brat | track ten
untitled
producer!suguru x popstar!reader
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wc: 9.4k
content: talking talking talking. maybe this one should've been named talk talk.
a/n: so far away fans i made this for you.
songs (not previously) mentioned: claws by charli xcx, so far away by charli xcx
taglist is closed!
18+ please <3
[ february seventeenth ]
your walk was supposed to be forty minutes.
it’s a thing you do here, the walking. you leave in the morning without a plan and end up two neighborhoods over, and then your nail salon has an opening, then it’s one in the afternoon and you haven’t eaten.
you’re almost home now. you turn onto your street with your hands in your jacket pockets, doing the math on whether it’s worth stopping somewhere instead of cooking, until you look up.
he’s on your stoop.
you stop.
his headphones are on, the big ones he always travels with. black hoodie under a jacket that’s not warm enough, backpack slumped against the step beside him. he’s smoking, staring at nothing across the street, and he hasn’t seen you yet.
so you get a few seconds of him unattended.
he crossed an ocean. he came to a city he has said, more than once and with feeling, that he hates, and he’s waiting outside a door without knowing if you’re even there.
is that his first cigarette?
no, you answer yourself, and you don’t know how you know, except that there’s a specific way he holds the last of multiple.
he’s been out here a while.
you make yourself move. berlin has been good to you, but standing frozen in the middle of the street is its own kind of conspicuous. and that’s your door. he’s in front of it. there’s no other direction this goes.
he immediately corrects his posture when he sees you coming. he stubs the cigarette against the step, stands, pulls the headphones down all in what seems like one motion. he wipes his palms on his thighs.
then he smiles at you. his almost-smile, like he’s been caught.
you find that you’re smiling back. you’re not sure what to say other than the first thing in your head.
“have you eaten?” you ask.
he looks relieved that you said anything at all. “i had something on the plane.”
“how long ago was that?”
he picks up his bag. “not that long ago.”
you can tell he’s lying by that stupid smile.
“okay,” you say anyway. “come on.”
+++
your favorite restaurant is four blocks from your apartment. it’s small and mostly empty this time of day. you’re greeted by the same woman who always greets you and she waves you toward the table by the window you’ve used since you first came.
suguru takes the chair across from yours. when a waiter comes by with water he looks at you.
so you order. soup for both of you, because if you’re cold he must be freezing. coffee, too. you get about half of it right and gesture through the rest and the waiter fills in the blanks.
when he goes, suguru is still looking at you.
“what?”
“nothing,” he says.
it isn’t nothing, and you know what it is, because you just watched suguru geto sit at a table with his hands in his lap and wait to be told what he’ll be eating.
he doesn’t seem to mind it. in fact, he looks a bit like he’s enjoying himself. then he exhales long.
“i should’ve told you everything when it started,” he says.
there it is.
you set your phone face-down on the table. you didn’t think he’d jump right into it, but it’s not the first surprise of the day. “why didn’t you?”
“something was happening with you,” he says. “with us. after the studio, the night with satoru. you were—” he stops. starts again. “you were different for a couple weeks. more open.”
you remember. you remember being like that.
“and i know you don’t like when i say it but it really was supposed to be nothing.” he turns his glass. “two hours of work. it didn’t seem worth it to bring her name up when you were finally relaxed.”
“and then?”
“by the time it was something i had to tell you, there wasn’t a clean way to say it anymore.” a pause. “so i didn’t.”
you nod. you don’t mention that you’d already known. not the details, obviously, but you’d felt it before you had any evidence.
“did you know what she was doing?” you ask.
he shakes his head.
“at all?”
“not until the photo.” he says it flatly. “i knew what it was the second i saw her post, and i knew you’d know. then the song, and by then—”
“yeah.”
the coffee comes. you wait until the waiter’s gone.
“was there a moment where it might’ve been something?”
“no.”
you believe him. it catches you off guard that you do because he’s said that it was nothing before, with a lot more urgency than this, and it hadn’t touched you at all.
it also means the whole thing could’ve been a five-minute conversation in july. you’d have taken it then. you would’ve been harsh about it and made him work, but you’d have taken it, and it would have ended there.
“i stopped wanting to talk about it,” you say.
he listens.
“the label was up my ass for something after sympathy. anything, as long as it had both our names on it.” you turn your spoon over on the napkin. “angel was done and it felt relevant, so i finished it and gave them that.”
you wait to see if he’ll say something. he just sits there letting the silence get uncomfortable, and it occurs to you that he’s not going to help. so you continue.
“i picked sukuna to hurt you.”
he already knows that part. you said a version of this to him the last time you fought—so i did. i wanted you to see it—and you’d said it to cut him. that’s not the part you need to say now.
“i knew what he’d be like on set. i knew what it would look like and that you’d be looking.” your voice is steady. “and i kept doing it. the runways, the parties. i made sure everything with him happened where you could see it.”
you watch a waitress set down two plates and say something at the next table, because the next part is ugly and you’d like ten more seconds.
“it worked. it hurt you, and i liked that it did. i didn’t guess, either.” it comes out quiet. “i knew exactly what to do. all those years of knowing what really gets to you, and i used all of it.”
it doesn’t land the way you’d braced for. his eyes stay soft in a way that doesn’t make sense.
“okay,” he says.
“okay?” you ask, uncertain.
“i knew pretty early. you cast a man i can’t stand in a video for our song and put your own name on the direction. i’m not an idiot.”
“i didn’t say you were an idiot.”
“you did once.”
it surprises a small laugh out of you and he looks pleased with himself.
“it wasn’t the video or him being touchy with you. i hated it, but it wasn’t that.”
you frown. “then what?”
he sips his coffee. you can see him deciding not to deflect.
“you were so you with him. in photos and in real life.” he says it to the table. “you’d laugh and lean in when he spoke to you.” he sets the cup back down. “i used to have to work for it.”
that one stings.
“i wanted you to be like that with me again,” he says. “that’s all it was, in the end.”
you think for a moment. “i’m not sorry about the video,” you say.
he waits.
“i mean it. i’d make it again exactly the same.” and you would. it felt good to make it and you’re proud of the result. “i’d just take back everything after.”
he’s quiet.
you think that’s it. you’ve each said your piece. the food will come, you’ll eat, and it’ll be a different conversation. you sip your coffee.
“i let it happen.”
you look up.
he has both hands around his cup and he’s looking down.
“the whole thing after. the going out every night, not sleeping, all of it. i knew what we were doing.”
“suguru—”
“no, let me.” he says it gently. “i was supposed to know when it was time to take you home. it was my job. i didn’t, and it’s not because i didn’t see it.”
he finally looks up.
“i was jealous,” he says. “the whole time. not just sukuna—i mean constantly, about everyone. every room you walked into.” he shakes his head slightly. “it had started feeling like you were mine again and i needed you to stay that way.”
it should be hard to hear. it isn’t, quite, and you don’t know what that says about you.
“you were with me,” he continues. “you were calling me first, coming home with me every night. it hadn’t been like that in so long and i wasn’t going to be the one who fucked it up.” his jaw works. “and if i’d said anything—hey, we should slow down, we should talk, or figure out what the fuck we are—you’d have gone. maybe not that night, but you’d have gone.”
that’s probably true. the waiter goes past and neither of you looks up.
“i figured, at least you were where i could see you. you were safe as long as i could see you.”
the food comes. steam rises off both bowls between you and neither of you touches them.
“i knew we were pretending,” you say.
he looks up.
“i’m not—you didn’t do anything to me.” you want him to know that. “i wanted you close like how it used to be and i figured i could have that as long as we didn’t talk.”
you push the bowl an inch away from you. “it worked. i had you every day and i wasn’t thinking about anything else. i was—” you pause. “i was happy.”
“and now?”
“i can’t decide if pretending was the wrong call. we didn’t survive it once we finally did talk.” a beat. “i don’t know which one i’d pick if you put them in front of me right now.”
he straightens the spoon you left crooked, and the salt, and the corner of his napkin.
“i need you to know i would’ve stopped it.” he raises his eyes. “if i’d known where it was going. i would have pulled us out. you out. even if you hated me. even if i lost you.”
you believe that he thinks that. you also think he can’t know, but you don’t say either.
you pick up your spoon, mostly so your hands have something to do. he does the same. for a minute you both just eat.
you’ve been carrying a question. a genuine one, because satoru hasn’t talked to you much about suguru since you left. now that there’s food in front of you it seems almost askable.
“can i ask you something?”
he nods at you.
“did you talk to satoru about it? after?”
he swallows. “talk isn’t the word.”
your brows furrow.
“i went at him.” he says it without any particular shame. “after you left i went straight to his apartment. i was so fucking angry.”
“because he didn’t tell you?”
“i guess.” he thinks about it. “yeah. mostly.”
that’s not all, so you wait.
“he’s the only person i can do that with,” he says eventually. “yell. you know i don’t do that. but he just lets me.”
the tables around you have filled while you weren’t paying attention. the room is louder than it was, and you have to lean in to hear him.
“what did you want from him?”
“for him to be sorry.” he shrugs. “to admit he’d done something wrong. i laid the whole thing out to him—he lied to me, kept me in the dark, all of it.”
“and?”
“he just stood there. he wasn’t sorry. when i was done he said that i wasn’t there and he was. he said i wouldn’t have been able to handle it.”
you can hear it in satoru’s voice, unbothered and free of malice, which probably made it worse.
“so how did it end?”
“he told me you asked him not to tell me.”
oh.
“that was the end of it. i couldn’t be mad at him for keeping his word to you.”
you look down at your hands.
you do vaguely remember asking. it’s one of about four things you have: satoru’s hand on your back, a cold water bottle, a soft couch, and your own voice saying promise?
“i don’t know why i asked.”
“i do,” he says. “you were protecting me, or us. doesn’t matter which.”
it’s generous, and he might be right. the group behind you laughs at something.
“so what happened between then and you coming out at his show?”
“he made me go to therapy,” he says.
you look up. “what?”
“he wouldn’t help me.” he takes a drink. “i asked him to help me fix things with you and he said he’d think about it if i figured out whatever was wrong with me first.”
you laugh. “he said that?”
“he said it like that, yeah,” he says through a smile. “so i went. i’ve been going.”
“for how long?”
“since november.” he tips his head. “twice a week at first, once now. i still hate it.”
“i went too,” you say.
now he looks at you.
“i mean, i moved because everything was too much, and i got here and it was still too much, which was… i don’t know. so i found someone.” you shrug.
“good,” he says, and means it.
“it's a little stupid, though.” you set your spoon down. “we both paid strangers to talk to us instead of just talking to each other in the first place.”
he laughs with his mouth full and has to cover it with his hand.
then the waitress is back to clear the plates and asking if you want anything else.
you look at each other. neither of you is ready to be done. you start to say something about the check and he’s already handed her a card without looking at it.
“i know a place,” you tell him.
+++
the place you know is a silent ten minute walk east and down a set of stairs. it’s the kind of bar that exists in this city by the hundred: low ceilings, mismatched chairs, a radiator ticking.
the girl behind the bar looks up when you come in, then she looks at suguru, and you watch her face do the whole thing—recognition, disbelief, a bad attempt at neutrality—in about a second.
suguru doesn’t notice, or pretends not to. he goes straight to the far end of the bar and starts shrugging out of his jacket.
the owner is working today. a small old man with reading glasses pushed up into what’s left of his hair, who calls you by a wrong version of your name and has never once given any indication that he knows who you are.
he glances past you, down the bar.
“dein freund vom rolling stone?”
months of this man handing you a drink without so much as a raised eyebrow, and this is what breaks him.
freund could be friend or boyfriend. you’ve been asked some version of this a million times by people paid to ask it, and you’ve never once given a straight answer.
your german isn’t good enough to explain. that’s what you tell yourself.
“ja,” you respond.
when you turn around, suguru’s watching you with his chin on his hand.
the stools put you side by side, facing the bottles instead of each other, which turns out to be easier.
“what’s it been like for you here?” he asks.
“quiet.”
“that’s not an answer.”
“it’s kind of the whole answer.” you pull your sleeves down over your hands. “nobody cares. i mean, people know. i’ve been clocked in the supermarket. but it’s a—” you search for it. “it’s a nod. someone nods at you and then they keep buying their eggs.”
“huh.”
“i have a coffee place and a library.” you hear how strange it sounds out loud. “i went to the dentist by myself last month. i sat in a waiting room.”
he puts his glass down. “you sat in a waiting room?”
“i know.” you laugh. “i was so proud of myself. i called satoru after.”
he smiles at that.
“the first month was awful, though. i’d get up and there’d just be a day.” you gesture. “an entire day with nothing in it.”
the girl comes down the bar with a pitcher and sets it in front of you. she says something fast and cheerful and gestures at the owner and then the two of you, then she goes away again, and suguru watches her leave with the amused expression of someone choosing not to comment.
“what have you been doing?” you ask.
“studio, gym.” he pulls the pitcher over. “therapy.”
you didn’t expect anything more, but he keeps going.
“i don’t really know,” he says. he’s pouring so he doesn’t have to look at you. “i honestly don’t. i get up and do things, i’ve made a lot of stuff, i’ve been… productive.” he stops on the word like it’s the wrong one. “but it’s all just filling the day. i don’t know what any of it’s for.”
you nod. you get it.
“it’s fine. i’m not—” he exhales. “for years there’s been a next thing. even when we were nobody there was a next thing. now there isn’t, and it turns out i don’t really want anything on my own.”
you drink, and decide to ask him something easier.
“are you still smoking as much?”
“more, probably.”
you make a face and he ignores it. “are you sleeping?” he asks.
“yes, actually. at first no, but now i go to bed at, like, eleven unless i’m out.”
he seems pleased at that.
“have you been going out?” you ask.
“only when satoru’s around.” a pause. “have you been writing?”
“constantly.” you laugh at yourself. “it’s insane. i don’t know if it’s good, but i’ve never written this much in my life.”
“it’s good.”
“you haven’t heard it.”
“everything else you’ve written has been good,” he says.
none of it is important. you’re filling in four months of very ordinary days—what you eat, who he works with, what time you get up—and the strangeness of it is that you’ve never had to do this before. there’s never been a stretch of either of your adult lives that the other one wasn’t in.
“i didn’t expect you to put music out,” he says.
“you didn’t expect me to put music out?” you look at him incredulously. “i thought yours was fake when i saw it.”
you turn your body on the stool so you’re facing him, one knee against the bar, and make him tell you how he made it.
he’s stacked up hundreds of writing credits over the years, but they’ve all been from adding a line or two to already-existing songs. when a song has no words, you have to sit there and create them yourself, which he describes as humiliating.
“how long did it take you?” you ask.
“for loser, four weeks.”
“four weeks?”
“i wrote so many bad lines. kept sounding like a fucking greeting card.”
it makes you laugh.
he asks you about the production process, and you tell him about how you don’t understand what he does. you still don’t fully trust that the tracks were finished, only that you stopped when they felt good enough.
“did you use a studio?”
“my apartment.”
his eyebrows go up.
“it was lonely,” you say. “you at least had satoru.”
“i didn’t, really. i gave him all the lyrics and told him to do what he wanted with them.” he shrugs. “he came to the studio and we recorded.”
“you didn’t talk about it?”
“he just asked if i was sure about releasing it. he still wouldn’t talk to me about you, so we just sort of moved on to the next thing.”
so he was alone too, then.
“it was hard, but nobody was waiting on it. no schedule or notes. i hadn’t made anything like that in years.”
“it stopped being fun a while ago,” you say.
“yeah.”
“like, a long time ago.” you say it carefully. “everything has been for something. some of my favorite songs are from when it was just for us.”
“it could be fun again.” he doesn’t look at you when he says it, and he doesn’t expect an answer.
“i really love what is forever for,” you tell him.
“yeah?”
“it’s my favorite.” you tap the bar. “i was pissed that satoru got to sing it.”
he laughs. “why?”
“’cause it should be me.” you hear it out loud and put your face in your hand. “which is insane. i know it’s insane. it obviously couldn’t have been me.”
“i’d have liked it to be you,” he says. he’s smiling into his glass.
you drink.
“the production on what is it like to be liked is—” he shakes his head. “i was so proud when i heard it.”
“but?”
“i hated it.” something closes in his face. “i hate that song.”
you didn’t expect that. your brows come together.
“not like that, i just—” he pauses. “i didn’t want it to be true. i don’t want you to feel like that and i especially don’t want you here alone feeling like that.”
“which one’s your favorite?” you deflect. it’s a coward’s move and he lets you have it.
“party 4 u.”
you think about it, and then you snort. “of course it is.”
“what?”
“it’s the one about wanting you to come back. your favorite song is the one about you coming back.”
“it’s the one we started together,” he says, wounded, and it’s such a transparent lie that you laugh out loud.
“you’re a narcissist.”
“maybe. it just felt good.”
“what did?”
“hearing you say you wanted me to come back. come to my party.” he says it easily, without looking away. “i’d been listening to a lot of things where you didn’t.”
the pitcher’s a lot lower and you’re both a lot looser than you were an hour ago. the girl behind the bar has given up on being cool entirely and is just watching from the other end, and you find you don’t care.
“can i ask you something?” you say.
“again?” he teases.
“your song says you’re in love with me.”
he doesn’t flinch. “it does.”
“is that true?”
“of course it is.”
it lands so plainly that you almost let it go. like you’d asked him what day it was.
“how do you know?”
you watch him try. that’s the part you’ll think about later. a long time of him sitting there with his glass in his hand actually attempting it, when the version of him from six months ago would have told you not to worry about it.
“i can’t remember not knowing,” he says finally.
“that’s not an answer.”
“i know it’s not.” he almost laughs. “i’m trying.”
so you wait.
“there’s not a—there wasn’t a day. it’s just that when something happens, i want to tell you. when i make something, it’s for you to hear.” a pause. “i don’t know when it turned into that. it might have always been that.”
you’re quiet.
“it was a fact.” he frowns at his own sentence. “it was just like the weather.”
you should say something. you’re aware that you should say something.
he exhales.
“when you played me claws,” he says.
your stomach drops about six inches.
suddenly you’re seventeen years old in the bedroom of a home you don’t live in anymore, laptop balanced on your knees and your heart going so hard you thought he’d hear it over the track.
“i was so nervous,” you say. “i was actually nauseous.”
“i know. you’d been weird all day.” there’s something fond in it. “you talked for like five minutes before you played it. you never do that.”
you’d forgotten that. now that he’s said it you can hear yourself doing it.
“i was so scared you’d think it was bad.”
“i like everything about you, over and over for like two minutes. i wasn’t thinking about whether it was bad.”
“what were you thinking?”
he takes a second with it.
“that i needed you to stay,” he says. “not in the room. stay with me. i remember thinking it in those words and it never went away. that’s what i keep wanting to explain and i can’t. i’ve been like this the entire time you’ve known me.”
“and you mixed it,” you say, because your eyes are burning and it’s all you can get out.
“i mixed it that night.”
“and you put it on our album.”
“and you thought i did that because it was good.”
“it is good,” you say defensively.
“it’s good,” he agrees. “that’s not why it’s on the album.”
the bartender comes over and tops up both of your glasses even though you’ve been doing it yourselves the whole time. suguru, who has not looked away from you once in thirty minutes, looks straight at her and says, perfectly pleasantly:
“thank you.”
that does it. she goes crimson, says something very fast in german that you don’t catch a word of, and retreats to the other side of the room, where she immediately gets out her phone.
you look at him. “suguru.”
“what? she’s been staring at me. i’m not blind.”
you put your face in your hands and laugh. he’s laughing too, quietly.
it settles after that. someone puts on a record older than both of you.
“i was nervous,” he says. “at the grammys.”
“nervous?”
“yeah.”
“you’re never nervous.”
“i was then.” he says it matter-of-fact. “to see you. i didn’t know what it would be like.”
you can’t help but smile. suguru geto, sitting in a town car, working himself up.
“what’d you think it would be like?”
“i had no idea. you could’ve been anyone. you could hit me, or act like i was a stranger. i’d have taken it and i still spent the whole day trying to prepare for it.”
you think about him getting out of the car. his shoulders coming down when he saw you.
“i wasn’t nervous to see you,” you say.
“no?”
“no. i knew exactly what it was going to be like.” you look down. “i got nervous to perform, though.”
“we didn’t do soundcheck.”
“we didn’t do soundcheck because we would’ve had to talk to each other.”
he laughs at that.
“i was backstage getting ready and thinking about how we hadn’t even talked about staging and i thought, oh fuck, this is going to be a disaster.”
“it wasn’t, even though you changed the setlist.”
you wince. “i did.”
“you changed it and didn’t tell me.”
“i told the stage manager.”
“you told the stage manager.” he’s laughing again. “i wasn’t even all that surprised. i had about two seconds of thinking i fucked something up and then i thought, no, you did something.”
you giggle but it fades fast, because he’s still looking at you.
“were you angry?” you ask.
“couldn’t be.” a pause. “the song surprised me, though.”
you knew that was coming.
“i wrote it, like, the second week i came here. i wanted you to know why i left.” you’re looking at the bottles behind the bar. “not the fight, obviously, but the reason i left and stayed gone.”
“which was what?”
“i didn’t think i belonged there anymore.”
he’s quiet.
“i don’t mean it in a sad way,” you say, which is a lie. “i’d just looked at it from far enough away that i could see it properly. our whole world. and i couldn’t find where i fit into it, and i figured it’d be better for everybody if i just got out of the way.”
“everybody?”
“just—” you gesture. “everyone.”
he doesn’t answer for long enough that you look over.
“was it better for you?” he asks.
you exhale. “yes and no. it was good to be alone. necessary, i think. i started sleeping eight hours. learned what i actually like doing when i can do whatever i want, which is apparently walking around, taking pictures, and writing songs.” you play with your sleeves. “and it was too quiet. i could hear myself think and i didn’t like most of it.”
“what’d you think about?”
“the label, mostly. it was them. i started putting stuff in order, and every time i got to the worst parts, there they were.” you start counting them off without meaning to. “mila being signed. the angel video. the skin credits. the fact that they knew how bad we were getting and sat on it until it was a liability.”
“they had us sign the grammys contract first,” he says. “the shoot, then the proposal at the top of the meeting, then we signed and then the publicist came in.”
“we wouldn’t have signed if she came in first.”
“no.” he almost smiles. “we would’ve walked out.”
“and i just—” there’s no better way to say it, so you say it. “i called our lawyers.”
he doesn’t move.
“in november. it was a thursday.” you don’t rush it. “i asked them what it would take to dissolve the whole thing. the contracts, joint agreements, everything. they said they’d look into it.” you turn the glass again. “it took twelve minutes.”
the room carries on around you.
“it wasn’t about you,” you say.
you watch him take it and decide to believe it, and that’s when you tell him the rest. he deserves the whole thing and not the part that makes you look better.
“or, it wasn’t but it was. i wanted out of the contract and spent weeks trying to work out how to keep you and lose the rest of it, but i couldn’t. there’s never been a you and me outside of the contract.”
he’s looking at the bar, and you hate that you can see how it hurts him.
“so i took the exit that was there,” you say.
he’s quiet for a long time.
“it hurt,” he says finally. “i mean—” he pauses. “i’d made peace with a lot of things that could happen, but i wasn’t ready for a call from legal.”
“i’m sorry.”
“i don’t want you to be.” he takes a sip from his glass. “i wanted to fight you on it. i had the argument by the end of that afternoon and it was good. it was a really good argument.”
“why didn’t you make it?”
“it’s the exact thing you said i do,” he says. “keep you where i want you.” his jaw moves. “if you wanted out and i talked you out of it, then everything we fought about was true. i’d rather lose the whole thing than be that.”
he continues: “and then the label asked us to hold off until after awards, and i was so fucking grateful.” he huffs. “it’s the only nice thing i’ve ever thought about them.”
“you wanted time?”
he nods. “i waited. and then i saw you at the grammys, then i waited another week and got on a plane. now i’m here. we weren’t gonna just end it through lawyers.”
it’s quiet between you. the record changed at some point without you noticing.
“do you still want out?” he asks.
you look at him. you don’t answer. he doesn’t push, which is either patience or fear and you’re not going to ask which.
because it’s true that there’s never been a you-and-him outside of your names together on a track, and it’s also true that you’re sitting next to each other in a bar four thousand miles from anyone who could force either of you to be here.
he reaches for the pitcher and finds it empty.
“another?”
“i have wine at home,” you say.
he looks at you.
“do you want to come?”
“yeah,” he says.
+++
outside it’s darker and colder than it was.
you walk. you’re both done talking for now, and it feels fine. you suspect the drinks have something to do with it, but it feels better than fine, really.
he stops halfway up the block to light a cigarette and hands you one without asking, then leans in and cups the flame for you the way he’s done a thousand times. it’s the closest he’s come to touching you all day.
you take the route you always take. past the coffee shop with its chairs upside down on the tables, past the corner where the lady sells flowers on saturdays, past the park with the pretty blue gate.
you’ve done this walk probably two hundred times. it feels very strange to have him in it.
“do you walk everywhere?” he asks. he’s freezing and doing a bad job of hiding it.
“mostly. train if it’s far.”
“mm.” he takes a drag. “i’ve seen about a thousand pictures of you on the train.”
you turn your head. “i just told you nobody bothers me here.”
“they don’t.” he shrugs. “they leave you alone and then they post about it.”
“so you’ve been looking?”
“obviously i’ve been looking.” he says it like you asked him whether he breathes.
a few streets later he says he’s hungry again.
“i have food,” you say.
“okay.”
you’re walking closer than you were this morning.
+++
you take your shoes off when you step into your apartment and immediately start clearing the couch—a hoodie, a tote bag, a stack of mail. you disappear down the hall to change and tell him there’s food in the kitchen, help yourself.
then a door shuts and suguru’s alone in your apartment.
it’s warm. that’s the first thing. the radiator is on and the whole place smells like you, which he was not prepared for, and he stands there to take it in for a moment before he does anything.
there’s a book on the coffee table with a highlighter shoved in it as a bookmark.
a plant sits on the windowsill, alive. thriving, actually. you’ve killed every single plant anyone has ever given you.
by the door there’s a rack with three jackets on it and what he counts as eleven handbags.
in the kitchen he opens the fridge and stands there looking at it longer than he needs to.
there’s food in it. snacks, but also real food: vegetables, half a chicken in a container, a carton of eggs, a jar of something with a hand-written label he can’t read. there are three bottles of red wine on the counter, which doesn’t surprise him, but they’re next to a bowl of onions and potatoes.
you’ve been feeding yourself.
he takes crackers from the cupboard and grapes from the fridge and sets them on the coffee table. he keeps going.
the corner by the window is home to a small desk with your laptop, covered in the same stickers. there’s a mic on a cheap stand with a pop filter clipped on crooked, and a pair of headphones on the chair back.
two notebooks sit on the desk. the top one is new but he recognizes the one underneath. he’s watched you write in it. he’s had it thrown at him.
he stands in front of it with his hands in his pockets.
it’s the same setup. the exact configuration he had in his room at seventeen, down to the mic being about three inches too low. the whole thing costs less than the shoes you wore on last week’s red carpet.
and you made a record on it, alone, and he thought it was better than most things he’s done in a room with full gear and someone else’s money.
there’s a cork board on the wall by the desk.
film photos, mostly. a canal, a lot of doors, you and satoru holding pastries up at the camera. a few business cards, a couple of club wristbands, a receipt from somewhere. scraps of paper in your handwriting, which he could pick out of a hundred, are pinned up between everything else.
he reads the first one he lands on.
i can't believe all those things that you said you broke my heart and you fucked with my head again so i run (so long ago and so far away) you are the poison, i'll drink the poison … never in sync so we just sink and drown press restart and reboot my heart but i'm not a robot so i fell apart
it’s dated from october.
it’s just up there with everything else, the way you’ve always kept things. every surface you’ve ever occupied has looked like this, papered in fragments, and he’s spent years pulling songs out of it.
he can hear the tap running somewhere down the hall. he reads it again, which he knows he shouldn’t.
and it’s fine—he’s fine. it’s fine. he steps back from the board.
there’s laundry on the dining table, folded in piles that are waiting to be put away. there’s a black t-shirt he recognizes on top of one pile, then another, and under that a hoodie he’d assumed he lost last winter.
you brought his clothes with you to another continent. you’ve been wearing them here, in the apartment where you were learning how to be alone.
and none of it’s hidden. the board, the shirts, any of it. you left this morning and weren’t expecting anybody when you came home, least of all him, so there was nothing to put away.
he takes a seat on your couch and waits.
you come back in a t-shirt and sweatpants, and go straight into the kitchen. when you come out again you have two water glasses, two wine glasses and a bottle, all of it stacked against you at angles that aren’t going to hold.
he takes the water off you before it falls.
“thank you.”
“mhm.”
you sit on the other end of the couch with one leg folded under you and start pouring. he watches you do it, and he can feel you working up to something.
“i need to say something about what i said to you,” you say. “when we fought.”
“okay.”
“i was cruel to you on purpose.” you’re pouring slowly. “i think you believed the stuff i said. and you’ve had so much time to sit with it.”
“yeah.”
he takes the glass you hand him.
you take a breath. “you never made me hate myself. that’s never been true.”
he’s staring at you.
“i didn’t have words for what i was actually feeling,” you say. “so i used that instead.”
“what were you feeling?”
you take a second.
“that i had lost myself. i couldn’t tell who i was around you.”
he lets you keep going.
“in public, yeah, but even when it was just us without any of the—” you move your hand. “the thing. i’d be there and couldn’t tell whether i’d turned off the performing version of me.” you look at the wine. “and it scared the shit out of me and i didn’t have any words for it. so i fought with you and i said what i said.”
there’s nothing he can apologize for or fix or take responsibility for, because you’re not accusing him of anything. you’re just telling him what it was like.
“how do you feel now?”
“i don’t know,” you say.
“okay.”
“i’ve only had one night with you last week and today. i just don’t know.”
he nods. he doesn’t push, and he doesn’t tell you it’s fine.
then, because you were honest and he’s going to be:
“i’ve thought a lot about what i said too.”
your stomach flips.
“i wanted the fight to be over.” he’s looking at the coffee table. “you were saying things and i knew you’d say something you couldn’t take back, so i ended it the way i knew how.”
“suguru—”
“i knew what it would do.” he says it evenly.
you’re tearing up. he can tell from the corner of his eye.
“i hated myself immediately,” he continues. “and i’ve hated myself about it every day since, and i wish that was an exaggeration.”
he watches you pat your eyes.
“i almost came back that night.”
a pause.
“i got all the way home.” you turn your glass by the stem. “sat in the entryway for like twenty minutes, and i almost turned around and went to find you.”
he stops breathing.
“why didn’t you?”
“because i thought you meant it.”
it hurts to hear, even though he’d known that.
“do you still think that?” he asks.
“no.” it comes out fast. “no, i stopped thinking it pretty fast, actually.”
“then—”
“then it didn’t matter what i thought.” you shrug. “everything had caught up and i couldn’t be there. by the time i worked out that you didn’t mean it i was already gone.”
he thinks about the twenty minutes.
him sitting in the studio with the lights off and the session still open on the screen, and you sitting in your apartment twelve blocks away, deciding.
“you should’ve come,” he says. it comes out quieter than he wants it to.
“i know.”
neither of you says anything for a while. you sip your wine. somewhere below the window someone plays music.
“did you keep your apartment?” he asks.
“yeah.”
“you didn’t list it or anything?”
“no.” you look at him. “i didn’t do anything with it. i just left.”
come home.
it’s right there, right in front of him, the thing he came here to say.
come home. i don’t care how. i want you where i am.
and he feels himself start to move away from it.
it’s a physical thing, almost. the words get as far as his mouth before something in him files them somewhere else.
he drinks. he stares at the coffee table.
and he knows what this is. he’s paid someone for months to teach him what it is. it doesn’t stop it from happening.
don’t push. don’t make it a thing. let it come to you or don’t.
and then your voice: “talk to me?”
he sees all the patience in your face when he looks over and something gives.
“i’m sorry,” he says.
it comes out too fast. you open your mouth and he keeps going because if he stops he’ll never get it out.
“i’m sorry for august. for not telling you and for every day i let it go on after that, and i’m sorry for yelling in the studio, and i’m—” he sets the glass down because his hand is unsteady. “and i’m sorry you had to move to another country to get away from me.”
he runs a hand through his hair.
“you left everything. your apartment, your whole life, satoru, everything, and you came here where you don’t know anyone and you barely speak the language, because it was easier than being around me.”
you look alarmed. “suguru—”
“i want you to come home.”
it’s out, finally, and it’s so much less complicated than it was in his head that he wants to laugh.
“that’s what i came here to say. i want you where i am. i don’t care what we call it, i’ve never cared what we call it, i just want to be able to see you. and if you can’t, or you don’t want to, that’s fine. i’ll come here if you’ll have me.”
“you hate this place.”
“i love you more than i hate this place.”
it’s out before he can stop it and he doesn’t take it back. he watches your eyes well up again.
“and if you want out of the contract, we’ll get out.” he says it before he can lose it. “i’ll sign whatever. you don’t have to make music with me if you don’t want to.”
“you don’t mean that.”
“i absolutely don’t want that,” he says. “but i mean it.”
“i’m scared,” you say. your voice is small.
his heart drops.
“not of you. i’ve never been scared of you. it’s just—” you sniffle. “i don’t want it all to happen again,” you say. “i wouldn’t survive it a second time.”
“i’m scared too,” he rubs his face. “i know exactly how i’d fail you again.”
“that’s not comforting.”
“no.” he almost smiles. “but at the grammys, when you got out of the car, i saw your face and the first thing in my head was i could never do that to her again. not shouldn’t. couldn’t.” he holds your eyes. “i wouldn’t even be here if i didn’t believe that. but if you don’t, i’ll go and that can be the end of it and i won’t make it a thing.”
he can see the conflict on your face.
“what do you need?” he asks, sitting up straight.
“you can’t sleep on the couch.”
he blinks.
“i mean—” and you almost laugh, because out loud it’s ridiculous. “you know what i mean.”
he does. him on your couch with the door shut between you, being careful and avoidant while you cried into a pillow.
“when something’s wrong you have to come in,” you say. “say it out loud, even if it’s the wrong words. even if it makes it worse for a night.”
“okay.”
“i do it too.” it comes out quieter. “i need us to be a team. not… look like one.”
a pause.
“is that okay?”
“yes,” he says.
he shifts just close enough to take your hand—carefully, like it might be the wrong move—and you intertwine your fingers.
he looks at your hand in his.
“can i ask you for something?” he asks.
you nod.
“if you do come back, please don’t disappear.” he says it plainly. “if it gets bad, please don’t walk out or stop answering my calls or get on a plane. i need you to stay in it with me.”
and it occurs to you, sitting there with your hand in his, that this is the first thing suguru geto has ever asked you for.
you shift closer to him. “okay.”
“okay?”
you nod. it’s quiet for a minute.
“i miss dancing with you,” you say.
he smiles. “yeah.”
“and getting ready for stuff with you. getting ready last week without you was—” you shake your head. “i didn’t like it.”
“i miss putting jewelry on you.”
you huff. “you would say that.”
“it’s something i’m good at.” he shrugs. “i miss picking things. i miss taking pictures of you.”
“you took so many bad pictures of me.”
“i have thousands of pictures of you. some of them are bad.”
you laugh, and he keeps going, quieter.
“i wanna take you on vacation.”
“we’ve never been on a real one.”
“i know.”
“i wanna go to a beach,” you say. “with nothing there.”
“a beach with nothing there,” he agrees.
“and i want to eat food you cooked.”
“i can’t cook.”
“i know. you can learn.”
“i’ll learn,” he says, and he means it. suguru geto is going to learn to cook.
you pull your knees up. “i want to make something with you,” you say. “i have this song i’ve been sitting on. i couldn’t make an instrumental work and i think it just needs you.”
“send it to me.”
“it’s not ready.”
“send it to me anyway,” he insists. “the studio is a disaster, by the way. i want to redo the whole thing. change the furniture out. or we can find another one away from—”
“suguru?”
“what?”
“we’re talking like i’m coming back.”
he stops.
“will you?”
and here’s the thing:
everything you said is true. you are scared, and you’re right to be. it’s not going to go away because a man flew across the world and said nice things to you.
but the man is here. on your couch, in the city he hates, having offered to live in it. having offered to give up the only career either of you has ever had. having said i love you more than i hate this place like it was an aside.
and you’ve run the other experiment. you’ve had a whole winter of the alternative and you know exactly what it looks like: this apartment, which you like, and a coffee shop you love, and eight hours of sleep, and the grocery store, and his clothes in your laundry, and his songs on your speakers every single night.
it’s fine. it’s not enough.
“i’ll come home,” you say.
he exhales and tips his head back against the couch with his eyes closed.
you give him a minute.
then you turn and lie on your back with your head in his lap, and he doesn’t miss a beat. his hand goes to the top of your head like it’s been waiting, and his fingers start slowly moving against your scalp.
it’s quiet for a while.
“how long were you actually waiting on the steps?” you ask.
“a while.”
“how long is a while?”
“almost three hours.”
you tilt your head to look up at him. “three hours?”
“more or less.”
“why didn’t you call me?”
“i didn’t mind waiting. i’ve waited longer,” he says, which is stupid and also true.
“what were you listening to in your headphones?”
“you,” he replies.
you close your eyes.
“did you plan the speech?” you ask. “for the grammys.”
“no.”
“but you’ve never done an award speech.”
“i wasn’t going to but it seemed insane to say nothing. i wanted to say something to you.”
after some silence, you ask: “what did you think of my dress?”
“it came down the balenciaga runway in september.”
“it did.”
“i remember thinking they had made it for you.” you feel his leg shift under your head. “didn’t surprise me at all when i saw it on you.”
you hold your hand up in front of his face.
“i got my nails done this morning.”
he takes your hand, turns it toward the light and looks at it properly, seriously, the way he’s looked at everything you’ve ever shown him.
“i like them,” he says.
“yeah?”
“mhm.”
he doesn’t give your hand back. he holds onto it and rests it on his chest and keeps going with the other one on your head.
“i want to sing what is forever for,” you say to the ceiling.
“okay.”
“like, in front of people. if we do another show one day.”
“then we’ll do it.”
your eyes have gotten heavy. you’re aware of it happening and can’t do anything about it—it’s the wine and the day and the hand in your hair and the fact that you feel, for the first time in too long, completely accounted for.
“it’s late,” he says. “i should let you sleep.”
“no.”
he doesn’t argue. you can hear the smile in the breath he lets out. you don’t open your eyes, and after a second his hand starts moving again.
eventually you get up. you go to the bathroom and come back with a spare toothbrush still in the packet and a clean towel.
you show him the bathroom. you clean everything off the coffee table, and by the time the shower starts running you’re in bed and checking your phone for the first time since this morning.
a missed call from satoru. four hours ago, which means he’s basically been waiting all day.
you call him back and it doesn’t even ring properly before his face fills your screen, and he’s lying on a couch that’s not the one in his apartment in a hoodie with his hair everywhere, and he looks so unbearably expectant that you have your answer before either of you says anything.
“you told him where i live.”
“i did,” satoru says immediately. “what happened? is he still there?” he props himself up on his elbow. “answer the second one first.”
so you tell him. about the stoop and the restaurant, then the bar, then the living room. and the fact that you talked, actually talked, for hours, about all of it.
down the hall, the water shuts off.
suguru steps out of the shower, dries off and puts on clean boxers and a pair of sweatpants from his backpack. he can hear your voice before he’s even out of the bathroom.
he gets as far as the bedroom doorway.
you’re sitting criss-cross in bed with your phone propped against the lamp on the nightstand and satoru’s voice coming out of it, and you haven’t seen him.
“—he’s staying tonight,” you’re saying. “and i’m coming home.”
satoru doesn’t say anything for a second.
then: “so you’re in love with him.”
and suguru watches your face do something you’d hate to know he saw. a huge smile you can’t get rid of, and then there’s a full two seconds of you not having an answer ready.
“please shut the fuck up,” you say.
it isn’t a no.
“you’re really coming home though?”
“yeah.”
“good.” the speaker makes it tinny and gleeful. “he’s been so fucking annoying about it.”
you laugh. “goodnight, satoru.”
he waits until the call ends.
he can’t wait to sleep next to you, and he can wait forever to hear you say it out loud.
