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Satoru Gojo is a mess the day he first meets them.
He is overwhelmed, struck dumb by their combined uniqueness. All his life he has been overwhelmed by so many faces, so much information but none have caught him like this. He can’t take his eyes off the pair of them. So much so he doesn't know how to act. For all he is spoiled, he has ultimately been raised sheltered from what lies outside their society. Everything he could ever want or need is more than just within reach, it is already in his hands. He is a small god in their world and he knows it, is there any wonder he has an ego the size of a sun? -but then he goes to school and gets hit with a reality check. There is so much about their world he doesn't understand, so many parts of it he can't touch. He gets paired with the likes of a boy who can eat curses and a girl whose touch can do what he can not.
They also, in not so small terms, tell him to fuck off and he sorta falls in love right then and there.
Again, he blames his upbringing.
Maybe if his nanny had told him no more often he wouldn't be such a simp for boys with razor sharp smiles and girls who'd rather step on him than kiss him.
As it is, Suguru Geto tells him his eyes remind him of a furby (Satoru has to go home later and look it up to get the insult properly) and Shoko Ieiri blows smoke in his face.
They are unimpressed. They are kinda dicks.
he loves them he loves them he loves them
It is easier to love Suguru than it is Shoko; a fucked up truth he hates to swallow.
Hates that he thinks it all but one he can't deny.
He knows without thinking too hard, how to love Suguru, how to touch and tease. Satoru can lean against him, hug him and no one will even blink an eye. He knows where the limits are too, even if outsider observers assume he doesn’t. That he doesn’t even know the meaning of the word. They don't see how soft he can be with the man he cares about. How he respectfully never pushes to demand more than he is given. How he listens to the long speeches even if he doesn't seem to. How he always looks away when Suguru consumes curses, giving him space to dry heave and gag in private.
He knows how Suguru’s brain works, and what his smiles mean. It’s not a secret to anyone who looks, but Satoru becomes an expert like he’ll make a career of it.
He cannot touch Shoko in the same way. He wants to. He wants to tease her, cling and caress just the same but if he does, it will be a thing that everyone will comment on. She will be judged for it far harder than he or Suguru ever would be. If not their peers, then by his family. By the useless clan members that keep hedging their bets on about how any of them will turn out. Unlike him, unlike Suguru -Shoko’s got more to prove to their secular world. She was not born in it, her power rare but ultimately she is not a powerful fighter. She is good at not letting the pressure get to her, hates the higher ups and clan bullshit almost as much as he does, but she still needs them in a way he doesn’t.
He is aware he is allowed a certain amount of freedom; in being a man, in being a Gojo. In having a power that most fear.
If he thought for one bitter second he could do something to ease it all for her, he would. If he thought he could get away with paying for her schooling himself, without the whispers of what she had to do to earn that favor, he would.
The Gojo name carries power, but there is a price for that. There's no move he can make that doesn't ruin them all in the long run. That doesn't leave them tainted and lesser just for trying.
If he could love them both equally, without them both suffering for it, he would. Just as the earth, moon and sun move to fit each other, Satoru would envelop them into his universe, if it would not mean having to break some precious core piece of them. He would have to break Geto’s dreams down into something that aligned better with their society ideals. Break Shoko into something softer and lesser. Break them down both until they fit. It would break him to dare to try.
So he loves her with a bleeding heart, trying his best to wrangle it into something less obvious but unable to keep from getting his sticky stained hands off her regardless.
It’s in the way he smooshes wet, tacky childish kisses into her cheeks whenever he can. It’s in the way he allows her into his space without a second thought. It’s in the way he enjoys the silence that enters his spirit whenever he can just sit and watch her work. The way, when his mind is utterly blank, his feet take him to her.
Suguru is the sun, blistering and demanding, hot and consuming. Love with him is a burning growth that starts in his gut, sears his insides and breaks his heart to ashes.
Shoko is the moon, waxing and waning, with or without his notice. She is just as bright, just as demanding of his attention but she drowns him in soft tides of steadiness. Shoko is there, keeping him steady, reminding him who he is beyond his power. She’s a relief.
He loves her, but it’s harder when he doesn’t know how to do it without fear of breaking it all to pieces.
In the end, he shouldn’t have worried. He isn’t the one who breaks them.
Suguru burns it all down, and they are left standing in the ashes.
He’s a fucking mess to say the least. He has always been aware he's not the greatest when it comes to understanding those around him, but the way the rug is pulled out from beneath his feet when it comes to Suguru is on another level that leaves him angry and frustrated. The rage is blinding, pushes him to new heights of loathing for their society but when the fight is over all that remains is the overwhelming sense of hurt.
He is Satoru Gojo and nothing touches him without his say so, and yet he feels his heart bleeding out all the same.
He seeks Shoko out like a wolf running blindly to the first hint of a full moon. Howling and sobbing to be heard, to be found. It would be embarrassing if he had any shame. He finds he has none, collapsing at her side. Hiding in her arms. There are no words needed between them. She knows. Shoko takes him in, kisses his salt-burned cheeks, and allows him make a mess of them both.
More than anyone else, she knows and that makes his raw heart tear anew.
They mourn alone, they lick their wounds alone too and he makes the internal promise to make sure her heart is healed before daring to ask more. Even if it takes months or years. Too soon, and she would assume she’s just a second prize, a fail-safe.
It couldn’t be further from the truth, but he’s self-aware enough to know that she has little evidence of this fact. He’s made it so.
Like everything in his life, it’s a damn mess, and one he isn’t sure where to start to fix.
How does one really prove you’ve loved someone? Really and truly? -he could go and buy the biggest set of flowers this side of Japan, bare his heart with a big mushy confession and he’s pretty confident she would set the flowers on fire. Probably ask if it was April Fools already.
He does his best to simply be there for her more. He checks in regularly and follows her around a lot, a white baby duckling toddling after her in the morgue. Quacking his displeasure at her long hours, terrible eating habits and outrageous drinking amounts. Whether it's office hours or not, he makes sure to spend a few hours with her no matter what gross thing she's dismembering.
Shoko kicks him out within a week.
“Stop being weird.” She demands. Flipping her long beautiful hair over her shoulder and glaring up at him.
He’s a little distracted by the boner in his pants to properly respond in defense.
“Aw, come on. I’m lonely.”
A weak excuse if there ever was one, and maybe too much of the truth. Judging by her expression, a deep frown followed by a full body sigh.
“We can hang out, just not while I’m trying to work. How about dinner? Your treat, just nothing weird like a maid-cafe okay?”
“Damn. The last place did have really good smoothies though.”
“No themed-cafes please.” She tells him again, snapping her gloves back into place and turning around to her work.
Satoru stands by himself, silently in the corridor until he whips out his phone and starts googling if being attracted to the snapping of gloves is a kink or not.
“Hmm, this better not awaken anything in me.” He mutters, already aware that it has.
The dinners are not a stepping stone like he thought they would be to dating her. In his fantasy, she would dress in some hot little number. There would be low lighting, good wine and flirting. Maybe some footsie under the table. Maybe a hot make out in the bathroom if he was lucky. He loses himself more than once in the dreams of what could be; the way he would be able to touch her without excuse. The placements of his kisses, how they would look bruised into her skin in different shades. The darker the better.
Instead, the dinners are this:
Dirty hole-in-the-walls type of places, with flickering lighting, sport channels played too loud to a bunch of drunken old men while Shoko slumps into her plastic chair. Still dressed in her work clothes smelling like bleach and cheap beer. It’s closer to morning than it is to night, so the only thing open is places like this.
“Why did we come here again?” He whines. There’s nothing he really wants to eat off the menu, and not just because of his sensitive palette. It’s also because he can see from here that the chef’s got a cold and no one is wearing gloves. No six-eyes needed.
“It’s cheap, near campus and still open.” Shoko replies, placing her order quickly. She orders something for him too, clearly being a familiar face means she gets to make special demands for less spicy dishes without fuss. Still he pouts.
“What’s with the face, you said you liked it last time.” He said that because he knew she liked it.
“I just…thought we could go somewhere else.”
“Why? Literally nothing else is open.” Shoko’s attention is now fixed on her phone. She’s playing some game.
He wads up a used straw wrapping and throws it at her head. Without looking up, she shoves it into her mouth like a fucking gremlin.
“Oh my god.” He curses, in disgust. In love.
She spits it at him and he laughs stupidly loud when it lands on his cheek.
He takes her to dinner, he sends her waves of stupid memes that he knows will make her laugh, he spends more time crashing on her couch than he does in his own bed but it feels like he’s made zero headway. He’s loved her since they were kids, and it’s only grown but it’s hard to get a read on her.
-he knows she loves him. She is his best friend. He is hers. He knows things about her that not even her family does. She’s the only person he never puts his barrier up for. Knows if he made a move to be sexual with her she would not turn him away but he doesn’t know how to ask for more. Shoko and sex isn’t a foreign concept; but there are too many jokes, too many half-starts that end in giggles. Passed off as nothing more than a bit of fun.
The love is there, strong and binding, but he’s given her so much already he doesn’t know what else he can give without it being pointless. Surely, she already knows the extent he would go for her. How much he cares.
It is the wanting part he doesn’t know how to share. Without it being a joke. Without it being compared.
One night, he breaks down and sends her a meme of Ben Wyatt looking serious and saying what he can not. It’s all about the yearning.
Shoko sends back a laughing emoji.
-and then a dancing woman, three Christmas trees and nine eggplants.
Gojo: What does that even mean? Sorry I don’t speak troll.
Shoko: Lolol. Ask your mom.
Gojo: You are a menace to society.
Shoko: Thank you.
There comes a day when even his six-eyes fail him. It happens rather suddenly, and rather stupidly if he does say so himself. He’s just finished dragging his students back to campus (alive and whole, so points to him) when he starts a call to Shoko. Just a casual reminder that he’s available for dinner if she is.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t think you would be back tonight. I made plans.”
“Is it Utahime? Is she in town? Just bail.” He teases, grappling Megumi into a headlock that the kid doesn’t fight. No fun. Satoru lets him go in favor of grabbing Yuji instead who does a much better job of struggling. Or at least pretending to, frailing his arms and fake gagging as Satoru tilts away to speak more clearly into his phone. “I’d take you both but you know she’d just try and poison me. Again.”
“It’s not her. I have a date.”
“What?” He asks -and it must not come out as choked out as he feels because she doesn’t seem worried.
“Yeah, I know. Surprising considering my schedule.”
There’s a lull in the conversation, Shoko’s clearly still at work but his brain has also started to melt so he’s not up to his usual chatty nature.
“Nobara told me I should get out more, helped me sign up to some dating app.”
Satoru looks over to his last student.
Et tu, Nobara-chan?
“Hey, Nobara. You’re having detention for the rest of the year.” He tells her bluntly.
“What? Why am I being punished?” She screeches, but he ignores her. Literally flinging Yuji in her direction like a bomb and walking away. Upset but trying very hard not to show it.
It’s good that he has his eyes covered with his blindfold rather than his glasses.
He’s pretty sure if anyone could see his full expression right now, they would be worried he was losing his mind. Maybe he is. Shoko has had dates before, but that was…ages ago. Even then it was just casual if that, she’s always been more focused on her work. Anyone she met was just at a bar, someone practically nameless and faceless. They didn’t take her to dinners. She didn’t cancel on him for them.
“Hey, are you still there?” She asks.
“Y-Yeah. Sorry. Had to give someone detention for the first time.” She laughs and it helps his heart stop trying to crawl up his throat.
“So. Tinder? You think that’s safe.” He starts and then stops, because he does not want to come off as a complete douche who thinks she’s too weak to protect herself, “I mean, as like, someone outside our society?”
He sounds like a higher up. He sounds like his grandfather.
He wants to drown himself in the nearest body of water.
“That’s the thing…it’s someone we know.”
“Oh?” He forces out, “Go on, don’t keep me waiting.”
“No making fun of me. I’m surprised too, I…I don’t know, maybe I’m just curious considering we’ve known him forever and it’s never crossed my mind before, but it’s Ijichi.”
This time, there’s no hiding the choked out garble of noise that escapes his mouth.
“Hey, don’t be like that.” Shoko chides, and he tries to speak out again but she cuts him off. “I’m not getting married to the guy, it’s just a date. Just to see. He’s been pretty decent so far, and he knows what my life is like so there’s no pressure. I know you’re going to tease him either way, but just hold off for like, a solid twenty-four hours.”
Tease? He’s going to shove Ijichi into a locker and shove that locker into the damn sea.
In the haze of the fury roaring in his mind, the worst is the bitter sting of hurt.
-but does he even get to feel hurt? Clearly, he’s been too much of a coward to just ask her out. Hoping if he just silently waited long enough for her to notice him, it would change something. Betting, without any proof, that nothing would change if he didn’t.
What an idiot.
“I’m not going to tease him.” He tells her, “Not about this.”
“I’m going to need that in writing. Notarized by Nanami.”
“I mean it. Shoko, he’s got a date with you. He’s a lucky bastard. Nothing to joke about.”
She makes a soft sound, pleased but amused. He can imagine the even softer smile that she tends to wear when she does, “You can be sweet when you want.”
“It’s all the sugar I consume.”
“Yes, well. That’s also how you get early onset diabetes.”
They chat for a bit longer, until something on her end demands her full attention. Then it’s just him on a bench, folded over and wondering if he could pull some strings and get Ijichi stationed somewhere else. Not even somewhere bad.
He looks like he would do well in Hawaii.
One date turns into three, and then by the end of the month, Shoko has broached the subject of inviting Ijichi out with them to their yearly trip out to the beach. A trip that started shortly after Geto left them, when they found themselves too depressed to do much more than pack their shit and leave if only for an extended weekend. They never put down rules about it. It was…just a thing. Shoko always put in the days off at work and Satoru always made sure to book the best penthouse. They would spend hours on the beach doing nothing but swimming, chatting and in Shoko’s case looking smoking hot in a little black bikini that Satoru felt a personal amount of attachment to. He dreamt of that flimsy bit of fabric.
“No.” Satoru states, with no small amount of indignation.
He has learned to let a lot of things go. He’s learned to keep his mouth shut when she talks about the other man with fondness. He’s learned to not get riled up about their dates -that always seem to take place when Satoru wants to spend time with her; he’d be more suspicious if he wasn’t so aware that it’s based on her schedule more than his. It’s Shoko’s time and he does not own it, no matter how much he might covet it.
He does however, get a say so on who he spends his time with and he does not want to spend what free time he has, sharing it with anyone who isn’t Shoko or Shoko in a tiny black bikini.
“Why not? I know we don’t usually invite anyone else, but it might be fun to start. It’s not like he’s a stranger, you get along with him even if you don’t want to admit it.”
Satoru stabs his salad like it just told Rome it wanted to become a dictator.
“It’s our thing. I like it being our thing.” -okay so yes, he is very aware that he sounds like a petulant toddler. Satoru has been so good about everything else. He doesn’t tease Ijichi, nor does he use his family’s connections to push him to some random corner of the planet. Yes, he dramatically spends his time in the dark for hours at a time while Mitski plays on repeat but he thinks that is allowed. He’s allowed to feel upset.
“It is still our thing, regardless of who we invite. I just thought I’d be nice and invite him.” Her gaze is heavy on where he continues to stab at the poor innocent lettuce.
“Did that salad commit an unforgivable act against you?”
He stops and sets down his fork.
“I don’t want to hang out with him on my off time. I don’t care if he’s your boyfriend-”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
He hates that his heart aches, it feels terribly hopeful, but he wants to be smart about this. Just because she hasn’t put a label on it yet, doesn’t mean she won’t.
“You have gone out with him a bunch. You talk about him all the time. You held hands.”
Shoko snorts. “He’s a good friend, who I recently got to find out is good company. We only held hands because he drank too much and I had to be the line leader of the night to make sure he didn’t wander off.” -She leans towards him, reaching over to pluck a limp bit of carrot out of his salad. “I mean, gosh, he helped me out of my car yesterday. Does that mean I’m a married woman now?”
“You met on a dating app.”
“Satoru.” She says firmly, “I’m not dating Ijichi. Not formally. He’s nice and I like going to dinner with him more for the change of pace than I do because I think it could go somewhere.” Satoru, who has been in agony for weeks about every said dinner, has the sudden urge to flip a table. Grab her wine glass and down it. Shoko must read the urges on his face, if not the reason.
“Did you think I was?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” There’s a long pause of silence between them. It’s so awkward that they both reach for their drinks at the same time. She empties her glass of white wine and he does the same to his tropical mess of a smoothie.
It’s been a long time, but Satoru notices how nervous she becomes in an instant. The first tell is her curling her fingers along a strand of her hair. Rubbing her thumb across the shiny strand over and over while she thinks. Another is the way she won’t look at him. Her dark eyes dart downwards and stay there. The last is the way she tilts her body slightly away.
It’s the last one that hurts the most. Whatever she is thinking, it’s not good and it’s going to end with her pulling away from this. From him.
-the mere idea, sends a wave of fear into him. The exact same kind he so rarely feels, but utterly paralyzes him all the same. For all his gifts, for all his power, he’s learned the hard way that none of it matters if he can’t keep the people he loves from leaving him. He has to say something.
Now.
Before she-
“I want to be the only one to see you in the black bikini.” Is what leaves his mouth, because he’s a fucking idiot with no filter and why does anyone let him speak, ever? Once the gate is open however, there’s no going back. “The reason I don’t want him to come is because it’s the one time of the year I don’t have to share you. Not with work. Not with our society. It’s the best part of the year for me. Better than my birthday even. It’s just days of you and that’s why I was upset. I don’t want to share that with anyone and I know that’s fucked up. I know I haven’t said anything and it’s not my place to complain when you move on…but that’s why.”
Shoko drops the hair strand and looks at him, then bites back a muffled bout of laughter.
“Hey! Rude! I’m pouring my heart out here and you’re going to laugh at me?” He exclaims, upsetting a flock of birds nearby into the air.
She laughs harder, “Sorry, it’s just…really. The bikini? That thing is like seven years old.”
He’d be more upset, defensive even, but she’s also reaching out and linking their fingers together. It’s a shy move that he does his best not to stare at, worried that the pressure might make her stop.
“It makes your ass look fantastic.” He proudly tells her. Another peal of laughter. He holds her hand a little tighter. “I didn’t like the idea of you dating him.”
“I can tell.” Shoko replies, “You never said anything. I assumed you didn’t care.”
“I didn’t think it was my place to tell you what you couldn’t do.”
“Smart man.”
“I have my moments.”
She gives him a derisive look, “You could have had a few more. I only got on the app to start with because Nobara made a comment about you being the only man in my life. That I need to get out more.”
“Nobara is going to have detention for the rest of her life.”
“Don't be too mean. She was trying to help me be less of a workaholic. I mean, it didn’t really work because the only person I chose to hang out with ended up also being a co-worker…but it wasn’t bad. Ijichi was fun to hang out with.”
“More than me?” Satoru presses. Shoko, ever the troll, shrugs. She does it with a smile, and a certain glimmer of mischief in her eyes. Satoru loves her so much that he doesn’t even mind.
“Don’t be mean.” He demands.
“You like me when I’m mean.” He feels his body temperature rise, his cheeks feel hot.
“Yes. I do.”
“You liiiiiiiike meeeee.” She trills, and god help him, he really does.
“Yes. I do. Now can you kiss me or something so I don’t die of embarrassment?”
Shoko presses her lips to his and he can taste her laughter.