#ish and also not really

[thatdesklamp]

One Month Before Suguru Geto's Betrayal, 2007

My final satoru POV oneshot before the next intrinsic warmth update. Five is a nicer number than four, and I really wanted to put some more focus on Geto before I continued with IW canon. (This has been in the drafts for a while but I had a free half hour to clean it up a little and figured it was better posted than not posted. Enjoy!)

“You’re good for him,” Satoru hears you say, through the thin partition of the wall.

Satoru pauses outside the door. He wasn’t expecting to hear you: this is Suguru’s room, and it’s early evening on a Wednesday night, which means Satoru and Suguru are going to boot up a movie on Suguru’s shitty DVD player and watch it until one of them falls asleep. Which will probably be Suguru: he’s always falling asleep, these days.

Satoru has a thriller movie jammed under his arm, because he’s figured that it’s impossible for Suguru to fall asleep to something that’s meant to make you all tense and wired, and it’s the kind of thoughtful thing he thinks Suguru will appreciate.

“You think?” Suguru responds. His voice is quieter, muffled, like he’s facing away from the door.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

It’s you again. Satoru has his fingers on the door handle. They catch there, hesitant.

“Tough luck for him.”

“Geto.”

“What?”

“I’m not joking.”

“Well. Neither am I.”

Satoru’s fingertips slide from the door handle. He is very aware of how loud he is breathing, and how thin the door is. Satoru doesn’t move, wary that the floor will creak, and that you will know him from the sound of his footsteps.

“I’m trying to be nice here,” you say.

“You don’t need to. Just be honest.”

“Then I’m being honest.”

“No, you’re not.”

You let out a sharp sound, a quick exhalation of air. “Come on. This is a compliment. I wouldn’t say it to anyone else.”

“Sure.”

“I’m serious—Geto, what’s with you today?” Your voice is pitching up, questioning and quietly teasing. It borders on playful, and Satoru doesn’t know what to make of it. You never act like this with him. “Did you wake up cranky, or something?”

“Probably.”

Satoru doesn’t hear your reply, if you give one. He rests his forehead against the door, trying not to make a sound.

You’re good for him, you had said. You had to be talking about him—who else could you be talking about? You and Geto talk about things other than him, yeah, Satoru gets that. But who else would Suguru be good for?

It’s got to be Satoru. Satoru is Suguru’s best friend. Satoru is the most important person in Suguru’s life, and he knows it. He likes it, being that important to someone who is so important. And it’s not as if Suguru isn’t just as important to him. It’s Suguru. Satoru has never had to think about why he’s so important to him: it’s always been obvious, and accepted, and he’s never needed to justify himself to anyone.

You had said it. Why?

“Would you really not say it to anyone else?” Suguru murmurs.

His voice is quiet, so quiet Satoru can barely hear him. The low scratch of his voice is familiar, from all those times Satoru would sneak into his room after curfew, when they’d stay up and talk about any of their wild ideas until the sun made them squint and blink. Satoru would steal the bed, but Suguru never minded; he would sit splayed on the room’s desk chair, or lie down on the floor and look up at the same ceiling as Satoru, or he’d go cross-legged at the foot of the bed, pretending not to notice when Satoru prodded him with his toes.

Those nights, especially in their first year, were the moments Satoru really began to understand Suguru, right to his core. He hadn’t known what to expect from him, back when he was just Suguru Geto, child prodigy, and when Satoru was assumedly just Satoru Gojo, heir to the Gojo clan. And then when you stopped talking to him, just a few months before his sixteenth birthday, Satoru came to rely on those nights more than he ever had.

Satoru would walk into a room, and your conversation with Shoko, bright and friendly and cheerful, would fall quiet. You would look at him with such hatred, and such sadness, and you would turn your back on him, just like how you had promised never to do. Satoru hated your silence more than anything, but he knew he would always have Suguru, and Suguru would never let their silence fester.  

They would talk until their voices were hoarse, because Satoru had never met someone so intrinsically similar to him before. He and Suguru disagreed, but he could feel the underlying rush of recognition permeate every conversation, and so even in their disagreements he could only see their likeness. Satoru devoured every word, because every word led him closer and closer to confirming what he was desperate to know: Suguru was the same as him. Suguru is the same.

Satoru has missed their evenings together. He’s knocked on Suguru’s door, but he hasn’t had it open to him in a while, not the way it used to, every night, without question.

Satoru has wondered if Suguru’s getting to be an insomniac, because he looks so tired all the time, like he hasn’t been sleeping. Satoru figured that him knocking on Suguru’s door in the middle of the night, every night, was probably the thing keeping him awake, so he’s stopped.

“I just said so.” Satoru tries to picture the scene: you’re leaning against the headboard of Suguru’s bed, arms crossed, attempting to hide your impatience with Suguru. Suguru’s a good distance away from you, because he’d have to be, since you’re still not comfortable for Satoru to be close to you anymore, and so Satoru decides Suguru will be sitting on the end of the bed, or, more likely, on the desk chair, or on the floor. You’ll be rolling your eyes, but trying not to. Something alights inside Satoru’s chest, fond. “And then I said I wasn’t lying.”

“I guess not.” Suguru chuckles to himself; it’s not his usual laugh, which is loud and broad and compelling, the laugh Satoru hasn’t heard for a long time. It’s more subdued, and it sounds meaner, somehow. “I figured you were playing dumb on purpose.”

“That’s not really me,” you say. “You’re thinking of Gojo. He’d play dumb for the attention: I wouldn’t.”

“Satoru would.” This time, when Suguru laughs, the mean tinge has softened. He sounds, just for a moment, familiar. “Yeah. You’re right, he would.”

“Course I’m right.”

“Now you do sound like him.”

“Oh! Oh, don’t! You’re so mean to me!” You let out a loud gasp, a touch too overdramatic for you, and Satoru realises a second later that you’re imitating him. He presses himself closer to the door, eager to hear. “But Geto, don’t you remember, I’m the—shit, what did you call me? Ages ago? Do you remember? The… like a snake charmer—”

“The Satoru whisperer.”

“Yeah!” Suguru laughs again, but you’re smiling: Satoru can tell that you’re smiling, from the roundness of your voice, the endeared tone you can’t get rid of. Satoru isn’t even offended that you’re both comparing him to a snake. You’re smiling, and Suguru is laughing.

You’ve made Suguru laugh. Satoru’s memory—his perfect memory—reminds him with the emotionless cruelty of his six eyes that it has been two months, one week, four days, since he has made Suguru laugh. He remembers the moment, the day, the joke he had made.

“I’m the Gojo whisperer. The Satoru whisperer.” Satoru’s heart stumbles. “That’s my real cursed technique, Geto, did you know?”

“I didn’t. Take off the gloves, then.”

“No.” Your laughter fades, naturally, and then with a dull thud. “Nah. I’ll keep them on.”

“I guessed as much.”

“Yeah.” There’s the sound of bedsheets rustling, and your long exhale, and then the soft scuff of fabric on fabric. Your gloves against the itchy blanket Suguru keeps on his bed: you’re fiddling with it. You’re nervous, or you’re thinking deeply about something. If Satoru could see you, he would know which it is.

“Still.” You continue, with a touch more hesitation. It surprises Satoru: you haven’t been tentative for all of this conversation. Why would you be now? He’s struck with the fear—fear?—that it could be Suguru, making you nervous. Suguru’s expression, dampening your mood, making you doubt your words. Satoru tries to brush it off.

“What is it?”

“It’s what you said.” You trail off. Then, when you next speak, it’s with the hard set your voice gets when you’re striving for manufactured confidence. “Why’d I be playing dumb? Telling you you’re good for him—or that you’re the only one?”

The conversation holds, and Suguru doesn’t say anything. It stretches long enough that Satoru, impatient to hear Suguru’s reply, fears that he’s missed it, if Suguru responded in a whisper he couldn’t catch.

But then Suguru clears his throat, and says: “Because, Hebi, it’s obvious you’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. Of course you are.”

Lying? Satoru shares your confusion, and his brain races to provide answers. This cryptic thing is something new that Suguru’s been trying out, and it doesn’t suit him. Satoru has always liked his friends honest: it’s why he likes you, and how blunt you can be, even when you’re pretending to insult him.

“About which part?” Yes! Good question, that’s a good question: which part? That Suguru is good for Satoru, whatever that means, or that Suguru is the only one who is?

But, no—he doesn’t need Suguru to answer! Satoru comes to the answer before Suguru has decided how to phrase it. It’s the second, of course it’s the second.

Of course Suguru isn’t the only one. He never has been; he’s just been different, a different facet to the desperately necessary friendships that Satoru keeps close to him. There’s you: you, his longest friend, the only person who has seen every shade of him and still wanted to stay. You: his first, his only, his best.

Thinking of you, Satoru understands what you had meant, when you had said that Suguru is good for him. Because you’re good for him, too—you’ve changed him, him and his life, and Satoru could not be himself without you by his side. He knows, because he’s lived it.

Satoru is still fresh from your absence, when just last year you were still cold and distant. Satoru had hardened into someone he hadn’t liked, and he has only been able to thaw now you are back with him.

So of course it’s the second: of course, everyone knows it’s not only Suguru. Suguru isn’t the only one, not when Satoru needs you, too.

“Both,” Suguru says.

Satoru can feel his heart contract.

“Oh.” You hum. “How have you figured that one?”

“Well. I know why you’d think you’re right—I shouldn’t have said you were lying, that wasn’t right. But we’ve changed a lot, all of us. And I don’t know how much Satoru needs me anymore.”

Anger flares up, hot and fast. What is Suguru blabbering on about? Of course Satoru needs him!

Why is Suguru saying all of this with some straight face—Satoru knows what Suguru sounds like when he’s being honest, and he’s being honest now, but Satoru keeps waiting for the punchline. Seconds pass, and Satoru hears the tick of every single one as they go, and he strains his ears for when Suguru will laugh again, and say he’s kidding, that of course he knows Satoru needs him.

“I know what you mean,” you say, quietly, and Satoru’s blood curdles. He goes completely still, even as his heartbeat thumps in his ear.

You know that he needs you. You know he does.

A flash of bitterness—how many damned times does he need to tell you, before you get it? He tells you all the time, he laughs with you and has never shared a conversation with you in which you haven’t been showered with compliments, all of them genuine. What can he do, then, if you don’t believe him? What more can he say?

And then it subsides. The hot spike of cruelty fades, and Satoru is left with a gaping hole in its absence.

“Maybe it’s an age thing. Us getting older.”

“It could be.”

“You don’t think so?”

Suguru pauses. A beat. “I think you’re good for him. Not me, not anymore.”

“You are. You just don’t see it, but you are, more than me.” You say the final word—me—so dismissively, almost with revulsion. Satoru cannot comprehend how you could think of yourself like that.

“I know what you think, and why you said I am. But it still doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

“You make him better.”

“You’ve far surpassed me in that skill, Hebi.”

“I can’t give him what you can.”

“Neither can I. Not what I used to be able to.”

“No. No, Geto, you don’t see it.” Your voice picks up, and it sounds like you’re about to say everything, to finally be open as well as honest—and then you sigh, quiet and small again. “It’s different, with you. You’ve got something different with him.”

Suguru laughs that mean laugh again. “It’s interesting you still think so.”

Still? Satoru waits for you to echo it yourself, for you to insist Suguru gives you an answer. The conversation isn’t complete, and it’s unsatisfying and vague and Satoru can’t stand it. He wants you to ask for more. But you don’t: you don’t push, you don’t pry. You hold yourself back, and let everything remain unsaid.

Satoru can’t ask Suguru himself. Suguru will not be this honest with him, even though he’s been so equivocal with you.

“It was meant to be a compliment.” The words come out in a whisper, like a child at a sleepover.

There’s that rustle of bedsheets again, and Suguru says, kinder this time: “I know.”

“Yeah?”

Suguru must nod, because you let out a soft huff of breath, small and trying at laughter.

Satoru stands there, his forehead still resting against the wooden door. He only realises when he opens his eyes that he’s had them squeezed shut: his glasses have been pushed down his nose, and even though it’s late in the evening, the dim light is blinding. Satoru straightens, his mind full and thrumming and painful, and adjusts the lenses.  

“Hey.” Your voice: Satoru knows this voice. You are strong, with this voice, and so gentle.

He remembers being eleven, sitting on warm wooden stairs with the orange afternoon sun blazing behind your head like a halo. He remembers the realisation that you would die before him, that you knew, and that you accepted it. He remembers the blazing look in your eye, when you told him he would never be alone when you were still living with him.

He remembers crying in front of you, how much he’d hated it, and how much he’d wished you would take his hand and hold him.

You had comforted him with this voice. And, now, you comfort Suguru.

“You’d tell me,” you say, so tentative and kind, “if there was something wrong. Right?”

“Yes.”

“You would? Really, Suguru?”

“Yes,” Suguru repeats. Then he chuckles, blows out some air, and you squeal.

“Hey, you—!”

“Everything’s fine,” Suguru says, as you both laugh, and as your laughter dies down. “Seriously. Sorry if I’ve been short with you lately, it’s just the heat getting to me.”

His voice is light but genuine, and when you reply, you’re echoing his tone. “You sure, yeah?”

“I’m sure. I promise. Why, did you want to pinkie swear on it?”

“Oh, you’re a bastard. Maybe I will. Take my gloves off and turn your fingers into ash, see how you like it.”

“It sounds intriguing.”

“Ew.”

“Maybe it’s like a hot stone massage. Have you ever thought to try?”

You scoff, and it’s rich with the same affection as when you laugh with him. “Geto, you’re really weird.”

“You might have mentioned that.”

“Might I? Yeah, no, I think I have.”

Satoru doesn’t want to listen anymore. He pushes the door open with too much force and it bangs on the wall opposite, whining on its hinges. He feels high on adrenaline, and he doesn’t know why, but it’s the rush he gets when he’s in a fight and tastes blood.

You look up. Suguru looks over his shoulder. “Oh. Satoru, hey.”

Satoru stares at you two. He’d thought—he’d thought you’d be sitting apart, that you’d have insisted on distance between you and Suguru. You insist on it when you’re with Satoru, and he hates it, because it shows that you still don’t trust him after what happened in the Chapel, and that you’re still not properly friends again. But you and him are still much closer than you and Suguru, so—

Why aren’t you far apart? Why is Satoru standing in the doorway, staring at you and Suguru lying on the same bed, lying down next to each other, both on your sides, facing each other, only, like, actually only inches away from each other?

You’ve discarded the duvet on the floor, but you’ve draped Suguru’s shitty itchy blanket over both of you, and you’ve got a section of it wound between your fingers. You’re fiddling with it, like Satoru knew you would be. But it’s only a single bed, and you’re close to Suguru—actually, weirdly close, closer than you’d let Satoru get. And that’s him! He’s your best friend, not Suguru.

“What are you doing?” Satoru asks, before he can stop himself.

You prop yourself up on your elbow and give him a small wave. Your body had been half-obscured by Suguru’s.

You open your mouth to answer, but Suguru cuts in, dry and sarcastic: “Finishing some intense, passionate lovemaking, Satoru. What do you think?”

Satoru reels back, even though he knows Suguru’s just being a dick, teasing him. Satoru gives him a warning look, and Suguru holds his gaze, undeterred. He doesn’t know if Suguru’s bringing it up on purpose, or if he’s just being cold—Satoru had told him about the dreams he keeps having, and he wishes he hadn’t, because Suguru hadn’t said anything helpful about it. Not at all the way Satoru’d hoped he would, because he’d just given him an uninterested look and told him not to tell you about it. Which, yeah, obviously Satoru wasn’t going to. That wasn’t the question he needed answering.

Satoru looks back to him. Suguru’s hair is down. It’s like pen ink, the way it spills across the white of his pillow. Suguru raises his eyebrows at him, and Satoru knows his face has been burning scarlet.

You snort, and drop yourself back down on the bed.

“You haven’t finished next week’s essay, have you, Gojo?” you ask, placing a gloved hand over your eyes and letting out a tired sigh. “I was going to make Geto help me with it, but he distracted me, and I’ve only just remembered about it. Eugh.”

“Distracted?” Satoru’s brain goes on autopilot, and he clocks what he’s saying whole seconds after the words leave his mouth. “Hey, that’s not some innuendo is it, Hebi-Hebi? Have you two been holding out on me?”

“What? Oh, right. The passionate lovemaking.” You laugh, amused and tired. “Yeah, you know me. Number one playboy right here.”  

“For sure,” Satoru says, playing along. “I feel you could be a player, you know, if you went and got yourself a boyfriend sometime. What do you think?”

His eyes flick between you and Suguru. He doesn’t have a name for the boiling feeling rising up in him, but it’s got him flushed and out of the loop, and he dislikes it vehemently.

“Probably not anytime soon,” you say. Satoru notices Suguru’s lips curl, knowingly, and he almost blurts it out right here, that he knows Suguru knows something, and that he needs to know it too.

“Hey, never say never.” Satoru shakes it off. He tries to: the boiling feeling stays simmering, and he still can’t squash it, no matter how much he wants to. But Satoru is excellent at ignoring and pretending, and so he does, and turns to Suguru. “Yo. Movie night. I’ve chosen a good shitty one, yeah?”

Satoru thrusts the DVD case in front of him. Suguru’s eyes flicker on it for a second, and then he leans back.

“I’m pretty tired, Satoru,” he says. He rolls onto his back, his hair ink on the pillow, his dark eyes closed. “Can we skip this week?”

“What?” Satoru blinks. Then his face contorts into a scowl, and he grimaces down at him. “What do you mean, tired? It’s Wednesday night. I’ve picked us a movie.”

“I could do with the sleep. Next time, yeah?”

“But—”

“You have been looking tired, Geto,” you say, standing. “We’ll leave you be.”

You send him a look, but Satoru ignores it. “No, we won’t.”

“Gojo—”

“C’mon, Suguru,” he urges. Satoru crouches down next to him, so their heads are level. At the proximity, Suguru opens his eyes, and turns his head so he can meet Satoru’s gaze. Satoru sends him a grin. “C’mon. Movie night. You won’t remember you were tired when you’re thirty. Movie night, come on.”

Suguru watches him. Satoru swallows.

It’s not just his eyes that are dark. There are heavy bags around them, deep-set and puffy. Suguru’s cheekbones are gaunter than they used to be. His gaze has been losing its warmth. He even says his name differently. Satoru.

Satoru has asked. Suguru doesn’t let him in. Suguru doesn’t think Satoru needs him.

For a split second, Satoru wishes you weren’t here: if it was just them, maybe Satoru could admit that he’d heard it all. Maybe he could grab Suguru by the shoulders and shake him, and then he’d force sense into him, and make him realise that yes, Satoru needs him, that Satoru needs him desperately and that Satoru cannot imagine carrying on without him. Maybe Satoru could say that to him.

Maybe he will. But Suguru just quirks him a smile, and waves him off. “Nah, honestly. I’m tired. I’ll get an early night, and we can do something later.”

Satoru is not used to being dismissed, but he has learnt what it means now, after all these years.

“Yeah,” he says, brightly. “For sure. Next week.”

Suguru hums, and Satoru tries not to read it as non-committal.

He avoids your gaze as he ducks through the door. If he looks at you, or lets you see his face, you will be able to read every emotion flickering through him. Better than himself: Satoru doesn’t even know what he’s feeling.

“I’ll walk you back,” you say, as you shut the door.

“Great.”

“Yeah. Hey, Gojo, I’ve got a DVD player in my room. I can watch it with you, if you really wanted to see it.”

Yeah, sure.

Will you let me get that close?

Satoru wants to say it, biting.

As close as you let him get? Both of us, on your bed, inches away?

Will you do that again? Will you do that with me?

Will you?

He looks down at you, ready to spit it out.

Satoru falters. Your smile. The small upturn of your lips, the gleam of your eyes, the warm glow to your skin in the evening light. You’re smiling up at him, and Satoru knows you better than anyone; you know that he’s upset, and that this boiling feeling is going to burn him alive, and you’re trying to make him feel better.

You know him. You want to spend time with him.

Satoru lets out a breath, and feels the tension, heavy set in his jaw, leave him. He looks back to you, to your shy hopefulness, and there’s that rushing feeling, that affection and fondness and warmth all rushing together.

“Now, if you insist,” Satoru says, grinning broadly down at you. “I know you’re desperate to stay in my company, Hebi-Hebi, but you don’t have to be so obvious about it! But, I guess I’ll let you see it with me, if you really want to.”

Your eyes shine. “I’m glad I can. Thanks, Gojo. Come on.”

[akiretv]

true besties wear eachother's merch

[qaanngi]

Hapee seasonal 🎄

[azolitmin]

[just-null]

i am literally on my KNEEEEEESSSSS. please please make more yandere hantengu clone art.. i don’t care if you don’t color it in or if it’s just a simple sketch PLEASE 😞

is the threat directed at you??? at others??? at something else??? do you even want to find out??? You'll probably be okay if you get back home before dark and make it up to him.

[ethosiab]

the day i learn how i want to draw redstone i will become at least 13% more powerful

[starlingfawn]

send me back in time and i'll bring us back in line

[tbgkaru-woh]

The new generation leaders

[hopeswriting]

reminder that if you back tsuna into a corner he

A) sends you right back into the worst prison for mafia criminals you just escaped from, but even worse than before (enjoy being unconscious and tied up in your one room swimming pool for the next 10 years)

B) freezes you with flames burning so hot they turned into ice (< this isn't how the zero point breakthrough is explained in canon but it's the more dramatic explanation), fully knowing you were already frozen by similar ones for 8 years until, like, a month prior

C) burns you fucking alive and also undoes the last 10 years of your existence across all existing timelines. also he won't think anything about it afterwards ever (?????? like. it's not that he didn't deserve it, to be clear, but damn. 😭😭😭 middle schoolers when you just want to take over the world(s) for a bit, smdh 🙄)

D) is willing to become the boss of the most powerful mafia family in the world with a bloodstained history if it means getting the opportunity to get his hands on you and kill you beat the shit out of you. but you're lucky he likes you so you could stay on very thin ice long enough for both of you to clear things up

E) gangs up against you with all the current and future strongest people in the world, and then punches you so hard he makes you see the light of doing the right thing despite your centuries years old deep rooted hatred which singlehandedly kept you alive as an undead person

also reminder he did all that while he was only 14 years old. this is all things he did in less than a year.

this is tsuna's resume during the course of less than a year of proper mafia business.

so, you know. the next time he goes "i just want my friends and i to be safe and happy and live in peace. 🥺🥺🥺 please don't make me fight you to make it happen? 👉🏽👈🏽🥺👉🏽👈🏽🥺👉🏽👈🏽🥺"

just maybe, consider listening to him

[ophii]

what year is this again?

additional doodles idk

[whenthelightisrunninglow]

spent the last couple nights watching the handplates (<- @zarla-s if you’ve never read it) comic dub with a friend of mine :-]

gaster ^

[ricky-mortis]

Curtwen Week Day 4: Haunted

[tiniest-hands-in-all-the-land]

Been playing FFXIV recently desperately searching for my cunty lil man :)

I love my tiny little friend who insists I come with him for all of his political negotiations where I just sit and nod and occasionally smack a dude senseless

[bacchuschucklefuck]

we let the ocean drown out our voices/enjoying the bitterness/in the chaotic light, I close my eyes and see

[fudgecake-charlie]

I wanted to play around on aggie drawing BigB because he deserves to have more exploration in his design!! I think I quite like the blue and purple

[moaccyrk]

Akane's moment of weakness.