Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"I give up," Satoru said, walking in and collapsing across the couch, face-planting into one of the cushions.

Shoko, lounging comfortably across the opposite end of their expansive U-shaped couch, closed her book and set it down on the coffee table, aware that there would be no hope of returning to her reading until Satoru's bemoaning had concluded. "That bad, huh?"

"It's not worth it," Satoru mumbled into the fabric. "I'm never dating again. Love is made up."

"I'm engaged," Shoko pointed out.

Satoru was briefly quiet as he considered the fact that Shoko was engaged and she seemed to be genuinely happy with Utahime, which was a significant point against his 'love is made up' theory. He lifted his head, propping himself up on his elbows, and amended: "Love only exists for lesbians."

Shoko swirled the red wine in her glass. "I'm bisexual."

Wrinkling his nose, Satoru reassessed the linguistic and cultural factors influencing his theory. "But have you ever been in love when a dude was involved."

"Touché," Shoko conceded. She took a sip of the wine. "Counterpoint: you're bisexual."

"Shoko," Satoru scoffed. "How dare you bring facts and logic into this? What kind of friend are you? I am suffering."

"Gimme the post-mortem," Shoko said, wiggling her fingers at him.

Eager to complain more expansively, Satoru immediately rolled over to sit. He grabbed one of the pillows on the couch and hugged it, pouting as he mentally unpacked his date and considered where to start. "Like, he was fine, mostly. Honestly we had pretty good banter. We were funny together. But I felt … I don't know, prickly, I guess. Like all my banter was sharp and defensive. At one point he said, 'wow, you really are a brat', with this smirk on his face like he was looking forward to the opportunity to do something about it. And even though—as we've, y'know, discussed—"

"You are a brat," Shoko agreed, circling her hand in his direction as though she was presenting something. "And you kind of do want someone to do something about it."

"Right. But it just … got my hackles up, because I wasn't at all convinced that I wanted him to do something about it."

"So don't see him again." Shoko shrugged, one brow tugging in and the other going up. "Why the extra drama?"

"Because of the chickens."

Shoko had been lifting her glass toward her lips, about to take a sip, but at this she put the glass down entirely. "The … chickens."

"He has pet chickens."

Twisting to set her feet on the floor so that she could face him more fully, Shoko steepled her hands, breathed in, breathed out, and then spread her hands again, judging this a dismissible offense. "Lots of people keep chickens. It's quirky, but I guess if you have the space for a chicken coop and you want fresh eggs? It's like, a step more intense than rooftop gardening."

"No," Satoru said, weighting the word heavily. "Pet chickens."

Shoko's brows pulled together. She regarded him warily. "Defined as …?"

"Indoor chickens. Apartment chickens."

"Indoor chickens," Shoko repeated, pointing a finger in a sort of wiggly figure eight motion around their floor, tracing the path of an imaginary chicken. "Like just running around?"

"Right. He said they were very cuddly."

Shoko's hands steepled again. She opened her mouth. Shut it. Flattened her lips into a line. Opened her mouth but still took an extra second to think before she managed words. "How do you … house train … a chicken?"

"You don't."

Sucking her lower lip into her mouth, Shoko furrowed her brows in an expression of real suffering. "So there's just …" The wiggly pointing gesture again. "Chicken shit. Everywhere."

"No."

Shoko dropped her face into her hands. "Stop with the antici … pation."

"They wear chicken diapers."

Lifting her face from her hands, Shoko stared into space with an expression of bewildered horror, eyes darting around as she processed through this. "Chicken diapers."

"He showed me a picture."

"No. I can't. How do you … no."

"They kinda looked like little face masks, but a bit more tented. With straps. Cute colors and everything."

Shoko whimpered. She picked up her wine and knocked back a large swig.

"Imagine me, Shoko," Satoru went on, falling back into the couch cushions and pressing the back of his hand to his brow like he was swooning. "Freshly brat-tamed, naked and bound, recovering on the couch and being cuddled by an endiapered chicken."

"You're right," Shoko said, shaking her head with a thousand-yard stare. "You should never date again."

They lapsed into silence for a minute. The other minor amusing or annoying details about the date all seemed insignificant in the wake of the Chicken Diapers revelation. Satoru got up, walking around the couch and heading for the kitchen. Shoko lifted her almost-empty wine glass. He took it as he went past.

Grabbing a blackberry ramune from the fridge, Satoru set it on the counter while he took the open wine bottle out of the fridge and refilled Shoko's glass, bringing it back and putting it in her hand. "Your rancid grapes, madam."

"Thanks, babe," she said, smirking as she took the glass and sipped.

Satoru sank back down on his end of the couch, staring out the window at the Tokyo skyline. Thousands of lit windows filled with tens of thousands of people finishing up their evenings and getting ready for bed. He wondered how many of them were happy and in love; how many were resigned to relationships without love; how many were alone. "Seriously, though. I'm done."

"With dating? You won't last a month."

"I'm tired, Shoko. It's not good for me. And we're in our mid-thirties now. Anyone quality is already in a relationship." Satoru cracked his soda open, slumping down on the couch and tipping the bottle toward his mouth. Fruity sugar coated his tongue, but it failed to cheer him. "No one's left but undateable disasters."

"Implied: like you."

Satoru tipped his drink in her direction to agree with this implication, even though his eyes remained on the glitter of the city lights.

"If I have news you're not gonna like," Shoko started.

Satoru's drink paused midway to his lips.

"Do you want to hear it now, or would that just be piling unfairly on your bad mood?"

"Hm." Satoru sipped his drink. The blackberry flavor was not very good. They'd put too much food coloring in it to make it dramatically black, as a promotional tie-in for an anime he liked. "Well, it would be unfortunate to ruin a hypothetical future good mood. Hit me."

"I want to move in with Utahime."

Satoru took another sip of his soda. There were times that he wished he drank alcohol and that it had the effect on him that it seemed to have on other people. Something to make everything fuzzy and less painful sounded really appealing at times like this.

"When did you take brain damage?" Satoru inquired. He kept looking out the window instead of at her. "Was I there? I don't remember you taking brain damage. Is that what love is? Brain damage?"

Shoko pulled her knees up to her chest, then reached for the throw blanket on the couch to drape it over her legs. "I mean, we've been engaged for months. You had to have expected this sooner or later."

"I figured that 'engaged' was just the next level of dating. A lot of times, relationships are healthier when you live separately, you know. You could be married with different residences. It would work." The blackberry ramune was sticky and cloying on his tongue. He really liked blackberry as a flavor in general, but this was just unfortunate.

"This factoid about healthy relationships brought to us by which peer-reviewed sociology publication, exactly?"

Satoru pointed a finger in her direction. He still didn't turn to look at her. "That came very close to being a low blow about me not knowing shit about healthy relationships."

"I would never." Shoko scoffed. He could hear the smile in her voice.

"So you're just going to leave me all alone with my inevitable future pet chickens?"

"Ugh," Shoko said, laughing.

Finally rolling his head in her direction, Satoru grinned, feeling a little bit more emotionally stable when he had something to be ridiculous about. "What color diapers do you think I should get for them?"

"Augh, stop." Shoko threw a pillow at him. "Listen, I'll help you find a replacement. I won't leave until we find someone you're reasonably willing to try living with."

This was a surprising commitment when Shoko knew how picky and difficult he could be. Satoru blinked at her. "I mean if the roommate search goes anything like the dating search you could be stuck with me forever."

"I have someone in mind," Shoko said. "I just wanted to clear it with you, first."

Satoru narrowed his eyes. "Who?"

"Geto Suguru, I've mentioned him before, remember?"

"Sure, the imaginary childhood friend."

Shoko set down her wine so that she could grab a pillow and whack him with it. "He is not imaginary!"

"I have known you for years," Satoru argued, yelping and trying to use his own pillow as a shield. "I have never met this guy."

"He's busy!"

"He's made up."

Huffing indignantly, Shoko gave him one last pummel with the pillow and then sat back down. "Well, good news, now you finally have the opportunity to meet him."

Satoru whined and melted farther down the couch, which landed him on the floor. He tipped his head back onto the couch cushion and plopped the pillow he was holding over his eyes. "Can't believe my fate is to have an imaginary roommate and chicken diapers."

Condensation slid down the side of Suguru's beer as he stared numbly at it. He pressed a fingertip to the glass to catch a bead of it that had gathered enough weight to skid downward. It swelled against his nail for a moment, then slid down the crevice alongside where his finger touched the glass. He felt the impulse to lick it off, but ignored that.

Shoko dropped into the booth by his side. "Wow, deep contemplation. Earth to Suguru?"

Shaking his head to try and slough off his weighty mood, Suguru put a friendly smile on his face. She tipped her chin down and her eyebrow up to say that she didn't buy it. He gave it up.

"Who kicked your puppy?" Shoko went on, wiggling out of her jacket like it was strapped on. Suguru was a little in awe of how she made the process of shedding a jacket look like a full-on wrestling match. "Did someone tell you that you aren't pretty? Do you need me to beat them up?"

A genuine smile tugged very slightly at the corner of Suguru's lips at the thought of his much smaller friend beating up someone in the defense of him, the martial arts expert with an array of national and even international championship wins. It was a dumb joke, but she knew perfectly well that it always worked on him.

"Just gloominess." He shook his head, trying again to dislodge a little of his sour mood so that he could be better company for his friend. His best friend, really, and kind of his only friend. He had plenty of acquaintances on good terms, he was well liked by his students in the dojo and his contacts in the wider jujutsu community, but the list of people he would make time to hang out with on a purely social basis had only a single name on it. "Nothing new."

She flagged down a waiter and ordered her own beer, then returned her attention to Suguru, poking him in the side until he squirmed and another smile threatened at his lips. "Tell me anyway."

"It's seriously nothing new," Suguru warned, pulling a face because he couldn't stand his own moody self-pity. He'd always been too busy to indulge his own melancholy disposition, but lately he found himself with spare time and no idea what to do with it. "I have this feeling like I'm missing out on life. I always have, really. Watching other people spending their teens and twenties going to parties and clubs, and I just had … work. And taking care of the girls. And while I wouldn't trade them and the dojo and my championship career for anything, now that I'm retired from competitions and the dojo is established, the girls are in college …"

"What are you supposed to do with yourself, at the ripe old age of 34?" Shoko supplied when he trailed off.

"Yeah." Suguru sighed and took a swig of his beer. "I feel like I missed my chance and now it's too late to get started. The people who want relationships are already married, and most people actually have relationship experience rather than just a string of meaningless hookups, so it looks weird that I don't. Plus, most of the gay guys on any of the apps are just looking for hookups. That used to be what I was looking for, because I didn't have the time or energy to offer anyone more than that, but now … I don't know. I want a relationship, but even now that I have that time and energy to offer …"

He fell quiet, struggling to find the words, and Shoko nudged him again. "What?"

"I sleep on a futon in the office of the dojo, Shoko. There isn't room in my life for a relationship."

Nodding, Shoko rested her hand on his arm, rubbing her thumb soothingly against the muscle. She didn't offer advice, she just listened and was present for him. It was one of the many things he appreciated about her.

"I know," Shoko said. "You've talked about it. You want to have a grown-up place of your own, to feel like a successful adult, but also …"

"But also it feels like such a meaningless thing to want," Suguru said, scowling at himself. "My entire life I've spent just barely scraping by, and now that I have savings, the idea of spending it on an apartment makes my whole body tense up. I do just fine in the dojo. I have somewhere to sleep, a shower with generous amounts of hot water, and a microwave. That's more than lots of people. I want an apartment so that then I can have an actual adult relationship and seem like I'm normal and well-adjusted or something, but it also just seems like a waste of money. The whole thing—me wanting a relationship—feels like vanity."

There was no response from Shoko. The waiter came by and set down her beer. At first, her silence was a thoughtful, safe space, where he could lay his worries without feeling judged, but then it stretched on too long and his frown turned worried. "Shoko?"

"Sorry." She shook her head, coming out of her own reverie. "You're right, it's not anything new. And they're valid desires, valid concerns. I really want you to find a relationship with someone who makes you happy, and Tokyo rent prices are insane."

"Okay," Suguru said, turning more towards her and nudging her in return. "Enough retreading topics about my moodiness. What's up with you?"

"Actually, um," Shoko said, fiddling with her beer coaster instead of looking at him. "It's kind of tangentially related."

Suguru felt his brows furrow further, at a loss for what topics she might have that would be in any way tangentially related to his relationship woes or housing situation. "Um?"

"I want to move in with Utahime. Since we've been engaged for a few months now."

"Oh." Suguru blinked a few times, feeling the pieces of this puzzle starting to shift but mostly blank spaces left as he started to try and fill it in. "Yeah, of course."

"But I'm not quite halfway through my two-year lease …"

Understanding started to dawn, and Suguru was startled by how much it felt like his whole world tilted on its axis at the mere possibility. "You want me to take over your lease."

"Potentially. If you get along with my roommate."

Brow furrowing deeply, Suguru stared at his beer, starting to rotate the glass between his hands just to have something to do. Roommate, sure. Not a problem. If Shoko could live with this person, they were probably fine. It was the money that stressed him out. He ran numbers like this in his head all the time, calculating how much he needed, how much he spent. All his life he'd stretched every yen and still felt like it wasn't enough. Now that he had some savings built up, he wanted to hoard it protectively. His mind was a constant anxious knot of worries about what if something happened, what if there was an emergency, what if the girls needed help, what if he couldn't work anymore … His shoulders were rising, already bracing himself for the number she was going to tell him. Shoko lived in Minato. She talked sometimes about how it was a nice place. With a view. He felt sick.

"How much," Suguru said, glaring at his beer like he might need to fight it.

"Seventy thousand."

Suguru blinked. He blinked more. Maybe there was something wrong with his ears. He must have missed the first digit. One-seventy would be a steal for half the monthly rent on a nice place in Minato. Two-seventy would still be a bargain for a nice place with a view. "What-seventy thousand?"

"Nothing-seventy thousand. Seventy thousand even."

"In Minato," Suguru said, disbelieving.

"Satoru owns the place," Shoko explained. "His family comes from money. He can afford to be generous."

Suspicious, Suguru studied her. "Are you just insanely in love with Utahime, or is there some kind of catch?"

Her hesitation was damning.

"Shoko." Suguru folded his arms and gave her a stern look.

"It's not a catch," Shoko insisted. "I don't like talking about him like there's a catch. Satoru's got a huge heart and he's one of my closest and most trusted friends."

"But?" Suguru prompted.

"He's high-maintenance," Shoko confessed. "He's needy, he's chatty, he has no sense of personal space boundaries. He forgets to eat. You don't have to feed him, but you do have to check in on a daily basis like 'hey Gojo, have you eaten today' and then keep asking him that hourly until he actually eats something."

"He's a grown adult who needs babysitting," Suguru summarized.

"He's one of my two best friends," Shoko said, flicking his arm.

Suguru continued glowering, not ready to be pacified. "Who's the other."

She flicked his arm again. "Just meet him, will you? See the place."

Jaw tight, Suguru kept up his glower.

"As a personal favor to me," Shoko insisted. Another flick to his arm.

Suguru grumbled and looked away, knowing that he had no hope of holding out against her. If he didn't fold now, she'd turn on the puppy eyes. "I'll meet him."