Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

stage one: the skin turns red after the impact. blood vessels under the skin and other tissues in the body burst, and within 24 hours of the injury, oxygen rich blood has pooled under the skin and caused a bruise to form.

when satoru gojo is twenty two, his marriage becomes a crime scene.

he is gathered and bagged as evidence to be processed, and a chalk outline of his wedding band is left on the kitchen floor. he is questioned, he is cross-examined, and he is swabbed for dna before he is released back into the world in a blood soaked daze.

the police tell him they’ll be in touch about his statement, if they need anything clarified. he doesn’t hold his breath.

he opens the windows but can’t get rid of the acrid smell of gunpowder. he bleaches the kitchen floors but he can’t rid them of the brown tinge of dried blood. he disposes of the tape across his apartment entrance like it is regular garbage, and not how his world begins to end.

there is a hole in the wall right by the door where the bullet impacted after it blasted apart his husband’s head. his ears still ring when he looks at it, like he’s just heard the gun go off again.

he sees the flash, hears the gasp, one that he isn’t sure belongs to his lungs or his husband’s, and then feels the thud on the linoleum beneath his feet. he hadn’t touched the gun.

he hadn’t touched it six months ago when his husband came home, pulled it and a box of bullets out of his pocket and asked, “isn’t she a fuckin’ beauty?” before pointing it at his temple and kissing him hard.

he hadn’t touched it when it lay, still smoking, next to toji’s cold, bloodless body, despite how badly he had wanted to turn it on himself.

he had called the police instead, blood slicked fingers fumbling across the keypad, and he had screamed down the receiver.

my husband , he’d sobbed, i killed my husband .

he had been arrested, his hands bagged and taped to preserve them for evidence and testing before being handcuffed and put into the back of a police car. a lawyer was offered, but declined. an interview was given. his fingernails were cut and scraped. his mouth was swabbed. his clothes were bagged, and as he changed into a plastic, temporary outfit under the watchful eye of the lead detective, his bruises were noticed, and photographed too, another violation of his body that he had no choice but to consent to.

he was taken to a room with nothing but a table and three chairs, and interviewed for hours. concrete walls, a concrete floor, a cold room of nothing but grey. he answered every question, but wondered where toji’s body is. is he safe, my husband? he asked them, and the detectives, they looked at each other like they couldn’t quite believe what they were hearing.

he was asked about the events of the evening, handcuffs still on, and he complied, walked them through it all. they started with the gun, how and when he got it, and then when he’d arrived home, what the conversation had been. did he hit you? they’d asked, did he threaten you? and satoru had remembered thinking, yes, but you’re too late to be asking that now.

as he was interviewed, the gun had been processed and fingerprinted, and satoru’s fingerprints weren’t found. then the questions about his confession started, and so had the tears. he’d sobbed as he told them that it was his fault, if he’d just been better, that toji would still be here. that he wouldn’t be wasting their time.

he remembered feeling like he was on a tv show, and like someone had just forgotten to give him a script, that someone would call cut! and makeup would run on to set, tidy him up, and everything would be fine. the interview had been recorded, audio and video, and filed away in evidence.

nearly a full day later, he was released. just like that. no more questions, no more probing or documenting or gloved hands touching.

he calls his parents from the police station phone, but they don’t answer. he fakes the call, talks to a dial tone, and tells the intake officer they’ll pick him up soon.

one redeeming quality of toji’s; he always came when satoru called.

now, he is alone. no one comes when he calls. they had stopped doing that years ago. the apartment is turning dark. he should eat. he should cook. he should drink something. tap water. he can’t cross the kitchen to get to the sink. he sleeps on toji’s side of the bed, nearly suffocates himself in the smell of his pillow, the last place his sweet head lay before the kitchen floor, and now the cold, hard steel of the morgue.

he showers in their bathroom. the blood is in his hair. it runs down the drain red and stains his hair pink like a bad dye job. he can’t get it out. he washes and washes, scrubs his scalp raw, but he can’t get it out. he misses his favorite jacket, one that will rot away in an evidence locker until it is nothing but threads.

his thoughts come in bursts, nothing and all at once. his fridge is empty. his life is blood stained.

in the coming days, he will receive a call from a support service. they will call him a victim and he will wonder what of. they will ask if he wants therapy and he will wonder what for, before he reconciles with himself that toji’s key is now simply a spare, and the front door will never open for anyone else again. he will say no when he means to say yes, a force of habit. he will look at his reflection and see a victim, a stranger, and he will break the mirror with his bare hands, slicing flesh with glass, until it’s all he can feel.

-

satoru meets toji when he is freshly nineteen. he has a fake id courtesy of shoko, and toji is the security guard at the bar he’s trying to get into. toji is hot, and he smells good, and he clocks the fake id a mile away but lets satoru in anyway. 

he’s not a virgin and hasn’t been for years, but he’s a stranger to the way toji pursues him all night. he is prey, looked upon by hungry eyes. he is a feast waiting to be had, and toji has him in the alleyway behind the club with his face pressed to the cold brick wall, cutting up his fragile teenage skin like the wings of a butterfly.

no one has ever paid attention to satoru the way toji does. he hangs on every word, even as they start to slur. he buys him drinks, he kisses him, dances with him. satoru loves it. owns it. every pair of eyes in the club is on them when toji clocks out of his shift and can finally place his full attention on satoru. 

they exchange numbers the next day, toji makes him breakfast, they fuck again in the warm sunlight of toji’s kitchen, and satoru is gone for him. ruined, after one night.

less than six months into the relationship, the exclusivity, satoru breaks his lease, moves in with toji, and takes up a new job closer to the club, so they can meet up on breaks. his life revolves around toji, and everything that came before doesn’t matter. his sun is here, and he is the only thing in his orbit.

it’s a romance the likes of which he’s never seen or felt. there are so snarky remarks or passive aggressive comments, like from his father to his mother, who should’ve just divorced years ago. it’s like nothing he’s ever seen or felt before, like the whole world is in technicolor. everything is beautiful with toji around him because toji tells him it is. that’s all he needs to know. it’s love. it’s wonderful. and he knows that because it’s new . he rationalises it to himself, tells himself that it’s normal to only want to be around one person, to only need one person. that’s why his family never worked quite right, why his mother hid from his father and his father came home late, drunk. it wasn’t love, it was tolerance.

when he calls it love, shoko scoffs. she is the first to stop returning his calls but toji asks why he would need her when he has him. their love should be all he needs.

toji is twenty six. he buries himself under satoru’s skin like a tick and sucks him dry. he proposes with a ring that satoru is pretty sure is stolen, but it’s stolen for him, and he wears it like a badge of honour. this man loves me, he thinks, he loves me and it feels like flying.

he loves me and it feels like falling .

he is rough with passion, with calloused hands and a body that fucks harder than anything satoru had ever felt until now. harder than the blows that come in the following months after their wedding, harder than he hits the floor when they send him unconscious. 

they get married at the courthouse when satoru turns twenty. toji is seven years older than him, but on that evening, it is only six. they are the last couple to be called into the courtroom, and they have no witnesses so they ask the registrar and the clerk to sign the marriage certificate as friends and family of the grooms, to witness their union.

they wear matching suits, down to their shoes. there is no aisle for either of them to walk down, and their vows aren’t written by them, just the stock standard, sickness and health, in life and in death, the death that satoru had no idea was just around the corner.

the judge stamps their certificate and they are married.

they consummate the marriage on a mattress that toji picks up off the sidewalk one day and brings home so they don’t need to sleep on a blow up one anymore. it is stained, but they splurge on some nice sheets, and it becomes their marital bed. they are poor, but satoru feels rich. he feels like a millionaire when toji looks at him, when the scar at the corner of his mouth upturns and he pats his lap and tells him to get over here, baby boy.

they honeymoon for one full evening, when toji gets a day off work. toji tells the entire bar that satoru is his husband, feels him up in front of everyone, leaves hickies on his neck and fucks him in a bathroom stall. it feels good to be shown off, to be claimed by someone so wonderful, someone who loves him so much and isn’t afraid to show it. he shows it so well, all the time, hand in the back pocket of his jeans, grabbing his ass, mouth whispering the filthiest things in his ear under the bass of the music.

he wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. the empty seats at the wedding, the whirlwind one night honeymoon, the hangover for the entire next day. he wouldn’t trade it because every moment is with the love of his life, the man who makes him feel wanted and loved . the man who married him, despite his flaws, despite their age difference.

their love is perfect, satoru thinks, it’s what they wrote romance novels and fairytales about. his heart races when he thinks of toji, pounds in his chest like torrential rain on a tin roof. his hands sweat, his head spins; it’s like a bad flu, the lovesickness, but he loves it. looks at toji like he hung the stars, with such adoration that even strangers comment on it.

toji’s love, so pure, so smothering, it had moved through satoru like a parasite, a cordyceps taking over his nervous system and turning him into someone who only lived to serve one purpose. he was a slow moving poison, a snake that wrapped around him and squeezed everything until there was nothing left.

but satoru, he cherished it. all he has ever wanted in life was to belong to someone, and he’d finally found it.

satoru married the right man. the perfect man. his . satoru could’ve loved toji his entire life, could’ve lived up to his vows, if only toji had kept up his end of the bargain.

he doesn’t remember the first time toji hits him, but he remembers the worst.

satoru had annoyed him. he had been annoying him all day. he was just in love and he wanted to be close. it was a victimless crime. toji had shoved him so hard, he hit the wall first, and then he hit the floor, and his wrist had snapped under the weight of both of them. the scream he let out was visceral. he had gotten good at taking the blows quietly, but this - this startled them both. it was blood curdling. toji got off him instantly, apologised. swallowed hard. satoru was bleeding, a nick in his eyebrow that dripped into his eye, blurring his vision.

“we have to get you to a hospital,” toji had said, watching satoru closely, “let me drive you.”

under his thumb, as always. a prisoner, with the door wide open but too scared to leave. knowing the warden has a gun. knowing the warden will shoot to kill.

his hand had swollen, and his wedding ring had needed to be cut off. they gave him the remnants of it in a plastic bag with an apology, and toji had twirled satoru’s hair around his fingers and told the nurse it’s okay. it’s a good excuse to spoil him with a bigger, better one.

it was his first broken bone, but not his last. the sound it makes is the same as the sound when toji’s skull shatters like glass all over the kitchen wall.

-

toji is buried. part of satoru is buried alongside him.

he has to see a doctor because his hearing is maybe damaged. he wonders why the doctors don’t care about the rest of his body. his wrists are bruised from the handcuffs. his neck and back and shoulders are so tense he can’t move properly, his range of motion cut down to almost nothing.

his heart feels like it’s been torn in half and then in half again. he wants to place a piece of it at each corner of his apartment and hold a seance, but he’s not sure if he wants to welcome toji back into his home, into his loving embrace, or banish him to hell to burn like he deserves. like he probably deserves.

his body aches for months. it’s not the ache that comes after a slap to his face, or being pushed into a wall. it’s the ache that comes with smashing your favorite mug, the ache that comes with shrinking your favorite shirt in the wash. it is loss, the ache that laughs in your face when you look in the place of the thing you no longer have.

the self help books he reads tell him that the body remembers. the body keeps the score . the body, the body, the body. he thinks of toji’s body, and what state it’s in, whether he’s riddled with worms and maggots, or if he still looks as beautiful and peaceful as he used to sleep. he was buried, not cremated. they talked about it only once, satoru’s morbid questioning of toji turning into sick flirting.

“bury me six feet under,” he’d said, his smile lines creasing under his tanned skin, “i could never be hotter than you.” it was summer, and toji glowed in summer. he kissed satoru, and he’d taken it for granted.

so, he aches in the aftermath. he rots in their bed, and his body feels like a bruise that won’t heal. he is broken capillaries and a hemorrhage waiting to happen, to bleed out like a hunted deer all over the already soiled sidewalk mattress.

he doesn’t see anyone until his landlord lets himself in on a weekend. he doesn’t know what day it is. his job has been good about the bereavement leave, mainly because they don’t want him crying as he tries to sell things. he takes time, and they pay him, and the money sits in his bank account because the only thing he needs, the only thing he wants, is something money cannot buy.

his landlord, an older man with salt and pepper hair, a well trimmed beard and dark, thick rimmed glasses, enters through the front door as the sun sets out the kitchen window.

satoru is on the couch. he feels like a cornered lamb right before slaughter, and he curses himself for thinking of himself as something so delicate and pure. he is blood stained. his hands will never be clean.

the landlord sits by him on the couch, his keys clattering on the coffee table. satoru doesn’t pay attention to what he says. he closes his eyes, leans his head back and just - waits.

“gojo,” he says finally, catching his attention, “i’d understand if you wanted to move out and break the lease. i’d refund your full bond, give you a month rent free. i’d understand.”

satoru has thought about it. finding somewhere new. somewhere that his husband’s blood isn’t coagulated between the floorboards. but it would mean going through his things, separating their lives stitch by stitch until they have unraveled.

“maybe,” is all he says.

“i’d like to have everything professionally cleaned, in any event,” the landlord says, and he leaves when satoru stops responding to him. there is nothing left to talk about, not here and not ever.

-

satoru feels like salted earth. like nothing good can ever grow here again. for months, he waits for something to bloom. he waits for the sweet floral scent of spring, waits for his blood to start to flow once more, for his body to remember the feeling of safety and for his muscles to relax, to stop the tired ache that spreads throughout him like a disease.

it never comes.

he wakes from dreams where he is screaming, where the gun is in his hands. he wakes from dreams where toji is covering him with his body, first out of love, where he is deep inside him and they are breathing together as one set of lungs, and second out of terror, because his hands are around satoru’s throat and he can feel the life being choked out of him.

his dreams mimic his reality of years. the wretched earth that he is was salted by his own hands, the soil poisoned by his own love, and its inhabitants slain like war horses.

in sleep, the horror doesn’t cease.

he thinks about ending his own life and the relief that would come with it. the gun was confiscated once it was deemed not to be evidence in a murder, just stolen, but there are other ways, he knows. the thing that stops him is that there would be no one left to find him, and the knowledge that he would rot away into the floorboards instead of with toji, where he has always belonged, with his love that feels like stockholm syndrome, or a hand squeezing his heart, forcing it to beat, causing the same choked up feeling of panic disguised as tenderness.

the scent of toji on the pillows fades. the sheets turn stale. satoru considers going back to work, and then doesn’t, too afraid to be the gossip, the trainwreck that everyone is talking about; too afraid that worse, they will make him talk about it, and he will have to relive the moment his husband died, how he choked on blood, how he reached for satoru like he was seeking comfort, the very last thing he ever did.

life goes on, like the gaping hole inside his chest isn’t there, like the garden of his life that he sowed isn’t dead and he isn’t a starving animal begging for scraps, at the mercy of an earth who detests him.

when he thinks that it can’t get worse, when he is skin and bone because food turns to ash and blood in his mouth, and when his eyes are sleep heavy for the rest that never seems to come, he remembers.

in the twilight of their marriage and of toji’s life, their fights became more and more frequent. toji cheated on him, satoru knew this much, and toji never tried to hide it when he came home late with lipstick still smudged into the corner of his lips and along his jawline.

god, the lipstick. the gloss was the worst, the sticky sweet stuff that the freshly eighteen girls wore on nights out. when it would settle into his scar, when toji would turn his face away from satoru and the light would catch the glitter. that always felt like a fatal twist of a knife. 

the cheating, in all honesty, had stopped bothering satoru months ago. what they had was love, and what toji needed was sex which in between the healing of bruises, was something satoru could rarely provide anymore. toji never asked, but satoru gave permission.

he had come home, smelling of her, someone he’d been dating for a while now. not just sex, but dates. pouring their money into a relationship that wasn’t his to be in. he was drunk, maybe high too, on god knows what. weed, usually, but satoru wouldn’t ever be surprised if it had been something else. he’d been annoyed by something. satoru had tried to kiss him when he came through the front door, tried to claim back what was his, but toji had shoved him away. hard. cruel.

toji had walked into the kitchen, poured a drink, and with his heart severing, bleeding, splitting clean in half, satoru had said maybe they need some time apart.

he had offered to move out, though he hadn’t figured out where he would move to, and toji had turned to him with fire in his eyes.

“you tryin’ to get rid of me?” he’d asked, “you wanna fuckin’ leave me? me? ”

and satoru had flinched, because he knows what came next. closed or open fist, it never mattered. it all hurts the same, all bruises, all bleeds.

toji had watched him shy away, had set his glass down and stepped closer. he had just wanted to be good, to offer space for toji to realise that he was all he ever needed, like toji was for him.

he had swallowed hard, choked down the bile in his throat at the realization that this wouldn’t be like every other time. toji was staring at him so hatefully, so full of violence and malice that satoru had almost felt violated by his gaze. it was more than a deer in headlights. it was like watching his life flash before his eyes.

only, it wasn’t to be his life.

“answer me,” toji spat, grabbing satoru by his face, a thumb pressing into his cheek with a bruising grip.

“i never want to get rid of you,” he had answered, their eyes forced to meet, “please. i love you. ” and he knows he sounds pathetic, begging a man who hurts him to love him back.

toji released his face, pushed it away from him, and taken his drink once more. “i just thought you might want some space. from me.”

“all these excuses,” toji had shaken his head, disappointed, “you’re sick of me, huh? you want me gone?”

“no, please,” satoru had said, “ please.”

“nah,” he’d scoffed, “nah, you don’t get to tell me shit.” he’d reached into the waistband of his jeans, pulled the gun from the back of them, and held it to his head. “you that sick of me? i’ll make it nice and fuckin’ easy on you. i’ll take out the trash so you don’t have to.”

satoru remembers screaming, he remembers crying to please please please put the gun down, baby please, we can talk about this i love you pleaseputthegundown.

he was begging and crying, he was screaming for mercy for the sake of the man he loved, only to be silenced by a gunshot blowing apart everything satoru had ever known.

-

the funeral home feels like a slaughterhouse. it is family owned. inside the office, where he budgets the next few years of his life into a payment plan for a funeral only a handful of people will attend, satoru can swear he smells toji’s cologne. woody. smoky. heavy enough to drown in. heavy enough that he sometimes felt like he might, when toji was on top of him. when satoru’s nose was pressed to his navel, or when toji had him pinned to the living room floor in a drunk rage. their intimacy and their abstinence smelled the same.

it makes sense that the last place toji’s dead eyes see would feel like this. empty, the way he’d leave satoru feeling after he’d fuck him still tasting of the woman he’d been with for dinner.

toji is buried on a thursday before a funeral for a father. the cemetery is full of people, teeming with life as satoru’s is buried. the coffin is wood, the suit he wears is cotton, and his heart sinks like a stone to a place he isn’t sure he can ever reach. the sun is bright and beautiful, but satoru’s is gone.

it’s the day he realises that love and hate taste the same in his mouth. like blood and rust and dirt. sour, the way the drinks went down the night he met toji, and the way the hangover felt in his apartment that became his home. they hurt the same way, both like a part of him has been fractured. like he is an ancient artefact crumbling to dust in the hands of his discoverer. he wants to be buried alongside his lover like a bygone ritual practice. he wants to drown in the dirt and rot if it means he gets to love and hate the same person in the next life too.

he is the only attendee at the funeral. he eulogises to no one but a funeral director on a bitterly cold day, with toji’s favourite leather jacket wrapped around his frail shoulders. he is the first and last handful of dirt to be thrown atop the coffin, and satoru, as he retreats in tears, swears he can smell the sweet scent of rot through the planks and nails holding it together.

that night, he wakes from a dream where he throws himself into the six foot deep hole in the ground and begs to get him out , please , where he swears the dirt walls are breathing as toji once had. he wakes to himself screaming, pillow tear soaked and sheets damp, his neighbour banging on the wall for him to shut up, don’t you know what time it is?

after the funeral, satoru picks the scabs toji left him with. he hits himself with the same force so that the bruises don’t fade from his skin, so the veins underneath it are permanently marred by his violence.

his eyes sink. his body fails. the leather jacket he wears still has blood stains on it.

in the summer of their second year of marriage, it had been so sweltering hot that satoru had sprawled on the floor with nothing but a pair of boxers on. one of his eyes was swollen almost shut, despite him having spent the last few hours icing it. toji had come home from work, had cradled his face and kissed over the point of impact. 

“my beautiful bloodstained baby,” he’d crooned, cigarette smoke heavy on his breath, “shit you look so good like this. like mine . no one could ever want this face, huh?”

and satoru had believed it. felt the words tattoo themselves to his soul, stick to it like tar. no one could ever want him, his nose ever so slightly crooked from the way toji’s fist had connected with it, like a strike of lightning. his eyes heavy, feet heavier. no one could want this.

no one could love someone so soaked in gore and carrion that it was all they knew. no one could want a person whose life was already over. futureless. a void

-

the weeks following the funeral, satoru wonders if this is how it feels to be toji. he is a walking corpse, unable to feel a singular thing. he is numb to sadness, he is numb to hunger, he doesn’t think he’ll ever feel happiness again. he moves on autopilot on the rare days he gets out of bed, movement mechanical and stiff. 

his already slender body decomposes right in front of his eyes, watches himself slowly shrink into toji’s already too large shirts. his clothes hang off him like he is a metal coat rack, nothing more than an empty husk. he wonders how much longer he can live like this (except, is he really living? he asks himself). 

in his darker moments, he wonders if he is dead. if there is some kind of sick, necromantic spell placed upon his body to keep it awake, and alive, despite how passively he is living. he doesn’t eat more than a few bites most days, with his finances dwindling and his stomach constantly nauseous, and what he does eat, he certainly gets no nutrition out of. he is wasting away to nothing; his skin thins, as does his hair, and his body just - gives up, right alongside his mind.

he wonders how many mirrors he broke in a past life, how many black cats paths he crossed and ladders he walked under to be in this state of purgatory. he wonders why his punishment is this, a life that should have ended, a life with only half of himself. he wonders what he did to be so damned in this life, he wonders if he can ever atone for it. he has said prayers, he has asked every god in the forsaken sky for absolution, and has been met with silence. he has asked for signs, begged to just not wake up, but nothing works.

there is no god. there is no reprieve, no mercy. just an empty bed, an emptier soul. a man who has nothing left to lose.

Chapter Text

stage two: the blood begins to lose oxygen and change colour. a bruise that is a few days old will appear blue, purple or black.

the morning that marks one month since toji died, satoru wakes with a guilt that sets his stomach in knots. he had tried to visit so many times, had sat outside the cemetery for hours watching the spiders between the bars of the wrought iron gates spin web into gold, but could never bring himself to go in.

empty handed, he’d turn up, and hear his mothers voice telling him how rude it was to be a guest without a gift. it’s poor manners , she’d tell him, that’s not how i raised you. in his head, he wonders if she played any part in raising him at all. if he’d had an adult to model himself after, would he be the trainwreck that he is? was this path always paved for him?

for a month, he tells himself that he doesn’t need to visit toji, because toji is always with him. in dreams and nightmares, in life generally, toji always found a way to be there, oppressive and looming, waiting to strike like a viper. 

the month passes in the blink of an eye. if satoru hadn’t checked the calendar, counted the days individually, he would have thought it’d only been a week since toji painted their kitchen wall red. he has yet to visit toji’s grave since the funeral, too consumed by his grief to really consider it. even when he gets to the gates, stands under the canopy of poisonous trees of heaven, he knows deep down that this is as far as he will allow himself to go.

he isn’t sure whether to call it a punishment or a reward, to not make the walk to his grave, to see the fresh dirt, new grass, new life beginning to rise from his remains. to not see it feels like prolonging the inevitable pain that will come from the absolution of freeing him, dead, buried. gone. but to see it - somehow feels worse. like he can keep living a lie, waiting for his door to open and his husband to return to him like the dark side of the moon.

work has given him bereavement leave but without it to break up his day, his life has become a sickening reenactment of groundhog day. each one more miserable than the last as he drowns in his grief, unable to process that toji’s really gone. 

but the guilt at not visiting, the way it gnaws at his bones, wins out over every other emotion, every bit of dread he feels at the prospect of being faced with toji’s grave. so he drags himself out of bed, dresses himself, and with his mother’s words ringing in his ears, he finds himself in front of a flower shop.

-

the man in the flower shop is the first person in months who looks at him, who meets his eyes when he speaks. satoru had forgotten how it felt, to be looked at. to be seen. even in life, toji never really saw him. 

the man’s eyes are kind, a gentle violet that satoru’s never seen before and he is handsome. there is a warmth that emanates from him that satoru hasn’t felt for a long while, unsure if he’s imagining it or if it’s genuine warmth, too used to the coldness that clutches at his bones in an iron grip. 

he asks politely for a funeral arrangement, and from behind a curtain of hair, the man simply says, “i’m sorry for your loss.”

his fingers are a winding mess of bandaids that don’t match the colour of his skin, and healing scratches, presumably from the biting stems of roses.

satoru stands, lost, at the counter while the man pieces together white on white on white, nicks himself again on another stem, and curses under his breath when the blood stains the petals.

he apologises. satoru can’t remember the last time someone apologised to him. it feels so foreign that he doesn’t reply.

the man, now with a slash of red across his white apron, turns and sets the flowers down on the register. he looks like he’s been cut across the middle.

“i’ll give you a discount.” he says, “for bleeding all over the place.”

satoru looks up, and the man is smiling. his eyes are half moons, and his whole being is radiating a warmth that satoru forgot. it’s sunshine, maybe. it’s something good, something golden and sweeter than honey.

“i can pay,” he says, because he knows he must look like he can’t. he is unshowered for coming up to four days, his hair greasy and his skin sullen. he must look atrocious. he knows he does, he has for years, but suddenly without toji’s hands on him, his eyes are more swollen and darker than ever.

funny how things go.

“i know,” the man says, “but i did create a small biohazard back here over your funeral arrangement. a discount is the least i can do.”

satoru stares at him, open mouthed and stupid, wondering what price this kindness comes at. after everything, after all the days and weeks and months he’s spent mourning a love that shaped him into the little lamb he is now, he has nothing left to give.

“thank you,” satoru replies, and hopes it sounds genuine enough to be believed. the discount is nearly half the price of what he would have paid. he counts the cash in his wallet, and places it gingerly in the outstretched hand, careful not to let their skin touch, like toji might still be watching. waiting for him to mess up, to catch someone’s unwanted attention.

“they’re really good flowers,” the man says, “just got them in the morning.” the smile on his face never wavers, it is constant, beautiful.

“what are they?” satoru asks, thinking he could listen to this man talk about his flowers for days and days on end. his pull is gravitational, like satoru is a magnet. he is kind, much kinder than satoru is used to from a stranger. much kinder than he’s used to from the who supposedly loved him.

“mostly chrysanthemums,” he replies simply, pointing out the relevant flower in the bouquet, “white forget me nots. and carnations.”

satoru doesn’t know any of their meanings; he knows that white symbolises grief, but he wonders if toji deserves white. if he is pure and clean enough to have his grave adorned in white. he was a dirty man, dirty in the way he joked and fucked and hit, with a closed fist against concrete and satoru’s softest spots.

“thank you for choosing them so carefully,” he answers, wrapping his fingers around the narrowest part of the white wrapping and picking up the bouquet, holding them close to his chest.

“they’ll last for a week or so,” the man says, “i put some water in the bottom of the paper to keep them hydrated.”

it’s a small gesture, but one that makes satoru tear up. 

“thank you,” is all he says before he leaves, the bell jingling above him breaking the tangible silence.

he leaves the shop and steps out into the sun, and finds that not even this is comparative to the man’s smile. it was otherworldly, eyes creased at the corners with years of tenderness, the kindness and twinkle seemingly etched into his face.

on the street, satoru allows himself to run his fingertips over the the silky petals. he remembers toji, rage blind and bloodied, telling satoru he’d kill him, he’d burn his fingerprints off and rip his teeth out and wash his hands of him. and the only reason he’d stopped is because satoru had begged for it. please , through broken sobs, please, i can’t do it anymore. toji had called him pathetic, and carried him to bed. gentle. kissed every one of his fingertips, counted his teeth with love. 

the flowers are too beautiful for either of them, for toji’s wrath and satoru’s misery. they are for someone innocent, someone who has never hurt another, and someone who never let them. he takes a petal, plucks just one from the bouquet, and leaves it on the doorstep of the flower shop, opting for a bouquet from a grocery store instead.

-

in the quiet of his apartment, his thoughts run rampant. without toji around, he allows himself to think of one of the last time he saw his friends, and nanami, blunt as always, had asked how he could let himself be treated this way. he had wanted to argue, say that he wasn’t letting toji do anything he didn’t want, that he didn’t deserve, but, nanami had sighed.

you’re satoru, he’d said, it’s like i’m watching him kill you. you aren’t like this. i’ve never seen you so dull.

but, as it turned out, he is like this. he is worse than any of them had expected.

though every complaint from his friends had come from a place of genuine, real concern, they had only ever served to isolate him. nanami’s comment had been another nail in the coffin, had severed satoru from any salvation and left him totally to toji’s mercy. 

in the end, it felt true that he had let toji do these things to him. the door had always been open, the phone bill always paid by some small miracle. he could’ve called, he could’ve asked for help. he could’ve left and started again, but he didn’t. he made his choice, and the choice was violence over his own virtue. what he gave up for love can never be commodified. but still, he wonders which love is the one he gave up more for - toji, who he sacrificed lifelong relationships for, or the friends that built lives around him like family should, who were everything to him even as he let their relationships crumble like ash.

he had told nanami to leave it alone, and he had. the type of man to only need to be told once. but the idea that he let this happen to him never once left his mind. every time he was on the receiving end of the white hot fury that toji carried around like a burden, satoru thought to himself, this is just as much your fault as it is his. if you don’t leave, you’re letting him do it. you’re not a victim, you’re just a bystander in your own death.

like toji, the flowers decay. the grocery store bouquet is a stark contrast to all the others placed on nearby graves. it’s pinks and clashing reds, wrapped in green, and it rots on toji’s grave like he rots below it for weeks until he can replace them.

again, like the tides in response to the moon, he is guided back to the flower shop. he is water, he slips through his own hands, his actions not his own.

“hello,” he is greeted, a voice like sunshine and a face to match, “i always say it makes me happy to see a regular, but—“ the man cuts himself off, “the same bunch?”

today, he is wearing a nametag. suguru; excellent. strong. brave.

“thank you,” satoru replies, “could i get a purple ribbon this time, please?”

suguru nods. “it’s, uh - i don’t know if you’re interested in meanings, but purple, it’s a sentimental colour. associated with calm and peace. or, in japan, it’s a very regal colour. associated with the emperor, or aristocracy.” he clears his throat, “it’s a good choice for this particular bouquet, is what i’m saying.”

“thank you,” satoru says, “his favourite.”

toji’s favourite because it was the colour of their sunday mornings, the newspaper unfolded on their sheets, crumpled beneath them as toji held satoru’s hips, leaving bruises in the shape of him. when a fresh set of bruises had been sewn like wildflower seeds across his skin, toji would preen, and tell him how good he looked in purple.

“he had good taste,” suguru comments, and satoru says nothing, because he is still faithful, even if the one he is faithful to never paid him the same courtesy, and died before he ever could.

this bunch makes it to his grave, and although it is beautiful, it still decomposes. it still dies. and satoru feels like the grim reaper, spreading decay everywhere he goes.

-

the following month, satoru returns to work.

his life becomes a cycle; wake up, get ready, work, come home when it’s already dark outside to an even darker apartment, eat, shower. rinse, repeat. he finds that it makes him angry more than it makes him feel sad. like every time he turns the key and unlocks his front door, he opens it to find he has been robbed of his most prized possessions. but his television is there, his fridge is still there. the safe in the closet is still locked.

he finds himself wanting to call the police again, to file a report of a break in, but when he steps inside and surveys his belongings, he finds that there is nothing actually missing.

or rather, nothing material missing.

he does his washing on friday nights in the basement of his building, where toji used to unplug the smoke detector and get high with him, sit him atop one of the dryers and kiss him breathless. he does his shopping on a sunday, and only buys half the groceries he previously had to.

he cries when he shouldn’t. feels nothing when he should be feeling it all. grief sits with him, taunts him and calls him a killer. it eats him alive, burrows into his skin like a cancer.

in silence, his ears still ring as loudly as the moment after the gunshot, when toji choked on his own blood, smeared it across the floor with his last gasping breath. knowing that it wasn’t instant, knowing he reached for satoru. that’s what he sees in the dark when he gets home. that’s the robbery. 

a month after he returns to work, he is fired. they say they gave him all the grace to mourn his husband but even after a month back, satoru still finds himself unable to remember simple orders, or the process of the new pos despite having trained on it numerous times; his head feeling too cluttered with salted ash and grime. 

he thinks it’s fair but it also leaves him jobless, living off of his meagre savings and the pennies left in toji’s will. a will. something that had stopped satoru dead in his tracks when he’d found out about it. a will, evidence of planning. but evidence of love, he tells himself, when satoru had seen all of toji’s earthly possessions left to him and him alone.

he lives off instant ramen that he can only afford every second day, and instead drinks water to fill up his stomach or wills himself to sleep to stave away his hunger, trying to stretch his savings and the money toji left as much as possible, saving most of it for a rainy day and making sure he has enough monthly for the funeral repayments. as the weeks go by, his shirts, toji’s shirt, hang off his body like he is a decomposed corpse barely hanging onto life. he feels like one at least. it’s an extra stress that he doesn’t know how to deal with.

it’s by some grace of god that when he returns to the flower shop a month later to replenish what is probably more rotten flowers on toji’s grave, he sees the flower store with a ‘help wanted’ sign.

there have only been a few times in his life that have felt like divine intervention. satoru has never believed in a higher power. he’s never prayed to any god, nominated himself a part of any religion, or even allowed himself to think that reincarnation is possible, not really. but this, this feels like a sign. 

he doesn’t have a green thumb. he can’t keep a plant alive if his own life depended on it. even the hearty, so called unkillable plants withered and died in his company, but maybe he can change. maybe he can be different, fit himself into this position like it was always meant to be.

maybe he can just smile at people over the counter. count change, tie bows, sell birthday and anniversary cards while suguru does the rest. creates the artwork.

as soon as he steps foot in the store, suguru’s face, which is always light, happy, kind, it seems to fall, a cloud passing over his expression before he composes himself.

“hi,” he greets, “the usual?”

satoru shrugs, and he closes the door behind him. “i noticed you’re hiring?” he asks, a question for a question. 

“yeah,” suguru sighs, already beginning to pile flowers on his work bench, an array of white, “my last assistant moved, so,” he shrugs his shoulders, “if you know anyone looking for work, could you mention that i’m hiring?”

satoru, oh, it almost hurts to pull himself together and offer up a smile. it’s been so many months since he’s done it, twisted his face into something that resembles more of a grimace than anything happy . but he does it, because he needs a job, and he needs to not be in his apartment.

“i mean, i’m available?” he says, “i can work any time. i don’t really know about flowers, but i can make small talk while you work. i’m a quick learner—“

“are you serious?” suguru says, his head whipping up from where he’s cutting the stems of the bunch he’s holding. 

“i mean, yeah?”

“can you start tomorrow?”

“i can start today.”

suguru barks out a laugh, like satoru couldn’t possibly be serious, but stills when he realises he in fact is.

“shit, okay. are you sure?”

“where do you need me?”

and it begins like that, as easy as breathing.

the shop is beautiful, every part of it serving a purpose both practically and aesthetically. the jet black feature wall behind the counter is dotted with flecks of gold, pins that hold stark green climbing vines in place up the plaster. where the wall isn’t covered with plants, it’s covered with ornate preserved and framed bugs, from birdwing butterflies to horned beetles and variations of spider.

the frames are black and gold, the background snow white to accent the colours of each insect. they appear to be a collection, cared for with love and displayed for others to enjoy; and satoru does. admires them while suguru isn’t looking, quietly contemplating the tear in one of the wings of a black and white butterfly, where one of the pins seems to have ripped through the fragile membrane.

the floors are concrete, fitted with drains so suguru can water the plants easily. because the air is wet, it is humid, and the windows out to the street fog up during the peak of the day. when the sun isn’t shining, the shop stays cool, and suguru can bring the flowers out from the fridge to display them. 

on his first day, satoru learns how to work the cash register. it’s quiet, so suguru coaches him gently through each function, shows him how to cash it out at the end of the day, and then leaves him to mess around while he tends to the next day’s orders.

for the first time since he can remember, since before even toji had known him, satoru feels a sense of - accomplishment, maybe. something so foreign he can hardly put a name to it. something that fades as soon as suguru locks the door behind them, and bids him goodbye until the next day, leaving him to go home to nothing and to no one. a dark apartment, a cold bed, and the ghost of a dead husband, nothing but a shadow cast on the wall at the end of the world.

on their lunch break, suguru flips the sign on the door of the flower shop to ‘back in half an hour’, and returns with a key for satoru to let himself in each morning. toji’s grave goes another day without fresh flowers, but satoru feels something else bloom. opportunity, maybe. though his trust wears thin on everyone he is surrounded by, when suguru hands over the key, instead of a circle cut to attach it to his keychain, there is a flower. a sweet touch. something personal, to answer a prayer he didn’t even know he was uttering. it is a huge amount of trust for a first day, something suguru offers up like a scrap of food as a truce to a scared animal. 

“we open at nine every day except sunday. sunday mornings, i have a market stall from seven to one, and then i drop off whatever is left to the local hospital. the shop closes at four, but i like to get in about half an hour before opening and stay back about an hour to make sure everything is ready for the next day.” suguru explains, “i’ll teach you everything you need to know.” he promises, “see you tomorrow?”

it is a tuesday. he has five days of work ahead of him still. a living to make.

“yeah,” satoru says, still breathless at the concept of having a job. a real job, that he chose for himself. “thank you.”

suguru smiles, “you don’t need to thank me,” he says, “get home safe.”

-

on his second day, satoru is tasked with cleaning up the shop floor full of dead and dried leaves. suguru passes him the broom and dustpan and he is set to work. the low hum of the nu-metal music suguru likes plays as background ambiance. satoru doesnt think the music suits a typical flower shop but the way suguru has created an atypical space — it definitely suits.

he’s humming a tune to himself, absent mindedly sweeping the floor with his head down, careful and mindful of not missing a single spot when it happens. almost in slow motion, he bends downs to sweep a bundle of leaves and dirt. his body’s muscle memory hasn’t acclimated to the store yet and as he bends down, his hips knock into a display of ceramic pots.

the ensuing crash is a thing of satoru’s nightmares. a flash of toji cracking a plate against the floor and the tingle on his cheek from what would be the subsequent slap of his face. his body reacts before his mind can comprehend it and he is hunched over, dry retching and frantically murmuring, “ i’m sorry, i’m sorry, i’m sorry .”

“satoru!” he hears in the distance and his body begins to tremble because the body, the body keeps score and he’s going to be punished for it. the footsteps towards him grow like thunder closing in on him until —

there is a hand on him, and it’s gentle, and despite himself, satoru flinches away from it, his hands pressing into the shattered ceramic on the cool floor. he can feel the infection before it starts, the dirt mixing with his blood. blood. on his hands. on his floor. the hand, firm, kind, it holds him to the earth, grounds him when toji’s body flashes into his vision. 

he presses his forearm to his face, to hide, to stop seeing, but what he sees when he closes his eyes is worse. so much worse. it tears the breath from him like the ripcord of a chainsaw starting.

“hey,” he hears from a thousand miles away, and he realises he’s heaving for air like a starved animal. he’s shaking so hard his teeth are chattering with it, and there is blood dripping down his arm. “it’s okay.” the voice, heavy, low, but not the one he’s used to. the pain isn’t what he’s used to either. what he is bracing for never comes, and he can’t understand why. thinks it would almost be easier for it to, than to be caught in this purgatory between impacts.

“i’m so sorry,” he repeats, “take it out of my paycheck. please. i’ll clean everything up, i’ll replace it—“

“satoru,” suguru says gently, “it’s okay. really. they’re not expensive. i can just order more. i budget for mistakes. you wouldn’t believe how often i drop things.”

it’s a lie, satoru thinks, but it calms him. suguru’s hands are steady. they are balanced. strong, like his name. satoru would have a hard time believing they’d ever dropped anything. but in the same breath, as he flinches from them, he’d also have a hard time believing that they’d ever hurt anything.

he thinks of their first meeting, a white, holy light between flashes of blood, and remembers the discount of the flowers when suguru had bled on them. how he’d simply put them aside and started again, and given satoru the bouquet for more than half the price and wonders how many mistakes this budget can cover, and if he will be the source of them all. 

“but - i broke like four of them,” satoru breathes, his heart filling with embarrassment at the admission of his own mistake, “i have to pay - i broke them.”

he feels exposed, and totally pathetic, eyes searching for suguru to understand him so he doesn’t have to explain any further. so he doesn’t have to delve into why he is apologising so intensely. he is a machine, soaking up its own leaking motor oil, tragic and distressing.

suguru quirks an eyebrow, like he can’t quite believe the words coming out of satoru’s mouth. like he might be crazy. but he shakes his head, “like i said, i budget for mistakes.” he says, waving his hand, “come on. i have a first aid kit in the break room.”

it’s minutes later when satoru’s mind finds itself back in his body, when his ears stop ringing and his skin stops tingling. suguru has one of satoru’s hands in his own, the cool sting of alcohol waking him up and snapping him back to reality.

suguru’s hand has blood on it. the floor, too. white tile. satoru wonders if it’ll stain, like the floor of his kitchen has. the linoleum needs replacing; he’s been waiting for weeks.

he hisses in pain, something he hasn’t caught himself doing for years, too attuned to it to care, and suguru’s attention, his eyes, violet and kind, snap up to meet his.

“sorry,” he whispers, “i did tell you it would sting, but i don’t think you heard me.” satoru’s face flushes, he feels it rise from the collar of his sweater, right up to his hairline.

“sorry,” he answers, “i’m not good with blood.”

it’s not a lie. ever since toji , satoru can barely shave his face without fear of nicking himself and bleeding all over the counter top of his bathroom. he always bled so nicely, toji loved him for that. reminded him of when he was a kid and his father would take him hunting.

satoru had met toji’s father exactly once before he died. a gruff man with more salt than pepper hair. worn hands, and skin like leather. he was a mountain, even in his old age, unmovable. he spoke only to toji, spoke at his wife. toji had introduced him as a friend, and they’d argued about it later, a battle that satoru always lost, no matter what weapons he fought with or how hard.

“it’s okay, we’ve all got our stuff,” suguru says, and satoru catches the double meaning, the undertone of disbelief in his words that feels like a twist of the knife he didn’t even know was puncturing his body. it hurts, it hurts , he thinks, but he wears it, because he’s a liar. he deserves it.

still, somehow, the statement makes him feel seen. like he is being looked at rather than looked through .

suguru bandages his hands, comments that he’s lucky he won’t need stitches, and tells him to spend the rest of the day on the front counter taking orders.

even in the sanguine aftermath of toji’s death, not the nurses at the hospital, nor the domestic violence detectives touched him as gently, as if he were breakable. as if he were something they were afraid to break, rather than something they were trying to. as if he even still had the ability to break at all. but suguru, his fingertips are feather light and his expression is one of genuine concern every time satoru tries to pull away, tries to run from the pain of the antiseptic in his wounds, clearing the dirt and chips of ceramic.

he is expecting to be fired at the end of the day, but instead, suguru presents him with the cleaned pile of ceramic pots, scrubbed clean of their dirt and filth, and offers him glue, glittery gold paint and a thin paintbrush.

“i think we could remake them,” he says, a smile on his face, “just planters for the store. we couldn’t sell them, but they’d look nice just for us.”

so he comes back. again and again. a new cycle beginning.

-

in the aftermath of the shooting, of the crime scene, the questioning and the funeral, satoru had contemplated reaching out to his family much like he’d contemplated taking his own life. they had always felt like a noose around his throat, cutting off opportunities like oxygen.

he supposes, in a way, he has them to thank for the empty life he leads now. he was kept under their thumb for so long that rebellion felt like the only natural next step. they led him to love, but never showed up to see it through.

satoru searches for places to lay the blame like one would search for a set of lost keys. he lies awake with it setting heavy on his chest, knowing that whatever new place he can find, the truth will always be that he killed toji. whether or not he pressed the gun to his palm and pulled the trigger, it doesn’t matter. he was the snow that became the avalanche.

he thinks of how it felt to live under the weight of the expectations they had for him. he had tried so hard to live up to them, but perfection was always just out of his reach. it makes sense that he’d have found everything he needed with toji; the love, so all consuming that it bordered on painful, and the violence, that hurt like a kiss. he was always seeking out the rush that came with disappointing the people he cared about most, that he never let himself realise that it would be the driving force of the severance between himself and everyone he knew.

but he misses them. he misses his friends, misses shoko and her cigarette smoke perfumed hair, he misses nanami and haibara and wonders if they ever got their act together. he misses the people they might’ve turned into, the stories they’d tell and the adventures they’d have.

so while satoru mourns the death of the life he had, while he mourns a husband, it also hits him that he’s mourning a family, mourning friendships, and that grief isn’t strictly for the departed.

and while he knows he doesn’t deserve the sorrow, he mourns himself as he walks through this life as a ghost, haunting his own apartment, a casualty of toji’s charm and his brutality.

he wishes that he could be mad at the people who left him. he wishes he could yell and scream and kick and thrash the way he wants to, the way he thinks he deserves. the horror of his reality isn’t lost on him, but he’d always believed that there was something about him that made him deserve it.

so his fury at shoko, at his father and mother, at nanami and all his friends, it fizzles out like a firework on a warm summer night. it simmers in his veins, but it’s steady. it’s quiet, on the backburner, because feeling it does him no good.

like his anger at toji. for hitting him, for breaking him, for leaving him. it simmers. boils over occasionally, because he hasn’t learned to control it yet, but it stays there, stays like a memory, like a smell or a taste. like a friend or a ghost.

-

on his third day, suguru asks his coffee order, and on his fourth, he brings two recyclable cups to work, one containing surugu’s horror concoction of black coffee (no milk, no sugar, no happiness), and the other is satoru’s order: a caramel vanilla latte with extra sugar, and whipped cream on top.

it becomes a dance, a waltz of suguru bringing coffee every day, and satoru leaving the exact balance of coins on the register at the end of the day, so he never has to be in debt to anyone again in his life.

-

satoru works six days a week. he cleans out old glass jam jars in the massive basin sink, to be used for plant cuttings, and he sweeps the floors, and he waters plants with heart shaped leaves, and he loves it. he learns about flowers, their colours and meanings, and suguru lends him a book about it, tells him to learn the language of flowers and then practice it in conversation with customers.

on saturday afternoons, they collect all of the potted plants and place them in the basin, letting them soak up the water from their roots. they crowd them into the sink, and fill it to the brim with water, and they sit back and watch the plastic pots bob in the water until it has all but disappeared.

they become friends, slowly. suguru asks about a scar on satoru’s hand, and satoru asks about a tattoo on suguru’s collarbone. there is an even exchange between them. they do not touch, they do not hurt each other, but they work together, like planets in orbit, suguru as jupiter, larger than life, the eye of the storm, and satoru as mercury, the closest planet to total destruction one can possibly be.

instead of attending markets on sundays, suguru gives satoru the day off, with a fresh bouquet of flowers each week to leave at toji’s grave. he doesn’t ask questions, never pries, just hands him the flowers fresh from the fridge on a saturday afternoon and tells him to have a good weekend. 

on sundays, he drinks coffee in the sun. it’s the one pleasure he allows himself, the warm latte heating his still shaking, nervous hands as he sits and soaks up the vitamin d like a sunflower. it feels good to grant himself this one indulgence. money well spent, when his stomach has grown accustomed to instant ramen and water, and the coffees that suguru buys him each day. it’s less the taste and more the accomplishment, the feeling of warm skin, warmth in his tummy. it reminds him of how at home he felt with toji, his cooking and how it was always perfect, when they could afford it.

when toji would wake up early and sober enough to go to the seafood markets and buy fresh fish, when he’d make broth and chicken katsu and hand rolled sushi. the days where their apartment smelled more like a restaurant than a hospital room. when, by lunchtime, his hands would be so waterlogged that they’d go for a walk, follow the river near their house and wander until he dried out.

his love had felt warm, even in the thick of all the violence. he had hit hard, but god, he loved like he meant it. and satoru knew he had to. he did, because what else is there, if not for your greatest love?

his sundays are quiet, calm days. he tiptoes through the kitchen, sits on the fire escape and watches the world below him. wonders if the stairs remember the time toji had threatened to kick satoru down them, to see if he would survive the fall to the street below, all because satoru had come home later than expected one night, early on in their relationship.

he is a fool for staying, but he would’ve died if he’d left. whether it was his choice or not, he knows there was no surviving that breakup.

not alone, at least.

mondays come to him sweetly, softly. he wakes to an alarm clock, allows himself a period of grace to check his phone and its lack of notifications, to make his empty bed and make breakfast, cereal he can now afford. he dresses in clothes that hang off his body still, and he walks.

-

weeks into the job, there is an order that takes them two days to fill.

it’s for a wedding, and every single flower is white. there are varieties of them, but all one colour. it’s his first big order, and he’s tasked with sitting in the cold room under the lights and picking out all the flowers that aren’t pristine.

he works back on the first day to get through the bouquets of flowers for the bridal party, ecstatic to be part of someone’s day in such a beautiful way. it’s a job he takes seriously, plucking off browning petals where he can, where it won’t be noticeable, and discarding flowers that aren’t in the best possible condition. 

there is a bouquet each for six bridesmaids, and one for the bride. satoru finishes them all on the first day, proudly displaying them on the shelves for suguru to check on the second day, and arrange into something beautiful for the bride.

watching suguru work is like magic, and usually satoru revels in it. his hands are fast but precise, cutting and arranging and wrapping with white lace at the bride’s request. it is pristine, it is perfect, and suguru is so focused.

they sit together at the table suguru has set up for larger tasks like this, behind the counter, a large and old wooden table. one leg is squeaky, the top of it sticky, covered in plant remnants from bouquets past. it smells earthy, from where satoru lies on top of his folded arms, back arched over the table, head tilted to one side to watch.

he breathes shallow, watches things move in slow motion, gazes up at suguru and the halo around his head, his vision dark at the sides like this might be the last thing he sees. and if it was, he thinks, he’d be happy.

suguru glances down at him, an eyebrow quirked.

“you good down there?” he asks.

he just smiles, eyes closed, eyebrows furrowed.

the truth is, he’s not even close.

in his adolescence, he’d gotten headaches that snowballed into migraines on a regular basis. migraines that left his whole body aching, that made him nauseous and clammy, and bedridden for days. he’d learned to identify triggers for them; strong smells, bright lights, quickly changing temperatures, and had learned to avoid them.

but he’d been busy, they’d been busy. so busy that all they’d consumed on their lunch break yesterday was coffee as sweet as candy floss and an energy drink each to power through into the evening. satoru hadn’t even had dinner, just collapsed into bed. 

he hadn’t even had a chance to realise he had a headache until it had spiralled and he was in the precipice of throwing up every time he looked at the cold room.

“mhm,” satoru hums, the noise echoing in his head, the squeak of the table sounding more like a blood curdling scream than a background noise.

suguru frowns. an unholy sight.

satoru isn’t himself, and he can feel it. the right side of his head feels like it’s on fire, like someone had weaved a branding iron through eye and into his ventricles, cauterising every blood vessel in his brain. it feels ferocious, white hot, and vegeant. like he is paying some kind of tax for getting his job done.

“i don’t believe you,” suguru says, and this time satoru winces when he tries to open his eyes properly, tries to meet his gaze and convince him that he’s fine. because he has to be. they have a job to get done, a bride to please.

“m’fine,” satoru says, more of a whisper than anything else. his own voice hurts more than anything, feels like throwing steam on the iron, clouding his vision and screaming inside his skull.

it’s getting dark outside and there isn’t much left to do. if satoru was smart, he’d go home, brave the train and the short walk despite the crowds at peak hour, and leave suguru to finish up.

“don’t lie,” suguru chastises, no real heat behind it, “what’s wrong?” he sets the lace down, lets a pair of scissors fall to the table and satoru flinches at it, then again at the fast movement.

“it’s nothing, really,” he insists, but god, his own voice again, a sharp, shooting pain lancing through his head, this time causing him to groan out loud. it seems worse by the minute, his body screaming at him to just go home .

suguru sighs heavily, not annoyed, just - concerned, maybe. satoru can’t quite pick it, not with his eyes closed. there’s a hand on the back of his neck, cold fingers that feel like salvation, goosebumps rising on his arms.

“can you get up?” he asks, “i’ll finish this up and drive you home.”

“but we haven’t finished,” satoru says.

“ you have.”

and his heart drops.

“what?” he breathes, “no, i’m really fine. i promise. what do you need done?”

suguru shakes his head, “what i need is for you to go to the break room, turn the light off and wait for me to take you home.”

“are you firing me?” satoru asks, “i swear, it’s nothing. i can finish, if you want to leave, if you’re busy. just - whatever you need done—“

“ satoru,” suguru’s voice comes firm and even, presses to his back once more, “i’m not firing you. i wouldn’t have been able to get all this done without you. i’m telling you to go rest. no hidden meaning.”

there is a long pause between them, satoru squinting up at suguru, his thumb digging into his shoulder blades, massaging the knots out of them.

he doesn’t know how to verbalise what he’s feeling. doesn’t know how to ask for reassurance that going and resting is fine, because it never has been before. toji hated when they had to adjust plans because of his headaches; used to roll his eyes and ask, what? are you a girl? grow up. and satoru would power through, to save himself from more pain. longer term pain.

“i cant ,” he whispers, and suguru is so - sympathetic. sweet. his hand goes lax, fingers feather light through his shirt.

“oh, ‘toru, come on, come with me,” he says, “can you walk?”

satoru nods, but suguru helps him up anyway, off the chair and back into the break room. he turns the light off, sits suguru down, and brings him a glass of cold water. he says, give me fifteen , and closes the door behind him, leaving satoru to ache by himself.

his body feels hot, and his hands shake as they reach for the glass, but the water helps. feeling it down his throat, pool in his stomach, it gives him another sensation to focus on. he presses the glass to his cheek, and then the other cheek, and finally sets it down, allowing himself to close his eyes and wait it out as much as possible.

fifteen minutes is fleeting, and before satoru knows it, suguru is back with him, slinging satoru’s arm around his shoulder and helping him out the back entrance to his car. he lays him in the back seat, offers a sweatshirt for him to rest his head on, and tells him that they’ll be home soon.

“i got your address from the employee record,” he says, adjusting the rear view mirror to look at him, “but i won’t keep it. i hope you don’t mind.”

satoru just nods, can’t comprehend the implication, the kind boundary that suguru sets for them, and covers his face with the sweatshirt, allowing himself to drown in the smell of suguru, the closest friend he’s had in years.

he barely remembers getting inside; he feels hands on his back, on his shoulders, forcing nothing. he hears suguru’s voice, feels his bed and blankets and hears the kitchen tap. he is handed two pills, that he swallows with a glass of water, and then not much more. there is the click of his front door, and then silence. sweet silence.

sometime during the night, his phone buzzes. he doesn’t see it until morning, until the sun is high in the sky, and his whole bed smells of another man. the sweatshirt from the car is tucked and tangled into his sheets, and his phone has five messages from suguru.

all of his alarms are turned off.

[suguru (boss)]

7.43pm: take the rest of the week off. rest up.

8:12pm: i gave you some painkillers around 7.30, so don’t take any for a few more hours.

7am: morning. i hope you’re feeling better. can you let me know that you’re alright?

8.22am: let me know if you need anything.

10.02: satoru? i’m getting worried.

his head still hurts, but his body hurts more. his muscles are exhausted from holding them taut, his eyes heavy and tired despite having slept for so long. 

it’s a little past ten now, and satoru texts back, apologising and promising that he’s okay. from his nightstand, he takes more painkillers and slowly sips the water suguru left him, and he just - wants to cry. such a silly thing to mess him up so much. a headache, plenty of which he’s powered through before, causing him to leave suguru unaccompanied on one of their biggest orders.

he falls back asleep shortly after letting suguru know he’s okay, and wakes a little after one to food being delivered.

1.12: i paid for it with your change, by the way. something easy on your stomach. rest up.

-

satoru comes back to work a few days later, and buys them their usual coffee as an apology for being off for so long. he arrives at his usual time to suguru already behind the counter. the bell above the door jingles and his head raises, a smile on his face already to greet him.

suguru looks him over, eyebrows furrowing for a moment before he takes the coffee with a polite thank you .

“what’s that look for?” satoru asks, sitting down behind the counter and looking over the order sheet for the day. he flips through the papers, sipping his coffee as he takes stock of what their day will entail.

“nothing,” suguru hums, a smirk on his lips, “just - isn’t that mine?” he asks, tugging at the shoulder of the sweatshirt satoru is wearing.

satoru looks down, his mouth still full of his overly sweet coffee, eyes wide as he realises that he is, in fact, wearing the sweatshirt suguru left with him the day he drove him home. he’d washed it, and it must’ve gotten caught up with his things.

his face is hot , cheeks red , but - he laughs, because it’s so ridiculous. “what?” he asks, “upset it looks better on me?”

and it’s just a spur of the moment joke; he doesn’t expect suguru’s face to freeze, doesn’t expect him to look at satoru with wide eyes. he didn’t even expect it from himself , didn’t think he had it in him to tease like that anymore. toji had hated it when he teased, when he ran his mouth. it’s right that he goes to apologise that suguru laughs, shoving his shoulder so lightly, “actually, yeah,” he chuckles, “you should keep it. it fits you better, for sure.”

satoru blushes something fierce, the response unexpected when he’d expected something harsh or sharp like a knife. he hadn’t expected the gentle teasing, the soft response settling in his chest like a dandelion landing on the grass. 

his shoulders relax, his body goes calm, and they settle into their daily routine, satoru cutting lengths of ribbon and measuring wrapping paper, tidying up, sweeping - doing all the little chores so that suguru can focus on plant care and orders.

over lunch, suguru asks if he’d like to come help the market stall this sunday. it’s an earlier start than usual, and the pay is next to nothing, but it’s a nice way to spend the day, which is pretty much what sells it for satoru. a day in the sun with suguru sounds perfect .

when he gets home later that evening, and he goes to give thanks before his dinner, he sits with a newfound heaviness in his heart. only it isn’t crushing. it is one of gratitude and when he whispers ‘ itadakimasu ’ to himself, he means it with every fibre of his body. 

he eats slow, savours it like he savours suguru’s company. his heavy heart turns into a heavy stomach, and the first meal he’s enjoyed in recent memory; the first meal that hasn’t turned to dirt in his mouth.

his prayer of thanks extends beyond just the food, but for the chance he’s been given. he has - a friend. a job. his life has sustenance and maybe, for the first time in a long while, meaning.

Chapter Text

stage three: the hemoglobin under the skin begins to break down, and the bruise turns from purple to yellow or green in colour. the body slowly begins to heal.

satoru wakes earlier than he should for the markets. the morning is cool, he feels it even through his closed windows, so he dresses in layers; a tshirt under a hoodie, a jacket over the top, and jeans. casual but still - professional.

he opts for his usual work shoes, a pair of grass stained sneakers, and laces them up tight, prepared for plenty of walking around and heavy lifting today.

he makes toast for breakfast, strawberry jam slathered on thick, and then sits in his living room waiting for suguru to pick him up. they’d packed the majority of the car yesterday, bouquets of dried flowers mostly, a few plants that would survive overnight out of the fridge. all that was left was for suguru to pick up the fresh flowers, which he had planned to do on the way over.

the streets are still quiet when suguru pulls up, and they greet each other in the street in hushed voices, suguru handing satoru a coffee, just like every other day. the car is absolutely packed to the brim with flowers, and the floral smell is delightful, if not a stark wake up call compared to the cool morning streets. to the top of the old car, a table is hunkered down with ropes. an ambulance cuts through the silence. two car doors close, and they are on their way.

when they arrive, they are among the first cars in the lot. together, they set up the table, removing it from the roof of the car, and setting it up in their allocated stall location. suguru fills buckets with water, and sets the fresh flowers in them along the front of the table, while the dried flowers and plants line the tablecloth they’ve set out.

satoru is tasked with writing on the chalkboard, flower varieties and prices, which he does kneeling by the table, ready to prop the sandwich board up at the edge of their stall.

as the market hums to life around them, the sun bathing the field in gold, suguru finally pulls out two folding chairs, and sets them down behind the table.

it’s - fun.

it’s something that satoru would do every weekend, honestly. he’d give up his calm, syrup slow sundays for this, if it meant he got to still enjoy the sun. and the company.

he and suguru chat until their coffees have gone cold, between themselves and with customers. satoru watches in awe as suguru explains every flower in every bouquet, as he makes new bouquets for people with special requests. satoru cuts ribbon, he replenishes the water in the buckets, and he counts change, and he honestly, truly cannot remember the last time he talked so much.

even on good days, which were rare, toji didn’t like to talk. on bad days, he compared the sound of satoru’s voice to nails on a chalkboard, the crunch of metal after a car wreck. satoru knew better than to talk too much or too loudly, and he definitely knew better than to laugh. but with suguru, there’s no time to second guess himself. he’s so fast and bright, always asking questions, always telling stories, always listening intently to satoru’s every word.

by the time suguru offers to grab them another drink from a nearby stall, satoru’s throat feels raw from overuse, his voice almost hoarse from laughing so hard.

he brings them back honey and lavender iced lattes, telling satoru this will ease his vocal chords. he asks if he’s feeling sick, and satoru just - he can’t believe that someone is paying such close attention to him, that they’ve noticed his voice breaking and cracking at the ends of his sentences.

he also brings snacks, honey roasted nuts and fresh yoghurt, something for them each to graze on while the morning wears into midday.

it’s almost astounding to satoru how simple it is. how easy it is, just the two of them making their own fun, laughing like kids in the warm sun. eventually, he ends up with his legs crossed in the fold up chair, whole body turned to face suguru, stripped down to his tshirt as they laugh at something on his phone.

and he doesn’t even think of how loud he’s being.

he doesn’t even think when he shoves suguru for being too damn hilarious. when suguru nudges him back with his elbow. he doesn’t think at all, not the whole day, and he can’t remember the last time he felt this light. electric.

when it comes time to pack up, they are the last of the stalls in the market to do so. their last customer is a little girl, who hands suguru a handful of change and asks for a bunch of his prettiest flowers. the amount of coins she hands over is far too small an amount for what suguru gives her, but he doesn’t count the change, just puts together a bouquet of pretty pinks and baby’s breath, a bouquet of innocence, and tells satoru to curl the ribbon extra for her so she can wear it in her hair the next day.

“she comes every week,” suguru tells him, “she buys the flowers for her parents. i always tell her she doesn’t have to pay, but,” he shrugs, “i think she just likes how it feels, to hand over the money. know she’s contributing something.”

the sun is high in the sky when they finally leave, the car still smelling strongly of florals, of spring melting into summer. suguru drives with the windows down, with his hair blowing wildly in the breeze and the radio on. he drives with one hand on the wheel, his other on the gear stick, his relic old mustard yellow car rattling every time they hit a pothole.

they drive to the hospital, one closer to town, and suguru parks outside the main entrance, near the bustling emergency department, and is greeted by several people, employees and patients alike.

suguru, effortlessly charming, hands out flowers, makes people’s day, and donates everything that’s left to patients in intensive care who can’t have family visit, to children, to new mothers.

satoru feels - almost lightheaded with it. seeing how he laughs with people, seeing how easily he jokes, how he doesn’t have to put on a mask when he interacts with other people, because this is just how he is. wonderful. radiant. 

there is nothing sinister waiting to be uncovered, there are no ulterior motives to his kindness. he does it not because it’s expected of him, because it’s asked, but because he does things like budgeting for mistakes when satoru breaks things, and donating sunshine to people in need.

satoru feels like he knows suguru, because there is only one side of him to know. he doesn’t have to stay one step ahead, anticipating his every move to be able to counter it. and it floors him, every time. to not have to think. overthink. rethink.

several people help with taking the flowers inside to be distributed, but satoru tries to blend into the background as much as possible, knowing these people are likely ones who have sewn him back together once or twice. he stays quiet, leaning on the door of the car, until a voice rings in his ears like an old favourite song.

suguru’s frame is too broad for him to see her at first, but then she’s there, as beautiful as the day satoru last saw her.

“satoru!” his name is called, and suguru is beckoning him over, that smile on his face that makes you feel like you’re the world, “c’mere! there’s someone i’d like to introduce you to.”

and satoru walks over, eyes locked on the woman, one hand full of flowers and the other holding the last of a cigarette. she drops it, stomps it out, and smiles.

“this is shoko,” suguru says proudly, “my guardian angel.”

“hey, you,” shoko says, and god, her voice is like home.

suguru looks between them, satoru’s eyes brimming with tears and shoko’s full of love, and takes a step back from them, like the ripples of their reunion are enough to be felt across the ground, like the earth has shifted, and something is back in balance.

“hi,” satoru breathes, and that’s all shoko needs to pull him into a hug, standing on her tip toes to hook her chin over his shoulder, the flowers between them getting crushed as she holds him against her. “i’ve missed you,” he whispers, and holds her back just as tight; notes that her hair is long, now, that her coat is white, that she’s a doctor.

his heart swells with pride. his eyes finally overflow.

“disappear on me again and i’ll kill you,” she whispers, and lets go, “let me look at you. you haven’t changed one bit.”

“you have,” satoru laughs, “your hair.”

“yeah, and eye bags, and pale skin because i’m always here and i never see the sun,” she rolls her eyes, “oh, satoru, it’s so good to see you.”

she turns to suguru, presses her hand to his upper arm. “before i was your guardian angel, i was his,” she says, “we’re old friends. i can’t believe you work with this idiot, satoru. he’s been talking about you for weeks.” she teases.

“how do you two know each other?” satoru asks, looking between them, taking a moment to wipe his eyes on the back of his sleeve.

shoko gives suguru a disapproving look and shakes her head. “suguru was a patient of mine. he thought he was so cool, riding around on his motorbike. till he came flying off it, because that’s what always happens,” she rolls her eyes, and suguru looks - sheepish. embarrassed, maybe? he’s blushing. “i put him all back together.” she says proudly.

“they call them donor cycles for a reason,” suguru says, like he’s been told a thousand times, “we became friends because she wouldn’t drop it. told me she wouldn’t sign my discharge papers until i agreed to sell the bike.”

satoru laughs so hard it shocks him, has to stifle it with his jumper sleeve because yeah, that sounds like her. 

it’s so easy to slip back into his teenage skin, to laugh so loud it startles him, to joke about stupid things, to tease and make memories again. it’s so easy it almost feels suspicious, like he’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop. even now, in the after, he feels surveilled. 

but right now, he has a village. the kind that they talk about when they mention healing. connection and community and silliness. something simple to help take his mind off the rest.

they chat a little while longer, and then shoko’s alarm goes off, indicating that she needs to go back to work. she kisses suguru’s cheek, hesitates before kissing satoru’s, and then tells him not to be a stranger, and he wonders if it’s so easy to come back, like no time has passed, was he ever a stranger at all?

letting go of her feels impossible, but he does it anyway, because he’s done impossible things before, and because this time, he knows that she is waiting for him to call. he knows that he has the freedom to talk to her for hours. and suguru will make sure it happens.

they get back into the car together, just the two of them, and suguru - he’s something that satoru can’t quite nail down the word for. he’s pulled his hair up into a bun with the hair tie he always wears on his wrist, and he’s got two hands on the wheel, quietly listening to the radio.

“so,” satoru says softly, “a bike, huh?”

and suguru tips his head back against the head rest, sighs dramatically. “don’t start,” he laughs, “i thought it was cool. it was my first big purchase. three months in, i came off it and broke my leg. cool scars, from all the pins, but - yeah. it hurt.”

“did you actually sell it?” satoru asks, raising an eyebrow.

suguru goes silent, and then, “no. but you absolutely cannot tell her that.”

“your secret’s safe with me,” satoru grins, “as long as you show me.”

-

suguru drops him home a little after four in the afternoon. a warm light is starting to settle in his apartment, a sign that the spring flowers will be beginning to bloom soon.

he wonders by what stroke of luck he ended up here, to be thinking of his life not in tallies of bruises and stitches, but in seasons and flowers. to have a space to go where the door knows the touch of his hand and opens for him like a well read book. that is solely his own, that no one could take from him.

satoru remembers that his life began in the dark, just like everyone else. his very first task earthside was finding the light, to stumble around despondent, in search of the people that help him to flip the switch and let hope in.

he had always thought his life to be one led under fluorescents, under cold basement illumination, but now in his apartment, with the still chipped wood of the kitchen door frame, satoru thinks that maybe the light he needed was the same as the little plants in the store. something shining and golden and radiant, not barren like how he’s lived for so many years. under a bulb that’s needed changing.

it seems like his curtains have been opened. it feels natural. 

-

it starts off small, like all good things do. it takes longer to notice than satoru would like to admit. the lingering glances from suguru. the soft way he says his name. soft, so soft. not burnt and rough the way toji would cuss it out. the way he’ll gently place his hand on satoru’s waist as he moves around him. 

and the looks, god the looks. they weren’t leering, or possessive or whatever hateful look toji was feeling at any given time. 

his kind, violet eyes, so different from the cold, hard gaze of toji’s deep green ones. They would look at satoru with such longing. as if he was precious. as if he wasn’t ruined and worth something. and Satoru didn’t know what to do with those looks.

It lights a spark in him. one he hasn’t felt in a long time. not since he met toji. and again, this time, the spark is different. it isn’t blazing and threatening to burn down everything in its wake. It’s a gentle simmer, sitting low in his belly. it’s gradual the way the heat spreads from his lower belly to his chest. 

i think I like you, his mind supplies whenever he looks at suguru. i think i like everything about you. i wonder what you think of me?

there is one day in early spring, when the days are getting longer and the air is growing warm, where suguru asks if satoru has ever had anything that is just his, or if he’s had to share it all for his whole life. satoru just tilts his head at the question, tells suguru that he knows satoru was an only child, one of the non traumatic things satoru had shared with him.

but suguru just smiles, and shakes his head fondly.

“i got you something,” he explains, “or, well, it came in as part of an order, and as soon as i saw it, i thought of you. thought you could bring some life back to your apartment.”

“you didn’t have to do that,” satoru says gently, but from behind the counter, he’s already pulling out a plant clipping, a brand new root reaching out into crystal clear water. beautiful green, healthy, with two heart shaped leaves attached to the stem.

“i know,” suguru says and then repeats, “but i thought of you.”

and satoru wants to ask what about this plant made suguru think of him. what about this healthy, beautiful, living plant, made suguru think of him… but suguru beats him to an answer.

“it’s the leaves,” he says, “she’s a white variety of the one that i let grow around the store, so she’s a touch of colour. she needs plenty of sun, and you’ll have to change her water once a week or so, but besides that, she’ll keep growing like the ones in the store, and when she’s ready to plant, i’ll help you.”

the thought of them growing something together, planting it together, it makes satoru smile. it warms his heart from the inside out, makes even his fingertips tingle with hope and possibility.

“i don’t have anything to give in return,” satoru murmurs, almost ashamed, like he should have anticipated this. like he should have known. toji always expected him to.

“you’ll think of something,” is suguru’s reply, his voice light and teasing, “start by taking care of this cutting, and we’ll go from there, how’s that sound?”

it’s sweet. it’s happy. satoru almost thinks it might be flirting.

it’s just that it’s different from what he knows to be flirting. toji was always so overt. so crass about it, groping and grabbing and kissing, commenting on his ass or his waist or something. always so - god, he can never find the right word for it. he’d loved it, feeling toji own him. it never mattered where they were or who saw. that even if he was beaten black and blue, toji still wanted to claim him.

toji’s love came thick and fast and suffocating, like a pillow over his face that made it impossible to breathe. it was love that toji demanded and demanded and satoru couldn’t sustain, no matter how he tried. toji asked him to give, and satoru did until he was nothing but bones.

but suguru, he is so sweet. so gentle about it. as if all satoru has to do is startle in the slightest for him to stop. suguru watches, keeps an eye on satoru’s body language and tries to pry open the old, dusty pages of the book of his body, tries to read the disintegrating pages and illegible writing.

“it’s called a philodendron white princess,” suguru says with a wink, and satoru blushes to the tips of his ears as he clutches the cutting close to his chest, eyes wide.

satoru maybe has a crush. feelings. and it maybe feels like they’re reciprocated. and his head feels above water for the first time, his lungs open. it doesn’t feel like he’s trying to breathe through the mayhem of a forest fire. toji and suguru; they’re fire and clean air. 

it’s new. not bad.

but maybe it isn’t flirting. maybe this is just how friendship feels. like something easy, like he doesn’t have to watch his back every second. it never felt like this with shoko, and definitely not with nanami, his two best friends from before, but he was young then. things have changed. he’s grown. maybe this is just what friends do. give gifts, joke, be sweet.

so he leaves it, accepts the gift for what it is, and takes it home.

when it’s time to finish off for the day, satoru takes care to pack the cutting, packing it in a ziplock bag from its place on the counter, suguru having set it up in a glass of water for the day. when he gets home, he digs out his favorite mug, a light blue with sunflowers on it, and places the cutting inside, making sure to set it so that the leaves at the top poke out the sides. 

he sets it down on his windowsill and looks at the green heart-shaped leaves with a splash of white, and feels an unnamed emotion bloom in his chest that doesn’t make him sick to his stomach. it sets the tone for the rest of his evening and for the first time in a long time, his sleep isn’t accompanied by the phantom weight of toji’s rotting hands clamped around his neck. he doesn’t wake in the middle of the night drenched in sweat as dread fills his very being.

for the first night in a long time, satoru feels at peace. 

-

the bouquet of the week thing is one that starts as a conversation out of pure boredom between them at the end of a long and slow day.

satoru is cleaning up, doing his usual sweep of wilted leaves and petals that have fallen to the concrete floors, and suguru is counting coins when he asks, what kind of flower do you think you’d be?, mindlessly.

his eyes don’t meet satoru’s, but his cheeks are infused with a red hue, the tips of his ears just barely dusted with it too. careful hands count another dollar, and he makes a note of it.

satoru has to think for a moment, before he finally settles on, “blue forget-me-nots.”

suguru hums in approval. “true love, faithfulness and hope, besides the obvious,” he says softly, “beautiful flowers. little, but pretty.”

“what about you? what would you be?” satoru asks, clearing some foliage out of one of the drains.

“violet peony,” he says, “you remember the meaning from the book?”

satoru beams. “nobility and dignity,” he nods, “sometimes romance or respect.”

“perfect.” suguru praises, and then two days later, when satoru arrives at the shop, there is a new sign out the front.

ask us about our bouquet of the week!

when satoru walks in, the bell jingling, breaking through the silence of the early morning, he does ask, and suguru’s face turns that familiar shade of charming pink again, colouring his cheeks like he’s been kissed by the sun itself.

he leads satoru to the cold room, and in it, there is a bucket with six bouquets of blue forget-me-nots and violet peonies, peppered with white and purple babies breath. they are each wrapped in white and purple wrapping, and tied with a blue ribbon.

and satoru - he’s left breathless.

“it’s us,” suguru smiles, “they look nice together, don’t you think?”

they sell out by lunchtime, and satoru can’t help but wonder if there’s a meaning there he’s reading too much into.

they do look nice together, as flowers, violet and blue, and when satoru catches glimpses of them in the frames on the walls. tall and taller, black and white, opposites that attract.

-

a week or so after their market stall, suguru is late. satoru had opened, had served customers, had done everything he’d needed to do without issue. it had actually been a quiet, calm morning, thankfully. nothing for him to mess up, just things he’s familiar with, customers he’s come to know. he’d been able to read some of suguru’s books, flipping through the pages on flowers and plants and bugs.

the bell above the door jingles, warm and welcoming, and suguru enters, shrugging off his coat as satoru dashes over to take the two coffees from his hand.

“sorry,” he sighs, “i way overslept. shoko dragged me out last night for drinks.”

satoru smiles at the mention of her, setting the coffees down at the till and then taking suguru’s coat to hang up in the employee room.

“good to know she can still drink anyone under the table,” he laughs.

“she actually - she mentioned that she’d stop by sometime soon, but not to tell you so it could be a surprise,” he says, “but - you don’t seem like the type to enjoy surprises, so.”

“thank you.” satoru says firmly, “i appreciate it. it’ll be nice to see her.”

“well, she cannot wait to see you,” suguru grins, “wouldn’t stop asking about you all night. i think that’s half the reason she was paying for drinks, actually,” he chuckles, “the drunker she got me, the more intel she thought she’d get.”

-

satoru’s hair grows faster now that his diet has improved. at the shop, he wears a bandana to keep it out of his eyes, an old piece of cloth from a tshirt that he isn’t sure was his or toji’s. the summer comes and brings with it rolling thunderstorms, flooding rain and humid afternoons where the shop becomes a heatbox.

while he sweeps, while he chats and makes small talk, and prunes the climbing plants, his hair grows damp with the effort, sweat dripping down his back and soaking the white cotton.

he hasn’t cut his hair because toji liked it, and with how much he has scrubbed in the shower, until his skin is all but bleeding, he figures it’s the last part of him he has left that toji has touched, twirled his fingers in the longer parts and yanked at them with passion, with hate.

but suguru is starting to notice. he’s commented on it a few times, when satoru has complained about the heat, when he’s complained about the loose strands getting in his eyes while he works. tells him he should cut it, that he knows a good barber if satoru is looking, but the thought makes him feel nauseous, like cutting it would be a betrayal. like cutting off a limb.

so he learns to be quiet about it, opting to just cover it as best he can, trying not to fuss when the bandana needs to be retied in the middle of talking to a customer.

until one particularly hot friday rolls around, and even suguru has tied his hair up with one of the hair ties he always wears around his wrist. the sky is dark outside, like night time or the end of the world, and suguru sighs and sets his broom down, like a decision has just been made in his head, and there’s no talking him out of it.

“if it’s going to a barber you’re worried about, i cut my own hair sometimes,” he says, “it’s obviously bothering you. i promise i won’t shave it off.”

satoru smiles apologetically, cheeks tinting pink, not just coloured by the heat. “i’m really sorry,” he says, “it’s bothering you, i know. i’ve tried to stop fussing.”

“it’s not bothering me,” suguru counters, “come on, can you trust me? it’ll be a couple of snips, promise.”

the thought of it makes satoru’s mouth go dry, his chest ache with how his heart hammers inside his ribcage. can he trust suguru, with a pair of scissors, with hands on him? alone? can he trust himself?

he swallows hard, tries to stave off the feeling that he is being cornered, and nods his head, because there is no way of getting out of this without looking like a freak. without giving himself away. his hair can be another thing to mourn, topping off the ever growing list.

“yeah, okay,” he breathes, and suguru is positively beaming about it.

he whisks himself away to the break room, and returns with a pair of scissors and a black cape to button onto satoru, to keep the hair from falling down his shirt and sticking to his back in the humidity.

he pulls up a chair, and suguru stands behind him, so unseen that satoru could swear his presence was an illusion, a trick on his tired mind to cause him to finally lose it. he can feel him there, hear the footsteps and the way he shakes the wrinkles out of the cape before throwing it over his head, and beginning to button it.

and satoru just about blacks out.

the click of the first button starts it, a full blown panic response, hands shaking and sweating, eyes glazed, body rigid and braced for impact. 

the second click sends him into oblivion, the sensation of material pressed to his throat, constricting. the memory of his sweater choking him as toji pulls him back every time he’d tried to run. the reminder of toji’s thick fingers, crushing his jugular vein.

by the time he moves, suguru has already started cutting his hair, gentle fingers and the snip of the scissors not enough to stop this. trainwreck. he is a mess.

he gasps, like he’s come up for water, and peels himself from the chair, turning to face his assailant, expecting to see the dark scar toji carried like a badge of honour, and the eyes that burned red with rage; instead, he finds suguru, just as startled as he is. deer in the headlights, like satoru could ever have the capacity to be an oncoming truck.

with his back to the wall, safe, he fumbles with the buttons on the cape, hyperventilates because he can’t see properly, can’t feel his fingers. when it’s finally off him, when he can finally breathe, he closes his eyes, and presses his hands to his chest, holding his throat, and tries to think of a way to pass this off as normal.

suguru puts the scissors down, and takes a step back, and satoru feels bad. he was only trying to help, and now he looks horrified.

“can i get you a drink?” suguru asks, his voice low and tentative, the way you might talk to a lion, finally free from the circus.

satoru can’t speak, doesn’t, so suguru gets him a drink, and sets it on the chair, for satoru to get when he needs it.

thunder rumbles across the sky.

it’s a tense few minutes in the flower shop while satoru composes himself, while he steadies his breath and calms down from the verge of an earth shattering panic attack. suguru is the first to speak, to cut the tension, and god, what he says - it hurts just as much as the gunshot.

“if someone is—” he swallows, “if they’re hurting you, you can leave, you know. you can stay with me, if you need. i can help.”

satoru’s heart sinks, breaks again and again, because it seems like all he ever does is bother people. he is the constant, unwavering burden that toji had always accused him of being.

“no—“ satoru says, but suguru is there, cutting him short before he can deny it.

“i know you wear a ring, i know there’s someone in your life not treating you right,” he murmurs, “you don’t have to tell me about it, but i’m here if you want to. need to. i can help—“

“he’s dead.” satoru says, “he’s dead. it’s okay. i’m okay.”

-

toji’s violence starts slow and insidious. it begins when they’re out together, with toji steering him through bars and gripping satoru’s waist or wrist too tightly. he’d laugh, say ouch, babe, and toji would release him just long enough for satoru to fall back into a conversation, and when his attention was gone, the pressure would be back.

he thinks of when his parents used to have fancy dinners, how he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth but was too young to know what it meant that his mother never had to cook. he remembers going to the kitchen to bother the chefs, and learning that when you cook lobsters, you boil them slowly, beginning in cold water, so their instinct isn’t to jump out or to snap when it gets hot.

so, it started with a brushing grip, and escalated to pinching satoru under the table when he’d talk too much to shoko, pay too little attention to toji. then to tickling and play fighting, where satoru’s pleas to stop fell on deaf ears and his laughter dissipated. toji would initiate, a slap, a shove, satoru would reciprocate, and toji would return it twice as hard, with a glint in his eyes that satoru should’ve seen as danger.

he’d read through satoru’s phone, insist he keep it without a password, and that if satoru had nothing to hide, then there would be no objections. when shoko asked to see him, which was rarely since she’d started college, toji had to be there.

and then toji had choked him. he was rough, always liked sex to be rough, and satoru never minded being thrown around a little, but this. this was the only time satoru ever made toji bleed in return for his abuse, his fingernails scratching at the two hands around his throat as he choked him, as he fucked him, toji’s eyes alive, and satoru’s glazed.

everything else, he could handle, but the choking scared him.

a few days after it, he’d run into shoko, and her face went white, as if satoru was already a ghost. the bruises were still dark, still painful, still fresh, and they wouldn’t properly disappear for weeks. she hadn’t even said hello, hadn’t even asked how he was, just, you need to leave him. i can help you.

and satoru had told her no, he’s in love. toji loves him. he’d argued a good case like he was a lawyer fighting the death penalty, only for shoko to text him later that night.

you know, he only has to choke you once and the chances of him killing you within the year increases by seven hundred percent.

seven hundred percent, satoru.

please don’t make us bury you.

all hell had broken loose when toji saw it. it was the first time he’d been choked into unconsciousness, black spots clouding and eventually blotting out his field of vision, his body going limp as toji lifted his feet off the ground.

it was the first time he’d thought that maybe he would be buried by his friends, only for shoko to never reach out again.

-

suguru looks visibly puzzled, head tilted to the side, scissors still in hand like he’s been frozen in time. and satoru can’t blame him; the statement that just fell from his mouth is absurd. he’s dead, still hurting satoru from beyond the grave, malicious fingers that don’t bruise still intertwined around his heart like the roots of a mangrove. he rots under their touch, and suguru is made to bear witness because satoru won’t allow him to look away. he is selfish. he is cruel, just as cruel as toji.

“my husband,” satoru whispers, clutching the plastic sheet to his chest, twisting the buttons in his fingers, sensory seeking something that doesn’t feel like the twist of a knife, “he’s dead.”

satoru can see a thousand questions cross suguru’s face then, how, where, when, what happened? and yet he asks none, sets down his weapon, the scissors, and nods.

“okay,” is what he says, “how about i cut your hair without the cape, then?”

satoru stares at him, dumbfounded.

“or we can skip the cut altogether, but you’re going to need one sooner or later, and i’ve already made a start.”

the shop is greenhouse humid, flowers blooming from the climbing vines above them, a canopy of green and golden sunlight streaming through, and suguru wets his hands under the faucet of the basin, runs his fingers through satoru’s hair, and cuts it as they stand face to face. 

he narrates every movement he makes so satoru doesn’t startle like a nervous wild animal, just stepping behind you, just going to brush the hair off your shoulders, just close your eyes for me while i cut the front. just, just, just, as if he isn’t doing something immeasurable for satoru. he asks before every touch, stands back between trims so satoru isn’t crowded. gives him breathing room.

and when he’s done, he lets satoru go look at his reflection in the staff bathroom. he doesn’t follow. he doesn’t stalk like satoru is prey.

he waits with a smile until satoru comes back, and he gives his approval, and then he thanks him for his trust.

and that’s it.

“it looks good,” suguru says, brushing a stray hair from satoru’s forehead, “better now that people can see your face.”

“not sure how good that is.” satoru says, self deprecating out of habit.

“very.” suguru replies, fast and firm, nodding his head, smiling that smile that turns his eyes into crescent moons. “very.”

-

after the haircut, and the subsequent meltdown, satoru finds himself offering up small pieces of information about himself, like a wanderer threading string through trees to find his way home.

everything, no matter what it is, leads him back to toji.

he was my husband, satoru says one friday night, washing a cut from a rose stem on his index finger, bandaging it with a blue bandaid and turning back to his task. they’ve stayed back late again to complete a last minute wedding order. 

he was my husband and he loved me.

and suguru doesn’t counter it. doesn’t try to make him feel bad for being loved by such an awful man, by someone who could hurt him so profoundly. by someone who ultimately tainted him irreparably. he just nods, lets toji be the elephant in the room for a moment, and moves on.

he was my husband, satoru says, and he hurt me. he was my husband and i killed him.

and that is the confession that burns the church, satoru thinks. the admission that, when said aloud so brazenly, almost seems as if it is a wall trying to be erected between them. almost as if it’s satoru saying, i am damaged. get away before i damage you too.

but suguru doesn’t. he doesn’t flinch. he doesn’t falter. barely even blinks.

“i don’t believe that,” he says instead.

but satoru wants to be believed, and even the worst parts of him are begging to be seen, and suguru is the only person who seems to want to see him. and for better or for worse, satoru wants to be seen by suguru, especially if what seems to be growing between them is to be believed. 

“but i did,” satoru whispers, “he’d be here still, if i was better.”

“but what is better?” suguru asks, as he continues threading ribbon around a bunch of hydrangeas. “compliant? quiet, even when he’s killing you first? how can you be better if you’re dead?”

satoru recoils from the words, from the stinging venom of truth in them that sinks into his skin and turns it necrotic. suguru is right. admitting it, though, feels like a character flaw. staying, even when it was against his better judgement, only makes him look as stupid as he actually is. so yes, compliant is better. dead, maybe, is better.

“you don’t know.” satoru says, voice thick, “whatever helped me survive was better. so yes, compliant, and quiet. better was whatever helped me see the next day. better was whatever made him happy. and then i just wasn’t better enough, and it killed him.”

he says it with conviction, with his whole body. he runs a hand through his hair in frustration because - 

can’t you see, suguru? can’t you see what would become of you if you’re with me?

suguru stills his hands, runs them down the front of his apron and turns to him. “it breaks my heart that you think so little of yourself, that you could ever deserve that,” he breathes, “but it isn’t your fault. that it’s breaking my heart, or that he’s dead. none of it is on you. he conditioned you to feel like you’re nothing. he’s the bad guy, and you didn’t kill him. that was his own choice.”

“please,” satoru whispers, “can we stop?”

suguru acquiesces, like letting go is the easiest thing in the world, turns back to the last bouquet of hydrangeas. “yeah,” he says gently, “we can stop.”

and they do.

-

the silence of the shop is a welcome reprieve from the rush after valentine’s day. they are surrounded by leftover roses, bouquets that never got picked up, and balloons that are beginning to lose air, sagging to the ground under the weight of the humid air.

everything is shades of red and pink but it’s pretty. satoru likes these shades, can’t find any sign of terror in them like he usually would.

he and toji never really celebrated valentine’s day, but after spending this year in a flower shop, satoru thinks he might like to start, even just for himself, something private to mark making it out alive.

but as if it were clockwork, suguru lets out a heavy breath, and props himself against the counter, arms crossed in front of him, hair tucked behind his ears and apron covered in dirt and sap from the flower stems. he is a mind reader of the highest degree. the sweetest satoru has ever known.

“think you’d let me take you on a date sometime?” he asks, tentative, “soon, maybe?”

satoru smiles, turns his cheek to hide the blush creeping up his neck, turning his ears the same pink as the store decorations. he feels silly, giddy. “i’ve never been on a proper date,” he answers, “i don’t know the first thing about dating.”

the flirting has grown in intensity over months, the tension building as they skirt around each other’s bodies and feelings. magnetic. satoru is caught entirely in suguru’s orbit, gravity pulling him in by the loops of his belt and the collar of his shirt.

the most surprising part of all is how much he likes it. letting himself be led. how natural is feels. how nice it feels to not be dragged.

“that’s half the fun, right? not knowing anything about it?” suguru asks, “you set the pace, i’ll do the rest, how’s that sound?”

there’s a teenage excitement in satoru’s voice when he agrees. this is something he never got to feel with toji; even when their relationship was new, it was looked down upon by everyone. an adult and a teenager could never be taken seriously. people looked at satoru with pity in their eyes, and looked at toji with contempt. but here, satoru is an equal. the playing field is level, and suguru isn’t pursuing him because he’s a clueless teen. he’s pursuing him, maybe, because he just likes satoru. and because liking him is enough.

no mental gymnastics. just a feeling suguru wants more of.

and satoru is a person he wants more of.

“i set the pace,” satoru says, testing the feeling, the way the words sound, “how?”

“well,” suguru hums, taking a seat next to satoru, “you decide everything. if you want the date to stop, we stop. if i do something you don’t like, you can tell me and i’ll never do it again.” he explains, “you decide.”

“i decide,” satoru murmurs, nodding his head, “okay. i’d like that.”

so their first date is a movie at a drive in theatre, in suguru’s car, the two of them in the front seat and a bucket of popcorn acting as a barrier. suguru had picked the movie, a showing of pride and prejudice, and picked satoru up from the front step of his apartment building, his downstairs neighbours watching out the front window.

and it makes his heart seize, to know he is cared about. to see evidence of it so blatantly when he had been blind to it for so many years.

suguru pays for the ticket. he pays for the food. he pays for ice cream as they go for a walk after the film, sweetness melting down the cone and into the spaces between his fingers that he wishes suguru was filling instead. they talk like old friends, and when suguru drops him home, he kisses his cheek like an old lover, asks permission first like a gentleman, and goes home with a goodbye, with the neighbours still watching as if they are nothing but decoration, wide eyes on them, satoru knowing he will once again be the talk of the building.

these people called the police for him. now they’re watching him rebuild from the ashes, and for the first time in a long time, satoru thinks he is grateful it wasn’t him on the receiving end of that bullet. that despite it having his name carved into the shell casing, he is glad he isn’t the one it hit. he often thinks of how easily it could’ve been him, and rarely ever of how happy he is that he wasn’t - but now, for this feeling, the feeling of being sewn back together without even realising it, he thinks this is how it should’ve always felt.

-

one afternoon, a saturday at the close of spring, when the news comes through that the market has been flooded out in the torrential rain they’ve been having, suguru asks nonchalantly if satoru has plans for the following day.

satoru, unsurprisingly, rarely has plans that don’t involve suguru, or shoko, or both at the same time, and nothing has been discussed so he shakes his head, adjusting one of the frames on the wall that’s been pushed off centre by a growing vine.

suguru smiles, grins, even, with a hint of mischief behind it, and asks, “d’you like fish?”

“are you asking me on a date to a fish market? because the answer is no, if you are,” satoru laughs, stepping back from the wall to check if the frame is straight.

“i was thinking the aquarium, actually.” suguru says.

and that’s how satoru ends up with his sleeves rolled to his elbows, wrist deep in salt water, fingers brushing along one of the limbs of a coral pink starfish by lunchtime on sunday. he’s laughing, shoulders pinned to his ears as every sensation courses through his fingertips, as the starfish becomes a sea cucumber, and then a spiky shark egg. 

suguru is beside him, laughing, teasing, flicking droplets of water into his hair when the attendants aren’t looking to scold him.

satoru thinks the rock pool is his favourite part, until they see the underwater viewing room. it bathes them both in deep blue, schools of fish shimmering by, dotting the walls and floor with their tiny shadows. a whale shark eclipses the whole floor to ceiling glass panel; an orca sings happily in the ocean chorus; a manta ray flaps his wings like a bird, dazzles onlookers as he flips through the water like air. when the sun catches the water at the right angle, it casts streaks of rainbow light across the room, tiny prisms of every colour imaginable twinkling through the cerulean depths.

all of it is so beautiful it takes his breath away. being here with suguru is something he can’t quite believe or make sense of. how much of his life has changed, and how much hasn’t. 

the room is fairly empty, and pin drop silent, people watching in awe as the sea seems to move around them. satoru can’t remember the last time he felt so small in such a wonderful way. so calm.

beside him, suguru’s fingers tangle with his own, clasping their palms together. suguru’s palm is sweaty, and it occurs to satoru in that moment that he might be nervous. that maybe his heart might be hammering away in his own chest.

suguru guides them back to the far wall, and then invites satoru to sit on the floor beside him; they sit cross legged, as comfortable as one can be on the ground. their hands remain holding tight, resting atop suguru’s knee, where he places his free hand on top of the mess of fingers.

suguru is lethally beautiful in this light; his sharp features complemented by the shadows and cool, dark eyes made brighter by the colour of the water. his face catches golden light, then kaleidoscope rainbow, then turns back to darkness in seconds, and satoru can barely tear his eyes away to watch the fish.

he wonders how he looks. he wonders if they make sense together, in the eyes of other people. he wonders if he really cares all that much; if the feeling is right, why question it? and this feels so right.

“i think i like you a lot,” satoru says softly, eyes wide, unblinking as he looks up at suguru, “is that okay?”

suguru meets his eyes, pulling back so slightly so he can see him properly. “only if it’s okay that i like you back.” he answers, and presses a kiss to satoru’s forehead, “come see the manta ray tank. they’re my favourite.”

he stands up, tugging satoru to his feet, and leading their way into the next room, before satoru’s brain has a chance to catch up.

this is so different. he’s on a date with someone who likes him, he’s holding hands in public and being kissed on the forehead and he feels giddy. excited.

the contrast between this and between his relationship with toji is like day and night. toji showed him off like he was property. like he was signaling to passersby, look what i have. with suguru, he doesn’t feel so much shown off, per se. it all feels more private, but not in a hidden sense. more in a just for them sense. like he might be the only person suguru sees. like suguru is fine with only seeing him.

where toji grabbed and groped and marked to show ownership, all suguru has to do is look, and people seem to recognise it. that they are together, in some sense. that suguru is proud to be with him.

in the manta ray tank, the room is even quieter, and they stand close to the glass this time, suguru’s chin hooked on satoru’s shoulder as he recites facts about the animals, pointing out their features with one hand while the other holds satoru’s wrapped around his middle, keeping him close.

“they’re social animals,” suguru says softly, lips close to satoru’s ear. so quiet. “the females hang out in groups. their babies are called pups, isn’t that cute?”

“do they mate for life?” satoru asks, and suguru chuckles in response, shaking his head.

“they don’t, they’re not really a romantic species,” he laughs, “more playful. always in situationships.”

satoru huffs a laugh, turning his head to try to catch a glimpse of suguru. instead, suguru’s lips are pressed to his cheek.

“they’re smart. i think that’s why i like them. they can learn tricks, and remember their names.”

“i can do that, too,” satoru hums.

“maybe that’s why i like you, then.”

it’s the most beautiful feeling. he says it so easily, no edge to his voice, no cruel sting that comes after. just a confession that they hold together.

satoru is painfully aware that he’s blushing, a pink hue cascading down his cheeks and neck; he can only hope the colour of the room hides it, despite the fact that he’s sure suguru is able to feel the heat radiating off him.

being around him is like a rush of blood to the head, dizzying. satoru can’t get enough of it. when they’re apart, he’s looking forward to the next time they’re together. when they’re together, he’s so blissfully happy that he can barely contain himself.

he doesn’t respond to the statement. suguru doesn’t need him to. 

they seem to spend the rest of the day kissing in every room of the aquarium. in front of the seals, inside the little viewing area that lets you see inside the tanks, to the tune of the whale shark singing. suguru kisses his face, his hands, his shoulder as they line up in the queue for the gift shop. he holds satoru’s hip, to keep him close, and pays for their souvenirs.

satoru gets a manta ray stuffed toy. suguru gets a snow globe that he promises to keep at the store front, and a framed fish skeleton to add to his wall.

satoru clutches the manta ray to his chest the entire trip home.

suguru drives them home as the sun goes down. they both smell of the sea, of salt water and sunshine. he wears sunglasses as he drives, dark, opaque shades  but turn translucent when he turns to look at satoru when the traffic lights turn red, so he can see the kindness in his eyes. the gentle, sweet gaze that is only reserved for satoru, it seems.

as suguru pulls up outside satoru’s apartment, he takes a breath, one that is so heavy it’s as if he’s been holding it for hours. he turns off the engine, and satoru feels his palms begin to sweat. feels the illusion start to shatter like one of the souvenir snow globes from the gift shop, dropped by a careless child.

this is it, he thinks, this is where he sees me for what i am and what i’m not.

but suguru, for all his kindness, he cannot leave satoru in suspense for long. 

he takes satoru’s hand, folds it into his own, and turns to face him properly, lines of - worry? etched into his face.

“i want to talk to you about something,” he says softly, and satoru just - the ache of self preservation kicks in. he wants to explain himself, wants to apologise for anything he might’ve said, or done, or anything. wants to beg, to ask to start again. because this is the only good thing he has, this job, this friendship, this - something more. it’s all he has at all. 

“suguru, i - please,” he whispers, all but chokes out, but suguru squeezes his hand.

“it’s okay, it’s not bad. just listen,” he smiles, “i like you. i meant it when i said it today. i like you a lot. and i guess i just want you to know it. that i’m serious about you. about liking you, about taking you on dates, about all of it. and i guess i just wanted to see how you felt about knowing all that.” he says, “i won’t be upset if you need to think about it. i won’t be upset if you decide you don’t want anything serious. i just - want to see if we’re on the same page.”

and - no one’s ever asked him something like this before. no one’s ever given him options. no one’s ever allowed him to say no. his loves have been so fast, so rushed, that no never really occurred to him as something he might want to say.

“i like you,” satoru says, “i like you so much i almost feel silly sometimes, because i barely know what to do with it.” 

suguru smiles, nods, lets satoru keep talking, listening intently.

“i know you know my relationship history isn’t… good,” he sighs, “i know you know how my last one ended. i know that makes me - i dunno, bad luck, maybe.”

“no,” suguru says firmly, “no. it doesn’t. not at all. don’t think that for a second.”

“anyway,” he clears his throat, “i would understand if that turned you off.”

“it doesn’t.”

“suguru,” he pleads, “i would understand.”

“it doesn’t - satoru,” he sighs, “i don’t like you despite that. i need you to hear it when i tell you this. i don’t think any less of you because of how you were treated by someone else. i don’t think any less of you because of someone else’s actions, and how that impacted on their life.”

“i just don’t want you to be disappointed, if you come to realise that i’m - i dunno. bad. i don’t want you to feel like i’m trying to trick you.”

“‘toru, the fact that you’re even thinking like this tells me you’re not trying to trick me. the fact that you’re so worried about me when this is just as scary territory for you tells me that you aren’t bad. you could never be bad in my eyes.” he squeezes satoru’s hand again, “just, tell me. don’t think about it. what do you want?”

“you,” he says, no hesitation.

suguru smiles, seemingly satisfied with that answer. “then we want the same thing, and i think that’s enough to give it a try, even if it’s scary, don’t you?”

“yeah,” he whispers, “i do. i want to try.”

“me too.”

and satoru doesn’t really know what try means. where it leaves them. but it’s something. it’s a start, a step in the direction he wants to be heading. somewhere that leads to them as a couple, maybe. something serious. because suguru is serious about him. just thinking about it gives him butterflies, fills him with nerves, but also happiness.

something wonderful he hasn’t felt in so long.

-

as expected, shoko shows up unannounced, tells suguru that satoru will be taking a long lunch, and drags him out of the shop before he can protest. not that he would, but satoru feels bad leaving him alone without giving him time to prepare.

it’s also been such a long time since he’s been alone with anyone other than suguru or toji, he thinks he might’ve forgotten how to just be. he hasn’t been a friend of anyone’s in so long, his life closed off even in the light at the end of the tunnel, certain he’d only have the energy to maintain one friend at a time.

but with shoko, it’s easy. like slipping into shoes you’ve worn a thousand times. no blisters, no ache, just familiarity. as simple as riding a bike.

she takes them to a cafe a few doors down, and sits them in a booth towards the back, somewhere private. she orders water for the table, and pours satoru a glass, and only then does he notice she’s in scrubs, and feels a pang of regret for how long he’d let pass between them without reaching out to her.

it just felt so heavy in the aftermath, and he honestly thought she’d never want to see him again after how he’d acted.

when the glasses are full, she takes a sip, and then asks, “so what the fuck?”

her abruptness startles a laugh out of him, but the look on her face is one of pure concern. he knows it well, because he’s seen it before. pleading eyes, silently begging him to be honest this time.

“i don’t even know where to start,” he says softly, ashamed, “so much has happened.”

“well, suguru has filled me in on a couple of things. that piece of shit is dead, he mentioned.”

“shoko, he was my husband.” satoru scolds.

she takes another sip of water.

“i don’t want to argue with you, sho,” he says. “i missed you. i’ve missed you so much. it’s still - it’s gonna be a sore spot for a while. i know you hate that, i know you hate him, but it won’t just go away overnight. i watched him die,” his voice breaks at the last sentence, chest becoming heavy. “you have to know how hard it is to do that. i don’t - you don’t have to understand it. but i’d like it if you could just accept it for what it is. no matter how shitty he was, i still loved him, and it still hurt me to lose him.”

there’s a beat of silence between them, the bustling sound of the cafe filling it comfortably. her gaze drops to her hands where she picks at her cuticles, a nervous habit from her teen years. so little of her has changed. but so much has grown.

“i get it if you’re mad—“

“i’m not,” she interrupts, “just shut up for a second. i’m thinking.”

he nods, leaning back in the booth, his own hands fidgeting in his lap, almost a perfect mimic of her. when they were younger, their behaviours mirrored each other’s so easily. it’s almost shocking how quickly they fall back into it.

“i worried about you for years,” she admits quietly, eyes still averted, “like, a really fucking long time. i used to dream about running into you and him on the street and just fucking laying into him. i had speeches practiced,” she says, “and now i can’t tell him exactly what i think of him, and all that anger is displaced. i’m not mad at you, but in general, i’m fucking furious, satoru. he stole you from me. he stole your best years. and then he fucking shot himself in front of you.”

satoru very visibly recoils from her words, and it’s like the wound has reopened. hearing it all so honestly, hearing the truth of it, her truth, laid out bare for him to see. it hurts him more than he’d anticipated.

but, in healing, there is hard conversations. especially with the people you love. and god, he loves her. always has. he always will.

“he did, yeah,” satoru breathes, running an anxious hand through his hair, “i’m not asking you not to be mad. i’m mad. it’s just - there’s more to it than that. it’s hard to explain,” he shrugs, “he was all i had for years. the weight of that is fucking - immense.”

“he left you to fend for yourself knowing you’d never done it before, knowing he’d cut you off from everyone,” shoko says, and satoru nods.

“i know,” he reaches across the table, and takes her hand gently in his own, “trust me. i know. he manipulated me until the literal very end. he was cruel. he was a terrible guy. all of that, and i still loved him. all of that, and i’m still grieving him.”

shoko squeezes his hand. understanding. 

“i don’t fucking get it,” she says, “i really don’t. he was such an asshole,” satoru laughs.

“he was. even now he’s dead, he’s still somehow an asshole.”

“i’m so glad your taste has improved.”

the tension eases, and satoru tilts his head to the side, eyebrows furrowed. “now, what could you possibly mean by that?” he asks, a smile on his lips as he takes his hands back to open the menu in front of him. he can feel his cheeks turn hot, can feel shoko’s eyes on him, intense as always, her stare unwavering.

she kicks him under the table.

“you know exactly what i mean,” she spits, “he doesn’t shut up about you. like, ever. ohhhh, shoko, he’s so pretty, ohhh do you think he’ll like the aquarium? he makes me sick. and i have to deal with nanami and haibara.”

“oh, they ended up together?”

“don’t even try to change the subject,” she kicks him again, but he tucks his knees up onto the chair, smirking at her across the table.

“you changed the subject first!”

“gay people are so annoying,” she sighs, “they did get together, yeah. but back to suguru. what is going on there?”

“i don’t know,” he says, “i like him a lot. he’s so - you know.”

“no. elaborate.”

“good looking, to start. funny, smart, and he’s so kind. i’ve never met anyone as nice.”

“i mean - obviously.” shoko says, her tone teasing but still slightly worried. like she isn’t sure if this is something she can say. “are you exclusive yet?”

satoru pauses. “i haven’t asked,” he shrugs.

“you should ask,” she says decidedly, “he’ll say yes, but it’s always good to be sure.”

satoru orders waffles with pink cotton candy and strawberries and a side of ice cream, and shoko watches him devour every bite over her bowl of ramen. she tells him he needs to look after his health better, and they both laugh, because what a thing to say, after everything.

it is like he’s back in high school, enjoying her company. after classes, they’d go out and get milkshakes or boba tea or whatever they were craving at the end of a long day. he’d snap her bra straps, she’d pull his hair, and they’d run through the suburban streets with their backpacks bouncing with the weight of their books. losing her was like losing his twin, his better half. 

they gossip, they catch up, they laugh for the better part of an hour, and then take their time on the walk back to the flower shops shoko’s arm wrapped around satoru’s. the casual contact feels nice. grounding, because in every other sense, he feels like he might float away. this must be what people mean when they talk about being on cloud nine. unbridled happiness.

she greets suguru, says a proper goodbye, and promises to be in touch soon, then leaves them in the quiet of the shop once more, the bell jingling above the door to signify her absence.

“so, how’d it go?” suguru asks, a smile on his lips as he cuts a length of wrapping paper.

“so good,” satoru beams, “so, so good.”

suguru doesn’t ask for details, he doesn’t pry about what they talked about. he doesn’t grill satoru for hours about any of it, and even though satoru would have gladly answered anything, it feels nice to know what he says is just accepted at face value, that he doesn’t have to explain himself in such detail that it begins to sound, even to him, like he’s lying

as the day stretches on, and more work gets done, the sky begins to turn ominous. by mid afternoon, the windows are sweating condensation, the humid air filling the room like a storm in a teacup, rain lashing and battering the outside of the store in a late spring storm.

they close the shop early, back the flowers into the cold room, and take refuge in the staff room, satoru laying on the cool tiled floor, and suguru stretched out on the couch, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.

the room is dimly lit, a lamp on a coffee table their only source of illumination. it’s too hot to sit under a ceiling light, but too dark to be without something.

they chat absently, suguru buries himself in a book and satoru enjoys him reading out little tidbits that he recites from the pages. facts about flowers. how to care for succulents.

satoru drapes his arm across his face, and braces himself for an answer he hopes is good. into the silence cut by the sound of rain, he asks, “hey, would you say that we’re exclusive?”

then comes the sound of the book closing, skin against the tile as suguru lays down next to him, and places a cool hand on his chest.

“look at me,” suguru says, so softly, so gently that the rain almost drowns him out.

satoru shakes his head, cheeks flushed, bile rising in his throat. he wonders how being vulnerable could still be so embarrassing, especially when it’s so easy around suguru.

suguru takes his hand, then, and removes the arm covering his face. his smile is radiant, the most handsome man satoru has ever laid eyes on. their fingers intertwine, and suguru says, “well, i’m not seeing anyone else, are you?”

“no, i promise,” satoru says, and suguru nods.

“i believe you,” he whispers, “i’d say that makes us exclusive then, don’t you think? would you like that?”

satoru nods, too fast, too much, but suguru doesn’t laugh at him. when he does chuckle, and when satoru properly looks at him, there’s something in his eyes that he can’t quite place.

happiness, maybe. a gentle kind.

or love. the softest.

“i’d like that too,” suguru smiles, and then kisses him, chaste, soft, so gently that satoru chases it when he pulls away, his head lifting off the tiles. suguru is too quick for him, though. 

“sorry,” satoru whispers.

the rain gets heavier outside, the lamp flickering, threatening to go out, like the realisation in suguru’s eyes of why satoru is apologising.

he kisses him again, the hand on his chest moving to his neck, to cradle his jaw like satoru is the most delicate thing he’s ever touched. and this time, suguru lets satoru end the kiss. he only pulls back when he’s breathless from it, when his body has curled entirely into suguru, and even then, he wants to kiss him more.

“you don’t need to apologise to me,” suguru breathes against his lips, kissing the corner of his mouth, “you’re too beautiful to not be kissed. i just don’t want to overwhelm you.”

“you couldn’t,” satoru whispers, “all i want is more.”

“i like you so much,” suguru chuckles, “you can have as much as you want.”

they stay like that on the floor for god knows how long; until the storm passes and all they’re left with is a humid room, made worse by their closeness, by the way satoru is breathing in suguru’s every exhale.

it feels strangely adult, at the same time as it feels teenage. making out at his job, with the guy he’s been seeing casually. they’re laughing into each other’s mouths, their teeth clash, their noses bump, they’re sweaty and satoru feels like he’s on cloud nine, so happy he can barely contain it.

suguru’s kisses taste like the dinner they shared, like the iced tea he’s started keeping in the fridge to cool them down on long days, like coming home.

-

the disclosures keep coming as their trust builds. breadcrumbs, invisible string. they all start the same, the acknowledgment that toji belonged to satoru, and satoru to toji. an acknowledgment that satoru belonged at all too much to say out loud, too self assured for him.

he was my husband and he broke my wrist. he was my husband and i still have bite marks in the shape of his teeth on my shoulder. he was my husband and he permanently altered my being so that no one else could love it, so don’t even try, because he will haunt you the way he haunts me, thick and ectoplasmic and horned. he was my husband and he is all over me, always, an otherworldly being, a truth in the lies, the man who replaced my heart with shrapnel embedded so deep that it tears me open when i move.

he was my husband, my owner, my burning brand.

he was not hearth or home, not safety in a flood, nor calm in a storm. but all that mattered at the end of it was not the siege his body underwent; it was just that satoru had him at all, imperfect and his, even if it meant he had to share.

in their first year of marriage, when satoru is readying himself for work, one of his first big boy jobs, toji joins him in the cramped bathroom, caging him against the sink. he is accustomed to wearing foundation, used to adjusting his clothes to sit just so atop his bruises, but toji seems intent on ruining his facade today. 

he has agreed to drop him off, to kiss him for luck and maybe meet him for lunch, but something toji says in the bathroom stops satoru in his tracks, makes his stomach plummet the three floors into the basement where they do their washing.

he nuzzles into his neck against a hickey from two days prior, nips at it with sharp teeth and whispers, every time have ever had to leave you, i’ve wanted to kill myself.

satoru is too young then to know it is nothing more than a mere manipulation tactic. he was too naive to realise that toji’s violent wish for satoru to always be close, the deranged extent he would go to to keep him prisoner would be the thing that ultimately set him free.

this memory comes to him one evening when suguru cashes out the register and asks satoru if he wouldn’t mind going to the bank to deposit the money. satoru asks if he’s sure, asks, don’t you want to supervise? and suguru looks at him like he’s gone insane, and asks, why would i want to do that?

it’s as if the leash around his throat slackens, and he takes a breath. there is innate trust. the ankle monitor is gone, though the weight remains. 

it’s healthy. the gentle flirting between them, the full faith that satoru has in suguru to never, not even once think about placing his life in satoru’s hands.

satoru thinks that suguru must be the last of his kind. the last of the men on earth who are gentle enough to understand, without even fully knowing, that satoru needs time, needs patience. he doesn’t push, doesn’t ask for more, doesn’t expect the impossible. there is no pressure to heal overnight, to let him in without fear of what monster might be lurking beneath a tranquil, sweet surface.

in his head, satoru knows that suguru isn’t capable of anywhere near the sheer destruction toji wrought upon everything he touched. he is much the opposite; his hands turn things to gold, his tender touch reserved for everyone. he approaches everything with compassion first, with forgiveness.

on the cold, empty side of the bed, the manta ray plush finds its home, and satoru wonders if this was always how things were supposed to be. before he had to wear apologies like armour, before his body was corrupted by someone who disguised their love as something sinister. before he would say it hurts only to be met with it’s supposed to. if his life was supposed to be beautiful from the start, he isn’t sure. if he would have turned out different had he met suguru earlier, maybe it would have changed things.

he thinks that all that matters is that it’s becoming beautiful now.