Archive of Our Own ^omega

Satoru doesn’t see his death coming.

He witnesses the aftermath—a hungry blade of cursed energy carving into space itself. It’s hardly the first time Satoru’s very conception of cursed energy, its horrors and marvels, has been savagely expanded, but the awe wore off a long time ago. So there’s some novelty to the shock-tinged incredulity that fills him as he fully grasps what Sukuna has done.

In spite of that, Sukuna’s impossible genius isn’t what’s reminding him of that moment when he was sixteen and dying and prying open the world with sheer willpower to lay its secrets bare.

The awe is for the reason the death Satoru didn’t see coming didn’t take him.

Itadori Yuuji is a fifteen-year-old boy. Cute and tough and helplessly charming. The most adorable monster Satoru’s ever known.

The arms cradling him now don’t belong to a boy. The face peering down at him isn’t what he’d call cute either—but it is very handsome. And it’s far too early to tell whether Yuuji’s retained his charm, but Satoru knows a monster when he sees it.

He keeps an absent eye on Sukuna as he takes in his rescuer and their surroundings. They’re on the roof of one of the intact buildings at the edge of the wasteland Satoru and Sukuna have made of Shinjuku, at least a kilometer away from where Satoru was standing a moment ago, prematurely triumphant and more vulnerable than he was even when facing down Fushiguro Tōji.

The distance is no detriment to his sight. Down there, Sukuna looks confused, and he’s as much of a mess as he was in the aftermath of Satoru’s final and most potent Hollow Purple. His cursed-energy sensing must be severely affected if he hasn’t detected Satoru yet. It probably helps that he’s instinctively tamped down on his cursed energy.

His knight in lackluster armor is doing the same, and the efficiency of his suppression is frankly mind-boggling coming from someone without the Six Eyes.

Yuuji’s gaze has shifted from Satoru to Sukuna now. There’s not much of an expression on his face, but the neutral set of his features makes him look somber and distant—nothing like that fiery sunburst of a boy who wore his emotions openly and entirely even when he was sliding the weight of the world onto his shoulders.

Satoru didn’t help, did he? He just added his own dream to the weight.

There’s something else too, mundane in light of everything else but striking all the same. Yuuji’s favored oversized hoodies for as long as Satoru’s known him, delighting even in the unsolicited alteration Satoru made to his uniform, but he’s never worn those hoods up. But this man’s face is shrouded in shadows, the hood pulled down low over his eyes. Satoru’s curse-soaked sight can pierce the darkness, but anyone else would only see a scar-touched mouth and the tip of a nose.

“You know,” Satoru says, and he keeps his voice low, hushed, but it still feels like he’s breaking something sacred, “I thought you’d grow out of this style a few years down the line. Don’t tell me your fashion sense never got any better.”

There’s a strangled noise. Not quite a laugh, not quite anything else.

And for the first time, this strange new version of Yuuji speaks: “Is that really what you should be focusing on right now?”

Satoru shrugs, the motion made a little awkward by how Yuuji’s still got him in a bridal carry. What a gentleman.

He reaches up, shoving the hood off unceremoniously. Yuuji blinks, once, and Satoru already knew that his eyes are the same warm brown of the boy who sent him off barely an hour ago with hope and faith and a firm, grounding touch, but it’s funny how the same color can look so different on the same face.

“You’ve certainly grown up,” Satoru murmurs, feeling strangely wistful. He lets his fingertips brush the top of Yuuji’s hair. It’s longer than Satoru’s used to, combed back in graceful waves, with a stray strand slipping down to curve along the side of an eye. If he ruffled it, his fingers would sink right into the thick of it. He strangles that urge and lowers his hand to Yuuji’s right ear, smoothing his thumb along flesh that’s apparently long healed. “In more ways than one.”

Yuuji’s lips twitch, the ghost of a smile there and gone. His eyes drift downward to stare blankly at Satoru’s midriff.

Before either of them can say anything else, there’s a whole lot of commotion below—an explosion of cursed energy followed by raised voices.

Satoru refocuses on Sukuna in time to watch one of the incarnated sorcerers allied with them engage him in battle. Higher up in the sky, an icicle forms and melts, dropping a weapon that’s undoubtedly a powerful cursed object.

There’s that white-haired monk too, at least until Hakari spirits them away to his domain.

“Oh,” says Yuuji. “I’d forgotten this part.”

“If they’re already executing the backup plans, they must think I’m out of the game. So impatient, honestly. But I can’t really blame them either. You did swoop in and right back out. Did they even see you? None of Mei’s crows are here—though I might have killed a bunch with that last Purple.”

Yuuji hums noncommittally. “They probably didn’t see me. And that guy’s going to die.”

“Kashimo, wasn’t it?” Satoru asks idly, eying the figure shrouded in lightning. “He did make quite a fuss about my fighting Sukuna first—I was quite offended at the implication.

“He didn’t want us to interfere in your fight. I remember that. The others stopped Okkotsu-senpai because Sukuna might have been planning something, but for him, it wasn’t about that. Warrior’s pride, maybe.”

“You don’t sound very impressed.”

“Pride is pointless.”

Satoru blinks. Yuuji’s expression doesn’t become any less opaque.

“You’ll have to elaborate on that someday,” Satoru tells him. “For now, aren’t you going to rescue him?”

“No.”

“No,” Satoru repeats, surprised…and something else. A strange feeling in his bones, writhing in his spine. “That’s not like you.”

“Isn’t it?” Yuuji asks dully. He stares into Satoru’s eyes for a moment before frowning, more thoughtful than bothered. “Guess it wasn’t. But that was a long time ago, sensei.”

“You’re, what, twenty-five? Thirty?” Satoru scans Yuuji’s features more carefully—the skin is unwrinkled, and there’s no grey in his hair. He’s older for sure, but he could be anywhere between twenty and thirty. “I suppose it would be half a lifetime for you.”

Yuuji says, “I’m eighty-five.”

“…Come again?”

“Long story.” A slight frown mars Yuuji’s expression for a millisecond, before his features smooth back out. “Or a very short one, I guess. You can see it, right? Those eyes of yours—they can see what I am.”

It’s not a question; it’s not even a statement that compels an answer.

Satoru still looks, fully ignoring the battle raging below to focus on the man holding him.

The most unique web of cursed energy he’s ever seen brands itself into his mind.

It’s more complex than the mess Yuuji made of his body and his soul by consuming Sukuna’s fingers, and it’s also not comparable to what he looked like to Satoru’s eyes when he emerged from the Prison Realm and found his favorite student in the process of slowly but thoroughly breaking down a total of six distinct cursed-energy signatures. Even after the integration was complete, Yuuji felt like a human—like a sorcerer.

That’s still there. An essential quality no curse can replicate, no matter how human they look. Yuuji’s flesh and blood, not pure curse given form. But Satoru wouldn’t quite call him human anymore.

He’s felt something similar, quite recently even. This is a lot like how the Death Painting who calls himself Yuuji’s brother registers in Satoru’s senses. But there’s a world of difference between that one and Yuuji in terms of power—not just the sheer quantity of Yuuji’s cursed energy but also the refinement and control that are evident even as Yuuji simply stands there without even a spark of it at his fingertips.

“Ah,” Satoru breathes. “Your body went and changed on me again, Yuuji. It keeps doing that.”

“No,” says Yuuji, and he finally, gently sets Satoru down. “Not on you. Not this time.”

It’s tacit confirmation of something Satoru already assumed. He steps away from Yuuji, just enough that he can properly stand facing him. They’re nearly the same height now, Yuuji just a few centimeters shorter.

It’s a drastic difference from what Satoru’s used to. Growth spurts are gradual things. Satoru’s seen his fair share of students shoot up over the years, though few reached his height—story of his life, really. But it’s another thing entirely to blink and be eye to eye with a boy you could tuck under your chin just this morning.

Yuuji doesn’t look nonplussed by their matching stature, but his expression isn’t so blank anymore either. There’s a strange new intensity to his gaze as it bores into Satoru, threatening to make the Six Eyes feel inadequate.

Satoru can understand though. This must be new to Yuuji too.

After all— “I didn’t survive, huh.”

Yuuji doesn’t reply, but the next moment, the same impossible arc of cursed energy that’d have cut through Infinity and Satoru both tears through the air below, and Kashimo—more lightning than man now—escapes it by a hair’s breadth.

“I couldn’t see it then,” Yuuji says. “Did you?”

“If I had,” Satoru says drily, “I’d have dodged.”

Yuuji, still looking at Satoru rather than the battle below, only stares for another long moment.

Then he nods. “I always thought that. But I wondered, sometimes.”

Satoru frowns. “Yuuji—"

“I wouldn’t have blamed you, sensei,” Yuuji says serenely. “Even before I really understood, I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

Then he leaps off the building.

It’s a good seven stories down, but Yuuji lands gracefully on his feet. Off in the distance, Sukuna and Kashimo have finished their fight—only one of them lives to tell the tale, just as Yuuji predicted. But is it truly prediction if it’s foreknowledge?

Satoru spares a moment to really take in the form Sukuna has assumed—or reclaimed, more accurately. It proves beyond doubt that the historical records of the King of Curses weren’t exaggerated.

Then he warps right into Yuuji’s trajectory, so close that the tips of their feet touch. Yuuji doesn’t run into him or flinch back in surprise. He simply brings his body to an utter stop with no apparent effort or surprise. 

Satoru’s often called this boy a beast, always fondly. Right now, though, Yuuji reminds him more of the deadly precision of a well-oiled machine.

“Where exactly are you going?” Satoru asks him.

Yuuji blinks placidly. “To take care of Sukuna.”

“I believe that’s my job.”

“No way,” Yuuji says, casually circling around Satoru. “You’d get Fushiguro killed too.”

“Hey now,” Satoru starts, but he can’t come up with a convincing argument, especially now that Sukuna’s taken on his true form. Capturing an enemy that strong is infinitely harder than killing him, and Satoru’s cursed technique isn’t particularly suited to non-lethal capture anyway.

Even so—

“Gojou-sensei,” says Yuuji, turning his head slightly so that his profile is in view, “trust me. Please.”

It’s rusty. The plea, that is. Satoru’s betitled name spills from Yuuji’s lips as if his teacher isn’t seventy years dead.

It’s a very strange thought. Another world, another time, another Satoru—dead and gone. He’s considered time travel a time or two. But even cursed techniques that manipulate time are few and far between, and none have been known to reverse time, only pause or dilate it in limited bursts.

But jujutsu frequently makes the impossible possible. The boy before Satoru has often felt like a testament to that.

He sighs, rocking back on his heels. “Fine. I guess I lost anyway. I do want a rematch—but Megumi’s more important. Go get him.”

Yuuji gives him a two-finger salute as he faces forward again. He takes one step, then another, and then he’s gone, leaping across the terrain with a speed that strains even the Six Eyes.

No, Satoru doesn’t think Mei’s crows managed to capture how or whether he escaped that final slash.

He thinks on that for a moment. He tries. But his mind keeps returning to Yuuji—not just the strange, distant man he’s become but the boy Satoru left behind not too long ago.

Is he…still here?

Satoru crushes that line of thought and follows after Yuuji, dropping out of compressed space in time to watch Yuuji step nimbly past four grasping arms and land a punch that makes the world burn black.

Black Flash, Satoru thinks, with a hot thrill in his bones.

These aren’t black sparks so much as violent arcs of black lightning—a massive eruption of cursed energy that obscures both the perpetrator and the victim from even Satoru’s eyes for the span of a full second.

Once it starts to clear, Satoru can see Yuuji’s fist, still coated in exquisitely controlled cursed energy where it’s buried in Sukuna’s body, right above that gaping mouth on his belly. It was snarling when Yuuji approached him, but now it’s stretched into a grotesque grimace, and the flesh around it is no less distorted. Sukuna’s normal mouth is open in a silent scream, all four of his eyes wide and blank, the pupils almost invisible.

As Satoru watches, the distortion travels across the rest of Sukuna’s form, the skin rippling and the flesh bulging like it’s all about to slough off or maybe burst open like an overripe fruit.

“And here I thought you wanted to save Megumi,” Satoru calls out.

Yuuji doesn’t reply, but he doesn’t need to. Satoru gets his answer the next moment as that great, squirming mass of flesh flies violently backward—except there’s still a body hanging off Yuuji’s fist, shorter and thinner and unmistakable. Megumi’s body looks so small and fragile like this, a far cry from the lethal weapon Sukuna wielded like he’d been born into it.

Megumi topples forward, and Yuuji catches him by the shoulders, carefully lowering him to the ground and laying him out on his back. He’s unconscious but breathing, just a little too fast, and aside from a few burn-like scars on his face where Sukuna imposed his own impossible features onto this flesh, he seems unscathed.

Yuuji only lingers for a moment before straightening up and walking over to where Sukuna’s cursed energy burns like a beacon, significantly diminished but still potent.

The Six Eyes see cursed energy, not souls—but for sorcerers, the difference is very little. Satoru knows exactly what just happened. It’s what Yuuji—his Yuuji—was planning too. Satoru was the one he sought out to discuss Tsukumo’s notes and his own theories, and what Satoru remembers best about those late-night conversations is the blistering pride that suffused him as Yuuji broke down a special-grade sorcerer’s lifetime work into applicable strategies, incorporating his own experiences with the soul and his unique abilities, all in a desperate and viciously hopeful bid to save his best friend.

If Satoru had died to Sukuna, he’d have died with full faith in his students. That version of Satoru who died in Yuuji’s time—he must have died content.

He hopes Yuuji knows that, at least. Dead men don’t talk, but Satoru did try to tell him, didn’t he? Not in so many words, but Yuuji’s a smart boy. He’d have understood eventually.

I wouldn’t have blamed you, sensei. Even before I really understood.

And before—

How could I forget you?

Satoru steers his mind away from that line of thought and back to the matter at hand—faith. He had every faith in Yuuji. Clearly, it was warranted.

But there’s no amount of faith that can make it less surreal to witness and understand that Yuuji just separated Megumi’s and Sukuna’s souls with a single punch.

Satoru walks by Megumi, whose breathing has slowed and steadied. He looks like he’s just sleeping. The battlefield is empty otherwise; Hakari and the monk still seem to be occupying each other. But he can see a few of Mei’s crows in the distance. He waves at one.

They’ll be here soon. Yuuta, in particular, won’t stay put for long, assuming he isn’t already headed for the parasite instead.

Satoru doesn’t want to think about that right now either. Thankfully, Yuuji makes that easy—Yuuji and the blob of baby-pink flesh he’s cradling in his hands.

“That’s an ugly pet you’ve got there,” Satoru comments, peering over Yuuji’s shoulder before moving to stand beside him for a better look.

A baleful red eye bores into him. “Gojou Satoru—”

“I think he’s kinda cute.”

Sukuna’s comically tiny mouth—made all the more hilarious by how the voice coming from within is still his deep bass—snaps shut, that single eye swiveling back to Yuuji while dripping offense and incredulity, and for once, Satoru can’t even judge Sukuna because he’s feeling much the same.

“Cute?” he asks, joining Sukuna in staring at Yuuji.

There’s an unrepentant shrug. “Like a very weird cat. I think he’d be a cat, if he were an animal. You too, sensei. Different types, though. Very different.”

“You’ve…put a lot of thought into this,” Satoru says faintly.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think.” Yuuji smiles. The first smile Satoru’s seen from him, and all he can think is that Yuuji should never, ever smile—not like this. “Hey, Sukuna? If I give you the choice to stay with me, you’ll just say no again, right?”

Again, Satoru notes.

“What are you blathering on about now, boy?” asks Sukuna, somehow managing to sneer even with that distorted face.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Yuuji says—and raises his cupped hands to his mouth.

“Yuuji!” Satoru warns, reaching out on instinct, but it’s already too late. That mass of flesh has been crammed unceremoniously into Yuuji’s mouth, and Satoru can hear noises—not the wet sounds of chewing flesh but the very human tones of someone being swallowed whole.

He’s heard it before, sometimes from people he was too late to save, though his clearest memories are of Suguru’s grosser intimidation tactics. But it’s not disappointment or disgust that he’s feeling now, just the same sense of surreality that seized him earlier.

Yuuji’s throat bulges, silencing those noises forever. His hands are pressed flat against his mouth, as if holding it closed.

Satoru thinks, again, of Suguru choking down curses.

Yuuji doesn’t choke. No gag reflex, after all.

But he shudders violently the next moment, shaking his head like a spooked dog. “That tastes way worse than the fingers. Or maybe I just forgot how bad those were? No, I’m pretty sure they just tasted like…weird soap. Right?”

“I wasn’t the one who went around eating them,” Satoru hears himself say. He feels a little dazed. Maybe all the self-inflicted brain damage is catching up to him. “But that’s how I remember you describing them, yes.”

Yuuji nods thoughtfully. “Guess he just got some flavor. It is Sukuna—he wouldn’t make himself tasty.”

Satoru blinks hard, forcibly clearing his mind.

“Yuuji,” he calls softly, earning himself the full force of those lightless eyes. “Why?”

Yuuji’s quiet for a moment, his eyes unwavering on Satoru. Even with the dispassionate look in them, the intensity of his gaze is scorching. Satoru weathers it the way he’s weathered storms and monsters and life itself.

“It’s lonely, sensei. Living forever.” Yuuji raises a hand to his stomach, flattening it against his navel—where the core of his cursed energy blazes like a miniature sun, now mixing with pulsing tendrils of alien power. The sun subsumes them, as if merely burning away an infection. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about regrets. This was one. I shouldn’t have listened to him. Maybe I was too kind—it’s strange to think that I ever was.”

“You are,” Satoru says quietly, unable to help himself.

“I was,” Yuuji corrects. “He’s not happy, you know. And maybe he won’t ever be. But that’s alright.”

What happened to you? Satoru wants to ask, but even the little Yuuji has said is already an answer. Satoru, Sukuna, Tengen—there are sorcerers who’ve lost the luxury of being human.

It’s not a fate he’d ever have wished on a single one of his students, but especially not this boy.

“Yuuji,” he starts, uncharacteristically uncertain of how to continue—

“They’re coming,” Yuuji cuts in. “Can you take us somewhere quiet? I don’t want to see everyone just yet.”

Satoru considers that for a moment. “If I refuse, you’ll just run anyway, won’t you?”

Yuuji laughs. It’s as rusty as that plea was. Maybe that means it’s real.

“I forgot how scarily sharp you were,” Yuuji says, his tone bordering on cheerful.

And it’s not a straight answer, but it’s no less clear for it.

Satoru reaches out, snagging Yuuji by his unnecessarily high collar and yanking him forward. Curious eyes track his hand, but Yuuji doesn’t stop him or even resist, falling forward easily. Satoru flattens his other hand along the back of Yuuji’s head, pressing it down against his shoulder.

Yuuji makes a strange little noise.

Satoru lets his Limitless envelop them, spiriting them away from the familiar cursed-energy signatures warily closing in.

He takes them to the sea—it’s the very edge of his teleportation range, which means it’s also too far for any of the others to sense them.

It’s a quiet beach. An isolated spot, tucked away from the public eye. The water might have been inviting if not for the sheer amount of cursed energy drenching it. Most of the actual curses fled the moment the two of them appeared here. Japan’s waters are treacherous these days, but nothing in them is a threat to Yuuji or Satoru.

“…Aren’t you going to let go?” Yuuji asks, his voice a low mumble.

Satoru huffs. “I’m not keeping you captive.”

Yuuji shifts on the spot, his right foot dragging along the sand, but he doesn’t straighten up and back off. It’s an awkward position, for sure. Aside from where Satoru’s still holding onto Yuuji, they’re only touching where Yuuji’s forehead is resting against Satoru’s shoulder. The position requires him to bend down. That’s still strange. Just a little while ago, all Yuuji would’ve had to do was lean forward.

But it really isn’t Satoru keeping him there. His hands are light on Yuuji, more touch than pressure. Yuuji still stays.

Then his hands rise slowly, coming to a hesitant rest on Satoru’s waist.

The warmth of his skin seems to sink through the thin fabric of the undershirt.

The hold grows tight without warning, like Yuuji’s trying to squeeze him like an oversized tube of toothpaste, and then it’s a full-body collision, all of Yuuji’s considerable bulk slamming into Satoru. He chokes down a grunt at the impact and wraps his arms around Yuuji properly, steadying them both. On a typical day, Satoru wouldn’t even feel the strain, but right now, even with his reverse cursed technique restored and plenty of cursed energy to spare, he’s starting to feel the effects of the fight he just survived—the fight he was rescued from by the man now clutching him like a lifeline.

Yuuji is deathly silent. He doesn’t even seem to be breathing. His head is still ducked low, bearing down against Satoru’s shoulder with a force that threatens to bruise them both down to the bone.

Satoru stares out at the horizon, closing his eyes as a light breeze washes over them.

He tries to think of nothing. Nothing at all. It doesn’t come naturally to him, but that fight exhausted his mind more than his body, and for once, the blankness lingers.

It’s blissful, for however long it lasts. A stolen eternity.

Yuuji’s the one who pulls back, in the end, though he doesn’t go far, stopping with just a foot of space between them. He’s holding his hands out in front of him, staring down with no real expression on his face.

Two of his fingers are still missing.

“It’s real, huh,” Yuuji says, not quite a question. “You’re really real. All of this is. I’m in the past.”

“Yes,” Satoru confirms, just in case Yuuji needs to hear it. More lightly, he asks, “You’ve been pretty proactive for a guy who was doubting reality.”

“Didn’t really think about it,” Yuuji mutters, his eyes darting up to meet Satoru’s. “Just did it. I didn’t really think it’d work—throwing my soul into the past like that. Figured I’d get, I don’t know, strewn across humanity’s collective consciousness or something.”

Satoru blinks. “That would have been rather unpleasant.”

“I guess,” Yuuji says, frowning. “Mostly, I thought I’d just pass out for a while. I dream, sometimes.”

Satoru reaches over and pinches both of Yuuji’s cheeks.

“Ow,” Yuuji says dully. “What’re you doing?”

“Proving it’s not a dream, in case you needed some extra reassurance.”

“Thanks?”

“You’re welcome,” Satoru chirps, lowering his hands. “Sukuna giving you any trouble in there?”

Another ghost of a smile crosses Yuuji’s face. “He’s trying. I forgot this feeling.”

“That’s a little ominous.”

“He won’t get out,” Yuuji assures him, his voice lightening up again. “It’s just been a while since I’ve had to share my soul. It’s so loud.”

Yuuji doesn’t look or sound like he thinks that’s a bad thing. His eyes grow heavy-lidded, an absent expression creeping across his face, and it’s not an exact match for the way his teenage self would look those few times Satoru saw him deign to actually respond to whatever Sukuna was saying in their shared mind, but it’s close enough that Satoru can tell it’s what he’s doing.

The brief silence pushes Satoru’s mind toward a direction he can no longer avoid.

If it’s his soul that Yuuji sent to the past, then—

“Sensei,” Yuuji asks before Satoru can finish that thought, “do you think Fushiguro’s okay? I was pretty rough this time.”

“Were you gentler the last time?” Satoru asks curiously.

Yuuji frowns, tilting his head to the side like he’s struggling to remember. “Maybe? I took longer. Punched a lot more. But Sukuna took all the damage. Fushiguro was…fine.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I doubt you damaged him much—that blow was as precise as a scalpel. Impressive, really. My attacks wouldn’t have been as kind on his body or his soul.”

Yuuji nods agreeably.

Satoru waits a moment.

Then he asks, “Aren’t you going to scold me?”

“Scold you?”

“For hurting Megumi. I’d have killed him, you know, if I’d kept going.”

“I know,” is all Yuuji says.

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

“You’re not the only one,” Yuuji says softly, “who’s let children die.”

Ah, thinks Satoru, that unpleasant feeling from earlier creeping up his spine. It seems to spill into blood and bone both, turning one cold and the other hollow.

It’s not fear. Satoru can’t remember the last time he felt afraid, and this isn’t a man who deserves his fear anyway. But there’s a picture forming from what Yuuji’s saying, what he’s said before, everything he hasn’t yet, and all the things he’ll never say—and it’s not pretty.

What’s one of those too-old too-wise things Megumi likes to say? The only thing granted equally to all is an unfair reality.

Maybe Satoru was hoping to change that—for himself, for his students. A part of him accepted long ago that it’d never change for him, but he did have hope for his students. He had a lot of hope for this boy.

He’s always been prone to playing favorites.

“Let’s sit down a while,” Satoru says, walking toward the water. “It’s been a very long day.”

Yuuji’s silent and still for several seconds, even after Satoru sits down. Satoru cheats, using the Six Eyes to watch Yuuji without turning his head. He has a feeling Yuuji knows he’s doing it; he developed a very good sense for it mere weeks into meeting Satoru.

He cuts an imposing figure, standing there alone. His oversized clothes don’t hide his stature, and his face could be carved from marble—hard, cold, exquisite. It’s not entirely alien. Yuuji has always had a chilling intensity about him when he truly focuses. But age and experience have pared this man down in ways Satoru can’t grasp, not yet.

Eighty-five, huh? Old enough to be his grandfather.

It doesn’t quite compute.

Eventually, Yuuji stirs to motion, padding over to sit down beside Satoru.

“He’s gone, isn’t he?” Satoru asks, far more casually than he thought himself capable of. “My Yuuji.”

“Yes.”

“You could at least pretend to be sorry.”

“…You did it first.”

“What, time travel? I’m sure I’d remember that.”

“Dying.”

“Ah. Fair enough.” Satoru leans back, till the blue of the sea becomes the blue of the sky. The bulk of his attention remains on Yuuji’s somber form. “Do you resent me for it?”

“No.”

“You mean it, huh? And here I thought you weren’t kind.”

“If I were,” Yuuji says, with a strangely delicate quality, “I wouldn’t be here.”

Satoru stares at Yuuji’s face for a long moment, trying to discern some emotion in its blank lines. There’s nothing. He was more animated earlier though, at least after eating Sukuna. Almost cheerful, if only for fleeting moments. It can’t be that Satoru’s worse company.

He reaches over, grasps Yuuji’s chin, and turns it toward him.

Yuuji blinks, unperturbed. For several seconds, he does nothing at all, and neither does Satoru, merely contemplating bad idea after bad idea, and then Yuuji breaks the stalemate with a languorous movement, raising a hand that gives Satoru more than enough time to escape its clutches before it closes gently but firmly around his wrist.

The calluses pressing into his skin aren’t wholly familiar. It’s not conscious choice that has Satoru comparing them with the ones his Yuuji had, drafting a mental map of the ones that have faded, the ones that overlap, and the ones that are entirely new, and he’ll remember these forever too, now, just like how he’ll always remember the way that boy’s hands felt the last time they touched him.

Yuuji does nothing else. He doesn’t pull Satoru’s hand away. He asks no questions.

He doesn’t stop Satoru with actions or words when he starts leaning in.

The lips are the same. The scar at their corner as well, even though it should also have faded and softened out by now. Then again, Satoru’s always suspected that those scars stay because Yuuji wants them to, and now he wonders if Yuuji’s two severed fingers remain unhealed for the same reason.

He could ask, now. This Yuuji might even know the answer.

Satoru lingers for a moment with their faces just inches away, considering whether to ask or act. The latter wins out.

Yuuji allows the kiss the way he’s allowed the rest of it—his eyes wide open, his whole body motionless. Satoru keeps his eyes open too, even as a part of him sinks into the softness of the lips now pressed against his. They feel the same, too. Plush and kissable. A little dry. Satoru would put gloss on his own and kiss Yuuji in the guise of moisturizing them—a paper-thin pretense Yuuji never played along with but allowed anyway.

Do you remember? Satoru wants to ask.

He doesn’t. He watches Yuuji’s eyes instead. They’re dark and burning, like hot coals. The sight shouldn’t be new, but this is a fire fundamentally and ferociously different from what Satoru is used to. There’s nothing of that heat between their lips, but there’s warmth in abundance, seeping through Satoru to chase away the biting chill of the ocean breeze.

It’s another eternity later that he draws back, and the entire time, Yuuji doesn’t breathe.

Satoru huffs. “Is that how you kiss your teacher after seventy years, Yuuji?”

Yuuji’s hand uncurls from around Satoru’s wrist, drifting to his face instead. The fingers hover against his jaw, not quite touching. Satoru can still feel them, like static electricity, making him keenly aware of the fine hairs there.

“If I kiss you,” says Yuuji, “I won’t stop until I eat you.”

Satoru could point out that a fair amount of eating is generally involved in what follows, but they both know Yuuji means it very literally this time. Satoru could still play the fool, but the memory of Yuuji cramming what was left of Sukuna, diminished but unquestionably sentient, into his mouth is fresh in his mind, and the joke doesn’t quite make it past his throat.

“Well,” he says at length, “that’s not how you usually finish that sentence.”

“I remember,” Yuuji murmurs, his eyes growing heavy-lidded as he looks at and right through Satoru. “But it’s the only way I know to keep someone now.”

Something inside his ribs clenches tight, making it hard to breathe for a single moment.

That boy wanted to keep Satoru. He wasn’t subtle. Satoru always figured he’d change his mind sooner or later, if Satoru lived long enough to give him the chance.

In this Yuuji’s world, he didn’t. You’d think that’d be its own argument.

Satoru says, “Careful now. You’ll make me jealous of Sukuna.”

Another of those strange, half-there smiles flits across Yuuji’s face. “You should go back to the others, sensei.”

“Should I?” Satoru asks, raising an eyebrow. “Sounds like you don’t intend on joining me.”

“No,” Yuuji says plainly. He stands up then, an abrupt motion that seems to go on for several long, suspended seconds. “But you should. They’re probably worried.”

“Maybe they think you’ve kidnapped me,” Satoru mutters absently, content to sit there and stare up at Yuuji—there’s a lot to look at.

“Not today,” Yuuji says, and before Satoru can quite process that, Yuuji’s yanking his hood back up and turning away, as if he’s got every intention of just walking away from Satoru.

Satoru’s on his feet in an instant, and the next second, he’s in front of Yuuji.

Just like the last time, Yuuji stops before they can collide.

“And where are you going?”

“To take a walk,” Yuuji says blandly. “I just had a pretty big meal.”

“What’re you—” Realization strikes, and words and thoughts all flee Satoru for a moment, eradicated by sheer incredulity. “Are you talking about Sukuna?”

Yuuji just chuckles, his eyes crinkling with it. For a moment, he looks so much like—

“Yuuji—”

“I’ll come back,” Yuuji says, very deliberately stepping away from Satoru. “Eventually.”

“Eventually,” Satoru repeats dubiously. He surveys Yuuji—there’s still no real tension in his frame, but Satoru knows how quickly that body can go from zero to sixty. He can be gone in an instant. “I could drag you back with me, you know.”

“Ah.” It’s a quiet sound, surprised and a little awkward. Yuuji slides both hands into his pockets, rocking slightly in place. “I guess I’d let you try, sensei. For old times’ sake. But I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Sparing my pride, are we?” Satoru asks drily. He waits for stung pride to rear its head, but there’s not much there. Just an empty feeling not unlike exhaustion. He sighs, crossing his arms. “At least tell me where you’re going.”

“Nowhere in particular,” Yuuji replies with a shrug. “I just need to think for a while. Sukuna and I need to talk too. He keeps trying to go through my memories and getting pissed when he can’t.”

“Is that…normal?”

“Which part?”

“Sukuna being unable to access your memories. I was under the impression that’s part and parcel of being a vessel.”

“It is. But I’m not really a vessel. I’m a cage.” Yuuji’s lips turn up the corners. The smile is pretty, but the shadows of his hood turn it ominous, almost cruel. “And I know my own bars very well these days. Goodbye, Gojou-sensei. I’ll see you around.”

Yuuji steps to the side and keeps walking, striding calmly past Satoru. Satoru doesn’t turn around, but he watches him anyway, the Six Eyes trained on his retreating form. It seems, at first, like Yuuji plans to walk the entire length of the beach, taunting and tempting Satoru to really try to stop him, but just as that thought occurs to Satoru, Yuuji flickers out of view—speed so fast and refined that it mimics teleportation. Satoru’s eyes aren’t fooled, but even he has only seconds to watch as Yuuji leaps across the landscape, vanishing past an outcropping of rocks.

A moment later, even his cursed energy is gone from Satoru’s sensing range.

-

He returns to a predictable mess that’s no easier to handle for it.

Yuuji’s fate is pretty much what Satoru was expecting. He simply vanished. One moment, he was there; the next, he was gone. There were no eyes on him at the time. Everyone was distracted by what was happening on the screens. Satoru doubts it’d have made a difference anyway.

The resulting chaos disrupted their plans enough that Kashimo charged ahead, with Hakari at his heels. But Yuuta stuck around instead of heading for Kenjaku, and by the time Sukuna was taken care of, the whole situation was confusing—and concerning—enough that everything stalled out.

The news of what’s become of Yuuji is greeted with skepticism at first. They all saw what happened to Sukuna, and more than one person apparently theorized the hooded figure was Yuuji, but just as many called that bullshit. Mei’s crows couldn’t get a good view of the face—Satoru has a feeling Yuuji might have done that on purpose.

Somehow, Yuuji’s so-called brother is the first and the firmest believer. Most of the others aren’t any less skeptical about Chōsō’s claim that his blood would have told him if Yuuji had died, and even Satoru has to tamp down on the urge to say that Yuuji—their Yuuji—is dead.

But at the end of the day, they’re all sorcerers. Even time travel doesn’t feel too far-fetched in a world where thousand-year-old sorcerers are running around. Yuuji’s current absence raises more questions, but there are few answers Satoru can give to that.

He keeps details about Yuuji to a minimum in general. It’s not that it’s not his story to tell. It’s just not a conversation he’s in the mood to have.

There are more pressing concerns anyway.

Hakari is alive, if a little worse for wear. His opponent got distracted when Sukuna’s cursed energy started plummeting. Satoru can tell it’s not how Hakari would have preferred to win the fight, and he likely wouldn’t have killed the monk—but they turned themselves into ice, shattering into pieces.

Satoru remembers the way Sukuna’s cursed energy vanished entirely the moment Yuuji swallowed that ugly little blob. Uraume probably thought Sukuna simply died.

It’s dangerous, that kind of devotion.

But it’s good news for them. Satoru’s not keen on losing another student. As things stand, their only loss is Kashimo, and even from their brief interactions, Satoru can tell that’s how that one wanted to go.

Megumi seems fine. Unconscious and likely to remain that way for a while, but physically, he hasn’t incurred any damage Shouko can’t heal. Satoru would like to see him awake and about before forming any conclusions, but from what Yuuji said, he survived the bout with Satoru just fine the first time around. And he did mean it when he said Yuuji was still gentler than Satoru had been.

That’s all he’s allowed to say and learn before Shouko shoos everyone else out of the infirmary.

“You gave yourself brain damage,” she says the moment they’re alone.

“Necessary evil.”

Her already sunken eyes seem to grow even duller. “The brain is a black box even to us. You could have killed yourself.”

“I didn’t,” he chirps. He taps his skull, grinning despite how it aggravates the pounding headache that’s formed there. “Good as new.”

“Are you, really?”

Satoru shrugs. “As far as I can tell. If I drop dead—”

“Satoru.”

He stops. Her eyes are still dull, but her jaw is clenched. The scent of cigarettes clings to her.

“Huh,” he says. “You were worried.”

One of her hands clenches, just for a moment. “Did you die?”

“Shouko,” he says slowly, “you just spent a solid ten minutes feeling up my life signs. I’m quite obviously alive.”

She reaches calmly into her pocket and retrieves a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Satoru watches, bemused, as she lights it up and puts it to her lips, taking a deep drag. The first exhale is a furious huff that sends smoke streaming out through her nose and mouth both—an image that’d be hilarious on any other face, with any other person.

“You said Itadori’s claiming to have traveled back in time—”

“I’m sensing some skepticism here—”

“—and his first act was to save you.”

“Hard as it may be to believe, some of my students do like me.”

“Itadori liked you a little too much.”

“Well, that’s a matter of—”

“In the future he came from, did you die?”

Satoru sighs and leans back, tilting his head toward the ceiling. “That’s quite the assumption.”

“It’s movie logic,” she deadpans.

Satoru chuckles. “Yuuji did like movies. Hated it when I spoiled ’em for him.”

“Now you’re talking like he’s the dead one.”

“Isn’t he?” Satoru asks lightly. “He’s gone, you know. That boy we knew. He’s never coming back.”

Shouko is silent for a long moment.

Then, softly, she says, “You didn’t answer my question.”

“You already know the answer.” Satoru smiles up at the ceiling. “I always figured you’d outlive us both.”

She smacks his chest—well, she tries. Her hand bounces harmlessly off Infinity.

“That’s pretty out of character,” he tells her, strangely gleeful. “I can put it away, if you wanna try again.”

She smacks her own face instead, an open-palmed strike that’s a little too forceful for comfort. “Just…shut up. What now?”

“Kenjaku,” Satoru answers immediately. “I did promise I wouldn’t mess up Suguru’s death anniversary.”

She exhales another cloud of smoke, which gives a certain gravity to her narrowed eyes and pursed lips. “You aren’t keeping any promises today. I need to observe you for at least twenty-four hours. Your body and cursed energy have been under unprecedented stress the last few months. It’s already a miracle that you came out of the Prison Realm without any adverse physical effects.” In a quiet mutter, she adds, “Still not sure about the psychological ones.”

“I heard that.”

“Good,” she says ruthlessly. “Anyway, Okkotsu has headed out. Tōdō and Takaba are still in position, though we don’t have contact yet.”

“That parasite is smart,” Satoru muses. “Even if we know the colony they’re in, tracking them down won’t be easy, not when they’d be expecting us now—maybe the livestream was a bad idea after all. We’ll smoke them out eventually. But we might have missed our window today.”

“You can always wait another year for the right date.”

“You’re really bad at sarcasm, you know that?”

“Lie down, Gojou. Sleep, if you can. I’m going to monitor the flow of your cursed energy for a little while.”

“No way I’ll be sleeping here,” Satoru grumbles, but he lies down, closing his eyes as the tips of her fingers come to rest gently against his temples.

Her cursed energy pulses, and her hands seem to grow pleasantly cool where they’re touching. Aches Satoru wasn’t consciously aware of flee his skull, followed by that blaring headache, and his body relaxes of its own volition.

He could still go. She can’t actually keep him here. No one can.

It’s Satoru who’s choosing to stay. Part of it is the state of his body. His own reverse cursed technique can’t detect anything wrong in his brain, and it’s fixed all the damage to his body, self-wrought and otherwise, but with the adrenaline all gone, what’s left is a strange, lingering exhaustion that threatens to eat through his mind and his bones.

Part of it is—

Memories play out in the back of his mind, an endless parade of words and images. Sukuna and Suguru and the body that’s not Suguru. Yuuji. His Yuuji, young and bright. The heat that formed under the imprint of his hand when he breezed right through Satoru’s barriers to touch him one last time. The man he’s become—a body that’s still young, with a spirit that’s anything but. His power now burns the way his eyes used to, and Satoru tries to figure out if the trade-off was worth it.

It’s still Yuuji. Whatever happened, whatever he’s become, it’s still Yuuji.

It’s more than Satoru’s used to having.

“I need to go find him,” he says; it comes out as a low mumble, barely coherent even to himself.

“Later,” says a voice above him—Shouko. “Just sleep.”

Not Kenjaku, Satoru wants to say. Yuuji.

He needs—

-

It’s two days later that Satoru returns to his house. He spent most of that time sleeping, and Shouko wouldn’t admit to drugging him no matter how many times he asked.

Interesting events transpired in the meantime: Megumi and Nobara both woke up.

Megumi is fine. A little slower than usual, but not in a way that’s cause for concern. Nobara’s bounced back quite impressively for someone who was in a coma for nearly two months. Even her cursed technique is intact, unlike Aoi’s.

Satoru retrieved the letters he had handed to Shouko, shredding them. He’ll tell them all that himself, later. For now, they share a far more urgent concern—Yuuji.

There hasn’t been any sign of him since Satoru last saw him, and the Culling Game no longer recognizes a player by the name of Itadori Yuuji. Megumi and Nobara take the news about as well as expected, which is not at all. Yuuji’s two self-proclaimed brothers are even less happy.

Satoru’s not particularly pleased himself.

Good news isn’t abundant even otherwise. Yuuta and the others returned empty-handed; Kenjaku had apparently fled before any of them could find them, and last they checked, the game claimed “Getou Suguru” was in Hiroshima, but even Satoru’s own attempt to locate them failed. When he’d exited the Prison Realm, it had been easy enough to use Sukuna’s immense cursed energy as a beacon. He also suspects Kenjaku hadn’t been expecting him.

He’ll find them. He’ll kill them.

It would be easier if they didn’t also have to deal with the hot, steaming mess that both domestic and international affairs have become. It’s unlike anything their people have had to face since sorcerers as a whole faded from the public eye. Politics isn’t Satoru’s preferred playing field, and no one would ever accuse him of being diplomatic—but it seems he’ll have to be something.

It might have been enough to make him regret killing the higher-ups, except he knows they’d have changed things for the worse, especially if Satoru had fallen to Sukuna. He did fall to Sukuna, in one world, and as obsolete as it is now, that knowledge still gives him perspective.

In the midst of it all, a whole night to himself within the familiar confines of his own walls sounds pretty damn good.

That impression lasts until he steps into the house.

His place had escaped the destructive impact of Tsukumo’s fight with Kenjaku, mostly thanks to how it’s nestled into a corner of the woods that’s just barely within Tengen’s now rapidly weakening barriers, and when the sorcerers gathered against Sukuna had scattered across the still-intact parts of the campus to train and rest and live however much they could, Yuuji had followed him here.

Satoru didn’t turn him away. It never even occurred to him.

On the night of the twenty-third, neither of them slept much. But they lay in bed all night, quiet in a way they rarely were. It wasn’t a lack of things to say, just a choice not to. Or that’s what it was for Satoru. He’d already told Yuuji the important things, burdened him as much as he could stand. Set him free too—or so he’d hoped.

Maybe it was different for Yuuji. He never could predict that boy entirely.

And Satoru was the one who eventually coaxed Yuuji onto and then inside his body, but Yuuji was the one who stayed there till morning light, his shuddering breaths warming Satoru’s throat while his cock softened and hardened without demand or urgency where it was buried deep inside Satoru.

The next morning, Satoru held on to the soreness for as long as it was safe.

They never did say goodbye.

Yuuji did, that day on the beach. Satoru has to wonder if he was compensating for the time he couldn’t.

Satoru isn’t jealous. He doesn’t like goodbyes anyway. He’s demonstrably bad at them, in fact.

He can smell Yuuji here. Not cologne or anything artificial. Not even the way cursed energy that’s potent enough seems to acquire a scent, uniquely tailored to the sorcerer. This is something more fundamental. A wholly human scent—skin and sweat and essence.

Satoru lingers in the genken for a moment, contemplating whether to leave or stay. But nothing better awaits him outside.

He takes off his shoes and walks into the living room—and stops dead in his tracks.

Yuuji’s sleeping on his couch.

The man, not the boy. The size makes that exceedingly obvious, even with how Yuuji’s hood is pulled around his face even now. He’s sprawled on his back on Satoru’s couch, contained within it only because it was custom-ordered for Satoru’s frame. Socked feet are propped up against one of its arms, and the hooded head is resting on Yuuji’s own bicep, tucked into it in a way that leaves only the corner of his mouth and a sliver of jaw visible.

Satoru can’t sense him at all.

He can see him, the flesh and what lies beyond it—a maelstrom of cursed energy compressed so brutally that Yuuji would pass as a non-sorcerer to all but the keenest of sorcerers. They still wouldn’t be able to sense him. Even Satoru can’t. Yuuji’s only a few feet away, but if Satoru were to close his eyes and turn off the Six Eyes somehow, he’d pick up no foreign cursed energy stretched out along his couch.

“You’re back,” greets a low voice, raspy with what seems like sleep.

“You’re awake,” Satoru returns. “Should I apologize for disturbing you?”

Yuuji’s head lolls to the side, and the rest of his shadowed face becomes visible. “It’s your house.”

“That was sarcasm.”

“Oh. Huh.” Yuuji sits up. If he’s still sleepy or tired, it doesn’t show in that fluid movement. “You angry?”

Satoru raises an eyebrow. “Should I be?”

“Dunno,” Yuuji says, shrugging. “You seem pissed. But I can’t really tell. Been a while.”

Whatever the hell Satoru was feeling—anger or worse—collapses in on itself at that bare truth.

He pinches his forehead, making his sunglasses dig into the bridge of his nose. “I’m not angry. How long have you been here?”

Yuuji hums. He’s sitting with his legs bent and his arms wrapped around them. It does very little to diminish his size, but there’s something about the posture that makes him seem more…real.

“Few hours, I guess,” Yuuji says finally.

“We’ve been looking for you. Not that we had the slightest clue where to look. The Culling Game seems to think you don’t exist.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s still around. Forgot all about it. This time travel thing is really weird.”

“That’s quite the understatement,” Satoru says drily. “Megumi and Nobara aren’t very happy with you.”

“Kugisaki…” Yuuji lets out a rough huff, almost a laugh. “She’ll be all young again, huh? That’s gonna be hard to get used to. This one time we were out, someone thought she was my mum. I swear she was going to kill that lady. And that was years ago. She was pretty old when I saw her the last time—very cute, but don’t tell her I said that. She had a cat, too. All-white fur, blue eyes—I wanted to name her after you, but Kugisaki vetoed it.”

“I’m flattered,” Satoru says, and it’s not even a lie. There’s just a whole host of other feelings inside him that are much harder to identify, let alone process. “What about Megumi? Was he a cute old man?”

The crooked smile on Yuuji’s face fades. “No. He’s been gone a long time.”

“Ah,” Satoru breathes. “Maybe you’ll get to find out this time around.”

Yuuji makes a vague noise that’s not quite agreement. “Okkotsu-senpai and Zen'in-senpai got to grow old though. Together, too. They had a son and a couple of grandkids.”

“Don’t tell them that,” Satoru warns. “Time’s tricky. Say too much and those kids might never be born.”

“Can’t be worse than what I’ve already done,” Yuuji says, his voice pitched low like he’s talking to himself. “I don’t really plan on seeing them yet. You guys are going to be busy for a while anyway.”

“You’d know.” Satoru walks closer, until he’s close enough to loom over Yuuji. “Not even Megumi and Nobara? Or that brother of yours. Wait too long, and Aoi might hunt you down.”

Yuuji waves a dismissive hand. “That’s fine. Tōdō will understand. Chōsō will, too. The others… I’ll talk to them too, eventually.”

“Now I’m starting to feel special,” Satoru says, bracing his hands on the arm of the couch and leaning down till he’s eye level with Yuuji. “Seems I’m the only one you’re not avoiding. But I’m sharing that honor with Sukuna, aren’t I?”

“He wouldn’t call it an honor,” Yuuji says, sounding amused. “Are you really jealous? That’s funny.”

“I’m not laughing.” Satoru straightens up, resisting the urge to yawn. All the sleep he’s gotten only seems to have made his body greedy—it’s not exactly a good sign, but all things considered, he’s getting off lightly if this is the only lasting effect of his fight with Sukuna. “Come.”

Yuuji peers up at him quizzically. “Where?”

“I need to sleep. Looks like you can use some yourself,” Satoru tells him, walking past the couch toward the hallway leading to the other rooms in the house. This isn’t a sprawling structure like the Gojou clan compound back in Kyoto, but it’s still a sizeable house, far larger than what one man needs. It’s not often that Satoru has guests either. Back in August, when he transplanted Yuuji from that drab basement to his own house, he initially put him up in one of the rarely used guest rooms. It took three days for Yuuji to end up sharing Satoru’s bed instead. “My bed’s big enough for the both of us. Or have you forgotten that too?”

Yuuji says nothing. Satoru keeps his eyes fixed, physically and otherwise, on the hallway in front of him.

After a moment, there’s a looming presence behind him. A body standing close enough for its warmth to lap at him.

Satoru didn’t hear Yuuji move. No rustling cloth or shuffling feet. Not even a single breath.

He resumes walking, and Yuuji follows, as quiet as death.

-

This, Satoru thinks, wasn’t my brightest idea.

The bed is big enough. They’ve both settled in. Yuuji has even deigned to strip out of his hoodie and the full-sleeved t-shirt he was wearing underneath, taking a quick shower before slipping into the clothes Satoru gave him.

They fit better than they used to. Satoru hasn’t yet seen the full landscape of the body under them. Yuuji changed in the bathroom. Satoru did the same when he took his own shower.

Now they’re both in bed, facing each other like silent sentinels. It’s dark in the room, but Satoru can see Yuuji perfectly—familiar features made nearly alien by the utter lack of expression there. His eyes are open, dark pools that gleam brighter than the shadows drenching the room. He knows Satoru’s watching him, of course. He took his sunglasses off and didn’t pull a blindfold on, and the faint glow of his eyes spills out into the dark. Not that Yuuji would need it. He’s always had excellent night vision—and even better instincts. He must feel Satoru’s eyes on him as keenly as Satoru feels his.

Even the first time they fucked, the aftermath wasn’t quiet like this. It’s not awkward. There’s no discomfort. Just a weight that settles heavily in Satoru’s bones and a gravity that tugs almost gently at his guts. 

If he closed his eyes, he might even sleep. He just can’t make himself do it. He can barely blink. On the other side of the bed, with enough space between them for a third body, Yuuji acts much the same.

“We don’t seem to be sleeping,” Satoru murmurs.

“No,” Yuuji agrees softly. “There’s something I need to ask you.”

“Then ask. Not like you to stand on ceremony.”

Yuuji’s large frame shifts slightly under the covers. “What do I call you?”

Satoru blinks. “You’ve been managing fine so far—but then, I haven’t been your teacher in a long time, have I? I doubt you’ve needed one.”

“It’s not that,” Yuuji cuts in, quiet but firm. “Gojou-sensei is still Gojou-sensei. He always will be. And I did call you that earlier. I wasn’t really thinking about it. Your face, your voice, the way you are—it felt right. But you’re not him. Not really.”

“Are you calling me some sort of imposter?” Satoru asks, a little too stunned to even appreciate the irony.

“No, nothing like that. You’re Gojou Satoru. I know that.”

“The more you talk, the less it makes sense.”

“You’re Gojou Satoru,” Yuuji repeats. His eyes glint a ghostly blue for a moment, reflecting the light of Satoru’s eyes back at him. “But you’re not my Gojou-sensei. He’s dead.”

It’s not really déjà vu that Satoru’s feeling, but that conversation with Shouko flits across his mind anyway, followed by a dozen different thoughts Satoru has had, all variations on the same theme.

Yuuji, gone. Yuuji, here. Dead and alive all at once.

However—

“I am exactly the Gojou Satoru you last knew—even if that was seventy years ago. Dead men don’t change, Yuuji.”

“No,” Yuuji agrees again, his voice so utterly calm that it’s its own violence. “But he still died. He was dead for seventy years. I remembered him for seventy. You can’t—”

For the first time since Satoru met this new, strange version of Yuuji, his voice falters—faultlines that reveal the roiling magma underneath. In the dark, Yuuji’s eyes now glint red like freshly spilled blood, cut through with black concentric rings. Sukuna’s eyes, except Satoru doesn’t think for even a moment that this is anyone but Yuuji.

Yuuji blinks, once, and the red and the rings fade, reverting to a dark brown that’s no less intense for its mundanity.

“Nothing gets to change that,” Yuuji says, quiet and absolute. “Not even time.”

Shouko warned him, just once—more than she usually bothers with. She told him not to love this boy.

Satoru made dismissive noises about hormones and growing pains and fickle hearts, and both of them ignored that it wasn’t Yuuji’s heart she’d been talking about. Maybe she knew a lost cause when she saw one.

It’s Satoru’s eyes that failed this time.

“How unfair,” he breathes, rolling onto his back. “I should be the one doing this. Three days ago, I had a precious little student. He was very young and very, very kind. I had a lot of faith in him, you know. Now he’s gone, and there’s you.”

“I’m not claiming to be him either.”

“Ah, but you are.” Satoru raises a hand toward the ceiling, closing his fingers around empty air. “You’re Itadori Yuuji. You’re not that boy now—but you were, once. The parts of you that’ve changed, the parts I don’t know—I’ll just have to learn them.”

“…I am sorry. For taking him away.”

“Liar,” Satoru says, closing his eyes. “Satoru is fine. If we’d both survived this, I’d have told you to use it anyway.”

Yuuji makes a soft, wretched noise.

Satoru doesn’t look at him, and even he doesn’t know if he’s sparing Yuuji or himself.

-

Yuuji’s still there in the morning, and it’s somehow a surprise, despite the fact that Satoru wouldn’t have slept through his bedmate exiting the premises, no matter how eerily good Yuuji is these days at hiding his presence.

The morning is a quiet affair. After they’re both done with their routine ablutions, Yuuji follows Satoru out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, not protesting when Satoru gestures at him to take a seat while he makes breakfast. The opposite has happened often enough, here in this same kitchen, and Satoru’s used to cooking with Yuuji too.

But he doesn’t know this body, and he’s not keen on finding out just yet how differently it moves with and against his own in a confined space.

Yuuji thanks him for the food and inhales it; Satoru goes through his own at a more sedate pace, watching Yuuji more than the plate.

“Have you been eating since you got here? Sukuna doesn’t count.”

Yuuji makes an amused noise. “I haven’t been starving.”

“That’s not an answer,” Satoru points out, but he doesn’t push it. “Do you still enjoy cooking?”

“I don’t hate it.” Yuuji takes a break to shovel more rice into his mouth. “But I don’t do it much. Easier ways to eat.”

“You like it more when there are people to cook for.”

Yuuji pauses for a fraction of a second; Satoru might have missed it if his eyes weren’t what they are.

“Yeah,” Yuuji says, with a strange note in his voice—surprise, but not quite directed at Satoru. “I guess I did.”

“Did you…forget that?”

Yuuji’s eyes flicker to Satoru, holding his gaze for a single, heavy moment.

It’s answer enough. 

Satoru makes a show of eyeing his frame, still clad in one of Satoru’s t-shirts and a pair of sweatpants. While he doesn’t favor oversized clothes the way Yuuji does, few of them are close-fitting. His casualwear sure isn’t. His clothes are loose on Yuuji, but they do nothing to hide the sheer breadth of his shoulders and the bulge of his biceps.

“Well, as long as you’re getting enough fuel,” he tells Yuuji, leering. “Those muscles won’t keep themselves.”

“I appreciate the concern,” Yuuji says wryly.

“Of course,” Satoru chirps. “Gotta look out for the elders.”

This time, Yuuji laughs—a real laugh, shaking his shoulders and spilling gracelessly out his mouth.

He says, “You’re taking this all pretty well.”

“Were you expecting something else?” Satoru asks.

Yuuji shakes his head. “I wasn’t expecting anything. But I’m not really surprised. Nothing ever fazed you.”

“You’re one to talk,” Satoru points out.

Yuuji tilts his head as if conceding the point and resumes demolishing his meal. Satoru leaves him to it, and they finish eating and clean up in relative silence. Yuuji does help with that, not asking for permission before taking up his customary spot beside the drying rack. Satoru tries not to wonder too hard whether it’s muscle memory that’s been obsolete for seven decades or just cold logic.

“I don’t suppose you’re coming with me to meet the others,” he says toward the end, with only a couple of plates left in the sink.

“Not yet.”

“Got any plans for the day?”

“Mmhm.”

Satoru sighs, more theatrical than anything else. “Let me guess—you don’t intend to share what they are.”

“You were the one telling me not to share too much,” Yuuji says with a sideways glance; his profile is all sharp lines, like you could cut yourself just looking at him.

“I wasn’t talking about me. I had no future for you to ruin.”

Satoru knows, even before the words are out, that it’s the wrong thing to say. It’s cruel; it’s unnecessary.

He says it anyway.

Nothing really changes in Yuuji’s posture or countenance. He takes the last plate from Satoru and wipes it dry with quick, efficient motions before putting it on the rack. He unties the apron from around his waist and hangs it back up, and the entire time, his expression is wholly, blisteringly neutral.

“No, you didn’t,” Yuuji finally says, raising dark, unreadable eyes to Satoru’s. “But you will.”

-

Yuuji’s there when Satoru leaves in the morning and gone by the time he returns in the evening, late enough that it’s nearly the next day already. He could regret coming back at all instead of piling on another round of colony clean-up, but he made this choice with the full awareness that he might return to an empty house.

“Wherever you go,” he told Yuuji before heading out in the morning, “just come back home.”

Yuuji said nothing, and his face gave nothing away—but some things are a leap of faith.

Satoru’s faith is vindicated a few hours later when he snaps awake, cursed energy surging, and comes face to face with the figure looming above his bed, tall and broad and hooded.

“Scary,” Satoru drawls, unimpressed. He shoves himself up on his forearms, letting the covers slip off his shoulders to expose his bare chest. “You didn’t get the dramatics from me, did you?”

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” is the unrelated reply.

“Just wanted to watch me sleep then?”

“That’s not exactly—”

“Oh, you wanted to do more than just watch? I see it’s true what they say about men getting more pervy in their old age.”

“Satoru.”

“Look at that,” Satoru murmurs, relaxing back onto the mattress, “you’ve finally used it.”

Yuuji sighs, seeming to deflate on the spot. “You’re unbelievable.”

“I’m refreshing your memory—you can thank me later. Now get in here. I have a meeting with some Americans tomorrow, and I need some fortifying cuddles so I won’t kill the whole lot.”

“Fortifying cuddles,” Yuuji repeats, enunciating every word like he’s not quite sure he’s still speaking Japanese.

“Yes,” Satoru says blandly, raising a corner of the covers—more demand than invitation. “Come to bed, Yuuji.”

Yuuji takes a halting step forward, his knees now nearly touching the edge of the bed. The hands that rise to the zipper of his hoodie are slow but steady. The heavy fabric drops to the floor, and Yuuji starts climbing into bed, careful to avoid digging hands or knees into any part of Satoru, and it’s clear as day that he intends to climb over Satoru and settle on the other side, but Satoru snags him by his t-shirt and yanks him down, and he’s under no illusion that he caught this man off guard, but there’s still something satisfying about the low grunt that Yuuji lets out when their bodies collide.

A warm, heavy weight settles on Satoru. It sinks right into his bones, like molten gold.

He wraps both arms around Yuuji, burying a hand in his pleasantly thick hair. Yuuji shifts, stretching out his legs and breathing softly into Satoru’s throat.

He says, “I’ll crush you.”

Satoru hums, brushing his thumb along the velvet-soft hairs of Yuuji’s undercut. “I can think of worse fates.”

-

It’s on a cold Thursday evening that Satoru comes home to find clear signs of life within the house.

The culprit is obvious, but Yuuji’s usually pretty subtle about his presence here. Satoru has concluded, from both Yuuji’s behavior and the scattered bits of information he’s revealed, that laying low like this is now second nature to Yuuji.

It’s been over two weeks since the fight with Sukuna, and Yuuji still hasn’t deigned to meet any of the others. Search efforts have stalled too, not just for Yuuji but also for Kenjaku. Leads are non-existent; more than that, resources are limited. The number of active sorcerers had never been large to begin with, and the disaster at Shibuya and everything that followed have dealt a devastating blow to their manpower.

The Culling Game has, ironically, increased the available pool of sorcerers, and the rules his students helped add have turned it significantly less deadly, but the incarnated sorcerers are not particularly friendly, and most of the awakened ones are weak. Hostage retrieval—and exchange, in the case of the foreign soldiers who managed to not get slaughtered by the rampaging cursed spirits in the colonies—is moving at a glacial pace, and the wider populace learning that “monsters” exist has gone about as well as expected.

Every single one of the remaining active sorcerers is being run ragged, and Satoru’s own life has become an increasingly entangled mess of politics and damage control.

He envies Yuuji, sometimes.

He won’t envy him when Megumi and Nobara finally get their hands on him. Even Satoru has taken to avoiding the two of them; he suspects they know that he knows more than he’s letting on.

It’ll all come to a head eventually, but that’s future Satoru’s problem. Right now, he’s more concerned—well, more curious than concerned—about his half-open front door and the light streaming out into the genkan from the living room.

He’s expecting Yuuji. He’s expecting only Yuuji.

“Welcome home,” greets Yuuji, looking briefly up at Satoru before returning his gaze to the curse-drenched abomination on his lap. “Sorry about the mess.”

The mess being the body laid out on the floor of Satoru’s living room, the coffee table and some of the chairs pushed aside to make room on the rug. There’s blood. It’s barely visible on the darker parts of the corpse’s clothes, but Satoru’s eyes can’t not see how it’s drenching those familiar robes.

Suguru’s face is unmarred—except for the messy stitches keeping his scalp attached to the rest of his face.

“Sorry about that too,” Yuuji says, and Satoru doesn’t need to look at his face to know that he’s noticed what Satoru’s staring at. “I couldn’t get them as neat as before. But I did try not to mess up his face. He’s important to you, right?”

“He was my best friend,” Satoru says. His voice sounds distant, like it’s someone else speaking. He drags his eyes away from Suguru’s body. It does little to make this whole tableau feel less surreal, not when— “There’s duct tape on that brain.”

“They wouldn’t shut up,” comes the plain answer to an unasked question. “I wouldn’t have minded if they were just angry or something, but they were way too interested in me instead.”

“There is,” Satoru says slowly, reacquainting himself with the sound of his voice and perhaps also reality, “a much simpler solution.”

Yuuji smiles—bright, burning. “Not yet.”

“Oh?” It comes out a little too low, scraping the insides of his throat. Satoru forces his hands to unclench before the nails dig into his own flesh. 

“There’s something I need them to teach me,” Yuuji tells him. His hands are curved around the brain, encircling it without quite touching it. It’s not protective by any stretch of the imagination, but there’s a possessiveness to the gesture that clings like old oil to the insides of Satoru’s eyelids. “—take too long.”

Satoru blinks. “Repeat that.”

Yuuji cocks his head, his brows furrowing, but gamely says, “I said I might be able to get it out of Sukuna, but he’s really stubborn. It’d take too long. I have time, but you don’t.”

“I see,” Satoru states. He doesn’t see. But his mind is racing, sorting and synthesizing every interaction he’s had with this Yuuji, and the gleaming edges of a picture are starting to form. “And what exactly do you want from me before I die, Yuuji?”

“Not before,” Yuuji corrects. “I don’t think so, at least. Kenjaku only got to Sukuna’s fingers after he died. I don’t know about the other incarnated sorcerers though. But Sukuna did it differently—I guess he was technically alive in that moment. Maybe either way is fine?”

Satoru lets out a sharp exhale as the rest of the picture fills in with dizzying speed.

It’s the only way I know to keep someone now, Yuuji said.

Satoru’s eyes flit to the body on the ground. Suguru looks peaceful, like this. But he vacated this corpse months and months ago; Satoru saw to it himself. It’s been an imposter piloting it around, and now that parasite sits captive on Yuuji’s lap, its toothy maw sealed shut.

He looks at Suguru’s bloody hand and remembers it strangling his own body’s throat in Shibuya. Satoru called, and Suguru answered. But he’s still gone. There’s nothing inside this corpse to salvage.

The dead stay dead. Yuuji would know it better than most.

But jujutsu is capable of miracles and horrors, and past a certain line, there’s no real difference between the two.

“Let me get this straight.” Satoru searches Yuuji’s expression for even a hint of the sheer derangement he’s currently bearing witness to. There’s nothing—only placid, pleasant lines. It’s not his habitual blankness, but that might just be worse. “You want to turn me into a cursed object. And, presumably, eat me.”

Yuuji nods.

“Yuuji,” Satoru says, enunciating every word carefully, “what the hell?”

“I thought you might say that.” Yuuji nods again, as if to himself. “But I didn’t want to lie to you, Satoru.”

“Great. A-plus communication. I’m proud, really.”

Yuuji frowns. “You’re being sarcastic again.”

“You want to eat me.”

“I thought you were jealous of Sukuna.”

Satoru opens his mouth—and closes it. He was. He is, even though he’s been trying not to dwell on it. Eating Sukuna this time around was a choice Yuuji made; it was a choice Yuuji made to not be lonely.

Eating Satoru, too, would be for—

“Wait a minute,” he breathes as fresh realization dawns. “You want to eat me while you’ve already got Sukuna cozying it up in there.”

“There’s space,” Yuuji assures him, missing the point so egregiously that it loops back into comedy. “I told you—I know my soul very well. I can hold you both. I can keep you safe. It won’t be like it was with my brothers.”

Satoru tamps down on the urge to laugh hysterically. “You’re insane. I already knew this, of course. But you never fail to exceed my expectations. Do I even get a say in this?”

Yuuji looks down at the brain. “Satoru…”

“Sukuna didn’t. I remember you not caring much.” Satoru thinks back to that day—the things Yuuji said, the way he looked. “What was it that you said—he won’t ever be happy?”

Yuuji raises his head. He stares at Satoru for a long moment, and his expression is blank again, but his eyes—his eyes are fever-bright.

“I was hoping you would be,” Yuuji says quietly. “With me.”

A few nights ago, Satoru coaxed Yuuji into revealing just how he’d died. He could guess, given the trajectory of the slash Yuuji had rescued him from, but he still wanted confirmation. Yuuji’s description was curt but clear.

Satoru has survived a lot of damage in his life, but he’s never been cleaved clean in half.

He imagines it might have felt something like this.

“God,” he curses, laughing. He staggers over to the couch and drops down beside Yuuji. “You knew me for six months. For all you know, you’ll get sick of me in another six.”

Yuuji uncurls a hand from around the brain to lay it over Satoru’s, sliding rough-feeling fingers along his own. Satoru’s the one who links them, more instinct than thought, and their hands locking together feels like a door slamming shut, somewhere far away.

On the floor, the corpse of his best friend lies still and serene, like a taunt.

Yuuji asks, “Do you still believe that?”

You shouldn’t love that boy, Shouko said all those months ago, bland and tired the way she got when she already knew he wouldn’t listen. It won’t end the way you think it will.

“No,” Satoru says, closing his eyes and leaning against the solid line of Yuuji’s body. “I know better now.”