Work Text:
Satoru’s dreams are never just dreams, anymore.
Tonight, once again, he drowns in disjointed memories of a fond smile and blurry voice— the words are scrambled the same way letters in dreams always are, but the tone is honey on toast, crisp and sticky and sweet. There’s a warm hand on his own, raised and then lowered, clasped together and fingers entangled in a natural transition from a high-five to a lover’s hold. Satoru looks up from his hand in his beloved’s to meet burnished copper—
—and wakes up with tears in his eyes.
The sun has yet to rise. A bird outside his window is singing, too close and too damn loud considering the early hour. The electronic wall clock across his bed blips, 05:20 flashing stark red against the darkness. Satoru blinks, in time with the light, once, twice– and sighs.
Today, too, he wakes to the feeling of something precious slipping through his fingers.
The article in last month’s issue of Kateikako International spent nearly 2,000 words to paint Gojo Satoru in a near-reverent light. A world-renowned sculptor, famous for his works and looks—standing apart from his contemporaries partially because his creations, unlike those of others, are painted reminiscent of ancient Greek statues. His creations tend towards the fantastical, sometimes ethereal and sometimes grotesque, but always realer than life.
The author had spent two-thirds of her article gushing over his works (particularly of the New Human series exhibition three months ago, which included a creature with a volcano head and another with a giant rose, dripping red, on its shoulder). The remaining third, slipping in here and there between the article’s real content, had been used to describe his looks; his icy blue eyes that glittered in the studio light, his–
“‘–bewitching smile reflected in his cup of tea’, oh geez,” Suguru snickers, splayed indolently on the couch as he read through the article. “And here I thought the glittering eyes bit was as bad as it could get.”
Shoko leans over the back of the couch to take a look and snorts. “There’s no mention of his personality, so she probably managed to keep the topic to shop talk.”
“I let you ingrates into my home and all you do is drink my booze, empty out my fridge, and insult me,” Satoru grumbles, dramatically slumped sideways on his favourite armchair. “Some best friends you are.”
“I’m doing you a favour by emptying your alcohol supply and giving you an excuse to buy ones with prettier bottles,” Shoko says. “So you should actually be thanking me.”
“Tell you what, I’ll actually thank you with free reign over two of my best bottles if you call Nanami for me.”
Shoko’s already making her way to Satoru’s liquor cabinet, leaving Suguru to chortle over the article on his own. “Sure, but I take gratitude up front.”
“Fine, but no takebacks!” He tosses his phone onto the remaining empty wingback– Shoko’s designated seat. “Tell him I’ve got a personal project. No commissions for at least a year. Maybe two.”
“Wait, are you starting another series?” Suguru asks over the magazine, laughter cut short. “You just finished New Humans. You don’t usually start a new project so soon after finishing one.”
“I can’t help it,” Satoru sighs. “This one muse won’t leave me alone.” He’d already put in an order for Carrara marble this morning, anyway; the only thing left to do while he waited for it to be delivered to the studio was call his agent to let him know, and he’d already foisted that job off to Shoko.
Maple syrup eyes, warmed with undeserved affection, swim behind his eyelids once more. Unfamiliar guilt battles with equally unfamiliar affection.
If he could just get it all out of his head and into a sculpture…
Even now, Satoru’s hands itch to grab his tools, or a pencil and a sketchbook. Anything, anything to turn his dreams into something tangible.
“I think this one could be my masterpiece.”
The marble block arrives eight days later, and Satoru begins his descent into hermit-dom.
As if in encouragement, the dreams persist as he goes on with his new project, different scenes played with the same single cast member— always only the boy in front of different backdrops, always the boy looking at him with those same eyes. The boy's features gradually become more defined with every dream, but fade away from Satoru’s mind faster after waking; he starts keeping his sketchbook by his bedside to immediately capture the boy's likeness on paper as soon as he opens his eyes.
Pink hair, like a flurry of sakura petals blown in the late spring breeze. A boyish grin. Even teeth peeking between plush lips. Toned muscles, most of the time camouflaged under a strange, gakuran-esque uniform—
—and a red hood around his neck like a hangman’s noose.
Once he had enough sketches to work with, he starts the sculpting process.
Oddly enough, sculpting the statue's body is the easiest part yet. He knows exactly where to carve out every dip and every line— the defined muscles on its thighs, arms, and abdomen less like an idea given form and more like recounting memories through touch. A body he knows better than his own. Satoru shapes every line with the confidence of a man drawing a decades-long lover.
It's when he gets to the face that he runs into a wall. The urge to shape old wounds onto the boy's—the statue's— face (tiny crescents under its eyes, a rough line cutting through an eyebrow, a rough scab on the corner of his mouth) wars with the desire to keep its face untouched and unmarred.
Satoru eventually chooses the latter. Oddly enough, the boy in his dreams now has no scars, save the persistent crescents under his eyes. His smiles become brighter. The unfamiliar guilt sitting heavy in the pit of Satoru’s stomach eases up, just a bit.
(It feels like he’s rewinding time, somehow. Like gently ripping out a wrong stitch to make it right. A mistake unmade.)
The eyes are the next hurdle he has to face— the most difficult part to shape.
Every other feature is perfect except for the eyes, even though they're what he can see most clearly in his dreams every time. How do you draw love out of marble? Satoru has sculpted dozens of fantastical creatures and evoked all sorts of emotions in their viewers, but how does he sculpt adoration? Every goddamn night he dreams of fondness dripping from a boyish voice calling his name and a smile like a hearth fire in winter, visions now as clear as yesterday’s memories, but how can he give shape and colour to affection?
For days, his hands falter millimetres away from the surface of his medium, terrified of imperfection in a way he’s never been before. He stops and starts, stops and starts, the perfectionist in him screaming at every possibility of a mistake he could never take back. As if he’s long sinned enough against this nebulous, loving figure in his head, and any flaw in the sculpture now, of all times, would be the very last straw.
His own voice rings in his head, over and over; the same words, the same tone:
Your penance to him must be perfect.
It takes him an extra fifteen days to finish shaping the eyes; twelve to practice them to perfection on clay and spare blocks in the studio, and three to actually carve them into the boy’s face. Satoru’s hands had never been as steady as they had been in those last three days.
That night, he dreams of the boy throwing his arms around Satoru’s neck. His laugh is giddy, his breath warm on the shell of Satoru’s ear.
This time, he’s close enough for Satoru to finally hear his words clearly:
I’ll see you soon, sensei.
Three months into his project, his entire studio had become the aftermath of an explosion of yellow and bronze. There are paint swatches and pictures of desert sand from every angle, showing every variation of sand colours he could get his hands on. There are printouts of every shade of yellow-to-orange-to-brown in Pantone, pictures of different types of honey, marigolds, dandelions, and buttercups in a bronze vase, and a single sunflower.
He has so many references but none of them fit, and Satoru is maybe, probably, driving himself to madness. He’s never had such a hard time picking colours before; he’d call it a novel experience if the frustration isn’t currently driving him crazy.
The statue he's going to all this trouble for stands idly in the corner, as statues tend to do. Its marble body is coloured completely now– smooth tan skin with freckles scattered lovingly, painstakingly dotted in little bursts. His pink hair—the vivid pink of peach blossoms at the height of their bloom— had also been its own struggle to colour pick for. An off-the-shoulder toga, painted soft cream with gold hems, is carved to drape artfully against marble skin like real cloth. A godling given form, if he does say so himself (and Satoru does). His feet, his hands, his cheeks, his pearly teeth—everything is coloured, bright and lovely and almost, almost perfect.
Almost, because his eyes are still blank, a shock of colourless marble irises amongst the most realistic-looking features of Satoru’s creations—ruining the illusion of life.
Satoru’s getting desperate.
He's never been so invested in a project before, not to this extent. But this statue is different. Yuuji. His- its name will be Yuuji. He even knows what characters he’d use for the name already. 悠 for permanence, and 仁 for benevolence. 悠仁. The figure in his mind is endlessly kind, but he’ll carve him with the body of a fighter, to better protect himself and others. Overflowing benevolence and a steadfast heart, with the ferocity of a tiger when provoked. A fitting name for the boy in his dreams, as if that name was always his to use.
Yuuji will be different, Satoru knows. Yuuji is already different. He's never dreamt of any of his projects this vividly, after all. He’s never dreamt of their stories or named them, or thought about how they’d be if they ever came to life.
He’s never hoped for any of his creations to come to life before.
But Yuuji is different.
He’s become too real, as the days go by. Satoru’s dreams had only become clearer with every chip sloughed off the marble, the afterimages lingering behind his eyelids for hours after.
And he’s so close to finishing him. It. This.
Him.
Yuuji.
Satoru’s guilt and love, turned over and over in his hands, studied from every angle, engraved into marble.
Like a curse, or a wish.
I’m so close.
The dreams still persist, night after night, and the scenes keep changing each time. Yuuji in a kitchen he’s never seen, turning around to welcome him home. Yuuji sitting in front of a low table, clicking metal tongs in front of a steaming hotpot. Yuuji asleep on a couch in a dark room, profile lit in a kaleidoscope of colours spilling from the TV screen. Yuuji laid out under him, laughing and panting. Yuuji, shirtless and supine on a cold metal slab. Yuuji, exhausted but giddy from a hard-won victory. Yuuji smiling, Yuuji jumping in joy, Yuuji pouting, Yuuji, Yuuji, Yuuji.
On the ninety-seventh night, he dreams of Yuuji, pained, looking at him with equal parts hurt and worry. Yuuji, opening his mouth to speak, and Satoru still can’t hear his voice clearly but he knows, he knows what he’s about to say—
How could I ever forget you?
Satoru drops his paintbrush onto the paint-splattered floor with a clatter on the ninety-eighth night.
Yuuji is finally finished, the paint colouring his eyes the very last part to dry. In the end, Satoru had gone for rock honey, painstakingly mixing the paints until the colour came out exactly as he remembered. It had taken him hours, and at one point Satoru had nearly pulled out all his hair in frustration, but everything had been worth it.
The culmination of months of Satoru’s affection and obsession stands in front of him now, and Satoru knows without a doubt that he will never be able to outdo himself ever again.
Yuuji looks alive, his side profile lit by the moonlight spilling in from the palladian windows of the studio. Needle-thin eyelashes fan out from his eyelids, casting barely-there shadows on his cheeks. Elevated by the pedestal, he gazes straight at Satoru with a smile. The same warm curve he’d seen in his dreams, time and time again, except this time Satoru could reach out and touch him.
So he does.
Yuuji’s lips are unyielding, despite the illusion of softness. Satoru presses down with his thumb, gently, reverently, and succeeds only in flattening his own flesh against cold stone. He leans down, nearly resting his forehead on Yuuji’s, hands moving to cup his cheeks.
“I told you to forget me,” Satoru whispers, only half-aware of what he’s saying, “but I never meant to forget you.”
I’m sorry, he wants to beg. Guilt crawls up his throat and hides behind his teeth, waiting to spill out of his mouth. Is it my penance to live in a world without you?
But I don’t want it. I can’t stand it.
Now that I’ve had a taste of what I’ve lost, I can’t live without it.
Help me remember it all. Let me ask for your forgiveness properly.
“Yuuji,” he breathes out, dry lips brushing against chilled marble. “Yuuji.”
Satoru presses his lips to solid stone.
One second passes.
Then another.
And another.
(How many seconds do you think it takes for a curse to take form?)
(How about a miracle?)
On the fourth second, almost like a lie, the lips under Satoru’s own yield and part, pulling its first breath from Satoru’s willing lungs in a gasp. The skin under Satoru’s palms soften, warming up, and eyelashes flutter and brush against his cheeks.
Two pairs of lips part with a wet, muted pop. Satoru pulls away, barely, reluctantly. His hands have, at some point, anchored themselves onto Yuuji’s waist, fingers buried under folds of now-linen.
Yuuji’s palms rest themselves on Satoru’s chest, warm and soft and alive.
Rock honey eyes meet blue, and Yuuji—
—smiles.
“I’m back, Gojo-sensei.”