Work Text:
MORPHINE
morphine (n.):
the thing you reach for when the pain is too honest and you need it
to speak a little quieter for a few hours."
He loved him.
He loved him.
He loved him.
(so how could he have……)
CONTENTS
I. Yesterday (Before It Was Yesterday)
II. Red
III. Ugly
IV. Junior
V. Itch
I.
Yesterday (Before It Was Yesterday)
They keep asking him what happened the night before as if Yuji has an answer. Detective Nanami Kento. Yuji has seen him on the news once. Cracked more cases than he has braincells, probably. And now he sits across from Yuji in the grey room, with the grey table between them and the grey air. He looks at Yuji. Waiting. Waiting for Yuji to show his workings.
(He doesn’t have any workings. He has a saturday.)
(He has blood on the floor that wasn't his.)
(He has a restraining order someone got and someone ignored)
"Itadori," Nanami says, and he says it flat. "Tell me about the night you met him."
And Yuji thinks; Oh, he wants the beginning. Okay. He can do the beginning. The beginning was easy. It was everything after that got complicated.
Here is what he remembers:
A club. Lights the color of a headache. Him. High. He was deliberate about it too. Had taken something small and blue. And waited for the world to get interesting and then went dancing.
He was twenty. And lonely. And high and wasted, all sways and loose limbs. Red, blue, green. And Gojo Satoru. Yuji says his name like it’s still his to say.
White hair. White shirt. The audacity of his face. Yuji blinked and thought; hallucination. The good kind.
"You alone?" His voice was deep. Unfairly deep. Enough that it made the back of Yuji’s neck stand at attention.
Yuji grinned at him. "Depends who's asking." Smooth. That was smooth. He’s telling you right now that he did not feel smooth.
"Me." Just: me. like that was sufficient.
Yuji snorted. Then took his hands, smooth, pale, large hands, and put them on his hips. Because he was high. And because something in his chemistry said:
Yes. this one. Put this one in your mouth and don't let go.
(He knows how that sounds.)
They danced. Satoru said he was cute. Yuji wanted to bite him for it.
(He did, later.)
"Did you know who he was," Nanami asks, "when you met him in the club?"
Yuji pauses. Did he?
Gojo Satoru. Three years above him at Jujutsu college. The golden star boy. The one all the years whispered about in the corridors, not because he was dangerous, (though he was). But because he was beautiful and he knew it, and he wore that knowledge like a coat. Yuji had seen him once, from a distance. He had been laughing at something Ieiri said. Arms slung over his other friend, Getou.
"No," Yuji tells Nanami.
Nanami writes something down.
"And the restraining order."
Yuji’s jaw locks.
"Whose idea was that?"
Silence. The wall has a crack in it. Yuji traces it, while he waits for Nanami to get tired of him. He doesn't. He never does. Nanami Kento has that patience. But here’s something Nanami doesn’t know about Satoru. He was not okay. Yuji means this carefully. Without cruelty.
Gojo Satoru was not okay.
II.
Red
Yuji loves the color red. He’s always loved the color red. Senpai thought it was funny.
(Yuji called him senpai. Not at first. At first he called him Satoru-san
and he made a face like Yuji insulted his ancestors. Then senpai. Then just YOU, then nothing.)
"Why red?" Satoru asked once, lying on Yuji’s bed with his long legs hanging off the end, watching Yuji repot a wilted plant.
‘’Red is honest,’’ Yuji said. ‘’It doesn’t pretend. And it says a lot too.’’
Satoru was quiet for a moment. Then, "What does it say?"
Yuji thought about it. "I'm here,’’ he said. "I'm here and I'm not stopping."
Satoru blinked. He looked at Yuji then with a small grin on. Yuji didn’t know what that look meant. He wished he asked.
Yuji also loved wilted flowers. Collected them like art. Satoru brought him flowers the next day. half-dead violets, stems drooping, lke he had gone to a florist and said, "The saddest ones, please."
Yuji put them on the windowsill. He watered them. They didn't come back. But he kept them anyway, because Satoru had picked them for him. And he kept everything Satoru picked for him.
Kissing was the beginning and the end of them. It was more than a habit. It was a need, a ritual. Satoru kissed Yuji in the morning, right as he stirred awake, lips trailing from his temple to his jaw, catching the curve of his mouth. He kissed him in the afternoon, outside Yuji’s work, hand slipping around his waist, pulling him close. He kissed him at night, when the air was thick and dark and Yuji was pliant, tired, letting Satoru do whatever he wanted. They kissed until there was no air left, until it was dizzy and heavy, until Yuji’s lips were raw and swollen, bruised.
Satoru loved him in a way that left marks.
(Yuji is being literal.)
He counted them once. Twenty-nine. Satoru counted them too, under the dim lamp light in his bedroom, his fingers tracing each one like a painter admiring his work.
And then, Yuji’s voice broke in, softer, reluctant. “People…are noticing,” he said, looking away, rubbing at one of the marks below his earlobe. “Could you… maybe make them less obvious?”
Satoru stiffened. “Less obvious?” He cupped Yuji’s chin, tilting his face up, forcing him to meet his eyes. “Does it hurt?”
Does it hurt?
"No," Yuji said. A heartbeat. “Not really.” And that was true. And also, not true.
Satoru wasn’t convinced. There was something in the way Yuji’s gaze flickered, in the tightness of his voice. He knew, and Yuji knew he knew. But Yuji looked at him, quiet. Vulnerable.
Satoru leaned in then, letting his lips brush over Yuji’s. “You’re a terrible liar.” He kissed him again. “But I don’t want to hurt you.’’
Yuji shivered, eyes slipping closed.
“I love you,” he whispered. “You know that, right?”
‘’Yeah, I do.’’
"Did he hurt you?" Nanami asks, and he is very careful with the word hurt.
Yuji looks at his wrists. The marks are faded. He thinks about telling Nanami that.
‘’No.’’
‘’Did he tell you he loved you often?’’
‘’All the time.’’
‘’Did you believe him?’’
‘’Yes.’’
Nanami jots down again. ‘’Did you love him?’’
Yuji blinks. What kind of question is that? Of course. He loved him. "It was complicated," he hears himself.
Nanami writes another thing down. ‘’I see.’’
III.
Ugly
‘’Who was Megumi?’’ Nanami presents another file on the desk. An image.
‘’Fushiguro Megumi,’’ Yuji says, looking at it. ‘’My friend. Only a friend. Senpai never believed that.’’
They lived together for seven months before things got ugly. Their first fight happened over something stupid. Yuji was never home. It was his new job. He slept there. Or crashed at his friend’s. Megumi’s. A guy Satoru met once. And he had a feeling about him. Irrational and uncertain.
“I don’t like how close you are with him.”
Yuji stared, brow furrowing. “Can you stop? What is wrong with you? He’s only a friend.”
(Yuji had never heard himself say that before. He didn't know his voice could do that. Satoru had gone very still when he did.)
And then he disappeared. Withdrew. Stayed out late. Answered Yuji’s messages two days after he sent them. Sat across from him at dinner and looked at his food like it was more interesting than him.
(It worked. It worked exactly as designed.)
Yuji stopped. He stopped sleeping. He stopped working. He texted Megumi less and less until he stopped texting Megumi at all because every unanswered text from Satoru felt like a stone in his chest, and he didn't have room for anything else.
(Satoru found out about this later. He seemed pleased.)
"Did he isolate you?’’ Nanami asks.
The word isolate sits in the air between them. A word for a thing that has a shape.
‘’Senpai was protective," Yuji tells him.
‘’Itadori—"
‘’He loved me,’’ Yuji cuts in. ‘’ That's why he acted that way.’’
Nanami sighs. He sets down his pen. Pushes his notes aside. "Tell me about the night of the fight."
And there it is.
IV.
Junior
Satoru was the golden star boy. Yuji's said this already. But just so you understand. The distinction between them. Yuji was a first-year student. A nobody. Someone who Satoru walked past in the hallway more than a hundred times and never once looked his way until that club night. But Yuji noticed him. Yuji looked. That was the part they don't tell you about obsession. It started like admiration. It started like wanting to be near something good. It didn’t announce itself. It settled. Into the cracks. Until it was too late.
The night of the fight. Satoru had been…he’d been saying things. For weeks. Small things.
''Your fault. It's your fault.''
He said it so quietly enough to sound like ‘Your love’.
“You don’t love me anymore, do you?”
Yuji’s face dropped, eyes darkening. “Not tonight. Please, Senpai.” He sounded tired. Frustrated. “Not tonight.”
Days pass, stretched with tension. Then one night, Yuji snapped, eyes red, face flushed with rage. “Why are you being such an asshole?”
Satoru blinked, thrown. Yuji was yelling again. “What did I do?” he asked, genuinely clueless.
“What did you do?” Yuji stared, mouth open in disbelief. ‘’One day I'll leave you, and it'll be your fault." He never said anything like that before. He didn't know where it came from. Somewhere below his ribs, maybe.
Satoru went white. Like Yuji had reached inside him and taken something out. ‘’You can’t leave.’’ His voice broke as he tried to reach for Yuji. “What would happen to me?”
“You should have thought about that before acting like a twisted fuck. What more do you want from me, huh? I did all you asked. I stopped talking to my friends. I even quit my damn job because of you. What the fuck more do you want?!”
Satoru stood there, absorbing every word. Every blow. "I'm sorry," he mumbled. "Please don't go. Not you too. I'll change. I promise. I will...I just...I thought you didn't love me anymore.”
He looked so devastated. So broken.
And Yuji—
He felt something soften in him. Against his will. Against every single thing he had just understood. He felt it soften. They found each other again that night the way we always did. Tangled and raw and not speaking. Satoru's weight against his. The ceiling above them.
‘’I love you," Satoru whispered.
Yuji said nothing. Not because he didn't feel it. He felt it too much. But he had also learnt what love meant in Satoru's vocabulary. It was like a leech. And the kindest thing he could do for the both of them was to stop feeding it.
V.
Itch
Nanami comes back. He always comes back. He has become the most consistent thing in Yuji’s life right now. Yuji finds this both comforting and damning.
"Tell me about the night you went to his house."
Here is what the prosecution says: He went to Satoru’s house that Saturday night. He had a key.
(He had a key once, until Satoru changed the locks. But he found another way in.)
There was a restraining order. Satoru’s blood was on him. When they found Yuji, he was kneeling next to Satoru. And Satoru was not breathing.
But this was what Yuji remembered; He was worried. Satoru had not been home for weeks since their argument. There was no restraining order. No one had ever filed one. Yuji wasn’t sure where the police got that from. He’d gone to Satoru’s home because he knew what his bad nights looked like.
Satoru was not okay.
He had nightmares. Nightmares about a mother shaped like a fist. Blue walls going black. A closet with no air. Yuji knew this because he was there for them. Every time for two years. Satoru would wake gasping and Yuji would be there and he would say: You're safe. It's okay. And he would press his face into Yuji's chest and shake.
Gojo Satoru who never needed anything. Who was the golden star boy. Shaking in a nobody’s arm like a kid. And Yuji would hold him and say; I would never let go.
He’s here.
He’s here.
But here’s what Yuji says; He found him like that. He loved him. He would never do anything to harm him.
Here’s what he doesn’t say; He remembers them fighting. He remembers Satoru telling him to go. He remembers red. He remembers thinking; I’m here. And I’m not stopping.
''I didn't do anything. I swear it.''
Nanami shuts his file. "I look forward to our next session," he says. He doesn’t say it warmly.
The guard comes, the cuff go on. Yuji doesn’t fight it.
Back in his cell. He has a cot. The wall. The light that flickers every forty seconds.
Forty seconds.
Flicker.
Forty seconds.
Flicker.
He picks up the pen they let him keep and writes;
(He’s not saying he didn't do it. He’s not saying he did.)
(He’s saying there is a part of that night that lives in a room in him that has no door he can find.)
Nanami thinks the room has a door.
Nanami thinks he's choosing not to open it.
(maybe.)
(maybe Nanami is right.)
(maybe the reason he can't find the door is that he built the wall too well.)
He loved Satoru. He needs you to understand this, before you make your judgements. Satoru was the golden boy and yet he chose Yuji. That was the most terrifying thing that ever happened to him. The second was that he let it. .
(The third most terrifying thing is what he remembers. Or doesn't remember. Or remembers wrong.)
The kiss. Outside the club, that first night. Satoru was smoking. Yuji had asked how he could smoke those things, and Satoru offered him one. He took it and coughed so hard he nearly died. Satoru laughed. And then kissed him. That was the start of it all. Everything that followed, followed.
But that didn’t change how he felt. He still loved Satoru. He loved him the way you love the first warm thing after a very long winter. He loved him past the point of sense. Past the point of safety. Past the point where loving someone and staying with someone are not the same thing.
Satoru said once: "if you ever leave me, I'd want to see you wrapped in your favorite color.’’ He said it quietly. In the dark. Watching Yuji sleep.
(He wasn’t asleep. He heard it. And he thought; that’s love.)
Satoru meant that tenderly.
He closes his notebook. Nanami will come tomorrow again. But for now, he will sleep and dream.
About Satoru. His hands on his hips. The sound of his voice saying cute. The audacity of cute. He will dream about red. About the blood. And what red says.
(I'm here.)
(I'm here and I'm not stopping.)
He loved him.
He loved him.
He loved him.
(So how could he have?)
(So how?)
(How?)