One Year Before

Suguru watches detachedly as Satoru scrubs at the crusted blood around Riko's hairline. The damp tissue he's using is already pink with the blood he's wiped off of the rest of her face, and his fingertips are stained as well, but Satoru doesn't seem to care. He just keeps kneading the balled-up tissue against her scalp, his brow furrowed tightly over his uncovered eyes. Suguru's gaze drops to Riko's face. She almost looks peaceful. She probably would if it weren't for the stiff pallor of her skin and the half-inch hole drilled in her forehead. Oh, and the dried blood crusting in her blouse and hair. And the unnatural stillness of her body.

In fact, she doesn't look peaceful at all. Just dead.

Suguru's gaze snaps over to the morgue entrance as the door is pushed open to admit Matsubara, who is the school's official doctor, and Shoko, who does most of the work. Satoru's eyes are on them, too, his whole frame tensed as he watches their approach.

"How unfortunate," the older woman murmurs, coming to a stop at Riko's head, Shoko stopping half a step behind her. Matsubara reaches a hand out to touch Riko's hair, but Satoru's arm snaps out to hover protectively in front of her, Infinity flickering to life in a broken halo around him.

"You don't touch her," Satoru says, his voice hoarse and quiet, but trembling with intensity. "Only Shoko does."

Shoko's eyes flick over to Suguru to give him a searching look, her brows pinched together, and he offers a tiny shake of his head before dropping her gaze. Matsubara's eyes widen in surprise for a moment, but to her credit, she bows her head in a nod and takes a step back. "Very well. I'll trust you to care for the body then, Shoko." Shoko offers a distracted nod in return, her eyes still on Suguru, and Matsubara turns to leave the morgue, the scuffing of her feet the only sound in the stiff silence.

Once the door has swung shut behind her, Satoru lowers his arm, and Suguru catches the way his fingers tremble as he does so. Infinity dissipates, and Shoko takes a step forward into Satoru's space.

"The hell happened?" she murmurs, her voice torn somewhere between irritation and concern.

Satoru just shakes his head, one hand going to rub at his forehead as he turns away from her and towards Suguru. He motions Suguru toward him with the other hand, and Suguru steps around the end of Riko's table to him.

"Hang on—-" Shoko begins as Satoru claps Suguru on the shoulder, and then the world blinks and they're standing in their dorm hallway. Satoru sways, his back thudding hard against the wall as he digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. A quiet, shaky breath escapes his lips.

Suguru watches him in detached silence for a moment, and then, his body acting on muscle memory more than anything else, he moves past Satoru to open the door to his own bedroom. He shuts the blinds and rolls down the curtain that's clumsily been tacked to the window frame, then yanks back the blankets on the bed. Returning to Satoru, who has turned his face into the wall, his shoulders hunched and trembling, Suguru places his hand lightly on Satoru's upper arm and tugs. Satoru follows him into the bedroom and allows Suguru to push him onto the bed. He curls up on his side without taking his hands away from his eyes, and Suguru pulls the blankets over him. He shuts the door and shoves one of his old uniforms into the crack underneath it, tugging it this way and that until the light from the hallway vanishes completely.

He turns back to Satoru, whose white hair glows in the muted grey light still spilling from the window, and sits at the head of the bed next to him. The mattress dips under his weight, and he hears Satoru's breath shift with a trembling inhale. Satoru had told him once that his presence was more overstimulating than anyone else's because of all the curses taking up space in his body, but that never seemed to mean Satoru didn't want him there when he got like this.

Except there hasn't really been a "like this" before. This is much, much worse.

Suguru can still feel the vestiges of Infinity prickling over Satoru's skin, fragmented and pulsing weakly, like Satoru's trying to drop it but he can't. Suguru's gaze drifts over to Satoru's rounded back, up over his rigid shoulder, to the sliver of his cheek, to the heels of his hands still digging into his eye sockets. They'll have to get him new glasses. But that can happen tomorrow. Suguru pulls the pillow out from behind his back and settles it over Satoru's head, pressing it down firmly until Satoru's hand darts out from under it and grips onto it. Their fingers brush as Suguru takes his hand away, and for the first time in days, he feels Satoru's skin against his own.

It feels wrong.


Months pass, and everything is too much the same just as it's too different. Too much the same, because he's following the neverending cycle that feels less and less like it has a purpose every time he does it; too different, because Satoru's no longer by his side. There's a constant ache, behind his sternum, at the back of his throat, in the base of his stomach, that keeps him awake into the grey pre-dawn hours, his mind treading well-worn labyrinthine paths that have no outlet and no destination. Satoru's gone more often than he isn't, and every time he returns, he's grown more powerful, while Suguru can feel himself stagnating, watching numbly as the distance between them yawns wider and wider.

When Satoru at last masters the constant use of Infinity, Suguru knows he no longer needs him, that they're not the strongest anymore. Just Satoru.

He expects it to hurt, expects the ache to choke him, to force him to a standstill. Maybe it does, deep down, beyond his ability to care. But it's a relief, too.


One Day Before

Suguru looks down at the curse he's just exorcised, just a diseased little orb in his hand. The thought of swallowing it, of feeling its residue coat his throat with bile, is too much, so he tells himself he'll swallow it on his way back to the school. He travels all the way back to campus with it in his hand, cursed energy coiling and spiking against his fingers, walks all the way up the stairs, and then stops short at the barrier. As he looks into the curse's murky depths, already feeling the acrid sludge it will leave behind on his tongue, the painful lump it will make travelling down his throat, he finds he still can't make himself swallow it.

So he stands there instead, waiting. Waiting for nothing, because no one sees and no one cares and he might as well throw himself down the stairs for all the good he's ever going to do with his life. His fingers tighten around the curse, flesh turning white in stark contrast to the blue-black orb, and he rubs at his temples with his other hand. The ache has spread from his throat to the backs of his eyes, dull and persistent. It's been there for so long now that he forgets to notice it more often than not.

The air behind him shifts and stretches, and then Satoru's unmistakable presence pops into being, the edges of his cursed energy harsh against Suguru's awareness. "Aw man, misjudged the distance."

Suguru clutches the curse tighter as he feels Satoru's attention land on him. "Hey, what are you doing out here?" Satoru closes the distance between them, and Suguru's shoulders hunch in anticipation of an obnoxiously friendly arm draped around them, but it never falls. Satoru just comes to stand at his side and looks over at him, the blue of his eyes over his sunglasses visible even in Suguru's peripheral vision.

Suguru just shakes his head, his unfocused gaze boring into the blindingly white pavement stones in front of his feet. He's too tired to put on the mask, too tired to joke around, too tired even to come up with a lie.

"You gonna eat that, or what?"

Suguru's eyes drop to the curse in his hand. Nausea twists in his stomach, and, slowly, he shakes his head again.

Satoru's hand enters his field of vision, and his long fingers curl around the curse. Their fingers overlap around the orb, but Suguru can only feel the cold, impersonal distance of Infinity instead of Satoru's skin on his. Satoru pries the curse out of his hand, and, dully, Suguru lets him, his eyes tracking the sphere as Satoru pulls it closer to himself. Satoru's fingers tighten briefly around it, his brows furrowing with concentration, but nothing happens. After a moment, Satoru lets out a huff. "Dammit, really thought I had it this time." Then there's a bright flash of red and the curse explodes, leaving only a cloud of dust in its wake.

There's a beat of silence, and belatedly, Suguru realizes he was supposed to call Satoru a show-off for trying to use Purple on a totally neutralized curse instead of Red or Blue. Their relationship is like that more now, missing beats that would have been second nature before. Still, at least he doesn't have to eat the curse. It was only a second grade, anyway, and he has plenty of those. More than enough. More than he could ever possibly need.

He stiffens as Satoru's hand makes contact with his shoulder— there it is —but he doesn't shrug it off. "Come on," Satoru says, and then they're standing in the relative darkness of their dorm hallway. Suguru blinks slowly as his eyes adjust.

"Got it that time!" Satoru says cheerfully.

"I need to go meet with Yaga," Suguru says, because that's what he's supposed to say.

"Meh, he can wait." Satoru's arm makes it the rest of the way around his shoulders, and Suguru allows himself to be shepherded into Satoru's room. Satoru kicks the door shut behind them and strong-arms Suguru over to the bed, where they sit down heavily together. Satoru's arm drops from his shoulders, then, and he takes off his glasses, reaching past Suguru to set them on the bedside table.

As Satoru pulls his arm back, Suguru lifts a hand to fix a stray hair poking at his eyeball, but he misjudges the distance and his knuckles brush against Satoru's pinkie. He freezes, then, staring motionless down at his hand, because he had touched Satoru's skin. Not Infinity, his skin . It's been—so long since the last time he felt Satoru's skin, since he's felt anyone's skin. His throat closes around a thick lump, and he clenches his fist as tears start to prick at the backs of his eyes. Keep it together keep it together keep it together.

"Yo, you good?"

He should say he's fine, but his lips won't form the words and his voice wouldn't put any strength behind them even if they could. So he doesn't say anything at all, just presses his thumb to the knuckle of his index finger where their hands had touched.

"Geez, I don't even get an answer? And here I thought we were friends."

Suguru reaches over before he can stop himself and pokes Satoru's hand, and he feels skin again. "Why isn't your Infinity up?"

Satoru looks at him like he's crazy. "Because it's you?"

Because it's you, like it's so simple. If he knew— "Someone could show up and try to kill you."

"Then you'll protect me until I get it up, right? I'm really fast at it now, you wouldn't have to hold them off for that long."

"You shouldn't—" put so much trust in me, but he doesn't say it, can't say it, because he has to believe he couldn't ever hurt Satoru, even as everyone else is turning into fair game.

Satoru's looking at him weird, he knows he is, and he knows he should put the mask back on, pretend everything's normal and fine because Satoru can't help him, not with this.

"I mean, if you're that stressed about it, I'll turn it back on."

"No."

Instead of looking Satoru in the eyes and smiling and saying everything's fine, which would stop the questions even if Satoru didn't believe him; instead of standing up and walking out so he can go report to Yaga; instead of just fucking leaving the school altogether; instead of doing literally anything else , Suguru grabs Satoru's hand. His fingers are cold, and his palm is clammy where it comes into contact with the back of Satoru's hand, but he clutches it tightly anyway, the lump in his throat rising up to choke him, because it's still skin. It wouldn't be if Satoru knew the paths Suguru's mind treads in the middle of the night, and more and more often, in broad daylight, and it might never be again, so Suguru squeezes Satoru's hand tighter because right now it is still skin.

Satoru stiffens a little, and Suguru's not looking at him, can't look at him, but he can imagine the way Satoru's eyes have widened, the way they're flicking back and forth as he processes the situation. Suguru's leaving after this, has to leave, because this is the closest he's ever come to a confession and some awful, wrenching feeling in his gut tells him Satoru knows that, on some level at least. The silence is stiff and heavy, almost enough to choke on.

And then Satoru leans back to rest his weight on the heel of his other hand, his slouched posture giving the illusion that all the tension has left his body, and he wriggles his hand around in Suguru's grip until it's face up. His long fingers curl around the side of Suguru's hand and give a sharp squeeze, and Suguru's eyes flick over to their joined hands. Satoru lifts their hands and waves them around a bit. "If I'd known turning Infinity off was the way to get you to hold my hand, I would have done it sooner."

Suguru's gaze, lifted against his will by their raised hands, at last shifts to Satoru's face. There's a mocking tilt to Satoru's lips, but something unmistakably serious in the set of his brows, in the tilt of his head. And his eyes, god, his eyes. Unnervingly blue, studded with flecks of so many different shades, probably the most interesting pair of eyes ever gifted to a human being, and they're watching him steadily. And in that moment, Suguru thinks fuck it , fuck it because he won't, can't be here for much longer, fuck it because nothing matters anymore, and most of all, fuck it because Satoru's skin is soft and warm and he needs to feel more of it before he dies.

He reaches out with his other hand and drags his fingers over Satoru's hand, his wrist, underneath his sleeve as far up as he can go, and it's not enough, it's not fucking enough , but this is all he gets. This is all he gets.

But then the fingers of Satoru's free hand are skimming up Suguru's arm, his shoulder, his neck. They grip the back of his head, tangling in the long, dark hair at the nape of his neck, and their eyes lock for an instant, fractal blue to deep black, before Satoru's lips are on his. A sharp gasp hisses through Suguru's nose as the strength behind the kiss forces him backwards, off-balance, and he grabs tighter onto Satoru's arm to stay upright. Satoru tilts his head to deepen the kiss, and Suguru pushes against him in response. Satoru's lips are warm and soft on his, so so warm, and then there's a flash of wet as Satoru's lips part slightly.

Suguru pulls back from the kiss, eyes wide with shock, his heart hammering in his throat. Satoru loosens his grip on the back of his neck, but the intensity in his gaze keeps Suguru frozen to the spot. Satoru has never once looked at him like that before, like he's desperate to take and to give and to feel, and god, Suguru can't make himself not want all of that anymore. He leans in again, and they meet closer to the middle this time, the kisses harder and more demanding. Satoru curls his fingers into Suguru's hair and tugs, and Suguru breaks the kiss to push his head back into the pressure. Satoru ducks his head and presses his lips to the underside of Suguru's jaw, and Suguru arches his neck to give him access, each breath shuddering in and out between his parted lips.

Satoru peppers a trail of kisses down the side of Suguru's neck, one thumb dipping down to push Suguru's collar out of the way. Fingers trembling, Suguru lets go of Satoru's hand and reaches up to undo his collar button. Satoru pulls away from his neck and bats Suguru's hands away to work at the button himself. Suguru's fingers drop to undo the second button and tug down the zipper, and then Satoru is pushing his uniform top off of his shoulders and down his arms. Suguru clumsily works his hands free of it, and then Satoru tosses it to the foot of the bed. Satoru presses forward, then, and Suguru's breath hitches as one of Satoru's hands makes its way under the hem of his undershirt to grip his waist.

Satoru kisses him again, and Suguru fumbles his way to Satoru's collar. He has to pull away for a moment to get the buttons undone, but Satoru just goes back to his neck, the collar of the undershirt allowing him to make it all the way down to Suguru's shoulder. Suguru sucks in a breath when he feels Satoru's teeth pinch the sensitive skin, and his hands go still at the top of Satoru's zipper. Impatiently, Satoru slips his hand out from under Suguru's shirt and unzips his uniform himself, shrugging it off and throwing it on the floor. Their lips meet again, sloppy and off-center, before Satoru's hands are at the hem of Suguru's undershirt again, tugging the fabric upward. Breathlessly, Suguru helps him get it off, and the collar catches on his bun and pulls it partially undone. Suguru works both hands back into Suguru's hair as they kiss, and the bun comes the rest of the way undone, his hair spilling over his shoulders.

Suguru blindly grabs at the bottom of Satoru's undershirt, and Satoru pulls back just long enough for him to pull it over his head before their lips are crashing together again. Suguru's fingers skim over Satoru's waist, then up to his back, fingertips digging into Satoru's bare skin as he presses their bodies together. Satoru arches into the touch, and then their chests, sweaty and heaving, are bumping up against each other. Suguru pulls him in tighter, only knowing he needs more , and then their entire torsos are pressed together until each breath has to be given by one and taken by the other and it's too much.

A broken sob bubbles up in Suguru's throat, and he pulls back as it forces its way past his lips in a fractured breath. Tears are stinging at his eyes, and god fuck, this is all wrong. He shoves his face into Satoru's shoulder, his chest seizing with another sob, and Satoru stiffens against him. Suguru's eyes widen, unseeing gaze darting back and forth over the wall behind Satoru, and he goes absolutely still as the sickening realization starts to sink in.

He knew. He knew Satoru couldn't be relied on like this. He knew Satoru could never find out. He knew Satoru wasn't ready, would never be ready, for this.

He's fucked up, let everything come too close to the surface. And now it's too fucking late.

His entire frame shaking with numbed horror, Suguru pulls away from Satoru, who offers no resistance, and grabs his white undershirt from behind him. He pulls it over his head and stands, keeping his gaze turned away from Satoru's face as he walks to the door and pulls it open. There's a small sound from behind him, and for a split second, he freezes, thinking that maybe, somehow, Satoru might have said something, might not want him to leave. But the silence is crushingly absolute, and Suguru steps over the threshold and shuts the door behind him, chest aching so deeply he can't breathe.


Ten Years After

In the broken lull that follows Satoru's quiet words, Suguru remembers one year of distrust, one year of inseparability, one year of estrangement, ten years of silence, and one night of shattered intimacy. He pulls his trembling fingers away from the stump of his shoulder one by one, a pained breath hissing through his teeth, and slowly reaches his hand out to Satoru. He watches his blood-soaked fingertips cross over from the shadows into the light of the setting sun, his vision blurring and each inhale more effort than the last.

His eyes flick up to Satoru's face, who is watching him silently, impassively, his blue eyes shadowed and the irises almost purple in the orange light. Satoru's gaze drops to his hand, the back to his face. Suguru's breath rasps out painfully in the silence as he waits.

And then, slowly, Satoru reaches his hand out in return.

Their fingertips brush.

And it is skin.