Archive of Our Own

Presenting is well-known as a stressful time in the lives of young people, to the extent that there are counselors who specialize in talking about it. There’s the possibility that presenting can change the way other people see you, there’s new rules you have to learn, there are family and societal expectations to juggle, so on and so forth.

All of which is to say: presenting is already stressful enough without sending half your class running out of the room choking and waving their hands in front of their noses. 

Yuuji is quickly falling into presentation fever and doesn’t understand why people are leaving around him, or why the rest are staring at him like that, with scrunched-up faces and the politest-possible frowns. All he can do is whimper and curl in on himself until the school nurse in a scent-blocking mask ushers him out of the room and into the small scent-isolated rooms they use for school presentations. He cries only when left completely alone, confused and hot and wracked by pain in his abdomen, and doesn’t stop until he falls asleep from sheer exhaustion.

His grandpa picks him up later. He’s wearing a mask, too, and Yuuji thinks it might be because it’s cold season. That is, until they drive to the hospital, and the pheromone specialist there tells Yuuji his scent is abnormally strong.

People can’t smell their own scents. Yuuji just blinks, still dazed, not fully understanding. She tells him that some particularly strong omegas have more potent scents than usual. It’s a leftover from times when the strongest omegas—prime omegas—would need that strong scent to call out to the strongest potential mates even if they were far away, and also to deter the weak nearby from taking advantage of their heats. It’s a biology thing, she says with a shrug. Just something that made sure only the strongest genes are passed on. There are barely any prime omegas left anyway, and they’re no longer beholden to their genetics like they used to be. Now, it’s basically an evolutionary hiccup.

“A hiccup,” Yuuji echoes, tilting his head against the cotton filling it.

“You’re saying he’s a prime omega?” Yuuji’s grandpa asks with a frown. “That can’t be right. We don’t have any of—that in our family.”

He pauses as soon as he says it, but keeps staring straight at the specialist.

“Prime alphas and omegas can show up in any line, not just the big families you hear about on the news,” the specialist explains patiently. “It can skip generations, many generations, or just show up spontaneously.”

“He can’t be,” his grandpa repeats stubbornly. “I’ve heard about the shit they do to those prime omegas—”

“Not anymore. We’ve all heard those horror stories, Itadori-san, but these days that kind of…” She searches for an appropriate word. “Discrimination…is very much illegal. His life doesn’t have to change. We’ll need to put him on some prescription-strength scent blockers, of course, for his own sake and the sake of those around him…”

His grandpa’s scowl only intensifies.

“But they’re virtually side-effect free and very effective. He’ll smell like a beta. As long as we keep an eye on things, there should be no problems at all. And prime omegas’ status is protected by the government, so while I do have to report this, his second gender and any details about it will be sealed unless there’s some reason a government agency needs to know.”

Yuuji won’t understand until a few days later, after his presentation pseudo-heat has subsided. His grandpa has a long talk with him, and explains his new medications and why it’s so important he takes them. He tells Yuuji about how prime omegas used to be stolen away by big families to mate with prime alphas, how they were kept inside these homes and not allowed to leave. That they were used just to make more prime alpha kids and for nothing else.

“I know I taught you to be honest,” he says, “But this once, it’ll be better off if you just say you’re a beta, okay?”

“But I presented in front of everyone,” Yuuji says. This is all so confusing he starts to wonder if he’s not still heat-dazed. “They’ll know—”

“I guess this information about prime omegas having strong scents is, uh, protected information or whatever. They recommended…” His grandpa winces. “I guess there are some rare cases where betas in physical distress can let out really strong hormones. They said you can tell everyone you were sick, and it interacted strangely with your presentation. As a beta, that is.”

Yuuji’s eyes dip to his hands. Lying makes him feel sick. “Can’t we just tell the truth? The doctor lady…didn’t she say that stuff with the prime omegas was illegal now?”

“People can make anything happen with enough money, Yuuji,” his grandpa says, more serious than he’s ever heard him. “I don’t want to risk it. I’m not risking you.”

“Okay,” Yuuji whispers. “Yeah.”

So that’s how Yuuji becomes a beta to everyone at school. He shrugs off questions about the incident, recites the excuse his grandpa gave him to the best of his ability. With his fancy scent blockers, nobody can tell any different, so they accept the explanation.

“What did it smell like?” Yuuji asks, desperately curious even if he can’t let them know the truth, even if he can never join in on the people in his class comparing scents. “Was it really bad?”

The looks on his friends’ faces is answer enough. “Ugh,” one of them murmurs. “It’s all kinda fuzzy, but…”

“Sweet, right?”

A third friend nods hurriedly. “Like—super sweet. Like disgustingly sweet.”

Yuuji fakes a laugh and a disgusted face of his own. “Gross! I’m glad the doctors figured out what was wrong, then.”

They all agree with him. They’re glad his scent went away.

Yuuji will just have to be glad for it too.

Over the years, he almost manages to convince himself he really is the beta he’s pretending to be. He takes his pills religiously, goes to checkups once every year to make sure everything is going okay. There are full-year heat suppressant pills now, too, so he goes on those just to make extra sure his scent never has any reason to leak past the blockers. He hangs out mostly with betas, like betas tend to do, and when his grandpa goes into the hospital he hangs out mostly with nobody at all.

Except for, when he’s fifteen, his token appearance at the Occult Club just to satisfy his grandpa’s request to join a club results in him eating Ryoumen Sukuna’s finger, and after that everything is a whirlwind. He’s ordered to be executed, and then he decides to be executed later after eating more fingers, and he goes to school, and he dies, and he comes back from the dead but he has to pretend to be dead for a while longer like he’s some kind of spy.

Execution and dying aside, it’s the most fun he’s had in—maybe ever, really. He has friends now, and he has teachers who cares about him.

One, in particular, who’s a prime alpha.

Yuuji doesn’t even notice Gojo-sensei’s scent at first, not until he’s living in one of his properties. His scent is contained by Infinity most of the time, so Yuuji can only smell it after they sit on the couch together watching a movie.

“Do you have an air purifier down here or something?” Yuuji asks absentmindedly, looking around for one and finding nothing.

“Nope!” Gojo-sensei responds in that sing-song way of his. “The air in here is alllll Gojo!”

Yuuji snorts, but continues smelling. “Huh. I guess I like Gojo then!”

He doesn’t realize what he’s said until, predictably, “Kyaa,” Gojo-sensei says, hiding his face playfully. “But it’s so sudden!”

Yuuji lightly thwacks Gojo-sensei’s shoulder, pretending he’s not blushing at his mistake. “I meant the smell. It smells like…” He sniffs again. “Like nothing, but…I don’t know. It’s refreshing.”

Gojo-sensei goes still next to him. He hums idly. “Yuuji, you’re a beta, right?”

“Mmhm.” The lie runs off his tongue easily, by now. “I’m pretty sensitive to smells, though, which is why it’s nice in here. Like taking a break, or something. Why?”

“Just trying to get to know my dear student better.” Gojo-sensei sounds the same as ever, so Yuuji doesn’t really get it until later.

What he’ll find out, from Kugisaki bullying Fushiguro into it, is that Gojo-sensei’s scent is strong like a prime alpha’s tends to be, but he also doesn’t have a scent so much as he has an absence of it. A void, like his Limitless, leaving the air smelling fresh and clean and new all around him. Which means he was smelling Gojo-sensei back then, which means as a supposed beta, he shouldn’t have been able to smell it very well. 

Yuuji sits with widened eyes and a frozen heart as Kugisaki and Fushiguro continue their gossip. (“What? That’s so weird.” “Yeah. I’ve only smelled it a few times, but it’s like—” A wrinkled nose, familiar. “Like not being able to smell anymore. Sort of. It’s unpleasant.”)

It’s fine, right? Gojo-sensei never said anything. And Yuuji said he had a good nose for a beta, anyway, so—and even if he found out, it’s not like Gojo-sensei would do anything—

Not to him. He’s just a kid. That’s all Gojo-sensei sees him as.

He sags onto the table, drawing Fushiguro and Kugisaki’s attention.

“What, are you sad your favorite Gojo-sensei has a bad scent?” Kugisaki asks, both teasing and sharp.

“He’s a beta anyway, he doesn’t care,” Fushiguro says automatically, then scowls slightly. “Also, what are you implying?”

“He knows what I’m implying,” Kugisaki says, elbowing Yuuji in the shoulder. “And you do too. You’re not stupid.”

Fushiguro’s face only twists up more at that. “No.”

“Yes,” Kugisaki says gloatingly. 

Yuuji shakes his head on the table, then sits up, glaring as best he can. “No! Come on, Kugisaki, he’s our teacher. You just reminded me that I didn’t finish that worksheet in class, that’s all.”

“What about him being our teacher means there’s no way you have a big, stupid crush on him?” Kugisaki asks, which is unfairly rational.

Fushiguro, employing an impressive degree of selective hearing, just says, “You’ll have to do the worksheet for homework then.”

Yuuji groans dramatically and slumps back over the table. “We’re sorcerers, why do we need math anyway?”

It’s a common complaint from him, and effective enough at herding the conversation away from Gojo-sensei and any feelings Yuuji may or may not have for him. Yuuji only half-engages in the talk. Internally, he tries to calm himself down, to slow his heart.

It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s all fine.

Gojo-sensei doesn’t bring it up, at any rate, so it keeps being fine. And then he’s trapped in a box. He doesn’t do any talking then.

Yuuji hates how much he hates not hearing him. He hates that he let him be taken in the first place. And he chases after anything he can do to help, any form of redemption after Sukuna killed so many people. He cleans up the curses in Shibuya and tries not to think at all, even if things are very not fine now in a much worse way than he could ever have anticipated.

His scent blockers running out is really just the icing on top of it—like, of course, why wouldn’t they?

Chousou is the first to notice, because he’s the only person (sort of) nearby anyway. The body he’d taken over was a beta, so he can’t smell it super well or anything, but he does keep sniffing in Yuuji’s direction.

“Look, I know it’s been a while since I’ve taken a bath, but—” Yuuji says when he’s had enough of it.

“No. Not that.” Chousou chooses his words sparingly, so it hits Yuuji like a punch in the face when he simply asks, “You’re an omega?”

Yuuji chokes on air, stepping back reflexively. “What?”

“Your smell.” 

“I…I…” Shit. Right. He’d ran out of pills a few days ago. He hadn’t even been able to think about it, really, not with everything else going on. “I, uh, I mean…” He winces. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I usually take blockers, but…yeah. Is it really bad?”

Chousou looks confused at the question. “Bad? It’s my little brother’s scent. Of course it’s not bad.”

Ah, right. He forgot this one was a brocon. Yuuji deflates slightly, chuckling awkwardly. “Oh. Okay.”

“It’s very sweet though.” Chousou sniffs again, but his nose doesn’t wrinkle. “It’s nice.”

Yuuji could almost hug him for that, really, even if he still doesn’t quite know what to do with Chousou. If even Chousou had run away, Yuuji isn’t sure what he’d do with himself.

“Um, thanks.” He tries a smile. He hasn’t smiled much lately. Maybe that’s why Chousou looks so concerned. 

Okkotsu-senpai is the first person he meets who can really smell him. He’s very polite about it, but Yuuji can tell by the way he speaks from a slight distance, and the way his pupils blow out. Yuuji can smell the alpha on him, can smell his strength. Perhaps that’s why he’s able to stay close.

When Fushiguro shows up, though, he takes one breath and gasps, then scowls.

Yuuji covers his scent gland uselessly.

“You’re an omega?!” Fushiguro demands. “What the hell, Itadori?”

It isn’t what Yuuji thought they’d talk about, if they ever met again. “It’s, uh—look, there was this whole thing with my grandpa—”

“I don’t care about whatever thing you had,” Fushiguro growls, though his expression does flash with something like regret for a short moment. “You’re telling me you, an unmated omega with a scent like—that—” He waves around wildly. “You didn’t tell the truth before entering a world full of strong alphas who wanted to kill you? What if someone found out and used an alpha command on you, huh? We couldn’t protect you if we didn’t know—”

Yuuji blinks. “What are you even talking about?”

“The sorcery world has a higher than normal percentage of alphas and omegas, and an abnormally high percentage of prime alphas.” Fushiguro crosses his arms, as if he’s embarrassed about losing his cool. “The higher-ups? They’re almost all alphas. A bunch of them are prime alphas, too. The big families breed for it, and something about cursed energy—” He sighs, dragging his hand over his face. “Whatever, that’s not the point. The point is, if any one of them found out you were an omega, that’d mean they could use an alpha command on you. They could tell you to kill yourself, to hurt somebody else so you’d be executed right away—they could tell Sukuna to come out if they wanted for some reason. If that happened, we’d be completely blindsided since we all thought you were a beta.”

Yuuji scratches his face, a bit embarrassed now. “Uh…sorry. I didn’t know about any of that. Or, think about it, I guess. It’s just—” He curls in on himself a bit, takes a deep breath. It’s fine. This is Fushiguro. He won’t be weird about it. “I’m a prime omega, so—”

“You’re fucking what?!” Fushiguro shrieks so loud Yuuji flinches, holding his ears with a wounded look. Chousou nearly steps forward, but Yuuji waves him away.

“Yeah. I have to be on these really strong blockers, but I ran out, and…so…”

“Oh, shit,” Fushiguro mumbles to himself, more worked up than Yuuji’s ever seen him. “Fuck. Fuck, Yuuji, that’s—you see how that’s worse, right?”

“Uh…” Yuuji flounders. “I smell bad so people will want to get rid of me faster?”

Fushiguro gives him a strange look. “I don’t understand how your head works, sometimes.” He sniffs curiously, then shrugs. “I mean, it is really strong, though. And sweet.”

“Yeah, I’ve gotten that before,” Yuuji says, lips pursing, looking away. At least Fushiguro isn’t running either. He’s an alpha, too—makes sense, Yuuji supposes, with what he said about that being common in sorcerers—but he’s also really strong, so. He hates sweet stuff, though, so it must be at least a little hard for him.

“Anyway. No. That has nothing to do with anything. You must know how prime omegas used to get kidnapped for breeding, right?”

“Yeah. That’s why I’ve been pretending to be a beta this whole time in the first place.”

Fushiguro closes his eyes slowly, hands clenching. “Uh…yeah. Okay. That makes sense. I—right, so, it’s illegal now, but—the big families—I said they breed for it. And since prime omegas partnering with prime alphas almost always results in a prime child, through the years these big families took a lot of prime omegas. It’s harder for them to do it now because of the laws around it and because there aren’t many prime omegas anymore, and even fewer who are public about it. Even they can’t get around the blocks the government has on that information. But you? You’re already in this world. You’re already in their sights. They already have power over you because of Sukuna. If they found out you’re prime, and if they smelled you like this they’d know—if they found out, they could take you, use you until they were done with you. And none of us would really be able to stop them.”

“Not even Gojo-sensei?” Yuuji starts to ask before faltering midway. “Oh.”

They both stand in silence a while. Eventually, Fushiguro says, “Tell me the name of the scent blockers you were on. Ieiri-sensei should be able to get some, and I can sneak them back to you. And uh…” He blushes slightly. “Heat suppressants? You still have those?”

“I’ll need more soon,” Yuuji says in a small voice. He’s been trying not to think about it.

“Some of those too, then.” Awkwardly, he gives a single pat to Yuuji’s head. “We’ll, uh…we’ll…figure it out, okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Sorry. For yelling at you.”

“No, I should’ve thought of that stuff too. Sorry.”

Fushiguro nods, then says, “That all wasn’t the reason I came here, though.”

And thus starts Yuuji’s adventures inside the culling games. Fushiguro gets the blockers and suppressants to him. They enter the games with Yuuji smelling like a beta again. They leave it with Tsumiki safe a while longer. They continue trying to find a way to rescue Gojo-sensei.

When they finally find a way to get him out, it’s been two years. Yuuji is freshly eighteen and covered in scars both new and old. He’s a bit taller, a lot stronger, and so, so tired.

He’s worried when Gojo-sensei is let out he’ll be even worse for wear, but he looks just the same as when he went in. The only difference is his eyes, when Yuuji finally catches a glimpse of them. They used to be bright. They used to sparkle, like they held a secret only Gojo-sensei knew.

Now, as Megumi gives him the rundown on what’s happened these past years, he just stares straight ahead without seeing anything, even when he’s looking right at Yuuji. Even when he’s smiling. Even when he’s joking that he just had a nice nap while they all look like shit.

Impulsively, Yuuji reaches for a hug. He buries his head deep into Gojo-sensei’s shoulder, and he wants to tell him how much he missed him, and how he needed him, and how he barely made it without him, and how he wants Gojo-sensei to be proud of him, and how freeing Gojo-sensei was the only thing that kept him going most days. He wants to tell him all of that, everything, to go day by day and etch himself back into Gojo-sensei’s mind.

But Gojo-sensei just sighs and holds him closer. Every thought vanishes in his embrace, and Yuuji is left crying. Pathetic, he thinks. You wanted to show him how much you grew up and then you sob over him like a little kid.

Pathetic, maybe, but Gojo-sensei only tightens his arms further. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, quiet enough Yuuji thinks maybe he’s only imagining it. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t strong enough to protect you.”

“No—” Yuuji draws back hurriedly, looking up. “No, Gojo-sensei. That doesn’t matter. All that matters is you were strong enough to come back.”

To me, he doesn’t say.

Gojo-sensei looks just as stricken as if he had, though. When a dazed Yuuji brushes his fingertips against his cheekbones—he’s not trying to put the moves on, or anything, just to remind himself Gojo-sensei is really here under his hands—Gojo-sensei jerks back so hard he nearly stumbles.

Running away.

Yuuji nearly thinks he must be releasing scent, and raises a hand up to his scent gland just in case.

“Well,” Gojo-sensei says, then clears his throat. “Well.”

Yuuji waits for him to continue obediently. A long-recovered Nobara’s eyebrows are raised sky high, glancing between Yuuji and Gojo repeatedly. Megumi appears nauseated.

And Gojo-sensei, well—he refuses to look straight at any of them, but before he pulls up his blindfold, Yuuji feels like he catches Gojo-sensei’s eyes focusing on him for a split second before he looks away again.

“I’m guessing there’s still a lot of work to do,” Gojo-sensei finally says. “And we’re going to get started on that right away. But first, I haven’t eaten in two years. Let’s get some food. Preferably something with a lot of sugar.” 

There are many more battles after that, but that’s another story. In this story, when everything is settled, Yuuji still has one more fight left.

Megumi isn’t really one to vague text, so when Yuuji gets a text from him that just reads “EMERGENCY. HIDE” he takes it seriously. The only problem is that the text gets to him too late.

There’s already an emissary of the higher-ups at his door, and they don’t really seem inclined to let him know what the emergency is.

He has an idea, though. One of two. Either they think now that the curses are settled it’s time to get rid of him, or—

“Itadori Yuuji,” someone’s voice booms out in the dark hall. “You’re an omega.”

He’s getting awfully tired of being told what he is. He stays silent, frowning.

“A prime omega,” another voice chimes, and this time he can’t stop his wince. Shit. This isn’t good.

“What makes you think that?” he finally asks, though he knows that he wouldn’t have been summoned here if they didn’t have some kind of evidence.

“Ieiri Shoko—”

Oh, god.

“Was found to have been keeping some receipts off her expenditure reports. When we investigated further, we discovered she’s been issuing prescriptions for—”

Okay, they definitely know. He scrubs irritably at his hair. “Don’t get mad at her. I asked her to keep it secret.”

He hadn’t. She and Megumi had agreed it was necessary from the beginning. But Yuuji isn’t going to bring anybody else into this. 

“Lies upon lies,” someone says, smug. “Were you ever planning on informing the school of this?”

“My status is protected by the government. It’s not like it’s illegal for me to keep it secret.”

“Illegal, no, but unethical? Absolutely. As an omega, you’re susceptible to alpha commands.”

Yuuji frowns. “Only by alphas stronger than me, and anyway, that’s actually illegal—”

“Records show that Ryoumen Sukuna was a prime alpha,” they interrupt.

Yuuji’s mouth hangs open.

They’re not actually going to try this.

“He could command you to give over control of your body, and you would be helpless but to comply.”

“It’s been three years since I ate that first finger,” Yuuji says, starting to get properly pissed off. “Three years. He knew I was an omega from the beginning, talked my ear off about it too. You think if he was going to give me an alpha command, he wouldn’t have done it already?”

“We don’t know his agenda. He could be biding his time,” someone says hurriedly. 

“It’s too risky to leave to chance.”

“There’s only one option, if we’re still leaving execution off the table.”

“For now,” someone mutters.

“For now,” they acknowledge. “We simply need to mate you to a prime alpha. Mated omegas aren’t affected by alpha commands.”

“You’re fucking kidding me,” a mouth on Yuuji’s cheek says incredulously.

Yuuji’s still in shock, maybe, because all he can do is laugh. “Seriously? Seriously. You—oh, my god. You didn’t have to go all through this if that was your point. Just say you want a prime omega to fuck—”

“You’re out of line,” one of them says, though they at least sound a bit embarrassed. “We’re only thinking of what’s best for the world.”

“Like shit,” Yuuji snarls. 

“If you don’t control yourself, we will restrain you.”

“What, with one of your alpha commands?” Yuuji’s laughter verges on hysterical now. “Try it. Just try to see if you’re stronger than me.”

The room is silent, a moment, before clapping rings out from every corner.

“I’ve been wondering when you lot were going to try something,” Gojo-sensei says, clapping still as he walks closer to Yuuji. When he reaches him, he flings a casual arm on Yuuji’s shoulder. Despite the circumstances, Yuuji can’t stop the way it makes him shiver.

“Gojo,” someone says haltingly. “You weren’t invited to this meeting.”

“No, and that wasn’t very polite, was it?” He heaves a dramatic sigh. “I was so hurt when I was told my dear student had been taken away, and just for this?” He shakes his head. “If you were all so desperate for an omega, I could sign you up for Tinder.”

“You—” They grit their teeth and double down. “He’s a safety hazard. He always has been, and this is the final straw. If he’s not mated by a prime alpha, the only option is execution.”

Gojo-sensei hums. His hand on Yuuji’s shoulder tenses, hard enough to bruise. “Even if I say he’s under my protection?”

“Even then,” they say, though their voice is trembling.

“I see,” Gojo-sensei says, and any illusion of playfulness in his voice vanishes. “Any prime alpha, huh?”

Perhaps they sense what’s coming, because nobody says anything until Gojo-sensei whirls Yuuji into his arms, back facing his chest, chin on his head. “All right then!” he chirps. “I’m a prime alpha! I’ll take him.”

Yuuji doesn’t remember much of the resulting uproar. There’s a lot of yelling, voices overlapping over one another, but Yuuji just remembers Gojo-sensei firm behind him, and the way he ushers him away with Yuuji still in his arms. Nobody follows them. Yuuji is silent all the way until Gojo-sensei unlocks the door of a familiar house—ah, right, this is where he lived when he was ‘dead’, a whole lifetime ago—and, leaping ahead of him, prostrates himself on the floor ahead of Yuuji.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, sounding completely sincere. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I don’t know of any other unmated prime alphas that are on our side, and I needed to get you out of there at least—I mean, I couldn’t be sure if they’d insist on taking you into custody, and who knows what shady shit they’d get up to with you in their hands like that—”

“It’s okay,” Yuuji says blankly. He’s pretty sure he’s dreaming, or something, so it’s fine. He’ll wake up at some point.

“It’s not okay.” Gojo-sensei looks up, takes off his blindfold. His eyes are serious, dark. “We both know what a mating requires. It’s not fair to ask of you. I’ll try to find a solution before the deadline they were throwing around, but—if—I mean, it could always be broken, but—” He shakes his head forcefully, rocking back from the seiza into a graceless crouch. “I’ll try to find a solution,” he repeats. “We’ll figure this out.”

Part of Yuuji wants to say that it really is okay. He wants to say that he’s had a crush on Gojo since he was fifteen, and that after knowing what it is to live without him he thinks maybe he loves him, too. He wants to say that he’s dreamed of Gojo running his hands over his body and telling him he wants him, that he wants his bite on his neck.

But the larger part of Yuuji, even underneath the shock, knows that this isn’t Gojo’s choice either. This isn’t just him. Gojo is being asked to mate his own student. Gojo doesn’t love him. He doesn’t want to be tied to Yuuji forever. Telling Gojo his feelings would only weigh him down further.

Yuuji says nothing. He nods. When Gojo-sensei shows him to his old room, he stays in there texting Megumi and Nobara until it’s time to take a bath and go to sleep. He doesn’t let himself think about being mated to Gojo, even when he’s lying sleepless in bed, staring at the ceiling.

It’s not an option. Gojo-sensei will find a solution.

And Yuuji will be alone, but he’ll be safe, so it’s…it will be okay.

...

Satoru hates that the first emotion he has when Megumi calls him in a panic, explaining that the higher-ups had discovered that Yuuji is a prime omega and took him, is relief. 

He’d idly suspected that Yuuji was lying about being a beta ever since Yuuji smelled his scent all those years ago, but he couldn’t be sure. And anyway, with Yuuji’s athleticism, if he were lying, the most likely option would be that he was hiding being an alpha. There were talented omegas, sure—Maki was one, and Inumaki another—but the majority of sorcerers were alphas. Ryoumen Sukuna included. He’d likely take to an alpha vessel.

Satoru wasn’t disappointed, or anything. Yuuji was his student, and his favorite at that. He was unexpectedly fun to be around. If Yuuji were an omega, Satoru would have to start worrying about whether he was touching Yuuji too much, getting too far into his personal space, stuff like that. He didn’t want to change anything.

Maybe he should have examined, back then, why that was. But he didn’t.

The first time he wondered what Yuuji’s scent would be underneath the blockers he was almost certainly wearing was inside the Prison Realm. At one point he might’ve chastised himself for wondering, but all he had inside that damned cube was his thoughts, and two years of thinking meant little was sacred. 

Something sunshine-y and bright, like Yuuji, perhaps? Like clean linens being hung out to dry in the sun. Or something quietly strong, like the smell of the woods, perhaps. Or sakura blossoms, to match his hair? Florals tend to be associated with omegas, but maybe…

Suppose. Just suppose Yuuji were an omega. He’s not, but if Satoru lets his thoughts stall he’ll get bored and if he gets bored he’ll contemplate smashing his head into the damn ground. So just suppose, just for fun, that Yuuji was hiding being an omega. What, then, might his scent be like?

Maybe the sakura again, or maybe peaches or strawberries. Something sweet. He’s such a good kid, so accommodating, always willing to let Satoru do whatever he wants with him. There’s no way he wouldn’t smell sweet.

And if he smelled sweet, surely he would taste…

Gojo’s eyes fly open. 

Taste? Scent is perhaps overly personal, but within the realms of reasonable inquiry. Taste, though, that’s—no. That’s too much, even for him. Not when it’s his student.

The evil voice within him that always wants to push too far, too hard, whispers, But he’s your favorite student.

Sure. That doesn’t mean anything. He’s still—

When has it ever stopped you before? You brought him to your house. You kept him there with you for months. You sat too close to him, touched him. You enjoyed it.

Satoru wants to think about something else, but the tendrils of the thought spread through him, seize him. That wasn’t anything wrong. He was just showing affection, like he always does. And Yuuji’s grandpa had just died. Surely he needed a friendly hug or two. He wasn’t crossing any lines. Plus, Yuuji was an alpha, anyway. Probably.

But if he wasn’t?

If he was an omega, and Satoru was touching him like that. If he still didn’t want to stop.

If one night, Yuuji bared his scent gland to him, and asked his Gojo-sensei to smell him, and underneath the scent blockers Satoru smelled him sweet and wanting—

Satoru cuts it off. He fills his head with white noise, punches the ground, turns off the Infinity so his knuckles go bloody.

It’s days later, or perhaps weeks or months, that the thought worms its way back into his mind. If Yuuji were an omega. If. He’s only thinking, just hypothetically. If he were, and if he wanted Satoru.

Would Satoru be able to say no? Would he want to?

He hasn’t known Yuuji that long, really. Not even a full school year. Even if Yuuji weren’t his underage student, which he still is, it’s not as though Satoru knows him well enough to agree to a mating. They would need to take it slow, first. He’s a good boy, a good omega. He deserves to be courted in the traditional way, to be showered in gifts and attention, for Satoru to prove beyond any doubt that he’s the best alpha for—

Satoru grinds his teeth together. What is he even doing? Yuuji, his student, a minor. Possibly still a beta. Probably an alpha. Almost certainly, he has no interest in his teacher, who he’s known for a few scant months. Yuuji wouldn’t see him that way. Yuuji wouldn’t want him. 

Not even if he complimented his scent, not even if he was the first one—even if he smiled with flushed cheeks whenever Satoru returned, even if he cooked for him, even if he leaned into every one of Satoru’s glancing touches—

It’s frightening, to realize how much Satoru had been cataloguing these things without even realizing. Of course, he’d paid attention to his favorite student. Not a strange amount, he’d thought. The vessel of Sukuna, the most interesting thing to happen to Satoru in ages—of course he’d kept an eye on things. On him.

He’s an even better liar than he had realized, to have fooled himself so completely.

Satoru has finally discovered a reason to be happy he was put in this cage. If he really does have feelings for his student, it’s probably best he’s kept there, far away from Yuuji. Because—he knows he’s not a particularly good man. And he doesn’t know for certain that, after realizing this, he would be able to keep himself from wanting more than he’ll get.

(Some time later, he’ll roll his eyes at himself for the dramatics. But then, even later than that, he’ll have his rut and come snarling into his fist thinking of pink hair, so.

That puts him right back where he started.)

Hence, when he hears about Yuuji being kidnapped: relief. Because at least it means Yuuji is an omega. And a prime omega, too, which is something Satoru hadn’t even bothered to think about. At least, he thinks for a single shameful second, this means he has a chance.

He heads back to reality quickly enough, though, the part where Yuuji has been taken, and teleports to the place where the higher-ups hold their meetings. Stupid of them to hold it here, stupid to think he wouldn’t find out.

The most stupid move, though, was taking Yuuji from him.

He doesn’t ‘have’ Yuuji, of course; he’s kept the most respectable distance he could manage, made easier by the fact they were at war. He’d been wondering how to act now that things were calmer. Now that Yuuji wasn’t even really his student anymore. Now that he was taller, and his cheekbones more prominent, and every part of Satoru ached to draw him close and not let him leave—

Anyway. He doesn’t have Yuuji, but Yuuji still is his, even if he’s not. His alpha already decided that for him back in the Prison Realm, much less when he was let out and Yuuji hugged him with such desperation Satoru nearly forgot he wasn’t allowed to kiss him. Even if Yuuji finds someone else—god, Satoru doesn’t want that, but if it happens, and it likely will—Satoru’s alpha, and Satoru himself, don’t have anyone else for them now.

And they took Yuuji still.

They really must have forgotten that Gojo Satoru was the strongest, with him in the box and then in combat. Very, very stupid. He’ll remind them later, when he doesn’t have an omega to protect.

He tries to keep his cool, but it’s difficult hearing the bullshit the higher-ups are spewing. Satoru expected it as soon as he heard the words ‘prime omega’, but still, hearing them attempt to take Yuuji for themselves, to fuck him, to breed him—he’d tear out their throats if Yuuji weren’t here. Yuuji seems inches from it himself, though Satoru knows he wouldn’t actually hurt them. He’s a better man than Satoru.

Maybe that’s why Satoru says he’ll mate him.

He should have thought of something else. He should have just threatened them, showed that he could provide for his omega—

No. No. Not his. His, but not his.

It was impulsive, but it still hurts to tell Yuuji they’ll find a way to fix things when being mated to Yuuji isn’t a problem to fix. But it being because of the higher-ups, that’s a problem. Yuuji not agreeing, that’s a problem. So. He’ll fix it. He’ll find a way. He’ll wipe that blank expression from Yuuji’s face. He’ll make him happy.

That’s what he should do, as Yuuji’s alpha, and what he wants most anyway.

The rustling downstairs late at night brings him out of his daze, and he’s running before he can think about it. It’s not somebody come to take Yuuji again, though—just Yuuji himself, rummaging around the half-unpacked boxes for a glass.

He blinks owlishly up at Satoru on the stairs. “Gojo-sensei? Did I wake you? Sorry, there weren’t any glasses clean and I wanted some water.”

“Sorry. Never got completely around to unpacking this place after they sealed it up.” Satoru clears his throat. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Yuuji shakes his head softly. 

“Me either.” Not that he ever sleeps much, but even less after getting out of the box, and less still with Yuuji so close. He should wish Yuuji good luck and sweet dreams and go back to his room now that he knows he’s safe, but impulsively, he instead asks, “Wanna watch a movie?” 

A pause, then Yuuji laughs. It’s a bit airier than normal, but Satoru savors it all the same. “Depends. Is anything going to punch me if we do?”

Satoru grins. “Just me and you, promise.”

“That doesn’t technically answer my question, sensei,” Yuuji says with teasing, narrowed eyes. “You’ve punched me plenty of times.”

Satoru claps his hand to his heart. “Only for training! It’s not like I liked it. Anyway, where did my cute, obedient student go? You’re supposed to say yes sensei, I’ll do anything as long as it’s with you—”

It hits a bit wrongly in the air between them, probably because they’re presently prospective mates. Yuuji colors slightly in the moonlight. “Shut up,” he mumbles, but just as Satoru thinks he’s fucked it all up, he fills his cup and starts to head to the basement door.

“Yuuji-kun!” Satoru exclaims happily. He doesn’t even have to feign the way his heart leaps. “I knew my favorite student was in there somewhere.”

Yuuji stops at the door, fingering a chip in the wood, then says quietly, “I’m not your student anymore.”

He’s down the stairs before Satoru can think of how to respond to that. It’s not like he could ask whether Yuuji was just stating a fact or whether he was mad at him or whether maybe, just maybe, Yuuji wants it to be only Yuuji and Satoru too.

Satoru lets Yuuji pick the movie. He chooses something Satoru knows he’s seen before, and when it starts Yuuji stares at the screen without any emotion. He looks lost in thought. 

Satoru doesn’t blame him, but selfishly, he wants Yuuji’s attention all on him while he has him here at least. “How are you feeling?” he asks, ignoring the screen entirely, just staring at Yuuji.

Yuuji’s eyes flick over to him. He smiles wearily. “I guess not great.”

Satoru waits for him to elaborate.

He does, eventually, frustration rising in his voice. “I knew they wanted me dead. I’ve known that from the start. I even agreed with them for—for a while.”

Satoru hides the way his fist clenches at the thought. 

“And—I knew—I mean I didn’t know, but Megumi told me this was a possibility, right? This sort of thing is the whole reason my grandpa wanted me to pretend to be a beta. But the fact they could—just call me in there, just like that, and pretend they wanted to mate me to save the world?” He growls, low, bites it off. “Like, at least have the decency to say you’re a creep, right?”

“You tell ‘em,” Satoru says appreciatively.

Yuuji sags back into the couch. Carefully, Satoru winds an arm behind his neck to rest on his shoulders. Yuuji makes a small noise and leans a bit closer, just like he used to when they sat on the couch together like this.

“I get it,” he says, barely audible. “I get why—all of this shit happened. I do. But sometimes I wish people didn’t hate me without even knowing me, you know? And now they want to fuck me without knowing me too, just because of what they can get out of me.” 

Satoru spares a percentage of his brainpower to drool over the word ‘fuck’ coming out of Yuuji’s mouth, and to think dazedly that he’d love to know what he could coax out of Yuuji too, like slick and orgasms. The rest of it, he uses to look at Yuuji straight on. 

“Hey,” he says. “Fuck those guys, and fuck what they think of you. And I know that’s easy for me to say, since they don’t have the control over my life they do over yours. But—let me drop the jokes a second, okay? So you know I’m being completely serious when I say those assholes aren’t worth a single strand of your hair.”

Yuuji gazes back at him, flushing the color of the aforementioned hair.

“I’m sorry they’re doing this to you. I’d make them go away like this if I could.” He snaps. He could, actually, make them go away like that, snap and all, but Yuuji wouldn’t approve, and running a dictatorship sounds exhausting anyway. “But all of what they’re doing, it has nothing to do with you. You are much more than a vessel, and much more than a prime omega. And I’m worth at least a few of your hairs, so you should listen to me instead.”

Yuuji keeps staring at him for a while with luminous eyes and those flushed cheeks. If it were a movie, maybe Yuuji would kiss him. But he smiles, instead, and it’s small but so fond Satoru feels it like a punch to the chest, and then he rests his head on Satoru’s shoulder and nuzzles in with a little content sigh. 

“I missed you so much, Gojo-sensei.”

Satoru, dazed from the feeling of Yuuji so close, makes a potentially poor decision. He points out, “You said I wasn’t your teacher anymore.”

Yuuji stills slightly. “Yeah?”

“So you should call me Satoru.”

Just Satoru, no honorifics. It’s a bold proposition and he knows it. But Yuuji, bless him, defies all expectations as always. “Really?” he asks, almost hopeful. “You can call me Yuuji, then.”

He always has in his mind. Satoru squeezes Yuuji’s shoulder. “Yuuji.”

“Satoru,” Yuuji says, sounding incredibly content. Satoru wants to kiss him. He shouldn’t, and he knows that, but it still takes more energy than he’d have expected three-odd years ago to keep from kissing the shape of his name off of Yuuji’s lips.

“Can I say something embarrassing?” Yuuji is starting to look drowsy now, and sound it too. 

“Sure.” He gives in just a little, just enough to mold Yuuji even closer to his side. He’s making him comfortable, he tells himself, but at least this time he knows he is lying. 

“If—this was always gonna happen, and—if somebody had to step up to say they were going to mate me. Out of everyone, I’m glad it was you that came.”

Satoru freezes.

Slowly, he looks down.

Yuuji’s eyes are closed, and his breathing is evening out. Asleep. Asleep, after saying something like that, and—he probably just means that he’s glad it was someone he trusted, but…

Out of everyone, he said.

Satoru swallows, holds back the impulse to wake Yuuji and confess everything, and carefully maneuvers Yuuji to lie down on his lap. He idly pets his hair. Yuuji used to be a bit of a messy sleeper—he snuffled a bit as he rested, sprawled out everywhere. Now he’s quiet and still.

Satoru hates to think that might be because he spent so long in dangerous situations where it wouldn’t be safe to be discovered in his rest. He hates knowing that he wasn’t there, and hates that Yuuji’s had to change at all because he was too weak. Yuuji’s always been perfect. He should never have needed to be anything but the sweet boy Satoru met three years ago.

Which is why there’s no way in hell Satoru will let anything happen to him now, not now that he’s back.

He keeps stroking Yuuji’s hair, and turns off the television until it’s just them alone in the dark.

...

Yuuji wakes with his head in Gojo-sensei’s lap, feeling sleepy still but also warm and safe. He makes a small noise as he turns on his side and buries his face into Gojo-sensei’s abdomen—

Until he hears a chuckle, and realizes he’s awake and not dreaming and that his head is on Gojo-sensei’s lap.

He sits up ramrod straight. “Sorry, Gojo-sensei!”

Gojo-sensei tsks. “I thought we went over this earlier. Satoru, remember?”

Yuuji gulps. That feels a lot more intimate than he had realized in the dark of the night, lit only by the TV screen. But still he obediently repeats, “Satoru,” and relishes in Satoru’s grin.

“Good boy,” Satoru purrs. He jumps off the couch, nonchalant, as though he hadn’t just set Yuuji’s heart racing. “All right, my prospective mate. If I’m gonna figure this out, I have to talk to some people. You okay here? You’re free to have company if you want. And, I mean, if you want to go out I can’t stop you, but…”

“Nah. I know how easy it’d be for them to grab me somewhere. I’m safe here.” He smiles up at Satoru.

Satoru’s breath hitches for a moment before he turns away, waving. “I’ll go get dressed.”

“Do you want breakfast?” Yuuji can’t deny his heart aches a little seeing Satoru walk away, especially knowing he’s leaving to make sure they never mate. “I poked around a little last night. You don’t have much, but enough for some scrambled eggs or something.”

“Aw, Yuuji,” Satoru coos. “You do care.”

“Of course I do.” He looks away. He cares far too much. “Breakfast is, uh, you know. An important meal.”

“If you make something I’ll eat.” Satoru pinches Yuuji’s cheek, then lumbers off. Yuuji is left with a burning cheek and a fist tightening inside his chest.

Satoru is gone after breakfast. The house feels too big without him here, but at least it smells like him. It still makes him feel safe, content, like not even something as intangible as a scent can enter into this place as long as Satoru is around.

He passes the time on his phone, texting Megumi and Nobara. At some point Ijichi drops by to bring some of Yuuji’s clothes and other belongings, along with some groceries Yuuji had requested, but he doesn’t stay long—only long enough to tell Yuuji that he’s sorry this is happening, and long enough for Yuuji to reassure him he’s all right and certainly doesn’t blame Ijichi. 

After Ijichi leaves, though, the house returns to how it was—silent and empty. Yuuji contemplates putting on a movie, but his heart’s not quite in it. He eventually decides to tackle the half-packed boxes scattered around the house, putting everything back how Satoru had it when he stayed here (to the best of his memory, anyway). And that’s how Satoru finds him, sweating lightly and pink-cheeked from exertion, bending over to pull some dishes out of a box.

“Oh! You’re home! Welcome back.” He beams at Satoru.

The words sound natural, like he’s said them a thousand times. They sound right. But they also aren’t really his to say, are they? Who is he to welcome Satoru back to his home? 

His self-deprecating thoughts are broken by the sudden, complete absence of scent. Even the stew simmering on the stove all of a sudden smells like nothing, and Yuuji blinks confusedly.

“Sorry,” Satoru says in a lower voice than Yuuji’s ever heard from him. 

It takes a few moments still for Yuuji to put the pieces together, and when he does, his previous flush becomes darker, deeper. If it weren’t for the blockers, his glands would be doing their utmost to fill the space with sweetness. He wonders for a brief moment whether Satoru can still smell the slick he knows is starting to build in him, and isn’t sure whether he hopes for it or not.

“No,” Yuuji rasps, clears his throat. “N-no, it’s fine. It’s just…” He doesn’t know what it’s just. “It’s fine.” He wipes his palms on the apron he’s wearing just for something to do under the gaze he’s certain Satoru is leveling at him from under his blindfold.

They stand like that a few seconds more before Satoru exhales sharply. “Right. I’m going to take a quick shower.” He pauses after for long enough to fill Yuuji’s mind with images of Satoru showering, long enough for a bead of slick to trickle down Yuuji’s thigh. A strange little smile flashes at the corners of his lips before it’s replaced by his normal silly grin. “Gotta wash the blood of the higher-ups off me, and all. I spent all day defending your honor!”

Yuuji knows he’s joking about the blood. He doesn’t want anyone to get hurt over him, either. But he still feels a shameful trill of arousal thinking of Satoru fighting for him. He bites his lip and ducks his head, missing Satoru’s shrewd observation and another secret smile. “Uh-huh, sure. Just don’t drip anything on the floor, okay?”

“No promises,” Satoru says, a bit darker again, and Yuuji’s eyes fly up to look at him in time to catch a wink. 

It’s stupid. It’s nothing. But Yuuji still has to suppress a whimper and the urge to run to Satoru and desperately present himself. Stupid.

“By the way, Yuuji,” Satoru says, just before he walks through the doorway. 

“Huh?”

“You’re going to break those dishes if you’re not careful.”

Yuuji hadn’t even realized how tightly he was gripping the forgotten dishes in his hand. One of them already has a hairline fracture. His flush grows embarrassed. “Um. Sorry.”

“It’s fine! You’re my prospective mate; what’s mine is yours. Break as many dishes as you like.” He laughs at his own joke and swans off. Yuuji waits until he’s gone to sag against the counter and gulp in a breath.

Fuck. He feels strangely like he just got a taste of what it would be like if Satoru flirted with him. It’s completely overpowering. Would it be too obvious if he took a shower too? A cold one, preferably.

The smell of the stew filters back in, and Yuuji calms himself sniffing it, tasting it, then making a few minor adjustments. 

It’s delicious, but for some odd reason, Yuuji wishes he still couldn’t smell it.

The next several days fall into a rhythm. Satoru leaves during the day, Yuuji unpacks and texts his friends. They come by to visit, too, exchanging meaningful glances whenever Yuuji talks about Satoru.

(“Satoru,” Megumi says with a weary look in his eyes.

“He told me to call him that,” Yuuji defends himself.

“Of course he did,” Nobara says, lips twitching. “Yuuji, were you the sort of person who got a lot of chocolate on Valentines’ Day and assumed it was all obligation chocolate?”

Yuuji tilts his head. “It was, though?”

“Oh my god,” Megumi mumbles.

“And I bet you wondered sometimes if people didn’t like you much because people would talk to you but never got close.”

Yuuji’s mouth drops open. He feigns horror. “Nobara, how long have you been stalking me?”

She throws a pillow at his head. “Idiot.”

He frowns. “Well, yeah, but why this time?”

“They totally had an agreement,” she loudly whispers to Megumi. “Everyone’s Yuuji. I’m calling it right now.”

“Everyone’s?” Yuuji echoes, increasingly confused. “What’s your point, anyway?”

“Oh, nothing,” she sings. “It’s more fun that you’re like this.”)

In the evenings, Satoru returns, usually to Yuuji cooking dinner but sometimes with takeout. Yuuji gets used to not being able to smell things. That only makes him more convinced Satoru doesn’t feel anything for him, though—not that he needed any convincing in the first place. But surely Satoru isn’t aroused by him that often. 

He reminds himself of that even as he ruins his briefs with slick and has to run up to change before their movie night, only to ruin them again when Satoru cuddles close. He’s even touchier than normal nowadays, and likes Yuuji as close as possible. Maybe he’s nearing his rut, Yuuji conjectures idly, and flushes so red at the thought Satoru asks him if he’s feverish.

Yuuji wasn’t raised an omega, really, so he doesn’t know as much about being an omega as he probably should. Megumi has chastised him more than once about being inappropriately familiar with alphas, for example. He knows maybe his behavior with Satoru is part of that. But he can’t bring himself to stop, to ask Satoru if he might prefer to touch an omega he actually wants to mate. He knows Satoru doesn’t want him. But god, he wants Satoru so much it burns, more and more every day.

It burns, and burns, and it’s been so long that Yuuji’s actually had a heat that he doesn't realize the burning isn’t just heartache until he’s surrounded by Satoru’s pilfered clothes and whining into the sheets.

Raised omega or not, Yuuji realizes this isn’t a situation he should call Megumi for. He does call Nobara, though, and when she gets to his room she reels. “Shit, Yuuji. You smell like a candy shop. Did you stop your blockers? Or your suppressants?”

“No,” he whimpers, curling up in his nest. “I would never.”

“I bet the higher-ups have something to do with this,” she says, face twisting in distaste. “Switched out your pills or something.” She grinds her teeth, but finally pulls out her phone and texts someone.

“Who’re you talking to?”

“Gojo.”

Yuuji’s eyes round, and he sits up. “What? He doesn’t want to be here while I’m in heat.”

“First off,” Nobara says, her own eyes narrowing, “You don’t know shit. Second off, if he doesn’t want to be here, don’t you think he, like…needs to know not to come back first?”

“Oh,” Yuuji says, sluggish brain working through that. “Yeah.”

“Plus, something isn’t sitting right. They don’t want you mating Gojo. Why would they just hand you to him on a platter?” She taps her chin. “They must have some other plan, something to get you into their hands.”

The interruption is timed so quickly after that that Yuuji’s dazed mind almost thinks they are perhaps operating off a script. Several masked individuals burst through Yuuji’s window, and more come up from downstairs. Nobara hisses, pulling out her hammer, looking with a judgmental eye around.

“Fuck. Yuuji, these are regular people. You can’t use energy.”

They’re all wearing gas masks, so his scent does nothing to them either. Yuuji should punch them, but when he makes to get up, he’s more wobbly than anticipated.

“We don’t want a fight,” a masked attacker says. 

Nobara scoffs. “Sure. Drop the bat then.” Her phone is still in her hand, and if Yuuji weren’t looking straight at it, he wouldn’t notice that she was texting something else. She locks her phone and appraises the situation. “Seven guys and none of you want a fight, huh?”

“Nah. All we want is for Yuuji to come with us—”

“Bunch of cowards,” she says, and leaps into action.

Even with the restriction of no cursed energy, Nobara holds her own. Yuuji attempts to help too, but Nobara yells at him to stay back when the first person attempts to use an alpha command on him. They’re not strong enough for him to be swayed, but omegas are more susceptible to alpha commands from preheat on, so Nobara tells him to stay in his nest and plug his ears. If they’re willing to use alpha commands on an omega in preheat—which is illegal, but so is kidnapping and inducing heat, so they’re clearly not particularly concerned about that part—they probably prepared other dirty tricks, so Nobara doesn’t want to risk it.

The group doesn’t fight fair. After Nobara has the seven men down, more come charging up. She growls, frustrated, and hefts her hammer, but they’re swarming before she can stop them.

“Stop causing trouble, little omega,” a man who smells pungently of rotting fruit says, licking his lips. “If you don’t come along with us obediently, we can’t guarantee you’ll get to the people who hired us untouched, huh?”

Yuuji’s eyes flash. “You could try it, but I’m pretty sure you’d die.” Yuuji might dislike killing, but Sukuna has no such scruples, and Yuuji thinks he’d probably take over by force if alphas as weak as the ones here attempted to touch him—out of pride, not any kind of protective instincts, of course. 

The man scoffs. “The fuck you think you can do to me, omega?”

Yuuji bares his teeth, ready to let the man figure out exactly what he could do, when all the smells in the room die out.

“I have every confidence he could put you in your place, you miserable fucking cockroach,” the most furious voice Yuuji’s ever heard says with an eerie calm, “But at the moment, you should be more worried about what I will absolutely do to you.”

Yuuji calms immediately. 

Satoru’s here. Everything’s fine now.

“Who the fuck are you?” the man asks, very unwisely.

“I’m his alpha,” Satoru snarls, and lunges so quickly at the rotting-fruit man that Yuuji barely has any time to process the statement.

His alpha?

That’s what they’d been aiming for in the eyes of the higher-ups, sure, but that’s fake, and—he’s never said it like that. Not so plainly, just saying he’s Yuuji’s. But maybe it’s just because he’s angry, and—

Actually, why is he so angry?

Yuuji’s seen Satoru fighting curses a handful of times. He tends to treat it as more of a nuisance than anything. He’s never gotten mad like this, never had his teeth clenched and his eyes flashing around his disheveled, crooked glasses. Yuuji knows Satoru cares for all of his students, but this seems like…more than that.

Yuuji bites his lip and presses at his abdomen, at the pang of mixed arousal and hope that rings through him at the thought.

Satoru doesn’t use cursed energy either, but he still cuts through everyone on the premises with a brutal efficiency. He knocks them out, then comes back to the rotting-fruit man and kicks at him with such fervor Yuuji has to interrupt.

“Satoru.” He holds out his arms instinctually. “I’m fine, see?”

Satoru swings his attention to him, breathing heavily, then steps over the man’s body to swallow Yuuji in a hug, tight enough Yuuji can’t move.

“I’m fine,” Yuuji repeats, returning the hug, running his hands over Satoru’s back. “They didn’t do anything to me.”

“They were going to,” Satoru growls.

“They wouldn’t.” He continues to stroke, trying to calm Satoru down. “Not with you here. I knew you’d be here.” Because he saw Nobara texting, but that doesn’t seem like the right thing to say right now, for some reason. 

Satoru’s heavy breaths slow. He still crushes Yuuji to him, but now he desperately scents Yuuji on his neck, and Yuuji gasps slightly—he may not be much of an omega, but he knows that’s something pretty intimate.

“You gonna fuck in front of me too?” a very pissed Nobara says, lying down spread-eagled on the carpet.

Yuuji startles out of the two-person world he’d fallen into. “Nobara! Are you okay?”

“I’m more okay than these idiots,” Nobara says, groaning as she stands up and toes at one of them. “But I’ll go see Ieiri-sensei. There’s definitely no way I’m staying here right now.”

Yuuji tilts his head.

“Oh, don’t try that cute shit with me. Gojo, I protected him pretty well for you. You owe me. Something expensive.” She lumbers out of the bedroom, muttering, with Yuuji still confused.

“Yuuji.” Satoru touches Yuuji’s face delicately. “I need to get rid of these guys, but then…we should…” He swallows, uncharacteristically nervous. “We should talk. Wait for me?”

“Y-yeah.” He’s not sure if it was an actual question. It shouldn’t have been, since it’s not really like he has anywhere to go and this is Satoru’s house, but Satoru’s expression softens anyway. 

“I’ll be back,” he says, and drops a feather-light kiss on Yuuji’s hair.

Yuuji goes the same color as that hair and stays that way until all the men are lugged out of his room.

...

The sheer panic Satoru feels when he gets Nobara’s texts is enough to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that his alpha sees Yuuji as his omega. He’s on a job far enough away that it requires multiple warps to get back, and his hands tremble as he does the calculations to ensure a smooth journey. Fuck. He should have known they’d pull something like this. Stupid. If anything happens to Yuuji—

No. It can’t. He won’t even think about that. He won’t let himself.

He thinks about Yuuji instead. He’d been convinced before all this started that there was no way Yuuji could ever want him, but that was before he’d taken in Yuuji’s behavior around him. He was a mess of blushes whenever Satoru got close, whenever Satoru flirted. And even more damningly—while Yuuji’s slick is scentless while he’s on scent blockers, Satoru can still see it.

He still tried telling himself it was possible that Yuuji found him attractive but didn’t want anything with him. The way Yuuji clung to him before he left and the blinding smiles when he returned could be mere attachment or loneliness. 

But it was enough to make him want to try.

He’d decided to take a risk and ask if he could court Yuuji, and now this. These old fucks really have no interest in living. He’ll make them wish they weren’t, but first he has to get back.

When he does, making sure his nose is covered with Infinity first so that Yuuji’s preheat-scent doesn’t affect him, he sees a bunch of hired goons with no cursed energy (god, this tired trick again) and one of them standing over Yuuji spouting disgusting bullshit, over his Yuuji, and then he just sees red.

“I’m his alpha,” he says, and doesn’t even stop to consider what Yuuji might think of it, because he’s too busy raining down hell on every one of the bastards who wanted to take his Yuuji from him.

He doesn’t come back to himself until Yuuji calls out to him. He can do nothing but answer. Yuuji in his arms is heaven, reminding him that he wasn’t too late, that he got here in time. “I knew you’d be here,” Yuuji says, and the alpha in Satoru calms too, happy that Yuuji has recognized his ability to protect.

That same alpha doesn’t entirely realize that Satoru hasn’t confessed anything to Yuuji yet, or perhaps just doesn’t care. He’s scenting Yuuji before he can stop himself. 

Yuuji gasps, but doesn’t push him away, which is…promising? Nobara speaking up reminds him that there’s still work to be done though. Too many people around, for one.

Satoru lines all of them up neatly on the sidewalk with bound hands and feet. He calls Ijichi to let him know there was a situation at his house. Ijichi asks in a panic what he’s even supposed to do with thirty random men. “Just let the higher-ups know they failed,” Satoru answers with darkening eyes, “And tell them that even kindergarteners know to clean up after themselves.”

They probably have an eye on the situation anyway. They won’t want Satoru to make an even bigger scene of it than he already has. He’s sure somebody will come for the men at some point.

He warps Nobara unceremoniously back to campus, dropping her off with a scandalized yelp, then warps back directly in Yuuji’s room. 

Yuuji is waiting for him obediently. His dazed smile soothes something in Satoru, like it always does. “Welcome back, Satoru,” he says. “I didn’t get to say it earlier.”

All the air leaves Satoru at once, and he sits down just outside Yuuji’s nest even though he wants nothing more than to take Yuuji into his arms again. He holds himself back with great willpower. “I’m back,” he says, finally. 

“Yeah.”

They stare at one another a few moments longer. Yuuji pinks at whatever he sees in Satoru’s eyes.

“Yuuji.” Satoru swallows. “Yuuji…” He’s been wondering for weeks how to talk about this. He had a whole plan. Everything falls away in front of Yuuji’s amber eyes and parted lips. 

Yuuji scratches his neck, then winces. “Oh! I completely forgot, but I’m in preheat, aren’t I?” He claps a hand over his scent gland. “Sorry, Satoru. It must smell pretty bad, right?”

Satoru blinks, blindsided by the change in subject and by Yuuji’s presumption. “I have Infinity blocking my nose so that I stay in control. I don’t know what you smell like.”

“Oh.” Yuuji seems both relieved and disappointed.

Satoru hesitates, then decides to just jump in. “But I’m one hundred percent sure you smell amazing, which is the point. It’s already hard enough to keep myself from you when I can’t smell you, and you’re in preheat to boot.”

Yuuji’s expression doesn’t change for a while, then all at once, his jaw drops and his eyes grow wide. “H-huh?! Satoru?”

“I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you for…for longer than I should have been. And I know I only proposed mating you to get the higher-ups off your back, but I’ve also wished this whole time it were real. I know I was your teacher, and I’m much older, and maybe this is all just grossing you out, but—but if you were okay with it somehow, I’d really like to court you…Yuuji?”

Yuuji is prodding at his ears, shaking his head like he’s trying to get water out of them.

“I think my ears aren’t working,” he says breathlessly. “I keep hearing you say weird things.”

Satoru’s heart sinks. “Weird how?”

“Weird like—you would never want me, I thought. I mean, I knew you wouldn’t, but—” Just like that, his heart rises again, soars above the earth. 

“I want you. I absolutely do. Of course I do.”

Yuuji’s blinking too fast, clearly confused and a bit dazed. He raises his hand to his cheek to pinch, but Satoru catches his hand before he can and interlaces their fingers, squeezes tight. “This isn’t a dream, Yuuji.”

Yuuji’s eyes start to gloss over with tears. “So when you said—you were my alpha.”

“I want to be.”

“For real? You’re not lying? You don’t feel—pressured or—nobody asked you to, or—”

As gently as he can manage with his soul screaming out to take, have, consume, Satoru presses a gentle kiss on Yuuji’s cheek. “Nothing like that. I don’t do anything I don’t want to, you know.”

Yuuji strokes his cheek, wondering, turning a pleasing shade of red. “But I’m, um, I’m going to be executed, and…”

“Not if I have anything to say about it. We’ll work something out.”

Yuuji’s lips purse. Satoru wants to kiss him. He’s pretty sure he can. “All that matters is what you feel. So…what do you feel?”

Yuuji laughs. “I mean, Sensei, I’ve been in love with you since I was fifteen. Like, it’s pretty ridiculous. Nobara and Megumi tease me about it all the time. But I never thought—”

Satoru decides to kiss him after all instead of being told again he could never love Yuuji when he’s pretty sure loving Yuuji is the only option he ever had. With a growl, he leans forward and digs the hand that’s not holding Yuuji into the short hairs at Yuuji’s nape, then kisses him.

Their lips slot together, and everything is suddenly right. Yuuji’s lips are chapped, but they feel perfect against his; he’s inexperienced, but the way he tries so hard to follow Satoru’s lead is so recognizably Yuuji that it’s wonderful anyway. And when Satoru coaxes his lips open with his tongue, Yuuji moans, and he tastes unbearably sweet—

In fact, strangely so. Satoru parts, licking his lips, staring thoughtfully at Yuuji. Yuuji is still panting, eyes glazed over. “You’re in preheat,” Satoru says. “I took it too far. Sorry.” 

He is not, in fact, sorry.

“Not too far,” Yuuji says, still with that same breathlessness that makes Satoru preen. “Why did you stop?”

“I thought…I can’t smell you, but I think I might have tasted your pheromones, and that’s a bit dangerous long-term. I don’t think you realize how close I am to losing control, sweetheart,” he says, voice dropped down an octave.

Yuuji’s breathing hitches, and he bites his lips.

God, he really doesn’t realize how tempting he is, does he.

“I don’t want you to think our feelings mean you have to do anything with me this heat, especially because it was brought on by force. But I also want you. So I have to be careful.”

Yuuji licks his own lips, looking to the side. “I…I mean….I want you too, Satoru.”

Satoru has to keep himself from moaning just hearing that. “Good. I’m glad. But the risk isn’t only sex.”

Yuuji doesn’t bother suppressing his own whimper.

“I don’t know if I could stop myself from biting you, Yuuji,” Satoru says on a whisper. He uses his grip on Yuuji’s neck to drag a light touch over the very edge of Yuuji’s scent gland. Yuuji shivers. “If I start anything right now, it would only be knowing you wanted to become my mate.”

Yuuji, to his credit, looks like he’s thinking seriously about it. But eventually, he beams softly at Satoru, the smile Satoru loves seeing on him so much. “That’s all I’ve wanted for years. Even more since you said you’d mate me.” He inches closer. “I think that means you have a promise to fulfill, right?”

Satoru grins back and kisses him, chaste, just because he loves him. And then, holding on by a thread, he says, “I only have one more question, then. What do you smell like?”

Yuuji looks a little bit ashamed when he says, “I don’t know exactly, but everyone always said it was—sweet, I guess? Like. Really sweet.”

Fuck.

He needs to smell him now. But the window is broken in here. Not safe. Satoru isn’t a fan of the residual smells left in here by the break-in, either. With a mental apology, he gathers up all of the stuff in Yuuji’s nest with one arm, and gathers Yuuji himself with the other, warping them to his room.

“It wasn’t safe in there,” he says, eyes darkening behind his shades. He takes them off slowly, folds them on his nightstand. “Set up your nest in here. I’m going to go get some food and water from downstairs.”

Yuuji’s eyes widen, but he nods. So obedient, his good omega. Satoru races downstairs to get water and a few of Yuuji’s sports drinks as well as whatever portable non-refrigerated food he can see. He races back up, sets the water on his nightstand and the food on the desk to the corner. Yuuji is diligently weaving his nest, but he keeps looking up to see Satoru and blushing.

“What’s wrong?” Satoru asks.

“Uh…” Yuuji stalls. “Well, it’s just.” He motions down to the nest, blush intensifying. “I took your clothes without asking. I sort of didn’t think you’d see this, but now you’re here and…”

Satoru curses internally. Shit, he has the cutest omega in the world. Yuuji sniffs the air, thoughtful, then grins. “Never mind. You like that, don’t you?”

“Yuuji,” Satoru whines. “You’re just too cute. You can’t blame me.” He puts on a pout. “Besides, it’s unfair you can smell me right now and I can’t smell you.”

“You can smell me if you want,” Yuuji points out.

“Not until you’re done, I can’t. The second I smell you, I’m going to pounce,” Satoru says, which is both true and a good way to make Yuuji blush again.

Satoru feels like he’s vibrating with the anticipation of it. He’s half-hard, and that’s without letting himself think of what’s ahead. He occupies himself by taking off his shirt and pants.

When Yuuji sees him, he gapes, then bites his lip. 

“You like that, don’t you,” Satoru repeats, gloating.

Yuuji narrows his eyes, then says, “You can’t blame me.” Then he takes off his own light shirt and shorts in retaliation.

Satoru forgets how to talk, briefly, so…touché.

Yuuji pats the last section of his nest, then sprawls out gracelessly in it. “Mm. It’s nice in a bigger bed.”

“It’s nice having you in my bigger bed,” Satoru says with a leer. “You can stay if you want.”

Yuuji eyes him, and teasingly says, “Let’s see how you do with a few days first.”

Satoru gasps in mock-hurt even as his alpha growls inside him. “Yuuuuuji, I’m hurt! Do I have to show you how good I can be for you?” He walks over, carefully crawls into the nest, making sure not to disturb his omega’s hard work. “Because I will be good,” he says, voice dropping a shade, crawling until he’s straddling Yuuji. “So good you’ll never want to leave. I promise.”

Yuuji’s eyes are blown. “Show me, alpha,” he says, and bares his neck.

That’s it. The very last straw. Satoru growls out loud and removes the Infinity from his nose, greedily taking in Yuuji’s scent.

It hits him like a truck, and he’s moaning before he realizes it, rutting against Yuuji and nosing into his neck for more of the scent. Sweet was an understatement; he smells like walking into a bakery and a candy shop and diving his face into a bag of sugar all at once, like every one of Satoru’s favorite desserts and more. I could die happy just smelling this, he thinks giddily, and bites lightly at Yuuji’s scent glands to coax out even more of it.

The sound Yuuji makes at that is just as delicious, a kind of shocked moan, and Satoru sucks marks all over the scent gland trying to hear it again. “Fuck, fuck, Yuuji, Yuuji, my omega,” he says in between in a kind of frenzy as the pre-heat starts to affect him. “Smell so good, so so good—best thing I’ve ever smelled in my life—”

“Really?” Yuuji asks breathlessly, rolling his hips against Satoru’s jerky thrusts. “You really think so? Everyone else hates it.”

Satoru laughs just as breathlessly into him. “They don’t need to like it. I love sweet things, Yuuji. You smell like you were made for me.”

Yuuji whimpers and bares his throat even more, arches it attractively. 

Satoru starts to kiss everywhere, taking a detour to Yuuji’s lips, then seeking out the scent everywhere it touches Yuuji’s body. He feels lightheaded, barely sane. “All of you,” he mumbles. “All of you is perfect. Just for me, just for me. The sweetest thing—want to taste you, want to eat you up—”

Without his nose blocked, he can smell the slick as it pools in Yuuji’s underwear, and he groans as he kisses down Yuuji’s body on his way there. “Fuck, Yuuji. Wish I coulda smelled this every time you ruined your briefs before. Was that all for me?”

Yuuji gulps in a breath, doesn’t even ask how Satoru knows. Satoru hopes that means he’s doing a good job. “Y-yeah—you kept touching me, and…”

“I wanted to do so much more than just touch you,” Satoru hisses, and sucks a mark just above the elastic of his briefs. “Every night, you’d welcome me back, and I’d want to take you right there in the kitchen.”

“Oh, god,” Yuuji cries out, hips bucking. “Satoru—please—”

He noses along the line of Yuuji’s dick through his underpants, smelling, moaning. He doesn’t have the patience anymore to take the underpants off normally. He tears them away and licks a long stripe up Yuuji’s dick in one movement.

“Fuck!” Yuuji thrashes underneath him as Satoru licks at Yuuji’s tip. He kisses his way back down, all the way down to his hole, finding it wet with slick.

The first taste of his slick is like heaven. Satoru’s eyes flutter closed, and he grinds his dick against the bedsheets at the jolt of stimulation it provides. “You taste like pure sugar,” he mumbles against Yuuji’s hole, intoxicated. “Can’t believe you’ve been wasting this all this time when I could have been the one to clean you up.”

“Satoru,” Yuuji says, half scandalized, half aroused, but he clams up with a little yelp when Satoru dives back in, tonguing around his hole, then in. More slick floods over his tongue, and he moans. 

He can smell Yuuji’s scent shifting, deepening. He should be heading into proper heat soon, likely hastened by the pheromones Satoru has no doubt he’s pumping out in the midst of his scent-drunk reverie. He doesn’t exactly have the capacity of mind right now to feel embarrassed about the lack of control. In fact, insofar as he is planning anything at all right now, he’s rather planning on losing as much control as his sweet little omega will allow.

“I didn’t even need to bring food or water up here after all,” Satoru says, licking his lips and staring with eyes swallowed up entirely by his pupils at Yuuji’s hole. “I’m going to live off you from now on.”

Yuuji stares back at Satoru with a conflicted expression, finally settling on softly flicking his forehead.

“I can’t?” Satoru asks plaintively before returning to his new addiction and sighing at the taste.

Yuuji gasps, throwing his head back. “Biologically, pretty sure not,” he ekes out through clenched teeth. “And I’m also pretty sure we both have other things to do sometimes.”

“I’d make it work,” Satoru declares between messy licks, each one stoking the flame in him further so hot he burns with it. “God, Yuuji...Yuuji...my omega...mine, mine, mine, mine—”

Yuuji’s hole flutters beautifully at the claim. Satoru growls, resisting the urge to sink himself into Yuuji only through his equal desire to keep drinking up more of Yuuji’s slick. There’s too much he wants to do, needs to do—prior to scenting Yuuji, he’d have said that even a sex marathon with Yuuji lasting the length of a heat wouldn’t have been enough to fulfill all of his desires, but now, he’s pretty sure even an entire lifetime wouldn’t be enough to get his fill of Yuuji.

“We need to become immortal,” Satoru murmurs distractedly.

Yuuji pants out an airy little laugh. “What’re you even—”

Satoru decides that his omega is entirely too coherent and his own mouth entirely too empty and hitches Yuuji’s legs over his shoulders to suck at the source of Yuuji’s slick directly.

Yuuji chokes on a sob beautiful enough to make Satoru ache. “Fuck, fuck, Satoru, please,” he begs desperately. “Alpha. I need…”

“Can you get there like this?” Satoru pants, pulling himself away one last time with an effort for which he probably deserves some kind of official commendation. “Please say you can. I’m so hungry.”

Yuuji thrashes a little, from side to side, when Satoru dips back in. “I don’t know,” he moans. “Maybe if you stop—stop taking a break every two seconds—”

Satoru grins despite his distraction. He’d tell Yuuji that he loves when Yuuji mouths off at him, loves that he’s not afraid to demand what he wants, but he’s been given an edict. It’s no hardship, anyway, not when he wants to spend his whole life from now on right where he is.

It’s far from his best work, admittedly; sloppy, messy, thoroughly artless. Forefront at his mind is coaxing more slick out of Yuuji, and technique is secondary. Satoru from fifteen minutes ago might have been embarrassed, really, with how he’d imagined all the ways he would blow Yuuji’s mind when he finally had him in his bed. But Satoru from fifteen minutes ago hadn’t smelled Yuuji, hadn’t tasted him, so honestly fuck that guy. He doesn’t know anything at all.

Besides, Yuuji doesn’t really seem to be complaining. Satoru engraves everything about him in the throes of pleasure into his mind—the little hitches of breath, the restless energy as he twists and turns in place, the tears starting to shine at the corners of his eyes, the rivulets of sweat trickling down his body and kissing the muscles as they tense and relax repeatedly. Satoru wants to taste those too. He’ll get to it later.

A fresh wave of slick makes its way onto Satoru’s tongue when Satoru idly presses a thumb into Yuuji’s hole. Its taste is so divine Satoru grabs at Yuuji’s ass, desperately attempting to pull Yuuji even closer, groaning wildly.

Satoru is always thinking. He never really stops. But somehow, like this, his mind quiets; his world narrows down until it’s just Yuuji filling up all of his senses, just Yuuji and the heat burbling increasingly electric in his veins.

So when Yuuji says something, he doesn’t really register it as words at first, just omega-voice and omega-pleasure. The hand tugging at his hair only makes him think trying to take omega away from me, and he rips his mouth away from Yuuji to growl and bare his teeth at whoever would dare.

It’s Yuuji, of course, eyes wide open and startled at the growl, but Satoru only has a moment of regret before Yuuji clenches his hand in Satoru’s hair and whimpers and comes so hard it looks painful. Slick spurts from his hole and Satoru growls again before cleaning it all up carefully, eyes rolling back in his head. His hips jerk against Yuuji’s back once, twice, and without even realizing he had been that close, he comes in his underwear.

Their breathing is equally heavy in the aftermath. They both stay like that for a while, Satoru trying his best to regain brain function. Satoru licks his lips, though it doesn’t do much to clean his face of the slick covering it. “You, uh,” he croaks. “You said something? Sorry, I didn’t…”

“I was just telling you I was close,” Yuuji says. “You growled.”

“Yeah.”

He takes a delicate sniff of the air, head tilting slightly on the pillow, his eyebrows scrunching up in thought. Satoru loves him so goddamn much. “I think you’re in rut.”

“I love you,” Satoru says, because he can’t not, then, “...Yeah, that’d make sense. But you can’t blame me. Yuuji is just too irresistible.”

Yuuji’s lips quirk in a little half-smile. “Only to you.”

Satoru snarls involuntarily before he wrests back control. “It only needs to be to me.”

“Mmhm.” Satoru melts at the fondness in Yuuji’s eyes. “I love you too, by the way.”

“Good,” Satoru says. It is good. It’s a miracle, really. And also, “Because I think if I had to share your slick with anybody else, I’d probably kill them.”

Yuuji blinks a few times, nose wrinkling. “You’re kind of a pervert, sensei,” he says matter-of-factly, and also correctly.

Satoru still nips at his thigh in joking reprimand, pouting and rubbing his face against the mark, wiping Yuuji’s slick everywhere and promptly regretting it and licking that up too. “What? Me?” he asks with mock outrage when he’s finished. “You’re the one who just called me ‘sensei’ in bed.”

Yuuji’s flush darkens. “I’m just—used to it!”

“Sure, sure. And if I asked you if you ever thought about doing this with me back then, you’d say…”

Yuuji kicks him, heel digging painfully into his back. The flush spreading still further is an answer of itself, though, and Satoru pauses as he takes it in, heat tingling in the tips of his ears. He shouldn’t have brought it up, shouldn’t be thinking about this. It’s not like he really wants to think too much about what he may or may not have been thinking back then either. But at the same time, his alpha swells with pride over the knowledge that his omega has wanted him all this time, and—

He’s not thinking about it.

But.

Satoru sets Yuuji down on the mattress carefully, crawls over him, licks up the droplets of Yuuji’s release scattered across his abdomen and chest and thrills at the hint of sweetness present even there, mixed with the saltiness of Yuuji’s sweat. Yuuji stares at him, tongue swiping over his chapped lips. Tension is written into every line of his body.

“You can call me sensei if you want,” Satoru says quietly. He hates himself a little for saying it out loud, but he can’t fully bring himself to regret it either, not when he sees the set of Yuuji’s shoulders relax slightly.

With his eyes lowered, eyelashes brushing his cheeks, Yuuji murmurs, “I didn’t mean to.”

“I know.”

“Not just now. I didn’t...mean to when…” His lips purse. “I didn’t even totally realize what I was feeling until you were gone. I wasn’t trying to be, like. You know. Weird.”

Satoru sighs softly.

He does know, even if he wishes he doesn’t—not because he begrudges Yuuji for his feelings, but because he himself is no stranger to the same guilt.

“Yeah. I know. You’re not weird, Yuuji.”

Yuuji stays silent, looking very much unconvinced.

“I mean. You are. Like, you like brussels sprouts. But—”

“Even you said they were good with the cheese sauce and everything,” Yuuji protests. “You said I could make them again, even—”

Satoru forces a playful smile onto his lips. Yuuji goes quiet, then gently touches Satoru’s cheek until he’s facing him again, looking down at him with the smile dropping slowly.

“You’re not weird either. Except for when you are.”

Satoru can’t even muster a retort to the latter part, but does nuzzle slightly into Yuuji’s palm. He closes his eyes again. “I thought about you in the Prison Realm.”

“Okay.”

“You were still...I didn’t want to.”

“Okay.”

“You’ve always been so good to me.” The only one who didn’t want something from him or treat him like a nuisance to be managed. “And I didn’t think it was anything beyond that, but...when I was alone, I still thought about you.”

Yuuji’s thumb strokes softly against Satoru’s cheek. “Okay,” he whispers. “I did too.”

“That’s different.”

“I know. But you still like me now?”

Satoru lets his head drop until he’s gracelessly sprawled against Yuuji’s shoulder. “So fucking much,” he mumbles into the curve of his neck.

“Same. And I don’t want to let you go, especially not now. So I guess…”

Yuuji is quiet so long Satoru opens one eye and peeks at Yuuji’s face. He looks like he’s seriously considering it, but what he eventually says is just a flippant, “I guess we just, like, deal with it?”

Satoru snorts, then laughs heartily, throwing his head back.

“What?! I mean, what other option do we have?”

“No, no, you’re right. Simple as that, huh? We just deal with it.” Satoru wipes a tear away from his eye. “Oh, god.”

“Nah, maybe not simple. But we can’t change what happened, and now…I mean, now we’re both naked and I’m in heat and you’re in rut and you’re about to mate me, so. It kind of is what it is, you know? Unless you wanna go feel bad in another room instead of knotting me. But I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t end up breaking down the door or something if you do, fair warning.”

Yuuji’s eyebrows are furrowed together in thought, again genuinely thinking it over, as if Satoru would ever have been strong enough to leave him after all of this, or ever, and Satoru’s heart practically bursts with everything he feels for his sweet omega.

He is right. If there’s nothing they can do now, why bother thinking about it, at least for the time being? He can go cry later if he needs to, but right now Satoru has Yuuji underneath him and frankly Satoru is already hard again just from the taste of Yuuji’s come and hearing him casually talking about knotting, so. He’s really quite busy.

Satoru lays a big, smacking, obnoxious kiss on Yuuji’s lips in lieu of whispering how much he loves Yuuji on repeat into his skin until Yuuji gets tired of hearing it. “Getting a new door does sound like a pain,” he declares sagely, crowding any negative feelings away into a box at least until he’s thoroughly satisfied his omega. “I like the knotting plan better.”

Yuuji’s lips quirk. “Same.”

“Even though it’s kind of a bummer that your slick will end up somewhere other than my mouth,” he muses. “I’ve never tried sucking my own dick before, but maybe—”

Yuuji flicks his forehead again with a dismayed, “That’s gross, Satoru,” though his gaze does drift thoughtfully downward.

“So mean to me,” Satoru murmurs, but he’s already been distracted by the reddened scent gland on Yuuji’s neck, mouthing at it. This is basically the next best thing to Yuuji’s slick, especially when Yuuji goes ramrod straight and whines as he ghosts his teeth over the oily skin.

“Shit, why does that feel so good,” Yuuji gasps, head falling back to present his gland again.

“Sensitive?” Satoru asks, even though he already knows the answer.

“Y-yeah. Very.”

Satoru sucks a hickey into the spot as reward both to Yuuji and him. Yuuji keens, jerking, letting Satoru feel Yuuji’s semi-hardened cock against his still-clothed one, finally reminding him that he’s terribly uncomfortable in his underwear with come cooling on him.

“Ah. Hang on.”

He attempts an unflattering shimmy but eventually gives up and sits properly to take the underwear off, making a face as he does. Yuuji watches with amusement, sitting up as well and cocking his head when he notices the wet spot on the front.

“What? You can’t blame me. You’re…” Satoru gestures dramatically. “It’d be weirder if I didn’t come. Actually, I’m pretty sure it’d basically be illegal?”

Yuuji snorts, but shakes his head. “No, not that. I was just wondering—hand that over?”

Satoru does, presenting it ceremoniously as though giving Yuuji the keys to the city, and Yuuji laughs once more. Satoru preens.

Yuuji looks at it, flush rising once more on his cheeks, then sniffs the wet spot.

The bottom drops out of Satoru’s stomach, filled instead with rising arousal.

“It doesn’t smell like anything,” Yuuji says delightedly. “That’s so useful. I bet...” He flips them inside out, takes a tentative lick. “Wow! Yeah, it’s like I lost my sense of taste all of a sudden—”

Satoru rumbles as he wrenches the underwear out of Yuuji’s hand, manhandling Yuuji into a messy kiss. He can taste the hint of his come just fine—just like nobody can smell their own pheromones, they can’t taste them either—but it only stokes the arousal burning inside even further.

“Fuck, Yuuji,” he gasps out in between kisses, rolling his hips against Yuuji’s and hissing through his teeth at the feeling of their cocks bare against one another. “You drive me absolutely crazy. It’s definitely illegal to be so sexy without even warning your poor old sensei first—”

He tenses for a moment when he realizes what he said—Yuuji was right, habit is a dangerous thing—but Yuuji brings him back into the moment by grabbing firmly onto his ass to pull him into another dirty grind. “What are you gonna do about it?” Yuuji asks, groaning, hands flexing like he can’t keep himself from it now that he has his hands on Satoru properly. “Satoru-sensei.”

Satoru can’t control the thrill of heat the combination of his old title and first name brings to him, like a little secret held between them. He’s compartmentalizing, so he forgets about feeling bad and focuses on feeling unfathomably good with Yuuji instead. “I want to do so goddamn much with you,” he growls. “I want to do everything. I want to fuck your face, I want you to come down my throat, I want to come all over you and rub it into your skin so that nobody else can ever smell even a hint of your scent—”

Yuuji grins, a fierce thing that only sends Satoru further into the depths of obsession. “Possessive.”

“Oh, you don’t know anything yet,” Satoru whispers hoarsely. “I never was good at sharing. Even though you weren’t mine yet, when I saw the higher-ups trying to take you, I wanted to kill them all so bad, almost as much as I wanted to take you right there in front of them to show them exactly who you belonged to.”

He punctuates the sentence with a particularly forceful thrust of his hips and a slow bite at Yuuji’s lower lip, but draws back and stops his movements when Yuuji says, “No.”

Brief terror claws at Satoru’s stomach. “No?”

“Oh. Shit. Sorry, not no to this, no to—well, for one, I don’t really think I’d want to fuck in front of all those old guys—”

Satoru winces. “Okay, fair. Sorry.”

“Nah, nothing to be sorry for. I wanted to suck your dick to prove a point every time I saw you flirt with some random lady on the street to get directions someplace.”

He chokes, blindsided once more by Yuuji’s delicious straightforwardness. “Yuuji,” he rasps, dick twitching.

“But mostly I meant no, even back then I was still yours. I have been, since…” Yuuji gnaws on his lip, then offers up a sheepish shrug and a little smile. “Well, uh, since.”

Satoru’s mouth goes dry.

“Fuck,” he whines, more high-pitched than he’d like to acknowledge. He can feel the next wave of his rut crashing over him with physical force. “Yuuji, Yuuji…” He can’t not be kissing Yuuji right now. “Omega, my omega, mine, mine.”

“Yeah,” Yuuji breathes. “And you’re mine too.”

“Never been anybody else’s. Always yours, always will be, fuck, Yuuji, I need to be—” Satoru scrabbles to grab at Yuuji’s ass, trailing a finger down until he finds Yuuji’s hole. “Yeah? Can I?”

“Uh-huh, obviously. C’mon, just do it already—”

Satoru intends to just check whether Yuuji needs any stretching, but ends up getting distracted by the feeling of Yuuji squeezing around his fingers and the sweet noises Yuuji is making. He’s distracted for long enough that Yuuji huffs irritably and raises off his fingers.

“Yuuji?”

“So slow,” Yuuji grumbles, eyes swallowed up by his pupils, and casts beneath him for Satoru’s cock. Satoru doesn’t even realize what he’s about to do until Yuuji is sinking down.

They moan together, Satoru’s hands grasping Yuuji’s hips so hard that he’s pretty sure it’ll bruise. Yuuji absolutely had the right idea here. The feeling of Yuuji’s hole around his fingers was nothing compared to the feeling of him around his dick. “Oh, god, baby, you feel too fucking good—”

Yuuji’s mouth is open wide, soundless, adjusting to the feeling. His thighs shake a little as he lowers himself bit by bit, mouth snapping shut into a determined frown that’s probably the most adorable thing in the world.

“What do you even need to be that long for?” he finally wheezes out.

Satoru pauses, then smiles lecherously. “You wanna find out?”

Yuuji groans when Satoru lifts his hips slightly and he slides down a little further. “Not in the next few minutes, I don’t.”

Satoru claps a faux-shocked hand to his heart. “You wound me. I would never rush my dear sweet beautiful darling omega. Maybe I was going to tell you my dick is long so that it can reach cereal boxes on the top shelf. Or so that I can swing on it like Spiderman.”

Yuuji contemplates that with lips pursed against a smile. “Is that what you were gonna say? Because if so then I would probably say that I actually never wanted to hear you or, uh...like, anyone ever say that sentence?”

“Yuuuuji,” Satoru wails, though it comes out raspier than intended. “You are so hypothetically mean to me.”

Yuuji pointedly drops down further.

“...But no, non-hypothetically, mostly I was just going to demonstrate the practical benefits, yeah.”

“Mm.” Yuuji finally fully seats himself, experimentally circling his hips. Satoru hands fly to ground himself against the tight heat surrounding him—one hand on Yuuji’s hip, one on his gorgeous thigh. Strained, Yuuji says, “Benefits sound pretty good.”

And with that, he lifts up again, then drops.

Satoru had thought Yuuji would take some more time to adjust, so he’s taken uncharacteristically unaware by the electricity rocketing up his body. “Fuck,” he bites out viciously. “Oh, fuck, Yuuji, you can’t just—I mean, please do, but oh, god—”

“Shit, you go so deep,” Yuuji murmurs, seemingly mostly to himself. “I thought you would.”

“Yeah? You thought about it?” Satoru rumbles.

Yuuji grinds at the base, tongue flicking out to wet his still-chapped lips. “It felt too weird going out to get, like, a...like a special...you know. Um.” Satoru wants to bite the blush of his cheeks. “A dildo.”

Satoru listens, rapt, and kneads at Yuuji’s thigh. He changes his mind. The actual cutest thing in the world is Yuuji stuttering over talking about dildos with Satoru’s dick in his hole. Or maybe the cutest thing is just Yuuji? Yeah, it’s definitely that.

“So I just have this random one I got online a long time ago. Just whatever was cheap enough I could afford it. But every time I used it, I would think that, um…well, I guess that it didn’t feel right. Like.” He’s not making eye contact now, and his blush is so strong Satoru can practically feel the heat of it from here, but he still says, “Like if it was actually you instead of just pretending, you’d fill me up a lot better.”

The statement hits Satoru with such force it’s like getting the air knocked out of him. He can practically hear the thin thread of his self-control snapping as his mind floods with images of Yuuji fucking himself on a pale imitation of Satoru’s cock, pretending he’s there, thinking of how much better it’d be if he really were. Maybe Satoru could have found him like that—maybe he could have needed him for something, and walked in without knocking, and Yuuji would have had that silicone impostor inside but not able to hit him where he really needed, and he’d have tears in his eyes while he begged his sensei, his alpha, to please make the emptiness go away—

He’s imagined the same thing before plenty of times, but hearing about it is entirely different. Before even fully realizing it, he’s grabbed a hold of Yuuji’s hips and is lifting him up, then pulling him down harshly while fucking up into him.

Yuuji only lets out a punched-out squeak, letting himself be moved. “Yuuji,” Satoru says huskily. “You really can’t just say things like that. Not when your sensei is trying so goddamn hard to control himself.”

Yuuji’s grin shows teeth. “I don’t think I ever said I wanted you to control yourself, though?”

Satoru doesn’t even bother feeling bad about the growl this time, punctuating it by pouncing forward, pinning Yuuji to the bed. “You’re so much fucking trouble,” he says lowly, affection dripping from every word. “I really am going to keep you like this all the time, you know.”

Yuuji’s mouth hangs open now, breathing coming fast, eyes glazing over beautifully. “Good,” he says.

Satoru’s laugh is airy and perhaps a little mean. “Good, huh? You want that? You want to be on my cock forever? Your friends ask where you are and you say—fuck—say you can’t go out because you’re too busy getting dicked down by your alpha?”

Yuuji whines, rough, like it’s been ripped out of him, holding onto Satoru’s shoulders way too hard. Satoru doesn’t mind. Yuuji can’t hurt him, and anyway, Satoru would wear Yuuji’s handprints all over if he could.

“I wonder how long it’ll take like that before your hole memorizes my shape,” he bites out, angling his heavy thrusts slightly to hit Yuuji’s good spot. Yuuji weeps and digs his blunt fingernails into Satoru’s back. “Always open for me, always loose enough I can drink your slick and then slide right in like I never left…”

Yuuji’s fingernails rake down now, scratching raised red lines into Satoru’s skin that sting for mere moments before they’re healed. Pity. Satoru bets he can make Yuuji do even more, though, bets he can make Yuuji lose control and make Satoru feel every inch of that superhuman strength. He imagines Yuuji leaving his mark everywhere, being thrown around by him, taking his pleasure from Satoru like he’s not much more than that stupid toy cock of his, and groans.

His next words are dazed, gravelly, and probably way too honest. Yuuji feels way too good for him to keep filtering himself; he doesn’t even really know what he’s saying anymore. “You don’t even know how much I’d take from you, baby, you don’t even know what you’ve gotten yourself into. You get me this addicted to you, tasting like a goddamn feast, feeling like a dream, and then you think—oh, fuck, Yuuji. Maybe you think I’m a good guy, maybe you think I’m gonna control myself, maybe you think I’m just talking, but I swear if you don’t stop me I will take fucking everything. Gonna rip your clothes off whenever I’m hungry, gonna dive right in, gonna fuck you whenever you’re looking too delicious to resist, and you’re always too much for me to resist, Yuuji. You should really stop me. You really, really should stop me.”

And Yuuji, with pupils blown and eyes glazed and lips parted, sweating and red-faced and cockdrunk and the most gorgeous perfect beautiful thing Satoru has ever seen, says, “Nah. I meant what I said. Good.”

The electricity crests so suddenly it takes Satoru by complete surprise. He keens like some unweaned pup, a wounded, desperate sound, and pumps into Yuuji rough, trying to push his knot in before all his come can escape Yuuji’s hole. As soon as it catches, he’s clumsily shoving his hand between them, stripping Yuuji’s cock out of sync with his jerky thrusts, and murmuring, “Oh, god, come with me, baby, I need you to come with me, I need it.”

It only takes a few strokes and a swipe over the top for Yuuji to follow him over the edge, and as he does, Satoru lunges for Yuuji’s neck and bites down on Yuuji’s scent gland. Yuuji stiffens for a moment before the bonding endorphins kick in and they’re moaning together, the taste of blood and sugar on Satoru’s tongue so earth-shattering that he can’t bring himself to let go of Yuuji’s skin quite yet. Even when he does, he licks the bonding bite for way too long, savoring the combination of Yuuji’s lifeforce and the pheromones that were made for him with eyes fluttering and hips still grinding idly into Yuuji’s.

When he finally comes out of the haze, Yuuji is staring up at him, a smile fighting at his lips.

“What.”

“You really liked that. I can feel it.”

Now that he’s back in himself and it’s been pointed out, he can recognize that some of the satisfaction thrumming in his veins isn’t just his own. He sniffs. “So did you.”

“I mean, yeah, duh. I’m not the one with blood on my teeth though.”

“That’s true. I might be a Yuuji cannibal now,” Satoru says thoughtfully.

Yuuji squints. “I was thinking vampire, but you wanna eat my hands and stuff too?”

“I’d probably go for your thighs first, but every part of you would be a delicacy,” Satoru intones with highly inappropriate solemnity, and smacks an equally tonally inappropriate kiss on Yuuji’s lips.

Satoru worries he might have gone too far when Yuuji takes a minute to respond to that, but in the end he just says, “Huh. I guess I have reverse curse technique now, but don’t you get diseases and stuff from eating people? We probably shouldn’t do that.”

Satoru really does love him so goddamn much. He kisses Yuuji again, and again, and again until all the kisses merge into one and his brain is fuzzy again with rut and with the desire to fold Yuuji inside himself until nothing could part them ever again.

Cannibalism is admittedly probably a step too far on that front, since he’s rather invested in Yuuji staying alive. But Yuuji lets him drink his slick, lets him press his face against his scent gland like he needs it to breathe, lets him fuck him, lets him do everything he wants. It’s too much, really. There might be some saint on this earth who deserves it, but Satoru definitely doesn’t.

But also, Yuuji’s side of the bond sings satisfaction love pleasure love happiness love love love-you and safe safe safe safe reluctance-to-let-go, and so perhaps he’s not alone in it—this wonder at finally being allowed to have Yuuji in every way possible, the fear he’ll be ripped away from him again, the bright aching love that makes it feel like it’ll all turn out as long as they’re at each other’s side.

Yeah. Satoru doesn’t deserve this. He might be the strongest, but he’s not under any illusions that he’s the best. The best is this omega right next to him—Sukuna’s vessel, his student, his friend, the love of his life. He doesn’t deserve this, but he’s more than selfish enough to take it.

“Stop worrying so much,” Yuuji mumbles, mostly asleep, making grabby hands until Satoru is pressed up against him skin-to-skin again. “C’mon. Sleep. Pretty sure even the strongest needs energy if you’re gonna ‘take everything forever’ or whatever.”

A terribly fond beam steals its way onto Satoru’s face. He presses it against Yuuji’s scent gland, where his mating bite now lies red and beautiful, and takes a deep breath.

Everything is sugar-sweet and perfect.

He closes his eyes and sleeps.