Chapter Text
Year 1
This dorm situation fucking sucks.
It takes Suguru nearly ten minutes to shoulder up a single flight of stairs and down a long depressingly beige hallway, hefting a stuffed duffel bag and a squishy memory foam pillow through groups of boys packed in tight like sardines on either side, dodging flying elbows as they high-five and wrestle and interchangeably use ‘dude’ and ‘bro’ as pronouns.
Just as the walls are closing in he pushes his way through to room 24. Once inside, with the door safely locked behind him, he drops his bag onto the floor and breathes a heavy sigh of relief, clutching the pillow to his chest.
He’s not usually this much of an anti-social loser, and maybe a year or six months ago he would have introduced himself to his neighbors and pretended to give a shit about where everyone was from and what they were studying, only ever as charming as he needed to be to get by, but here in this new place that was really nothing at all like home but now was home, he can’t bring himself to.
He’s just happy to see that the room is empty.
Sweet fucking solitude. Finally.
He’d been in the admissions office all morning ironing out the details of his attendance and financial aid, then he’d had lunch with his parents, his mother getting all sentimental and tearily hugging him outside of his dorm building when it was time to say goodbye, as if a tiny sobbing middle aged woman being wrangled off of her son and stuffed into the car by her grimacing husband wasn’t the most embarrassing thing in the world.
It was nice to get away, to retreat into his own little space while the world beyond the door continued on and on. He’d get back to it later. Maybe.
Light filters in through the tree branches outside the window, squares of yellow stretching across the hardwood. Everything is sun-warmed, peaceful. There’s even a bird chirping somewhere. The knot inside of him loosens, the tension melting off of his shoulders—
Suddenly, heavy metal music blares and there are several loud thumps from the hallway.
Aaand the moment’s gone.
Suguru sighs deeply. It won’t always be like this, he reminds himself. The other boys are all just excited to see each other again. He feels a tiny stab of jealousy; they actually have people, people who missed them and couldn’t wait to see them again.
He’s never had people, never had friends like that back home. Nobody has ever interested him enough, or maybe he was the one who wasn’t interesting enough. Unfortunately unclear. Most of his dorm-mates were probably returning for their second year and already knew each other, knew where their classes were and which professors were assholes, so he was the odd man out—the transfer student from a small school in the countryside.
In comparison, Tokyo is loud and always going, giant television screens flashing with ads and idols, buildings so tall they touched the clouds. The first time he’d seen the city’s neon skyline at dusk, he’d had to stop and stare, suddenly feeling like the tiniest blip in the universe, blink and you’ll miss him because everything else shined so much brighter.
That feeling hasn’t really gone away in the years since, but he thinks that might just be a human thing, so he deals and he forces himself to be okay with it all—the move, the loneliness of knowing nobody at all, least of all himself—because he doesn’t have any other choice.
His parents have made this place out to be the answer to all their prayers. It’s his ticket out of the sticks, his origin story or some stupid shit like that. He thinks they might just be happy to have him out of the house, but either way, he’s stuck here for the next three years.
Stuck in this shitty room the size of a shoebox, with two twin beds pushed against either wall, a window with crooked yellowing blinds and a pair of shabby marked up nightstands—the crudely drawn sharpie dicks were impressively anatomically correct, and even labelled—separating them. The pine furniture is flat and none of the drawers or cupboards have any handles, just little divots for you to stick your fingers into.
It feels less like a home and more like a prison. Or a psych ward.
Unfortunately, the previous occupants had left nothing sharp enough for him to stab himself with lying around. Bummer.
There are some silver linings, though. He’s the first to arrive, so he gets dibs on whichever bed he wants. He takes the left side because the afternoon sun cuts a nice square across the wall, perfect for reading and doing homework, and drops his pillow onto the bed before sitting down and testing the squish of the mattress.
The springs squeak shrilly.
He sighs again. Of course.
He flops onto his back anyway, glaring up at the ceiling as he searches for asbestos or mold. This dorm building was so old that even lead paint was a possibility. His skin is already crawling, and he hasn’t even been here an hour.
He tells himself that it’s fine, everything is fine, he’s just having some kind of existential crisis, that’s all. He’s having a hard time adjusting, thrust into the big city with practically nothing on his back or in his wallet and a handful of dreams he’s not even sure are really his.
You know, college kid stuff.
It’s normal; he’s totally normal. He’ll figure it out in time, and then things will turn around.
That’s been his mantra for a while now, but it’s sticking less and less, and if he doesn’t unpack right this second, he might just up and leave, get on the train and go back home. Or maybe somewhere else. Somewhere he doesn’t have to think about all this bullshit.
His future, what he was doing with it, if he wanted to do anything with it at all.
But then what kind of person would that make him? The kind that gives up and runs back to mom and dad with his tail between his legs because shit got a little too hard?
The thought of their disappointment turns his stomach, so Suguru forces himself up, leans over the side of the bed and pulls his bag along the floor by the strap. He folds his clothes and arranges them in the dresser awkwardly shoved between the end of the bed and the door. He doesn’t have much, so it takes just long enough for him to slightly chill the fuck out, and then when he’s done he plops right back down and tries to decipher the Rorschach ceiling tiles.
There are stains and dried spitballs and something brown in the far corner that might have legs. Layers and layers of grime, but no discernable meaning Suguru can see. He wonders how many others have laid here like him and contemplated disappearing into the crowd, becoming nothing more than a residual, just the wisp of a memory—the faintest thing, and then gone.
At least the other guys have mostly quieted down, either unpacking or leaving to pair off with their friends in different buildings.
To avoid any more unpleasant contemplations and looking at the dot in the corner that definitely had legs and was also definitely moving, he gets back up to shelve his books in the desk hutch, picks at the remains of a sticker on his headboard, and moves his bedside lamp an inch over to cover a water mark.
He’s particular about things sometimes; gets this gnawing sensation in the pit of his stomach if things are dirty or they aren’t in their rightful place. Maybe he’s just twitchy, or maybe it’s a symptom of something, but he doesn’t go to the doctor, least of all the head doctor, unless he’s dying.
In any case, his mother had sent him with two family sized bottles of hand sanitizer, so he’ll probably be okay for the semester. As long as his roommate knows how to use a coaster, that is.
God. His roommate.
They were probably going to think he was such a fucking freak; a depressed neat freak with compulsive tendencies, unmedicated anxiety, and a strict hair care routine.
He’s been dreading their first meeting for months now, ever since his transfer got approved. He’s prepared himself for the worst, to be disliked and shrugged off and ignored for the rest of the year. It’s not that he really cares about making friends here, he’s not actually convinced he’ll care about anything here, but it would be nice to land someone easy going. Someone cool, maybe, who’d just mind his business and keep to his side of the room.
He wishes his parents could have sprung for a single so he could just do his time in peace. Graduating and getting the fuck out with minimal incident was the ideal. Whatever came after that, he’d figure it out then.
He’s thinking about putting the pillow over his face and screaming into the plush until his throat is raw (or he suffocates, whichever comes first) when the lock roughly jiggles and the door bursts open, shaking on its hinges as it loudly smacks into the edge of his dresser, rocking the entire left side of the room.
Startled, Suguru jumps a foot in the air, his eyes widening. What the fuck?
There’s a guy in the doorway, looking about his age, tall with too pale skin and paler hair. He wastes no time at all, swaggering right in and right up to Suguru, who’s sure he must look like a feral cat with his tail puffed up and his eyes the size of dinner plates.
“‘Sup, roomie?” The guy greets with little preamble as he expectantly sticks his hand out. “I’m Satoru.”
Suguru stares at him.
His brain functions have suddenly ceased.
He is nothing but a vegetable.
Satoru has a lollipop tucked to one side of his mouth and a loaded backpack slung over his shoulder and he’s—well, he’s very attractive. Pretty, even. Like, so pretty.
It’s not at all subtle, not the kind of pretty that slowly settles in as you get to know someone. No, he’s the kind of pretty that demands attention, that captures a room and the air from your chest and holds it hostage.
There were other more powerful words that could have been used to describe him—ethereal, angelic, divine—but all dumb Suguru can think is pretty, just so pretty.
He’s slim, and mostly leg, but his lines are fine and delicate. Soft looking, even. And his hair… Now that Suguru is really paying attention to it, it isn’t just pale or the absence of any other color, it’s this strange but beautiful moon white, feathery and falling about his face in a purposeful disarray, the close shave of an undercut wrapping the back of his head.
But gorgeous as he was, by far his eyes were his most interesting detail. They were startlingly blue, like the sky or the heavens or some other majestic shit, staring both into him and through him as he waits for Suguru to catch up with the slightest twitch of his lips. Looking like that, he must be used to the fawning.
A gossamer boy with the face of an angel and legs for days.
That’s who the universe has sent him in his most dire hour of need.
Suddenly, things were really looking up.
His new roommate, Satoru, the pretty boy with the lunar beam hair and watercolor eyes, is also wearing sunglasses inside, dark and round John Lennon things perched low on his nose. They were an interesting fashion choice, but this guy would still be tempting if he was wearing a potato sack.
Satoru’s little grin stretches the longer Suguru sits stumped.
He was either high or a douchebag—maybe both, wearing those things inside and doing nothing but smirking like he knew he was hot shit—but Suguru guesses they’re on a first name basis or whatever, so he shakes his hand and introduces himself.
Satoru’s hand is warm and so big, like crazy big, with long elegant fingers and perfectly filed nails. They drop each other, and like that the thing he’s been dreading the most is over and done with. Plus, this guy doesn’t seem so bad. He seems… nice, actually, if not a little straightforward.
The glasses are totally ridiculous, though.
Satoru dumps his backpack onto his bed opposite Suguru and plops down beside it, stretching his legs out, his sneaker-clad feet reaching the side of Suguru’s bed. He’s tall, but this guy is just a bit more so. He hasn’t met many people that had to look down when they spoke to him.
Did Satoru get all the good genes in the world or what?
He doesn’t seem real, doesn’t seem like just some dude chilling across from him, turning the sucker around and around in his mouth like the stick was a thought he was mulling over. He’s so good looking Suguru wonders if he should move his feet over because the sides of their shoes are touching, and it’s not like weird or anything, but this guy is super hot so maybe he feels a little something fluttery in his chest as he looks down at his scuffed up All Stars tapped right up against the side of Satoru’s shiny white Air Forces.
Satoru doesn’t seem to mind it, though. He hasn’t even noticed. He’s just drumming his fingers on his lap as he looks around, assessing the damage.
“What a shithole,” he finally decides, and Suguru snorts. Satoru grins over at him, still turning that lollipop between his teeth.
It’s distracting actually, and it feels like A Moment as they watch each other. The sun is fading fast, casting a warm rosy glow over the room. It glints off of the boy’s sunglasses, shines through his hair.
With this view, Suguru is certain he’s picked the best side of the room.
“You like movies?” Satoru asks then, tilting his head cutely, like a curious puppy. “Usually, I do nothing but vegetate and contemplate my existence the first night on campus.”
“Yeah,” Suguru says with a slight laugh because me too, dude. “I like movies.”
Satoru’s already rifling through his bag and producing his laptop, wrapped up nice and safe in a sticker bombed case. Suguru spies a few characters from some mangas he enjoys. Movies and manga, two things they already have in common. It’s not much, but it’s something.
This isn’t so bad, he thinks as he watches Satoru, studying his movements, relaxed and fluid, the length of his body not at all hindering the gracefulness. He just made sense somehow, everything around him—the setting sun eclipsing the dull of the room, the bird outside still sweetly chirping away—working to catch up to how seamless he was.
He just glimmers and glimmers, hair and eyes as iridescent as the clouds and the morning sky. He was interesting, someone to… figure out, even if he was only interesting because he was insanely handsome and the first guy Suguru has befriended here.
Satoru sets the laptop on the edge of his bed and angles it towards Suguru’s before rucking off his flannel, dropping it onto the floor and using it as a cushion as he leans back against Suguru’s bed. Underneath, he’s wearing a loose navy blue hoodie, the strings frayed and missing their aglets. He’d glimpsed smooth milky skin, and a nicely lined abdomen when he’d shrugged out of his flannel. Suguru guesses he has to hide all of that under his long sleeves otherwise the masses will fall to their knees.
Satoru leans forward to fiddle with the laptop controls, scrolling through his files as Suguru stuffs his pillow behind his back and settles against the wall, slouching a bit. He has a perfect view of the back of Satoru’s head and the laptop screen, so he can shamelessly check him out all he wants.
What a nice end to an otherwise terrible day.
He’s just looking really, at anything he can see—the undercut, the tips of his ears partially hidden under swaths of moon hair, the firm lines of his shoulders—when he catches sight of the logo on the back of Satoru’s sweatshirt, so washed out he can barely make out the eye, wide and framed with six lashes; all seeing, omniscient.
It’s familiar, on the backs of all the latest laptops and cell phones and virtual reality headsets. Suguru nearly chokes at the sudden realization.
The white hair, those soul-searching eyes.
“You’re a Gojo,” Suguru blurts before he can stop himself, the shock driving away any tact.
Satoru isn’t just a Gojo, he’s the Gojo—the sole inheritor of Japan’s largest tech company and its massive, massive stock fortune.
A cancer-curing fortune, a world hunger-ending fortune.
This guy probably uses banknotes as napkins.
Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.
He’s shook, like really shook, but Satoru only looks awkward, his eyes downcast as he rubs at the back of his neck like the jig is up. Like, ‘Oh, no. He knows I’m rich now. Whatever shall I do?’. “Yup, that’s me,” he says with a little grimace.
“What are you doing in public housing? I mean, shouldn’t you be living it up in some high-rise apartment and paying a couple of lackeys to do your homework?” This is so crazy. He’d wanted a low-key roommate, not the most famous guy on campus! The science building was named after him!
“My parents think I need to be humbled. Get a little taste of the real world or something, I guess,” Satoru says with a shrug. He leans back and lays his head against Suguru’s bed, pushing hair out of his eyes and peering up at him over his glasses as he pouts. “So I’m stuck rooming with you commoners.”
“Lucky us,” Suguru deadpans in return. Satoru’s pout morphs into a smirk. He gets the sense that this dude isn’t fazed by anything. “Do you think you need to be humbled?” He asks because yeah, he can kinda see it.
Gojo Satoru only smiles, a lopsided thing that tugs at his cheek and produces a cute dimple. His teeth are pearly white and perfectly straight. “Why don’t you ask the mini fridge and microwave when they get here tomorrow?” He cracks the last of his sucker off and pulls the stick from his mouth, flinging it into the bin on the other end of the room. His head lolls to the side as he looks back at him, his eyes bright and mischievous.
Surprised, and a bit pleased at how those eyes stay on him, bright and effervescent, white lashes curled and fluttering, Suguru slowly smiles back.
A microwave. Thank fuck.
✧ ✦
✦ ✧
Despite the welcome addition of the microwave, Gojo Satoru, Suguru quickly learns, is actually the worst person he’s ever met.
He’s loud, he’s insane. He’s stupid hot, and even worse, he knows it.
He’s a spoiled rich kid with no verbal filter, poor social skills, and absolutely no sense of personal space.
His side of the room always looks like a tornado has swept through it; his clothes pouring out of his closet and dresser drawers, the pop punk posters he’d hastily taped to the wall horribly lopsided, his bed never made.
He moves at the speed of light because he’s constantly jacked up on shots of espresso, puts his abnormally large feet on top of every viable surface, and plays first-person shooter video games until three in the morning, obnoxiously heckling the other players over his headset each time he scores a kill.
Basically, Gojo Satoru never shuts the fuck up, and he’s always laughing about something that probably wasn’t that funny. A truly terrible sense of humor, only made up for when he smiles that cute teasing smile, like you’re supposed to think he’s the greatest thing in the world, first bestowed upon Suguru after he’d unpacked and immediately taken a picture of the anatomical dick on the nightstand to post on his story, intending to take full credit.
Suguru can’t escape him. Like ever.
They share two classes and a study period and Satoru just insists on sitting beside him in each, not to mention the fact that they also share a fucking room. The movies and the microwave and the mini fridge are nice, and Satoru is nice, don’t get him wrong, he’s just… Too Much.
It’s easy to be annoyed with him at first. The king coming down the mountain to slum it up with the peasants until he gets bored and goes back to his butlers and yachts.
That lasts for all of a week, though, because the thing about Satoru is that, while extremely punchable, he’s also kind of funny and sweet and always happy to see Suguru. It doesn’t matter when they were last together because Satoru is going to squawk like it’s been ten years and fling himself at Suguru like he’s just returned from war.
Before he knows it, he’s purposefully saving Satoru a seat, and the arm casually slung around his neck and the tugs on his bangs as they walk across campus become comforts instead of nuisances.
Suguru had been so worried about finding his way before he met Satoru, but in the end it had all been for nothing. He just sticks by him, and everything slips into place. He crams, and he crunches and it all fucking sucks, but when he comes back down, strangely thoughtful Satoru is there with a steaming cup of tea or a bag of something delicious.
And when Suguru has his moments, when he melts down from the heat of the constant pressure and decides that it’s all bullshit anyway and the sun might as well explode already, Satoru is just like ‘you’re so right, dude’ as he licks sugar dust from the tip of his finger and flips the page of whatever physics book he’s reading, giving Suguru something else to think about besides the existential dread.
He’d wanted someone chill, who’d just stay in their lane, but who he’d gotten was the complete opposite, and he’s so fucking glad for it. Glad he’d got this brash, brainy Satoru weirdo instead. He’s a menace and Suguru wants to smack him upside the head more often than not, but he just likes that about him now.
He’s fun, new and exciting and unlike anyone else that Suguru has ever met.
And for some odd reason, Satoru just likes him too, clings to him like a koala and invites him to study and eat and play games.
Good looks and dreamy eyes aside, there’s just something about him that touches Suguru, that makes him pay attention to all the little quirks and curiosities, makes him wonder what he’s thinking about and how he sees the world.
But Suguru liking him more than he should or more than he’s ready to admit aloud is one thing and understanding him is another.
His rich model of a roommate is actually a total nerd, into physics and pseudo-science and the multiverse. If anyone casually mentions dark matter, he vibrates in his seat, practically foaming at the mouth. It’s cute, honestly, but it’s like he does anything and everything to avoid talking about his birthrights, even when directly asked.
Anyone else would flash their black card and pull out daddy’s name, but not Satoru. He’d rather talk about building moon colonies or some little blue planet he read about that constantly rains glass instead of something as meaningless as money.
Suguru listens to him wax on about the enormity of the universe and wonders if Satoru ever feels like he has something to prove, wonders if his own name ever scares him. Wonders if, sometimes, he too feels like the tiniest blip, floating around with no real ideas about anything.
Gojo Satoru, the boy with everything, ruminating over his place in the world. It’s hard to imagine, but when he’s bent over an engineering textbook and he’s got a pen crooked behind his ear and there’s a streak of blue ink across his cheek and he’s chewing his bottom lip like his grades matter at all when he’s him, Suguru sees it. Sees Satoru and all of his contradictions.
The boy with everything doesn’t even want it. He just wants his weird science and his stars and the rest can get fucked.
Suguru’s thinking about this—Satoru rebelling against his tech conglomerate namesake and building time machines or portals to different dimensions instead of the next cash grab thing to doom scroll on—as they’re packing up to head out for a late dinner, the library mostly empty around them save for a few other stragglers carting their books back to their proper shelves and rubbing bleary eyes, when Satoru checks his phone, then asks, “Hey, do you mind if I have a couple of friends over to our room later?”
Suguru shrugs as he slips his laptop into his backpack. “Yeah, I don’t care.”
Satoru grins as he shoots off several rapid fire texts. “Cool! You’re gonna love ‘em!” He triumphantly declares, and oh, Suguru hadn’t realized he was being included at first, but as Satoru rests an elbow on his shoulder while they peer through the glass case at the deli down the street from their dorm, their faces practically squished together, he thinks he probably should have.
This dumbass is actually his friend, maybe even his best friend.
He’s never had one before, and he’s not sure he’d have picked this one from a lineup, but as they sit at a park bench and Satoru inhales his sub like it’s air, Suguru just laughs and tilts his bag of chips over to share and knows that even if it all happened by accident, there’s no one else that could ever satisfy him.
Later that night, he’s pleasantly surprised to learn that Satoru’s other friends are actually kind of great.
They show up at the door in a big group, dressed in varying versions of sleepwear, laughing and shoving at each other as they spill inside to gather and sit in a circle on the floor, Satoru’s legs stretched out and taking up all the room, forcing Suguru to shuffle closer into his side to avoid the Yuki-Choso pile on his right.
They’re both a little older, but Yuki, a tall blonde with big brown eyes who knowingly smirks after asking Suguru what his type is and he can’t come up with anything to say off the cuff because his actual type is right beside him, interns for Satoru’s father, and Choso has this benevolent calming energy that washes over the room (or maybe that was just the huge bag of weed he’d immediately whipped out upon sitting down), so he gets the appeal, especially when Satoru hacks a cough into his ear and grabs ahold of his leg to steady himself, his eyes rimmed red, his smile goofy.
Suguru has no choice but to snuggle in at this point. Satoru is irresistible, and he readily welcomes him, laying an arm along the edge of the bed behind Suguru’s head, doing the whole yawning bit as he lowers it, tugging on Suguru’s bangs when he side-eyes him, a little nervous over the obvious display, a slight flush rising in his cheeks as Satoru gathers him close, their hips pressed together.
One of the other girls, Shoko, her sleep shorts riding up her thighs as she lays back across Satoru’s bed, watches them with a funny little smile, twisting a lighter between her fingers. Utahime—her bow askew because they’d been getting up to no good, Satoru gagging and ripping his blanket away from them in disgust—whispers something in her ear, and she nods once, flicking the lighter to life, and stays watching them through the dancing flames, the bags under her eyes more charming than anything.
Nanami, a who seems Unimpressed at all times, studying business management, sniffs haughtily at Satoru’s near-constant heckles, and doesn’t hesitate to kick him in the shin when he snatches the joint from Haibara’s hand before he can hit it.
Satoru just laughs and laughs, his head lolling against Suguru’s.
Isn’t Nanamin so cute, Suguru? Look how angry he gets.
No, no, hit it like this, Suguru. There, doesn’t that feel nice?
Your eyes do a crinkly thing when you smile. Did you know that, Suguru?
Suguru, Suguru, Suguru, he says, like a mantra, like hopes and prayers and wishes sent to the stars.
It’s hard for Suguru to pay attention to what’s going on around him after that, and he’s only half there as they complain about homework and their professors and play cards and share a few joints. He’s just thinking of the heat of Satoru’s body the whole time, pressed up against him and lighting him up each time he moves, his arm still around his shoulder, fingers lazily toying with the strings of his hoodie.
He’s never really been the guy who hangs out, but it’s nice, sitting there with Satoru and his friends. He’s not sure what’d he’d been expecting, but he’s happy they’re different types of losers rather than tech-bro douchebags.
They all seem to be their own brand of weird, which makes things a little more interesting, and he’s not at all worried about fitting in with them. Plus, they all seem to know about him already, and it makes him feel a little important, even if it’s just to Satoru, who must have talked about him because he hadn’t even needed to introduce himself. They just accepted him, dealing him into the card game and passing him the bottle like it was nothing.
Eventually, they shuffle around and lapse into doing their own things, Suguru and Haibara playing a bit of Mario Kart as Satoru lays across Suguru’s bed on his stomach, watching and huffing about Haibara’s excessive use of giant bananas. Though they’ve changed positions, his head stays close to Suguru’s, his exhales puffing against his neck as he laughs, the breathy sound seemingly for Suguru’s ears alone.
Even surrounded by all these people, he’s hyperaware of Satoru, hyperaware of how they always seem to end up in each other’s spaces.
Then, when he’s squinted at the laptop screen for a little too long and he’s frowning, there’s a hand at the back of his head, trailing the line of his hair tie. If Satoru ever kept his hands to himself, Suguru would know he’d been body snatched. He was always, always touching him, like he had to, like he couldn’t resist.
Suguru himself hadn’t known the temptation of flesh until Satoru had quite literally kicked in the door, but he rarely touched first, afraid that his hand might slip through and the curtains will open to reveal that they were never actually that close at all.
Even after they’d spent nearly all night cuddled up on the floor, he still can’t quite believe it happened.
And yet, Satoru wants more, always more. His touch isn’t out of greed, it just is, so Suguru gives more and lets him wrangle the tie free from his hair, Satoru passing it over his own wrist to wear and pulling his pale fingers through the dark strands. It feels nice, Satoru scratching along his scalp, tracing the shell of his ear, parting his hair and loosely braiding it and wrapping it around his palm.
Suguru’s stomach is flipping, flipping, flipping the whole time and he can barely focus on the game, Haibara swinging into the lead and winning with ease.
“Wanna get out of here?” Satoru asks then, craning to rest his chin on Suguru’s shoulder.
Suguru glances at him from the corner of his eye, his fingers pausing on the controls. It’s dark enough that Satoru’s glasses are off, and he’s wearing that lazy grin, the one that promises some kind of trouble.
He does his best to maintain cool composure as he exits the game. “And go where?”
“Dunno,” Satoru drawls, still fiddling with his hair. The skin on the back of his neck prickles. “Somewhere we can breathe.”
“Yes, lets,” Shoko readily agrees, having overheard. She tumbles out of Satoru’s bed and fixes her shorts. “I need a smoke.”
“I said ‘breathe’,” Satoru snickers, pressing his face into Suguru’s shoulder.
Shoko’s already got her pack in hand. “Fuck off,” she says.
There’s nowhere to go this late—or early, really—but they spill across campus anyway, sliding down sprinkler slick hills and bumping into each other and falling on their faces. He’s never had a night like this; where everything seems possible, seems easy. Then again, he’s probably just high.
They break apart into their own little groups as they reach a patch of trees, Suguru naturally shifting in Shoko and Satoru’s direction. The tiny brunette picks the furthest tree to lean against, and Satoru wanders out into the grass beyond it, flopping onto his back and staring up into the sky.
Suguru slides down the trunk and sits next to Shoko, pulling his legs up and draping his arms over his knees. She smokes in near silence, lazily exhaling from the side of her mouth, watching Satoru through the wispy grey clouds.
Does she see what separates him from the rest, too?
Even now, he’s off in his own little world, gazing up into infinity. He’s like his stars, actually. Born great, born bright.
That must be why it’s so hard to look at him sometimes.
“So,” Shoko begins, and Suguru rolls his head towards her, pillowing the side of his face on his arms. “What do you wanna know?” She’s got a conspiratorial little smile going on, like it’s all funny to her but only she’s in on the joke. Suguru raises a brow, and her sharp, knowing eyes flick towards Satoru. “About him, I mean. I see you watching.”
Suguru feels his face heat. Is he that obvious?
Shoko laughs at his expression, so he takes that as a yes.
“It’s okay,” she says. “Everyone watches him.”
That doesn’t sit well with him, that he’s not the only one mesmerized. It’s impossible to gatekeep a person, but he wants to anyway, wants to hoard Satoru’s smiles and laughs all for himself, pulling the snapshots out to ruminate over later when Satoru is asleep. Just in the other bed, just across the room.
What does Suguru want to know?
Only everything.
“I just—What’s his deal?”
“You wanna know why he’s Like That?” Shoko rolls her eyes, flicks ash from her cigarette. “He’s just a spoiled bitch, but he’s crazy smart and he’s probably gonna save the world someday, so we keep him around.”
Suguru huffs out a laugh. It’s a decent assessment.
“He likes to push the limits; of space, time—even gravity,” she goes on.
“So he’s weird and a danger to himself and others,” Suguru translates, and she grins.
“Once, we ate a couple of weed cookies and climbed to the top of the science building because he was obsessed with this comet that only came around every couple of hundred years. I broke two nails and ripped a hole in my tights, but when we got up there and his eyes started doing the twinkly thing it didn’t really matter so much.”
“How was the comet?”
“We couldn’t see shit. That idiot forgot his pocket telescope, so we had to look it up on YouTube later. Then when I was bitching about having to climb back down, he goes on and on about teleportation and particle theory. Like what the fuck, right? But he was sooo sincere about it I started to think he could actually do it—he could actually teleport. And you know what?”
She goes glassy eyed for a minute, staring out into the night, like the moment she’s sharing with him is happening again right alongside them, and she can see it so clearly. Suguru waits with bated breath, like he just has to know how this ends to go on, left in suspense.
“When he walked to the edge of the roof and stood there, so serious, so convinced of his own strength, I waited for him to disappear,” she finally finishes.
“Did he?” Suguru asks, something strange twisting inside of him.
“Nah. He fell off and rolled his ankle. Scared the shit out of me.”
Suguru laughs. Of course.
“I’ll tell you something though,” Shoko says, crooking her finger at him. He eagerly leans in as directed. “He’s different, that boy. He’s always got his head up in the clouds, searching for a meaning.”
Suguru looks over at Satoru, the only star left on the ground, staring up into the night sky, his finger tracing the points of the constellations.
Satoru, alone on that hilltop, waiting for something cosmic; some spaceship to cruise by and beam him up, some star cluster to collapse far out in the Milky Way and send him its atoms.
“He’s got to come down sometime, don’t you think?” The question seems like a test, and Suguru didn’t know he needed her approval or what he needed it for, but the thought of Satoru left to die on earth when he belongs light-years away, the thought of anyone telling him what he should be or do, rankles him.
“I like him like that,” Suguru says. Chaotic and beautiful and dissatisfied with the lack of magic in the world.
Shoko exhales a soft knowing laugh, a plume of smoke curling from her lips. “I bet you do,” she says coolly, with the air of someone who’s long suspected such a thing even if they’d only just met.
Satoru tromps down the hill towards them then. He hits a patch of wet grass, holds his arms out wide and slides the rest of the way down, his sneakers whipping a stream of cold sprinkler water in their direction as he lurches to a stop in front of them.
“Asshole!” Shoko cries, wiping the moisture from her cheeks, the rest of her cigarette pitifully soaked.
Glasses pushed up into his hair, Satoru flutters his lashes down at them. “What are you guys talking about?” He asks.
“Nothing, just telling Suguru here about that time you got so high you were convinced you could teleport but you only managed to maim yourself and give me a heart attack.”
Satoru’s eyes are bright as he settles down on Suguru’s other side. “I’m telling you—I just gotta come up with a way to slice up my matter and then stitch it back together somewhere else. It works with particles and data, so why not people? What I can’t figure is how to keep any little bits from escaping. I don’t wanna come back without all my fingers, or you know, my more valuable parts.” He grins over at Suguru at that, who immediately blushes and looks away.
“Who lied and told you it’s valuable?” Shoko asks, flinging her wet cigarette at his head.
Later, when they’re alone, standing outside of their door as Satoru pats his pockets for his keys, Suguru asks, “Teleportation, huh? You gonna share your discovery with the world?”
“No, not the world. Just you,” he says absently, fiddling with the lock. He pushes the door open, letting Suguru duck in under his arm. “We’ll go anywhere we want. The Space Needle, the top of the Eiffel Tower—” He stops, his eyes widening as he considers the endless possibilities. “Nah, we’ll go way bigger! Like the rings of Saturn or the moon or the North Star or even that little glass planet! You just tell me where it is you wanna go, and I’ll beam us away. We’ll have adventures the normies can only dream of!”
Suguru keeps his back to him as he empties his pockets onto the nightstand and lowers the blinds, thoughts of dancing across Saturn’s rings and napping like cats in a moon crater and his first kiss in the City of Love swirling around and around in his head.
He’s thinking of the Northern Lights washing Satoru in color, making him alien, turning him into something other; of warm, blue cenotes in Mexico, the two of them floating on their backs in the center of the ring, watching the clouds as they wheel past; of newly discovered Greek ruins and Satoru side by side with a statue of Hercules, larger than life and somehow untouched by time as he points to his place in the stars.
Satoru always says that stupid shit, like it’s them against the world, like they’re the only two that matter.
It makes Suguru feel warm, makes him believe in something greater too.
✧ ✦
✦ ✧
The night of the lunar eclipse changes everything.
It’s late November, and the air has turned crisp and cold, promising an early snowfall and a white Christmas.
The RAs have already hung twinkling lights, decorating the trees and eaves, campus glittering like a warm little village, nestled in the valley of a snow globe, just waiting for the shake of the storm.
Satoru, adorable in a fluffy blue beanie and a matching scarf when they walk across quad, talks about it nonstop. The eclipse isn’t that rare an event, but he’s over the moon (pun intended), anyway.
He bounces on the balls of his feet and his eyes get crazy as he waxes on, his cheeks and the tip of his nose pinking in the cold. It’s like he’s reciting poetry, the universe his muse, encasing all his wonder, like the enormity of it is something he can reach out and take and hold in the palm of his hand.
Anything is possible for Gojo Satoru, after all. He can read the stars, decipher their impossible language, and weave his own words back.
And when Satoru plucks an icicle from a low-hanging branch and lets it melt in his palm, showing Suguru the crystal clear water before he drinks it up, Suguru understands all the poets and the artists.
He understands how their viewpoint can narrow to one person, and how that one person can become the center of everything.
So Suguru humors Satoru, mostly listens while he yaps about lunar cycles and star maps as he hunches over a textbook, his pencil annotations neat, his underlines ruler straight.
Classes are fine, homework is fine, everything is just fine, but he’s so fucking bored, and when he thinks of the rest of his life, broken down to patient files and hours on the clock, he finds it horribly lacking, like there’s just something missing, something he can’t figure out or can’t see yet.
He’s wondering if psychologists can prescribe themselves meds when Satoru leans over, flicks his ear and asks if he’d actually been listening, then circles Suguru’s name in individual letters in the paragraph he’d been attempting to read.
S-U-G-U-R-U, circled in baby blue. Mapped out like a constellation, stars connected with the lines of his pen.
Satoru blows on the ink until it’s dry and shows Suguru how the color matches his eyes, pressing his cheek to the book. It’s on loan from the library, but he’s never going to give it back now.
Satoru can make anything seem like magic. That’s his gift—his belief, his excitement. Give him an eclipse, and he’ll make a big bang. He acts as if he hasn’t been staring up into the sky his entire life, like the universe is brand new and they’re going to be the first to experience it.
Suguru often feels like he’s just along for the ride, but as he looks at the world through Satoru’s kaleidoscope, he sees that some things, even inconsequential things, when tilted a little differently, can take your breath away.
That night, as they’re preparing to stargaze, Satoru stuffs his pockets with snacks and Suguru pulls a beanie on over his head, then tucks his hands into the wide front pocket of his hoodie. Despite how little he cares about the eclipse, he’s looking forward to it, though mostly because of the boy beside him.
Who knows where the night will take them? Maybe he’ll be bored and freeze to death, or maybe Satoru will sidle up against him and borrow his pocket for his cold hands.
There are endless, infinite possibilities, Satoru would say. He thinks living is like that—a never-ending equation, letters and numerals that only hold meaning because someone else gave it to them.
“When are Shoko and the others coming?” Suguru asks as he waits for Satoru to lock up.
Satoru’s brow furrows cutely when he turns around. “They’re not? It’s just us,” he says, like ‘keep up, Suguru’, before pushing him down the beige hallway Suguru was once sure he’d always walk alone.
Oh. He’s nervous now, anxious excitement bubbling up inside of him. This whole time, Suguru thought it was a group thing, just an excuse for them to drink and smoke on top of the science building while they entertained Satoru’s antics.
Instead, it will just be him and Satoru; just him and a beautiful boy, a boy who knows he’s beautiful, who knows what it does to people when the moonlight hits him.
Together, they steal across campus, avoiding security by hiding around corners and pressing themselves to tree trunks like they’re in a spy movie. Their breaths come in cold puffs, and it hurts so much, but he can’t stop smiling.
When they’re past the final boss of the security car parked in the lot, Satoru leaps up and slaps his name plaque on the side of the building, such a boy thing, before dropping to his knee and cupping his hands to give Suguru a leg up with a charming grin.
When Suguru gets to the top, Tokyo is a blur of blinking neon lights on the horizon.
Up here, it’s easy to pretend there is nothing else. No impending doom, no worries, no fears. Who gives a fuck about therapy? The open sky is all that matters.
It’s so close Suguru can touch it, and he swears he’s never seen the moon so big. Cycled to its highest point, it patiently waits to darken, and he wonders if it looks forward to this too. He sees the moon nearly every day, but now it’s something to marvel at, now it’s something to truly see. Would he ever feel like this, if it weren’t for Satoru? Suguru doesn’t think so.
No, it would just be the moon doing what the moon does, if it weren’t for the moon boy and his strange moon hair, sharing with him the secrets of the universe.
With a huff, Satoru pulls himself up, and they sit next to each other at the edge of the roof, their legs dangling into oblivion. Satoru finishes his snacks in record time and then leans back on his palms. He’s left his glasses back at the dorm, his crystal eyes on full display as he gazes upward.
Suguru again thinks of ancient Grecian statues, men of stone, carved from marble, so intricately made you could trace the lines on their palms and tell their futures.
“She’s in our shadow now,” Satoru says eventually, hours or minutes later. Time doesn’t exist up here; Suguru can only tell it’s passed because the moon swirls with pinks and reds, like a scoop of berry ice cream.
There is no big moment, no ‘aha!’. It is just a natural thing, the dark of the moon, and it is beautiful.
And the rose-colored boy beside him, who sees things no one else can, goes quiet. The universe has opened in his head, galaxies in his eyes as he gazes somewhere far into the beyond.
Satoru’s lips part, and Suguru thinks this is the real astrological event, this moment now.
In the other universes Satoru talks about, where they live different lives and think different things but are still somehow themselves, Suguru wonders if they are there just like this; side by side, two paths converged into one, the parallel lines that skipped the foreplay and met in the middle, going somewhere unknown, but somewhere all the same.
He hopes the other Suguru is braver, hopes the other Suguru watched the ice melt in Satoru’s hand and then kissed him after he drank it all up just to feel the cold press of his mouth, just to taste the atmosphere on his tongue.
In this world, on this plane of existence, Suguru is content with Satoru’s knee against his, he is content to admire from afar and take what he can get.
Eventually, Satoru has been quiet for too long, and that’s something Suguru wasn’t ever expecting. He always fills the silence, boasting loudly or telling jokes. Now he is only soft and contemplative, fiddling with the string of his hoodie.
“Is that your sad face?” Suguru asks, nudging him.
Satoru can’t stifle his smile. Like inevitable dawn, it breaks loose, lighting him up from the inside out. “No. This is my pondering face. My sad face is much more pathetic.”
Suguru doesn’t doubt that. “What are we pondering?”
Satoru shrugs and kicks out a foot. “I don’t know. The same things everybody else does, I guess. My purpose. What I was made for.” He peeks over at Suguru, a little bashful, like it’s embarrassing to be a human. “Do you ever think about stuff like that?”
It’s unusually heavy for Satoru. Suguru has always thought of him as someone who gets bored when it’s still, who lacks the forethought for introspection, but maybe he’s just quiet about it, maybe he just doesn’t show it to anyone else.
But Suguru, Satoru has said before, eyes rolling like Suguru should already know, you’re not like anyone else.
“I—Yeah, sometimes.” More than he cares to acknowledge, at least.
“So what’s the answer?” Satoru persists, turning those angel eyes in his direction and tilting his head, like Suguru is about to give him life changing advice.
“You tell me, Big Brain,” is all Suguru’s got.
Satoru groans and throws his hands up in exasperation. “Great! So neither of us know.”
Suguru doesn’t tell him that nobody really knows the answer, that maybe there isn’t a real purpose at all other than to just be, to just exist and take what you can before it’s all gone, because he’s afraid that’s the only truth, and if that’s the only truth and he still doesn’t know how to just be—then where does that leave him?
Where does that leave him other than here on this roof, here in this moment, thinking of Saturn kisses and supposed endless chance. The vision of a future that is entirely impossible for them because there is no oxygen in space and Satoru can’t actually teleport, but if he stood at the edge of the roof and spread his arms out wide—just like Shoko, Suguru would believe in him too.
“I know that this is nice, and that you’re my friend,” Suguru decides.
It feels lame as fuck to say, but he doesn’t take it back.
Satoru’s face lights with a grin. “You’re not gonna start crying on me, are you?” He seems thrilled at the thought.
Suguru crying and a lunar eclipse all in one night. A dream come true.
Suguru laughs. “Absolutely not. You wouldn’t survive it.”
“Hey! I’d survive it!” Satoru protests, lightly throwing an elbow into Suguru’s ribs.
“I don’t know, Satoru. My sad face is pretty good. You’d probably be irreparably damaged.”
“I guess I’ll just have to make sure you’re never sad, that way we don’t have to find out,” Satoru declares, plastering himself to Suguru’s side and roping an arm around his back, leaning his head onto his.
“You think you have that much power over me?” Suguru asks, casting a side-long glance at him.
If the roof of the science building dropped away, it would just be Satoru, the white shadow shape of him against the dark eclipsing night, thousands of glittering stars blinking in and out around him, their beauty taking nothing from his.
Satoru’s answering smile is sly and close enough to kiss. Don't I?
Suguru doesn’t dignify that unspoken nonsense with a response. It’s too much for the moment, too much for Satoru’s weight against him and too much for the tentative change he can feel, planets tilting on their axises, constellations seen with newer more curious eyes.
They stretch out on their backs, and Suguru thinks of Satoru out in the grass that night months ago, when he’d really started to believe in those infinite possibilities, those billion to one chances.
He’s happy to be there with him this time, their hands close enough to touch, this hazy frenetic energy passing between them. Pulses of white-hot electricity and figure eights with no end or beginning, just turns and turns around the woven circle.
Like a cosmic shift, they are now something different. Above it all, somehow, like they’ve left mortal constraints behind them, shedding the weight of just being in order to float.
This is the answer. This must be the answer.
Time becomes nothing but a construct, and their tandem breaths, their intertwined heartbeats, Suguru’s whispered name as Satoru points out a red-blinking satellite wheeling by, become a slow soundtrack, and still along the first curve of that figure eight, there is no end for them in sight.