Chapter Text
“Welcome to the Perception and Sensation review class,” Gojo announced, “All of you better get 100s on the final or I’m personally going to kick your ass.”
Suguru raised an eyebrow at the five students in the class. “All of you?” he repeated amusedly.
“Suguru, it is not my fucking fault that the rest of the non-sorcerer population is too weak to join us.”
“I wouldn’t say they’re weak. Just not rich enough for your exorbitant entrance fee.”
“Of one box of mochi? Please.”
Utahime groaned. “Can we please get started already? I still have to study for sociology after this.”
“Why are we even learning about this? It’s not like any of us are qualified to become psychologists, or really anything other than jujutsu sorcerers,” Nanami asked, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose.
“I could become a doctor,” Shoko reminded him.
“What, and magic every patient that walks into your surgery room? You’d get arrested for witchcraft,” Gojo sneered.
Utahime wrapped an arm around Shoko, not noticing the way Shoko simultaneously melted and froze in her hold, and pointed an accusatory finger at Gojo. Suguru caught Shoko’s eye and smirked, and her eye twitched, as if to tell him to keep his mouth shut. Well, Suguru wasn’t a snitch, 70% of the time. “Shoko could get into medical school with her intelligence! Unlike you, bastard - and why are you teaching?”
“He’s teaching because he lost a bet,” Suguru interrupted smoothly, smiling at Utahime. He received a scowl in return. She hadn’t been duped by his politeness ever since he and Gojo had schemed to make her lose her footing on a group camping trip. The backup curse was in place for Shoko to catch her, of course, and while Utahime had greatly enjoyed being saved by Shoko, Suguru’s curse being there was proof enough that he’d been involved. From then on, she’d smacked the “scum” label on both him and Gojo, as if they were peas in a pod.
Shoko, who’d come up with the idea in the first place, was blissfully excluded from the label. Favoritism at its finest, really.
“Teaching sucks,” Gojo scowled. “Which is why you all need to pass, or I’m going to lose another bet.”
Suguru grinned. “Be careful what information you reveal, Satoru. You’ll make everyone want to fail if you say that.”
“You-” Gojo sighed, one of his legs bouncing. “If you guys don’t pass, Suguru said he’ll make me eat nothing but vegetables for a week straight.”
Nanami let out a sound that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
“And I can guarantee, without doubt, that I will be incredibly fucking annoying without my usual sugar intake. Even more so than usual. None of you want to deal with that, right? So listen carefully.”
“Yes, Gojo-sensei!” Haibara said brightly. He faltered a second later. “Ah, that feels weird to say…I can’t imagine Gojo-senpai being an actual teacher.”
“Nor do I have any desire to be an actual teacher, but here we are, so everyone shut up.” Gojo stood up and grabbed a piece of chalk, and began drawing a chart. “Did you guys know that we have more than five senses? Haibara, list the five major senses.”
“U-uh, vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch,” Haibara offered up quickly.
“Correct. Can anyone name any other senses they know of?”
Mei Mei raised her hand. “Pain.”
“Itching,” Shoko offered.
“Correct and correct! Does that surprise anyone?” Gojo grinned as he finished his chart. “Along with pain and itch, there are also the senses of cold, heat, pressure, and gentle touch - as well as our vestibular sense and proprioception. There are more that people have argued for, like hunger and thirst, but we’ll ignore those for now.”
“Note that the only internal stimuli are for pain and proprioception. That might be a test question, I’m not really sure, but you can remember with the phrase ‘inside the pp’-”
Utahime threw her eraser at him with so much murderous intent that Suguru swore he could see the residuals of cursed energy floating around it. It bounced harmlessly off of Gojo’s infinity, unfortunately for everyone but Gojo himself.
“Anyway - let’s get into the good shit. Sensation is the registering of a physical stimulus on our sensory receptors - in other words, the transduction of sensed information into neural signals. Perception, on the other hand, is the process of turning sensory input into meaningful conscious experience, or the translation of the neural signal into usable information.”
Gojo poked Suguru in the cheek, to his mild annoyance. “Can anyone use the terms “sensation” and “perception”, or something similar, to describe my perspective right now?”
“You’re receiving sensory input from your eyes that tells you where Geto-senpai is,” Haibara started slowly. “Right?”
“Yes! That’s the sensation part. You could also say that I’m receiving sensory input from my finger about where Suguru’s cheek is.” He squished Suguru’s cheek for good measure, and Suguru had half a mind to judo flip him right then and there, but he restrained himself for the sake of his kouhai’s education. “Now, what am I perceiving? ”
Nanami raised a hand in a manner that communicated how much he really wouldn’t care if he was wrong, which was respectable. “You’re perceiving that it’s Geto-senpai’s cheek you’re touching, and you know that he’ll let you do anything you want to him, so you can continue to assault his cheek.”
Suguru’s eye twitched, but Gojo threw an arm around him and he was rendered helpless yet again. “Correct! Wonderful job, Nanamin. That’s a good way to segue into the fact that perception often relies on our pre-existing schemas and experiences to make sense of the world around us. Because I have a great amount of experience with Suguru, I know that he would never do anything to hurt me~”
As Gojo nuzzled his cheek, Suguru’s restraint snapped, and he swept Gojo’s stupidly long legs out from under him and pinned Gojo onto the floor. His head would've been protected by Infinity, but Suguru kept an arm under the back of his head anyway. As Gojo’s face started to turn red (embarrassment at being caught off guard?), Suguru turned to the students politely.
“Schemas are a term commonly used in social psychology to refer to our mental concepts of certain people and places, which let us know what to expect. A common example is that our schema of a coffee shop allows us to know what’s appropriate to wear, how to order, where to sit, and how much noise is appropriate to make,” he explained as he stood up. Gojo was still frozen on the floor - maybe he was just enjoying a free break. “It’ll come up a few times in this class, though, so it’s good to know either way.”
“R-right, “Gojo agreed, hopping to his feet with forced nonchalance. Suguru didn’t miss the brief middle finger he aimed at a smirking Shoko, so there probably wasn’t anything wrong. “By the way, fuck you, Suguru.”
“Is that a promise?”
Utahime made a loud retching noise, and the red that was starting to fade from Gojo’s face came back in full force. “What - no! Huh? I mean. No. What? Anyway,” he emphasized, picking up the chalk from where it had fallen on the ground, “we’re gonna get into the process of perception.
“We’re always trying to get a veridical, or ‘truthful’ perception of the world, because if we’re perceiving something further or closer than it actually is, we’re liable to injury. We also want to focus on the most important or interesting stimuli, such as the main melody of a song and such. Basic concept, but it’s worth mentioning before we get started on the technical stuff,” Gojo explained, drawing a crude stick figure on the board. “You guys ready?”
Shoko seemed more excited for the biology part than anyone else, although her version of excitement was simply smiling and her leg bouncing a bit more than usual.
“Honestly, I don’t care if you’re ready or not. So! For each of our sensory systems, we have neural cells called receptor cells. These transduce, or transform, a physical stimulus into an electrochemical signal, or a neural response. Does anyone know an example of a receptor cell?”
“How is he doing that with his mouth?” Utahime whispered to Mei Mei, who merely shrugged, looking unimpressed.
“Utahime! Can you think of anything?”
Utahime’s eye twitched, but she schooled her expression into something more serious. “I guess…if it’s for a particular sense, then rods and cones might be the receptor cells for the eye. Or taste buds, on the tongue,”
“Correct! You know, Utahime, I wasn’t sure you had a brain, but I guess you must have a little something up there if you can answer that correctly.”
As a pencil went flying towards Gojo’s head (and bounced off), Suguru couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take before Utahime started throwing desks at Gojo. Probably a matter of minutes.
“Another example of receptor cells include the hair cells in the cochlea, which is in the ear. All three of these transduce the sensation of stimuli into neural responses, which is then transmitted to the brain for processing.”
“While processing, our brains will interpret the information differently due to phenomenology - our subjective experience of perception, or our internal experience of the world around us,” Suguru added.
“Geto’s doing it too,” Utahime whispered.
Mei Mei sighed. “Are you surprised?”
“There’s a lot of weird definitions of this, and it overlaps with philosophy quite a bit, so it’s easier to get an idea of it from examples. The best example to wrap your head around it might be, 'Is someone experiencing and appreciating the same beauty as I am?’ The beauty of, say…” Suguru squinted at the notes that Gojo shoved in his face. “Uh. The beauty of a lone violin, the aromatic smell of coffee in the morning, the wonders of seeing the colors of a sunset in the west of an evening sky…this is so romantic, Satoru.”
Gojo blanched, snatching the notes away. “I-I didn’t write that. It was in the textbook.”
“And you copied it word for word?” Suguru grinned. “Aw, was someone feeling the wonders of seeing-”
Gojo slapped a hand over his mouth, addressing the class and refusing to make eye contact with him. “Phenomenology can also refer to the ‘annoying cacophony of the neighbor’s lawn mower, the stink of an airplane bathroom, and an up-close look at a stranger’s nose hairs’. Also copied from the textbook, so none of you get any ideas about-”
Suguru rested his chin on Gojo’s shoulder, smirking. “The wonders of the sunset are nothing in comparison to when I look in your eyes, Satoru,” he whispered, quietly enough that the rest of the students couldn’t hear. He was fucking with Gojo, obviously , but he was also telling the truth in a way. Nothing could really match the way Suguru’s heart would skip a beat when Gojo gazed up at him from his slipping glasses, as though he were about to eat him alive.
He could practically feel the heat radiating off of Gojo as he shoved Suguru away, and congratulated himself for winning this round of flustering Gojo, but as he caught the other boy’s wide-eyed gaze through his askew sunglasses he couldn’t help but think, I’d probably let him.
Which was a weird thought, because Suguru was definitely not into vore, or he’d enjoy swallowing curses a lot more than he did.
Moving on. He cleared his throat, addressing the class again. Shoko was looking at him as if he were a bug she’d stepped on and was considering whether to step on him again, which was not the greatest look to be leveled with. He cocked his head at her, asking what he did wrong, but her scowl only grew more pronounced. Well. He’d have to ask her about that later. “Phenomenology is a uniquely human experience, which can’t be experienced by computers or robots. As far as we know, at least. About as well as we know if animals experience phenomenology.”
“The two-headed calf,” Haibara mumbled, and everyone immediately turned to glare at him with all the force of a thousand suns.
“We’re also unsure as to whether humans share phenomenology. People share a common understanding of, say, blue, but are we really sure that we’re all experiencing the same color? It’s trippy, yes, and it takes us out of psychology and more into philosophy, but it’s important to consider because it’s so difficult to judge accurately.”
“Anyway! Now for a bit of history, since we all love history,” Gojo announced. “Aristotle was one of the major players on the perception and sensation playing field, back in 384-322 BCE. He marked the difference between sensory and motor functions, was able to attribute the sensory organs and their purpose, and gave us the 5 main senses we learn in schools today. He was also the first to describe the Aristotle illusion, in which one will feel as though there are two touches despite only being touched once between crossed fingers. You can try this now, if you’d like.”
Nanami crossed his fingers, and Haibara poked with two fingers. “How does that feel?”
“Two.”
With one finger. “And that?”
“Two.”
Suguru stifled a laugh. “Case in point. The second illusion Aristotle is known for discussing is called motion aftereffect, or the waterfall illusion. You ever look try those brain fuckers where you stare at something moving for a long time, like a waterfall, and then look at something stationary? If you haven’t, we’ll try it now.”
Suguru released one of his curses - a waterfall curse, conveniently enough - and let it sit there, creating a flow of water that Gojo directed into the mouth of another curse beneath it.
When Gojo snapped his fingers, everyone looked at the stock-still Geto, and recoiled.
“Did they have to look at me?” Geto complained, as Gojo guffawed at the looks on their faces. “But yes, I should have appeared to be moving upwards, as opposed to the waterfall’s downward motion.”
“Another famous guy was Hermann von Helmholtz, whom some of you may recognize from Brave New World as the alpha male with all the bitches,” Gojo intoned seriously. “He was best known for his constructivist approach to perception - the idea that perceptions were constructed using information from our senses and cognitive processes, and just sensation wasn’t enough to explain the world to us - we need to use unconscious reasoning, or an unconscious inference, in addition to sensation. It seems kind of obvious to us now, but it was revolutionary back in his day, I assure you. He invented the ophthalmoscope, which allows your eye to be examined while you’re still alive. He was also the first to measure the time it took for a neural signal to get to the brain, and come up with the idea that there was an actual delay between seeing and processing and thinking. Basically, he was just as big of a chad as he was in Brave New World.”
“And younger than him and full of spite was Ewald Hering, who said, according to Satoru’s notes, ‘fuck you Helmholtz there’s FOUR’. Four what, Satoru?”
Gojo squinted. “Uh. Wait let me check - oh, that’s what it was. Helmholtz also developed the concept of the Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory of color vision - that our perception of color is based on combinations of red, green, and blue.”
“Ahh. And I assume Hering thought differently?”
“Yeah, he was into the opponent processing theory - that there were blue-yellow and red-green pairs, one of which turned off the other. I doubt we need to get into the specifics of that, though. They were both partially right, which would’ve pissed them off, but their main beef was with unconscious inference - Hering thought that sensory input was enough to understand the world without needing unconscious inference and such.”
“They should’ve just kissed,” Shoko remarked dryly, taking out a cigarette that Utahime snatched away from her.
“Nothing gayer than two proud men who are good friends in spite of their ideological differences,” Utahime agreed, her glare boring holes into Suguru in particular.
He raised his hands in surrender. “Why are you looking at me like that? I’m not homophobic or anything, I agree with you.”
“Oh, god, he really is stupid when it comes to-” Shoko elbowed Utahime, and Utahime sulked. “I don’t know how you put up with them.”
“Hey, Nanami, how do you feel about gay people?” Haibara asked a bit too loudly. He didn’t seem to notice, nor did Nanami even bother to look up from his notes.
“They exist.”
“Oh! Cool.”
Suguru wasn’t sure what Haibara had perceived coming out of Nanami’s mouth to warrant the giddy grin on his face, but he was happy for him, he supposed.
“Onto some other psychophysics people - we have Fechner and Weber, who discovered Weber’s law . More accurately, Fechner named the law after Weber. It states that the just-noticeable difference, of JND, between two stimuli is related to the strength of the stimuli. For example, if you’re trying to detect the difference between a line 466mm and 467mm, you’d probably fail, but you might detect the difference between a 1mm and 2mm line. If you think of how logarithmic graphs even out as they get larger, it’s kind of like that.”
Shoko actually laughed at that one. “That’s gay as hell. Who’d name their scientific law after another man?”
“There’s also Fechner’s law, so maybe he just ran out of names,” Suguru offered. “Fechner’s law states that sensation is a logarithmic function of physical intensity, which is…ah, basically what I just said. Fechner’s law is just more explicit about the logarithm part. The two rules are similar, so they’re usually combined into the Weber-Fechner Law.”
“I think it’d be funny if there were a Gojo-Geto law,” Gojo mused. “Some new physics concept, or something.”
Suguru scoffed. “You’d have to discover something to name it after us, dumbass, and it’s not like any of us are going to work at some research facility.”
“I could discover some new type of curse,” Gojo protested.
“It could happen,” Utahime grumbled. “The widespread terror of you two combined really could create a curse.”
“And then you could get it for your collection, Suguru,” Gojo cheered. “If your opponent isn’t intimidated enough, bring out the Goge curse, the embodiment of fear of us! Or maybe the Satoru-Suguru..the Satosugu curse! Yeah.”
Utahime choked. “Are you thinking up curse names or baby names?”
“What kind of baby would be named Satosugu? Don’t be weird, Utahime,” Gojo scolded.
“Let’s move onto Gestalt Psychology,” Suguru declared, before he could think too hard about sharing a last name with Satoru. “It argues that we view the world in terms of general patterns and well-organized structures, and is interested in how edges and continuity are perceived. For example, the Kanizsa triangle forms shapes that aren’t actually there, but are suggested by our minds.”
“You have a list of some Gestalt Psychology terms in the handout packet. We won’t be going over them, but you’ll want to know those for future reference. Probably. We’re just guessing what Yaga will or won’t put on the test,” Suguru admitted.
“Next up is Direct Perception , by J.J. and Eleanor Gibson, or the Gibsonian approach. It believes that the world generates rich sources of information that the senses just have to pick up directly, in the same brain vein as which scientist from before?”
“Hering,” Mei Mei supplied. “Who opposed Helmholtz.”
“Correct! Gold star for Mei Mei. The Gibsonian approach criticized a lot of perception work because it didn’t often use stimuli that were naturally encountered in the real world and thus provided weird results. It got called the ecological approach because of that, too.”
“The Information-Processing approach said that perceptual and cognitive systems created a flow of information. For example, information flows from the eyes to the units in the brain that process the information seen, and then that information flows to cognitive systems that tell you what it means, and then that information flows to another place that tells you what to do about that information. The diagram in your handout shows this pretty well. All this flowing takes a finite amount of time and can be recorded using reaction times. It falls in line with Helmholtz’s viewpoint.”
“You could think of the Gibsonian versus the Information-Processing approach as, like, the beef between Hering and Helmholtz’s children,” Satoru added. “Cross-generational beef.”
“So like the Gojo and the Zenin clans?” Haibara asked innocently.
Satoru scoffed. “You could say that, but please don’t bring up the Zenins around me ever again unless you want me to vomit. Anyway, the last approach we’re going through is David Marr’s computational approach, inspired by the rise of computer science. He sought a mathematical computation for every task the brain would need to perceive something., with math models based on neural networks and computer simulations. Researchers nowadays use his approach to try and predict perceptual phenomena, as well as simulate it in computers.”
“In a similar vein, we also have neuroscience, which you’ll be dipping your toes into with Perception and Sensation, since there’s a lot of anatomical stuff. Basically, neuroscience aims to understand sensation and perception in terms of the nervous system’s structures and processes that let it function. It goes all the way down to the cellular level , understanding electrochemical signals and stuff like that, but also attempts to match certain regions of the brain to their functions. This is measured through different types of scans, like the ECT. CT, PET, MRI, and fMRI scans.” Suguru sighed, picking up a bottle of water. Was it his or Gojo’s? He honestly couldn’t remember, but he chugged it down anyway. His throat was definitely going to be sore after this.
“These two guys, Hubel and Wiesel, were the main guys that invented the microelectrode,” Gojo continued, scowling in a way that told Suguru that was probably his water bottle. Whoops. “It’s small enough to go inside a neuron without damaging it, and record electrical activity or stimulate the cell. …pfft, stimulate.”
Suguru groaned, even though he knew it was coming. “Your 5 year old boy's sense of humor never ceases to amaze me, Satoru.”
“There’s a lot of amazing things about me,” Gojo boasted, sticking his tongue out. “And there’s a lot of amazing things about neuropsychology, which is the study of the relationship between brain damage and changes in behavior.”
“That might be the worst transition you’ve ever made, but yes, that’s correct. Behavior changes can include problems with language, memory, and/or perception, and brain damage can come from a wide variety of accidents, as I’m sure we’re all aware of. It originated in the study of soldiers wounded by gunshots and other injuries. One example of a neuropsych patient is D.B., who had a tumor and had to get it, along with some other areas around his occipital lobe, removed. There’s also the widely famous example of Phineas Gage, whose head was impaled on a railway spike and therefore had drastic changes in personality.”
“Another form of brain damage is agnosia, or a deficit in some aspect of perception due to brain damage. Damage to an area of the temporal lobe will cause prosopagnosia, or face blindness, and damage to another area may cause amusia, or a lack of music appreciation.”
“As mentioned earlier, the fMRI method is used to capture which part of the brain correlates to which by tracking blood flow to those parts when they’re stimulated .” He leveled an accusing glare at Gojo, who waved him off while cackling. “Satoru, if you laugh at my next few words, I won’t let you sleep in my bed tonight.”
Utahime let out a scandalized gasp that Suguru pointedly ignored.
Gojo immediately sobered up. “I won’t laugh. I promise.”
“Okay. The idea that cognitive and emotional factors can influence phenomenology, or how we experience perception, is known as cognitive penetration-”
He broke off, waiting for Gojo to burst out laughing - and it certainly looked like he wanted to, with his flushed face, eyes squeezed shut, and quiet snicker, but he miraculously held himself back from completely losing his shit. “Oh, wow. You’re really dedicated.”
“Y-you have no power over me,” Gojo mumbled, and he was actually trembling from exertion. Suguru would be impressed if it weren’t Gojo trying not to laugh at the word penetration.
“One time thing,” Suguru assured him in a tone that said it probably wouldn’t be a one time thing. “I wouldn’t dream of taking advantage of your weakness like that.”
“It’s not my weakness,” Gojo snapped, face flushing again. He looked cute whenever he was pouting, Suguru decided. In a totally normal and platonic kind of cute way.
“Hai, hai.” Suguru preferred the nights when Satoru invaded his bed, too, but he had no intentions of revealing that information in front of their students. “Anyway, the opposite of cognitive penetration is cognitive impenetrability, which is the belief that perception remains the same regardless of cognitive and emotional state, and our attention, expectation, and mood will change instead, which is different from our perception. The existence of the placebo effect is pretty damning evidence in favor of cognitive penetration, but there are alternate explanations for almost everything. It’s complicated.”
“Last thing we’re gonna talk about today - I promise, don’t look at me like that Nanamin - is an application of perception and sensation: impending collisions! Joyful topic. To avoid collisions, our visual systems make two major judgments: one is the time to collision, which is the estimated time it will take for an object to collide with you. It’s determined by the object’s perceived rate of expansion per unit of time, although you don’t do that math consciously. For example…”
Gojo walked into Suguru, bumping his forehead against Suguru’s neck in a way that felt somewhat cat-like. He then, predictably, slid his chin to rest on Suguru’s shoulder and looked at the students smugly. “Suguru was a looming object for me, so I made the mental calculation of how many steps it would take to collide with him, and then covered that distance because carnage is fun.”
Suguru scoffed, running a hand through Gojo’s hair and feeling him melt into Suguru’s touch like cheese. “The second one cue is the size-arrival effect, or the idea that larger objects are judged to be closer than smaller objects. It’s an illusion, actually, and one that isn’t always helpful when judging distance. In the real world, one might accidentally cut off a motorcycle because they appeared further away than they actually were compared to a car.”
“Okay! Class dismissed, everyone go do their study guides and watch the videos and stuff.” Gojo wrapped his arms around Suguru’s waist, humming contentedly as everyone stood up and chairs screeched against the floor. Suguru should’ve been used to it by now, but he still ended up focusing on a desk in the back of the classroom and willing his face to not betray the blood rushing through it. “I told you that was the last thing, Nanamin! Aren’t you happy you had faith in me?”
Nanami sighed, in a long-suffering why are you like this? manner that wasn’t all that different from Utahime’s when she was too enamored with Shoko to get angry. “I’ve never had faith in you a single day of my life.”
“Your loss,” Gojo pouted. “Suguru has faith in me, and he’s way less grumpy than you are, Nanamin.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Suguru scolded, his lips quirking upwards when Gojo gave him an affronted look.
“You don’t have faith in me?!”
“I never said that.”
“You implied it! So mean…”
“Get a room already,” Utahime yelled as she left, ironically clinging to Shoko like an octopus as they left the room. She paused in the doorway, though, and doubled back to leer at them. “Geto’s room, in particular, but you don’t need me to tell you that.”
Suguru flushed, but Gojo just made a face at her and unwrapped himself from Suguru’s back. “It’s not weird to sleep with your friends, right?”
“Not at all,” Suguru lied, desperately pretending he didn’t want Gojo’s warmth around him again. “She’s just reading too much into things.”
“Classic Utahime,” Satoru scoffed. “Alright, let’s start preparing for the next lesson.” He picked up his notes and sat down on what would normally be Yaga’s desk, beginning to type out a lesson plan.
Suguru raised an eyebrow. “You want to be prepared? ” He made a show of squinting out the window. “I don’t see Heaven and Earth doing the lambada, so I must be hallucinating…”
He was rewarded for his efforts with a pencil missile, which was easily blocked by a slug-like curse he often used to catch projectiles. Good thing he’d gotten clearance for today’s waterfall curse usage from Yaga. “Asshole. Come help me write this shit down; this was your idea in the first place.”
“Fine,” Suguru sighed, pulling up a chair.
They’d been working for half an hour or so when Gojo mumbled something.
“Sorry, what?”
Gojo kept his gorgeous eyes trained strictly on his lap. “I can still sleep with you tonight…right? You’re okay with it, right? I kind of laughed, but…”
Suguru’s heart melted, and he raised a hand to ruffle the other boy’s hair. “I was joking, Satoru. You can come to my room whenever you want.”
“You-” Satoru chewed on his lip, still refusing to make eye contact. “You want me there, right?”
I always want you, Suguru's thoughts screamed so loudly that he had to fight to make sure the words didn’t accidentally slip out of his mouth. “You make my room brighter whenever you’re there,” he admitted instead, which was equally as embarrassing to say, in hindsight. But if this uncharacteristically insecure Satoru needed validation, he had no problems with giving it. “I like it better when I’m with you.”
Satoru blinked, and he was really blushing a lot today, but Suguru wasn’t one to complain. He pinched Satoru’s cheek, feeling the heat beneath his fingertips. “Don’t ever worry about if I want you around, okay? That’s not like you to be so concerned about,” he teased.
“...mmm.” Satoru swung a leg over Suguru’s thigh and climbed into his lap, resting his head against Suguru’s neck. “N’ you don’t mind this either, right?”
I could die happy like this. Suguru was getting into the habit of pushing down some of his weirder thoughts without even blinking. “You’re like a giant teddy bear, you know that? Bonier and lankier, but still.” One hand rested around the small of Satoru’s back while he maneuvered over to the laptop with his other hand. “I like when you’re clingy like this, only for me.”
“Would be weird if it was anyone else,” Satoru murmured.
Suguru breathed in the scent of artificial strawberries and sighed. “Yeah, it would be.”