Archive of Our Own

“Suguru, what’s wrong with you?”

Suguru blinks. He’s gotten used to the out-of-pocket things Satoru often says, but even for those standards, that’s a bit of a strange question. “What?”

“There’s something wrong with you,” Satoru repeats, no longer a question. He still has his sunglasses on, but Suguru feels intensely scrutinized nonetheless. “Your cursed energy is all over the place.”

Suguru squints at him. “Obviously. You do know I’m like a vending machine of cursed energy, anyways, right?”

Satoru makes a face. “Not like that. This is something different.”

Suguru looks down at himself, as if he could see whatever Satoru’s Six Eyes are picking up on him. “I feel fine.” He’s not even lying, at least this time.

Satoru’s apparently not appeased with this answer, and he moves his glasses to the top of his head to inspect Suguru more thoroughly. “No, there’s definitely something off.” His response is uncharacteristically serious enough to even give Suguru pause, and he tries to think back to the last mission they had just finished. 

“All I took in last time was a Grade 2 curse,” he recalls out loud, his brows furrowing. “It didn’t feel like anything different.”

Satoru still looks fidgety. “It doesn’t feel right. You don’t feel right.” Before Suguru can open his mouth to ask what the hell that means, Satoru barrels on. “Try saying something.”

Suguru looks at him blankly. “Say what?”

“Anything?”

Suguru opens his mouth and then closes it. “Like what?”

Satoru throws his hands up into the air, although Suguru feels like, if anything, he should be the one to get frustrated at the moment. “I don’t know, just…” Satoru frowns. “Tell me your favorite color.”

Pepto bismol pink, Suguru opens his mouth to say. It’s a running joke they’ve had between the two of them, ever since the one day Suguru’s uniform accidentally got mixed with his sister’s clothing and came back from the washing machine tainted a wonderfully horrific shade of pink. Satoru refused to let it drop since then, and so every gift Suguru’s ever received from him has been in some ghastly hot pink color.

But that’s not what comes out of his mouth. 

“Blue.”

Satoru’s eyebrows shoot up to disappear under his bangs. “Blue?” he repeats.

Blue? Suguru asks himself. 

“Blue,” he hears himself repeat.

Under any other circumstance, Suguru would be patting himself on the back for getting such a dumbfounded look to show up on Satoru’s face. As it is, Suguru’s pretty sure his own face looks exactly the same.

“Okay,” Satoru eventually says, and he’s blinking rapidly. “...Why?”

At that, Suguru clamps his mouth shut. Whatever’s going on with him, it’s clear his mouth is moving at a time too ahead of his own brain, but he doesn’t need much time to figure out the reason behind his spontaneous outburst. 

No reason, he opens his mouth to say, but the words don’t come out. Is there something stuck in his throat? No, he was speaking just fine before, and his throat feels fine, so why does—

“Because I—” The words burst out of Suguru, and when he tries to stop more from coming out, he finds his chest constricting to the point where he has to nearly keel over. “I—” He struggles to maintain even his shallow breathing, and he’s pretty sure his entire face is flushed. “I think I need to see Shoko,” he eventually gasps out.

“I think you need to see Shoko,” Satoru says at the exact same time. He’s turned off his Infinity to lend a supporting arm to Suguru, but when Suguru even thinks of insisting he doesn’t need assistance, he’s wheezing out another breath like it’s his last. 

They stumble to make their way to the morgue, where Shoko spends most of her time, for some reason Suguru doesn’t want to think too hard about. Suguru’s just managed to lean against the operating table, the thin paper crumpling under his vice of a grip, when Satoru’s phone blares. His expression immediately sours when he looks at the caller ID, and it doesn’t take much of a leap in logic for Suguru to figure out who’s calling. 

“I’m busy,” Satoru snaps as a greeting. He pauses, but only for a bit, his expression darkening as he presumably interrupts the person on the other end. “No, I don’t have time for another mission right now, didn’t I just say—”

“Satoru,” Suguru interrupts. “It’s okay.” Satoru’s face tells him just how much he wants to argue, but Suguru cuts him off before he can start. “Really, I feel fine now.” Again, he’s not lying. His chest still feels tight, but his lungs have loosened enough that he can breathe easier again. 

With a sigh, Satoru slips his glasses back on. Addressing the caller on the phone, he finally responds, “Yes, fine, whatever, I’ll be there.” Without waiting for a response, even though Suguru can vaguely make out frantic chatter on the other side, Satoru hangs up. He stares at Suguru for a few moments, although with what expression, he can’t make out, since his glasses mask the most expressive part of his face.

“Don’t die,” Satoru finally says.

Suguru raises his eyebrow. “You too.”

Soon, he’s out the door, and Suguru’s left to his own devices in the morgue. Just as he’s beginning to reach for his phone and call Shoko, the woman herself shows up at the entrance, lit cigarette in hand. 

“Are you supposed to be smoking in here?” Suguru asks as a greeting, and Shoko rolls her eyes before snuffing it on a nearby ashtray. 

“Right, because these residents are so likely to get lung cancer from second-hand smoke,” she responds wryly, gesturing to the dead bodies they’re surrounded by. Suguru will never understand what she enjoys in a place like this. “So, what’s wrong with you?” Shoko asks.

Suguru finds it odd that he’s been asked the same question twice in the same day, and he opens his mouth to say just that, but what comes out is nothing at all what he intended to say. 

“My favorite color is blue because I’m in love with Satoru.”

Shoko looks at him, unimpressed. “Okay. Is that all?”

Suguru’s too busy gaping at himself. “That’s… not what I meant to say.” He rubs his chest, realizing in a flash that all the previous tightness has completely disappeared. The realization he’s coming to is not at all to his liking, and he hopes to any higher deity that he’s wrong. “Shoko, I think something’s wrong with me.”

“Symptoms?” Shoko asks lazily.

“My lungs—felt constricted, I think, it was kind of hard to breathe, I’m pretty sure my heart rate was increasing faster than it should, my face was heating up, maybe—” Suguru knows he’s rambling, but once he’s started, he’s finding it hard to stop. Shoko watches on impassively, but after Suguru cuts himself off, she nods knowingly to himself. 

“Yeah, I know what this is,” Shoko says, but the sly grin on her face doesn’t inspire any confidence in Suguru. “Suguru-kun,” she starts with mock seriousness. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to diagnose you with the horrible condition of being in love with one insufferable Gojo Satoru.”

Suguru stares at Shoko.

“That’s not it,” he finally says after a moment that stretches out too long. 

Shoko raises an eyebrow. “You sure? Because those symptoms sounded a lot like love sickness to me.”

Suguru hopes his face isn’t as red as he thinks it is. “No,” he says again resolutely. “That’s not it.” After a pause, he adds in a mutter. “I know the difference.”

“Sure you do,” Shoko agrees, but she’s still got a shit-eating grin on her face. “But if you insist.” She holds a hand out, and Suguru dutifully gives his wrist. Shoko’s cursed technique simultaneously warms and cools his skin where it traces its path, and after the apparent diagnostic is finished, there’s a frown on Shoko’s face. Suguru doesn’t need to ask to know that whatever news he’s going to receive won’t be good. 

“Well, it’s not just you having a crush on Gojo,” Shoko eventually says, leaning back against a metal tray. “Although I’m sure that plays a part, too.”

Suguru rolls his eyes. Why had he ever thought it would be a good idea to tell Shoko about his feelings? He should have known she would be insufferable. 

“Something’s blocking your cursed energy output,” Shoko finally continues. “It’s putting a sort of stopper over your output, so any intermittent releases give out more cursed energy than you should.”

“Okay,” Suguru agrees, even though he has no idea what Shoko is saying. “But why am I having a physical reaction to it, too?”

Shoko frowns, and Suguru doesn’t feel very relieved by the stumped expression on her face. “How did you say your chest started tightening, again?” she asks, and Suguru dutifully relays the events that had just passed. Shoko taps her fingers on the tray behind her in an irregular pattern, but soon enough, her eyes flash with the spark of an idea. 

“Lie to me.”

“What?”

“Lie to me,” Shoko repeats. “Anything. Tell me to my face you’re not in love with Gojo.”

Suguru resists the urge to walk out entirely. Again, bringing this back to Satoru? Suguru can admit he’s a little interested in the Six Eyes sorcerer, but he’s not in lo—

“I’m in love with Satoru.”

What the fuck.

Suguru’s hand goes to his throat where it feels scratchy and disused, even though he knows it can’t be—words were just pulled out of him, after all. 

“I’m not—” Suguru tries to say. “I’m not in—”

And it’s back. He can nearly physically feel his lungs constricting on themselves, his breaths coming out in short, panicked gasps as he hunches over the morgue’s cot. There’s something clogged in his throat, and if Suguru didn’t know better, he’d say it was his own words, but—

“I’m in love with Satoru,” Suguru says, for what he thinks must be the fourth time in the past hour. 

“So you’ve said,” Shoko says, sounding wearier than she has any right to be. “You want the good news or the bad news?” Suguru opens his mouth to answer, but Shoko apparently deems the answer unnecessary as she continues. “The good news is I’ve figured out what’s wrong with you, the bad news is that you probably won’t like it.”

Suguru stares at Shoko, hoping he doesn’t have to vocalize his obvious question. 

“Whatever’s blocking your cursed energy also has the ability to stop you from saying certain things—those certain things being lies,” she clarifies. At Suguru’s blank stare, she adds, “Basically, your body is forcing you to tell only the truth for the time being.” She shrugs. “If you try to resist, well. You know what happens.”

Suguru continues staring at Shoko.

“So it’s true, then?” he says slowly. “I’m in love with Satoru?”

Shoko looks like she desires nothing more than to have Suguru on the operating table. “Of course that’s what you focus on,” she says with barely concealed disdain. “But yeah, you idiot. You being in love with Gojo, your favorite color being blue because of him—” she interrupts herself to wrinkle her nose in disgust, “—totally corny, by the way—it’s all nothing but the truth. At least to you.”

“I can’t tell him,” Suguru immediately realizes out loud. “Satoru can’t know.”

Shoko lets out a thinly veiled snicker. “I’m not sure you’re the best person to hide secrets right now.”

Suguru doesn’t need to say that out loud to know it’s true. 

He rubs a hand over his face. “Satoru’s going to be terrible about this.”

“Probably!” Shoko agrees with an unfair amount of cheer. “Ah, speak of the devil.”

“The devil?” a familiar affronted voice shouts. “I am anything but, my dear Shoko.”

“You’re the only one that thinks that,” Shoko responds to Satoru waltzing in, with no small amount of fondness in her tone. 

“Nonsense,” Satoru dismisses, and before Suguru can do anything—like, for example, flee the room and maybe the school and maybe Japan altogether—Satoru’s draped his gangly limbs on Suguru’s shoulder, effectively trapping him in place. “So, doc, what’s the verdict on Suguru?” he asks Shoko, but Suguru doesn’t miss the abnormally tight grip Satoru has on him. 

“Nothing life-threatening,” Shoko responds easily. “Geto can tell you himself. Can you both get out of my office, now?”

Satoru looks around the morgue. “This is an office?”

Shoko raises an eyebrow. “Out.”

“Fine, fine, Shoko-saaaaan,” Satoru groans, but he eventually shuffles both him and Suguru out of the cold metal grave Shoko calls home. Suguru is given less than a second to adjust to the sudden light before Satoru’s turning on him, with a grin that borders on terrifying. “So, Su-gu-ru,” Satoru spells out. “What’s wrong with you?”

Suguru, not for the first time in his life, wishes he wasn’t friends with such callous people.

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Suguru manages to say, and the fact that he can get the words out at all probably is a good sign. “I just.” Suguru pauses. What’s the best way to phrase his… situation? 

In the end, he doesn’t get a choice—in a sensation that’s becoming very familiar to him, the words come out on their own volition. 

“I can’t say anything but the truth.”

For the second time in the same day, Satoru’s eyebrows raise above his sunglasses. “What?”

“I’m surprised you’re surprised by this,” Suguru says honestly—not that he’s capable of speaking any other way, in his current predicament.

“Was it because of the last mission we went on?” Satoru prods, and Suguru shrugs.

“Probably.”

Satoru frowns. “So, what, you can’t… lie? At all?”

Suguru nods, a sense of foreboding tickling the back of his neck. “Yeah.”

Sure enough, a sly grin starts unfurling across Satoru’s face. “You can’t lie about anything at all?”

How much more is he going to rub it in? It’s not like Suguru wants to lose the ability to lie. He opens his mouth to say just that, but a few seconds later, he finds Satoru’s face inches away from his own. 

“Say, Suguru,” he starts inconspicuously enough, but he’s close enough that Suguru can see the way his eyes dance with mirth. He’d call it cute if he wasn’t currently fearing for his life. “Since we’re such good friends and all that, you wouldn’t mind if I asked you a few questions, right?” Satoru then has the audacity to bat his eyelashes, inching even closer to Suguru. “You don’t have any secrets hidden from me, right?”

Suguru clamps his mouth shut even as he feels the words rising in his throat. “Bathroom,” he chokes out, and speed-walks as fast as he can without flat-out running. The farther he gets from Satoru, the more his lungs expand, until he turns a corner and he can finally exhale. Clearly, whatever he’s been cursed with decreases in strength proportional to proximity, and that’s a fact that should relieve Suguru, but he’s not sure how many times he can get away with physically fleeing away from Satoru.

Just as Suguru straightens, he sees Satoru turn the same corner, his head tilted. 

“This isn’t a bathroom, Suguru.”

“I know that,” Suguru manages to say, and he notes with cautious optimism that the clenched feeling from before hasn’t returned. As long as Satoru doesn’t ask another probing question again, he might be alright.

Then again, this is Gojo Satoru.

Before Satoru can inevitably open his big fat mouth and ruin Suguru’s life one question at a time, Suguru rushes to answer the previous question in an attempt at damage control.

“You can ask me anything you want,” Suguru says carefully. “And I’ll answer.” What he doesn’t add is the fact that he has to answer, even if he doesn’t necessarily want to. And… Suguru can think about forty questions he’d never want asked from Satoru. 

Satoru looks much too delighted at Suguru’s answer. “This’ll be fun,” he says with a grin, and Suguru can only give back a weak smile. 

Fun, he tries to repeat out loud, but the word gets caught half-way up his throat, and he doesn’t quite manage to cough it out. 

Being cursed, fortunately or unfortunately, didn’t keep Suguru out of the field. Even though Shoko had mentioned it as a stopper of sorts on Suguru’s cursed energy, he found that his fighting skills were largely unaffected. He still wasn’t completely sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing—he didn’t particularly enjoy defeating curses and limping back to Jujutsu High with blood all over him—and that wasn’t even including the sensation of ingesting curses, which he almost routinely had to do—but at the same time, being outside of Jujutsu High and fighting curses meant he didn’t have to go out of his way to avoid Satoru. 

It was almost to the point of paranoia—the way Suguru’s heart rate would ratchet and his breaths would go shallow when he saw the white-haired idiot anywhere. Every time Satoru opened his mouth, Suguru was sure it would be his last day on earth. 

But since the day he’d been cursed, he’d successfully avoided any probing questions from Satoru—or rather, Satoru hadn’t asked any probing questions. It was unexpected, but Suguru wasn’t questioning his good luck, wherever it came from. 

Apparently, though, that luck had decided to desert him. The report he’d last received had said Grade 2, and it was in Shinjuku, so Suguru had gone with the intention of stopping by a pastry store he knew Satoru favored but, of course, the report had been filled out wrong—what he was facing now had to be at least a high Grade 1, maybe even Special Grade. Suguru stares at the writhing mass of limbs before him and wonders, not for the first time, why he had ever decided to be a jujutsu sorcerer.

Suguru wins in the end, because of course he does. It’s not exactly an easy win, though—before inevitably being absorbed by Suguru, the curse manages to leave quite a few slashes on Suguru, and although the pain is bearable, his left leg in particular throbs ominously with every step he takes. 

He still manages to stumble his way back to Jujutsu High, where, as his luck would have it, the first person he comes upon is none other than Satoru. He’s got his hands in his pockets, head raised to the sky, and a lollipop in his mouth from god-knows-where. He looks like he’s just come from a mission, too, although the only way Suguru can tell is in the slight ruffles of his uniform.

Satoru’s relaxed posture instantly stiffens when he sees Suguru, and soon enough he’s right by Suguru’s side, an arm offered in support that Suguru gratefully takes as he brings his limping to a stop. He’s struck with a sudden sense of déjà vu, but the sensation leaves almost as quickly as it comes.

“You okay?” Satoru asks casually, but Suguru knows him well enough to detect the underlying worry running through his tone. 

I’m fine, Suguru opens his mouth to say. His leg doesn’t exactly feel great, but he can walk it off at least long enough to Shoko’s office. He turns to tell Satoru just that, and it’s exactly then that Suguru starts coughing again. His sudden movements only irritate his already bothersome wound, despite attempts from Satoru to stabilize him. 

“My leg,” Suguru says instead. “It really fucking hurts.”

Satoru eyes the leg in question. “Yeah, it doesn’t look great.” Suguru’s baggy pants cover the worst of it, but it’s still sagging enough on one side to look… not exactly appealing. Satoru squints at it for a bit, before snapping his fingers in a moment of most likely misguided enlightenment. “Say, Suguru, you want me to carry you to Shoko’s?”

Suguru momentarily forgets about the pain radiating from his leg to stare at Satoru. “What?”

Apparently, that’s enough of a response for Satoru to physically lift Suguru into his arms—he’s careful not to disturb the injured leg, but that doesn’t stop Suguru from startling like a scared cat once his feet are off the ground. Instinctively, his hands reach for the nearest thing to stabilize himself, and soon his arms end up around Satoru’s neck. 

Satoru has him in a… bridal carry…?

Suguru looks at the ground, then at Satoru’s shit-eating grin, inches away from his own face.

“Satoru,” Suguru starts carefully, even though he’s all too aware of the sensation of Satoru’s hair tickling his fingers at the base of his neck. “What are you doing.”

Satoru blinks with faux innocence. “Just helping a friend out, Suguru.” The corners of his eyes curve up as he smiles. “You said your leg hurt.”

And this is why Suguru never fucking tells him anything. 

“You’re so embarrassing,” Suguru mutters, and he sees Satoru’s grin grow wider, the little shit.

“What, you want me to drop you?” Satoru asks with wide eyes, and although Suguru knows he won’t, he can’t stop himself from tightening his hold a little more. 

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Suguru says with a scowl. He tears his eyes away from the smug look on Satoru’s face to shake his head. “Are you going to take me to Shoko or not?”

“We’re already here,” Satoru says, and when Suguru blinks, he realizes they are, in fact, in front of Shoko’s self-designated office. 

“How—” Suguru starts to ask, then realizes he’s probably better not knowing. “Well, thanks, I guess.”

“You could be more grateful, you know,” Satoru states haughtily as he helps Suguru stand on his own two feet again. “Not everyone would be as chivalrous as I am.”

Suguru resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Chivalrous.”

Satoru points at him triumphantly. “You said it, not me! And now it has to be true.”

“Sure,” Suguru agrees wearily. It’s only then he realizes his arms are still around Satoru’s neck, and he quickly removes them, jumping back a little in the process and nearly putting his weight on his bad leg. He hopes fervently he doesn’t look as flustered as he feels. 

Satoru tilts his head. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Suguru manages out, and he’s half-relieved the word comes out at all. “I’ll see Shoko now, you can leave.”

Satoru doesn’t move. “You don’t want me to come in, too?”

“No,” the word shoves its way out of Suguru’s mouth, almost violently. Satoru looks as taken-aback by the outburst as Suguru feels. “No,” Suguru repeats in a calmer voice. “I’m fine by myself.”

Satoru looks skeptical, but with a shrug, he’s out of sight. Suguru inhales slowly, and when he turns around, he’s surprised to see Shoko leaning against the door. 

“Lovers’ spat?”

Suguru rolls his eyes. “Very funny.”

Shoko takes a drag from the cigarette that never seems to leave her hand. “I wasn’t the one who was brought here by bridal carry,” she responds pointedly, and to that, Suguru has no response. “So, what part of your body did you break today?”

It happens on a completely unassuming day.

Suguru and Satoru have had no missions at all in the day, which is surprising given the amount of times they’ve been called for days past. The off days are always nice, and today particularly so, with the sun out enough to warm the usually chilly grounds.

They’re sitting under a large tree in the main courtyard, because as unfazed as Satoru will try to seem, his eyes have always been sensitive to light and especially so when the sun is out in such a full fashion. Suguru once saw him wear four pairs of sunglasses at once in an attempt to combat the sun’s glare—an attempt that was both hideous and unsuccessful. 

Suguru’s reading a book, a leisure activity he hasn’t had the pleasure of doing since he joined Jujutsu High. Satoru’s next to him, half-splayed out on the ground, mindlessly picking at the grass. 

“Suguru,” Satoru says suddenly, breaking the comfortable silence that had previously blanketed the area. Suguru glances at him from the top of his book. Satoru’s eyes are raised upwards to squint at the sunlight poking through the shade from the leaves. 

“Yeah?” Suguru prompts when Satoru falls silent once again. 

“Who was your first crush?”

Suguru blinks. “My what?”

Satoru closes his eyes as if in deep thought, and when he opens them again, he’s staring right at Suguru. “Your first crush,” he repeats, and Suguru is both confused and surprised by his uncharacteristically serious tone. “Who was it?”

Of all the things to be serious about. 

“I don’t really remember,” Suguru starts carefully. “Probably Ryō Nishikido from 1 Liter of Tears.” Suguru scratches his cheek with a finger. “I’m still not sure if my crush was on him or the character he was playing.” For once, Suguru’s grateful the answer wasn’t instead the boy in front of him.

Satoru’s still staring at him, but now with incredibly wide eyes. “Really?” he asks, incredulously enough that it has Suguru running back his own answer in his mind. He didn’t say anything too surprising, right?

“Yeah,” Suguru says slowly. “I can’t exactly lie right now, anyways.”

The reminder only has Satoru’s eyes widening more. “But Ryō Nishikido is a guy.”

Suguru stares at him. “Satoru, I’m gay.”

“You’re what?”

That certainly wasn’t a conversation Suguru ever thought he would need to have. 

“I literally told you three weeks after we met?”

“I thought you were joking!”

“Why the fuck would I joke about that?”

But he’d cleared everything up. Some things made more sense now, like how nonchalant Satoru had been when Suguru had finally worked out the courage to come out to him a few weeks after getting to know each other, or how often Satoru would pester him about getting a girlfriend when they were out on missions together. 

Suguru figured that since he’d asked one probing question, Satoru would have enough and back off for the rest of the curse’s duration… which, in hindsight, was a naive prospect to begin with. Suguru was pretty sure Satoru didn’t have the phrase “backing off” in his vocabulary at all.

But Suguru manages. The questions themselves are mostly harmless, and ones Suguru would have answered truthfully anyways. 

The real trouble comes a few weeks later, when Satoru comes back from a mission with four shopping bags strung on each arm. 

“You went shopping?” Suguru asks when he sees Satoru waltz through the gates. 

“I had a little bit of extra time and a lot of extra money,” Satoru says with a grin. “Don’t feel left out, I got you some stuff, too!” he adds, throwing a bag that Suguru catches with one hand. It’s heavier than he expects, and when he peeks inside, he sees a bundle of books tied together with string and a pack of hair bands similar to the ones he already regularly used. He squints at the inside of the bag again, before turning to Satoru. 

“How did you know—” what books I like and how I was running out of hair bands, he means to ask, but he’s cut off by Satoru’s flippant handwaving.

“I pay attention to things,” he says easily, as if it’s just a fact of life. “I pay attention to you.”

Suguru doesn’t know how to respond to that. “Thanks,” he murmurs as a response, setting down the bag by his feet and sitting down just as Satoru does the same. “What did you get?”

Satoru looks supremely pleased he asked. One by one, he takes out various articles of clothing and other accessories, describing each of them in unnecessary detail that Suguru listens patiently to. The last item he pulls out is a cheap plastic tiara, which Satoru puts on his hair with unnecessary pomp.

“Why’d you get that?” Suguru asks, stifling a snicker when he sees how it glints dully in the afternoon light. 

“I just thought it looked nice,” Satoru admits with a grin. “Don’t you agree?” Satoru moves closer to Suguru, batting his eyelashes. “Don’t I look cute?”

“No,” Suguru immediately scoffs, but the word comes out easy—too easy. A flash of something like hurt flits across Satoru’s face, but it’s gone in an instant. He opens his mouth in rebuttal, but Suguru’s not done. Before he can register what he’s thinking, the words have clawed their way past his throat into the open air. 

“You’re beautiful.”

Satoru stares at Suguru, and all Suguru can do is stare back, mesmerized by the light blush spreading across Satoru’s face. 

“I should go,” Suguru suddenly blurts out, and then he’s scrambling back on his feet, hoping his desperation isn’t evident in his face or tone. “I need to—I need to see Shoko.” He’s not sure if he can physically force out any more excuses from his throat.

“Suguru, wai—”

Suguru doesn’t let him finish before speed walking as fast as he can towards the mortuary. A string of curses is running loops around his brain, and he’s not even sure if they’re verbal curses, literal curses, or some fucked up combination of both. 

“Shoko, I need to get rid of this right now,” Suguru blurts as soon as he steps foot inside. Shoko, who had just been poring over her latest deceased patient, barely spares him a glance. 

“Get in line,” Shoko gestures without looking up. 

“Shoko,” Suguru stresses. “Please.”

At that, Shoko finally looks up, a cigarette dangling from her lips. She takes it out, snuffing it on the nearby ashtray before looking Suguru up and down, unimpressed. 

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” she says, and Suguru’s unsure if he’s imagining the disappointment in her tone—but either way, he’s got more things to be worried about. 

“This curse,” Suguru says instead. “This… truth-whatever curse. I want it gone.”

“Easier said than done, isn’t it,” Shoko says dolefully. “Whatever it is, I can’t just get rid of it myself.” She coughs, and Suguru wonders if all the smoke is finally getting to her. “There’s a pretty simple way to get rid of it, though.”

“Anything,” Suguru says immediately. “I’ll do anything.”

Shoko looks more amused than anything. “I’m not sure how it works exactly, but you need to tell your greatest secret.”

“My greatest secret…” Suguru trails off, and then his brows furrow. “What the hell does that mean?”

Shoko shrugs. “You tell me.” She pauses. “Actually, no. You’ve told me way too many times.” She gives him a pointed stare. “I think you know who you need to tell.”

Realization dawns on Suguru like cold water dripping down his spine. 

“No.”

“Oh, but yes,” Shoko says easily. “Telling Gojo’s the only way out of it, sorry.”

Suguru rubs his forehead and wonders where he went so wrong. Was it meeting Satoru? Joining Jujutsu High? Being a jujutsu sorcerer at all?

“Okay,” he says finally. “Thanks, Shoko.”

“Good luck,” Shoko says while ushering him out, amusement tinging her tone. 

Outside, Suguru doesn’t even have time to think about what to do before his field of vision is filled with one Gojo Satoru. His sunglasses are on the top of his head, so the full force of his gaze is directed at Suguru like a missile. 

Suguru notes with mild disappointment that Satoru’s not wearing the tiara anymore. He wasn’t lying when he said Satoru was beautiful, with or without the tiara, but the tiara was still kind of cute, if only in a cheap way. 

“What is it,” Satoru demands, and Suguru drags his gaze from the top of Satoru’s head back to his eyes. Suguru tries to back up, but finds his back hitting a wall. 

Is Satoru… kabedon-ing him?

“What is what?” Suguru asks, but he’s a little preoccupied with the way Satoru keeps inching into his space. 

Satoru backs up, but only to whip his sunglasses off his head in a dramatic fashion and spread his arms out, the glasses dangling from one hand. “The secret,” he demands, and Suguru’s heart drops into his shoes. “Your greatest secret, the one you’ve apparently told Shoko sooooo many times but haven’t even mentioned once to me.” He leans in again, his brows slanted. “I might even be hurt, Suguru.”

Satoru’s tone is cold, but Suguru knows him well enough to detect the actual hurt lingering behind his words. 

“You overheard?”

Satoru scoffs. “Not on purpose,” he says, before amending. “Not at first.” He gestures to the side, where Suguru notices for the first time a familiar paper bag. “You left your stuff back then, when you were running away like your ass was on fire.”

Suguru frowns, miffed. “I was speed walking.”

“You were running.”

“Speed walking.”

“Running.”

“Speed walking.”

For once, Satoru doesn’t insist on having the last word. For once, Suguru wishes he would. 

“Whatever,” Satoru says instead, his sunglasses spinning wildly on his hand as he gestures. “What is this secret, Suguru? What’s so bad that you’d physically force yourself not to tell me? Why are you totally fine telling Shoko, multiple times even? You’re not dying, are you?” Satoru cuts himself off. “Suguru, you’re not dying, right?”

Suguru raises his hands up in a placating manner. “I’m not dying, Satoru, it’s just that—”

He’s cut off before he can continue by an indignant Satoru. “Then what is it?” 

Suguru’s never wished more for a natural disaster to spontaneously occur. His luck seems to have run dry, because the earth does not, in fact, crack open and swallow Suguru whole, and instead, as he attempts to clamp his mouth shut, he feels unfortunately familiar physical sensations—his face starts going flushed from the sudden struggle to breathe, the breaths he can get out are short and hurried, and he’s pretty sure his legs are going to fall out on him at any moment. 

Satoru recognizes this, because of course he does, and his expression twists to be more anguished than Suguru’s ever seen. Suguru despises himself at that moment, for being the person to put that expression on Satoru’s face. 

“Suguru,” Satoru says quietly. “Is it so bad that I’d know that you’d rather choke on your own words?”

This isn’t how I wanted you to know, Suguru so desperately wants to say, but he knows the actual words that’ll come out of his mouth before they upheave themselves onto the ground below them. 

“I’m in love with you,” the words come out in a rushed gasp, and although Suguru’s relieved to breathe easily again, he’s not exactly relieved by the astonished look on Satoru’s face when the words hit him. Suguru thinks maybe that’s it, but more words push against his diaphragm. “I’m so fucking in love with you that it’s annoying, sometimes. I’ve been in love with you since the first time you took your sunglasses off in front of me—you’re really fucking beautiful, you know?” Shut up, Suguru’s voice screams at himself. “That’s why my favorite color’s blue, it’s always been blue, it’s only been blue since I met you.”

Sometime in the middle of Suguru’s rambling, Satoru’s sunglasses end up slipping from his fingers and landing on the ground.  Satoru’s still staring, utterly shell-shocked, as Suguru talks. 

“I want to spend the rest of my life with you because I’m in love with you,” Suguru finally says, and he wonders faintly exactly how many times he’s told Satoru he loves him in the span of the last minute. Blessedly, his mouth snaps shut and stays shut. 

Satoru is still staring at him. 

“Right,” Suguru says weakly after a long stretch of tense silence. Satoru hasn’t moved an inch, and Suguru can’t help but wonder if he’s broken the other. “I should go.”

That snaps Satoru out of his stupor, but before he can make any move or open his mouth to stop Suguru, Suguru is speed walking— not running, but speed walking—away, but this time, he makes sure to grab the bag of gifts Satoru had gotten him, and once he’s speed-walked far enough away, he slows down until he reaches his room, locking the door as soon as he’s inside. 

He slides down with his back against the door until he’s sitting down, the bag in between his knees. He opens it again, carefully untying the string that binds the books inside together. He recognizes the set as the series preceding a book he remembers mentioning offhandedly to Satoru, and—

“I’m not in love with Satoru,” Suguru tries saying, his voice hoarse with what sounds like disuse. 

Well, he’d definitely gotten rid of the curse.

Suguru tries avoiding Satoru, and it fails almost immediately. This is largely because Suguru forgot the only person he ever spent time with at Jujutsu High—other than the once sporadic, now regular visits to Shoko—was in fact Satoru. 

So he shouldn’t be surprised when the second he leaves his room the next day, Satoru’s waiting outside on the grounds with an inscrutable expression, but he still almost startles hard enough to speed walk back to his room. He doesn’t, in the end, but only because he knows Satoru would never leave him alone if he did.

“Suguru,” Satoru calls as Suguru’s feet slow to a stop. 

“Satoru,” Suguru says back cautiously. He coughs. Better to talk about the elephant in the room quickly and get it over with, right? “About yesterday—”

“Ask me what my favorite color is,” Satoru interrupts. 

Suguru blinks. 

“What?”

“Ask me what my favorite color is,” Satoru repeats. His gaze is unusually intense, even behind the tinted glasses. Suguru hopes this isn’t some elaborate prank, although he wouldn’t exactly put it past Satoru.

“What’s your favorite color?” Suguru eventually asks, and as soon as the question leaves his mouth, Satoru is, once again, inches away from Suguru’s face, his hands on Suguru’s shoulder. Maybe he should have a talk with Satoru about personal space. 

“I’m in love with you,” Satoru announces. 

Suguru stares at him. “That’s not a color.”

Satoru ignores him completely. “I’m really fucking in love with you,” he repeats, and when he notices the skepticism on Suguru’s face, he moves even closer. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since I first saw you with your hair down.” His hands move down from Suguru’s shoulders to lace their fingers together. 

“That was a week after we met,” Suguru says breathlessly. He swallows. “What are you waiting for?”

Satoru responds by smashing his mouth against Suguru’s, and it’s a little clunky, a little messy, but all Suguru can think is that Satoru tastes like summer candy. 

When they separate, Satoru leans his forehead against Suguru’s. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” he says softly, “because I’m in love with you.”

“You’re so embarrassing,” Suguru mutters.

“But you love me for it, don’t you?”

This time, Suguru doesn’t need a curse forcing him to tell the truth. 

“Yeah, I do.”