Chapter Text
Satoru doesn’t typically care for sentimentality. He likes to look ahead, to take things easy, to form attachments and lose them just as easily. Time and experience have taught him how fleeting even the deepest of bonds can be.
The first day of the trimester is an exception.
Sometimes, on days like today, when he’s fresh from the break and free from distractions, it feels like it’s twelve years in the past, and there’s a different, black-haired boy standing at his side.
Satoru can’t help but to think about it.
Ahead of him, Megumi hangs his head, already exhausted.
“Hurry up,” he sighs, turning back to glower at Satoru’s stopped form. “We’re already late.”
“It’s fine, it’s the first day,” says Satoru, staring up at the flower-less cherry blossom trees. The lenses of his sunglasses cast the branches in a tint of blue. “Lectures don’t start until five past anyway.”
And it’s his third-years. They’d be used to his lateness by now.
“I’m going then,” says Megumi. “Yuji’s waiting for me.”
“Yuji?” Satoru repeats, finally walking again. He grins, tries not to sound too teasing, as he asks, “You saw him just last night, didn’t you? Can’t stand to be parted for that long?”
He’s only let out half a laugh, brought on by the fierce look of annoyance on Megumi’s face, when a weight lands itself around his wrist.
He cuts off, pausing with annoyance. He hates it when people grab, when they touch without asking.
“Satoru.”
It’s not him, Satoru thinks, instantly, but then he’s turning and of course it is, he’d know that voice anywhere, he’d know the feel of those hands.
He’s never had to ask.
“…Suguru.”
It is him. He looks the same, his hair longer and his shoulders wider, but still sharp-eyed and handsome and strong, based on the way his fingers have tightened around Satoru’s wrist.
Satoru stares, and then straightens. His hand is starting to shake. He curls it into a fist, hard as he can, so Suguru won’t notice.
“Go on without me, Megumi,” he says, evenly, pretending he’s not swallowing back his heart with every breath. “I’ll see you after class.”
Satoru looks at him, sees the single movement of worry disappear from his face the moment he and Satoru make eye contact.
“Right,” Megumi says. “See you later, Gojo.”
He keeps going, head-lowered. Satoru can’t begin to imagine what he’s thinking.
Suguru is still holding onto his wrist. Satoru’s arm feels numb from the touch of it, from how hard he’s trying to keep himself still. Any sudden movement, and Suguru will let go.
The curiosity he musters feels false and unconvincing, when he turns back to Suguru and asks, “What are you doing here, Suguru?”
He doesn’t care what the answer is. He already knows, despite himself, that Suguru isn’t here for him.
Suguru gestures vaguely behind him, and says, “I’m just…dropping someone off.” Then he shoves his hands in his pockets, completely out of reach, and pulls his shoulders back. “What about you?”
“I’m a professor here.”
“You are?” Suguru’s eyes widen, the corners of his mouth lifting with what seems like genuine surprise. “That’s…unexpected, honestly.”
Satoru’s chest hardens. Raising his eyebrows, he says, with no small degree of hurt, “Well, it has been a while.”
Suguru winces instantly, his smile slipping away. The sight of it turns any of Satoru’s offense to guilt. Trying for softness that feels all too exposing, he asks, “Did you want to come up to my office?”
Suguru’s eyes brighten with interest, but it lasts little more than a moment.
“I-I have work,” he says, and there’s a stutter in his voice, a break that sounds like disappointment. Then he’s pushing a black card into Satoru’s hand. “Here, take it. My number…”
Satoru glances at it, at where Suguru holds it out to him. It’s entirely deliberate, the way he brushes their fingers together as he takes it from him.
“Call me, please,” Suguru continues. “We can get a drink and…and talk. Or something.”
Satoru can’t look away from the card, not yet. He hasn’t had Suguru’s number, a way of contacting him, in more than ten years. It almost doesn’t seem possible.
“All right,” he says, and the smile he levels at him feels more real than any of the ones before it, more genuine with happiness and not forced out around his nerves. “I’ll call you after work.”
He steps back, thinking that’s the end of it. With that black hard slipped away into his pocket, he can part more easily than he might of without it.
But Suguru says, hastily, like he’s desperate to get one last word in, “It was…”
He pauses. Satoru stares back at him, waiting,
“I’m so happy to see you. Satoru.”
Satoru smiles. It’s nice to hear, especially from Suguru.
I wish I could believe you, he thinks.
“Me too, Suguru.”
It takes Satoru twice as long as it usually would, to climb the three flights of stairs that lead up to his office. He’s not sure if he attributes that more to the slow pace he’d taken or the fact he’d had to stop on the second floor to stop himself from crying.
Shoko gives him a strange look when he steps into his office. She’s been waiting for him, as she usually does, even though it’s only the first day of term. A cloud of smoke makes her hazy around the edges.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asks, frowning deeply. “Why do you look like that?”
Satoru drops his bag in his desk chair, drapes his coat over the back of it. His throat feels thick, his hands numb. He can’t stop thinking about the little black card in his coat pocket.
“I just ran into Suguru downstairs.”
Shoko lowers her cigarette.
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“How’d it go?” she asks, obviously.
Satoru grimaces. “Fine,” he says, though it feels far from certain. He thinks about the easy, unbothered way Suguru had been, how he’d ran his hands through his hair, how he’d smiled and told him it was nice to see him like it hadn’t been more than ten years.
He thinks about that iron-grip around his wrist, the slight stutter of disappointment when he’d said he couldn’t come up to his office with him.
More softly, more openly, Satoru adds, “He gave me his card, so I can call him after work. To get a drink, or something.”
“Are you going to?”
Satoru stills. It hadn’t really occurred to him, that he doesn’t have to call if he doesn’t want to. He could rip that card to pieces and burn it up with one of the dozen lighters Shoko’s left around the room, pretend it was never anything more than a grey puff of ash dispersing in the air.
He slips his hand into his coat pocket, runs the tip of his finger along the thin edge to make sure it’s still there.
God, he wants to see him. He wants to follow that urge he’s held inside of himself the last ten years and chase after him like he was supposed to from the very beginning.
“Yeah, I’m going to,” he says, because there really is no other choice.
“Good,” says Shoko. She gives a decisive nod, a little smile of encouragement. “You can tell me all about it tomorrow.”
Satoru’s sure he will. There’s not a single thing he hasn’t told her, over the past decade. Especially where Suguru is concerned.
If he’s distracted through his first two lectures and the following tutorials, his students don’t mention it. He fast-tracks through the unit overviews, explains the different assessments, acknowledges the smattering of nods when he asks if everyone’s found a copy of the prescribed textbook, and then rushes back to his office the moment the lecture recording ends.
He'd left the business card on his desk, so he wouldn’t be tempted to look at it in the middle of his classes. Now, as he holds it gently by the edges, wary of putting fingerprints on the clean black surface, he finds himself hesitating.
It’s probably not too early to call. Despite how quickly he’d pressed on through his classes, they’d still carried him through to five-thirty.
He puts it down again, picks it up, turns it around to look at the logo on the back. He can’t tell what kind of business it is, based on that alone. He wonders if that’s intentional.
He’s well and truly memorised the phone number by this time, but he still double checks, again and again, after he’s typed it into his phone, still worries he’s somehow messed up, as he brings the phone to his ear and listens to it ring.
Then the ringing stops, sooner than he’d expected. Satoru has a split second to prepare himself to speak, as he hears Suguru’s answering greeting.
“Suguru?” he asks, forcing his voice out like it’s supposed to sound, when he’s not biting through his tongue with nerves. “Is this a bad time?”
He asks Suguru to meet him back outside the college, in the same place where they’d stood and stared at each other that morning. Something of that disbelief still lingers in Satoru’s chest, as he waits, his jaw aching with a tension that snakes right down his throat to his sternum.
Suguru appears out of the darkness without warning, dressed as he is in all black. He joins Satoru in the circle of light beneath the streetlight, his cheeks tinged a soft shade of pink and his hair vaguely wind-blown.
Satoru swallows, faltering, as Suguru smiles at him.
“Did you walk here?” he asks, though the answer is clear enough. He’d have offered to drive to him, if he knew, even if the thought of sitting in a car beside him makes his hands shake.
Suguru blinks, then shrugs, still smiling. “I took the train today.”
Why? Satoru thinks, instantly. Where do you work? Where do you live? Will you let me come home with you?
He wants to ask him so many questions, and he wants a decade worth of answers. Nothing could be unimportant to him.
“So where are we going?” Suguru asks, thin eyebrows raised expectantly.
“There’s a tearoom around the corner,” Satoru tells him, gesturing to a side path. Then, in a flash of uncertainty, he explains, “I don’t actually drink alcohol, so…”
“That’s all right. I don’t either, really,” says Suguru, as soothing as ever, as quick to put at ease. “A tearoom is fine.”
Satoru breathes in. With a smile of his own, entirely genuine and entirely forced, he asks, “Should we go then?”
Suguru nods and steps back, but still he stays close enough that Satoru can’t help but brush up against him, their shoulders touching for a single moment, as they fall in beside each other.
Suguru speaks first, as they walk, glancing over at him every few steps as he asks, “Did you have a good day? First day of classes, right?”
Satoru hums thoughtfully. It could have been the worst of his entire teaching career, and he still wouldn’t be able to complain. Not with how the day started, with where it is now.
“It was good,” he says, smiling over at him. “Some of my third years brought in a cake as a welcome back.”
He doesn’t mention that he’d been too tense, too distracted, to properly enjoy it, that the taste of chocolate and cream had been dulled by the constant thought of black hair and piercings and purple eyes.
Suguru raises an eyebrow at him, looking amused. “They already bribing you to give them good grades?” he asks.
“My students are brilliant, they don’t need to bribe me!” Satoru exclaims, gapping at him with more indignation than he feels. Then he grins. “Believe it or not, I’m a fantastic teacher. I’ve never had a student fail one of my classes.”
“I believe you,” says Suguru, and with enough intention behind it to smash right into Satoru’s heart, he knocks their shoulders together in a show of teasing familiarity Satoru hadn’t felt since they’d last parted.
“So do you teach lit?”
Satoru doesn’t immediately catch Suguru’s next question, caught up as he is in his proximity. Suguru’s wider in the shoulders than he used to be, back when they were teenagers.
“I teach a few humanities subjects,” he spits out, doggedly keeping his eyes on the road so he won’t think about how his shoulder is still burning for more of Suguru’s touch. “Mainly literature, but linguistics and history classes too. And art history, since the last professor went part time.”
His hand somehow burns even more. As they cross the street he presses it to Suguru’s spine, his mouth dry, and feels something in his sternum strangle itself with desperation.
He never minded in the past, Satoru tells himself, as he tries not to imagine Suguru stepping away from his touch. But that was a long time ago.
Suguru stays close to him, and he doesn’t pull away. Satoru takes that as enough approval, that such a small touch is welcome enough.
“Damn, sounds like a lot,” Suguru comments, his eyebrows pulled together in the centre. “But you like it?”
Satoru smiles to himself. It’s not hard at all, to tell him, “It’s the best thing in the world.” Then he presses his hand more firmly to his spine. “Just in here.”
The tearoom is small and non-descript, exactly the sort of place you’d go if the intention was to avoid every other crowded izakaya in the area. The few customers sit at their low tables, talking amongst each other in quiet voices that filter into a low hum.
Satoru orders for them, ignores the pain in his stomach when Suguru’s surprised he still remembers his favourite drink, and tries, in vain, to think of something worthwhile to say that doesn’t let on just how much he’s struggling to contain himself.
By the time their drinks arrive, neither of them have spoken. Suguru doesn’t seem to mind, content enough to take in the surroundings, but Satoru can’t help but to clench his teeth in frustration at his own lack of action.
Sighing softly to himself, he runs his fingers through his hair, pushing the white strands back just long enough to feel the cool air against his forehead, before it falls back down.
“You look the same,” Suguru says, suddenly. When Satoru looks at him, he’s already staring.
He can’t help but raise his eyebrows, pleased.
“So do you.”
He does, but he also doesn’t. He didn’t have any tattoos the last time Satoru had seen him, and the only piercings he had were the two gages in his ears.
“But these are new,” he says, and before he can stop himself he’s reaching out to touch, to brush the tips of his fingers over Suguru’s eyebrow, over the ring of metal through the side of his nose.
“And these,” he adds, staring at the ink crawling up his throat.
Suguru stills beneath his hand. It’s for that reason only that Satoru realises what he’s doing.
He draws his hand away before he can smooth it down Suguru’s throat, beneath the collar of his shirt, to feel if those really had been nipple piercings he’d seen the outline of that morning.
Voice low, Suguru explains, “I get them done in my free time at the shop.” He’s not looking at him anymore, his eyes lowered to where Satoru grips his peach iced tea.
“The shop?” Satoru repeats, jaggedly forcing out the words. He taps his finger against the cold glass, training his eyes on Suguru’s mouth so he won’t think about how he still wants to touch, wants to pull at the collar of Suguru’s shirt to see how much of that broad chest is covered in ink.
“Where I work. I’m a tattoo artist. Have been since I…”
Since I left.
Are we allowed to talk about it? Satoru doubts it, doubts Suguru’s willing, if he can’t even make himself say those few short words, but at least Satoru’s not thinking about sticking his hand down Suguru’s shirt anymore.
“Not quite as prestigious as a university professor,” Suguru continues, smiling modestly. “But it works for me.”
Satoru tilts his head to the side, thoughtful. The Suguru he remembers from university had spent so much of that last year looking at the future with confusion and dread, unconvinced that any of the options pressed on him were the right ones.
But that smile on his face looks genuine, and the softness in his eyes is one Satoru remembers well, from before the stress and frustration of university had hardened him.
The sight of it reminds him that it’s still Suguru in front of him, still his best friend, even if so much has changed since they last saw each other.
It’s easier, after that, to relax.
He takes a sip of tea. “And you like it?”
“It’s the best thing in the world.”
Satoru smiles, and Suguru smiles right back.
“So you have a lot of these now?” Satoru asks, unable to help himself, as he gestures at the tattoos down the side of Suguru’s neck. The lighting in the shop is too dark to make out any details, but he still wants a better look, even if he has to keep his hands to himself.
“A fair few. I’ll show you one day.”
Satoru pauses, his eyes flickering to Suguru’s, to make sure he hadn’t imagined the edge of flirtation in his otherwise casual voice.
Sure enough, Suguru’s looking at him with his eyelids slightly lowered over his phoenix eyes, the corner of his mouth brought up into a smirk.
It’s at once as familiar as it is strange. Satoru had seen this look more than once, back then, enough times to know what it meant. He hadn’t considered the possibility of seeing it again now.
Almost by instinct, he feels his lips twitch into a similar, sly grin.
He’s not naïve enough to put any hope into it, like he did as a teenager, but he can’t deny his relief that the attraction is still there, if not anything else.
I always knew you wanted to fuck me, Suguru, he thinks, raising his glass to his lips. Would’ve been nice if you’d done something about it.
He wonders if Suguru would now. He wonders if he’d say yes, if Suguru offered.
Probably. Self-control had never been his virtue.
He can’t be sure how long they would have stayed like that, eyes locked onto each other, not saying a single word but with a thousand different emotions flooding the space between them, if his phone hadn’t cut through the tension.
Barely reacting, Satoru’s eyes drop to his lit-up phone, Megumi’s name written across the screen as it vibrates faintly on the table.
Satoru reaches for it at once, his mouth twisting apologetically as he says to Suguru, “Sorry. I have to take this.”
Suguru just shakes his head, unconcerned.
“Megumi,” Satoru says, forcing more brightness than necessary into his voice. “What an honour. You never call me.”
Megumi gives a dull, almost unnoticeable scoff. “Don’t get used to it,” he says. “Are you going to be home soon? Yuji is here and we’re ordering take out.”
“Oh, where from?” Satoru asks. He hadn’t eaten anything beyond a slice of cake, and the thought of food is somewhat appetizing, in this one moment of distraction. “Doesn’t matter. Just get me something sweet.”
“All right,” Megumi says. His voice goes fainter, as he says to Yuji, “He’ll have honey chicken and rice. And a pack of those assorted mochi ice creams.”
Satoru straightens, beaming. “Ahh, you know me so well, Megumi,” he simpers, already picturing the disgust spreading across Megumi’s face. “I knew you cared.”
“Fuck off,” says Megumi, unsurprisingly. Satoru laughs, is pleased to hear Suguru do the same from across the table. “It’ll be here in twenty. Be on time or we’ll eat the mango mochi.”
It’s an empty threat, but Satoru’s eyes still narrow with distrust.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“I won’t let him, Gojo-Sensei!” Yuji shouts, only a second before the line goes silent.
Satoru pulls his phone away from his ear to grin down at the screen, fondness making his teeth ache.
“Are those your students?” Suguru asks him.
Satoru blinks, and shoves his phone away.
“Oh, technically,” he says. “Megumi’s kind of my kid. Yuji is his friend but he’s in a few of my classes too.”
Suguru’s glass thumps against the table.
“You have a kid?” he asks, with a sudden urgency, a disbelief, that almost makes Satoru laugh. “How?”
“I mean, it’s not like I birthed him myself, Suguru,” says Satoru, reaching across the table to flick at his shoulder. “His dad died, and he asked me to take care of him and his sister. Not long after you…”
After you left.
Maybe Satoru can’t talk about it either. The ten-year-old wound is still fresh, still feverish and bleeding. If he interferes too much it’ll only get worse.
Suguru blinks at him, a strange look on his face. Then he asks, with what can only disappointment, “You need to go, don’t you?”
It’s a kind of panic, a helpless uncertainty over what reasons he could give to linger, that makes Satoru grimace and say, “Yes. I’m sorry.”
Truthfully, he could stay for longer. It wouldn’t take much more than ten minutes to walk back to his car and drive home. But he doesn’t know what’s safe to talk about, doesn’t think he can stop himself from scrubbing at that wound until its beyond healing.
Suguru drinks the last of his ginger beer, the ink moving over his throat as he swallows, and then stands. “Come on,” he says, leaving several bills on the table. “Can’t have them stealing your mochi ice cream.”
Then he offers out his hand. Satoru stares at it, his heart thumping. They haven’t held hands since they were seventeen.
He can barely remember how, as he presses their palms together, as he lets Suguru pull him to his feet and guide him back through the shop. It’s more overwhelming than it should be, that one point of contact. He wants to bring Suguru’s warm hand to his mouth, so he can kiss his knuckles.
Satoru shivers.
He can’t keep holding onto him. He can’t. Any longer and he won’t be able to resist the temptation, to pull him around and move in close to him, to touch him, to kiss him.
It’s probably a good thing, that they’ve been interrupted. Much longer and it was only inevitable, that he’d do something he shouldn’t.
He tugs his hand free. Suguru doesn’t react, but he’d probably already planned on letting go. There was no reason for it anymore, after all, not now that they’re both outside in the near-empty street.
Somehow, it makes Satoru wish he’d held on. Maybe the risk would’ve been worth it, to feel Suguru’s warmth for just a little bit longer.
They walk back in silence, but it’s not as awkward as Satoru might have expected it to be. Their shoulders brush with every few steps, and it’s enough.
“Do you want a lift home?” Satoru offers, when they reach his car beneath the main building. He doesn’t know how long of a train ride it is back to Suguru’s place, or where Suguru’s place even is, but nowhere is too far.
“No, it’s okay,” Suguru says. He steps back, unbothered, his hand sweeping the hair out of his face. Satoru watches the movement, aching. “It’s too far from here. And your dinner is waiting.”
I don’t care, Satoru thinks. Let me take you home. Let me stay.
He swallows, and says, “You sure?”
“I’m sure. Thanks anyway.”
Satoru’s not about to argue with him. Shrugging off his disappointment, he opens the car door and throws his bag onto the passenger seat.
“Satoru.”
He hesitates, glances back up at where Suguru’s watching him.
“Will you call me again?”
He sounds soft. Vulnerable. Like he thinks he’s asking for something he shouldn’t be allowed to have.
Satoru gives him a crooked smile. The wave of affection in his stomach feels just the same as it used to. The force of it almost hurts.
“You have my number,” he says. “You call me.”
There’s a ringing in Satoru’s ears, when he leaves Suguru behind in the car park. He feels vaguely sick, his hands numb, his throat thick and dry at the same time.
Seeing Suguru again is so much better, so much more intense, then he had really anticipated over the years. In so many ways it feels like they’d never been apart.
He looks as good as he did ten years ago, or better, with his hair and his piercings and his goddamn tattoos. He looks like he’s supposed to.
And he looks happy. In Satoru’s last few memories of him, he remembers dark shadows beneath tired eyes, a frame thinning out, unkept hair and clothes hanging loosely.
There’s nothing to be seen of that Suguru in this one now. He’s filled back out, broad-shouldered and slightly thicker around the waist than Satoru with muscles. His hair is longer, his eyes brighter, his mouth quicker to curve up into that beautiful smile.
Satoru draws in a shuddering breath. His hands tighten on the steering wheel. He wishes he’d stayed longer, even if he probably would have ended up sprouting every single desperate thought of longing he’s had the last decade.
There’s not even any guarantee that Suguru will call him again. Satoru knows he’d asked, which should have been all the indication he needed, but there’s every chance it was just out of politeness.
He’ll call, he tells himself, with as much assurance as he can. He was disappointed that I had to go. I could tell.
He sits in his car for longer than he needs to, after he gets home, even if his dessert is in danger of getting eaten. When at last he drags himself up to his apartment, he’s mustered up an easy enough smile it should convince Megumi there’s nothing wrong with him other than the usual.
“Did you go somewhere after work?” Megumi asks, anyway, frowning at him when he comes inside. He’s got two bowls in his hands, two pairs of chopsticks.
“Yeah,” says Satoru. He grins warmly, tries to mask the conflict in his mind. “Got a drink with an old friend.”
He doesn’t add anything else onto it. Megumi can probably guess exactly who, just from that.
“Your food is in the kitchen,” he says, without asking anymore questions. “Yuji and I are eating in my room.”
Satoru waves him off. “Say hi to Yuji,” he says, as Megumi moves down the hall and disappears behind his bedroom door.
His food is waiting for him, just as Megumi had said, but he doesn’t have much of an appetite for any of it. He’ll admit, he’d rather be back at that tea room with Suguru than here, even if he’d been burning himself up with unnecessary nerves the entire time.
In the end, he puts it all away for later. The night’s gone quiet in the short time it’d taken him to get home, and he feels strange and unnerved, that numbness in his hands lingering despite the warmth of the apartment.
And it’s calm, aside from the occasional noise from whatever movie they’re watching in Megumi’s bedroom. Satoru could so easily let the rest of the evening slip away, caught up in his own thoughts.
He’s still standing in the kitchen, contemplating whether it’s worth it, staying up much longer, when his phone vibrates in his pocket. Half-distracted, he pulls it out and reads,
Suguru
Is texting allowed?
6:14
He stares at his phone, not quite believing it. Barely more than twenty minutes and Suguru’s already reached out to him.
His thumbs hover over the screen, unsure. He wants to hit the call button right now, just so he can hear his voice, just so he can tell him how absolutely allowed it is.
Instead, with a great deal of control, he types.
As if it wouldn’t be.
6:16
He bites his bottom lip. He doesn’t want to seem over-eager, but that might have been too dry. Nothing about it at all feels natural anymore.
Did you get home all right?
6:16
My Mango Mochi was safe, if that’s what you’re asking.
6:17
I’m glad. I know how devastated you’d be otherwise.
Can we meet again soon?
6:18
Satoru swallows. His eyes narrow in on that last, leading message, on the suggestion of wanting more. He types without thought.
Yes. Whenever you like.
6:18
Tomorrow? After work again?
6:18
Yes. I’ll meet you outside the college, same as today.
6:19
I can’t wait.
6:19
Me too.
6:19
Satoru drops his phone on the counter, grinning. This time yesterday he’d only distantly dreamed of seeing Suguru again, and now here they were planning their second meeting.
It doesn’t feel real at all. If it weren’t for the very tangible evidence of Suguru’s messages on his phone, he’d think he’d imagined the whole thing.
But slowly, the smile fades from his face.
Seeing Suguru again is the one thing he’s always wanted most, out of everything in the world - nothing has ever felt more important to him. Now that he has, he’s not sure what comes next. He’s not even sure they’ll see each other again, after tomorrow.
There are no guarantees, especially with Suguru. He’d learned that the hard way.
He doesn’t want to live that pain again. The things it would do to him, to convince himself he had Suguru back only to lose him again…there would be no recovering from it.
Because it’s clear to him, even after only one day.
The way he feels about Suguru hasn’t changed.