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Some of his first memories are these tendrils of beads, crystal and clear, glittering and jingling softly as his sedan-chair moved, reflecting delicate sun rays.
He’d sit in the jeweled carrier with his tiny hands clasped in his lap, over his robes embroidered with something he always found too-scratchy, and he’d watch that curtain of semi-clear beads reflect light as they jostled him gently from location to location, like a particularly small deity.
He’d watch from the inside of this shiny box servants and inhabitants of the Gojo estate stare as he passed, these glittering pearls blurring his memory, separating him from the hushed whispers and curious eyes.
He has these odd memories of people falling to their knees as he passed, though he’s never sure if he dreamt that up. Everything felt only about half-real, behind his shiny curtains.
Despite his intelligence as a child, Satoru would say he has no real memories of being younger than about eight years old. Save for some blurry snapshots— beads and servants and robes and caretakers— he hardly remembers anything at all.
Like he’d been a ghost, hovering around obediently, a startlingly quiet child, big eyes silent and observing, unnerving.
Then, when he was eight or nine, frustration began to build up as his curiosity about the world kept running into walls. So he’d sneak out. Just to walk around the city, take aimless trains and busy himself figuring out the transport as he went, charm strangers into buying him sweets.
That’s when he became a child, he thinks, when he wiggled out of his clan’s hold for long enough to see people and streets and shop windows and to not have servants kneel before addressing his tiny figure. When he first tasted shitty street cotton candy, he thinks, is when he became something resembling of a person. He became something other than his Sight, his power.
Still, when he clawed his way to Jujutsu Highschool, he remained a tragic product of the environment he’d been brought up in. It will take time, and care, to fix the soul of a boy who grew up being raised like a god. So, so far away from warmth that youth seemed like a concept for some other type of creature than whatever he was.
Satoru respects Suguru Getou from the moment he meets him.
He doesn’t like him, immediately, of course not. Satoru’s wary, and he’s never known many people his own age, and he’d certainly, certainly never known somebody from a non-sorcerer family.
Somebody who grew up knowing the rules to football, who grew up watching TV. Somebody who spoke to him plainly and who laughed in his face as if Satoru had, too, as if they were no different.
On top of all of that, Suguru had this part of him that was deep-buried, something sinister only Satoru could possibly see.
When he first laid eyes on him, in the dormitory kitchen, one night before their first-year classes started, Satoru had frozen.
Not because the boy was tan, and tall, and loose-haired. Not because he had faint freckles on his cheeks, like he played in the sun, or because he wore a sleep shirt with an old movie design on it, not because he seemed to defy everything Satoru knew about jujutsu— but because, deep, deep in his guts, there raged a curse, horrible and certainly high-grade, its vile residue somehow being contained by this boy’s lanky frame.
When he spotted him back, he had smiled, Satoru remembers well. Smiled and introduced himself and said something joking or cocky about how odd Satoru seemed, some light jab Satoru was too starstruck to be offended by.
Satoru remembers how horrible the curse felt, and how easily Suguru carried it, making tea in the kitchen like he could just live like that, with a monster in his gut. He remembers thinking that ought to be the strongest person he’d ever met.
Obviously, Satoru learns who he is, over time, finds himself a little bit. With his newfound friends and newfound freedom, he was always going to.
By the end of his first year he was louder— if not more annoying, as many would put it. He was cocky openly instead of just quietly arrogant, and he was a real boy, not some shell of a temple statue.
He had an mp3 player and a binder of Digimon cards and a TV in his dorm and a bike and at least two friends. Which was a lot, at the time. Which was enough.
Of course, it lingered. Of course, there was the question of whether or not one could ever be truly free from their childhood.
Of course his friends would snicker and call him weird, sometimes, but they never seemed upset Satoru was overall quite strange in friendship. And so Satoru learned how to be young on the model of two other deeply odd teenagers, and he found it tasted like freedom anyway.
Even if his divinity was still the most useful part of him, his power and his potential. Even if the beaded curtain still glimmered between him and the world— it thinned out. Mostly due to a pair of golden eyes and this mean challenging smile Satoru had learned to read as warm.
He kept craving more. As he grew up, learning how to be barefoot, he found he kept craving more.
He’d goad Suguru into spars, he’d drag them away at night to sneak off and get drunk while pretending to be older than they were. He was loud, louder, loved to coax out eye rolls and exasperated huffs. He orchestrated pranks, he made up elaborate dares, he lived for being treated like something with a soul.
And still, there was a gap, that same shiny curtain, between him and normality, he still felt it. He clawed and clawed and clawed for it and no matter how much humanity he found in this boyhood he shared with one other spirit, he was never sated. He was beginning to accept he might never be.
“D’you ever miss it?” Suguru wonders, one devastatingly hot summer day, laying on their backs in Suguru’s room, strewn about the floor and the futon, waiting for the fan to swing their way.
“The clan? Why would I?” Satoru wonders, lulling his head to look at his best friend in confusion.
Suguru’s half hanging off his futon, his hair in a bun on top of his head, little strands sticking to his neck and temple from the heat. His cheeks are just a tiny bit shiny, and Satoru briefly wonders if his skin would be sticky to the touch, like his own is.
Suguru shrugs. “Dunno. Big estate, servants— whatever? Sounds like it’d have his perks.”
Satoru huffs, turning his face back towards the ceiling.
“No. That place was horrible.” He says.
This is the first time he is this honest with Suguru. This is the first time he talks about it to anyone at all. It doesn’t feel significant, at the moment, to either of them, but it’s a tectonic shift.
Suguru frowns a little, Satoru sees in his peripheral. “Really? You never complain.”
“Well,” Satoru clicks his tongue. “It’s not like anything bad happened there. Other than kind of rough training, maybe, nothing- nothing was bad. But it was…” He trails off, shrugs. “Boring.”
“Oh yeah?” Suguru smiles “Like a princess in a tower?”
Satoru snorts, kicks him lightheartedly. He thinks Suguru knows by now, when he feels Satoru’s limbs, he’s really only ever feeling a thin wall of Infinity. He never mentions it, though, and Satoru doesn’t find out if the skin of his shin is sticky from sweat.
“Dude, basically. Everyone bows, no one looks me in the eye…” He grumbles, and Suguru whistles, lowly. “It’s miserable. No one’s ever smiled in that place, I swear to god.”
“Wow, bowing? And here I am, treating you like a commoner.” Suguru sighs, and Satoru snickers. “You’re like a leader of a cult.” Suguru adds.
Satoru wrinkles his nose. “More like a cults prize.” He corrects.
“Sounds lonely.” Suguru says, kind of suddenly.
When Satoru turns his head to look at him, he doesn’t find any pity, or heaviness, in Suguru’s expression, though. His face is perfectly balanced, still and relaxed, like he hasn’t said something vulnerable and true, not at all.
Satoru doesn’t know how he’s supposed to act, sometimes, around others. He relies on following along, most of the time, at a complete loss as to what a regular human reaction ought to be.
So when Suguru says such a soft thing and then keeps staring off into space like nothing’s changed, Satoru shrugs and says “Yeah. Guess so.”
Suguru smiles again, boyish, and beautiful, to Satoru. “And now all you get is me and Shoko? What shit luck.”
Satoru laughs again, snickering, and he knows he’s not supposed to say he thinks finding them had been the luckiest thing that’s ever happened to him. That the only reason he thinks he’ll ever feel halfway human is because of their bonds. So he just says “Yeah, can you imagine?”
Satoru never touches anybody, and as the years pass, that simply becomes just one of his many oddities.
It’s not even in the top few weirdest parts about him. Kids at this school being squeamish of touch in general was, really, maybe the most common thing about him.
He’d nudge, of course, he’d nudge and flick and even swing his arm around Suguru’s shoulders, he’d offer him a hand up after a fight, he’d clap his back. But never without Infinity. Always feeling like reaching out with it absent would be something completely intimate, something undeniably overboard.
The thing, though, about growing up on special-grade missions, in battle, in trains and hotel rooms, in training, with just one other boy, one total equal to his godhood, is that their bond transcended regular limits of boyish friendship.
Satoru becomes a person, with Suguru by his side. Arguably, he becomes a person because of Suguru by his side.
So they grow so intertwined there’s no such thing as silence, amongst them, no such thing as unfamiliarity.
It’s not simple, this bond, but it feels like it is.
It’s somehow seamless: the way they fall in love, with an infinity between them, as if that’s no obstacle at all.
Without word, and without touch, they fall in love anyway, across the room. It’s the most important thing Satoru has.
They fall in love in comfortable silences and in deep conversation alike, they fall in love in hotel rooms in separate beds, on trains, in cars— they fall in love sharing a bike.
Sometimes— because he is old enough, now, pushing adulthood —he wonders if they could be like regular teenagers. If maybe, to him, Suguru is who he’s supposed to hold by the hand, kiss, sleep next to. If what they are ought to be equivalent to that kind of thing. After all, if they’re drunk or hurt or vulnerable, Suguru sometimes calls him ‘angel’, and to Satoru, that feels like movie-romance.
Suguru doesn’t seem to mind their current predicament, though, and neither does Satoru, how could he ever? He’s been lucky enough to stumble upon another soul he can trust whole-heartedly. He’s not so sheltered as to take that for granted.
Satoru returns from a mission he was assigned alone, stumbling into Suguru’s room kind of late at night, beat. His head aches up to his gray matter and his temples pulse.
Suguru just barely glances up from his book, as Satoru wrestles off his jacket and his uniform pants, dropping into his futon beside him flat on his back, in his shirt and boxers and too-colorful socks with pizza slices on them. At-home at last.
“Hi. You seem chipper.” Suguru says from behind his book. Satoru is mildly jealous of the calm evening Suguru seems to have had— his hair is freshly washed and down and his light is dimmed and his book is something Satoru would probably find deeply boring.
“My head is going to explode.” Satoru says, throwing an arm over his eyes.
They fit on the futon easily, Suguru always curling up a little when he reads, and Satoru spread out on the lower half with his legs on the ground. It’s nothing they haven’t practiced.
Suguru snorts quietly. “Eyes?”
“Mhm. And my— entire brain, maybe.”
Suguru just hums in understanding, like he always does, always calm and void of any pity.
He doesn’t say anything immediately, so Satoru just lets his presence relax him. Companionship in the way they’ve always understood it— breathing in the same room, heartbeats in sync without proof and without a doubt.
He can’t tell Suguru’s gearing up to say something until he does, and it becomes obvious he’s been tasting out the words before he spoke them.
“Satoru, how long has it been since you touched anyone?”
Satoru lets his arm drop from his aching eyes easily, glancing up at Suguru.
Suguru’s put his book down into his lap, and seems to have been looking at Satoru quietly for the entire duration of the silence, observing.
“Hm?”
“Just- y’know? At all?”
“I…” Satoru thinks it over, digs around and can’t seem to find a real memory. “I dunno? I got sick, once, when I was, like, eleven, so probably then? I think I couldn’t keep infinity up around doctors…” He muses, never one to mistrust Suguru’s curiosity.
Suguru frowns a little bit, setting his book to the side fully. “Really? Not at all other than that?”
They never really speak about this, though it doesn’t feel terribly heavy now that they finally are. Really, nothing is ever too heavy to be dropped between them.
Satoru shakes his head, then twists so he’s sitting up on the futon, folding his legs under him.
“No. Why?” He asks, and Suguru shrugs, though it seems loaded.
“Dunno. Doesn’t that get- I don’t know. Do you never- wish for it?” He manages. Satoru can tell he’s trying not to say the wrong thing.
He frowns, some fear of having made a mistake that hurt Suguru curling up in his stomach. “Do you- Do you wish I touched you?”
“No.” Suguru says, immediately, as if just to comfort Satoru’s hesitant tone. Then he seems to realize he spoke too fast. “I mean- yeah, I do- just-“ He stumbles, and Satoru smiles a little at his awkwardness, endeared, as Suguru sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “What I mean is,” He straightens. “That it’s not about me. I’m not the one that’s been magically separated from the world all my life.”
Satoru frowns, a little bit. “You think it’s that bad? That I always have it up?”
Suguru shrugs, looking away. “I don’t know. Maybe not. But, like- touch is- nice, y’know?”
Satoru frowns, a little bit, though he’s smiling, because Suguru’s a little flustered with talking about this, it seems like, which is endearing enough by itself.
“Nice?”
Suguru shrugs again. “Yeah. Like- man, it’s not a thing I ever thought I’d need to explain- like.. Like, I dunno, receiving a gift? Having a nice time with somebody? You know, that kind of thing. Comfort.”
Satoru hums in thought. “I don’t know. I- I’m kind of…”
Scared, he supposes, is the right word. Though that sounds horrible and Satoru wishes it wasn’t. He’s never scared of anything. But he hasn’t felt this one thing most of his life, and he’s a little scared of learning what that boundary is for him. He’s scared of reaching out for it.
He likes never thinking about it, never wondering much past what he already understands is enough for him. Which is out of character— he tends to push himself. In everything but this, he supposes.
“I’m not asking you to do anything.” Suguru says, quickly, and Satoru hadn’t even noticed he started worrying until Suguru soothed him. “I just- I kept thinking, if your head hurts, maybe it’d be nice if someone could- like- massage it, or something. God, I don’t know…”
“You think that would help?” Satoru asks, genuinely.
“Pressing your own temples feels nice, right?” Suguru asks, and Satoru nods, a little hesitant. “’s even better if you don’t have to do it yourself.”
Satoru thinks about it. Thinks about digging his own thumbs into where his eyebrows start and feeling the dull pressure calm his aching skull. Looks down at Suguru’s hands and thinks how they look large and warm and he thinks-…
“Okay.” He says, sudden, quieter than he’d like.
“Hm?” Suguru doesn’t catch on.
“Okay.” Satoru repeats, more confident, looking Suguru into the eyes, in his dimly lit room, with his loose, clean hair. “It’s- it’s off.” He says, cursed energy in the room flickering just the tiniest bit, as Infinity goes off like a dying led lamp.
Satoru can see it, in Suguru’s eyes, the moment the reality of this situation seems to flood him, some great weight to all of this overcoming his irises.
“N-now?”
“Well, unless you-“
“No, no, now-“ Suguru swallows. “Now is good.” He says.
“Okay.” Satoru mumbles, strangely quiet.
“Okay?” Suguru prompts again.
“Okay.” Satoru repeats.
Suguru wets his lips, looks over Satoru as if he’s seeing him for the first time.
He raises his hand up, then, from his lap, and they’re sitting across from each other, it wouldn’t take a lot at all for Suguru to touch his face, yet his hand moves so slowly, like he’s waiting for Satoru to stop him.
“Wait.” Satoru says, tone quiet, almost in a breath, and Suguru’s hand freezes immediately.
“Sorry- We don’t-“
“No, just, can you,” God, this is so stupid. Satoru clears his throat, puts his own hand on his knee. “Just my hand, first, maybe?”
This is, without a doubt, the most vulnerable Satoru has ever felt. He watches Suguru’s eyes soften with understanding, and he nods wordlessly.
Maybe Satoru would like for it to go even slower, but there’s only so much gentleness that can be put into Suguru moving his hand between them until it touches Satoru’s. It’s simply not that grand of a thing, theoretically, physically.
Still, he touches him slowly. Satoru’s hand lays on its side on his knee and his breath hitches the moment the slightest bits of Suguru’s fingertips graze the fine hairs over his skin.
The pads of his fingers follow, smooth across Satoru’s knuckles, his hand slowly engulfing Satoru’s.
Satoru feels electricity shoot up his spine. These mad little tingles of warmth, wrecking him from his knuckles to his bones. He exhales, quiet but harsh.
Suguru settles his entire palm over Satoru’s hand, gentle, and Satoru stares at their hands helplessly, breathing heavier.
What overcomes him next is warmth. Like a tide, it rises on him, like a slow wave building. Suguru rubs his hand slightly with his thumb, so gentle, deeply comforting, and maybe if Satoru were looking from outside of his body, he’d be able to see how not much is happening at all. How it’s just two gangly boys on a futon and one awkward, singular, lingering touch.
However, within him, a storm rages, like summer thunder, humid and wild and overwhelming and hot.
“This is okay?” Suguru murmurs, and Satoru doesn’t take his eyes off from where Suguru’s breaching his Infinity, and he feels Suguru not taking his eyes off of his face in turn.
“Mhm-hm.” He mumbles, not trusting his words.
Suguru coaxes his palm upwards, ever so slowly, touch never ceasing. Satoru’s chest feels like it’s going to explode, every graze of his fingers tingling in Satoru’s veins. Suguru’s palm smooths over his fingers, settling on top of Satoru’s, and Satoru watches his own twitching fingers stretch to intertwine with Suguru’s like they’re somebody else’s, out of his control.
Fingers, shaky, intertwined, slot together in warmth seamlessly, and Satoru watches them with shaky breaths leaving him shallowly, like he’s got a kitten in his lap he’s afraid of startling.
Except maybe his own self is the kitten, or something.
Suguru squeezes, then. Still slowly, but firm, he does, he intertwines their fingers and squeezes his hand, so much softness woven into the gesture Satoru is overwhelmed.
For a moment, Satoru’s fingers remain tense, half-straight, stiff as Suguru holds his hand, before Satoru feels himself, almost against his own will, crumble.
His fingers bend, curl in towards Suguru, his fist squeezing, and he feels gone, chocked up, and he feels it build, like he wants more of this. More of Suguru’s skin, more of this warmth. He squeezes back, hard, harder, until his arm is shaking a little bit with the strain, clutching at Suguru’s hand, almost in awe.
“I-...” He starts, but finds no words on his tongue.
“Do you still want me to try and help with your head?” Suguru asks, gently quiet, and Satoru’s eyes snap up to him at last.
He’s beautiful, Satoru thinks, dumbly, all lines of him softened in the dim reading light.
His expression is so open, cheeks a little redder than they usually are, and it soothes Satoru, makes him feel less silly for becoming this vulnerable this fast. Like they’re both the same kind of clumsy.
“Y-yeah.” Satoru says. Because he does. More than anything, he wants more, wants to sink into Suguru full-bodied, not just into an embrace, but like a liquid into sand, wants to drop into him somehow utterly.
He still feels like he’ll explode, though, if Suguru’s sweet thumb brushed just one more piece of untouched skin, thinks he’ll crumble.
It’s all contradictory.
He’ll settle for Suguru soothing his headache, for now.
Suguru raises his hand and Satoru’s heart beats and he’s scared and he’s thinking yes, yes, yes, please,
Suguru’s other hand settles on his cheek, like that’s easy, like that’s not world-shattering. A shudder wrecks through Satoru, once, a shaking, loud exhale leaving him as the first prickles of warmth shoot through him.
Suguru’s patient, leaving his palm on his cheek as he settles, feather-light. Satoru blinks harshly, once, twice, and then, like with his hand, it all melts. It melts into something syrupy, and warm, and addicting.
His eyes flutter, then screw shut, eyebrows furrowing as he leans into it, utterly helpless, melted by the warmth of Suguru’s touch.
“Angel,” Suguru murmurs, and Satoru barely hears him. “‘toru,” He tries again, with something like endeared amusement in his quiet voice. “You gotta let go of my hand, for this.”
Satoru blinks his eyes open, too undone to feel embarrassed. He just says “Oh.” quietly and lets go of Suguru’s hand, though he doesn’t untangle their fingers, just relaxes his grip.
Suguru puts his hand next to his other, in his lap, squeezes once before moving away. “There you go. Just relax.” Suguru mumbles, as Satoru blinks bleary and dazed at the space between them, consumed by the hand on his cheek, feeling like he might start leaning the entire weight of his head into it.
Suguru mirrors his movement with his other hand, now holding Satoru’s head with both palms, and Satoru makes a small noise as they settle, something like a choked whimper, quiet.
Suguru shushes him gently, thumbs grazing the space under his eyes, and he feels flooded, with warmth, with emotion, with a love so tangible it shouldn’t be real.
Satoru gathers enough strength to look at Suguru. Helplessly, eyebrows furrowed, he looks at him for comfort, like he’s begging with his eyes to be saved, somehow, to be put back together.
“Jesus,” Suguru mumbles, when Satoru’s glazed over eyes meet his own. His fingers are careful, reverent on Satoru’s skin, so perfectly soft Satoru might cry about it. “‘toru, you’re so…” He trails off.
His hands climb up slightly, his large fingers splayed all the way to the base of Satoru’s skull, through his hair, his thumbs positioning themselves over Satoru’s temples. He squeezes, then, puts pressure in little circles over his temple, and Satoru groans helplessly, melting into a puddle on the spot.
“Yeah?” Suguru whispers, and Satoru can just nod slightly, shaky, his eyes fluttering closed like he might pass out. “Fuck, ‘toru...”
Satoru whimpers quietly again, falling deeper into Suguru’s palms, melting and melting and melting until time stops feeling real.
His skin is ridden with goosebumps, but other than that, he relaxes fast, melting into Suguru’s perfect-burning hands like under a spell, feeling himself go a little lax where he’s sitting.
Slowly, as he grows truly limp, Suguru leads his face to the crook of his neck, and Satoru just comes apart there, as Suguru rubs the base of his skull, this spot he never imagined was so tense but sings under the sweet pressure of Suguru’s hands.
“Oh god,” Satoru whines so, so quietly, now overwhelmed with the smell of him, the warmth of him, the achingly delicate skin of Suguru’s neck, pressed to the side of his nose. It’s too much. Satoru can feel his heart, thrumming in his chest.
Satoru’s never felt another person’s heart. He’s never felt another person’s warmth at all, not that he remembers. He feels his own heart beating like it's trying to get out.
“You’re doing good.” Suguru soothes, by his ear, as Satoru hides in his neck. Like Satoru is in enough evident distress for Suguru to try and comfort him, in that soft voice of his that he only ever sometimes uses. “I’ve got you, angel, I promise.” Something's too devoted, in Suguru's voice, something makes him sound too helpless to be the one in supposed control.
Satoru feels like he could cry. From emotion, from genuine overstimulation, just from this.
“C’mere.” Suguru whispers, as he maneuvers them to lay down, Suguru flat on his back and Satoru burying his face in his neck. Satoru feels his limbs gravitate towards Suguru like nothing ever has before, his leg folding over one of his, his arm over Suguru’s chest.
He shudders, not rarely, but every time Suguru touches a new spot of his skin. He’s shaking, he thinks there’s real tears gathering in his eyes from how overwhelmed he is. He doesn’t want to move away, not one bit, squirming a little bit as he tries to accept all kinds of new sensations. Suguru’s hip under the soft side of his knee, Suguru’s breaths under his hand, over his chest, Suguru’s scorching warmth up and down and over.
“Love,” Suguru whispers, eventually, but Satoru doesn’t hear him, losing his mind in his arms. It’s a lot. It’s all a lot. “Love, you’re shaking too much, wait,” Suguru mumbles, concern woven into his voice.
He rolls Satoru off of him, and Satoru doesn’t want the warmth gone, even if it was taking him apart, even if it does get easier to breathe outside of Suguru’s neck.
Suguru doesn’t stop touching him, though, so Satoru doesn’t complain. Their legs are still tangled, and he’s still holding the back of Satoru’s neck.
“We gotta take it slower.” He explains, when Satoru stares up at him, lost, breathing hard. His hair falls over one shoulder, down like a curtain by their heads, and Satoru feels like he dreamt him up.
He nods, his thoughts returning to him as air fills out between them. “Yeah.” he says, ragged, then clears his throat. “Yeah. I’m sorry. ’s just a lot.” He mumbles, voice still wrecked.
“I can imagine.” Suguru says, with a smile so warm Satoru feels his anxieties settle like they’d run out of air and crumpled to the ground. “How about this,”
Suguru lays on his side, so they’re now both doing so, facing one another on the pillow that smells like Suguru.
He leaves one hand, the one he’s not laying on, in Satoru’s hair, combing through gently. “Like this. I’ll just touch your hair.” He says, quietly.
Satoru’s eyes flutter, his spine alight in the softest way as Suguru’s fingers graze his scalp. He nods. “My head does feel better.” He mumbles, and Suguru smiles, the sweetest god-damn smile Satoru’s ever known. “Can you, just-...”
“Hm?”
Satoru places a hand on the futon between them quietly, and Suguru, taking the hint, wiggles out the hand he’s laying on and intertwines their fingers together.
“There?” He asks. Satoru’s eyes just flutter shut, and he hums in content.
He can’t fall asleep, like this, not really, he’s too dizzy. But he can melt into a mush, utter putty in Suguru’s hands, eyes closed in a limbo of warmth. So content it’s almost like he’s sleeping, feeling like he’s recharging after his mission.
“Fuck.” He whispers. “You were right. This is nice.” He admits, now that he feels less overwhelmed, the sharp warmth of it all turning mild and soothing. Suguru’s hand is like a lifeline in his palm, even if it’s the very thing that’s currently making him need something to clutch on to in the first place.
“No one…” Suguru mumbles “No one else has ever touched you like this?”
The question is so plainly stupid Satoru has to squint his eyes open. “What? Who?”
“I don’t know. Anybody, at all?”
Satoru shrugs a little, still a puddle of limbs as Suguru’s hand pets through his hair. “I didn’t really have any close caretakers as a child. And I-… I wouldn’t trust anybody else, now, obviously. So.”
Suguru hums in understanding, but Satoru sees him swallow a little thickly. Like that’s not something he takes lightly, Satoru’s trust.
They fall quiet, after that. It’s stilly, how amongst all this soothing, Suguru’s the one to knock out first.
Satoru feels his hand slowing down, the movements losing their intent, his fingers moving twitchy, and he flutters his eyes open to see Suguru on the very edge of falling asleep.
His fingers still move some more, as if through a dream, but his face is relaxed, so devastatingly serene, and his eyes are delicately closed, not fluttering behind his limbs, but still and dreamless.
Satoru lays there in awe, holding his hand, as he watches in real time Suguru’s breathing even out, and his hand gradually completely still, settling limp behind Satoru’s ear, mostly on his neck, a warm, heavy comfort.
Satoru eventually finds the strength to surrender to it, too, surrender to the sweet warmth of his proximity, fall asleep guided by the dizzying warmth.
The next morning, Satoru wakes up in a warm bed alone, only finds Suguru downstairs for breakfast. They don’t mention what happened last night, but not really in a way that feels avoidant— in fact, in a way that soothes Satoru significantly, makes him feel less like he caused a scene with his turbulent reaction to something as simple as the touch of a hand.
“It freaked me out.” Satoru admits, later, when he decides he’s done not mentioning it, feeling Suguru’s definitely letting him call the shots on whether or not they talk about it.
Mid afternoon, by the vending machines, after class and before training, Satoru breaks, decides to bring it up.
“Last night?” Suguru supplies easily, raising up from where he crouched to retrieve their cans.
“I’ve never been so affected by so little in my life.” Satoru says, in distaste, wrinkling his nose, and Suguru laughs at him.
“Why on earth did you think you could never touch anyone, in your eighteen years of life, and feel normal about it?” He asks, falling into step towards the training grounds, handing Satoru his coke.
“Well how was I supposed to know?” Satoru whines. “It didn’t occur to me no one else gets to never be in contact with the world. I just.. forgot about it.”
“You forgot about it?” Suguru snickers.
“I did! Well, sometimes, it would cross my mind, but I didn’t think it was that important.”
“Oh, man,” Suguru sighs laughingly, taking a sip of his drink. “Sometimes I forget how messed up you are.” He says, impressively not unkindly for such a comment.
Satoru pouts. “Could I get better at it?”
“What? At touching?”
“Yeah.”
Suguru snorts. “I guess? You could get used to it.”
Satoru frowns, thinking back to how it felt like Suguru had his hands inside Satoru’s tissue, how it felt like he was in his guts. He holds down a shiver. “Really? Used to that?”
“Yeah. I- I mean, I…” Suguru starts, and Satoru’s ears perk up when he catches on to nervousness in Suguru’s voice. “I wouldn’t mind- like- helping? Or, however you’d put it.”
Satoru smiles, a little self deprecating, holds down the urge to kick a rock. “I can’t imagine it’s much fun for you, watching me cry like a girl because somebody touched my hand.”
“You shouldn’t feel weird about it.” Suguru murmurs, always easy, always light around him.
“It is pretty weird, though.” Satoru insists, mostly just watching his feet push through the dusty path across campus.
“I guess.” Suguru admits, not unkindly. “But you said you liked it. And- I liked it. So why wouldn’t it be something you get to have?”
He says it like it’s truly, genuinely simple. He shrugs and tells Satoru you deserve warmth and he doesn’t even blink. As if that’s not wholly contradictory to anything he grew up believing.
Satoru glances at his friend, then back ahead, hands deep in his pockets.
He’s too good to me, Satoru keeps thinking. He’s so sweet, to me.
He doesn’t really know if he deserves that, or whatever. If it makes sense, for him to have such a thing, in this life, such a lovely constant. But he’s, perhaps, selfish by nature, and has no plans of letting it go. So he smiles a little without looking at Suguru and says. “Makes sense.”
Satoru doesn’t know how to go about it. His limbs feel overgrown and he feels clumsy in this like he doesn’t usually ever feel, about anything.
He’s been in control of every cell in his body since he was four. He wants Suguru to touch him again, though, and that he has no real control over, not any that feels simple and real in his hold. He also has a sneaking suspicion Suguru won’t do it until Satoru asks.
So on a rare, slow weekend morning, in the common room, Satoru just drops Infinity without a comment. He’d been sitting there, on the couch across from Suguru, ignoring some show that was playing reruns on their television, contemplating how to go about it, for what seems like hours. In the end he just lets it go, like a rope.
Suguru registers the minuscule twitch in cursed energy slowly, glancing towards him with a little confused frown once he realizes what the flicker was.
Satoru just stares back at him. He feels stupid. Like he just quickly took his shirt of in front of Suguru, unprompted— that’s what it feels like.
“…You-…?”
“I’m- trying to get used to it.” Satoru says, in explanation, and Suguru’s frown loosens, understanding glinting once in his eyes.
“Okay.” He replies, maybe too carefully. “Should I-…”
“You don’t have to do anything.” Satoru quickly adds. “Just- maybe… Something, like…”
Without overthinking much, he lifts and uncurls his legs on the small couch and drapes them over Suguru’s lap, something that feels natural and easy, with the way they’re sitting.
Suguru accepts him easily, Satoru holding his breath so he doesn’t shudder as his calves settle over his thighs.
Suguru puts a careful hand over his leg, low, above his ankle, light and non offending.
Satoru settles silently, as Suguru's warmth travels slowly around him like ivy, climbing his skin, his bones, maybe. Suguru just watches his face. Satoru focuses on his breathing and feels like—
It’s okay. It’s good, like this. His legs aren’t as sensitive as his face, his neck, they don’t feel as intimate as his hand. It feels light and casual— or, like it easily could seem light and casual, if not for the way Satoru’s heart begins beating harder in his ribcage.
He relaxes slowly back into lounging, and Suguru finally murmurs “This is fine?”
Satoru nods, head falling back on the arm rest. “Y-yeah. This- I can handle this.”
“Okay.” Suguru whispers, gently.
He seems to turn his attention back towards the show they’d been watching, as Satoru lets his eyes shut.
They spend the morning like that. Satoru’s bare legs, with their thin white hairs, over Suguru’s sweatpants, as Suguru makes soothing little motions, like moving a light knuckle up and down his bone, holding his ankle, absent, easy.
He doesn’t otherwise acknowledge Satoru’s thrown back head, or the way he’s clearly focusing a lot on his breathing, or the way the muscles in his legs twitch sometimes, his skin filling out in goosebumps. The way he shivers when Suguru drags a finger over his skin.
Satoru thinks he can imagine it, now. Being used to this. ‘Used to’ in the loveliest meaning of that phrase, used to as in familiar with it, relaxing into it like a home.
He thinks maybe he’d like them to be like this. Limbs strewn over each other, lounging in front of the television accompanied by meaningless gentleness. Day-to-day life including fingers in his hair and the comforting weight of a palm over his ankle.
Satoru never could have guessed that's what the missing piece had been. Never, in a million years, could he have known the vague, dull ache inside of him just needed one last bit of humanity, one last bit of slimy, mortal proximity, to feel even remotely whole.
Now, it's like he begins understanding. He curls up in his bed at night like he always does, with his blanket bunched up in his arms, and realizes why the weight of it feels hollow. Realizes what it is, that distant urge to wrap around something, to sync his breathing with some other rhythm, so it can be carried steadily throughout the night. He feels silly for never putting it together.
Satoru is no stranger to being frustrated with his own oddities, as much as he is no stranger to being remarkably unbothered by them.
He is unbothered by the way people view him, he does not busy himself with worrying about opinions, ever. He is stronger than everybody and he has Suguru, and he has Shoko, too, so he's never alone, either, and so why should he care about anything else?
He is frustrated when he doesn't know what to do with his own limbs. He is frustrated when he finds he doesn't understand what friendship is supposed to imply, he is frustrated when, even after years of growing, out of a walking talisman into a real, talking boy, he finds there are things he still does not understand.
He is frustrated he wants touch so badly, frustrated that's something he'd, apparently, been craving all along. And he's, more than anything, frustrated that he can't just have it like he wants to.
Because it's too much. Because when Suguru puts both of his hands on two parts of his body, Satoru squirms, shivers. Because he can't press the entire line of his body against Suguru like he wants to because he'd shake until he cried, no matter how much he wanted it to be easy.
Suguru, because he’s this creature born and made specifically to be the bane of Satoru’s existence, is a saint about it. Of course he is.
It’s like he has a sixth sense for what Satoru needs, and how much he can take.
There is something else, though, something Satoru finds festering within him, as days pass and he so very slowly grows accustomed to the briefest, most careful of touches.
Sometimes he spaces out in the company of his best friend, wherever they are in the day, and finds this rabid urge within him to reach out, sometimes stronger than the ache to be reached for.
He’s never been anything less than obsessed with Suguru. Everybody knows this, and everybody understands this as a mutual way that they are.
Still, it catches Satoru off-guard, this aspect of it, this part of his ever-present, muddy yearning. This deep set desire to claim, touch, take from him. To dig his claws in and never let go.
He surprises Suguru with it, too, he thinks, the first time that he reaches out without asking for touch, but with the intent to take.
It’s a small thing. They’re sitting side by side on a country side train, coming back home from a mission, and when Satoru silently lets Infinity go, shoulders dropping in relief after a long day keeping it up, Suguru doesn’t stop looking out of the window, doesn’t glance at him once.
It’s his way of not making a big deal out of it, Satoru thinks, because he knows for sure Suguru can feel the tiny shift, is familiar with it. He doesn’t twitch a fraction, though, simply waits to see what Satoru wants to do with his own bared mortality.
And for a long while, Satoru doesn’t do anything. The train jostles slightly, the boring, green scenery flying past their window. Their cart is empty save for them and the sunlight grows orange, in the window-shaped squares it’s throwing on the train floor.
The delicate side of Suguru’s face, along with that singular strand of hair falling from his burn, are alight in the almost-red glow, and his breathing is steady, posture relaxed in their comfortable, post-mission silence.
Satoru stares at his hand for a long while before he reaches out.
There’s something devastatingly inviting about his flesh. It looks smooth, all of him tan and strong and somehow delicate in that strength. Beautiful less like a flower and more like the ocean, or the moon. Gentle like something powerful.
His veins are the tiniest bit of blue at the thinnest bit of his wrist, before the bone drops into his hand, the pronounced knuckle of his thumb. His even tan skin is disrupted by little, thin white scars, like scribbles over his limbs, a collection he’s acquired over the years.
Satoru never used to think about such stuff. Suguru used to be Suguru for the way he matched him, for the way he knew him, for the way he loved him, and very rarely for his body. Recently Satoru has found he could, and has, memorized all the little scars, though. So something has certainly shifted.
When he does reach for him, he just takes his wrist in his hand, Suguru’s entire arm going pliant, turning into Satoru’s touch to accommodate his loose grip.
He wraps his fingers carefully over the top of Suguru’s wrist, his hand turned palm-up, and he lets himself grow familiar with the warmth of him for a moment before his thumb, curious, a little unsure, presses down on the most delicate bit of his wrist, right over his veins.
Satoru holds his breath for a second, and then, he begins to feel it. A dull throb, rhythmic, steady. A pulse, unyielding, just the tiniest bit quickened. The breath Satoru was holding on to leaves him shaky, his chest filling with something. Some grand gratitude for the life he’s feeling under his thumb. Some bizarre gratitude for their own humanity.
“Satoru?” Suguru calls, and Satoru glances up, still a little distracted, to find himself nose to nose with Suguru, who has turned from the window to stare at him.
“I can,-“ Satoru starts, then has to clear his throat, his ragged voice. “I can feel your heartbeat.” He mumbles, half-stupidly.
Suguru’s eyes are a little wide, and he laughs, the slightest bit, this twitch of his lips, like he’s both endeared and something like shocked. Awed, maybe.
“How about this?” Suguru starts, picking up Satoru’s hand by his wrist, separating him from his pulse and dragging his hand up, carrying it to his neck. “Feel it here.”
Suguru guides his thumb directly under where his neck throbs similarly. God, if the skin of his wrist was gentle and strong, then the skin of his neck is mind-numbing. Both softer to the touch and infinitely hotter, enticing like something freshly baked. Satoru feels his thumb pulse heavily with Suguru’s heartbeat, and feels, ridicilously, with their proximity-
He laughs, breathless, says “It got quicker.” Says it almost in a whisper, delighted.
Suguru smiles back, almost bashful. “Yeah, well. Y’know.”
Nothing very special is happening at all, in the quiet train cart, it’s just one hand on a neck, but Satoru feels like he’s going to burst and Suguru, apparently, certainly feels some type of way about it too.
Satoru plays with the hairs at Suguru’s nape absently, pressing against his pulse, caressing with his thumb, and Suguru gets this still look on his face that somehow makes Satoru think he likes the feel of it all. Like he’s focusing hard on enjoying the touch without giving himself away too much. There doesn’t seem to be much he can do, though, about the speed of his heartbeat or the way his pupils are large even by the natural light of the window.
Satoru giggles, then, almost. A quiet bell laugh, small and a little stupid. Suguru focuses back on him, smiling, asks “What?”
“You shiver when I do this.” Satoru mumbles back, the tips of his long fingers caressing right over Suguru’s nape. He doesn’t shiver this time, but Satoru still feels his skin is full of goosebumps, that his hairs have risen up there.
“Not always.” Suguru mumbles back, in weak defense. “Sometimes. ’s- sensitive.”
“I thought I was the one that didn’t let anybody touch him in decades.”
“’s not the same.” Suguru replies, all pliant in Satoru’s palm, unbearably sweet.
“Why? You say you get used to it, but people touch you every day and you’re still shaking.”
“Yeah, well.” Suguru almost-whispers “You don’t touch me every day.”
“Do you wish I did?” Satoru asks, immediately, eyes glinting.
Suguru shrugs and it doesn’t feel half as casual as he probably wants it to. “I never used to think about it, not much.” He says, and it doesn’t sound final.
“And now?" Satoru prompts.
Suguru looks at him in the eye, and as if it’s simple, says, “Now I think about it all the time.” Suguru admits, almost all in one breath.
Satoru smiles, hesitant, face breaking out in a grin in little fragments of joy.
"You like me." Satoru whispers, accusatory. Like he's making fun of Suguru for it.
Suguru rolls his eyes, failing not to look fond, and says "I don't know what gave you that idea."
So right after his first sudden obsession, which was Suguru's touch on him, on his skin, in his hair, Satoru acquires another, equally abrupt, obsession to touch him in turn.
These overlap long before Satoru's capable of really, truly handling them.
He feels clumsy, which is an unusual and stupid way for him to feel. He feels messy, aching as badly as he is sensitive, wanting so much more than he can bite off.
He lets Infinity go and presses their thighs together while they're sitting side by side and has to spend the entire time managing his breathing and letting his eyes flutter. He goes to bed at night and imagines what Suguru's hands would feel like on even hotter skin, where it's delicate, where it's pale, imagines Suguru's fingers on his ribcage, on the bare insides of his thighs.
He stares up at his ceiling and drags his own hand absently over odd spots on his body and it doesn't feel like much, by himself, but if he imagines it's Suguru, blemishing the porcelain behind his thighs, he gets so dizzy it's easier to fall asleep.
"Do you think we should kiss?" He asks Suguru, one day, in his own room, slacking off as Suguru does his homework.
Satoru plays with a strand of his hair, loose for the evening, fresh, pretty. It's something small he learned to love, just one strand of hair at a time, silky and sweet on his fingers but never so warm as to disrupt his breathing.
Suguru barely glances up from his papers, flipping a page and only raising an eyebrow.
"Should?"
Satoru shrugs, drops his hand and Suguru's hair. "Dunno. People do that, right?"
Suguru snorts, writing something down.
"Since when do you care what 'people do'?"
Satoru huffs, lulling his head back on the wall they're both leaning on, legs spread out on his futon.
"It's fine if you don't want to."
"Of course I want to." Suguru says, immediate, almost stern. "Just..."
He finally abandons the papers on his lap, turns to look at him. "I don't think you should do things just because you think you're supposed to."
His eyes are impossibly golden, Satoru thinks. Suguru would say they're brown, and anyone would admit they're at least sort of amber, but Satoru thinks they're the deepest pools of molten gold he could imagine. So warm, to their core, when they look at Satoru, like embers.
"I gotta follow some example." Satoru murmurs, with a shrug.
"I think I'd most rather you do whatever you feel you want to."
"If I did what I wanted I'd be- like- biting you in odd places, and stuff."
Suguru smiles a little, with furrowed brows, and Satoru thinks it's interesting how his ears get red.
"Biting me in weird places?" He repeats, smiling, blushing. His voice is a little quieter, and it's like this bubble builds around them. Like they're suddenly sitting closer than they just were.
"Yeah."
"Like...?" Suguru says, almost like a prompt, which makes Satoru almost manically brave.
Satoru moves his head closer, not smooth but hesitant, twitching back the tiniest bit. He can smell Suguru better, now, his long hair always full of some shampoo-y fumes, his skin always smelling like warmth. He can feel the actual warmth, too, growing hotter as he gets closer.
"Like where I can feel your heartbeat." Satoru whispers, not really touching him yet, but close enough that his own heart starts hammering.
Suguru's only answer is a shuddering breath he tries to hold down. Satoru is not stupid, he knows what it means. He feels the way he almost bares his neck the smallest fraction, like he's bracing for impact.
Satoru doesn't know how to go about it. But Suguru said act on instinct, so he mostly just surrenders. Breathes in deeply, the warm smell, like a home, and puts his open mouth slowly on the scorching hot skin above Suguru's pulse.
He doesn't know what he's doing but he thinks he might know what he wants. He wants something like to taste, to feel, maybe to swallow down. Just his mouth on Suguru's skin is so intimate his eyes flutter shut and his brain fogs over immediately, like a high that is instant, overcoming him before the smoke even leaves his lungs.
His lips move slowly, so slowly, over the skin, tasting the dull throb of Suguru's pulse, his mouth open, tongue daring to press against the scorching warmth. He exhales around a quiet sound, a noiseless sort of groan, leaving him without his own permission. Suguru's skin is a little bit salty, and smooth, so smooth, and so incredibly warm.
He wants to kiss the pulse but doesn't want to close his lips. He sucks in, a little bit, mouthing open-mouthed kisses over the same spot, working it over slowly. Suguru inhales and exhales and both breaths shake so much they could be gasps or moans, just quiet, delicate.
Satoru moans a little bit in content, eyebrows furrowing deeper as he raises his hand to hold the other side of Suguru's neck, keep him close and steady.
He feels Suguru reach up to grip his wrist, as if for support, exhaling around a ragged "Satoru..."
Satoru feels intoxicated. He drags his lips down the lovely skin, his spine shivering, his heart trying to beat out of his chest. His mouth is messy, guided by this oddly carnal urge to feel out with his lips, his tongue, to leave a little bit of his spit behind.
Usually, Satoru finds touching Suguru easier than being touched by him. Controlling the movements usually makes him feel steadier, less like breaking down, like that first time.
This, however, undoes him devastatingly. He feels something new build inside him. As he leads the pace, kisses Suguru's neck like a man possessed, he feels his yearnings and his desires build upon themselves until they're like an avalanche, until this booming cloud of snow is barreling over his head, and he feels like he could never have enough. Like he could never be close enough, could never have enough Suguru in his mouth, in his hands.
Suguru's shoulders rise up and down harshly, one hand gripping Satoru's wrist and the other loose on his shoulder blade, like he's keeping him close, too, and other than that he just bares his neck and lets Satoru kiss him like he might try to eat him.
Satoru's mouth finds his pulse again, and for a moment, he just leaves his lips pressed there, feeling his pulse throb, easier to track on his lips, heavy on his tongue. Like the beat of it enters him, too, flows through his own veins. Then, keeping his promise, and guided by that avalanche, that chant for moremoremore, he bares his teeth, and closes them over the delicate skin.
Hard, obsessive, not hard enough to injure but hard enough to bruise, he bites, rejoicing in the stretch of it, the feel of adored skin between his teeth.
Suguru moans, then, startled and beautiful. A quick, helpless noise, short, breathy, playing on loop in Satoru’s head.
Satoru pulls away slowly, his lips lingering on dampened skin, their shoulders rising up and down harshly. He only looks at Suguru once he's far enough to see his eyes.
There's a glint in the gold of them, awed, like he's looking at something huge and beautiful, like he's looking at a clear night sky. His eyelids are low, too, and his lips are parted, and he's definitely blushing, now, which is a rare sight in enough itself.
Satoru manages a breathy laugh through his own parted lips, all of him still feeling kind of messy, kind of ravenous.
"You look dumb." He says, and it comes out quiet and cracked and Suguru still smiles back, helplessly, eyes still all over Satoru's face like he's trying to memorise the sight of his lips damp.
"I..." Suguru trails off, like he can't gather his thoughts fast enough, eyes lingering on Satoru's lips with such blatant longing in them Satoru feels like his gaze might as well be a full sentence.
"You might be worse than me." Satoru adds, watching the way his best friend has come undone under his lips. His hand is still frozen by his neck, Suguru's fingers are still around his wrist. Satoru thinks he's getting a little better at handling it, now that he knows what to expect, but he still can't quite calm down while they're touching.
"I think I am." Suguru whispers back, helpless.
They spent too long acting like gods instead of teenagers, it seems like, playing divine creatures, ones that can thrive on power and theory alone, on mutual understanding that feels deep enough to transcend regular bonds.
This all becomes a dam breaking, now, something simple like touch plunging them into the reality of their young, mortal bodies. Suguru's eyes are so dark Satoru feels like he might lunge at him, and though he probably won't, Satoru feels his heart quickening at being leveled such a look at all.
"You look like you wanna kiss me." Satoru mumbles, eventually, breaking the tense silence.
He never really keeps much from Suguru. Maybe sometimes he's too proud to be openly weak around anyone at all, but he always manages to communicate everything with Suguru. He's sometimes proud, but he's never shy.
"What do you want?" Suguru presses, stubbornly.
“I guess I don’t really know.” Satoru confesses easily, into the air between them, in the kind of bubble that makes him feel like nothing is too vulnerable. “I think I don’t want to feel so weak about this, anymore.” He admits.
He really doesn’t. He defeats the strongest curses of the century with a flick of a wrist and a yawn and he flies and he bends space at will— and he can’t calm down his breathing because somebody he loves very much is just so very close to his face he’s flustered.
Suguru smiles, a little, private, says “Being weak isn’t bad, I think. Sometimes.” He tilts his head, strand of hair swaying like a pendulum meant to entrance Satoru. He’s so lovely, this up close. “If it’s around somebody you trust.”
Satoru looks at him, down at his lips again, eyes all over each other’s faces. “I trust you with my life.” He says, plainly. This, this bit isn’t new. When their job, their life, means fighting, means daily risks, they can’t afford for trust to be latent.
“I know that.” Suguru whispers. His lips are almost close enough for Satoru to feel his breaths. Suguru is gravitating towards him like it’s unconscious. He’s saying he wants Satoru to think for himself but he looks like he wants to ruin him, against his better judgment, he looks like he could lose it. “But do you trust me with this?”
Satoru contemplates this seriously, knows Suguru would understand whatever answer he were to give.
Satoru understands Suguru’s adoration. Even if they never talk about it, if they never touch about it, it’s the most important bit of the way that they are— this mutual understanding built on a bond so strong it’s a silent thing. He had cherished that, for years, that ability to communicate on looks and understanding alone, no words or touch needed.
He’s just beginning to think he might like to taste it, too. He thinks he’d like Suguru to adore him so plainly it leaves marks on his skin and leaves them both shaking. He thinks he’d like Suguru to adore him so plainly he plays with his hair while they watch movies and leans on his shoulder while they ride trains and kisses his temple when either of them gets hurt.
“I do.” Satoru says, quietest he’s been all evening.
Suguru smiles again, so close their foreheads are nearly touching. Satoru no longer knows where he’d rather point his eyes. Suguru swipes a soft thumb over Satoru’s wrist and Satoru abruptly remembers he can still feel Suguru’s warm neck under his palm.
“I feel weak, too.” Suguru whispers, like a comfort. “I… You make me feel-.. God,” Suguru mumbles, and it doesn’t matter he’s kind of speaking nonse, becasue Satoru’s more watching his lips move than listening anyway.
“Are you gonna kiss me?” Satoru whispers, trying and failing not to sound too hopeful, too young, too clumsy. He feels his own breath bouncing off of Suguru’s lips.
“…I really want to.” Suguru admits, like under a truth serum, helplessly sincere. “I really fucking want to.” He whispers, and it makes Satoru smile.
“Then kiss me, coward.” He goads, and gets rewarded with a pair of lips right over his own.
It’s a soft kiss. Sweet and closed-mouthed, careful, a real movie sort of first kiss, Satoru thinks. Or he would, if he could think much at all.
This is something new. He’d been getting used to Suguru’s touch, slowly, and in theory, in physicality, one chaste kiss shouldn’t be much.
It registers slowly, the sincerity of it, the inherent intimacy of it, and that’s a little bit new. To be connected like this, by the mouth, Satoru thinks it’s bizarre. He finds a manic sort of satisfaction in the feel of it. He wants bizarre. He wants to lick at the back of Suguru’s teeth, he wants to feel his nails raking behind his thighs, he wants to feel him breathe through his mouth.
He settles, for now, though, just kissing back. Helplessly, he surrenders, kisses back the best he knows how, on instinct alone. Suguru’s lips are warm, soft, careful. Suguru’s entire body bows into him, like he’s crumbling, his exhales devastating like sighs. Suguru kisses him like he’d been starving for it.
Suguru pulls away, but not entirely, lips hovering. Satoru doesn’t know if he opens his eyes, because he himself doesn’t. Instead his pliant mouth opens, and without thinking, guided by need and curiosity, he lets his tongue lull out the slightest bit, traces Suguru’s bottom lip with it. It’s a gesture more obscene than he aimed for, but the heat it curls in his gut feels good.
Suguru shudders, Satoru can feel it everywhere. He exhales and his breath shakes and Satoru opens his mouth wider, lips lingering, puts his tongue further into Suguru’s mouth, like an experiment.
It’s like it takes Suguru a second to catch up, feeling their tongues against each other, their open mouths pressed together, and then he crumbles, grips the back of Satoru’s head and holds him close as he licks into his mouth. It’s like he can feel Suguru turn into liquid and splash on the floor boards, as if out of a bucket or a popped balloon, coming apart devastatingly fast with one prick of a needle.
Satoru moans, guttural and genuine, torn out from deep within him. Suguru holds him by the back of the neck and kisses him like an oasis, like it gets him drunk. He drags a tongue over the roof of Satoru’s mouth and Satoru never would have guessed that feels good, but it feels so good he whimpers, curling deeper into him.
Suguru breaks away to kiss the corner of his mouth, his cheek, his jaw, seemingly unbothered by the bit of spit they made trickle down from their lips. He kisses him almost urgently, over his jaw, down his neck, holding him close and kissing him like he’s mad with it.
Satoru breathes fast, very fast, feels like he could pass out. The hand on Suguru’s neck is now gripping his hair, holding on for dear life, feeling like he’s on the edge of pleasure just from Suguru kissing his neck like it’s a sort of prayer.
“Suguru.” He whimpers, helpless, and Suguru groans. It's entirely too much, and still Satoru could never dream of pulling away.
“I’m sorry.” Suguru whispers, lips still lingering, but with noticeable effort to calm down. “Sorry. You drive me fucking crazy.”
His voice is so raw and honest Satoru shudders. He doesn't know where to hold all of Suguru's want. It makes him preen as much as it makes him anxious to deliver something he doesn't even understand.
"D'you want me to move away?" Suguru whispers by his ear, probably long since caught on Satoru's overwhelmed. Satoru shakes his head, grips his hair tighter. He wants nothing less than the cool air of the room, than distance.
He takes deep breaths, instead, as Suguru stops kissing him, instead just lingers, traces the line of his jaw with his nose, presses his forehead to Satoru's temple. "There you go. I'm sorry, angel, just breathe." He mumbles, almost sweet-nothings.
"Stop apologizing." Satoru mumbles, almost grumpily, as his breathing finally gradually slows down. He feels Suguru smile against his cheek, and kiss him there, then, the flushed skin, so sweet Satoru would feel sick if he didn't feel devastatingly in-love.
He feels like he could gag with all the mushiness climbing up his throat.
When their eyes finally meet again, Satoru still sees heat in the depths of Suguru's eyes, embers. His face had gone gentle, though, void of any expectations, content to just press their foreheads together as if they aren't both aching to somehow morph into one.
Slowly, Satoru reminds himself, and feels stupid about it.
He can't take another minute being this clumsy.
Suguru's right, though. Satoru doesn't mind being seen like this, if Suguru is the one seeing him. He doesn't mind collapsing under all of it if Suguru's catching him.
"You're thinking something corny, I can tell." He adds, almost shy under Suguru's blatantly devoted gaze.
Suguru smiles, mumbles "Can I say it? Do you promise not to punch me in the face?"
Satoru laughs once quietly, smiling back at him, helplessly softened by all of it.
"I make no promises."
Suguru takes both of his hands to Satoru's face, then, and Satoru manages to welcome them, with just one shuddering exhale. It's starting to feel simple, the easy touch, the plain warmth.
Suguru cups his face in both hands and looks at him, not just his eyes, but all of him, and just when Satoru starts beginning to feel silly being held like this, he breathes: "You're so beautiful."
Satoru thinks he'd heard that before, that he's beautiful. Thinks he knew that, at some point, that he'd been told his hair and his eyes and his divinity made him fair, pretty, beautiful.
Suguru says it now and he's so sincere Satoru freezes, a little bit, rendered speechless with his face in Suguru's palms.
He breaks out into a smile slowly, lips twitching to maintain some of his characteristic cockiness, but he knows his face is red and that his smile comes off shy. He laughs, ducking his head once the words register, skin prickling from Suguru's eyes on him.
"That is corny." Satoru says dumbly, into Suguru's neck.
"I mean it." Suguru whispers, his own smile in his voice. He traces fingers up Satoru's spine where he's bowed into him, and Satoru shivers but doesn't twitch away. "Is it too much?" Suguru whispers.
They'd been tangled in some way for so long now Satoru has somehow melted into the prickling warmth of it, went beyond some limit within himself. "Yeah." He admits "But 's- 's good." He whispers.
He tipped over something inside himself, and his core shivers, and he hardly wants it to end, the overstimulation somehow soft in every bit of his body. Satoru's arm twitches uncontrollably and Suguru touches it, seemingly concerned, so Satoru whispers "Keep holding me."
His limbs twitch a little bit and his spine shivers and Suguru wraps his arms around him and holds him there. Upon request, he holds him there like Satoru isn't shaking.
Eventually it warms over. Eventually Suguru stops moving and so Satoru gets used to the press of their bodies— and then they're just two messes of gangly limbs on the school's traditional futons leaning on each other and breathing quietly.
"Can we lay down?" Satoru mumbles eventually, feels Suguru kiss his temple.
Satoru had been so worshiped all his life and none of it had ever felt as sacred as Suguru's endless fondness. He feels sick, he feels small, he feels safe.
It doesn’t take much to get them laying down. Satoru isn’t shaking anymore. He wants to stay like this. He feels raw and he feels tired and he hasn’t felt this safe ever. Ever since he could remember it’s been Infinity and barriers and all sorts of ways to protect his own majesty from bounties and rivals and curses.
Now he melts like a child, safe, warm, content because the most important thing he could lose is holding him tight and keeping him close.
That’s around when he makes some progress in ‘getting used to it’. Not completely, not enough to feel normal with Infinity off and skin against his own, but enough to start craving it so badly it’s embarrassing.
Enough to start relaxing with steady contact, to start dozing off with his head in Suguru’s lap, enough to find out what it is that makes couples on the street hang off of each other’s arms and people in movies hug and kiss and fuck.
The first time anybody else touches him, it’s accompanied by a loud swear and a weirdly underwhelming sensation.
He’s ignoring a mission report he’s too lazy to do in the middle of their common room, and Shoko only gets to begin her sentence before her hand settles fully on Satoru’s shoulder.
“Hey, nerd, I- Woah.” She approached him from behind, settled a hand on his shoulder, and Satoru wants to laugh at the way she pulls her hand back like he burned her. “What the fuck? Are you okay?”
Satoru just shrugs and glances back down to the manga he’d been reading to avoid his work, ankle crossed over his knee. “Yeah. I’m just- doing a new thing.”
“Shutting Infinity off?” Shoko asks, rounding the couch to plop down next to him. “Jesus. Warn me next time. Where did that come from?”
Satoru shrugs and flips a page. “Suguru informed me it’s weird I’ve had it up for like fifteen years.”
“You’ve had it up for fifteen years?” Shoko asks, never dropping her frown of distaste.
Satoru shrugs again “Give or take.”
“And you needed somebody to tell you that’s weird?”
“How was I supposed to know?” Satoru says. Seriously, whats with everyone? Don’t they know him?
“Fuck. Does it feel crazy now?”
“Kinda did at first. But Suguru’s been touching me more,-“
“Ew.”
“-so I think I’m getting more used to it.”
Shoko’s frowns just deepens.
“…Is anyone else allowed to touch you, or just Getou?”
Satoru snorts. “Dude. He hasn’t got, like, a claim on me.”
“He might as well.“
“Piss of. Just say you want a hug.”
“I don’t want a hug.” She says, stubbornly. “I just… am curious.”
Satoru glances at her again, then puts his comic down. “You can’t make fun of me.” He says.
Shoko scoffs. “I’m not that much of an asshole.”
Silence stretches then. Satoru doesn’t know how to go about this, and he and Shoko have too much of a brotherly thing going on to be too sincere about this, so for a moment, they just stare at each other.
“So- what. Can I- Like…” She trails off, frowning even deeper now.
“Just do whatever you would usually. If I had Infinity on, and all.”
Shoko sighs, staring him down, and then, with a weirdly determined expression, just settles down next to him, like she would usually, over Infinity, not uncommon for her to drape herself over her friends as a sign of affection— like a weird grumpy cat.
Satoru tries not to freeze as Shoko’s small frame leans heavily against his arm, her own arms wrapped around her knees.
She feels different than Suguru. Smaller, cooler, less intense. Sweet like a popsicle, kind, light. Her touch feels like something simple, affirmation without asking anything back. Wordless, like how he likes it.
They’re quiet, like that, for a moment. Processing the fabric-clad touch like children sniffing out something new.
Eventually, with a quick sigh out her nose, Shoko’s head drops to his shoulder, a familiar gesture in technicality, but new without Infinity.
Satoru doesn’t start breathing harsh or shake. Maybe because he’s really getting better, or maybe, likely, because Suguru just makes him feel much more than anyone else would. Nonetheless it’s sweet, comforting.
“This is kinda nice.” Shoko says, eventually, quieter, and Satoru can’t help but snort at how she puts it.
“Yeah.” He laughs. “Yeah, I’m finding it usually is.”
It means more than Satoru understands it does, to let friendship in through his Infinity, too. It pulls him together more than he realizes.
On a Thursday afternoon in the common room, Satoru thinks about how much better he understands being alive now than he did just two, three years ago. On their couch in their common room in this lonely dorm in a school with just five students, he finds just that much is enough to make him feel like something that breathes and bleeds.
Satoru has no way of knowing whats supposed to be ‘normal’ behavior. Mostly he lets Suguru address that kind of stuff, morals and customs and everything else civil and boring.
It occurs to him, during this period of growing accustomed to a strange aspect of being a human with human relationships— that Suguru is also an eighteen year old sorcerer, too strong for his own good and too mad to be average, and that he, also, is not a good reference point for what is considered appropriate.
It also occurs to him that he does not care about this much at all. Nothing is easier than melting into this obsession they’ve always shared anyway.
He’d feel stupid about becoming such a thing as clingy, if Suguru weren’t the worse one by far.
Clingy sounds too soft, maybe, though, childish. Suguru presses his nose into the hair behind Satoru’s ear and inhales and holds his waist and Satoru thinks of words more like devotion.
Satoru is still starved for it. He still aches for as much as he can get, he’s still undone by any new touch, any sweet gesture. Weeks pass and he still holds Suguru by the pulse in the backseat. Just to feel it tick.
Sometimes he catches Suguru’s hands shaking with restraint. Suguru noses at the back of his neck, hands at his hips, and Satoru thinks he feels them quiver with the urge to climb up his frame.
Satoru shivers when Suguru’s lips brush his nape, his body filled head to toe with warm pickles, veins live wire. Like his blood’s got champagne bubbles in it, everything buzzing gently.
Satoru leans back into it, abandoning the tea he’d been making them in the dormitory kitchen.
“I’m being nice.” Satoru mumbles, referring to the steaming kettle and two cups with teabags hanging out of them. It’s late, could be past two in the morning, and Satoru thought he was being kind making Suguru tea along with his own. “You’re distracting me.”
“You’re distracting me.” Suguru mumbles into his skin.
Satoru snorts. “Line.”
“Shut up. You like it.”
Satoru leans back further into his touch and supposes Suguru’s right.
Suguru doesn’t do much, just nuzzles the back of his neck, leans in close, but Satoru feels it warm him over.
Impatient, annoyed with this weeks long slow pace, he grabs Suguru’s wrists, tries to guide them further up his body.
Suguru complies, forehead pressed into Satoru’s hair like he’s trying to breathe him in. His fingertips are clumsy as Satoru encourages his hand underneath his t-shirt, but they’re sincere, shaky as they map out the planes of Satoru’s abdomen.
“Is this-“ Okay, he was going to say, probably, but Satoru’s the strongest person alive and he cannot take one more day being handled with this much carefulness, no matter how warm it makes him.
“God, shut the fuck up.” Satoru interrupts, annoyed, shivering already. He turns his head and kisses Suguru over his shoulder.
He’s easy.
It’s stupid, but that’s what he is. Easy for this boy, easy for his touch, easily melted and easily distracted. Suguru’s lips find his and they’ve kissed a couple of times since the first time and Satoru still can’t wrap his head around it. It still makes him dizzy, it still feels like a sort of drug.
He brings a hand to hold Suguru’s face, by his jaw, smushing his cheeks a little bit, and he pushes him away, almost too-forcefully, like he’s having a hard time pulling away himself. He pushes Suguru back until he takes the hint and drops into one of the dining chairs right behind the kitchen counter.
He likes to take in the sight of him, then, sitting down and looking up at Satoru with something like begging in his eyes. Big, blown out pupils, lips red, cheeks soft under Satoru’s fingertips. Satoru can hardly comprehend this type of devotion, these days, can’t shake how different it feels than servants at the clan falling to their knees.
Suguru worships like a god would another, Satoru thinks. With a hint of claim to it.
“You like toying with me.” Suguru concludes, as Satoru keeps holding his face, keeping him looking at him, as if Suguru would even think of glancing away.
“I like that you like me.” Satoru corrects, easily.
“You’re an egomaniac.” Suguru says, as easily, though his voice is a little too breathy to fit their usual banter.
“You’re an enabler.” Satoru says back, and drags a smile out of Suguru.
He shakes his head and grabs a hold of Satoru’s wrist, kisses his hand, his knuckles, slowly, irrationally, like he’d cherish any part of his body available.
Somewhere in the logistics of it, Satoru’s fingertip catches on to Suguru’s lip, and without thinking about it rationally, Satoru acts on his wild, encouraged instinct, and pushes his finger curiously into Suguru’s mouth.
He knew the inside of Suguru’s mouth already. He knew its warm, wet, intimate.
It somehow still entrances him, now, dipping his finger past his lips. The way in which Suguru just keeps his eyes on him as he takes his finger makes Satoru’s knees feel weak. The sight of a part of his own body disappearing into Suguru makes his blood boil sweetly.
He exhales quickly, once, like he’s surprised at the way Suguru welcomes him so easily. He feels a mad urge to push at these new limits, to explore, to see more. To see how far Suguru could be pushed, if his eyes would just keep getting more glazed over and his cheeks redder. What was at the end of that tunnel? What did breaking him look like?
He adds another finger, with no more thinking than the first one. Suguru seems to be letting him explore, blatantly, sitting there with a steady, dark look in his eyes, like he’s still in control, even when his mouth is full of Satoru, lips stretched around his fingers obscenely. Satoru’s never seen a thing like it.
His fingers explore slowly, feel the plush of his tongue, the odd skin of the top of his mouth. His entire fingers fit down his throat and Suguru doesn’t so much as blink. Satoru distantly wonders if that’s due to his technique.
Satoru spreads his fingers apart slowly, vertically, and watches Suguru’s absurdly plaint mouth drop open without a noise, sees his own fingers messed up with Suguru’s spit, pillowed on his tongue. His heart feels like it’s sinking into his body, like all of him is throbbing.
He wants more. Suguru’s taking everything he gives him and Satoru wants to see limits. He pushes his fingers in more, like he’s fucking them in, and Suguru still doesn’t gag— but his expression changes slightly, from his signature, collected one, his brows suddenly twitching upwards slightly, knitting together, like he’s struggling to take him, a little bit, and the sight is so abruptly erotic to Satoru he feels a pang of heat through his entire body, through his clouded mind and now apparent erection, through his every limb.
Satoru's not shy, he doesn’t hide, and Suguru must see his cock twitch in his shorts, but he doesn’t so much as glance away from his face.
“Jesus.” Satoru mumbles, as Suguru takes his wrist again and pulls his fingers out. He follows along easily, breathing hard, not finding it in himself to complain Suguru’s pulling him away.
“Had your fun?” Suguru asks, so deliciously condescending it licks up Satoru’s spine and reminds him of why he’s so terribly in love with such an asshole. His voice is a little ragged, like he needs to clear his throat.
“You look good like that.” Satoru says, plainly, his own voice breathy. Suguru just smiles and kisses his now spit-slick knuckles.
He holds his hand like it’s not damp with his own spit, kisses his wrist, up his forearm, drags him closer. Satoru helplessly lets himself be guided between his legs, his kisses lighting his skin up, even in such plain spots, like his arm.
Suguru’s other hand bunches up the hem of Satoru’s large night shirt and Satoru doesn’t even notice, until his lower stomach is being exposed to the cool air, and Suguru’s leaning down to place a kiss right over his hipbone.
Slow, warm, the kiss bursts through Satoru. He makes a noise, startled, fingers smearing drying dampness on Suguru’s shirt as he clutches at his shoulder for support. Suguru just takes his middle in both hands, holding his shirt up by his sides, and kisses him under the bellybutton again, slow, wet, like he’d kiss his neck.
Satoru holds both of his shoulders and lets his head lull back with a breathy moan.
He laughs weakly as Suguru puts his head under his shirt to kiss further up his stomach. He wants to tell him he’s ridiculous but he’s too torn open to do anything but clutch at his shoulders, and it doesn’t feel ridiculous anyway. It feels terribly good.
“Get your- fuck, get-“ Satoru tries, manages to cross his arms and toss his shirt off his frame, Suguru never moving his lips from Satoru’s heaving ribs once. His hair is, endearingly, a little mused from Satoru’s shirt. “Get your head out of there, that’s s-so stupid- A- ah,-“
Suguru just holds him firmer by the hands on his sides and kisses his stomach, the hard planes of his muscles, like he’s performing some sort of ritual at an altar, desperate and so careful it makes Satoru feel crazy.
He moans, overwhelmed, and into the skin of his torso, Suguru mumbles “Tell me when to stop.”
He says it like a plea, like he needs Satoru to keep him in line because he’s losing his own control.
What a silly thought, that he’d be so undone just with Satoru’s skin— but he is, they both are, ridiculously desperate for something so ordinary and carnal they never noticed they weren’t immune to it.
Suguru probably trusts Satoru would sense if someone were on the first floor of the dormitory in the dead of night, if someone were on their way to see them like this, here. There’s beauty in that, too, in that unspoken permission to make out in the middle of a common living area. Freedom brought by the very divinity that’s been caging them in the first place.
“Do not fucking stop.” Satoru says, would-be exasperated if his throat wasn’t so set on moaning each time Suguru’s lips sucked at his skin. His words are strained and his grip is hard on Suguru’s shoulder, his other gripping his hair in a way he has a sneaking suspicion Suguru likes.
Suguru seems content to do just this, taste out the skin of Satoru’s middle, sigh quietly into his body like he’s satisfied just with the salty taste of him. Satoru squirms and grips his shoulders and feels half-insane as he whispers. “Suguru, c’mon.”
“Mm,” Suguru hums absently, kissing the side of Satoru’s stomach, where the skin is particularly sensitive, almost ticklish. “What?”
“I don’t know. Anything, asshole.” Satoru huffs, feels Suguru smile against his skin. Mean. So so gentle, and so mean, devastating.
He tugs Satoru closer by the thigh, and Satoru only has it in him to feel vaguely concerned for the plain dining room chair they’re both relying on before the feeling of being firmly seated in Suguru’s lap overwhelms him, a shudder wrecking up his spine as his neck bows forward, face curling into Suguru.
“Shit.” He gasps, wet, the chair too narrow for Satoru to support himself by his knees. The only reason his insistent hardness isn’t pressing up against Suguru is because he’s low enough in his lap, would need to tilt his pelvis, but he’s too overwhelmed to move by himself at all anyway.
“Better?” Suguru, mean, whispers by his collarbone, and Satoru cries out way too loudly once he ducks his head down again and takes one nipple between his lips.
That, that’s real pleasure melting down his spine, not just prickles of warmth from intimate touch, but a real point of stimulation, shooting heat down his body and building in his lower stomach like tension, not enough for relief but enough to drive him crazy.
“What the fuck.” He breathes out, curling further into Suguru, holding his hair in a tight grip, keeping his head to his chest, making it clear he wants him right there. Suguru just moans in response, like whatever Satoru says is secondary to the mission he has to taste every bit of his torso.
Satoru whimpers, thighs begging to shake, as Suguru holds him by the waist and kisses at his chest, over the swell of his pectorals, over the middle, kisses almost lewdly over the hollow where his heart is. His mouth is warm and cherishing and damp, and Satoru feels weak with it.
He doesn’t even notice he’s gasping Suguru’s name uselessly, so embarrassingly wrecked from this, until Suguru kisses his neck, whispers into his ear “What do you need, angel?”
Satoru squirms, unsure, overwhelmed. “I- I don’t- F-fuck,”
He moans loudly when Suguru takes his hips and tilts him to grind down against his thigh, once, slow and perfect. That shoots up so much pleasure through him he’d need several minutes to wrap his head around it. For now, it just feels too good to squirm away from. His mind is fogged over with the need for more of that same sweet relief.
He’s already so fucking pent up, he feels on the edge of life. His hips twitch entirely in Suguru’s hold.
“Yeah?” Suguru whispers, mumbled in a breath, and Satoru’s too far gone to hear the blatant arousal in his voice.
He just whimpers, tilts his hips for more, grinds down in almost absent circles, pushing forward. It immediately floods his brain, like a drug, his mouth dropping slack from pleasure. It’s all-consuming, this pleasure, it makes him weightless and formless.
He feels blind, deaf, everything blank for a drawn out moment, except vague chants in his head that seem to be somehow wordless, somehow just strings of want, of good good good good, of more more more more.
His moans catch in his throat and it’s one, two times that he manages to grind down before his pleasure erupts, entire body shaking and curling messily into Suguru as he comes into his sleep shorts, shaking, panting by Suguru’s ear. There’s maybe a distant acknowledgment he’d been under the impression this kind of thing lasted for longer, and that maybe he’d crumbled too fast, but he feels too good to care.
It’s just Suguru, anyway. Suguru won’t judge him, Suguru isn’t timing him, Suguru will hold him together.
It feels like it goes on forever, like he ought to have calmed down multiple times when it just kept going, pleasure in his every pore, raking down his thighs and up his torso, Suguru’s voice somewhere in his ear promising ‘I’ve got you, angel, fuck, there you go.’
By the time Satoru can make himself heave in proper breaths again, it takes awhile to register Suguru’s hand moving between them.
Satoru’s got him in such a tight grip, his slightly taller body curling over his, arm wrapped around his head and shoulders, holding their faces in each other’s necks. He lets his arm loosen just a little bit, just enough to pull away and see Suguru’s face lax as he palms at himself over his own fucking shorts, his hand moving in a hypnotizing rhythm over the hard imprint in his lap. His abdominal muscles clench harshly, his lower body squirming the slightest bit with the pleasure, chasing his own hand as if absently. It’s so stupidly hot Satoru can’t take his eyes off of him, can’t catch his breath.
Again, it’s with zero real thought that Satoru stuffs his fingers into Suguru’s mouth, wanting to reach inside, wanting to feel him warm there. His fingers are violent and intrusive and Suguru just takes them.
His eyelids flutter as his eyes roll back, moaning much more messily than the first time as Satoru pushes his fingers deeper through his mouth. Like he likes the intrusion, like he wants Satoru to know him in each bizarre, carnal way, too.
Satoru presses down on his tongue, holds his mouth open hooked on his bottom teeth, spit trickling past his lips, whispers in his ear desperately “Come, please, I need to see you come.”
Suguru’s eyes are all whites as he stutters to a still, then shakes through it, trashing a little bit as he rides out his own orgasm. Satoru is trying to make himself remove his fingers, give him room to breathe. They still linger on his face though, smearing spit, making a mess of him, of them.
Suguru heaves in shaky breaths, gripping Satoru’s hips, and they curl back into each other. Suguru’s hand moves up his side and Satoru twitches so hard his leg almost kicks out— so Suguru’s touch settles, calm and warm on his hip.
“Sorry.” He mumbles, wrecked. Satoru’s always steadier when the touch on him is constant, firm pressure rather than teasing friction. He relaxes into Suguru’s neck, the sweet heat of his palms. “Jesus.” Suguru coughs.
“I…” Satoru sighs, leaning his forehead on to Suguru’s sweaty neck. He smiles, breathless, mumbles “‘m gonna need to shower again.” He says, and Suguru snorts.
“Can you stand?” Suguru rasps, as genuine as he is teasing. Satoru’s legs shook so bad before he came they’re still kind of twitchy.
Satoru laughs, like that’s a stupid question, even though the answer, when he thinks about it, is “…Probably not, no.”
Suguru smiles in turn, nuzzling his nose to Satoru’s skin, all self-satisfied. He hums. “Nice.”
“Oh, so that’s sexy, now? That I can’t walk?” Satoru asks, like his voice isn’t still a little bit shaky.
“Yeah.” Suguru says easily, nips at the skin of his neck once.
Satoru shivers, gets a clumsy hand on Suguru’s face and pushes him away. “Ah- Suguru, enough-“ He complains, feeling ticklish, sensitive, somehow still playful.
Suguru smiles at him through his fingers, mouths ‘Sorry’ as Satoru moves his hand to touch his face less awkwardly, cupping the side of it gently, like something precious.
“This was pretty stupid.” Satoru mumbles, leaning his forehead to Suguru’s.
“Felt good, though, right?” Suguru says, always somehow game, always pushing him.
Satoru beams, just a tiny bit shakier than usual. “Yeah. Really did.”
Suguru helps him, with devastating amounts tenderness, to stand, with a hand to the small of his back, and only lets him leave for the showers once Satoru assured him he’s not that fragile.
Later, Satoru, showered and no longer shaking, though he does feel oddly raw, as he switches out the black tea he’d been making for the herbal, evening kind, because caffeine makes Suguru too twitchy to fall asleep, Satoru thinks how he wishes the showers were closer to the living room area. How he wants to hear Suguru walking around, showering, brushing his teeth.
For the first time, Satoru dares imagine some sort of space where they’re a little bit more cramped, and a little bit more alone.
It's a startling desire. Though he supposes it makes sense, to eventually start thinking about a life after graduation, one that clearly ought to involve Suguru.
He doesn’t mention it, that night, how stupidly domestic his desires are becoming, for somebody so young and so hotheaded. He just plants his head firmly on Suguru’s chest and falls asleep like he spent the day at the beach, exhausted as if from the sun.
Ever since he grew familiar enough with the touch of his lover to fall asleep touching him, Satoru’s learned a new softness.
He spends the morning drifting through half-sleep, the gentlest kind of it, the one that makes the warmth of his rest into the most enticing, lovely thing, making his blood syrupy, his mind not clearing from the slumbering haze as he dozes, in and out of sleep.
He’s not usually like that, not really. He’s restless, he’s hotheaded, he’s young and brimming with energy. He doesn’t drift through drowsy mornings as if on clouds, he doesn’t feel drugged with just one embrace.
Except Suguru holds him as they sleep, from behind, holds one of his arms bent in front of Satoru, fingers intertwined, and keeps him close to his chest.
Satoru somehow feels both small and celestial.
Suguru, even in his sleep, holds him like he’s yearning. Nose pressed to Satoru’s nape, palms reverent, the way in which he holds him reminiscent of clutching at something deeply precious.
Satoru feels like he’d been hit with a dart, some tranquilizer that makes all his limbs limp, his eyelids heavy. He doesn’t want to move. Suguru’s snoozed his alarm thrice now, with the hand not in Satoru’s gasp, and Satoru’s half content and half dreading the moment Suguru’s lips brush his neck and say,
“We should get up.”
Satoru groans at his murmur, leaning back heavier into him, like he could roll on top of him and stop him from getting up.
Suguru laughs a little bit, voice hoarse from sleep, raising up on his arms and letting Satoru flop onto his back, looking down at him.
Satoru wrinkles his nose, refusing to open his eyes as Suguru’s hair tickles his face a little bit, refusing to give up the warmth of this embrace.
Suguru must pick up his hair to tuck it behind his ear, because it lifts from Satoru's face, as he whispers “‘toru, look at me.”
He says it so quietly, gentle without being too slimy, so dry and soft and lovely to Satoru. His bleary eyes blink open, helpless to reject the invitation of gazing upon Suguru’s face first thing in the morning.
He’s grinning. Small and soft, he’s grinning down at Satoru, all the lines of his face curling perfectly in the morning light, dropping into the delicate slopes of his features, all of him familiar, sweet.
“Hi.” Suguru whispers.
Satoru, never a morning person, just blinks up at him slowly, making some sort of soft noise, sleepy. His brain is too slow, still, to grapple with the sight of Suguru in his bed, with the feel of his body caging him in.
Suguru snickers, looking down at him full of mirth, everything feeling as if draped over with airy linen curtains, spring-like and blurry with the morning softness. "Cute." Suguru mumbles.
Satoru narrows his sleepy eyes at him immediately. "What?"
Suguru, radiating warmth, leans down and engulfs Satoru fuller into the smell of his vaguely-rosemary shampoo, kisses his cheek, dry, cherishing.
"You're cute." Suguru says again, smiling, nose pressed to Satoru's cheek.
"What the fuck." Satoru grumbles, even as his chest immediately fills with the praise, like butterflies, like some deep-set urge to preen and to fluster alike. "That's ridiculous."
Satoru's heard himself be referred to as many things, from divine to godly to sama, but he's never been called something so stupid and small. He's never imagined himself so simple.
He doesn't know why it makes his heart feel larger.
And Suguru, Suguru being clingier in the mornings, less reserved, has been the discovery of a lifetime, Satoru bathing in his attention like a precious, royal sort of pet, spoiled.
He leans his head further back, bearing his neck to Suguru despite his complaints. Suguru kisses it, soft, not putting too much on to Satoru this early in the morning.
"Whatever you say, pretty." Suguru breathes, probably just to be an ass. Satoru can see it, the mischief in his eyes as he pulls away, the kick he gets out of watching him shiver just from some teasing.
Satoru frowns and clamps his own palm over Suguru's mouth, trying not to pout.
"You're making fun of me." He murmurs. Suguru kisses the center of his palm, smile still in his eyes. He takes Satoru's wrist, gently puts it back on the pillow.
"No. I think it's sweet you get flustered." Suguru says, and he's making fun of him, and he's so genuinely endeared that Satoru can see the fondness spilling from his eyes.
Satoru just huffs, a little overwhelmed, feeling, horribly, flustered indeed.
"The strongest sorcerer can blush, isn't that something?" Suguru whispers by his ear.
Satoru manages a laugh, embarrassed, feeling so terribly safe with just Suguru's eyes on him, free to be however weak he needs to be.
He wants to tell Suguru he makes him feel like he's dreaming. He doesn't know how to word that, though, he doesn't know how to be that bare. He thinks maybe Suguru can tell anyway. Because he kisses him, kind and simple, and it's simple, it's so simple, Satoru finds he's had this softness within him all along.
When he looks in the mirror, there's this boy there.
Satoru blinks owlishly at his reflection in the mirror, looks himself up from his feet to his face.
His limbs are long. Overgrown, kind of funny, certainly lanky. They're strong, corded, but in the past two years or so he'd grown too much too quickly for his muscle to catch up, for his strength to distribute. His knees are kind of knobby and his skin is pale. His shirt is wrinkled, and his boxers have this fraying thread by the hem of them.
His face is still a little puffy from sleep, his hair a mess, and his eyes are the only thing about him that he's previously understood.
They're divine and big and unnatural and unordinary and that's something he's always understood.
The rest of him is lanky and boyish and a little bit clumsy and that— that he's never noticed, he thinks. He's never noticed he sits within a body, in a silly sense. He's always been Blue, flying up above heads, this culmination of cursed energy- he's always been this prophecy.
Satoru scratches his stomach, his shirt lifting up, as he stares himself down as if it's the first time he's seeing a reflection.
It's been happening more and more. This layer of himself becoming visible to him. This version of him that houses all that power, that holds it, that's somehow also eighteen years old, and that has every weakness that comes with being such a thing as eighteen years old.
"Satoru?" Suguru frowns at him, poking his head into the bathroom door. His uniform is buttoned up and his hair is in his top knot. "What are you doing? We're leaving in five."
Satoru can't say Contemplating my humanity, he supposes, so he just nods him off.
"Yeah, yeah... 'm on my way."
When Suguru kisses him, Satoru's eyes sometimes roll into the back of his head, behind closed eyelids.
He gets so full of this profound satisfaction he melts with it, overflows with it, feels the world around them become numb as his senses zero in on to Suguru's lips.
It's ridiculous. Suguru kisses him, on Satoru's futon, his shitty fan doing barely anything to cool down the room, and Satoru feels gutted. He feels like his big slimy scorching red guts are spilled down, from his middle, like prey slaughtered in the snow, steaming.
Simply because something inside of him feels so large. So so big, tearing him open and launching him into space.
"You're," Satoru mumbles, as Suguru kisses him, careful, light hands on his hips, kisses fleeting and sweet. "You're holding back on me." Satoru murmurs, through heavy breaths.
Suguru smiles from where he's above him, Satoru leaning back on all the pillows he's collected on his futon in an effort to make it softer. He doesn't say anything, just kisses him even slower.
"I can tell." Satoru adds, a little breathless, grazing Suguru's hands on his hips with his own fingers, feeling the way they're are shaking slightly, as if with restraint.
"I'm being patient." Suguru mumbles back, in this tone that implies he's not satisfied with Satoru's own lack of patience. He kisses his cheek, his jaw, Satoru thoughtlessly letting his head lean back to accommodate him with a quiet sigh.
"God, Suguru-" His breath hitches, lord, his neck is always so sensitive. "I-I want- more," He demands.
He thinks he does. He thinks it's been weeks of learning touch and he thinks he's finally grown mad with the drug of it.
"Greedy." Suguru scolds, with that delicious sliver of mean in his kiss-roughened voice. Satoru shivers, as Suguru's fingers draw small circles over his hips, over his soft cotton shirt.
"You want it too, bastard," Satoru pants. Suguru's kisses are making his neck damp, which is still as weird of a sensation as it is arousing, deeply satisfactory. "I can tell." He breathes, too shaky to come off as confident as he wants it to.
Suguru just hums in reply, seemingly finding discovering more of the skin of Satoru's neck more entertaining than his complaints.
"Do you think I can't take it?" Satoru pants.
"I think," Suguru muses, fingers tightening on Satoru's hips, his open mouth grazing Satoru's neck sweetly, like he's savoring the taste of him. "That you're already shaking." He muses, kisses the low part of his neck, wet and gentle. Then once more, further up. "And that if I stripped you naked and touched you how you want me to, you wouldn't be able to take it." Suguru whispers.
There is some part of Satoru that's wounded pride, at this, that's deeply annoyed anyone would suggest there's something at all he couldn't handle. That part does its best to shine through, despite the way most of his body locks up with bubbling arousal, Suguru's tone so suddenly filthy and so perfectly condescending and so near his ear that Satoru feels it in his dick.
Satoru shifts his head so he coaxes Suguru to look at him, their foreheads hovering. He looks meaningfully into Suguru's dark eyes, sneaks a gentle hand into Suguru's hair and says, careful, "Maybe I want you to make me take it."
Because that's what it is, isn't it? Satoru needs somebody that he trusts enough to take over the decision of vulnerability for him. And he trusts Suguru so, so deeply. He trusts him to break him, and then put him together. He wants Suguru to make him shake in his arms until he can't tell up from down and he wants him to take care of him like that, too. To handle the bodily bits of them as Satoru surrenders his soul in turn.
Suguru's eyes flash, some desperation in them he's not managing to hide.
He's no better than Satoru. He's weak and he's needy and he's all body, all human, all desire.
"Satoru." Suguru mumbles, whatever show he'd been putting on with his confidence melting into something as needy as Satoru. Slowly, but Satoru can see it, dissolving in him.
"I trust you." Satoru manages to whisper, hand in Suguru's hair. It's just a small fraction of all the devotion he feels, that admission of trust. Suguru's irises are big and black, his eyes so full of helpless arousal it's vulnerable. "I trust you," Satoru chokes out again "Hold me down, make me feel good." He whispers against his lips, feeling the most naked he ever has.
"Fuck," Is all Suguru manages before he kisses him, as if a means of distraction from how deeply Satoru's words hit him. It works, of course. Satoru complies, lets his eyes flutter shut, lets his mouth drop open for Suguru's tongue.
"Yeah," Suguru gasps, mostly still into his mouth, their kisses gentle smacking sounds that fill up the room. "Y-yeah, shit, fine, we can do that, we can- mm-"
Suguru loses his words when Satoru loses his need to hear them, instead pulls him in firmer by the hair, kisses him deeper, wetter. He can tell he's making Suguru come apart, with the way he's all torn open already, and it's heady, it feels powerful.
"Just," Suguru manages, indulges in a couple of more kisses before pulling back, settling on his knees slowly, between Satoru's thighs. "At my pace." He gasps, voice still wrecked.
Satoru pants up at him and holds back the need to complain, instead tries to relax, to let Suguru lead the pace, sort of like he'd asked for.
Suguru seems to observe the needy state of him slowly. A roaming hand, climbing up his thigh, sneaking under his shirt, light, just moving his clothes and watching Satoru's abs ripple under his tingling touch like horse skin.
"You like me touching you?" Suguru mumbles, as if he needs to make sure, eyes trained on the planes of Satoru's stomach he'd carelessly exposed to the air. The room is hot, in summer, and it feels good to lift his shirt, feel his stomach cool down, with how unbelievably heated he feels under his skin.
"Obviously." Satoru grits out.
"It's like..." Suguru observes, eyes all captivated as his thumb traces the lines of the muscle on his stomach, gentle, reverent. Like he's admiring some impressive bit of work, something pretty and precious, carved or sculpted. "It's like you're still fighting it, though." Suguru says, and he sounds like he's put it together.
Satoru huffs as his only response, even as something in him relaxes— because he can see it, in Suguru's eyes, that he gets what he needs.
Suguru trails his hand further up, bunching up Satoru's shirt over his heaving chest. Satoru's stomach erupts in goosebumps, just because his fingers graze over his pecs.
"You pretty thing..." Suguru whispers, sounding genuine, entranced. At the words and the way in which he thumbs at Satoru's nipple, hand splayed over his ribs, Satoru moans suddenly, body twitching into a slight arch, into Suguru's hand.
His mind clouds over quickly, again, instinctively pushing his chest into Suguru's hand as his thumb plays almost absently with this sensitive bit of him, making tingles erupt throughout his body and need sharpen in his stomach. "You want me to take care of you?"
Satoru can't reply, tongue feeling stupid in his mouth, so he just stares up at Suguru with big eyes, moaning quiet ahs as Suguru's other hand takes a hold of his bare ribs, too, thumb at his other nipple.
Satoru's honest, desperate reply might be a whimpered Please, but he's not gone enough for that, so instead he just cracks out "Kiss me."
For all Suguru's taking some sort of steady role here, he seems helpless to deny Satoru, ducking down to kiss him messier than before, moaning into each other's mouths like they've been apart for months.
Satoru, against his will, whines in the back of his throat as Suguru pulls away, leaning back, acting like he wants to go back to that awfully slow pace where he's just looking at Satoru, touching him slowly.
Satoru tries to raise up, chase after him, but Suguru puts a warm hand on top of his chest, pushes him back down gently. "Shh, I've got you."
Satoru can't really push back. He's been rendered too dumb. He breathes heavily and looks back at Suguru helplessly, relishing in the palm over his heart.
He likes how messier Suguru is after their kiss. Lips and cheeks redder and hair messier and eyes hazier. He thinks he's being similarly admired, in turn, Suguru's eyes raking over his form, his shirt bunched up over his chest, his probably stupid expression as he pants, feeling his cheeks must be deep crimson by now.
Suguru's gaze is like touch itself, when it trails down his middle, over the path of white hairs leading into his shorts, catching on the bulge in between his legs, subtly, for a second. But Satoru shivers, still, at the way Suguru wets his lips absently, sizing him up, and he wonders if Suguru's sees his cock twitch again just from being observed.
If he does, he doesn't mention it, just looks back up at Satoru's face like he's witnessing a sight more erotic than this ought to be.
"You're so..." He muses, trails off, pulls his hand under his bunched up shirt, further still, tracing his collarbone, climbing up his neck, light, admiring.
Satoru wants to cry. He holds it together.
"'m so what?" He mumbles, despite himself. Suguru acts as if he can't hear him, too engrossed in trailing his hand up to Satoru's chin. The light grip he gets on his jaw, there, makes Satoru dizzy, as Suguru holds his face with no force at all, just observing him, making him flush under the intense stare. Still, Satoru demands "Tell me." He breathes.
"You wanna hear it?" Suguru asks, eyes still absent, like they're too hooked on Satoru's flesh to pay attention to much of anything. His thumb, gently commanding, plays with Satoru's lower lip, making his breath hitch, his eyes flutter. Satoru opens his mouth instinctively and Suguru, as if experimentally, puts his thumb on his tongue, pushes in a little bit.
Satoru moans immediately, overwhelmed, Suguru's taste exploding in his mouth, the lewdness of the gesture clouding his mind over completely.
"That I think you're pretty?" Suguru continues, suddenly hovering closer, his words reaching deep. Satoru moans a sort of pitiful whimper, feeling he reached some limit within himself. Like he's gotten to the furthest point of weakness he's previously known.
He's scared to go deeper. He trusts Suguru to take him.
Suguru pushes his thumb just a tiny bit more, not too firm, but invasive. Whispers again "That I want you so bad I can't think?"
Satoru's too broken apart to pay attention to how needy Suguru himselt seems. Suguru pulls out his thumb and, as if he was just exploring, keeps holding his jaw, smearing spit.
"Then do something." Satoru complains, completely breathless, as Suguru pulls away again, drags his hand out of his shirt. "Fuck. I'm so fucking hard. Suguru, c-c'mon,"
He never even thinks like that, much less says such things, but pride is slowly sinking somewhere where he can't see it, slowly descending into some trench, leaving nothing but need behind.
"Take your shirt off." Suguru says. He says it gently, he's not stern, but it's enough of a command to make Satoru, for some reason, obey the very second it leaves his mouth. He wiggles out of his t-shirt like he'd been impatient waiting for any instruction at all.
He can't figure out why, until Suguru drags another light hand across his bare chest as Satoru settles back down, and whispers, so genuine and so quiet- "Good."
Satoru's blood turns to champagne and that's why, probably. Because he wants to Suguru to be pleased.
Suguru observes him for another silent, almost hesitant second, and then he mumbles, awfully soft, sincere, "'toru, can I really touch you?"
The way Suguru can make him shake with his mean little tone and a hand around his throat, and still be so fucking sweet, makes Satoru insane. He nods messily, immediately. "Yeah. Yeah, fuck, don't ask, don't ask, just- just- O-oh..."
Suguru cups him over his shorts so, so very carefully. Just a steady, warm touch, not too firm but present, grounding. It isn't friction, it doesn't overwhelm him as fast. It's just intimacy. Suguru holding him where he's vulnerable and being kind.
"Y-yeah, I- Ah-" Satoru keeps trying to babble, rolling his hips a little bit into Suguru's palm without even really noticing he's doing it. He whines when Suguru pulls away and Suguru shushes him again, leaning down to kiss his stomach as he takes Satoru's shorts and underwear off in one smooth, slow glide.
Satoru grabs on to his hair and shoulders and heaves up at the ceiling, feeling air hit his dick, feeling Suguru kiss down his stomach, low, under his bellybutton, where white hair grows thicker. He feels dizzy, he feels utterly desperate.
Suguru's hands find his knees and pry his legs apart smoothly, Satoru's limbs following his lead helplessly.
Satoru can't do much but throw his arm over his eyes and lean his head back once Suguru pulls away, to just fucking look at him again.
He holds his thighs open and rubs absent circles in the inner parts of them, sensitive skin tingling with the attention. Satoru knows he's flushed— he's unbelievably hard and he's completely naked and Suguru just looks at him and that makes him squirm.
He shivers lightly as he feels Suguru’s eyes and fingertips explore his body alike, brief but reverent, like he’s observing great art.
“Don’t hide.” Suguru murmurs, and Satoru might have never heard him if he didn’t also reach for his hand, move it from his face carefully, making him face their predicament again.
“There.” Suguru breathes, satisfied, Satoru unable to think of anything to do except breathe heavy and stare back at Suguru, feeling halfway crazy and oddly limp. “You’re…” Suguru muses, quietly, and, like the devil, trails one knuckle up Satoru’s hot, hard length, damp with need and twitching from the brief attention.
Satoru cries out, hands reaching over his shoulders to clutch at the beddings, heat bursting behind his eyes. It’s not enough. It’s not enough, and he wants more, and he’s so unbelievably scared of it.
“Perfect.” Suguru breathes, as if continuing his thought. Satoru makes a sound, at that, one he barely thinks about. “Look at you, you’re fucking perfect.”
“Touch me.” Satoru gasps, impatiently, the plea like the first real crack in him. “Suguru, touch me, touch me for real, I-“
Suguru observes him with that sort of starstruck look he’s been wearing all night, like Satoru’s truly some sort of celestial thing that fell in his lap from the sky, like he’s some blessing.
Then he looks back up at his face, and Satoru gets to see the look in his eyes for a second, just before his own world goes blurry, Suguru’s perfect-burning hand wrapping around his cock, finally touching him like he needs him, slow, slick. Pleasure ripples through him, almost violent, Suguru’s palm just right, his slow drag upwards just filthy enough.
“Yes.” He gasps, arching more, grabbing fistfuls of his sheets.
Suguru touches him too slowly, and too lightly, to really make him cum, even as sensitive as he is. Like he’s really got a sixth sense for him, like he can somehow see exactly where Satoru is with his pleasure and how to keep him where he wants him.
Satoru feels too good to care.
Suguru kisses his neck and Satoru is blind with pleasure, a sweet simmering kind, somehow exactly perfect to him. He’s never felt this way, never felt so simply good his mind went blank.
There’s some distant part of him still capable of being self conscious, grabbing Suguru’s shoulders as the latter moves further up his body, kissing his collarbones. That is vaguely aware he should maybe be participating more in this than just crying limp on his back.
“Suguru,” He slurs, in an attempt to collect himself. Suguru’s palm is so fucking perfect on him, dragging just right, dragging out moan after moan from his throat. “Suguru, I-“
“Shh,” Suguru comforts, quietly, and Satoru can’t focus for long enough to notice how torn open Suguru is himself. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. Let me.”
Satoru whimpers, strained, as if still keeping some bit of himself contained from crying out too loudly, bucking into Suguru’s fist.
Suguru is careful, with the way he handles this, he’s something akin to shy. Except that there’s no shame to it, no hiding— yet something about his inexperience is sweet. His eyes are a little wild, his cheeks deep, deep red, his touch curious and mesmerized.
There’s a gentle kind of shock on his face, the flushed expression of a soul that’s only now really realized what it is to have a body.
“Have you got lube in here?” Suguru whispers. Satoru doesn’t know why the plain, easy question is kind of heady, too. Maybe because of the way his tone is leveled and not implying anything filthy, but his words imply he wants to make a mess of him, right where they lay.
Satoru nods shakily, gesturing to his drawer, and he has to bring his fingers to cage his face away as Suguru makes his grip slick, so much messier than it could ever get spontaneously, and, Jesus, if that doesn’t make Satoru feel aflame.
He feels the wet pleasure in his cheeks, in his chest, in every crevice of his body, as Suguru keeps up his light touch, his teasing level of pleasure.
Satoru thinks he might be embarrassed. He’s coming apart, after all, the blatant way in which he’s enjoying this right there in front of Suguru to see, his entire desperate body, twitching.
Suguru’s still clothed and he’s just touching Satoru lightly, barely even jacking him off, if not for the way he’d made everything fucking wet, and Satoru’s burning, hiding his face. Because Suguru’s sitting right there between his legs and he’s making a mess out of Satoru and he’s watching him become this, silently, gaze inescapable.
Suguru lets him hide for now, it seems, and Satoru finds it’s easier to swim aimless in the pleasure when he can’t see anything, when he’s hidden away and allowed to just be the live wire of his own veins. He almost finds it in himself to relax into the way Suguru touches him, his cock, his thighs, mapping out his lower body like it’s something particularly worth the attention.
He aches, as Suguru just explores him, as if playing with him, as if keeping track of what brief little motion makes what part of his body shiver, like a marionette. He moans quiet and kind of pitiful, feeling so very good and so weak in the same breath.
He aches, and he knows what he wants, and he’s sure as hell not gonna ask for it.
Suguru knows, though.
Because Suguru is half of him, probably, is why he knows, why he can tell. He sneaks slick fingers further in between Satoru’s legs, and Satoru doesn’t uncover his eyes but he feels Suguru look up to his face, anyway, looking for a response to his wordless question.
“…’toru,”
Satoru nods, rapid, shaky, hips canting against Suguru’s fingers the slightest bit already.
“Are you sure?” Suguru asks. He sounds gravely, turned on, so gentle.
Satoru cracks out, more pathetic than he’d ever like to be, “Yes.”
"Look at me," Suguru whispers, tangles his dry hand with Satoru's fingers and just drags them over his head, holding his hands above his pillow.
Satoru can't complain, can't even think about anything at all, because immediately Suguru's flushed, pretty face is hovering above his, focused on his pleasure, and one sweet, slick finger breaches him carefully, slowly.
He can just stare up at Suguru with his eyebrows furrowed and mouth dropping open with a soundless moan. He can’t manage anything else.
He's losing himself to some nebula of intimacy, his body tensing around the intrusion, his mind only coming up with white noise. Suguru's touch is so warm. Satoru barely understood he could be touched there.
"Satoru." Suguru whispers, somewhere by his ear. "You have to breathe."
Satoru takes a shakily inhale, rattling on the way in, and finds he hadn't even noticed how much he was holding his breath until the oxygen floods his brain, somehow amping up the pleasure along with it. He whines quietly, the breaths giving him his voice back.
Suguru kisses his neck, like a distraction, as Satoru focuses on his breathing.
"There you go, angel..." Suguru whispers by his ear, and Satoru feels something in his core relax. Because Suguru's there. Because Suguru's got him and Suguru's making sure it's alright and Suguru is the only one who's seeing him like this— and with the way they're halves, Satoru as comfortable as he would be in solitude.
"Suguru..." He slurs, relaxing slowly into the touch, the striking intrusion of his finger.
"Does it hurt?" Suguru murmurs, his hair tucked behind his ears and flowing down his back, save for that one stubborn bang that's hanging by their faces.
It might have stung, Satoru thinks, at some point when he was too busy processing the mere concept of such intimacy to notice it much. Now it's calmed to a duller stretch, manageable and secondary. He thinks it's silly how Suguru worries about that.
Satoru shakes his head no, and he thinks maybe his gaze lingers on Suguru's lips for a moment too long, his expression turning too inviting, because Suguru kisses him then, firm and perfect.
It's as he kisses him that Suguru starts moving his finger earnestly, with a rhythm to it. He's fucking in kind of shallowly, the drag itself not necessarily as much stimulation as it's just heady. Satoru's brain melts with the rhythm, the filthy morion of it, making his thighs shiver steadily.
His eyes flutter behind his lids, his quiet noises getting swallowed up by Suguru's tongue, greedy in his mouth, their lips so familiar against each other they can grow a little sloppy.
Suguru seems to deem him relaxed enough as they kiss to nudge him with a second finger, and Satoru collects all the braincells he has left to let him in, breathe even as he’s being kisses like doomsday.
Eventually, though, he can’t kiss back anymore. Instead he lets Suguru claim his lax mouth, moaning messily into their mess of spit, as this ache grows inside of him, like dark matter, sucking him in. It starts up even through the sting of the second finger and then doesn’t stop growing, consuming him with every breath he heaves in until his head feels floaty and his need feels bottomless. Like his desire is deepening rapidly.
“Suguru,” He moans again, as Suguru presses his forehead to his temple, as if this is taking a lot out of him, too. He stares down at Satoru with that soft-shocked look of his, obsessed, as if gauging his reactions. “Suguru, fuck.”
“Holy shit.” Suguru mumbles, as Satoru’s eyes flutter to roll back, and Suguru’s fingers pick a rhythm back up.
There’s so much so inherently filthy about such a dull rhythm, like a throbbing heartbeat, slick and warm, fucking into him slowly and unapologetically. Satoru gets lost in the pleasure of it easily.
“You’re so tight inside.” Suguru whispers, like it’s a genuine observation, and Satoru whimpers out-loud, hands winding up clutching at Suguru’s shoulders.
"Fuck. Shut up." Satoru breathes, nails bluntly digging into Suguru's muscle. He's utterly overwhelmed, from each side, his chest feels like it's overflowing and his thighs can't seem to stop shaking. "Don't- hah- don't say that shit."
"Why?" Suguru asks, leaning further in by his ear, his cheek, both of them sweaty and flushed. He fucks his fingers in more meaningfully and Satoru moans again, helpless. "It turns you on, I can't tell." He whispers.
Satoru does not fucking hear him. His fingers graze some spot within him that feels so right, so right, right down to his bone marrow. He's dizzy, Suguru's fingers are so perfect to him and so barely reaching that spot, as if teasing him on purpose.
He closes his eyes, a string of 'ah, ah, ah's starting up from his throat, one he barely hears.
"You look so good like this." Suguru whispers, to no avail. "Fuck, Satoru, you make me insane."
Satoru appreciates the compliments, maybe, somewhere far in the rational backs of his mind. All he manages though, is to look Suguru in the eyes as soberly as he can manage and gasp out. "Deeper. Suguru, I want more."
Suguru groans like Satoru's words are touch, head bowing deeper by his neck, and his fingers reaching in firmer, with renowned vigor, fucking into Satoru.
"Oh shit, oh- please." Satoru gasps out, the plea so sincere he sees Suguru's eyes glint with it.
He hovers over his face, mumbles "You don't need to beg. I'll give it to you, what- whatever you need, what-"
"Fuck me for real, asshole." Satoru manages to grit out, half coherent.
Suguru scoffs a laugh, maybe at Satoru's commitment to complain even while fucked halfway out his mind. His voice is so undeniably turned on, though, the short laugh lands dark and deep into Satoru's guts.
"Anything." Suguru whispers, kissing at Satoru's skin aimlessly, at his neck and collarbones. "Anything." He repeats, and Satoru moans again.
He keeps up a helpless string of noise as Suguru somehow gets out of his pants without pulling his fingers out. Satoru can't really keep track, as hard as he tries to, because Suguru's fingers bump against his most sensitive spot on every trust like a horrible tease— and he's losing his mind.
He's sweaty and he's flushed and his legs are still shaking and he thinks there's three fingers in him now and he feels like he's steadily losing his lucidity, like he's melting into some other creature, something with less thoughts, something made up of pleasure.
His eyes snap open when Suguru's stupidly perfect, long knuckly fingers pull out of him, and his complaints die in his throat when he sees them wrap around Suguru's own cock.
"Fuck." He mumbles, barely audible, panting on his back and watching Suguru's brows furrow, the tops of his cheeks crimson, mouth dropping open just from a few indulgent touches. His hand moves smooth, slick, obscene.
Satoru knows he's only preparing himself but shit, isn't that an image, Suguru's eyes trained on his lower body, his hand around his cock, taking in the sight of him greedily. Like it gets him off.
Someday he'd like to see that too, he thinks, someday soon he'd like for the pleasure to be all about Suguru, to just watch him fall apart. Currently, however, his body is less flesh and more desperation, not much in his mind except for how badly he wants Suguru to do his best trying to have them become one thing conjoined.
"Please," He says, so quietly he more mouths it. Suguru's eyes snap up to him anyway, expression crumbling as he catches sight of his face.
He laughs, then, another quiet huff, as if in disbelief of the state he's put Satoru in.
"Baby." Suguru breathes, and Satoru's breath hitches, at the name and at the feeling of the tip of Suguru's cock leaning on him, almost asking for permission. Suguru’s hand climbs up his chest, traces his collarbones, holds his jaw admiringly. Satoru just pants up at him. "Shit, look at you."
"Please," Satoru croaks, and his voice cracks as Suguru's pushes in slowly. His world tunnels. Suguru's eyes flutter, this air of control slipping off his frame as he sinks into his lover. "Please, please," Satoru whispers mindlessly. Suguru told him he didn't need to beg, but he sure as hell doesn't seem to mind it, crumbling slowly with the heat of Satoru, with the warmth of his pleas. "Please, pleasepleaseplease, yes,"
Suguru's breathing heavily, groaning low and quiet as he pushes in. Satoru's head falls back, eyes rolling into the back of his head, thighs shaking as he feels Suguru finally be as close as he yearns for him to be, reaching within his body, feeling like he's filling his ribcage, sating his soul.
Suguru has to heave in such a large breath once his hips are flush to Satoru it's almost a gasp. Satoru thinks his entire body is shaking at least a little bit. Suguru coaxes his face back towards him with one gentle hand, and lord, isn't he a sight.
He looks down at Satoru with large, large eyes, like his body has knocked the breath out of him, like he can't grapple with all that's under him.
He pulls out slightly, then pushes back in. It's just good at first, and then it’s firmer, and then there is that heady rhythm again, not too firm yet, but sweet and dirty, and then Satoru's gone.
This is what he wanted, isn’t it? To be broken down into the weakest bits of himself, for Suguru to see. To be torn open so somebody else might take a look, and understand.
He doesn't think he remembers how Infinity feels, right now. He doesn't think he understands distance. Suguru's inside him, horribly intimate, invading his space as deeply as he can and doing so with so much care and Satour's gone, he can't think, he feels lightheaded.
Suguru insists on eye contact, foreheads pressed together, watching Satoru's eyes glaze over with his thrusts. "You- God, you feel so fucking good." He says, in a breath. He says it like he hadn't expected it, either. Like he, too, for too long played into this fantasy where they didn't need to be mortal bodies in order to be whole, like they could just be concepts of power, separated by infinity and woven by fate— like it's almost surprises him, how good it feels, how addictive flesh is.
Satoru's hands clutch at Suguru's head, his hair, and they're gripping at each other a little messily, and every drag of friction makes them both a little stupider, and a little needier.
"You- god, look at you, 'toru, you're so beautiful, you feel so good." Suguru babbles above him, and Satoru just holds his eyes for a moment more before his own blur over. Maybe he goes a little cross-eyed, or his lids just flutter, or his eyes roll back again, he doesn’t know— all he knows is that he's too full of pleasure to maintain a steady gaze.
He loses himself, only about half aware of where his limbs are. Suguru holds him, though, cages him in and holds him through it, face hovering close enough for Satoru to never feel too far away, his voice in his ear babbling sweet nothings, how he's pretty, how he's perfect, how he's Suguru's.
Satoru's fucking close. He's been on the edge and denied fall for what feels like hours now, and he's shaking all over, squirming a little bit, and he can't get it past his lips that he needs just a little bit more before Suguru wraps his hand around his cock, as if he could tell.
Satoru cries out, body tensing, like every cell in his body is greedily gathering up the pleasure, anticipating its peak. It feels so good, that's all he can think. It feels so good, he's never felt like this, body made up of pure pleasure. His mind feels blank save for the raw good feeling reaching all the way up into his soul.
He's lost it, he has. He's wound up a mass made up of starlight, for Suguru to clutch on to.
As Satoru hovers in the delicious space right under his peak, he must clench down, because Suguru's world seems to blur over, too, tunnel in on pleasure. He swears, breathless, then thrusts in harder, then again, and it's like he loses control. Like he surrenders, too, to this pleasure, chases it instinctively and hard. Firm and heady and steady, a rhythm born of desperation.
Satoru's moans rattle with the jostling of their bodies, Suguru's own voice growing louder, needier, reaching for him helplessly.
"I'm close," Suguru gasps out, first "I'm close, you feel so fucking good, you're gonna make me cum, you're- 'toru, love- Satoru, Satoru-" He rambles, and that, out of everything, makes pleasure shoot up in Satoru and reach an abrupt ceiling, tipping him over where he lays.
God, it's like he's never known what release really feels like before.
It comes in waves, perfect and all encompassing, making him deaf and blind and still for a moment, like a real little death. Then he shakes, rattles, Suguru's hand somehow still having the mind to milk him through it, his body still moving, thrusting, though it stutters and Satoru feels him pull out suddenly, with an obscene noise, warmth splattering on his abs.
Suguru groans low and almost kind of whiney, like he’s been broken down, too, and Satoru manages to think He came on me before that starts up more pleasure in him, too, his thighs still fucking shaking. It’s like he can’t come down, can’t reach the end of it all.
Even as he stops coming, the atmosphere doesn’t disperse. Suguru’s thumb rubs under his head some more, hand slick until Satoru whimpers and squirms and Suguru finds mercy to let go, leave him to his aftershocks.
Suguru looks at him, with low eyelids. His eyes still swim with a lust that’s not so much the sin it’s supposed to be, but a lust much like devotion, a desire for flesh born from a desire for intimacy. Suguru stares at him with the helpless obedience of a guard dog with a bloody muzzle. Like his devotion is unconditional.
Satoru’s shaky fingers take ahold of his jaw and bring their faces in for a kiss, slow and hot, kind of wet. Suguru moans quietly and sinks into the kiss as if he hand’t just been inside of him, like it’s a wonderful opportunity, this kiss, something he ought to seize.
Satoru sighs, his brain not really truly recalibrating, instead just melting into something more tired and less desperate as they make out slowly, basking in the sweet glow of lingering pleasure, the bone deep satisfaction of it.
“You never took off your shirt.” Satoru complains, his hands on Suguru’s shoulders, lingering.
He doesn’t even think about the touch, now. Like it worked, maybe. Like he tipped over something in himself, broke down into something that’s too human not to be touched.
“I was distracted.” Suguru murmurs to his temple, and then smiles when Satoru does, when he breathes something like a whispered laugh.
Satoru particularly likes it when they kiss while smiling. It makes him feel like mush, and he privately adores it. Now, especially, with all his inhibitions down, laying back like a wreck, spread out on his sheets.
Satoru’s hands wrap themselves properly around Suguru’s shoulders, holding him in a sort of hug, there, all sweaty and sticky, with just one tshirt and zero underwear between the two of them.
Suguru melts, tucks his face into the crook of his neck and holds him back, perhaps equally wrecked.
He doesn’t bother opening his eyes when Suguru kisses his temple, his cheek, slowly pulling away. He feels so content he might be capable of dozing off then and there.
He whines half heartedly when Suguru lifts up a little bit, and Suguru whispers. “I need to clean up. There’s, like, jizz between us.”
Satoru wrinkles his nose, eyes still closed. “Ew. Don’t call it that. I’ll kick you out.”
Suguru laughs quietly like he’s endeared, kisses the bridge of his nose and lifts up, disappearing into the bathroom.
Satoru doesn’t even stay awake for long enough to mind his absence. He blinks and Suguru’s back, wiping his stomach, gathering excess lubricant off his still kind-of-twitchy thighs, kissing the bottom of his ribs a couple of times, dry. Satoru must have fallen asleep for just the couple minutes he would have been gone.
"Why do you look kind of nervous?" Satoru asks, voice gravely and sleepy, looking up at Suguru as the latter traces his skin absently, cleaning them up but lingering on Satoru's flesh like he can't bring himself to move away.
"I'm not nervous." Suguru says. His cheeks are still red, his hair loose and a little messy, and he looks warm and he looks-
"You're flustered." Satoru says, smiling, teasing, a little weak, still wrung out.
Suguru huffs. He sits on the side of the futon, looking down over Satoru's still very naked body, the hand lingering on him dragging over his thigh, hip and stomach, light enough to wake goosebumps back up Satoru's skin. The gentle kind of tingling, like a head-scratch.
"You're naked." Suguru says, like an explanation.
He doesn't really look nervous, per se, but he looks like he can't quite get used to it. To having Satoru like this, to sharing this intimacy, to this last thing that wasn't previously breached between them.
"You got a crush on me, or something?"
Suguru snorts, his exasperated eye roll not managing to hide the fondness in his eyes, even when he throws the clean underwear he brought him at his face.
Satoru laughs, tired but genuine, from his stomach, feeling airy— like he'd been some sort of good kind of gutted, like he's lighter after he'd been torn apart.
Satoru shuffles into his underwear and moves to the side, and Suguru lies down next to him wordlessly. There's never much space at the futons at this school, but they're practiced, by now, to fit in, gangly limbs like puzzle pieces.
Satoru immediately folds himself half over Suguru as the latter lies down, one leg curling over his hips, tucking himself against his shoulder. He sighs in content as Suguru huffs another fond laugh at the way he invades his space. Easily, like he wasn't once scared of this. Like he doesn't have to think, anymore, about where his limbs go.
"Maybe we should shower" Suguru murmurs, though he curls back into Satoru in turn, hands on his waist and in his hair. "We're- kind of sticky."
"Not a chance." Satoru sighs into Suguru's neck.
Suguru cleaned them up, rid them of the most uncomfortable mess, but they're both still kind of sweaty, sticky like teens get on summer days.
It feels good, in a weird way. To be messy, to stick together. To get sweaty and then pass out leaning on each other once they've tired out, like they've been chasing each other in the high grass.
Satoru wakes up being tugged at, somewhere around early morning, grumbling half-asleep as he gets jostled.
He protests his arm being pulled with a weak whine, and he hears Suguru laugh quietly.
"Baby, you're falling off." Suguru whispers, dawn light having grown ripe enough for the heat in the room to go back up. Satoru must have drifted away from Suguru in the heat, winding up half on the cool floor.
"'s too hot." Satoru complains in a slur, and promptly rolls over right back into Suguru's arms. It's way too hot for this, yet he can't help it, loves it, doesn't even mind how suffocatingly warm he is as Suguru's stupidly lovely arms wrap back up around him.
"Might be cooler if we both slept on our own futons."
"You wouldn't dare." Satoru grumbles.
"We should get up soon, anyway." Suguru says again, tucked away somewhere above Satoru's head, the smell of rosemary and the sweet kind of sweat all up in Satoru's face as he hides in his neck.
"How soon?" Satoru asks, eyes closed and words still a little slurred.
"Like, an hour."
Satoru huffs. "I'm sleeping through it, then."
He feels Suguru kiss his sweaty temple, and it's lovely, to feel somebody's blatant fondness for him, even this sweaty and this cranky. It makes him warm from deep within.
"Hey, 'toru?" Suguru whispers by his temple.
"What?" He grumbles, not quite annoyed but not quite pleased his still being stirred.
"I love you."
Satoru untucks his head from Suguru's neck, then, staring up at him, his tired eyes opening as far as they'd go this early in the morning, big and blinking at his lover, their heads side by side on the pillow.
Suguru looks sleepy, too, with his low eyes and smile soft and a little dumb. He doesn't look like he said anything of particular significance, yet he radiates a warmth so tangible it makes Satoru dizzier.
Satoru smiles, slow, small, opens his mouth to reply— but he can't think of anything to say.
He could maybe say something evasive and funny and they'd laugh and kiss and fall back asleep, but he doesn't really want to. His eyes flicker from Suguru's eyes, back and forth, reading into them, and it’s like Suguru hasn't got anything to explain himself either.
He's just looking back at him, so unapologetically soft and unbelievably sincere, and he's smiling a little bit, too, and he's just looking at him, like he's now more content, with the words up in the air.
Satoru saw on TV once, this little funny fluff-bit before commercial breaks, about how if you distract somebody as you hand them something, if you're casual enough, they'll just take the object from you, without even noticing they're holding something.
That's what he feels like, a little bit. Like Suguru just handed him this admission with so little fuss to it he can't do anything but take it, seamlessly, into his palms, hold it carefully and never drop eye contact.
He presses their lips together, first. Slow with sleep and dry, god, it's so simple. It's nothing difficult. They're just two bodies.
"Yeah." He whispers back, tucking his head back down under Suguru's chin. “I love you too.”
In the end, he hadn't had any other ideas. He had no other reply— no reason to reply any other way. He’s at a loss for jokes and excuses alike.
It's nothing they didn't know already, anyway. Suguru kisses his hair as Satoru stubbornly settles for more stolen sleep, and it's no new invention, to love.
It's all encompassing and older than time and greater than any power he understands and it's really nothing new. It's something he'd been born capable of, long before he could see it. It's something soft enough not to run from.