Archive of Our Own

This bond burning between them was born less like a creature, and more like a star. Blazing and all-consuming, oddly gradual, both a million years slow and explosion-fast.

The buildup was almost seamless, like the light of it creeped in slowly, and before Suguru knew it, it was alighting her whole world, it was something she couldn’t see without.

It was her sun, really, this girl and her eyes.

If she were to pinpoint a few moments, though, that mattered, she’d find the first one in the girl’s communal bathroom, years ago, on some weekday night at three in the morning.

Back before they’d even turned sixteen, before they noticed the speed at which they were growing on each other— like vines, like mould.

Really, when Suguru walks into the bathroom, late on a sleepless weekday night, Satoru’s still mostly just a classmate. A new friend, a girl she trusts but hasn’t noticed just how deeply just yet.

(Truthfully, even then, she would have jumped in front of a bullet for the other girl. The only part that matters at the moment is that she didn’t know it yet.)

Her friend is easy to spot, even though the bathroom is pitch-black, her mess of white hair reflecting what little hallway light can catch on it.

“Satoru?” Suguru mumbles, flicking on the light, frowning suddenly at the scene in front of her.

Satoru startles, which by itself, is strange. Means she really was lost in thought, if she didn’t feel Suguru approaching.

She’s standing in front of the sink in a tank top and sleep shorts, and she wipes at her face furiously when she spots Suguru, with the heel of her palm, ducking her head momentarily as if she could quickly hide her distress.

She’s got a pair of shiny metal scissors in her hand, and the sink and the floor are all full of loose white hairs.

“…what are you doing?” Suguru asks, eventually, after a second of staring at the almost dream-like scene, this pale girl in the flickering fluorescent lights, with the prettiest strands of hair Suguru could imagine someone having limp like a crime scene around her.

Satoru sniffs and says, a little bit snappy, “Cutting my hair. Obviously.”

“… In- in the dark?”

“Well I can still see.” She says, exasperated and sounding like it’s a bit of a front.

Right. Magical eyes, and all. Suguru still can’t quite grasp it.

“Can you?” Suguru says, can’t help herself, with a small teasing smile as she tilts her head, observing the mess on Satoru’s own.

Satoru’s very, very strange. Suguru has concluded this weeks ago, when they met.

She’s beautiful. Hauntingly so, she’s beautiful, in this way Suguru hadn’t known humans could be.

Her white hair, though, long and lovely, is always tied back, always in somewhat-tangled little tendrils around the dormitory. Satoru’s unbelievably beautiful, but messy, Suguru noticed, odd and a little bit lanky, clumsy in her beauty. Like she maybe doesn’t know exactly how to behave like something of this earth, like she’s really fallen from some heaven and can’t get used to the mortality clinging to her.

She’s barefoot half the time, and she's always loud, and she's all the while carrying all this angelic beauty around like it’s nothing. Suguru finds it as endearing as she does strange. Captivating at the very least.

Now, her half-messy hair is choppy around her shoulders and chin about halfway through, halfway falling past her shoulder as it usually does. It’s, really, done horrendously.

“Shut up.” Satoru huffs.

“What were you trying to do?” Suguru laughs, not unkindly, approaching her.

She knows she should be careful, with Satoru, right now. She notices the slight tremor in her hands, and how her nose is a little red, like she’d been crying.

It’s just that she also knows, even this young, that the way to be gentle with Satoru right now is to be gentle with her pride.

(It matters, that gentleness between them also means play.)

“I just wanted… like- Ugh, it’s just so annoying to have all this hair, and I’ve always wanted a- like, a short haircut, and I-“ Satoru rambles, seemingly embarrassed, and then sighs, looking at herself in the mirror. “And I definitely cut too much.” She admits, as if to her own reflection.

Suguru hums, rounding her, looking at the choppy layers around the base of her head. “Depends on what you were going for.” She muses.

“Well not this.” Satoru says, which is oddly vulnerable for her. Suguru looks at her through the mirror and Satoru ignores her gaze, looking to the side.

“I can fix it.” Flies past Suguru’s lips before she thinks it through, and Satoru’s eyes snap to hers in the mirror. “I mean- I can probably…” She muses, lifts a hand to the choppy strands hanging from the base of Satoru’s skull.

It isnt just her head hair that’s white— every minuscule hair on her body seems to be, too. Suguru’s thumb absently brushes over the soft, soft hairs sprouting from her nape, above a pale neck littered with pale, pale freckles, all of her soft like clean bedsheets, like spring dawn through sheer curtains. Satoru stills, and Suguru clears her throat and manages to finish “I can probably make it even for you.”

Satoru’s little “Okay” then is the quietest thing Suguru’s ever heard her say.

She hadn’t thought this through. She takes the scissors from Satoru’s shaky hand and doesn’t even have her move from her spot as she starts snipping at her hair.

She hadn’t thought this through. It’s far too intimate, Satoru’s slightly freckly shoulders, her white tanktop, her odd silence and quiet little answers to Suguru’s questions, making sure she’s doing what she wants her to.

Satoru doesn’t seem to be picky. She ends up saying “Just.. Just salvage what you can.” And Suguru’s just never heard her sound like that, so she keeps quiet and does what she can.

The delicateness of Satoru’s hair makes her nervous. She feels like she’s handling something precious, though Satoru doesn’t seem to treat it as such. She can’t help but find her messy hair so devastatingly sweet, the hairs curling at her nape, the choppy attempts she made at it.

“…how do you know how to do this?” Satoru asks, eventually, sounding a bit more like herself.

“I cut my own hair.” Suguru shrugs. She’s not really that experienced or confident with it, but she seems to have a much better shot at saving this than Satoru herself.

“…you cut your hair?” Satoru asks, and Suguru frowns a little, not glancing away from the strands she’s snipping at carefully.

“Yeah?”

“But it’s so… long.”

Suguru’s quiet for a second, stilling only briefly in confusion before making herself continue on.

This girl is so very, very strange.

“Y-yeah? You gotta cut the ends sometimes, so it grows longer properly.” Suguru says, trying not to sound like she’s pointing out something obvious, even though- well, what teenage girl doesn’t know that?

“Oh.” Satoru mumbles. “I had… I had people fussing about my hair, and stuff, at the clan, so I wouldn’t know.” She says “I guess I never even paid attention to what they did with it.”

Suguru suspected something along those lines.

Sometimes, when Satoru mentions the clan Suguru knows she grew up aching to leave, some things fall into place, a little bit. The way she doesn’t know quite how to be human— it seems to Suguru that the isolation Satoru grew up in runs deeper than it’s apparent at first glance.

“They’d never let me cut it.” She admits, and Suguru keeps quiet, hoping she doesn’t stop talking, doesn’t stop letting her hear. “I always wanted to, but… It was unbecoming, or something.”

Suguru huffs, and then admits, after a few more ruffles of her hair and a glance in the mirror in front of them “It’s pretty like this.” She says, soft and quiet, half to herself.

“Is it done?” Satoru questions, just as quiet but with gentle excitement coating her voice.

Suguru hums, letting her hands drop from short white strands, regretfully.

Satoru doesn’t say much, immediately, but she does smile, slowly, her lips spreading out into a grin as she brushes her fingers through her hair.

The longest bits now tickle her neck, bright white strands fluffy and still a little bit messy around her head. Suguru thinks it looks good. She thinks it makes her neck look longer and her grin brighter, her posture deliberate and steadier in its grasp of femininity. She thinks making her own choices looks good on Satoru.

“You like it?” She mumbles.

“I do.” Satoru whispers back, rolling her neck a little bit, turning on her feet to see more of the back of her head. She giggles suddenly, in little bursts of laugher, like glee is spilling out and bouncing off the mirror and the bathroom walls.

It sounds a little bit uncontrollable, kind of childish. A startlingly sweet sound that makes its way through the cracks in Suguru’s facade and hides away somewhere, somewhere deep in her ribcage.

“God, it feels so light.” She says, moving her head oddly side to side as if looking for the phantom swaying of hair.

Suguru laughs quietly, stuck in place by the sudden gentleness of this moment. Just a little bit startled at how soft friendship can be in cold, dark places like this campus and this world of sorcery.

“Thank you, Suguru.” Satoru says, sincerely, with her smile lingering when she faces her head-on for the first time tonight, properly.

Something swoops in Suguru’s stomach, then, face-to-face with this girl in the shitty bathroom light. It’s, maybe, the first time she feels it so clearly, this startling pull, this burst of something important in the middle of her chest. She swallows it down, for the time being.

She says, instead “No problem. You could repay me by cleaning up all this hair, though.”

Satoru pouts suddenly and Suguru laughs and heavens know how long it’s been since this campus bore witness to something so golden being born amongst these sleek wooden halls.

Satoru grows into herself, as the seasons roll on, and Suguru gets to watch it happen.

They always might not make it past their next mission, that’s always the cost of their lifestyle.

But hidden away on this mountain, throughout the years, they get little pockets of time.

Satoru teaches Suguru what it means to be powerful. She teaches her what raw strength looks like and what it means to be special grade, what it means to be unyielding and unbeatable. She teaches her who the clan heads are and exactly how arrogant you can get away with being if you’re strong enough.

In turn, Suguru teaches Satoru how to inhale cigarette smoke.

How to take care of her hair. How to download video games without paying for them and how to place the pin down on a record player.

They grow by building each other, like that.

On missions, on the field, they’re a freak-duo of unseen potential and ungraspable strength.

In their dormitory, though, Suguru gets something special. A still-messy, still-loud girl with the biggest brightest eyes anyone's ever known, that’s all faded digimon shirts and manga with folded page corners and overly sweet soda and that stupid, wretched swoop in Suguru’s stomach that never, ever goes away.

“I’ve never had a friend before.” Satoru admits to her, when they’re sixteen and get properly drunk for the first time.

Suguru left their friends in the common room with their smuggled in booze and their drunken giggles to go have a cigarette on the porch, and really, they’re all children in comically-large grown people’s shoes, but it’s hard not to be when life expectancy’s not past thirty.

Suguru isn’t sure when Satoru decided to follow her out there or when she ended up with her head on Suguru’s shoulder. Satoru’s become so clingy with her, touchy and lingering, in a way many girl-friends are but not at all in a way Satoru is with anyone else. Suguru hoards this attention greedily.

“Like, before you. And Shoko, and the guys, and stuff… But mostly you.” Satoru admits, unprompted, as Suguru takes another drag of her cigarette.

“I know.” Suguru whispers back, softly. Her head is cloudy from the cheap whiskey and her stomach is so warm she thinks Satoru’s about to make her insides boil up.

“…No one’s ever treated me like you do.” Satoru mumbles, at last. Like she’s simply observing, noticing it for herself.

“Like… like what?” Suguru dares ask, before her brain’s caught up with her lips.

“Like… I dunno… You care- Well, I think- I think you care about me. Not my- my technique, or whatever. You…” Satoru lifts her head from her shoulder, and they’re sitting on the chilly porch, nose to nose, and Satoru’s lips smell like alcohol and Suguru—

Suguru’s pretty drunk and very floaty and she feels it, then, that swoop, that pull, but it doesn’t bring dread along with it, anymore. Just a distant ache, like her fingers are itching to reach for another cigarette after she’s been sitting without one for too long, or another bite or a sip.

She thinks she doesn’t mind what Satoru’s lips smell like, because she’s drunk off the same bottle and she’s used to the taste, and, in fact, could go for more. Could lick along the seam of those soft lips and take back Satoru’s swigs of whiskey.

She doesn’t, though. Instead she glances away from Satoru’s lips, back to her eyes, just in time to hear her say “You know me.”

“I do.” Suguru whispers back, assuringly.

“No one’s ever known me like you do. I didn’t even know me before you did.” Satoru whispers, in this sort of word-vomit, like she’s simply let loose a string of consciousness.

“It’s a shame.” Suguru whispers. They’re too close together but it’s fine, it’s close friendship, it’s seamless intimacy. Suguru pointedly doesn’t look at her lips again and it takes about sixty-percent of her drunken mind’s power to focus on this. “You’re pretty cool.” She admits.

It’s childish, and simple, and yet Satoru grins drunkenly, tilting her head “You think I’m cool?”

Suguru grins back. They’re really close together, it probably looks ridiculous from a far, but no one sees them here anyway, and their bones are all swaying and drunken. “I never said that.” Suguru says through her smile.

Satoru giggles, and bumps thier foreheads together. She’s so close Suguru can smell her sweet cosmetics and their noses have to tilt by each other in order not to touch. Like Satoru could just lean in any moment now.

“You just did!” She insists. Suguru smiles, too fondly, holds the side of Satoru’s face to steady her. She’s really warm under her hand. She lets Suguru touch her through Infinity and Suguru doesn’t think she does that with anybody else. “You think I’m cool.” She delcares, a little slurred.

“I think you’re…” Suguru mumbles, getting distracted momentarily by the softness of Satoru’s cheek under her thumb. She’s way too close and Suguru needs to string together every single one of her functioning braincells to not do something stupid and irreversible. “Really drunk.”

“I think you’re drunk.” Satoru mumbles, maturely. Then she reaches for Suguru’s hair, half-loose for the evening, plays with a long, silky black strand over her shoulder, arranging it how she sees fit. Then she adds, much quieter— “I think you’re so pretty.”

Suguru’s heart is a little loud in her ribcage. Not so much fast as just loud, thumping against her chest in strong throbs. Her free hand is still holding the end of a cigarette, one that’s surely gone out now with how long ago she’d taken a drag.

Satoru’s eyes wander from her hair to her face, and she’s blinking like it takes a lot for her eyes to focus, and she’s so open, so sweet, and she’s the strongest person in the world and she’s practically in Suguru’s arms, out here on the porch.

“D’you think I’m pretty?” She asks, with a small smile, teasing, but an underlying of something genuine, too. Suguru knows she’s ashamed of caring about the answer.

“I think you’re beautiful.” Suguru whispers, sincere with her whole chest.

Satoru smiles wide, laughing a little. “You’re teasing me.” She laughs.

“I’m not.” She whispers back, smiling but still very, very honest. “I think you’re… I think… I’m, um-“ She brushes her thumb over milky white skin and Satoru leans into it, leans into her palm, sweet like a cat, and Suguru’s brain sort of short-circuits. “I’m- really drunk.” She decides on, with a sigh.

Satoru laughs, bright and pretty. Takes her hand and kisses her knuckles so seamlessly Suguru almost doesn’t notice she did so until she’s being pulled up to stand.

Satoru drags her back inside all giggly and drunk and strong and beautiful and all these terrible things, and Suguru follows her helplessly.

+

Satoru falls asleep on her shoulder, sitting on the common room couch. Nanami’s off getting a slightly too-nauseous Haibara to their dorms, so the only person that’s left and even moderately sober is Shoko, laughing at Suguru who’s too drunk and too enraptured to move herself away from Satoru’s sleeping frame.

“You’re so still.” Shoko laughs, as she cleans up cups off their coffee table.

“Shut up.” Suguru hisses at her, quiet as to not wake Satoru.

Satoru who she’s always known to be a light sleeper, but seemingly knocks out when drunk, because she’s snoring softly, completely limp and rather deeply asleep on her shoulder.

Satoru who’s so trusting of Suguru that her head spins.

“She won’t leave if you breathe, you know? She’s not a cat.” Shoko says, dropping plastic cups into a trash bag. “She’s more like a- really dumb dog.”

Suguru chuckles once quietly, and then gets a little distracted, looking down at the girl leaning heavily into her arm.

She stares down at her silently, for a second, before addressing Shoko “She’s got freckles, did you know? Really faint ones, but they’re all over her cheeks.” She muses, quietly.

Shoko’s quiet for a second, and then she whistles lowly and says “You’re getting a glass of water.”

“‘m not that drunk anymore.” Suguru mumbles as Shoko turns on the sink some meters away behind her, presumably filling up a cup for her.

“You’re waxing poetics about your girlfriend’s freckles to me. That’s not exactly the Suguru I know.” Shoko says, handing her the cup with a knowing smile. Suguru doesn’t like it, she feels vaguely patronized.

“She’s not- w’re just friends.” Suguru mumbles into the rim of the cup before taking a sip, the water suddenly more interesting than Shoko’s knowing gaze.

“Mm- no. We’re just friends. And we don’t act like that.” Shoko says, settling back into a chair and kicking one leg over the other.

“Yeah we do.” Suguru insists, too quickly, probably. “I’d let you lean on my shoulder.” She says, like it’s obvious, and Shoko smirks, leaning her chin on her palm.

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t have that feeling in your chest.” Shoko says, and then grins wide when Suguru’s eyes snap to hers. “Hah! That was a shot in the dark, honestly, but you totally just gave yourself away.” Shoko laughs, and Suguru’s startled, caught expression crumbles into a small frown as she cackles.

“Oh, god, I should have filmed that.” Shoko settles on, laughter quieting down.

And Suguru doesn’t glance back at her, just stares down at Satoru. Her freckles and her lashes, her hair that’s grown out from last year’s choppy haircut but is now unapologetically Satoru, as opposed to the long, straight strands she came from her clan with. It’s now all loose and messy in a way that’s distinctly effortless, falling just right despite its wildness in a way that it’s almost frustrating.

She’s still a little lanky, but her limbs have grown corded and long, visibly powerful, and she’s got this glint of play in her eyes all of the time, like she’s let herself out of some lifelong facade.

Her cheeks are flushed from the alcohol and she always blushes so particularly, whether it’s from the cold or exercise or (rarely) embarrassment. Her entire cheeks turn a rosy red, patchy and in great contrast to her lashes and her eyes.

“I’ll…” Suguru mumbles, keeps her hands in her lap so she doesn’t keep touching Satoru’s cheek, tucking away her hair, or anything as silly. “It’s just a little- thing. I’ll get over it.” She whispers.

“…Hey.” Shoko says, eventually, softer, kicking at Suguru’s leg lightly to get her attention. “I’m just joking, you know? It’s- I won’t tell anyone, or anything.” She says, kinder.

And Suguru just whispers, again, like she's convincing herself “…I’ll get over it.”

Suguru does not, in the slightest, get over it.

It becomes a real problem, when they’re around seventeen, eighteen.

What she grew up to accept as an annoying crush, something that almost seemed to be just a frustrating byproduct of their unmistakable bond, was now becoming something much louder. Much more adult and real and frustrating in much, much worse ways.

She tries to hold herself to a strict no-nonsense standard, she really does. She does her very, very best to keep a firm grasp on her comprehension of their friendship, doesn’t let herself overthink or indulge or, god forbid, hope.

But Satoru’s horrible. Satoru’s tall and angelic and she climbs into Suguru’s bed in nothing but lacy cotton underwear and Suguru’s shirt to lay around and steal her video game console and her legs go on for fucking miles and her hips are right there by Suguru and she thinks she might be genuinely losing her entire fucking mind.

There’s an entire month when Suguru wears a braid to class, each and every day, because in the mornings Satoru would sit behind her dressed like that and braid it for her.

Suguru likes to get ready slowly, in the mornings, likes to be neat, likes her shirts straight and tucked and her nails even and her hair brushed and done, and Satoru likes to come in, in the clothes she slept in, and spread out on Suguru’s bed and distract her for about twenty minutes every day, before they’ve even had breakfast.

And so for a while she had this phase where she made Suguru sit on the floor, and she’d put a knee by each side of Suguru sitting up on her bed, and braid her hair.

And Suguru doesn’t even really like her hair in a braid and would be annoyed with any other thing chipping away at her morning routine, but-

But Satoru’s fingers are deft and kind in her hair, and Suguru pointedly never thinks about how even the accidental tugs at her scalp feel devastatingly good. She only sits there, still and pretending she’s perfectly relaxed, when all she can think about are the bare legs by her ears and how badly she wants to turn her head and mouth at them like a dog.

So she wears braids for a bit. Just for awhile, before Satoru forgets about it, leaves her braid-less and with the memory of soft milky skin that fucking smells like strawberries, honest to god, due to some body wash or the other.

Suguru’s no stranger to restraint, though. She’s disciplined and steady and reliable and she doesn’t indulge, doesn’t give into desires.

Her shirts are ironed and her nails are even and her hair is long and she wishes it was braided more often. Her fighting is educated and precise and her stance is perfect and she paints her nails maroon and gauges her ears patiently without stretching them out and she irons her shirts and, god, she wishes Satoru would braid her hair again, wishes-

Her pants are fitted and her form is perfect and her grades are unblemished and if she could just have those thighs by her ears again, any which way she could have them, she’d give it all up to stay there.

Satoru hangs off her arm and leans into her shoulder any time they’re lounging around and, when they’re on days long missions without Shoko to heal them, she helps Suguru wrap every bandage she needs, and her hands are meant for great power yet her fingers somehow know great gentleness.

Missions are a little bit different, though. When they spend days with their techniques active and their entire bodies on high alert, the quiet nights, the few-hour pockets of time they get, at hotel rooms, abide a different set of rules to regular life.

Here, when Suguru sits in her underwear with her hair damp and her uniform ruined from curse blood, and Satoru's in front of her on the bed in a tank top and carefully cleaning Suguru’s throughly wrecked knuckles, Suguru doesn’t feel wild with some desire she doesn’t really know how to grasp, like she usually would when Satoru's faintly-freckly shoulders are covered only by thin white straps and when her eyes glow in the dark a little bit.

On nights like these, their intimacy becomes something quiet, and precious for the way that it’s human in. Their long, too-strong limbs and their too-old eyes become nothing more than just that, just flesh, just young girls tired out from too much power on their backs.

“This really sucks for you.” Satoru murmurs, dabbing gently at the heavily split skin of Suguru’s knuckles with a cotton puff soaked in something disinfecting.

Suguru laughs, not flinching at the stinging pain atop her bleeding hand.

“It never even landed a hit on you, and you still gotta deal with this…” She continues, not noticing Suguru's laughing at her blunt tone, holding Suguru’s hand steady with her other one very gently, like she’s cleaning up an old antique, dusting something made of glass.

“You get used to it, when you’ve always been fighting without princess powers.” Suguru says, through a teasing smile, and Satoru huffs.

“Infinity’s the most ancient technique modern jujutsu society-“

“It’s flashy.”

“Says you! Miss. dramatic folk-tale monsters sprout from my palms!” Satoru says, and Suguru laughs, and likes how it distracts her from the bone-deep sting of the disinfectant.

“It’s not that dramatic,“

“You’re like- a fucked up Disney princess.”

Suguru laughs again, and they quiet down, as Satoru brings up a roll of bandages to her fist, wrapping it around her palm first before threading it over her knuckles.

“Does it not hurt?” She murmurs, eventually.

“It does, kind of.” Suguru shrugs. “But I’ve got such a pretty nurse,” Suguru starts, and Satoru huffs, and Suguru can’t tell if her cheeks have become that lovely red in the dark. She mourns the sight.

“Shut up.” She mumbles, eyes firmly on Suguru’s hand.

Every brush of her fingers against Suguru’s palm is so very warm, and every second she spends cradling her hand Suguru spends feeling like gold is coursing from her fist through her veins.

She’s got pale, purple-ish bags under her eyes, slightly swollen and visible in the dark, and her eyelids are low like she’s tired, and Suguru knows she hasn’t slept for the entire mission, since they left campus yesterday at dawn. 

Suguru moves the white hair hanging by Satoru’s face, not long enough to be placed behind her shoulder, so Suguru only gently pushes it away, like a curtain.

Satoru glances up to her, murmurs “What?”

“You look tired.” Suguru says, simply.

Satoru exhales harshly through her nose, looking back down at where she’s tying up the last of Suguru’s bandage.

“You aren’t exactly miss universe yourself, right now.” She huffs, though she’s quiet and doesn’t seem like she actually cares very much for banter, at the moment.

“You’re going to have to sleep tonight.” Suguru says back, tucking away the hair behind Satoru’s ear.

(That’s the kind of thing that’s allowed, on missions, in hotel rooms, at night. Being a little softer with each other.)

“Sure.”

“Satoru.” Suguru scolds.

“Suguru.” Satoru mocks, looking up at her. She meets Suguru’s eyes like she’s not afraid of her scolding. Suguru holds her gaze.

“Come on. We need to be up in just a few hours anyway.” Suguru insists, as Satoru lowers their hands into her lap, bandage tight and secure where it needs to be. “Just get some rest, we can stay right here.”

The problem is as follows: Satoru can’t seem to let herself relax on missions. Even if she shuts Infinity off, she can’t seem to rid the habit of being on high alert. Given she grew up with a bounty on her head, it’s not strange she can’t ever truly rest without Tengen’s barrier or clan guards,

Or Suguru, they’ve come to find out. Sometime during their first more serious, away missions, when the higher ups were just beginning to warm up to using them as their favorite one-shot solutions, they figured out Satoru can piece together a few hours of sleep if Suguru’s around.

Suguru never asked her to explain this. She never makes her acknowledge it. Satoru had just shrugged, the first time they both knocked out in the same bed, beat, and said “You’re strong, and stuff. I guess I can rest around you.” And that had been that.

They never make a big deal out of it but Suguru keeps it close, close to her chest. The fact that Satoru trusts her like that. That she feels like Suguru, even asleep and equally tired, could be her Infinity for her, could be what shields that soft milky skin from harm. It lights this spark in her, knowing this, that spills like a bonfire and smells like a sweater from home.

“’s a small bed.” Saturu mumbles back.

“We’ll fit.” Suguru insists, and Satoru smiles a small, delicate smile, secretive. It's wordlessly giving-in.

They tangle together as if they do it each night. Satoru lays close and tucks her head under Suguru’s chin and she’s not small but Suguru isn’t either, Suguru wraps her up almost protectively in her arms. They fit together with an aching familiarity.

Their scarce sleeping clothes make it so their embrace is all furnace-hot skin and soft white hair and Suguru’s so deeply exhausted she only feels gently warmed to sleep by all this intimacy, only feels content as she holds Satoru and her trust close to her steady heart.

The same wretched little feeling that makes her mad with desire sometimes now makes her feel somehow pliant, sleepy, hazy. Like the warmth takes a blunter edge and pulls her under sweeter.

Satoru’s breath is on her neck, her long, pretty hands are on her waist. She’s wrapped up in Suguru’s strong arms and she’s melting further into her every time Suguru takes her bandaged fingers up and down her spine soothingly.

“Fuck, I really am tired.” Satoru mumbles by her collarbone, spilling like a puddle under Suguru’s fingertips.

Suguru hums. “You gonna be able to sleep tonight?” Suguru whispers back.

“I always am, with you.” Satoru whispers, into the darkness by her neck, hidden away.

Suguru’s chest squeezes and she wants-

God, she wants to be her Infinity. Wants to wrap around her, skin tight, and absorb every hit for her, chase away all unwanted touch. She holds Satoru tighter in response and she wants nothing more than to be granted this forever.

Satoru falls asleep, like that, fast and seamless. Suguru feels it happen, feels her melt against her, hears her breathing slow, feels her lashes stop tickling her neck.

For a long while more, though she could never tell exactly how long, Suguru stays awake. Her hand is in Satoru’s hair and she’s holding her impossibly close, long legs tangled under the thin, breezy sheets.

She’s overwhelmed, as she feels it, as she feels Satoru fall asleep in her arms. Utterly and completely overwhelmed, so much so she thinks her chest might be really, physically hurting. Her stomach is certainly truly clenched and her limbs carry this exhaustion, like they could tremble, though they remain still.

She knows it’s love. She’s young and a little reckless and a little terrified and just the smallest bit lost— but she’s not stupid. She knows it’s love.

It just feels so large, in her chest, right now, she doesn’t know what to do with herself. She wants to squeeze Satoru so hard they become one. She wants to kiss her but doesn’t actually think that would be enough to sate her, thinks she could crawl inside her ribcage and still not feel close enough.

She wants to cry, a little bit, because, fuck, she’s never had this much to lose before. It scares her to her bones.

What follows are months of torture. Months upon months.

Suguru’s not tortured by her love, no. She’s, really, kind of content with it.

She knows Satoru loves her, too, though it might not pair with the same desires.

And she likes being in love. Likes that bit of sweetness she gets to have, amongst all the curse-bile and metallic blood taste that is her life. She feels like it keeps her human, grounded.

It’s just that she doesn’t feel one bit grounded with her absolute, deeply shameful and terribly wretched, lust.

Sometimes her hands shake with it. With the urge to reach out and grab, grab a slim waist as she bends over for something, grab strong hips and press them against the nearest flat fucking surface, grab her neck, fuck, Suguru feels like an animal.

She really does. Anybody that knows her would probably say she’s if not the most stable, most rational, responsible person they know. Suguru’s in control of herself. She’s precise, she’s calm, she doesn’t indulge-  and yet she wants her fingers digging into pale thighs and Satoru’s cunt in her face so fucking badly she feels like she’s been possessed by some sort of wild god-damn animal.

She likes being in love. She doesn’t mind that part.

She likes how Satoru is every second of her every day as much as she despises it. She likes loving her, but sometimes she doesn’t think she can handle her, anymore. Feels like a fraying rope, every day that Satoru just lives around her, in the dormitory, beautiful and tall and strong and somehow still delicate, somehow pretty on top of all of that.

Suguru’s at her limit. That’s what she keeps thinking.

Yet months pass. Months pass and Satoru wears Suguru’s shirts without any pants on and sits on the kitchen counter and she fixes Suguru’s hair for her with deft fingers and she reads manga in her bed while leaning against her and she shines like an entire nebula on-field and Suguru is the picture of restraint. The picture of a perfect friend.

She accepts her warmth but never overdoes it, not so much so it would be clearly crossing lines. Just, subtle. Just brief hands on hips and casual, friendly touchy-ness, heads on shoulders and overlapping legs and movie nights and nothing at all unusual, nothing in the realm of ‘too much’.

She doesn’t think anyone suspects a thing. Sure, her friends can probably tell she’s a little in love. She doesn’t think anyone knows, though, that she feels fucked-up beyond salvation, degenerate and a little bit feral.

It makes her nights all the more shameful. She winds up with evenings where she’s heaving with a hand clapped over her mouth, fingers messy over her own cunt, damn-near losing consciousness from the lack of oxygen as she imagines Satoru above her, those stupid strong thighs by her ear, riding her face however she likes it, taking her own pleasure from Suguru, restricting her breath and dripping down her chin, her neck.

More often than not she goes to sleep shaky from an orgasm and a mandatory cold shower, so, so full of unpinned guilt and suffocating shame. Disappointment in herself she can’t quite place— like she’s angry at herself for having these carnal feelings, for giving into them, for being unable to keep herself in line.

She always thought that if it boiled over, it would be due to some grand, explosive thing.

She’s imagined it, involuntarily, many times. Sometimes through a leans of fear and rejection, sometimes through guilty fantasies.

She’d imagined confessions in the rain and she’d imagined whirlwind nights that ended with bold invitations and confidently spread legs and heat in its right place.

Instead, it’s a Wednesday.

It’s Wednesday and it’s late but they’ve gotten caught up hanging around Suguru’s room, a little bit sleepy considering it’s a school night, and something becomes a little bit charged, caused by nothing at all, nothing but years of careful restraint.

It starts with Suguru’s hand on Satoru’s thigh, as she plays around on a Nintendo console, leaning into Suguru’s shoulder so they can both see the small, pixelated screen.

They’ve gotten quiet as Satoru tries to pass this level, murmuring occasional quiet comments. Suguru’s palm is resting comfortably on Satoru’s inner thigh, about halfway between the top of it and her knee. Satoru’s leg is thrown over Suguru’s, and it’s really, the most natural thing.

She doesn’t even notice when she starts rubbing it absently, a little bit sleepy, distracted by the smoothness of the skin there. She doesn’t notice until Satoru sighs, shifting closer a little bit like she’s settling.

“Feels nice.” Satoru mumbles, and only then does Suguru get a little flustered with what she’s doing. But Satoru doesn’t seem upset, so she smiles to herself, kneading the muscle of her leg.

“Yeah?”

Satoru hums “Be firmer?” She wonders, ever casual, a little demanding.

Suguru, gently flustered but used to by now to Satoru’s proximity, huffs a laugh through her nose and kneads a little firmer, obediently, though she does tease. “You want me to massage your leg?”

Satoru hums, tipping her head back, her face hidden by Suguru’s neck. “Sure.”

Suguru pinches it lightly, snorts “I’m not asking, I’m wondering if you’re really that spoilt.” She says, but doesn’t stop.

Satoru’s legs are firm with muscle under all that soft skin, perfectly long and balanced, and Suguru knows well where they ought to be hurting after this morning's training.

She massages the muscle and ignores to the best of her abilities the growing heat pooling in her stomach, the perfect limb in her hand captivating her with terrible grace.

Satoru sighs, a sweet, content thing, the console in her hand still on but ignored with large GAME OVER letters across the screen. “You’ve got magical hands, you know that, Suguru?” She sighs.

It’s just that she’s so, so perfect under Suguru’s hand, and her voice sounds soft like a moan, so Suguru can’t really reply. Just watch with lidded eyelids the skin that pinches and stretches gently under her fingers, focuses on the intimate warmth of the inner parts of her thigh. 

She doesn’t know what she’s thinking as she lets her hand climb higher, but she almost moans out loud when Satoru just lets her feel up the high bits of her thigh, hand firm on on the most delicate skin, so high up Suguru thinks the almost invisible white hairs covering the entire expanse of Satoru’s body grow softer there. Her skin is perfect, smooth and young and warm, sweet, sweet like something Suguru could taste. It's pliant under Suguru's fingers.

She feels like a drooling fucking animal, she always does. But something so sweet is within reach and all Suguru knows how to do is sit politely with eyes captivated and stare, as if up at the dining room table, a dog waiting for scraps to drop.

Suguru can feel her skin get warmer than it is down near her knee, can feel the dizzying heat gather under her hand as she dares reach further up.

Satoru hums and it sounds too soft, too content, like a gentle moan. Suguru can’t really think much, just brushes her thumb along the seam where lacy cotton underwear travels from her crotch to her hip.

Satoru twists to look at her again, and Suguru suddenly, instead of just the top of a white head of hair, sees big, blue eyes, soft yet glinting with something like mischief.

Her hand freezes but doesn’t move, except for her thumb that slots back against her fist and away from where Satoru’s the warmest at.

“Sorry. Zoned out.” Suguru forces herself to mumble, and she knows, she knows for certain, Satoru and her heightened senses can feel the wild thumping of her heart, no matter how smooth she sounds.

Satoru studies her face with quiet interest, like she’s seeing something that excites her as she puts it together.

Then she stands up, abruptly, all her warmth gone in an instant. Walks off the bed and Suguru raises up on her elbow and watches her stupid, model-fucking-body move as she snaps closed the game console and leaves it on Suguru’s desk, turning around with a smile in her eyes.

Suguru stares back at her, air charged, as she waits anxiously to see if she’s fucked up by feeling up her best friends thigh, all the way up to the inseam of her crotch. 

Satoru stops, as if to look at her, study her. She watches a step away from the bed, seems to track the up-and-down movement of Suguru’s chest that she’s trying so hard to keep steady.

“Suguru?”

“Hm?” Suguru hums, too quickly, her voice almost cracking around the simple sound. She does her very best to look somewhere rational, but Satoru’s face is too much and her legs are too long and the wall off to the side is too shy so her eyes tremble over Satoru’s figure.

“Do you know I can tell?” Satoru says, ever simple, and Suguru’s eyes now snap to hers, firm, wild and searching for answers in the blue.

“W-what?” She says, and she genuinely thinks she’s never stuttered a day in her life before. But suddenly her greatest fear is hovering above her— a fear that Satoru knows. That she can tell that Suguru’s out of control, that she leaves bite marks in her pillowcase each night trying not to moan out her name.

She can tell what, exactly? That Suguru's pathetically turned on from just having her around, the same way she always is, beautiful and shameless and soft? That Suguru, even now, feels tingly with proximity, with desire she can't contain no matter how hard she tries?

Satoru smiles, warmly, and mumbles “Come here.”

Suguru raises up to sit on the edge of the bed like Satoru gestures for her to, obedient without thinking, like Satoru's controlling her limbs, looking up at her and feeling strangely like she’s begging for forgiveness, feeling both cold and feverish.

Satoru approaches her, and, to her dismay, cards a hand through Suguru’s hair, forcing a quiet, hopefully unnoticed shiver down her spine. Suguru looks up at her, a little helpless.

“Do you know I can tell you want me?” Satoru asks, at last, and Suguru’s breath hitches, but Satoru’s holding her by the fucking hair, Jesus Christ, so she can’t move a muscle. She’s terrified and she’s, to her complete horror, throbbing between her legs, feverish down to her fingertips.

“Satoru.” Suguru mumbles, apologies on the tip of her tongue, though, from here, she can’t quite string together a sentence.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Satoru asks, her stomach at Suguru’s eye level, her fucking underwear at Suguru’s eye level. “You want me?”

Suguru only keeps looking at her, eyes wild, terrified to cross that line, to reveal her cards, to make them come crumbling down.

“C’mon.” Satoru whispers, bits of uncertainty slipping through, like Suguru’s testing her confidence. She comes closer, and Suguru has to bend her neck completely, chin by Satoru’s hipbone, as Satoru brings her other hand to her head, holding the side of her face.

She moves a thumb over her cheek. Then further, still, pressing on her lower lip. Suguru opens her mouth as if on command, and Satoru, like she’s not even thinking about it, pushes her thumb in past her lips, on to her tongue.

Suguru feels herself leak, possibly, which she doesn’t think she’s ever felt so distinctly before. She licks at Satoru’s thumb without waiting for instructions, instinctually, mind a little blank except for the taste of Satoru’s skin, the invasion of her finger. She doesn't know what's happening but every bit of her soul is yelling at her to not dare try and stop it.

Satoru's eyes glint with something like awe as she watches Suguru take her finger. “Tell me you want me.” Satoru whispers, betraying herself at last. She sounds soft and uncertain and undeniably as heated as Suguru.

Suguru sucks around her finger, eyebrows furrowed, aching to close her eyes but unwilling to miss a second. Satoru shivers as Suguru moans quietly around her finger. It feels stupid-good, having her inside, even just like this. Suguru could suck at her fingers until she couldn't think anymore.

“Fuck, look at that…” Satoru whispers “Tell me you want me, Suguru, and you can have me.”

She drags her spit-covered finger out of Suguru’s mouth, wet on her chin, and Suguru breaks.

“I want you.” She rasps, head dizzy with the slightly salty taste of her finger, the obscene intrusion of it past her lips “I want you so fucking bad, I can’t think, I-“

She doesn’t know what she expected, but after this lewd fucking moment, it certainly wasn’t a kiss.

Satoru drops down into a maybe-odd position and kisses her full on the mouth, so hungry and demanding it takes a second for Suguru to catch up.

When she does, she moans, high and drawn out, pulling Satoru by the backs of her thighs into her lap urgently.

Holy shit, she can’t think. Satoru’s thighs are straddling her own, bare and beautiful as Suguru’s hands map them greedily. Her skin is soft, soft, Suguru's fingers dig into it like it's both her first and last chance to touch something worth worship. 

God, she hoards it immedietly, everything Satoru gives her.

Her mouth is hot and unrelenting and tastes like candy and Suguru lets their tongues slide together and feels damn-near passing out from the vastness of her emotions.

She can’t pull away, or think much at all, but if she could, she’d for sure be running her mouth about all the time she spent wishing for this. It’s all thats bouncing around her head— relief.

She didn’t know anything could feel like this. Like an avalanche of something like relief, something like gratitude, crumbling down over her, mixing with something so devestatingly human it could be lust, it could be love. She gasps into Satoru’s mouth, pulls her closer, relishes in the feeling of Satoru’s own hands trembling tangled in her hair, pulling her closer, too. Like they’re trying to mend each other into a thing conjoined.

“Satoru.” Suguru gasps, pulls away to kiss messily, one-tracked, at her neck, her jaw, losing her mind in a pursuit to taste, the dam of her restrained longing absolutely bursting open, reducing her to a creature of pure desire. “Satoru, holy shit.”

Satoru laughs, breathless, bearing her neck and gasping “Yes. Fuck, yes.” She says, making a sweet, content noise as Suguru’s palms pull her closer by the ass, fingertips sneaking in to just graze the skin beneath cotton lace. Everything feels surreal. The rough lace over her knuckles, the scorching warmth of Satoru's body, the addicting taste of her skin and spit. Suguru moans as she sucks at the skin of her neck, fingertips digging into Satoru's perfect legs as if she could slip away if she didn't hold tight enough.

“I do want you.” Suguru breathes into her neck, barely ceasing to mouth and lick and suck at it. Satoru’s hips make tiny, aborted circles above hers, almost as if unconscious, seeking friction.

Suguru isn’t thinking anymore. Something completely carnal takes over her brain, and Satoru’s hips are grinding forward, and she’s smoothing a hand over the expanse of a thigh, reaching for her front.

“I do, I do, shit, you drive me crazy,” She rambles, as Satoru’s fingers clench in her hair, and she moans, genuine and sweet, as Suguru’s teeth graze her neck.

Suguru’s fingers reach for her crotch before she’s even thinking, her mouth following a few steps behind as she remembers to ask, “Can- ‘toru, can I- Ah-h-“

She stutters, moaning away her sentence when her curious knuckle meats the slick, dampened material of Satoru’s underwear, throughly soaked. Suguru’s head, swimming, falls against Satoru’s collarbone, as Satoru whines gently.

“Oh fuck, baby…” She breathes, staring down at the now very apparent, large damp spot on the gray fabric. It looks obscene. Suguru’s lightheaded.

She drags a knuckle over the dampness and Satoru’s entire thighs twitch, her fingers clenching in Suguru’s hair as she whines quietly and chases her hand the tiniest bit with her hips.

“Fuck” Suguru mumbles again, rubs her fingers firmer over the fabric that’s so damp it might as well be absent, looks up at Satoru to kiss her again. Satoru barely kisses back, letting out a breathy moan once Suguru’s fingers settle into rhythmic circles over her clothed clit. Suguru gets to watch her eyes go unfocused, then, from up close, her mouth slackened as Suguru pulls her lower lip with her teeth and releases it. “Fuck, you’re so wet…”

Satoru pulls her back in to kiss her messily, despite the drawn-out moan she lets into her mouth. “You, baby-“ Suguru gasps into the mess of a kiss, settling into some alternate-reality version of herself, one she knows well from her fantasies. One that calls Satoru baby. Oh, this fantasy is so practiced. “Please-“ She gasps, and Satoru keeps kissing her words away, moaning at the deliberate friction over her heat “Please, please let me-“ She can’t find breath to get the words out “Let me taste you, baby, let me-“ Another kiss, hungrier. Suguru brings their foreheads together to try and keep them apart for long enough that a sentence manages to register “Fuck, Satoru, I need to eat you out, get on your fucking back, shit,-“

Satoru laughs again, still breathless, still full of mirth and mischief. She crawls quick out of Suguru’s lap on to her pillow, and Suguru follows even quicker, settling between her legs and kissing her into the mattress as soon as possible.

She sneaks her hands under Satoru’s shirt- Suguru’s own shirt, she thinks, deliriously, as Satoru shivers, from their kiss and from Suguru’s hands lingering over her ribs. She scrunches the shirt up, and then the sight bellow her registers, and she has to pull away to see— just to see.

“Look at you, angel…” Suguru pants down at her, one arm spread out as a hand trails over her goosebump-ridden ribs, over her right breast, thumbing at a nipple as she drags the shirt over it, making Satoru moan, all shaky breaths. Then she leaves it like that, bunched up above her chest. “Do you do it on purpose?” She thinks aloud, out of it with need, looking down at the disheveled sight of Satoru in that familiar fucking outfit, bare legs and Suguru’s clothes. “Come into my room dressed like this, to watch me suffer?”

Satoru smiles this wide, slightly fucked-out grin, arching up into Suguru’s touch. “To watch you blush like a schoolboy, you mean?” She tases through heaving breaths, despite her position.

“Why didn’t you say anything? If I was that obvious?”

Satoru pants, manages “I thought you’d break eventually.”

“Never without your word.” Suguru breathes back, and Satoru shivers beneath her, arching up into her touch, head lulling back as she smiles.

“Noble fucking asshole. Are you eating me out or no?”

And Suguru, despite herself, cracks her own smile. The laughs makes it easier to slide down the lacy, gray and damp fabric down perfect, smooth thighs,

And then she looks at her, properly, and loses all jokes on her tongue.

Satoru’s quiet as she watches Suguru’s expression, watches her stretch her thumb out again, pulling slightly at the neat, damp white hair over her folds, pulling them apart to see the slick heat beneath them.

“Pretty.” Suguru breathes, pretty much entierly to herself, moving her thumb over a raised clit and watching every muscle of Satoru’s stomach and thighs twitch. Satoru whines, demanding, when Suguru doesn’t keep her finger there, instead just keeps staring, prying her open gently to study her with greedy eyes.

“Don’t say shit like that.” Satoru says, though heaving breaths, and Suguru’s pretty sure she’s full of shit, because her entire face goes properly flushed at the praise, and Suguru knows her— knows she likes hearing she’s pretty.

“’n you’re soaked, look at that…” Suguru mumbles next, well-and-truly entranced, dragging a light finger from her hole and spreading the wetness around, as if only to feel it for herself.

She could fucking drool, she could, she might.

Satoru covers her eyes with her fingers, whining slightly as her hips shift. “Yeah, so won’t you stop torturing me?” She breathes, and Suguru just rubs a circle over her tender entrance, like she’s exploring her. “Oh, god.” Satoru whimpers.

Satoru’s so turned on her entire thighs are shaking, not slightly, but truly trembling, visibly and on the edge of too-violently, and Suguru’s barely touched her yet.

The flush from her face has spread out over her chest, breasts outside of her shirt and peaked upwards from the arch of her back, her firm, smooth stomach heaving, all of her restless, like live wire.

“Suguru, please, I can’t fucking, oh-“ Satoru babbles, and Suguru can’t get over how just tiny little movements of her fingers make Satoru shake and stutter, like she’s delicately tugging marionette strings. Suguru can’t take her eyes off of her pussy.

Lord help her, she’s going to ruin her.

“I can’t stop thinking about it, I can’t stop wanting you, please, please Suguru- won’t you-“ Satoru babbles, and Suguru-

Suguru can’t think, isn’t sure Satoru can, either, doesn’t have the peace of mind to rationalize a single though, but just the implication, the idea that Satoru could be just like her, could have spent as long aching and wishing and imagining—

She leans down and licks an experimental, eager stripe across the entire scorching hot area, wetness gathering on her tongue and mixing with her saliva and, this is it, Suguru’s a goner.

Satoru cries out, hands landing in her hair, and Suguru’s last bits of sanity frail and snap and fall out of sight.

She doesn’t really know what she’s doing, but she’s not having many coherent thoughts anyway. She moves purely on some sort of awakened instinct, and her own boiling desire to taste her, to worship her with her mouth like a prayer.

Everything is so slick and wet and Satoru’s so hot down there, dripping down Suguru’s chin. It’s such a foreign sensation, so arousing just by itself, her mouth free to swallow down something so intimate, velvety and messy-wet and hot. Suguru feels drunk. Her hands hold Satoru’s thighs steady as they almost trash by her ears, and Suguru turns to kiss them, too, to mouth at the insides of those thighs that got her into this fucking mess in the first place.

She feels out of her mind. Satoru takes heaving breaths, as if to calm herself while Suguru’s mouth is away from her pussy, but she whines, too, displeased.

She whimpers “Please” in a voice so cracked and sincere it sounds like she’s sleep-talking, and she tugs Suguru by the hair and directs her back towards her cunt. Suguru could resist but Satoru’s hips grind against her face, everything a bit too messy, and so she moans instead, deep and rumbling. If she could get some air she’d beg for Satoru to hold her tighter, to fuck her hips on firmer, to use her face to get off like a pillow, or a toy. “O-oh…”

Suguru doesn’t stray away anymore, she follows Satoru’s moans and guiding hands and licks indulgently, lapping her up like something feral, tasting her like she’s a sweet. The bodily scent of her is heady and drug-like, and Suguru holds her so close she might suffocate in it, arms hooked under her thighs and holding on to her hipbones, Satoru’s legs twitching violently by her ears.

This way she feels her restless body arching under her, her hips moving desperately with Suguru, trying to encourage her to be faster, firmer, but Suguru thinks she could, should, come just like this, just from the firm and steady licking, mouthing, just from the careful attention to her clit, her tongue swirling in hot circles, pressing down.

“S-suguru, fuck, fuck,” Satoru keeps managing bits of words and sentences, and she never truly stops begging, like she’s trying to drive Suguru crazy. “Please,” She cries “Please, please, I’m close, I-“

Suguru can scarcely hear her. She doesn’t have the attention for all of that when Satoru’s so perfect and pliant beneath her, open and sobbing out broken moans when Suguru circles the pads of two fingers over her entrance.

“Oh fuck yes” Satoru gasps, and Suguru pulls away her mouth just enough to whisper,

“Come on, relax for me, angel,” She says, petting her hip that’s tense and grinding absently. Suguru moans out loud when Satoru listens, with some visible thought put into it, relaxing and taking two fingers to the second knuckle smoothly, obscenely. “Holy shit.” She mumbles, and wraps her lips around her clit again, and Satoru almost screams.

Suguru’s never done any of this before but it doesn’t really matter. Satoru seems to be taking everything she’s being given and they’re both too desperate to notice how clumsy they are. Suguru feels hopeless, elegance far out of her grasp. She’d crawl on all fours if Satoru made her, to burry her face between her legs like this. Finesse is lost on her.

She curls her fingers and it’s clumsy and experimental but Satoru tells her, moans and chants “There, there, yes, fuck, do that again, Suguru-“ so Suguru gathers enough. “Oh, I’m gonna cum, I’m- I’m- A-ah,”

Suguru laps it up, doesn’t stop as Satoru convulses through a violent orgasm, body shaking with the waves of it seemingly unending, only moans rather loudly into her heat, as Satoru pulls at her hair harshly. She slows her fingers down and then drags them out when Satoru stops quaking but her mouth never leaves her, only softens a little bit.

Satoru never pushes her away, just moaning high and wet, and when she keeps holding her closer by the hair, that’s around when Suguru loses her mind for good.

She doesn’t know what overcomes her, but it’s like she’s drunk or hypnotized, drugged, because she can’t seem to get enough, can’t seem to stop, jaw slack as her spit and Satoru’s arousal become undistinguishable. She feels a warmth, a fuzziness overtaking her, and she moves her lips in the same motions that made Satoru come the first time, and promptly stops understanding anything but Satoru’s words and babbles, little chants of her name, of “Don’t stop, don’t stop, please,”

She feels stripped of herself and her own sanity, all that remains of her a well of unending desire.

It’s a genuine hunger. Not metaphorical, but real hunger, an intense and primary yearning for the sweet taste on her tongue. Satoru half-guides her head with rolls of her hips and Suguru lets her ride her nose, her tongue and her pliant, soft mouth, curls her tongue inside, up, around. She keeps moaning into the folds, body full of pleasure like someone’s giving it to her instead, her head clouded over with it.

Perhaps she spent too long wishing for this too strongly, perhaps she held it down for too long. Because now she’s ravenous, never wants her tongue out of the twitching heat of Satoru’s sensitive walls, never wants Satoru’s hips to stop chasing for more.

She feels it when Satoru comes again, but only distantly. Every second is something new, every next thing she does with her mouth, her tongue, makes Satoru shake sweeter each time, results in noises Suguru barely hears over the white noise in her head, makes more of that heady taste burst on her tongue.

Satoru’s hands fall from her hair during all of it, winding up somewhere in the sheets, as if she needs to clench something harder than she could Suguru’s hair, and her entire body shakes and Suguru has to hold her down as she keeps going. She can only register that Satoru isn’t telling her to stop because she’s locked her ankles behind Suguru’s back, but otherwise can only hear her moan and babble and not manage a single proper word apart from vague mumbles of “S’guru.”

She can tell, through her daze, that Satoru’s trembling with overstimulation and that she’s still arching for more and that turns Suguru on so fucking bad, that she got her this way, this torn open and desperate, that it puts her in this loop of unending arousal, fuck, she could stay with her face pressed into her pussy forever.

Satoru’s third orgasm comes faster and is harder to catch, given how she’s shaking like she’s coming already the whole way through. She moans like she’s just as out of her mind, shakes in her hold like an exorcism. She’s loud and she’s squirming and all Suguru can think is good. Wants to push this as far as it could go, selfishly, manically wondering how much Satoru could take, just what she would end up like if Suguru were to continue taking her apart.

Suguru would have genuinely kept going forever, probably, until they both lost count, until she passed out from the lack of air and Satoru passed out from cumming.

Satoru grabs her by the bangs, though, lifts her head up, tilting her neck again, and Suguru gasps like she’s emerged from water, looks up at her with unfocused eyes and a slack jaw, lower face glistening. She hadn’t even noticed her head swimming from the lack of oxygen.

Satoru looks at her down her heaving body and manages a completely breathless laugh, head falling back. She’s still twitching slightly.

“Holy shit, Suguru.” She breathes “That’s- that’s enough, you’re gonna kill me.”

Suguru kisses her hipbone, her thigh, whispers “I could keep doing it forever.” She mumbles, out of it. Satoru picks up her face, hold her chin in her palm and brushes her thumb over Suguru’s damp lower lip. “You taste s’ sweet.” She mumbles.

Satoru twitches slightly and Suguru can almost see the praise enter her veins and flow through her. She smiles, drunken “Fuck, I can see that, look at you…”

“One more.” Suguru mumbles, leaning down to kiss her stomach.

“Suguru-“

“Please, angel, one more, give me one more.” She says, and then keeps whispering ‘please’, small little pleas against her soft skin.

She moves back down lower over her stomach, and Satoru moves her hand from her face back to her hair, and Suguru takes it as permission to lick back over the slick mess between her legs, moaning in delight when she does.

Satoru twists and shakes like her soul is trying to leave her body, gasping loudly, and she doesn’t push away, and none of her mumbles sound like ‘stop’. She melts into it, in this odd way, like she wants it, the pleasure bordering on too-much, wants Suguru to hold her down and make her take it. It makes Suguru insane, makes her mind spiral further into that soft, thoughtless place.

Satoru pulls her away again, when she comes, harshly by her hair, her entire body twitching violently, curling in on itself. Suguru kisses her stomach as Satoru shakes through it, making these sob-like sounds, fingers locked clenched into Suguru’s hair once again.

“You okay?” Suguru asks quietly, above her ribs. She kind of wants to move back down. Kind of wants to make Satoru cum again, maybe twice more, maybe wants to see her damn-near pass out from an orgasm.

“Take your pants off and kiss me.” Satoru gasps, instead, and Suguru smiles at the demand.

“You want a taste?” She teases, slurred and drunk on it, tugging her shorts down, and Satoru moans very sincerely when Suguru kisses her, messy with her own slick.

Suguru cant take the way Satoru steals the taste of herself from her mouth, greedily, mouth eager against her own. She’s throbbing so badly, her own thighs shaking, she thinks she could genuinely come from enough time spent between Satoru’s legs, and nothing else.

“Lemme-“ Satoru mumbles, than seems to get distracted by Suguru’s kiss “-Fuck, that’s so hot,-” She gasps, licking herself off of Suguru’s tongue “Let me make you come, now, please.” She says, polite little ‘please’ at odds with her absolute demand.

“I’m- fuck, Satoru, I’m close.” She warns, dead serious, though she hasn’t been touched once.

Satoru grins, shaky, and whispers “Straddle me.”

All other ideas swimming about her head promptly abandon her in favor of relieving the ache between her legs, and deep in her stomach.

With Suguru’s thighs spread at Satoru’s hand-level, Satoru barely gives her time to adjust to the long-awaited feeling of her hands on her pussy when two perfect, long fingers enter her at once.

She moans out loudly, upper body collapsing on to Satoru, back arched obscenely.

Suguru feels her face heat, feels overwhelmed, with her own pleasure so out of control. She still feels out of it, feels increasingly less in control, in fact, as she surrenders to the pleasure she’s been so desperate for for minutes, hours, years.

“Your- your hands…” Suguru mumbles nonsensically, then cries out when Satoru adds a third finger, takes it with a slight stretch and a lot of enthusiasm. Fucks down on her fingers, her long, strong, pretty fingers, reaching so good inside of her that her eyes roll back.

It’s embarrassing, shameful, the way she’s arching like a cat in heat, and for some reason that turns her on, too, badly. That’s Satoru made her this vulnerable so quickly.

“You really are close…” Satoru muses, somewhere above her, Suguru’s face buried in her neck.  “Just from eating me out, baby?”

“Y-yeah. Yes, yes, y-yes,” Suguru babbles, now properly out of it as Satoru’s fingers fuck in firmly, curling towards the spot she needs them in relentlessly. A steady rhythm, maddening, so so good Suguru can't form a single coherent thought. God, she’s getting fucked within an inch of her life by just some fingers and a couple of careful words, that’s how bad she has it. “I could come down there, ‘toru, I’ve- I’ve wanted-”

“Have you imagined this before?” Satoru asks, suddenly, like it’s just occurred to her, as Suguru moans broken into her neck, rocking with her hand. Every thrust of Satoru's fingers ends with a smooth curl, the pads of them pressing deliciously over the most sensitive bits inside Suguru. She starts trembling, her entire body, release nearing and the need for it completely overtaking her mind.

“Y-esss,” She says, too fucked-out to shy away from the answer.

“Touched yourself? Thinking about me?”

“Every- fuck, yes,- All the fucking time, Satoru, Satoru, please,”

“Though about this, hm? Cumming on my fingers?” Satoru asks, simply, and Suguru’s been close for so fucking long, she can’t reply.

She can only stutter out a loud, genuine moan as her body trashes through an orgasm, feeling herself gushing over Satoru’s hand, hot and messy and desperate.

“Fuck, there you go.” Satoru whispers, reverent, as Suguru moans, higher-pitched than her voice usually is, rocking down as she rides out the rest of her orgasm, rolling through her in waves, so overwhelming they seem unending.

Suguru collapses to her side eventually, sluggish as she lets Satoru curl against her. They’re both gasping for air, gathering each other back into their bodies. Suguru’s thighs are slick where they meet when she rests her legs on her side, fuck, she feels debauched, the dampness almost halfway down her thighs proof of the mess she's been made into. She’s never felt so messy and so sated in her life.

“Can’t stop shaking.” Satoru mumbles with a smile in her voice, her thigh hooked over Suguru’s hip and, in truth, shaky, though much gentler than before.

Suguru smooths a hand over it and kisses the top of Satoru’s hair. “Give it a moment.” She whispers, still breathing a little heavily, stroking Satoru’s thigh as their heartbeats return to something normal.

She becomes distantly aware when they’re both nodding off slightly, breaths synced as they slow gradually, as the sticky dampness of sweat and cum starts to grow clammy and uncomfortable, despite the inherent comfort of their embrace.

“You with me?” Suguru whispers against her temple, eventually.

“No.” Satoru mumbles. “You made my brain leak out between my fucking legs, Suguru, what the fuck was that.”

Suguru laughs.

“… I just wanted to, for a long while, that’s all.”

Satoru raises up on her arms, looking down at Suguru, and Suguru’s kind of shy to say it, all of a sudden, but she’s the most beautiful thing Suguru’s ever, ever seen. Messy hair and cheeks still throughly red and lips kissed bruised and neck littered with faint red spots.

“Well you’re a fucking animal, I’ll tell you that. You have to carry me to the shower, now.”

Suguru doesn’t carry her, but Satoru’s legs are genuinely shaky when she stands up, so Suguru guides her with a hand on the small of her back to the bathroom and a tiny, proud smile.

They lock up inside one of the rooms with a bath, by the shower area, stripping away their probably put-on-backwards clothes they hastily took with them to the halls. As if they would be able to pass some rare passer-by through the dormitory and not have them immediately see what they’ve been up to.

Suguru still feels kind of floaty, still coming down slowly from the high of having Satoru’s body like that. Satoru washes her hair for her and keeps kissing her lips, slower than the other kisses they’ve shared, sweeter. So maybe that’s why she can’t seem to land back on earth.

Her head still feels cloudy, like when she's been drinking but then remains awake long enough into the night to see the feeling of complete intoxication melt into something tired and subtle and soft, something that makes her clingy.

Their smiles keep catching together and every whisper they share is more heard through a brush of lips than over the water running.

Suguru doesn’t want to leave the fog that’s risen in this bathroom. She doesn’t even think about it, not as Satoru lays on her chest and tills her chin so they can keep kissing in the bath, not as she lays her head down on her collarbone before they can get too lost in more heat, more friction, more desire than their bodies can handle.

They grow terribly lazy in the bath, lying together like they would in a bed but too sleepy to make themselves leave the sweet comfort of the warm water just yet. Satoru’s blinks cease by her neck, and Suguru jostles her softly with her shoulder, whispering “Don’t fall asleep here, angel.”

Satoru whines a little bit, quietly, stirring.

“I really like that.” Satoru whispers, as she raises up gently, hair in wet, white teandrils around her head, eyes unbearably soft.

“Falling asleep in an awkward bathtub?” Suguru asks, smiling, tucking hair away from her face.

“No. ‘Angel’.” Satoru whispers, something horribly vulnerable coating her voice. Suguru knows she would never admit a thing like that if she were not half-asleep, four orgasms deep and surely feeling as raw as Suguru is from all this unloaded emotion.

Suguru smiles, cupping a palm over the side of her neck, running it down the long length of it, over her perfect shoulder, her pretty collarbone, the slight freckles there. “It’s fitting, don’t you think?”

“No.” Satoru says, quiet and simple “But if that’s really how you see me, I never have to wish for anything ever again.”

She speaks so simply, so open, as if they never spent years upon years carefully maintaining rigid lines in the way they love each other. Suguru’s eyes snap to hers, unprepared, and Satoru blinks back as if only then realizing she’s being uncharacteristically sincere.

“Sorry, that’s corny. And dumb. And I’m really in love with you, I can’t help it.” Satoru adds, quickly.

Suguru kisses her, then, wet hair and wet lips and wet necks, kisses her earnestly and warm, soft, like reassurance and like comfort and like not asking for anything back.

“Really?” Suguru can’t help but ask, smiling against her lips.

Satoru smiles, kisses her, whispers back “Really.”

Another kiss, soft and lingering, and then “…I love you, too.”

Satoru giggles, like she knew that, but loved to hear it anyway.

They stumble into bed with half-damp hair awhile later, though it’s fine, it’s summer anyway. They couldn’t possibly spend time on things such as blow driers now that Satoru’s barely awake on her own two feet.

Suguru loves feeling Saoru fall asleep next to her but could not, for the love of god, say when that happened tonight. The path from her bedroom door to her bed is a blur of tumbling limbs and drawn up covers and then she’s out cold, somehow leaning heavily into Satoru but unsure how, only remembering she could hear Satoru’s heartbeat as she went under.

Suguru doesn’t know why she ever even assumed there was a way of quenching her desires for this girl.

She supposes she didn’t think much about it, kind of assumed she’d be sated once it was out of her system.

It immediately becomes apparent that night was nothing short of a dam breaking.

The following days are pretty much the same as they always are, except maybe they touch more, casually, maybe share some secretive, giddy smiles. Except that instead of yearning and yearning and yearning and then finding quiet evenings during her week to bite her pillow and whisper Satoru’s name to herself, she goes to her directly, bites her name into her shoulder instead, shows no signs of getting less enthusiastic about feeling her come on her tongue. In fact, it more like a drug. Something she keeps coming back to.

Satoru takes advantage of it, in a way. Seems to like Suguru desperate. Hovers naked over Suguru’s lying form, her knees digging into the mattress by her ears. Holds Suguru’s hair in a grip and lets her tease herself with her own fingers, looking down at her pliant, open, panting mouth, tongue slack and heavy, eager for her weight, and her eyes glimmer with adoration.

“Fuck, look at you.” Satoru mumbles, gripping Suguru’s hair so her head tilts more towards her crotch. Suguru thinks maybe she can feel the heat radiating off of her even from a few centimeters away. “You’re obsessed.” Satoru marvels.

Suguru never got lest desperate, during the few times they did things like this, but she does get bolder, less stunned-silent and more free in her greediness.

She smiles, maybe a little crocked, a little cracked, like she’s pleased with the hand in her hair holding her in place.

“I am.” She breathes, ragged, neglects her own arousal to wrap her hands around Satoru’s waist, gently encouraging her closer. “‘cmon, give it to me,”

“Say please.” Satoru breathes out, with this marvel, as if she’s testing the limits of what Suguru would do for her.

Suguru, smiling a little wicked, a little drunken, looks straight into Satoru’s blown-out pupils, sweet flushed face, drags her hands up a lovely, toned stomach, kisses the inside of Satoru’s thigh that she can reach.

“Please.” She says, eyes glimmering, tone half-teasing but meaning pretty sincere, her own thighs tense with anticipation. “Please, baby- Ah-“ She continues, and Satoru grips her hair, firm, makes her crane her neck. Suguru stares up at her with a dazed smile, the stinging on her scalp delicious, the hunger in Satoru’s eyes delicious, as he stares down at Suguru begging between her legs.

With her smile still in place, she lets her mouth drop open again, tongue plaint, and Satoru lowers herself down, unable to wait anymore, like Suguru knows she isn’t.

Her taste hits her tongue and Suguru moans, eyes rolling back into her head.

That night she comes with the slightest brush of her fingers over her clit, so pent up with Satoru using her face she thinks she could have come without touching herself at all.

But other than that — not much changes.

Suguru supposes they’re lovers now. They were inseparable before, and now they kiss, too, and touch and fuck and say ‘i love you’, sometimes, when the moment feels soft enough.

It’s startlingly seamless, growing into this. As seamless as finding each other was in the first place.

Satoru asks her, once, coming back to Tokyo after a faraway mission, sitting in an empty cart in a countryside train,

“You ever think about what it would be like if we never met?” She muses, head leaning on Suguru’s shoulder as Suguru zones out the window, the repetitive green scenery and the length of their mission tiering her out.

“What? No.” Suguru says, pouting at Satoru slightly, but by now used to her lack of filter and lack of tact. “Why would I think about that?”

Satoru shrugs, not looking up, playing with their fingers between them. “Makes me sad to imagine it.” She says, and Suguru snorts.

“That’s stupid.”

“You’re stupid.” Satoru shoots back, maturely, and Suguru laughs, teasing and fond.

She brings their fingers up, kissing her knuckles once. “You should try taking a nap, instead of making up scenarios to be upset about.” She tells her.

The train rocks softly over old railing, the late summer sun golden through the cart windows, paining squares over the empty compartment.

“It’s not made up! It easily could have happened.” Satoru says, stubbornly. “And it would have sucked.”

Suguru’s fond and terribly smitten and kinda exhausted, kissing again the back of Satoru’s hand.

“Why does it matter? We know each other. We never won’t know each other. What brought this on?”

Satoru sighs, sweet, slumping further into her arm. “Dunno. It really freaks me out imagining who I’d be without you.”

“....and who’s that?”

Satoru shrugs again, staring down at their knees. “The strongest person in the world with nothing to lose, I think. Doesn’t that sound fucked up?”

Suguru’s heart aches and swells at the same time, and she thinks maybe it’s an odd turn of events, for somebody like her to end up so terribly fond of somebody else she can’t think straight sometimes.

“We’ll never know.” Suguru says, quietly, after a second. Her voice is steady, though: she’s certain. “You still won’t ever not have me.”

Satoru sighs again, burying her eyes into the crook of Suguru’s neck. “You promise?”

“‘course I promise, idiot.”

“Sorry. ‘m being weird. You should forgive me, though. I never felt like this before.” She says, and Suguru can feel the slightest twitch of her smile against her neck.

Suguru laughs. “Oh, and that makes you special?” She says.

And then Satoru huffs a little laugh, but doesn’t reply, which makes Suguru a little suspicious.

She straightens up a little bit in her seat, turning to face Satoru fully, her head lulled back against the cart wall behind their seats, her eyes glimmering with softness. She looks lovely, in the golden light of the countryside bursting in through the window.

“Satoru? Do you think I’ve felt like this before?” Suguru asks, small smile in place but heart a little fluttery with the implications.

She shrugs, innocently, not looking away. “You had a life before me. I’m the one that’s new to being not-emotionally-constipated.”

Suguru huffs a small laugh, surprised. “The way I feel- that I feel about you, you think that’s happened to me before?”

Satoru looks soft and genuine when she smiles, asks “It didn’t?”

Suguru’s mouth opens to say something, but disbelief makes her words get lost on the way, her eyebrows furrowing. She stuggles with what to say for a second, then elects to duck down and kiss Satoru instead.

She goes in sweetly, cherishing, trying to say all that she apparently hasn’t been saying enough with her lips. Satoru meets her easily, kissing back languidly as the train rocks softly.

“How do you not know how obsessed with you I am?” Suguru whispers against her lips, feels them spread into a smile.

“I could stand to hear it more.” She says, voice shaking, betraying her.

So Suguru leans in and kisses her cheek, once, chaste, and whispers, simple, “I love you.”

Then she leans back and watches Satoru duck hear head to hide her face behind a hand, the tip of her ear red. Suguru laughs quietly as Satoru moves forward  to hide her face in her shoulder. “Really? Out of everything, that gets you shy?” She asks, leaning back into her seat, Satoru’s face snug by her neck.

“Shuddup.” She mumbles, there, smile in her voice.

Suguru’s just so terribly fond of her. She kisses her hair, laughing quietly, almost thinking that would be the end of their conversation, until Satoru whispers once more.

“I love you, too.”