Chapter Text
Suguru isn’t looking at him, but that doesn’t mean that Satoru can’t feel the judgemental press of his eyes in the hollow of his throat. Satoru isn’t looking at him either, not with his normal eyes, at any rate, but he can nonetheless see Suguru’s shape following sluggishly behind.
There are still marks on his wrists from the ropes that bound them only an hour before, the sigils etched finely into the flax that Satoru can now see transferred onto the delicate skin of Suguru’s wrist. Every so often, one of his hands will reach for the other wrist. No doubt the lingering cursed energy of the sigils accidentally burned into his skin are irritating.
Satoru tries not to let the knowledge of it boil his blood. Tries to steady his breathing. His own wrists burn in phantom sympathetic pain, but Satoru ignores it.
They walk. They descend the six or so floors of stairs from the Tori gate that marks the technical school’s territory. Unbidden, an old memory resurfaces. The two of them rushing Riko up and up and up the stairs, worry and exhilaration both making Satoru’s legs feel lighter than air.
This feels like the opposite, in every way. They plod down, down, down, and every one of Satoru’s regrets hangs around his neck like manacles. Link by link, forged by his own hands. Around them, the night swallows up any shadows, and all is quiet, too cold for cicadas or birds to be out.
Suguru stops at the base of the mountain, and Satoru follows suit. He tries not to move, half-worried to turn around lest Suguru disappear with a wisp of smoke behind him.
Fails anyway, when Suguru takes a slow, trembling breath.
“So,” Suguru starts.
Satoru pulls his blindfold down, just to indulge. Just to see Suguru, with all six of his eyes. Satoru doesn’t try to pretend he hasn’t missed him, this time. In response, Suguru’s lip tilts, a wobbling half-smile. Satoru will take it.
God, Satoru will take it.
“I want to tell my family, at least,” Suguru finally continues, when it’s obvious Satoru won’t reply. “To let them know I’m not dead.”
He still isn’t looking at Satoru, but his shoulders are hunched a little. Satoru has never seen Suguru look so curled in on himself, so small. Not even back then, in the days before his break from society and sanity and Satoru.
“Sure.” Satoru tries to sound unaffected. He tries to sound cool and suave and like he has all of the answers. Suguru quirks an eyebrow at him, so Satoru knows it’s not working. “We’ve got an hour, probably, before anyone thinks to check on you again. The whole night depending on whether or not they decide to wake the Higher Ups or leave it for tomorrow. If not, then maybe three more of me not answering my phone before they send someone to look for me. You think that’s enough time?”
Now that Satoru lets himself, it feels like he can’t look away. Suguru’s hair is lank, dirty and tangled from his fight with Yuuta three days ago, and then manhandled into the bowels of the technical college after that. His curse energy is sparking and hissing, a burnt pot boiling over with nowhere to go. His skin is sallow, his breathing too slow and even to be anything but deceptive. Satoru can almost hear the rattle in his exhale.
(Regrowing an arm when you’ve never practiced RCT will do that, Satoru supposes.)
Even still, Satoru thinks he’s the most beautiful thing in the world.
(After all, he’s here, isn’t he? He’s standing on legs that try very hard not to tremble, breathing the same air as Satoru, and really looking at him again. Before this last week, it had been years.)
Suguru laughs, a single disbelieving chime.
“You really thought of everything,” Suguru says. His laughter settles, leaving behind a bemused expression. “And here I was sure you hated me.”
“I could never hate you, Suguru.”
“Don’t lie to me, Satoru.”
“I’m not. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Didn’t I make myself clear before?”
Satoru looks around them pointedly, at the staircase at their backs, the moonlight painting the surrounding undergrowth indigo and silver. It’s the only proof Suguru should need: here, Suguru is here, and alive, and breathing the free air. Here: that Satoru is beside him, after all this time, after everything.
Here. Here.
“Whatever is going through your head right now, stop thinking it,” Suguru snaps. “It’s making you look stupid.”
“You’re stupid.”
“Can we focus on my kidnapping slash escape, please?” but there’s laughter in Suguru’s voice, and Satoru wants to bottle it up to keep in his fridge for the long, excruciating nights alone.
Suguru’s energy is too crackling, too discordant from being chained down to be stable. Satoru doesn’t want him to risk it, especially this close to the school. Someone will no doubt notice his residuals. Likewise, Satoru’s energy is too slippery, too disobedient right now to be reliable enough to fly them somewhere, much less try to teleport.
Suguru looks at him, his eyes dark in the night. Satoru has missed the way Suguru looks at him. Something in the tilt of his head tells Satoru that Suguru is following along with his train of thought.
They’ve always been able to read each other. Satoru is glad of it, after all this time. Glad that they still can.
Satoru smiles, a crooked grin that feels unnatural on his face these days. He grabs Suguru’s wrist, where the sigils were burnt into his skin, and feels a prickle of energy as they dissipate under his palm.
It’s not a long walk back down the mountain to the City, but it’s crawling with tourists, locals, curses, and soon enough, sorcerers, too.
“Run with me, Suguru,” Satoru whispers into the night, pulling Suguru along with him as steps off the path and into a thicket of undergrowth.
Suguru keeps looking at him, and there’s something in his eyes that Satoru almost remembers from their youth, something that reminds him of a sparkling ocean. He doesn’t say anything, but he slips out of his Geta, hooking an elegant finger between the cloth straps. The wooden shoes clink pleasantly in the air between them.
“Don’t suppose you have a hair-tie on you?” he asks.
Satoru can’t help but smile at him. He doesn’t, but the question makes some tight place in his chest loosen.
“I have some at my apartment in Tokyo. Think we can make it that far before we get caught?”
Suguru sends him a smirk. He takes a deep breath, and from this close, Satoru can hear the strain in it. His hand flexes, the one where Satoru is grabbing him by the wrist. There are too many questions he has, too many that he knows Suguru won’t answer. If they fed him in the day they kept him prisoner; if Shoko took a look at him, if they treated him well, if they beat him or questioned him or—
“Only one way to find out.”
Suguru crashes into the undergrowth, a mass of dark hair and fabric. Satoru almost laughs as he scrambles to keep up, all his rambling thoughts flying out of his head as he follows after the whisper of Suguru’s shadow.
They do not head towards Tokyo.
Instead, they run for hours. It reminds him of their first years in school, back when Satoru couldn’t fly or teleport and hated everything about cardio. How Yaga would make the two of them run up and down the steps up to the Tori Gates when they fought, until one or the other collapsed. Too competitive, too cocksure of their own superiority, they’d run for hours and hours, until the two of them were too exhausted to lift their legs, and still they’d argue over who quit first.
The early morning sun spills weak light through the trees as they skirt the edges of the forest. When the sun fully rises, they find the river and follow it west, away from civilization. Satoru pulls them to a stop, finally, when the sun has properly risen and they crest a hill. The treeline stops, making way for gently sloping hills, and down below is a lake, spilling out endlessly to the North, on their right.
Satoru has a stitch in his side, but he stretches out his back like everything is fine. Suguru pants at his side, wheezing and rattling. His shoes were lost somewhere in the forest, dropped into the undergrowth when they both nearly tripped over a tree root down a steep ravine.
At some point he went from holding Suguru’s wrist to linking their fingers together, their hands clammy with sweat between them.
“Where are we?” Suguru gasps.
“Hara.” Satoru’s eyes sweep over the landscape. “Or, almost at Hara.”
They’re at one of the small tributaries of the lake, so that it looks more like a wider part of the river than a proper lake. He points over to the other side of the water, where houses cluster along the shoreline. Suguru squeezes his hand. He can’t tell if it’s involuntary or not. He doesn’t say anything.
“There’s a tourist spot maybe 2 kilometers to the east, on the other side of the lake,” he explains.
Squeezing Suguru’s hand as he says it, he tries not to look at him. Instead, he stares out at the landscape. When Satoru comes here in the summer, the hills are covered in flowers, little white and yellow ones that stand out starkly against the grass. Now, they’re mostly covered in dirt, brown and unappealing. At least they’re not covered in a layer of frost, yet. Satoru is still over-warm from the run, so the brittle wind that whips up from the lake is welcome.
Suguru might like it in the summer. He was always more into nature than Satoru was.
“You wanna pretend at being tourists,” Suguru says flatly. It could have been a question save for the way Suguru says it. “You want to play at—”
“Obviously not,” Satoru says. He tugs on Suguru’s hand, just to make him stumble a step. “I own a cabin out there. Well technically, Tsumiki owns it, but I bought it.”
“Tsumiki,” Suguru repeats.
The name means nothing to him, obviously, but Satoru still feels his heart thud painfully at the flat way he says it.
“I think I can risk a quick teleportation.” He says it mostly to keep Suguru from asking any questions he wouldn’t like the answer to. “No one will think to look for us here.”
Suguru is quiet again for a long moment. He was always reticent, in school, right up until he wasn’t. The empty space where Suguru would have once given him a quip, or a scolding, or a laugh feels wrong. Like skipping a step climbing down a set of stairs, so dizzy with exhaustion your body can’t right itself, but he can’t blame anyone for it. Satoru himself is used to silence from Suguru, after more of their life apart than together.
Suguru squeezes his hand again.
“Don’t make me regrow another arm,” he finally says. “I barely managed to do it the first time.”
“I’ll be careful with your whole body, don’t worry.”
He tugs Suguru forward, watching the way Suguru cringes even as he flushes, pink staining even more of his already windswept face. Satoru wraps his arm around Suguru’s waist, squeezing against the layers of his dirtied outfit until he can feel how thin he still is. Suguru pushes once against his chest, but he keeps their hand clasped together tightly. Something about the way his heart thunders, so close to Satoru’s, makes Satoru’s insides bubble.
“Do you have to say it like that?”
He mumbles it into Satoru’s collarbone, almost pushing his face into the crook of his neck to escape scrutiny. Satoru laughs. He’s helpless against it, especially with the way Suguru tenses against him: not quite irritated, not quite uncomfortable. Annoyed maybe? Embarrassed?
“Hold on to me,” he whispers.
“You don’t need to hold me to teleport,” Suguru mumbles, but tellingly, he doesn’t move from where Satoru’s wrapped around him.
Satoru’s curse energy feels funny under his skin, more like an oil slick than the ever expanding nothingness he expects. Slippery and writhing, like it might pull free at any moment. But he can also feel it expanding inside of him again, now that it’s made up its mind about what he’s done to it, filling up the near-infinite well of himself.
It makes him feel a little motion-sick, to be honest. He hopes Suguru isn’t feeling the same.
Satoru reaches for infinity, pulling at sheets of reality until something snaps, and with a crackle, they disappear.
It’s a rough landing. He’s not felt that bad about a teleportation since turning twenty. Still, they reappear safely inside the wooden cabin. Satoru clutches on to Suguru like a lifeline, willing his stomach to stop roiling. RCT tries to sputter back to life under his skin, serving to make him even more nauseous. It’s cold in the cabin, warmer than the outside but only by a few degrees. Considering no one’s been here since springtime, it makes sense. There’s a wood-burning stove somewhere, he thinks dizzily.
He opens his eyes, unsure when he closed them, but the visual stimulus makes it worse. The cabin is dim, with black-out curtains on the main window, but everything still smears into grey-brown shapes. The Six Eyes start reaching, searching for warmth and energy from here, then outside, then down by the lake, then—
“I don’t think you should have risked that teleportation,” Suguru tells him.
His voice is soft, just a quiet murmur right by Satoru’s ear. It brings Satoru back into the room. One of his hands has crept to Satoru’s back, where he strokes the tips of his fingers gently between Satoru’s shoulder blades. The other hand is still clasped firmly with Satoru’s between them.
Satoru hums. He means to deny it, but he doesn’t really think he wants to open his mouth right now. The hand at his back reaches up to cup at the base of Satoru’s skull, pushing his head more firmly into Suguru’s neck. Obligingly, Satoru closes his eyes.
“Deep breaths, Satoru,” he whispers.
He takes a deep breath. Suguru smells like sweat and dirt; like the forest around them. His robes smell like ozone and asphalt, no doubt leftover from his fight.
His hands are soft. His touch is gentle. Satoru breathes deep again. Oh so slowly, Suguru turns them.
Satoru imagines him scanning the contents of the small cabin: the wooden table in the center of the room, the tiny kitchenette, the single hallway that leads to the bath and the bedroom. With an unsteady lurch, Suguru starts leading them somewhere. Satoru holds onto him. He focuses on Suguru’s curse energy, pulsing through him in a steady, almost hypnotic rhythm. Suguru’s heart beats out of sync with it, still racing from their run.
Satoru’s stomach unhelpfully roils. He wonders if he’ll puke. Unbidden, he thinks of all the times in their schooldays where Satoru pulled along a curse-sick Suguru, helping him find the nearest bathroom. Turnabout is fair play, he supposes.
Gently, Suguru settles them down somewhere, the tile hard against his knees. The bathroom, perhaps?
“I’m fine,” Satoru thinks to say, even if he struggles against Suguru when he tries to pry himself away. “I did it, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
It’s not the resounding praise that Satoru is expecting, and he can’t help but pout. With his eyes closed, of course, the .
“Where are you going?” Satoru asks, reaching out when Suguru’s warmth moves away from him. “Suguru—”
“Don’t be a baby,” Suguru’s voice says, farther away. “I’m getting you water. Don’t move. If you throw up in the tub, I’m making you clean it.”
Satoru isn’t being a baby. It’s just that he feels awful; terrible even, with every step Suguru takes away from him. It hasn’t been very long since—since the Night Parade, just a few days, Satoru thinks. He’s been out for most of it, actually, and Suguru’s curse energy has been sealed down that whole time. So it makes sense that now—
Something crashes farther off. A clang that rings through the small space. Satoru doesn’t want to open his eyes.
“Suguru?”
“I’m—yeah,” Suguru replies. “Sorry. I’m coming.”
He’s back at Satoru’s side in an instant, pressing a cold cup into his hands. Suguru settles a hand between Satoru’s shoulder blades again, and some of the oppressive pain in his head settles.
He waits until Satoru has taken a huge drink of the water, of course, before he bothers speaking again.
“Did you puke?”
“No,” Satoru says, trying not to pout.
He takes another sip of water, attempting to get RCT online. Like a lighter, flicking his metaphorical thumb against the spark wheel. Nausea rises in his throat as he tries.
“Will you stop that?” Suguru snaps, his hand pushing harder against Satoru’s back. “You’re making me sick.”
“Oh, did you puke then?”
“Stop being a baby.”
It’s not a no. Satoru thinks about the sound he’d heard from the kitchenette earlier. Something spilling. Satoru’s curse energy is almost too big for his skin. He feels bloated with it, with the unnatural way it writhes under his chest. Beside him, Suguru is no better off. The Six Eyes blink open, finally, and really look at him. What he sees makes him dizzy again.
Suguru’s curse energy always had a little bit of that effect on him. It makes sense that it would be worse now, given everything.
Satoru finishes up his cup of water and settles it gently against the tile floor. Suguru doesn’t move, so Satoru doesn’t bother to move either. He’s not sure how long they stay like that. The Six Eyes would know, probably, if he bothered to look out past the miasma of Suguru’s energy trying to swallow him up whole.
His pocket buzzes. He couldn’t tell if anyone bothered calling him while they ran through the forest. He doesn’t want to check now.
“So,” Suguru says after his phone finishes buzzing. “Are we going to talk about what the fuck is happening?”
“The running away together? It’s romantic, if you ask me.”
Suguru clicks his tongue.
“I don’t want to talk about it either.” Suguru sounds reluctant. Satoru wants to look at him but now that Suguru is relaxing, he feels it loosening every muscle in his body. He doesn’t think he could force himself to open his eyes, not for another few hours at least. “Satoru. Oi, Satoru. You grew my arm back.”
“You did that.”
Suguru scoffs at him. Satoru tilts his head so that his forehead rests on the wooden base of the tub and squints one eye open. Suguru’s matted hair hangs limply between them, so that he can’t quite see the expression on his face. One hand, the new one, Satoru realizes, is clenched in his lap, trembling ever so slightly. Satoru reaches out for it and settles his cold fingers atop Suguru’s knuckles.
“I’m sorry,” Satoru says. He feels sick again. “You told me to curse you a little at the end.”
“This is what you call a curse, then?”
Suguru’s fist relaxes, just enough for Satoru’s fingers to slip in between them. Satoru shrugs.
“Love is the strongest curse of all, Suguru,” Satoru whispers.
It feels worse, somehow, than when he’d crouched at Suguru’s side while he slowly bled out before his eyes. It feels worse because Suguru still isn’t looking at him, and he doesn’t know if Suguru is smiling, if he’ll ever laugh from the heart again.
“Fucking hell, Satoru,” Suguru gasps. He laughs, breathless, disbelieving. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
“You’re crazy,” Satoru snaps back, hurt.
Suguru clicks his tongue again. His hand slips up from his shoulders to cradle the base of his skull, where the headache he’s been ignoring pounds against his brain stem. Suguru’s hand is cold, too, like ice cubes against his neck.
“Ten minutes,” Suguru concedes, as if they’ve been having a real argument. “Take a catnap. I’ll be here. Then, we really have to talk about it.”
Suguru finally tilts his head, his hair jostled just enough to reveal his face to Satoru. Satoru squints at him with one eye then risks opening the two of them. How could he not? Suguru is smiling.
Even in the dimness of the bathroom, where there are no windows and neither of them have bothered to turn on the lights, his eyes seem to twinkle, sunbursts of honey in sienna. Something in Satoru feels like it expands at the sight.
“Ten minutes,” Satoru agrees.
He doesn’t nap, but he feels more rested than he has in a decade nevertheless.
Ten minutes go by faster than Satoru would like. He might have dozed, but he’s not sure. He definitely doesn’t fall asleep. Suguru definitely does, though, considering he’s not immediately badgering Satoru awake the moment he counts to six hundred in his head. Satoru takes a sharp breath, shaking out the pins and needles feeling from his arm.
Suguru is a warm weight pressing against his side. Satoru hesitates, unwilling to disturb him when he looks so exhausted, even in his sleep. All of the livelihood from earlier has faded away from him. He’s gaunt, the thin line of his lips almost grey. There are new lines along his forehead, in the corners of his eyes. Tiny things. Satoru wonders if they’re from frowning or smiling.
Clutched to Suguru’s chest even in his sleep is Satoru’s hand, Suguru’s fingers cold and lax from sleep.
“Hey,” Satoru whispers, squeezing their clasped hands and tugging gently. “Suguru. Let’s get you to bed, yeah? You look ready to drop.”
“Drop dead, you mean. I already did that,” Suguru mumbles. Lips tilted up, he doesn’t bother opening his eyes. “Or is it too soon for those kinds of jokes?”
“Fuck you.”
He forces himself to stand. Tugs a lethargic Suguru up with him.
“Too soon, then.”
Suguru feels like television static, soft and rumbling beside him. It makes Satoru dizzy again. They barely make it to one of the two bunk beds before Satoru tilts a little too much to the side and tumbles into the surprisingly soft mattress.
He really does sleep after that.