Chapter Text
Deafening noise yanked Suguru out of sleep and back into the long shadows of his bedroom. For a moment, he was sure it was an earthquake shaking up the walls and knocking down all he owned to the sounds of an apocalypse. But the bed wasn't shaking. And the sound that woke Suguru was gone in an instant, replaced by guttural, choking noises.
Something worse than an earthquake.
“Satoru!”
The lights flickered on after a few fumbling attempts, revealing that Satoru had collapsed from his usual resting place in the corner of Suguru’s room. He was laying on the floor—more boy than Suguru had seen him in months—and staring up at the ceiling, eyes dilated into far off galaxies.
Suguru’s knees hit the hardwood floor, and he ran his fingers through Satoru’s hair, starlight clinging to his skin like fresh blood. Satoru was breathing, even though he hadn’t bothered with breathing since he died. They were desperate, quick, shallow breaths that rattled through his body, pushing ugly sounds out of his throat. The wounds Zenin Toji tore through his body gushed as if fresh, a pool of glittering ink growing ever larger around Satoru’s body. Suguru could practically feel the bite of a sharp blade piercing his own flesh.
It had already been one year.
One year since their worlds had ended. One year since they had collided into one.
One year since Suguru’s knees had found the cold stone of the school’s courtyard, since Satoru’s blood lapped red at his fingertips.
And here they were now, like nothing had changed, Suguru on his knees once again and Satoru gasping for air through bubbling blood and spurting gore. There was no way to tell if Satoru knew where he was now, what he was now, because it all seemed so real, the blood and the fear and the desperation flooding those bright blue eyes.
Suguru tried to keep his fingers from shaking as he cupped Satoru’s cheek, turning those pain-filled eyes towards himself. “Satoru, Satoru, can you see me? It’s alright, look, it’s alright. I’m right here.”
This wasn’t real. This wasn’t real, and Suguru knew it even if Satoru might not have. That didn’t make it any easier to see Satoru on his deathbed. It didn’t stop the panic from clogging his throat, shaking there like a death rattle.
“Sgr-Sgr-!”
“Dont, don’t talk if it hurts.”
It shouldn’t have hurt. Not anymore, not a whole year after, not after Satoru gained a body indestructible and infinite, a body capable of renewing itself if any harm came to it.
But it did hurt.
Black tears stained Satoru’s cheeks as his chest rose and fell frantically, his pupils blown so wide that the pure summer sky of his eyes was entirely swallowed by a black hole. Suguru felt like he was drowning, something thick and heavy coating his lungs, every breath a battle. His own heart hammered erratically, desperately, trying to force life back into cooling fingers.
It did hurt.
Suguru pulled him into his lap, disregarded all the blood seeping into his pants, bent over until it was just Satoru and him, eye to eye, exhaling the same last breaths.
“You’re not alone, I’m right here, you’re not alone.”
One year before, Satoru had been alone. With debris digging into his spine and life flowing out of his wounds. With death clawing at his lungs and his heart stuttering into silence. Alone and unseen, dying quietly and painfully without even a kind hand to hold his own.
Suguru held his hand now; held onto his icy fingers that shifted between claws and nails, squeezing tight and refusing to let go.
“It’s gonna pass in a moment. It will pass, it won’t hurt anymore,” he hushed, gently stroking Satoru’s hair, reassuring despite the fact that he didn’t know how long Satoru was dying that first time.
In the end, it only took five minutes.
Even if each second felt like a century.
Suguru held Satoru through the whole thing, whispering empty consolations and trying to ignore the feeling of his own body going stiff and cold. A mock show of death, ice seeping through his veins and encasing his organs. Vision growing dark and blurry before clearing up in wide, wild snaps. Body convinced it was dying even if there was no reason for it.
Like the sensation of falling in your sleep, no less terrifying for having been fake.
He pushed it all away. Because he knew he wasn’t dying, but Satoru did not. He pushed it all away to hold those trembling fingers warm within his own, to keep Satoru’s hazy gaze, to push away as much fear as he could with just being there for once, being there when he had been needed.
Satoru’s breaths grew shallow, and his grip grew slack.
It ended quietly, with one last shudder seizing Satoru’s body, before his eyes eclipsed into darkness.
And then it was over.
Satoru laid motionless in his hands, cold as he was back then, when their lives had been irreparably ripped into shreds. Suguru’s hair brushed his cheek as he leaned down, pressed their foreheads together, allowed the ink to stain his skin.
“Satoru? Are you still there? Can you hear me?”
There was no answer.
Satoru laid still and cold, eyes reflecting back Suguru’s tear-streaked face back at him like empty mirrors.
“Satoru?”
A fearful whimper sneaked through his windpipe as he shook Satoru’s shoulder, finding him no more responsive than a doll.
Something fractured inside of Suguru, sharp and jagged. He bore his fingers into the bloodless flesh of Satoru’s shoulder, shook him harder, demanded .
What if this was truly the end? What if Satoru was truly gone? What if this year was all just untying the knots, if this night was all just one final ragged breath? What if in a heartbeat more Satoru dissolved in his arms like stardust—fluttering on butterfly wings somewhere far away to meet his final death?
Maybe he should have been glad for it, maybe he should have wished Satoru released from the merciless march of pain and suffering their lives had devolved into. But his own selfish heart reeled painfully at it, crying like a lost child, don’t leave me here alone.
Satoru shuddered.
It was a movement so small that Suguru wouldn’t have caught it if his whole entire world hadn’t been Satoru at that moment.
There it was again, more sudden, more violent now, rippling through Satoru’s entire body. Awareness sparked back into those eyes at the same time as a sharp inhale hissed through teeth-ringed mouth, not followed by further breaths because Satoru had remembered he didn’t need them.
Satoru was bubbling then, melting, convulsing until he was nothing but darkness and twinkling stars. Cool to touch and so small in Suguru’s arms.
“Satoru?” Suguru’s voice was laden with tears, a hairline fracture in the sea of grief.
Satoru screamed.
It was an ear piercing, visceral sound that cut through tendons and severed bones. As high pitched and deafening as it was murky and guttural. A scream of an animal caught in a trap, a scream of a human with death flashing before their eyes, a scream of a curse doomed to repeat the same.
Surprised shouts echoed from the outside, and Suguru swept his hand through the air, sent his curses below the doors and into the hallway so no intruders would be let through.
Satoru flooded over him and Suguru bore his fingers and his hands and his arms through dark waves of a reforming body, holding him so close that those screams reverberated against his aching heart.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, please, Satoru, it’s okay, you’re okay.” He babbled as he bent over Satoru, bodies entwined and engulfed into each other, pressing fingers through starlight spikes of Satoru’s hair and his lips where there was an ear forming out of the dark. “I’m here, I’m right here for you.”
The scream cut off halfway and crashed immediately into a shuddering sob. Satoru pressed his head into Suguru’s neck and Suguru hid his own against Satoru’s shoulder, letting the galaxy paint his vision black.
Sobs shook through their bodies, a river of tears cascading down wet shoulders. Suguru was no longer sure whose they were, if it was Satoru crying or him or both of them. It ached just the same, heartstrings ripped away and lungs squeezed until they no longer took air. Until there was no telling which one of them was doing the mourning.
With time, the pain ebbed.
Slowly but surely, like a shy sunset, tears stopped falling and the sobs gave way to raspy intakes of air and Satoru’s pleading whimpers for attention. Suguru’s legs shook as he pulled them both up, almost gave out on that two step trip back towards the bed.
He let himself collapse against the comforter, pulled Satoru tight against his heart, closed his eyes as Satoru mimicked the beats with the gentle throbbing of his whole body.
“It’s okay to be scared, I was scared too,” he whispered, holding on to every trembling part of Satoru’s body like it was the most precious thing on earth. “It hurt, but it’s over now. You’re okay now, we’re okay now.”
The clock on Suguru’s bedside flashed 00:23, even though it felt like a millennia had passed since Suguru was first woken up by Satoru’s body meeting the ground.
He held on to Satoru, he let Satoru hold on to him, cool galaxy over warm skin.
He hoped they wouldn’t have to live through Satoru’s death next year too.