Chapter Text
The best thing about being a Gojou is that Satoru has it all.
Prestige, wealth, sharp intelligence and a face practically unrivalled in its beauty.
The only thing that’s not so great is the fact that he’s basically a marriage pawn.
Because he’s too pretty, everyone says, to not present as an omega.
Whereas alphas make up 20% of the world’s population, omegas account for a mere 3%. Statistics for male omegas fall even lower at 1 in every 100,000 people.
In a reality where alphas occupy the upper echelons of society, this genuine scarcity nurtures a perverse culture where being mated to a male omega is seen as a sign of prestige.
Satoru is barely 13 when his parents promise his hand in marriage to the Itadori family. Four years his senior, Itadori Sukuna is the eldest alpha son of the Itadori Group, the uncontested leaders of Japan’s gambling industry.
As an old family of power, much like the Gojous, the business value of the engagement was a no brainer.
It hadn’t been a choice.
Satoru remembers a younger version of himself sitting at the edge of a long table, staring up into eyes the shade of bloodstone.
For many others, first meetings have the potential to kindle the embers of romance.
For Satoru and his future-mate, that moment had been nothing but the birth of a mutual hatred.
Their relationship never steered towards the classic enemies-to-lovers trope.
In fact, a decade later, they’re bigger enemies than ever before.
“Apparently, I have to get Sukuku a cute birthday present because I’m your fiancé,” Satoru sings, standing nose to nose with Sukuna in front of the Itadori mansion. “You know, to act the part.”
It’s a Saturday evening and the chilly bite of winter lingers in the air. His breath leaves him in a gentle puff of mist that glides over the sculpted plains of Sukuna’s face.
He hit a growth spurt during his late teens and easily caught up to the alpha’s height, but he tilts on his toes just a little further to gain a few millimetres of supposed vertical dominance.
“What do you think? Should I just get you a pile of flaming shit? To match your personality?”
From far away, their positions look almost intimate but Ichiji, the Gojou family butler is sweating bullets off to the side. Despite being a beta, he can smell the mounting aggression rolling off in waves between the two most eligible bachelors in the country.
They’ve gotten into bloody fist fights before and Ichiji can only pray that it won’t get to that point tonight. He can’t take another pay cut, good heavens.
“It would be so easy,” Sukuna drawls in response, eyes unwavering, “to just rip your pretty little head off. Twenty-three already but you still haven’t presented. If it wasn’t for the old geezer threatening my inheritance , I would have sent you to hell a long time ago.”
He sneers. The warm light filtering through the grand bay windows behind them adds an extra sheen of molten malice to the reds of his irises.
“You’re not an omega,” Sukuna near spits, “that’s what I’ve been fucking telling them since forever. Anyone with an actual brain could figure that out.”
“Beautiful genius? More like blood thirsty asshole. You have the stature of an alpha and I see the way you look at Yuuji. Fuck off home before I punch your face into the asphalt .”
Itadori Yuuji, Sukuna’s younger twin brother.
Satoru’s beloved Yuuji is the only reason why he even bothers to show up here for the bi-weekly dinner their parents insist on to maintain their engagement.
The day he’d first met Sukuna was also the day he met Yuuji.
Unlike Sukuna, Yuuji had greeted him with an enthusiastic shout. When Satoru had been cold to the Itadori siblings, Yuuji was the one who persisted for months with one-sided conversations until Satoru gave in and finally smiled.
Most stories typically include some guy with a tragic back story falling desperately in love with the first person who shows him the warmth of kindness.
Young Satoru hadn’t been deprived of any love. In fact, he received too much of it and was a pampered brat who manipulated his way into getting most of what he wanted.
Yet, when Yuuji came along, somehow his brand of genuine was like nothing Satoru had ever been subjected to before. A year into being Yuuji’s friend, his fondness changed to mild obsesssion and since then, it’s grown into a pining possessiveness that even he has a hard time controlling.
Through the years where he’d rebelled against omega etiquette and adopted the behaviours of an alpha, Yuuji had never batted an eyelash and supported him in his search for self-expression. When he had let himself go during university and partied until his veins seemed to hold alcohol instead of blood, Yuuji faithfully held his hair back as he vomited in the toilet and wiped his lips after with a cool towel.
Whenever he gets insecure about his lack of a sub-gender, Yuuji is there with a reassuring head pat and a gentle grin.
“Hey,” he always says, “presenting isn’t that big of a deal. I would have liked to be a late bloomer too. Enjoy it while you can.”
With Yuuji’s superhuman strength and rambunctious personality, everyone had expected the younger Itadori to be an alpha as well. In fact, teenage Satoru had cried himself to sleep for months wondering why he’d been engaged to the wrong Itadori.
But the year Yuuji turned 19, while visiting the Gojou summer home, he experienced his first heat.
Sitting outside Yuuji’s bedroom door, listening to his wet and frantic moans, Satoru had never felt more self-hatred and despair. Forget his engagement to Sukuna, even if that weren’t the case, omega-omega relationships are heavily frowned upon.
And so, he keeps hoping that his late presentation means something, something not omega.
Because he doesn’t think he can live with the reality of being anyone other than Itadori Yuuji’s alpha.