Work Text:
"You’re acting like I’m gonna break," Suguru’s voice is flat, a sound scraped clean of everything it used to be. It’s been sliding toward this for weeks (months?) Satoru keeps hunting for the exact point where the sharp, teasing lift in his tone dulled, then collapsed into this single muted note. Now even the slope of his shoulders, the wild fall of his hair, feel wrong. As if something small and foreign has crawled into him and is moving beneath his skin, wearing Suguru’s shape.
It makes his hands itch. Makes his chest tighten. A useless, restless anger that has nowhere to go except back into him, because none of it is Suguru’s fault. He reaches out anyway, fingers warm as if his technique had pulsed out of him on its own.
But Suguru shifts just then, as if summoned by some sixth sense, or by the prickling weight of eyes on the back of his neck. He pulls away with that same quiet, instinctive recoil he’s had for weeks. The futon is already too narrow, his knees drawn up, shoulders rounded, body curled toward the wall. The blanket is thin, the kind they only bother with in summer and the heat hasn’t let up in days, but Suguru clings to it every night like the season has nothing to do with him at all.
They’ve always slept on the two futons pushed together an arrangement built from routine and carelessness in equal measure. It used to be easy. Now the seam between them feels like a fault line, one Suguru keeps inching toward as though he’s trying to disappear into it.
"Well, aren’t you?" Satoru snaps, the anger slipping out crooked. "You’ve been flinching away from me for weeks. I get it, actually, no, I don’t. But whatever. I’m trying to be nice."
Suguru scoffs, looks over his shoulder. "That’s what this is? You, being nice?"
"Uh-huh," Satoru shifts closer, closing the gap between them, pressing into Suguru’s space like he always does. Like muscle memory that hasn’t caught up to the new rules. "I could be worse," he says, "Could be all over you, y'know."
The teasing leaves his mouth too easily, and he hates how he can hear the thin thread of intent wound underneath it. Something restless beats in his chest uneven and intrusive. It flutters against his ribs like it’s trying to escape, making his own pulse feel too loud, too everywhere. He forces a breath around it, smooths the edges into a joke. A joke. Mostly. He keeps it contained.
Suguru doesn’t laugh.
And the lack of reaction lands harder than anything else could have. It’s not annoyance, not the fond irritation Satoru used to lean toward like sunlight. It’s just stillness. A withdrawal disguised as calm.
Satoru feels it immediately, as surely as he’d feel a shift in cursed energy, the way Suguru curls in on himself under that thin summer blanket. Suguru clings to it holding it like a barrier. Or a tether. Satoru can’t tell which, and the not-knowing sparks something sharp inside him.
He should pull back. He knows that. The thought flashes through him, clean and simple. But his body doesn’t move. His knees stay angled toward Suguru’s. His shoulder stays close enough to brush if the other boy shifted even a little.
He’s so tired of retreating. So he stays where he is, close enough that Suguru can feel him choosing not to touch.
See? he thinks, not daring to say it this time. I’m not doing anything wrong.
But the distance doesn’t shrink. It stretches, thin and rough, like something Suguru could slip behind and disappear through if Satoru blinked at the wrong moment. He stares at the back of Suguru’s neck, at the tension coiled there, at the quiet rise and fall of his breath under the blanket he shouldn’t need in this heat and the faulty and directionless anger presses into him again.
“Let me try something,” Satoru says suddenly, and before Suguru can ask what, Satoru reaches around and flicks his forehead.
Suguru recoils, turns around, blinking at him. "Seriously?"
Satoru grins, pleased with himself. "Didn’t flinch that time."
Suguru scowls, rubbing at his forehead. "Because you caught me off guard, dumbass."
“Ohhh, so I just need to surprise you every time I wanna touch you? Noted.”
His fingers twitch before he can stop them but Suguru’s hand snaps up and grabs his wrist before he can flick him again. The contact is nothing, barely more than a brush of skin before Suguru lets go, but it hits Satoru harder than it should. His smirk falters just a fraction, just long enough for something tight and unguarded to push up under his ribs. Something he hopes the dimness of the room hides.
Suguru licks his lips, exhales. "Just… stay there."
Satoru does. His body goes very still, like any shift might disrupt the fragile.
Stay there. He can do that. For once, he can be still.
Satoru doesn’t say anything for a while. That’s rare. It should feel unnatural, like a moment waiting to be filled, but it doesn’t.
Suguru exhales, letting himself sink just a little into the futon, shoulders finally losing some of their tightness and turns on his back. He’s close but at least he’s not trying to pull away, yet.
"You know," Satoru starts, "if you wanted to hold my hand, you could’ve just said so."
Suguru groans, dragging a hand over his face. "Kill me."
"Can’t. You’re my best friend."
Suguru is peeking through his fingers, cautiously. Satoru flashes him a smile anyway and folds his arms behind his head.
"It’s no fun teasing Utahime alone, you’re part of the whole thing."
He says it offhandedly, like it’s just another joke, but even he can hear the sincerity threaded through it. He doesn’t take it back. He wouldn’t even if Suguru flinched.
Suguru stills.
It’s subtle, barely more than a pause in his breathing, but Satoru feels it like a shift in pressure, like Suguru hasn’t heard him say that in a long time. Or like he’s hearing it differently.
Satoru stares up at the ceiling, pretending he didn’t notice. He waits for Suguru to scoff, or roll his eyes, or say something cutting but nothing comes.
Satoru’s fingers twitch against the futon, restless. He resists the urge to reach out again, to flick him, to poke him, anything stupid and physical that might shake the awkwardness out of the air. He hates it. Hates quiet. Quiet lets things settle, and he’s not sure he wants to know what’s landing between them right now.
Suguru finally lowers his hand from his face. His expression isn’t annoyed and it isn’t anything Satoru has the language for. Satoru feels it then that instinctive pull. The one he’s been trying to ignore for weeks. He swallows it down, lets his grin soften instead of widen.
"You can try again," Suguru murmurs.
“Oh.”
It leaves Satoru before he can shape it into anything else before he can twist it into a joke or a smirk or something sharp-edged and easy. Just that single syllable, soft and stupid, hanging between them.
Suguru’s eyes flick away as if he regrets saying anything at all, but he doesn’t take it back. He just stares at the ceiling, jaw working once like he’s trying to chew the words into something safer.
Satoru’s pulse jumps. His body, traitorously eager, leans one millimeter closer before he yanks it back under control. Still. Suguru told him to stay still.
“Try what again?” Satoru asks, and it’s absurd how steady he sounds. His voice usually tilts, swerves, fills any silence it can find, but right now it feels like it’s balancing on the narrowest edge.
Suguru doesn’t look at him. “The… whatever that was. The flick. Or...” His breath hitches. Barely. But Satoru hears it. Feels it. “Just. Touching me. I guess.”
Satoru’s mouth goes dry. Completely, uselessly dry.
“Oh,” he says again, quieter this time.
Suguru shifts on the futon, the blanket sliding down his shoulder. His arm lies there between them, forearm pale in the low light, hand relaxed on the sheets.
It’s almost nothing.
It might as well be a door kicked open.
Satoru’s fingers move before the rest of him catches up slow, slow, like he’s reaching into a sorcery he can’t measure. His hand brushes Suguru’s knuckles. Barely. The faintest stroke, light enough that it can be denied later if Suguru needs it to be.
Suguru doesn’t pull away.
He doesn’t do anything at first, and the stillness is almost worse than recoil would have been. It makes Satoru’s chest seize, makes something bright and terrified flutter at the base of his throat.
Then Suguru turns his hand over. Just enough that their fingers line up.
Satoru’s breath stutters.
“You sure?” he whispers.
Suguru closes his eyes.
That hits Satoru harder than any touch could have. Satoru swallows, throat tight. His fingers slide against Suguru’s, a cautious, trembling pass that ends with the tips of their index fingers barely hooked.
Suguru exhales a real one this time, long and uneven, like it’s been caught in him for weeks.
Satoru’s voice comes out softer than he means it to. “Tell me if it’s too much.”
Suguru doesn’t open his eyes. “It’s not.”
And because Satoru has never been good at listening to limits he moves that last fraction of distance and presses their fingers together.
Interlaced would be too much. Holding would be too much. But this—this press of fingertips is perfect. It trembles between them like something alive.
Suguru inhales sharply, but he doesn’t move away.
Satoru wants to laugh, or cry, or do something loud enough to shake the room apart.
“You’re warm,” Suguru murmurs, and Satoru isn’t sure if he means the fingers or the presence or the closeness or everything.
Satoru forces out a shaky breath, smiling into the dark. “Yeah? Finally not flinching from it?”
Suguru opens his eyes, turns his head just enough to look at him. And the look it’s not tense. It’s not tired. It’s not empty. It’s something Satoru had been afraid he’d never see again.
“I’m trying,” Suguru says. “Just… don’t rush me.”
Satoru nods, even though he’s never rushed anything more slowly in his life. “I won’t.”
It’s stupid how much hope fits into that single point of contact. But Suguru doesn’t pull away. So Satoru doesn’t either.