Work Text:
Something is wrong.
A surge of gut-wrenching pain tears Yuuji awake. His eyes fly open and he gasps, sweat soaking into his clothes and the mattress beneath him. His scent—a strangely sweet thing—bursts in his nostrils, thick and cloying.
The coppery tang of blood fills the basement.
A strangled cry escapes Yuuji as another wave of hurt washes over him, leaving him dizzy in the deluge. But he struggles out of the tangle of sheets, needing to see where the damage lies. The pain pulses from deep inside his gut and traveling down, so he shoves down his shorts.
A mess of fresh blood and chunky bits of flesh greets his watery eyes and makes him wretch. The scent of blood overpowers his own as he spreads his legs and furtively feels at the area. It didn’t fall out of his ass, he thinks, though his body hurts so much he can’t be too sure himself. He shudders as he considers the idea that his balls fell off somehow, but that’s easy enough to check and no, they’re still attached.
Then, as he’s considering a fold he doesn’t recall being there before, his finger slips in.
And Yuuji chokes.
It hurts. It hurts to touch, the flesh hot and inflamed and oh so slick with what he’s sure is free-flowing blood.
What the fuck, Sukuna?! He shrieks inside his own head. He can’t summon more than a teary gasp from his lungs, but he at least still has this.
The silence he receives feels telling. It’s exactly the kind of misery Sukuna would inflict, needless and cruel. Yuuji shouldn’t be surprised, but this is like dying all over again, and he really thought they were both over this kind of thing by now.
The chunks of meat must have come from the injury, flesh falling away to make space inside of Yuuji. A concerningly steady flow of blood weeps from the opening.
This is bad, he thinks, mind hazy. It could be the sight of himself; it could be the blood loss. It’s most likely a mix of the two or maybe both things piled on top of each other.
Either way, he’s going to die here if it doesn’t stop.
His hands are slick and red when he picks up his phone. He has to wipe the fluid off on the sheets to open it and type correctly. Still, the color smudges the screen, ugly orange streaks blurring the bright pixels.
Hidden in the basement, pretending he isn’t alive, there’s only one person Yuuji can contact.
,
Satoru warps to the safehouse basement before the cursed spirit he’d been assigned finishes wailing into oblivion, leaving the cleanup and reporting entirely to Ijichi. He texts a quick instruction to reallocate the rest of his mission assignments for the day and his teaching slot to one of the Windows on roster for the semester as he practically appears at the top of the steps.
Three short messages and no replies to any of Satoru’s succeeding messages or calls.
Sukuna did something
Bleeding
In basement
What would prompt Sukuna to lash out suddenly? How bad was it, for Yuuji’s control to break and leave him injured?
The smell of blood hits his nose, and he gags at the thickness of it. It’s still fresh, which is somewhat promising. He notes the lack of damage to the basement proper, which means there wasn’t a fight—at least, not one in the traditional manner.
Bloody footprints and streaks trail from the sleeping area to the bathroom.
Warily, unsure of what exactly he’d find, he opens the door.
“Yuuji!”
Satoru rushes forward, dropping to his knees in front of the tub where Yuuji sequestered himself. The boy shivers, soaked through with blood but also water like he’d tried to wash it off and failed.
“Sensei,” Yuuji keens, too weak to do more than open his eyes and turn his face towards him. He sniffles, fear souring the air, adding another sickly layer to the smell. “It won’t stop bleeding.”
“What won’t stop bleeding?” Satoru demands, his hands already lifting up the baggy shirt. It’s absolutely ruined but he’ll replace it, he’ll replace all of it, will buy as many brightly colored clothes as Yuuji wants once this is over.
“Down,” his student whimpers. His shorts and underwear are already removed, and his hand twitches towards his abdomen. “It’s … there’s a hole…”
Excuse me?
Satoru gets his hands under Yuuji’s thighs and pushes them up carefully, spreading them so the ankles hook over the sides of the tub.
It’s hard to see, but the source of the blood is, indeed, there, along with chunky blobs that he realizes are bits of Yuuji’s flesh.
“How long has this been going on?”
“Woke up like this,” Yuuji groans, sweat beading down his temple. “It hurts…”
Satoru sheds his jacket, maneuvering Yuuji so he can wrap it around him. It’s not particularly long in its design but Satoru is a bigger man than his student so it still covers him somewhat. Once Yuuji is tightly bundled up like an infant, Satoru picks him up and teleports them to Shoko.
Shoko, who had been taking a smoke break, drops her cigarette.
“What the hell, Gojo?” she snaps, more out of surprise than actual anger.
“Help him,” Satoru tells her, more an alpha’s demand than a plea. “Sukuna’s done something.”
She’s already ushering them to the padded examination table before Satoru finishes talking. He lays Yuuji on the stiff bedding and tells Shoko what little he knows. The texts, Yuuji’s belief that it was Sukuna’s fault, the blood and flesh escaping from a space that shouldn’t be there.
Shoko covers Yuuji’s spread thighs with a sanitary sheet to take a look.
When Satoru steps away—not far, never far—Yuuji’s hand shoots out, fingers clinging to his shirtsleeve.
“Don’t go,” he begs. “Don’t leave me, sensei.”
And Satoru … has never had a student cry to him like this. Every single one of them lands in his hands as feral little brats, ready to fight and bite and scream at the world, but tears … if anyone cries in Jujutsu High, Satoru’s never seen it. He’s not the one people look to for that kind of comfort. Not even Megumi, whom he’d practically raised.
It would be a lie to say the gesture didn’t move him, even if he would have stayed regardless. His student is hurt and afraid, and although none of them have ever shown it to him this openly before, that just makes Yuuji’s clinging all the more endearing.
“Sensei would never leave his student,” Satoru promises quietly. He takes the hand clinging to his sleeve and holds it in both of his. “I’m here; Shoko’s here. Nothing’s gonna hurt you, Yuuji.”
Not the elders, not the king of curses.
Not even Gojo Satoru himself.
He holds Yuuji’s hands through the entire examination, Shoko’s announcement that while she’d healed the worst of the injuries, some flesh remained trapped inside that she would have to manually pull out herself with a pair of blunt forceps. He holds Yuuji’s hands throughout that, too, and helps Shoko clean him in the adjoining wash area built specially for patients afterwards.
It’s only then, finally, once the blood has been scrubbed from Yuuji that the scent hits them.
Shoko blinks. “Is that…?”
Satoru stares down Yuuji, who is dazed and clearly out of it from blood loss and stress. A sweet, soft scent emanates from the boy. What had been buried under the stench of blood and gore now wafts off him with a delicate underpinning of cursed energy.
An innate technique shared only by—
“Omega,” Satoru says, blankly. “He’s an omega.”
Well, shit.
Typically, all sorcerers are born with the unique effects of cursed energy use on their body, morphing them into an alpha, beta, or omega. It’s something that grows with them, strengthening over time.
But Yuuji is different.
Yuuji couldn’t use a single speck of cursed energy prior to consuming Sukuna’s finger. Yuuji, like all civilians, didn’t possess any sort of secondary gender prior his arrival at Jujutsu High, though he’d been warned plentifully that now that he can use it, to expect some changes.
Some saw his innate strength and thought he would be an alpha; others speculated that his already developed body could only shift enough to be classified as a beta.
No one guessed he would end up an omega.
The last one was born almost a century ago. There was only one left alive by the time Satoru was born, and he saw her just once by chance before being banned from the premises for so long, he’s not sure he’s allowed anywhere near that estate even now.
And Yuuji, sitting innocently on the examination table once more, this time clad in one of the spare sets of scrubs that Shoko keeps in case of bloody emergencies like these, stirs at their wonder.
“Omega?” He frowns. “But aren’t those … didn’t they disappear?”
“They stopped being born,” Shoko agrees, “A very long time ago. But no one ever figured out why.”
They’re considered treasures, they think and do not say. They’re the most precious thing a clan can have.
We don’t know what to do, now that they’re gone.
“If you’re an omega, then we know why this happened,” Satoru says, with a thoughtful calm he doesn’t feel. “Male or female, all omegas can give birth, after all. Your cursed energy probably needed to make some space inside for the new … parts.”
Yuuji gapes at them. “So, it wasn’t Sukuna?”
“Sukuna wouldn’t have the power to influence your secondary gender,” Shoko says firmly. “That’s decided by your cursed energy and your body. No one else can interfere.”
Yuuji makes a tiny little oh sound, looking very small and lost on the examination table. Satoru knows he’s thinking back on the brief Secondary Genders 101 class mandatory to all the first years for half a semester, and the unique—and common—effects cursed energy imparts on sorcerers.
While the roles omegas have played historically have been important to sorcerers, that by no means makes it an attractive position to be in, particularly for a teenage boy used to a certain degree of freedom. Omegas are by far the most restricted secondary gender, often confined to the home or heavily guarded whenever outdoors. They’re also not considered fit for fieldwork nor particularly encouraged to pursue interests that take them far from their homes.
Satoru can’t imagine his student living so meekly for his entire life. Or he might, but he can’t imagine Yuuji happy living that way.
“This might change some things,” Satoru says, “But it doesn’t change who you are, Yuuji.”
And Yuuji, ever in need of reassurance but never thinking to actually ask for it, smiles tremulously. Satoru expected some sort of quip or response, but he knows the boy is tired. It’s been … a long day, and while Shoko healed his internal injuries, she emphasizes that his body is still sore and still changing.
“If he starts bleeding again, bring him over at once,” she tells them sternly. “He needs to be monitored closely for any fluctuations in his cursed energy as well. If he’s an omega, he could go into heat, and his heat could trigger your rut, Gojo.” She glares at him. “I don’t need to tell you what could happen then.”
Satoru knows; Yuuji, he’s sure, can guess. His grades might be middling—which isn’t really a fair observation when he’s one of three students in every class—but he does learn.
A tense pause falls between the three of them as they all imagine their own versions of the worst case scenario, but Satoru breaks it by picking up Yuuji in that same careful bridal carry he used to bring him to Shoko earlier. With cursed energy wreaking havoc on his body, Yuuji won’t be able to walk properly for the next few days.
There’s something forbidding in Shoko’s eyes as she watches them. As she watches Satoru, in particular. As if she knows the undercurrent of his thoughts and dislikes where it’s gone.
But whatever she sees, whatever she understands, she keeps it to herself as she waves them away.
In the next instant, they’re in Satoru's den. Alone, just the two of them—Yuuji, curled up in Satoru’s arms, aching and entirely miserable; Satoru, reeling at the new scent wafting off his student.
Yuuji blinks. "Where..?"
"My place," Satoru says as he walks over to the bed. "The basement looks and smells like a crime scene right now. Unless you'd rather be there?"
"No..."
He lays Yuuji down on the on the clean mattress, tucking him in before curling around the boy with his own body.
Yuuji’s face turns a blotchy red. This close together, Satoru can see the flecks of gold in his eyes. “Sensei…?”
“Shoko said you need to be monitored,” he says, even though this surely isn’t what she meant, “So for now, I’ll stay close by.”
“But—but this—”
Firmly, he guides Yuuji’s face into his neck. A shuddering breath escapes the boy as he breathes.
“Sensei, I feel strange,” Yuuji whispers, sounding oh so small.
“Omegas require physical contact to flourish,” Satoru tells him factually, almost casually, like he isn’t giddy with delight at suddenly now being allowed such an unashamed display. “Omega pups, especially.”
“Oh.”
“It’s alright, Yuuji,” he murmurs, arms wrapping around his student, only separated by the soft comforter bundled around the omega. “Trust your teacher. Now that we know your designation, I can give you exactly what you need.”
And if, in giving what Yuuji needs, Satoru gains something he himself has yearned for all his life, then that just means they’re a good match, doesn’t it?
It does, he thinks. Then, he decides it.
He cards his fingers through the short, pink locks of hair. “So, just sleep, Yuuji. Sensei will be here every step of the way.”
Yuuji doesn’t answer, but the tension bleeds out of his scent as he relaxes into the bed. Into Satoru’s arms.
Precious little pup, a part of him coos silently. My little pup.
Mine.
Forever.