#mym

Then final grades are released. 

And suddenly? The soaked clothes, the coke, the club, the ultrasound shaking in his hand, the mochi, your lips on his—all of it has found a new place to bleed. 

His fucking GPA. 

Gojo just stares at the screen, sitting there at his desk in the quiet wreckage of his room with his laptop open in front of him and the number glowing back like an accusation. 

This has to be a mistake, is his first thought, because he does not get grades like these. He never has. Not in high school or college, not even in the classes he barely respected enough to attend with any sort of genuine consistency. No. Never.

There are plenty of things people misunderstand about him, and for the most part, he lets them. It’s easier that way. Play the part of the frat boy. Let them think he’s just rich, that he coasts along life. Let them think that the face, the name, the money, the effortless charm means there isn't a brain underneath the performance. 

That assumption has always served him fine. Girls don’t care that he could destroy a finance case study in one sitting. His brothers didn’t need to know he could skim fifty pages before class and still debate circles around half the room. The professors, though, figured it out eventually. The wealthy international student from Japan, the pretty frat boy asshole who everyone assumed was an idiot, is actually intelligent. Very intelligent. They are always quietly surprised when they realize that, as if intelligence looks strange on someone so attractive and careless.

Even you didn’t know the full extent of it. You knew he was quick-witted, obviously. Sharp in that annoying way that made him impossible to argue with. He was clever, strategic, cruelly observant when he wanted to be, you know all of that from experience. But, you had zero idea about the substantial fact that he is rather a genius, despite the role he plays. 

He never told you, not directly at least. He didn’t offer it up like it was something precious worth knowing about him because the thought of you looking too closely at him, well, another version of him he didn’t know how to explain, scared him shitless.  

He blames his silence on the possibility that intelligence, much like everything else in his life, had never felt entirely his. No, that belonged to his family first—the Gojo name. Proof of his usefulness and that he is capable of being handed an empire that he never asked to inherit. 

Though, Satoru figured he shouldn’t feel too bad for withholding this information from you. He never told anyone, never corrected anyone, either. Being underestimated is useful when you’re arrogant enough to enjoy proving others wrong. But this? This is wrong in a way that makes his skin sting bitterly cold. 

He refreshes his Canvas page once, then twice, like the big fat 68% on his Microeconomics final might rearrange itself out of embarrassment…To his dismay, it doesn’t. His perfect 4.0 GPA is now tainted, the A+ he formerly had has dropped to a B- because of the exam that was worth more than half of all the other assignments combined. 

He leans back in his chair and drags both hands over his face, pressing hard enough that colors spark behind his eyelids. His room is still a disaster from the last few days; clothes on the floor, empty water bottles by the bed, the faint sweetness of your perfume still clinging to fabric he should have washed but refuses to, the mochi you had gifted him has since been eaten, yet he couldn’t find it in himself to throw out the box—it’s there on his nightstand, close to him while he sleeps so that maybe he’ll dream of you and not the other shit that’s been haunting him. On his desk, half-hidden beneath his notebook, the corner of a sketch peeks out. 

Your eyes. Again. 

He looks at it and immediately wants to rip the paper in half. Because, God—they look too real, alive almost. Your lashes, the shape of your gaze, the softness at the corners that he has no business recalling in this much detail. 

He had drawn them during a lecture he didn’t listen to, then again at three in the morning. Then again after checking his phone and finding no reply from you. Yeah…you never did reply to that text he sent on his shitty night out. That was probably for the best anyway. Hope is a dangerous thing for a man like Satoru Gojo. So, he’s better off like this. 

Though, it had only started with drawing your eyes. But then, your eyes morphed into a page of your mouth. Your neck with your own initial where his chain used to be. The tilt of your head in his passenger seat when you admitted that you missed him too.

He had told himself this was just something to do with his hands, which is a lie, obviously. Apparently, grief does not just ruin sleep, appetite, dignity, and, subsequently, your life. Apparently, it also digs up old graves, hands you a pencil, and tells you to start sketching the girl who left you. 

Satoru lowers his hands and looks back at the grade. He uselessly tries to convince himself it’s fine. People bomb finals all the time. He’s seen other students cry in library bathrooms during finals week, walk out of exams looking shell-shocked, email professors with desperation seeping through every word. That’s normal college misery shit. But, he can’t be normal about this. 

He’s not supposed to be the guy who lets a breakup crawl into his coursework or the guy who rereads one stupid birthday text until four in the morning instead of reviewing for Microeconomics. He’s not supposed to sketch your face in the margins of his notebook while the professor explains material that will absolutely be on the final. And he is definitely not supposed to glare at one question for seven minutes because the word “future” appeared in the prompt and suddenly all he can think about is a folded ultrasound tucked behind his ID. 

A bitter laugh leaves him before he can even think to stop it. Of course you would find a way to ruin accounting too. Except it’s not really you who ruined it, and that realization wipes the disbelieving smile off his face. He did. He ruined it. He ruined everything.

He sat in class and didn’t listen. He opened practice exams and saw your face instead of numbers. He spent nights drawing when he should have been studying; drinking and snorting coke when he should have been sleeping, then lying awake sick with the guilt when even heavy intoxication couldn’t get his head quiet enough to rest. 

This grade isn’t bad luck. It’s only just more evidence, another exhibit in the case of how badly he’s unraveling.

Fuck, maybe I shouldn’t have flushed the Adderall—

His phone buzzes on the desk and he glances at it too fast, pathetic muscle memory snapping his attention toward the screen. The notification didn’t come from you, though a small part of him wished it did. Rather, it’s an email from the registrar and three texts from Ryan’s dumbass. 

ryan: grade drop yet?

ryan: bro if i failed mirco econ im killing myself ong

ryan: also you alive? you dipped outta class hella quick 

Gojo flips the phone facedown. The fucking guy can’t even spell micro right and is wondering if he failed?

Damn…guess I’m not one to talk. 

He doesn’t bother texting him back. He can’t talk to Ryan right now. Can’t hear some joke about finals or GPA not mattering when you’re hot and rich and inheriting your family’s multi-billion dollar company anyway. No, he can’t stomach that, because none of this is small. 

A 68% is not small. A B- is not small. A less than 4.0 GPA is not small. 

Not for the family he is flying home to tomorrow.

Home. 

He’s always hated home, but now even more so. 

His mother will ask as soon as she sees him before she asks about anything else. That is the first real blade of panic sheathed between his ribs. 

She will ask because she always does. His grades don’t exist privately, they aren’t something he can just hide and lie about like other students can. Nothing about him exists privately. His transcript is more than just school. It’s proof of discipline and control, and that the future heir to the Gojo company is still worth trusting with everything his family has decided he’ll run. 

A slip is not a slip in that house. A slip is a symptom, and his parents love hunting for causes.

Because this is not the first time his grades have slipped. The last time they did, his parents found the cause rather quickly. Drawing. Except it was only that. It wasn’t drawing and the loss of you and the life he almost had. 

It was only a slight dip of his grades. A microscopic imperfection, really. But in the Gojo household, imperfection does not stay small for long. Satoru remembers it all too clearly.

He was nine then, maybe ten. Young enough that his feet didn’t fully touch the floor when he sat in the stiff armchair by his father’s office window. Naive enough that the pencils in his hand felt more important than anything else in the world. Innocent enough to believe that if something made him happy, that happiness must be allowed to exist somewhere in his world. 

He had dreams then. 

Small ones, stupid ones, probably even impossible ones. The kind of dreams children form before adults teach them what lineage costs and what is expected of them. He used to think maybe he could draw forever. Maybe he could make beautiful things for no reason except the simple fact that he liked making them. He could become an artist, oh, or an architect, or anything other than the pre-decided thing his family had already built a life around him becoming. 

How silly he was to think such things. How silly he was to have even dreamt at all. 

He can see his father’s study when he shuts his eyes. Dark wood, pale winter light. The smell of paper, leather, and ink filling his senses. His mother standing near the desk with one of his sketchbooks open in her hands, turning the pages slowly with the same calm attention she gives documents littered with errors.  

His father stands beside her. Neither is angry in the way you’d expect. They never show emotion openly. They don’t yell or slam doors. They don’t ask their son why he’s been staying up late drawing buildings and nameless faces and mythical creatures in the margins of his workbooks. They don’t ask why he hid the art under his bed or why his fingers are always smudged gray at the tips. 

No, they don’t give a damn, honestly. They only care about cold, hard facts. They simply present the evidence. His math marks had slipped. A few points lower than they wanted. And they found the answer hidden beneath his bed. 

Sketchbooks, charcoal pencils, ink pens. A book on figure drawing, another on architecture. Cheap tiny things, most of them, bought secretly and tucked away like treasure. 

His mother turns another page. On it is a portrait of the housekeeper who used to sneak him warm milk when he couldn’t sleep. Her name was Emi. She had gentle eyes and a soft voice, and once, after discovering one of his drawings folded into a textbook, she smiled at him like he had handed her something precious. 

“You’re very good, Satoru-sama,” She had whispered. 

He had never forgotten that. It was about the only words of encouragement he had ever received. Though he pretended not to care, he proceeded to draw her until two in the morning that same day. 

It wasn’t perfect by any means. The eyes were a little too wide, the shading clumsy around the lips, but he had worked on it all night because he wanted to get her smile right. She had looked at the sketch when he finished it and covered her mouth with one hand. 

“You made me look kind.”

“You are kind,” Satoru had answered. 

Now his mother stared at that same drawing without an ounce of emotion, “She bought these for you?”

Satoru’s throat tightened as he looked at the sketchbook, then at his father, then down at his knees, “She said I should practice.”

His father’s face didn’t move an inch, his mother slammed the book shut, “That was not her place.”

Something cold moved through Satoru then. Confusion at first, unable to comprehend how something given out of grace can become wrong just because an adult has decided it is. 

His father steps forward and picks up one of the pencils from the desk, “Satoru,” He said, voice even, “Your marks have declined.”

Satoru looked at the pencil instead of his father’s face, “O-Only a little.”

His mother’s gaze sharpened. A little, in that house, is not a defense. A little is proof that he doesn’t understand the capacity of what is expected of him as the only child of the Gojo family. 

“This,” His father noted, lifting the pencil slightly, “Is why.”

Satoru’s hands curled in his lap, “...It’s just drawing.”

“No,” His mother snapped, “It’s distraction.”

The word landed with certainty, like once she had named it as such it could no longer be anything else. His father broke the pencil in half right after, the sound was so small, yet Satoru flinched anyway. Then, his mother began placing the sketchbooks into a black trash bag one by one. 

He watched all of it, because they made him watch. That is the part he remembers most. The witnessing, the instruction of it. His mother’s pristine, white sleeve brushing against the dark plastic bag. His father gathering the art books from the desk. Pages disappearing, hours disappearing. Small, private pieces of himself being discarded like they are garbage.

His parents always handled his happiness like paperwork. 

“You are not a boy who gets to waste time dreaming,” His mother informed. 

His father adds, colder somehow, sounding almost bored, “Dreams are for people with nothing expected of them.”

Satoru doesn’t cry. Not there. Not in front of them, he couldn’t. He just sat very still while his mother took the sketchbook with Emi’s portrait and placed it in the bag too. He thought, stupidly, childishly, that maybe she’d spare that one because it’s good. Emi assured him it was. The eyes were almost right, the smile was sweet, he spent an entire night fixing the shading on her cheek, and he adored it.  

But his mother spared nothing. By dinner, all the art supplies had been removed from his room. And by morning, Emi was gone too. None of the other staff said the word fired in front of him, no one had the heart to. He caught her in the entryway with her coat on and her bag clutched in both hands. She bowed deeply to his mother, then his father, then, finally, to him. 

She didn’t look at him long, which made it worse. Because even at nine years old, Satoru understands shame. He knew that she was leaving because of him. Since she bought him the pencils and books. She encouraged him to keep going. Because he loved something too obviously and someone had been kind enough to help him love it. 

He wanted to say I’m sorry. 

He wanted to beg, please don’t go. 

He wanted to tell his parents it wasn’t her fault, that he asked, that he wanted them, that he was the problem. 

But his father’s hand rested lightly on his tiny shoulder in silent warning, so Satoru said nothing. Emi bowed one last time, then left. Later on, that night, he cried in the bathroom with the faucet running. Quietly, ugly, and soundless into the sleeve of his silk pajamas, teeth pressed hard into the fabric because even then he knew better than to be heard. 

His chest hurt with it, his throat ached. He sobbed until his round, pale face felt swollen and hot and humiliating. 

It wasn’t because of the pencils or drawings, entirely. He now understood something. 

Love is not something he is allowed to have. Real love, the gentle kind that sits beside his bed with warm milk and tells him he’s good at something no one else cares to even notice. Buys him cheap pencils and art books and whispers that he should keep going, looking at the things he made with his own hands and treating them like they matter. 

No. 

Love like that—softness like that, does not belong in a house like this.

He imagines that his parents love him, maybe, in the surface level way people like them know how to. Through discipline and expectation; expensive clothes and private tutors and language lessons and posture perfected with a hand anchored between his shoulder blades. Their version of love shines through reminders of what he owes, who he is, and what will one day be his whether he wants it or not. 

But Emi, she had loved little Satoru differently. In small, careful gestures that to the average person are the bare minimum, yet to him, meant everything. And his parents tossed her out too. 

That is what hurts most—losing Emi. The only person in that house who had ever made love feel like gentleness instead of surveillance.

So Satoru learned the lesson clearly with her removal and the banishment of his hobby.

He cannot love things. He cannot dream things. 

Dreams require wanting. Wanting requires softness. Softness creates weakness. And weakness, in the Gojo household, is corrected until nothing living remains. 

So he stops, slowly. Children seldom kill parts of themselves so cleanly. He stops drawing first, then stops talking about things he wants, then eventually, stops wanting anything that fails to fit the shape of what is expected of him. Instead, he gets better at his studies because intelligence is useful, according to his parents. He learns how to be charming because charm, in the right situation, is a useful skill too. He also becomes beautiful, bored, and unobtainable, because, once again, those are useful. 

Years pass, and the lesson follows him into adulthood. Girls come easy because he does not love any of them. Sex leaves him unfulfilled since it does not beg for any tenderness. Frat parties are a performance in which nobody at Sigma Chi bothers to learn anything real about him. 

Satoru Gojo can be adored without ever being known, he can be wanted without being loved. He can fuck girls and feel nothing afterward, which is fine, preferable even, because feeling nothing has always been safer than feeling the thing he was taught he shouldn’t. 

Oh, but then…you happen. You happen, and at first, he doesn’t recognize or understand it as love. Why would he? Love has never brought him anything good. 

So when the feeling blooms within his chest, big and ugly and fucking impossible to ignore, he funnels it into the only concepts that make sense to him. Lust, possession, control. He thought, mine. 

Mine, mine, mine. 

The word feels similar enough to love when you have never been given anything softer to compare it to. 

He never knew how to love you gently, so he loved you with the kind of desperation as someone trying to keep the last warm thing in a freezing house. With both hands, too tight, so afraid of losing you that he made himself into the very thing that pushed you away. 

Then he loved you—actually loved you. 

Too late, obviously. Badly, too, but truly. Truly enough that losing you cracked open the same sealed, repressed place in him where the desire to draw had been deeply buried. 

Perhaps, that’s the sickest thing of all. You did not only make him love again. You made him dream again. 

Of course, his dreams stemmed out of greed first. He dreamed of making you his, keeping you, tying you to him so tightly that nothing could ever take you away. A dream of a future with you and a baby and a terribly confused idea of love. Twisted and poisoned by every lesson his family ever carved into him, but it was a dream nonetheless.

A dream of you and a family that is warm, human, and entirely his. And now look.

He loved drawing, and it was taken. He loved Emi, and she was taken. He loved you, and he lost you too. 

Now, he sits here alone in his room at USC, twenty-one instead of nine, staring at a mediocre grade with sketches of your face half-hidden beneath his notebook, and the old wound splits open all over again; bleeding through every layer of him he thought has scarred over.

Maybe his parents were right. Maybe dreams really are for people with nothing expected of them and love is only for people who can afford feeling it in the first place. 

Last time his grades slipped, they found the drawings and blamed Emi. This time, he already knows that they will find and blame you.

And the next morning comes quicker than Satoru would’ve liked. He walks out of Sig Chi with his passport, one suitcase, one carry-on, and every ruined part of himself carefully zipped inside. 

The car waiting outside is not one he called for, that alone is a bad sign. A Black Mercedes sits quietly at the curb, sent by his family of course, because even from across the Pacific Ocean, they can reach him and replace his choices with arrangements. His Porsche 911 GT3 stays parked where it is, useless, Carrara white, and too Westernized, while some Japanese driver in a dark suit takes his luggage from his hand like Satoru is already less of a person and more of an itinerary. It almost makes him laugh. 

“Van Nuys, Gojo-sama?” The driver asks. 

Satoru looks out at the early morning light, glittering pale over Greek Row; dawn has just started to break, “Yes.”

The ride to the private airport is particularly silent, save for the low hum of the Maybach and the occasional tick of its turn signal. Los Angeles slips past in pieces—palm trees swaying in the breeze, traffic despite the hour, glass buildings that look too perfect to be real, countless strip malls; ordinary life carrying on, stupid and indifferent, whilst Satoru sits in the backseat with his phone clutched in his hand and thumb hovering over the Canvas app like hopefully the Microeconomics grade has changed overnight out of pity. 

Horribly, it hasn’t. 

68%.

A stupid B fucking minus. 

His stomach turns as he locks his phone and then unlocks it again almost immediately. How pathetic. He checks his messages, saddened to see that there is still nothing from you, yet why would there be? You left that corny-ass birthday night text on read, and honestly, you were right to. He should be grateful that you ever even acknowledged him that night at all, let alone left him with a gift and a kiss he’ll forever remember. 

Halfway to Van Nuys, his mother texts and whatever sorry shit he was thinking about you, vanishes. 

mother: Lunch will be ready when you arrive. Your father and I have seen the transcript update.

Satoru reads it once. Then again. Then a third time because his brain refuses to process the words in the correct order. Of course there is nothing about having a safe flight or any lingering belated birthday affection or even a simple Oh, how are you, Satoru? We’re so excited to see you. We missed you. 

He could gag at the mere thought of either of them showing any sort of fondness, yeah as if. There’s a greater chance of hell freezing over. And as he sits there, stirring over the fact that his parents only give a fuck about the fact that he’s slipped, a painful sharpness pricks beneath his ribs. 

Oh.

This again.

He has not felt it in years. He used to get them more when he was younger, before he learned how to turn fear and distress into arrogance and performance, swallowing every unwanted emotion down, but his body remembers it distinctly. His chest tightens first, like a hand closing slowly around his heart, causing him to shift in the leather seat and inhale deeply through his nose. Yet the air doesn’t go anywhere; it stays trapped. 

He tries again, and still, nothing. His heart kicks once, hard enough that his hand twitches against his thigh, then again, then faster. Satoru looks out the window as if the highway requires his full attention, pretending that he’s not aware of every inch of his own body. Yeah, because there’s totally no phone in his palm open with a text from his mother, or ultrasound in his wallet, or sketchbook in his carry-on; your eyes drawn over and over, shoved between pages like some dirty secret. 

His lungs feel too small, which is stupid—obviously they aren't. He knows what breathing is, he’s actively doing it, his body is pulling air in considering he’s still alive. Though the air doesn’t land correctly despite it. His fingers start to tingle, he closes his hand into a fist, opening it almost as soon as does. The tingling has begun to spread anyway, crawling beneath his skin like static. His mouth goes dry, the road tilts strangely, only for a second, and his stomach lurches so hard that he has to swallow against it. 

“Everything alright, Gojo-sama?” The driver asks.

Satoru’s head snaps up too fast. For one horrifying moment, he thinks he might actually tell the truth; he may say no.

No, pull over. 

I can’t breathe. 

Take me back. 

I don’t want to go home.

I’m dying. 

Instead, he gives him a smile through the rearview mirror, small, yet perfect as always, “Yeah…Fine.” 

The words leave him with ease, though his body knows he’s lying through his teeth. And by the time they reach the private terminal, his pulse is hammering in his throat. Van Nuys is too quiet, of course it fucking is. There’s no obnoxious crowds to blend into, no TSA lines, no screaming children, no gate agents mumbling out boarding groups—no, being privileged and flying privately means that there are only the soft voices of people catering to him like he’s royalty rather than a kid on the verge of breaking down. 

The jet waits beyond the glass windows and Satoru stares at it for exactly three seconds too long because the room bends on him. Although, to everyone else, he is probably still standing there like himself—tall, pretty, expensive, faintly bored. But inside his skull, something there slips sideways. The edges of the airport lounge blur, sound pulls away from him, muffled and distant, as if everyone is speaking underwater. 

His heart no longer is beating. Now, it’s punching. He presses a hand to the center of his chest on instinct. Shit. This is bad. 

Bad, bad, bad. 

Really fucking bad.

A staff member mentions something about departure time. Satoru doesn’t hear the middle of the sentence, he only catches his name at the end, “Mr. Gojo?”

“I need the bathroom,” He says, urgent enough that the woman blinks and immediately, he’s moving. 

Walking, not running, that would be way too embarrassing and he already feels mortified. He follows the discreet sign down a short hall and pushes through the bathroom door with one hand at his throat. The door shuts behind him and the moment he’s alone, the mask drops so abruptly it feels physical. His first breath comes in wrong, a thin, broken inhale that scrapes high in his chest and gives him nothing. He braces both hands on the marble sink and tries again, desperately. 

Nothing. Again. Absolutely nothing.

“Fuck,” He whispers, eyes brimming with tears. 

He bows his head, white strands falling forward, fingers spread against cold marble. His chest feels locked, sealed shut, like there’s a band around his ribs and it’s pulling tighter with every breath he fails to take. 

He can’t get enough fucking air.

One hand flies back to his chest, palm pressing firm over his heart as if he can somehow hold it in place. It’s beating too fast, too loud; his entire body has gone hot and cold simultaneously, sweat gathering at the back of his neck while his hands numb. 

He thinks, right then and there, that he’s having a heart attack. The years of abusing bullshit coke have finally caught up with him. But then he thinks, no. This is much more humiliating than that. 

Panic attack. 

Somehow, that’s worse. Because he knows this. He knows this feeling, and it’s still happening; his knees threaten to give.

“No,” He grits out.

Hating himself for how pathetic it sounds he turns the faucet on full blast, water crashing into the sink, loud enough to cover the pitiful, uneven way he’s breathing. The act is out of muscle memory, maybe, or rather, childhood memory. Running water has always been useful for hiding things that should not be heard. 

Satoru grips the sink again, inhales and—no. Another inhale…No. 

No air gets through. 

His reflection stares back at him from the mirror, pale under the luxurious lighting, blue eyes glassy, mouth parted, one hand still pressed to his chest like a boy who has forgotten how to function. Now, he hates himself even more. 

He loathes that his body is doing this here of all places. In a bathroom nicer than most people’s apartments, minutes away from boarding his family’s private jet, over stupid grades. But if he’s being honest it really is more than just the grades. He’s panicking over his mother, over going home, over you, over the baby, and truly, over having a life so fucking privileged nobody would ever believe it could feel like a cage. 

His vision starts to turn gray at the edges, he bends forward and gags once into the porcelain sink. Nothing comes up. Everything he does yields a whole lot of nothing, except shame.

“Stop…” He whispers, voice shaking with the word.

He forces his eyes shut, but behind them he sees the black trash bag and mother’s white sleeve. He sees Emi bowing in the hallway, then your initial at your throat where his chain used to be, the ultrasound in his back pocket, his mother’s text. He sees every horrible thing that’s caused all the distress.

This time, the sound that escapes him is not a sob, though it’s close. Miraculously, the noise is uglier, smaller, a broken airless whine he barely can recognize as his own. He clamps a hand over his mouth and for a few seconds, Satoru can’t do anything but stand there with the faucet running and his mouth covered, trying to breathe around the fact that he has nowhere to put all of this. There’s no version of himself that is even allowed to carry such a thing. 

His whole body jolts when a polite knock on the door snaps him back to reality, “Mr. Gojo?” A voice calls from the other side, “My apologies for the interruption, but the crew is ready whenever you are.”

If he could gather any air at all, he’d laugh at that. He has never once been ready for any of this. Catching another glimpse of himself in the mirror, he instantly notices that his eyes are wet—God, fuck…no. I can’t be seen like this. 

Doing his best to erase his almost-tears he turns the faucet colder and splashes water over his face twice, then once again until the shock of the temperature gives his body somewhere else to focus. His breathing is still shallow and fast, but it’s quieter, at least. Quiet enough to pass if nobody looks too closely at him.

Though, nobody ever does. It’s both a blessing and curse. 

Today, it is definitely the former. 

Satoru dries his face with a hand towel so soft it’s insulting, then grips the edge of the sink one last time. He breathes in…out. His lungs hitch with each breath, but he straightens anyway. When he opens the bathroom door, his expression is back where it belongs. Pretty, cool, bored—the Satoru Gojo everyone loves. 

“Sorry,” He says to the attendant, voice smooth as silk, like the last five minutes were just a figment of his imagination, “Had a long night.”

She smiles sweetly, relieved to have an explanation that costs her absolutely nothing to believe, “Of course, Mr. Gojo.”

He walks past her toward the tarmac, one hand in his front pocket, fingers numb, heart trying to claw its way out of his chest. The jet waits, so does home, as does his family, and somewhere behind him, on a campus he is leaving for nearly a month, you are still gone. 

Stepping up and inside the jet, it is exactly as he remembers it from August, before junior year and ever meeting you. He’s met with cream leather seats, polished wood paneling, soft lighting, a glass of water already placed in his cup holder, condensation beading down the sides; a folded blanket rests on one of the seats, a warm towel is offered to him by a flight attendant who bows slightly and says his name like it means something special. 

Gojo-sama.

The title follows him into the cabin and settles over his shoulders heavier than any jacket he’s ever worn. Here, now, that name is the only one that matters anymore. 

Satoru thanks her in Japanese, taking the towel because refusing would require more energy than accepting, wipes hands that don’t feel entirely his, and sits near the window because that is where he always sits. Out of habit, mostly. 

The door seals and his chest tightens again. Here we fucking go. He thinks, humiliatingly, that the whole thing is about to restart right there in the leather seat with two flight attendants and a pilot close enough to hear him fall apart. His hand curls around the armrest, fingers digging into the seam, and he forces himself to breathe through his nose. 

In…out…that’s it. 

“Would you like anything before takeoff, Gojo-sama?” The attendant asks.

A few lines, maybe. Or anything to take my fucking mind off works. 

Oh, a different family too.

How about a version of myself that doesn’t ruin every good thing I touch?

He says none of his thoughts aloud, however, “No, thank you.”

She disappears, silent as a ghost, leaving him alone in the cabin with the sick luxury of being taken care of by people who don’t know him at all. That has always been the strangest part of wealth. The world will arrange itself around your comfort while never once asking if you are okay. 

The plane begins to move, slowly at first, then faster, rolling over the private runway while Los Angeles remains beyond the oval window. Satoru watches it all blur—the hangars, tarmac, low buildings, the dry California light peaking through morning clouds. His phone sits heavy in his pocket; his wallet sits heavier. His carry-on rests near his feet with the sketchbook inside it, buried beneath a folded USC hoodie like hiding it there makes him less insane. 

He thinks of you somewhere across the city. 

Maybe still asleep. Maybe awake. Maybe walking to get coffee with Blair. Maybe packing your stuff to go to Boston. Maybe already home. Probably wearing that little initial necklace and not thinking about him at all. 

The jet lifts, his stomach drops as the ground falls away, and he watches as Los Angeles becomes small enough to hopefully forget. The city flattens into grids, roofs, and tiny threads of freeway; USC disappears almost instantly, swallowed by clouds and the kind of money that can remove him from a place before he’s ready to leave it. 

Satoru presses his head back against the seat. He should sleep, he knows that. He barely slept last night or the nights before that, really, and the time difference is going to fuck him worse. He should close his eyes, drink water, possibly take one of the melatonin tablets his mother’s assistant packed in the side pocket because even his exhaustion is something they prepare for. 

He closes his eyes and immediately, there’s your face. It’s not the full thing, no, that would be too much mercy for he who deserves none. He only sees your mouth in his car, lower lip parted against his. The soft, broken way you kissed him like you knew you shouldn’t, but did so anyway. Then your throat—that dainty necklace, specifically. 

His eyes shoot open; the cabin is primarily quiet, except for the sound of humming engines. His hand moves before he fully permits it to, reaching down to unzip the carry-on and pull out the sketchbook. 

The sight of it in this cabin makes his stomach twist, because it doesn’t belong here. Or maybe it does. He’s unsure of which he’d rather it be. The cover is plain leather, expensive in the way all his things are, but not obviously so. He had bought it off campus weeks ago without giving it much thought, back when the first sketch of your eyes had happened like an accident and not a relapse. In here, it feels like something illegal in his lap. 

Ridiculous. A fucking sketchbook, and he’s holding it as if it may explode if he opens it incorrectly. 

He flips it open anyway, and your eyes stare back at him on the first page. On the next page is your mouth, then your hands, and then it keeps going; the curve your cheek turned toward his passenger window, drawn directly from memory with a precision that makes him want to throw the fucking thing across the cabin. 

There are pages he doesn’t even remember starting or finishing, pages from nights he doesn’t remember even surviving—your neck, your lashes, the crease between your brows when you tried not to cry, the small pendant resting against your skin. His thumb pauses over that drawing. 

He had hated that necklace the second he saw it. Well, no. He had hated what it meant. 

It meant you had filled the space he left behind with yourself, that the hollow at your throat had not stayed empty and waiting for him like he wished it would be. You had, instead, found some symbolic way to say, I belong to me, and Satoru had no right to be angry about it, which of course, made the anger burn sharper. Now, looking at the sketch, he only feels tired. 

Tired, and ashamed, and so fucking lonely that it feels childish. 

He turns the page—blank. For a while, he just stares at it as his pencil rests in his hand; the feeling of it there is so familiar it almost hurts more than the B-. His fingers remember things his mind spent years rejecting; the soft drag of graphite against paper, how to build something living out of lines.

He also tells himself that he will not draw you again. He’s done with that. He’s already drawn you too much, leaving behind a multitude of evidence, turning you into a thing his mother could find and name. 

So when the pencil touches the paper, what he first draws is nothing recognizable. It’s only a line, then another, then a curve of a wrist. Your wrist, perhaps. The way your fingers looked holding the mochi box on his birthday, careful and tense, like the act of giving a gift weighed more than it ever should. He draws the box next; the little fold of the packaging, followed by the angle of your thumb and a tiny shadow beneath your nail. 

He fucking hates himself for remembering, yet he keeps going. 

At some point, he puts his headphones in, and what would play other than The Neighbourhood? 

A few weeks ago, he would’ve skipped it so fast his thumb could crack the screen; avoiding them after you left because the songs made him think of you too clearly. Sweater Weather alone had been enough to ruin his whole damn night once, which was particularly embarrassing considering he’s supposed to be a grown-ass man and not some lovesick loser getting emotionally fucked by a song everyone knew in high school. 

But then, somewhere between grief and heartbreak, the avoidance became something else. A ritual, of sorts. 

He started listening to them because the songs reminded him of you. You used to play them whenever you slipped into his passenger seat at night, singing along to each and every word as he drove off. He would pretend not to notice, only to eventually learn the words from your mouth by kissing them out of you while one of their slow, miserable songs played through the speakers. 

And after a while, the songs stopped feeling borrowed. He began recognizing the openings before the lyrics came in, started knowing which ones he likes more than others, and playing them when he wasn’t even trying to torture himself. It’s still not usual shit, of course. Left to his own devices, Satoru Gojo listens to whatever is deemed cool to fit the image—Bass-heavy rap in the Porsche, house music at frat parties, anything loud and obnoxious enough to make his thoughts shut the hell up. 

He’d never even think to put some shit like The Neighbourhood on. Every song sounds like it was made for yearning after someone you’ve lost and ruined. Though, maybe that’s the point.

The Neighbourhood doesn’t feel like Sig Chi, or coke in bathrooms, or girls leaning into him while brothers shout his name. It feels like you, so much so that he can still feel your mouth smiling against his when he kissed you before the song could end. 

So he lets it play, because it keeps you close in one of the only ways he’s still allowed to have you. And with your music in his ears, your face under his hand, and the Pacific stretching endlessly beneath him, Satoru allows himself to become fully, pathetically immersed in the act of missing you.

The plane climbs higher over the ocean, and Satoru draws you in pieces because a whole version of you would probably kill him. He tries convincing himself that it is only habit, but that’s an awful lie. It’s grief finding an old language. A language he had been forced to forget, and somehow, horribly, you had taught his hands to speak again. 

One of the attendants comes by once with more water, fruit, some neatly arranged bento box he doesn’t touch. She glances at the sketchbook for half a second too long before kindly looking away. Satoru slams it shut with haste, though her face doesn’t change at all. She was trained better than that. 

Still, heat licks up his neck, “Would you like me to clear this, Gojo-sama?” She asks, gesturing to the untouched food.

“Yeah,” He answers, “Thanks.”

He waits until she disappears behind the partition before opening the sketchbook again, slower this time, pissed with himself for being startled. He feels nine years old again, like someone is about to take it from him. Like his mother’s white sleeve is going to appear between the seats and start tossing pages into a trash bag. 

No one comes and the cabin remains as quiet as it was. Satoru looks down at the page and realizes then that he has drawn your eyes too soft. He considers fixing them, but doesn’t. Because that is how you looked at him in his car when you whispered that you missed him too. 

Angry, yes. Hurt, definitely, but soft anyway. 

That might be the part he doesn’t know to forgive you for—the softness.

You had every right to be crueler. You could have looked at him like he was the worst thing in the world. Instead, you gave him his favorite mochi and kissed him and told him that you missed him, then still left because apparently you had managed to learn how to love someone without surrendering your spine. 

He draws until his hand aches and Los Angeles is long gone. Until the version of Gojo who exists in California starts clipping off in pieces. His Dodgers cap is already packed away, the USC hoodie folded in his carry-on shoved beneath clothes he will not wear in Japan because he’d be chastised for it. His rings are off except for the single one his family approves of. His hair has been pushed back more neatly, though he knows he will fix it properly before landing.  

The boy from California, the one who can get drunk and stupid high in a frat house, making entire rooms chant his name, is being stripped away slowly by altitude and distance. 

And hours later, when they begin their final descent, Satoru has stopped pretending he’s not afraid. 

The captain announces Tokyo in a voice too calm for how he feels inside. The cabin lights shift, attendants preparing for landing. Outside the window, clouds break apart, and Japan appears beneath him in gray-blue stretches of land and sea. 

Satoru stares at the sketchbook still open in his lap, your face stares back—unfinished, because he can never find it in himself to complete it. 

He looks at it for a long moment, then closes the cover with a carefulness he cannot explain. His hands move before his pride can stop them, sliding the sketchbook into his carry-on, but then he hesitates. The front pocket is too obvious of a placement, the top of the bag is too easily accessible. He unzips the larger compartment and shoves it beneath folded clothes, though that is still not enough. He takes out a dark jacket, lays it over the sketchbook, then presses the whole thing down like he’s burying a body.

It’s dumb, really. He’s a twenty-one year old man now, not a little boy. Yet, he can’t stop himself from acting like one. 

By the time the jet touches down at Haneda, your face is hidden underneath two shirts and a jacket, shielded away like the prettiest contraband to grace earth. Satoru sits back, jaw tight, and peeks out the window as the runway rushes past. 

Tokyo receives him how it normally does, without ceremony. It never needs to make a spectacle of taking him back like California does. 

It always knows he’ll return.