail, a bright blue scrunchie holding it in place. She’s nudging the younger boy at her side, smiling up at the two of them.

The boy is a little thing, hardly older than seven, a wild rat’s nest of hair, with a determined scowl on his face. He’s clutching a manilla envelope that is almost the full length of his torso.

Toji Fushiguro’s face, staring up at the two of them.

Satoru crows something that Suguru doesn’t quite catch, bounding down the last of the stairs and sweeping the girl up in a huge, spinning hug while she shrieks in delight. The boy watches Suguru with dark eyes.

Suguru feels frozen on the stairs, gripping onto the railing like a lifeline.

“What’s with the scowl, Gumi?” Satoru says, pinching one of his cheeks.

The boy pushes Satoru’s hand away while Satoru pouts.

“Don’t call me that,” the boy snaps.

“You can’t be mean to me today, Megumi,” Satoru whines, finally setting the girl down on the ground beside him. “It’s Suguru’s birthday!”

“What does his birthday have to do with you,” the boy mumbles.

All three sets of eyes turn back to Suguru, still frozen on the stairs. Satoru frowns up at him, concerned. The same face he’d made when Suguru pushed him away, that first night they’d kissed–

But, no, that wasn’t real, was it? Riko was alive in that dream.

“Is something wrong, Suguru?” Satoru asks, setting a hand almost absently on the girl’s head. What had he called her, in their bedroom? Tsumiki?

“Happy birthday Geto-san!” she shouts, bowing at the waist and tugging on Satoru’s sleeve as she does so. “Be polite, Gojo-san!”

“I liked it better when you were bullying Megumi to be nice, instead of me,” he says, but does tilt forward a little, his eyes shining as he watches Suguru. “Happy birthday, Suguru.”

Suguru blinks back tears. His heart is full, his heart is breaking into a hundred pieces, his heart is a hollow void that stopped knowing what joy was months and months ago.

The little boy, Megumi, drops to standing from the sofa and shuffles towards the stairs. He holds out the envelope, his cheeks flushing, eyes fixed on the first step.

Slowly, Suguru curls into a sitting position on the stairs and takes the envelope with a trembling hand.

“Happy birthday,” Megumi mumbles.

Suguru turns it over to find a set of large, slightly wobbly kanji, spelling out Happy Birthday , too deliberate to have been written by anyone but the seven-year-old in front of him.

Suguru opens it delicately and pulls out a set of legal papers, quickly flipping through them while Megumi flushes a deeper and deeper red.

“Geto Megumi,” Suguru reads faintly, looking down at a boy he has no memory of, a boy wearing the face of the man who killed the love of his life, a boy who finally looks up at him with huge, watery eyes.

“Do you like it?” he asks in a small, small voice. “Tsumiki-chan and Gojo said you would but…”

“I–” Suguru starts, then has to stop himself before he spontaneously bursts into tears. A smile trembles to life on his face. “You shouldn’t address Satoru so informally, you know. You don’t want people to think you’re just as bad as he is.”

Megumi’s lips tilt up, just a little, and somehow Suguru knows that’s the biggest smile to have graced Megumi’s face since they brought the two of them home.

“Okay, ’Tou-san,” Megumi whispers, hesitant.

Suguru pulls Megumi into a hug, because he isn’t quite sure this is real but there is a very real child in his arms, trembling ever so slightly where he’s pressed against Suguru’s collar bone, and there’s a ring glinting on his finger, and Satoru and Tsumiki are holding each other and bawling, excessively and.

And.

God, does Suguru want it. Here, with Satoru. In a house he doesn’t recognize, the two of them building a family together. Love and joy practically oozing from the walls. Suguru laughs, burying his face in Megumi’s wild hair when tears finally start falling. He laughs, and it feels like a laugh from the very bottom of his heart.

And truly, if this is the only family he ever gets, if feeling this wonderful, painful, overflowing thing will only ever happen in a dream, then Suguru wants to indulge in it. He wants to hold onto it for as long as he can.

Suguru pulls Satoru into the kitchen while the kids go back upstairs to shower and change. Satoru is smiling at him like a lovesick fool, something that hurts to look at the more he thinks.

“Satoru,” Suguru says, swallowing down another lump in his throat. “Satoru. I need to tell you something, and I need you to believe me when I say it.”

“Okay.” Satoru’s smile dims a little in confusion. He tilts his head, and adds, “I believe you.”

“You haven’t even heard what I have to say.”

Satoru shrugs.

“Do I need to?”

“Be serious, Satoru!”

“I am! I trust you; of course I’ll believe you.”

He says that now, of course. Suguru takes a deep breath.

“Okay. So,” he starts, trying to figure out the best way to begin. “We’re currently under the influence of a curse. It’s put you into a dream and sent me into it as well, to drain your energy. We’re on an airplane right now. It’s July, 2007.”

Satoru stares at him for a long time after that.

“It’s 2010, Suguru,” he finally says. Slowly, like he thinks something might be wrong. “Your birthday isn’t in July.”

“It’s not my birthday, Satoru,” Suguru says. He can feel tears starting to well up in his eyes, and he blinks them back furiously. “I don’t–I don’t know who those two kids were. Megumi and Tsumiki. Besides the obvious that Megumi was Fushiguro’s kid. I don’t–whatever this is. ” Here he waves around the expansive kitchen, “It’s not real. You’re dreaming, Satoru.”

“Why would a curse put us both in my dream?”

“I escaped mine. So I know this isn't my dream.”

To be fair to Satoru, he hasn’t run away screaming just yet, although his eyebrows have nearly disappeared under his bangs. He shuffles a little closer and clasps Suguru’s hand, frowning again.

“You don’t remember Megumi or Tsumiki?”

“I’ve never met them before today, Satoru.”

Something twists in Satoru’s expression. His free hand comes up to cradle the side of Suguru’s head gently.

“You don’t think it was a memory curse? You got home late last night from that mission; it was the only way we could arrange for Megumi–”

“You don’t believe me.”

Satoru stares at him, his mouth hanging open as if to continue his train of thought. Suguru watches his eyes flicker over every part of his own face, up and down. Satoru is the smartest person Suguru knows. He’s a genius of Jujutsu. If Satoru doesn’t believe him; he isn’t sure how to prove what he’s saying any way that will be satisfying.

“Okay,” Satoru finally says with a frown. “I believe you. How do we get out of the dream, then?”

Suguru swallows. He thinks back to a sticky spring evening, Satoru’s lips on his. A dream, just a dream. Wind in his hair, the swooping sensation in his stomach that comes from hurtling at the earth from a height, no curses chasing after him that time, no Satoru to catch him at the last minute.

“You’re not going to like it.”

Suguru grips Satoru’s wrist, the hand still cradling the side of Suguru’s jaw. He nuzzles into the touch, just for a second. Satoru is still frowning. His brilliant mind is whirring, Suguru knows. That expression hasn’t changed since first year.

“A shock, right?” Satoru says, almost to himself. “Most people wake from dreams after something shocking. Like falling, or getting hit, no?”

“Dying,” Suguru agrees. He swallows again, looking away from Satoru’s too-bright eyes. He hesitates, feeling like he’s baring too much of his fucked-up soul already. Looks away before he elaborates. “When I have nightmares. The only way I can get out of them is by dying.”

“Suguru–”

“They’re only dreams, Satoru,” Suguru is quick to defend, knowing from the sharp hiss of Satoru’s breath that he’s not taking it well. Suguru doesn’t dare to sneak a look at what his face is doing. “It’s not a big deal.”

“If it’s not a big deal, why won’t you look at me?”

Suguru’s eyes snap up to Satoru at that, caught out. Satoru’s eyes are red, making the blue stand out all the brighter. Suguru has never seen Satoru cry. Even when he was dead, his eyes were clear, the sky in reverse: bright blue surrounded by bright white clouds.

“I jumped,” Suguru says before he can stop himself. “It wasn’t so hard. And it worked, so what’s the big deal?”

Satoru doesn’t have an answer for him, not for a long stretch of silence. Then, he sighs.

“Now I get it when people call me annoying,” he says.

Suguru rolls his eyes, pulling away from Satoru to let himself breathe. His eyes roam the kitchen, gleaming white countertops and grey cabinets, a spotless stove with those fancy black glass burners; a wood knife block set neatly beside the fridge. Satoru’s hand on his shoulder stops him before he even realizes he’s moved.

“No,” he says, stubborn.

“The curse is only after you.” Suguru blinks, then turns back to Satoru, who is scowling at him now. “It has a plane with over two hundred non-sorcerers captive, Satoru. If we don’t get out of this dream, it’s going to take you who knows where.”

“I’m not going to let you stab yourself; what the fuck, Suguru! Those were a wedding gift!”

Suguru pales. He’s been carefully avoiding the implications of everything that’s happened in this dream so far, for his own sanity, but there it is. Plain as day.

Wedding gift.

Satoru is dreaming of the two of them married. Of them owning a house together. Of them raising children together. The ring on his finger is a heavy, burning weight. Their wedding bands.

(Suguru feels like he’s going to be sick.)

“It’s a dream, Satoru,” Suguru says as gently as he can manage, trying not to let his breaking heart spill into his throat. “We’re not married.”

A tear slips down Satoru’s cheek.

“I’m trying to believe you,” he finally replies. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and Suguru resists the urge to wrap Satoru in his arms, anything to quell the distress plain on his face. “If I…If I think about it, I can’t really remember getting those knives. But I also know that Nanami gave them to us on our wedding night. I also know that our kids are upstairs, and we promised them we’d go to the aquarium today. Suguru. I. I’m trying.”

Our kids. Geto Megumi. Suguru pushes the awful, painful yearning down, down, down. It’s not helpful right now.

“Trust me,” Suguru says. “It’s not a combatant curse. If I can get out of the dream, I can get rid of it easily.”

“I trust you.” He says it as easily as breathing. As if it’s obvious. Suguru isn’t going to survive after all of this is over. “Okay. What should I do?”

Slowly, tenderly, lovingly, Suguru takes Satoru’s right hand and curves his middle and ring finger in, setting the thumb gently above them.

“A short, sharp shock,” Suguru murmurs, then presses his lips to the tip of Satoru’s finger to steady his own nerves. “It’ll be quick.”

“You’re crazy,” Satoru says, ragged. “I’m not doing it. I’m not killing you, Suguru.”

“It’s a dream, Satoru,” Suguru answers. “It’s not real. You have to trust me.”

Suguru loves him. He loves Satoru so much. Here in this dream, without any of the awful, bloodthirsty thoughts souring his soul, it’s easy to see what really matters. Satoru closes his eyes, tears still streaming down his face. Trust me, trust me. I love you. Trust me.

“I’ll never forgive you if this isn’t a dream,” Satoru whispers, then, adds: “For you, the smallest Hollow Purple I can make.”

Suguru loves Satoru more than life itself. He’d do anything to keep him safe.

A flash of blinding purple light, and Suguru falls to his knees.

Suguru wakes with a wretched gasp. He’s getting so sick of this. Behind him, Matcha howls, the only warning he gets before the enemy curse launches itself at Suguru’s head. He holds his breath, pulling the thing off of him by sheer adrenaline and throwing it clear across the cabin, where it smashes against what remains of the door leading to the cockpit.

Suguru summons four more curses: small, agile things that can easily maneuver around the still-sleeping passengers.

He has a theory. The curse can feed off of non-sorcerers, but it can only manipulate dreams from people who have enough curse energy. Sorcerers, most likely. It can probably only put the same person to sleep once, otherwise Suguru thinks it would have sent him back to his own dream instead of Satoru’s, in a terrible, infinite loop. That means…

The curse wails as one of his scorpion curses stings it in the spine.

Suguru stands, watching the curse fight with satisfaction. He can see a huge bite-sized wound on its neck, oozing black blood. No doubt a wound courtesy of Matcha while he was dreaming. He can feel the waning of its cursed energy now. One of the slimy curses grabs it, as if reading Suguru's mind, and holds it firmly in place.

Easy.

With all the strength he has, he stomps down on the curse's head with the heel of his trainers. The bone crunches under his foot, too satisfying, too easy after the trouble it's caused. 

Suguru grins. He holds his hand out and the curse’s scream stops short midway through, as it becomes a swirling mass of energy in his hand. Suguru shoves it into his mouth, ignoring the taste as best as he can.

His head spins as the curse riots in his stomach, but he swallows back the nausea for now.

Behind him, a huge, hiccuping breath.

Satoru.

Suguru rushes back to Satoru, to see him sitting on his knees, his eyes bloodshot, watching Suguru with an utterly betrayed expression on his face. The look stops him in his tracks. Matcha sits just beside him, her tail thumping against the floor in a steady rhythm. They stare at each other for a long, breathless second. Satoru’s cheeks are wet with tears, his mask hanging limply off one of his ears.

That’s right around when the screaming starts up. He dissipates Matcha, leaving Rainbow Dragon until the Copilot gets on the intercom. He says (in a remarkably calm voice for someone sitting next to a pile of gore that used to be a human) that they are making an emergency landing in Osaka, in twenty minutes, nobody panic.

Satoru gets up, pushes past Suguru without looking at him, and slides into their row of seats, sliding all the way to the window. Suguru dissipates Rainbow Dragon, only a slight lurch under his feet when she disappears and the pilot takes full control of the plane. He hesitates for a moment, then follows Satoru into their seats.

Satoru has Infinity up. He bumps up against it when he sits down, nearly 15 centimeters between them. Suguru thinks of the beginning of the flight, Infinity gone, the warm press of Satoru’s knee against his.

He thinks of Satoru, holding his hand in a reality that doesn’t exist, their wedding bands glinting in the early morning light. It’s still hard to believe, isn’t it?

Suguru crosses his hands over his chest, staring down at the floor.

It’s a long twenty minutes, after that.

Here is how the mission resolves itself: they make landfall in Osaka, Gakuganji and a handful of the Kyoto teachers waiting at the airport to do damage control. Since the mission was technically Suguru’s, he’s cornered and forced to give a full account of the mission “failure” to a very disapproving Gakuganji. Suguru mentions the trap, the potential Bounty Hunter, but keeps the nature of the curse’s technique vague. Gakuganji is more interested in the trap set for Satoru than he is in the curse, anyway.

When Suguru has finished his mission report, Gakuganji turns to one of the teachers with him, already coordinating how to catch the supposed Curse User. He doesn’t bother with Suguru again. It suits Suguru just fine; he knows the Kyoto school has always turned their noses up at his technique. Without so much as a dismissal, Suguru slouches away, his eyes scanning the tarmac for a shock of white hair.

But at some point, Satoru must have slipped away. Suguru tries to quell the disappointment he feels churning in his stomach that Satoru has already left.

Before this mission, it’s been normal for them to be alone. And it technically isn’t Satoru’s mission, either. It makes sense that he would want to go home after the nonsense that was this plane ride.

Still, Suguru had thought–

It doesn’t matter what he’d thought. Obviously Satoru doesn’t want to talk about it. He probably wants to forget about the whole thing and go back to how they were before (Suguru, falling behind, trapped in a swirling pit of growing hatred and despair, while Satoru only flourished, glowing brighter and brighter while Suguru suffocates in his shadow).

Suguru thinks of a cold February morning that never happened, the tip of his nose cold, his wedding ring glinting in the light. He thinks of a little boy with the face of a murderer, watching Suguru with serious eyes. He thinks of a joy he hasn’t felt in the waking world since Riko’s death, and more than anything, he wants that back.

But Satoru doesn’t.

Suguru takes the train back to Tokyo, hoping that the time spent alone will help mend whatever has been ripped to shreds in his chest.

The sun is sinking below the horizon by the time he makes it back to the school, not quite dusk but close to it. The school is a ghost town at this time of evening, especially with how busy everyone is. The summer has been busy.

(Exorcise. Consume. Exorcise. Consume.)

Satoru is nowhere to be found.

Well, he’s not in any of the common areas. Suguru heads to his dorm and sees Satoru’s door shut tight, a flickering light under it a telltale sign that he’s in there. At least they haven’t sent him on another mission yet. Suguru hesitates, staring at Satoru’s door, trying to gather up the courage to knock on the wood.

Trust me, trust me. I love you. Trust me, he thinks again, and it doesn’t feel any less real than it did in Satoru’s dream. But Satoru’s door is never closed.

Satoru had never looked quite so betrayed as he did this afternoon, when he’d woken from the dream.

He goes into his own room, closing the door behind him as he does.

Suguru eats the snake curse, then curls up in bed and falls into a thankfully dreamless sleep, much earlier than he means to.

He wakes suddenly hours later, confused for a moment until he catches the silhouette leaning against Suguru’s now open door, moonlight spilling in from the hallway.

“Satoru?”

A sharp gasp from the silhouette, and then Satoru steps into his room, his expression half-hidden in the darkness.

“Yeah, okay,” Satoru breathes. “I thought I could pretend like nothing happened, but I can’t. I’m still really pissed at you.”

“What? You’re pissed at me?”

Satoru straight-up growls. Suguru is not awake enough for what the sound does to him. He watches Satoru storm all the way into his room, jumping onto the foot of Suguru’s bed and scowling, even as he carefully folds his legs so as not to jostle Suguru.

“Obviously!” Satoru hisses. “You made me kill you, Suguru!”

“It was a dream.”

“Okay,” Satoru snaps, clearly not okay in any way. “Except it didn’t feel like that to me. All I had to go on was your word for it. How long was it before you defeated the curse?”

“I don’t know.” Suguru sits up, shaking his head to clear the lingering sleep, to try to focus on this conversation. “Minutes, maybe.”

“Where I was still dreaming,” Satoru finishes. Manic, he crawls on his hands and knees over to Suguru’s side, still scowling. “Where I was in an empty kitchen with a corpse, Suguru.”

Suguru opens his mouth to respond, but finds he has nothing to say. Satoru is scowling at him still, expression thunderous. But Suguru knows him well enough still to see the tremble of his lip.

“I’m sorry.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Satoru continues. “You impulsive, stupid, insensitive–”

“Satoru–”

“Bastard!” Satoru collapses backward as if his rage escapes him all at once. His head thunks against the wall heavily. “I’m so mad at you.”

“I’m sorry,” he tries again.

Suguru’s bed is pressed up against the back right corner of his room, so that, with the way Satoru is sitting, moonlight spills against his face. His eyes shine in the darkness, wet with unshed tears. Satoru takes a huge breath, staring up at the ceiling. He doesn’t say anything.

“Why,” Suguru starts, and can’t help sitting up and rearranging himself, inching just a little closer to Satoru. “Why did you want to pretend like nothing happened?”

That makes Satoru look at him again, petulant.

“I mean, isn’t it obvious?” He looks back up at the ceiling again, pink slowly crawling up his neck. “I mean. I was dreaming about us married with kids. That’s like. Insane. You were so freaked out you wanted to die.”

“That’s literally not what happened.”

“Did I kill you or didn’t I?”

“Satoru,” Suguru sets his hand on Satoru’s ankle, the closest part of him that he can reach. They both flinch a little at the skin-on-skin contact. He hasn’t noticed Satoru has Infinity down. It has to mean something, right? Emboldened, Suguru continues, “Satoru. I–I don’t think it was insane.”

Satoru’s eyes flicker back to him, the downward tilt of his lips trembling. Suguru squeezes Satoru’s ankle, hoping it helps.

“You don’t?”

Suguru swallows. He weighs the pros and cons of honesty, of revealing the fragile hope slowly blooming in his chest. He’s always been shit at talking about his emotions, no matter how articulate he is at everything else. Still, would not saying something be worse?

He thinks of Satoru’s lips on his, Satoru’s weight against his in a bed that doesn’t exist yet. He thinks of himself: two days ago, three weeks ago–drowning in his own spiraling thoughts. His heart eating itself up with righteous anger and hatred. He thinks of himself, holding a boy who looks like his worst enemy, his heart so full of love he could fill the whole universe with it.

He knows which one he wants.

“Are those kids,” he starts. He licks his lips, hesitating. “Tsumiki and Megumi. Are they real?”

Satoru nods. He sits up, watching Suguru with wide eyes. Suguru gathers up his courage.

“Do you really think. That. That Megumi would–”

He stops, unsure how to continue. His insides feel like they’re trying to shake themselves out of his skin. Satoru stares at him, unblinkingly. Suguru has told him numerous times that most people find it unsettling, when he stares at them like that. Not Suguru. Suguru feels like Satoru’s stare is holding him together. Like if Satoru stops looking at him, he might disappear in a cloud of dust like one of his curses.

“Megumi would love you, Suguru,” Satoru says. Finally, the corner of his lips tilt up. “He’s just like you, you know. Serious, grouchy, kind of mean. But also, somehow, the kindest little boy you’ll ever meet.”

Suguru shakes his head, trying to deny the idea. If Satoru knew what he’s been thinking about all these months, he wouldn’t think he was kind at all.

Satoru pulls his ankle out of Suguru’s grip, only to sit up on his knees and cross the sparse distance between them, so he can set his hand lightly on Suguru’s shoulder.

“Don’t argue with me,” Satoru whispers, somehow reading Suguru’s mind. “I’m trying to tell you that he would love you. Him and Tsumiki both.”

“Just the two of them?”

The small smile on Satoru’s lips grows, until he’s grinning with almost all of his teeth. The grip on his shoulder tightens. Suguru can’t quite move his eyes away from Satoru’s lips, from the way his eyes shine in the moonlight.

“Don’t be hard-headed,” he says, faux scolding. “You met them in a dream where we were married, Suguru. You know how I feel.”

“I–”

Suguru finds he’s not quite sure what to say to that. Satoru is smiling at him, gentle and manic all at once, deeply precious to Suguru.

“Can I meet them?” Suguru whispers, just a hairsbreadth from Satoru.

“Yeah. I was planning on visiting them tomorrow. You can come with me, if that’s what you want.”

“It is,” Suguru replies, too quick to be anything but desperate.

He’d feel embarrassed about it if Satoru wasn’t so close. But he wants it so bad he might tear the entire world apart if he can’t have it. He wants to choose love instead of hatred. He wants to choose happiness instead of anger, instead of lonliness. He wants everything Satoru was dreaming of. Satoru, his. A little family of their own.

Satoru: his.

When Satoru kisses him, in the dim moonlight of his bedroom, he tastes vaguely of toothpaste. Suguru closes his eyes and slides his hand along Satoru’s neck, his palm tingling as it rubs against the soft skin there.

Real, he thinks. This is real.

Satoru pulls away for a moment, his eyes searching.

“All of it?” he breathes.

For a moment, he looks more vulnerable than Suguru’s ever seen him. But only for a moment.

“All of it,” Suguru agrees. Then leans back up and kisses him again.

Epilogue

And then, less than two months later, Suguru summons the dream curse and puts two wretched, miserable non-sorcerer bastards into a deep sleep. A better fate than either of them deserve, but the two little girls are watching, and he thinks neither of them deserve any more violence, no matter his own hatred, no matter his own anger.

Suguru wants to keep choosing love, not hatred. He wants to keep choosing gentleness, not violence. Some days are easier than others, he's discovering. Suguru kneels down to pick the lock imprisoning the girls, and tries to swallow down his hatred. The door swings open with an afwul creaking sound, and Suguru stands, shuffling back so as not to loom. 

The girls stare up at him, scared. He pulls out his phone, tries to look as relaxed as possible. He turns a little, tilting his head so that the girls are in his periphery. Slowly, they crawl out, shuffling towards him. 

Satoru answers on the second ring.

“What do you think about twins?" 

He offers a hand to both the little girls while he awkwardly holds his phone with his shoulder up to his ear. Their hands are so tiny, so frail against his. 

“Twins?” Satoru’s voice is staticky on the other end of the line. There’s never good reception in these remote villages. “Weren’t you on a mission?”

Suguru sidesteps the question, pulling the girls out of that awful building and into the night air. It’s late enough in the month that the afternoon heat has disappeared, replaced by a cool wind that smells distinctly of autumn.

“Megumi told me he wants a brother,” Suguru continues, leading the girls carefully through the pathway, watching their hesitant, trembling steps. He takes a breath and tries to quell the murderous intent that rises in him.

“Megumi tells you everything,” Satoru grouses. “It’s not fair! Why are you his favorite? I found him first!”

“I’ll be home soon,” Suguru says, mostly ignoring Satoru's pouting. “Make sure Shoko is there. Tell Megumi I’m sorry, but it’s girls this time.”

A long pause from Satoru. One of the girls, Mimiko, stares up at him, her eyes shining in the wane moonlight. He smiles for her.

“Are you okay?” Satoru finally asks, and Suguru can’t help the way his heart swells for a moment, with how much he loves Satoru. "Shoko is already here. She's helping us unpack. We can meet you there, if it's serious."

“I’m fine,” Suguru says. “Nothing serious. See you soon.”

“Come home safe, okay? I love you."

Satoru hangs up on him before Suguru can say it back, the brat. Suguru can't help but laugh about it. He pauses for a moment pocketing his phone so he can more easily watch the girls as they walk. 

Maybe fifteen minutes later, they stop at the outskirts of the village, its gently twinkling lights hiding a sinister secret. Suguru wants to burn the whole place to the ground. Mimiko and Nanako are breathing heavily at his side. They'll need to take a curse the rest of the way, by his guess. 

“Are you two ready to go home with me?”

Nanako and Mimiko look down at the village, dressed in rags, their hair so heavily matted that it hardly moves in the light breeze.

“Is it safe?” Nanako asks in a trembling voice.

Suguru kneels so that he’s closer to their height, wrapping an arm around each of their tiny waists.

“It is,” he whispers. “It’s safe, and it’s happy, and it’s full of love.”

The twins stare down at the village for a moment. Then, as one, they turn back to Suguru. They nod, and collapse sideways into his shoulder, both of them gripping the loose fabric of his coat tightly. Suguru stands, only wavering slightly at the change in weight.

“All right then,” he says, sparing the sleepy village one last backward glance. He wants to keep choosing love, not hatred. Some days are much, much harder than others. But: there's a family waiting for them when they get back, and the thought of Satoru's expression when he brings the girls home is enough to finally convince him to let go of the blazing anger, this time. “Let’s go home.”