Chapter Text
It’s hard for Satoru to separate then from now. There’s little difference in the world, little for others to notice. There’s the sun, hanging in the sky like it wishes to come down and kiss the earth, and that’s familiar. There’s a never-ending list of duties Satoru will take upon himself if they are not meted out to him first, and that’s familiar, too. There are the empty halls of the school, bare of anything to offer comfort, and that is so familiar it almost aches.
Sometimes he will look down at his hands, ones that were once large and gangly as a teenager, and he’ll realize he’s grown into them. He wonders when that happened. When did he stop hoping for the future and start dreading it? When did he stop making plans for a boy who was never supposed to grow up alone. Satoru waits for the soft call of his name he will never hear again and thinks he knows.
He turns back to the fight before him, feeling like a voyeur in his own body as he drops beneath Yuji’s fist—aiming wide and with less force behind it than he’s seen all day—and sweeps the boy’s feet from beneath him. He slams into the mat, his skull cracking on the rough tatami like the ringing of a fractured bell. It was cruel, even for Satoru. This last match was not a fight; there was nothing to be learned from the unforgiving meeting of Satoru’s fists on Yuji’s bruised skin. But Satoru is tired. Everything around him is too bright, from the lights hanging overhead that remind him of quiet hospitals to Yuji’s dazed smile as he looks up at him and asks for another round.
From behind his blindfold, he watches Yuji’s eyes refuse to focus. “I think we’re all done for today,” he says, leaving the promise of more hanging when Yuji wilts a bit like a flower in a trampled garden.
He looks out the window and then turns back to Satoru with a hopeful twinge to his features. Satoru looks away.
“Just once more, Sensei?” Yuji asks. Satoru can hear his smile even if he can’t see it. It blooms in his mind, uneven and pulling awkwardly on the scar that exposes a few of his upper teeth.
Satoru looks back at him then, and it’s much worse in reality. Blood from where Satoru struck him trickles past his hair and over his eye. It’s almost hard to make out against the soft pink of his hair and his eyelashes, but Yuji smiles past the blood that blinds him and seeps into the corner of his mouth.
And here is where Yuji is most familiar of all.
Satoru drops into a crouch. Yuji’s not his student, not anymore, but when Satoru opens his mouth to speak, Yuji falls silent like he’s awaiting a command. Maybe teacher was never the correct title for himself. He knew jailer fit him well. Executioner, too, when Yuji smiled at him particularly sweetly, like he trusted whatever was about to come as long as it came from Satoru.
“Depends,” he says. He folds a hand behind him. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“That’s so unfair, Sensei,” Yuji groans, tipping his head back. He has a few scars on his neck, too. They wrap a little too close to his pulse. He snaps his head up, and a droplet from the still bleeding cut lands on the mat between them. “Three,” he says with confidence.
Satoru had kept his hand in a tight fist. “Ah, sorry, Yuji-kun! Wrong answer!” It wouldn’t have mattered what Yuji chose, because Satoru is tired and Satoru is cruel and he wants for nothing more than to sink into his bed and remember nothing of a day that already reminds him so strongly of everything he’s lost.
He helps Yuji up, and though he’s shorter than him, the top of his head just barely brushing Satoru’s chin, pulling him to his feet with a single hand is almost a challenge.
“Bad luck,” Yuji says, walking slowly towards the locker room. “No way I could have guessed it.”
Satoru ducks under a hanging partition made of coarse cotton, and Yuji does the same in the makeshift stall next to him. “The room has mirrors, Yuji-kun,” he says, raising his voice so it’ll carry over the row of lockers that separate them as he changes back into slacks and a button-down shirt.
A soft oh floats over, and for a moment Satoru worries the last blow truly had been too rough, too vicious for a man Satoru will never stop seeing as a boy.
Then two red boots wait for him below the curtain and Satoru sees his shadow run an embarrassed hand through his hair. “Guess I was distracted.”
Satoru whips the curtain open, and Yuji doesn’t flinch. He does nothing but tilt his face back and hit Satoru with a smile that is so different from what he remembers. But it’s worn by someone so familiar he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to part it from tragedy.
“Distracted?” he asks as he ushers him out the mat room, away from the drying blood he will have to clean come morning. “By your incredible Sensei?”
Yuji laughs. “Maybe,” he says. “Your last move was pretty cool. So fast, too! I thought you were going to kill me!”
Satoru laughs and hopes it doesn’t sound as hollow as it feels. Not yet, he thinks, and knows by the pinch of Yuji’s eyes he’s thinking the same.
He pauses where the hallway diverges. “We can practice again tomorrow,” he extends like an olive branch. Tomorrow is teaching the new first years and exorcising a few grade ones that are making the higher-ups nervous and visiting a grave already bursting with flowers, and it will simply have to swell to fit Yuji, too. He gives him a half-hearted salute, his smile falling as he turns to leave. “Bye, Yuji-kun.”
“Ah, Sensei!” Yuji says before he has put even a step between them. “I need your help with something.” Satoru’s shoulders are heavy like the pulling of the earth. His eyes, protected as they are by the blindfold, feel ragged and overused. He cannot think beyond going home and sinking into the bathtub, playing a wonderous game of ducking beneath the clear water and praying he does not come back up.
But because Satoru is the one who holds Yuji’s life in his hands, because he will be the last person who will ever look him in the eyes just to let him down, he supposes he owes Yuji what little is left of his own present.
“What?” he asks, and then when that comes out to harsh and accusing, “what do you need help with?”
Yuji shifts on his feet, and once again Satoru’s gaze is drawn to obnoxiously red boots. He has not grown enough, Satoru realizes, to warrant a larger pair. Would he, granted he’s given the chance to age as every boy like him is?
“I lost my hoodie,” he says, his eyes sticking everywhere but Satoru. To the setting sun peeking through the window he says, “I really need it back.”
“Can it wait until the morning?”
“No!” Yuji shouts when Satoru turns back to the door leading outside. To his apartment. It’s not far from campus, just a skip and a stone’s throw and over the river that has long since dried, and he would reach the quiet building.
“No, Sensei,” Yuji says. “I really need it back. Tonight.”
“You’re already wearing a hoodie.” Satoru tugs on the dark blue fabric beneath his coat. He tilts his head. The fabric is well taken care of. Worn, but from inevitable use and not negligence. It’s a little too long on Yuji too, and despite the falling darkness of winter and the weight of his bones, Satoru finds himself smiling. “This is Megumi’s, isn’t it?”
Yuji tugs on the sleeves of his stolen hoodie, his ears burning red. Satoru thinks it’s cute, the interesting contradiction to the rose pinks of his hair that makes the boy in front of him so human. He can almost pretend the slits carved beneath his eyes are merely a product of childhood recklessness. He can almost pretend he can’t feel the overwhelming wave of malice that seems to surround him.
“Yes,” Yuji says haltingly. “So is the one I lost, and if I don’t give it back to him, he’s going to strangle me.”
“Ah, Yuji, I don’t think he’ll mind,” he says, partly because he longs for nothing but his waiting bed and partially because he has never seen Yuji do much of anything and Megumi not be besotted beyond belief. This is cute too, the dance the two of them have found themselves in, and if Satoru didn’t know how it would end, he thinks he would have pushed them together long ago.
And there he goes, spoiling the peace that had begun to settle even in his own mind. Nothing is safe from himself, it seems. Not the beautiful winter day he had been resolved to hate the moment he woke, and not the pink cheeked boy before him.
“You don’t understand, Sensei,” Yuji says, already setting down the other hallway, the one that leads deeper into the school. “That other one is his favorite.”
Satoru hums. “I think I do.”
He follows Yuji.
They leave nothing unturned. Not the tops of the closets no one’s cleaned in months, not the space around the winding wires of the television in the lounge room, and soon Satoru sits himself at the dining table, hot water boiling as he watches Yuji move quickly around the room. Yuji looks deep into a kitchen cabinet and Satoru sighs along with the whining of the kettle.
With the mug of tea in his hands dying cool, Satoru sets it down in favor of helping Yuji lift the living room couch to look beneath it as he resigns himself to what will be the rest of his night.
Some time after the moon’s risen high, he beckons Yuji closer, the trail of blood dry on his face as he picks at it and leaves flecks of bloody footprints. The cut sits right below the beginning of his hairline, quick and sure like the flick of a paintbrush, and Yuji makes no move of pain as Satoru scrubs it clean with a wet paper towel. It won’t need stiches, barely, and again Satoru knows he was too rough with the boy. He shouldn’t have agreed to training at all. Not today.
“Sorry,” he says, after Yuji has begun to squirm in his hold, the cut clean and showing no sign of further bleeding. He drops his hand from Yuji’s chin and goes to throw the paper towel soaked in crimson away. With his back turned, because he cannot watch Yuji as he brushes him off as though Satoru’s fists breaking his already fractured skin is not only alright but expected, he says, “I went a little too hard on you during practice today, Yuji-kun. Sorry about that.”
With his back still to Yuji, Satoru mouths it’s okay! along with him. He plasters on a smile before he turns and checks for the hoodie behind the washing machine.
It’s not there, not that Satoru really thought it would be, but he takes a moment away from Yuji to lean against the cool metal of the machine and sink into it.
Sometimes being around the boy is a towering wave of too much. It’s too much forgiveness for something he hasn’t even done yet.
He tilts his head back to look at the single bulb hanging in the room. He reaches out to swat it, watching the light stretch and pull the shadows of everything around it. This room has stayed in perpetuality since he was a student, and he feels like everything in it is exactly the same.
He joins Yuji in the main lounge. Yuji picks up a heavy loveseat just to place it back down, nudging it with his foot so it rests in the same grooves it made in the carpet. The entire room has been touched by them—by Yuji—and yet it looks as though it had never held his existence at all.
Satoru waves him closer when he goes to readjust the cushions he had just looked behind and lets them stay crooked as he redirects them to the kitchen.
Their search is interrupted by Yuji stealing his phone from his pocket and sending out a text. Three in the past five minutes, and Satoru watches as he checks again, tapping quickly on the screen before he slips it back into his pocket.
“Actually, I think I left it at your place,” he says, grabbing Satoru’s gym bag along with his own. “Can we get it now, Sensei?” he asks, already shouldering open the door that leads to the courtyard.
A winter’s breeze washes over Satoru, and though he keeps a long running stream of cursed energy to warm himself and steel his skin from the snow that begins to hover above it, he takes a moment to watch the barren cherry blossom trees become laden with snow before he joins Yuji.
The boy is already a few paces ahead of him, and he waits, his hair collecting snowflakes, for Satoru to catch up.
Before he can shoulder Satoru’s bag, he takes it from him and slings it across his own back. It feels good, the constricting weight from the bag’s strap around his chest and against his neck, and if he closes his eyes, he can almost pretend it’s a hand about to constrict.
Yuji leaves deep footprints in the heavy snow, and Satoru looks behind them and sees only a single trail following.
“Hurry, Sensei. Please,” he adds when Satoru slows down to brush a finger over a snow-covered bench.
It’s not a long walk to his apartment, made quicker by Yuji’s pleas for haste, and Satoru finds himself lost in the falling of the snowflakes, in the way they blanket the city and leave it silent. Peaceful, almost, and then Satoru walks past a park where Suguru had slew a curse in an easy flick of a sword and then gave Satoru a devastating smile he was quick to return, and suddenly his eyes fall on nothing but a world he detests beyond reason.
Even Yuji, who smiles up at the snow and lets it catch on his tongue, is not spared. He is too much like Suguru. Too kind, too trusting and hopeful, too good to be near people like Satoru. He is too much like Suguru and yet he is nothing like the man Satoru killed with his own two hands, and for a moment Satoru thinks he hates the boy beside him most of all.
He stops in the snow, and the world continues without him. Yuji falls still beside him.
“Sensei?” he asks. And Satoru knows well enough that if he speaks now, it will be nothing but vitriol for a boy who has done nothing to deserve it. It would feel good, he thinks, to yell and scream and rage and see golden eyes well with tears the way he has never seen Suguru cry. It would feel good, to shake the boy before him down and ask why it is always him that’s left behind.
“Are you alright?” Yuji asks. Satoru has never been alright a day in his life.
“I’m tired, Yuji,” Satoru says, glad Yuji cannot see his eyes beneath the blindfold.
“We’re almost home,” Yuji says.
But Satoru’s apartment has never been home. It comes close, when Shoko sits on his counter and breathes smoke into the air, when Megumi grumbles but joins him at the table to share dinner with him. But it’s not home, and again, Satoru wants to blame the boy beside him because there is no one else who will except his ire as though it was made for him.
He follows Yuji up the staircase to his apartment and lets his feet land heavy on the carpet. Here, if nowhere else, Satoru will let his rage be known. He will leave the impression of the soles of his shoes here, if not for eternity than for long enough for him to come back and see the way the carpet holds the memory of his feet. For once he will see the way the world moved around him when he refused to follow it blindly and bare his neck to it.
Satoru sets his bag on the ground as he searches for his keys, the memory of his bed so tempting he can almost feel it against his skin and opens his door to darkness when he knew he left the lights on.
He sees Megumi first when light floods the apartment, and then it’s Shoko and Kiyotaka and Nobara leaning on his counter, a plate of something sweet in her hands.
“Happy birthday,” they say when he does little more than linger in the doorway, still halfway in the winter cold he cannot feel. He hears Yuji’s voice above them all, and the boy nudges him in.
Nobara hands him the plate—hands him the strawberry cake that while he knows from the uneven spread of the icing is homemade, still looks as though it was crafted with a talented hand.
It’s heavier than he expected, and he stares down at frosting as white as the snow falling outside.
“Thank you,” he says belatedly after Shoko has elbowed him, not quite meeting skin, but with a strong shift in the air around him that he knows the power it held.
“Happy birthday, or whatever,” Nobara says. She nods behind him. “Thank Yuji for the cake though, that was all him. I was banned from the kitchen.”
“You weren’t banned,” Megumi says, rolling his eyes as he steps behind Yuji and helps him out of his thick winter coat. Satoru doesn’t imagine the way his hands stutter when they meet his own hoodie. “Yuji just asked you to cut the strawberries thinner and you said no and then stomped out.”
“I don’t stomp—”
“Like a damn elephant—”
Yuji laughs, and Satoru watches as both of his former student peter into silence to watch him. It’s easy, Satoru knows, to fall into the orbit of someone like Yuji. He looks down at the cake in his hands. It is even easier to lose someone like him.
“Thank you, Yuji,” he says, a little too earnest, and Yuji’s eyes blow wide with surprise. He clears his throat and then sets the cake down—gently—to wrap an arm around him and rustle his pink hair. It’s longer than when he first met him, and Satoru thinks it suits him. Everything Yuji has gathered in the years since, the length in his hair, the breadth of his shoulders, the new creases of his eyes he has garnered from smiling particularly wide, everything that shows that he is alive after it all, Satoru can’t help but want to encourage. Let Yuji create roots where others couldn’t. Let Yuji break the curse and be a damned boy allowed to live.
Yuji laughs again, ducking beneath Satoru’s arm after he took a thick moment to sink against his side, and then whisks the cake off to the kitchen to be cut.
Shoko takes his place. “I tried to stop them,” she says around a cigarette. No matter how many times he’s has asked her to stop, the smoke settling deeply into his furniture that he’s able to smell her long after she’s left, she refuses, adding a second between her lips as if to punish him for even asking.
Satoru shrugs, listening to the distant chatter as Kiyotaka joins his former students in the kitchen, the man tossing a searching look at them over his shoulder.
“The kids just kept saying ‘everyone wants to see their friends on their birthday’.” Satoru can almost hear it, can almost see the way Yuji’s mouth would curve around the words. Shoko taps her cigarette into one of the ash trays Satoru keeps littered around the apartment for her. “They’re a dedicated bunch. Hard to get them to back off when I can’t tell them why.”
Satoru pushes around a clump of ash, never quite touching it, never quite able to feel the heat it admits. “I appreciate it,” he says instead of thank you, because that’s too much. It’s too revealing to thank her for trying to keep the few people who still want to be near Satoru from his side as he tries to mourn the only man who ever fought to get closer than the rest.
It's not always on his birthday that the ghost of Suguru hangs heavy in the air. It’s when the sun shines bright enough that the courtyard of the school feels alive or when a cat curls around his ankles and looks up at him or when Yuji laughs and for a moment Satoru thinks he can turn around and find the man he loved smiling back at him.
And it was this week, when Gakuganji handed Satoru a dark, studded sapphire earring and asked him to destroy it. There was nothing to it. It didn’t hum of cursed energy when Satoru finally made his shaking hands hold it. It was nothing but the memento of a boy not yet a man, a hero not yet a killer, and it still nearly brought Satoru to his knees.
But it was still born from the earth, and it burned like anything else, the smoke curling in the winter air.
It is every day, but it’s worse in these moments.
From the kitchen Megumi calls for him, his voice deeper than Satoru has ever heard it, and he joins them. The cake burns in front of him, studded with far more than thirty-three candles and Satoru catches Megumi’s less than charitable smile as he slides the cake in front of him.
“Happy birthday, old man,” he says, and Satoru blows out the candles save for one in a single breath. It wavers beneath his breath, as though it’s debating flickering out, but its flames rise a second time like he had never tried to put it out at all.
“What did you wish for?” Yuji asks as Kiyotaka moves around him to cut the cake into even slivers.
The list of wants Satoru has is never ending. If he were to take an eternity to write them all down, he thinks the paper would sooner wrap around the earth than run empty. Satoru wished for nothing, because wishing and hoping and praying has gotten him nowhere.
He extinguishes the last candle between his fingertips.
He has since exchanged his blindfold for a pair of heavily tinted glasses, and he tilts those down the bridge of his nose to wink at Yuji. He says, “if I tell you, it won’t come true,” and pretends he can’t feel Shoko’s eyes on him.
Kiyotaka serves Satoru first, each slice no bigger than the width of two of his fingers, and he nettles Kiyotaka until he lays a second piece on his plate.
“Please at least wait until the students have had a piece,” he says, a reproachful tone Satoru is so familiar with it’s almost comforting. It reminds him of Kento. Kento with his strict morals and spine of steel, and Satoru finds himself clinging to everything that reminds him of before so hard his palms have begun to bleed.
“Don’t see any students here,” Satoru says, licking a long strip of icing from his fork, his gaze pinned on Kiyotaka until he looks away with faint disgust etched into his face. Good. Kiyotaka’s eyes, tired and aching like his, still see far more than Satoru would like.
“You know who he means,” Shoko says, coming to sit beside Satoru, and only once a buffer has been put in place does Kiyotaka join him at the table.
“The adults over there?” Satoru asks, pointing to the corner Yuji, Nobara, and Megumi have gathered in. Though he supposes it is less of a gathering and more of a congregation, Nobara and Megumi hoarding every smile and laugh Yuji blesses them with.
“Those kids are all grown up,” he says, and finds the words hard to get out. His lips want to say my kids and the thrumming he recognizes as his wild-run heart wants it even more.
Megumi must feel his eyes on him, because he breaks away from the almost reverent gaze he has set on Yuji to turn to Satoru.
Megumi does little looking with his eyes. Satoru has known him since the boy was old enough to be wary of the ravenous world before him. He has seen him build walls around himself, and he has seen for whom he has laid them down. Sometimes Satoru thinks he knows the boy better than he knows himself, and so when Megumi tilts his head a fraction to the side, he knows what he’s asking.
With a small curve of his lip he knows Megumi will be looking for, he brushes off his concern. Megumi comes over anyway, because sometimes he thinks the boy knows Satoru better than he knows himself.
He doesn’t come alone, Yuji and Nobara trailing after him, and he doesn’t come empty handed, either. He sets a tall, sweating bottle of champagne on the table.
Satoru eyes the bottle. “I don’t drink,” he says, and knows Megumi is aware. He wants something stronger. He wants something that will strip paint from the walls and memories from his mind.
“C’mon, old man,” Megumi says, pulling open Satoru’s cabinets and dusting off five long, clear glasses. He’s barely more than a decade older than Megumi, but when he says, “celebrate living through another year,” Satoru feels as though a lifetime separates them.
Satoru’s breath hitches or Nobara winces or Kiyotaka clenches his teeth together like he wishes he could do more, but not a single person looks at Yuji, and the tension in the air is suddenly palpable. Satoru images he could raise his hand and part it like the ocean.
A flush, and if Satoru were a betting man, he would guess it’s born of shame and not embarrassment, builds across Megumi’s cheeks as he reaches for the champagne bottle, the beginning of an apology on his lips.
Yuji beats him to it, popping loose the cork with a fluid flick of his thumb. “To another year!” he says and fills each glass to the brim.
Satoru brings his glass to his lips and thinks Yuji must know what he’s doing. He’s not stupid—has never been, not when his friends tease and poke fun, not even when Satoru himself sends his cursed energy like a protective shroud around Yuji for even the simplest of missions—and a part of Satoru hates that it falls to the boy with a tightening noose around his neck to comfort them.
The end of the rope rests in his own hands, and he throws back his drink and then stands to get the hardy bottle of liquor from his cabinet he hasn’t touched in seventeen years.
He comes back to find Shoko lining shot glasses in front of each of them, shrugging when he pauses before her.
He fills them all as far as they will take, and the rest of them set their still-full glasses of champagne down in favor of the shot glasses.
With little preamble, Satoru tosses his back. The burn down is throat is expected but not familiar, and he finds himself wanting to chase it down with more when he can still read the bottle’s label.
Megumi snakes the shot glass from Yuji’s hands before a drop of liquid can hit his lips. “Adults only,” he says, and takes both his and Yuji’s shots in quick succession. Megumi does little more than shake his head against the taste, and Satoru knows he’s used to the act.
“Three months,” Yuji whines when Nobara cackles and downs her drink, too. “I’ll be twenty in three months, Megumi.”
Megumi still looks pleased, even after all these years, when Yuji says his name. He’s stronger than Satoru thinks he’d be if Suguru where here, saying his name as softly as Yuji says Megumi’s. He doesn’t think he’d have the strength to deny him a single thing. He could ask for the heart from his chest, and Satoru thinks he’d give it to him. He’s not sure if this is a new revelation, but it has him swallowing another shot and still not tasting a goddamn thing.
“Yeah, well, ask me again in three months, then.” They both know Yuji is not guaranteed three months. Megumi, Satoru has noticed, tries to wring promises out of Yuji, promises he must know the other will not be able to keep. He will say, when you get married wear your hair like this. He will say, when you have children, I pray to God they aren’t as careless as you. And he will say, when I finally free you of Sukuna I’ll tell you, but only when Yuji’s not around to hear.
Satoru watches them lose themselves in a world of touches that linger a bit too long, of wandering eyes and that stick where they shouldn’t. He watches Nobara wrap arms around them both and pull them to rest on Satoru’s couch. He watches and can’t help but see himself in their shadows.
“Thirty-three,” Shoko says, watching silently as Satoru pours himself another shot. It’s not with pity, not quite, but it’s close. Shoko has stopped pitying him. She stopped the moment he let Suguru walk away from him a second time. She lights another cigarette and turns her head to exhale the smoke away from them. Sometimes Satoru thinks she blames him. Suguru had been her friend, too, years and years ago. It had been the three of them, until it had been only two, until it had been just him, and with hands that miss the bottle the first time, he pours himself another shot.
“Thirty-three years old,” she says. She’s already thirty-four, Kiyotaka a meager thirty-two, and somehow Satoru feels older than time beside them.
Kiyotaka doesn’t stop him either when he tips the amber liquid down his throat, but he catches the pinch of his brows. Kiyotaka, he has learned, does pity him. He had to watch people die around him, too. But Satoru thinks it’s not the same. It cannot possibly be. If Kiyotaka loved—if Kiyotaka cared for them the way Satoru cared for Suguru, he thinks he would be joining him in this descent of oblivion. But Kiyotaka sits prim and proper in front of him, his glass of champagne politely sipped at, as though everyone he has let pass through his fingers meant nothing to him when even the whisp of a reminder of Suguru has Satoru like this: desperately wishing he had been able to change his fate.
Kiyotaka slides him another slice of cake, this one piled liberally with strawberries, and Satoru thinks he’s being cruel. Again. Cruel to Kiyotaka, cruel to Shoko and Yuji and surely everyone in this room who have gathered to celebrate him when he wants for nothing but to forget he ever existed.
Satoru takes a large bite so he doesn’t have to answer Shoko. Like the alcohol and his breakfast this morning, he doesn’t taste a thing. Pity. It looked delicious. He’ll have to tell Yuji so.
“Any plans for thirty-three?” she asks.
He shifts the cake around on the plate, smearing a trail of snow. He hasn’t been able to bring himself to think of the nearing future. He knows what it holds for him. He catches a flash of pink. He knows what it holds for Yuji.
“Cut back on carbs,” he says, punctuating it with a bite of cake that is more strawberry and icing than anything. “It’s not easy maintaining a figure like this.” Should Shoko peel back the silk of his shirt, she’d find bones peeking past wane skin. The higher-ups found another finger last week, and that, in addition to memories of Suguru that never really seem to fade, has made eating much of anything a challenge. Everything turns to mangled, bruised flesh in his hands, and he can’t help but wonder how Yuji had managed to swallow the first finger.
Only Yuji’s head, laying on Megumi’s shoulder, is visible over the couch. He doesn’t have to get up and check to know he’s smiling.
Shoko snorts, nudging him under the table with her foot. She pulls a paper bag from her pocket and sets it down in front of him.
“Open it,” she says, when he simply looks at it. “It’s not going to bite you.”
“You didn’t have to,” he says. “I—birthdays aren’t—”
“A big deal to you,” Shoko finishes for him, “I know. Doesn’t mean I didn’t want to get you something.” She runs a finger over the lip of her glass, her gaze stuck on the bubbling liquid. “Doesn’t mean I don’t think you deserve something.”
For what? Satoru wants to ask but knows the answer will not settle the turmoil in his stomach any more than the sight of Yuji sitting peaceful in the house of the man who will kill him does.
Inside the bag, wrapped in a protective film of plastic, is a stack of cards. Satoru laughs, opening the packaging as Shoko groans about depreciating value.
“The weird looking one was your favorite, wasn’t it?” she asks.
Weird, Satoru thinks, is charitable. It’s downright ugly, a sharp viperous face with a long body and pointed claws. Large white tentacles stick out from its back, and Satoru thinks it’s the closest he’s seen non-sorcerers get to curses.
Its stats lead to it being a vicious fighter, prone to dirty, underhanded tricks, and Satoru got a certain kind of pleasure at being able to play a game where he could be well and truly awful, where he could attack his opponent the way he never would in real life. Not back then.
A lot has changed since Satoru sat on grassy hills and played cards with any child from the Gojo estate he could convince to drop the honorifics for a moment and join him on the ground, but he still feels a flare of amusement flicker in his chest when he looks down at the stack of cards. He tucks them safely into the pocket of his slacks.
“Thanks,” he says. He catches the small smile Shoko aims at the table.
“That was thoughtful of you,” Kiyotaka says, watching Satoru without a hint of shame. He probably thinks there is none to be found in the act. Tonight has been the longest stretch of time they’ve been able to go without Kiyotaka clenching his jaw and bowing his leave before Satoru means for him to, and he almost wants to tip the man’s drink into his lap and see how far his goodwill will extend.
“What was thoughtful?” Yuji asks, the rest of Satoru’s—the rest of the kids by his side. Megumi lingers a little closer than Nobara, and when he feels Satoru looking, he steps back a fraction. He seems reluctant to put space between them.
“Shoko got me a gift,” Satoru says. He tilts his head to lay against the back of his chair and it takes a moment for the vertigo to dissipate. He smiles at Yuji when the words on his tongue dance from his reach.
Yuji smiles back down at him, and Satoru wonders why he even tries. Nothing, not the rising sun or blinding lights of the morgue, have ever been able to compare. He catches a cheek littered with freckles between his two fingers, baby fat still clinging to his bones.
He tugs gently, warping Yuji’s laugh when he moves with the motion. “She got me a couple of playing cards,” he says. “I’ll have to teach you kids one of these days.”
“Pass,” Megumi says, eying the fingers Satoru has yet to remove from Yuji’s face. If he wanted to touch Yuji like this, Satoru knows the other boy would let him. Satoru knows he would let Megumi do quite a lot. “I saw how obsessed you got with that crap.”
Satoru fakes a gasp and clutches at his chest, his exaggerated sprawl into his seat threatening to spill him onto the floor before Nobara forces the legs of the chair back on the floor. It takes a moment for his limbs to fall back into his control, his hands safely back on the table, and Megumi seems to relax.
“Megumi-chan, Digimon is not crap,” he says. He pats his thigh, the stack of cards making a dull thump as he does. “It’s an art form.”
“It’s a game for children,” Megumi says, rolling his eyes. Satoru knows, should he ask again, should he genuinely ask the boy in front of him to join him on the ground and indulge in a little bit of immaturity, he would. But this too is a game of its own, and Satoru likes this one well enough.
“Oh, be nice, Megumi,” Yuji says, tapping Megumi’s shoulder with his own. “I think it sounds fun!”
Megumi presses into Yuji where he let their shoulders touch, chasing after him so they remain stuck together. “Fine,” he says, the easiest capitulation Satoru has ever pried from him.
“Oh!” Yuji says again, his eyes lighting impossibly brighter. Satoru looks out the window, but the stars are still hanging in the night, still painting themselves into myths and legends and stories, and he wonders what else the boy has captured in his eyes if not a piece of the sky.
He runs to the gym bag he left in the genkan, coming back a second later, a thick wrapped bundle in his arms. “We got you something, too!”
“Ah,” Satoru says, laughing harder than he thinks the situation warrants. But if he doesn’t laugh he might sob, and the tears building in his eyes are easier to explain away as mirth than a towering, nigh debilitating sorrow that’s taken hold in his chest.
What more will this kid give him that he’s never come close to deserving?
Yuji sets the package in front of him when he doesn’t take it from his hands, Kiyotaka moving the plate of cake Satoru has yet to finish. He’s long since lost his appetite.
“It’s from the three of us,” he says, almost bouncing on his toes as he waits. He’s the only one not addled by alcohol, the only one without rosy cheeks or unsteady eyes.
Yuji nudges the package closer. “Open it, Sensei.”
And since it’s Yuji asking, and since Satoru will take so much from him and has given him so little, he does.
Soft, pillowy fabric meets his skin. He unearths a pair of gloves first, kidskin leather and fashionable. Underneath it is a winter hat that’s not nearly as expensive, and when he inspects it further it looks to be homemade. It’s a brilliant blue, and Satoru thinks it’s the same shade of his hidden eyes.
“It—we can trade in the hat, if you don’t like it,” Yuji says. He shifts on his feet, his hands twisted and nervous behind his back. “Sukuna was giving me shit for it all week, but I try not to listen to him when it comes to stuff like this ‘cause he likes to be an asshole.” Satoru sees Megumi’s mouth thin at the mention of Sukuna, and he brushes his thumb over the back of Yuji’s hand. The other boy doesn’t notice.
Yuji continues unbidden. “But we can get you something that matches the gloves instead—"
“You made this?” Satoru asks, already knowing the answer. His thumb finds a missed loop and pulls it infinitesimally larger.
“I—yeah,” Yuji says, his face nearly as pink as his hair. “Nobara and Megumi helped with the color and the pattern.”
Nobara clicks her tongue. “I thought green would have broken up the weird, winter sprite thing you’ve got going on already, but I got outvoted.”
“Thank you,” Satoru says and sets the hat and gloves carefully down beside him, away from the bottle of alcohol and his shaking hands. He clears his throat, praying his words come out clearer and sweeter than they taste on his tongue. “Really, thank you all.”
“I tried to tell him you don’t get cold,” Megumi says later in the night when it’s just the two of them left at the table, the bottle of liquor almost empty but split heavily in Satoru’s favor. “I told him you use your cursed energy to keep yourself warm.”
Satoru hums, blinking deeply when spots swirl in his vision
“You know what he said?” Megumi asks, and Satoru knows he will tell him regardless. “He said ‘it’s not the same’. He said you deserved a chance to let your guard down, to let go of Infinity and just let yourself exist as a man. Not the strongest. Just a man. Just a human like the rest of us.”
Megumi tries on one of the gloves resting on the table. It fits him well, his long fingers elegant in the black fabric.
“Then he laughed,” Megumi says, a horrible slant to his mouth Satoru knows heralds shaking hands and slamming footsteps and hitching breaths Satoru can only listen to from outside a closed door. “And then he corrected himself. ‘Human like the rest of you.’ Said he kept making that mistake.”
“He’s not, you know,” Satoru says, after a moment, knowing he’s being cruel. But he thinks he’d have liked to know about Suguru, before it all. He thinks it would have been easier to prepare for the impact if he knew he was falling. He thinks he would have wanted to be warned. He thinks he would and knows deep down he wouldn’t have cared. It wouldn’t have mattered. Suguru could have been marked for death the moment he met him, and it wouldn’t have changed a goddamn thing. But maybe Megumi will be different.
Satoru looks down at the table, down at Megumi’s hand still painted black. “He’s not human. Not really.”
“Shut up,” Megumi says.
“No human can move the way he does,” Satoru says.
“Stop it.”
“No human could hold Sukuna like he does, like he was built for it,” Satoru says. He pauses, trying to tread carefully through the haze of amber liquor. “Almost makes you wonder if he swallowed the first finger on purpose—”
Megumi snatches the bottle and pours the rest of it out. “I know what you’re doing,” he says, his back to Satoru. “I know you’re trying to make this easier. But just—just shut up. Please.”
Megumi sits back at the table, exhaling a heavy breath into the night. “I don’t want it to be easy.”
Oh. This, too, Satoru thinks, a wan smile splitting his face, is familiar. It seems neither of them think themselves innocent in the condemnation of the cursed boys they were foolish enough to fall in love with.
Satoru cracks open another bottle, and Megumi lets him have the rest of the night quiet, lets him run fruitlessly from the memories of his past that cling.
And so the early hours of the morning find him like this, his regrets sneaking past his lips, his glasses thrown and forgotten in a corner of the bathroom as he lays his head against the cool porcelain of the toilet seat and prays that was the last of it. He can still remember Suguru, can remember the cadence of his voice and the angle of his smile and the way he would be bent over himself with laughter could he see Satoru as he is now.
“Are you okay?” Satoru has to close his eyes, because as much as his addled mind wants him to believe, they will not open to his beloved standing before him.
“Sensei?” Yuji asks again, his voice closer a second time.
Satoru tilts his face on the seat, angling up so he can see all the ways worry walks along Yuji’s body. “You’ve been in here for a while,” he says.
“What time is it?” Satoru asks, and then spits bile into the toilet bowl. Yuji watches with only concern pinching his brows and fills the cup by the sink with cold water.
He kneels next to Satoru. “A little after two,” he says.
He spits into the toilet again. “Wonderful.” He rolls his head along the seat and says to the rippling, bile diluted water, “’M alright, Yuji. Just need another minute.”
“Sensei, I don’t think you can stand right now.”
“Call me Satoru,” he says. “I’m not your teacher anymore.” It sounds harsh because it is, because Satoru should have no connection to this boy outside of the noose he’s wrapped around his neck. “Or Gojo-san,” he amends, “if you wanna be formal.” Maybe that will be better, Satoru thinks as his stomach rolls with something other than spoiled alcohol. Maybe it will be better if he fosters distance between them.
“Satoru,” Yuji tries. His name sounds kind coming from him. It sounds forgiving. Satoru thinks he hates it. He thinks he would hate going back to Sensei even more.
“Do you need help getting to bed?” he asks.
The tiles are cool on Satoru’s bare feet, and he wonders when he removed his socks. Probably sometime between hating himself for his vices and giving in to them. That narrows it down very little.
“I just need a few more minutes,” he says again. “Then I’ll be right as rain.”
Yuji settles next to him, his back against the towering lip of the bathtub. It was bought with a second person in mind, large enough that even a man of Satoru’s stature could share it and have room for another. He has not brought anyone home in years.
Yuji pulls his legs up to his chest and crosses his arms over his knees. He sets his gaze on the door—now closed, and Satoru must have been worse off than even he had thought if he had stumbled into the bathroom and left it open for anyone to walk by and see a pathetic excuse for a man-made soldier spill his guts into a toilet bowl. Yuji gives him the illusion of privacy, his quiet breaths rustling the strands of Satoru’s hair.
It should really stop surprising him, this kindness Yuji readily offers as though he knows no other way to navigate the world.
“You don’t have to wait with me,” Satoru says. “You can go home.”
“Megumi and Nobara already left,” Yuji says. He checks his watch, the glass face cracked. “A couple hours ago actually.” He smiles down at Satoru, and he looks away when it begins to blind. “They told me to tell you goodbye for them.”
“They left without you?”
The three of them live together, in a small little condo Satoru hated the moment he stepped foot in. The winds will knock the walls down, he had tried to tell Megumi, his cheque book open and one filled already. Even if he knows the boy would never take money from him, it settled a gnawing part of him to know he could, if he needed to. The cheque now sits tapped to their fridge, decorated with Yuji’s doodles.
They live further from the school than Satoru does. They picked a place as far as they were allowed to go, Megumi told him. As far as Yuji was allowed to stray.
He remembers the day they decided to leave, had watched helplessly as Megumi’s smile started to grow until his teeth began to show. He chose a lovely little apartment overlooking the beach, an hour’s ride from Satoru’s. But there’s a train that will take us right to your place, Megumi had said.
And then an hour later he came to Satoru, his knuckles rubbed raw as though he had taken his anger out on the first hard surface he could find. They said he can’t leave, he had spat. They said he’s a liability. They think he’ll run. And then he threw himself onto Satoru’s couch, looking all of his eighteen years, looking like the child he had never allowed himself to be. When has Yuji ever gone against them? he had asked to Satoru’s quiet hands and silent frown. When has he ever put up a fight when it comes to this?
And then Satoru had spoken and set the boy even further into his rage. You could move out with him, he had said, if you established a kind of guardianship with him. Megumi had turned, puzzlement creasing his features. He will not like what comes next, Satoru had thought. But he would hate leaving Yuji behind even more.
You’d be in charge of him, Satoru had said, a little like I am. I’m sure Gakuganji could be swayed to extend the leash they keep on him if he knew a Zen’in, former or not, holds the end.
Then Megumi had set his eyes on the ground and his voice had shook and his knees had trembled as though they threatened to give out beneath him, and Satoru knew what he was going to ask before he opened his mouth. It will still be me, he had told his boy. It will still be me who will kills him.
“I told them to,” Yuji says, and Satoru is ripped back to the present. It’s brighter here. Despite the harsh winter, it’s warmer, too. “Megumi seemed tired, and Nobara’s got an early morning tomorrow.”
“Kiyotaka can drive you home,” Satoru says. “Or Shoko, if you ask nicely and give her some money for smokes.”
“Ah,” Yuji says. He plays with his thumbs atop his knees. “They’re a little, indisposed, at the moment.”
Satoru sits back on his heels, the world refusing to move with him until it does, the light blue tiles and the darker toned paint of the bathroom hitting him all at once. He staggers to his feet. “What happened—”
“They’re just asleep!” Yuji’s quick to say. He helps Satoru lean against the sink counter. He presses the cup of water in his hand and doesn’t let up until Satoru takes it from him and downs it in a single swallow. It feels good, feels soothing, on the torn lining of his throat. Even if he can’t quite remember it, his body will bear the scars of tonight.
“I think they had a little too much to drink, so I put them to bed. I hope you don’t mind,” Yuji says. “I put Shoko in Megumi’s old room.”
Satoru snorts. “‘S fine. It’s what’s there for,” he says. “Megumi was okay to drive home?”
Yuji nods vigorously, and Satoru puts a hand atop of his head, afraid he’s going to wear the skin from his neck. “Totally! He really only had the glass of champagne and a couple shots with you.”
Satoru refills the glass and swishes some water in his mouth, spitting into the sink until he can no longer taste his own bile. He stays bent over the sink, watching Yuji shuffle behind him through the mirror.
“Were you watching Megumi?” he asks, a sly slant to his lips.
Yuji scratches at the corner of his mouth, just shy of the scar that cuts through his lips and exposes his teeth, the one that never really seems to heal. “I wasn’t watching him. I just—noticed him, I guess,” he says.
He scuffs his foot on Satoru’s bathroom tile, and Satoru drops his gaze to watch his socked feet skate against the floor. His socks are red, the color still bright and starchy, and Satoru wonders who gave them to him, because he knows when Yuji picks clothes for himself, he will choose practicality over comfort every time. And red lends itself so easily to stains, to dirt and being dirtied, that Yuji would have never picked them for himself.
“I wasn’t looking at him in any particular way, Sen—Satoru,” Yuji stutters. He meets Satoru’s eyes through the mirror. “I promise.”
Ah. Kid’s got it all mixed up, but Satoru’s not in any kind of hurry to correct him. Better to let him think Satoru disapproves of their burgeoning relationship, as though he would ever have a say in what Megumi does in regard to Yuji, then to sit back and watch history repeat itself.
“Good,” Satoru says and thinks he can’t possibly sound as stern as he tries for. Yuji does not inspire rigidity and discipline from him. Satoru has never needed it with him, not as he had with Megumi, with Nobara and the other students that passed through his care. Any slight Yuji makes, real or crafted by his wild run shame, he takes upon himself to mete out a punishment. And it’s always far worse than what he could ever deserve.
Satoru stands from his slouch, nearly eclipsing Yuji’s reflection. He turns to face him. Yuji is hard to look at like this. He’s always different than Satoru expects. He knows the boy is nineteen nearing twenty, and in his mind he thinks he cannot possibly stand taller than Satoru’s knee. The tops of Yuji’s hair would brush his chin if he were to lean close. Then Satoru will hear a passing mention of Sukuna and his horrors and think whoever houses him must be as strong as an ox, must live and breathe malice as the curse that lives beneath their skin does. Yuji smiles at him when their eyes meet, and Satoru wants to weep for him because he knows the boy would never do so for himself.
“I never asked,” he says, pulling Satoru from the winding path his thoughts love to run down when they are left alone and to the boy in front of him. Yuji waves a hand over his own face. “Don’t your eyes strain when you take off your blindfold?”
He hands Satoru the pair of glasses left abandoned in the corner as though Satoru will suddenly remember a pounding building behind his skull the moment Yuji mentions it.
“They can,” Satoru starts and wonders how he can explain this to someone like Yuji. The boy is far from stupid, but how does one go about explaining the intricacies of a steamboat to a fish who’s never felt the need for one?
He takes the glasses from Yuji but doesn’t put them back on. “Six Eyes is powerful on its own,” he says, and this he knows he is already well aware of. “But combined with my cursed energy, specifically considering just how much of it I have, it amplifies every aspect of it. That includes overuse and strain. But if I don’t use Infinity, it usually doesn’t hurt unless I’m actively using Six Eyes.”
Yuji tilts his head, so reminiscent of a sunbathing cat Satoru wants to run his fingers through his hair and see if he purrs like one, too.
“You don’t have Infinity up right now?” he asks.
“I turned most of it off a few hours ago.” He drags a hand across his chest and Yuji follows the motion. “I keep it moving around my heart and head, just in case.” Satoru doesn’t have to specify what he’s waiting for. Not to Yuji. Not to a boy who’s scars have never been the product of a fair fight.
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Yuji asks
Satoru shrugs. Maybe to someone else, maybe to someone who hadn’t spent sleepless nights honing the technique until it could be turned on and off as simply as running blood through his veins. He hardly even notices the warm thrum of power when it’s activated. If he’s colder than usual without it, well, he’ll simply chalk it up to the winter air.
“Not really.” Satoru grins. “Besides, it lets me do this.” And then he catches Yuji in a hug so grand it lifts him from his feet. Yuji can still be held like a child, he thinks as the boy laughs in his arms, even if was never allowed to live like one.
He carries him out of the bathroom like this, Yuji’s feet dangling inches off the ground as Satoru takes larger steps to accommodate for the added weight. And Yuji is heavy, always heavier than Satoru expects. He nearly trips over a corner of his table that has lived in the same place since he dragged it up three flights of stairs and thinks the alcohol has yet to fully leave his body.
He sets Yuji back on his own feet and will blame the alcohol for his missteps.
“Are you sure you’re feeling alright?” Yuji asks, keeping his voice low and soft so he doesn’t wake Kiyotaka and Shoko sleeping in the other rooms. “I don’t wanna leave you and then have you like, die in your sleep from choking on your own vomit.”
Satoru snorts. He too, keeps the late night quiet. “I think I’ll be okay.” Because that wouldn’t kill him. It would take nothing less than his own power turned back on him to drive his body beneath the ground with finality. Carelessness does nothing but add to the weight on his shoulders, the bruises smudged under his eyes. He has tried much of everything, and little has stuck.
Satoru turns down his hallway, Yuji following him into his room.
“I’m alright, Yuji,” he says. “Really.”
“You can’t walk straight.”
Satoru tests a line towards his bed, collapsing into the giving mattress. Yuji’s right, planting each foot neatly in front of the other is a struggle.
“No more walking needed!” Satoru kicks off his shoes, tossing them somewhere deep into his room. They patter to the floor with a dull sound.
But Yuji just frowns above him. Satoru tilts his head back so he’s left staring at the popcorned ceiling, painted over and over again until the colors began to bleed together.
“Sensei—”
“Satoru,” he corrects.
Yuji’s frown deepens, but he says, “Satoru,” then pauses. If Satoru were to look, he thinks he’d see a crease between his brows, bending the well warn scar slashed between his eyes until it gives rise to new valleys and mountains. He doesn’t look.
“Are you alright?”
“Peachy,” Satoru says. He shuffles on the bed, reaching behind him and pulling out his phone that was digging into his back. It’s dead, a flashing no power symbol glaring at him and he decides it will be his problem tomorrow. There are no happy birthday messages waiting for him, no one to ask after him that was not with him tonight. There’s nothing waiting for him that cannot wait a little longer.
If Suguru was here, and oh, is this a dangerous path to wander down tonight, he would sit by Satoru’s side, a cold hand on his ankle, and pry the answers from a slowly willing mouth. Suguru was like that: taking what Satoru didn’t even realize he was offering. Taking from Satoru what he would learn he was never able to hold himself.
Yuji stays standing by his feet, and he hates him just a little for it.
“You drank nearly an entire bottle by yourself,” he says softly. Softly, like he’s speaking to a wounded, trapped animal. Satoru hums and supposes in some ways he is. “You don’t like to drink.”
“We should all strive to expand our horizons,” Satoru slurs, and it’s then he realizes he’s been doing so from the moment Yuji walked in on him in the bathroom. His tongue feels bloated in his mouth, too big or his mouth too small to hold back what he so desperately wants to say.
Yuji sits down next to his feet, and this is worse. Yuji is not Suguru, no matter how many similarities they share, no matter how closely Yuji’s future mirrors Suguru’s past. Yuji is not Suguru, no matter how badly Satoru wants his best friend back.
“I’m worried about you,” he says. He swallows, his shoulders tightening as he does. “We all are.”
“We?”
“Nobara and Shoko and Kiyotaka. Megumi,” Yuji says. “He’s really worried. Even if he doesn’t say anything, I know he is.”
“Because you know him so well?” Satoru asks.
“Yes,” Yuji says, steel in his voice for only this. For only things that are not him and his mountainous deadline that colors everything he does. “You’re his dad, of course he’s worried.” He bites his lip, twisting thick, strong fingers into the blankets sprawled around Satoru. He looks at Satoru with honeyed eyes.“Don’t make him lose another one. Please, Satoru.”
Something tumbles in Satoru’s chest. Something grows brittle and falls to the hollow cavity between his ribs. He doesn’t stay to hear it crack.
“You know a lot about that, huh? About losing fathers,” Satoru says, hammering it deeper when Yuji recoils. Surprise—and hurt, Satoru thinks—sits oddly on his face. He covers it with placidity quickly enough. If Satoru were anyone else, he doesn’t think he’d be quick enough to catch it. But he’s Satoru, the Strongest, someone’s one and only even if they aren’t here to bestow the twisted honor anymore, and he finds weaknesses like they call to him. He knows how to hurt as well as a shark knows how to snap its jaws around prey and thrash, and right now he wants to dig his claws into something soft and rip.
“I’ve never seen Kento get attached to someone as quickly as he did with you. And look where that got him,” Satoru says. Yuji’s eyes have grown wide, and he finds them hard to meet. So he doesn’t. He sets his own to the well in his plaster wall he never bothered to fix. “An empty casket without enough ashes left to fill it.”
“Sensei—” his voice wobbles. Satoru won’t give him the chance to steady it.
“Do you think it hurt,” he asks, closing his eyes as the moonlight spilling into his room grows too bright, “when he died for you? Do you think he regretted it?”
“You’re being mean,” Yuji chokes.
Six months after they met, when Yuji was freshly seventeen with a thick scar between his ribs, he still cried like a child. His nose puckered like a coiled spring, his face growing red with anger or shame or helplessness. Quiet tears came later. Quiet tears came after his hands trembled and the rest of his body slowly followed. Quiet tears came once he was alone and stuffed between his metal bedframe and his dorm room wall, his arms curled around himself as if that would be enough to stave off the overwhelming wave of emotion Satoru was all too familiar with. He could see him through paper walls, could feel him shake as well as if Satoru was sitting next to him and not tucked away in the teacher’s lounge. He never offered comfort, never knew how to contort his awkward body into something without sharp edges.
He cried like a child, even if he never had a chance to live like one.
He wonders if he still does. Yuji sucks in a sharp, stilted breath above him, and Satoru doesn’t have the strength to check.
“That’s not a no.” Look at me now, Suguru, he thinks. Look at me and watch me build a wall around my heart, just the way you taught me.
Yuji makes a tight noise beside him. “No,” he says. “No, I guess it’s not.”
Yuji stays next to him until Satoru falls into restless sleep, the soft bend of the mattress the only hint of his presence. He is a coward, and a liar, and Yuji still cries silently.
He blinks sleep from his eyes, the awful aftertaste of stale liquor filling his mouth even after three rounds of rinsing. He doesn’t bother with his contacts or the glasses in their case, plastic still clinging to its edges.
Last night’s clothes are tacky and heavy with sweat. He peels off his shirt and tosses it on his empty bed.
He patters down the hallway, and the rest of his apartment is empty, too.
“You look like shit.” Almost empty.
Shoko leans against his kitchen island, a steaming cup of tea pressed to her lips. She holds one out to him, dark, swirling coffee chasing the unfamiliar taste of alcohol to the back of his throat.
“You’re supposed to let that cool,” she says after he’s downed the entire mug and has shuffled towards the pot to pour another. Shoko makes coffee just the way he likes: too strong to be anything but a punishment. He wonders if she knows he deserves one.
He notices the full spread on the kitchen table a moment later.
“Never had a woman make me breakfast the morning after,” he says, his joke falling flat when Shoko taps her fingers on her white ceramic mug.
“I find it hard to believe any woman would stay long enough to see the sorry state of your bedroom.”
She’s right, in a way. Though it’s less because they can’t stand the clothes covering the floor like sand on a seabed, or the dirty bowls growing old on his desk. Satoru’s taken no one home, kissed no one but fleetingly, since Suguru.
She remembers herself then, remembers the man in front of her who is so well versed in faking smiles he’s forgotten the shape of his own.
“Yuji made it a few hours ago,” she says, clearing her throat. She sets her tea down. “Left it in the fridge for us. I just warmed it up.”
“Ah,” Satoru says. He sits in front of one of the plates, steam curling into the air. What little appetite he had upon waking fizzles with it.
“You talk to him?” he asks, stuffing rice in his mouth just for something to do with his hands.
“Just for a moment,” she says. She joins him at the table. She doesn’t pick up her chopsticks, watching Satoru eat as the food in his mouth runs from taste. “He said he had some stuff to do at the college. He left pretty quickly.
“I heard you two talking last night, though.”
His chopsticks still over his food. “Sorry if we kept you up,” he says, breaking the yolk of his egg so it settles into the cracks between rice grains.
“You don’t believe that,” Shoko says after a moment. She waits long enough, lets Satoru shovel half of the food into his mouth and push the rest around the plate, that he almost thinks she’ll let it lie.
“Believe what?” he asks, because he has never made anything easy. Not for Suguru, not for himself, and surely not for Shoko. Shoko, who for some reason has stood by his side through all these years, through the screaming matches and the stretches of frigid silence, through the cuts spanning the length of his wrists that never stayed longer than a single night.
“About Yuji. About Kento,” she says. She frowns into her empty mug of tea, tucking a long strand of brown hair behind her ear when it leaks onto the table. “You know he wouldn’t regret it. Not for a second.”
“Doesn’t mean his death wasn’t Yuji’s fault,” Satoru says, looking away when Shoko peers up at him with sad eyes.
“He’s a handful, that one!” he says, the cheer in his voice so forceful it only comes kicking and thrashing.
“Satoru.”
“And the higher-ups have been breathing down my neck these past few years, more than usual. I’m sure that’s due to Yuji, too. I’m saddled with twice as many missions as usual, and they’re so boring. Every day’s the same, searching for Sukuna’s fingers until I want to rip my own off at the monotony of it all.”
“Satoru,” Shoko says.
“And he got Megumi all attached.” Satoru laughs, the sound brittle like ice growing on glass. “He’s going to be wrecked when the kid dies—”
“And you won’t be?” Shoko stands to collect their plates, hers untouched and his half-empty but his stomach no fuller for it. She keeps her back to him, gives him the illusion of privacy in an apartment that’s always been too big for one.
“You know it won’t be any easier like this,” she says. She starts the tap, waiting until the water heats enough for steam to trickle towards the ceiling. “Demonizing him in your head isn’t going to make killing him any easier.”
Shoko does not walk around a point; she barrels towards it and leaves Satoru to pick up its pieces. But not for this. Satoru’s hands are red enough already, let him leave this where it lies.
His voice gives, cracking in two when he finally gathers the strength to whisper, “it might.”
“It didn’t with Suguru.” His name is a grenade dropped in the middle of a battlefield. Suguru is taboo, like fucking in the pews of a church before marriage, semen running down the bride’s legs before she’s made a wife.
“That was different,” he tries.
Shoko turns around, pinning him under brown eyes that have no give. “Why? Because Suguru’s choices were his own and he still picked the wrong ones?”
Satoru catches his mouth in his palm. “He was different, Shoko,” he says, his voice muffled beneath his fingers.
“Because you were in love with him?”
He feels what little breath he had managed to cling to rush out of his lungs. They don’t talk about this. They don’t talk about Suguru and Satoru and the what if that haunts Satoru better than any curse could.
In all years he had known him, they had never had. Never kissed or held hands or fucked in the back of their homeroom class the way Satoru always imagined. The hallways are tainted with them, with the thought of Suguru and Satoru and what they almost had. It’s the almost that kills him, because he knew if he asked, if he set his hand to Suguru’s neck and said kiss me, he wouldn’t be turned away.
He never asked. He imagined an eternity of them stretched out like the horizon. He never saw the end until it greeted him with a hole in its chest and at least curse me a little at the end on its lips.
“The love is different,” Shoko says, “but the pain will be the same.”
Yuji avoids him for the next two weeks, and Satoru lets him. He lets the kid have his peace and pretends he doesn’t notice the silence dogging his side.
They’re forced together as the end of the month nears, a mission that requires both Yuji and Satoru. Urgent, he’s told, but all he hears is we’ve found another one.
Yuji takes the car stuffed with Nobara and Yuta and their collection of cursed weapons, and Satoru’s left in a car of his own, Megumi slouched in his passenger seat.
“What’s up with you?” Megumi asks after Satoru flicks through radio channels before settling on one. He decides he hates jazz before the first measure ends and turns the whole thing off.
He tips his glasses down, peering at Megumi’s weathered frown. He frowns the way Satoru smiles, effortlessly and without any real feeling behind it. Some faces simply settle into the expectations thrust upon them. Megumi had been an angry kid, had been volatile and violent and gave out more bruises than he came home with, and even a decade later he wears don’t touch me like a brand. Satoru has never been good at following directions. He reaches out a hand to ruffle Megumi’s hair, his fingers getting nicked on the sharp end of an earring.
“That new?” he asks as Megumi swats his hand away.
“A few weeks,” Megumi says. He watches Satoru gauge the slowly filling road. “Yuji did it for me.”
His hands clench on the steering wheel as he changes lanes.
“There,” Megumi says, sounding vindicated but not pleased. “You’re being weird again.”
“You call me weird every day,” Satoru says. “What makes today’s weird any different?”
"Yeah, well you’re being weird about Yuji,” Megumi says. He frowns deeper as he says it, and Satoru bats down the desire to tell him his face will stick that way. He doesn’t think he would mind.
“So now you care?” he asks.
Megumi shrugs and Satoru wonders why he asked at all.
He turns onto the highway before he says, “I’m not being weird about him. I’m just busy. I’ve got a lot on my plate.”
“You always have a lot on your plate. What makes today’s busy any different?” Megumi parrots, his voice dropping low to imitate Satoru’s.
“We’ve got a mission today. All of us,” Satoru says, knowing he’s being cruel the moment he opens his mouth. Megumi falls silent beside him, lost in his own spiraling thoughts, and Satoru almost thinks it’s worth it.
Their group splits up, because of course it does, and Satoru catches Megumi around the neck before Yuji can adhere to his side.
“Megumi-chan’s coming with me,” he says, winking at Nobara when she huffs and thumbs at the nails hanging from her waist. “We’ll have a bit of a competition between us, see which team can exorcise the most curses.”
“I wish you would take this more seriously, Sensei,” Yuta says. Rika hovers behind him, her claws tugging lightly at the straps of Yuji’s crossbody bag. He pats her hand almost absentmindedly, and she settles more evenly between him and Yuta. “They wouldn’t ask for all of us if the mission wasn’t serious.”
“Don’t worry, Okkotsu-senpai,” Nobara says, cracking her knuckles. “We’re going to win.” Yuji is the last to turn around as they part, his stare heavy enough on Satoru’s back to be felt with or without Six Eyes.
The work is quick and easy. Satoru settles himself into the hollow of an apartment building, the scraps of a leather couch behind him.
“Left!” Satoru calls, watching from above as Megumi calls upon his Shikigami with ease. He begins to anticipate which one will be brought to life before he even curls his fingers into configuration.
A curse with wings and legs longer than its body screeches, and Satoru mouths Nue, as the bird materializes from the air.
“That came from the right, dumbass!” Megumi calls up to him.
“My left!” Satoru says. “Always assume I mean my left.”
Satoru counts sixteen as he hops down from his little enclave. He impresses footprints into the concrete when he lands.
“Good job!” He claps a hand onto Megumi’s shoulder, brushing some debris that fell onto his clothes during his fight.
“No thanks to you,” he mutters, shrugging off Satoru’s hand. He follows him back towards the clearing in the middle of the shopping center.
The entire place is a cavity, hollowed out like a mussel picked clean. The higher-ups had been late clearing out the area. Satoru kicks a dismembered foot out of view, the tip of his shoe staining red. Most of the casualties had been limited to a few hours ago, but the mall still smells rusty with stale blood. Satoru could open his mouth and catch droplets on his tongue.
They wait for a few minutes in content silence until the other group climbs over the wreckage of a coffee shop. It would be easy work for Satoru to fix, concrete and plaster melding together like they’d never been torn apart. He settles deeper in the debris, happy to wash his hands of this day completely. Someone else will come along and clean what he couldn’t be bothered to. They always do.
“Fourteen,” Nobara says proudly when they come within earshot.
Satoru smiles and nods towards Megumi.
“Sixteen,” he says after a moment, delayed by the emergence of Yuji from Rika’s shadow. He’s alright, all three of them are. Just scrapes and red marks that will become bruises tomorrow. Oddly the worst off is Yuta, a slowly leaking cut stretched over his forehead. He wipes the blood away with the back of his wrist before it can trickle into his eyes.
“That means we pick where we go out to eat,” Satoru says. “I’m in the mood for Chinese.”
“You didn’t even do anything,” Megumi mutters by Satoru’s side.
Satoru looks to Yuji, waiting for an awed retort or a curling smile, but he’s found interest in the cracked ground, his shoulders hunched.
“Sixteen curses all by yourself,” Yuta says into the waiting silence, “well done.”
Megumi shifts awkwardly at the praise and leaves it hanging unanswered in the air. Again, Satoru looks to Yuji, waits for him to break the silence, but he too is quiet.
Satoru claps his hands together, the sound echoing against the few buildings still standing.
“Well,” he says, “the food isn’t going to eat itself!”
Nobara is the first to move, chastising Megumi for his messy hair as she sets to fix it in passing. She heads back to the cars, Satoru ready to follow when Yuta’s soft voice stops him.
“Do you want me too—”
“It’s alright, Yuta.” His two past students stand close, their heads bent together. Rika hangs behind them, a haunting presence that Yuji looks more comfortable in than Satoru’s. Rika chitters, and Yuta blindly reaches out to pat her into ease.
“If you’re sure,” he says, his eyes dancing between Satoru and Yuji. He offers a smile then, brightening when it slants towards Yuji. “I’ll wait for you back at the car.”
Yuta pauses briefly as he passes Satoru, his eyes sharp. “Sensei,” he says, and then he’s gone, Rika a shadow at his back.
Yuji kicks at the loose gravel scattered by their feet.
“What was that about?” Megumi asks.
“Ah,” Yuji says. He folds his hands together in front of himself, rocking back on his heels until Satoru thinks he’s going to tip backwards.
Without fanfare he pulls a thin bundle from his bag, untying a string to expose pruned, purpled flesh. The cursed wrappings echo with energy, and all at once Satoru feels it wash over him.
“Yuta found another one,” Yuji says. He twists the finger towards himself, turning it until the long black nail almost brushes his nose. “This makes nineteen, right?”
A noise catches in Megumi’s throat, and he makes an abortive movement towards Yuji. His arm settles weakly by his side.
For the first time in two weeks, Yuji meets Satoru’s eyes. He holds out the finger towards him, the slightest shake to his hands. “I thought I should wait until you were here to eat it.”
“Good. That’s good.” Satoru clears his throat. “Smart move, Yuji. Well done.”
The edge of Yuji’s lips twitch towards a smile. He tilts his head back and holds the finger above his lips. Satoru can feel the ringing pressure that heralds Sukuna peeking his head past Yuji’s wall of control. Like a dog salivating before a bone, the curse knows what’s waiting for him.
“Wait!” Megumi says. Yuji stills, the finger held above him like a guillotine. Megumi’s chest is heaving like he’s run a marathon. Not even the endless waves of curses he fought earlier brought this level of fatigue from him.
“Just wait,” Megumi pleads. Satoru watches as Yuji’s eyes grow sympathetic and then determined and decides he doesn’t want to watch anymore.
He steps between Yuji and Megumi in wash of movement, tapping against the top of the thick scar beginning between his eyes. Yuji falls boneless into his arms, lighter than Satoru remembers. He settles the boy gently against an alley wall.
Megumi’s fingers twitch by his side.
“He’s fine,” Satoru says, tucking a strand of pink behind Yuji’s ear. “He’ll wake up in an hour or two.” He traces the scattered freckles laying over the bridge of Yuji’s nose, deep brown even in the middle of winter. Yuji is a boy born of summer, honey and blossoms and deep wells of scars. Flowers curl and wither as September nears, heat swelters then disappears from the air; even summer must end.
“You looked like you needed a minute,” Satoru says. He ghosts his fingertips over Yuji’s eyelids, makes sure they keep closed. “We can tell Nobara and Yuta Sukuna was about to gain control after he ate the finger, and I had to knock him out.”
“So he’s eating it then,” Megumi grits out. He’s all sharp edges and cutting words and fragility so plain Satoru wonders if he thinks he’s hiding it at all.
Satoru raises an eyebrow. “What else would we do? Hide the finger back at the college and wait for the higher-ups to sniff it out and blame it on Yuji?”
Megumi burrows into himself, his chin tucked tight against his shoulder. He’s nearly shaking with rage, and Satoru doesn’t know who it’s directed at. The higher-ups, himself, Yuji maybe. At Satoru, if Megumi was smart.
“They’d only kill him faster if they thought he was hiding fingers.”
“I know,” Megumi says, his own fingers pinching the blood from his arms where they’ve wrapped around himself. “I fucking know, okay.”
Satoru leans back against the alley, Yuji at his feet. “Megumi,” he sighs. “I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“Something. Anything,” Megumi hisses, a match waiting to be lit by its own sparked rage. “I want you to make a decision that isn’t premediated by the higher-ups. For once in your goddamn life, I want you to save someone you love.”
Satoru tips his head against the wall.
“I’m sorry. That was a shitty thing to say,” Megumi says after a moment, settling beside him, their shoulders close but not touching. Never touching, because one does not touch death himself. One does not invite him in to share a meal, and one does not love him without hating the swipe of his scythe. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Yes, you did.”
Megumi looks down at Yuji, looks at the tops of pink cherry blossoms. “Yeah, I did,” he whispers. He closes his eyes. If a tear slides over the cusp of his eyelid, Satoru has no one left to tell. “I’m just so tired of losing people I care about.”
“I know, kid,” Satoru says. He taps against the brick wall as Megumi falls apart beside him but not with him, his shoulders shaking with a sob that speaks of a thousand emotions packed precariously together like a ship in a bottle. “I know.”
Sooner or later a storm must come.