Supercell

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/64853365.

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: M/M
Fandoms: 呪術廻戦 | Jujutsu Kaisen (Manga), 呪術廻戦 | Jujutsu Kaisen (Anime)
Relationship: Getou Suguru/Gojo Satoru
Characters: Gojo Satoru, Getou Suguru, Ieiri Shoko
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - No Curses (Jujutsu Kaisen), Storm Chasing, storm
chasers AU, Professor Gojo Satoru, Depressed Getou Suguru, Geto
suffers from mental illness but it isnt strictly defined, also he got struck
by lightning, and hes disabled because of it, Pre-Established
Relationship, Exes, Exes with Benefits, Your honor they're still in
love!!!, past trauma, Trauma, unresolved grief and trauma, Dead Amanai
Riko, she's always dead, Explicit Sexual Content, i dont specialize in
smut if you cant tell, but its more emotionally driven sex writing anyway,
Service Top Getou Suguru, Bottom Gojo Satoru, Angst, Angst with a
Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Ieiri is there too, brief itafushi mention ell
oh ell, READ THE FUCKING AUTHORS NOTES, they are important,
thank you and goodnight, i am updating tags as i go along, Alternate
Universe - Childhood Friends, Survivor Guilt, Enemies to Friends to
Lovers, TA Okkotsu Yuta who still looks at Gojo like he hung the stars,
he has beef with Geto despite never meeting him lol, Car Sex, Gojo
Satoru-centric, Hurt Gojo Satoru, Getou Suguru Needs a Hug, Crybaby
Gojo Satoru, he cries in my fic guys. He cries often, and it’s in character
BECAUSE I SAID SO
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2025-04-20 Completed: 2025-05-11 Words: 102,662
Chapters: 9/9
 Supercell
by monkeysmustdie

Summary

Supercell (noun) . sū-pər-ˌsel

: an unusually large storm cell.

specifically : a severe storm generated by such a cell.

***

Satoru Gojo was twelve years old when he saw his first supercell and fell in love with
meteorology. Coincidentally, it was the same summer he fell in love with Suguru Geto.

A lot can change in sixteen years.

Geto technically isn’t supposed to be alive. Gojo definitely isn’t supposed to see him anymore
after how they ended things. But they keep crawling their way back, their paths keep
crossing, continually twisted up by the winds and the fates. For all his intelligence and
accomplishment in his life beyond the weather, Satoru is nothing if not stubborn. There’s a
storm coming down in the Great Plains, and he’s not going to miss it for the world. It’s going
to take a lot more than his ex-boyfriend to stop him from seeing a supercell one last time.

***

Or, SatoSugu are exes and ex-professional stormchasers who are brought together by chance
for one final chase, and it might cost one of them their lives.

Notes

Mildly inspired by art from @scabplucker on tiktok. this story actually has nothing to do with
their story or art!!! I just saw a stormchasers AU and latched on :) I encourage everyone to
check them out bc it’s so cute

Story is set in America, specifically in the Dixie Alley/Tornado Alley areas. Stormchasing
culture is mainly an American phenomena (and tornado alley is a very unique climatological
place on earth lol) so suspend your disbelief for the purposes of this gay fanfic. No ethnicities
are being changed or erased, there’s no misuse of AAVE or southern dialect. I am actually
southern and lived in Mississippi for a long time and I’m writing scenery/background from
experience. Once again, suspend your disbelief! Have fun! Life is short! Gay sex!
SatoSugu’s relationship is moderately toxic but it’s coming from both sides. That being said,
there’s nothing in this fic that requires a TW (zero abuse, dubcon/noncon, etc). I don’t write
dead dove!

Lastly, if you like my writing style, i recommend my magnum opus, Sleepwalking. Thank u
for reading!
 Mesocyclone

Satoru Gojo was twelve years old when he saw his first supercell storm. It was the summer
he fell in love.

He was convinced that his parents were witches, evil sorcerers, mad scientist geniuses who
had devised the perfect form of torture tailor-made for him, and what a torture it was.
Mississippi in June was a suffering like no other. He couldn’t stand feeling like a swamp
creature every time he stepped outside, humidity soaking through him and gluing his clothes
to his skin, the panicky sensation setting in when he realized that a wet heat meant there was
no escape from the suffocating temperature climbing through his body, pinprick bites of his
skin where he tried to sweat it out, all the moisture leaving him and being released back out
into the summer air.

The sun was damn near inescapable. Even in the shade, it hounded him, radiation from the
rays seeping into exposed paleness and burning him bright red, overdosing him with vitamin
D until he felt he might die of heat stroke. Even in the house, where he was so rarely allowed
to be, the temperature crept through the walls and overpowered the ages-old air conditioning
unit. The biting black flies could smell his sweat, could smell his blood through it, and they
followed him like ghosts or evil spirits or demons or just plain bugs. At the end of every day,
he was tomato-colored and mosquito-eaten and blister-covered and furious, and at the end of
every night, his sweat had soaked through his sheets and he was sticky and foul-smelling and
defeated.

He did not want to be in Mississippi. He hated Mississippi. He hated everything about it. His
parents seemingly knew this, and as punishment for getting suspended for the final month of
sixth grade after he shoved one of his friends in the stairwell and caused him to fall and break
his leg at the kneecap, he was banished there for the entire summer. No phone, no video
games, just the heat and the bugs and the goddamned farm.

The farm was partially owned by his father’s company— a subsidiary or something, Satoru
was too young to care about words like that yet— and as it happened, it was the ultimate
instrument of his torture. It was out in the middle of nowhere, god-damned nowhere,
somewhere in the delta with its rich soil and dirt-poor populace, and even if Satoru wanted to
escape, he would have to walk around 15 miles through flat green nothingness before even
finding a gas station.

It was run by a small family (two parents, three children) and about 15 seasonal employees
who didn’t speak much English, all of whom were instructed to treat Satoru how they would
treat any other worker. Aside from his sleeping arrangements— where he would be staying in
a guest room in the main house where the family lived— he was to follow the expectations
placed on everyone else and follow their schedule. He would start work when they started,
take breaks when they took breaks, and retire when they retired, and he would do it all
summer long.
Gojo wasn’t exactly sure what the company bearing his last name actually did, but he knew
that his mother had a particular interest in organics or sustainability or some other wishy-
washy bullshit that led to the romanticization of rural life and the funding of small farms like
the one the Geto family ran. Call it charity or call it a tax write-off, it didn’t matter— his
family had the money to burn, and their family had the land to work, and as Satoru Gojo saw
it, the work was miserable.

The farm did a little bit of everything. Row crops, garden-style, a few cattle, a few horses, a
chicken coop, beehives, general maintenance— all of which came with their own unique
miseries and tortures for the soft-handed Satoru to suffer. The weeds needed pulling, the soil
needed hauling, the stables and coops needed cleaning, the cow shit needed shoveling, and
the house and barn needed repairing, and Satoru hated it all, every last second of it.

But worst of all— worse than the heat, worse than the bugs, worse than the long days and the
bursting blisters and the cow shit and the sun— was the farmer’s son, Suguru Geto, who had
somewhat been assigned to be his buddy and get him acquainted with farm life (read:
supervise him).

He hated Suguru Geto. He couldn’t find a single thing about him to like, or even just to
tolerate. He hated his narrow eyes, how they seemed to scan him up and down, a little grin at
the corner of his mouth when he saw what new and terrible state Satoru showed up in at each
sunrise. He hated his deep olive tan, how he never seemed to burn, despite spending longer
hours outdoors than Satoru did. He hated how the muscles of his arms and back were so
much more defined than Satoru’s despite them being the same age. He hated his long black
hair, how he tied it up in a knot behind his head like a girl, the giant sunhat he wore, the way
he looked at him with mild disdain and moderate pity with one hand on his hip and the other
balancing a shovel over his shoulder.

Most of all, he hated his voice— it had already started to drop with the onset of puberty, and
Satoru was still all squeaky and embarrassing— and he hated how he said his name. Satoru,
can you hand me that bottle, please? You’re doing it wrong, Satoru. Satoru, I see you
slacking off. Do you want some sunscreen, Satoru?

“Shut up already!” Satoru had screamed at him one afternoon, two weeks in, making a few of
the other Spanish-speaking farmhands look over and laugh behind their gloves. It was hour
five or six out in the sun, and the day wasn’t even halfway over— after they finished painting
a fence, they would have to walk across the entire expanse of the farm to the horse stables,
where they’d be shoveling shit and changing out hay for the rest of the afternoon until the sun
went down, and Satoru was more miserable than usual. “Stop talking like that!”

Suguru tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. The shade cast a neat shadow just above the tip
of his nose, a sharp line bisecting his face and making him look even stupider, at least to
Satoru. “Like what?” He asked, his cadence unchanged.

“Like that!” Satoru shouted. “Like, polite! With that stupid accent! It’s so fucking annoying!”

Suguru snorted and looked away, going back to the fence he was painting. “Well, you don’t
have to cuss at me.”
“See, you just did it again!” Satoru was practically tearing his hair out at that point. His hands
ached, his head ached, his shoulders and back and legs ached, and his vision was starting to
go blurry from too much sun exposure. He was being immature, but he didn’t care.
Something had to give, and that afternoon, there was only one person close to his size that he
could pick on. “You just said ‘cuss’. It’s curse! Say it right!”

The other kid side-eyed him, the shadow vicious, but the look on his face was worse. He was
laughing at him, Satoru knew it. He knew that on the inside, he was being laughed at by this
dirt-scraping, horseshit-shoveling, middle-of-nowhere country bumpkin.

“Well, I grew up saying ‘cuss’, so I’m gonna keep saying ‘cuss’,” Suguru told him, that mean
grin tugging at his top lip. “You can say ‘curse’ if that’s what you grew up saying in Boston
or wherever you come from, but don’t cuss at me.”

“I’m from New York, you fucking hick.”

Suguru turned sharply, fist balled with every intention of striking, but stopped short when he
saw Satoru’s face. Almost instantly, he softened, pushing his hat back on his head to get a
better look at him.

“Satoru, you okay?” He asked, stepping forward. “You don’t look so good.”

Satoru only had time to blink at him for a little while before his legs gave out from under and
his head slammed against the dirt.

When his eyes opened again, the first thing he saw was the empty, cloudless sky. The second
thing he saw was his shoes.

There was a farmhand holding him by the ankles, elevating his legs at a 70-ish degree angle,
staring down at him with strange, pitiful eyes through all the wrinkles and sunspots. At his
right and left side were two other farmhands, eyes much the same as the first, mumbling back
and forth to each other in Spanish, clicking their tongues every now and then and shaking
their heads. The sunhats they wore cast strange shadows around their heads like reverse
halos, and Satoru blinked up at them like a small human told to be not afraid. Kneeling
beside him at his head, face upside-down in Satoru’s weak vision, Suguru had one hand
cushioning the base of his skull and the other in front of his face.

“Yo, Satoru. How many fingers am I holding up?”

Satoru squinted, head aching, eyes wobbly in the sunlight. “Six? Wait, three.”

“Eh, close enough,” Suguru shrugged, hand slipping back under Satoru’s pounding skull.
“How much water have you had today?”

Satoru rubbed his face with filthy hands, smearing himself with dirt and white paint. “I’m
concussed.”

“Nah, you’re not. You’re too hard-headed to get concussed,” Suguru said, taking off his
sunhat to place over the other’s face, the smell of sweat and faintly girly shampoo covering
him. “You got heat syncope. You’re dehydrated.”

He said something in Spanish, a polite tone, and the farmhand lowered Satoru’s ankles to the
ground. Gojo couldn’t help but feel his eyes fluttering closed in the shade the sunhat
provided, the world outside his eyelids glowing green and alien and polyester. The three
farmhands continued to chatter over his body, laughing every now and then, and with his
minimal foreign language skills, Satoru could only make out a few words like mas agua and
calor and pobrecito said in a mocking voice.

“Can you walk?” Suguru asked, still all but cradling his head in two hands— much softer
than they looked.

“I think so,” Satoru groaned.

“Good, ‘cause I’m not asking these guys to carry you back to the house,” Suguru told him,
that accent somehow less irritating. “They don’t like you too much. Can’t hardly blame ‘em.”

Satoru didn’t have the energy to fight him on it.

“Shut your eyes,” Suguru instructed, and lifted the sunhat from his face.

Something strange happened the moment the initial sunglare wore off and the world came
back into focus.

Suguru was looking down at him, brows furrowed with concern, head slightly tilted, sweat
streaks catching the light in little glimmers and plastering stray strands of hair to his forehead
and temples. He had a faded scar at the corner of his left eyebrow, just where the orbital bone
connected with the slope of his skull as it went backward, and his right ear was pierced. He
had an evident habit of chewing the skin on his lip, as it was red and irritated in one place,
dry at the rest. He had a small zit on his chin and high cheekbones and narrow eyes with a
catch at the corner. Satoru stared up at him, their eyes met for a moment or so, and for the
first time all summer, he didn’t hate what he saw.

Maybe I am concussed.

Suguru pulled him to his feet with both hands, but he wobbled off balance almost
immediately, and had to be caught by the elbows before he had the opportunity to sustain
another head injury. He groaned and mumbled when Suguru positioned himself under his arm
to push him up and started half-dragging him back toward the house at the far end of the
field. Satoru tried to protest at first, insisting that he could walk, he was fine, but he was a
terrible liar and they both knew it. His feet and ankles just wouldn’t cooperate, his head too
swimmy with exhaustion, every muscle group aching as he moved them.

“I hate you, you know,” he muttered to the one carrying him, eyes struggling to stay open.

“Yeah, I’m not crazy about you, either,” Suguru said plainly, not struggling the slightest bit
under Satoru’s half-dead weight.

“Why are you doing this, then?”

“It’s hard not to feel bad for you.”

When they reached the house— Suguru’s house, Suguru’s parents’ house— Satoru was
dragged around the back through the bramble, scraping his bare ankles on blackberry bush
thorns and hissing at the stinging feeling of torn flesh. Suguru all but shoved him in through
the mudroom that led to their kitchen and lowered him carefully onto the cool tile, flat on his
back. Satoru would have snapped something vicious at him, but the second his sunburnt skin
met the ecstatic touch of cold ceramic, he could do nothing but sigh and drink it in as his
surface temperature plummeted in the kindest way.

“That sun got him, huh?” Suguru’s mother tilted her head disdainfully when she walked in to
see two very filthy boys in her clean kitchen, one sprawled out like a corpse and the other
filling a glass with sink water.

“Mhm,” Suguru nodded. “Heat syncope. Hey, ‘Toru, spell ‘syncope’.”

“Why should I do that?” Satoru moaned from the tile, his eyes squeezed shut.

“Cognitive test,” the other said, and knelt on the floor next to him, pressing the glass into his
hand. “Also, I just wanna see if you can.”

Satoru pushed himself up by the elbows and took the water, downing it all in 4 or 5 swallows,
letting excess run from the corners of his mouth down his chin and neck. “Syncope,” he
huffed when he was done. “S, I, N… S-I-N-C-A-P-Y?”

Suguru laughed at him, and his mother clicked her tongue. “You’re as dumb as you look,” he
told Satoru.

“Enough,” the woman told her son, lightly smacking the back of his head as she passed. “Be
a good host.”

“Well, he’s a bad guest. Also, ‘Toru, it’s spelled S-Y-N-C-O-P-E.”

“Enough,” his mother said again. “Stay here with him for the rest of the afternoon. I have to
drive into town with your sisters to pick something up, so I’ll bring back some medicine on
my way.”

“Why do I have to stay with him?” Suguru folded his arms. “

“Because clearly you haven’t been doing a good enough job of making sure he’s had enough
water, or he wouldn’t be dirtying up my kitchen tile right now,” she said. “You know he’s not
used to this climate. I’m not giving him back to his folks in August all busted up. Stay here
with him, and if you track mud into my living room you’ll answer for it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Suguru grumbled as she left, then gave Satoru a glare. Satoru snorted at him.

“Really? You ma’am your mom?”

“You don’t ma’am yours?” Suguru wrinkled his nose.

I don’t even talk to my mom, Satoru thought, but he said nothing. No way was he giving this
hick that kind of ammo on him— god knows he’d never stop bringing it up.

He half-expected Suguru to keep going with their snarky back-and-forth, but all he got was
an eyeroll before he was standing up again, refilling the glass with tap water, and bringing it
back down to where Satoru lay.

“You feeling better?” He asked, and Satoru sneered at him.

“I was fine in the first place.”

Suguru ignored him. “Keep drinking water. I’m guessing you haven’t much today?”

Satoru brought the glass to his mouth and kept swallowing, still just as hungry as before, a
little less sloppy with the excess running down his chin. “Fuck off.”

“Hey,” Suguru snapped, a little too sharply, and Satoru’s eyes flickered upward to the stern
sound. “Don’t cuss in my mom’s house. You wanna cuss, go back outside.”

His accent seemed to slip out more when he was mad— Gojo noticed. Geto took the empty
water glass from Satoru’s hand and made another trip back to the sink. Satoru flipped him off
behind his back.

“Go take a shower,” Geto told him, a bit of a bite on the undertone of his voice, the voice
Satoru was growing less and less tolerant of with each word out of his mouth. “You’re
filthying up the floors. Come back down here when you’re done.”

And Satoru would have said something snarky and rude, maybe squeeze in a curse word just
to irritate the stuck-up mama’s boy a little more, but he couldn’t think of anything. His
overheated brain was still exhausted, still swimmy with sunlight and thermal radiation and
pain at the base of his skull. All he could do was obey.

He was halfway certain that as soon as he’d finished cleaning himself up he’d be sent back
out into the field again (these people certainly seemed cruel enough to do that to him), so he
took his time, letting cold water hit his sunburned arms and neck and back mercilessly and
watching streaks of brown dirt go running down the drain. He tried desperately to think of
some form of revenge for the hell he was suffering. There was nothing he could possibly do
to these people that would stick, nothing except burn down the barn and kill a cow, but he
wasn’t an animal murderer and he wasn’t entirely certain that he could manage to commit
arson without accidentally self-immolating. His parents could care less about what their son
did, but Suguru would have to pay for what he was doing, no matter what. There was no way
he would let himself be disrespected like that by some hick. Cradled under the head, half-
carried back inside, given water and made to spell ‘syncope’ while he lay on the tile— it was
too much. He would have to answer for it.

Gojo was ready to start cursing him out when he went back downstairs— something along
the lines of I don’t know who you think you are but don’t ever put your dirty fucking hands on
me again— but stopped short upon seeing Suguru standing in the living room.
He had changed out of his field clothes, too, and was shifting his weight from one foot to the
other with a book in his hand, back turned. His black hair was in a long spill down his
shoulders, cut in such a way that it was evident he once kept it short but had grown it out all
at once. There was a collection of freckles on his bare shoulders beneath the undershirt he
wore, sunspots and sparkles, and a diagonal scar on his left shoulder blade. Immediately,
Satoru forgot what he was going to say.

“Hey,” Suguru said, closing his book and turning around. “You alright?”

“Leave me alone,” Satoru mumbled.

“Love to, but my mom says I have to stay with you.”

A long while passed, the most awkward stretch of infinity Gojo had ever known.

“Why’re you even out here?” Suguru asked, finally.

“My parents hate me,” Satoru said, very matter-of-fact.

“Why’s that?”

“I keep getting in trouble at school.”

“You broke some kid’s leg, right? That’s what my dad said.”

Satoru bristled, running one hand through his wet hair. “First of all, it wasn’t my fault. He
was being annoying and I shoved him, it’s not my problem if he gets hurt on the way down.
Second of all, if you know I got sent out here because of that, why even ask?”

“‘Cause I wanted to see if you’d lie,” Suguru replied, then crossed the room back to the
kitchen where he disappeared behind the dividing wall.

Satoru’s fists clenched at his side. “You’re weird,” he called after him. “I bet you don’t have
any friends besides the cows.”

Suguru laughed. The faint sound of a cabinet opening and closing, then the crinkling of
plastic. “I’ve got friends. I don’t push them down stairs, either.”

Satoru was going to snap something else, but Suguru returned too quickly, holding a small
pack of cookies in each hand. He held one out, giving a polite smile.

“Here,” he said.

Satoru eyed him strangely. “What is it?”

“Cookies. You can’t read?”

Gojo scrunched his nose at him, but it was a useless endeavor. He was starving. He hadn’t
eaten breakfast that morning because he slept through it, and he was almost 100% certain that
his growth spurt was never going to hit if these people kept borderline starving him, and he
could feel his pride disintegrating as he snatched the package and tore it open.

Geto only watched him, laughing quietly, shifting his weight from one side to the other and
tilting his head. “Relax. No one’s taking it from you.”

Satoru had half a mind to tell him to shut up, but he was too focused on his first taste of sugar
in well over a week. “I don’t get you,” he mumbled through his full mouth, not taking his
eyes off the quickly emptying pack.

“How’s that?”

“You’re only being nice to me because your mom is forcing you, right?”

Suguru blinked. “She’s not forcing me to do anything.”

“Then your dad’s forcing you?” Satoru stuffed the remaining cookies into his mouth and
crumpled up the plastic. “Like, you’re getting forced to work out there, too?”

Geto stared at him for a moment, then started laughing again. “I help ‘cause I like it, and they
need it. I’d much rather be out there than babysitting you.”

Satoru tilted his head, confused, crumbs at the corner of his lip, and let his eyes fall squarely
onto the unopened package in Suguru’s other hand. He sighed, handing it over.

“I seriously don’t get you,” Satoru repeated, tearing the package open. “Why are you being
nice? It’s creepy.”

“Well, must suck, right?” Suguru’s arms folded over his chest, and his grin morphed into
something softer, something gentler, something that would have made Satoru frown if he
looked up from his snack. “Your folks sending you away for a whole summer to live with
strangers? They haven’t even called you once, have they?”

Satoru blinked at him, mid-chew.

“I don’t blame you for being whiny,” Geto said. “I’d be whiny, too.”

Awkward pause. Crumbs on the floor. Gojo could feel his cheeks burning, and he couldn’t
understand why. His eyes were all but glued to the small details of Suguru’s face that he had
only discovered earlier that afternoon— the scar at the corner of his left eyebrow, the red lip
where he chewed off dry skin, the zit on his chin— and all of a sudden, he felt syncopated
again. He wasn’t using the word properly, but that’s how he felt.

“Is this, like, a game?” Satoru asked stupidly.

Suguru laughed. “You don’t have to like me,” he said, “but it might be easier for you if we
tried being friends. Your choice, though.”

He went back to the kitchen.

That was how it started. Satoru stopped taking his meals in his room alone and instead started
sitting at the table with Suguru’s family. It was quite awkward at first, but the little twin
sisters, Mimiko and Nanako, were five years old at that point and nightmarishly chatty, and
by the third or fourth time they made the table laugh with an invasive question, things had
softened considerably. Satoru was not aware that a catfish was a creature you could actually
eat, and after seeing a picture of one he wondered why anyone would want to eat one, and his
doubt was further solidified after actually trying it and deciding that it was the worst fish he’d
ever put in his mouth. He made a rude face, and Suguru kicked him under the table, and his
father laughed when he winced.

Satoru was afforded one day off per week— Sunday, of course— and did not want to waste
any of his precious time going to a stuffy, boring place like church, but Suguru’s family went
and so he did, too.

There was only so much room in the backseat of the pickup truck— enough for Suguru to
hold one of his sisters on his lap while the other sat next to him— but they weren’t going to
be able to fit all four kids, so the boys were relegated to the truck bed. Satoru was horrified at
first, insisting he’d go flying out and die on the side of the road, but after a lot of teasing from
Suguru he accepted his fate and clung tightly to the side of the truck as they started moving.

He had stopped hating it when Suguru laughed at him. He still felt embarrassed, incensed,
wronged in some sort of cosmic way that he had been damned to spend a summer glued to
his side while his school friends were off in Cabo or something, but he had stopped hating
being laughed at. Suguru had a unique face when he laughed or smiled. His thin eyes closed
upward, like crescent moons, crinkles at the corners and a dimple on his left cheek, and his
brow went furrowed like he was angry or squinting at the sun. Satoru had already uncovered
a small detail he hadn’t noticed before, too— when Suguru was forcing a smile to be polite,
he kept his mouth closed, upper face relaxed, but when it was real, he was all teeth.

That Sunday morning, as he was laughed at for his fear while they were coasting a cool 40
miles per hour in the bed of the truck, he saw it for the first time within himself— a little
glimmer of interest, a little stirring at the bottom of his stomach. He didn’t have the words for
it at the time, but that all came later.

Church was boring, and he wasn’t sure how to pray or what to pray for, so he kept his eyes
open as everyone bowed their heads and looked around at the tops of heads and the backs of
necks. Suguru was whispering something beside him, breathing the words with his hands
folded in his lap, and he tried his best to eavesdrop on the conversation between boy and God
to no avail. He liked the way Suguru looked with his eyes closed, the little hissing noise his
lips made when he whispered an s-consonant, the way one rogue strand of hair fell in front of
his face. And again, the stirring at the bottom of his stomach squirmed up, and again, he
didn’t have the words for it yet.

He was still well past certain that he hated Suguru Geto. He may not have hated the way he
laughed, he may not have hated how he looked in his church clothes and his eyes closed, he
may not have even hated his accent that much anymore, but still, he hated him. It was the
only feasible solution, the least common denominator. He hated the heat, hated the farm,
hated Mississippi, and hated Suguru.
That hatred was shattered two nights later, when he saw the storm.

That morning, Suguru had a smile smeared across his face that could only be described as
strange. Satoru sneered at him for it and told him he was starting to look more and more like
a hillfreak every day, but he didn’t seem to care— he was practically laughing to himself as
they worked that day, scraping old paint from barn walls and resetting rat traps. He didn’t
even bother to scold Satoru for slacking off like he usually might. Clearly, there was
something bigger on his mind.

Satoru finally asked him when they broke for lunch that day, and Suguru was too busy staring
up at the sky to eat his sandwich.

“Fine,” he said, “I’ll bite. What are you so fucking happy about?”

He knew it was serious when he wasn’t chided for cussing. “Look up over there, to the east,”
Suguru told him, still grinning. “See that?”

Satoru furrowed his brow. There was nothing to the horizon— it was a bit cloudy, sure, but
they didn’t look particularly interesting, especially not from so far away. “Um, no?”

“That cloud pattern lines up with what the weather channel was saying,” Suguru explained.
“The wind feels right, too. It’s a big storm coming. Might be the biggest we had all summer.”

Satoru blinked. “A storm? Like, rain? That’s why you’re sitting here smiling like a moron?”

Suguru nodded. “You’ll understand once it gets here.”

And Satoru rolled his eyes dramatically and kept scraping old paint and resetting rat traps,
and Suguru kept smiling to himself and letting his gaze wander east, and it was not brought
up again until much later that night, when the farmhands had long since retired and Suguru’s
family was asleep and Satoru was lying awake in only his underwear once again, sweating
through his sheets.

He jolted at the unfamiliar sound of his door latch clicking and the hinges creaking open, and
instinctively pulled the discarded comforter over himself.

“Suguru?” He whisper-hissed.

“Come outside,” Suguru whispered back, head poking through the doorway, that grin visible
in the darkness. “Hurry up.”

Satoru stared incredulously, cheeks pink, heart still racing from the minor scare. “What?”

“Hurry,” Suguru reiterated, still grinning, still leaning in the doorway. “It’s gonna start soon.”

And maybe it was the wrong decision. Maybe Satoru was a sucker for peer pressure, or
maybe he was plain stupid, but the moment Suguru’s head disappeared from his open
doorway, he was pulling on his shorts and a tee shirt, and he was creeping into the silent
hallway after him, passing under family photos lining the wall and scrapes and scratches
along the stairs. Suguru was way too quick for how quiet he was on his feet, practically
feather soft as he vanished down the banister and through the kitchen leading to the back
door, while Satoru agonized over every creak in the floorboards, somehow certain that if he
woke up his hosts, he would be damned to spending the rest of the year with them. Still, he
made it outside, and when he did, the first thing he noticed was the wind.

It was different. Warm. A little cool on the first blow, then evening out with body heat and
wrapping around Satoru’s skin like a ghostly hug. It was thick and unbreathable— humid, he
had learned— and seemed to take up space in his lungs as he drew it in. His hair was gently
stirred from his forehead and the sound as it passed over his ears was like a snake’s hiss, like
a steam valve. He had never known a wind like that.

Suguru was thirty or so feet away from the house, barefoot in the dirt, arms at his sides and
staring out aimlessly into the distance. As if he could hear him over the wind— as if that was
even possible— he looked over his shoulder as Satoru approached and waved him closer.

“Come on,” he said, louder that time. “Check it out.”

Satoru squinted at him in the darkness, eyes adjusting to the atmosphere, and came to his
side. “What are you talking about.”

“Can you see it?”

He followed the line of his vision out toward the horizon. It was a storm coming, all right, but
he wasn’t sure what was so special about it. All he could see was one wall of black clouds,
endlessly stretching north to south, like it swallowed up the rest of the river delta.

“Um, no?”

“Just wait,” Suguru insisted.

They waited, silently. If nothing happens in ten seconds, Satoru told himself, I’m going back
inside, and I’m punching him tomorrow.

One. Two. He stared over at Geto out of the corner of his eye, stared at his passive smile
seeming to glow in the darkness. He wasn’t wearing his hair up. It was blowing in the wind,
flitting around his shoulders, silken and lovely. Three. Four. Five. It was so dark, but still
Satoru could see his tan lines, one around his neck and one on each bicep, a clean line
separating olive skin from deeper brown. Six. Seven. Satoru hated him. Hated him. Couldn’t
stand him. Couldn’t stand the weird, squishy, confusing feeling in his stomach when he
looked at him. Couldn’t stand the way he couldn’t stop thinking about how he’d cradled his
head when he was recovering from heat syncope. Eight. Nine.

“This is stupid,” Satoru declared, turning to leave. “I’m going inside.”

Suguru snatched his wrist with a force neither of them knew he had.

“Wait,” he said. He did not let go.

Satoru stared dumbly at him, then back at the dark sky.

Then, suddenly, the biggest flash of lightning he had ever seen lit up the atmosphere, and he
finally saw it.

That cloud was unlike anything he had known. It was bigger than big, more massive than
massive, taller than all the heavens and stars combined and wider than the earth smashed into
a blue and green puddle. It must have stretched for a thousand miles, Satoru thought, must
have stretched from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. It was like an upside-down wedding cake,
with many tiers and layers, all of which seemed to bear down on the delta like they were
specks of dirt under a massive magnifying glass. It was the most incredible thing he had ever
seen. Another brilliant flash of lightning, and it was gone.

“What is that?” He breathed.

“That’s a supercell,” Suguru smiled, not taking his eyes off of it, not taking his hand off of
Satoru’s arm.

“What’s a supercell?”

“The most amazing storm in the world.”

Satoru stared out into the sea of black, then at the hand holding his wrist, then at Suguru. He
blinked once, twice.

“Is it coming this way?” He asked.

“God, I hope so. I was praying it would.”

Satoru’s mind flickered back to the church, to the pews, of being wide-eyed during prayer
time and watching Suguru mumble under his breath, the hissing sound of every s-consonant,
the repetitive chant he seemed to be doing, and it all clicked. Supercell supercell supercell
supercell supercell supercell supercell.

“You were praying for a storm?”

Another lightning flash, and Satoru’s stomach ached to see that the thing had gotten closer.
Much closer. And even worse, it was rotating, swirling counterclockwise overheard like a
hurricane spiral.

“It’s spinning,” Satoru said shakily.

“That’s the mesocyclone,” Suguru explained. His grip had loosened on Gojo’s wrist, but he
was still hanging on. “The hallmark feature of a supercell.”

“It looks like a tornado.”

“Only 20% of supercells produce tornadoes, but the ones they do are powerful.”

“Should we run?”

The hand around his wrist slipped down to interlace their fingers. Satoru froze.
“Wait for the downpour,” Suguru said. “That’s the best part.”

And Satoru knew he should have gone straight back inside. He knew he should have snatched
his hand away, called Suguru a mean word or two, and told him to keep his filthy hands to
himself. He knew he should have gone back to his room and tried to go back to sleep, and
only to listen to the supercell bearing down on them as it slammed waves or rain against his
windowpanes and turned the farm into a muddy mess for him to deal with in the morning, but
he didn’t do that. He didn’t even move. Something in his stomach— something squishy and
crawling and cold and hot all at once— had severed the connection from his brain to his
muscles. All he could do was stand there, stand there and wait with Suguru, hand-in-hand as
they faced a storm that looked like the end of the world.

The winds picked up slowly but surely, and then all at once. The rain came down in light
smatterings at first, little pinpricks of cold against their warm arms and faces, and then in a
torrential unleashing of water casting down from the highest heavens to the deepest hell. It
was unlike anything Satoru had ever experienced, unlike anything he could ever dream of.
The winds were wild and whipping, almost coiling around him as they shoved him backward,
almost throwing him off balance. The rain was so heavy and so fierce that he could not see
two feet ahead of him, could not see up or down or inside or out, soaking him clean through
his clothes and down to the bone, right down through the meat and into the marrow and
settling there like a desperate chill.

The sky opened up above them, the ground gave out from under, he was swimming in air and
he was stumbling and he was blinking precipitation from his eyes and he was struggling, but
he was not afraid. He was not afraid because he still had one tether left, one tie binding him
with the earth and not with the ocean coming down on him— Suguru was holding his hand
tightly, and Suguru was laughing, and Suguru was a silhouette in the darkness and the deluge,
and Suguru was all Satoru could even perceive.

That night, Satoru came to realize two things.

Number one: he was not going to be who his family wanted him to be. He was not going to
be the future CEO of the company he was to inherit as his birthright. He was not going to
spend a single minute of his adult life in the skyscraper in downtown Manhattan with his
surname scrawled across the side. He was going to build his own life, get his own job, and
that job was going to revolve around supercell storms.

Number two: he was in love with Suguru Geto.

As much as a twelve-and-a-half year old boy could be in love with a boy he had met only
three weeks prior at that point, he was madly, deeply, unmistakably in love. He knew it when
he was dragged back inside, being shushed as they squeaked and squelched into the
mudroom, pulling their wet shirts off to wring them out on the floor and squeezing out their
shorts in big handfuls, still dripping a trail onto the kitchen tile when they snuck back inside.
He knew it when Suguru went to go find spare towels to dry themselves off with, and for the
first time that entire summer Satoru had felt cold while he stood alone next to the fridge. He
knew it when his heart fluttered as Suguru pressed the towel to his head and shoulders,
reminding him in a whispery voice that he was not excused from working the fields if he
caught pneumonia. He knew it when he crawled back into bed that night, shivering and wet
under the sheets, and found he could not stop thinking about that country kid he hated so
much.

He was in love. He was in love. He was in love.

Everything seemed to change after that night. The work was still brutal, the heat oppressive,
but Satoru had stopped complaining. He had stopped slacking off. He was actively trying to
keep up with Suguru, who noticed and teased him about the change in attitude, but it was a
welcome sort of bullying. If they were previously attached at the hip, they were all but
superglued together after that night, taking every meal and water break together and spending
unending hours wandering around the farm and playing cards and talking, talking, talking.
Satoru learned that Suguru had broken four bones, one in each limb, all of them as a result of
an animal altercation, none of them at the same time. Suguru learned that Satoru could play
four instruments, all of them at an excellent skill level, all of which he hated.

On weekends, they babysat Suguru’s little sisters, and Satoru learned how to paint their nails
properly and what each of their favorite colors were. On Sundays when they went to church,
Satoru learned how to avoid clinging to the side of the truck bed as they rolled along down
the roads, and started to enjoy the thrilling feeling of flight. When the pastor told them to
bow their heads and pray, Suguru would discreetly link their hands together in the pews
beside each other and they would pray together, as hard as they could, for another storm.
Supercell supercell supercell supercell supercell supercell supercell.

They never did get their second supercell, but every time a big storm rolled through, they
would sit on the front porch or in the living room and watch it, and Suguru would teach
Satoru everything he knew about severe weather in the south. He learned new and exciting
vocabulary words like cumulonimbus, wall cloud, rear flank downdraft, rotating updraft,
inflow jet, wind shear, and anvil.

One night in late July, Satoru asked him if he was going to be a weatherman, and Suguru
laughed, throwing his head back.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, “but you better swear on your life not to tell my folks.”

“Pinky swear,” Satoru grinned, but Suguru shook his head.

“Uh-uh. Blood oath.”

Satoru tilted his head, doglike, and Suguru answered by taking his Swiss Army knife out of
his pocket and flicking out a small blade.

“Hold your finger out,” he demanded.

Satoru hesitated. Only a month and a half prior, he would have screamed at the suggestion
and ran for the hills, insisting that this family of crazy hicks was trying to skin him alive.
Even then, he didn’t want to do it, didn’t want to feel the inevitable pain, but he couldn’t help
himself. Suguru’s face was so inviting, so unique, the scar on his eyebrow and the catch at the
corner of his eyes and the raw patch on his lip where he kept chewing the skin off becoming
something beautiful and warm and gorgeous that summer.
Reluctantly, he stuck his index out, and Suguru pinched the pad of his fingertip and gave a
quick, tiny swipe. Satoru yelped at the sting, watching with a turning stomach as a fat bead of
red blood quickly grew from the minuscule incision.

Wasting no time, Suguru cut his own finger, and promptly pressed their wounds together,
blood meshing and mingling as he held them there. A strange, strange type of wanting spread
through Satoru’s stomach as his heart began to quicken in pace.

“There,” Suguru said, grinning. “You swore.”

Satoru nodded, stupid and sick to his stomach, eyes glimmering with adoration.

“I’m gonna be a stormchaser,” Suguru confessed.

“What’s that?”

“What it sounds like. They drive around chasing storms and taking videos for the news. They
measure them for the weather folks. It’s dangerous, but it saves lives. Mom would kill me if
she knew that’s what I’m gonna do.”

“I’m gonna be a stormchaser, too,” Satoru blurted out, nodding eagerly. “We can do it
together.”

Suguru blinked at him, then laughed. “Alright,” he said, flashing teeth on a smile. “Let’s do
it.”

Satoru beamed.

Summer went quickly, and by early August, Satoru was failing to hold back tears as he was
dropped off at the Memphis airport, having failed to convince his parents over the phone that
they should let him stay out in Mississippi indefinitely. He was dripping tears into his hands,
snot running from his nose and drool running down his chin, and he was ugly, and Suguru
was trying to hand him napkins while laughing a little too hard at him.

“It’s fine, ‘Toru,” he said, trying to reassure him. “I’ll see you next summer, okay?”

Satoru nodded, still weeping, trying to ignore the eyes he felt from the other passengers
dragging suitcases into the main lobby around them.

“You can write me letters,” Suguru offered. “I promise I’ll write back. My folks unplug the
phone on weekdays, but you can call me every Sunday, if you want.”

“Okay,” Satoru sniffed.

“I have your number. I’ll be sure to call you on your birthday, okay? You better not forget
mine.”

“Okay.”

“Come on. Buck up. I’ll see you soon.”

“Uh-huh.”

Suguru seemed to stare at him for just a moment, sighing with what sounded like frustration
and guilt. “Hang on,” he said, and hesitated for only a second before ripping a button off the
front of his shirt. “Here. Take it.”

Satoru stopped crying for a brief moment as the button was pressed into the palm of his hand
— gingerly, gently, much too soft and generous to be the same person he met at the beginning
of June. He looked up with red, puffy eyes, and Suguru was smiling down at him with that
crescent moon face.

“Give it back next summer, alright?” A tight hug, Satoru’s head pressing against his shoulder,
breathing in his scent and smearing saltwater and snot on the front of his now-torn shirt.

That was how it started. That was the strange beginning of an almost ten-year-long love affair
that was played through entirely in short phone calls, dozens and dozens of snail mail letters,
and summers spent working on a farm while Satoru’s parents wondered what the hell had
gotten into their son’s head out there. Satoru carried the button around like a holy cross,
keeping it in his breast pocket or the sole of his school shoes and having a mini-meltdown
every time he misplaced it. He wrote Suguru letters constantly, agonizing over his
handwriting and spelling, lying in bed writhing for anywhere between days and weeks while
he waited for a new reply. He made a phone call every Sunday and his heart beat desperately
against the walls of his chest, his breath catching in his throat when Suguru’s mother
answered and asked a million pointless small-talk questions before calling her son down to
answer.

They talked about everything unimportant. Satoru asked him about the weather and the
storms and if public school was as miserable as it looked in the movies. Suguru asked him
about New York and his studies and if private school was as stuck-up and suffocating as it
looked in the movies. They talked about how excited they were to see each other again, how
ready they were for summertime, how boring things were without the other, but stopped short
of saying the dreaded I miss you, much less the mythical I love you. Satoru counted down the
days, kept every letter in his pillowcase, kept the button in his right hand, and June was back
before he could shake off the chill of a northeastern winter.

Suguru was there with his family to meet him when he got off the plane. He was there the
next summer, and the next summer, and the next summer, too. He picked him up and spun
him around in his arms the first couple times, then was startled (and seriously disappointed)
to see that Satoru hit his growth spurt late at the age of 15 an ended up four or five inches
taller than him.

Every year was much of the same, every season spent painting and digging and repairing and
tending, with Satoru growing stronger and stronger each time, hardly complaining anymore,
even when he really wanted to. They prayed for rain every Sunday and ran out into the
downpour every time it came, hand in hand. They caught colds and they watched the weather
channel and Satoru never gave back the button Suguru had ripped from his shirt. The Geto
family had long since begun treating him like a second son, and Satoru had long since started
seeing that place as his second home, and the heat stopped bothering him. He didn’t cry on
the drive back to the airport every August, but he teared up when the plane took off.
The summer after he turned sixteen was by far his favorite.

That year, Suguru’s family had finally gotten a computer, eliminating the need for letter
writing as they started to email back and forth every day, sometimes multiple times per night.
Suguru seemed to have softened a considerable bit, talking much less about the weather and
much more about the emptiness of day-to-day life, more about how much he looked forward
to summer every year.

It’s the only time I feel like myself, one of his messages read.

Satoru assumed it was just teenage moodiness— he was going through some of that, too—
but he swore he could feel the sadness through the screen. He swore there was a difference in
the way Suguru spoke to him, even digitally. His sentences were longer, he incorporated
commas and the occasional misused semicolon, he wasn’t excessive or flowery in how he
typed but he made extra room to ask endless questions about the late mindlessness of
Satoru’s life.

How is school, ‘Toru? School is fine. It’s annoying. I wish I could change my last name so I
could be treated the same as everyone else. The others aren’t kind to you? They’re too kind.
They act like I’m the one in charge of the company or something, like they’re trying to suck
up to me, as if I care. I hate it. Did you get the chance to listen to that song I sent you? Yeah,
it was cool. I didn’t understand a lot of the lyrics, but the music was good, at least. Is
Radiohead famous or something? Have you seen any good storms recently? No. It’s too
sunny. It’s like the air up here is dry. I hate it. Do you remember that time it rained so hard
you lost your sneakers in the mud and my mom yelled at you for half an hour? Of course I do.
I remember everything. I remember how you couldn’t stop laughing. I remember how your
hand felt.

He never said that, though. That would have been weird.

It was strange. Suguru was acting strange. He had been acting strange for months, but Satoru
was either terrible at noticing or intentionally neglecting to react. He was certain that he was
just going through something, maybe having a phase, that he didn’t really care all that much.
After all, Satoru had only been trying to subtly hint to him that he was in love for four years
at that point, and he couldn’t quite understand why he was never pushed away or
reprimanded for being too touchy, but also never outright told his feelings were reciprocated.
By the time he was sixteen he had decided not to care any more once June rolled around, and
he would just be happy to get out of the city.

That summer, Suguru said, he had a big surprise planned, and he couldn’t wait for Satoru to
see it. Gojo had begged for a hint, even just the smallest notion of a reveal, but Geto held fast
to his resolutions and refused to give even an inkling. He was patient, cautious, answering all
of Satoru’s pesterings with colon-and-parentheses smiley faces and less-than-three hearts.
You’re gonna love it, he wrote. That’s all I’m gonna tell you.

I’m gonna love you, Satoru typed out carefully, before mashing the backspace key and
replacing it with a very haughty oh my goddddd just tell meeeeee please please please.

No :)
You’re so boringgggg.

<3 see you in 9 days.

And in nine days, Suguru met him in the carpool lane, parked illegally, leaned up against his
father’s pickup truck with his hands in his pockets and a plainly stupid smile across his face
that made Satoru’s heart swirl upward like a mesocyclone. He was so brilliant in the early
summer sunlight, shimmering and reflecting off the oil in his black hair, tied up behind his
head and a new earring glinting in the glare. He was not coming toward Satoru like he
usually was, wasn’t calling his name or waving over his head, wasn’t doing much of anything
but standing there and smiling, smiling, smiling.

He was alone.

Satoru beamed, hurrying toward him. “You got your license?”

Suguru nodded. “Mmhm. That’s not the surprise, though.”

Satoru blinked at him, eyes straining against the sun sinking lower in the sky.

“Dad got a new truck and gave me the old one for my birthday,” Suguru said, a touch of pride
to his voice, a touch of shimmer in his eye. “It’s mine.”

Gojo’s eyes lit up something awful, something inhuman and joyful, and Geto was laughing
before he could stop himself.

“Why’re you looking at me like that?” He tilted his head, black hair falling softly at the side
of his face, and he was glowing from the inside like a shadow on canvas, backlit by
something akin to the divine.

Satoru could only get out half a broken syllable before Suguru’s arms were around him, head
on his shoulder, the smell of sunlight and sweat and faintly girly shampoo ensnaring him and
holding him there like a fish in a net, like a bear in a trap, but he wasn’t fighting it. He had
long since stopped fighting the way he felt and instead leaned into him, crushing him against
his chest, lightly thrashing him side-to-side and laughing into the air around them. Suguru
laughed back, slapped the back of his head, put two hands on either shoulder and pushed
them apart for a moment or so, just enough for smiling gazes to meet.

“I missed you,” he said, all teeth and all shine. “I really, really missed you.”

Satoru’s heart exploded in his chest, reformed, exploded again, and suddenly all the blood in
his body was vibrating and his eyes could see every planet beyond the solar system and he
could taste the wind and he was frozen with joy. Being told to his face what Satoru had been
typing and then erasing for the better part of a year— being told he was missed— was better
than anything he could have ever imagined, anything he could have possibly asked for.

“Can I tell you something else?” Suguru smiled.

Can the sun be brighter? Can the stars be prettier? Can my own skin be any closer? Can I
want you any more?
“What?” Satoru breathed, still clinging.

“That’s not the surprise, either.”

The surprise came later that night, after a stroke of good fortune and a very forgiving weather
forecast, when they went on their very first storm chase together. It wasn’t a proper chase— it
was nothing like what they would encounter in college and their early careers, complete with
doppler radar and video equipment and something bordering on a deathwish— but it was
more than enough for them. It was Satoru and Suguru, sixteen and still unscathed, driving
into a storm cell as it flowed southward and consumed the farmlands in sheets of billowing
rain. When they had found a good spot along a flat and empty expanse of old highway,
Suguru had parked the car at the shoulder and made them get out, stepping into whipping
winds that stung the eyes and softened the chill in the air.

Satoru came to his left, both of them leaning up against the driver’s side of the truck, and
before he could think any better of it, he was letting his hand come to slip around Suguru’s.
Just as their fingers laced, a huge lightning strike lit up the dusky sky, a rumbling thunderclap
following shortly after, the sound carried by the currents flowing their way.

“I wish I could see this every day,” Satoru said, not taking his eyes off of the storm fast
approaching, not bothering to push his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

Suguru squeezed his hand. “Me too.”

“I wish I could live out here with you.”

“Me too.”

Another flash of lightning. Another thunderclap. Another inhale from Geto, sharp through the
nose, eyes drawing shut.

His voice was soft when it came again. “Satoru?” He called over the winds.

“Hm?”

One hand came up to hold him at the cheek, and before he could even process what was
happening, the space between them had dissolved and Suguru was pressing his lips against
him, a slight tremble evident in the way both hands came to rest at his shoulders, the way he
leaned into him. He kissed him like it was his first time, because it was. Satoru was frozen for
a second, only a brief second, and then it was over, and he was kissing him back like the
winds would rip them apart. He was terrible, unskilled, but they both were, and neither one
expected the other to be any good at it.

“Surprise,” Suguru laughed against his mouth, and kept kissing him until the rain started, and
when it did, they got back in the truck and they held each other against the downpour
slamming out all sounds against their windshield.

That was eight years before Suguru was struck by lightning, eight years before he broke
Satoru’s heart, eight years before the sky fell and the world ended.
Very often, Satoru wondered what life might have been like if he had simply refused to be his
friend after collapsing from heat syncope when he was twelve years old. Very often, he
wondered what might have became of him had he never seen a mesocyclone. Maybe he
would have somehow known peace, even if he had never been fulfilled, even if he had never
met his match in the form of some country kid with a slight messiah complex and a strange
fascination with supercell storms. Maybe he would have taken over as the head of Gojo Corp
and been who his father had always wanted him to be. Maybe he would have been rich and
famous and miserable, but he wouldn’t have been heartbroken.

Maybe he would have survived it.

 Lichtenberg Figures
Chapter Summary

Lichtenberg figure (noun) . ˈliktənˌbərg-

Electricity : a branching pattern on the surface of an insulator that has been subject to an
electric discharge.

10:37 a.m. Mid-April. Somewhere in western Alabama. Three days before the storm.

Gojo was exhausted. He had been exhausted for six hours, and there were only so many
strawberry monster energy drinks a 29 year old man could consume before he starts to feel
the strain on his heart. For two days straight, he had been driving, suffering, staring up at the
cumulus clouds as they towered and climbed overhead, cotton-white and sugar-soft and
promising something, something, something. All the songs on his favorite playlist had
become annoying, all of his audiobooks had been exhausted, and all the radio stations in that
part of the state were either evangelical programs, fuzzy gospel music, or a static-crunched
country blend of both.

His eyes ached behind the glasses. His stomach ached under his old tee shirt. His fingers
ached and resisted straightening after so long wrapped around the steering wheel. But he was
done for the time being, and now came his brilliant reward.

There was a time and place for everything, and Waffle House certainly had its own special set
of circumstances— in fact, over the years, Satoru had boiled it down to a science. There were
exactly four conditions under which a visit to any WaHo on earth would end up being a
pleasant experience: (1), you visit after midnight, (2), you and your partner visit right after
having sex, (3), you’re blackout drunk and/or high out of your mind, and (4) all of the
preceding conditions were combined. As he pulled into the parking lot, Satoru was well
aware that he met zero of the required circumstances for a good trip— it was a beautiful
Thursday morning, he hadn’t had sex in almost a year at that point, and he was stone cold
sober— but he did not care. He was exhausted and he wanted a waffle.

The place was mildly busy when he walked in— a bit uncharacteristic for that area on a
weekday morning, but Gojo didn’t think too much of it. He wasn’t thinking too much of
anything besides coffee cream sugar waffle drowned in syrup. An equally exhausted old
woman wearing an apron called a halfhearted welcome to him as he entered, and he gave a
small wave as he sought out an empty booth in the far corner of the restaurant. He took note
of the way the soles of his shoes stuck to the floors as he crossed them, the billboard-generic
country music playing faintly over the radio. His blood buzzed. His mouth watered, which
was out of character for him. He needed that waffle like oxygen.
There was already a sticky plastic-laminated menu on the sticky table in front of him, and he
didn’t need it, but he gave it a once-over anyway. It’s part of the little song and dance one has
to play for things to go well, part of the ritual for rain, part of the process. The elderly and
entirely disengaged waitress made her way to him, not bothering to deal with eye contact,
and asked him what he’d like to drink.

“Coffee, please,” he said. “As much half-and-half as you’re allowed to give me.”

She raised an eyebrow. “How many d’you want?”

“More than you think I should have.”

She squinted at him, nodded, and turned back around. She returned with the coffee mug filled
only halfway and a huge handful of the little thimble-sized plastic cups, still chilled from the
fridge up at the front, and let them all spill out onto the table.

“I’ll give you some time to decide,” she said. “You can holler.”

Satoru nodded, beginning to peel back the plastic seal on each of them, dumping them in one
by one. His brain screamed waffle waffle waffle, but he controlled himself. He hadn’t been
too good about that recently.

He was busy dumping in at least four heaping tablespoons of sugar into the mostly-milk
coffee when the door opened again.

The first thing he noticed, as always, were the shoes— lace-up, leather, covered in scrapes
and faded scratches and rips at the tongue like claw marks. The soles were heavy and rubber,
mud-lined, obvious steel plating in the toe and the heel counter, obvious weight to it. There
was a slight limp on the left leg, just enough to be noticeable, not enough for a stranger to pin
down to any sort of direct cause. It was light on the last of the muscle reflexes, almost lazy in
a way, a careful drag at the ball of the foot. Close inspection to the erosion on the soles would
show that the limp was persistent, probably permanent.

Satoru would know it anywhere.

His heart sank and his stomach churned and he could feel an unwarranted salivary response
attack his glands as his anxiety spiked, his mouth becoming wet and heavy, his throat
swallowing involuntarily, and he let his eyes go wide and trail up from the feet to the face of
that familiar stranger walking in through the doorway.

Long black hair like an oil spill down the back, stray locks hanging at the sides of his head
and in front of his face, half of it pulled into a haphazard knot behind the skull. Ears that
stuck out at the sides, adorned with a myriad of different piercings, gauges at the lobes and
pirate rings on the cuff and an industrial bar going straight through the helix, a beautiful
asymmetry and an MRI machine’s worst nightmare. There was metal in his nose and lips,
too, but not as much, only enough to be tasteful— a stud and snakebites. And tattoos. Satoru
was certain that the vines on his left arm below the Chinese dragon were a new addition, but
he couldn’t prove it. It wasn’t like he could keep track of how that man’s appearance changed
every time he decided to waltz back into Satoru’s life.
Their eyes met, and Satoru did not immediately start running. Mistake number one.

That familiar smile spread across his face like disease spreads through a prison, like panic
spreads through a crowd, and he was walking over. He was walking over, he was
approaching, and Satoru was freaking out. He was frozen halfway through pouring a fifth
half-and-half thimble into his coffee and he was trapped like a deer in headlights, like a fly in
glue, like a man held hostage in a Waffle House in the middle of nowhere. That familiar
smile was getting closer. The world was getting smaller. All the air was vanishing from his
lungs and he had to say something, he had to do something, he had to stand up and shout at
him, something like don’t even fucking try it this time—

“Suguru,” he choked out, and it came off bitter and curling on his tongue.

“Satoru,” Suguru nodded politely, settling into the space in the seat across from him,
smoothing out the fabric of his worn-out band shirt. His tone was soft, friendly. His snakebite
piercings caught the glimmer of yellow lamplight. He was, for all intents and purposes,
gorgeous. Satoru could have thrown up into his lap right there and then.

“I didn’t say you could sit here.”

Suguru’s chipper tone shifted almost instantly, as did the shimmery glow in his narrow eyes,
becoming dark and sharp like a shattered geode. “Then get up and make me move,” he said,
and his lip flickered for just a millisecond.

They stared at one another for a moment or so, a mutual burning of the eyes, a mutual
clenching of the jaw. Suguru was considerably less incensed than Satoru was, but the veneer
of calm and nonchalance was easily pulled away, and his true emotions were plain to see with
a trained eye.

He hadn’t changed a bit.

A long, ugly beat of silence, only the sounds of metal scraping against the flat top grill,
employees barking between each other, light clattering of utensils on plates, and the mostly-
muted sounds of country on the radio. They held eye contact for what felt like a life sentence
before Satoru blinked first and they peeled their gazes apart.

“I thought you quit chasing,” Suguru said, voice returning to something plain and even, eyes
scanning the sticky plastic menu before him.

“I thought you quit chasing,” Satoru retorted, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“I was lying.”

A small scoff, a roll of the eyes. “What else is new?” Satoru folded his arms.

Suguru was unphased. “Your hair’s getting longer. It looks lovely.”

“You got a new eyebrow piercing.”

“I did,” Suguru smiled, letting one hand come up to tap it with his index finger— it was a
little curved barbell, a star shape on either end, either surgical steel or titanium. “Do you like
it?”

Before Satoru could tell him that no, he did not like it, and in fact he did not like anything
about Suguru’s stupid face or how it seemed to change or acquire a new piece of metal every
time he saw him, the disinterested waitress was coming over with a pen and paper in hand.

“What’ll you have to drink?” She asked Suguru, who looked up with a polite smile— a fake
smile. He was such a god damned liar, and god damned liars don’t change.

“Coffee for me, too, please,” he said. “Just how it comes. And I’d like two eggs, over easy,
toast and jam on the side.”

“Two checks or one?” The waitress scribbled.

Again, Suguru beat him to the punch. Again, he had the upper hand. “I’m on his tab, ma’am.”

Satoru went red-hot with anger, but he did not protest. “Two waffles, chocolate chip,” he
forced out, trying and failing to maintain a cool tone. The waitress could have set a world
record for the inability to give less of a damn. She left, and the tension returned.

“What are you doing here?” Suguru asked him, not bothering with the polite face anymore.

“You first.” Satoru tried another swallow of his mostly-milk coffee, but winced. Somehow, it
was too much sugar, and worse still, it was going lukewarm.

“There’s a big storm system moving in from up west,” Geto said, nodding a thank-you when
the waitress set down his coffee beside him. “Definitely going to be some tornadic activity,
maybe a streak of outbreaks—“

“I know that,” Gojo interrupted through a tight jaw. “I asked why. Are you working for the
NWS again? The NSSL? Are you indie?”

Suguru grinned. “A man can’t have hobbies?”

Satoru tasted iron where he bit his cheek too hard. “That’s why you can’t pay your own tab
and you’re making me cover you?”

That grin deepened. “A man can’t have hobbies?” He repeated.

Satoru felt his skin go hot and his hands start to ache under the table. He couldn’t stand that
face, couldn’t stand those eyes, couldn’t stand anything about him. A hobby. Is that what he
thinks I am? Is that what I’ve let him get away with thinking for the better part of four years
now?

He was going to say something else, but Suguru was burning his lip on way-too-hot coffee
and setting the mug down hastily, laughing a tiny bit on the flinch, and Satoru’s instincts
betrayed him.
“I’ll tell you ‘cause I like you,” Geto yawned, “but not ‘cause you care. I’m gathering up
some good footage for The Weather Channel. I’ve been freelancing for a while, and a
producer likes my videography. It’s all under wraps, though.”

Satoru blinked. His brows drew together. “So it isn’t research?”

“I’m not married to academia like you are,” Suguru said, and he could have been lying. It
certainly wouldn’t be out of character.

A beat of silence as Satoru considered his response.

“Your turn,” Geto said. “Why are you out here, risking your pretty face?”

Gojo glared. “It’s like you said— I’m married to academia. I’m gathering data.”

“Where’s the rest of your crew, then?”

“Solo mission.”

“But Yaga doesn’t like sending you on those anymore, does he?”

“Yaga isn’t my boss.”

“Maybe not on paper,” Suguru said slowly, leaning forward on his elbows. “But we both
know you aren’t in control here.”

He was not talking about Yaga.

Before Satoru could tell him to go fuck himself, the waitress was back, setting down waffles
and eggs and appearing entirely indifferent to the strange, vaguely sexual tension hanging in
the air like a dark cloud. Gojo mumbled a defeated thank-you and promptly drowned his
waffles in syrup. He wasn’t exactly hungry anymore, but he wouldn’t be prevented from
having his sugar fix by the scum sitting across from him.

“It’s nice to see you never change,” Suguru said, tapping salt over his plate.

“I wish you would,” Satoru muttered.

“How have you been, ‘Toru? It’s been a little over a year, hasn’t it?”

Eleven months, twelve days, and give or take five hours, but who’s counting?

“I’m not interested in small talk, Geto.”

“Ooh, icy. You interested in something else, then?”

“I’m interested in breakfast.” He stuffed an oversized bite in his mouth.

“I’ve been well, if you care to know,” Suguru said, cutting up eggs and eating nothing.
“Freelancing is always an up-and-down thing, but I’ve had a few good months. I saved up
enough to buy a real nice camera. You remember which one I was talking about? The
Canon?”

“EOS 5D Mark II?” Satoru recited with a bored tone, not looking up from his plate. “Yeah, I
remember.”

“That’s sweet of you,” Suguru replied. “Anyway, it shoots real nice. I’m still getting the hang
of it, but the footage is crisp, and there’s decent low light performance, too.”

“Uh-huh.”

A light pause before Geto spoke again. He stared at Gojo, stared carefully at his features, at
how poorly he was hiding his emotions. It was almost endearing. “I read the article you had
published recently.”

Gojo flinched. “You did?”

“Mmhm. Congratulations, by the way. The Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences is no joke.”
Suguru had changed his tone again, something morphing from mild and polite to plain
enticing. His words were slow coming off the lips, a little hum on the undertone of his voice,
and it was way too early in the morning for that behavior to ever be excusable. Luckily for
him, he and Satoru had both lost track of their circadian rhythms, and the number on the
clock meant nothing anymore.

Satoru hesitated. “Well, what did you think of it?”

“A lot of it was beyond my level, honestly,” Suguru laughed. “The chemistry gets lost on me
sometimes, but the physics I can parse. I can see why you’ve been getting good reactions.
How long did this one take you?”

“A year, after I finished writing it. The peer review process took forever, and there were some
revisions. If you count the research phase, two years total.”

Suguru laughed, lightly shaking his head, another loose lock of hair falling across his
forehead. “They have to give you the fellowship position now. Those old bastards would be
fools not to.”

Satoru had to pinch his own thigh to stop himself from smiling. “As long as they keep
funding me, I don’t care.” He was lying.

“You’re brilliant, ‘Toru,” Suguru said, and he was telling the truth. “Always have been.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Suguru’s eyes were softer than they’d been when he
came in, his demeanor changed. He was different. He was different every time they met,
every time their paths crossed in some unlucky way and brought them face-to-face again.
Satoru was forcing swallows of his breakfast. Suguru was picking at his eggs.

“Knowing you, if you’re on your own,” Geto began, “you drive until you physically can’t
anymore, and then you check in somewhere and rest for the day. Judging by those dark
circles, I’ll wager two days’ worth of travel. You’re exhausted.”
“Riveting analysis,” Satoru bit into another soggy, sugary mound of waffle. “Maybe you’ll
get your research job back if you beg hard enough.”

“You checked into the hotel down the highway? Holiday Inn?” Suguru ignored him, a small
smile crossing his mouth. “I’m not far. I could come over.”

Satoru glared. He swallowed hard. “No. Absolutely not.”

A strange sensation ran up his leg as the toe of Suguru’s boot nudged up against his sneaker
under the table, just the lightest pressure, just enough to cross the line from playful to
something worse. The waffle tasted rancid in his mouth. He could feel his blood rushing
south, at the slightest touch, the most contact he’d gotten in a full calendar year, and was
silently disgusted with how easy his body was to fold. He kicked the offending shoe, and
Suguru made a small huffing noise.

“I don’t get why you push me away like this,” he hummed through a bite of toast.

Gojo blinked incredulously. “You broke up with me.”

“My point stands,” Geto shrugged. “You call the twins on their birthday and send my mother
Christmas cards, but when it comes to me—“

“Your point does not stand,” Satoru interjected, leaning across the table to control his
volume. “The twins call me on my birthday, too. Your mom sends me a card every year. I’m
just being polite.”

“I’m not telling you to stop. I’m just saying, let’s not act like you’ve completely distanced
yourself from me. We both know you aren’t above it.”

“I told you, Suguru,” Satoru began slowly, hands in his lap to hide the twitching, eyes glued
to the chocolate chips melting on the waffles and the syrup soaking in like blood through
fabric. “Last time was the last time. I’m not playing this game anymore. It’s— it’s not good
for me.”

Suguru sipped his coffee, eyes unmoving from where they trained on the one before him. “Is
that what Shoko tells you?”

“It’s the truth,” Gojo hardened on his resolve, making a hesitant attempt to look up and meet
the eyes boring holes into him. “You’re— this isn’t healthy. I hate this.”

“No,” Suguru said, lip curling up in a small smile, a smile Satoru couldn’t stand. “You love
this. You just want to pretend you don’t.”

Satoru trembled, and he couldn’t help it. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t tell me I don’t know you, Satoru,” he said, the sound of that name falling from his lips
like rain, like mist, like it shouldn’t have been there in the first place, because it shouldn’t
have.

“You don’t.”
“Then get up and leave,” Suguru dared him. “Leave me with the tab. Block my number. Do
what you always threaten to.”

Satoru’s breath hitched in his throat. A thick swallow. A hateful stare. He was silent.

“That’s what I thought,” Suguru murmured.

Satoru opened his mouth to say something else, something indignant, something about how
much Suguru viscerally disgusted him and he was sick and god damned tired of being pulled
around on his chain and enough was enough, but he was halted by a vicious crashing sound
outside— something like thunder, something like a bone snapping— followed almost
immediately by the irritating whistle of a car siren at close range. Both at the table jolted at
the sound, Satoru dropping his knife into the syrup puddle on his plate and Suguru spilling
his coffee.

“Damn!” One of the line cooks was shouting, all heads turning to the noise. “Damn!”

Suguru turned, Satoru turned, and both stomachs twisted.

“Shit,” Suguru hissed, pushing himself up from the table and hurrying toward the door on
long, striding steps, the slight limp in his left leg falling strangely under his boots. “Shit,” he
cussed, voice growing louder on every word. “Shit. Fuck! Fuck!”

The situation registered in Satoru’s head instantaneously.

Observation: There was a tree in the parking lot that had fallen over. It had fallen over
directly onto a car, one that looked to be a 2002 Ford F-150, an F-150 identical to all the rest
out in the poorer places of the south, but with an energy about it that Satoru knew he’d seen
before. It had fallen squarely onto the truck bed, and from the way Suguru was cussing and
forgetting entirely that he had the upper hand over Satoru and his weak, weary heart, that
must have been his 2002 F-150.

Analysis: A tree had just fallen on Suguru’s car.

Satoru couldn’t help but grin. Karma was a strange and beautiful thing.

Plan of action: rub it in his stupid face.

The air changed as the upper hand shifted and Satoru slowly strode out to where Suguru was
standing beside his truck, leaning left and right to assess the damage at every angle. Almost
all of his weight was centered in his right side, balanced on his good foot, something he only
did when he needed complete focus on a task and couldn’t bother his mind with the worries
of overworking his primary muscle groups. He confessed once that physical therapy lived in
his head like a worm, and even in the grocery line he would catch himself using his good leg
as a crutch and have to suffer the pain of correcting himself. Satoru told him often that he
should just buy a cane— an actual crutch— but Suguru would wave him off as though
swatting flies. I don’t need it, he would say, and I don’t want one.
From the way he was leaning up against the crushed metal of the truck bed, it was evident
that he was a bad liar, but Satoru knew that already.

“Damn,” Satoru said as he made his way over, eliciting a flinching glare from Suguru, but he
did not let his smile falter. It was his turn. “That’s some bad luck, isn’t it?”

And that was a very, very mean thing of him to say, but Suguru deserved it.

“There’s a 0.0065% chance of being struck by lightning within your lifetime,” Suguru said,
returning his attention to the handle he was trying to pull, struggling against the jam. He
looked over the mess of tree branches and leaves between them, the upper half of the small
tree he’d had to duck under just to get to the driver’s side door. “Go run those numbers
against the chances of a tree falling on your car and see how lucky I am.”

“I didn’t bring my calculator,” Satoru yawned. “You want me to go ask the line cooks if
there’s a good repair shop around here?”

“It’s fucking totaled,” Suguru cussed. “There’s no point. God damn it. God fucking damn it.”

“Do you want a ride back to your hotel?”

Suguru stopped struggling against the unopening door and shot an even more venomous glare
than the one he had before. “I don’t have a hotel. I was sleeping in the car. Not everyone’s got
the fucking money you do.”

His accent came out more when he was angry. Satoru noticed it, just like he always did. He
also noticed that he technically hadn’t said anything critical— he’d only commented on the
bad luck of the situation and innocently offered a favor to his very uncharitable ex-boyfriend
— and despite that, he was being cussed at. He couldn’t stifle his grin. He was under
Suguru’s skin like one of those piercings. He was winning.

Suguru turned 180 degrees until his back was pressed up against the crushed side of the
truck, broken branches poking into the skin of his spine and shoulder. Wincing painfully on
the pressure he was forced to put on to his lame leg, he shifted his center of gravity enough to
pull the bad leg over his good knee and begin unlacing his boot. “Stand back,” he told Satoru,
pulling it off and beginning to hop awkwardly on one foot until he faced the driver’s door
again.

“What are you doing?” Satoru inched forward against instruction, eyebrow raising at the way
Geto pushed his hand into the shoe and made a fist inside of it.

“Back up. I’m not kissing your cuts if you get hurt,” he said, and wound up.

“Sugu, that really isn’t necessary—“

The window shattered easily with the force at which his arm moved, propelled by the
strength of his shoulder. Satoru couldn’t help flinching, couldn’t help the little twist of
excitement in his stomach when he saw Suguru’s eyes narrow with energy release. The
inward break was clean— no huge shards, no cuts, no tears. Maybe it was strange to say, and
maybe it spoke to his character at large, but Satoru couldn’t help finding it attractive when
Suguru broke something.

The boot was thrown off of his fist and back onto the ground. One arm reached carefully into
the now-open window, clicked the jammed lock, and the door came open. Geto exhaled a
huffing sigh, annoyance radiating off of him like poison fumes from a gas leak, and pushed
the top half of his body into the ruined vehicle.

“Can I call you a tow truck?” Satoru offered.

“I don’t care what you do.”

Well, that’s a change in attitude. “They won’t just let you leave the car here.”

“Then they can tow it themselves. I don’t give a damn.”

Satoru thought for a second, but he wasn’t really thinking. His eyes were watching the way
Suguru had to contort himself just to crane his body into his car and start retrieving things
from the passenger seat— a bricky laptop he used exclusively for doppler radar and the
aircard he used for mobile internet, a backpack presumably filled with essentials, and a black
camera case holding the Canon EOS 5D Mark II— gathering each up into his arms and
placing more and more strain on the lame leg he was using for balance at that point. Satoru
had the upper hand, sure, but he didn’t really enjoy it. It didn’t feel fun to watch Suguru
suffer like this, even if he deserved it, even if he was asking for it and the universe simply
punished him accordingly.

There had to be something he could do to turn things around. There had to be some way he
could keep the upper hand while still sleeping at night. There had to be a solution he could
conjure, a storm he could brew, a perfect and precise lightning strike to stop him in his tracks
and bend his will into a more agreeable shape—

“Where were you headed?” He asked finally, and Suguru lifted his head out from under the
truck’s roof. He squinted at him in late morning sunlight.

“Northwest by way of I-22. Make my way up past Memphis into Missouri.”

“And stop where?”

“When I hit the storm.”

And Satoru had a choice— a very clear choice. A very clear right and wrong, black and
white, positive and negative charge, upcycle and downdraft. Years ago, during one of their
many intense arguments, Suguru had criticized him for his inability to see beyond the stark
contrasts and into shades of gray. That’s why this paper is so god damned stiff, he had raised
his voice, waving the research Satoru had been agonizing over for the past few weeks. You
can’t possibly imagine that there’s another explanation than something you can think up,
‘cause you’re too god damned brilliant, aren’t you? You’re too god damned arrogant. And
Gojo had shouted back that Geto was a god damned asshole, but that didn’t matter— he was
right. There was a liminal space in between everything, a crack where the light creeps in, a
paracosm for each and every one of Satoru’s many, many failings.

This moment, it seemed, was one of them.

There’s an answer in here, somewhere, Satoru thought. There’s a way I can get mine and let
him get his. There’s a way I can make him sorry for everything he’s ever put me through,
make him sorry for all the times he broke my heart, make him remember exactly what he’s
missing before I rip it away from him forever. I’ll get my payback and he’ll get his. There’s a
god damned out. God damn it, there’s an out in here, and I’m smart enough to sniff it out.

“Come with me,” He decided, sunbright smile in the shine of the big empty sky. “I’m going
the same way.”

Suguru blinked for a moment before his resolve hardened. “Come with you?” He repeated
carefully.

“Why not?” Satoru shrugged. “You’re not gonna be able to get yourself a new truck if you
can’t make a couple grand off this storm footage, right? Besides, I’d feel a little bad if I left
you out here all alone.”

Geto folded his arms, one eyebrow quirked, head tilted just slightly. “And what happened to
last time being the last time?” He asked.

Gojo waved his hand dismissively. “That was different. This is business. A good colleague
gives someone a hand when he can, right?”

Suguru visibly hesitated. There was a familiar sort of look in his eye as he scanned Satoru up
and down, sized him up, tried to slip past his outer shell and peer into his inner motives. It
was the same look Suguru used to give him when he was on driving duty during chases and
Satoru was punching the gas too hard, gripping the wheel too loosely, smiling just a bit too
much to be considered safe. Gojo knew by those eyes that Geto understood he was not
trapped— not really, anyway— and he had every chance in the world to escape. The only
issue with that would be admitting he was wrong for the position he took during the Waffle
House confrontation, the position of smugness, of assurance, of knowing that if he only
pushed hard enough he would have Satoru licking sugar from his fingertips and blinking up
at him from the pillow with teary eyes—

“Come on,” Satoru encouraged. “You might need me more than you think you will.”

And at that, Suguru showed a teething grin. “Alright. One last mission.”

With a slight twinge of guilt swirling in his stomach like a mesocyclone, Satoru matched his
smile.

“One last mission.”

***
It always ends up this way, doesn’t it?

It always ends up with Satoru pushed against a wall, pinned either by his shoulders or his
hips, the anchors of his body in the palms of Suguru’s hands and tender spots pressed into
soft flesh. It always ends with Suguru’s mouth against his skin, never staying in one place,
traveling from lips to neck to clavicle, leaving a trail of dental indents and broken blood
vessels and strings of saliva. It always ends up with Satoru’s hands going rogue and pulling
Suguru’s shirt off over his head, undoing his hair tie to run his fingers through that inky soft
spill, brushing up and down the hard lines of his body and letting muscle memory fill in the
rest. It always ends up with one of them on their knees. This time, it was Suguru.

He had told Satoru once that he needed to be felt more than he needed to be touched. In any
way that could be considered contact— of the skin, of the eyes, of the spirit— he only
wanted his presence to land somewhere, to be understood in some way, no matter how small.
Satoru had always been his perfect sounding board, his perfect touchpad, his pure white
canvas upon which he could paint the story of his passions in nail scrapings and raised lines
and kisses and bite marks. That day, in mid-afternoon with the hotel curtains drawn and the
door deadbolted and Satoru’s pants around his ankles, he made himself open once again, and
Suguru was running his hands up and down the length of Satoru’s thighs and stomach, and
Satoru— God forgive him— could only stand there writhing against the wall.

It wasn’t that Gojo was selfish. It wasn’t that he had nothing to give. It was just that Geto was
a natural giver, that it pleased him most to give, and every time Satoru allowed himself to be
touched and held and pulled apart at the seams, he gave Geto what he needed— the
opportunity to give more, and more, and more.

Satoru did not realize just how touch starved he had been. He never did, until he was right in
the middle of things and feeling himself start to unravel only a few moments in. Every small
noise Suguru made only worsened things, every struggling exhale against his most sensitive
skin like a small torture, like a suffering he couldn’t stand. He could feel every small
sensation, every tiny collapsing of the soul, the way those lip piercings felt against his body
as he was taken by mouth, the way those painted nails felt pressing crescent moon indents
into the flesh of his hips and ass, the way the muscles of the throat contracted involuntarily.

He could feel himself crumbling with his resolve, his knees going weak, his hands going
AWOL and finding their way to a soft grip at either side of Suguru’s head, then remembering
himself and bracing against the wall behind him. He couldn’t stop the sounds coming from
his mouth, couldn’t make himself stop shaking, and Suguru must have known he was getting
close because he pulled away at just the worst moment to catch his breath and stare up at
him. Satoru could not bring himself to meet his eyes and instead turned his gaze to the
ceiling, heaving pained breaths, frustration growing in his heart like kudzu grows along a
chainlink fence.

“You know I’ve missed you,” Geto told him, breathing heavily, unnaturally, stroking him.

“You’re killing me,” Gojo groaned, and he wasn’t exactly talking about their current
situation. Suguru laughed anyway.
Another vicious shudder rolled through Satoru’s body as he was licked, Suguru’s piercings
dragging against hypersensitive skin. A broken moan escaped Satoru before he could punish
it back down.

“Is this alright?” Suguru murmured, but he didn’t need to ask. His answer was obvious,
evident in the way one of Satoru’s hands mindlessly swept through his hair to push him a
little closer to his body again, a little closer to what he really needed.

“Please,” Satoru breathed back, more of a whine than anything that could be considered
dignified, and he did not know exactly what he was begging for. Suguru seemed to know,
though. That was the issue with Geto— when it came to Gojo, he always seemed to know. If
he wasn’t so unreasonably attractive, if there weren’t twelve years of history between them, if
Satoru wasn’t still undeniably trapped under his spell, it would have been a little disturbing.
“Please,” he whined again, but Suguru didn’t need to hear it.

“Okay, ‘Toru,” he said carefully, into his skin, into the blood beneath. “I’ve got you.”

And he did. He would always get him, in every semantic sense. He would get him on a
personal level, understand him eye to eye. He would get him in the way that he could hold
him, protect him, keep him safe from everything except his true undoing, the one he kept
letting in. He would get him in the sense that there was never any escape, never any way to
claw himself out of love, never any way to fight the inevitable return when their paths
crossed and a tree fell and a storm descended. Suguru would always get him. He had never
once failed to get him.

He would never admit it, but even four years removed from their breakup and the beginning
of their on-again-off-again unhealthy arrangement, Satoru took great pride in knowing he was
the only one to see Suguru for the person he truly was. The Suguru he had met that morning
in the Waffle House— the mean Suguru, the Suguru who knew just how weak Satoru was to
his advances and exactly how to push his buttons, the Suguru with the eternal upper hand—
was not the real Suguru. The polite and country-charming Suguru of his childhood was not
the true Suguru, either.

No, the true Suguru was the one who lovingly carried Satoru to bed and covered him in soft
kisses and sharp teeth, who brushed the hair out of his face and told him how lovely he
looked before pinning him to the mattress and taking him apart, piece by piece, for as long as
it took. The true Suguru could make him come from kisses alone, though he never did,
because that wouldn’t be any fun.

That afternoon, one hand was holding both of Satoru’s arms behind his back, the other on the
mattress for balance, because he knew Satoru liked it that way. He knew he liked to be made
to feel small yet worshipped, used yet adored, needy yet desperately needed. He knew he
liked to be asked what he wanted while Suguru was actively giving it to him. He liked the
nipping at his shoulder and the groaning in his ear and the way Suguru felt inside him. He
liked that he could tell when Satoru got close, how he’d kiss his neck and hold him through
the initial waves and the aftershocks, how he’d whisper against his ear that he sounded so
pretty when he came, that he ought to let him hear that sound some more. He liked that when
Suguru finished, he finished inside.
He liked the way Suguru kissed him afterward. He liked the sweet things he said. It was like
make-believe.

“You felt so good, sweetheart,” Suguru murmured into his hair, cradling him against his chest
and dragging his fingertips in soothing circles over the skin of Satoru’s back. “You always
take it so well, ‘Toru. You’re perfect.”

Satoru made a humming noise against his skin and closed his eyes. He knew Suguru meant it,
but it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“You need me to get you anything? Some water? A towel?”

Satoru shook his head and held on a little tighter.

“Okay, I understand. I’ll stay here as long as you need me, alright?”

A kiss pressed to his sweaty forehead and Suguru lovingly stroked his hair. Satoru could not
find the words to tell him that he needed him to stay indefinitely, inevitably, forever and ever,
amen. He could not figure out how to tell him that he did not need to be offered anything but
arms, but safety, but holding. He did not know how to say that he needed him to need him,
wanted him to want him, that all he wanted was to hear I love you whispered to him one more
time, even if it wasn’t true anymore.

But Suguru would never give that to him. Maybe he didn’t deserve it.

He fell asleep in his arms, and he couldn’t be blamed for doing so, either— he was well past
exhausted before Geto even walked into the Waffle House and ruined his day. He slept for
hours— sleepless dreams, dreamless sleep, he couldn’t really tell— but when he woke up he
was well rested and his body was sore and tender and the sun outside the drawn curtains was
sinking sleepily down the horizon, and Suguru was asleep beside him.

Mentally, he kicked himself.

Number one— he had just ruined his sleep schedule and effectively made himself nocturnal.
His circadian clock was in shambles already from the two days of straight driving south, then
west, guzzling shitty energy drinks and pulling over every 30 minutes to reapply his eye
drops, but now it would take considerable effort to break himself out of the cycle he found
himself in.
He would have to stay up all night, and worse, he would have to stay awake throughout the
next day and struggle against the exhaustion that would slowly seep into him like ink into
paper, like blood into fabric. He was going to be tired tomorrow.

Number two— Suguru was still there.

He hadn’t vanished like he was wont to do. He hadn’t gathered his things and crept silently
away once Satoru’s guard was lowered and his consciousness was extinguished. He hadn’t
disappeared like he always did and left Gojo to pick up the pieces in his absence. He was still
there— still right there, still beside him— sleeping on his stomach with his arms folded under
the pillow at his head, snoring quietly with his back rising and falling, only a thin sheet
covering him as he’d neatly bunched the comforter around Satoru without his knowledge. His
hair was still down, spilling out in rivers over his shoulder and back, long silken strands and
gentle beauty in how his vulnerability showed itself. There were raised red marks where
Satoru had clawed him, signs of ache on the defining lines of his muscles, signs of sunlight
beneath his skin. His summer freckles had faded from winter, but they were slowly returning.

It occurred to Satoru that he hadn’t seen him asleep in almost four years at that point. It
occurred to him at the same time that Suguru really had nowhere else to go. Maybe he didn’t
want to be there, asleep in the hotel room with him. Maybe he didn’t want to be in that part of
the south. Maybe it didn’t matter.

In his mind, Satoru knew he should just leave things be, but he had a fatal character flaw, and
that flaw was greed. He was greedy in what he wanted to take, what he wanted to know, what
he wanted to discover. He was greedy with his life when he chased storms, when he drove
directly toward them instead of parallel, insisting that he could get a better data set or a better
picture or a better experience by reducing the distance between himself and certain death. He
was greedy when he gave in to Suguru’s achings and gave him access to his body, allowing
himself to be loved from a pedestal and covered in unequivocal adoration. And that night, he
was greedy with what he wanted to see, and what he wanted to see most of all was the
sprawling alien mark covering the expanse of Suguru’s back, the one he was certain only he
had been permitted to touch.

Carefully at first, then all at once, he drew back the sheet and uncovered the scar.

On the night he got it, it had been different. He still had a picture of it somewhere saved on
his computer. He had seen it much in this way, with Suguru lying asleep on his stomach in
the hospital bed and the back of his paper-thin gown open, his whole body still trembling
with the fresh new wound that had roared through him at the legs and come crawling up his
spine. The doctors called him lucky— incredibly lucky— but he didn’t look lucky. He looked
injured. Even with the sterile fluorescent overhead lights dimmed and the glow from the
many monitoring machines he was hooked up to casting reverse shadows over his still body,
Satoru still could not tear his eyes away from the pattern stretching strange tendrils up the
skin of his posterior and branching out like a terrible poison.

Professionals called it a Lichtenberg figure. Survivors called it a souvenir. It was a long,

sprawling, fernlike drawing made from where blood vessels and capillaries had exploded
under his skin with the force of the electric charge flowing through when the lightning struck
him. That was what the experts said, anyway. Satoru had seen them before, of course, but
only in textbooks and the autopsy photographs Shoko was able to gain access to in her
medical research, direct-strike corpses with their blood gone blue and deoxygenated under
yellowing skin, the pattern even more stark and startling. They were ugly, strange, stomach-
twisting in the human brain’s evolutionary response to avert itself from anything
unmistakably human yet undeniably wrong.

On Suguru, it was beautiful.

Satoru couldn’t touch it in the hospital— Suguru was still expected to be suffering from
nerve damage, and any unwarranted contact with the damaged area might cause further
injury. Shoko had said that it would probably be fine, but Satoru should follow the doctors’
instructions, anyway, and so he did. Still, he knew he would not be able to sleep that night,
and not for many nights after, but he thought that if he could touch it in some small way, he
might find rest in those foreign lines trailing up and down the length of his spine.

Satoru could not help himself but connect dots in his head as he stared, as he made the only
contact he could with his eyes alone, sitting in the plastic chair beside the ER ward cot while
they waited for an open bed in the ICU and for Suguru’s parents to make the drive north from
their home, assuming they even got the call. Satoru could not help but see in the featherlike
designs a consistency with nature, the golden ratio religious zealots and schizophrenics found
everywhere, the way reality would bend itself into familiar shapes until everything—
everything— looked the same. Energy, concentrated in heaven above and returned to earth in
a killing bolt, was no different.

Lightning was peculiar in that way.

Some victims got them, and some didn’t. Some patterns lasted for hours, some remained
under the skin for weeks or months. Unless there was more extensive damage to the
underlying tissues and the burn pattern itself solidified in much the same path that the strike
itself took, they were rarely permanent. As lovely as they were, as morbidly interesting and
strange they looked on his sleeping lover, Satoru could only hope that one day they might
fade. He could only hope that there would be no permanent damage, no lasting trauma.

He knew from the young body in the morgue at the basement of the hospital four floors
below them that he was hoping in vain.

Satoru snapped out of his memories when he realized that Suguru had woken up and was
staring at him, eyes half-lidded, sleepy in the darkness. He was smiling softly.

“Sorry,” Gojo mumbled, withdrawing his hand.

“S’alright,” Geto yawned. “I don’t mind.”

Satoru hesitated before letting his hand brush up over the length of the scar again. A slight
relaxation in Suguru’s muscles and he readjusted himself to lift his head from the pillow,
keeping honeyed eyes trained on the one touching him in the dim light.

“I’ve been trying to think of a tattoo to cover it up,” Suguru said. “I was thinking about a tree,
but that seemed too cliche. You have any ideas?”

“Don’t cover it up,” Satoru said.

A small laugh. “You like it that much, huh?”

“Am I not supposed to?”

“I didn’t say that.” Suguru was still smiling, lips curling around his words, piercings glinting
every now and then in reflected light from the window. “It’s cute. You’re cute.”

“I’m too old for that,” Satoru shook his head, and Suguru laughed a little more.
“You’ll be cute when you’re 90.”

“Well, all 90 year olds are cute, to some degree,” Gojo reasoned. “I’m more worried about
being cute when I’m 60.”

“Come find me when you’re 60, and I’ll tell you if you’re still cute. Twenty bucks says you
are.”

And a way of sadness washed over Satoru’s heart, and Suguru noticed, and a deep silence fell
over them again.

It always ends up this way, doesn’t it?

It always ends when they remember who they really are, who they’re supposed to be, who
they’re supposed to be to one another. It always ends when they get a little too close— closer
than sex ever could— and found themselves uncomfortable in the lack of a shield to hide
behind. It always ended when one scared the other away, when one felt his belly twist at the
remembrance of what love used to feel like, when their nakedness became apparent in
something beyond just the flesh. It always ended when one left, and if one of them didn’t
leave in time, it would end when one began to cry.

Satoru did not cry that night, though some small part of him may have wanted to. Suguru did
not run away, though he would have if he had the means to do so. That night, there was
nowhere to run, no shoulder to cry on. That night, it was just the setting sun and the falling
barometric pressure and the Lichtenberg figures lining Suguru’s skin. That night, it was just
them.

“You okay, ‘Toru?”

“I’m okay.”

One hand— calloused and hard, yet as gentle as gentle could be— snaked up from below the
sheets to caress Gojo at the knee, taking note of the way he softened into it rather than
flinching. Carefully, Geto rolled onto his side and opened his arms.

“Come here.”

Satoru resigned himself to sleep against that skin again. He would deal with the
consequences after the storm.
 Heat Lightning
Chapter Summary

Heat lightning (noun) . ˈhētˌlītniŋ.

: vivid and extensive flashes of electric light without thunder seen near the horizon,
especially at the close of a hot day and ascribed to far-off lightning reflected by high
clouds.

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

4:48 a.m. Early March. Dr. Gojo’s office. Six weeks before the storm.

Satoru woke with a horrible jolt when Ieiri slammed two palms down on his desk, at either
side of his head. He would have screamed, were it not for the fact that his mouth was semi-
glued shut by dried drool and saliva on his lips. He blinked miserably and tried to adjust his
crooked glasses, his office still shrouded in darkness, the sun not yet risen.

“Shoko?” He squeaked, his voice still strange and uneven from ill use, rubbing his eyes and
brushing hair out of his face as his heart rate spike subsided. “What the hell?”

“This is an intervention,” the woman informed him quite sternly, sparing no regard for the
scare she had given him seconds before.

Satoru blinked a few more times, then peered behind her shadow, seeing nothing. “You’re the
only one here,” he said.

“That should tell you something about how badly you need this intervention, if you only have
one friend willing to show up,” she said, all but snapping at him, crossing back to the
doorway to flicker on the overhead lights. Satoru hissed like a vampire and recoiled at the
sterile fluorescence flooding the room. “Enough of this. It’s been four years. You need to
move on.”

“What are you talking about?” Satoru whined, sinking back down into the cradle made by his
arms, hiding his face. He did not need to be told what Ieiri’s point was.

He was a disaster. A stranger who had never spoken to him could tell by first glance, by just
one look around his office and at his appearance. He had worn the same button-down and
slacks for the past five days, his hair so oily that it seemed more gray that pure-white, his
mouth sour with coffee and energy drinks and his fingertips trembling from low blood sugar,
his eyes encircled by dark coloration that resembled bruising. His office was barely usable,
covered in haphazard piles of books and papers and overstuffed binders, the rest of the floor
covered with empty coffee cups and candy bar wrappers. The whiteboard spreading across
his eastern wall was entirely unintelligible, filled with incoherent scribblings and poorly
drawn diagrams and angry scratchings-out in dry erase marker. It looked like something a
schizophrenic in a movie might create, like something that would only make sense to an
insane man. He had torn down a poster— something an old student had given him— and left
it to hang by one corner. If Yaga saw it, he would threaten disciplinary action.

Shoko rapped her knuckles on his desk beside his head, and he snapped upright again. “Wake
up,” she demanded. “We’re having this conversation.”

Satoru squinted at the watch on his wrist. “What are you even doing here? You aren’t
supposed to be able to get in the building until—“

“I have my methods,” she told him, narrowing brown eyes and beginning to straighten up a
messy pile of papers. “You aren’t supposed to live in your office.”

“I’m not living in my office. I’m just busy.”

“Too busy to brush your teeth and take a shower?”

“Are you trying to be my mom?” He couldn’t help but snap at her. “You’re not doing a good
impression.”

“I’m trying to get you out of that chair before your skin melts into it,” she retorted. “This is
getting out of hand, Gojo. You’re not well.”

“I’m fine.”

“You haven’t been to your own classes in over a week,” Ieiri scolded, and took careful note
of the way Satoru’s cheek grew an indent where he chewed it from the inside. “You’ve been
making that poor TA handle all your lectures.”

“Yuta loves teaching!” Satoru protested. “He’s a great teacher! He’s probably better than I
am.”

“It isn’t Yuta’s job to teach, it’s yours,” she reminded him. “Have you taken a look at your
RateMyProfessor page? People take this class because they want to learn from the highly
respected and popular Dr. Satoru Gojo. They’re paying to learn from you.”

“Are you trying to guilt trip me?” Satoru scoffed. “It’s not going to work.”

“I was trying flattery, but I forget how much of an idiot you are,” she rolled her eyes,
continuing to straighten up his desk. “You can’t keep letting this unhealthy attachment you
have dictate every aspect of your life. It’s not just you who suffers the consequences, you
know.”

Satoru’s cheeks flushed red. “How did you know that Suguru—“

“It’s obvious.”
Again, Satoru refused to meet her eyes. One side of his face came to rest on the heel of his
palm, his eyes dripping down to the center of his desk, down to the patch of raw wood where
he scratched and scratched the protective coating away, his nervous tic that he insisted helped
him focus but really only destroyed his nails. He had nothing to say for himself. Those days,
he rarely did.

“How did it happen this time?” Ieiri asked, gathering up discarded coffee cups and carrying
them in an armload to the little garbage can by the door.

“He was passing through on his way to Florida,” Satoru admitted, his voice mumbly and
reluctant. “There was a freak storm down by the Everglades, some flooding, some wildlife
encounters. He asked if he could see me.”

“And you said yes?”

“I’m not proud of it.”

“You let him into your house?”

“Am I being interrogated?” Satoru remembered his indignance and looked up. “I want a
lawyer. I know my rights.”

“This pattern is killing you,” Ieiri shook her head. “Like, I get the whole ‘tortured genius’
thing, but I think it was Immanuel Kant who said the definition of insanity is doing the same
thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

“That was Einstein, and he was an idiot.”

“You do this every single time, Gojo,” Shoko said, her tone of frustration dipping into
something more akin to reluctant sympathy, sinking down against the desk and tilting her
head to examine him a little closer. “Every time you see him, you throw yourself into your
work and start neglecting everything else. You start cancelling classes, ignoring your friends
and colleagues and sleeping in your office—“

“It’s easier if I just sleep here,” Satoru excused, becoming a little impatient with the lecture,
rubbing the inner corners of his eyes with his forefinger and thumb. “Sometimes I wake up
and I have a new idea about the research or a better way to word a sentence, and if I’m sitting
right here at my desk, then I—“

“Do you really think you’re fooling me?” Ieiri cut him off again. “It’s easier for you to sleep
in your office because if you went home, you’d have to be reminded that he isn’t there
anymore.”

Satoru went quiet. His eyes flickered with anger, but it was short-lived, like the initial spark
of a candle flame roaring upward before softening back down into a quiet glow, a sad glow.
He looked aside. “You talk about him like he’s dead.”

Shoko sighed and pushed herself up from the table. “He should at least be dead to you.”
“You’re crossing a line,” he told her, but his tone wasn’t intimidating. He let his head fall
back down onto the desk again. “This isn’t your business.”

“You’re my friend. He was my friend, too. He’s gone, and now I’m looking out for you.”

“I don’t want your help.”

“You need it.”

“No, I don’t.”

Ieiri sighed hard and cast her gaze aside. Satoru stole a long look at her in the safety away
from her eyes, and quickly wished he hadn’t. It seemed that every time he looked at that
woman these days— the woman who drove seven hours in the middle of the night to meet
him at the hospital after Geto was struck by lightning, the woman who spent long hours in the
student clinic making phone calls and referring patients and all but badgering specialists to
take a closer look at what appeared to be minor issues, the woman who always seemed to
have her hands full, either with a medical chart or a beer— he only saw his former close
friend and study partner, that young girl she had once been. Her hair had gotten longer and
her eyes were tired and she wore sweaters and long skirts and took naps on her lunch break,
but she was still that same girl, still that same Shoko Ieiri.

He couldn’t really look that girl in the eyes anymore. Not when he was like this.

“I miss him, too, you know,” she said, her voice quieter, more forgiving. Her fingertips
drummed softly against the desk, soft as she tried to understand him. “I can’t say I know how
you feel, but it’s not just you who suffered when he left.”

“Stop talking about him like he’s dead,” Satoru mumbled, not bothering to fix his glasses as
they slid down the bridge of his nose. “It pisses me off.”

“You know what I mean.”

There was a heavy, awkward pause between them. Ieiri let her sleepy gaze wander from wall
to wall, from the window behind Satoru’s head to the overused whiteboard, critical and
considering. Gojo did not watch her as she did. There would be no point to it, no point to any
of this to begin with. Things would not change. Eventually, he knew, Shoko would get sick of
him and his immaturity and his inability to grow as a person, and just like Suguru she would
leave him, and just like that he would be all alone again. He hoped it would happen sooner
rather than later.

“Have you thought about getting back out there?” Ieiri asked, and Satoru visibly bristled at
the suggestion.

“I am not going to date anyone,” he said sternly, a bit of a bite to his voice. “I don’t care how
long it’s been. I’m not ready.”

“That’s not what I meant,” the woman rolled her eyes and pushed herself off her desk,
wandering behind him toward the window. It was still dark outside, streetlamps and clouds
blotting out starlight, but in the treeline behind the parking lot she could see the opening of
the sky beyond the passing mist of early morning. “I meant out there. Like, stormchasing.”

Satoru blinked at her. “Are you joking?”

“I read the weather report, too, you know,” she said. “Aren’t they saying that the storm
season this year is supposed to be more intense or something?”

“It’s a possibility,” Satoru muttered. “Climate change and all that. NOAA is predicting some
more severe thunderstorm activity this year.”

“Why don’t you go out and see one?” She suggested. “You know, touch grass, like the kids
say.”

Satoru laughed a small, broken laugh. “Wasn’t it you who told me I lacked the fundamental
risk aversion to keep myself alive out there?”

“I stand by my analysis,” she yawned, “but this isn’t exactly living, is it?”

Satoru had no answer for that.

“It’s just a suggestion,” Ieiri said, crossing back toward the door, slipping hands into the
pockets of her long wool skirt. “You don’t have to take my advice. I was just thinking about
those chases you and Geto took me on, and how when you were all soaked from the
thunderstorm and running from hail, you were the happiest I’ve ever seen you. I just thought
it might help you remember the Gojo we all know.”

A lump crawled its way into Satoru’s throat. He swallowed it back down with considerable
effort and refused to meet her eyes.

“Again, just a thought,” Ieiri waved her hand— a tiny mercy. “I’ve got to go down to the lab.
Early morning meeting with a mentee of mine.”

“Right,” Satoru said, sitting up a little straighter and rubbing his forehead. “I’ll see you
around.”

“Take a damn shower,” she reminded him, “and go to your classes today. Relieve that poor
kid of duty. If you don’t, I’m ratting you out to Yaga for TA abuse.”

“Alright, alright. I will.”

“Good talk. Good intervention,” Shoko nodded, pulling the door open. Halfway through, she
looked back. “And Gojo?”

“Yes?”

She smiled at him, her eyes drawing closed, and for just a moment or so she looked as young
as she did their first year of undergrad. “Don’t be a stranger. My door is always open if you
want to hang around.”
Satoru swallowed the lump in his throat again and nodded at her. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m
lucky to have you.”

A little flash of teeth before she left, intentionally leaving the door open so he’d have to stand
up and shut it. He sighed a little at himself, at the sinking feeling in his chest, at the weakness
and muscle aches in his legs. He knew she was right— she always was, it seemed— and he
wished she wasn’t. He wished she didn’t give a damn about him, and for the life of him, he
couldn’t understand why she did. It wasn’t like he had done anything in the past four years
but pester her, ignore her, show up weeping at her doorstep in the middle of the night and ask
to sleep on her couch because he couldn’t bear to stay in his own home anymore. He had
been nothing but a burden, nothing but an embarrassment, nothing but a big crybaby who
was pushing thirty and still ruining himself over his childhood sweetheart turned bitter ex.
Gun to his head, he would not be able to explain or reason out why she continued to bother
with him, but she did. No matter how much he might try to shut the world out, Ieiri found her
way in.

His eyes found the window, found the inky black sky beyond the glow of lamplight. It was
hard to tell in the darkness, but those clouds were altostratus, and they were moving quite
slowly along the atmosphere. The weather report promised light rain the afternoon, an early
spring shower, something gentle and kind and necessary, something sure to bring flowers in
later months. He could not help looking for the hooks in the clouds, the defining features,
squinting through his glasses with bleary eyes and a weary heart. Ieiri’s words echoed in his
head.

I was just thinking about those chases you and Geto took me on, and how when you were all
soaked from the thunderstorm and running from hail, you were the happiest I’ve ever seen
you. I just thought it might help you remember the Gojo we all know.

That kind of joy— childish, whimsical, not yet struck by loss or a bolt of lightning or
reminded of the mortality of all things— seemed so far away, so unattainable. She was only
trying to help, but by her own words, she couldn’t ever understand. He could chase storms to
the ends of the earth, he could tear the world into pieces looking for that kind of a severe
weather event, but none of it would ever measure up to that rain-soaked, hail-beaten, heart-
exploding kind of joy he felt all those years ago. What she did not understand— what she
couldn’t understand— was that the joy was possible because Suguru was there, too, laughing
at his side, pulling him by the hands.

He tried to put it out of his mind as he messaged Okkotsu.

Hey Yuta :D change of plans. I’ll be doing the lecture today, so you can have the day off!!

The kid— bless his little heart— responded within minutes, despite it being around five in
the morning.

Are you sure, Dr. Gojo? You can rest some more if you still aren’t feeling well, I really don’t
mind taking care of things.

I appreciate the concern but it’s no worries!! And how many times do I have to tell you to call
me Satoru??
Sorry. If you’re certain it’s alright, I’ll skip the 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. lectures, but I’ll still be
present for the 3:15. Please let me know if you change your mind!

OK see u soon!! Thank u for all your hard work best TA everrrr!!!

[ Yuta Okkotsu heart reacted to a message ]

Satoru sighed hard as the guilt swallowed him up at the stomach again. Ieiri was right, as
usual. That kid looked at him like he hung the stars. He was brilliant in his own right— much
brighter than Satoru had been at his age, with a much better work ethic and a maturity that
extended beyond his years— but it seemed that Yuta Okkotsu had not yet learned how to say
no to the people he loved and admired, and it seemed that Satoru Gojo (however
unconsciously) had taken advantage of that fact when he decided to hole up in his office for a
week straight.

He found it necessary to remind himself that Yuta was not his personal assistant, but that he
was a teaching assistant, a grad student with his own research to conduct and papers to write
outside of conducting Satoru’s classes on his behalf. Even though he had directly requested
mentorship under Gojo— who despite being a bit of a prodigy and somewhat of a local
celebrity in his field and on campus was not yet even a full-fledged professor— he was still a
student, and it was Gojo’s job as an instructor to look out for his best interests.

Someday, he knew, that kid would surpass him and go on to become one of the greatest
minds in their field. Someday, he would advance well beyond his current station, and when
he looked back, Satoru did not want his memory to be of a lazy, sloppy lecturer who could
hardly be bothered to show up to class, much less offer the mentorship he was required to
give by nature of his position.

Satoru sighed. Ieiri was right. He would need to buy the kid dinner or something, or at the
very least, he would have to write him a damn good recommendation letter.

His guilt sat in his stomach all day long, all through the classes he struggled through. His
8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. were of a much higher level than anything else he taught— his
Atmospheric Dynamics lecture, with the lab portion run entirely by Okkotsu as part of his
program— but his 3:15 p.m. block was a much simpler one, one he only taught as a sort of
favor to another professor he had lost a bet with the previous semester— his Intro to Earth
Processes, a 300-seater taught in a big ugly lecture hall in one of the newer buildings on
campus.

It was an easier class, not just because it was an entry level course, but also because it was a
big crowd where he didn’t feel as pressured to remember all of his students’ names, and he
found it easier to be a little looser with the course material and a little more carefree in his
approach to teaching. When he made dumb jokes, there would be a large resounding groan
from the walls that he delighted in, and when he accidentally cursed in the middle of a
sentence, they would laugh. One of his more attentive students had emailed him a link to an
instagram page with the handle @WhatsDrGojoWearingToday, which exclusively posted
pictures of his outfit from what looked to be the third row and captioned each photo with
something along the lines of "he got that shit on tho" and "does he know leaving the house
like this is optional". Satoru would not admit to Ieiri that he had started planning his outfits
exclusively based on the reaction from the many, many followers that anonymous account
had.

That was not the only thing he enjoyed about such a large class, though. He also had it with
quite a few of the kids from the meteorology club, which he was technically the faculty
sponsor of, though he hardly showed up to meetings. Oftentimes, they would come up to his
podium after the lecture concluded to ask questions, which he always enthusiastically
entertained.

That afternoon, just as he was shutting off the projector and chatting absentmindedly with
Yuta, he was thrilled to see one of their ranks— Megumi Fushiguro, the son of one of his
father’s estranged business partners who had somehow ended up in under his wing later on in
life— approaching him after class, with another student at his side. He was a strange looking
kid, with shoulders a little broader than what was normal for his age, and what looked like a
scar at the same spot on both orbital bones. Satoru had noticed him many times, not just
because he looked to be the most attentive student in the room, but also because of his pale
pink head of hair. He looked almost like an alien standing next to Megumi, who could not
have resembled a more perfect nimbostratus cloud— dark and flat and sleepy-looking.

“Ah, Megumi, my favorite freshman!” Satoru beamed, waving him over. “How are you,
kiddo? How’s the club going?”

“I’m a sophomore now,” Fushiguro corrected him with a bland tone, tilting his head in the
direction of the bright pink ray of sunshine at his side. “This is Yuji Itadori. New member. He
asked me to introduce him.”

“It’s nice to meet you!” Itadori’s smile was almost as bright as Gojo’s, with a much more
considerable amount of sincerity behind each flashing tooth.

“Oh, right, Itadori,” Gojo turned his smile. “I’ve seen you around. That hair is hard to miss,
you know. How are you liking the course?”

“I love it,” Yuji said, nodding enthusiastically. “I’m not super good at it, but it’s really
interesting. Yuta makes the confusing stuff easier to understand.”

Okkotsu blushed a bit and laughed, scratching the back of his neck. Gojo gave him a firm pat
on the shoulder, tilting his head with a look of pride. “I keep telling him that he should just
take over teaching the rest of my classes, but apparently he has better things to be doing,” he
teased, then turned back to the boy who looked more and more like an alpenglow the longer
he stood there. “What’s your major, Yuji?”

“Broadcast journalism right now, but I’m trying to switch my concentration to broadcast
meteorology,” he answered brightly.

“Oh, you want to be a weatherman, then?” Satoru laughed.

“Actually, I want to be a stormchaser.”

Satoru blinked, forgetting himself for a moment, then softened back down into a more
relaxed version of himself. “Really? That’s dangerous, you know.”

“I know!” Itadori said. “That’s why I want to do it. Somebody has to, right?”

Gojo felt an uneasiness creep up in his stomach, but he stuffed it back down all the same. “I
worry about you adrenaline junkies,” he smiled. “Megs, where’d you find this guy?”

“He found me,” Fushiguro rolled his eyes. “Saw one of my heat lightning timelapses on
instagram and wouldn’t get out of my DMs about it.”

Satoru leaned back a little more as he laughed again. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Yuji. I’ll
look forward to seeing you in my future classes.”

“I had a question,” Yuji said, sort of suddenly, and Satoru couldn’t help but notice how
Megumi narrowed his eyes at him.

“Sure thing. What’s up?”

Yuji seemed to hesitate. “You, um, you were there when that accident happened, right?” He
asked. “When that girl died?”

Satoru felt his heart sink and his stomach twist. Okkotsu drew in a sharp breath as his eyes
went wide and his face fell. Megumi quickly smacked the back of Itadori’s pink head of hair,
eliciting a yelp and a stumbling backwards. “Jesus Christ, Itadori,” he hissed.

“No, no, it’s okay,” Satoru assured them, forcing a smile, readjusting his glasses and directing
his gaze to the now-wincing Yuji. “I don’t mind being asked about it. Yes, I was there. Her
name was Riko Amanai. She was a junior when I was finishing up my doctoral program.”

Yuji blinked a careful glance between the faces of the two at his side and the one before him,
realizing instantly that he had made a mistake in asking, but now in too deep to back out of it.
“Did you— um, what was it like? Being up close with lightning like that?” He asked, a
nervous tremble in his voice, watching Fushiguro’s glowering expression out of the corner of
his wide brown eyes.

Satoru thought for a second. “Well, it’s a little hard to remember. It was almost five years
ago, after all. But I can confidently say it was the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. I was so
focused on the sound that I didn’t realize anyone had gotten hurt at first.”

“Was it, like, instant?”

“Yuji,” Fushiguro snapped, one hand coming up to place a deathgrip on his shoulder, but
again Satoru stopped him.

“Megs, it’s okay, really,” he laughed awkwardly, waving his hands, leaning back a little on
the desk. “It’s important to talk about these things. Cautionary tales save lives. If Yuji here
wants to go out and chase storms, I might as well give him a lecture.”
Yuta spoke up, worried eyes switching between the kid and the teacher, tilting his head. “Dr.
Gojo, I can tell him if you don’t want—“

“The story’s out there, anyway, Okkotsu,” he cut him off, still smiling, but cracks were
evident to a trained eye such as his TA’s. “It was my mistake that got us in that situation, after
all. If he wants to know the details, he should hear them from me.” He turned back to Yuji.
“What exactly have you heard?”

Yuji looked ashamed of himself. “Well, um, I just heard some people saying that you were
out storm chasing with another TA and a younger student, and both of them got struck by
lightning and that girl— I mean, Amanai— died because of it, and the other TA almost did.”

“You’re sort of correct,” Satoru said. “The other person wasn’t a TA, he was my— I mean, he
was just a close friend who did nature photography. Riko Amanai was a student of my
mentor’s, and she really wanted to be on a stormchasing team when she graduated. She was
certainly bright enough to— NOAA or the NWS would have been lucky to have her. We
were monitoring a supercell moving across Arkansas over spring break, and we were
supposed to stay a safe distance away from it, but I was reckless and wanted to get closer.
That was my first mistake. Mistake number two was getting out of the car. My friend, the
photographer— his name was Geto— he wanted to get some clearer shots, and Riko didn’t
want to be left out. Mistake number three was letting them out of my sight. I was a good 100
feet away from them when it happened. That probably saved my life, to be honest.”

Yuji blinked at him, mouth slightly open, looking conflicted as to whether or not he should
ask a follow up question. Gojo filled him in before he had a chance to decide against it.

“It was a direct lightning strike that got her,” he continued, his voice even and calm, “which
is very rare. The ground was wet already, so it was a great conductor for electricity, and
because she wasn’t wearing the proper shoes, the charge passed right through her into the
earth and spread out like a big puddle. Geto was right next to her when it happened, and if he
hadn’t been wearing his rubber-soled boots, he might have been killed, too. The charge ended
up passing through one leg, traveling up his pelvis and spine, and then exiting through his
other foot— something called step potential. He was paralyzed in his left leg for a few
months, but he’s alright now, except for a slight limp. Riko died instantly. 30 minutes of chest
compressions couldn’t bring her back.”

“I’m— I’m sorry for your loss,” Itadori forced out, his voice uneven and unsure.

“It’s alright,” Gojo smiled. “Really. I appreciate you asking about it, Itadori. It was my fault,
so it’s important that I tell people about it and try to prevent them from making the same
mistakes I did.”

Yuta seemed to flinch at the suggestion. “Dr. Gojo, it wasn’t your—“

“It was,” Satoru said firmly, a tone he rarely took with his mentee. He let his eyes flash just a
bit, a sincerity to them that looked almost alien to the students, who had only ever known the
cheerful, playful, young Dr. Gojo who only ever wanted to hold classes outside on sunny
days. “Lightning is an unpredictable thing, sure, but that’s why you have to be extra careful
around it. Riko wasn’t my student, technically, but as the person with the most experience in
the group, it was my job to keep her safe. I was still young, but I was old enough to know the
risk and dangers and I didn’t do my job. If I had kept us a safe distance away from the storm,
if I had made her stay in the car, if I had kept a closer eye on her, then there’s a high
likelihood that she would be alive and my photographer friend wouldn’t be disabled.”

A beat of silence, as no one knew what to say.

“I’m not trying to discourage you from stormchasing, Itadori,” Gojo said, tilting his head. “I
just want you to be smarter than I was.”

Itadori gave a true smile. It was small, and it was a little nervous, but it was real. Satoru could
tell that the kid had been through some troubles of his own just by the way his eyelids
crinkled when he closed them, just by the way his brows positioned themselves when he
listened. He was young, he was innocent, but he was not untouched by loss, and he
understood. “Thank you for telling me,” he said, and he meant it. “Sorry for being so
invasive. I don’t really think before I speak sometimes.”

“Like I said, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about Riko,” Gojo returned.

“Do you still stormchase?”

Satoru blinked. Yuta glanced at him.

“I haven’t in a long while,” he said, “but I’m planning on a trip sometime soon. There are
some big systems expected to form out west this year.”

“Cool!” Yuji beamed. The kid was obviously very easily amused. “Getting back on the
horse!”

Gojo couldn’t help but laugh. “Right on.”

He laughed again as he watched him leave, half-dragged by Fushiguro, being scolded heavily
in a whispery tone while he waved an enthusiastic goodbye. Yuta looked on with mild
concern, but gave his usual upturned-eyebrow smile.

“I’m sorry about that, Dr. Gojo,” Okkotsu sighed as the room became empty with their
absence. “I like that Itadori kid, but he’s a little… well, I guess he’s just young.”

“Stop calling me Dr. Gojo or I’ll flunk you,” Satoru scolded playfully. “And not too much on
the youths, Yuta. You’re not much older than him. Besides, I believe in answering all of a
kid’s questions, even if they’re a little invasive. I read that it’s good pedagogic practice.”

“Right,” Yuta nodded, and a long silence followed as he gathered up his papers and pens and
Satoru tapped aimlessly on his desk, clearly lost in thought. “Excuse me, Dr.— I mean,
Satoru?”

“Hm?”

“Are you really going out stormchasing again, or was that kind of a lie?”
Satoru blinked at him for a moment, eyes wide behind the glasses. “You’re a little freaky with
how you read people, you know,” he said. “You a secret psychic or something?”

Okkotsu laughed and scratched his temple. He closed his eyes when he was embarrassed.
“Sorry. It just didn’t sound like you when you said it.”

“It wasn’t totally a lie,” Satoru said, and pushed himself up off the desk with considerable
effort to his achy joints. “I’m seriously considering it.”

“Why the sudden change of heart?”

Satoru paused for a moment. His eyes found the clouds outside the classroom windows, the
light drizzle that the weather report had provided, the dip in barometric pressure felt even
through the walls. “Someone important to me told me I ought to,” he said.

Yuta seemed to smile. “I think you should, then,” he said. “It’s your passion, after all. I don’t
mind handling the lectures while you’re gone.”

Gojo patted his back firmly as he passed on his way to the door. “I lean on you too much as it
is,” he said. “Don’t worry. If I go, I’ll time it properly so you aren’t thrown to the wolves
again. I really appreciate your hard work, Yuta.”

He followed him on their way out of the building, but stopped short at the awning, just before
dry pavement met the rain. For a long while after Okkotsu left, he stared up at weeping
clouds and wondered, wondered, wondered. He wondered for a long while if he was doing
the right thing, if he had ever been doing the right thing. In the clouds swirling above he saw
the faces of those who still cared about him, in the sparkling bits of sediment baked into the
sidewalk he saw the students who looked up to him, and in the lines covering the palms of his
hand and making up his prints, he saw a biological phenomena unique only to him. It was a
soft sort of sadness, a strange sort of squeamishness at the bottom of his stomach, a
misplaced feeling of frustration when he realized how many eyes he had on him at all times.

For a moment or so, he understood why Suguru chose to run away. It took strength to
withstand being loved. It was an uncomfortable thing.

Stormchasing would not save him. He knew that. He could understand why some might think
it would— Yuta was right to call it his passion— but even if he returned to what once made
him feel so alive, it would not erase the past, and it would not bring the ghosts back to life.
His worry was and had always been that he’d never truly chase a storm again, but rather that
he’d end up chasing youth, chasing innocence, chasing freedom. He worried that another
stormchasing excursion would only leave him feeling empty and hollow inside, like an addict
falling just short of another thrill, like a drowning man coming just short of the surface before
succumbing. He worried that he might be hurt again.

But then there was the feeling. The feeling of magnetism, of attraction, of pull, the feeling of
being dragged by a string at the center of his chest out in the sky, into the cell of the storm,
into that which would soak and shake him and make his heart beat rich and deep like too
much aspirin. The feeling of cold water covering the skin, making the clothes stick to his
back, plastering his hair to his face and rendering his glasses unusable. The feeling of the
wind gasping in his ears and thunder roaring from above and the ground shaking and his
shoes sinking into mud. The feeling of being small, being helpless in the face of something
huge and great and terrible and powerful, the feeling of vulnerability clashing with his
invincibility complex in the most profound of ways.

I just thought it might help you remember the Gojo we all know.

He felt the rain hit his skin and he made his decision.

***

11:28 a.m. A cheap room at the Holiday Inn, somewhere in western Alabama. 2 days before
the storm.

Satoru awoke with his a hand on his cheek.

He was pulled from his sleeping memories when the mattress dipped beside him, Suguru’s
weight settling at the hollow of his stomach as he lay on his side, still aching and sensitive
from the night that preceded them. Carefully, as though he were fragile, as though he were
made of glass, he pressed one palm to the side of Satoru’s resting face, thumb stroking him
gently at the cheekbone and ring finger tucked behind his ear. He had a strange look on his
face, one Satoru struggled to recognize after so many years. Something like kindness,
something like velvet.

“Wake up,” he murmured. “The day’s getting on. I let you sleep too long.”

Satoru yawned, rolling over. “What time ’s it?”

“Nearly noon.”

“Nearly noon?” Satoru repeated, shooting upright, the worn muscles in his back and core
seeming to ache less with the instant spike of anxiety that shot though him. “Fuck, we have to
get on the road, I have to get my things together—“

“Relax,” Suguru laughed, head tilting a little to the side. “It’s fine. I checked the radars,
things haven’t progressed much. I got your car packed up. Just brush your teeth and we’ll get
going.”

Satoru squinted at him. “You packed the car?”

Suguru grinned and held up his other hand. Hung around his middle finger, overlapping with
the many rings he wore, was Satoru’s digimon keychain. Housekeys, carkeys, plastic
supermarket coupon barcode, Patamon. Satoru felt his ear twitch.

A strange quiet fell over them as they stared at one another, Suguru dressed and wearing his
boots, hair tied up behind his head, and Satoru still naked and exhausted under the hotel
sheets, red-faced and cautious, like a skittish cat or a spooked horse. It occurred to him that
he had entirely forgotten how to wake up with someone, how to let his guard down when he
was supposed to, how to keep it up when he needed it. He was so used to the instant
arguments with Suguru, the automatic bickering that never felt fun anymore, even when it
started off playful. He was so used to fighting against his heart, suffering against the ache,
trying to train his eyes on the sight of Suguru’s back turning and walking away from him,
trying to make it familiar enough not to hurt anymore.

He was not used to this— the soft smiling face, the crescent moon eyes, the thumb stroking
his cheek as though there were still tears there. He was not used to Suguru still being there
when he woke up. He was not used to Suguru. Not anymore.

It was a strange phenomenon, forgetting what once came naturally. Satoru wondered if that
was how dementia patients felt. It starts small, like the words to your favorite song or the
drive to work, and then it progresses into the vital parts of life like the street you live on and
the pills you’re supposed to take and your own name. It was a terrifying thing, forgetting.
Satoru was terrified to have already forgotten what this— this tenderness, this gentle touch—
had felt like.

He found himself almost entirely confused when Suguru insisted on driving, insisted that
Satoru keep getting his rest. It was another thing he forgot that he’d forgotten, how it felt to
sit shotgun and slump against the passenger side door, skull pressed to the window, soft
vibrations of the road becoming soothing. He knew for a fact how it felt when Suguru would
rest his hand on his knee, a gesture so small and so gentle that it threatened to rip Satoru’s
heart out of his chest and stomp it into the dirt. What had once been simple became difficult,
what had once been commonplace and casual became a risk taken with held breath, what had
once been soothing induced arrhythmia and what had once been unequivocally categorized as
love began to fall in the margins and the in-between spaces of correlation and causation.

They were playing make-believe, but it didn’t matter.

Satoru was a bit beyond frustrated to be reminded that they made a damn good team.

Suguru had always been on his level in terms of intellect and interest. In their undergrad
years, they had a bit of a friendly rivalry, but there was never a clear winner in terms of the
metrics. A differential equations exam? An easy A+ for Satoru. A 4,000 word research paper
on global climate systems and how they affect rural communities in the Midwest? Suguru
had the obvious upper hand. Digitally modeling thermodynamic systems with a finicky
coding language? Satoru ran circles around him. Their capstone project on mesoscale
meteorology? Suguru was almost embarrassed to admit that he’d scored about three points
higher than Satoru when they got their final grades back.

Their differences were stark, but it was their differences that ended up making them such a
promising pair of stormchasers.

Suguru, the brilliant photographer and skilled navigator, could always rely on the risk-taking
and sharp-reflexed Satoru to get him as close to the storm as possible and let him lean his
entire upper body out the window as they pulled speeds upwards of 85 against vicious
sideways winds. Impulsive, impatient Satoru could always count on unflinching, unshakable
Suguru to make the right judgement calls, and he always listened when he was called to slow
down or speed up or hang a hard left or make a u-turn and get the hell out of there. Shoko had
called them yin and yang once, and it was obvious who was who. They were partners in life,
partners in everything they did, and they made a damn good duo. They made a damn good
team.

Even then— even four years removed from their messy breakup and subsequent
‘situationship’, as Yuta liked to call it— their spark was still there, at least when they were on
the road. Even with their places switched, with Satoru riding shotgun and Suguru behind the
wheel, their dynamic found its way back in the small cracks separating their former selves
from the present. They were talking about the current, the constant, about the clouds and the
predicted patterns and the satellite imaging and the data they hadn’t analyzed yet. They were
talking about everything but themselves, everything that couldn’t hurt them because they
hadn’t given it the ability to.

Suguru’s hand came to rest on Satoru’s knee, his thumb moving back and forth, the same
gentleness he had used to lightly cup his face that morning and wake up him.

Satoru rolled his eyes and pushed his hand away. “Come on. Knock it off.”

“I can’t touch you?” Suguru smiled— that sly sort of smile, the one he was wearing when he
ruined Satoru’s breakfast at the Waffle House— and did not move his hand. “You realize that
not even eight hours ago you were asking me to—“

“I remember,” Satoru cut him off with an annoyed expression, one that only egged Suguru on
further. “Let’s just not forget who we are.”

“Who we are?” Suguru repeated. His hand slid upward Satoru’s leg until it was just above his
knee and gave a little squeeze, narrow eyes attentive to the way he blushed at the tips of his
ears.

“Yeah, let’s not forget who we are to each other,” Gojo folded his arms.

“Oh, I see what you’re getting at,” Geto yawned. “Well, if it means anything, you’re still just
Satoru Gojo to me. Still just the rich kid who showed up to my house one summer slacking
off and passing out from heat syncope.”

“Yeah, and you’re just some stupid hick to me.”

That hand slid further up his leg, about midway between his thigh and his groin. “Gave you a
run for your money in college, though, didn’t I?”

Satoru tried not to squirm, tried not to focus on the deepening blood flow from his aortic root
to the femoral arteries. “I’m not gonna say I wasn’t relieved when you chose to pursue your
little camcorder rather than higher education.”

Suguru laughed quietly, easing slowly off the accelerator, the noise on the radio becoming
faint and distant. “I wanted to be a stormchaser, not a Ph.D. candidate. I knew that since I
was little.”
Again, that hand drew closer to Satoru’s inner thigh, where his skin was flush and hot and his
jeans were becoming too tight. Again, the pigment in Satoru’s face deepened.

“I’ve always known what I wanted,” Geto hummed softly.

Gojo bit down on his budding rage and swallowed it. It means nothing, he reminded himself.
I’m a hobby to him. He doesn’t want me— not really, anyway.

“Save it,” Satoru told him sternly, yet he did not push that offending hand away again.
“We’re working, remember? I let you tag along on my chase because I felt sorry for you. Be
professional.”

“Oh, sure. Last night was very professional.”

“Last night was a fluke,” Gojo rolled his eyes. “May God forgive me for my moment of
weakness. I have a soft spot for scumbags.”

Geto laughed, and it was genuine. “You really never change, do you?”

“It’s my fatal flaw— I’m incapable of personal growth. That’s why I keep letting you in.”

Suguru shook his head, smiling. “You’re so cute when you’re frustrated.”

Satoru chewed his cheek and felt himself bloom red, like springtime, like opium. “I’m quite
calm, actually.”

Suguru’s hand finally stopped the slow ascent and instead pressed squarely against Satoru’s
weak point, eliciting a wince and a full-body tensing as he drew in a sharp inhale. “That’s not
what I meant by frustrated,” he said, so soft it could have been a hallucination.

Just then— as if on cue— Satoru’s phone rang. His stomach sank, lower than it already was,
the blood flow diverting from his gut to the center of his chest. He pulled the irritating
vibration from his pocket, and sure enough, the name spread across the screen was the one he
least wanted to see at that moment.

“Hold on, it’s Shoko,” Satoru said, trying to quell the rising fire in his belly, pushing Suguru’s
hand away from where it rested over the tightness in his pants.

“Shoko?” Suguru raised an eyebrow, but did not pressure him further— at least, not
physically. “I haven’t heard from her in forever. How is she?”

“She can’t know I’m with you, so keep your stupid mouth shut,” Satoru told him, conscious
of the continued ringing, conscious of how many he had left before the line auto-
disconnected. “I’m not exactly supposed to be talking to you right now.”

Suguru snorted, but a thin smile crossed his lips. He relented, and the hand on Satoru’s crotch
returned to the steering wheel.

Satoru brought the phone to his ear. “Is this Shoko Ieiri, M.D.?”
“I’m assuming this is Satoru Gojo, Ph.D.,” she yawned on the other end of the line. “You
driving?”

“Mhm. You need something? Is anything on fire?”

“Just checking in on you. I didn’t hear from you for the last three days.”

“Well, I didn’t realize I had to report back to Mission Control every step of the way.”

“Don’t be a dick. I’m just making sure you’re alright,” she said, and her eye roll was almost
visible in the tone of her voice. “You didn’t exactly head out looking your best.”

Suguru glanced at him. Satoru swallowed uncomfortably.

“I’m alright,” he said, his tone reverting to something cool and natural. “How are things back
on campus? Yaga being a pain in the ass?”

“No, I haven’t heard from him… oh, but your TA came by my office. What was his name
again? Yuna?”

“Yuta,” Satoru corrected. “Why? Is he struggling? I’m having another lecturer cover my
classes, so he doesn’t need to run himself ragged trying to be two people at once.”

Ieiri laughed on the other end. “No, he seemed to be handling things well. He was just
worried about you. It was cute, actually.”

Satoru laughed. Suguru smiled. “Worried about me? What a silly kid. He knows I used to do
this for a living, right? I was pretty good at it, too.”

“He basically worships you. You can imagine why he’d be a little scared of his big hero
driving out into a tornado dungeon.”

Suguru laughed quietly at the phrase tornado dungeon, and Satoru lightly smacked his arm
for making any noise at all. “I’ll send him a text once I get where I’m going,” he offered.
“You didn’t say anything mean about his big hero, right?“

“I told him you’re an idiot, but an astonishingly lucky idiot.”

“Come on, Sho, you’ve gotta be a better hype man than that,” Satoru said, and he would have
laughed, but Suguru was retaliating from being smacked by letting his wandering hand return
to Satoru’s leg, where it confidently slid back up his thigh to where it had sat so comfortably
before. A rush of blood south from the head, and Satoru’s ears tinged pink with his cheeks,
and Suguru was looking straight ahead.

“I don’t need to hype you up to a 22 year old boy who already talks about you like you
invented meteorology,” Shoko was yawning again, and by the sounds of heels clicking on the
other end of the line, she was pacing absentmindedly. “So, where are you? I’m guessing
you’ve crossed the Mississippi by now, right?”
Before Gojo had the chance to answer, that offending hand had slid into his upper thigh
region, right below where it needed to be. Satoru shifted slightly, somehow needing it where
he’d fought against it before, and Suguru gave a small squeeze, making him sink right back
down. “Uh— I’m, uh, not there yet,” he stumbled over his words at hot sensation ran through
his legs like electric shocks. “I think it’s— yeah, I think I’m a bit north of Tupelo by now.”

He was terrible at hiding the sudden shift in tone, terrible at lying, and Ieiri was nothing if not
perceptive. “Gojo? You alright?”

And again, before he could answer, Suguru had pressed the heel of his palm into the space
between his legs, and Satoru drew another sharp inhale through his teeth before covering his
mouth to prevent an unwarranted sound from leaving him.

“Hello? Gojo?”

“Right, sorry,” he forced out, eyes flickering over to Suguru, who looked no more interested
in the situation than he had five minutes ago. He didn’t even bother to glance out of the
corner of his eye as he rubbed over Satoru’s jeans. “I’m— uh, I’m just— traffic sucks,” he
decided, trying to contain himself. “I’ve, um, I’ve gotta go.”

“What?”

“Call you later, bye,” he mumbled into the receiver and hung up before she could put in
another word. “What’s your issue?” He demanded breathlessly from Geto, who still had not
stopped touching him. “I was— you can’t just— I’m on the phone—“

“I felt left out of the conversation,” Suguru said, with a bored tone. “Also, I just wanted to
see how well you can fake it. You can’t, by the way.”

“I— know that,” Gojo groaned into his hands, his head drawing backward and his hips
shifting uncomfortably toward the sensation. His seatbelt was suffocating. “That was—
you’re being mean.”

“Mmhm.”

“Knock it off before— before you kill us both.” He was full-on squirming at that point, the
pressure at he center of his groin becoming almost impossible to bear, hypersensitivity
stabbing at the nerve endings of his brain.

“I’m a good driver,” Geto hummed. “Nothing to worry about, sweetheart.”

“It’s— it’s my car, and if you crash it—“

“What?” He grinned. “We’ll get stranded out here? I won’t mind.”

“I’ll kill you,” Satoru hissed, and Suguru laughed, but he backed off anyway.

“Okay, alright,” he said, letting his hand come free of Satoru’s clothed crotch and turned the
radio up a little bit, some classic rock song becoming irritating almost immediately. “I
apologize. I won’t push you if you don’t want me to. I know you only packed a few changes
of clothes.”

Gojo rolled his eyes, catching his breath, the considerable ache between his legs not yet
subsiding. “It wasn’t like I expected to see you. It wasn’t like I expected a tree to fall on your
stupid truck. You deserved it, by the way.”

“I’m sure I did,” Geto hummed, but his facial expression showed otherwise. He looked quite
pleased that his own vehicle had ended up totaled in the middle of nowhere. He looked
pleased with where the road had led him.

A soft silence fell over them— sort of a lull, sort of a relaxation, sort of an exhale. Short
lived.

“Oh, and one more thing, Satoru?”

Gojo looked up, his face still pink, brow still furrowed. Geto had stopped smiling, but he
wasn’t exactly frowning. His face had become somehow soft, somehow malleable, looking
straight ahead at the flat, boring expanse of American land before them, one hand on the
wheel and the other in his lap. “I forgive you for lying earlier,” he said.

Satoru blinked. “Lying about what?”

“I realized it when I was packing up the car this morning,”Suguru said, so bored he might as
well have been yawning. “You didn’t bring any of your equipment with you. No anemometer,
no camera, no two-way radio… hell, you didn’t even bring a notebook. You barely leave the
house without all that stuff.”

Satoru looked away. Suguru stared at him from his periphery, eyes soft at the corners.

“You aren’t out here on a research trip,” Geto continued. “You’re not out here on business.
You’re not gathering data. You just want to chase a storm, don’t you?”

Gojo felt his breath catch in his throat. He said nothing.

Geto didn’t need him to. He knew he was spot on.

“It’s alright,” he smiled again, somewhat reassuring. “I’m not making fun of you. That’s why
I’m out here, too.”

Still, Satoru kept quiet. Still, he kept still.

Suguru brought his offensive hand down to touch him again, but that time, he was innocent.
That time, he only let it find Satoru’s open palm, only let their fingers lace and palms press
together. A tiny shock of static electricity, a tiny zap of something that used to be so tangible
and real, now reduced to a poor imitation of nothingness in a passenger seat on a tired
highway in a tired part of the south.

“I’m lucky to see you again,” Geto told him, and he meant it.
 That was when Gojo finally remembered where he’d felt that static shock before.

Suguru, in a way, was his own form of heat lightning.

He was heat lightning in the sense that heat lightning is not truly heat and is not truly
lightning— at least, not in the way we understand lightning to be. Instead, it’s a reflection of
lightning from clouds too high up to see, too distant to hear. It’s an illusion dancing in
condensation at the end of a hot summer day, when the humidity is choking and sticky and
the skin loses the ability to sweat out the fever. It’s a mirage in heaven, it’s a physical
manifestation of the division separating the power of light from the power of sound, as
thunderclaps can only travel ten miles while lightning can be seen from 100 miles away.
Distant thunderstorms, distant longing, like seeing the smiling face of your once-lover in
train window reflections and billboards and strangers on the street, the brief image flickering
away on the double-take. A fake. A fantasy.

That was what this time with Suguru was to Satoru— a distant reflection of something too far
away to touch, to hear. A trick of the eyes, of the season. Heat lightning.

So when Suguru pressed his hand over the strain in Satoru’s jeans, following that pattern of
movement that had once been so familiar to them, when he let muscle memory and soft
whinings dictate the way he touched him when he wasn’t supposed to, Satoru welcomed it.
He welcomed it when Suguru took his hand from his lap and pressed kisses against the back
of his palm and each of his fingers. He did not protest when Suguru refused to switch places
with him for the next leg of their trip, insisting instead that Satoru should get some more rest,
and he didn’t mind doing his share of the work if he was along for the ride.

He didn’t fight him on it. He didn’t even argue. It wouldn’t matter if he did.

Suguru could look at him like that all he wanted— like nothing had ever happened between
them, like neither one had ever hurt the other— and it would not matter, because it wasn’t
real. None of it was. It was merely a reflection of something far away and unattainable,
something they’d had once and destroyed. It was a ghost in the clouds. It was heat lightning.

Satoru decided to make the most of what he had, even if it was fake.

Chapter End Notes

thank you everyone for your comments!! every AO3 author knows those email notifs
are like crack
 Thaumaturgy
Chapter Summary

Thaumaturgy (noun) . ˈthȯ-mə-ˌtər-jē

: the performance of miracles.

specifically : magic.

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Every Sunday, Suguru cleaned his gun.

It’s important to keep your guns clean, his father had always told him. You should be using it
often, but even if you don’t, keep it clean.

So he kept it clean.

He set up his supplies on the edge of his nightstand, his rags and solvent and cotton swabs
and oil lubricant, and sat cross-legged on his bed as he took the weapon apart, piece by piece,
staining his sheets with soot and grime as he laid it all out beside him. He took careful,
cautious deliberation with each step— applying the solvent and letting it sink in, scrubbing
the chambers and barrel, dripping droplets of oil into the moving parts, running his cloth
along the wooden and steel components with care. The gun was old, a hand-me-down Colt
revolver his father bought in the late 70s, but it belonged to Suguru, and it was Suguru’s job
to clean it. He was meticulous, perfectionistic, as attentive to detail as he had been as a child
when his father would take him out for target practice. He was almost reverent in how he
handled the metal, almost devotional.

When he was done, when he had finished removing carbon buildup from empty chambers
wiped it until it shone in lamplight, he took the single bullet he kept in his bedside drawer
and loaded it. He spun the cylinder a few times, listened to the rhythmic clicking, listened to
the mechanical sound moving from his stained hands. He played absentmindedly with the
hammer, ran his forefinger along the trigger, drew the pad of his thumb back and forth across
the engraved wood handle. He stared at his distorted reflection in the steel. Sometimes he
cocked it. Sometimes he didn’t.

Every Sunday, Suguru cleaned his gun, and then he pressed the barrel to his temple and
waited.

He imagined how it might feel, how it might sound. He imagined if it would be anything like
the loudest noise he had ever heard, that earth-shattering explosion of soundwaves, that rapid
expansion of air molecules bursting all at once with a superheated temperature that even the
surface of the sun itself could not match. He wondered if the gunshot— the crack, the snap,
the opening of his skull— might be anything comparable to that piece of god that went
falling from the sky in a brilliant flash of light and hit that girl in the head.

He wondered if his death might be instantaneous, just as hers was, or if he’d lie there
bleeding and leaking brain matter for a while before his eyes closed.

He supposed it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to kill himself, anyway. He always put it down
after a little while of meditation.

Every Sunday, Suguru thought of Riko.

He liked that girl. He really liked her. She reminded him of his little sisters— all of Nanako’s
loud mouth and shockwave disposition, all of Mimiko’s soft appearance and youthful eyes,
all sunlight after rain and flowers blooming and overconfidence and an inner knowledge that
suggested a purpose much deeper than what undergrad had promised her— and the girl was
nothing if not insistent. She was insistent in her studies, insistent in the meteorology club
meetings, insistent on getting Suguru to teach her how he got his perfect shots of brewing
storms and tornadogenesis, and she was insistent on becoming a stormchaser. After so long of
her insisting, after weeks of her prodding and promising and dropping in and out of Satoru’s
research office where he worked with Suguru part-time, she had started to become less like a
pest and more like a friend.

Geto had started to enjoy their small tutoring sessions when she would come by to harass
Satoru, her assigned TA for the atmospheric dynamics laboratory section she was suffering
through, because she insisted that then-Ph.D. candidate Gojo was not giving her the proper
explanations for the analysis questions she had been docked points on, and Satoru insisted
that she was both ridiculous and illiterate. Often, Suguru would be there to act as a sort of
mediator, translating Satoru’s barely legible handwriting and gently pointing out the integers
Amanai had misinterpreted from her data set, and she would declare that Suguru was a much
better teacher than Satoru was, and Satoru would retort that that was because Suguru was
actually intelligent and not just entitled, and Suguru himself would not be able to hide his
laughter whenever they began to bicker like siblings.

Even if Satoru still found her incredibly obnoxious, Suguru had grown quite fond of her.

It was his idea to bring her on that chase over spring break.

“Dude, no way,” Satoru had groaned when Suguru brought it up. “We are not bringing her
along.”

“You have to admit she’s brilliant,” Suguru had offered, leaning on his shoulder, shuffling
recently developed photographs in his hands— a multi-celled storm he had caught glimpses
of during his recent trip out west. “She’s persistent, too.”

“She’s insistent,” Satoru corrected him. “There’s a difference. And I don’t care how smart she
is. She’s annoying, and she’s too young. She’ll probably start screaming if I get within thirty
miles of a storm cell.”
“You haven’t given her a chance,” Geto scolded playfully. “And aren’t you aiming to become
a professor? You’re supposed to be cultivating young minds.”

“I’m supposed to be grading lab reports right now,” Gojo retorted with a kiss to the cheek,
“but I’m being very rudely distracted. Besides, she’s not even my student, technically.
Conclusion: not my problem.”

“Let her come along, just this once,” Suguru had pressed.

“Uh-uh. Not in my car.”

“Please?” He tried, sliding one hand up the side of Satoru’s face, until his thumb pressed
against the cheekbone. It was a mean thing of him to do, an unfair thing— he knew Satoru
was weak to that hand that held him, to the pad of his thumb. He knew it would get him
whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it, and that afternoon he wanted Satoru to agree to
take Riko with them on their next chase. “Do it for me?” He murmured, his mouth close to
Gojo’s ear.

And Satoru had grumbled, but he ultimately gave in once Suguru promised to repay his
patience with as many episodes of Digimon as he wanted that night, plus a donut from the
campus bakery, plus twenty-five billion kisses to be collected over the course of infinity.
Satoru had also negotiated the stipulation that she would not be riding shotgun and would be
instead imprisoned to the backseat, and she would have to sleep in a hotel room by herself
because he was not sharing a room with a girl, and Suguru had agreed to all his demands with
nips to the ear and hugs from behind, and of course, he was wrong. He had always been
wrong. Riko never should have gotten in the car.

But God, was she fun. God, was she bright. She really was just like his little sisters, and
maybe he had only wanted to bring her because he missed them, or maybe he liked the
frustrated face Satoru would make every time they got to bickering (which was about every
45 minutes), but he had loved having her on their team of two. Satoru would never admit it,
but Suguru knew that he did, too— it was evident in how he teased her, how he acted childish
and stupid, how he began to behave around her how he did with Ieiri and Nanami and
Haibara. It was more than just evident, it was obvious. She was their friend. She had insisted
her way into it.

It was late afternoon when it finally happened, but they wouldn’t have been able to tell,
because the storm was blotting out the sun like a total solar eclipse.

In hindsight, they should have seen it coming. It started out as nothing special— a multi-
celled storm system, sporadic in generation, a long and wide expanse of atmospheric
networking in the skies above— but growing darker and darker with each passing minute,
descending lower and lower over the Great Plains. The wind was warm and soft, the
atmosphere a purplish hue, the animals sinking low and deep into the soil and trees. The local
weather monitors had issued a loaded gun warning. Suguru knew something was off that day
when he woke up with a bad feeling, but he had stuffed it back down, as he had grown used
to doing. He had suffocated it like the swirling supercell they faced began to suffocate out the
light of day.
He couldn’t remember most of it— the lightning strike had stolen most of his memories after
a certain point— but he remembered holding Satoru’s hand in the passenger seat, his right
holding the camera out the window and wrist bracing against the vicious wind, his left
interlaced on his lap. He remembered Riko in the back seat, leaning in the divide between
them and pushing Satoru to speed up, speed up, speed up. He remembered how the
mesocyclone towered like the finger of God coming to brush against the earth, how Gojo’s
van had flown by dozens of cars and trucks pulled over on the side of the highway as the
tornado sirens began to sound, how the multiple vortexes of the low-precipitation supercell
had swirled together like a maypole dance, like a pagan ritual, like a circle of sisters joining
hands in the earth.

He remembered how Riko had all but demanded that Gojo pull the damn car over and let her
climb out to get a closer look at that monster as it descended, how Satoru had given him a
questioning look out of the corner of his eye as if to ask permission, and he remembered how
he’d smiled and agreed to it. He remembered how Riko was pulling on her rubber-lined
raincoat as she scrambled out into the empty, open field to their east, how she’d jumped over
barren crop lines and stomped over empty dirt into a marshy center, laughing all the while.
He remembered following her, watching her practice the photography techniques he had
taught her, bending her knees and relaxing her shoulders and focusing all her energy into the
shot. He remembered smiling at her, smiling at Satoru and giving him a signal to run after the
data he wanted to collect, signing off on their separation.

He remembered watching Gojo get further and further away. He remembered watching him
put his arms out and tilt his head back and let the adrenaline course through his veins like
heroin, like methamphetamine, like heaven. He remembered looking to his left and seeing
Riko only ten feet away, eyes narrow with concentration, her whole body put into the
preparation the image she was trying to capture, the gorgeous beast swallowing up the
horizon.

He remembered smiling. He remembered being happy.

After a few moments, he looked back over to Amanai, and that was when he saw it.

In the loose strands of hair that had fallen free from her fishtail braid as the wild wind
whipped against their bodies, he could see the electric field beginning to form, clear as day. It
was almost like a halo, almost like a highlight, that black hair sticking straight up as negative
charge from the earth gathered in a terrible puddle beneath her feet clashing with the positive
charge of her human body to create an attractive force, the buildup of electrical charge in the
world around her beginning to affect those unfeeling cells about her head, that spill of silk
that looked so much like Suguru’s.

Geto could only remember blinking at it for a second or two before checking his own hair,
and sure enough, it was raising straight up, as though a collection of invisible angels were
pulling it from his head between their plump little fingertips. When he realized what was
coming next, what was bearing down on them, it was already too late.

“Riko, get down—“

Explosion. Strike. The rapid expansion of air molecules as the atmosphere became
superheated, many thousands of degrees hotter than the surface of the sun, if only for a mere
instant. There was no room in the absence of oxygen to scream, no room to run to her and
tackle her to the mud before he was blown backward by the sheer force of the instantaneous
thunderclap, no shade in the shadow of hell on earth, that tiny glimpse of it.

Riko Amanai likely had no idea what hit her when she died.

For a moment or so, Suguru Geto had no idea what had hit him, either. All he knew— all he
could process at the time— was the pain.

There was really no accurate way to describe the intensity and the scope of such an agony.
Even if he could, he was certain that it was too muddled by the rich rush of adrenaline
through his veins to have been considered meaningful at all. It was about what one might
expect from electrocution— an instant, automatic, all-encompassing sort of pain that
swallowed him up like a snake swallows a rat and held him, still and squirming, in its vicious
maw as the world came to a stop all around him. It rocketed up his left leg like a torpedo
through water, bursted like a carpet bombing through the intricate muscle groups and dense
bunches of nerve endings in his pelvis, then branched in a strange way— half of it seeming to
crawl up the spine, the other half exiting through his right leg almost immediately. It was a
freezing pain in the sense that it literally froze him in place, all of the muscles in his body
seizing and contracting at once, movement becoming impossible as he was made to become
familiar with the sickening feeling of the sky scrambling his brain like eggs.

It lasted only a moment— a few seconds at the very most— before the electric current had
dissipated back into the earth and he was released from the groundstrike’s grip, but the
damage was done. He collapsed into the mud, coiling in on himself as his body relearned the
feeling of fire, and found that half of him had become useless.

There was a sharp ringing in both of his ears, the rest of the world seemingly underwater.
There was a numbness in both legs, a white-hot sensation at the small of his back. There was
no rain. There was Riko, ten feet away, unmoving.

On his elbows and the palms of his hands, he crawled toward her.

Every blood vessel under her wide-open eyes had hemorrhaged, leaving them washed red and
black as it began to clot. Her jaw hung slack. Blood pooled in the shells of her ears and
bloomed from both nostrils like poppy flowers, like opium. Parts of her clothes that had been
exposed under the rubber raincoat had ignited and quickly extinguished themselves, leaving
bright red second-degree burns to peel in the charred absence. There was no time for Suguru
to start screaming— he wouldn’t have been able to hear himself even if he did. There was
only time to roll her over onto her back, press both hands to either side of her neck, and feel
the stillness there, the lack of a pulse. There was only time to start ripping the raincoat off
with numb fingers and begin useless chest compressions.

Satoru was at his side in seconds, having sprinted from where he stood toward the source of
the deafening sound, and he was saying something warbled and distorted like Suguru,
Suguru, can you hear me, are you hurt, and Suguru was shouting something back like help
me, help me, ambulance, help me, and from there, it was all a blur.
He didn’t remember anything past the point where he started CPR. He could only remember
what Satoru told him later, as he recovered in hospital.

According to him, the paramedics arrived late— around 30 minutes after the strike— due to
their remote location and the fact that most of the other EMS teams were busy attending to
injuries sustained in a nearby town where a tornado had touched down. By that point, Satoru
said, Geto had long since experienced the adrenaline crash and collapsed into the mud again,
and that was when he fully lapsed into a catatonic state and would not react to any outside
stimulus. Shoko told him later that it was likely an early response to severe trauma, both
physical and mental— the brain’s way of shutting itself down to avoid shouldering the
burden of pain and terror. The way Gojo described it, it was like he was just as dead as
Amanai, save for blinking and breathing. The way Gojo described it, there were two bodies
that night, two bodies to hold, and he could only pick one.

Satoru said that after 30 minutes of CPR, he’d taken off his jacket and draped it over
Amanai’s head, then pulled Suguru into his arms and waited for help to arrive.

Suguru could never decide which he resented him for more— for giving up on saving Riko
after so little, or for letting him lie in the mud for so long.

When the ambulance showed up, there were two of them, one for Riko and one for Suguru.
They strapped Geto to a gurney and put him in one car, sending him away to the ER with the
sirens wailing and the lights flashing, and they zipped Amanai up in a body bag and sent her
in the other, sent her in silence and in darkness to the hospital morgue.

Both of them went alone. Satoru got his car out of the field and drove after them.

When Suguru came to in the hospital— when the catatonic state released him, when the
adrenaline had dried up and the searing pain returned, when his body accepted that he had
survived— Shoko was brushing stray locks of hair from his forehead and Satoru’s face was
pale and tear-stricken and everything was broken. Geto could only wiggle the toes of one
foot. He was hooked up to a heart monitor and an oxygen tank and a morphine drip and his
family was on the way, Riko was colored blue and yellow and purple and growing colder and
stiffer in the surgical-steel coated morgue in the basement of the hospital, the sky was
opening up and raining down and hell was here, hell was here, the end was near and hell was
here.

“I’m so sorry,” Satoru had whispered to him as he clutched him, as he grasped him. “I’m so
sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” He pressed his face into the warm crook of Suguru’s neck
and begged forgiveness, promised repentance, breathed grief. Suguru stared up at the papier-
mâché ceiling tiles and tried to listen past the weeping, past the beeping of his monitors, past
the death hanging over that room like a stormcloud.

Distantly, so distantly, he could hear thunderclaps as the storm passed. There were no
windows in his room in the ER ward— only four walls and a door and a security camera and
all the wires attached to his half-dead body. However, if he focused hard enough, he could
see the lightning strikes landing in his mind, and he could count the seconds in between the
rolls of thunder and he could measure them without the use of his mouth. He could see them
drawing near, or he could see them drifting away. He could lay motionless and silent in that
hospital bed all night, or he could let his muddy, cold arms wrap around Satoru and he could
cling to life.

He tried so hard to cling to life that night, with the full understanding of his injuries, with the
full knowledge of Riko’s body in the morgue below their feet.

Suguru did not believe in thaumaturgy. He did not believe in miracles. He did not believe in
magic. So when the doctors told him it was a miracle that he survived, he did not believe
them. When they told him it was a miracle that he did not need skin grafts or surgery, he did
not believe them. When they said it was a miracle that he had only sustained partial paralysis
in the leg the charge had entered him from and not the leg it had exited out of, he did not
believe them. There were no miracles, there was no magic, there was only the sky that
opened up and rained shimmering hell down, and he knew he was correct because he was
breathing and Riko was not.

No, he did not believe in miracles, but he believed in mistakes. He had survived by mistake.

That lightning strike that killed Amanai was meant for him, he was certain of it. After all, it
was Suguru who had decided to go out into the open field to get a better shot, practically
standing in a puddle with his steel-plated boots, wearing his stupid earrings with the copper
backs and carrying a big hunk of metal, his precious camera, the one he wouldn’t even let the
poor girl hold for longer than two seconds. It was Suguru who had refused to wear his
rubber-lined raincoat when Riko had remembered hers. It was Suguru who had spent his
whole life staring down storms and challenging them— outright fucking challenging them—
to take him down, because for whatever reason, he believed he was invincible.

It was Suguru who should have died that night, Suguru who should have been struck. It
should have been Suguru in that coffin, eyes glued shut by the mortician, wearing a suit his
mother had picked out for him and adorned with flowers and teardrops. He had not survived
by the work of some miracle, the grace of some God. He had survived by that God’s mistake.

He supposed it was just his punishment, then— being damned to survive with the knowledge
that he’d gotten some poor, promising girl killed by his own negligence, by his own
arrogance. It was his punishment to walk with a noticeable limp and end each day with a
searing pain in the ankle and knee. He supposed that he was atoning with his body, paying the
price for his sins with his blood, coming a little closer each day to forgiveness when his
scrambled-eggs brain began to blank out and seize up at inopportune times. It was also the
reason why he did not try to kill himself, why he did not unload the gun he cleaned every
Sunday into his skull— if he was being punished, he was not going to take the coward’s way
out just to escape from the pain. If he was being punished, he was going to take it like a man.

Shoko had told him that mental health issues were commonplace, even expected, after
sustaining a lightning strike. Even more so, it would have been worrying if he didn’t develop
some form of anxiety or depression as a consequence of watching a girl die, holding her fresh
corpse and feeling her heat evaporate little by little into the air around him. Shoko didn’t
know what she was talking about.

She and Satoru— idiots, the both of them— had assumed that his appearance and personality
changes following the incident were a physical manifestation of his suffering, that he was
trying to find some way of coping with grief. It was an assumption that deeply angered him,
though he would never tell them, because he couldn’t. The real reason would have sent alarm
bells ringing in their head, would have made their eggshell-walking and tiptoeing even more
frustrating.

Just because the lightning strike hit the wrong person did not mean his death warrant was
unsigned. Soon enough, God would realize his mistake when He saw vermin like Suguru still
crawling the earth, and He would rectify his misstep. Suguru was going to help that process
along as much as he could. That was why he started to add piercings where he hadn’t wanted
them before, why he started wearing rings that looked tacky and cumbersome on his hands.
That was why he walked for hours on rainy days, why he stood in open fields and out on lake
shores when it thundered, why he continued to chase storms alone, letting Satoru sit up for
him and worry in his absence. It was why he broke his heart.

Satoru deserved better than him. Both of them knew that. Neither wanted to believe it.

Someone like Satoru— someone so brilliant, so bright, so unmistakably one-of-a-kind, a true

rarity in the ever-repeating and ever-expanding nature of the monotonous, dull universe—
deserved so much more than a man meant for a lightning strike. He deserved so much better
than the grief, the suffering, the pain that would come with his inevitable and ever-
approaching death. He deserved so much more than a man who deserved to die. What Satoru
needed— what Satoru deserved— was someone who could honestly compete with his level
of interest and intellect, someone with a kind heart and a brave spirit and a soul still
unpolluted. Satoru needed a type of love, a type of commitment, that Suguru would never be
able to give him.

In Geto’s worst nightmares, when that lightning bolt came down from heaven to finally strike
its correct target, Satoru was holding him when it happened. He could not bear the idea of
causing another death.

So he broke up with him. He broke his heart. As much as it destroyed him, he did what he
had to do to keep him safe. In time, he knew, Gojo would get over him, move on with his life,
find someone better, and in time, God would fix his mistakes and Geto would die. It was the
natural order of things, the natural proceeding.

So when Satoru tracked him down six months after their breakup and asked to see him again
— for closure, he said— Suguru had let him. In hindsight, he should have known better.
There’s no such thing as closure.

He should have turned around once he realized what awaited them, once he saw the look in
Satoru’s eyes, how they were red-rimmed and rubbed-out and the same shimmering shade of
blue he’d learned to take for granted after so many years together, and he couldn’t say no. He
could pretend to the be the one in power all he wanted— he could be the one on top, the one
holding the other, the one who made the reservations and granted the concessions and wiped
the tears away— but he would never truly be the one in control. Not when it came to Satoru.
Not when it came to those eyes.

So when one meeting turned into two, and when two became five, and the months got longer
and their time together got shorter, his scrambled eggs brain had found a satisfying way to
square it to himself.

It was not Satoru who needed him. It was him who needed Satoru.

Satoru did not need him when showed up to that college town they’d promised to leave
behind, the one Satoru found himself stuck in. He did not need the hands that would trace up
and down his silhouette, feeling slight changes, feeling the makings of a stranger he never
was. Satoru did not need to be needed, but he liked it, and Suguru missed him, and so he gave
him what he wanted every time. After all, he was certain that it was just a game to Gojo, just
a meaningless pastime, something to busy his hands with in-between courses and storm cells.

It wasn’t until the last time— the last time, they had insisted to each other— that the lie truly
unraveled itself in Suguru’s mind. Up until then, he had either refused to see or refused to
understand how deeply wounded Satoru walked away from every encounter, how each touch
left marks on the skin like bruises, that each time Suguru left him it made it harder for either
of them to ever truly leave. Up until that final night, that final meeting, Geto had never made
himself acknowledge it.

He planned never to see Gojo again. He planned to find that missing sensation somewhere
else, a new meaning to a life spent dwindling away, and he would find it as far across the
country as he could go without losing his access to the supercells he lived for. His plans never
seemed to go according to plan, though, and there was no way he could have known that
Satoru would be sitting in some random Waffle House in western Alabama that morning
when he walked in. There was no way he could have known that they’d be heading the same
way. In a way, it was like a miracle, his own form of thaumaturgy beneath the stones
unturned and the wounds reopened. In a way, it was divine intervention.

He knew that he could have (and should have) turned and left the second he saw that white
head of hair sitting by the window dumping thimble after thimble of half-and-half into coffee
that tasted like diesel fuel. He knew he could have saved them both the pain— saved them
both the joy— of bickering in the booth and clawing at each other in the hotel bed, but some
part of him could not swallow his pride and turn on that limping heel. Some part of him had
to stay, had to see it through. It was the part of him that was still in love.

When the tree came down and trapped him there, he knew it was thaumaturgy, knew it for
sure. When he cussed and broke the window with his boot and found himself cornered by the
one he had so often pinned down, he knew it was a curse, and some pit in his stomach drank
it up greedily. There was little else he could do.

He had planned to be home by Sunday. He needed to clean his gun, needed to press the
empty barrel against his head and wonder. None of his plans ever went according to plan. He
hoped they never would again.

***
4:22 a.m. The southeastern corner of Missouri. One day before the storm.

Geto remembered his claustrophobia only when Gojo whispered his own name into his ear.

Suguru. The way he said it was unlike anything his ears could have ever imagined hearing in
his lifetime, on that side of the veil. Suguru. It was like a plea, like a promise, like the hands
clutching him at his back and desperately clawing for safety, like love. Suguru, please. He
could have listened to Satoru say it a million more times, could have strapped himself down
to the surface of a burning sun and remained cool only by the grace of his own name falling
from those velvet lips, could have reached up to the heavens and pulled the stars down as a
gift, only if he had asked. Suguru, Suguru. Suguru, please, please, please. What he wouldn’t
do to hear it some more. What he wouldn’t give. What he wouldn’t sacrifice. Sugu. Even
shortened, he adored it. In fact, he adored it even more. The more broken, the more polluted
by breath, the more of a whine on the undertone, all the better.

Satoru never had to get specific with what he wanted. Satoru never had to elaborate. All he
had to do was whine that name, breathe it against Suguru’s ear, and his wants were realized in
real time, in opposition. He’d cry more and Suguru would give him less. He’d beg now and
Suguru would make him wait. He’d groan a prayer and Suguru would bite his neck to remind
him that there was nothing to believe in, not anymore. Satoru mumbled his name like the
name of some holy saint, and Suguru would remind him that he was held only in the arms of
a sickness. He’d kiss him all the same.

But there was a constricting feeling that came with that kind of love. There was a lingering
anxiety at the back of his throat, one he could taste every time they kissed, one that felt like
electricity and looked like a hook echo on radar imaging and sounded like a supercell
swirling down on them. Claustrophobia. The sudden sensation of the bindings on his wrists
and ankles getting tighter, the temperature crawling higher, the end drawing closer. His
reminder to run, to get away, to escape from that place before he drowned in that moment. It
was what led him away the first time. It was what would lead him away every time after.

When he fucked Satoru he felt heaven, but he also felt like a thief, and at any moment he
would be cast out and thrown into hell again, because he didn’t belong there. He didn’t
belong in heaven, holding Satoru like water, hearing his own name whispered against his skin
like reverence. He belonged on earth, under the mesocyclone, looking up at churning infinity
and waiting for the lightning strike.

He only felt claustrophobic when he held heaven in his arms.

That night, the claustrophobia was vicious, and even with Satoru asleep at his side, he
couldn’t stop the trembling.

Maybe it was because it was almost Sunday, and he hadn’t cleaned his gun, because he left it
at home. Maybe it was just the lingering endorphin crash after giving Satoru what he needed.
Maybe it was just fear, just plain old fear, seeping through his skin again. Maybe it was
nothing. Either way, he had to get up, had to get out of that bed, had to get away.

So, he pulled the same maneuver he had been pulling for the last four years, give or take. He
found just the correct angle at which he could slip his arm out from underneath the one he
held close, found just the right pace at which he could shift their weight on the mattress so he
wouldn’t roll or jerk or be snapped awake by the sudden sensation of cold entering the space
where Suguru’s warm body had been only seconds before. It was like diffusing a bomb, like
surgery on a sedated tiger, like trying to wash dishes in the darkness while the whole house is
dead quiet. Every time he did it, he got better at it, but every time he did it, the guilt in his
stomach only grew. It festered. It began to rot, all over the hands that had grasped and
crawled and clutched at that body only hours before, now asleep and peaceful and unaware
that he was being abandoned, being abandoned again.

When he had successfully pulled himself free from Gojo’s feather-soft embrace, he tucked
the blankets around him and resisted the urge to kiss his forehead.

They had had a terribly long day. They’d gotten lost almost the moment Satoru started
driving, and because he refused to use a GPS for anything other than stormchasing, they’d
made a gigantic loop around the gorgeous expanse of northeastern Arkansas, in the rich soil
adjacent to the Mississippi River where the only life to be found was in the grass and the
trees and the opossums and the sun and the sky. They’d pulled over multiple times for Suguru
to take film of the stormclouds as they climbed and towered, stopped at the side of the road
almost every time they hit a momentary downpour for Satoru to clamor out and feel it on his
own skin, despite repeated warnings from Suguru that he’d catch pneumonia or something.
They’d had a long day— a good day— and they’d had it together.

For the duration of about eight hours, they’d felt like themselves again. They’d almost
forgotten why they’d broken up in the first place.

There were two beds in the hotel room, but they had only used one. In hindsight— always in
hindsight— it had been a mistake. After all, it was Satoru who had said they should not forget
themselves, that their trip together was strictly business, but then again, it was also Satoru
who had started pulling his clothes off and begging to be touched the moment they found
themselves alone, like a man lost at sea might beg for a taste of saltwater. It would kill him,
of course, but it was water, and it was all his delirious brain could latch onto at the moment.

That night, as Geto lay awake holding Gojo as he slept, he wondered if he could have
avoided the claustrophobia by sleeping in the other bed, or if it was going to get to him
regardless. He wondered if it was an inevitable thing, the realization that he needed to run, or
if he had been making a mistake somewhere along the route that forced him back into
becoming the person he no longer wished to be, the person who broke Satoru’s heart over and
over, knowing full well what he was doing each time.

The day had been perfect. They had done everything right. They had been happier on that
journey northwest than they had been in months, living their separate lives, and still, it was
not enough. Still, Suguru was going back to his old ways, getting dressed in the darkness,
slipping out of the hotel room unseen and leaving Satoru to sleep alone for another night.

On any other night— on every other night— he would get in his car and drive away. On any
other night, he would walk home. On any other night, he would call an uber or something and
he would shut his phone off and he would escape. But that night, there was no getaway car,
no road home, no service. There was nothing he could do, nowhere to run, and so he sat in
the parking lot and watched the sky.
He had been in love with storms since he could remember, since he was tiny, since he’d heard
his first roll of thunder. He loved clouds, loved rain, loved an atmosphere full of swirling and
churning and waves like the ocean, but there was something so comforting about an empty
sky. There was something so comforting about silence, even from heaven.

But the heaven cannot last forever. The sun must always go down. The leaves must always
fall. He could not keep running away forever. He could not sit in that parking lot all night. He
could not return to the past. Even if he did, there would be no one waiting at the end of the
long corridor to receive him. Eventually, he would have to suck it up. Eventually, he would
have to return. He hoped that when he did, Satoru would not have noticed that he ever left.
Maybe he could crawl into bed beside him and kiss his soft face and apologize for disturbing
him. Maybe he could whisper how lovely he looked when he slept. Maybe he could brush
stray locks of hair out of his face and nudge him with his nose and feel the soft vibrations of
his happy humming when those arms wrapped around him again.

When he opened the door, Satoru was not in bed. He was not asleep. He was standing by the
window, fully dressed, one hand holding open the blinds and staring out at the parking lot
below. His head turned sharply as Suguru stepped inside.

He opened his mouth as if to say something, though no sound came out. He wore a strange
expression, something similar to pain, something far away from contentment. It was a look
Suguru had seen many times before, almost always at that hour of night, almost always in the
darkness. The expression— worry, it seemed, though not quite as simple— did not change
when their eyes met across the room.

“What are you doing up?” Suguru asked, shutting the door carefully behind him and flipping
the deadbolt lock.

“I thought you left,” Satoru responded, though his voice was off-color and foreign, like an
imitation of himself. He did not move from where he stood by the window, but he shifted his
weight in his shoes on the bad carpet.

Suguru quirked an eyebrow before bending down to undo the laces on his boots. “How would
I leave?” He asked, not very interested. “A tree fell on my truck, remember?”

“You could have called someone,” Satoru posited. “You could have taken my keys.”

A sharp exhale through the nose as both boots came off and he straightened up again, pulling
the sweatshirt off over his head. “You think I would steal your car, ‘Toru?”
“I don’t know,” Satoru said. “I don’t know.”

There was an awful beat of silence before Geto crossed the room to the bed they’d left
untouched and leaned himself down against it, the ache in his left leg becoming sharp and
wincing, the pain in his head becoming less dull and more throbbing. All the while, Gojo
kept still by the window, that face unchanging, those eyes looking worse and worse behind
smudged glasses, blue and glowing and light refracting through the moisture. They stared at
one another for a while, neither one willing to break the tension, neither one willing to have
the conversation they had been having periodically for the last four years.
In the end, Geto blinked first. “You’re all dressed,” he remarked, his tone bored.

“So are you.”

“Did you go out looking for me?”

“Would I have found you if I did?”

Suguru sighed and rolled over onto his back, stretched out over unused bedding, the tight
threads of the blanket beneath him somehow more like sandpaper than a cloud. He looked up
at the ceiling, feeling that sensation of claustrophobia return, wishing he knew how to keep
the conversation from spinning out in circles like it always did.

“I just needed some air. I went for a walk.”

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, Satoru. Are you?”

Gojo didn’t answer. He seemed to resign himself as he walked back across the room, back to
where Suguru had lined his boots against the wall, and began kicking off his sneakers, still
mud-stained and grass-bled. He was a little too hasty in unzipping his jacket and the fabric
got caught, and he stood there for a few moments, cussing to himself and fumbling with his
fingertips. Something small and snakelike in Geto’s gut squirmed. He sat up.

“You can go back to bed,” he offered. “It’s early. Big day tomorrow.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Did I wake you when I left?”

“No. I woke up and you were gone.”

The realization hit them both at once, and it hit them like a truck. Altogether, all at the same
time, they remembered exactly why they’d broken up in the first place, why they’d never
found their way back together. They remembered that no matter the circumstance, no matter
the miracle, it would never be enough for either of them. In every timeline, in every universe,
Suguru always left, and Satoru always stayed behind to clean up the mess they’d made.

Suguru’s stomach twisted so hard he thought he might throw up.

“If you had the ability, you would have left again, wouldn’t you?” Satoru asked him, and if
Suguru hadn’t been listening to hear it, he would have missed the slight crack in his voice.

“Let’s not have this conversation right now,” he closed his eyes.

“Where did you go?” Gojo pushed.

“Does it matter?”
 “Yes. It matters.”

“Does it matter at four in the morning?”

“Closer to five, and yes.”

“Please just drop it, ‘Toru.”

“Why won’t you just tell me?” Satoru demanded, though he kept his tone quiet, like it was an
actual question, like he didn’t know the answer already.

“Why won’t you just come here?” Suguru tried, and it almost worked. He could see a dull
flicker cross Satoru’s eyes, glowy in the darkness like moonlight, almost mournful in a way.
He saw him hesitate, saw him consider. It would have been so easy just to go back to playing
pretend. It would have been so simple to hide from one another in opposite arms, to close
their mouths and their minds and take what they had like doctrine, like dogma. From the look
on Satoru’s face, he knew he had thought about it, what it might feel like to give up and give
in.

In the end, he turned away.

He didn’t say anything else. There was no need to. Soon enough, the sun would come up, and
they’d be alone again, alone together, alone in their own heads. They’d realized that they’d
made a terrible mistake, of course, but in the same way they shared a heart and two halves of
a severed soul, they shared a fatal character flaw, and that flaw was stubbornness.

It had haunted their relationship from beginning to end to rebirth to double-death. Every
point of contention became a small war, a finicky battle they’d dig trenches over. Everything
became a staring contest, and neither one of them would ever blink first. No one ever
admitted defeat, lest they have to make concessions to negotiate a peace treaty. To admit to
one another that they had made a huge mistake in meeting again, in undoing their progress in
moving on from the last time, would be the same as admitting defeat, admitting guilt. Satoru
was too smart to ever let his guard down like that. Suguru was too mean to let him get away
with it. They’d rather peel off their fingernails one by one than have them painted a color
they didn’t like. They’d rather sink than swim. And that night, they’d rather lie in opposite
beds and stare up at the ceiling until the sun came up and someone got hungry.

They would have to wait for the storm to end.

Chapter End Notes

Of course the Geto POV chapter took me a billion years to get right. I have to much to
say about my beloved Geto Suguru. I have something big planned for next chapter
TRUST. thank you everyone for reading and commenting :)
(edit 4/26: it just came to my attention that a couple people shared this on twitter!! thank
you so much, what a wonderul little gift! I know the topic of stormchasing is very niche
but it means a lot that people are still interested!)
 Saint Elmo's Fire
Chapter Summary

Saint Elmo’s Fire (noun) . ˈsānt ˈel-(ˌ)mōz ˌfī(-ə)r

: a flaming phenomenon sometimes seen in stormy weather at prominent points on an

airplane or ship and on land that is of the nature of a brush discharge of electricity

Chapter Notes

Everyone will have to forgive me for writing the angstiest chapter of all time. I promise
it works out just give me a few more chapters lol

See the end of the chapter for more notes

11:56 p.m. One year ago. The last time.

Satoru didn’t drink.

Suguru had managed to get him to try it on only two occasions, neither of which ended well.
The first time was the summer after they turned seventeen, when Geto (in his delinquent
phase) had stolen a bottle of scotch from his parents’ cellar and brought it with them when
they went out to see another storm. That was the night they learned that Satoru was a
miserable lightweight— which is to be expected of someone drinking for the first time— but
it was also the night they learned he was a miserable crybaby when inebriated. He would
start weeping at anything and everything, from the smallest provocations to the brightest
joys, and he was almost impossible to console once he got started with it. He also got very
sick, and had to fake a stomach bug the next morning when it was time to get out of bed and
fix one of the tractors, but Suguru was halfway certain his father knew what they had been
doing.

The second time he tried drinking was the night of his early college graduation, a few months
after he turned 21. It was more peer pressure than anything else, but Shoko had convinced
him that Jell-O shots would be the magical elixir to convert him, and Suguru had insisted that
he’d have more fun now that he was old enough for it. Things started out alright, and Satoru
was enjoying the soft, floaty feeling that came with the lowering of inhibitions and numbing
of the senses, but as soon as he was reminded that he’d finished undergrad early and was
moving on to a new stage in his life he suddenly felt overwhelmed by emotion and ended up
crying on Ieiri’s shoulder and in Geto’s lap for much of the night until he finally passed out
on the couch. After that, he’d sworn off alcohol forever, claiming that he must be allergic to it
or something because he was never going to get a positive reaction, and Suguru hadn’t
pushed him on it, even when his own drinking became somewhat of a habit after Riko died.

No, Satoru didn’t drink. So when Suguru got a call in the middle of night three years after
their breakup and Satoru sounded wasted, he’d panicked.

It was a Friday night in early spring, and there was still snow under awnings and highway
banks and ice crystals clinging to parts of trees that didn’t get enough sun. The downtown
district wasn’t particularly busy, even with the usual crowd of college kids out partying, but it
was still a hassle trying to find somewhere to park his car while he got out and searched.
When he found him, he was sitting on frozen concrete outside some stupid dive bar, shivering
with his head in his hands.

“Satoru?”

He looked up immediately, blue eyes wide and red-rimmed, his face pale and puffy in the
cold, and he’d teared up again almost instantly. “You came,” he choked, his voice broken and
distorted, and the corners of his mouth twisted into some sort of a tearful smile.

Almost instantly, Suguru was kneeling in front of him, two hands on either side of his face,
checking his heart rate and searching for any signs of injury. He found nothing there— only a
slow, steady pulse under snow-cold skin, and a terrible sadness trapped behind the eyes. “Of
course I came,” he said, more of a mumble, still scanning him over and tilting his head gently
to see either side of him. “Jesus, ‘Toru, what happened to you? Did you take anything? If
you’re on something, I need to know right now.”

Satoru shook his head and started dripping tears, and it was so much of a suffering on
Suguru’s poor heart that he could do nothing but wrap that cold body in his arms and smooth
his hair, quieting him.

“I’m here,” he murmured, “it’s okay. You’re gonna be alright.”

And Satoru had clung to the coat on his back and wept just a little harder.

“Let’s get you home. Can you stand?”

And he could, but only barely, so Suguru secured his arm around his shoulder with one hand
and held him by the waist with his other, and they’d made a long and slow journey back to
where he’d parked his car, with Satoru’s ankles dragging all the while, a broken and patchy
trail left in frost on the sidewalk, midnight moon watching overhead. It was hell on his
limping leg, but he struggled through it, struggled through the searing pain crawling its way
up from the damaged and atrophied muscles in his ankle to the center of the strain in his knee
and then further up his thigh until it reached the ball joint of his femur in his pelvis. He
reminded himself that he had been through worse. He reminded himself that he had never
quite seen Satoru so in need of being dragged.

“Can you remember the last time I carried you like this?” Suguru had asked him, trying to
lighten things, trying to get him to do anything but cry while he distracted himself from the
pain. “Remember? It was the summer we met.”
Satoru nodded, his eyes vacant, but somewhere distantly the memory was reaching him. “I
got— I got— passed out,” he stumbled over his words, his head hanging forward.

“Mmhm. Heat syncope, remember? I had to carry you back to the house, and you were
bitching the whole way.”

That made Gojo laugh, which caused them to stumble, and Geto only barely caught him
before he went crashing down to the concrete. The extra pressure put into his lame leg made
him suck in a hissing breath of air. If he still saw his physical therapist, she would tear him a
new one. He knew he would barely be able to walk the next morning, but he didn’t care.
There were more pressing issues to deal with than a little discomfort.

“Easy, easy. You’re gonna get yourself hurt,” Suguru chided, and held him a little tighter
around the waist. “Keep talking to me. You remember that summer, right?”

“I— I hated you,” Satoru nodded back.

Suguru laughed. “Yeah, you did. Couldn’t stand me. And here I was, thinking you were kind
of cute.”

“Did not.”

“Did too. It was impossible not to,” Geto reminded him as they rounded the corner to where
he had parked on a side street he hadn’t walked in over three years at that point. “You were
kind of helpless, weren’t you?”

“You felt s— sorry for me,” Gojo hiccuped. “Like— like now.”

“I’m here because you called me,” Suguru reminded him, trying to keep his tone gentle as the
sensation snaring around his bad leg became something more akin to agony than plain old
pain.

The cold that night was something vicious— some sort of front moving in from the
northwest, something he’d glanced at on the weather reports and refused to acknowledge—
and the wind chill was making it worse. Every time a gust hit them, it was like daggers to the
numb skin of their faces, making their eyes sting and squeeze shut and their teeth chatter and
shoulders shake. Satoru, for whatever reason, was not dressed for the cold and suffered
greatly for it, trying desperately to dig his face into the wooly comfort of Suguru’s coat while
also remaining upright. It would have been cute were it not so pathetic. It would have been
sweet if they weren’t supposed to be strangers.

Once they got to the car, Geto reclined the passenger seat for him as far as it would go and
pushed the seat back to the end of its railings to make room for his legs. He pulled off his
coat and put it over Gojo like a blanket, wincing as he did so, and his kindness was repaid
with a muffled grumbling of the other trying to wriggle out of it.

“Come on, knock it off,” he told Satoru, trying to remain gentle, finding himself stern.
“You’re freezing. That shirt isn’t cutting it. I’m already dealing with wasted ‘Toru, so don’t
make me deal with hypothermic ‘Toru, too.”
And he’d expected wasted, hypothermic ‘Toru to laugh, but he didn’t. It seemed that all
wasted, hypothermic ‘Toru knew how to do was roll around uselessly and cry quietly, and in
that moment, all he could do was pull Suguru’s coat tighter around his shoulders and curl up
small in the passenger seat. Sober, shivering Suguru could hardly look at him without
wanting to explode, without needing to breathe. The car seemed to be getting smaller the
longer they let the engine warm up, the longer he stared down at the not-really-there body
clinging to fabric that smelled like him.

It was, in a word, unsettling. It unsettled his soul.

“Let me call Ieiri,” Suguru said, pulling his phone from his pocket, hoping silently that she
hadn’t blocked his number. It wasn’t like they’d spoken since the day he broke it off with
Satoru. “Just so someone knows what kind of state you’re in.”

Before he had a chance to even unlock it, there was a freezing cold hand snared around his
wrist, as tight a grip as those numb nerves could muster. Suguru looked up, and Satoru was
staring back at him with some sort of humiliated, embarrassed face, his eyes wide and
pleading, his shoulders showing only the slightest signs of a shiver.

“Don’t tell anyone I’m here,” he begged. “Please.”

Suguru hesitated. “I was just thinking that we’d call somebody closer to you, ‘Toru.”

Satoru shook his head vehemently, that grip growing tighter, the chill beginning to seep in
through Geto’s skin. “Nobody else. Please. Please.”

“Okay,” he conceded, but he didn’t like it. There was a sour taste in his mouth, a sinking
feeling in his chest, one that only got worse when he let Gojo keep clinging to his hand after
he put the car in drive and began trying to remember the way back to his apartment, the one
he hadn’t bothered taking his old stuff out of after their split. He didn’t like the way his
stomach was sloshing against itself, how he kept swallowing involuntarily, how Satoru kept
dozing off in the passenger seat and he had to keep waking him up with small questions and
smaller reassurances.

He would not say why he was out there, why he was wasted after so many years of refusing
to have even the sweetest and sugariest of alcoholic drinks, but Suguru supposed he didn’t
need to. It wasn’t like it would matter. But he did ask— repeatedly— why he hadn’t called
anyone else to come and help him, why it had to be Geto to take him home that night.

“You’re the only one I want,” Gojo had mumbled into his sleeve, drifting off again, and there
were no follow-up questions that would have his answer any clearer, would have made it
make any less sense.

Suguru’s left leg ached something awful as they drove, his eyes narrow and squinting through
reflective darkness, cautious of slick patches of ice at the dips in the road, careful of the way
his headlights seemed to cut two glimmering holes in the night, one for the driver, one for the
passenger. Satoru kept dozing off, kept snapping back awake, kept mumbling drunken
nonsense to himself, something about a report he had to finish or how his research wasn’t
adding up, or how he hadn’t seen a supercell storm in so long, so long, so very, very long.
Every now and then he would roll backward in his seat and make a moaning noise, his face
twisting against the faux leather, and Suguru would have to ask him if they needed to pull
over so he could puke, but Satoru insisted he’d gotten all the puking out of his system at the
bar he’d been kicked out of.

He was in a better state by the time they reached his apartment, no longer needing to be half-
dragged and half-carried to the elevator or to his front door, but Geto allowed him to cling to
his arm all the same, as he kept stumbling and losing his balance and tripping over his shoes
with every other step. There were many times he worried that his inebriation may have
veered off the track of what could be considered normal and into a more dangerous territory.
He recalled vague horror stories about wasted teenagers passing out on their backs and
throwing up in their sleep, aspirating the vomit and choking to death on it, and he found the
pain in his chest growing greater than the pain in his leg he refused to use a crutch for.

There were many times that night that he looked at Satoru’s face— that soft, soft face— and
wanted more than anything to shake him back to his senses. He had never quite seen those O-
type stars behind his eyes burning out so blue and bright, so vacant and ghostly, so cold. He
could not help but think of all the times Satoru had taken care of him when he overdid it, how
cold and distant he became in the hours after, how he pushed him away every time. He could
not help but hate himself.

When they got inside— an arduous task— Suguru brought him to his couch and all but
forced him to lie down. He was careful with him, cautious, like if he touched him the wrong
way he would shatter into a million pieces and disintegrate into the couch. In hindsight, he
was probably too cautious— Satoru was wasted, not on his deathbed.

“I’m gonna go get you some water,” he said, pushing Satoru’s shoulders back down as he
started trying to sit up again, tucking the coat firmly over his chest and trying not to become
annoyed when it all came undone again. “Have you eaten tonight? Do you think you can, or
will you just get sick?”

Satoru shook his head— a little childish, a little cute, but still entirely unsettling considering
the state he was in, the state Suguru had never seen him suffer through quite so shakily— and
made it clear that he would be able to keep nothing down if he tried.

Just like he had all those years ago when he collapsed from heat syncope, Suguru had
dragged him back to safety, and just like all those years ago when he lay sprawled out and
filthy all over the kitchen tile, Suguru brought him water and made him drink.

“Careful,” he said, “small sips. Slow down. You’ll make yourself sick again.”

A good quarter of it ended up on his chin and neck and chest anyway, but Geto supposed it
didn’t matter.

“Where do you want to be, ‘Toru? Your bed or the couch?”

“Don’t wanna sleep,” he muttered out, clearly fighting a yawn.

“No, you’re going to bed. You’re gonna pass out before you know it.”
“Not tired.”

“Right. Couch it is, then,” Suguru said, pushing himself up by the knees and ruffling Satoru’s
hair was he went. “I’m gonna go get you a blanket from your room. Is that alright?”

And Satoru didn’t answer, so Suguru took it as a yes.

When he came back with the blanket— blue, plush, cheap and polyester, but it suited him,
Geto thought— Gojo was no longer lying down on the couch. He was still, quiet, a strange
look across his face and in his eyes as he occupied the space between the furniture and his
disastrous coffee table. He looked dazed like that, with his eyes half-lidded and sleepy, the
evidence of what once had been tears still present in the stains on his cheeks and the pink tint
around his eyes, the redness at the tip of his nose where he’d pawed at it too many times. He
smiled a small smile when Suguru met his gaze.

“Oh? You want to sleep in your bed, then?” Suguru asked him, and he approached, slow and
stumbling.

“Not tired,” Satoru repeated, and allowed himself to fall into Suguru’s arms again, bracing
under his weight, clinging tight to his back and shoulders. It was only moments like those
that their height difference became apparent, the four or five inches Gojo had on Geto
manifesting in the way his spine curled at the top to bend down over him, like a small
forward fold into his embrace.

“Alright, okay,” Geto was saying, trying to keep them upright. “Let’s go. On your own feet,
come on.”

But Satoru’s hands were wandering. They were moving from Suguru’s shoulders down to the
small of his back, fingers hooking under the hem of his shirt and brushing against the bare
skin there as he tried to pull the fabric away. Suguru froze for a moment— only a moment—
before regaining control of the situation.

“No, no,” Suguru said firmly, pushing offending hands away, doing all he could to keep his
gaze stern when all he wanted was to revert back to softness and sympathy at the pathetic
display he was faced with.

“Come on,” Satoru mumbled, pressing his face into the crook of Suguru’s neck and trying to
kiss him, his nose brushing up against the piercings, his mouth against that warm space
where clavicle met shoulders, where his hair was coming undone and falling neatly over his
flushed face. “Come on,” he mumbled again, trying to drag his hands out of where Suguru
held him by the wrists, “please?”

“No,” Suguru said, harsher that time, and pushed them apart. “If you’re going to make a
mistake like this, you’re going to do it sober.”

Satoru pinched his brows together, his eyes going soft and sad, a face he used to make so
often in the waning months of their relationship— or whatever it was that preceded this
relationship. “It’s not a mistake,” he protested, “I want you.”
Suguru shook his head, trying to stifle a sigh. “You aren’t in your right mind, ‘Toru. You
know that.”

Gojo’s face twisted into something worse, something more desperate, and he pulled his hands
out of Suguru’s grip to start pulling his own shirt off, fumbling with buttons, almost radiating
frustration and embarrassment with every muscle movement, and he was shaking his head
and mumbling something incoherent to himself while Suguru could only stand there, staring
past him, heart sinking lower and lower into stomach acid where it began to rot.

“Satoru, enough.”

“Isn’t this— isn’t this what you want?” He demanded, his voice changing, his shoulders
showing that telltale twitch as he tried and failed to undress himself in a way that could be
described as anything but stomachache-inducing. “Isn’t— this isn’t what you want from
me?”

“I don’t want anything from you when you’re like this.”

Satoru had half of his shirt open, unbuttoned down to the center of his stomach, trying to
wriggle his way out of the fabric, trying to push it off over his shoulders without ripping the
remaining buttons, but his drunken arms couldn’t seem to figure out where to go and he was
getting lost in the thread, getting wobbly on his feet, his face twisting and twisting until he
was unrecognizable. “But I— you— I want you,” he said, and he stumbled, and Suguru
reached two arms to catch him as he fell backward.

“Why are you doing this to yourself, ‘Toru?” Suguru tilted his head mournfully, his voice
soft, and that was it.

All at once, Satoru collapsed into tears, and Suguru crumbled.

In seconds, he was holding him close in his arms, pressing one hand to the back of his neck
and securing the other at his waist, letting him cling miserably to the shirt on his back, letting
fingernails press little crescent moon indents into his skin as Satoru’s body heaved with
terrible sobs into his shoulder and chest. They all but fell back against the couch cushions, the
weight of Gojo’s body suddenly becoming too much for Geto and his bad leg to handle, and
there was nothing either of them could do except hold one another through it. There was
nothing Suguru could do except pull him into a softer position, the other’s legs across his lap,
holding him on some sort of halfway cradle. It occurred to him, in the back of his mind, that
the last time he’d held anyone in such a position they had been dead, and here Satoru was,
full of life and spilling it all over his chest.

Satoru cried when he was drunk. Everyone knew that. It was the primary reason why he
refused to drink. But Satoru also cried when he was angry. If he got too frustrated with work
or with traffic or some other menial task he was too exhausted to handle, little tears would
sting up at the corners of his eyes, and the fact that they were there at all would only make
him more upset, and it would be a self-fulfilling cycle that led to him trying to push the
weeping back into his eyes and trying to hide the way his face got redder. It was a childish
thing. He had mostly grown out of angry-crying as he became an adult, but he still had his
moments, most often when he felt himself wronged in some way that he couldn’t express
with words. On the night Suguru broke up with him, he had cried, but they weren’t tears of
sadness or of fear, or even of heartbreak. They were angry tears. Angry, angry drippings
down his face, angry red rim around the eyes, angry twisting of the brow and the mouth.

Suguru knew, rationally, that Satoru was drunk-crying and not angry-crying. His words were
another story.

“Why— why don’t— don’t you want me?” Satoru wept into the fabric of his shirt, staining it,
mouth open and breath warm on the skin underneath. “Why am— am I not— never good
enough?”

Suguru knew he was just drunk. He knew the idea of ‘drunk words, sober thoughts’ was a
stupid myth, but he couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t help holding Gojo just a little tighter
against him, just a little closer in his arms, feeling guilt snake through every ligament and
muscle fiber until he was puppeted by his own self-resentment like a doll, like a marionette
on a string. “That’s not it, ‘Toru,” he murmured into his hair, rocking him gently, pressing
kisses to the side of his head and stroking his hair like it might fix him. “It was never you. It
was never because of you. I told you that.”

“You’re lying,” Satoru choked, a little clearer. “You’re always— always lying to me—“

“I’m not, I promise,” Suguru mumbled back, holding him tighter. “If you can believe me on
anything, believe me on this. It was never because of you that I—“

“Then why?” The other demanded. “Why do you keep— keep doing this to me?”

And that was when it clicked in Geto’s head.

Whatever he had thought about their unspoken arrangement before, whatever he had allowed
himself to believe, whatever exercise of cognitive dissonance he had repeated every time he
walked back into Gojo’s life uninvited but not turned away, he was wrong. He had always
been wrong. What he was doing was not love, was not charity— hell, he couldn’t even call it
safe. It was sick.

For so long, he had been convincing himself that he was doing Satoru some kind of service
with their semi-secret meetings. He had always been a giver, after all, and when the
opportunity to give presented itself, he never hesitated. For so long, he had convinced himself
that Satoru took nothing away from their encounters except blind, bland satisfaction of the
flesh, the appeasement of a craving, mild entertainment when the boredom became too much
to bear. The only reason he was able to believe such a lie was because he had deliberately
turned his face from the truth, time and time again.

He pretended not to see the sad, soft glimmer in Satoru’s eyes when they pulled apart from
kisses. He pretended not to feel the reverence behind the touch, the devotion beneath it. He
pretended not to hear Satoru catch himself in his moaning, stop just short of whining out an I
love you, cutting himself off mid-consonant to bury his face into his neck and bite down. He
had been pretending, and pretending was just a nice way of saying he had been lying.
“Sweetheart, I had no idea,” he breathed against him, and he was lying again, but the guilt
was too overwhelming for him to do anything else.

“I still— I still love you, and—“ Satoru choked again, choked against his chest. He coughed
once, twice, collapsed further into his own feelings. Suguru had never seen him cry like that,
not in the fifteen years they had known each other at that point. He had never seen anyone cry
like that. “I still love you and— and you keep— why—“

“I don’t know,” Geto murmured, running his hands through soft white hair, trying and failing
to thumb away the tears on the other’s face, like trying to shovel snow in a blizzard. “I don’t
know, ‘Toru, I don’t— I don’t have an excuse.”

He had almost forgotten how it felt, how it felt to hold him. He had almost forgotten how his
hands seemed to fit around Satoru’s body perfectly, like they had been formed up from the
clay as perfect complements to one another, the perfect pair. He had forgotten that Satoru’s
forehead fit like a jigsaw piece into the crook of his neck when they cuddled, that his soft hair
smelled like something sweet and faintly citric, that his skin was so milky clear and almost
translucent, blue veins coming up from just below the epidermis like the ghostly shadows of
sharks circling below an unsuspecting swimmer. His voice was so lovely, a caress of the ears,
even when he cried. Suguru had almost forgotten how it felt to love him. Almost.

“I thought— I thought that if I— if I drank like an adult, I could— could grow up and get
over it,” Satoru mumbled, his breathing returning to an easy baseline, the weeping still
evident in his tone, in the way his voice cracked and broke. “I was— I said I wouldn’t cry.
Said I wouldn’t— wouldn’t call you.”

“It’s okay,” Suguru told him, close to his ear, his snakebite piercings brushing against his
skin. “It’s alright. I’m glad you did. I don’t want you out in the cold.”

But Satoru shook his head. “This is— this is killing me,” he faltered again, his shoulders
shaking when another wave of tears rolled through him. “I can’t— can’t do this— anymore.
It hurts.”

“Okay,” Suguru nodded, whispering, brushing the back of his hands along the gentle curve of
Satoru’s face, passing over cheekbone and helix of the ear and the warm part of the side of
his neck. “Okay. Alright.”

The touch seemed to undo him, whether Suguru meant it to or not. “You keep— keep
breaking my heart. Once should have— have been enough,” he dripped.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Suguru whispered into his hair, squeezing his eyes shut, lest he start
dripping tears, too. “Sweetheart, Satoru, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Satoru seemed to be drifting off, growing smaller and quieter, somehow crying himself to
sleep in Suguru’s arms.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” he repeated, like a meditation, like a prayer. “I won’t— I won’t do
this to you anymore. This is the last time. I promise.”
And Satoru seemed to understand, because he was nodding against Suguru’s neck, his
fingertips curling into a fist on the fabric of his shirt. “The last time,” he repeated.

And Suguru kissed his forehead, kissed it again and again and again, because it was the last
time, and he would never have the chance to after. He kissed his cheeks, kissed the salty
tears, kissed the tip of his nose and held him tight and tried not to break into pieces all over
the floor on that apartment they used to share together. He lifted him up as best as he could
on his lame leg— hissing quietly on the agony, the burning sensation of overuse— and he
brought him to his bed where he belonged, where he stopped crying. He let him get settled in
and he knelt at his side, brushing stray locks of white hair from his face, tracing him with the
backs of his fingers, trying to re-memorize what had once been so natural to the both of him.
He watched as Satoru went silent, as his breathing slowed, as he drifted off and away in the
stillness of sleep, the depressant on his central nervous system joining forces with the
physical and emotional exhaustion of crying one’s eyes out in the arms of someone who used
to be home to them, and he waited until he was at least halfway certain that he was
unconscious before trying to stand up again.

“Wait,” Satoru called after him, his eyes still closed, somehow seeing him in the darkness.
“Wait, wait, please.”

Suguru waited.

“Can you— can you stay here, please?” Satoru asked, his voice small, his brows drawing
together a little. “Just— just until morning.”

Geto sighed through his nose, tilting his head to the side. “Satoru, you know I shouldn’t—“

“Please,” Gojo croaked, and his eyes flickered open— blue and red and wet and awful. “Just
— If this is the last time, then— then just do this one last thing for me. You owe me that
much.”

Suguru couldn’t argue.

That night, he sat at the foot of Satoru’s bed for three straight hours before he finally left,
before he crept away on silent feet like he always did, like he was a thief who had stolen
something, and he had. He had been stealing small pieces of Satoru’s soul for the better part
of three years at that point. With every touch, every touch he shouldn’t have had, his hands
came away covered in particulate and molecules and pieces, bits and pieces, of Satoru. Pieces
that got washed away in the shower, pieces that got rubbed off on his shirt when he wiped his
hands, pieces that evaporated into nothingness as the laws of thermodynamics were broken
and matter was destroyed.

He was destroying Satoru.

Whatever he had allowed himself to believe before to protect his own guilty conscience and
his nonexistent peace of mind, he was wrong. Worse than wrong, he was a liar and a thief and
a selfish bastard. Satoru was right when he said he would never be good enough for Suguru,
but not for the reasons he thought. For Suguru, it would never be good enough to just break
his heart once and move on. He had to keep breaking it over and over, again and again, every
time he left before the sun came up and Satoru woke up alone in a cold bed. It would never
be enough to just live with the yearning, live with the memories he kept to himself, the
phantom images of Satoru smiling or Satoru laughing or Satoru writhing underneath him or
Satoru sleeping. He would have to gather new ones, scrape them together, all at the expense
of the man he had once claimed to love, who he still loved, somehow.

It was the last time he would ever hurt him, he told himself. The last time he would ever
answer a call or drive to the apartment that used to belong to him, too, the last time he would
ever steal tiny pieces of Satoru’s soul like some sort of vampire, the last time he’d ever break
his heart. When he slipped out the door that night, the guilt had already eaten its way through
his center, a hole where the lightning went through the night he should have died. If he stayed
until sunrise like Satoru had asked him to, there would be consequences. There would be
implications. There would be another conversation, a sober conversation, another chance to
hurt him. At that point, Suguru no longer trusted himself.

It was just something he could no longer stomach.

He pressed a kiss to his index and middle fingers and smeared it on the doorway as he
disappeared. It should have been the last kiss he ever gave him.

***

2:28 p.m. Somewhere in the plains. One day before the storm.

They hadn’t spoken much that day, not like they usually did.

Satoru had warmed back up after their awkward not-really-a-conversation in the wee hours of
the morning, when Suguru had come back to the hotel room to find him standing at the
window with his clothes and shoes on, wearing a distressed face, but he hadn’t exactly
returned back to his comfortable baseline of making stupid jokes and spouting off statistics at
the slightest provocation and trying to drive 20 miles over the speed limit with his head
craned forward to look up from the windshield. Suguru, for his part, had been trying to make
things as simple and smooth as possible, still wearing the mask he’d put on when he came
back to the hotel room and asked Satoru to lie down with him, and for the first time in living
memory, Satoru had refused him. He was a fantastic actor, and quite the convincing liar, but
that lingering feeling of claustrophobia had stuck with him through the night and well into
the day, and as they went further and further northwest to where the worst of the storm cells
were expected to form, he’d found it harder and harder to hide.

The sunlight was sparing that day, coming down from the clouds in strange ways, and when it
came down, Satoru’s white hair reflected the glimmer like a halo, like a glow emanating from
his head full of statistics and equations and atmospheric modeling, emanating from his
smiling face and the azure blue of his irises. In a way, it had started to remind Suguru of
something that had fascinated him a long time ago, something he’d read about in a book on
weather phenomena and their impact on folklore. When he looked at Satoru’s glowing light,
he saw Saint Elmo’s fire, that old seafarer’s tale from the days when nobody knew what
plasma was and bolts of lightning were universally accepted as a physical manifestation of
God’s wrath.

Looking at it critically, Suguru could understand why God was so easy to believe in during
those dark ages, so easy to fear. For the mariners drifting helplessly along stormy seas, with
their flimsy vessels flung around, they were at the whims of nature, at the mercy of a God
who, at that time, seemed none too pleased with them. Suguru supposed that if he had seen
that glow as they did— the glow that clung to the masts of their ship, the soundless, harmless
lightning that flickered and fizzled wildly from tall points and the ends of their own
fingertips, he might have fallen to his knees in prayer, too. Those sailors saw that which was
to be feared as a sign of their protection, a sign of grace from their patron saint, Erasmus of
Formia, their Elmo reaching down a benevolent hand and giving them lights to guide
themselves by.

In truth, it was no protection— rather, it was a subtle sign of danger. What the sailors did not
know— what they could not have known— was that it was an effect of the ionization of the
air surrounding them, the electric field in the presence of a storm becoming so charged that
the molecules themselves began to glow with power, with energy, a light or a flicker or a
flash or a whisper of God’s own breath against the sails. Suguru could understand how those
back then, those without the knowledge afforded by centuries of scientific and atmospheric
studies, could have believed in something so outlandish as a saint’s grace through a storm. He
probably would have believed it, too.

Often, he wished he could still find it in his heart to believe— at least, to believe in heavenly
benevolence. He missed how he felt when he believed in such a thing. He missed who he had
been before he saw heaven come down to earth, before he saw it strike Riko instead of him.

When he saw that glow about Satoru’s head, he turned away.

They’d had a lot more luck with the storms that day, depending on how you look at it. They
weren’t making much progress by way of distance, because Suguru kept asking Satoru to pull
over every five minutes so he could take a few shots if the exceptional views in the skies
above them, glorious cloud formations in the distance, rain shafts shrouded in darkness at
varying distances— sometimes twenty miles away, sometimes two. It reminded him of the
waterspouts one could see from the shores of the gulf coast, how they’d twist upward in thin,
threadlike spirals, as harmless as a dust devil with all the intimidation of a full tornado.
Sometimes the footage was for the freelance work, but sometimes it was just to have, just for
himself.

Satoru didn’t seem to mind it. When they stopped for long enough, he’d make a quick phone
call to Ieiri or that TA he was always talking about, the really promising one. He’d tell them
where he was, what he was doing, and he’d keep making grinning glances to Suguru at his
side, like they were both in on some big secret, like they were playing a cat-and-mouse game
with the outside world and winning. Were it not for that constant, creeping feeling of
claustrophobia seeping in through Suguru’s veins, he might have liked it. He might have
snaked a playful arm around Satoru’s waist, might have groped him just to see if he’d flinch,
might have tried to kiss him in the middle of a sentence. And maybe that was what Satoru
wanted him to do, but it didn’t matter, because Suguru could hardly look at him anymore
without wanting to flee.

He hadn’t said anything about it, and he’d never say anything about it, but he had a bad
feeling about that storm they were chasing.

He didn’t get bad feelings about storms often, but when he did, it was usually wise to listen to
his gut.

He didn’t have a bad feeling when he was 22 and following the path of a tornado that quickly
worsened from a common twister into an EF3 wedging monster. He didn’t have a bad feeling
when he was 26 and caught alone in the throes of a category 3 hurricane swirling down on
the gulf coast. He didn’t have a bad feeling when he watched the roofs of dozens of barns and
poorly-built homes get ripped up and sucked away in the terrible force of the wild winds he
had been chasing. But he had a bad feeling when he and Satoru brought Riko along for a
relatively safe chase. He had a bad feeling when they stood in that field and watched it all
come down. And that afternoon— one year after the last time, with Satoru in the driver’s seat
chattering abstract nonsense about some new geometric theory he’d been researching in
reference to the atmospheric sciences— he had a bad feeling.

He had a bad, bad feeling and no way of bringing it up.

It wasn’t like Satoru would listen to him, anyway. It wasn’t like he’d ever listened before.

“Yo, Sugu,” Satoru was smiling from the wheel, something cocky, something slightly
annoying. “You listening to me?”

Suguru rolled his eyes on the irony as he snapped out of his thoughts. “Hm? Sorry, I guess I
spaced out.”

“You’ve been doing that a lot today. You sure you’re alright?” Satoru asked, and one hand
came off the wheel to poke him gently in the shoulder. “You can’t go spacing out when we’re
actually in this thing, you know. Reports are saying it’s gonna be big. Huge.”

Suguru sighed a little at the suggestion. He wanted to say something mean and snarky,
something like sorry, I was struck by lightning and got my brain scrambled like eggs, it’s also
why I’m in this car with you right now, like some cosmic punishment.

“So I’ve heard,” he said instead. “I’m fine. What were you saying?”

“I was asking what comes next,” Satoru replied plainly.

Suguru blinked at him. “What do you mean, ‘what comes next’?”

“I mean, what comes next?” The other shrugged. “Like, what’re you doing after we get done
following this thing?”

And Suguru paused for a moment while he thought about it. “I don’t know,” he said, leaning
back in his seat, feeling the weight of the camera in its case at the floor of the car, between
his shoes. “Deal with my truck, first of all. Go back home. See if I can’t do anything with this
film I’m gathering up.”

“Where’s home for you these days?”

He paused again, wondering if he should bother telling him. “Farther south than where it
used to be,” he decided. “Better access to the hurricane season. There’s been more work
getting footage for news crews out there recently.”

“Damn,” Satoru clicked his tongue. “We’re going opposite ways, then. I could take a couple
more days off work to get you back to your place.”

Suguru shook his head. “Just drop me back where you found me. The collision center needs
my signature to turn my old truck into scrap metal. Insurance stuff.”

“Right,” Satoru nodded. “You sure you’ll be alright out there?”

Suguru’s stomach felt a pinprick of something mean and uncomfortable. I’ve never needed
your help before, he thought. Rich of you to treat me like some wounded animal after last
time.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, his tone calm, but Satoru was nothing if not perceptive.

A tense pause as the other considered his next words carefully.

“Y’know, I’m out here because Ieiri told me I should get back into it,” Gojo began, a small
smile on his mouth. “I was working too hard, sleeping in my office, putting too much work
off on my TA… I guess she thought I needed to feel like myself again.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And, I mean,” he swallowed uncomfortably on his words, fingertips drumming against the
steering wheel, like a nervous tic, “it’s a little crazy that we ran into each other back there,
right? I mean, what are the chances?”

“Sure,” Suguru side-eyed him. “Where are you going with this?”

“I guess,” Gojo swallowed again, “I guess— I don’t know. Maybe it means something,
right?”

Geto laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those ‘I don’t believe in coincidences’ people.
I’ve never known that from you.”

“I’m not, I’m not,” Satoru laughed with him, but it was nervous, antsy. It wasn’t natural. “I’m
just— I don’t know, yeah, maybe it’s a coincidence. But couldn’t it— couldn’t it be, like, a
sign?”

Suguru laughed again, but he was unnatural that time, too. The claustrophobia had dialed
itself up to a fever pitch and the bolts holding him together were starting to strain. “A sign,
Satoru? I thought you were a respected scientist. You don’t believe in shamanism, do you?”
“I don’t,” Satoru shook his head. “It’s just— we make a good team, don’t we?
Stormchasing?”

“We do.”

“And we used to make a pretty good team when we were together, didn’t we?”

Suguru closed his eyes. “We used to, yes.”

“Then couldn’t we—“

“No.”

“Right,” Satoru muttered, and Suguru knew instinctively that it was through gritted teeth. He
could tell it by the way the energy had shifted in the car, the way the barometric pressure was
dropping, the way the wind stilled and his hand tightened on the wheel. The radio was off.
“Sorry. I don’t know why I said anything.”

“It’s fine,” Suguru said, turning his gaze out the window, but he knew that wasn’t the end of
it.

“You’re never going to tell me why, are you?” Gojo’s voice came again after a while, and
Geto winced.

“The first twelve times weren’t enough?”

Satoru scoffed quietly. “That explanation doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny, does it? You keep
saying it’s because you’re ‘bad news’ or whatever, but you’ve got no problem walking back
into my life to mess it all up again. Really, it’s like you just flip a coin and decide which
version of Suguru you’re going to be on any given day.”

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Suguru’s hand slipped to his knee on the left leg, pressing his
thumb behind the cap and into the joint, trying to feel something there. “Weren’t you the one
who was saying we shouldn’t forget ourselves yesterday? That this is all business?”

“You’re just going to conveniently forget that you wouldn’t accept that answer?” Satoru bit
his teeth. “Don’t turn this around on me. You were the one who started pulling my clothes off
the minute we—“

“Don’t act like you didn’t know exactly what you were doing,” Suguru interrupted to roll his
eyes. “I know you, ‘Toru. The ‘innocent idiot’ act isn’t gonna work on me.”

“It’s not a fucking act, it’s—“

“Maybe I’m reading this whole situation wrong,” Geto cut him off again, the hand on his bad
knee tightening. “Is this not just mindless entertainment for you?”

Gojo turned to blink at him. “What?”

“You’re not out here on business, you’re chasing a storm for fun,” Suguru explained, “and
you didn’t bring me along out of the kindness of your heart, you thought you saw your
chance to get one over on me when a tree fell on my truck—“

“Are you kidding me?” Satoru was terrible at hiding his temper. He always had been, ever
since they were young, but as he’d grown older his anger had become a steady thing,
something that builds like a storm, until like a storm it spiraled and swirled together to create
something dangerous, something to be warned about.

Luckily for Suguru— or unluckily, he wasn’t really sure at that point— he had experience
chasing storms.

“I’m tired of being treated like I’m the only one with free will in this situation,” Geto said,
his eyes wandering to the window again, and in the reflection of the glass he could see the
phantom image of Gojo glaring knives out of the corner of his blue eye. “You’re just as much
of an adult as I am. If this is so much of a torture for you, then you should take some
responsibility for your part of the mess.”

“Am I remembering things wrong, or did that lightning strike fry your brain worse than we
thought?” Satoru scoffed at him.

“You’re a genius, Satoru, but nobody ever accused you of being smart.”

“Then spell it out for me.” Satoru’s tone was cold, bitter. “Stop dancing around the point.”

“Fine. You do this because you’re bored,” Suguru said, clear as day, calm as sunlight. “And if
this is torture to you, then you enjoy torturing yourself.”

A beat of silence, and Suguru knew he’d gone too far, but he was in too deep to reverse
course. At least the anger in the air was enough to darken out the claustrophobia.

“Disgusting,” Satoru muttered to himself. “You are actually fucking disgusting.”

“Right back at you, sweetheart.”

“What the hell did you ever see in me, Sugu?” Satoru asked, his tone lowering, his eyes fixed
squarely on the road ahead, on the clouds at the horizon line. “What did you— what was it
about me that made you feel justified in tearing my life apart like that?”

“Enough. Stop it.”

“I want to know. Clearly, it isn’t just you at fault here. Clearly, there’s something wrong with
me that I need to fix before I can ever learn to move on from you—“

“Satoru, enough.”

“No, we’re having this talk,” Satoru snapped, his fingers snaring tighter around the wheel and
his eyes glued to the road ahead of him. “I’ve wanted to have this talk for four years, Sugu,
and we’re having this fucking talk.”
Suguru put one hand on the door, as if to warn him that he wasn’t afraid to disable himself
even more by jumping out of a moving vehicle, and Satoru responded in kind by slamming
the accelerator and daring him to try it.

“You’re really going to do this, aren’t you?” Suguru muttered, relenting, two hands coming
up to press the heels of his palm against his eyes.

“We’re having this talk,” Satoru insisted. He did not let up off the gas pedal. The
speedometer climbed higher. Eighty, eighty-five, ninety miles per hour…

“Slow down. You’ll get us killed.”

“Tell me why you dumped me,” Satoru demanded, “and don’t lie.”

“I never lied in the first place.”

Satoru clicked his tongue. “Lie number one.”

“God damn it, Satoru, take your foot off the gas.”

“I’ll push this thing as far as it goes until you fucking tell me why—“

“I’m not good for you,” Suguru snapped back, and Satoru’s foot finally eased off the
accelerator, but did not push the brake. “It’s the same answer you’re gonna get every time, so
quit asking.”

“Lie number two,” Satoru counted. “Tell me. Tell me why I’m not good enough.”

“I’m not playing this game with you, ‘Toru.”

“Yeah, you are,” Satoru said, and depressed the gas pedal again. “I’m not giving you a
choice. Tell me.”

“Does this make you feel powerful?” Suguru turned to him, narrow eyes wide, ice
underneath. “Huh? Do you feel tough, doing this?”

“Sort of,” Satoru bit back.

“You’re gonna have a damn hard time getting anywhere,” Geto reminded him, “because I’m
not afraid of a car wreck and I’m not afraid of you.”

Gojo laughed, drumming fingertips on the wheel. “Oh, right, I forgot. You got struck by
lightning and lived, so nothing scares you anymore, huh? Nothing except talking to me or
even thinking about the person you used to be before—“

“Enough,” Suguru cut him off, his voice vicious, mouth heavy with venom. “Cut it out. Get
yourself together. We are not doing this right now.”

And there it was again— that glow, that halo, that phantom light behind his head reflecting
outward from his white hair, Saint Elmo’s fire or the illusion thereof. That sign of protection,
the sign of ionization in the air, the sign of the cross at the door when the congregation bowed
their heads and believed in something Suguru found impossible to reconcile anymore. He
stared at that light, stared at that glow, stared at how stinging beads of something even
brighter were springing up in the corners of Satoru’s fiery eyes. There was that joy, that
imprint joy had left behind, that ghostly vision of who they had used to be, who they used to
be together.

“It’s never, ever going to work, Satoru,” Suguru forced from his mouth, forced the glow to
extinguish itself. “Stop trying.”

Again, he looked away. Again, he turned from the glow, from the fire.

“What did I ever do to you?” Satoru’s voice was small, hissing, like a broken pipe or a
droplet of water in a hot pan, evaporating quickly as stinging tears evaporated from his eyes.
“What did I do to you that would make this okay? What— what kind of revenge is this,
Suguru?”

“It’s not revenge, its—“

“Punishment, then? Is that what this is?” His hands were shaking, trembling, and he had
nowhere to put them. In that moment, he was just like Geto— nowhere to run, nowhere to
hide, alone in the face of the great terror, staring down the storm and daring it to get closer.
“Are you— are you punishing me for something I did when we were together?”

Suguru stared at him like he’d burst into flames. Something sick and bubbling occupied the
space behind his eyes. Hatred. Hated of the situation, of the insinuation, of the truth, but
never of Satoru. Never of him. “Fucking Christ, Satoru. Is that who you think I am?”

“Just tell me what I did wrong!” Satoru shouted, the raising of his voice sudden. “What did I
do to warrant this? When does it end?”

“It should have ended a year ago,” Suguru said though his teeth, the hand on his bad leg
tightening over his knee until he could feel the sensation beneath the paralyzation, until he
could feel the pain somewhere other than his own head. “Pull the fucking car over and calm
down.”

“I’m not doing anything until you tell me what I did wrong!”

Finally, the pain became too much to stomach silently. Finally, Suguru snapped.

The hand on his knee slammed against the dashboard and caused them both to flinch. Satoru
looked away from the road for only a moment, only enough to catch the burning look in his
eyes, so dark and terrible and swirling he could have mistaken it for a mesocyclone.

“You didn’t do anything! Have some self respect!”

Suguru had never, never yelled at him like that before.

He was a soft-spoken person, but he wasn’t meek. He didn’t raise his voice often, but when
he did, it was for good reason, and it was the kind of sound that silenced a room. It was a
foreign sound, an alien sound, like a deep echo within an uncharted cave or a far-away
explosion or the acoustical pressure waves radiating from the surface of the sun, a frequency
too low to be understood by the human ear, an oscillation too terrible to be known. It was the
sort of unknown that inspired fear, that suffocated speculation. That afternoon, it was what
made Satoru start to cry.

Not drunk tears. Not sad tears. Hot, bitter, angry tears.

The brake slammed and the car veered dangerously to the side of the road, grinding to a halt
in a patch of mud, the contents of the backseat being thrown forward and crashing around
miserably as inertia met mechanical resistance. The gear shift clicked strangely as it was
slammed from drive into park.

“Why won’t you just leave me alone?” Satoru shouted back, his eyes horrible, his cheeks wet.
“If you’re so— If you’re so bad, then why won’t you get out of my life?”

“Why do you keep letting me back in?”

“You know why!” Two hands slammed on the horn and he screamed with it, then released to
white-knuckle the wheel as hard as he possibly could. “I don’t need to tell you that I still—“

“Don’t,” Suguru demanded, his voice low, steady, and it caught Satoru’s attention just long
enough to freeze him. “Don’t,” he repeated. “Don’t say it.”

And Satoru stared at him for a long, long time.

Tears dripping. Eyes red and blue and glimmering, fractals underwater, a deep-sea secret
trying to swim to the surface, the decompression sickness eliminating it before it ever had a
chance to break the waves. That eye contact— sick, crumbling, like a thousand years of war
boiled down to the space between two blinks— was worse than anything Suguru had ever
felt. Worse than the lightning strike. Worse than holding Riko’s dead body in his arms. Worse
than waiting with the gun to his head. Worse than anything in the entire world was knowing
exactly what Satoru wanted to say, what he needed to say, and refusing to say it back to him.

Not because it wasn’t true. Because he couldn’t.

Eventually, Satoru blinked first, and he turned back to the wheel, wiping his eyes with the
backs of his palms. He depressed the accelerator, but only a deep grinding noise came up
from the wheels beneath them. He tried the gear shift once, twice. Stuck.

“You’re kidding,” he muttered to himself, trying the shift again, trying the emergency brake,
trying the gas, trying the brake again. “You’re fucking kidding me. No. No.”

Suguru pressed his face into his hands and sighed hard. It was all going white noise, all going
walkie-talkie static, all going dark. Finally, he understood what he had failed to see about the
halo surrounding his head that he had either ignored or pretended not to notice before.
Finally, he understood the true nature of Saint Elmo’s fire, that small glimmer of beauty, that
trick of the eyes that preceded or followed or danced within a storm. That air around them
was ionizing again, that electric field was beginning to glow and flicker wildly, but it was
nothing real, it was nothing true.

Their connection had always been like that fire. It had always been intense, ionizing, rare. If
Suguru had found it somewhere in nature, maybe he would have fallen to his knees and
worshipped, too. Maybe that’s what he should have done. Maybe, if he begged, he could still
be forgiven, and he could wash himself in that light and safety and sanctity and he could be
home, home again. They had always been pulled together, just to push each other apart again.
They had always been glowing, glowing, a matching halo around each head, backlit and
beautiful and impossible to believe, impossible to understand.

He would never, ever understand why Satoru still wanted him. Suguru would never, ever
understand why he kept going back, knowing full well he would come away more tainted
than before, knowing full well he was destroying whatever remained of that holy love he had
known for the better half of his life.

He looked over at Satoru in the driver’s seat, Satoru in control, and saw just how broken and
awful he had become.

“God damn it!” Satoru was hissing, slamming his hand on the wheel. “God damn it, God
damn it!”

And suddenly Suguru could take no more.

Carefully, deliberately, he lifted his camera case from the floor of the car between his feet and
unbuckled his seatbelt. Without so much as a second glance to Satoru— without another
word— he pushed the door open and got outside.

“Where are you going?” Satoru called after him.

Suguru did not bother turning around. He did not bother answering. He just went on walking
in a straight line, dirt following in an uneven pattern on his limping leg, into the field to the
northern side of the highway.

“Suguru!”

Sometimes, you do what works. Sometimes, what works isn’t always what’s right.
Sometimes, you just have to walk away.

Satoru did not call after him again, and Suguru did not look back. He walked until he was
about in the center of the field, until his boots sank in muddy marsh and trampled the young
grasses around him, until his bad leg ached so horribly he was forced to stop, forced to rest.
He was only 200 feet or so from where the now-broken-down car sat on the side of the
highway, but for all he cared, it could have been a thousand miles. It could have been the
distance between the sun and the moon, the peak of Everest to the bottom of the Challenger
Deep, the infinity separating heaven from earth, God from man. He walked until he felt it was
enough, until Satoru’s voice was a distant phantom in the back of his ears, and only then did
he exhale again. Only then did he start breathing properly.
 Carefully, conscious of the pain in his legs and his back and his stomach and his head, he
lowered himself into the mud on his knees and took his camera out of the bag. He pointed it
skyward, pointed it to the towering cumulus clouds overhead, and watched through the lens
as they drifted northwest, the same direction they had been heading, the same path they had
wandered together a million different times. He sat there, and he breathed, and he watched,
and he waited. Up in the atmosphere, at the veil behind which heaven hid, the liminal space
between in here and out there, he could almost see that light. He could almost see that fire.

After a long while, he heard a screeching of tires against asphalt, and he exhaled a deep sigh.

He could have helped Satoru fix the car. It was only a locked gear shift. He knew it by the
sound, and it was a simple fix, but he also knew Satoru was smart enough to figure it out for
himself if he could ever wipe the tears from his eyes and pull himself together.

If Satoru had any sense, he would keep on going without him. He would leave him out there,
leave him alone and muddy and still trembling with adrenaline from their argument, and he
would let him find his own way home. It was what Suguru deserved, after all. He could think
of no more fitting punishment for what he had become, the thing he had steadily been
becoming for years at that point. In fact, it wasn’t enough. If Satoru had any sense— any
sense at all— he would keep the pedal to the floor and never, ever look back.

As he walked back to the road from his place in the mud, in the filth, he hoped never to see
him again. He hoped never to be graced by that face, graced by the glow of that halo. He
hoped Satoru would learn from his mistakes and learn to be mean. He hoped he might learn
from the cruelties he suffered and become cruel himself. If that was what had to happen for
him to finally stand up for himself, so be it.

For a long while, Suguru stood at the equinox where the asphalt met the dirt, and he stared up
at the sky, waiting for the lightning bolt. If he had ever deserved it before, he deserved it then,
in that moment.

His hopes shattered with his resolve when the familiar low hum of that heated engine came
back down the road, on the opposite side, and for a moment Suguru wished he would veer off
course and run him over, just to get it over with. Instead, Satoru pulled up next to him and the
doors clicked quietly as they unlocked. He did not look at Suguru, not even for a brief
second, but from the wide state of his red-circled eyes, Suguru knew better than to say
anything when he got in.

The mud on his shoes and pants grew heavy and painful as they made another U-turn and
kept driving, endlessly to the west.

Chapter End Notes

A LOT of the “last time” sequence was inspired by the song This Is The Last Time by
The National. I recommend it to everyone. It’s kind of this fic’s theme song :)
Thank you again to everyone commenting and supporting!! I’ve been lurking on twt and
I see yall recommending my fic and it means the world to me <3 I hope my next chapter
will live up to expectations
 Virga
Chapter Summary

Virga (noun) . ˈvər-gə

: wisps of precipitation evaporating before reaching the ground

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

10:45 a.m. A funeral home somewhere on the east coast. Five years before the storm.

Suguru looked good in a suit. Satoru thought so, anyway.

He looked good in black and white. Satoru always thought he looked something like a
painting, like an old photograph, like something someone might find at the bottom of their
grandmother’s drawer, some secret love she had known decades before and still set aside time
to reminisce over. Suguru had always been a timeless beauty, in Satoru’s opinion. He was that
breed of beautiful, that legendary sort of lovely. He had told him once that he had ‘a face men
would go to war for’ because he’d seen it said online, and Suguru had laughed and asked him
if he would really pick up a gun for him, and Satoru had answered yes, yes, a million times
yes, I would burn nations and raise millions and create a new world from the ashes just to
keep a place for that smile in the universe, and Suguru had kissed his nose and called him
adorable. That was when they were nineteen, almost five years ago at that point. Satoru still
believed it.

Suguru looked extra good that morning, especially considering Satoru had not seen him wear
anything besides a huge sweatshirt and baggy pants or a hospital gown in the last five days.
His family and his doctors were hesitant to even let him out of bed for the funeral,
considering his left leg was mostly paralyzed and he was still in a constant state of pain, but
after he had threatened to discharge himself if they did not let him leave, he was cleared to
attend. He had asked Satoru to help him get dressed, to help him do his hair, and Satoru had
been honored, because Suguru almost never asked him for help.

Suguru looked good with his hair styled that way— half-up, half-down, some special oil run
through the strands, making them stick up at the ends like the spindly petals of a spider lily,
like the precursor to a lightning strike— and Suguru told him he did a beautiful job, but he
didn’t smile. No one could have expected him to.

Spring rain was misting down that day, that misty morning like a curtain, like a veil. It was a
dusty kind of precipitation, the kind that leaves your clothes dry, the minuscule beads of
water collected neatly on the fabric and fibers of your coat, like fresh-fallen snow, like
sunlight. Only when you smear your hand across it does it start to soak in. Only then does it
stain.

It was catching in Suguru’s spider lily hair that morning, and were it not for the severity of
the situation, Satoru would have told him that he was glowing, because he was. He was like a
glass prism through which the rainbow shines out, like all the light that passed through him
passed between all of his small beauties and brighter glories, like the late Triassic period
when it rained for two million years straight. Through all that water, through all that shower,
Satoru was sure there had to be a flash of color, of every color. Satoru was sure two million
years was not long enough.

Somewhere in between the car and the church steps, Suguru’s crutches slipped on the wet
pavement, and Satoru caught him.

“You okay?” He asked.

“Fine,” Suguru said, but he was hissing, and he was wincing, and he was in horrible pain. It
was to be expected, of course. Ieiri told Gojo not to mention it to anyone, but electrocution
was not a painless way to die, and depending on how brutal the recovery was, Geto might
start wishing that strike had taken him out, too.

Satoru tried not to think about it as he helped Suguru steady the crutches and start moving
again.

“Did you leave your pills in the car? I can—“

“I don’t want them.”

Satoru didn’t push.

The service was small, but the church wasn’t. Rows and rows of empty pews, bibles in the
slots lining the backs of seats, kneeler bars with red velvet cushioning that provided no
comfort. Stained glass windows, tall arches, a statuette of the Virgin Mary in the courtyard,
crucified Christ at the end of the long aisle, hanging heavy and cold above the mourners
gathered. Riko’s family was catholic, Suguru had told him, and Satoru had never bothered to
see the inside of a catholic church before, and when he found himself there it was strange and
discomforting. He felt like he was intruding, somehow, on this family’s private affairs,
forcing himself into spaces he did not belong in, that did not welcome him. In all honesty, he
had tried his hardest not to go to the funeral at all, but the dead girl’s mother had invited
them, as they were the last to see her alive and presumably cared for her.

His stomach started to ache when his eyes found the casket, and saw the half couch lid was
open.

Mourners lined up. Satoru and Suguru lined with them.

It was a strange thing, to mourn someone who you had tried to keep a stranger for as long as
possible.
Satoru didn’t like her. That was what he maintained up until the moment he saw her corpse.
He didn’t like how loud she was, how sure of herself she was, how bright and brilliant and
willing to correct him she was, how undeniably, undoubtably promising she was. He didn’t
like the bandana she tied around her head, a little white triangle over her fishtail braid, and he
didn’t like that whoever had dressed her body for her burial had forgotten to include it. He
didn’t like the makeup they put on her— it was too strange, too cakey, and it didn’t match her
skin tone, but that might have been because of the formaldehyde. There was a strange smell,
too, something Satoru couldn’t quite pick out. It was vaguely chemical and harshly
meditative like incense, something meant to be purifying and coming across as merely a
mask for the death clinging to every corner of that long hall.

No, he didn’t like her. He was sure of it. He was sure of it up until he was giving her CPR and
911 was on speakerphone and Suguru was lying catatonic in the mud beside them. He didn’t
like her until they zipped her up and carted her away. He didn’t like her until he stood over
her casket and realized that if he had been a little more insistent about hating her, if he had
stuck to his resolve and refuse to let her come along, she would still be alive. He didn’t like
her until he realized it was his fault that she was dead, and then he liked her so much he could
have burst into flames or melted into a puddle or evaporated into the atmosphere.

Suguru was shaking on his crutches.

Satoru looked over and froze.

He couldn’t remember much of that face in the years after their breakup. He guessed he had
just blocked it out of his mind, that there wasn’t much room for it in between the anger and
the sorrow and the grief and the pain. But he remembered how it felt to see that face he so
adored twist and contort, bend itself apart, morph into a shape he’d never seen Suguru take
before. He remembered watching the tears slide down the side of his face, the face he would
pick up a gun for, and drip from his jaw and chin into the carpet beneath their feet. He
remembered how he never actually saw that precipitation hit the ground, how it all seemed to
evaporate with the end of the world around him, like virga.

There was nothing he could do, nothing he could say.

Satoru remembered reaching out to touch him, letting his fingers fold over the white-knuckle
grip he had on one crutch, and how Suguru had slapped his hand away.

And he remembered his heart breaking, just a little bit, because Suguru had never slapped his
hand away before.

He left not long after, crutches down the aisle and out the wide wooden doors, and he did not
come back for the service. Satoru did not go after him.

That was when it all began, he thought. The beginning of the end was when the sky sent light
to earth and that girl was caught in the crossfire.

Suguru started sleeping in. He started coming home late. He stopped calling, stopped
responding to Satoru’s silly texts throughout the day, stopped caring about his research
position at the university’s sister school. He started drinking too much and falling asleep at
the table, he stopped calling his mother and his sisters and would have missed their birthday
if Satoru had not reminded him, he let the work pile up all around him until it just became the
scenery and not a symptom. He started to deteriorate.

The only therapy Shoko could get him to agree to was physical, to support his bad leg as it
healed and gain some mobility back. He outright refused treatment for his mind, for his
scrambled-eggs brain, and became angry at the mere suggestion that medication or a support
group or something might help him better process Riko’s death than drinking himself to sleep
every night. He got worse for a long while as his injury got better, and then both fronts
stagnated, and he found a limbo where he could retreat within himself and away from the
outside world, away from his friends, away from Satoru.

Eight months in, he began disappearing for days at a time.

For a terrified minute there, Satoru worried he might be cheating on him, so he made the
(admittedly insane and over-the-line) decision to hire a private investigator, just to confirm
his suspicions. The truth was worse.

He doesn’t see anyone, the P.I. had said. He doesn’t even pick up his phone. He just walks. He
walks for hours and hours and hours. At night, in the rain, in the cold… he just walks. Just
limps around for miles.

And at that point, Satoru didn’t know what to do. At that point, he had run out of ideas.
Nothing he tried had ever worked, and frankly, he was terrified that all of his trying had only
made things worse. For most of those nights, at least in the beginning, he had stayed up until
sunrise, waiting on the couch, trying to imagine what he might say when he finally came
home. He tried to rehearse the argument, to pick out what he would choose to scream and
what he would choose to whisper, if he would start running down the laundry list of injustices
he had suffered or if he would take a sympathetic approach and just beg for them to talk to
each other. Towards the end of things, he had stopped waiting for the door that never opened
and started going to bed alone.

But there came a time when he just couldn’t take it anymore, when he couldn’t live in
purgatory with him any longer. That day came when he found that half of Suguru’s
possessions had inexplicably disappeared from their drawers, and with no signs of a break-in
there was only one explanation for what would come next.

Satoru found him at night, ten miles away form their home, walking the grassy fields far
outside of town with his limping leg stiff and his head craned skyward, watching dark clouds
overhead descend and swirl inward. He had not turned around immediately when Gojo called
his name.

“Tell me what’s going on,” Satoru demanded, a slight shake in his voice, a viciousness
bubbling up in his stomach when he saw the indifferent expression Suguru regarded him
with. “Tell me why you won’t come home.”

“Do I need to?”

“Yes!” He shouted, and took a few steps closer. “I deserve to know!”

Suguru tilted his head, exhaled through his nose. “I thought that maybe we wouldn’t have to
have this conversation.”

“You thought that— you thought that you could just get away with this?” Satoru asked,
almost laughing, his anger swirling all his emotions together into one unrecognizable puddle,
a Frankenstein mass of love and affection and worry and memories and hate, hate, hate. “You
thought that— that after eight years together you could break up with me without even
speaking to me?”

Suguru sighed. “I guess I did.”

Hot, bitter tears slipped down the curve of Satoru’s face before he even had the chance to
recognize that he was crying, that Suguru had made him cry again. “That’s what’s happening,
then? You’re leaving me?”

“I guess I am.”

And Satoru exploded.

He had gone there with a plan, with a monologue in his head that he’d practiced in the
shower, a collection of mean and quippy things he could say to teach him a lesson, to teach
him never to hurt another soul like he’d hurt Satoru, but it all came undone the moment those
words left his mouth. Suddenly, Satoru was no longer Satoru Gojo, meteorology prodigy,
future esteemed professor, one of the youngest Ph.D. candidates at his university and the one
with a stipend bigger than his monthly trust fund allocation. In mere seconds, in the time it
takes for a wisp of rain to evaporate back up into the atmosphere before ever touching the
earth, he was just ‘Toru. He was ‘Toru, Suguru’s so-called life partner, the whiny little heir
who’d gotten himself sent to a farm for the summer after breaking a classmate’s leg. He was
just ‘Toru, the little boy who’d fallen in love in the shadow of a supercell storm and never
once looked back, never once felt fear, never once entertained doubt.

He was just ‘Toru— weak, pathetic, stupid ‘Toru— and he was being abandoned.

Like a wounded animal, he lashed out. He fell to his knees and he screamed every horrible
thing he could possibly think of at Suguru. He called him a liar, a coward, a manipulative
piece of shit, an ungrateful and unfeeling dirtbag, scum below scum, garbage above garbage,
worthless, a waste, and he wished over and over that they’d never meet again, that they’d
never met in the first place. He was sobbing into his palms and he was ripping up grass from
the earth and he was waiting to be screamed back at, but the sound never came.

Suguru just stood there, motionless, and waited for him to get it out of his system.

When Satoru fell quiet, he exhaled a sighing breath, and he turned around again. “Goodbye,
’Toru.”

Not I’m sorry. Not I’ll miss you. Not I love you. Not even fuck you, too. Just a plain, simple
goodbye. That was all he received.

He should have known better. He should have known better to expect anything else.
If he were an outsider looking in, he would have called himself an idiot, would have said that
the signs were all there, the writing was on the wall, and if he still chose to degrade himself
by staying up late and searching for him and hiring a private fucking investigator to see if he
had found someone new, someone better, then maybe he deserved to be abandoned like that.
Maybe he deserved heartbreak, if he wouldn’t even stand up for himself until the game was
over, until he had already lost. Maybe the reason Geto was leaving him was because he was a
weakling, a coward in his own right, so full of himself and so self-assured and yet somehow
incapable of asserting his own worth in the world. Maybe Geto wanted someone smarter,
someone prettier, someone better than Satoru Gojo ever could be.

Maybe it was all his fault.

No, it was. Satoru was certain of it.

Even all those years removed— even five years after Riko’s burial, even four years after
having his heart broken, even after all the talk therapy and the career advancements and the
all-consuming research and the nights spent crying into his pillow and wishing he had never
washed the scent of Suguru’s cologne out of the sheets— he still could not get away from it.
He still could not get away from that night, from the grass between his fingers and the wet
soil on his knees and his heart in his hands and his soul dripping from his eyes and his nose
and his mouth.

Shoko called it grief. He wasn’t so sure.

Suguru was alive, after all, unlike Riko. He was still breathing and blinking and walking,
even with a limp. He was driving around the countryside filming twisters and wading through
Florida flooding in hurricane season and listening to the same songs they used to dance to
together. It was impossible to grieve a living man, a once-lover.

But that grief had teeth. That grief came out of nowhere in the middle of the day, in the
middle of conversations, in the pasta aisle at the grocery store and the laboratory and in his
own office, just as he was dozing off into his forearms again. That grief caught him when he
was standing at the podium in front of his 9 a.m. atmospheric sciences lecture, when he was
accepting an award at the regional meteorological society’s annual meeting, when he was
having ice cream for dinner for the fifth night in a row. It came on sudden, like a freak storm,
like a gun to the back of his head, and suddenly he was back in that moment. Suddenly, he
was just ‘Toru. Suddenly, he was just as worthless as he’d been that night.

When Suguru waltzed back into his life, the same phenomenon occurred. When Suguru
smiled at him, a new piercing glinting in Waffle House light, he was just ‘Toru again.
Pathetic, unreasonable, unrecognizable ‘Toru, waiting to be wanted again.

And every time it happened, that face flashed in his mind.

Riko, full of chemicals and still leaking the electrical charge that had stopped her heart and
soured her brain and killed her instantly. Riko, missing her bandana, too much makeup, her
skin going gray and leathery with every passing second. Riko, dead. Riko, never coming
back.
He could never quite make the connection in his mind. He could never connect the dots
perfectly, but he knew the basic principles guiding it, whether he chose to acknowledge it or
not. It all led back to that afternoon when the lightning bolt came down and took her away,
when he had found his hands stained by blood, when he realized he could not save her.

He could not save Geto, either. He was not sure Geto was the one who needed saving
anymore.

***

9:36 p.m. Another cheap hotel room. The night before the storm.

Satoru had been lying motionless in the same spot for three straight hours.

He had not spoken a single word since what had transpired in the car. He wasn’t sure if he
could call it an argument, if he’d even want to call it that. For hours, for what felt like days,
he had been trying to put a label on it that could be considered somewhat satisfactory, a
descriptor that would portray the true severity and effect that it had on him while also
remaining accurate to the actual events. Fight? Too mundane. Carpet bombing? Too extreme.
Ides of March style betrayal? Not exactly how an outsider might view it. Devastation?
Shattering? Multiple organ failure? Severe internal hemorrhaging? Incident? Well, incident
might work.

He flinched hard when he heard the sound of the shower shutting off in the bathroom behind
him, and he was reminded that he was so goddamn tired of flinching around Suguru. Suguru
had never done anything that would even warrant flinching— had never raised a hand at him,
never slammed doors or kitchen cabinets, never stomped around, and up until hours ago had
never shouted at Satoru— and yet here he was, curled up on the bed, flinching at the slightest
sounds. It was pathetic, really. Satoru had never felt more pathetic.

He should have left him out there in that field. He should have floored it until he ran out of
gas. He should have kept going northwest, should have drove until he hit the supercell he was
chasing after, should have driven dead-center into the vortexes as they touched down and let
them lift his car up and throw it miles and miles away, should have let it crumple and let his
body crumple with it. He should have blocked and deleted his number, erased all their photos
from his phone, should have called Shoko and begged her to forgive him for being so weak
and stupid and useless and asked her to come and rescue him again. He should have pulled
the car over when he was far enough away and started praying to a deity he did not believe
in, because if anything will move a man to religion, it was that face he loved so much, that
face littered with piercings and faded scars and crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he
smiled. If anything could bring him closer to God, closer to the devil, closer to the edge, it
would be Suguru.

But he hadn’t. Yet again, he had failed. Yet again, he did not stand up for himself, did not cut
their remaining ties, did not end things how they should have ended— on terrible terms.
Instead, he went back for him. He let him climb back into the car and muddy up the
passenger seat and floors. He let him sit there in silence, not bothering to apologize, and he
let him roll down the window to take footage of swirling in the distance. When he got hungry,
he let Suguru follow him into the truck stop he parked at. When he got tired, he let Suguru
follow him into the cheap hotel room, and when the doors closed, he let Suguru leave him
alone on the bed and take a shower. He was grateful for that, in a way. He needed time alone.
He needed to cry into his hands.

But now, the grace period was over.

He braced himself as the door of the bathroom clicked open, watched that familiar shadow
move along the wall before he turned off the light. He held his breath. He prayed quietly that
God would send the asteroid already and the whole world would explode into an orange ball
of flames before Suguru had a chance to open his goddamn lying mouth.

“Satoru? Can we talk?”

And Satoru remained motionless.

He would not move. Not for that voice. Not anymore. He was done letting it control him,
done letting it govern him, done letting the vowels and consonants sink their way through his
scalp and into his bloodstream, into his brain matter, into the pink softness beneath his skull
and the vulnerability therein. He was done folding, done following. Suguru had practically
screamed at him to have some self respect. He was going to listen, and when he listened, it
would be the last time. The real last time.

“Satoru?”

But, God, that was Suguru’s voice. It was so low, so velvet, as gentle as thunder from far
away and as smooth as rain sliding down the skin. It was soft and it was true and it was
unmistakably Suguru, and Satoru had to squeeze his eyes shut before the emotion could come
pouring out of him again, before precipitation could go falling from the skies and down his
cheeks, before he came undone again.

“Okay,” Suguru was saying, soft on the sigh, softer on the defeat. “You don’t have to talk to
me. I understand. But just— just listen, please.”

And Satoru could have pressed his palms to his ears and refused. He could have been
childish, could have been rude. He could have been anything he wanted and it wouldn’t
matter then because it wouldn’t ever matter. It’s never, ever going to work, Satoru, he had
been told, so stop trying. For the last time— the last time, he was certain— he would listen to
the advice coming from that filthy, lying mouth.

He lay perfectly statuesque, perfectly silent, and waited.

“I owe you an apology,” Suguru said after a long, long while, as he crossed carefully to the
side of the bed where Satoru had curled up and knelt on the carpet next to him. He made no
attempt to touch him, no attempt to push. “It’s a long time coming, but better late than never,
right?”
Satoru held very, very still.

Suguru sighed. “I was wrong. I know— I know I’m wrong for this one,” he said. “For all of
it, actually. You shouldn’t— I shouldn’t have said any of that. I didn’t mean any of it. I
shouldn’t have put that on you. And I’m… I’m sorry, Satoru. I really am.”

With a deep exhale, something like letting go of a thousand helium balloons, Satoru rolled
over to face him. Their eyes met, and in that instant— that brief lapse of seconds, that
fraction of a blink in the span of their lives, that flicker of a flame extinguished under the
swallow of a hurricane, under the skin-flaying winds of an EF5 tornado— they had truly seen
one another. Satoru had seen him, seen him raw, seen him with his hair wet and hanging
about his face like torn curtains, seen him with the skin around his newer piercings red and
irritated, seen him with a terrible crinkle at the corners of his eyes and the center of his brow
where that crescent moon smile he loved so much was born. Satoru had seen him with his
eyes relaxed, no longer red-rimmed and teary, entirely removed from that horrible swell of
torturous emotion he had subjected him to and replaced instead with something entirely
ordinary, entirely simple, entirely cold. For a moment— a brief moment, a brief flicker—
they saw one another as they truly were.

“I’m sorry, ‘Toru,” Suguru repeated, staring him down, like breaking eye contact was a death
sentence, “for everything. I don’t know why I— I don’t know why I keep doing this to you. I
don’t know why I can’t stop hurting you.” His voice was shaky, simple, something like a
whistle in the distance, something sterile and strange like an insect trapped in epoxy resin,
something real and raw like a gash in the guts. Satoru had to close his eyes to prevent himself
from looking too deeply, from seeing what he could not bear seeing. “I’m sorry I yelled at
you,” Suguru was saying. “I’m sorry I lied to you. But I want you to know one thing, alright?
Satoru?”

Reluctantly, Satoru let his eyes flicker open again, and his breath hitched in his throat to see
the look on Suguru’s face.

Gojo had seen Geto cry twice. Twice, in the sixteen years they’d known each other.

The first time was when they were both fifteen years old, working on the farm, and Suguru
had been tasked with putting down the oldest horse on the property, an animal so sick and
decrepit that every breath it drew in brought only immense pain, whose prolonged existence
was a suffering for all that knew the poor creature. Typically, it was Suguru’s father who
would undertake such a task, but he had decided Suguru was old enough to learn how it felt
to kill. He decided that his firstborn son— his only son— would need to learn sooner or later
how it felt to commit the final act of love in a livestock animal’s life, how to grant the final
mercy of life with the end of life. He remembered waiting outside the barn while he did it,
because Suguru insisted it was a personal thing between him and his childhood horse, and he
remembered hearing the thick sound of the gun firing against flesh, against bone, and then he
remembered Suguru stumbling out of the hay and into his arms, weeping, dissolving.

The second time he saw him cry was at Riko’s funeral, when they stood over her open casket
together and stared down at her unreal body, dead and pumped full of formaldehyde and
anticoagulants, unnatural makeup caked on her young, young face. He remembered how
Suguru had remained cool, remained steady, just as he had when he walked inside the barn to
put the old horse down, but had crumbled completely within seconds spent staring down at
that corpse. He remembered seeing the final remnants of the Suguru he knew slip away into
the atmosphere, into the clouds. He remembered watching tears dissolve into the carpet and
being helpless— helpless— entirely powerless to comfort or console his love above loves as
he collapsed into tears on his crutches, in his hands, because it was his fault.

He had seen Suguru cry twice, only twice.

And yet, here he was, dripping.

“I was telling the truth when I said it wasn’t because of you,” he said, his voice as careful and
creaky as a burnt-out floorboard, as steady as the hand that held a revolver to his temple, as
soft as distant thunder. He said it with a slight choke in his throat, a slight overproduction of
saliva on his tongue, a slight crinkle to the corners of his eyes as he tried to force the tears
back in, as he tried to push the toothpaste back in the tube. “It was never— It was never
anything you did, ‘Toru, and I mean it, okay? Okay?”

And despite himself— despite his resolve, despite his bitterness, despite the stabbing pain in
his chest and stomach and the corners of his mouth— Satoru nodded at him. He nodded
against the comforter, against foreign bedding that wasn’t his, against sheets that had never
known their love, that never would.

“It was never your fault,” Geto continued, trying to mask the brokenness of his voice by
lowering his tone, trying to swallow it all down again. “You are— you’re— Fuck. Fuck,” he
hissed to himself, pressing palms against his eyelids, letting his head hang as he knelt at
Satoru’s side. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Satoru. I really am. You don’t have to forgive me, but please
stop blaming yourself. If you have to hate me to get over this, if that’s what you need to do to
make it right in your heart, then that’s okay with me. Please, just—“

“I’m never going to hate you,” Satoru said, more like a mutter, more like a mumble, and
Suguru looked up with wide eyes. “I’ve tried. It doesn’t work.”

Suguru laughed. A small laugh. A paradoxical laugh. Something like ice melting before it has
the chance to freeze, something like leaves falling before they have a chance to change color.
Something like virga, like precipitation evaporating before it ever has the chance to reach the
ground, reaching out and never quite finding the mark. He laughed, and he dripped tears, and
he pressed his forehead to the side of the mattress and he folded his arms over his head.
“That’s good,” he mumbled. “That’s good, I guess.”

And against himself— against everything he knew to be true, everything he knew to be right
— Satoru let one hand come up and thread itself through the long, wet locks of Suguru’s hair,
that inky spill, like the unreal glow of space beyond the atmosphere, like a black star. Against
reason, against reality, Satoru touched him, and everything seemed to come undone.

“I don’t hate you, Sugu,” he said into the fabric of the hotel pillow, and felt how he dissolved
just a little more, how he disintegrated under his fingertips. The corners of his eyes stung, and
he felt himself beading up again, the saltwater sliding down across the bridge of his nose and
into to pillowcase, into a damp puddle below his face. “I’m just not going to forgive you.”
“That’s— that’s okay,” Suguru nodded, his forehead still pressed into the mattress, into his
own arms. He was somehow eager, somehow too accepting, a thick swallow in between his
words where he caught what little breath he could. Satoru still had one hand in his hair, one
hand at the side of his head, and the skin contact to the scalp was something bright,
something electric, something more intense and sharp than a lightning strike ever could be.
“That’s okay. You don’t— I’m not asking you to.”

A long, long while passed. Satoru’s hand remained in his hair, wet and cold, drying in the low
vibrational hum of the air conditioner at the far corner of the room, soft rolls of thunder
outside as the rain came down. There was a subtle kind of electricity there, a muted sort of
lightning strike present in every skin cell that met hair strand, and that kind of feeling became
a melting sensation for both of them. So many times, Satoru had decided to sabotage
Suguru’s showering efforts, either sneaking into the bath with him or waiting ambush-style
for him to get out, naked and splayed out over the bed, because they knew each other’s
weaknesses and each other’s weaknesses were always each other. So many times, that wet
sensation, that wet scent, had been enough to have them tearing the other apart, and somehow
in that moment it was nothing but mournful. Somehow, through the static, there was a
sadness neither could stomach.

Eventually, Satoru withdrew his hand, and Suguru was cold again. Cold, in the absence of the
sun.

A deep, hideous pause.

“Do you— do you want to go home?” Suguru asked at last, his voice unnatural and strange,
before he cleared his throat and corrected it. “I’ll be alright if you just pack up and go, I can
—“

His voice stopped and fell away as Satoru shook his head, pushing himself up from the
mattress on the heels of his palms, rubbing one eye with the hand that had been in Suguru’s
hair, now cold and wet and smelling faintly of tea tree hotel shampoo. “No,” Satoru said, his
voice equally distorted, both from crying and from screaming earlier in the day. “No, I came
all this way, and I’m gonna see that storm.”

“Right,” Suguru said, nodding, not looking up. “Then I can— I’ve got friends not too far
away, I can get someone to pick me up and—“

“Stop,” Satoru told him, and he stopped. “It’s fine. If you want to go, you’ll go. I know you.
But if you want to… if you want to see this through, I’ll take you with me.”

Suguru blinked at him. “You’re sure? You’re alright with that?”

Satoru nodded, but he didn’t look sure. His face betrayed him, as it always did. He rubbed his
eyes again, the weeping leaving him, the emptiness taking its place. “We still make a good
team, at least when it comes to the storms. But if you want to go, then go.”

A beat of silence.

“What do you want to happen, ‘Toru?” Suguru asked, quietly, and Satoru paused.
“I want one last chase,” he said, finally. “I want to see it through. And if you want to see it
through with me, then I want you there.”

Suguru nodded, but he didn’t believe him. That much was obvious. He wasn’t sure that he
had to, that it would mean anything if he did. He had, for the first time in living memory,
found himself entirely powerless in the situation, found himself quite literally on his knees,
kneeling at the side of Satoru’s bed as though in prayer, his arms around his head and his face
pressed against the mattress and the tears sliding down his nose and dripping into the carpet.
It had been so long since he’d allowed himself to cry openly, to cry in front of another human
being and not in front of the gun he cleaned every Sunday, and he had somehow chosen the
worst possible moment.

He was being manipulative, he was sure of it. Even if he didn’t mean to be— even though his
tears were real and his sorrow was honest and his self-induced torment was true— it was not
what Satoru deserved in that moment. He did not deserve the tears, did not deserve the
subconscious obligation to comfort that came with them, and Suguru did not deserve the
hand in his hair and the soft voice and the generous offer not to kick him to the curb— at
least, not just yet.

Geto wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do in that moment. He had never groveled before.
He had never felt the need to.

Similarly, he did not know what he expected of Satoru in that moment. All he knew was that
he would accept anything. If Gojo had decided to start screaming at him— if he decided to let
out the pent-up rage and resentment from four straight years of being dragged around on a
string, thrown from one urge to another— he would have held still and let the blows hit him
however they landed. If Satoru had told him to get out of his sight and never come back, he
would have left without another word, without even bothering to gather his things or put on
his shoes. If he had been told to go home and use that gun for what it was meant for, Suguru
wouldn’t have hesitated.

No, he did not know what he expected when he began that difficult conversation with Satoru,
but he knew had hadn’t expected this. He did not expect softness, even if it was stern. He did
not expect a gentle touch, a forgiving touch, something so plush and unassuming and careful
that he could have mistaken it for his first kiss, in the shadow of the cyclone, leaned up
against his father’s hand-me-down truck and holding Satoru at the hips. He could never have
imagined that kind of kindness, that kind of mercy.

Every time Suguru thought he had run out of ways, Satoru surprised him.

“I’ll go,” Suguru told him, lifting his face from the mattress, looking up as though seeing that
stained glass window again, as though staring up at a holy savior. “I’ll go, if that’s what you
want me to do.”

Satoru stared down at him, down the tip of his nose, his blue eyes somehow sadder than they
had ever looked. “That’s what I want,” he said. “I want one last ride.”

Suguru nodded, reverent. “Okay.”

“But if we do this,” Satoru said, a dark look crossing his eyes, as close to dead serious as he
was ever going to get, “it has to end there. You have to promise me that it ends there.”

Suguru nodded, solemn, eyes focused on the fabric of the comforter beneath him. “Alright,”
he said.

“I mean it,” Satoru insisted. “I can’t just— Sugu, I can’t do it anymore. It’s killing me.
Waiting is... it’s turning me into someone I don’t want to be. And I’m too old to play this
game. There was a time when I didn’t mind the waiting, when I was okay with just sitting
around and waiting for you to want me again, but I—“ his voice broke, and he looked away.
“I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m done.”

“Okay,” Suguru murmured, pressing the side of his face into the fabric. “Okay. Alright.”

“You have to promise me.” His voice was how Suguru imagined a ghost’s might have been,
something similar to the ghost that had been haunting him for the better part of five years
after that piece of the heavens fell to earth and shattered through Riko’s body, hanging over
his shoulder and dipping down into his breath and making everything come out strange and
fuzzy, like TV static, like the sea. “No contact. You have to swear.”

“I swear.”

“I will never be your friend,” Satoru said, and his voice dripped self-protective venom,
viscous and still, something like anaphylaxis, something like a desperate immune response,
trying to shut out the poison. “Not again.”

“I won’t ask you to.”

“And I won’t— I won’t come running the next time you decide to miss me.”

“Okay.”

“I’m done.”

“I know.”

Satoru looked away and huffed a sigh, something like defeat, something like acceptance.
Without returning his gaze back to the one kneeling on the floor before him, he reached out
an arm and extended his pinkie finger.

“Swear on your life,” he demanded. “No contact, no more, and I swear to God, Sugu, if you
break this promise—“

He was quieted by the feeling of Suguru’s finger slipping around his own, a tight hold, a
small squeeze.

“I’m not going to hurt you anymore,” he said, and if only for a moment, he had softened
completely.
A long while passed with their pinkie fingers clinging, that childish sort of love, that innate
form of trust, but all things must end. Eventually, they released one another, and Suguru
sighed hard and let himself twist back around, coming off of his knees and instead sitting at
the side of the bed, his back leaning up against the mattress, stuck in the space between the
hotel nightstand with the Bible and the landline and the uniform flavor of sickness that
haunted everything in a thousand-mile radius. Suguru sat there for a long, long time, knees
pulled up, eyes closed. Eventually, he was joined.

He looked up just a little bit as Satoru settled in beside him, into the space he had occupied
perfectly for so many years, and when Suguru put an arm around him he leaned down into his
shoulder and they kept still for a long while. Again, Suguru was reminded of that new
sensation he had never felt before, and it crawled around under his skin and in between his
bones until it had consumed him completely, and he was frozen in the face of it. Gentleness,
where it wasn’t deserved. Kindness, where it wasn’t earned. Satoru at his side, head on his
shoulder, being a better person than Suguru could ever hope to be.

That was the fundamental difference between them, he thought. It wasn’t maturity, it wasn’t
intelligence, it wasn’t life experience or suffering or guilt. It was kindness. It was the capacity
to remain kind.

Suguru let his head rest against Satoru’s and they stayed quiet for a long, long while.

Gojo spoke first. “You remember when you made me promise not to tell your mom you
wanted to become a stormchaser?”

Suguru laughed a little bit. “You mean when I made you cut your fingertip and blood-oath
it?” He gave the shoulder he was holding a tiny squeeze. “Yeah, I remember. And I remember
how quick you were to say you wanted to be one, too.”

Satoru nodded against his shoulder, hummed a little bit. “Did I ever tell you how my parents
took it when I told them?”

Suguru thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think you did.”

“They didn’t give a shit.”

Geto blinked. “Really?”

Gojo shook his head and sat up a little bit, coming to pull his knees up to his chest and fold
over them. “I told them all about it, and they physically could not have cared less. It was kind
of impressive, actually.”

“I thought they wanted you to take over as head of the family business. CEO of Gojo, Inc. or
whatever.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” Satoru laughed into his skin, moonlight coming in through the
blinds in streams and reflecting brilliantly off that soft head of snow, of ice, Saint Elmo’s fire
like his very own halo. “I guess they didn’t. I had expected them to at least say something.
Something about how they didn’t want their only son and heir to the family fortune to spend
his life running around the countryside playing in the rain. Maybe chastise me for being a
spoiled brat and a disappointment to my father’s name, I don’t know. They didn’t even look
at me when I told them.”

Suguru let the hand that rested on his shoulder withdraw to his back, tracing up and down the
jutting line where his spine came through the center, small circles and long sweeps, just how
he used to do. “They didn’t? Seriously?”

“Seriously!” Satoru laughed again, but it felt sad, forced. “I remember it perfectly. My mom
was sitting on her stupid purple sofa in her bedroom, she had a glass of wine in her left hand
and she was flipping through a magazine with her right, and I remember saying ‘mom, I’m
not going to work for the company when I graduate, I’m going to be a stormchaser and I’m
going to drive around following tornadoes and hurricanes and I’m going to do it with Suguru
Geto and I might die’, and she just went, ‘uh-huh’. That’s all I got! Uh-huh.”

Suguru titled his head, his eyes watching the way that white hair caught the light, seemed to
capture it and funnel it inward where it burst forth back through those shimmering blue eyes.
“What did your father say?”

“He said ‘alright’. That’s it. Just ‘alright’, and then he went back to his paperwork or
whatever the hell he was doing.”

“That’s awful, Satoru.”

“I know,” he sighed, shaking his head again, his eyes drawing closed. “I’ve been thinking
about it recently, you know? Now that I’m, like, pushing thirty and everyone I know is either
married or having a baby or buying a house or all three. It makes me… I don’t know. It
makes me think of how your parents reacted when they found out. You remember? After your
mom overheard us talking about it?”

“Of course I do,” Suguru said, his tone dropping to something regrettable and bitten-lipped.
“I’ve never seen her lose her temper like that.”

“Up until then, I’d never seen anyone lose their temper like that,” Satoru smiled to himself,
his eyes still closed, still focused on the sensation of the chipped paint on Suguru’s nails
drawing circles along his back, a wrinkle in his shirt catching every now and then,
interrupting the pattern. “I mean, she was losing it on you, and you were just standing there
going yes, ma’am and no, ma’am, and when she got to me, all she had to say was and you’re
just gonna let him do it?”

“You made her even madder when you just stood there grinning like an idiot.”

“I couldn’t help it,” Satoru laughed, and God, what a thing to see. With the tears still fresh on
his cheeks, the moon still glowing through his hair, the wisps of precipitation evaporating
before they ever kissed the earth, he had never looked more himself. He had never looked
quite so Satoru. “I was just— I mean, I was so happy.”

Suguru blinked at him. “You were happy?”

“I was,” Satoru admitted. “I was happy someone cared that I might die.”

There was a long, soft silence, a long while spent with Suguru’s warm hand on Satoru’s
spine, like an afternoon spent in a warm pile of laundry, like a lifetime spent at each others’
sides.

“Did I ever tell you what my mother said to me?” Suguru began, slowly. “When I woke up in
the hospital?”

Satoru looked over at him, his expression returning to something some more sympathetic—
something he should not have been able to harbor for Suguru anymore, not after that
afternoon. “I don’t think so,” he said, and he was gentle, forgiving.

Suguru exhaled through his nose and looked aside. “It was the day after it happened. I think
you were out getting me dinner or something. Shoko went with you. I still couldn’t really feel
anything, but I remembered bits and pieces, and I knew— I knew Riko was dead. It was four
or five days before her funeral.”

His hand stopped drawing circles and he forced himself to turn his gaze and meet those eyes.

“My mom told me she was happy I was alive,” he said, “but she told me I’d gotten exactly
what I asked for. She said everyone had warned me a million times, but I was too stubborn
and self-centered. And she said... she said that she didn’t know what kind of person Riko
was, but if I had gotten her at all mixed up in what I was doing, then I owed her parents an
apology at the memorial service.”

It was only then that he noticed Satoru was trembling.

It was soft. It was slight. But it was there.

“She said that to you?” He asked, so quiet that one would have to listen carefully to hear it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Suguru looked away. His hand slipped back around Satoru, back around his waist, and held
him there. “I didn’t need to,” he said. “She was right. If I hadn’t pushed you to let her come
with us that day, then she wouldn’t have—“

“Sugu, stop.”

“I always worried that it would happen again, you know?” Suguru’s voice was changing as
his grip on Satoru’s waist tightened. “I remember someone telling me that a person who gets
struck by lightning once is more likely to get struck by it again. I don’t know if it’s true, but I
just— I couldn’t get it out of my head. And I just kept thinking, what if it happened to me
and you were standing right next to me? What if—“

“Sugu,” Satoru insisted, and one hand came up to touch the side of his face, to turn him.
Their eyes met for a moment, then a longer moment, then an even longer moment, then
forever. “It wasn’t you.”
And that was when Suguru realized what he had known all along, what he had pushed to the
back of his subconscious with the memories he couldn’t stomach, the pain he couldn’t
process, the ghosts he couldn’t face. All at once, from every corner of his body and soul,
Suguru remembered that he was still in love.

He had always been in love.

He was never going to stop being in love. From the moment of his birth to the instant of his
death, he was going to be in love. He would wander through life, wander through the fields,
haunting himself and haunting the earth and searching for phantom flickers of his love. He
was going to spend years, decades, eternities in limbo, in purgatory, that in-between space of
heaven and earth where heat lightning flickered from reflections miles and miles away, and
he was going to wash in with the tide and out with the drawback of the tsunami, and he was
going to see it in clouds and constellations and crop circles and he was going to cling to that
image every time he could. He was going to be in love for the rest of his life, and when that
lightning bolt finally came down from heaven to cast him into hell where he belonged, he
was going to die with love in his heart, in his mouth, in his eyes and ears and stomach and
skin. He was never going to shake him, never going to erase him.

He was never going to not be in love with Satoru.

And he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

That head was on his shoulder again, one hand on his bad knee and the other across his lap,
and Satoru wasn’t crying, not anymore. “I wish I could go back and fix it,” he said, more to
himself than to Suguru. “I wish I could stop myself from breaking that kid’s leg in middle
school.”

“I don’t,” Suguru said, and it came out like a croak. “Those summers were— I go back to
those summers all the time.”

“It would make this all hurt less, wouldn’t it?”

Suguru shook his head. “It’s selfish of me, but I don’t want...” he trailed off, his head leaning
backward until it met the mattress, until he was looking up at the smooth canvas of the
ceiling, wishing he could see the sky. Even a cloudless sky, even an empty sky, even the
endless expanse of dead space would be enough for him in that moment. Satoru’s hand was
so soft on his chest, so gentle, and it took every ounce of his power not to take hold of it right
then and there, to interlace their fingers just as he had the night he dragged him out of bed to
see the supercell in his backyard. “I don’t want a life where I don’t remember you.”

Satoru was quiet for a moment or so. “Even if this is how badly it hurts at the end?”

Suguru nodded. “I would do it all again. But I— I wouldn’t let myself— If I could do it all
again, I wouldn’t hurt you.”

Silence. The easy sounds of breathing, of hearts beating in tandem. The distant rumblings of
thunder in a storm they were too tired to chase.
“I can’t go back, and I can’t fix anything,” Suguru told him, closing his eyes, tightening the
arm he had around what once had been his love, his whole life, his end-all-be-all, “but if I
could, I would have found us a way out. I would find a way. At the very least, I would have
never yelled at you like that.”

Another feather-soft beat of silence as Satoru leaned forward again, coming to his knees, and
turned to face him, even just at a three-quarters glance.

“I’ve yelled at you worse,” he told him.

“Yeah, but I deserved it.”

Satoru smiled, and it was soft. Soft as snow. Soft as thunder. Gentle as the crackle of
firewood in the furnace, gentle as Suguru had touched him through all those seasons, all
those years.

“We never could get it right, could we?” He asked, and his voice shattered. “We never— we
never figured out how to make it work.”

Suguru smiled back at him, but it was horrible, it was twisted. The corners of his mouth just
wouldn’t stay still. The corners of his eyes just wouldn’t stay dry. He looked unnatural,
unfamiliar, unlike the person he had become after that lightning ripped up through his legs
and ripped through his life, through his heart. He laughed, and he shouldn’t have, but it was a
panic response, an involuntary convulsion. It was all he knew how to do in that moment, with
Satoru at his side, their shoulders pressed together and their faces red and wet.

“It wasn’t— you can’t say you didn’t try,” Geto told him. “You tried. You were trying so hard
and I just—“

“I should have tried harder,” Satoru said into the air, into the nothing surrounding them, into
the end of everything as they let it happen.

Suguru shook his head. “When are you going to let yourself stop trying?”

And Suguru pulled him into his arms, and they both broke down, and the winds outside went
quiet while the hotel creaked and time spun backwards and suddenly they were just kids, just
kids again, still innocent and still untouched by death or guilt or lightning. Suddenly
everything that had ever transpired between them— every broken promise, every broken
word, all their trust shattered in pieces and shards of glass lying at their feet and twinkling
like stars trapped in concrete— suddenly none of it mattered, because at the end of the day, it
was still them. Still Suguru. Still Satoru. Still alive. Still there.

The tiny brush of lips against his neck, so light he could have mistaken it for the tears, and
then Satoru was kissing the space where his jaw met his neck and he was pressing his palm to
the other’s chest as though he could touch the heart itself, and maybe he could. Maybe if he
tried hard enough he could really reach him somehow. Maybe he could still be saved, if only
without words, if only without forgiveness. He let his hands run slow and gentle through that
white halo, translucent strands appearing iridescent in his mind, and suddenly Saint Elmo’s
fire seemed less like an ecological phenomena of an ionized atmosphere and more like what
it had been historically understood to be— a sign of protection. A sign of hope.

Satoru was moving without the need to test, to hypothesize, having the predictable results
down to a theorem by the time he straddled Suguru beside the bed and balanced himself with
two hands on his shoulders, sinking down into that familiar hold he had loved so much in
their endless blue springtime, the intimacy it allowed. Satoru had always favored a face-to-
face position, after all. He liked watching the way Suguru’s expression changed as they went
through the motions, watching concentration falter into poorly-stifled hunger and finally into
desperation, into need. He liked being able to reach up his hands and touch him as he
changed, as he came, and sometimes he liked it even more when his hands would get pinned
down to the mattress in response and he would be given what he did not know he needed. He
liked looking up through teary eyes and seeing love reflected back at him.

And that night, he was going to get what he wanted. He was going to get anything he wanted,
because it was the last time.

Suguru pulled them apart for just a moment, strings of saliva still connecting them, both
breathing heavily and open-mouthed and nervous, like it was their first time, like they’d
never know each other until that very moment. “Satoru, are you sure? We don’t have to—“

“You didn’t give me the ending I wanted last time,” Satoru interrupted him, his voice breathy,
almost exhausted in trying to hold back. “The last time, I asked you to stay until morning,
and when I woke up you were gone.”

Suguru could only stare up at him, stare up at the blue that looked so much like the sky and
wonder how he ever managed to let that go, how he ever found himself arrogant enough to
leave.

“I want to be the one who decides how it ends,” Satoru continued, slow and wavering, both
hands coming up to hold Suguru at either side of his face, one thumb brushing over the lip
piercing on his left side. “I want to choose this time.”

And all Suguru could do was nod at him— blind, deaf, dumb and led only by that which still
beat in his chest, that which still flowed through his veins, that which he knew with a divine
certainty to be love, love, love.

“Okay,” he breathed back, his hands tightening on where they held Satoru’s waist, thumbs
digging helplessly into the pale flesh just above his hipbones. “Anything. Anything you say.”

A small smile, a tilt of the head, and Suguru had to wonder if that was what Satoru had been
seeing all along, all throughout those years together. Those perfect eyes watered again, the
glow from behind them refracting elegantly through blue sapphire irises, like the warbling
patterns at the bottom of a swimming pool, like fever-dream visions and morphine-drip
midnights spent staring up at the ceiling and waiting for the lightning strike to come back for
him.

“Love me again,” he whispered. “Just one more time.”

Suguru kissed him, and that was it. There was nothing else. The room extinguished itself and
the outside world was wiped away as though blown by some EF5 wind and the moon
exploded into endless shatterings of light and there was no sound but the roar of blood in
ears, the brush of fingertips against sensitive spots and erogenous zones, the desperate noises
neither mouth could stop making. It was a blur, a wind-whipped wonder, like a whiteout
blizzard in the heat of July or an electrocution coming up through the legs, through the mud,
through the earth.

Suguru kissed him like it was the last time, because it was. He was ever conscious of that fact
as he let his hands wander again, hold him where he knew he would be held, at the small of
his back of his shoulder blades or the nape of his neck or the tender part of his upper thighs.
He was careful when he lifted him up, when he let those legs wrap around his waist and
allowed those arms to fold around his neck, and then he let that carefulness crumble away
when he let both bodies collapse into the bed and melt together again. Still-wet strands of
hair fell like ripped curtain around their heads, and Suguru could still taste the gummy candy
Satoru had for dinner on his tongue, and there was a tongue running along his lip piercings,
and there were nails digging into his back, and the thunder outside was growing louder, and it
was all Satoru, all over him, all the way down.

Clothes were coming off, buttons coming undone, and there were quiet mumbling noises
coming from the one pressed against the sheets, mouth closed and eyes squeezed shut and
flesh flinching at every small touch, every caress, every kiss. He was exhaling breaths in
shallow sighs and sucking them up through his nose again, and his hands were snaring in the
fabric around him, and Suguru leaned over him to press his face into the electric energy
radiating from his neck, flushed red and vibrant in the darkness.

“Let me hear your voice,” he murmured, metal in his mouth dragging across that milky skin,
but it was more of a beg than anything else. “Just let me listen.”

“Tell me you want me,” Satoru had whispered back.

And Suguru had to choke down the knot in his throat before he could answer.

“I want you,” he mumbled in between kisses, in between bites. “I’ve always wanted you. I’ve
never stopped wanting you. Never, not once.”

“Say it again,” Satoru pleaded, nails digging in harder, the sharp pain only serving to make
the other more tense, more intense.

“I want— I need you,” he corrected himself, the lingering over him becoming a bit of a
torture, every cell in his body screaming for sensation, finding nothing. “I don’t— I don’t
know how I— how I ever managed without you. I need— I need—“

“Swear it.”

Two hands wandered aimlessly until they found where Satoru’s arms held him, pinning them
back against the mattress by the wrists, then sliding back up to the pinkie fingers and locking
them together.
“I swear,” Suguru said, his voice breaking.

“Look me in the eyes.”

Suguru drew back just enough, just enough to truly see him.

Lying flat on his back against the sheets, naked, arms out at his sides and up over his head,
legs spread and eyes teary already. Warm, emotional rain slid carefully from the outer corners
of his eyes, across the bridge of his temples and into his white hair, where they all faded
away. His back was slightly arched, the faint outline of his ribs surfacing from his skin, and
he was open, in every sense of the word.

It was the most vulnerable position one could take, being so open. It was a position that
required trust, unflinching trust, unwavering trust, the trust required to offer oneself up and
know, instinctively, that it would not result in hurt, would not result in unwelcome pain,
would not be taken too far. Theoretically, Suguru could have done anything he wanted to him
in that moment. He could have continued with no regard for his safety, for his pleasure, for
his love, however little of it was left. Theoretically. Suguru was a monster, but he wasn’t evil.
He had broken Satoru’s heart over and over and over again but he could never conceive of
ever looking down at that face, at that figure, at that perfect soul and wanting to hurt him.

In that moment— that tender moment, where they both still had the chance to back out, to
run away— Geto almost felt helpless. He almost felt terrified. He worried that if he touched
him again, Gojo might break and shatter into a million tiny perfect shards. He worried that he
was killing him, killing him all over again.

But Satoru stared up at him, and in those eyes, the trust within could not be measured, could
not be replicated in a laboratory.

There was power in that. Power in submitting oneself completely. Power in handing over
control.

Suguru met his eyes and held the gaze like the winds outside their window might rip them
apart. “I want you,” he said, and only then did he notice that he was dripping tears onto
Satoru’s stomach. Only then did he fully under stand that he was telling the truth. “I want
you, ‘Toru.”

One hand trailed up Suguru’s side, up the tattoo at his waist, up to his chest. “I know,” Satoru
smiled, and a tear rolled down from each eye.

They did not say I love you that night. It was too late for that. Instead, they said everything in
between, everything that could serve as a foil or a disguise or a mask or a lie. Instead, Satoru
moaned Suguru’s name over and over, like a plea, like a prayer, and Suguru had kissed him
up and down, measuring and mapping out every inch of the other’s body with his mouth, the
holes in his lower lip where the metal went through burning with unknown taste, the holes in
his brain where the lightning went through blinking bright into the night. No, they did not say
I love you, but they felt it through each other’s bodies, and they understood it through their
breath, and the air hanging above them was thick and heavy with the weight of their baggage,
 and the storm outside was forgiving, at least until it was over, at least they fell asleep in one
another’s arms.

It was over, but it was not the end.

Chapter End Notes

Your regularly scheduled hurt/comfort semi-toxic gego as promised <3 Thank you again
for the support everyone !

The story is now fully fleshed out in my planning document and there will be nine
chapters total! I hope you’ll stick around to see this through, i have big plans >:)

Also I made a twitter finally! @monkeysmustlive

and Who wants to tell scabplucker (the ceo of stormchaser gego themselves) that I wrote
this fic. Because I sure as hell ain’t gonna
 Lividity
Chapter Summary

Lividity (noun) . lə-ˈvi-də-tē

: the quality or state of being livid

specifically : reddish- to bluish-purple discoloration of the skin due to the settling and
pooling of blood following death

Chapter Notes

My sincerest apologies in advance y’all.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

7:36 a.m. The day of the storm.

Suguru had a bad feeling that day.

He had a bad feeling when he woke up, but he brushed it off, because he’d woken up holding
Satoru like he was supposed to, one arm under his head and the other draped across his back,
and he’d started drawing light circles over his skin with his fingertips before his eyes had
even blinked open. That feeling hit him almost instantly when that face he so adored
flickered, just a little bit, a tiny smile at the corner of his mouth as he nudged his face a little
more into Suguru’s chest, his arm drawing upward to touch the side of his neck and feel the
pulse there, that familiar steadiness, that stability. He’d made a soft humming noise, lips
halfway pressed against him, and Suguru had held on just a little tighter, and that feeling
chewed at him beneath his skull like a hungry dog.

The feeling was a looming one— dark, cold, sitting in the center of one’s chest and radiating
winter wind outward, a reverse glow, all the light sucked up into it. It was the kind of feeling
that washes over you when you get a text from your mother at school and you know you’re in
trouble when you get home that afternoon. It was the sort of impending-doom sensation that
lingers over your head like the sword of Damocles, like heaven over everything, like swirling
clouds in a mesocyclone. It was like dramatic irony, like watching a movie where the
audience knows more than the characters do, where the world is about to end and they’re all
just sitting around, playing cards, cooking dinner, cuddling in bed.
Innately, Suguru felt the need to scream about it. He felt like he needed to run into the hotel
hallways and start banging down doors, warning everyone to get under their beds and hide,
cover their heads, cover their ears, and start praying. He felt like he had to find some city
street corner and wear a giant cardboard sign that read THE END IS NEAR and start shouting
at anyone who would listen. He looked down at sleeping Satoru and felt the need to shake
him awake, to tell him that they needed to run, to get out of there, that they had to put the end
of their unhealthy relationship on the backburner and focus on staying alive, because
something was after them, something was chasing them, something was coming.

He took a second look down at that soft face— perfect, picturesque, so angelic it couldn’t
have possibly belonged on earth breathing the same air as scum like Suguru— and he stuffed
that bad feeling down with the rest of them.

That feeling couldn’t have been founded in reality, he told himself. Maybe it was just
residual. Maybe it was only because he knew that once the storm was over, once the rain let
up and the clouds cleared and the winds were no longer wild, it would be over. Maybe it was
because he knew he would fall into a spiral the second they parted, the second it was truly
finished, and that he might never crawl out of it.

For a moment, he was ready to throw away all of the promises he had made the night before
and throw his arms around Satoru and refuse— refuse— to let him go. For a moment, he was
almost certain that he could convince him, that he could manipulate his way out of it, that
there was something he could say to wipe the slate clean and wash away all his past sins,
something like baptism, something like how it felt to become a believer. For a moment, he
might have.

Satoru’s eyes flickered open, and the moment was over.

“Hi,” he yawned, refusing to move, letting himself go still and soft again.

“Morning,” Suguru mumbled back, one hand coming up to rub the corners of his eyes with
his forefinger and thumb.

“What time is it?”

“Morning,” Suguru repeated.

“Not helpful,” Satoru clicked his tongue and pushed himself up off of the chest he lay on, the
space their shared heat had once occupied going vacant and filling up with cool wind from
the air conditioner in the corner of the room. “We have to get moving. Today’s the day.
Trackers are pretty sure we’re right up under it.”

And Suguru wanted to tell him no, we don’t have to do anything, we don’t have to go
anywhere, we can just stay right here in this bed and stay alive and never have to say
goodbye to each other ever again, but he held his tongue.

“Who’s driving?” He asked instead.

Satoru came closer, one palm on either side of his head, lingering over him with early
morning sunlight glowing through his hair like that halo Suguru loved so much, and with a
light flash of teeth under his flesh-pink lips, he bared his most playful grin. It was, and had
always been, a thing of beauty. Showstopper, Suguru had told him once. That’s a showstopper
smile you got. If it wouldn’t complicate things— if it wouldn’t pull them back into a place
they could no longer flee to— Suguru might have told him again.

“You kidding?” He tilted his head, and light glimmered sideways through his sapphire irises,
and Geto could have started crying all over again. “I’m driving, obviously. You’re on radar
duty.”

Suguru smiled back up at him, and one unworthy hand came up and touched the side of his
face, finding what he had never been able to make himself forget, finding that fragility
beneath his facade, the whippoorwill’s whining calls echoing through the trees in at the break
of day, the mourning dove’s voice swan-songing on a Sunday morning as he cleaned his gun.

“Alright,” he nodded. “I can do that, easy.”

“I know you can,” Satoru told him, and that grin was somehow brighter, the world behind
each iris somehow so much more promising than anything Suguru could conjure up on earth.
“Now, get up. If you aren’t ready in thirty minutes, I’m leaving you here.”

“Sure you are,” Suguru yawned again, more teasing that time. “But then I won’t be able to
buy you breakfast.”

“I don’t need you to buy me breakfast. Teachers make a ton of money, you know.”

“Yeah, but you love it when I treat you,” Suguru said, and Satoru blushed before he could
stop himself, and then he kissed him.

A small kiss. Something cute, something domestic, something inconsequential.

So this is where we are, then, Suguru thought to himself. We’re still playing pretend.

“I want Denny’s,” Satoru declared, and pushed himself up and out of bed, the sheets falling
off of his naked form as he made his way to the bathroom, the sunrise behind the blinds
illuminating all the marks left on his milky skin from the night before— red lines and
splotches and rings where he’d been bitten. Suguru almost had to choke himself to avoid
getting worked up at the mere sight of it.

“Denny’s? Christ, ‘Toru, at least pick somewhere respectable, like Waffle House.”

“Uh-uh,” Satoru called from the bathroom. “A tree fell on your truck the last time we went
there. It’s bad luck now.”

And Geto grimaced behind his back at the reminder of the bad feeling clinging to his
shoulders like a crawling curse, filthy hands spreading all over his body and suffocating his
senses until all he could feel, all he could know, all he could understand was the terror
trickling down with his spinal fluid and leaking into every cell, into every pore. He tried so
hard— so hard— to stuff it down, to rationalize it away, to choke it unconscious and livid
under his grip, but he couldn’t shake it. He couldn’t ignore it. Not when it felt so familiar. Not
when he’d had the exact same feeling before, and it ended with a funeral.

He was reminded all at once of the gravity of what he had done. The whole reason he had
broken Satoru’s heart in the first place— the reason he’d pushed him away, pushed him
down, stopped coming home and started sleeping in his truck— was to keep him safe. Safe
from the inevitable bolt of lightning that would come crashing down from God above to
finally take him to hell where he belonged, to finally right the wrong that had befallen Riko,
to wash away the blood on his hands with the price of his own body. The whole reason he
had torn their lives apart was to make sure Satoru’s stood even a fighting chance of holding
together after he was gone, gone with the clouds and the rain and the storm. The whole
reason he had destroyed them both was for the promise that Satoru would rise from the ashes
and rise without him.

The whole reason he ruined his own life was to save Satoru’s. Only then did he fully accept
that he had ruined his life in vain.

He knew Satoru still loved him. It was obvious. It was evident in the way he had cried against
his neck the previous night, the way he whined his name over and over, the way he locked his
legs around Suguru’s waist as if he would babytrap him if he could. It could be measured in
breaths, in blinks, in clicks and hisses and the wet sounds of his mouth as it moved over skin.
It was obvious in the eyes, in the way they glimmered through the dark, tears clinging to his
silver lashes and rolling down the sides of his face, in the way he left dental indents and wet
splotches of saliva when he bit the pillow. It showed itself in the way he kept a deathgrip on
both sides of Suguru’s face when he came, teeth gritted and bared, forcing their gazes
together and treating each movement, each muscle twitch and contraction, like it would save
him, and maybe it might. Maybe in some small way, they could still be saved.

Yes, Satoru still loved him. Undeniably so. He had no case to the contrary. If it was really just
fulfillment of the flesh— if he had only wanted to come and go to sleep— he wouldn’t have
curled up against Suguru’s chest and fallen asleep in his arms. If it was really just a process
of obligation, he wouldn’t have let Suguru kiss his cheeks and the corners of his eyes where
the tears had dripped, and he wouldn’t have asked Suguru to clean him up or bring him some
water. If it was truly nothing, nothing to the both of them, they wouldn’t have kissed each
other goodnight.

Satoru still loved him. Suguru loved him back. And there was nothing either one could do
about it, because it was over. They had realized too late. They had missed their chance, and
now they would have to move on with their lives. They would have to move on from one
another.

Geto was not convinced that he could pull that off.

They would never be friends. Satoru had made that very clear, and besides, there’s no such
thing as ‘friends with your ex’ unless you’re putting on a brave face to co-parent a child or
you never really loved each other that much in the first place. Attempting to be ‘friends’ with
Satoru after everything they had been through, after everything they had said to each other,
would be a fool’s errand. There were only two outcomes for such an idiotic idea— one, they
would inevitably start going back to each other only to vanish again, and Suguru would
continue the cycle of breaking Satoru’s heart over and over and over again while Satoru
refused to stand up for himself, or two, they would end up hating each other. Suguru could
not entertain either option as a possibility.

But Satoru was it. Suguru could not imagine a world where they never spoke again, even as
the certainty loomed over him. Satoru was everything he had ever wanted, everything he
could ever need. Satoru was the ocean and the tides, the moon that governed them, Satoru
was the Coriolis effect and the rightward motion of all things, Satoru was the taste of honey
in his tea and the scent of sugar in the air, Satoru was the end-all-be-all, his love above loves,
his one and only.

And Suguru had lost him.

He was still there, standing in the bathroom naked and brushing his teeth, humming some
pop song from the early 2000s, but he was gone. He may as well have been a ghost.

The panic hit him all at once, and he made a bad decision.

“Are you sure about this, ‘Toru?” He called, his eyes shutting for a moment, and his voice
came out just a little too desperate. Satoru, ever perceptive, appeared in the doorway of the
bathroom, still nude, the toothbrush hanging from the corner of his mouth as he tilted his
head.

“Sure abou’ wha’?” He asked through the mess of bubbles and fluoride in his mouth, and a
steady stream of white foam dribbled from the corner of his lips on both sides, and Suguru
again had to avert his eyes to prevent his mind from straying to something inappropriate for
such an early hour of the morning.

“We don’t— we don’t have to do this, you know,” he tried, being as vague as possible, but it
was not so easy. Nothing was easy with Satoru.

A momentary pause as Gojo returned back to the bathroom and spit into the sink, gentle
sounds of the faucet and his hands cleaning the lower half of his face, before returning to the
middle of the room and folding his arms at the side of the bed where Geto still lay, lazy.
Suguru kept his eyes closed and prayed to whatever deity was listening that the one
tormenting him would put on some goddamn pants already.

“You chickening out? For real?” Satoru tutted, chewing the inside of his cheeks, a deep-
shaded hickey at the base of his neck looking like the loveliest jewel of all the museums in
the world.

“That’s not— that’s not what I meant,” Suguru tried again, forcing his eyes open, staring up
at his perfect face (only his face, nothing below it), though his body was growing hot and he
was powerless to stop it.

Satoru frowned. “What did you mean, then?”

And Suguru’s panic morphed itself into something slow-moving and sluggish, the fear in his
heart settling like intestinal obstructions into the pathways of his soul. “I don’t… I don’t
know what I meant.”

And Satoru regarded him with critical eyes, but ultimately did not push it. “You remember
what I told you last night, right?”

God, which part? Suguru thought to himself. When you said we’d never be friends? When
you made me promise no contact? When you said you’d never hate me? When you said it was
over?

“Remind me,” Suguru mumbled.

“I get to choose how it ends this time,” Satoru said, and his voice was semi-sweet, semi-stern.
“You always got to choose how it ends. It’s my turn.”

Suguru exhaled a deep breath, and then he opened his eyes and smiled up at him again.

“Direct me, then,” he said, and his smile was fake, but he was a damn good actor. “What
comes next?”

Satoru grinned down at him.

“You weren’t listening? Denny’s. I want Denny’s, Sugu.”

“Put some clothes on, or we’ll never make it there.”

Satoru laughed, and when he laughed, every cloud in the sky cleared. When Satoru laughed,
all the world stopped just to listen. When Satoru laughed, all injustice had ended, all suffering
was finished, all sin had been paid for by the blood and the body and anyone— anyone, even
scum like Suguru— could be saved.

“Hurry up and get out of bed,” he demanded through the beaming. “I’m starving. You wore
me out last night. If I don’t get chocolate chip banana pancakes in the next hour, I’ll drop
dead.”

“You aren’t supposed to eat so soon after brushing your teeth, you know. It’s bad for your
enamel.”

“So is getting punched in the jaw, which is what I’ll do to you if you don’t get out of bed and
take me to Denny’s right now.”

“Take you to Denny’s?” Suguru raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were driving.”

Satoru rolled his eyes like Suguru was the stupidest person on planet earth, and maybe he
was. One would have to be monumentally stupid to have such a perfect face, a perfect person,
all to themselves and destroy it on purpose. One would have to be borderline brainless to let
go of Satoru Gojo.
“I am driving, moron,” Satoru corrected, “but only once we get up into the storm. Until then,
you’re driving me around.”

And in that moment Suguru felt like he might burst into tears. He felt like he might melt into
a puddle of saltwater on the bed and sink into the earth below, like he might seep into the soul
like sweat seeps into a shirt, like blood seeps into paper, and every last ounce of his resolve
clung to stability, clung to a smile, because it was Satoru’s turn to choose the ending. It was
Satoru’s turn to pick. It was Satoru’s turn to walk away with a clean conscience, with a calm
heart, and it was Suguru’s turn to writhe uselessly in the despair of knowing he would never,
ever, ever fall in love again.

It was Satoru’s turn, and whatever Satoru desired, Suguru would give willingly.

“I’d love to drive you, ‘Toru.”

“Good,” Satoru grinned and turned around again, pulling on the boxers Suguru had ripped off
of him the night before. “I need my energy for this chase, you know. It’ll be a big one.”

That bad feeling sank teeth into Suguru’s skin.

Something was going to happen. Something was going to go wrong, and there was no ritual
or prayer or rain dance he could perform to make it go away. Something was going to
swallow them both up, be it a vortex or a torrential downpour or the blood suffering outward
from their separate, separated hearts, and something was going to hurt Satoru. Something
was going to hurt him, and for once in his life, Suguru couldn’t tell if it would be him or
something else. He was no longer willing to take that chance, but he didn’t have the choice.

It was Satoru’s turn to choose.

***

5:56 p.m. The storm.

Geto could remember his first supercell like he could remember his first kiss.

He was seven years old. His twin sisters had been born only three months prior, and his
mother had suffered greatly from labor and delivery, so when the tornado sirens started
wailing in the middle of the night, she was unable to physically drag him with her to the
cellar to hide. His baby sisters had been shrieking in her arms, sensing the panic radiating
from her pores like sweat, like shockwaves, and he had been arguing the whole way down,
complaining that he was tired and he didn’t like the cellar and there was too much noise and
his ears hurt, but his mother told him to either shut his mouth or use it for prayer. He
remembered how the house seemed to rattle with the watery winds and the pissing rain and
how intermittent flashes of unreal light illuminated his steps down the creaky hallway before
the thunderclap shook him down again. He used to be afraid of thunder when he was little, he
told himself, but he was not little anymore. He was in second grade already. He was a big kid,
and big kids aren’t scared of storms.

Typically, he was not allowed to go in the cellar, and he didn’t care to, either. It was filthy in
there, and not the fun kind of filthy one gets from tromping around in the mud or catching
snakes or splashing in the creek. It was the nasty kind of filthy, the cobwebby kind, the one
that came with spiders and centipedes and the choking smell of mold and dust clinging to the
air around them. He was not allowed in the cellar because it was full of dangerous things—
things like gardening tools and a chainsaw and a lawn mower and a gigantic box of all the
Christmas decorations the family owned teetering dangerously on the edge of a broken shelf
— all things that could harm a little boy, but Suguru was not little anymore. He was a big kid.
Big kids aren’t scared of cellars.

He was staring up at the dust and dirt drifting down from the rattling rafters when he realized
that he did not know where his father was.

“Where’s dad?” He called to his mother over the sound of the babies crying.

“Shuttering up the windows,” she told him, annoyed, exasperated. “He’ll be here soon.”

“Ain’t that a tornado out there? That’s what the sirens are for?”

“He’ll be here soon,” she repeated. “Don’t worry about him.”

“I’m gonna go find ‘im,” he said, and started pushing himself up off the filthy floor, reddish
brown streaks coming away on his monster truck pajama pants.

“The hell you are,” his mother snapped, but with one baby girl in each arm she could not
immediately lunge after her son, who was moving quickly toward the small staircase at the
cellar entrance. “Young man, you get back here this instant!”

“I’ll hurry,” he assured her, brushing loose locks of black hair out of his eyes, pushing with
all his force against the cellar doors.

And his mother had shouted his name, threatening to beat him bright red if he disobeyed and
put himself out in that storm, and the babies cried louder against her arms as she clutched
them, but she couldn’t stop him. She couldn’t stop him because he was a big kid, and big kids
aren’t scared of their mothers.

He clamored through the rain and mud back into his house, bare feet tracking dirt and all
manner of mess into his mother’s clean kitchen, and he searched around the house for his
father, calling out against the noise of the wild storm passing close by. He checked the
windows, checked the hall, checked his mother’s bedroom, but only when he saw another
brilliant flash of lightning illuminate the world outside and cast a familiar silhouette against
the floors did he think to check the front porch.

His father had smiled at him when he pushed the front door open, all his force necessary
against the pressure in the air, and stumbled out onto the creaky boards beside him. “You
disobeying your mother, son?”
“Yessir. Came to find you.”

“You ought to go on inside. That’s what the sirens are for, you know.”

“Why’re you outside, then?”

And his father laughed a small laugh— just a chuckle behind the lips, and one huge hand
reached out to motion him closer as he crouched down. “‘Cause I’m watching that shape out
there,” he said.

Suguru blinked, the wind stinging his thin eyes. “What shape? The tornado?”

“Mmhm,” his father said, and seemed to consider him for a moment, only a moment or so.
Finally, that smile he’d known since birth— the smile his mother told him was a perfect copy
of his father’s— returned to that face, and he nodded at his son. “You’re a big kid now. You
ain’t scared, are you?”

Suguru shook his head vehemently. “No, sir.” Big kids aren’t scared of natural disasters.

“Watch and see, then. See if you can’t find it.”

And his father lifted him up with one arm, let him hold onto his shoulder and cling to his side
(like a little monkey, his mother used to say), and they both stared out into the wild-whipped
darkness, bathed in intermittent splashes of light.

“I don’t see nothing, dad.”

“Look where I’m pointing. Keep your eyes there.”

And he followed the line of his father’s arm, followed that imaginary point out into the
distance, and he squinted as hard as he possibly could, but there was nothing. Nothing but
rain, nothing but shadow, nothing but empty night and cold breeze and the distant wails of
tornado sirens interspersed with thunderclaps.

“Dad, I don’t see it.”

“Keep looking. Wait for the next big flash.”

He waited. He waited. He waited.

Boom.

It was as though God opened his eyes and all the light in heaven showered down in a single
instant. Beautiful streams of spider lightning crawled across the endless expanse of the
southern sky in the span of one blink, so bright and clear, almost like the sun had risen early,
all at once, and he finally saw it. There at the horizon, much closer than it seemed, something
like an inverted triangle stretched down from the swirling cloud blanket above and met the
earth in the gentlest kiss, the strangest touch. Thunder roared, shook the house and the porch
and the soft bones in Suguru’s young limbs, and despite himself, he flinched and clung to his
father just a little bit tighter.
“You seen it, son?”

“Uh-huh,” he exhaled, eyes as wide as they could go, mouth hanging open, and in his head,
he’d started praying. Do it again, God, he thought. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again.

Boom.

There it was again, a little more to the left, a little bigger than it seemed before. Suguru’s face
lit up with something he had never known he could feel just from staring at the sky—
unbridled joy, uncontained excitement, like Christmas morning or summer vacation or the
sound of his father’s truck rolling up in the driveway. God was listening. God was listening,
and God was moving across the fields far away from his home, and God was moving through
his father’s eyes and arms as he held his son against his shoulder, and God was speaking to
him through the lightning flashes, through the screaming of the sirens, the whistling of the
wind. The preacher always said that God was something to be feared, that safe in His shelter
are those who fear Him, but in that moment, Suguru knew better. He was a big kid. Big kids
aren’t afraid of God.

Twenty years ago. The end of his life as he knew it began twenty years ago.

He couldn’t remember much from his catatonic state after the lightning strike that killed
Riko, but he remembered wondering if God was still there.

He remembered half of his face buried in the mud, lying on his side, parallel to that corpse.
He remembered being unable to move, to speak, to blink. He remembered droplets of rain
dripping down from the skies like tears and he remembered Satoru’s horrible, horrified face
of concentration as he slammed compression after compression down on the center of Riko’s
chest, his eyes beginning to rain onto her body as well. He remembered that he couldn’t close
his mouth, but he could taste the mud, and he remembered trying to pray with his tongue and
finding himself useless, so he prayed in his head again.

Save her, God, he thought. Save her. Save her. Save her. Save her.

God was not listening that night. God spoke through the lightning strike, and then God was
gone.

That was the first time he could recall the feeling of lividity seeping in through his skin with
the light smatterings of rain and the electric discharge. It was not simply anger, it was not
something as uncomplicated and animalistic as fury, it was something else. Something
different. Something worse. It was the sensation of bloodflow ceasing as part of his body died
with the soul, the sensation of stillness in every crack and crevice, the life force within him
pooling and coagulating into his limbs until he was discolored and entirely helpless, until the
Lichtenberg figures etched into the skin of his back had turned from bright red to purplish
brown, until he was a rotting corpse in the mud like he should have been.

Lividity was a governing force, a constant skeleton in the closet, a leash attached to the collar
around his neck, dragging him from place to place, storm to storm, far away from anyone he
used to be, anyone Satoru could ever love. It was the same force that he felt when he looked
up at the sky, waiting for the strike, waiting to be taken up like a cow in a UFO beam, waiting
to become just as livid as Riko’s body. Lividity was, and would always be, lightning.

Suguru did not like lightning, which wasn’t all that surprising, considering he’d been struck
before. Still, where others might feel fear, terror, a sense of dread that swallowed up their
hearts and lungs like the terrible jaws of some deep sea creature, Suguru could feel only hate.

In the physical therapy sessions he underwent after the accident (and he didn’t like calling it
that, because a lightning strike is never an accident— it’s a deliberate thing, a deliberate
choice from the hand of God to reach down and rip the soul of a poor, promising girl from the
grass and back into the sky), his therapist had tried to get him through a number of thought
exercises to improve his mindset before the session. Visualize what taking back control of
your body and mind might look like, she had instructed him. Imagine how it might feel, how it
might sound. Maybe it looks like going for a run, or maybe it looks like wearing a brace.
Maybe it looks like moving without pain. Really try to picture it in your mind. What does
taking control look like for you?

And Suguru did not tell her— did not entertain the mindless thought experiment for even a
second— but secretly, he knew exactly what it would look like.

He imagined himself in the center of a great field, tall grasses whipping in waves at his shins,
at the torn fabric of his old jeans, staring upward at a swirling storm overhead, waiting. In
this field there were no crops, there were no trees, there were no snakes or shrews or broken
branches, and there certainly was no one else. It was just Suguru, Suguru and the sky, Suguru
and the wind, Suguru and God.

He imagined himself waiting for the hairs to rise on his forearms and calves, for the hair to
rise from his head in a wispy peacock fan, sticking straight up and outward as electrical
charge from the earth built up in his body and pushed from his pores, an attractive force, a
lone lightning rod made of biomass and malice and negligent manslaughter. He imagined the
feeling of a tingling crawling up his legs, up his thighs, something like arousal as his body
buzzed with the new sensation, the promise of what was to come. He imagined seeing the
tracers before it even came down, before the bolt fully manifested itself and the atmosphere
exploded with superheated pressure, with instability at the mouth of his supercell storm, and
he imagined that for an instant or so, he would burn hotter than the sun.

He imagined the strike coming down, the stream of heaven, that piece of God coming back to
see him, to witness him, and he imagined snatching it up with both hands and bending it.

He would catch the lightning. He would force it to comply with him, to submit. He would
pull and twist it into a shape of his liking, and the sky would roar down with disapproving
thunder, and the skin of his palms would melt away and the bones of his fingers would
crumble as they cremated and he would be holding it, holding that lightning, wrestling it like
an alligator and refusing to let it go, to let it take anyone else, to let it take control of him
anymore.

Suguru did not like lightning. He hated lightning. But he did not hate it in the way most
people did.
He hated it because it was unpredictable, unreasonable. Tornadoes are a relatively compliant
thing— they follow the paths set by the supercells they descend from, moving in a
measurable pattern to the northeast, following the push of warm air from the west, and for the
most part, they can be avoided. Lightning is no such phenomena. Lightning comes when it
wants, where it wants, without regard for the time or place or even the goddamned
atmosphere. Every now and again, a ‘bolt from the blue’ drops from a cloudless sky on a
perfect day, and when it vanishes again, a life is gone or ruined or at the very least a tree is
split in half. The strikes themselves can be many thousands of times stronger than what is
required to kill a person— like the strike that had killed Riko, that had stopped her heart and
made blood go pouring from her nose and ears and fill up the whites of her eyes— or they
can be nothing more than a knock on the head.

That unpredictability was of no use to him.

He could not use it to explain away his undeniable guilt in Riko’s death, but he could not use
it as a perfect indicator of his responsibility, either. He could not use it to study that which
had torn his innocence from him and torn his world apart with it, because he would never
find that identical bolt anywhere else on earth, and even if he did, he wouldn’t be able to
know it. He could not even use it to reliably kill himself with. He would have to wait, and
waiting drives a man insane. He would have to sit under a storm for days on end, stand in the
middle of any rainy field he could find, wearing all the metal he could put in his mouth and
on his hands, and he would have to wait, and even if the bolt came for him, it might not even
kill him.

He hated that about lightning.

That was all he could think about when he chased those swirling shapes he’d worshipped in
his youth, watching through his windshield for the unfolding storm on all sides, flying
parallel down the highway, windows down. It was all he could decipher in his heart in those
moments— past the adrenaline rush, past the sound of the emergency radio crackling in the
passenger seat, past the roar of the winds in his ears and at his back and the bun he’d tied his
hair in coming undone rather quickly— all he could focus on was the hatred in his heart, the
fire in his bones, the fire the lightning had ripped through him with and left him with nothing.
He saw the looming bolts hanging low in the purple, livid sky, flickering and flashing like
fireflies in a jar, and he pressed the eyecup of his camcorder to his right side and tried to
capture it. He thought that if he captured it, maybe he could take the power back, at least in
some small way. In some small way, he could be in control again.

On that night, in that storm— one of many tangled up in the the mid-April outbreak, as it
came to be known— there was no control, no point in trying to keep a handle on any of it.
That night, it was Suguru, Satoru, and the sky.

When they chased storms together, it was similar to their sex. It was part of the reason why
they made such a damn good team. When they were on the road, in their respective positions
— Satoru behind the wheel, keeping an eye on the map and an ear on the radio, and Suguru
riding shotgun, camera in one hand and doppler radar in the other— they moved as one body,
one being, one machine. Just as Suguru guided him through every writhing wave of sensation
moving through his central nervous system between the sheets, so too did he guide him down
the uniform highways and rocky backroads, instructing him with a gentle voice, an
encouraging tone. Just as Satoru allowed himself to get greedy in bed, to push the limit of
what he could physically handle knowing he was safe in Suguru’s arms, so too did he allow
himself to push the boundaries of what could be considered advisable in the shadow of those
great storms, because he knew that with Suguru at his side, he would be protected.

For all the miscommunications in their relationship and the impending end of it, there were
no such inconsistencies in the car, on the asphalt. They seemed to speak their own language,
talking in code, every command and concern received with a click of the tongue or a nod of
the head or a light squeeze of the hand on either person’s thigh. When they were on the road,
they were no longer Suguru and Satoru, bitter exes and not-quite-unrequited lovers. They
were not Dr. Satoru Gojo, meteorology Ph.D. and often-absent university lecturer, and
Suguru Geto, highly acclaimed extreme weather photographer. When they were together,
tailing tornadoes and mapping out mesocyclones, they were just Sugu and ‘Toru. Sugu and
‘Toru was all they could afford themselves to be— two hearts beating, two sets of lungs
breathing, two breaths moving, two syllables apiece.

The tension between them had largely cleared up by the time they hit their storm and had to
focus hard at the task at hand. The weather reports were not exaggerating when they said it
would be the storm of a lifetime— even without his more high-spec gear and trusty
anemometer, Satoru knew the wind that night was a vicious kind, like a thousand angry
ghosts all screaming against his windshield and in over his car, pushing it side to side, up and
down as they sailed along.

“Sugu, refresh,” Satoru had instructed, craning his neck toward to peer out the drivers’ side
window just a little more.

Suguru dutifully tapped a button on the laptop perched on his right knee, his camera steady in
the other hand. “We’re close to the notch of it now,” he reported, squinting. “They’re
estimating winds of… Jesus, they’re saying up to 250 miles per hour if a tornado touches
down out here. It’s violent.”

“It’s vicious,” Satoru beamed.

The notch: refers to the sweet spot of a supercell, where the hook echo forms on radar
imaging. Most often, it indicates the location of the mesocyclone (the defining feature of a
supercell), and when well-defined, provides a strong foundation for tornadogenesis. When the
area is known to be visually dangerous— such as when the mesocyclone itself is rain-
wrapped or high-precipitatory— stormchasers often refer to it as the bear’s cage.

In short, the belly of the beast.

“God, that lightning is incredible,” Satoru murmured as another set of bolts rocketed down
from the sky, thunder rolling smooth and assertive through the air as sound barriers shattered.
“What’s our position?”

Suguru refreshed again, eyes darting between the colorful radar screen and the steady camera
in his other hand. “Still safely south of it,” he replied, voice narrow with concentration, that
bad feeling chewing at him again.
“We could stand to get closer, though?”

Suguru clicked around again, his mobile hotspot flickering out in the rural area, and exhaled
through his nose. “Still no reports of a touchdown, and I can’t exactly make out a funnel
cloud… yeah, you can get close. Make a right at this crossroads up here.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice,” Satoru grinned, and pushed the brake.

Suguru looked over at him, and he knew he loved him, but he also knew something else.

Sometimes, you just know. Sometimes your gut growls and it isn’t hunger. Sometimes your
skin shivers and it isn’t cold. Sometimes your body understands, sometimes your spirit keeps
the score, sometimes your mind knows itself, and sometimes your mind has a mind to seek
deeper.

In that moment, Suguru knew he loved him, but he also knew the time was almost upon
them.

They say southerners can smell a storm coming from miles away. In reality, what they’re
smelling is the atmosphere itself, an effect of the humidity and the geosmin released from the
spores in the soil, the chemicals carried up in the clouds in the effects of pollution coming to
float down to earth again in soft wisps and whiffs, the ozone created by lightning landing in
droplets a long ways away. They say a storm can be felt in the bones a full day before it starts
pouring down, and that, too, has a scientific explanation. The atmosphere carries with it a
crushing weight, approximately 14.7 pounds per square inch of pressure at sea level, and yet
we feel nothing at all, because from birth we have been conditioned not to feel it, our bodies
moulded and formed around it, a constant reminder of our smallness, our statistical
insignificance. The shifting of the air they feel is the slight adjustment in barometric pressure,
increasing to weight down on the suffering and lightening to soothe the contented. There was
always an explanation, always something unseen but overstudied, something abstract and
unreasonable.

Suguru was, and had always been, different. He really could smell a storm, and not just the
saturation of substance in the air. He really could feel it coming on in his bones, and it was
not just the barometric pressure. He really could predict the future, plot the path the storm
might take, lick his finger and stick it to the wind and find the way out of the woods, into the
beautiful electric field the lightning he hated so much provided. Suguru was different. Suguru
knew.

In that moment, Suguru knew he needed to get the camera rolling, that his million dollar shot
was dancing outside their window, on the northern side.

“‘Toru, I’m going out there,” Suguru said abruptly, fumbling with the straps of his camcorder,
wrapping velcro around the palm of his left hand once, twice, three times, until he had the
small machine strapped on tight, still-white knuckling though it. He unbuckled his seatbelt.
“Maneuver 3. You got this?”

A hand fell over his left knee, the one that was so used to feeling nothing but pain, the one he
could not force back to full functionality after the incident, after Riko was torn away from the
earth by the mistake of God. A tight hold. A tight squeeze. Satoru did not let up off the gas
pedal.

“You’re sure about this?” He asked, turning to face him, his eyes showing bright concern
through his glasses.

A brief moment of doubt, of hesitation. A brief moment passed where the fear Suguru felt—
fear of the lightning strike, fear of death, fear of God— rocketed through his brain in
instantaneous streamers, visual tracers, sunspots. A brief moment where either of them could
have said uncle, could have cried mercy, could have turned back.

Suguru flashed his signature smile— a confident grin. Toothy. Shut-eyed. Terrible.

“No sweat, sweetheart,” he assured him. “This is my job, remember?”

Satoru hesitated for a moment longer.

“Pound on the roof if you want me to slow down,” he instructed. “Kick your legs if you want
me to stop.”

Suguru’s left hand— the one strapped to the camcorder— reached out to touch the soft side
of Satoru’s face, and felt him lean into the sensation of skin contact.

“I know the drill. I trust you,” Suguru told him. “So trust me, too.”

Satoru smiled.

“Maneuver 3,” he repeated, easing off the gas while the passenger side window rolled down,
vicious wind rushing in and drowning out all the sounds of the radio and the blinking and
their respective heartbeats. “Lock it in. Be careful, Sugu.”

“Don’t worry about me, sweetheart,” Suguru called back. “Just drive.”

Satoru nodded, and without another word, Suguru contorted his body to pull himself out the
window.

Maneuver 3: a Sugu and ‘Toru specialty. Incredibly ill-advised and dangerous, and Geto’s
secret to getting some of the best footage in the game. Requires a steady hand, a strong core,
and a bit of a deathwish.

One hand snared around the roof rails of Satoru’s car, the ones he’d helped install all those
years ago, and with considerable effort and concentration on the upswing, Suguru pulled
himself with one palm against the vicious wind and light pinprick sprinklings of rain. In an
instant, all the hair he’d let come loose from his bun was whirlwind-whipping around his
face, a black mass of tentacles, outward and sideways and obstructing his view until he tilted
his head just the right way and it seemed to flow in an even state. He pulled himself out of
the window until he was sitting against the door, both boots in the passenger seat, and his free
hand holding tight to his camcorder. He felt the fear for a moment or so, just an
inconsequential moment, and then he was flying.
It was a feeling like none other. It was a feeling that could only be described in soundwaves,
in sparks of light, in the trembling through his bones as he clung to the roof of the car and
pressed the eyecup of his camcorder to the soft flesh where his orbital bone dropped off.

It was like a downshift, like a motor screaming out, like the break of day at the edge of the
universe, like burning alive in a block of ice. It was like remembering what you’d known all
along, like taking your best friend by the face and pressing an electric kiss to his plush lips,
like seeing God gliding across the fields outside your childhood house. It was like crying at a
wedding, like laughing through sex, like getting drunk in a downpour, like dancing with your
lover in the kitchen at three in the morning. It was like the sound of your little sisters
shrieking in the garden, scurrying from their mother when it was time to come inside and
have a bath. It was like the face of a brilliant young woman stolen from the earth too soon,
like her bandana flapping like a flag in the screaming winds, like her shimmering blue eyes
that looked so much— so much— like Satoru’s. It was freedom. It was flying. It was
maneuver 3.

Maneuver 3 was something deeply personal to Satoru and Suguru. They’d discovered they
could pull it off when they were both nineteen and Satoru, ever the reckless one, developed a
nasty habit of hanging his entire torso out the passenger side window when they sped
alongside a storm, mouth open wide, wind blowing through his hair, like a dog. The first few
times, Suguru had nearly crashed the truck trying to drag him back inside, insisting that all it
took was one piece of rogue debris to go flying from the skies and sever his head, but Satoru
was not deterred.

“Just try it,” he insisted, all wide-eyed and wild-haired and wonderful. “Just try it once, and
you’ll see what I mean.”

So Geto tried it, after reminding Gojo a million times that he lacked the fundamental risk-
aversive nature that would lead to his eventual death by Darwinism, and after making him
swear not to go faster than 60 miles per hour, he unbuckled his seatbelt and climbed out on
shaky arms. At first, he shouted for Satoru to slow the fuck down before you kill us both, but
then that feeling of flight exploded through his body, and before he knew it he was laughing
and smiling and screaming for Satoru to speed up, speed up, come on!

That was back before death had touched them, before their lives had been torn apart by
lightning streamers spiraling downward from the skies. That was when they were still
untouchable, still invincible, still kids.

Things were a little different the night of the storm.

Suguru still enjoyed that electrifying feeling of flying parallel to the supercell, to the funnel
cloud beginning to form to their north, stretching down like a cat waking from a long nap, but
that feeling was no longer accompanied by the sizzling sensation of risk, the adrenaline rush
of fear melting into joy. It was accompanied only by a deep solemnness, a stoicism against
that storm, stony in the face of it. Through the tiny lens of his camcorder, one eye squeezed
shut and the other earning an indent in the flesh were he pressed he plastic against his face a
little too hard, He could see it all unfolding, as though watching mitosis through a
microscope. He could see the soft, cupped shape of the funnel cloud narrow into something
sharper and more severe, dirt and dust and puddles on the ground below beginning to flow
skyward as they were twisted up by the winds, sucked into that white thread descending from
an unforgiving God, like the tendrils of some Lovecraftian horror.

He clung tighter and tighter to the roof of the car, focused harder and harder, feeling the
sensation of icy air on his skin, light rain spilling against his face, his knuckles going numb
with force—

Abruptly, he kicked his legs to signal Satoru to stop, and braced hard against the metal of the
moving vehicle as the brakes engaged and he was shifting forward with the power of inertia.
A little too hurriedly, he swung himself back into the passenger side, narrowly avoiding
hitting his head on the window as he bent backwards.

“Pull over,” he instructed breathlessly, the same tone of voice he used in bed— sharp,
assertive, yet poorly concealing the strength it took for him to hold back and discipline
himself when everything he had ever wanted was splayed out before him. “It’s coming down.
Get ready to call it in.”

“Fuck, yes,” Satoru hissed to himself, hissed through grinning teeth, and it was the same tone
of voice he used in bed, when he was underneath Suguru. “Finally.”

By the time they scrambled outside and into the muddy field, jumping over the drainage ditch
at the side of the road and staggering backward to watch it from the best angle, the two ends
of the twister had already begun to kiss one another, but had not yet become tongue-tied and
lip-locked.

Satoru was on the phone in an instant, almost jumping up and down, excitement written
across his face. “Hello? Hello, yes, I— Yes, I’m a trained weather spotter, I need to report a
tornado… Yes, it touched down a few moments ago. …Due north of highway 81, intersecting
with route 615, yes. It’s vicious out here. …Dr. Satoru Gojo, meteorologist. Yes, that Gojo.”

Suguru would have laughed at the recognition if he wasn’t entirely transfixed.

There was nothing in the entire world that could rip away his love for the weather, for storms,
for the sky. There was no God savage enough to tear away the adoration he felt in his heart
when he watched it all unfold, when he watched it all go down. The Great Plains were like
purgatory— a flat, endless expanse of absolute nothingness— but in the skies there was all of
the universe collected and condensed, all of the joy and the pain and the sorrow one could
imagine, and in that moment it was all swirling down, all reaching up, and on both ends of
the screaming winds— at both ends of the extreme— he could see love.

Love in his eyes, his ears, his head, his heart.

Love standing at his side, staring up at the twister, smiling wide. Love, with its blue eyes and
its silver hair and its soft lips. Love, Satoru Gojo. Love.

They stood side-by-side, and they stood in silence. They stood there for a good ten minutes,
Suguru filming, Satoru smiling, the winds whirling northeast.
“It’s perfect,” Satoru said eventually, his voice almost unnatural after so long in between
speaking. “I mean, it’s just— God, look at the shape. It’s perfect. It’s perfect.”

“Did you get what you wanted?” Suguru smiled at him, and for a moment Satoru’s face
flickered with something unfamiliar, yet too known to his heart. It wasn’t quite sadness, but it
wasn’t far from it. Something like nostalgia, something like diesel fuel coffee with too much
half-and-half, something like chocolate chips melting on a waffle drowned in syrup.
Something like truth, like conclusion. Acceptance, maybe.

Satoru took his hand, and their fingers interlaced, just as they had that night sixteen years ago
when Suguru dragged him out of bed to see the supercell moving in swiftly his home, the
night Satoru decided how he would spend the rest of his life.

“Yes,” he said, and there were tears forming at the corners of his eyes, though Geto supposed
it could have been an effect of the wind. “I got everything.”

Their eyes met, their hearts melted like aluminum in a furnace, and without the need for
words they pulled each other into a gentle embrace.

It was the last time. They knew it was the last time. But if it were up to either of them, that
storm would rage on forever, that night would never end, and that tender moment would be
encased in amber and fossilized until the sun dies and decomposes into a red giant and
swallows up the solar system. Scientists would find them thousands of years down the line,
and they’d take their amber tomb and put it on display in a museum, and the plaque would
read something like a eulogy, something like The Lovers, the immortal example of the true
scientific theorem of love eternal.

They held each other tight, one of Suguru’s hands at the back of Satoru’s head, both of
Satoru’s balling fists on the fabric of his shirt. They swayed as the wind pushed them, swayed
as the rain sprinkled down, swayed like the ocean tides and the ships on its back. Suguru
drew in deep, yearning breaths of Satoru’s scent, the sweet shampoo he used, his lavender
laundry detergent, the smell that used to comfort him, the smell of home. Satoru tried his
hardest to memorize the feeling of those hands holding him like water again.

“You should be filming,” Gojo mumbled into Geto’s shoulder.

“Let me love this a little longer.”

And Satoru let him, because it was the last time. And when they pulled apart and Suguru
pulled him in and kissed him deeply, gently, like he was something precious and worth
protecting, he let him, because it was the last time. When he started to cry all over again—
just tiny tears dripping down his cheeks— he let Suguru thumb them away and kiss the tip of
his nose and smile at him, because it was the last time.

There’s a last time for everything. As far as finales go, Satoru had it pretty good.

But all good things must come to an end.

Their magical moment— the tiny flicker of their blue springtime lived through the roaring
winds of the tornado ripping across the plains and into the atmosphere— was shattered the
second Satoru pulled his head away from Suguru’s shoulder and let his eyes focus on that
shape he so loved, the shape of the cyclone, of the tornado.

Something had changed. That bad feeling crept up within Geto’s body again, the bad feeling
he’d woken up with and stuffed down all day for Gojo’s sake, the bad feeling identical to the
one he’d had the day he got Riko killed.

“Suguru,” Satoru said, his voice low and shivering, but only slightly, “Suguru, are you seeing
what I’m seeing?”

Suguru let go of him to get a better look.

“That’s not moving… That’s not moving like it should be, is it?” He said, and his hand
tightened a bit on the other’s arm.

Satoru swallowed hard and shook his head. “It’s not moving at all.”

A tense beat of silence, so sharp and sterile it could have severed arteries.

“Look at the left side,” Gojo let go completely, taking a few steps forward, and that familiar
look of fear was washed away by something else entirely— something like awe, like
incredulity, something like the face one wears when watching a train wreck, all wide-eyed
and open-mouthed and entirely helpless to rip their gaze away.

Sure enough, the left edge of the tornado’s shape had stopped moving rightward.

“Leftward occlusion?” Suguru breathed. “It’s— it’s too early for leftward occlusion. This
thing has another 20 minutes of lifespan at least.”

Leftward occlusion: in the context of severe weather, refers to the phenomenon of a tornado
to become steered by low-level winds, causing it to abruptly deviate from its expected course
and shift its path leftward. This leftward motion will be most obvious to chasers watching
from the south of a tornado, the most ideal location to be, as tornadoes typically move in a
northeasterly direction, following the path of their supercells.

A simple rule of thumb— watch the left edge.

When positioned to the south of a tornado, it will appear to be moving left to right along the
earth. If the left edge is moving right and the right edge is moving right, the tornado is
following the most common trajectory. If the left edge is not moving right, it is likely that
deviant tornado motion is occurring, possibly from a leftward occlusion. It is best taken as a
sign of danger.

If the tornado looks like it’s standing still, it’s coming straight for you.

“Deviant motion,” Satoru shook his head. “We have to get out of here.”

“On it,” Suguru nodded, and they made a sprint back to the car, clamoring inside.
The winds were getting louder. The lightning was intensifying, each thunderclap stronger and
more instantaneous than the one before, each flash of pure white beginning to strike a strange
sort of existential fear into each heart, into each set of eyes. Satoru turned the key and the car
clicked to life, a deep hum emanating from the engine, a soft heat filling up the enclosed
space.

“Sugu, get us out of here,” he said, tugging the gear shift. “Should I U-turn or slip south
when I get the chance?”

“U-turn, then take the next left you see,” Suguru said, but something was wrong.

The gear shift was not moving. Satoru punched the gas, and only a horrible grinding noise
rose up from the engine, from the motor. He clicked the car off, clicked it back on again, tried
the gear shift a second time, and—

“It’s stuck,” he breathed, “it’s fucking stuck.”

“It’s alright,” Suguru assured him. “It’s the same thing as last time. Remember, when I yelled
at you? It’s just stuck in park.”

“Of course I remember,” Satoru rolled his eyes, but he seemed genuinely annoyed, and
before either one could protest he was climbing out of the car to open the hood. “That’s not—
that’s not my primary concern.”

Suguru understood what he meant when he saw smoke streaming up from the crevices of
every part of the hood.

“Shit,” he mumbled, and his eyes found Satoru. His eyes found love. In seconds, he was
transfixed again.

Satoru had stopped paying attention.

“Fuck, okay, I can fix this,” he was chattering to himself, panic overtaking him, and Suguru
was slowly backing away, his head craned skyward, watching the deviant motion of the
tornado draw closer, closer, closer. Lightning flashed all around, thunder roaring, the sky
churning as it came crashing down. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Damn it. God damn it. Okay. Okay. I
can— I can fix this, I—“

Suguru was drifting away. Satoru was drifting away. The tornado was drifting closer.

“This isn’t how it was supposed to go,” Satoru reminded himself, reminded the world that
seemed hell-bent on torturing him. Another huge crack of thunder shook him out of his skin,
another brilliant zap of electricity raining down from the sky. “This isn’t— this isn’t how I
wanted it to be. It’s my turn to choose. It’s my turn to choose how this goes.”

He looked for Suguru— left, right, behind him— and could not see him.

Only then did Satoru remember why he’d stopped stormchasing in the first place, after
Suguru left him the first time.
It wasn’t because he had lost interest or passion for it. It wasn’t that he couldn’t imagine
doing alone what he had always done with Suguru at his side, what he had fallen in love with
because he fell in love with Suguru. It wasn’t that he’d gotten too busy or gotten too old or
the seasons had changed in some way. It wasn’t even because he was scared. In fact, it was
the fact that he wasn’t scared that kept him inside.

Suguru was not exaggerating when he said Satoru lacked the fundamental quality of risk-
aversion and impulse control that the human species had evolutionarily honed for thousands
and thousands of years of natural selection. Satoru simply did not know when to stop. He
never knew when to turn back, to turn around, to cut his losses or quit while he was ahead.
Were it up to him, he would have the brakes in his car uninstalled and a second engine added.
Were it up to him, he would ever pull over, never slow down. He would drive straight into the
tornado if he could, just to see how it felt, just for that thrill of measurement, of science, of
endorphins rushing through every cell in his body. No, Satoru was not one for thinking ahead
and considering the consequences of his thrill-seeking. That had always been Suguru’s job.

When Suguru— his one and only, his solar system, the sun he revolved around— had
abandoned him, Satoru felt true fear for the first time in his life. For the first time that he
could remember, Suguru was not there at his side to protect him, to guide him along, to be his
compass and his North Star and the voice of reason in his passenger seat encouraging him to
take it slow and see how the cyclone develops. Suguru had always kept a close eye on him, a
hand quick to catch him if he fell, to defend him if he were touched by filthy fingers, a soft
murmur in his ear reminding him that if he played his cards right, he’d get what he wanted so
badly.

When Suguru left him— left him to cry alone in that field— he knew intrinsically how much
danger surrounded him, how powerless he was to stop it all. For the first time in his life, he
felt weak. He felt useless. He felt pathetic. Suddenly, his compass was gone, his North Star
extinguished, his guiding hand evaporating into the unforgiving atmosphere, and part of him
knew that if he were to go out chasing storms on his own— if he got back on the horse and
got back in his car— he would not be able to keep himself safe.

He never knew when to stop. That was his fatal flaw.

Geto was supposed to know when to reel him in, when to remind him that he was mortal.
Geto was supposed to tell him when to stop, when to slow down, when to resist his urges to
get closer and closer and closer into the danger zone, but Geto had not done his job. Geto had
nodded along as they drew further into the red, Geto had smiled and accepted each of Gojo’s
directives, because it was Gojo’s turn to choose. It was Gojo’s turn to decide how things
ended, how their one last time was going to go.

Gojo had chosen horribly. He always did.

“Fuck,” he was hissing to himself, hands starting to shake on the hood of the car, starting to
warble and waver with his steadiness as panic began to set in. “Fuck, fuck, okay, alright—
Suguru, we have to— shit, this is bad, fuck—“

“Satoru?”
Suguru was somewhere far away— maybe in distance, maybe in temperature, maybe just a
trick of the winds distorting the sound waves leaving his mouth, but in that moment it did not
matter. There was no time for it to matter. The sound of the vicious breeze was growing
louder and louder, a distant roar, like the constant rumbling of thunder, like a constant
scream, and Satoru’s hands were not working properly.

“Suguru, get over here and help me,” he begged, the soot and oil and hot air beginning to
burn his fingertips. “Hurry, please, I— fuck, it’s getting closer, the debris cloud is almost—
shit!”

“Satoru, I need you to listen to me.”

“Look, I’m trying, but I— Fuck! Fuck!” He shouted into the air, covering his eyes with the
heels of his palms as panic began to overtake him, and he stumbled back from the car as the
prop rod failed under the force of the worsening weather and the hood slammed shut. “Okay,
new plan, we have to— fuck, there’s no cover around here, but if we stay close to the car it
could get picked up and thrown—“

“Satoru!” Suguru called from that distant place.

“What?” Satoru screamed back, whirling on his heels to the sound of his voice, and when his
eyes found him through the growing darkness beginning to envelop them, his heart nearly
stopped.

Suguru was smiling.

He was standing there, hands in his pockets, smiling the most beautiful smile Satoru could
have ever imagined. His hair was free from the bun entirely, locks of loose silk whipping
wildly around his skull like an angry ball of energy, and his head was tilted to one side and he
was smiling. He was smiling as if the world weren’t about to end.

Gojo abandoned the car entirely, crossing back into the grassy field beyond the drainage ditch
where Geto stood, a terribly cold sensation of dread building up in his chest like snow builds
up on a rood.

“Sugu, what are you—“

“I love you, ‘Toru.”

Satoru blinked for a moment, frozen in place, frozen in time.

“You what?”

“I love you,” Suguru repeated. “I still love you. I— I never stopped.”

Again, Satoru could only stare at him, could only breathe in forced expansions of each lung,
his autonomic processes becoming chores as the sky began to crack and crumble down.

“You’re doing this now?” He asked incredulously.

“I have terrible timing, I know,” Suguru laughed, and he was beaming, beaming like a kid,
like the little boy he had been the summer they met, the snarky little hick Satoru had learned
to stop hating, the kid he knew he would never get over. “But I have to tell you now, because
if I don’t, then I— I might never—“

“Suguru, we can’t do this right now, we have to go,” Satoru said, but his voice was small,
trembly, and his heart was betraying him and his knees were going jelly, and there was a
strange sensation washing over him, a strangeness in the air that he couldn’t quite place. It
was something like static crawling up from the carpet, something like a rhythmic clicking
only trained ears could hear, something simmering up through his shoes and into his limbs
and out the top of his head, the ends of his hair beginning to stick straight up—

The realization caused a slight respiratory arrest. He stopped breathing, but he could not tear
his eyes away from Suguru, away from that smile, even as all his loose hair began to rise up,
guided by some invisible force.

“I know it’s too late,” Suguru was saying, “and I know we can’t go back to the way things
were, and I know it’s all my fault, but if I could just tell you one last time—“

“Suguru—“ He choked out, staggering forward, his face pale and useless in the terror
consuming him.

Geto, for his part, appeared oblivious, none the wiser to the electric field beginning to form
around him, just as it had formed around Riko. Gojo barely had time to check himself to
realize that the field was affecting him, too. “I love you!” Suguru repeated, still glimmering,
still beaming like nothing was wrong, like they weren’t standing in the shadow of death.
“And I want— I want you to be happy. I want you to be happy, and I will do anything I have
to do to make you happy, even if that means going no contact—“

“Sugu, listen to me—“

“I know it’s your turn to choose the ending, but you— I wasn’t letting you make an informed
choice,” Suguru was coming toward him, palms open at his sides, eyes like crescent moons
and one crooked incisor still catching what little light remained. His hair was like the wispy
fan of a peacock, a perfect black halo around the curve of his skull, electrical charge radiating
up and out of them both like an attractive force, like the force that had been pulling them
together for so long, for as long as they’d known each other. “You weren’t— you didn’t have
all the information,” he continued, sort of laughing, “because I never told you that I’m still in
love with you.”

“Suguru!” Satoru shouted as loud as he possibly could, loud enough to shatter the illusion
building between them, loud enough to snap Suguru out of whatever stupor he was in. “Look
up!”

He looked up.

He saw his hair.

 His eyes trailed back down to Satoru, his mouth hanging open, a terrible darkness seeming to
swallow him as it all registered in his head. He started to say something, started to reach out,
but it was all cut short. By that time, it was all too late.

They only had time to lunge at one another before the bolt came down and hit them both.

Chapter End Notes

We have 2 chapters left EVERYBODY LOCK INNNNN LOCK IN RIGHT

NOWWWWW
 Halation
Chapter Summary

Halation (noun) . hā-ˈlā-shən

: the spreading of light beyond its proper boundaries in a developed photographic image

: a bright ring that sometimes surrounds a bright object on a television screen

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Satoru was newly fifteen years old when he tried to run away from home.

It was December, around Christmastime, and Christmas in New York was a fleeting thing.
For a moment or so— a couple weeks at the most— it’s sort of magical, and one finds it easy
to get lost in the swirl of wintertime tourists and the lights strung around the barren trees and
the billows of steam coming up from the subway through the manhole covers and the rain
grates. For a flicker in the shadow of the waning year, it was just like the movies, and little
song jingles in your heart like chime bells on the bodega doors, and you walk around with a
stupid little smile on your face with your numb cheeks rosy red and you believe in Santa
Claus. For a brief blink, every man is a child again.

That childlike feeling of wonder is erased almost as quickly as the holiday, and once it’s over,
there’s no more magic. It’s just another long winter, another long December that bleeds into a
longer January and an even longer February. In one instant, the world is bright and
glimmering and glowing from the ground up, and in the next, the ice crawls up your ankles
and your fingers are numb in the fists you ball them in and your breath is freezing and
coagulating in your lungs and you’re the farthest from the sun you’ll ever be.

It was snowing that day, which was not part of Satoru’s scheme.

He had it all down to a science, his master plan, but it would not matter too much. It would
only serve to annoy him as he made his way from the opulent home of his childhood (or lack
thereof) down to the nearest subway station, the subway he was not allowed to ride. People of
Satoru’s status and wealth did not ride public transportation— they had drivers waiting at
their beck and call, chauffeurs and sleek black cars and air conditioners tuned to their
seasonal preferences— and his mother had warned him in a disgusted tone of all the myriad
diseases common folk carried into the train cars like rats or roaches onto a merchant vessel.
You could get a staph infection or an STD just by sitting down in one of those seats, just by
touching one of the railings, she warned him. Don’t ever lower yourself like that.
He clung tight to the bare railing with his bare hands as the train carried him south of Central
Park, then east into Queens, until he found the correct stop a little ways down the R track,
where he got out and hailed a cab. He could have hailed a cab from the very beginning— he
could have called one of the drivers his father had on a constant standby to pick him up and
take him to LaGuardia Airport— but that wouldn’t have been any fun. It wouldn’t have made
him feel a little rebellious, even just for a short ride.

He had made the proper preparations in secret two weeks prior, when on his birthday— the
seventh of December— he had been entirely forgotten.

His parents were gone. They had been gone for weeks already, jetting off to somewhere
warmer, somewhere tropical, somewhere like the Maldives or Saint Bart’s or Bora Bora, and
they would not be back until well into February. They had not taken Satoru with them, of
course, because Satoru had school to attend to. Never mind the fact that Satoru hated school.
Never mind the fact that Satoru could turn in an assignment with a huge cartoony dick drawn
over the front and he would still be given a passing grade because of how badly his surname
had his private academy teachers in chokehold. Never mind the fact that their extending
holiday would mean missing Christmas, a time when mothers and fathers are supposed to
spend time with their sons, watching movies or baking cookies or doing any of the mundane
domestic bullshit that Satoru craved in his bones. Never mind the fact it would mean Satoru
was all alone, all alone again.

As usual, his parents didn’t care about Christmas, and they didn’t care to call him on his
fifteenth birthday, either. He doubted he would have answered if his little blue Motorola flip
phone had rung, but he still prayed that it might, just so he’d have the choice to ignore it. He
had no friends, either, so he had no one to throw a party with or receive presents from or
bother ordering a cake for. The only person who had called that day, as expected, was
Suguru.

So Satoru made a plan.

If he was not wanted in New York— if he was not wanted by his parents or his classmates or
his housekeepers or the snow settling gently in on the sidewalks— then he would go where
he was wanted. He would fly to Memphis like he did for the past three summers, and Suguru
would pick him up at the airport with his family, and he would stay in Mississippi where he
belonged and he would enroll in some run-down public school and he would spend his days
at his best friend’s side and he would refuse to ever return back to that city made of concrete
and glass and steel. It would be hell trying to convince Suguru’s mother to let him stay
indefinitely, but he was certain he could talk his way out of it, or at least buy her off. He was
certain that he could put on the puppy dog eyes and tell his sob story and beg to be allowed in
their home. He was sure a sweet woman like her wouldn’t have the heart to turn away a
lonely kid, all alone on Christmas.

So he went to the airport, and he passed through security, and he took off his shoes at TSA
and he showed his ticket to the officers and he bought strawberry soda, but he couldn’t force
himself to drink any of it. He was somehow too nervous, somehow shaking, a deep sort of
rattle that came from between the bones, like the windchill blowing through the skyscrapers
in lower Manhattan, like the snow falling on the shoulders of the expensive coat he did not
particularly like. He was somehow scared, but not of flying. He was scared of the phone call
he would have to make.

When he got to the gate, he found a quiet spot near the far end of the terminal, and with
shaking hands he dialed Suguru’s landline, counting out the digits in a prayerful whisper. It
was Sunday— the only day the Geto family turned their telephone on— and he had timed
everything perfectly so that his call would go through at around 5 p.m. It took three tries, but
eventually, his call was received, and the familiar voice of Suguru’s mother crackled through
the other end.

“Good afternoon, Geto residence, how may I help you?”

Satoru’s breath hitched in his throat at the sound, and without even realizing it, his throat had
clamped up with the anxiety, and his words sounded constricted and creaky coming from his
lips. “H— Hi, hello, ma’am,” he forced out, wincing at the awkwardness. “This is—“

“Satoru?” He could almost feel the eyebrow raising on the other end of the line. “Young man,
you know better than to call this house so close to suppertime.“

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he interrupted. “Can I please talk to Sugu?”

A slight pause as she seemed to consider it, and in his mind’s eye he could see her head
tilting, the frown she wore looking so much like her son’s, so much like eventide. “Well, he’s
a bit preoccupied at the moment,” she said, and her tone was hesitant. “He’s been studying all
day, and I don’t want to break his concentration—“

“Please, ma’am,” Satoru squeezed his eyes shut, grabbed a fistful of the fabric on his shirt
over his stomach, and prayed. “It’s— it’s an emergency.”

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I just— please? I’ll make it quick.”

Another pause. “Alright.” Then, turning from the receiver so that her voice was distant and
echoey through the warbled communication, she called that name Satoru had been mumbling
quietly to himself for days, for months, for years. Suguru.

He was at the phone in seconds.

“Hey, ‘Toru,” he said, his voice bright, and Satoru almost melted into tears right then and
there as the image of that face flashed in his mind, that crescent moon smile he would do
anything to see again, to see every day. “What’s up?”

“I’m getting on a plane,” Satoru blurted out.

“Hm? Oh, like a trip? Where are you going?”

“Memphis.”

Now it was Suguru’s turn to pause, to hesitate. “You are?”

“I need— I need you to come pick me up from the airport when I land,” Satoru was nodding
as though he could be seen, as though they were right in front of each other. “The flight is—
it’s only three hours, but I can wait around as long as I need to, I just—“

“Satoru, I can’t do that. I don’t have a license yet.”

“Get your dad to do it, then,” Gojo insisted, shaking his head. “Or, actually, I think I can
figure it out— I just need to get a bus ticket. They have buses out there, right? Right, Sugu?”

“What’s going on, ‘Toru? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine!” Satoru tried to contain his volume, but his heart was trembling in his chest, and
there were hot, angry tears springing up in the corners of his eyes, and he was stretching the
fabric of his shirt with how hard he clung to it and balled it up in his hand, and he was in pain
again. “I just— tell your mom I’m on my way, okay? Say that it’s— say it’s, like, a family
emergency and my parents will send a check in the mail, but I need to come and stay with
you, Sugu, I have to—“

“Satoru, slow down.” His voice was so soft, so gentle, like a loving touch he’d never felt, like
all the words he could never find it within himself to say. That voice was what he prayed to
hear in his dreams, what he trembled in anticipation every Sunday when they had their
weekly phone call, what he bathed in every summer, working the farm and staring up at the
clouds and playing board games at the dining room table. That voice was like the button
ripped from a shirt when they were both twelve years old, sitting like a black hole in Satoru’s
coat pocket, like the halo glow around a television screen or an old photograph. That voice
was like a halation, like heaven, wherever or whenever, forever, amen.

“I’m— I’m sorry,” Satoru choked, pawing at his face, smearing tears and snot on his sleeve.
He was too old to be crying like a baby, he told himself. Fifteen is too old and too far
removed. “I’m sorry, Sugu, I just—“

“It’s alright. Take a deep breath in…” Suguru told him, and they drew in a steady inhale of
oxygen together, a little whistling of air on both ends of the line. “…and out,” he guided, and
two sets of lungs depressed as carbon dioxide was expelled. Satoru sniffled again, regaining
control of himself, and the hand gripping his shirt relaxed. “Okay. Now, talk to me. What’s
going on?”

Satoru swallowed hard at the mucus in his throat. “We’re— Sugu, we’re friends, right?”

Suguru laughed. “What kind of question is that? Of course we are, ‘Toru. You’re the best
friend I have.”

“And we’re— we’re always going to be friends, right? No matter what?”

“Of course,” he repeated. “No matter what.”

“What if you—“ Gojo’s voice broke again, and he pressed the back of his hand to his mouth
to stifle himself before speaking again. “What if one day you— what if you get sick of me?”
“What are you talking about?”

“What if one day you get— get sick of me and— and you don’t want to talk to me again?”
He started to cry all over again, despite his best efforts. “Does that mean— does that mean I
can’t go to your house anymore?”

“Listen to me, ‘Toru,” Geto said, and his voice was low and steady. “That’s never gonna
happen, okay?”

“But what if—“

“Never,” he repeated, and Gojo fell quiet. “You’re always welcome at my house, got it?”

“Then why—“ Satoru choked, “why not right now?”

Suguru sighed on the other end of the line. Satoru could almost picture his hand coming up to
rub the bridge of his nose, to run fingers through his long spill of black silk, getting longer
every year, every August when Satoru returned to the south. “Did something happen at home,
‘Toru?” He asked. “You’re not acting like yourself.”

“I’m tired,” Satoru said, his body feeling the weight of every syllable, his eyes welling up
again. “I’m tired of— tired of everything. I don’t have any friends at school. Nobody will talk
to me. The company’s in the news again for bad reasons, and whenever people look at me,
it’s like they’re— it’s like all they see is Gojo.”

“My dad was talking about that scandal,” Geto seemed to sigh again. “I was hoping it wasn’t
affecting you too much.”

“It’s like— I’m not— I didn’t ask for this.” Satoru always seemed to forget what his tears
tasted like when they were rolling from his lower lashes to the corners of his mouth. He
always seemed to forget how they melted with ease into his saliva, reabsorbing into his body,
nothing lost and nothing gained. He could feel eyes on him from somewhere in the gate,
flickering glances of concern, of mindless intrigue, of judgement. “I never asked to be— I
hate it, Sugu. I hate that stupid building downtown with my name on it. I hate that they’re
gonna make me work there someday. I hate— I don’t want this. I don’t want to be this.”

“You don’t have to be, ‘Toru.”

“But I do!” Satoru again failed to control his volume, and only when the sideways glances of
the other vaguely-human figures passing him by in that long, shiny terminal reached him did
he remember to keep his voice down. He swallowed hard and tried again. “I’m always— I’m
always going to have this name attached to me, and everyone’s always going to hear ‘Gojo’
and think they know everything about me, and they don’t. They’re never— nothing I do will
ever matter, because everyone will always assume that I’m just— just Gojo.”

“Satoru, not everyone—“

“Everyone,” Satoru insisted, pressing one hand over his eyes as though trying to force the
tears back in. “It isn’t— it’s not fair. Everyone else gets to be somebody new. Everyone else
gets— gets a chance to be themselves and all I get is Gojo.”

“Satoru,” Suguru repeated, and then seemed to pause on the next inhale. Satoru sniffed, his
face twisted and terrible, smearing the mess of his eyes and mouth and nose into his coat
sleeve again, curling up smaller in the quiet corner of the gate, waiting for the next words.
“Can I tell you something?”

“Okay,” he croaked.

“You have to promise not to get upset. You have to hear me out. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“That’s exactly how I used to think of you, too,” Suguru said, and almost immediately, Satoru
wanted to forget his promise and start crying again. “When I met you, I just assumed you
were some empty-headed, soft-handed, whiny little prince. I thought you were just Gojo, just
like you said.”

“You’re not making me feel better.”

“I was wrong, ‘Toru,” Suguru said, and Satoru swore he could see that smile on the other end
of the line. He swore he could feel that warmth, could lay bathed in that light. “I looked at
you and thought I knew everything about you, and I was wrong. You proved me wrong.”

Satoru’s bottom lip twitched. “Really?”

“Yes!” Suguru laughed. “I didn’t know the first thing about you until I actually tried getting
to know you. I didn’t know you were so funny, or that you were secretly kind, or that you had
such terrible handwriting, or that you were so smart.”

A little twinge of red to the cheeks, and it wasn’t from crying. “I’m not that smart.”

“You’re brilliant,” Suguru insisted. “I had no idea you were so bright when we first met, and
now you know meteorology better than I do. The way you can take an abstract concept and
distill it down to something digestible is just— it’s just brilliant. There’s no other word for it.
And if you choose to study it in college, I know you’re gonna do brilliant things.”

Satoru sighed hard, his tears of anger drying up with the intensity of his emotion, replaced by
something cold and empty and sharp on the edges, something hollow, something that sang
when those city winds blew through him. “I can’t. I have to— they’re going to make me get a
business degree and work in that stupid skyscraper. They have my life all planned out for
me.”

“Since when have you ever done what you were told?”

“Very funny,” Satoru mumbled. He lacked the energy to roll his eyes. “I’m serious. Maybe
you’re allowed to study whatever you want, but I’m not. Meteorology is just a stupid dream.”

There was a long pause where neither party knew what to say.
“This might be bad timing,” Suguru began, carefully, “but there’s something I wanted to tell
you.”

Satoru’s heart lurched forward in his chest, like the slam of the subway’s emergency brake,
like the feeling of anticipation before release. He knew it could not be what Suguru told him
in his daydreams, in the minutes where he’d stare off into space and imagine a confession
dripping from his lips. They were just friends, after all. Best friends, but still, just friends.
“Yeah?”

“I got my PSAT scores back,” he said.

Satoru blinked. He had entirely forgotten about that test his school required them to take— it
wasn’t like he needed a good score on the real SATs to get into the Ivy League university his
father had picked out for him, anyway. He was pretty sure their family donated so much
money that his name was written on a stadium gate or something. It would be a crime not to
admit him. “And? What did you get?”

Again, there was that feeling, the feeling of his imagination filling in the blanks, and he could
almost see Suguru’s grin on the other end of the phone as he spoke. “1460,” he said proudly.

“Wait, seriously?” Satoru’s eyes went a little wider, his spine straightening. “The max is a
1500, right?”

“It’s a 1520, actually. The real test is a 1600 max-out. If I work hard at it, I could—“

“Sugu, that’s— that’s really good,” Satoru could feel his cheeks start to ache again, but it
wasn’t from crying that time. “That’s— wow. If you keep that up, you could get into any
school you wanted.”

“That’s the idea,” Suguru said plainly, but again, that crescent moon smile danced on the
other end of the line, 1,100 miles away. “I want to go to college with you.”

Satoru’s breath hitched on the lump in his throat. “Really?”

“Mmhm. And I knew you were gonna go to some prissy Ivy up in New England, so I thought
I’d better start studying to get in, right?”

And despite himself, Satoru started weeping again— openly this time, open-mouthed as he
pressed his face into his sleeve, ignoring the eyes of would-be passengers pretending not to
see him, ignoring the phone trembling in the hand at his ear.

“Woah, ‘Toru, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—“

“I don’t wanna— go to Yale,” Satoru blubbered, chest heaving, shoulders freezing under his
coat and every inch of skin underneath aching for contact, for a touch, to be understood. “I
want— I wanna to go— wherever you go.”

“Please don’t cry,” Suguru said, but he was laughing, and Satoru was reminded again that he
did not hate it when Suguru laughed at him. In fact, like everything else he did, he loved it.
He loved him.
A small chiming over the intercom, followed by the entirely exhausted voice of a gate
attendant making an announcement. Delta Airlines flight 5731 bound for Memphis will begin
boarding in twenty minutes, it said.

“My flight is gonna board soon,” Satoru sniffed, fighting again to contain himself, to stop
acting like such a baby and start behaving like the fifteen year old almost-an-adult he knew
he was.

“Don’t get on that plane, Satoru.”

“But I—“ Gojo choked again. “But I hate it here, Sugu. And the only time— the only time I
feel like myself is—“

“I know.” Suguru’s voice had returned to something low and contemplative again, something
like a gentle hand on his shoulder, something like the hand that held his when they prayed
together every Sunday, when they closed their eyes and silently chanted supercell supercell
supercell supercell supercell. “I understand. But you can’t get on that plane.”

Satoru squeezed his eyes shut to prevent himself from overflowing again. “Why?”

“Come on. You know why. It’d be a whole mess of paperwork once your handlers realize you
ran off.”

“But I— I can’t—“

“Yeah, you can. You’ve done it before, haven’t you? It’s only a few more months.”

“I can’t wait anymore,” Satoru had to strangle himself a bit to force his volume down
somewhere acceptable. “Sugu, I— It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to be stuck here over Christmas
while my mom and dad are off to God-knows-where and everyone else is with their family
and I’m all alone. I don’t want to be alone on Christmas anymore. It’s— It’s stupid, but—“

“Hey,” Suguru called him back, and he quieted again. “Listen to me. It won’t be like this
forever, okay? We’re gonna go to college together, and if your parents aren’t where they’re
supposed to be for the holidays, you can come home with me and spend Christmas and New
Year’s with my folks. We’d love to have you.”

Satoru paused, coughed a little bit at the buildup in his throat. “You— you mean it?”

“Yeah,” Geto said, and again, that crescent moon smile glowed through the receiver like a
halation, like the brightest object in the known universe, like the sun and the moon and all the
weather patterns it governed. “You’re family to us, so don’t worry about the hand you got
dealt with your own blood, alright?”

“Family,” Gojo repeated shakily, aware of his own name, aware of how it hung over his head
like a sword, like a flag, like a bolt of lightning.

“Mmhm. You ever heard the phrase ‘blood is thicker than water’?”

Satoru frowned. “Yeah?”

“Well, that’s not exactly how the saying is supposed to go,” Suguru explained. “The full
version is ‘the blood of the covenant is thicker than the waters of the womb’.”

“Is that, like, a Christian thing?”

“Well, in a literal sense, sure. But that’s not how most people take it to mean,” Suguru was
saying, but Satoru struggled to listen. People were passing him by again, passing him by on
their way to the gate, mothers holding babies and fathers dragging luggage, couples locking
arms and giggling together, a pair of twin sisters that looked so much like Nanako and
Mimiko bickering over a bag of gummy worms while their exasperated elder brother tried to
mediate between them. Satoru was all alone, all alone again, sitting at the far corner of the
gate in the busy terminal, crying on the phone. “It means the family you choose— the family
you create intentionally, with the people you love on purpose— is a stronger thing than the
‘family’ you were born into.” Suguru’s voice was so close, so close it could have been right
behind him, right there at his side, sweeping him into his arms and spinning him around like
he’d done for two summers in a row when the Geto family came to collect him at the airport.
“You understand what I’m saying, ‘Toru?”

“I understand,” Satoru nodded, and twin tears slid down each cheek as he shut his eyes.

“You can make your own family,” Suguru told him, “and you can make your own life for
yourself, and it doesn’t have to be what your parents want for you. You don’t even have to be
Gojo, you know. You can change your name.”

Satoru blinked. “Change it to what?”

“I dunno. You can change it when you get married. Take your wife’s last name or
something.”

Satoru snorted. “Like I’d ever have a wife.”

Suguru laughed. “See, now you sound like yourself again. You’ll be okay, ‘Toru. Don’t get
on that plane.”

Satoru took a long, stern look at the gate at the end of the terminal, the gate where people had
begun to gather around in the plastic row-style seats cruelly designed to prevent exhausted
bodies from lying down to sleep, the gate he was supposed to pass through on his way back
to Suguru, back to where he belonged. “I won’t,” he conceded.

“Good. I’ll see you in a few months, okay?” That smile— the smile Satoru could not see—
could have been measured in shockwaves, in explosions of sound, in suns and solar systems
and shatterings of stars. “Buck up. I’ll call you next Sunday.”

“Alright,” Satoru mumbled, preparing to hit the end call button.

“Oh, wait, hold on— how’s the book?”

Satoru scrunched his nose. “What book?”

“The book I got you?” Suguru sounded annoyed almost instantly. “You know, your birthday
present?”

“You got me a birthday present?”

“You’re saying you never got it?” That tone of annoyance shifted quickly into genuine
exasperation. “Like, it got lost in the mail? I knew not to trust the stupid UPS people, the
postal service our taxes pay for always does the job correctly—“

But Satoru wasn’t listening. His mind was fleeing quickly back to the seventh of December,
his fifteenth birthday only a few weeks ago, and how he had been so upset and frustrated in
his crushing loneliness that he entirely ignored the maid who’d come to interrupt his
moodiness and advise him that he had a package waiting in the front hall for him, and how in
his childish anger he had waved her off and entirely forgotten that there was a little parcel
sitting there, collecting dust.

“Oh my God, I’m an idiot,” Satoru hissed, pressing a palm to his forehead. “No, it didn’t get
lost in the mail, I just never opened it!”

“You what?” Suguru was upset, but he was almost laughing. “Satoru, you moron! I even told
you that I’d send you a present the week before your birthday and you told me you were
excited! And I worked so hard on the little ribbon, too.”

“I’m sorry!” Satoru cried, but he was laughing then, too, leaning back against the wall and
feeling the tears dry on his hot cheeks. “I’m so dumb, I swear, I’m a fucking idiot.”

“Get out of that airport and go open your present right now, you understand?” Suguru was
practically bent over on the other end, and the sound of his laughter was the brightest sun
Satoru had ever seen, the deepest storm, a swirling mesocyclone of joy and love and
everything he had ever hoped for, everything he had ever dreamed of.

“I’m going, I’m going!”

“Good. Tell me how you like it next week when you call, okay?”

“Okay, I will.”

“Alright. Good talk. And one more thing, ‘Toru?”

“Yeah?”

“I miss you.”

The receiver clicked as Suguru hung up. Satoru could have exploded with elation right then
and there, could have blinded the entire airport and every plane in the sky with the halation
glowing from his head, from his face, from his heart.

Satoru practically sprinted out of LaGuardia, practically sprinted past the passengers and the
passers-by and the crowded lines forming outside the myriad McDonaldses and Starbuckses
and faux-bodegas selling $7 bottles of water. He flew past security, past the baggage claim,
and before he knew it he was out in the cold again and he was hailing a taxi he normally
would never be allowed to take and he was beaming. He was beaming, and he was glowing,
and his heart was full and his eyes were tearing up again in the snow-blown wind, and he was
in love, he was in love, he was in love. He had been in love for thirty million years and he
would be in love for thirty million more.

In the yellow cab on his way home, with his forehead pressed against the window and his
eyes gazing up at the beautiful blanket of white and gray, as evening flurries came down and
the sun began to set somewhere unseen, Satoru felt it again.

That feeling of Christmas was all around him, all over him, in every cell and organelle and
every strand of DNA, down to his bones, down to the dirt between his toes every summer
when he went running through the mud in a downpour with Suguru. That feeling of
Christmas was bright and beautiful, the color of Suguru’s skin, a deep brown tan with a
reddish undertone and summertime freckles on his shoulders and cheeks and nose, his eyes
like solar luminance when they caught the kitchen light as they set the table for supper, his
snaggletooth incisor sharp when he grinned, sharp when he spoke. That feeling of Christmas
was not hot chocolate, was not tourists, was not the tree at Rockefeller Plaza or the ice
skating rink in Central Park, was not the snow drifting down from heaven above.

Christmas to Satoru came in June. Christmas to Satoru was summertime, was summer heat,
was Suguru.

Suddenly, Satoru could not wait for college. He could not wait to be roommates and study
buddies and lab partners with Suguru and to be attached at the hip, just like they had been for
three straight summers, just like they were meant to be— Satoru was sure— for the rest of
their lives. He could not wait for his poor excuses for parents to abandon him on Christmas
again once he was a university student and not the high schooler they kept under lock and
key. He could not wait for Suguru to bring him home for the holidays, just like he promised.
He could not wait to spend them with his true family, his chosen family, the family that had
chosen him.

When he got home— to what he was supposed to consider his home, anyway— he marched
straight to the grand foyer where he found the dusty package addressed to him and tore it
open with frozen fingers, squinting strangely at what he found.

It was a hardback copy of Bridge to Terabithia, a book Satoru had never even heard of, with a
blue ribbon tied around it and a lightning bolt-shaped bookmark stuck in the front cover.
Carefully, as though it were a fragile thing, he untied the string and opened the front.

There was a note written in black sharpie on the purple page of the flyleaf.

Dear ‘Toru,

This one will make you cry, but you’re a big crybaby, anyways. It’s one of my favorites. You
always reminded me of Leslie. It’s part of the reason why I like you so much. Let me know if
you like it once you’re done reading. Can’t wait to see you this summer.

Happy 15th birthday.

Love, Suguru.

For a long, long time, Satoru stared at that page.

Love, Suguru. Love.

He could not stop smiling.

He finished the book in two days, and by the end he was curled up in the fetal position and
sobbing into his knees, and he was rolling around in a puddle of his tears and wondering why
those two in the story had been made to suffer so deeply, why they couldn’t be given their
happy ending, why the sick and twisted author would write such a horrible plot development
into what was supposedly children’s novel, and he thought only of Suguru. He thought only
of how Suguru had told him that he reminded him of Leslie.

There were implications there, implications in everything. Maybe Suguru meant to say
something with the comparison that went beyond just the most basic themes of friendship and
youth and growth and individuality. Maybe it was because Leslie— that fictional character,
the girl in the book he had almost never read entirely by accident— was almost written as a
metaphor for those themes, a metaphor he hadn’t really understood until chapter ten. There
was something about it that Satoru and his science-oriented skull couldn’t quite decipher,
couldn’t quite parse. Maybe it was because that fictional town had reminded him so much of
the farm on which Suguru grew up, or maybe it was because the way the other students at
that fictional school treated Leslie seemed so similar to the way Satoru himself has been
treated his whole life, or maybe it was just that for so long— for the duration of the entire
book— Satoru had simply assumed there would be a happy ending.

He wondered if that was just part of the narrative, if that was just the literary trope they fit
into— always falling short, never meeting the moment, someone always ending up dead. He
wondered if Leslie was simply a foil for Jess, or if she was a plot device, or if the tragedy of
their story was written simply to serve the development of the surviving character.

He wondered if, in every scenario, in every universe, one would always have to die.

One of the defining features of a tragedy is that it is unexpected, unplanned for. Often times,
they come out of nowhere, seemingly from clear skies and sunny days, from budding
friendships and years-long relationships, from flowers and free candy and floaters clouding
one’s vision. From the brightest parts of life, death seems to spring forth like a rattlesnake in
the grass. Satoru would come to understand the true nature of tragedy much later in life, after
that lightning strike stole Riko from the earth, but at fifteen years old, he could not force
himself to understand why Jess and Leslie could not get their happy ending.

Still, he loved the book. He adored it, in fact, and not just because it was a gift from the only
one he could ever imagine wanting something as mundane as a book from, not just because it
came with a note reading dear next to Satoru’s name and love next to Suguru’s. He cleared a
special place for it in his room, on the special shelf his housekeepers were explicitly
instructed never to touch for any reason, the shelf where he kept everything he could possibly
consider important to him. He tucked it neatly into the slot he had made for it, just beside the
button Geto ripped off of his shirt to give him the first time they ever parted ways, the button
he never gave back.

Christmas came a few days after he finished reading the book, and although his house was
huge and cold and empty and quiet, he could not have been happier with his Christmas
morning.

His flip phone rang at around nine in the morning, and he eagerly answered the call, beaming
and kicking his legs with some kind of heartsick joy when Suguru wished him a merry
Christmas, told him how happy he was that Satoru had broken that kid’s leg in seventh grade
and got himself sent out to the sticks, and told him how excited he was to see him again.
After that, the phone was passed around to each member of the family, and Satoru exchanged
seasons’s greetings with all of them. Suguru’s father gave him a brief but heartfelt well
wishes, Suguru’s mother asked a million questions about how he had been and if he had been
eating properly and if he would be coming down for the summer as usual, and the little twins
— eight years old and still just as excitable as they’d been when Satoru met them as
kindergarteners— asked him what he got from Santa Claus that year.

“I got a really good book,” he told them. “You should read it when you get a little bigger. It’s
too sad for kids your age.”

It was too sad for kids of any age— too sad for grown adults, really— but Satoru read it
again and again until the spine was worn and broken and the gilded edges of the pages had
worn off with the friction of his fingertips, and every single time he finished it he wept for a
solid hour, and every time he read it he thought of Christmas, of the family you choose.

He brought the book with him when he spent his first proper Christmas with his family—
Suguru’s family— after his first semester of undergrad. The book did not leave his suitcase,
but he thought it served as some form of prospective talisman, especially as he and Suguru
decided to formally announce to the family that they were in love and had been dating in
secret since they were sixteen, and they were told that everyone knew already and they were
terrible at keeping secrets. Satoru and Suguru could only smile at one another in the matching
pajamas they had been gifted earlier that morning.

The longer they thought about it, the sillier it all seemed to them in hindsight. They were
never going to be just friends. There was no way they could have ever forced that finality.
Their fates had been sealed the very moment Satoru collapsed from heat syncope and Suguru
dragged him back to the house. Their lives had changed in that instant, diverged from parallel
pathways to meet in the middle and twist around one another, to link in a terrible and all-
consuming knot, a tangle so pronounced that even the best hairstylists would elect to cut it
out completely than even attempt to separate the strands. It was always going to be Suguru
and Satoru, ‘Toru and Sugu, forever and ever, amen.

Cut one, and the other bleeds. Bite one, and the other bites back. Strike one down— by hand
or by lightning— and the other falls with him. They shared a body in that way, shared a soul,
and Satoru hoped from his very depths that someday they would share a last name.

They shared a life, as true lovers do.

So when Suguru left him— when he left him on his knees in the field, in the dark and the
cold and all by his lonesome— Satoru died a little death that day, and a little bit of Suguru
joined him in the grave.

It was a strange thing, dying with a beating heart, with breathing lungs and a brain blinking
bright and brilliant into the empty night sky. It was a strange thing to watch your killer walk
away from you, limping on one leg, never looking back.

Sometimes, when he missed him so much he couldn’t stand it any longer, he reread Bridge to
Terabithia and he cried the whole way through. It didn’t matter how old he got, how
accomplished in his field he became, how much he’d started to ache. It didn’t matter that
Suguru was never coming back, that if he ever held him again it would never feel the same,
that his life had honestly and truly ended the night he was abandoned by the only person he’d
ever known to see him as Satoru and not Gojo. It didn’t matter that it was over, because when
he flipped through the familiar tear-stained pages of that book, he was just a little kid again.
He was just a twelve year old boy, sweating through a southern summer, falling in love under
a supercell.

He clung to that book like a bible, like it might save him from the hell he was living, and
when the skies had cleared, when the moment had passed, when he closed the opposite end of
the book, he tried his hardest to feel that sense of wonder and amazement that he had once
known so well, that had once governed his summers and his Christmases and his life. He
tried, with all his might, to remember what it felt like to love and be loved.

If he thought about it critically— if he thought about it for even a little longer than three
seconds— it wasn’t hard to do.

He had been blind to it at the time, blinded by the halation of heartbreak, but the ability to
love and be loved was what had kept him afloat in that horrible period of his life after losing
what he had always assumed would be his forever. In fact, were it not for love, he doubted he
would have survived it. Had it not been for Ieiri and her sterile insistence on looking after
him post-breakup, he would have ended up hospitalized from malnutrition and dehydration.
Had she not moved him into her house like a temporary hostage situation, like she was
harboring an escaped inmate, he would have spent every night pacing around his apartment
that was no longer a home, tracing his fingertips over their pictures hanging on the walls and
pressing his face into the clothes Suguru had left behind just to recall his scent.

Had it not been for that kind of love— that kind of family, forged all on their own— he might
never have crawled out of the dark ravine Suguru had shoved him into. Had his friends not
outright refused to abandon him, he might never have found his way home, back to storms,
back to the atmosphere he so adored.

For a long time— longer than he cared to admit— he had been angry at the world.

In the weeks following the loss of Suguru, the loss of his family, he had walked around
refusing to look up at the skies he loved so much, refusing to acknowledge the clouds or the
rains or the winds or the sunshine, and he had tried to live his life pretending he was not still
in love with what he did, with what he knew. He tried to pretend that meteorology was a job
just like any other, and he tried to ignore the bubbling rush in his chest when he inched closer
to solving a problem or read a particularly well-done analysis in a student’s paper or saw a
promising, swirling shape on the forecast each morning. For longer than could be deemed
acceptable, he pretended not to be in love with the weather, because Suguru was in love with
the weather first, and he was still in love with Suguru.

But like all loves, it was impossible to hide for too long. He continually caught himself
staring up at the skies, wide-eyed and wonderful, and only when he realized that he was
reverting back to the person he had been before the lightning strike ripped his life apart did he
cast he gaze back down to the earth and feel the tips of his ears flush red with frustration. He
caught himself going off on tangents in his lectures, and for a while he had excused himself
because he was new to teaching, but eventually it became apparent that he kept trailing off
not because he was bad at keeping a train of thought, but rather that he had so much to say
about the science he so adored.

He started gaining a reputation among his students, too— soon enough, he was not just Gojo,
he was Dr. Satoru Gojo, the young instructor who drew cute little stick figures all over his
weather diagrams and kept accidentally cussing through his lectures and spliced hundreds of
his stormchasing photos throughout his slideshows. He started to get to know the more
attentive students better, those who shared the same spark in the eye that he’d had in
undergrad, the same spark he’d seen in Riko and tried his best to ignore, except this time, he
chose to nurture it.

Despite it all— despite everything— he still loved the weather, and he was starting to fall in
love with teaching it, too.

He never did quite heal, but the wounds scabbed over, and eventually he learned to stop
picking at them. For the longest time, he had thought that the only identity outside his
surname— the only identity outside Gojo, the name of his father, the name of the company,
the name plastered on the side of a building in lower Manhattan— had been the extent to
which he could fill the slot at Suguru’s side. Suguru was his identity. Being with Suguru
became the core of his being, the center of his self, and before he had realized it he’d become
so intertwined with that half-severed state of living that he realized he had no manner of
moving forward once Suguru was gone. After that night— after being left behind— he had to
start from scratch.

To his credit, he succeeded. By that point, he had what he needed around and within himself
to reshape his fragile sense of self around his own body, and no one else’s. Whether he could
realize it at the time or not, he had built a life for himself that was entirely separate from
anything his surname had predestined for him, and he’d managed to become something
outside what he could have expected for himself, even in his undergrad years. He was Dr.
Satoru Gojo, a scientist whose research into increased tornadic activity in Dixie Alley in
relation to climate change was published by a respected journal, a teacher whose students
kept tabs on him via the @WhatsDrGojoWearingToday account, a former stormchaser who
now felt content to sit on his balcony and watch the rains come down instead.

But he was not perfect, and despite his best efforts, he had not moved on. Not fully, anyway.

Satoru backslid every time he saw him, every time he let him back in for the night and woke
up alone.
It was very obvious when it happened, and it never got easier to watch for any of the people
in his life who still cared about him. He was able to put on a brave face for his classes and
imitate his normal, bubbly self for the 90 minute blocks where he had to be up in front of a
podium, but on the days he couldn’t force himself to do it, he would cancel and simply make
his tests a little easier. He slept in his office and pretended to be busy, he showed up to faculty
meetings with dark circles around the eyes and red lines lining his sclera and pretended to be
sick, he pretended to be perfectly fine but he was a terrible actor, and everyone saw through
him.

So when he ended up calling him after getting wasted for only the third time in his life, when
he woke up with the memory of crying in Suguru’s arms and asking him to stay until sunrise,
just once, he knew it had to be the last time. If it wasn’t the last time, he would never learn,
and he would never develop, and he would stay stuck in his cycle until the day his heartbreak
killed him.

He had to wonder, however silently, if he had been cursed in some way. He had to wonder if
the crux of his narrative revolved around losing the one he loved, if that was the literary
tragedy of his character, or if he was like the girl in the book he clung to and served only to
advance Suguru’s personal development. He had to wonder if in time, all Suguru would
remember of him was a plotline. Satoru had to wonder if he was the one incapable of
progression.

When the bolt came down and struck them both, he realized that he had been wrong.

It was never going to be Sugu and ‘Toru. It was always going to be Sugu or ‘Toru. It was one
or the other. There was no outcome where they could have both.

***

8:02 p.m. Somewhere in the Great Plains, somewhere in the mud. Somewhere in the storm.

Satoru woke up with the rain.

It was sort of kissing him, kissing his neck and forehead and cheeks and eyes, and it was cold
and somehow vicious, somehow violent with every drop that hit exposed skin, every touch
felt in the same force as a punch to the gut. His eyes flickered opened and squeezed shut
again almost instantly, the roaring winds carrying dirt and dust and stinging them, and for a
moment or so he feared going blind if he tried to use his gift of sight again. The rain kept
sparkling down, and the sizzling sensation grew more and more unbearable each time, and
that was how Satoru woke up and realized that he was in horrible, horrible pain.

It took considerable effort to get his brain to process the proper signals, but he remembered
almost instantly what had happened.
He remembered Suguru’s hair rising up like a black halo, against the winds whipping at their
clothes. He remembered the tingling feeling crawling up through the circuit boards in his
body as the charge built up and the attractive force grew steadily stronger. He remembered
Suguru telling him that he still loved him, that he never stopped. He remembered them both
lunging at one another, falling short as the bolt came down from heaven.

Pain was replaced by panic within the span of one heartbeat. There was no telling how long
he’d been unconscious. It could have been mere seconds. It could have been minutes.

He jolted upright and involuntarily cried out in pain, as if every muscle and ligament in his
body had been torn apart by the force of the electric current that blasted through him, but his
body willed itself upright regardless. He cried out again as he pushed himself from his back
and onto his hands and knees, the force of the winds all around him trying to shove him back
down, and his eyes were springing up with vicious tears— not drunk tears, not angry tears,
not tears of sadness or heartbreak or hurt, but tears borne of pure, unbridled agony. The pain
was consuming him, just as the winds were, just as the tornado bearing down on him had
become, but he didn’t care. He didn’t stop pushing forward. He had his priorities straight.

“Suguru,” he mouthed, and found his voice silent against the screaming of the sky falling all
around him, useless in the deafening roar emanating from deep within that supercell.

Everything was so bright. It was the brightest darkness he could have ever imagined. It was
swallowing him like a snake, like sulphuric acid poured into the whites of his eyes and
seeping down the optical nerve into his brainstem. The sky was blackened like the bottom of
a skillet, the wind wailed and worsened as the vortex drew closer, the world was cold and full
to the brim with inverted energy, and still, it was just so bright. Satoru could see nothing,
nothing but his hands in the dirt before him, nothing but the grasses blown horizontal by the
storm, nothing but white fizzling out into pale shadows of blue and gray as the scene came
back into focus.

There was a shape in the grass before him, a curled and crumpled shape. A shape with a
beautiful spill of black hair torn loose from a bun, a shape with firm hands that held him like
water and pinned him against walls and mattresses, a shape with eyes like crescent moons
and a smile like the sun. A shape he had never once stopped watching, even as they fell away
from each other and fell apart. A shape like family. A shape like home.

“Suguru,” Satoru tried to scream, but again, no sound left his mouth as he scrambled forward
on the heels of his palms and his knees, stumbling and crashing down and forcing himself
upright again. As if suffocated, as if in a dream, he kept trying to force noise from his lips
until he felt the vibrations in his throat, even if he could hear absolutely nothing over the
winds. “Suguru, Suguru!”

That shape he so loved did not move. It did not stir, did not writhe, was not pushed by the
winds. That shape lay perfectly still, perfectly statuesque, growing cold.

Satoru’s heart sank.

“No,” he breathed as he reached him, his chest already beginning to heave, the nausea setting
in as the feeling in his legs went to jelly and his mouth began to overflow with saliva in
preparation to vomit. “No, no, Suguru, no.” Two trembling arms reached out, weak under
their own weight, and he fell forward onto his chest and stomach and chin next to where
Suguru’s crumbled figure lay in a haphazard pile of torso and limbs. For a moment, Satoru
was a slug writhing in the grass, an insect beneath a boot, the hand of God coming down to
pin him like the clay he was and prevent him from ever reaching his love, his one and only,
halo halation still glowing in the blinding light all around him. “Suguru, please, no.”

Against the force of the storm, against the rain beginning to pour over them both, he pushed
forward until he draped his upper body over Suguru like a blanket, like a shield.

“No,” he whispered, the tears almost impossible to feel in the sensation of everything else, in
the sensation of pain still stabbing at every nanometer of skin and muscle beneath. “No, no,
please. Please, Sugu, don’t do this to me.”

Suguru was shriveled into the fetal position, somehow lying on his face, both arms tucked
underneath him as he turtled up, head curled inward, knees and legs limp and useless behind
him, crossed numbly in the mud and the grass. With considerable effort, Satoru forced his
own wretched body to kneel to his needs, and he again groaned in torment as he shoved
Suguru onto his back.

His eyes were closed. His lips were slightly parted. It was as though he were sleeping.

Satoru screamed.

No words, no begging, no coherence. Just a scream. One long, horrible scream.

It’s something that bleeds in the throat, something that boils the blood until it curdles and
coagulates. It’s the type of sound that causes an immediate synaptic response, a chain
reaction of enzymes and immune activation and hormonal production. It’s the sort of scream
that forces the body to behave as though hypothermic, the digits and limbs reduced to
collateral damage as all the blood withdraws to the center of the body, to the vital organs, and
the hands and feet and toes and fingers go numb and pale and tingly as the nerve cells
suffocate and die. It’s poison in the well. It’s bile in the lungs. It’s bone shards in the belly.
It’s grief.

Satoru put two hands on either side of Suguru’s neck, pressed their foreheads together, and
grieved.

He kissed his open mouth again and again, one hand trying to guide Suguru’s jaw to kiss him
back, trying to find anything resembling resistance. He tried to be gentle, and then he tried
force, and then he tried to focus hard on the electricity still clinging to their saliva, tried to put
a name and place to the incredible charge and unreal energy of their love, of what they used
to be. He tried to taste that lightning. He tried to taste anything but his own tears as he wept
into that mouth. He found nothing.

“It was my turn,” he was weeping, all the soundwaves distorted and carried away in the
winds. “It was my turn to choose the ending.”
The hand he had on Suguru’s jaw tightened against slack skin, trembled with the heat of the
atmosphere distilled between them, and then—

A twitch.

It was small. Inconsequential, maybe. But it was real.

He had not imagined it.

Satoru pulled his head back, pulled their faces apart, and for the duration of three blinks, he
was frozen in the glow of that blinding halation, that glow from the grave. Carefully, on
hands so shaky they may as well have shook apart, he secured the back of Suguru’s neck and
focused his index finger and thumb on either side of that thin right eye, pressing the pads into
the monolid and lower lash line, and with painstaking precision, he forced Suguru’s eye to
open.

His pupil dilated as it was exposed to the light all around them.

Satoru was screaming again when he threw him into his arms and crushed that warm body
against his own chest in the tightest hug his ruined muscles and nerves could muster. By that
point, he could feel it all returning— the body heat, the beats of the heart, the blinking and
the breathing and the tiny twitches. By that point, his throat was raw, his hands muddy and
frozen, his blue eyes blind and useless, but he was crying into Suguru’s shoulder and he was
shaking him and he was screaming.

Again, there were things he knew in the rational part of his brain, the part his adrenaline spike
had switched off the second he was struck. He knew, rationally, that Suguru’s scrambled-eggs
brain was likely far beyond scrambled at that point. For all he knew, he could have been
braindead, locked in a coma for the rest of his life, however long his insurance would allow
that life to be. For all he knew, Suguru might never walk again, might never look him in the
eyes, might never wake up. For all he knew, Suguru could be gone, a ghost in a haunted doll,
broken and filthy and undesirable though it may have been. Rationally, Satoru understood all
of that. Irrationally— humanly— he didn’t care.

Suguru was not dead yet.

That meant there was still a chance, still a chance for Satoru to choose the ending.

Only then was he able to properly analyze the situation unfolding around him. That was when
the instinctive part of his brain— the stormchaser part, the one he had meticulously
conditioned over years and years of love and light and adventure— kicked into high gear.

There are four steps to surviving a worst-case tornado scenario.

Step one. Assess your surroundings.

Through-half blind eyes that could only see white, he could still make out the outer edges of
the vortex bearing down on them, though it had drawn so close that neither side could be
captured with one eye— Satoru had to physically turn his head to see both of them. The
debris cloud had fully descended upon the space they occupied, and the war within the
tornado itself was still spinning wildly out of control, and the path of deviant motion it had
followed on its initial diversion had persisted well past anything that could have been
considered normal. There was no way of judging the EF classification from the ground with
no tools and no operational senses, but Satoru supposed he didn’t need to— that thing was
weakening, but it was still coming. It was coming straight for them, and they were still stuck
out there, now entirely stunned by the electric explosion and entirely useless.

Full assessment: unsurvivable.

There was almost no way out of that. Almost no possible outcome where they weren’t flung
skyward and mangled by flying debris and hurtled back to earth at speeds exceeding 200
miles per hour. With every second that passed, that clock was running out. That percentage
was getting smaller and smaller, long division running off the page and onto the table—

“Come on,” Satoru mumbled, soundless, beginning to blindly gather up Suguru’s not-
actually-dead weight in his arms, locking around his waist and pulling backward with his
hips, the adrenaline rush beginning to settle in again and provide strength to his broken
movements. “Come on, Sugu, we have to go. Come on.”

Step two. Prioritize.

Easier said than done.

Satoru’s brain was not exactly working properly, every signal scrambled like a radio stuck
between stations, and no matter what his weary, teary eyes landed upon, they could only
make out the rough edges, never the details. The higher executive functioning that
prioritization would require— the processes of organization and structuring wants versus
needs, all of the things that separated humans from apes, their evolutionary cousins— seemed
to be too much to ask from his frontal lobe, which presently could not seem to decide what
emotion it wanted to feel while staring down at the limp, useless, somewhat-still-alive body
in his arms. Prioritization was all over the place, torn apart and thrown up into the winds, into
the vortex, roaring like blood in his ears.

His body urged him to prioritize the pain, to curl up into a little ball and scream until the all-
over burning sensation stopped, or at least until he lost consciousness again from the oxygen
deprivation consistent screaming would require. His brain begged him to prioritize survival,
to ignore the superficial wounds of his body and put the adrenaline rush he was blessed with
to good use and get out of danger, as best he could. His gut urged him to prioritize his fear, to
fall to his knees before Suguru and beg him over and over to wake up, to protect him as he
always had, to start believing in a God he never knew until that moment lightning ripped
through him like the Holy Spirit.

His heart— his heart, or whatever imitated it in that moment— urged him to prioritize
Suguru.

Satoru was not going to die. He was not going to let Suguru die, either. That was not the
ending he wanted. It was not the ending he would accept. Not after four years being being
dragged around, thrown between urges and whims, at the mercy of his own weak mind and
melting heart and the memories that flashed before his eyes every time he came face-to-face
with what used to be home to him, with what used to define his family, his own perception of
self. If it was going to end— if that was the crux of his narrative, the end of his road, the
unyielding conclusion to his path— then he refused to let it end at the hands of anyone but
himself. It was his turn to choose.

Decision made. That was priority number one.

“Get up,” he demanded, delirious, seeing nothing yet still dragging that limp body in his
arms, stumbling and falling backwards. He was not aware of his own words, not aware of his
own hands, halfway certain that the steadily-intensifying rain rolling down the sides of his
neck was his own brain matter leaking from his ears. “Fucking stand up. Get up, Sugu. Come
on.”

The adrenaline rush would not last forever. Soon enough, he would collapse and probably
lose consciousness again, and if they fell in the wrong place, neither one would ever wake up.
That much he knew from the way the tornado’s roar was growing louder in his waterlogged
ears. That much he could understand by the way he wobbled and swayed off balance by the
force of the scouring winds, so vicious and intense he swore he could feel his skin peeling
and tearing away.

“Suguru, please. You have to get up. I can’t drag you by myself.”

The word unsurvivable scrawled itself across the halation covering his vision like a veil, and
he ripped it apart.

Step three. Get low.

The best place to hide when a tornado strikes is underground— a storm cellar or a basement
or a catacomb, if you have one, Satoru remembered a newscaster saying once when he was a
teenager, watching the weather report with Suguru. The second best place to hide is the
smallest and most interior room in your home, a cramped space with four walls and no
windows, somewhere you can huddle with your loved ones and whisper prayers and
reassurances. The third best place is anywhere inside at all. A supermarket, a gas station, a
stranger’s home— anywhere will do. Anywhere with walls to break the wind. The worst place
you can possibly be in the event of a tornado is outdoors.

If his car had been operational, he would have been able to outrun it, even with the sudden
diversion and deviant behavior of the attacking vortex. If he could reach his car at all, he
could at least drag Suguru’s body into the backseat, curl him into a little ball and shield him
with his body. If in his panic he had not taken his eyes off of Geto, if he hadn’t let him
wander as he wandered the night Riko died, then maybe they could have taken shelter there.
If he had just abandoned his pride, they could have stayed the rest of their trip in the hotel
room, in bed, bodied pressed together and hands moving through one another and glowing
red with their shared heat, and they would have been playing pretend, but they would have
been happy. They would at least have been alive at the end.

If you can’t get nowhere else, get low. Get on the ground and flatten out. Get in a ditch. Get
down. Get under. Get low.
Satoru’s blind eyes searched desperately, Suguru gathered up under his arms, ankles outward
and leaving tracks in the dirt as he was dragged.

There was a drainage ditch by the side of the road, next to where they had parked their car to
get out and see the storm up close, and he knew it because he had to jump over it to get to
Suguru when his hair started to rise up and his eyes had been so full of love. There was a
drainage ditch a little ways from where he kissed him for what was probably the last time—
at least, the last time they were both conscious— and Suguru told him that he was still in
love, and Satoru had not told him that he loved him back. It was full of water at the time, full
of runoff from the fields and probably laden with chemicals and cow shit and flesh-eating
amoebas, but it would have to do. They had no other options.

Steeling himself against the counterclockwise winds blowing at his left side, Satoru once
again focused the remaining feeling in his arms on locking around Suguru and focused the
remaining bit of strength in his body on his lower back as he pulled him along. In seconds,
his eyes and ears and every inch of exposed skin felt the vicious sting of the sandblasting
effect.

Sandblasting effect: in reference to tornadoes, describes the phenomena in which especially

strong tornadic winds accelerate particles of soil, sand, and fine debris, which then strike the
skin at a high velocity and cause abrasions. These abrasions can range in severity from
superficial to disfiguring.

In Satoru’s case, he could feel it getting worse with every step. He could feel the cuts
becoming lacerations, gashes that would scar bright purple and ugly on his milky pale
complexion, larger pieces of something sharp slicing into him until he required stitch after
stitch, but there was no time to recoil from the attacking force. There was no time to shift
course. All he could do— all his body could will itself to do— was to position himself in
between Suguru and the spinning hell all around them.

“Suguru, get up!” He was shouting down at him, still delirious, still dragging, but he may as
well have been whispering. In the all-consuming volume of that night, the all-consuming
darkness, there was simply no hope for those soundwaves to reach those deaf ears. “Suguru!”

Around everything, a brilliant halation. Around everything, an extension of light, of sun, of

sky, of atmosphere. He knew, rationally, that it was somehow an effect of the lightning strike,
that somehow he was going blind and deaf and dumb as his nerves were flash-fried. He knew
in his conscious self that he was running off of pure adrenaline, a powerful rush of blood to
the head, and that his ability to keep himself upright was fleeting. Soon, the searing pain
squirming in every cell, every organelle, would overtake him, and he would collapse again
into a writing, screaming mass, waiting for the winds to wash him away. He could not let that
happen, not while Suguru was still helpless.

“It’s my turn!” He screamed at the sky, agony rocketing through each of his muscle groups
and ricocheting off the walls of his organs, the walls of his skull. “It’s my turn to choose the
ending!” Suguru was impossibly heavy in his arms, like a thousand times his true size, denser
than a black star, heavier than the empty, endless heavens. “This is not how it ends!” Satoru
screamed. “It’s my fucking turn!”
And then, as if on cue, he was struck.

It was impossible to tell by what. It could have been a rock, a shard of glass, a plastic bottle
cap, an eraser, and it would not have mattered. It could have been anything in the world,
because with the speeds at which the tornado was flinging objects like the tiny toys of angels,
it may as well have been a bomb, because within the span of one heartbeat, Satoru’s left eye
exploded.

He barely felt it— he could barely feel anything, after all— but he screamed anyway. He
screamed, and he recoiled, and he curled around over Suguru’s limp body as he dragged him
under the arms, and he began to spurt blood and tears and some strange mixture in between,
and he did not stop moving. He did not stop dragging that body he refused to let become a
corpse. It was a human reaction, a deeply human reaction, a reaction entirely from the
overworked glands sitting atop both kidneys and the terror swirling in the whirlpool forming
in his guts and the love— overwhelming, uncontained, uncontrollable love— overflowing
from every pore, every opening, every possible angle.

“Nice fucking try!” He roared back at the skies. “It’s still my turn!”

In his entire life, he had never once wondered what his own eye might taste like. He had
never once tried to imagine the texture and aroma and undertones of the aqueous humors
swimming in the jelly of his vitreous chamber. He had never imagined that it might taste like
sweat rather than tears. Then again, all he could really taste was the overwhelming iron in his
blood. Still, it was a first, a first and a last, like so many things had been that day. He hoped,
with all his heart, that it would also be the first time he got to choose the ending, the first time
he got to choose how he lost what he loved when it finally left him. That was something he
would trade both his eyes for, both his eyes and his tongue and all his teeth.

He could feel the adrenaline spiking again, the tiny burst of energy propelling him forward as
the winds worsened and the debris cloud all around them became more choking, more
saturated with dirt and dust, erosion and crop failures becoming deadly weapons in the swirl
of it all, the airborne whirlpool drawing nearer by the millisecond. If he could still see
through it— if he could see at all with his left eye— then he might have chanced a painful
look up, a painful look through the superficial scars beginning to form on his eyelids, and
tried to measure the direction of the tornado.

It wouldn’t have mattered if he did. Once you’re that close, measurement becomes all but
useless.

Another strange phenomena that came with the loss of sight: the gain of false sight.

There’s not exactly a scientific word for one’s life flashing before their eyes in the moment of
dying. Shoko had explained that to him once, when she was drunk at her desk and he was
asking too many candid questions about what it was like to work in the shadow of death.
“There’s something called terminal lucidity,” she slurred, “but that’s mostly for old people
with dementia and long-term palliative care patients. Essentially, they become their old selves
for just a little while before they die. All their memories come back, they start speaking and
seeing clearly, they’re usually in higher spirits… I’ve seen it a few times in residency. It’s
really morbid to witness, actually. We always call the family to come say their goodbyes
when it happens.”

“Do you ever think they’re just getting better?” He had asked.

She laughed into the forearms cradling her head. “Once you’re that far gone, there’s no
coming back. It’s like… it’s like a final moment of clarity. I’ve heard it’s from a sudden burst
of brain activity. Gamma waves or something.”

“Do you think Riko had that?” Satoru asked, and he was quieter, reminiscent. Not quite sad,
not quite sure if he had any right to be. “Do you think her life flashed before her eyes?”

Shoko was silent for a moment or so. “No,” she yawned. “I don’t think she knew what hit
her. I think she blinked and woke up somewhere new.”

Satoru blinked, and when he opened his eyes, he realized that he had fallen unconscious
again and collapsed into the mud on his knees, his upper body draped over Suguru’s, every
exposed inch of skin being sliced over and over by supersonic particulate rocketing through
empty space.

“No,” he hissed to himself. “No, no, I am not— I am not going. I am not going.”

Struggling to his feet again, pulling that limp body as close as he possibly could to his chest,
he started again on the impossible trudge to the drainage ditch. Ten or twenty feet became a
hundred miles in the span of seconds.

“It’s my turn,” he chanted to himself, silenced by the screaming currents. “It’s my turn. It’s
my turn.” Left, right, left. “It’s my turn.” Left, right, left right. “It’s my fucking turn.”

A particularly strong downblast of wind, and he was thrown to the mud again, Suguru on top
of him, blood from his lacerations everywhere.

He started to see it, flashing before the one eye he had left. He stared to see his life flickering
through the halation. Were it not for the fact that he had to focus every remaining sense on
the task at hand, he would have squeezed his lids shut to avoid the vision, to avoid the clarity
hounding him down like dogs hunting a wounded animal. Were it not for the body he held
under each arm, he would surely have pressed the heels of his palms into both the left and
right side of his face, ball and socket, and pressed down until the world had disappeared
entirely.

“I am not going,” he insisted to himself, though at that point the cloud of agony had induced
delirium to such a scale that he could not tell if his mouth was actually moving. “I am not
going. I am not done. It’s still my turn.”

He struggled upright and kept dragging both bodies— his and Suguru’s— to the drainage
ditch.

“It’s still my turn!”

He was knocked down again.

Shoko was standing over him and trying to press a warm towel to his forehead. Come on, she
was saying, breathe. You’ll get through this. He was weeping something back about his life
being over, about being alone forever, something pathetic that she normally would have
rolled her eyes at, but her patience was its own form of mercy. Come on. Breathe. Breathe.
He was slamming compression after compression down on the center of Riko’s chest,
demanding life from her, demanding her lungs to expand and contract. Breathe. Breathe.
Counting beats, trying to remember to right tempo, trying to remember the tune of Stayin’
Alive by Bee-Gees, the sound of the 911 operator on the other end of the line reminding him
to check for a pulse in between sets. Leaning down and pressing his ear against her chest,
finding nothing. Stay with me. Stay with me. He was begging Suguru after the last time, one
hand outstretched, drunk and dazed and useless and helplessly in love. Stay with me.

“I’m not going anywhere!” He shouted into the air, back on earth, clinging to Suguru like the
world would rip them apart as it spun out of control. “I am not done! You are not done! Get
up!”

He could not let the halation grow any brighter. He could not let the winds grow any fiercer.
He could not let the storm swallow them up and carry them away to clearer skies, simple
earth, empty atmosphere. Satoru knew he had to stay lost in the chaos of it all. He had to stay
lost in the haze, lost in the pain, lost in the blood still spurting from his empty eye socket and
bubbling up from every cut the weather gave him. In the haze, in the halation, he still had
Suguru. He still had a choice.

“Please,” he begged at nothing. “Please.”

Suguru’s mother was shouting at him, shouting in his face about how his big dreams were
going to get him killed, and all he could do was smile back at her, and how wrong he had
been. Suguru was kissing the tears from his cheeks and promising never to hurt him again,
and how wrong he had been. Satoru was running through the airport with a wasted plane
ticket in his coat pocket next to the button he never gave back, and he was so excited to read
the book Suguru had sent him for his fifteenth birthday, and how wrong he had been. Satoru
was staring out at a sea of young faces in the lecture hall, staring at Yuta’s wide, eager eyes,
thinking that he had succeeded in becoming something other than Gojo, and how wrong he
had been.

“I’m not done yet. I’m not done yet. You hear me, Sugu? I’m not done. So you’re not allowed
to be done, either.”

They were so close to the ditch at that point, close enough to crawl in, but Satoru was blind
and every direction had been scrambled with all the electrical signals in his brain and he was
stumbling, falling over, losing himself.

In a daze, a desperate daze, he started to cry as he pressed one hand to the side of Suguru’s
neck and felt that weak pulse still pushing back against him.

“We’re gonna get out of this,” he promised, weeping blood and tears and strange fluid against
his neck, against the piercings lining his face and his ears. “You understand? We’re getting
out of this. It’s not over ’til its over.”
For a moment, he swore he saw eye movement beneath the lids. For a moment, he swore he
saw that halation halo start to flicker out, to flicker brighter, like the low dip of an initial
flame before burning higher and hotter, consuming the world around it, swallowing it with
sleepy ease. It may have been the one eye he had left playing tricks on him, it may have been
a manifestation of his prayers playing out in hallucinatory format, but if only for a second or
two, he would have bet every dollar to his family’s name that he saw Suguru beginning to
wake up.

Another vicious downblast of hurricane-force wind, and all balance was lost.

Satoru had enough sense to pull Suguru’s body close against him as they fell backwards, his
own body becoming a landing pad, something akin to a snapping sound as the base of his
skill collided with hard, heady dirt, and then they were rolling, pushed along by the currents
like a pencil is pushed across a table by concentrated breath. It was a viscerally terrifying
thing, to be so easily manipulated by an invisible force, thrown around like a ragdoll at the
mercy of an unruly child. Satoru could only hug Suguru tighter into his chest, one arm
securing his back, the other protecting his head, until they hit the bottom of the muddy,
murky drainage ditch at the side of the road.

Satoru’s head dipped underwater for a moment or so as he tried to keep Suguru’s face clear of
it, and he surfaced to choke and cry out against the feeling of wet soil in his mouth, in his
lungs, the sensation of bacteria and all manner of microorganisms entering the open wounds
where his left eye used to be and the myriad gashes and lacerations scouring his skin. Still, he
forced both sides of him to open, socket and organ, and he used what little strength he still
had to push Suguru out of the puddle and onto his stomach, flat against the grass, the slope at
an odd angle for his spine, but it didn’t matter. Back injuries could be healed. Having one’s
spine ripped from skin could not.

He was beginning to lose consciousness again. The adrenaline was dying out in his
bloodstream, in the concerning amounts of blood he was losing from the hole where his eye
used to be.

“It’s okay,” he murmured into wet hair, into mud on his neck, into skin that he knew was still
warm. He pulled that body close against him as he crumbled back down to earth beside him,
as he lay in the grass at his side, as the rain grew heavier and the winds grew louder and his
body grew tired, oh-so tired. “It’s okay. We’re okay. We’re okay.”

Step four. Pray.

He had only ever prayed in summertime, on Sundays, when Suguru’s family took him to
church with them all those years ago. He had never prayed otherwise, because he did not
believe, and even in the face of sure death, of the end unfolding all around him, he still did
not feel inspired to. If there was a God, then God was punishing him, punishing them both for
getting so close to what they knew was dangerous, for seeking that adrenaline high and
endorphin release that all stormchasers— whether they would admit it or not— were seeking.
If there was a God, He was teaching them a lesson in Darwinism, in natural selection. If there
was a God, He would not intervene on their behalf.

So instead, Satoru prayed to the storm.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, pulling Suguru against his body and holding him there, one ruined
arm brushing up and down his back, trying to keep him warm. “I’m sorry that I— that I ever
— I’m sorry I didn’t do what I was supposed to. I’m sorry I let it come to this.”

Tiny kisses pressed to the side of his face, the center of his forehead, into the soft spill of
black hair, fried and singed at the ends where the superheated air had caught fire before the
explosion of thunder threw them to the earth, if only for a moment or so. Satoru kissed him
again and again, cradling him in the mud, the grass, the filthy water rising as the rain
worsened, washing them clean like baptism.

“Forgive me this time. Just this once.”

Yo, Satoru. How many fingers am I holding up? The sweet taste of sugar on his tongue.
Something sour and acrid like strychnine. Hey, ‘Toru, spell ‘syncope’. The swirling funnel of
the mesocyclone, the rain coming down in a torrent, a deluge. The winds warm against his
hair, his face. Give it back next summer, alright? His first kiss under the shadow of a
supercell. His first time in the back of a hand-me-down truck. His first love, his only love.
Have some self respect. The feeling of the rope swing over the creek breaking, of falling
backwards, of plummeting with no one there to catch you. The feeling of grass between his
fingers as he ripped up the soil in his despair. The feeling of being abandoned. You didn’t
have all the information, because I never told you I was still in love with you. Love, love,
right there in his arms, halation halo surrounding them both.

“I’m going to take what I want,” Satoru swore as the winds roared louder and the world got
darker, the vortex drawing closer, focusing hard on the lingering scent of Suguru’s hair, tea
tree and jasmine, hotel shampoo. “Let me out of here, and I’m— I’m going to take what I
want. Let me take him with me. Let me win. Just this once, let me win. I want to choose the
ending.”

They were supposed to get married. Didn’t they make that promise to each other? When they
were still teenagers, when they were still kids? They were supposed to have a big outdoor
ceremony with all their friends and lots of flowers, and Satoru was going to wear a white suit
with a blue boutonnière and Suguru was going to wear a black suit with a golden hairpin, and
the twins were going to be their flower girls, and Shoko was going to be his maid of honor.
Satoru was going to drink champagne and he was going to cry but they would be happy tears
and he would weep them all night with a smile on his face. He was going to change his last
name and leave Gojo behind, and he was going to be happy, and he was going to be enough.

“Let me be enough,” Satoru begged, losing blood, losing vision, the light dying, his hold on
that warm body loosening. “Don’t take anything else from me. Hasn’t it been enough? Aren’t
I enough? Haven’t I earned it?”

And he was enough, because the world had been enough for him.

That was the realization he came to that night, as he cradled Suguru in his arms and waited to
die.

Love was scripture, the words etched into his bones, carved into the rungs of every strand of
DNA. Love was the pair of hands that cushioned the base of his skull when he collapsed in
the field, twelve years old and overflowing with resentment and anger and hurt, and love was
the home he found in the family that accepted him, for one summer and then for all the rest.
Love was Shoko in his hallway, taking down all the pictures, clearing out all the boxes of
Suguru’s old things, ordering him the groceries he refused to buy. Love was the look in
Yuta’s eyes when Satoru criticized his research methods and offered workarounds, the way he
nodded and took notes and asked to learn more. Love in lowercase, in a sans-serif font,
unassuming, so common and complacent that you’d miss it if you weren’t looking, but love
all the same.

Love was the sunset, the sunrise, alpenglow over the Rockies, aurora borealis over Alaska,
love was the crepuscular rays creeping up through the clouds at eventide like the brushstrokes
of God coming into focus. Love was the halation, the hallucinatory glow around everything
Suguru touched, Saint Elmo’s fire that followed him wherever he went, because no matter
how bright the room, Suguru’s presence always made it brighter.

Love was the vortex ripping up chunks of ground and throwing it skyward. Love was the
storm.

If they died, they died loved.

“Thank you for letting me fall in love with you,” Satoru started to cry again, tears and blood
from both eyes, saline solution and aqueous humors, and he did not know if he was talking to
the sky or to Suguru. He did not know if it mattered. “Thank you for— for letting me know
what it was like to be in love. Thank you for this gift. The greatest gift of my life.”

That was when he felt the clawing at his chest.

It was faint. It was weak. It was more clinging than anything else, grabbing up useless fistfuls
of fabric and trying to make something of what little space remained between them. But it
was Suguru.

Satoru pulled away, just enough to meet his eyes, the tears and blood and strange fluid
starting up all over again when his weary, delirious state recognized that it was him, it was
really him, and he wasn’t yet a corpse. None of it may have mattered in the next few minutes,
but for that fraction of a fraction of a moment they clung to each other in the drainage ditch,
it was enough.

Suguru’s eyes seemed to see everything and nothing all at once. He seemed to recoil at the
sight of Satoru’s ripped-apart face and missing eye, but he pulled in closer and he let one
hand come up to hold him at the jaw, just below his empty socket.

There was no sound. There was no room for sound in the deafening noise surrounding them,
bearing down on their hole in the earth, swallowing them up. There was no sound, but with
his one eye Satoru could read lips, and he knew what he saw.

“I love you,” Suguru was saying, and he was saying it over and over and over again. “I love
you. I love you. I love you. I love you.”
 Like a prayer whispered against his skin, like a prayer said with fingers laced in the church
pews. Supercell. Supercell. Supercell. Supercell. Supercell.

“I love you more,” Satoru shouted back, and Suguru smiled, and they both began to laugh.

The halation began to flicker out and die as they held on tighter, ever tighter, and waited for
the end.

Chapter End Notes

One more chapter yall. Lock in.

Also, context on the Bridge to Terabithia thing because I know not everyone grew up in
American public schools: it’s a children’s novel about two friends, Jess and Leslie, who
live in a rural town much like where Suguru grew up in this story. Leslie (the character
Suguru says Satoru reminds him of) dies in a tragic accident, and it kind of comes out of
nowhere for the narrative. Jess is not explicitly in love with Leslie, but they are best
friends who understand each other like no one else could, and losing her tears him apart.
It ends bittersweetly. Their childhood friendship always reminds me of satosugu in a
strange way.

Anyway, thank you all so much for reading and commenting. Finale coming soon! Just
so y’all know, I post a lot on Twitter! Snippets and updates and the like, also I am very
fun and interesting >:) follow me if you want! @monkeysmustlive
 Afterimage
Chapter Summary

Afterimage (noun) . ˈaf-tər-ˌi-mij

: a usually visual sensation occurring after stimulation by its external cause has ceased

: a lasting memory or mental image of something

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

3:37 p.m. Wesley Medical Center, General Care Unit. Wichita, Kansas. Two and a half days
after the storm.

Doctors don’t wear heels. That’s a television thing.

Most of the female doctors Ieiri knew had long since forgotten how to walk in heels after
years spent in residency and training, and then in the first few ‘true’ years of their career,
where many a long night was spent on their feet, pacing in and out of sterile hallways,
standing over tables of tools and poring over monotonous documents, exhausted eyes
scanning for the outlier, for the missing piece of the diagnostic jigsaw they never seemed to
catch as it slipped through their steady fingers. By the time they found a moment away from
on-call status to go out with friends or on a date, they would find their favorite feminine
shoes had shrunk under their noses, the heels and toes pinching uncomfortably, the platform
itself wobbling beneath them, and they found rather quickly that they had unwittingly traded
the elegance and ease of accepting pain with the beauty it promised for the white coat they
kept in the closets of their offices more often than not.

Many of the younger doctors she knew— which is to say, many of the doctors her age—
hardly wore that white coat they had worked for twelve years after graduating high school to
get. For many of them, it was no more of a part of their profession than the fancy frame
holding their M.D. degree, hanging in their office or in their home, awkward and self-
explanatory wherever it seemed to land. For many of them, the white coat hung collecting
dust at the shoulders until a special occasion called for it— a ceremony or an important
meeting or an appointment with a patient that may have required the absolute certainty of
authority they held over the situation, such as telling a mother her child was going to die or
telling a newlywed woman that she could never become pregnant. No, for many, the white
coat was a cumbersome thing, a rather impractical symbol, with fabric that needed to stay
clean of blood and viscera and sleeves that seemed to snag on everything.
Ieiri didn’t wear her white coat very often. Even in her current position at the university’s
clinic, where any case that could be considered even adjacent to critical was simply passed
along to the ER down the highway, she felt strange and unnerving when she wore it. She
much preferred a simple blouse, something she could roll up past her elbows if ever a
situation arose where she’d have to get her hands dirty, something she would not mind
throwing away should she get splattered by a nicked artery. Similarly, she did not wear heels,
but not because she had forgotten how to walk in them. She did not wear heels because she
couldn’t sprint in them.

As a resident, and as a new doctor, she had told her colleagues that she wasn’t cut out for the
fast-paced ER or ICU units. I can’t imagine it’s a sustainable specialty, she told them,
yawning over her fifth coffee of the afternoon, wishing she could get away with dumping a
shooter of whiskey into it. I don’t understand how these people aren’t burning out like they’re
reentering the atmosphere. I can’t imagine needing to break into a sprint every twelve
seconds because somebody coded. That can’t be good on the bones.

She would wince at herself years down the line when she started to feel her knees and thighs
locking up after too long spent sitting at her desk, when she started to feel the soles of her
feet itching for movement in her flats. She would curse herself quietly for her childishness,
for her prioritization of comfort over career, over the profession she chose because she was
born to do it. She would ache for an emergency, for the need to break into a flying run down
the hallway, for the feeling of glossy epoxy floors slamming under her tennis shoes as she
raced the reaper.

She would miss it, and so she would never start wearing her heels again, because she could
not sprint in them.

But that afternoon, Ieiri could sprint in anything.

She didn’t quite understand why she was in such a delirious rush when she got to the hospital
in the plains that afternoon. She did not understand why she’d snapped at the driver from the
airport, why she’d told him to drive like someone was dying, because they were. Thinking
critically, she should have taken it as a good sign when the nurses she’d spoken to informed
her that he was in the General Care Unit and not the ICU or the morgue. She wasn’t thinking
critically, though. She’d hardly had a critical thought since she received that horrible phone
call late at night, and an overly-calm voice asked her if she was next-of-kin or immediate
family to Satoru Gojo.

They would tell her almost nothing over the phone— almost nothing that could help her
made the accurate assessments she needed— because even after explaining her credentials a
million times, to the hospital paperwork, she was still just a family member. She was just a
phone number, a name on a white sheet, a hand that could sign the DNR order on his behalf
or uselessly hold the cord tethering his unconscious body to the mortal plane as the plug was
pulled. Until she made it to the front desk, until she could present her badge and her ID and
the twisted look on her face, she was just another clueless nobody, waiting on the plastic
couches, weeping at the news she would not receive. Until she made it to the room where
they were keeping Satoru (or what was left of him), she was no longer Dr. Ieiri, and she had
worked too goddamned hard to be addressed as anything else.
So, she sprinted, and when she reached the door at the end of the hall, she did not knock
before throwing it open.

His back was turned, but he was standing on grippy-socked feet in a blue hospital gown, and
the entire left side of his body— arm, shoulder, neck, face— was covered in a collection of
bandages and butterfly wound closures, countless stitches over countless cuts and gashes, like
he’d gotten into a fight with a kitchen full of knives, like the storm had held him down by the
singed ends of his hair and sliced him open again and again and again. That unruly white halo
was shorter, almost concerningly so, as though along with the trauma surgery he’d undergone
the night he arrived, he’d had to undergo a medical-grade haircut, too. Tied diagonally
around the crown of his skull was the telltale gauze and adhesive medical tape, fabric
layering fabric, sterile layering sterile, meticulous as though it was all that held him together,
and it may as well have been.

He turned at the sound of the door swinging open, and Ieiri was prepared for it, but the face
she saw was still a gut punch— one eye (or lack thereof) concealed under padding and post-
surgical wraps, the other with a bluish tint to the sclera that didn’t quite match the brilliance
of his iris. Whatever conversation he had been having with whichever poor soul he was
damned to share a hospital room ended abruptly as he turned toward her, beginning to glow.

She called his name, and it came out exclamatory, like the amen at the end of Thanksgiving
grace, like the hallelujah shouted on Easter Sunday, and she couldn’t keep her mouth from
smiling when it left her. “Gojo!”

“Shoko!” He laughed back, and in an instant he was bear-hugging her, a light thrashing side-
to-side in his bandaged arms, something siblinglike and full of joy and laced with unspoken
regret. If he had the strength— if the pain lacing his left arm had been less intense— he
might have swept her up and spun her around. Normally, she would not allow him to so much
as rest his head on her shoulder, but in the hospital room she hugged him back, her exhausted
eyes not quite tearing up but not quite dry. “I knew you’d show up!” He smiled down at her
as he let her go, stumbling backward a little bit, the feeling of his own feet beneath him still
foreign and not yet relearned.

“I booked the soonest flight the moment I got the call,” she shook her head, halfway
breathless, head tilting as she examined the wrappings over the left side of his face before
zeroing in on the bluish tint clouding his right eye. “You have to tell someone when you put
them down as your emergency contact, you know. You’re lucky I recognized the Wesley
number. Jesus, what happened to you?”

“Um, I got struck by lightning?”

“They told me that much,” she rolled her eyes, then stepped back to examine him as a whole,
as though he were a flawed painting or a ruined map, finding nothing to like but nothing to
fear. “Who’s your attending? Is my name on your HIPAA forms? I’ll go get your chart and
read it for myself.”

“Slow down,” he laughed again, putting two hands up as though measuring depth of field. “I
still can’t think clearly. My brain’s all scrambled. Are you—“
He was interrupted again by hurried footsteps coming down the hallway, an anxious sort of
panting from the back of the throat, and a young man with eyes so deeply cradled by dark
circles he could have passed for Shoko’s cousin appeared in the doorway, a bit bent over,
looking somewhat terrified. “Dr. Ieiri,” he was trying to force out, “the— the nurse says you
aren’t supposed to run in the—“

“Yuta!” Gojo lit up again with an incredulous smile, and in seconds he had crossed the room
to crush the frail TA in another wound-threatening bear hug, and he was eagerly hugged
back. “What are you doing here? You should be in class!”

“I signed off for his absences,” Ieiri explained. “Said it was a family emergency.”

And Satoru could have started weeping right then and there, but he was too overcome with
joy, and he was too busy thrashing Okkotsu side to side as he had done Shoko only moments
prior. There was so much light in that room at that very instant, so much of a glow emanating
from every surface and all sides, the afterimages of their loves and their lives imprinted all
around them, a tangle in the air like cigarette smoke, a tickle in every throat.

“Knock it off,” Shoko was saying, but she couldn’t stop smiling as she tried to pry Satoru’s
arms off of the kid. “Come on, you’ll crush him to death. You’ll tear your stitches.”

“Dr. Gojo,” Yuta was looking up and beaming, and almost immediately, he was reprimanded
with a flick to the forehead.

“I died three times in that storm two nights ago, kid,” Satoru scolded playfully. “If you ever
call me Dr. Gojo again, I might go for number four.”

Yuta could only laugh. He could only shut his deep black eyes as tight as he could as he was
once again pressed into Satoru’s chest, that hug separated only by the thickness of one
hospital gown, yet with the bramble of family forming between them, those tricky vines
began crawling around every ankle.

It was a glowing thing, a glowing thing smearing shadows along the cardboard walls.

“Where— where were you?” Ieiri tried again to be stern, to scold, but her trained hands had
found the scarred and ruined remains of Satoru’s left arm, and she was lifting it closer to her
face to inspect the handiwork of the stitches left exposed, the ends sticking up like caterpillar
antennae, the sides of his deep wounds smushed together like gum smushes into pavement. It
was terrible, which told her two things— one, the ER had been in a hurry that night, and two,
she could have done better, had she only been there, had she only not encouraged him to
chase a storm alone. “You were— we expected you back on campus three days ago, and you
stopped communicating well before that. What were you doing out here?”

“Well,” Satoru began, somewhat sheepishly, before he was interrupted by a cough from the
other bed.

Not a real cough. A clearing of the throat, really. An announcement.

It was only then that Ieiri looked over and saw him.
Suguru was smiling. Shoko could only make a silent note of the fact that she had not seen
him smile in well over four years at that point. Even before he left— even before he broke
Satoru into a million tiny shards of himself and left her to sustain a thousand tiny cuts
between her fingertips as she tried to put him back together— he had not graced them with
his sunbright sparrowsong of a smile in longer than anyone could recall. His hair was down
over his shoulders, also considerably shorn, but retaining much of the length he’d grown all
his life, in all the life that she was present for. His skin was a lighter shade of forest floor than
it usually was, the reddish undertone suffocated out by the previous winter, but he had kept
the freckles on his face and clavicle and the color in his cheeks was soft, elegant. He was
notably unscarred, relatively unscathed, save for one butterfly-bandage-closed wound on the
right side of his forehead, and save for the fernlike patterns of electric discharge springing up
beneath the thin skin of his neck and jaw.

Lichtenberg figures. Fresh ones.

Ieiri’s eyes flickered back to Satoru, and she quickly found the figures at the side of his neck,
too, where the blood vessels had exploded beneath his skin with the force of the sun itself
shockwaving through his skeletal frame and musculature. That feathery, spiderlike sprawl
was something beyond just telltale— it was almost tattletale. In only a few seconds of
staring, in only a few synaptic firings, she knew everything.

Her eyes returned to Suguru, wide and blind.

“Hi,” he said, and he adjusted his face to give her a small smile separate from the one he had
been wearing before— something not close enough to cocky to be his typical grin, something
missing the weight required from guilt or shame or embarrassment. He smiled a real smile,
thin eyes shifting back into the crescent moons Satoru adored so deeply, and he tilted his head
to show the purplish-blue bruises covering the side of his head and neck, a gauze patch taped
over his jawline.

“You’re kidding,” Shoko breathed, almost muttering, and stepped back as her eyes went
somehow wider. Her gaze darted between Geto, Gojo, Geto, Gojo, Geto, before finally
landing on the dog she’d kept in the divorce, who was almost giggling to himself at the
absurdity of the whole situation. “You are kidding me right now,” she repeated.

“It’s nice to see you again,” Suguru offered, and her gaze returned, much more critical than
dumbfounded. “It’s been four years, hasn’t it? You’re looking well.”

“You look like you got hit by a tornado,” she retorted, but she wasn’t really snapping.

“Astute observation,” he snorted. “They teach you that in med school?”

“I was right. You never change,” she shook her head, stifling a smile, and turned back to
Satoru. “Gojo, what—“

“It’s a long story,” he laughed before she could ask the inevitable question. “Suguru was just
—“
“Suguru?” Okkotsu interrupted, his eyes staring to match Ieiri’s again, incredulous and a bit
concerned, flickering over to the man still in bed. “You mean— You mean that Suguru? The
one who—”

“Nice to meet you,” Suguru nodded at him. “You’re the apprentice, aren’t you?”

Yuta seemed to redden at the word apprentice instead of TA, but he steeled himself. “You’re
Dr. Go— I mean, you’re his—“

“How much of our business did you tell him, ‘Toru?” Suguru laughed.

“None, actually,” Satoru glanced at Shoko.

“Dispatch told us you died,” she protested. “Or, at least, they told us you kept dying. You
were gone for well over a week. God forbid I have a drink at the airport and start talking too
much on the way to pull your plug.”

“I died three times,” he corrected. “And very reassuring to know that you’d unplug me that
quickly.”

“Gojo, you wouldn’t want to be alive in a coma, you’d just—“ she seemed to stop herself,
turning back to Suguru, blinking twice as though he were a hallucination, as though he might
vanish if she took her eyes off of him. “You came out here to see him?” She asked,
maintaining eye contact, but she was speaking to Satoru.

“It was a strange coincidence,” Suguru shook his head.

“I don’t believe in those anymore,” Satoru declared.

“Yes, you do,” Ieiri corrected him. “You’re a scientist, not a shaman.”

Suguru laughed. “That’s exactly what I was telling him. Word for word.”

“See?” Satoru folded his arms, clean one over the ruined other. “There it is again. No
coincidences.”

“That’s just because I know you,” Ieiri replied, crossing the room to where Geto sat up in his
hospital bed, approaching carefully like she might a wild animal or a particularly jumpy
patient. “And I know him, and if I know either of you, I know something happened out there,
and it wasn’t just the storm.”

Gojo followed her, climbing into bed beside the rather-unscathed Suguru and settling in next
to him, as though Shoko might fold her arms at them both, like she might turn away. “It’s a
long story,” he offered. “You know half of it already.”

There was a soft beat of silence.

“I’m sorry,” Ieiri sighed, defenses dropping, as the adrenaline rush from her panicked sprint
began to dissipate back into her bloodstream like the cigarette smoke she couldn’t seem to
quit exhaling. “I’m sorry, I should be— I’m just glad you’re alive. Really.”
It was only then that the sadness reentered the room.

It was a strange thing to experience so far from home. Ieiri had long since desensitized
herself to those sorts of sensations, like the slithery feeling of regret snaking its way through
the ventricles and valves of the muscle in her chest keeping her alive, like the crawling kind
of creatures that clung to the hem of her skirt and dragged like wandering ghosts through the
shadows of her footsteps. It had been years— plural— since she could bring herself to
acknowledge a feeling like that once it found its way up from the depths of her stomach to
the surface of her skin, once it tore through the thin veneer of emptiness she faced herself
with and forced her to put a name to it. It was unwelcome, uncalled for, and it nauseated her
worse than the smell of formaldehyde or ammonia or any manner of sterilization products
could ever hope to sicken her with.

For a moment or so— as she stared back at the two faces she had once had etched into her
mind, encapsulated in a framed photograph in her office, kept like a keepsake in the center of
her being where the rest of her soul lay— she could have sworn she was wearing heels. As
her sleepy eyes traced the scars forming in Satoru’s skin, the electric carvings in Suguru’s
neck under his tattoos, she swore she could feel the pinching of shoes she couldn’t sprint in
settling around her achilles tendon and the knuckle of her big toe. She swore she could feel
that familiar stab of youth, of adolescence, of riding in the backseat at 95 miles per hour
while Satoru slammed the accelerator and Suguru hung out the window, camera in hand,
maneuver 3. She swore she could feel those lights flicker on, a clinking noise against glass
where the electrons dispersed, and she swore she felt herself smile without permission. Those
shoes ached, those heels wobbled, and there was nowhere to run.

“Geto, how are you feeling?” She forced herself to ask, and the ease in her tone seemed to
startle them both.

“Well,” he started, trying to match her voice in some way, “I keep seeing afterimages when I
close my eyes. Floaters. My bad leg seems worse. Got a bad headache. Aside from that, I’m
alright.”

“What’s the rundown? Any external injuries I can’t see? Any internal?”

“A few lacerations to the arms and face. From what they told me, there was nothing on my
test results to indicate larger problems on the inside. They’re keeping an eye on us for a few
days, and if ‘Toru doesn’t code again, they’ll send us home.”

“Who was your emergency contact?”

“I don’t have one.”

And at that, she had to pause.

In the days before he left them both— in the days when they were still close friends, when
they would sneak away from their responsibilities to meet in the commuter parking lot for
cigarettes, when they’d sit on the hood of his F-150 and watch the college kids passing
between classes and heading home, when they’d chatter quietly between themselves and
reminisce on simpler days, when she could look at his face and see within it a man she
recognized like she would her own brother— she might have made fun of him for the
admission. She might have called him melodramatic, saying he had to put something down
for situations like these, even if it was just her or Gojo, but they were no longer friends, and
she no longer found anything to make fun of.

That familiar feeling of sadness was pinching in her shoes again.

Maybe it was the fact that Suguru was leaning into Satoru’s shoulder like it was nothing, like
nothing had ever happened and they had never broken up, like Shoko hadn’t been left behind
the same way Satoru was. Maybe it was the fact that when they were together— when Satoru
and Suguru were still the obnoxious couple she found herself going out for drinks and dinner
with every weekend— it was always Gojo initiating the PDA. It was always Gojo hanging
from his shoulder, clinging to his arms, trying desperately to lace their fingers together under
the table or stealing kisses from his cheeks and lips, much to the chagrin of everyone around
them. Maybe that pinching feeling of being unable to sprint stemmed from the reversal of all
things, the inherent wrongness in them, like a person born with situs invertus, all the organs
mirrored along the middle line, a problem that might never present itself if everything stays
where it’s supposed to, but that makes the skin shiver nonetheless.

Something was different, and it disturbed her. It sickened her stomach. It went deeper than
the skin, deeper than the lacerations lining Satoru’s arm or the choppy haircut Suguru had
sustained or the missing eye or the new piercings she hadn’t clocked before. It was as though
she were staring through a fogged mirror, the world blurry in the beyond, like poring over a
page full of words written in your mother tongue and somehow knowing none of them.

Strangely, without her permission, she was reminded that when Geto left them— when he
disappeared from both of their lives, when he disappeared in days and left nothing but
cigarette smoke hanging over their spot in the parking lot— she had not been allowed to say
goodbye. She was not afforded that luxury. Gojo did, in his own way, and she supposed that
that was fair. The relationship those two had was an enigma to her, a type of love that she
prayed would never find her lest she gouge her own eyes out and join Gojo in blindness, but
still, she had wondered why he had been so comfortable to leave her standing in shoes she
couldn’t sprint in. Gojo got his haunting, he got his torment, he got the months spent curled
up on her couch in the fetal position, sustaining himself off gummy worms and ice cream and
refusing the take the vitamin supplements Ieiri brought home for him unless he could wash it
down with strawberry milk, and what had she got? What had she received?

A ghost. An afterimage. A subtle suggestion that she had never mattered in the first place.

And yet, here they were, face to face again, though neither one could quite recognize the
other anymore. Here she was, wanting to tell him that he should have put her name down as
his emergency contact if he truly had no one else. Here she was, showing up for him, holding
an olive branch behind her back.

Anger was an odd thing. It felt strange to let it slip through the fingers.

“It’s good to see you again,” she told him, and she meant it, even if it tasted sour and strange
coming out of her mouth, even if she couldn’t quite decipher it. “Really.”
He smiled at her. “Same here,” he said.

Shoko sighed and turned back to Gojo. It wasn’t much of a turn, really— more of a shifting
of the eyes. “You, on the other hand, I’m less thrilled to be dealing with. I don’t even work in
your department, but since apparently we’re close enough that you’d put me down as your
emergency contact, Yaga’s been on my ass about you.”

Gojo laughed. “I’m not getting fired, am I?”

Shoko pinched the bridge of her nose between her forefinger and thumb as she sighed. “No.
You’ve been put on medical leave for the rest of the semester. Dr. Kusakabe is taking over
your classes for the remainder of the year.”

“What?” Satoru looked up, seemingly incensed. “But that Kusakabe guy is— But I’m fine!
I’m just a little scratched up, I—“

“You had major surgery two nights ago,” she interrupted sharply. “You lost your eye. You
were struck by lightning. You were hit by a tornado. You’re lucky I don’t call for the nurses
to put you back in your own bed and strap you down. There is no way you’re returning to
teaching in the next three months.”

Satoru frowned. “What about my research?”

“The weather will still be there when you’re through with healing,” Ieiri crossed her arms. “If
you want to fight Yaga on that, be my guest.”

“And what about Yuta?”

“I’ll be fine!” Okkotsu assured, sort of laughing, scratching his wrist the way he did when he
got nervous. “Really, don’t worry about it. The semester will be over in a few weeks, anyway.
I can always get Fushiguro to help me out with the SI sessions if it gets to be too
challenging.”

“And what about your research?” Satoru pressed, and Suguru pressed his head further onto
his shoulder, a silent sort of reassurance. “You’re still going to keep me updated on your
drafts, right? If they won’t let me on campus, I’ll live by my laptop and make sure I see the
edits—“

“Really, it’s okay,” he laughed again. “I’ll keep you updated.”

“Has everything been alright, then? No issues with the classes or anything?”

“Well, I— I mean,” Okkotsu began again, his throat sounding dry and strange, still clinging
to the familiarity of awkwardness, “there is one thing that I can’t really figure out.”

Satoru tilted his head. “Yeah?”

“Do you remember the— the anonymous account?”

Suguru’s eyebrow raised. “The what?”

“Oh, you mean @WhatsDrGojoWearingToday?” Satoru recited dutifully, a look of pink-
cheeked pride crossing him.

Geto turned to the one at his side. “The what?” He repeated.

“It’s only my favorite account on instagram,” Gojo laughed and leaned back into the thin
hospital pillow on the raised half of the bed behind him. “One of my students made it, and
they just take pictures of my outfits during my lectures. I can’t figure out who owns it, but
from what I can gather, they sit in the third row on the left side of the hall—“

“And you— you keep tabs on this account?” Geto blinked thin eyes at him, incredulous.
“You don’t find that odd?”

“Well, everyone else seems to like it!” Gojo protested. “Yuta, didn’t they seem to like the red
boots I wore that one time?”

Okkotsu hesitated. “I believe the top comment was ‘is he being blackmailed into doing
this?’”

“That’s a compliment, right?”

Suguru’s face folded into his hands. “No, ‘Toru.”

“That’s not— that’s not the problem,” Okkotsu tried again, ignoring Ieiri’s stifled laughter,
pulling his phone from his pocket and hurriedly tapping at the screen. “Since you’ve been
gone, people started to wonder, and there was a news story that got out about the
stormchasers who got struck by lightning, and… Well, it’s— it’s been converted.”

“Converted?” Satoru frowned, then stuck his hand out expectantly. “Let me see.”

Yuta handed over the phone.

Satoru could not choke down his deeply offended gasp at what he found. He could almost
feel Suguru’s narrow eyes go wide and white as he peered over his shoulder.

The display name had been changed from Dr. Satoru Gojo Outfit Watch to R.I.P. Satoru Gojo,
Ph.D. with a tombstone and dove emoji beside it. The profile picture— originally a candid
shot of him doing a silly pose behind his podium, peace signs up to his eyes and a bright pink
baseball cap holding down his heron-feathered hair— had been replaced by a black-and-
white version of the faculty ID photo he hated. The bio had been changed from “tracking the
outfits of JJ Tech’s freshest weatherman” to “in memory of Dr. Satoru Gojo, gone too soon,
never forgotten.”There were no more funny posts, only one grayscale slideshow showing a
collection of his stormchasing pictures set to Sarah McLachlan’s ‘In the Arms of an Angel’.
It had around 9,000 likes and 2,000 comments, the majority consisting of broken heart and
dove emojis, the rest reading things like “omg he was my favorite teacher :(” and “praying
for his family”. The account had even been designated as an in-memorium page. Satoru had,
for all intents and purposes, been declared deceased.
The only good thing about the account, it seemed, was that the follower count had ballooned
from a few hundred to well over 5,000.

“They think I’m dead?” He spat, handing the phone back, hand trembling slightly with
indignance.

“They think you’re dead,” Suguru laughed quietly, his head soft on Satoru’s shoulder.

“Yuta, what the hell?”

“I tried to tell them!” Yuta exclaimed, his hands moving erratically as he tried to explain.
“They wouldn’t listen! I mean, they— you got struck by lightning and hit by a tornado and
there was no other information!”

“That doesn’t mean I’m dead!”

“Well, you died three times,” Ieiri teased from the corner.

Suguru laughed hard against his shoulder. Satoru shook his head, ignoring them both. “What
did you tell them?”

“I said— I said I didn’t know!”

“Well, that was a mistake,” Suguru noted.

Okkotsu wrestled his lips into a straight line and stared at Gojo, waiting for further
instruction.

“This is ridiculous,” Satoru shook his head, crossing his arms. “I mean, at least wait until my
body gets cold to start making memorial pages, right? I’m a little offended.” He seemed to
pause, seemed to think, scarred fingertips playing idly with the bandages covering his face.
“Yuta, go get a nurse, please.”

Ieiri narrowed her eyes. “If you need a doctor, you’ve got one standing right here.”

Gojo clicked his tongue at her as though she were stupid. “I don’t need a medical
professional, I need somebody to take the picture. You know, proof of life.”

“I can take the picture,” Yuta offered before Ieiri could express what a monumentally stupid
idea that would be, but Gojo shook his head again.

“No, you’re getting in the picture, too.”

“I’ll take the picture, then,” Ieiri returned.

“You’re getting in the picture, too!”

Suguru looked up from his shoulder. “Is the picture mandatory? I’m not exactly presentable
right now.”
“Yes! I died three times and everyone is going to take a picture with me!”

And Ieiri saw it again, just as she stopped being able to stifle the smile scratching at the
corners of her mouth, just as she saw the vines defining family start to slither around the
heels she wasn’t wearing. She saw the afterimages of what she had never experienced, the
tracers of lightning lining the skies before the bolt fully manifests and hell rains down from
heaven, the ghosts painted into empty space like transparent paint on a fluid canvas, and she
saw it. She saw it when she saw Gojo and Geto together— broken though they may have
been— sitting next to one another for the first time in well over four years. She saw it when
she saw the way Yuta looked between both faces, flickering back to her, flickering over to the
nurse they had pulled away from her duties to take a picture for them. She saw it in the glow,
in the halation, in the reflection of light from unreal surfaces, and she understood.

She would have to hear the story of how they all ended up in that room together, because she
only knew the half of it. The rest of it was written in the afterimages lining the walls and the
backs of her eyelids.

The picture was a silly one, something Satoru would have framed later on in life, something
he’d keep on his desk and hanging in his hallway. Suguru put an arm around him, head on his
shoulder, and closed his crescent moon eyes into the shape he had fallen in love with when he
was twelve years old, passing out in the fields, heat syncope slithering down the back of his
spine like sweat. Ieiri had her arm around Okkotsu, who had somehow forgotten to take his
worried eyes off of Satoru for the photo, looking down with a muted sort of anxiety behind
his eyes curving upwards. As for Gojo himself, he was all teeth. All teeth, all shine, half of
his body sliced a thousand times over, one eye shut and one eye taken by the winds.

The nurse handed Okkotsu’s phone back to Satoru, who wasted no time in messaging the
memorial account.

Message from Dr. Gojo: I’m not dead yet!!!

The page updated within minutes.

A screenshot of the DM conversation from the receiving end quickly replaced the grayscale
memorial post pinned to the top of the profile, the caption written in capital letters that
seemed to scream, a million different question marks littering empty space. NEW OUTFIT
JUST DROPPED: HOSPITAL DRIP?????

The earliest comments read as follows:

goatji_himtadori : WAIT HE’S ALIVE ?!/1>1??!?!!!

fshigro_mgmi : This is why we don’t spread misinformation online.

notazenin : @yutaokko why are you in this photo

panda_bydesiigner : so nobody’s gonna acknowledge the random dude in bed with him?
By the next morning, the profile picture had been reverted back to the candid shot of Satoru
posing behind the podium, and the bio had been altered to read AND ON THE THIRD DAY
HE ROSE AGAIN accompanied by five or six nodding-head emojis. His phone had been
destroyed when he was struck by lightning, but Gojo had a good laugh about it, which he
figured he needed if he was ever going to heal from the hell he had suffered, that he was still
suffering. Ieiri and Yuta stayed for a few days before taking off again, after making sure they
were all situated, and Satoru promised to be back in their town within the next week, after he
tied up a few loose ends where he was.

He was reminded again that someone— multiple people, evidently— cared whether or not he
lived or died. He was reminded that his previous beliefs had been childish, misguided, and
justly unraveled by his own undoing as it unfolded before his hands. He was reminded by
Suguru’s eyes as they watched him from the adjacent bed, as they closed and opened, closed
and opened, closed and opened. He was reminded by the feeling of his left eye socket trying
to blink with the right, and he was reminded in what he had lost just as much as what he had
gained.

It was a strange thing, to have died. It was stranger to have survived.

He closed his eye and hoped for stranger.

***

In the end, it was the dashcam footage that allowed the doctors to put the pieces together.

As it turned out, they did not sustain a direct hit from the tornado. It had changed course yet
again at the last second and dissipated fairly quickly, but the path of ground scouring it left
behind had been so close to where their bodies lay that their survival was somewhat
thaumaturgic. Originally, the group of passing stormchasers who found them were out
looking at this ground scouring pattern, and when they came across the curled shape their two
bodies made together in the mud, the group believed them both to be dead. They were, after
all, lying crumpled in a drainage ditch around 300 feet from where Satoru’s car had been
lifted up by the winds and hurtled across a field, and they were badly injured and covered in
mud and dried blood, and neither one moved when shaken or shouted at. Eventually, though,
Suguru stirred at the stimulation— not enough to be considered lucid, but enough to be
considered alive. All he could do was cling tighter to the motionless body he curled against,
lacerated and ruined left arm draped limply over his shoulder, empty eye socket purple and
still clinging to the jelly of what once was there.

The stormchasers— hobbyists, Satoru would later learn, and none of them trained in first aid
— simply assumed that Gojo had died already and Geto was on his way out. That was
considered his first death.

The ones who had come to their rescue would only realize that he was still alive when they
began trying to pull the two moderately mangled bodies apart to assess the damage on the
each one, at which point Suguru had snapped awake in a delirious state and began clawing at
the hands that touched him, his eyes wide and seeing nothing, trying to form words with an
uncooperative mouth and protect what remained of the one still halfway draped over him.
Assuming he had lost his mind in the aftermath of the unsurvivable, he was weak enough to
be restrained by the shoulders as Satoru’s unmoving form was dragged away from him, but
not before making a sincere (and almost successful) attempt to bite the hands holding him.
Two of the group were in the process of holding him down as he thrashed, useless but not
halfhearted, when the third one checking Satoru for breaks in his spine had let out a small
scream.

“This one’s alive,” she had said. “This one’s still breathing.”

I could have told you that, Suguru would later recall thinking to himself. I could have told
you that if you’d just get the hell away from him.

The 911 call for two ambulances— one with the sirens on, one with a bodybag— quickly
became a request for a medevac helicopter.

By the accounts the hobbyist chasers would give to the paramedics, then to the police,
Suguru had been drifting in and out of consciousness for much longer than could be
considered normal, but they’d called it a trauma response and tried to avoid the deft precision
of his half-balled fists when he started swinging on them every time his eyes flickered open.
He was incoherent, inconsolable, desperately clinging to what little fabric he could place in
the spaces between his fingers, and when the rotor blades cut circles into the sky and the
ropes came down in the darkening clouds as night began to fall all around them, he’d
panicked. He refused to let the professionals touch Satoru’s still body, refused to let them
strap him to a gurney and take him away, refused to let them be separated ever again.

That was how the paramedics came to know Satoru’s name— Suguru could not stop shouting
it as he reached for him, caught in something between a fever dream and a fugue state.
Satoru, he’d called after him, as the chopper lifted upward and a small cyclone dissolved in
its wake, as he struggled against his restraints and tried to run after him, as though he could
catch up if he only tried hard enough. Satoru, Satoru, Satoru.

He could remember the taste of iron in his mouth when his throat began to bleed. He could
remember the heaviness in his gut.

A little ways away from the hospital, Satoru coded in the helicopter. Cardiac arrest. His pulse
returned after two minutes and two shocks from the manual defibrillator. That was his second
death.

While Suguru was strapped down to the ambulance gurney and the paramedics debated
tranquilizing him to keep him from attempting to bite their nitrile gloved hands again, Satoru
was being designated as a priority one and wheeled into the operating room for emergency
surgery. Around halfway through the enucleation process— around the point at which the
final squelching remnants of what used to be his eye were being steadily plucked away and
set aside onto a sterile patch of cloth on a metal tray— he flatlined for a third time. His third
death.
He was revived again, the hole in his head where his left eye used to be was thoroughly
sanitized and packed with gauze, and he was taken to a room where he was hooked up to
countless machines and stabbed full of wires and made to feel like some sort of broken
marionette, all tied-together and strung-up and alone, alone with the heavy scent of
disinfectant and disconcerting cleanliness. Another six hours passed before he woke up, and
when he finally came to, there was no one there to greet him. There was only the rhythmic
beeping of the appliances monitoring his every bodily process, only the alien clicking of
breath in his lungs, only the haunting inhale and exhale emanating from the cold, empty
center of his chest. There was only the world he could see with his right eye, and there was
no left, and there was no Suguru.

He started ripping out wires and relishing in the fat beads of blood that began to swell up
from the artificial holes the professionals had covered him with. Nurses started rushing into
the room and the machines began to scream for attention. Satoru struggled to get up,
struggled with his depth perception, struggled against the team of hands that tried to tie him
back to the bed that didn’t belong to him.

“Where is he?” He demanded. “I want to see him. I want to see him. Is he okay?”

That was when the dashcam footage became important.

The amateur stormchasers who found them lying half-dead in the drainage ditch had found
their car, too, and while trying to pry through it for identifying information, they’d pulled out
the camera and sent it to the hospital with the paramedics Suguru kept trying to bite. The film
itself was damaged, skipping in some places and distorted in others, and it cut off rather
abruptly when the car was lifted up and thrown by the hurricane force winds, but it showed
them what they needed to know.

Two figures, one trying to open the smoking hood of the car, one ten feet away in the field to
their right. There’s no sound— it’s all been distorted and torn away— but their mouths are
moving, and the one closest to the car seems like he’s shouting. There’s a palpable sense of
panic that clings to the silent movie like sandspurs cling to exposed skin, like droplets of rain
begin to cling sideways across the windshield as the winds pick up and die out, pick up and
die out, pick up and die out. The figure in the field holds his palms open at his sides, semi-
outstretched, and smiles a smile that looks strange as his lip piercings coil around it. The
figure by the car gives pause, and then he goes to him. There’s another tense moment of
words leaving mouths, hands leaving sides, and the one from the car appears more and more
panicked as time progresses, but the one from the field only seems to laugh. Doctors aren’t
trained in lip reading, but even then, it was somehow obvious which words were being
exchanged.

Then came the freezing moment, the moment of stillness, of realization, and the two figures
appeared to become one as their eyes locked.

They lunged at each other, and the film went white, and when the resolution reverted itself to
something decipherable, they were both lying in the mud, unmoving.

One did not need an M.D. to piece together what had happened between them, and who they
were to one another.
Gojo was allowed to see him a few hours after he was moved from the ICU to the GCU,
when space was made for them to share a room. Geto had long since stopped trying to attack
the nurses and doctors attending to him after his initial delirium wore off and his brain was
given adequate time to set itself straight, but he still refused to speak beyond one-word
sentences or fix his eyes on anything but the fiberglass ceiling tiles boxing him in, and so
when the door slid open and a shadow moved against the light, he had not bothered to look
up. It would not have mattered if he did.

He heard that voice— that voice he would know anywhere else, underwater or above the
heavens or trapped in the terrible center of a supercell storm— calling his name, and it was
all over, all over again.

Suguru barely had time to register what was happening before Satoru’s arms had snared
around him and he was all but melting into his shoulder, fingers digging at the hospital gown
on his back, the scent of surgical iodine seeping out from beneath the bandages, something
metallic and tasteless where the curved needle had sewn his wounds shut, and he was
repeating it’s you, it’s you, you’re okay, you’re still here, and he was crying from one eye, and
he was three times dead but still alive.

It was only then that Suguru truly realized what had happened. It was only then that he knew
that he had survived, that he had been damned to live through it a second time.

He could only will his hands to wrap tightly around Satoru wherever he could and beg
forgiveness against the scars on his neck.

“I’m so sorry,” he repented, again and again and again. “I’m so sorry, ‘Toru. I’m so sorry.
Please forgive me.”

And Satoru didn’t need to tell him that there was nothing to forgive, that there was no sin to
repent of, that even if there was he would forgive any transgression with unflinching
acceptance. he did not need to tell him because his arms and his hands and his single eye
were doing the work, holding him close, stroking the flash-fried ends of his long black hair,
pressing his face into the space where clavicle met neck and neck met jaw, his breath like
exoneration with every exhale.

They did not need to confess their love again. Some things confess themselves. Some things
cannot be concealed.

They could see it in each other when their fingers brushed up against the featherlike
formations creeping up from beneath their skin, bright red and angry on Satoru’s milky pale
and a deeper chestnut color on Suguru’s summer olive tan. They could see it in the way it
stretched and sprawled, in the spaces where their blood vessels had exploded as the air
became superheated and expanded uncontrollably all around them, in the way their brains
had short circuited to rewire themselves and their hearts had stopped beating and their lungs
had seized up. They could see it in the Lichtenberg figures left behind, their matching marks,
twin scars resembling that which had struck them down, torn them apart and brought them
back together. They could see it in the way that skin still stung to touch.
That tender moment was short-lived, though, as their bodies were far more exhausted than
their minds could be. Satoru managed to convince their nurse to push their beds closer
together so that they could hold hands, but they were both drifting in and out of sleep by the
time their fingers brushed up against one another in the empty, endless space between them.
They hardly had any time to get their heads on straight and get themselves on the same page
before the next morning had come and Ieiri was rushing into the room, with Yuta in tow.
They hardly had any time to process what had happened to them before time continued to
march on, before they were dragged with the wind currents, before they were carried out to
sea.

Both of them managed to put on a brave face for the awkward conversation they knew would
come when their old friend saw them together, and as happy as Satoru was to see her again,
he could not help but feel a bit relieved when she disappeared with Yuta again, off to find
them some clothes beyond the hospital gowns they were relegated to. He could not help but
exhale another exonerating sigh to be alone with Suguru again, to be alone with the only
other person who could have even begun to understand what he was going through. Even
though they said nothing to one another, even though they did not kiss and did not touch the
marks lining the other’s aching body, they could not have felt safer than they felt together.
Satoru held his hand and held his tongue, and Suguru held space in the increased feelings of
claustrophobia building up in his stomach.

Their previous plans to go no-contact and never speak again had been evidently rejected by
the universe at large.

They didn’t quite know where to start, so they started from the beginning.

When they were discharged from the hospital a week or so after they were carted and
helicoptered in, Gojo went with Geto to his home in Florida, just to help him settle. He was
significantly less mobile in the lame leg than he had been before the second lightning strike,
so much so that he had no choice but to use a crutch to get around, and so Satoru felt it
necessary to accompany him on his way, much to Suguru’s protesting. For the first time that
either could remember, there were no wandering hands, no wandering lips, no hips or
shoulders pinned against walls or mattresses or hearts swallowed up in tight throats. For the
first time that either could remember, there were only laced fingers as the plane took off and
landed again, only shoulders brushing up against one another as they made their way through
security and baggage claim, only three eyes exchanging looks in the driver and passenger
seats in the car Geto rented while he tried to figure out his compounding insurance issues.
For the first time, it was chaste. It was childish. It was what they could stomach for the time
being.

Satoru stayed with him that first night, in that small rental home in the marshy part of the
Florida panhandle, somewhere where the bald cypress trees grew beside rows and rows of
longleaf pine, somewhere where the air was thick and warm and gentle as it passed through
their tracheae and twin lungs, shaking and scarred though they may have been. He helped
him move a few things around in the living room and the kitchen, helped him clear out all the
food that had begun to rot in the fridge when they left, and offered to make a run to the
grocery store for him. They shared a bed, but they did nothing of consequence, nothing aside
from gentle caresses and halfway-committed cuddling when the sun came up and they were
both too scramble-brained to fight their feelings.

He stayed, but he didn’t stay long.

“I have to sort some shit out back home,” Satoru sighed as he gathered his things up, which
wasn’t much— barely anything could be recovered from the car that had been flung and
mangled in the tornadic winds. “Besides, we probably shouldn’t… You know what I mean.”

“I understand,” Suguru said, and he did. “Will you call me when you land? Just so I know
you got home safe?”

Satoru smiled. “Of course. I won’t be a stranger. I just need to— I need—“

“I know,” Suguru nodded. “We both know how I get.”

“How we both get,” Satoru corrected.

A beat of silence.

“I still love you, you know,” Satoru reminded him, straightening back up.

“I— I know.”

“We should just…” he trailed off again, looking aside, his single eye finding the barren walls
and the empty hallway, the house that looked so much like a temporary solution and nothing
like a true dwelling. “We should just take our time with this. Just— Just figure it out as we
go.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll be alright,” he continued again, but it was obvious that he was only trying to reassure
himself, only trying to soothe the small part of him that panicked every time he and Suguru
parted ways. “No matter what happens, alright? No matter what happens, no matter what we
decide to do, I just— I just don’t want us to— to end up hating each other agin.”

“I never hated you, ‘Toru.”

“I know,” Satoru brought himself back to center, sighing on the words in frustration, clearly
losing his cool the longer he talked to himself, the longer he stood in that home that had
never known the light of their love. “I know, I— ‘hate’ wasn’t the right word. I just meant
that we— if we can’t figure our shit out, then I just want to— I don’t—“

“Satoru.”

His voice still had that cooling effect, that sort of simplicity to it, the careful wash of water at
the ankles on a lake shore, the gentle rock of the river delta and the life moving through the
soil all around it. That night, his voice could have been the breeze swaying the palm fronds in
the trees outside, the in-and-out rhythm of a thousand tiny creatures breathing into the
darkness, the fireflies that spring up in summer and cast a greenish-yellow glow into the
beauty of nothingness, the hands that held Satoru on either side of his face when they were
still young, when they were not yet injured. That night, the sound of his own name— the
three syllables, similar in length to a confession, similar in cadence to a curse— could have
soothed even the most irrational storms, even the fiercest supercells.

“I know,” Satoru smiled again— wearier this time— and he was grateful for the bandage
covering his other eye. Half-crying was better than full-crying.

“I still love you, too,” Suguru told him. “Remember that.”

“I will.”

“Call me when you land.”

“I will.”

And he did. It was a brief call— more of a check-in than anything else— but still Suguru
could tell that Satoru was getting choked up on the other end of the line when he talked about
renting a car and going back to his own apartment and dealing with the laundry he’d
neglected to wash before he left. Still, he could tell how deeply painful it was for their love to
continue, for their escape plan to have failed.

Maybe they would never truly get away. Maybe their plans would have been foiled anyway.
Maybe if the tornado had never shifted course and the lightning had never struck them where
they stood, maybe if they had gotten the hell out of the notch when they should have, they
might still have found their way back to one another, clawing on hands and knees until they
could claw at one another again beneath the sheets. Maybe they were running fool’s errands,
blowing against the wind. Maybe it didn’t matter.

Suguru had decided that Satoru would be the one to choose how things went. He no longer
had the energy to steer things himself, to protect them from one another.

They called every Sunday, just like they had when they were kids. Satoru texted him often—
multiple times a day, every day, usually mundane and inconsequential things like pictures of
the clouds and dutiful updates on what he ate for breakfast that morning, but sometimes
taking a more serious tone and sending the occasional I miss you and Are you doing alright,
Sugu? Suguru would always reply, always respond, either with a reaction or a sentimental
message of his own, something like It’s going to be okay, we’ll figure it out, or I miss you,
too. He could hardly tell if he was lying anymore. After so long of stretching the truth and
letting his mouth fit around the familiar shape of what Satoru wanted to hear, he found
himself shaky and uncertain on his own feet, on the foundation of his own feelings.

Oftentimes— most times, in fact— he wished he could run. He wished that he might be able
to flee as he’d done for four straight years, leaving before the sun comes up, blocking his
number just to unblock it later, lying awake in bed torturing himself over the way he tortured
Satoru, and he hoped it might kill him one day. Oftentimes, he wanted to revert back to the
person he’d allowed himself to be for so long, the person that killed Satoru slowly, piece by
piece.
He resisted that part of himself. He refused it. He made a resolution and he set it in stone, set
it in skin with the scars forming on his neck. He would not run away anymore.

“I’ve been thinking, Sugu,” Satoru began over the phone one Sunday, and Suguru felt his
throat close up.

“Yeah?”

“I might need… I might need a little longer by myself,” he said, and his voice was soft and
sighing on the other end of the line. “I just— I just have some things I need to clear up on my
end.”

“Right. I understand.”

“Can I see you this summer? Maybe in a month or two?”

“You can see me whenever you want, ‘Toru.”

“Okay. I just— I miss you, but I don’t— I don’t know if I can— I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“That’s alright. Whatever you need.”

“Sugu, do you— you miss me, too, right?”

“Of course I do.”

There was a breathy pause. Satoru seemed to fidget on the other end of the line. “Are you
scared, too?”

And Suguru paused to consider the weight of the question. He tried to map out the
approaches he could take, the avenues of admission, the distance between variables of
vulnerability and desperation, but his brain was scrambled eggs and his heart was held
together by haphazard hot glue, and his mouth was tingly with electricity, and his hands
ached for someone to hold.

“Of course I am,” he admitted. “I’m terrified.”

“I am, too.”

“I know.”

“We’ll figure it out, though, won’t we?”

“We will. One way or another. Even if we have to make it up as we go along.”

“You promise?”

Again, Suguru paused. “Promise.”

He didn’t know if he was making a promise he couldn’t keep, but he knew he was being
truthful, truthful to the melody the wind made when it blew through the holes in his heart, the
holes where the lightning went through.

He would be lying if he said he was not still hateful. He would be lying to pretend that he
was not angry at the skies, angry at the fact that he had survived again, that again he had
been cursed with a blessing, cursed with the impossible odds of his affliction and the
impossible odds of his survival, cursed to walk the earth with a limp in a world where Riko
was dead, and cursed again to live his life with the knowledge that Satoru had saved him.

One-eyed Satoru. Scarred-up Satoru. Satoru who flinched at loud noises twitched when
touched. Satoru who felt every sensation tenfold, his nerves fried and frayed at the ends, his
heart broken so many times that he could no longer categorize the way his stomach churned
at the idea of being abandoned again. Satoru, smiling, despite everything. Satoru, and his
infinite capacity to remain kind where Suguru had let himself go cold and cruel.

Satoru, more than he could have ever deserved, in this lifetime and the next.

Satoru, amen.

Suguru could hardly stand it anymore. He could not stand the feeling of fear that built up like
bile in his belly when he considered the possibility that they would not be able to reconcile,
that Satoru would make his choice and he would not be a part of the ultimate outcome. He
hated the sensation of being small, being powerless, lying in the ultimate mercy of another
man. Gun to his head, he could not understand how Satoru could do it for so many years.

He passed the time in between with pacing around his house, practicing the physical therapy
exercises he had learned five years prior, the first time he was shocked. He leaned up against
walls and felt the floorboards creak beneath his feet. He pressed two hands to his kitchen
countertops and shifted his weight slowly, adding more and more pressure to the lame leg
until the burning sensation became a roaring fire he could no longer stuff down. He stared at
his reflection in the mirror and tried to shave. He failed most mornings. It was an impossible
task, trying to perform that small act of intimacy with oneself, holding up the razor to flesh
that had felt too much of a sting already.

He stopped cleaning his gun. He worried that if he touched that chunk of metal the lightning
would find him again, that he might ionize and explode in an instant, that he might
disintegrate and leave Satoru to pick up his pieces as they scattered about the floor. He
worried over his every move, worried endlessly of the ruin his hands brought wherever they
went, the corrosive effect the oils he secreted seemed to have on everything he touched.

Perhaps that was the reason why he did not attempt to touch Satoru in any meaningful way
the last time they saw one another.

Still, Florida made it easier, which was a sentiment he never thought he might share. The
swampy weather and the humidity that seemed to seep through whatever walls he put up
became a quiet comfort, and the early mosquitoes buzzing in at the tail end of spring gave
him something to chase around the house, something to hunt down and extinguish. Once he
got used to the feeling of the eternal bruise under his left armpit where he kept the crutch, he
started going for walks down the lifeless street he lived on, asphalt underneath him growing
soft and sedentary in the heat of the day, in the moisture clinging to that part of the south. He
walked— crutched, limped, whatever he chose to call it— until he was so tired he worried he
might collapse, at which point he would turn back and head home to nurse his wounds.

He waited for rains, which came often, blowing northward up through the gulf. He waited for
rains, and when they came down, he went out onto his front porch and he talked to God.

It wasn’t prayer. He wasn’t asking for anything. He wasn’t confessing anything. He was just
talking. He was just asking questions, asking them to the rains and the rolls of thunder and
the flickers of lightning far away in the distance, asking them to the only piece of the divine
he could ever get his hands on, outside of Satoru’s body beneath him. He let the wind blow
droplets to kiss his face, and when they rolled close enough to his mouth he licked them away
like tears, and he put his hands together and he tried to let his anger wash away with the
baptismal waters. If he could not understand it— if he was simply not meant to— then he
could at least make his peace with it.

Slowly, he stopped being angry at the skies. He stopped being angry at what they brought
with them— lightning, thunder, all manner of mud and mildew and worms drowning beneath
the dirt wriggling up to the surface for a chance at survival. He stopped being angry at the
way they began to darken, at the ominous feeling it brought to the center of his guts. He
stopped hating it. At the very least, he tried.

And then, three or so weeks after the strike, the rains brought him Satoru, just as they had
when he was a child.

Suguru had woken to a soft knocking at his door in the middle of the night and found him on
his porch, staring at his feet.

He was dripping wet from the downpour, fat droplets rolling down the sides of his neck and
following the lines of the millions of scars on his left side, soaking into the thin fabric of his
old t-shirt, clinging to the stuck-together ends of his hair, more grayish than they were white.
Gone was the gauze the hospital had tied around the crown of his head, replaced instead by a
black concave eyepatch strung behind one ear and over the other temple. One hand was in the
pockets of his cargo shorts, he was wearing socks with his Birkenstock sandals, and it was
only after seeing the old button pinched between a reverent forefinger and devotional thumb
that Suguru realized he was dressed as himself, dressed as himself as a child.

“Do you care if I stay?” Satoru asked, and his voice was soft, like the texture of southern
mud, like the mist that lifts up off the marshes in the mornings.

Suguru blinked with wide eyes, one hand still on the doorknob, one hand balancing himself
on the wall. Before he could stop himself— before he could consider the implications and the
consequences and the difficult, drawn-out conversation they would have to have about their
lives moving forward— he was smiling, and he was reaching out to touch the side of that
face he so adored, covered in fresh wounds and what had once been tears beneath the
eyepatch.

“Come inside,” he said. “Come here.”

And he pulled him in, and the rain rattling against the leaky roof of that barely-above-a-trailer
house became just a little louder, and the frogs were croaking and the crickets were singing
and Satoru was everything, everything, melting in his arms.

Suguru let him borrow some pajamas, made him tea, and sat at the kitchen counter with him
as he drank it. He let one hand glide up and down the length of his spine under his shirt,
drawing soothing circles with his fingertips over aching muscles and sore shoulderblades.
Satoru kept the button in between his fingers, and Suguru kept his eyes trained on the way he
rubbed the pad of his thumb over the sew-through holes and the outer rim, as though it were a
protective talisman or a magic lamp. He could not help but recognize how the plastic itself
had been worn and tarnished over the years, the color within it fading, the surface going
smooth and even under consistent touch, consistent throughout the years they spent apart. He
couldn’t help but let his mind wander as he watched it, wander into the territory of
wondering, and then the wondering became a wishing. He wished, however silently, that
Satoru had carried it in his pocket for years, that he’d kept it in his hands or his mouth or
tucked behind his ear, that some small piece of Suguru was beside him when the rest of him
should have been, that he had still been present in some way through all the years he missed.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” Satoru mumbled in between sips of chamomile, shaking his
head softly. “I can’t stop thinking about us.”

“Neither can I,” Suguru murmured back, and his head came to rest on that shoulder, his nose
pressed against skin, inhaling. Even clothed in Suguru’s old band t-shirt and sweatpants, even
bathed in a scent that had not belonged to him for almost half of a decade at that point, he
still carried that same scent. It was the same one Geto came to understand when he kissed
him up against his truck when they were sixteen, in the shadow of the storm. It was the same
one he wore in the church pews when they laced their hands together and prayed for a
supercell. It was the same one that had enveloped him in the drainage ditch when he woke up
in those arms, bloodied and ruined though they were.

“I feel like— I feel like I might have destroyed things again,” Gojo sighed to himself. “I
thought I— I don’t know. It’s sort of funny, if I think about it hard enough. I got so close to
the ending I wanted and then— and now we’re back where we started. I messed it all up
again. It’s all my fault.”

Geto blinked. “You saved my life, ‘Toru.”

Satoru shook his head, closing his eye, and gave a tiny laugh. “You ruined mine.”

And he was smiling, but he wasn’t really joking, and Suguru didn’t laugh with him. He only
inhaled that scent that he’d known for the better part of his life— and he really did mean the
better part— and tried not to collapse in on himself with the pit of grief twisting in his
stomach.

“I just don’t know what to do anymore, Suguru,” Satoru sighed, sipping the tea as though it
were holy water, as though he liked tea in the first place. “I just— I feel so lost.”

“I know,” Suguru exhaled.

“I know we said we weren’t going to see each other for a while longer, just to ease into
things, but I— I just— I don’t know, Sugu. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep and I just— I got
in my car and started driving south.”

Geto blinked. "For... For eight hours?"

Gojo nodded. "Ten."

"Sweetheart, you could have called me. I would have come to meet you somewhere."

But Satoru shook his head vehemently. "No, it had to be— I had to— fuck," he hissed, letting
his head fold into his hands, propped up on the kitchen counter, and Suguru soothed him with
fingertip circles drawn into his skin. Satoru hoped that they might burn, that they might scar,
that they might join his growing collection and be something he could never lose, something
Suguru could never take away. "I wanted— I wanted to see you here. I wanted to see— see
your home again.”

Suguru sighed through his nose, lifting his head, looking up and around at the dim lightning
of the dim kitchen, at the dishes he hadn't done yet and the stovetop he'd forgotten to scrub
and the broken clock on the oven. "This isn't home," he said.

Satoru seemed to chew at the thought before sighing himself straight again. "I keep missing
you," he said. "I just can't stop."

"I miss you every day. Every morning, when I wake up." Suguru's hands were gentle where
they touched him, gentle where they held him, and they always had been. Even when he got
rough, even when he pinned him to the mattress and took what he wanted, there was a sort of
softness to it that couldn’t be scientifically explained, that couldn't be measured in any
meaningful way. Maybe it was the fact that his rhythm was always, always dictated by the
melody of sounds Satoru made into the pillow. Maybe it was the fact that if Satoru at any
point stopped making those noises, he would be folded over him in an instant, asking if
everything was alright, if he had been too rough with him, if he needed to stop. Maybe it was
because everything— everything he had ever done since he was twelve years old, up until the
point he left him on his knees in that field and kept limping until sunrise— had always been
about Satoru. Every breath, every blink, every beat of his heart, every river flowed outward to
that sea of blue he'd wanted to drown in for as long as he'd known him. "It hurts to miss you
like this, 'Toru."

Nothing could better define him than that feeling, than that certainly chewing him at every
angle. Nothing could better isolate the truth of his broken soul than the gold stitching him
together, than the love that made him soft and pliable and cooperative, the love reflected onto
everything around him in afterimages. Something like sunspots, something like floaters,
something like heat lightning and marks on the wall collected over the years. Something
everlasting, eternal. Something like Satoru.

“We were great together, weren’t we?” Satoru asked, sort of laughing, sort of mourning.

“We were perfect,” Suguru nodded, and he adored the word.

“No, we weren’t,” Satoru nudged him.

“I know,” Suguru conceded, “but we got pretty damn close.”

At the sound of his soft, sad laughter, Suguru allowed one hand to reach up and move
Satoru’s jaw to face him, bringing both left and right side into view, broken and beaming,
ruined and radiant, every part of him perfect, and Suguru adored the word. He adored it
because it was synonymous with Satoru, synonymous with that face, those lips, those cheeks,
that single eye. He did not wait for permission before kissing him again.

He wasn’t able to stay only on his lips for very long. Once the warmth of the tea and the
flavor of honey and milk and chamomile had soaked into his tongue, Suguru understood
magic and he understood how to use it. In moments— moments sewn together from the
scraps of seconds he could pull through the strange feeling coming over them, threaded
through the holes of the button Satoru clung to— Suguru was kissing every scar on his left
side, trying to count them with his lips, trying to measure them in a metric only he could
understand. Satoru was still, but he was melting all the same, and his breaths came deep and
heavy and his hands started to tremble when they found either side of Suguru’s waist and
held him there. He wasn’t kissing him back, wasn’t pressing his forehead in the space where
Suguru’s neck met his clavicle, the space made for him alone. He wasn’t speaking. He wasn’t
crying.

One of Suguru’s hands reached up to slip his thumb under the eyepatch.

“Sugu, don’t,” Satoru whispered, pulling back, shuddering at the touch, at the thought.

“Please,” Suguru breathed against his neck. “I just want to see you.”

Satoru shook his head, trying to push the offending hand away, but not very hard. “It’s ugly.”

“Nothing about you could ever be ugly to me.”

Another moment or so of hesitation, and Satoru relented.

Carefully, as though the other were made of frost and glass, Suguru let his thumb slide under
the cup of the eyepatch and lifted it up.

The temporary stitches holding his lids closed had dissolved, and the socket itself held
somewhat open, pink flesh lined with capillaries and blood vessels under a decidedly strange
upper lid, empty and sagging to meet the other, silver lashes pressed flat against his skin. He
was terribly scarred there, too— one huge gash that seemed to slice that space in half when it
was hit, and it showed in the way the whole thing appeared to contort around itself in a
strange, silent agony. Suguru could only stare for a little while, wet lips parted, eyes softened
and easy at the corners. Satoru looked aside with the eye he had left and chewed the inside of
his cheek, angry and ashamed, a cold sort of shame to the way he protected himself from
being seen. He kept his hands in his lap, one on either thigh, and he gripped the fabric.

“I’m trying to get a prosthetic,” he mumbled to himself, his bottom lip chapped and strange,
Suguru’s saliva lingering, “but Shoko and the other doctors said the damage to the socket was
so extensive that it might not fit correctly, and I don’t—“

He trailed off as Suguru’s thumb brushed against his lower lid, and he winced. Not from pain,
not from sensation, but just by virtue of being known. Being touched. Being seen with two
eyes.

“Sweetheart,” Suguru murmured, and his head was tilted as though examining wounds, as
though trying to map out a task before the wind blew all his notes away.

Satoru shook his head and squeezed his remaining eye shut. The other one tried to shut, too,
but with nothing to close around, the muscles were useless and limp as they contracted.
“Don’t,” he said again, but it was more like a beg, like a plea for mercy. “Please don’t.”

And for a moment or so, Suguru considered drawing back. He considered relenting to
resistance, however untruthful at its core. But he decided against it when he realized that if he
were to pull away, if he were to let his hands drop and let the covering come over that empty
socket again, it would be an admission. It would be a silent agreement that Satoru was what
he says he was— incomplete, disfigured, ugly. It would be a concession against love, against
acceptance. And it would be untrue.

Satoru froze in his arms when Suguru leaned in and pressed a kiss to the empty, unclosing
lids.

They were equally shocked to find that it felt the same as it had all those years ago, when
Geto would wake Gojo up on Saturday morning with lips brushing against his eyelashes, and
Satoru would roll over and laugh into his pillow and try to hide from the ticklish sensation
washing over him, and Suguru would pursue him relentlessly until he was laughing in his
arms and kicking his feet under the sheets and glowing brighter than the early sunlight
coming in through their blinds like streams, like the brushstrokes of angels, like physics itself
bending to smile upon them. Satoru was all but trembling, all but terrified, as Suguru
continued to plant gentle, adoring kisses on the ruined skin surrounding his ruined socket, at
both corners, top and bottom, before trailing up the length of his orbital bone, feeling where it
fractured, where it bruised.

“Oh, ‘Toru,” he breathed, the tip of his nose nudging over scars at his cheek. “Sweetheart.
You’re lovely. You’re just lovely.”

Satoru shook his head in protest, but it was so weak and unenthused that he may as well have
remained still. “No,” he mumbled back, but his voice was strangely pitched and somewhat
broken in his throat. “I’m not.”

“Yes,” Suguru insisted, leaving his face entirely, returning to kiss the deep gashes and ridged
ruins of his epidermis on his neck, the faded marks of Lichtenberg figures seeping back into
skin, their twin scars tying them together like red thread. “You are. You are.”

Satoru’s eye welled up with tears as he snared Suguru in a close hug, burying his face into
that warm, gentle place he used to call home, that he was once proud to call his.
“I love you so much, Satoru,” Suguru murmured against his ear as he held him, honey and
chamomile still rich on his tongue, hands opening and closing around the fabric at the back of
his shirt. “You’re perfect,” he whispered, and he adored the word.

Satoru adored it, too. He adored him.

“I know I can’t fix anything,” Geto continued, rocking him gently from side to side, feeling
shuddering cries against the fabric of his pajama shirt. “I know I can’t get back all the time
we lost, all the nights I should have stayed. I can’t undo what I did. But I know I’m never
going to stop loving you, Satoru.”

Gojo nodded into his shoulder and hugged him tighter.

“Would you let me love you again, ‘Toru?”

And then, with a poorly-concealed break to his voice—

“Would you let me come home?”

He found his answer in the way Satoru seemed to crumble completely against him, and then
they were on the floor of the kitchen clinging to one another like they were back in the
supercell, like they were being thrown around again by the wild winds and ripped apart by
invisible claws. In seconds, they were trapped in that moment, trapped under the all-
encompassing mesocyclone as it lifted them up and hurtled them skyward, parallel to heaven,
parallel to hell, but it was different that time. No longer was Satoru forced to cradle what he
could only assume would soon become a corpse. No longer was he lashed by the currents and
cut open by the debris cloud. No longer did he wrap his arms tightly around that which he so
wanted to protect, that which he would die a thousand different deaths for.

No, that night was different. That night, Suguru was there to hold him close, to dot him all
over with reassuring kisses, to whisper I love you and I’ve missed you and I’m so sorry as
many times as he needed to hear it. That night, he could be soft. He could be safe. He could
be melty and demagnetized and pliable in those calloused hands he had held since he was
twelve years old. That night, he was safe.

They didn’t get into bed for a long, long while, but once they did, they only had the energy to
cradle each other. Satoru was triply exhausted— from the drive south and the chamomile tea
and the hour or so that he spent weeping in Suguru’s arms— but he lay half-asleep for what
felt like hours, drifting in and out of consciousness, washed in a warm and orangey glow
from all sides, Suguru’s gentle touch like the warmest breeze in a springtime storm. He
would let his eye flicker open every now and then, and when he did he saw Suguru kissing
his scars in the darkness, holding his ruined hand with what can only be described as
veneration, pressing velvet-soft lips against each and every cut, every crack, every crevice.
He kissed the ones still healing and the ones beginning to fade, every shade of skin his body
discovered it could produce, deep brown like the color of oak trees and the fleshy pink of an
orchid mantis, disconcerting purple like mulberries smashed into the dirt. Geto kissed them
all unflinchingly, without question, as though receiving the gospels from the mouth of the
honored. He kissed them, and he kissed Satoru to sleep, a lullaby written in skin.
And in the morning, he was still there.

He was there, brushing stray locks of white hair from his forehead, his breath gentle where it
found him, and Satoru had made a humming noise before pulling Suguru against him and
promptly falling back asleep. Those hands that held him had trembled, terrified that they
might grow minds of their own and begin to tear apart what little they had managed to
cultivate in the space between their broken bodies, but it only took a little while of watching
the way Satoru’s chest rose and fell with his steady breathing to bring Suguru back to a
baseline. It only took the smallest kindnesses— the rain, the winds, the contented humming
against skin— to remind him that he was where he was meant to be.

When he looked at that sleeping face, it had all begun making sense. His place in everything
— under the lightning strike, in the notch of the supercell, in the path of the tornado— had
been carefully chosen by some path determined in childhood. His fate had been sealed the
day he took Satoru’s hand in the downpour. Try as he might, he would never be able to
escape the inevitability of the life they would know together, even if they were doomed to
know it separately.

He was just happy to make it up as he went along.

They dedicated the next few weeks to the mundane, to the domestic.

They went to the grocery store together and pretended to argue over which brand of dish soap
to buy. Suguru drove with one hand on the wheel and one hand on Satoru's knee, and Satoru
sang along to all the songs on the radio. They made a mess in the kitchen when they made
banana pancakes for dinner one night and Satoru kept trying to lick the batter off the spatula.
They pulled weeds in the backyard and watered the flowers. They had sex on the couch and
fell asleep watching the weather channel. Satoru liked to lay in Suguru's lap just like he had
all those years ago and scroll mindlessly while his hair was played with, laughing every now
and then, distracting him from the book he was trying to read to show him a dog video. When
the rains came, they went out on the porch to watch it all coming down, and when they saw
lightning flicker in flashes across the skies obscured by Apalachicola trees, their hands found
each other and they refused to run from it, no matter how much they might have wanted to.

They kissed each other goodnight and they kissed each other good morning. They bickered
about the Florida weather and if there was an eight-foot alligator in the nearby pond. They
danced in the living room and Satoru kept tripping over his feet, even though Suguru was the
one with the limp. Satoru called Ieiri and Yuta. Suguru called his sisters and his mother and
his father. They called each other by their nicknames more than they did any pet name. Sugu
and 'Toru was all they could need, all they could want. Sugu and 'Toru lying lazy in bed,
taking long walks on the boardwalks through the bald cypress trees, making love on the
carpet, singing to one another from opposite ends of the house, falling for each other all over
again, as though they had ever fallen away, as though that were even possible.

It was the happiest three weeks of Satoru's life, and for once, it wasn't ripped away.

They didn't say forever. They didn't need to. Some things did not need to be spoken to be true.
The sun shines whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. The leaves die and the flowers
bloom and the rains fall without your permission. The moon changes phases like a snake
changes skins and the tides cycle in and out like the bears crawl to and from their caves each
winter, and all of it will continue onward, always, whether or not you're there to see it, to
touch it, to taste it. Satoru and Suguru knew this fact well enough when they fell into each
other, over and over and over again.

In all his searching— in all the days and weeks and months he spent trying to bend the
equation to a shape of his liking, trying to square it with himself— Gojo never could find the
solution that made sense. He never could unwind the ties that bound them, sewn together like
the fingers they laced in the church as kids, woven like sea netting through every storm that
passed over them. He never could decode the reality of their shared undoing.

Eventually, he stopped trying. It was a useless thing to blow against the wind.

Things were not perfect, no matter how much Suguru adored the word. He suffered from
terrible nightmares and often woke up thrashing, his chest collapsing as every rib cracked and
caved in, his throat closing up and his eyes snapping open and his stomach threatening
mutiny, the afterimages of the lightning strikes and Riko’s corpse and Satoru’s blood-covered
face etched into the undersides of his eyelids, inverted as though viewed through a prism.
They were easier to handle, though, when Satoru was there to sit up with him and run his
hand along the sweat of his back, tracing the hard lines of his trembling body and murmuring
reassurances.

I’m here, he would whisper, no matter how loud Suguru might have been in the seconds
preceding. I’m here. It’s okay. You’re alright. We’re safe.

And sometimes Suguru would collapse into him and they’d lay there breathing for a long
while, long enough for shuddering exhales to return to something slow and sleepy as Satoru’s
scent drew its all-encompassing limbs around his senses, long enough to convince his
scrambled-eggs brain that there was no need to run, nowhere to run to.

Satoru was not unaffected, either. He didn’t suffer from the visceral, vivid nightmares, but he
froze up every now and then, blanking out in the middle of a sentence or pausing at the center
of a task, his eye going dead and strange under his glasses, his brain seeming to short circuit
under no strain at all. He mentioned once that it was an awful, stomach-sinking sort of
feeling, a terrifying few seconds where the body and mind goes still without the heart’s
permission, like one’s controller disconnecting in the middle of a game. He returned from
whatever netherworld he was transported to each time rather quickly, but by that point his
train of thought had long since been derailed and cloudy look of illness would settle over his
remaining eye, and he would go on stuttering and struggling to form his words until Geto
slipped a hand over his or an arm around his shoulder and manually reset him. He would only
relax at the wordless reassurances a simple touch offered him.

They felt it together well enough, but sometimes Suguru felt the edges beginning to fray, and
he would find his legs aching to move again, but not to escape. When he went out on his long
walks— the ones that so mirrored the paths he used to take for hours and hours, days at a
time, wandering the town he used to live in with Satoru until the searing pain in his left leg
had grown to such a fever pitch that he hardly felt it anymore, much in the way that a starving
person adjusts to their extreme hunger until it becomes a baseline— he would not disappear
as he used to. He would tell Satoru he was going out for some air, that he would be back
soon, and not to stay up waiting for him.

Satoru waited anyway. He always waited. He would wait for ten years, if that was what it
took.

Suguru would scold him when he came home to find him awake, watching the weather
channel in the living room— sometimes two hours later, sometimes five— but Satoru
wouldn’t argue. He would only ask if Suguru was feeling okay, if there was anything he
wanted to talk about, anything he could do to make it better. He would ask if he could hold
him. Suguru let him. It got easier after a while.

There was one night, though, that Satoru did not wait up for him, that he lacked the patience
to. There was one night that he followed.

Geto knew he was trailing behind, of course. He could feel it in the wind, in the way it
carried from behind and carried that familiar scent with it, the piece of home that ached after
him like shaking hands ache after something to hold. He could feel that eye on the nape of his
neck, but for the first time in his life, he did not mind being watched, being studied. He
figured that it was just as well— he could never have minded Gojo’s presence. Not anymore.
Not after all they had shared.

After three hours of silence, of steady pace, he spoke to him.

“Aren’t you tired, ’Toru?” He asked without turning around.

“Not really,” came the voice from behind him.

“You can go home if you like. I promise I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Are you telling me not to follow you?”

Suguru paused. He hadn’t really thought about it. “No,” he said, and he adjusted himself to
see that face, thirty or so feet down the dirt path behind him. Soft. Half-hidden. Laced with
concern, decorated with adoration. “I’m just telling you that you don’t have to.”

A small pause.

“Is it alright if I do?” Satoru asked, and Suguru smiled.

“Sure,” he said, “but come and walk beside me.”

And he waited while Satoru closed the gap between them to join him at his side, and they
kept on in silence, only the sounds of their footsteps landing beneath them and the echoing of
the cricket’s cries and the reverberations of frog’s songs ricochetting off the trunks of trees
and the forest of southern conifers and deciduous hardwoods to break the quiet between
them. Satoru did not interrupt his concentration to ask questions or to imply doubt, and
Suguru kept his eyes to the aching ground, to the way his footsteps landed on uneven
altitudes. Soft on the right, sideways on the left, soft on the right, sideways on the left, feeling
his body begin to adjust to that pain, to simplify the equation grinding between his joints, in
the damaged nerves that could never repair themselves.

In time, he found Satoru trying to match his pace, trying to move in lockstep as they loved in
tandem, the movement of his body like a scientific study, trying to replicate the sensation in a
laboratory setting, just to gain some deeper understanding. Soft on the right, sideways on the
left, soft on the right, sideways on the left, his filthy sneakers gathering dust in the same
pattern that Suguru’s boots did, his laces coming undone and dragging behind him, but he
would not break pace to lean down and tie them. He would not sacrifice that solidarity, the
rhythm they kept with their bodies, the matching movements and matching pains that tied
them together like the Lichtenberg figures fading fast on their necks, the electricity that split
in two and split their parallel pathways to converge again. He would not abandon the
afterimages left on the ruined socket of his left side. He would not abandon the beauty he had
found in the mud.

“I’m in love with you,” Suguru reminded him after a long while, after the searing pain had
gone numb again.

“I love you, too,” Satoru returned.

“What I said is different, though, isn’t it?” Soft on the right, sideways on the left, skin
stretching horizontally like a growth spurt, like boyhood.

“Is it?”

“I love you is... It’s more of an action. It’s a verb. Present progressive. I love you. But I’m in
love with you is more of a prepositional phrase. In love. Love being the object, not the verb.”

“I don’t follow.”

“What I mean is, I can’t get out,” Suguru sighed. “I love you, and I’m in it, and it’s the
premise and the conclusion at the same time. I can’t help it. I’m in love with you, and I can’t
help it. If I could help it, I would, but I can’t.”

Satoru touched him with his ruined left hand. “Then I’m in love with you, too.”

“I’m sorry I’m the one you love.”

“I’m not.” The hand touching him tightened its grip slightly, ever so slightly, until it felt
Suguru respond by way of simplicity, of subtle surrender. “Never will be.”

Suguru paused where his left foot landed, crutch beside him, and he stared at the dirt for a
long, long while. Satoru paused with him, but that hand never left him. His heart continued
its steady drum, prayerful in each beat, like a mantra burned into the cells creating him, the
cells within them. Supercell, supercell, supercell, it beat. I love you, I love you, I love you.
Verb, preposition, object, subject, predicate. I love you.

“I’m ready to go home,” Suguru said, his voice soft, and Satoru knew what he meant.
They turned back and returned to what had once felt so natural, to what had once governed
their summers and ruled the blood in their veins.

By the beginning of July, Satoru had booked another plane ticket back to his untrue home—
back to where his research and his responsibilities and his foundations found themselves—
but he was holding back tears at the airport again, just like he had when he was a twelve year
old boy, hopelessly in love with his childhood best friend.

“I’ll see you again soon,” Suguru was reassuring him, a smile on his face, the faintest
glimmer in his eye. “Come on. Buck up. Call me when you land.”

“Can I call you every night?”

“Of course. I’d be worried if you didn’t. Give Shoko my love, okay?”

“She doesn’t want it,” Satoru laughed, and Suguru laughed with him.

“There you go,” he encouraged. “Go on, before you miss your flight. I’ll be with you again
before you know it.”

Satoru leaned in and kissed him, and they held one another for a gentle moment, and then
they whispered their I love yous against each other’s cheeks, and then they were alone again.

For the first time that Suguru could recall, it felt strange.

Not sad. Not relieving. Not even lonely. Just strange. Strange in the sense that wearing socks
with sandals is strange. Strange in the sense that writing with one’s non-dominant hand is
strange. Strange in the sort of sensation a hot flash in winter brings, or passing though a cool
corridor in the heat of summer, or the sight of lightning with no thunder to follow it— heat
lightning, reflected far away in the clouds. It was strange, and it was unsettling, and it was
hated on both ends.

So when Satoru called two days later and asked if he could come home and spend the rest of
the summer with him, Suguru had not fought him on it. In fact, he had sounded somewhat
eager, somewhat uncharacteristic for his usual tone.

“Please,” he said, and he meant every consonant as they kissed the vowels.

Satoru was home in days, and he stayed with him for the duration of the summer, and for a
long while, they cared about nothing beyond the panhandle, beyond where their arms could
reach. For a long while, they focused only on the time they had lost, on the memories they’d
neglected to make. The afterimages clinging to the walls and scrawling themselves across the
empty space hanging before their eyes became something of an ever-present symbol,
something like a protective seal, something like starlight. The world spun all around them but
time seemed to have stopped that summer, a quiet kind of kindness found nowhere else, a
final reminder that they were still there, they were still alive, they were still together.

Suguru fixed his gaze on the certainty of it all and never let his eyes drift away from the one
staring back at him. The supercell swallowed him up and spit him back out, and the
mesocyclone swirled around his head, and thunder roared in his ears like his own blood
stream, and lightning illuminated the darkness when it came to envelop him, and he was
reborn new every morning, with every sunrise, with every blink from the eye he adored
staring back at him, blue like the earth from far away.

***

9:01 a.m., mid-August, the first day of the fall semester. The southern side of campus. Four
months after the storm.

“Are you sure about this?” Suguru asked him again, the crutch becoming cumbersome under
his arm as he kept pace with Satoru’s long strides, their shoes clicking along the glossy
hallway leading to the back entrance of the lecture hall.

“Positive,” Gojo nodded. “Are you? You don’t need to go up there with me if you don’t want
to.”

“So I’ve been told,” Geto yawned. “I was there, too. I have to make sure you tell the story
right.”

The door to the far-east exit unlatched to a darker room, and Satoru dutifully held the door
open for the other to pass through. “I have to warn you, though. These kids are something
else. They might see someone as good looking as me standing next to you and start to go a
little bit unhinged—“

“Shut up,” Suguru elbowed him, and Satoru laughed. “We’re doing this. Otherwise, they’ll
never leave you alone.”

He had a hand on the small of Satoru’s back as they rounded the corner and stepped into the
light of the large lecture hall, a 300-seater made for classes much more broad than the one
Satoru would be teaching that semester. Okkotsu met them at the top of the five or six stairs
as they made their way up.

“We have a problem,” he said, a little exasperated.

Satoru’s eye widened a slight touch as his ears caught the soundwaves of a thousand separate
chatterings bouncing off the cavernous walls of the room, the acoustics carrying voices better
than an ocean current, and with one look at the audience gathered, he knew exactly what his
TA meant.

“There’s no way this many people are signed up for an Advanced Atmospheric Sciences
course,” Suguru muttered to himself, tucking a stray lock of hair behind his ear, running his
fingertip along the piercing he found there.

“They aren’t,” Satoru said, and he couldn’t help but laugh as he turned back to Yuta. “I guess
word got around of my heavily-anticipated return?”
“I guess so,” Okkotsu conceded with a bit of exhaustion, before crossing the raised platform
with them to the podium where he was still attempting to get the projector screen to
cooperate.

The chattering from the tiered rows of sets seemed to grow louder as the majority of students
recognized the entrance of the awaited Dr. Gojo, and his ears caught bits and pieces of
conversation as they pertained to him, each one stirring the interest sitting at the bottom of
his stomach like a stone. I told you the eyepatch thing was real, one student scolded another.
A bolder voice made a subtle pointing gesture to the left arm coming out from his short-
sleeved shirt, remarking something like it didn’t look that bad in the picture I saw. A familiar
voice— young, bright, too much volume— was being scolded by the one next to it when he
said oh my god, dude, this is just like that scene in Human Earthworm 3 when the
protagonist…

“You’re gonna let this popularity go to your head, aren’t you?” Geto sighed as Gojo set his
bag down at this feet and pulled a thumb drive from his pocket. Yuta relinquished control of
the projector screen and began to gather up cords from the side of the podium.

“Definitely,” Satoru grinned back. “Don’t worry. I’ll be civil.”

Suguru hummed a laugh, and Satoru switched his microphone on. A few taps against the
foam shield, and the room quieted. He softened on the exhale as he eased back into the
teacherly role he could perform so well, becoming pliable and simple, wax in the sun.

“Alright,” Dr. Gojo nodded, straightening his spine, “let’s take it from the top. Who in here is
registered for my class?”

About half of the hands in the room rose.

“If you raised your hand, you can stay. Everybody else has to go.”

A resounding grumble from the remaining students, but no one moved. They seemed to titter
between each other, their eyes still flickering back up to the podium, back up to the projector
screen beginning to glow a whiter shade on gray canvas. Satoru sighed and shook his head.

“I let this get out of hand, didn’t I?” He mumbled to the one at his side, still smiling, a little
more sheepish on the way he bit his teeth.

“Sure did,” Suguru remarked, folding his arms over his crutch.

“Okay then,” Satoru said, turning back to the lecture hall, his grin morphing into something
more like an exasperated but genuine smile. “Since it’s syllabus day and I’m going to tell the
story anyway, the rest of you can stay, but only for this one class. If I see any unregistered
students in here after today, it’s a write-up. Deal?”

“Can’t write all of us up,” a small voice mumbled from the front row.

“My TA can,” Satoru replied, and Okkotsu gave him a mortified look, which made him laugh
behind closed lips. His eye began to ache just a bit as he focused hard on the individual faces
against the sea of strangers, the students he’d known in years prior or from the meteorology
club he neglected to properly sponsor. “Let’s see… I sort of anticipated this happening, so
here’s how we’re going to do things. I’m going to take five or six questions, and then I’ll tell
the story, and then we’ll review the syllabus. Sound good? Keep in mind, I’m only telling this
story once, so I don’t want anyone asking me about it during classes after this, got it?”

The room concurred. Between 40 and 50 hands shot up.

“Let’s see,” Satoru hummed, throughly enjoying himself, oblivious to the way Suguru rolled
his eyes at his side. “How about… Oh, Megumi! My favorite freshman! How about you?”

Fushiguro folded his arms in the fifth row, his cheeks going pink. “I wasn’t raising my hand.”

“Right, sorry. Still getting used to the one eye, you know,” Gojo feigned ignorance. “Itadori,
you ask good questions most of the time. Let’s hear it.”

Itadori beamed beside Fushiguro as he was picked. “Is that the guy from the picture?” He
asked, much too loud for what the acoustics of the room demanded, and he pointed squarely
at Suguru.

Geto folded his arms over his crutch and narrowed his eyes. “It’s rude to point, you know,”
he said, and Megumi immediately responded by smacking the back of Yuji’s skull.

Gojo laughed nervously. “I’m being rude, too. I completely forgot to introduce you. Or would
you like to introduce yourself?”

He considered for a moment or so before raising his chin a little higher and addressing the
bubblegum-colored student, who had started to rub at the lump forming at the back of his
head.

“Suguru Geto,” he stated plainly. “Extreme weather photographer, currently working with the
meteorology department on a few current projects. I was involved in the accident.”

“Is that why your leg is all messed up?” Itadori blurted out again, and was promptly
reprimanded by Fushiguro with another smack upside the head.

“No, this is from the first time I got struck by lightning,” Suguru explained, seeming rather
bored. “The second time certainly didn’t help, though.”

The room rose into chatter again.

“Okay, alright,” Gojo quieted them. “Let’s see… third row, middle seat, red glasses. You’re
in the meteorology club, right?”

“Do you still have an eye under there?” The young woman— Maki Zen’in, he thought,
though she looked too much like her twin sister to tell— ignored him. “Or is it, like, a
crater?”

“Nope, total enucleation. Just a socket,” Gojo replied cheerfully. “Alright. Blue hair in the
way way back, what’s your question?”
She seemed startled at being chosen, a look of bright engagement coming over her eyes.
“Um, is— is it true that you faked your death?”

Gojo laughed, as did most of the room. Geto put a hand over his mouth to cover his own
smile. “No,” Satoru answered. “That was a rumor that got out of hand. Honestly, I’m
disappointed with your generation’s lack of media literacy. Aren’t you kids supposed to be
the ‘net natives’ or whatever the sociology department is calling you these days?”

“But you did die, right? It was a stormchasing accident? The news article said—“

“Technically, I didn’t die at all, because I’m standing right here,” Satoru explained with more
grace than was necessary for the situation, tilting his head. “But if we’re speaking
figuratively, I died three times. I’ll tell that part in the story, though. Anyone else?”

“Let me pick one,” Geto nudged him, then motioned with his head to an auburn-haired
student near the third row, who appeared quite busy trying to steady her cellphone with one
manicured hand while also keeping the other raised. “I think I found the kid behind the
account.” Satoru laughed and nodded at him.

“You, taking the picture,” Gojo called her out. “What’s your question?”

The young woman flinched slightly at being caught in the act, but her cool returned to her
with a light smirk, brown eyes narrowed under bangs tucked behind one ear.

“Off-topic question,” she said, rising from her seat with a rather attentive look, folding one
hand onto her hip while the other clung lazily to the offending cellphone. “Can we get a fit
check?”

The room laughed again. Satoru laughed with them.

“Well, sorry, but it’s not too interesting this time,” he apologized, stepping out from behind
the podium with a little less precision than he normally would have expected from himself.
Suguru cringed slightly at how eager he was to show off the decidedly discordant outfit he
had chosen that morning, but behind the hand that came up to cover his mouth and rub at the
hollows of his cheeks, it was obvious that he was smiling. “The top is Banana Republic, the
belt is something from Amazon, I think I got these pants for Christmas a million years ago,
and the shoes are Tom Ford.”

“What about the eyepatch?”

He grinned. “Custom.”

“And the engagement ring?”

A muted chatter and scattered snickering from all corners of the lecture hall as Satoru’s
cheeks twinged pink before he could catch his bloodflow at the neck. The upper hand
vanished with his resolve. “Well— I mean, I’m not sure where I— it was a gift, so—“

“Heirloom,” Suguru answered flatly, and the room went electric.

Normally, Satoru would have done one of two things. One— he could lean directly into the
embarrassment, the adrenaline-rush feeling of being shy like a teenager with a crush, and
tried to pass it off with his students as a joke, laughing too hard and too obviously and
exposing himself to a greater degree than he would have if he simply kept his mouth shut.
Two— he could lean directly into Suguru, to let himself go red in the cheeks as he slung his
arm around that shoulder, owning it for everyone to see, the joy in his heart radiating outward
from his face, illuminating him from behind like a halo, like Saint Elmo’s fire. That day,
though, he could not quite will himself to do either. That day, all he wanted to do was cry.

Nothing of shame, nothing of embarrassment. Nothing but the ionizing feeling in the center
of his chest when he was reminded that it was real, that it was true, that it was evidenced by
the fact that he could feel the ring around his finger and the fact that everyone else could see
and perceive and interpret it, that Suguru was standing at his side. As the room full of
students chattered excitably— full of strangers, full of kids, full of people the age he had
been when he had fallen so deeply and so irreconcilably in love, only a few years younger
than the age he had been when he lost his home and his heart and his sense of self and had to
claw it all back from the whipping winds around him— he could feel nothing but his eye
starting to sting when he was reminded that he had made it out. He had survived the storm,
survived the strike. He had chosen the outcome and he liked how it landed.

He could only stare at Suguru’s smiling face beside him and fight back the saltwater rushing
to his right eye, choking it all down, promising himself that he’d let it all out later.

Suguru nodded at him, and he continued.

“Alright, alright, last question, and then we get to it,” Satoru reminded the buzzing lecture
hall. “Let’s see… Oh? Megumi, you actually have a question?”

“I do, yeah,” Fushiguro said, sitting up a little straighter in his seat, retaining the look of
boredom he wore before. He seemed to bite at the question before he asked it. “After what
happened, are you going to chase storms again?”

Gojo and Geto both paused. They shared a glance, something unspoken and undefined, but
nonetheless understood perfectly. They mirrored each other’s grins as they turned back to the
lecture hall.

“Absolutely,” Satoru answered. “It’ll take more than a lightning strike to keep me out of the
rain.”

He was not lying.

He and Suguru would find themselves flying down the highway soon enough, hands tightly
holding in the empty space above the gear shift, the glow emanating again from the center of
their bodies, from the genesis point of their twin scars, from the temperatures between them
that swirled together in a cyclone until it had become a self-perpetuating prophecy, a tornado
of sincere and certain magnitude, a life sentence served with eager hearts. The afterimages of
their love and the tracks it had made in the earth were reflected everywhere in the walls of
their skulls, the backs of their eyelids, floaters and sunspots and hallucinatory visions and
 fever dreams, and they inhaled them like oxygen, and they expelled them like everything
else.

The rains came down and the world was drowned out, the sun vanished behind vast
stormclouds and the Coriolis effect governed the rightward motion of all things, and the
injuries on the left sides of their bodies had become part of their hearts in a way that no stitch
or prosthetic or crutch ever could. They laced their fingers together and repeated that prayer
they had come to know by heart, that simple and promising plea, that love they’d grown
together.

Supercell, they prayed. Supercell. Supercell. Supercell.

Chapter End Notes

The end <3

Of everything I have ever written, Supercell is closest to my heart. I can’t believe this
whole story was created and completed in less than a month, and I can’t believe I have
to end it. It is so painful and so fulfilling. I love this story with my whole heart, and it
means so much to me that it meant something to a lot of other people, too.

If you made it this far, thank you from the bottom of my heart for your time and support
:) it truly means the world to me, and I’m happy that my angsty stormchaser gego fanfic
was able to provide a little entertainment to your life. I assure you that I have read every
single comment and cherished every one. Thank you so much for all the kudos and kind
words, I can’t put into words how much it warms my heart.

EXTRA SPECIAL SHOUTOUTS: thank you to the three gegooners sitting around a
campfire (you know who you are) who were the first to share my fic around. I loved
reading all your reactions and invading your twitter space to cause problems. Thank you
to everyone who drew art for this pic over on twitter as well— sim @6eyesluvr , jeheron
@yuronmydck , Moogs @mooogless , snailcow @snailcow1 , jam @zaabjam , mzeph
@kairaccs keini @vmpykeii and anyone else I may have missed (comment or dm and
I’ll edit to add you!). EXTREME ENORMOUS GIGANTIC SHOUTOUT/I LOVE
YOU to Ivy, my brain twin and sweetest friend, for being so awesome and cool and
letting me send her a billion voice memos a day. She’s sugurugetosbangs on AO3, go
check out academic weapon NOW!!!

Plugging my twitter @ one last time if you want to come and find me! I promise I am
Fun and Normal and I have a LOT to say about satosugu. @monkeysmustlive

I will be writing again very very soon. Trust me, I can never stay away from my notes
app for long. If you like my writing style, consider sticking around :)

Thank you again to everyone who took the time to read Supercell <3 I hope this fic
meant as much to you as it did to me.
Please drop by the Archive and comment to let the creator know if you enjoyed their work!