Archive of Our Own ^beta

When the window breaks, it’s absolutely not his fault, but it breaks anyway, the stupid curse — the curse’s fault, actually — screaming through the new gaping hole. All the glass tumbles inside the room instead of outside, scattering all over the new flooring, flashing gold when the sun streams through, keeps streaming through. 

Suguru was telling him earlier to take off his shoes before entering, because it’s a new floor, can’t dirty the new stuff, and all that, and Satoru was going to, but he saw the Stupid Curse (that’s the curses’ name now) streaking into the doorway. So he followed, shoes still on, honest mistake. He’s glad for it now, crunching over the window-in-pieces to the broken frame where it was a window-pieced-together instead. 

He cups a hand to his mouth, and yells louder than he needs to, “SUGURU!!!”

*

Well, the window’s new too, technically. The entire house is new. 2-month-old wood-walled newness growing straight out of the weeds in the middle of nowhere. There’s other houses like theirs nearby, and there’s always the farmers, and the perfect lined-up squares of paddy fields. It rains once every few months, or not at all, and the nearest convenience store isn’t actually near at all but their neighbor lets them pick the persimmons that dip over onto their side, and they’re sweeter than candy anyway. 

There’s a cat that stalks around the neigborhood sometimes, mean yellow eyes and fur shorn so short there’s basically nothing, but it lingers at their doorstep whenever it appears, so now they have three stacked cans of cat food behind the ketchup and corn. 

Satoru’s the one who called at ass-o’clock in the morning, but Suguru’s the one who charmed Miss Fujioka into letting them pick clean the branches that bend over onto their side. 

*

“Replacing windows are expensive.” Suguru stresses. He’s pissed, Satoru can tell. Of course he’s pissed, but there’s sand scraping the back of his knuckles when Satoru grabs his hand. Multiple green and leafy items are sticking out of the plastic bag tucked into the crook of his elbow. He’s wearing Satoru’s slippers, and he’s not wearing a watch, because there isn’t really a need to keep track of time here, not when there’s so much of it. Suguru looks good. He always looks good, but now, especially. Satoru wants to—wants. He doesn’t know the word for it. Doesn’t know if there’s a word for it. 

“We’re rich.” Satoru points out. 

“That’s not the point.” Suguru bites, but he’s still holding Satoru’s hand. Satoru rubs his thumb over the sand until it slides off. “Why’s your hand sandy?”

“Helped Miss Fujioka with the weeds, but that is also not the point.”

“C’mon, this is an easy fix! We could even just move out and find a new place, actually.” 

Suguru arches an impressive eyebrow. “Would you move out?”

“That’s also not the point.” 

But no, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. 

*

“Come on in!” Miss Fujioka creaks the door open, wobbly elderly smile crinkling wide around the corners. Suguru told him to sweep up the glass while he called the window repair people, and only then, after 2 months, Satoru realised they didn’t even have a broom. He deposits his shoes on the doorstep — since Stupid Curse isn’t here anymore — and toes cautiously inside. Sure, he likes announcing his presence and being outlandish and making every place Gojo Satoru’s place, but that was back at the school. Not—here. 

Miss Fujioka’s hair is the color of steel, bleaching even brighter at the roots, but her house is brighter. It’s wood, too, all the houses here are, but one of the walls have been knocked down for a sliding (unbroken) glass partition, tidy pebble pathway behind it that Satoru knows will wind all the way to the garden. Where there’s the persimmon tree, but also tomatoes, and onions, and sweet potatoes. 

She’d gifted them steamed sweet potatoes when they first moved in, all the carefully-filtered tangible bits of Satoru’s old life buckled down into a single suitcase that kept bumping over the uneven road when the car dropped them off, crashing onto the back of his ankles constantly until he gave up and started pushing it in front of him instead. Satoru hadn’t been the one who’d gotten them exactly, though — he’d rolled his suitcase onto the floor and tipped it over in the middle of his room, but all the wood and sun and green had overwhelmed him and he’d left to wander around the 0-day-old new house with the zip yanked halfway through. The rice cooker in the kitchen, that they’d bought and moved here a few weeks back, but no rice yet. Wall clock lying on the floor that’s not screwed on the wall yet, right beside a clattering mess of unassembled (yet) IKEA boards that’s supposed to be a nightstand. No plates yet, and no forks to wash, but the water spluttered clear and shockingly cold over his hands when he squeaked the tap all the way to the coldest setting. 

And it’d been—sunny that day, yeah, and everything new, all the pre-prepared parts slotting into place, but none of that is what he wants to really say. 

Suguru had gotten the sweet potatoes, an entire scalding bundle of them, wrapped in white cloth. It was too hot to peel and eat right away, so they’d left it on the floor, bickered their way to hammering the nightstand together, promoted the sweet potatoes to the top of the nightstand instead, and buttoned all the shirts over the hangers before putting them in the closet so they wouldn’t slip down. They’d eaten it afterwards, as dinner, and it was one of the best Satoru had ever had. 

“Do you happen to have a brooms to…lend us?” Satoru winces at how awkward he sounds, even though he shouldn’t be, but he’s scared of being clumsy, breaking the strange soft thing that’s crawled around his ribs ever since the sweet potatoes, the persimmons, the cat. 

So many of them belonging to Miss Fujioka, her age-wise eyes. Kindly, and kind.  “Of course I do.” 

He takes the broom, thanks Miss Fujioka, really thanks her.

Then he heads home. 

*

Suguru’s pacing around when he gets back, kicking off his shoes and holding the broom broom-side-up. “I’ve got the broom.” 

“They’re not picking up.” Suguru sets his phone down on the(ir) table and leans back into the chair. He makes a frustrated noise somewhere between a growl and a sigh. 

It’s kind of hot. It’s new, too. Suguru in school, Suguru at 17, Suguru at Shinjuku – he wouldn’t have expected this. Satoru wouldn’t have expected this—he didnt’t expect this. But he’s the one who called, and he didn’t cry, but his voice cracked at least four times in the span of a single sentence. Probably less than that. He doesn’t think he even made it past a comma.

“Tell me when they do.” He calls, and heads to the room with the broken window while brandishing his broom. And Stupid Curse is hovering right there in the room, buzzing above the incriminating gleaming mess

Satoru would have disintegrated it clean, but now, he just looks. It broke their window, yeah, but it’s a curse, and there aren’t many curses here. It’s part of why he packed up his old life at ass o’clock a few weeks after the call, just a note for his students, a longer one for Shoko, but even an A4 double-sided note is still just a note. Not enough to encapsulate all the––everything. But he can call the school and Shoko and all that his old life now. This one’s new, and different. He wants to make it different. 

He’s been tired lately, anyway. Not the worn out kind. Just…sleepy. 

He tilts his head, just to the side. Stupid Curse buzzes, vibrating in the air, then loops around three times and shoots back out of the window. But really, it’s not a stupid curse, just a curse. He can let it go. He’ll let all of it go.

*

It goes like this: 

His last conversation with Shoko was on his phone, rewritten-millions-of-times text sent while he was crossed-legged on their floor, after the fourth dinner there in the house. No, here. This is here, always here. He’d asked her: wna drop by we dont mind the smoke, and then forwarded the address. She’s the only one he tells, and she’ll be the only one. Always the three of them, anyway, even if the photo’s sun-blurred and weary now. She hadn’t replied, but Satoru hasn’t given up entirely yet. 

His last proper conversation, though, was in the morgue. Raw metal smell of the place, and the death curling off the cut-open limbs smearing on the tables. Smoke too, and he’d minded, at that time, but only because it’d been one of the bad days. The days had been getting bad more frequently, back then. He hadn’t cried, because he doesn’t cry, but he’d sucked the liquor dry straight out of the narrow neck when Shoko had summoned the bottle from the depths of the cupboards and offered it over, just a little left, sloshing around inside. He’d been shaking too, hadn’t been able to stand properly. Salt-sadness caught in his chest, and like those limbs, all bloated up.

It’d been more than a year, more than years, still is, and always will be. Shoko doesn’t cry too, but she’d had — still has, probably — her own way of dealing with it. By shearing open all the death around her too quickly. The scalpel was crusted brown when she’d stopped and said, “You won’t die.”

And Satoru can analyse that from a lot of different angles, and he has, but the one he’s settled on is that you won’t die, as a demand, was Shoko’s way of saying, please don’t leave too. 

*

But eventually he got sick of the death, and the smell of silver coins and whiskey or wine or whatever dirty liquid stripped a gaping burn all the way down his throat whenever he swallowed, whenever he came over, whenever Shoko offered, which was way too often, which was always. So it’d been ass o’clock. They hadn’t talked in more than years, but he’d called, and Suguru had picked up on the second ring. Satoru still didn’t cry, but four voice cracks in half a sentence is the same thing, isn’t it?

*

After he throws away all the glass, he finds Suguru couched on the floor, mumbling into his phone and washing komatsuna with the other hand. On the floor. 

He frowns, and mouths, why? 

Suguru looks up. Metal bowl and metal sink. Noisy. Calling. 

Of course. Satoru sits down and scoots closer until their elbows knock, then he taps Suguru’s wrist and pulls the bowl to himself. He grins down at the water, still swishing around, and the green floating up. Komatsuna means miso soup, hell yeah. 

He dips his hand inside and pushes the leaves around for a second, then teeters over to the kitchen and drains the water into the sink, holding his palm fingers-closed over the edge so the komatsuna doesn’t fall out too. He leaves it on the counter beside the tofu, still wrapped in plastic, and heads back over. 

He’s halfway there when Suguru’s head suddenly snaps up. Phone, he mouths, so Satoru slides his over, watches Suguru open the notes app and starts typing down (no typos at all, too) the details. He leans onto Suguru’s shoulder as he calls the window repair people, squinting down at his phone balancing on the edge of Suguru’s knee, but mostly just––being. He’s never realised, but the corner he’s kind of staring at is kind of empty. Maybe a plant, or two. Or another nightstand—day…stand? 

He doesn’t know the word for it. Doesn’t know if there’s a word for it. 

*

Yes, he ran away, he won’t deny it, but he won’t undo it, and he doesn’t regret it. Yes, it’s selfish, and the notes were barely enough, and he has responsibilities, but that’s why there’s a school, and that’s why there’s an entire society of sorcerers. They can cover his tasks, because it’s not like they were pressing concerns, and yes, that’s still being selfish.

But at the same time:

*

Shoko will drop by tomorrow, or in a few months, or a few years. Satoru doesn’t know when, but he does know that she will, bone-deep guarantee. He’ll feed the cat next week, maybe right out of his hand this time, if he’s lucky. Somedays there will be fresh persimmons on their nightstand when he wakes up, because Suguru runs in the morning sometimes, and he always grabs a handful on his way back. He’ll memorise the loose planks in the floor, when the planks inevitably become loose with time, and they’ll cobble together a daystand, and buy things to fill it with. The(ir) new house will become just their house, which already is their home. Maybe he’ll even find a word for it. 

*

So today, they won’t fix the window, but Satoru’s swept the broken glass out of the floor, so it’s safe now. They’ll eat miso soup for dinner, and clean the plates together, and maybe it’s kind of good that the window’s broken, because the wind will probably be cool tonight, like it is almost every day. 

They’ll keep on going. They’ll keep on living.