Chapter Text
He feels lighter than he has in months now.
Suguru is exhausted, in all truth, and he really kind of just wants to go take a damn nap, but he feels better than the poisonous thing he was even hours ago. Somewhere after the twins, thoughts about his parents all became laced with arsenic, and it’s only now that they’ve finally drawn the toxin from the air that he feels like he can breathe.
“Suguru,” his mother murmurs, low beneath the simmering noise of Satoru calling Shoko to bring the kids back to the house. Her delicate fingers brush another strand of hair away from his brow bone, her scent the same as he’s always remembered it to be when she never buys more than three specific perfumes.
He hums, refusing to open his eyes and leave the moment, because he feels more like a kid sat here pressing his face into his mother’s stomach than he has in almost a year. It’s nice, something like a delicacy, even though the thin carpet doesn’t do much to cushion his knees where he kneels, and his arms are stiff from wrapping around her middle. He doesn’t care at all. It’s kind.
“I have a gift for you, later.” She strokes through his hair again, the mesmerized motion of her fingers still the same as the first time she plucked a camelia blossom from it. “Remind me to give it to you tonight.”
“Okay,” he agrees, and sinks further into the moment, the closest to peace he’s gotten in a long while.
Shoko and Utahime are bringing the kids back via school car, so they won’t be back at the house for an hour or two, they’re informed. Yaga decided to tag along, since he was already there when they took the car. Naturally, Satoru tells them, Kento and Yu also decided to hitch a ride because to quote ever grumpy-I-am-not-a-grouch Nanami Kento, ‘I fucking hate the dorm’s kitchen and you’re rich so yours is better no I’m not sharing dinner.’ Everyone knows he’s sharing dinner.
“Oh my,” his father exhales, peering into Nanako’s room, eyes straying immediately to the parted fusuma doors leading into Mimiko’s.
It must be some sort of sight, irrefutable proof of just how rich Satoru really is. God knows he’d struggled just doing Megumi and Tsumiki’s rooms the first time. ‘Scratch that,’ Suguru thinks, tilting into the sidewall as his parents look but carefully don’t touch, ‘the kitchen was the worst.’ Did he love decorating it? Yes. Did he perchance have a meltdown or two over the price tag? Also yes.
“This is…kind of incredible,” Emiko mumbles, struck speechless as she looks around. At least the money thing is probably genetic.
The twins’ rooms are certainly a sight to behold, though at present, they don’t hold a real candle to Tsumiki’s. Nanako’s is a calm, mellow yellow, her bed a light walnut wood at the back of the right wall next to the window. It’s a mirror opposite to Mimiko’s, since they put their beds facing each other to have a larger combined room.
They each have a large cream rug on either side of the sliding doors, making it look like one large rug when they’re partially open. Nanako’s desk and wardrobe are both similar woods to her bed, and most of her decorations so far have turned out to be some degree of orange. In contrast, her sister has fully settled into the dark wood, purple theme her walls absolutely ooze. There’s purple for her bed, for her pillows, for way too many of the clothes in her closet, since she got the slightly bigger room and thus the walk-in wardrobe.
“Nah,” Satoru clucks, turning on one heel to lead their wide eyed party to the other hallway. “Come look at Tsumiki’s. That girl has been driving me nuts recently with how she just needs every book she sees.”
Suguru follows along, their hands ever clasped together since realigning into orbit, and he’s content to feel kind of akin to a wayward moon chasing after his earth. Satoru’s there, Infinity a brush along his skin like the cool wash of water. Nothing can hurt him. Nothing can hurt them.
They talk for a while after, carefully steering clear of anything truthfully heavy- easy enough when thirty minutes pass easily as his mother gushes her heart out over how cute the kids’ rooms are.
“How the hell did you afford all of it? I know you’ve got money, but dear god some of that furniture is expensive,” she gapes, having winded herself into silence, and next to him, Satoru only grins.
“Oh, you know. Facebook stocks are pretty lucrative right now.” His smile looks a lot more sharkish than Satoruish. Suguru rolls his eyes and half-heartedly gives him a kick underneath the table.
They sit around, have tea, wait for the knock on the door, and Suguru breathes, and Suguru is okay. It’s kind of a novel feeling, he muses, sipping at lukewarm tea from the cups Satoru bought forever ago. It reminds him a little of the hours after their trial two months back, of coming home, sitting down with Yu and Kento, talking about nothing. Looming beneath the inevitable of what they’d done and yet not feeling pressured by it.
Feeling free, instead, because nothing could possibly make them bow.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go lay down?” Satoru asks, nose bumping along his cheek as he leans close where they’re sat next to each other, and Suguru only hums, eyes persistently keeping shut. “Suguru,” he whines, gently turning his face to the side with a hand on his chin. “You look so tired, though.”
He does let his eyes slip open then, just a sliver, enough to roam over the buoyed concern on Satoru’s pretty face. How his lips slant, how his eyes narrow. You look tired, he says, but he can see the way those blue eyes map his soul, and so he knows Satoru isn’t talking about his face.
“I’m fine,” Suguru assures, though he’s quieter than normal, worn down even if he won’t admit to it. He’s exhausted, and with good reason. There’s been a growing pressure of tension he’s been carrying since that chilly night in early May, maybe even long before it. It’s only been broken now, after weeks and weeks of carrying it. Of course he’s tired.
“If you’re tired you need to go lay down,” his mother interjects, that demanding concern he got so used to while growing up raising sparks along his hackles. “What if you get sick, or you stress yourself? You have to take care of yourself, Suguru.” She opens her lips to admonish something more, but Suguru never hears it.
“Okaa-san,” Satoru tones, pitched low in his throat and a honey warm warning. He smiles, placid and chilly. “No,” he says, barely shaking his head. “This won’t work until old habits die, will it?”
Isamu sips loudly from his tea, a gesture Suguru has always partly loathed, partly loved, because he always times it to be incredibly awkward for whoever is getting the dressing down of the night. In his father’s favor, it is usually directed at his mother.
“...Oh, r-right,” she stutters, a wobbly smile matching the flush suddenly riding high on her cheeks. “...Sorry, Suguru. I guess I’ve, uh, got a few to break, huh?”
He hums, noncommittal, easing back from the tension his shoulders want to strain with as Satoru smoothes a palm down his lower spine. “As long as you try,” he murmurs, more tired than he thinks he might have ever been before.
Deft fingers take the cup from his hands, and even if he knows Satoru’s next words, he still fights the weight to his heavy eyelids.
“Come sit on the couch with me,” he says, soft in the molasses silence. “You’ll still be right here when the kids arrive, that way.” Blue crinkles as Satoru smiles at him, amused even though to his parents it probably looks sickeningly sweet. With a put out sigh, Suguru rolls his eyes, but he gets up anyway.
“Fine,” he mutters, because it is what he wants, and it does mean he can doze guilt free. He’s happy to jostle when Satoru immediately follows him, knocking their hips together and leaving their parents to catch up eventually when their worldviews finally recalibrate.
It’s only as they settle that Isamu moves, leaving Emiko sat at the kitchen table to observe as he takes the cushion over from where he stretches out on most of the sofa, using Satoru’s lap as a pillow. He and his father almost immediately strike up another inane conversation about the physics of his technique, and Suguru shuts his eyes, content to listen.
His mother doesn’t move for a while, simply watching on. Suguru doesn’t fault her for it. He learned how to change once, too, so he knows it’s hard.
As long as she tries, he thinks he can be okay.
“He’s been sleeping badly,” Satoru explains, when Isamu gestures to Suguru, deep in a doze not even ten minutes after laying down. “We’ve kind of got a lot going on you two don’t know about.”
“Clearly,” Isamu jokes, wry but fond. “Does it have anything to do with the winter you came home hurt?” His eyes are dark, oddly knowing, so like Suguru that for a moment, Satoru forgets and glosses over how it’s said- you came home. Like it’s his, too.
“Not exactly,” Satoru stumbles, words tripping slightly as he recalibrates, always giddy when something like it slips out of one of their mouths, a shifting discomfort warring with the joy over it anyway. “I suppose it’s similar,” he muses, unsure how closely he wants to allude to Kenjaku to Isamu when any knowledge is dangerous knowledge.
His father-in-law opens his mouth, maybe to ask more, maybe to let it go, and is royally interrupted, because naturally, that’s when Yaga knocks on the door.
‘Perfect timing,’ Satoru thinks, sardonic when he’s relieved to have the conversation cut into.
“We’re home!” Sensei calls, gruff voice carrying loud as he unlocks the door with his own key- first time for everything, and all. “Kento and Yu tagged along.” Satoru turns to watch the party pour in through the front door, shielded from his non-synergistic sight by the wooden walls of the front hallway. “Where the hell is my agreed bourbon, Satoru?” He grumbles, heavy gait preceding him as he all but stomps into the sitting room, a small bag hanging from one hand.
Behind him, Shoko and Tsumiki laugh, Utahime scoffing like she’s not an absolute lightweight. Careful to set Suguru’s head down gently, he pries away from him to stand, giving both Isamu and Emiko a wink as he rounds the couch.
Yaga grinds to a halt when he sees the both of them in the house, Panda asleep in his arms and a hot flash of blush burnishing his skin darker. “That was not the first impression I wanted to make,” he mutters, mortified, and Satoru laughs loudly amid the dual squeals Tsumiki and Nanako shriek with when they see him.
“Tou-ru!” They yell, running on socked feet to come barreling into his legs, and he only grins wide, dropping to his knees to scoop them up in a welcome hug.
“My favorite girls!” He crows, catching Shoko’s unimpressed grunt with glee. “How was your aunt’s?” Satoru asks, leaning back to actually look at them. Nanako is excited, clearly having had a good time, though Tsumiki sorely puts her to shame nearly vibrating in place.
“So much fun!” She bursts, like she just can’t contain herself. “We did so much stuff, it was so cool, Utahime-ba taught us scales and Ba-chan let me do a DNA experiment on an onion!” She rambles, gasping for breath like she’s just run a mile.
“Wicked,” Satoru responds, pinching her cheeks to stretch them out since he won’t ruffle up her perfectly styled pigtails and ruin them. “What about you, Mimiko?” He asks, looking up to where she’s stilled against Utahime’s leg, eyes on their visitors with obvious uncertainty.
“...I had fun,” she murmurs, quiet where she’s wary, and following her train of sight, both Nanako and Tsumiki fall still in suit.
With a mild clatter, Emiko shoves out of the kitchen’s doorway, clearly giddy at the sight of the kids in person considering how cute they are, but nervous, too. Isamu stays firmly planted on the couch, one hand on Suguru’s shoulder and expression fondly curious as he watches on.
“Who’s that?” Megumi blurts, only brave because he’s still sat in Shoko’s arms, something defensive on his face as he both cowers into her and defiantly shoves his chin up.
“That,” Satoru begins, drawing Nanako closer when she starts to fold in on herself, “is Suguru’s mom and dad. Getou Emiko and Isamu. They’re your grandparents.”
“Really?” Tsumiki pipes up, the only kid genuinely unafraid of strangers. She peers around him like he’s a doorpost, hands on his shoulder as she nudges closer. “You didn’t say they were coming,” she whispers against his ear- kid whispers, considering it’s loud enough for everyone to hear it.
“We didn’t know,” Satoru replies, “but we’re happy they’re here. They’re excited to meet you four.” And it’s as simple as that.
“Uhm- Hi!” Tsumiki chimes, taking a few steps from him as she holds out her hand like she’s seen Suguru do when he greets Tamaki, big brown eyes wide and hopeful as she barrels ahead. “I’m Gojo Tsumiki. Yaga’s my ojii-chan too, you know. It’s, uhm. It’s nice to meet you.”
Without a word, Emiko covers her lips with one palm, slow as she sinks to a crouch. Like she can’t quite believe what she’s looking at is real.
“It’s so nice to meet you, too,” she says, voice wavering as she smiles, delicate and wobbly as she clasps Tsumiki’s hand in both of her own. “I’m Emiko. But, you could call me Baa-chan, if you’d like?” She offers, tentative and hopeful, and Satoru is ever grateful for Tsumiki and all that she is when she only lights up like she was just given the world.
“Tou-san!” She exclaims, turning from Emiko to look at Suguru where he groggily sits up from the couch cushions, eyes squinted. “Look! I have two grandparents now!”
Abruptly, he snorts, covering his face in one hand as he sorely laughs. “Guess so,” Suguru muses, hanging over the back of the couch as Tsumiki all but skips over to him. Guilessly, she throws her arms up, and without even a word Suguru swings her up with him, seemingly content pressing a kiss to her forehead and absent mindedly smoothing the hem of her dress like it’s an ingrained sort of habit.
“Yaga Masamichi,” Sensei says, voice quieter off to the side as he introduces himself to Emiko, his handshake ever too firm even holding Panda- thankfully swaddled enough in blankets his face isn’t immediately visible just yet. “I was the boys’ teacher throughout highschool. I’m deeply apologetic Satoru let our first introduction be so terrible.” She laughs a little, clearly amused as much as she’s overwhelmed. “It’s good to meet you, Getou-san.”
“Oh, please,” she says, amid Tsumiki loudly introducing herself to Isamu, and Shoko bickering with Megumi about being put down to go see Suguru. “Just Emiko is fine.”
Yaga dips his head, and pointedly doesn’t comply.
“Will they like us?” Mimiko asks him, having sidled away from Utahime while Tsumiki was talking, and Satoru hums.
“Yes,” he says, definitive, with no room for doubt. “They loved you the moment we showed them a photo. They’ve loved me since I was a child.”
Nanako and her exchange a glance, one that’s packed with unspoken words and experiences he’ll never know the names of. They seem to come to an agreement, because they each take one of his hands, trying to look brave even though they’re not.
“I wanna meet them,” Nanako hushes, and Satoru gives her hand a squeeze where she’s white knuckled onto his own. On his other side, Mimiko nods.
“Okaa-san,” Satoru calls, and Emiko looks away from Yaga to look at him, surprise washing over her features even though she’s quick to hide it at the sight of Mimiko and Nanako squished into his sides. “These are the twins, Nanako,” Satoru introduces, tugging on Nanako’s hand, “and Mimiko,” he finishes, tugging on hers.
“Hello,” Emiko greets, trying so hard to be tentative when it’s clear to him that she’s about to burst from how excited and relieved she must feel. “It’s so nice to meet Suguru’s daughters. You’re both so identical!” She tries, and Satoru almost wants to laugh, because it makes the twins absolutely preen.
“You think?” Nanako asks, shy, and Emiko nods.
“Yes. I can only tell you apart by your hair,” she lies, when they aren’t identical in the slightest save their noses.
The front door slamming shut makes them both jump, Kento’s loud yelling only intercepted by Shoko’s obnoxious laughter. “-swear to god!” He shouts, glaring over his shoulder at where Yu is probably hauling things for him. “I said I’m not making fucking donuts. You know I hate the fryer grease-!”
“You two idiots-!” She jeers, cackling like a moron amid Megumi’s loud demands for the swear jar. Kento shoves through the mild crowd in the hallway, only to come to an abrupt halt, a stand mixer of all things held in his straining arms and eyes widening in panic when he realizes he has an audience.
On the couch, Suguru’s face flames red with his effort not to guffaw, and Satoru is the first to admit he’s no better watching Kento tuck his proverbial tail between his legs and haul ass for the kitchen with ears burning red.
“H-how did you fit all of your asses in one car?” Satoru wheezes, breaking into snickers even as he hollows to let the twins suction cup to him.
“Took the SUV, dipshit,” Utahime mutters, clomping past him in her socks, though not without a rough cuff to his head. “Hi,” she simpers, extending a hand to Emiko, and then to Isamu over the back of the couch. “I’m Iori Utahime, Shoko’s girlfriend. It’s nice to meet you.”
“...Shoko is a very lucky lady,” Emiko says, faint, and Utahime only flips her hair with a pretty smile before she’s breezing away into the kitchen to help Kento set up for whatever nonsense he’s planning to make for dinner. The one that he’s definitely not sharing with anyone.
“Why isn’t Kento yelling?” Haibara asks, lugging a bag with him that’s probably full of kitchen utensils or something as he shuts the door and peers around. “He’s been in a mood all day, you know.”
“Ken’o owes me twenty hundred yen,” Megumi announces, his intentional mispronunciation of Kento’s first name absolutely meant to irritate him, even all the way in the kitchen- successful, evidently, by the accidental clanging sound. “He said fuck eight times on the way here.”
Isamu’s eyebrows crawl up his forehead. Next to him in Suguru’s lap, Tsumiki argues loudly that it’s her money, not his, and Suguru himself claps a heavy palm to his face.
Satoru only grins.
Megumi doesn’t immediately warm up to the newcomers, but he doesn’t hide from them either, so Satoru willfully takes it. He figures they both understand when they raised grumpy Suguru.
Yaga sits with them on the couch and gossips like an old crone while their kitchen is commandeered, Shoko kicked out and Satoru himself pulled in, under the vague irritated explanation that, “she sucks, you suck marginally less. Now come help me.”
So he goes, leaving Shoko and Suguru with Isamu, Emiko and Yaga while he helps out Kento, Yu, and Utahime in the kitchen.
The kids split between it and the living room, with Megumi choosing to get underfoot and into things he’s not supposed to while the girls mostly sit on the couch. The twins are quieter in conversation, not surprising when they’re still acclimating, but they warm quickly. Tsumiki barely gives them a moment to know her name before she’s rambling off to them, her new favorite people when they haven’t heard her exhaust every single topic known to man yet.
Two hours later sees setting the table as a messy, loud endeavor, but Satoru smiles wide and laughs louder through it, because it’s chaotic and crowded and full of lively chatter and fond insults. They don’t have enough chairs, and so the table ends up being more of a buffet as they spread out around the living room, careful with bowls and napkins as most everyone enjoys Kento’s impromptu menu change to feed so many people.
“These are delicious,” Isamu muses, holding up a dumpling to examine it, eyes squinted. “Did you use jiaozi dough?” He asks, to Kento’s beet red flush. He nods, still mortified from earlier.
“Sort of,” he answers, reedy. “I took inspiration. My mother was Danish, so…I…mhm,” he says, clamming up and red dusting his cheeks bright when Isamu only looks on in pleased curiosity.
“They’re delightful,” he says, and pops another entire dumpling into his mouth.
“Kento’s a bit of an aspiring chef,” Shoko drawls, a low smirk on her lips as she seamlessly dodges the jab of his pointy elbow. “He might even open up his own restaurant someday. Who knows.” Beside her, Kento tries to disappear into his coat collar.
“Definitely better than Satoru’s cooking,” Utahime jabs, and he gasps, slapping a palm to his chest.
“I’m a great cook!” He sputters, to Suguru’s unrestrained snickers, jostling Mimiko where she sits lopsided in his lap with Megumi to snap his chopsticks at her.
“Maybe in cavity land,” Utahime replies, prissy and succinct. “You drown everything in sugar.”
“In my house, in my living room, eating my food,” Satoru admonishes, easily catching the thrown dumpling between his utensils with ease. “Shoko!” He snaps, to her full bellied laugh.
“All of you are terrible influences,” Yaga glowers, mouth drawn down into a scowl when Panda follows suit and tries to chuck his milk bottle. He catches it before it finishes its arc off the couch and dumps all over the floor, no less than three distinct lines wrinkling his forehead in aggravation. “Remind me again why I willingly spend time with hooligans.”
“Me, obviously,” Tsumiki pipes up, affronted sandwiched between him and Emiko on the couch.
“Right,” Yaga tones, serious and dower, “of course.”
Panda, at least, had been taken relatively easily by both Emiko and Isamu. A quick and short explanation from Yaga, along with one blink of those big brown eyes, and they’d adapted quickly. Emiko had even held him, lasting about five seconds before she’d melted and begun treating him exactly like she would a human newborn.
The two of them watch on as they all bicker and laugh together, trading the day’s stories as much as they’re able. Isamu looks content watching Suguru smile, laugh, as he encourages Nanako to eat a little more when she stops and conspires with Megumi to steal food from Satoru’s plate. He looks relieved more than anything.
Emiko seems sadder watching on, her eyes a little wet even though she smiles wide. It must be gratifying, knowing that Suguru finally has everything she’s ever wanted for him, but also deeply painful knowing that none of it was because of her own doing. That she herself was more of a detriment than any help. Satoru catches her surreptitiously wiping her eyes more than once, and doesn’t fault her. She’s happy they’re happy, and she’s trying hard to keep it to happy, and happy alone. He knows it’s difficult, and even among other emotions, he loves her first.
“If he’s Ojii-chan,” Tsumiki announces, maybe an hour after they’ve all really finished dinner but which no one has started cleaning up yet, “then you gotta be something else.” She levels her pointer finger at Isamu, smile bright with a challenge. “Like Tou-san and Tou-ru.”
“Good point,” Shoko muses, ever the vessel for chaos, even though Isamu only blinks, unperturbed.
“I’m afraid I’m not the most creative with nicknames,” he admits, with a small, sly smile to Emiko. “You did pick Guruguru, didn’t you, dear?”
“Stoppp,” Suguru moans, hands dragging down his face as Utahime latches on with a vicious squeal.
“Guruguru?!” She crows, just as evil as her girlfriend, and Satoru is truly an instigator at heart, because he only eggs her on.
They settle on Ojii-ji, because it’s cute for the kids and it makes Mimiko laugh. Isamu even cracks a smile, warm and fuzzy right alongside Emiko’s, full of pearly teeth whenever she’s called Baa-chan by the kids. When Megumi mutters it, apprehensively asking to touch her hair to see if it’s like Suguru’s, she looks all but over the moon.
It gets late quickly, though, and the kids have to go to bed by ten to make it on time to their last day of school, so the party gets wrapped up by nine.
“Wait,” Yaga interrupts, just before they can make to get up. He sets his glass down on the side table, rummaging instead for the small bag he brought with him on his way in. “I have a present for the twins.”
Suguru catches his eye just as Satoru looks at him, the both of them puffing up with excitement. Megumi and Tsumiki’s bears have certainly been well loved in the last few months- ripped, dunked in juice, grass stained, and forever able to help put them to sleep throughout it all. They’ve been an absolute godsend for getting rid of nightmares.
“For us?” Nanako asks, blinking wide as she shuffles closer on the couch, Mimiko moving to hang off of her shoulder. Tsumiki abruptly squeaks sat on Yaga’s other side, eyes lighting up like she’s also figured it out, though Megumi only squints in suspicion.
“For you,” Yaga repeats, his smile soft and amused as he pulls two stuffed bears out of the bag, and Satoru wants to squeal, because they’re adorable.
Just like Tsumiki and Megumi’s, the bears reflect the kanji of the twin’s names. Mimiko’s is a rich brown, only a few shades lighter than her hair, a tiny tiara set on its forehead, the same as Nanako’s- a golden bear in turn, with a little leaf sprout embroidered onto its forehead, the placement the same to signify that they're twins.
As both the girls take their bears, Satoru catches the small kanji characters each sewn into a foot- darling and zucchini, which makes him laugh behind the cover of his hand. No wonder Yaga wanted to see their certificates so bad.
“Name them whatever you like,” Yaga says, leaning over to pat them both on the head, fond as can be when he sounds sweet as honeycomb. “They’re yours. They’ll keep you safe from dreams.”
“They’re like Harbor and Blessing,” Suguru explains, moving around the kotatsu table to kneel in front of them, setting a palm to each bear’s back to fill them with cursed energy. Both Nanako and Mimiko reel slightly as the toys begin radiating calm, Yaga’s incredible technique like the flicker of a candle. Even Emiko’s eyes widen, her lips parting in shock when she feels it, sat close enough to.
“I- I wanna call mine Nini!” Nanako blurts, eyes big and watery. “For zucchini!”
Satoru finally laughs, clapping a palm to his face as he doubles over, giggling. Suguru is much better than him, offering only a sweetened smile and soft words, “that’s a great name,” like he’s not losing it behind his placid adoration.
“...I like Darling,” Mimiko murmurs, her eyes heavy with thoughts staring down at her bear’s embroidered foot, glassy and wet like her tiny smile.
“These are- incredible,” Emiko stumbles, peering over the girls to look at the bears, Isamu similarly interested just behind her. “How on earth did you make something like this?”
“Trade secret.” Yaga winks, offering no more than a dimpled smirk. Shoko snorts, flinging a hair tie at him he only catches and pings back at her.
Gifts aside, it’s still late though, and the twins look even more overwhelmed than before, though he knows it’s a happy kind of overwhelm. Still, they’ll be tired in the morning if they don’t sleep now, and they’ve got things to do.
“Why don’t we take Nini and Darling up to bed, huh?” Satoru suggests, to Megumi’s sudden pout where he sits wriggling in his arms, trying to weasel out to look at the new toys. “You can try ‘em out tonight.”
Both Mimiko and Nanako nod, their excitement plain on their faces. It gets him a bunch of protesting from the other two- loud, obnoxious as they are about bedtime, but Satoru has a dreaded parent-teacher conference to deal with tomorrow, so Megumi can be squirrely about going to sleep as much as he’d like. He’s going to be well rested if it kills him.
“Say goodnight to the elders, squirts,” he teases, Megumi tucked under his arm like a football as he makes a scene flailing, complaining though he’s not listened to. Tsumiki groans, but she’s more polite than her brother, so she at least doesn’t try to kick him in the ribs.
“Goodnight,” Emiko says, waving as the twins pass her by, Tsumiki’s whining loud enough to distract her from it. “We’ll see you in the morning?” She asks, and Mimiko pauses, forcing Nanako to bump into her from behind.
She nods, hands wringing, before she gestures slightly with one palm beckoning her closer. Emiko leans down, and up on her tiptoes, Mimiko whispers right up against her ear.
“You’re really pretty,” she says, quiet enough Satoru has to strain to hear it where he wrestles Utahime’s shirt from Megumi’s fisted hands when he grabs it passing by. “I want my hair to look like yours one day.” Then she pinkens, flushing from head to toe as her fingers dig into Darling’s artificial fur, before she’s sprinting off for the stairs in mortification. Nanako calls after her, never to be separated for long, and then they’re both thundering up the steps, bears clutched tightly in arms.
Never one to be left behind, Tsumiki calls a breathless, “goodnight everyone!” Before she’s bounding after them, newly distracted. Then it’s just Megumi, complaining still.
“But I don’t wanna,” he grouses, pouting something fierce. “I’m not tired!” Satoru pokes out his tongue, before also poking little nose with his index finger.
“You see Shoko and Jii-chan all the time,” he soothes, “and the sooner you go to bed, the sooner you can get tomorrow over with. Then you get two whole months off.” Megumi scowls, but he quits trying to stay up longer, small arms crossing in a fume even though he leans up against his sternum with little protest when Satoru reshuffles him.
“Fine,” he mutters, tiny and absolutely aggrieved. Satoru smiles over his head, exchanging a bemused look with Suguru where he gives his own goodnights to Yaga, Shoko, and Utahime.
“Say goodnight to grandma, grandpa, and gramps,” Satoru teases, lifting one of Megumi’s hands to wave it for him when he only sulks harder.
“Goodnight,” he seethes, and behind him, Yu snorts.
“Whoever’s staying, there’s a futon in the linen closet. Old people get the guest room- and that’s not you, Yaga!” Satoru announces, glancing over his shoulder to see Kento and Yu start to clear dishes as he climbs the stairs, Suguru hot on his tail to help with teeth and tuck-in’s.
“Unbelievable,” he grumbles, to both Emiko and Isamu’s chuckles.
The kids go down relatively easily despite the party, since the excitement was a lot for even him, Suguru thinks, resisting a yawn. He’s glad for it, since he might have just dozed off in the middle of a temper tantrum if one had happened. At least Shoko and Utahime take the SUV back when they leave, so though Yu, Kento, and Yaga all decide to stay for the night, they only have to find one extra bed.
“Goodnight,” he whispers, smoothing a palm down Tsumiki’s hair first, Nanako’s second, amused to see both of their eyelids already drooping. “I love you.”
“Night, ‘Tou-san,” Tsumiki mumbles, clutching Harbor close, “love you too.” Next to her, Nanako hums something similar, squeezing Zucchini tight and buried in her sister’s pillows. She’s practically glued to Mimiko where she sleeps on her other side, getting her own tuck in from Satoru as he gives both her and Darling a goodnight kiss.
He says something quiet Suguru doesn’t really hear, sat on the edge of Tsumiki’s bed where all the kids decided to dogpile to let Kento and Yu take Megumi’s room for the night. He fixes the sheets around Megumi and her, sappy as can be. It’s soft, soaked in honey, and in the dark of Tsumiki’s bedroom buoyed by the warmth of a fairy themed nightlight, he wonders not for the first time if they’ll always find solace here.
Unlike himself, Suguru knows. Where he’ll always find his childhood bedroom as smothering, suffocating, he hopes they’ll come back to theirs with nostalgia, fondness. That they’ll only ever carry thoughts of safety when they sit clutched in the palm of these four walls.
“Sleep tight,” he murmurs, kissing both of their foreheads one by one, unhurried and heavy, because they’re still children, still young enough to need him. They’ve never fought, haven’t had a world shaking argument yet, have never said cruel words to each other they don’t mean, and there’s something buried in him that demands wretchedly that it stays that way forever. It’s a damning wish, wanting them to stay small and helpless forever. It isn’t one he wants to be granted.
The brush of Satoru’s fingertips over his shoulder draw him back, the curl of them around his wrist pulling him from the comforting dark of the room like a lure.
“They’ll be okay,” he promises, whispered with barely a breath against his lips as they silently close the door, and Suguru listens, and he tries to believe it. Satoru only watches him though, because he knows his mind inside and out, and so Suguru doesn’t bother to try and hide the shadows curling in the crevices of his face and heart.
“Go talk to your mom, first,” he asks, wispy like a faint breeze skimming fingertips down the line of his jaw. Blue eyes slant low, fixed on his lips more than his own. “They’ll still be here.” They finally flick up, scattering between his left and right, the ten centimeters Satoru has on him making him feel as small as he had earlier.
“It doesn’t feel like it,” Suguru admits, lost in the patterns speckled throughout endless irises, heart squeezing in his chest like it’s been grabbed by a fist.
“It doesn’t need to,” Satoru replies, feathery and soft against his ear as he leans close, hands snaking up his wrists to find the line of his waist. “Acknowledge it, Suguru. Let it be, and then let it go.”
Drawing in a shattering inhale, Suguru listens.
They’re probably codependent, considering neither of them can function without the other, but when Satoru leans over him, holds him close, whispers in his ear and shields him from the rest of the world, Suguru can never bring himself to mind. They were broken long before they met each other by different people, different families, different lives. He doesn’t care if it’ll be their very downfall one day, because together, just maybe, their broken pieces might make a whole. And Suguru? Suguru can be okay with that.
The kids are right there, his family right there- they’re not leaving, not hurting. They’re fine, breathing, happy and well fed and sleeping peacefully through the night. Right now, they have no enemies.
Satoru is still peering down at him when Suguru opens his eyes, waiting until he’s exhaled and loosened his hands before he leans in. Lips soft with gloss, smearing shimmer and peach onto his own, he doesn’t care at all if one day they’ll topple because of it. He fell in love with their broken pieces too long ago to try not to now.
“We’re together,” Satoru promises, two words that mean the world. “You’re not alone.”
“I know,” Suguru says, and truthfully, he believes it.
His mother is still downstairs when he finds her, her hair loose and her shoulders calm as she sits cross legged in the open dojo, summer breeze stirring strains of inky black.
For a second, it gives him pause. Is this what Satoru sees when he looks at him? Elegant shoulders, night dark hair, sleek like an oil spill or stars dotted in an ink pot? He’s always had his problems with his family, but the reason he decided to grow his hair out at all was to look like her.
‘That’s not such a bad thing,’ Suguru thinks, and he’s not scared of what she might say like he would have been, once.
Emiko doesn’t move when he sinks down to sit next to her, her manicured hands relaxed in her lap as she stares out at the yard, a heavy sort of serenity weighing down her beautiful features. They’re silent for a long few moments as they sit and watch the greenery. The gentle roll of the trees, the hum and chirping of wildlife, the frogs in the pond and the creak of the crickets. It’s something he’ll always find joy in, no matter how many times he looks at this simple plot of land.
“I…haven’t always been what you’ve needed,” Emiko finally speaks, her voice barely louder than the noise outdoors, though not thin for it. She stares out ahead into the ripple of the nighttime shadows, as if it’s easier to confess to her own sins when she doesn’t look at him.
“No,” Suguru agrees, tangling his fingers in his lap, content at least not to meet her eye while they speak of this. “But you couldn’t give me what I needed anyway. You let me go.” He shrugs, thinking of the day that courrier had scouted him and come to talk to his parents, and desperate to get him out of a town that was smothering him, they’d agreed to give him up. “That was something I needed you gave me.”
“...I suppose so,” Emiko sighs, rubbing over her eyes for a long moment. Her shoulders look like a burden she can’t bear, slumping over too far. “I am sorry, though. I’m…so sorry. I shouldn’t have let my own fears influence how I raised you.”
‘No,’ Suguru wants to say, ‘no, you shouldn’t have,’ but that would be flogging something dead that’s already been beaten more than enough.
“I love you,” Emiko continues, head tilting slightly as she shrugs a tiny movement, “I love you more than you know, and I think…I think it was easy to be blind to who you really were as a kid. It made it easy to justify doing things that I think have harmed you, more than they ever helped you.” The admittance isn’t bitter, necessarily. Troubled would probably be a better word. Suguru shifts, staring at the graceful profile of her face, the wrinkle lines only now beginning to grow stark as she ages.
“I can’t change our past,” she sighs, reaching up to tuck a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “I wish I could take away all the pain that I must have put you through,” she concedes, tired as her eyes finally fall to the smooth wood of the engawa below them, and Suguru remembers.
Remembers the pills, the appointments, the harsh words and the desperation to pretend that nothing was wrong. The utter opposite, in fathoming issues where there weren’t any because the ones that nobody knew the names of couldn’t actually be fixed. How he spent so much time swimming in molasses, moments and memories lost to drugs he didn’t need. How a lot of his early life was spent pretending he couldn’t hear the neighbors whispering about the Getou family’s disturbed child, pretending like the other school kids’ words didn’t hurt him when they called him strange, pretending that he needed nothing and no one when not a soul made a thing better.
He remembers pain. He remembers a lot of it.
“I wish I could at least do that,” his mother says, a raw thing in the single desire, “because you never deserved to suffer for my own insecurities, but I don’t think I would change our past, even if I was able.”
There’s an irony to those words, only felt by him. Satoru has changed the past, or a version of it, and Suguru is glad that he did. The idea of becoming the kind of monster his mirror was is far less preferable to being the monster that he is now. He finds himself twisting into a wry kind of smile because of it, and it must catch his mom’s attention, because only then does she look at him. Her dark eyes are weighted with all sorts of things Suguru could intimately name, but which he refuses to. There’s a pit waiting for him if he tries, so he won’t.
“I believe that you- you made something good from something bad,” Emiko hushes, so earnest it hurts. “I’m so proud of you, because you gave yourself what we couldn’t, and if none of it had happened, maybe we wouldn’t be sitting here,” she wonders, absently trailing her fingertips down rickety tatami, her eyes scattering everywhere, nowhere, always settling on him. “You’ve made a beautiful home, with adorable children, and…” She pauses, waits for Suguru to look back up before she goes on.
“If none of it had happened, maybe you might not have Satoru, and for you to have him?” She smiles, melancholy and tired, the pull of her red lips wrinkling the crows feet at her eyes. “I think for you to have him, any pain must be worth it.”
“Oh,” Suguru breathes, chest aching, and looks away, down at his callused palms, because he knows what she means. He knows what they think of now when they think of Satoru.
They see him, and they must want to worship him like all the others, because Satoru was the catalyst that changed him. Changed them. One that left their family better than before, that left Suguru happier than before. They don’t- worship him. They’ll never worship him, and maybe that’s why Suguru can never hate them more than he loves them, because his parents see someone even more damaged than him, and they only want to love him.
‘They’re good,’ Suguru thinks, swallowing down the thickened thing shining his eyes with saltwater. ‘They’re good. Maybe it wasn’t always, but they’re good.’ Everyone’s a monster. Including him. Including them.
His parents saw him, damaged in ways they couldn’t explain, and he knows they’ve only ever wanted to love him. It’s the exact sort of monstrous thing he’s chosen to live with.
“I don’t believe in soulmates like your father does, Suguru,” Emiko whispers, tilting his chin up with one knuckle, leaning forwards on her knees and a small, velvet box cupped in her other hand close to her chest. “But some people are special. Like you. And I would be a fool not to tell you to hold on as tight as you can to the one you found,” she implores, almost pleading as she speaks.
“That boy loves you,” she whispers, like it’s raw pain scraping up her throat, and Suguru can’t breathe, because he’s never seen this side of her before. “He’d do anything for you, Suguru.” Her eyes look a little like coals, so dark as they are and yet so similar to his when he’s lit up like a matchstick, and ‘oh,’ Suguru thinks, ‘oh, oh.’
“So I- I want you to have these,” she says, and the feathery touch of her hand disappears from his chin in favor of curling up his wrist. She sets the box down in the palm of his hand, pressing it into his bones with her other as soon as he closes his fingers around it.
“Mom-” He starts, alarmed, because there’s a visible strip of untanned skin on her ring finger that he’s never seen before, and he’s worried from what he already knows, but she only smiles and shakes her head.
Opening the box with fingers that want to tremble proves his too confident suspicions. Her engagement ring sits front and center, simple in a plain silver band and three small diamonds adoring it. He’s not surprised about that.
His parent’s wedding rings have the breath punching from his lungs, all the words choking in his throat.
They’re as simple as her other ring, just plain gold bands with short, loving inscriptions in the inseam, but they mean so much more than anything extravagant would. Their wedding date is engraved into the metal, always against skin, and Suguru has never once seen either of them ever take them off.
“Even if I wasn’t at your wedding, even if you don’t want me there now,” Emiko says, trembling and quiet as they kneel together in the shell-shock of the silence, “your father and I agreed- we always wanted to offer. You don’t have to use them if you’d rather not, but we just-” She fumbles, and when Suguru looks up, it’s a struggle to see past the burn stinging his eyes.
She’s always just wanted to love him. How monstrous a desire.
“Thank you,” he gasps, unable to help from squeezing her too tight when he throws his arms around her, burying his face in the crook of her shoulder like he’s still little. “I- you don’t, thank you,” he breathes, choking on it, too.
“You gave yourself happiness,” Emiko warbles, and Suguru can only huff a teary laugh when she sounds close to them already. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you. I’m so proud of you, Suguru.”
He shuts his eyes, not to pretend like he can’t feel the tears tracking down his nose, but to revel in the feeling of them.
“I thought you didn’t drink?” Yaga asks, one brow raised high as he grabs and drains the tumbler of his horrible bourbon right from his hands.
“I don’t,” Satoru rasps, throat burning.
Sensei only grunts an unimpressed noise at that, hands free with Panda snug in the silk sling around his neck they got him for his last birthday, sound asleep after sitting through a very loud dinner. Brown eyes watch him carefully as Satoru dumps the melting ice from Yaga’s stolen glass into the sink, grabs the bottle, fills it another inch, and downs it again.
It’s only when he makes to throw another excessive shot back that a tan, callused hand pins his wrist and the cup to the counter.
“That’s enough,” Yaga tones, and petulant, Satoru yanks both his hand and the glass out of his grasp. When he makes to move like he’ll wrestle it from him, Panda be damned, Satoru gives up and jams it in the sink with the last of the dishes that wouldn’t fit in the washer. Another kickback and he’d be drunk, anyway. Shame.
“That’s so unfair, Yaga,” he snarks, hunching over his arms as he sets them on the counter top, glaring at uncaring granite. “You don’t stop Shoko from her alcoholic tendencies.”
“Because Shoko can handle her liquor,” Yaga tosses back, palm tentative when it rests on his forearm. “That bad?” He asks, and Satoru shrugs.
“Not really.” His swallow is thick, his tongue fuzzy. It wasn’t, not at all. It was actually fairly good, considering they still have parents and not distant relatives. He has nothing to complain about either- he didn’t spill a word about his real traumas, and Suguru got his closure. By all intents and purposes, he should feel fine.
“Hm,” Yaga hums, carefully neutral, and Satoru doesn’t fight when the palm on his arm drags him up enough he can rest his eyes on large shoulder if he hunches. Yaga’s technically an inch shorter than him now, but he feels bigger because he has more mass, taller because he wears boots with heels. Sometimes it’s nice, leaning against him, not lording so much as cowering.
“You know,” he starts, when the silence drags on, “you can use my first name. It’s not a taboo.”
“Isn’t it?” Satoru mumbles, before the words register, and he falters, picking his head up with his brows furrowed and his lips pouting. He makes to retort something to shove away how it has him wanting to stumble off kilter, only to come up short with nothing, leaving him looking up and not really having any words. A name would be closer than Yaga ever let them realistically get before. Closer than he’s ever let Satoru get, before.
“No,” Yaga refutes, holding him steady in place when Satoru tries to slink away by a hand on his spine. “Satoru,” he rumbles, low and calm, free hand leaving Panda’s baby sling to tilt his chin up. “After all these years, you still call me by my family name. Why?” He presses, nothing so harsh as a calm question, and he doesn’t really have an answer anyone would like.
“I never really had anything else to call you,” he mutters, trying for impotent so he doesn’t have to have this conversation, so that Yaga gets annoyed and gives up. He knows well enough he’s not so lucky.
It only earns him keen eyes unimpressed with understanding, the hand on his chin lifting away to smooth down his hair instead. He hates it, because it’s calming, comforting, because it makes all the walls want to shove down and away, and it only gets hard once the walls are gone.
He should know. He tried maybe once, maybe twice, maybe a million little times and only ever learning each one that Yaga wasn’t perfect. That he wasn’t undamaged enough to accept it, that Satoru wasn’t worth enough for him to try. It was okay, because he had his walls to fall back on, and maybe Suguru’s loss fractured him, that was what resolidified the steel between him and everyone else. So it was okay. It taught him how to be alone.
Even despite that, Yaga’s always been his one constant, distracted or not in the first life, trying so hard to learn to care again in the second. He doesn’t want to think about that, but the two glasses of heavy alcohol have his thoughts sliding slippery and slick from his hands, and so it just keeps tumbling in the spaces between seconds. How Yaga did change this time, how he’s been trying to do better- how he has done better, how he’s never quite been alone anymore.
It’s an action heavy with unspoken things when Yaga lets their foreheads tilt together, and Satoru stares at the counter, because he can’t snuff the thoughts out he normally hates to think and he doesn’t want for the meanness to leak out of him.
“Your daughter calls me grandfather for a reason,” Yaga Masamichi tones, low in the gravelly baritone of his voice, thrilling for more reason than one when the only thing Satoru’s ever yearned for is love. It’s a spear to the stomach for the very same reason.
The palm on his head swoops down, draws his chin up again when Satoru refuses to move.
“Why don’t you?” He asks, like it’s so simple, and he watches those steady brown eyes, and he thinks there’s an avalanche happening inside of his ribcage.
“Don’t you think I tried that already,” he mumbles, bitter, unable to keep the sour from his voice and off his tongue with the pool of warmth sloshing in the pit of his stomach. This is why he doesn’t drink. He metabolizes it too fast to handle.
“Maybe,” Yaga agrees, a regret staining the lines of his eyes, “but not with me. I’m sorry for whatever he did, or didn’t do,” he says, and it’s genuine, sincere. “I’m not that version of him, though.”
“I know,” Satoru whispers, and lets his head drop back down to broad shoulder. “I know it’s not fair.” Warm palm rubs between his curved shoulder blades as Yaga only hums, Panda fuzzy and soft squished between them, itchy goatee settling on top of his head when he stays there.
“He didn’t-?” Yaga tries to ask, but Satoru is sharp when he cuts him off.
“No,” he snaps, quiet. Fingers card through his unruly hair, brushing along his scalp, and he feels the guilt sharply. It’s not fair. He knows it, and yet he won’t admit it. “I’m sorry. I’m glad you do,” Satoru offers, weak as it is under the rush of alcohol turning him rougher than he means to be.
“Me too,” Yaga agrees, voice a vibration in his sternum. “I’m sure, Satoru,” he says, words hidden near his ear for him alone, “that whatever grief he was probably dealing with, he loved you.”
He squeezes his eyes shut, jamming their sockets into the bone of Yaga’s shoulder, refusing to cry over something so simple that really, is not so simple at all. He hates it, because it’s exactly what he wants to hear. It’s a rattly breath of sheer relief, because maybe he’s always sort of thought Yaga could fill that role, only made worse in the here and now where he has been, he hadn’t once. There’s a shaking sort of respite to know he isn’t just chasing after ghosts again. There is a want, of him and for him, and maybe that’s the thing that destroyed him, in the end. One he’ll let destroy him again, even.
Because it’s different from Suguru’s parents. Emiko and Isamu are everything to him, but where Suguru’s always had them, Yaga’s always been his.
“If you think I’m gonna defer you any genuine respect-” Satoru snarks, joking because if he doesn’t he’ll probably cry worse, and if he jokes, no one looks too hard at the glaze over his eyes or the salt on his face.
“You wouldn’t be you if you did, punk,” Yaga cuts in, clearly rolling his eyes by the motion of his head. “I don’t expect respect from someone with no concept of it.”
“Good. Cause I’m not giving you any,” Satoru says, sniffing hard to hide how it’s really just a sniffle. In his head, he tries it out first, rolls it around between his teeth and makes a face at how odd Masamichi tastes compared to just Yaga. “Your name is weird,” he mutters, nose scrunching, and can’t help but relax when the huff is exhaled into his hair.
“I’ll be sure to send the complaints along to my mother,” Masamichi says, and it’s so odd, because not in any life has he used it.
“...Masamichi,” Satoru mumbles, rolling the syllables along the roof of his mouth in curiosity, “Masamichi, Masamichi…” He squints, shoving his head to the side so he can stick his tongue out. “That’s a terrible name for a baby.”
Yaga actually snorts. Masamichi. Masamichi snorts. “You don’t have to use it,” he offers, palm stroking over his hair again, dark eyes crinkled in mirth. “But I do happen to agree.”
Satoru shrugs, unsure. He closes his eyes instead of deciding immediately, content to bask in the card of hand over his hair, the weight of his own exhaustion. He doesn’t get a lot of chances to. Never had a lot of chances to, before now.
“Yaga,” Satoru asks, barely a real note as he says it, regressing to his last name because it’s what’s familiar, “do you think I’m unlovable?”
“Now why would you think that?” Is tossed back just as quickly as he didn’t pose the question, the hand on his head sliding down to squeeze the back of his garishly scarred neck like it needs an assurance he’s fine.
“Just ‘cause,” Satoru drawls, dragging his head up so he can hook his chin on Yaga’s shoulder rather than jam his nose into it. He can feel his face flushing, probably red with blush, can see Suguru and his mother calm together in the dojo, can see Isamu settling into the guest bed upstairs. He can see another life entirely where no one loved him or bothered to try.
“Sorry,” Satoru drags out, fingertips twitching towards the counter and the bottle. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“Did you?” Masamichi tones, the skepticism present enough in his voice that Satoru doesn’t need to see his face to see the lift of his eyebrow.
“No,” he promises, lazily walking two fingers down the granite countertop. “I know a lot of people love me. Suguru does. And so do the kids.” He pauses, contemplating, all his thoughts so easy to slip into his mouth to let roll off his tongue. The thoughts he keeps to himself most times. The thoughts he’s never spoken aloud.
“I can be palatable. But do you think there’s a reason I ended up alone? Was I not good? I know I’m not good, but was I not good before I knew I wasn’t?” He rambles, poking the glass of the bourbon bottle to get it to tip and wobble.
“Satoru-” Masamichi cuts in, but Satoru only stumbles over him, fingertip hooking into the rim.
“Maybe it was my real personality. You know I tailored a fake one? Of course you know. My real one was worse, so I wore a fake one a lot, but a lot of people hated that one, too. That was intentional though.” He talks, spilling all the ever twisting things that rack up rent in his head, tugging expensive, patterned glass up with the hook of his finger. He could just use Blue. That would be boring.
He chugs it, refusing to flinch at the searing burn of liquor, because he’s felt things that are so much worse and a little alcohol is not the thing to best him.
“Motherfucker,” Yaga mutters, when he finally catches on and makes to grab it, but by then it’s too late and there’s not a drop left in it that isn’t sitting in his stomach.
“You ever wonder why my own mother didn’t love me? I do,” Satoru rasps, giving reversed cursed technique a careful spin- just enough to speed up his body’s absorption rate. He reels as the full effect hits him at once, actually seeing the light intake increase as his pupils blow out and feeling his sense of balance suddenly implode. He laughs, bubbly and bitter, limp slumping on Yaga’s shoulder as his brain depresses.
“Isn’t it funny?” He wonders, breathy and flowery as hands clutch tight over his back and side, panic obvious in Yaga’s movements when Satoru’s never done something like this before. “I would give everything to have parents like Suguru’s. How fucked up is that? That I want what they did to him?” He hiccups, feeling his eyes sting. “Why did I have to die to be loved.”
“...I’m sorry,” Masamichi murmurs, sighing, and Satoru squeezes his eyes shut as the world suddenly tilts, his feet leaving the floor for no action he does. The bottle clatters to the counter as he sways away from it, arms like spaghetti noodles hanging over Yaga’s shoulder. The footsteps jar him only slightly, rhythmic and steady as they walk.
“Suguru,” Yaga calls, stopping in front of the open dojo for a moment. Both he and his mother turn, their expressions slackening slightly when Satoru wheezes, all the blood rushing to his head and popping sparks in his blurry vision. “I’m putting him to bed.”
“...Shit,” he replies, thick like he’s been crying. “I can-”
“No, I’ve got him,” Yaga promises, and Satoru wishes he could plug his ears, not listen to it. He feels guilty for it already- this is Suguru’s day to be a mess. He’s just making himself a nuisance by doing this. “Stay with your mother. Let me deal with it.”
“Okay,” Suguru sighs, though Satoru does see him get up off the tatami, even behind his closed eyelids. “Thanks, Yaga.” He raises up onto his tip-toes, and there’s the nonexistent sound of a closed-lip kiss to the cheek, the rustle of fabric and a babyish coo as Panda is lifted from his silken sling. Fire warm fingers skim through his hair after, the weight of dark eyes heavy when they settle on him.
“Thank you,” Suguru whispers, tilting his head to the side to kiss him, and Satoru lets his eyes slip open, lidded just enough to catch Suguru’s melancholy smile as he steps away to rejoin his mom out on the engawa. It’s late. Satoru knows he’s tired. It must mean more to him to talk to her like this than to sleep.
He jostles with Yaga’s footfalls as he pushes open their bedroom door, watching through no sense of real sight as Suguru settles back down with his mother, head on her lap and Panda cradled in his arms. He looks more content than Satoru’s seen him be regarding his parents in a long while. The jealousy feels like the burn of liquor coursing through his veins and pooling in his heart.
“I’m sorry this has been hard for you,” Yaga tones, low as he slips their door shut to a sliver, absently nudging a pile of books out of his way as he treks for their bed, one of Suguru’s cardigans after it.
“It’s not though,” Satoru protests, the breath punching out of his sternum slightly when he’s flipped over his own head by hands that take care to cradle his skull, his spine meeting familiar mattress softly even as the world tilts and swims dizzyingly. He groans, eyes screwing shut.
“Right,” Yaga replies, sardonic, and Satoru jams his face into the pillows to get the light out of his eyes. Deft hands pull his socks off, nudge at his arms to thread his sweater down them second. “So you’re not drunk right now, sir I don’t drink.”
“Nope,” Satoru groans, curling up on his side when the last tug of the sweater sleeve leaves him jostled, shoving the heels of his palms into his eye sockets.
“Well,” Yaga sighs, trudging away to hang his sweater up in their closet like a good mother hen, “at least I can thank you for giving me one normal teenage experience.”
“Why did I do this,” he bemoans, the beginning threads of a migraine poking at him like needle heads.
“I don’t know, Satoru,” Yaga says, and the bed dips next to his back, a large palm sitting heavy on his ribs after. “Why did you?” He huffs, lips curling, the swim of the alcohol still fuzzying his mind.
“It’s selfish,” he whispers, hands melting down his face, curling around his stomach, both the wall across from him and time itself a liquid, dripping down reality. “I don’t wanna be selfish. Suguru needs it tonight. I’m not trying to be selfish.”
“About what?” Yaga presses, leaning over where he curls up like a clam, one thumb settling over his jugular to count out his pulse.
“I don’t wanna think of them badly,” he admits, staring at nothing, at everything, wishing he was different so that there weren’t ghosts following him, wishing Suguru was so he didn’t have to meet any. “I know it’s selfish, but they were- they were the first to be kind to me. It’s already ruined, but I don’t want it to be ruined,” he spills, the truth sticky falling past his lips.
“Why’d we have to go through this, Yaga,” he whines, wretched at the unfairness of it all. Suguru is hurt, Satoru is saved by the same people that hurt him. It’s too complicated, and none of it is any sort of fair. “Why’d I have to get what I did. How can I be jealous and relieved at the same time? It’s not fair.”
“...It’s not your fault your family treated you badly,” Sensei murmurs, stroking a palm over his hair, sturdy where their bodies press together in the dip his weight makes on the bed. “It’s not Suguru’s fault his parents are good people that made mistakes, either.”
“I hate it,” Satoru complains, senseless and useless. More childish than he’s let himself be in a long time.
“I know,” he says, and then, maybe the one thing he does want to hear, “and that’s okay.”
Satoru sniffles, eyes burning, pliant like taffy when Yaga turns him over. He stares blearily at where he can make out the colors of oaken skin, dark facial hair, brown eyes catching the light of the living room when it creeps through the crack left ajar by the door.
“All the adults in your life failed you,” Yaga says, plain as a fact, and Satoru hates the way his face screws up with the threat of tears. “Me included. And I’m sorry it happened that way.” Palms snake under his back, hefting him so he’s sat upright, and he spills like hot wax into the arms they’re attached to, already waiting to take his weight.
“But it won’t happen to your kids, and even if it doesn’t heal you, I hope it can help you,” he continues, achingly sincere, and Satoru clutches onto the back of his shirt like a lifeline, because he thinks he might need one. The three years he had to be a kid didn’t really feel like enough time.
Clumsily, because under the influence his control is shit and his nerves dulled numb, he tugs on the threads of reversed cursed, sloppily kicking it into gear to speed up his metabolism again, something he couldn’t do when he was originally fifteen after his first beer. The vestiges of a migraine clear away as the fog lessens, though it lingers like a haze. He still feels thick like molasses, syrupy like toffee.
“You’re not scared of them?” Yaga asks, or maybe Masamichi, he hasn’t decided yet. It takes a minute, but Satoru shakes his head no, still shoved into his sternum. “Then it’ll pass. The dust just needs to settle for a while.” Satoru doesn’t say anything to that, busy clinging as he tries hard to shove every last thought out of his head until it’s empty.
Steady hands ruck up his spine, hold the back of his skull close, the press of fingers finding the bolts holding plates of it together as they sit there, stewing.
“...I’m sorry,” Satoru mumbles, guilty as ever. “For pitching a fit.” Yaga grunts, tugging on the cartilage of his ear in admonishment.
“As much as you two act like adults, you’re not even twenty yet, and we’re all only human,” he muses, gloomy. “Parents are hard.”
Satoru shrugs, hiding away, and wishes not for the first time he was born to different people. How kind would it have been, to be regular? Average? Someone without a destiny, unburdened by fate?
“Will you stay,” he asks, small as he’s ever been, fingers leaving indents in Yaga’s shirt. “Tomorrow? I don’t want to be alone.”
Suguru will have his parents- the good and the bad and all the forgiveness now layered in between. They’re Satoru’s too, will be officially in the eyes of no law that applies to them whenever they get around to marrying, already are in just their own eyes, but they were Suguru’s first. He loves them. Hates some of the things they’ve done. Wishes they were his, too.
Yaga is, though. Masamichi. The only person who might have been anything close when he grew up without the presence of parents at all.
“If you want me there,” Masamichi says, weathering his childish anger and seasoned pains without complaint, “of course.” The best thing he ever had to a father. The best thing he’ll ever be able to call his own.
“Thank you,” Satoru whispers, and it doesn’t feel so big anymore.