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I. Kake soba
Nanami hates missions, but he hates returning to the school even more.
He hates the empty room next to his, hates the bone-deep tiredness that always hits him as soon as he’s back. Hates the way he’ll have to wake up tomorrow and train and fight and do it all over again.
He had collapsed onto his bed as soon as he’d returned, slept for five dreamless hours, and it’s almost midnight when he wakes, disorientated and hungry. There’s blood and residual cursed energy still clinging to his uniform, sticking his bangs to his forehead. He supposes he should change his bedsheets tomorrow morning.
For now, he showers, windows open to the sound of late May cicadas. He replaces his uniform with soft, clean clothes, towels the water from his hair.
The school is gloomy and graveyard-silent this late, and Nanami feels like the only person alive as he makes his way to the communal kitchen that only he seems to use these days.
Except for today, apparently.
“Oh,” someone says, when he opens the door, “it’s you.”
It’s Gojo. He’s curled up on the chair beneath the window that (last year, before everything changed beyond recognition) had usually been occupied by Ieiri. She’d blow cigarette smoke out of the window, to placate Gojo and Haibara’s complaints, or, more likely, to avoid the inconvenience of the fire alarm.
“What are you doing up, Nanami?”
The memories overlap strangely like a double exposure. Gojo’s chewing on the stick of a lollipop. The white paper bobs between his lips in a facsimile of Ieiri’s cigarettes.
“I’m hungry,” Nanami says simply. “I didn’t have time to eat when I got back.”
Part of him wants to leave, Gojo’s presence marring the usual quiet sanctity of the kitchen, but he knows he won’t fall asleep with an empty stomach.
“Can I turn the lights on?"
“Yeah, hang on –” Gojo rummages in his pocket, then brandishes his sunglasses triumphantly. “Go ahead.”
Nanami feels a little cruel for the harsh glare of the overhead lights, Gojo squinting even behind his sunglasses, but, unlike Gojo, Nanami hasn’t been blessed with night vision.
Gojo’s gaze prickles at the back of Nanami’s neck, blue eyes tracking his movement as he gathers ingredients from the fridge. He’d been hoping for toast, but they’re out of bread. He’ll make kake soba, simple and quick enough for the lateness of the hour.
“How was it?” Gojo asks. “The mission?”
It had been the first second grade that Nanami has exorcised without help. He’d watched it explode into blood and viscera and felt nothing. When he had returned, Yaga had not congratulated him. Next week, he’d said, they’ll assign him a semi-first grade. Test his limits.
Nanami supposes he should feel proud. He doesn’t.
“Fine,” Nanami says, for want of a better word. “It didn’t kill me.”
He doesn’t have to look to know that Gojo is pouting. “What, no exciting, gory details for your favourite senpai?”
“Missions are never exciting,” Nanami tells him curtly. He slices a mushroom with a little more force than necessary. “Why are you awake?”
Gojo laughs a bitter sort of laugh. “Couldn’t sleep.”
Nanami doesn’t see why that’s funny. Something about Gojo has always unsettled him, made him feel like a small boat on a too-large ocean. He doesn’t like how Gojo is so mercurial in his words and his mood, how the conversation can hurtle off in a direction that Nanami couldn’t have predicted, ripping him away from the comfortable script of responses he keeps in his head.
But Gojo is silent, now, and somehow that’s worse.
“Are you hungry?” Nanami asks, after a few tense minutes of nothing but the tap of his knife against the wooden chopping board, the soft bubbling of water in the saucepan, Gojo’s teeth scraping on paper.
Gojo looks at him, unreadable, before shrugging. “I guess.”
Nanami doesn’t have to have an all-seeing cursed technique to know that Gojo hasn’t been eating enough since Geto left, hasn’t been sleeping enough, either. It’s visible in the shadows of his cheeks and eyes, the slump of his posture.
(Not that Nanami’s been paying attention. Not that it’s any of his business.)
So he turns back to the saucepan with a click of his tongue and says, “When was the last time you ate something without artificial colouring?”
To his relief, Gojo laughs at this. “You’re such an old man, Nanami. You know it’s an urban myth that that shit’s bad for you, right?”
“I’m more concerned that you’re going to get scurvy.”
Gojo laughs again, inexplicably delighted. “Not with reverse curse technique, I won’t.”
Nanami doesn’t believe this – he should ask Ieiri – but that’s beside the point. The soba and scallions join the ginger and the mushrooms and the chilli in the ecosystem of the pot. He turns the water down to a simmer, the heat just high enough to maintain a steady flurry of bubbles.
“I didn’t know you could cook,” Gojo says, and suddenly he’s up in Nanami’s personal space, leaning over the cooktop to peer into the saucepan.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Gojo-san,” Nanami says, instinctively, foolishly.
This close, Nanami can smell the sweetness of Gojo’s cologne, something fruity that might be shampoo. Another thing that Nanami does not like about Gojo: he’s always prying himself into Nanami’s personal space, making the world seem off-kilter.
“Oh?” Gojo’s mouth splits into a grin. The lollipop has stained his lips a poisonous blue. “Is that why you act all stuck-up and boring? Is it all an act? Is my kouhai hiding a deep and horrible secret?
Nanami’s cheeks are hot from the steam. “Of course not. I just mean we’ve hardly spent time together.”
“Well, we’re hanging out now!” Gojo perches on the counter – the added distance a brief respite – and his long legs thud erratically against the cupboard below. “Let’s play a game: getting to know Nanami Kento-kun! Who taught you how to cook?”
Nanami does not like this. Nanami wishes he had turned and left when he’d first seen Gojo in the kitchen. “Why are you suddenly so interested?”
“I’m bored,” Gojo says, “and apparently you harbour mysterious depths. Enlighten me.”
Nanami sighs, and dodges one of Gojo’s swinging legs to open the fridge again. “I taught myself. Do you want egg with your soba?”
“I feel like you’ll give me one even if I refuse.”
The eggs, hard-boiled yesterday, are as cool as river pebbles in Nanami’s palms. “It’s a source of protein. Which, as far as I’m aware, reversed curse technique can’t provide. You still need to eat.”
“You sound like Shoko.”
“Ieiri-san is usually right.”
“Ieiri-san is cheating her way into a medical degree. She’ll tell you anything.” Gojo pokes at Nanami’s shoulder as soon as he’s back within reach. “So, okay, you cook. Do you have any other hobbies?”
“Gojo-san,” Nanami says, as he rolls each hard-boiled egg on the countertop, the shell spiderwebbing, “it’s starting to feel like you’re interrogating me.”
There’s a lapse in the continuous thump-thumping of Gojo’s boots against the wood. The water hisses under the saucepan lid.
“Sorry,” Gojo says. “I guess I’ve never had to do this before. Get to know someone, I mean. You make it kind of difficult.”
Nanami doesn’t understand, not really. Isn’t it always supposed to be difficult, getting to know someone? Even with Haibara, friendship had still sometimes felt like solving a crossword that he didn’t have all the clues for. He still doesn’t know what Haibara’s favourite colour had been.
(Orange, if he had to guess. He can see Haibara’s hands, tangerine peel staining the whites of his nails, each segment like a piece of the sun that he’d carved away to hand to Nanami. Perhaps Nanami is projecting.)
“My favourite colour is blue,” he tells Gojo, now, like some kind of retrospective olive branch. “I do enjoy cooking, but I enjoy reading more, and I haven’t had the time since being here. When I was younger, I wanted to join a band, but I don’t have any musical talent. My mother paid for guitar lessons. I was sent here before I could attend them.”
It’s too much exposure, suddenly, and he bites down on the words so hard that his jaw clicks.
Gojo blinks at him, and then a slow smile spreads onto his face, like he’s just been given a particularly intriguing gift. It makes Nanami feel a little like a prey animal, and he braces himself for the teasing that’s about to follow.
But all Gojo says is, “Shoko can play guitar. You should ask her to teach you.”
Nanami wants to ask Gojo about himself, to remedy the sudden informational imbalance. But the soba has cooked to perfection, and he’s too exhausted and too hungry to ask.
“The food is ready,” is all he says, and Gojo watches as he divides the broth and the noodles and the vegetables between two bowls.
They don’t bother moving to the table; a midnight bowl of soba as informal enough as it is. Gojo remains on the counter, the bowl surely too hot against the skin of his palms.
“This is really good,” Gojo says with his mouth full, before Nanami can even warn him that it’ll be too hot to eat. Gojo doesn’t seem to care, chopsticks already bringing another steaming bundle of soba and egg to his mouth. “Seriously. Thanks, Nanami.”
As inconsequential as it is, Nanami can’t help but bask a little, privately, in the sincerity of the compliment.
“Don’t speak with your mouth full,” is all he says.
Gojo sticks his tongue out at him, childish. It’s still stained blue from the lollipop. “Stop acting like I’m your kouhai. Respect your elders.”
Nanami is very, very tired. “Just be quiet and eat your soba, Gojo-san.”
They eat in as close to a companionable silence that is possible with Gojo Satoru in the room. Nanami wonders if this is the first time that either of them has shared a meal since Haibara and Geto were both torn out of their lives, in distinct but devastating ways. Ieiri has been shut in her room for weeks on end, studying for the medical school application looming at the end of the summer; the new first years keep to themselves in a small and anxious flock.
Nanami wonders if Gojo has also been lonely. He doesn’t ask.
“You know,” Gojo says, as Nanami’s on his way out of the door, bowls and saucepan drying soapily on the counter, “you don’t need to worry about me.”
Nanami glances at him, caught off guard. His hand is already on the door handle, tensed for escape. “I’m sorry?”
“You’ve been looking at me funny. Since… you know. You do a weird thing with your mouth, like you’re mad at me, but Shoko said you’re worrying.”
“I see.” Nanami hadn’t realised he had been doing anything. Hadn't realised Ieiri and Gojo had been observing him, either.
“I’m going to be alright. I always am.”
“I know you are,” Nanami says, and thinks he believes it.
Gojo gazes at him for slightly too long, eyes bright under the fluorescent lights. “You should look after yourself, too, you know. Not that I care, or anything.”
It’s that olive branch, again. Nanami wonders how many times they will pass it back and forth before one of them accepts it.
“You don’t need to worry about me either, Gojo-san.”
“I know,” Gojo says, and then, “Goodnight, Nanami.”
II. Mikkusu sando
“You’re leaving.”
It’s more of an accusation than anything else. Gojo’s voice is laced with a bitterness that Nanami isn’t sure he’s heard before.
Nanami sighs. He doesn’t look up from the folded shirt in his hands. “Yaga-sensei wasn’t supposed to tell you.”
He’s kneeling on the floor of his room (his horrible, hated, empty room), collating the few things that he owns into a single suitcase and a singe cardboard box. His clothes, a couple of books he’d never read, a black teapot that had belonged to his mother. A bracelet that Haibara had bought him, the first mission they ever went on, as if it was some kind of vow.
Nanami had thought he’d own more by seventeen, have some other proof that he’d been alive.
“So you were just planning to disappear without saying goodbye?”
Nanami looks up this time, with a frown. “Of course not. I wanted to tell you myself.”
“Well,” Gojo says, arms folded, tall and miserable and half-silhouetted in the doorway. “I guess it was going to be shit hearing it either away.”
“It was,” Nanami agrees. He doesn’t apologise.
“You’re leaving tomorrow morning.”
“I am.”
“Right.” Gojo’s mouth works strangely, like he’s trying to work out what to do with it. Eventually, it settles on a smile that only seems a little forced. “Let’s go out today, then. With Shoko. For old times' sake.”
The ‘old times’ barely exist, only a sporadic handful of events in Nanami’s memory. Haibara’s ghost clings to each of them like a curse. He tries to compartmentalise. He tries not to reminisce.
“I’m busy, Gojo-san.”
“It doesn’t have to be long,” Gojo wheedles. “Think of Shoko. She’s going to miss you.”
Nanami has always been disappointingly and disgustingly susceptible to sweet-talking. "Fine."
An hour later, he finds himself by the lake on the campus, Ieiri stretched on her back in the grass beside him, cigarette dangling between two fingers. Gojo’s feet are in the water, and he’s talking about swimming, but the air is heady with August heat, the scent of the cypress trees, the hum of insects. None of them really want to return for swimwear.
They share the sandwiches that Nanami had thrown hastily together. The bread is slightly stale and the ratio of ham to lettuce to mustard isn’t quite right, but the other two don’t seem to mind.
They've never spent time together like this, just the three of them. It feels almost farcical, a pretence at being normal students, a normal summer. Geto and Haibara’s absence is palpable. If Nanami squints, he can almost see Haibara on the far side of the lake, head resting against the tree they used to sit beneath as he gazed up into the high branches.
Ieiri chain-smokes four cigarettes before she makes the announcement.
“I was accepted into medical school, by the way. Got the letter yesterday. I wasn’t going to tell you until I’d paid the fees, finalised everything, but since Nanami-kun’s leaving…” She shrugs. “I guess you both should know.”
“Congratulations, Ieiri-san,” Nanami murmurs.
“Yeah,” Gojo says. He frowns at his sandwich, and then, with a lightness that doesn’t match the words, adds, “I can’t believe you’re both leaving me.”
“It’s only two years,” Ieiri says, more gentle than usual. “I’ll be back before you realise I’m gone.”
Nanami stares at the lake, at the tree across the lake, at the fragile clouds above the tree.
“And you’ll visit, won’t you, Nanami?”
There’s a warning in Ieiri's voice. “Leave it, Satoru.”
A moment of silence. The lake, the tree, the clouds. A rustle of grass as Gojo gets to his feet.
“I’m going to swim,” Gojo says. “It’s too damn hot today.”
He strips to his boxers with little ceremony, dives smoothly into the dark surface of the lake. A gannet hitting saltwater. Nanami’s chest feels as cold as if he was the one submerged.
“The sandwiches are nice,” Ieiri says.
“They’re not,” Nanami says. “They’re too dry. There wasn't enough mustard.”
Gojo has been underwater for too long. Part of him wishes that Gojo had pulled him into the lake after him.
“Don’t let him get to you,” Ieiri says. Her hand twitches, as if she’s about to put it on Nanami’s shoulder. Instead, she plucks another cigarette from the packet, lights it. Offers it to Nanami. “I don’t resent you for leaving. Hell, I’d do the same if I could, but they need me here more than they do anywhere else.”
Nanami accepts the cigarette. They both watch the bubbles that rise to the surface of the lake, seconds before Gojo does, gasping for breath. His hair is translucent with the water, plastered to his cheeks.
“It’s fucking freezing!” Gojo shouts. “I think I’m going to die!”
“He’s going to be fine,” Ieiri says, half-exasperated, half-fond. “Believe me, he’ll have forgotten about you by the end of the week.”
Nanami exhales smoke, watches it drift up towards the cypress branches. “Is that supposed to be comforting?”
“I don’t know. Remembering rarely is, is it?”
III. Niku-dango
A year passes, and then another, and another. Nanami tries not to remember.
He graduates from his finance course without failure and without flying colours, a non-descript grade on a non-descript piece of paper. He slips into the routine of his new, mind-numbing job with a begrudging acceptance of circumstance. He remembers, he tries not to remember.
Nanami is good at numbers. He is good at not taking bullshit from coworkers. He is good at catching the train to work on time.
He does not like any of these things.
Begrudging acceptance. Nanami supposes it’s part of adulthood, finding the smaller joys of life have slowly drained away, like peppermint gum that has been chewed for too long.
Two years into the job, and the mental list of things Nanami does not like grows longer and longer until it’s curling up on itself like an old receipt.
He does not like his job.
He does not like working late, although he finds himself doing it more often than not these days.
He does not like socialising with his colleagues.
He does not like sandwiches from the konbini (cold, bland, and they never get the proportion of ingredients right).
(He’d been planning to cook more, when he’d first moved into the apartment. Used his new and substantial paycheck to arm himself with new saucepans and a rice cooker and a lovely set of knives. But he’s busy, and when he’s not busy, he’s exhausted, and when he’s not exhausted, he’s busy. He suffers the poorly made sandwiches from the konbini.)
Nanami celebrates his twenty-second birthday at his desk, moving someone else’s money to someone else’s company. He receives five phone calls from clients. They bleed into his lunch break. By the end of the fifth call, there is no time for him to buy himself food.
The day drags on.
He declines his coworkers’ invitation to the izakaya, the refusal part of his usual routine. Then, however, instead of staying at the office until the room is dark and his eyes are burning, he leaves at five o’clock to buy groceries.
It’s July, and the early evening sun is still hot in the sky, but he wants to make something warm, something familiar.
(He and Haibara had made niku-dango, once, early on. They’d flung pieces of raw meat at each other with the childish disgust and laughter of two boys who didn’t know how truly short their time together would be.)
Pork, onion, sake, ginger, egg. The grocery store is cool, and he lingers by the vegetable aisle like he has all the time in the world, wondering what he could make with tomatoes, or aubergine, or daikon radish. He buys a bottle of wine, impulsively. Regrets the extravagance on the way home.
He’s halfway through unpacking his purchases when he feels it. A surge of cursed energy, alarmingly close and familiar. It’s followed by a knock at the door.
“You’ve got to be joking,” Nanami says.
Another knock.
Nanami takes a deep breath, closes his eyes for just a second, and goes to open the door.
“Nanami! I was starting to get worried you weren't at home, that you’d actually made some other friends!”
It’s Gojo, because of course it’s Gojo. He seems taller, even, than in Nanami’s memory. An apparition from the past that Nanami’s been running from, pale skin and dark clothes and bright eyes behind dark shades. He’s holding a bottle of wine, inexplicably, in one hand.
“What are you doing here?” Nanami demands, in lieu of a greeting.
“I missed you too, Nanami!” Gojo says, sing-song. He draws out each syllable of Nanami’s name like they’re a piece of candy he’s rolling around on his tongue. “I thought I’d drop by to wish you a happy birthday, of course!”
“I didn’t – you weren’t supposed to – how did you get my address?”
Gojo steps past him into the apartment with all the easy confidence of someone who is used to getting what he wants. “Your file, obviously. And I brought you a gift,” he adds, waving the wine at Nanami. “I didn’t know what you’d like, but Shoko said she’d have it if you didn’t want it. Your haircut suits you, by the way. Very professional.”
Nanami inhales, exhales. “Gojo-san, with all due respect, I don’t think you should be here.”
“Why not?” Gojo counters. “It’s been long enough for both of us, don’t you think?”
Nanami stares at him, so incongruous and familiar in his barely-lived-in apartment, a fragment of his old life amongst the new. “Why now?”
Gojo shrugs. “I had the time. Which is rare, by the way, no thanks to you. Someone had to take on your assignments after you left, and it’s not like we’re overrun with eager new recruits. You know Yaga had been planning on promoting you to first grade?”
Nanami does not allow himself to feel guilty. He doesn’t allow himself to feel anything. “That doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It doesn’t,” Gojo agrees easily. “I guess you’re better suited to whatever it is you’re doing now, anyway.”
“I suppose.”
“You look tired.”
Nanami is tired. “Why are you really here, Gojo-san?”
“It’s your birthday. And if you’re just hanging out all alone and depressing, which it looks like you are, I thought I’d take you out to dinner. My treat.”
“I’ve already bought ingredients,” Nanami says, stupidly. “For dinner.”
“Even better!” Gojo throws himself onto Nanami’s couch with more ease than Nanami’s ever felt himself in his own apartment. “I didn’t really want to pick out a restaurant, anyway.”
Nanami could kick him out. He could get angry. Both of these responses would be very reasonable, he thinks. But the alternative is dinner alone, again. As much as he hates to admit it, he doesn’t want to do that.
“Fine,” Nanami says. “You can stay, on two conditions. First, you don’t get in my way. Second, you don’t try and convince me to come back.”
Gojo clasps a hand to his chest. “I swear my life on it. What’s for dinner?”
Niku-dango is not a complicated recipe. It’s one of the first meals that Nanami ever learnt to prepare. But Gojo watches with interest as Nanami prepares the pork mince, adds the sake and diced onion and ginger, the same curiosity that Nanami remembers from before.
“Don’t tell me you still haven’t learnt how to cook,” Nanami says, drily, after a few minutes. Nanami cooking, Gojo watching. The scrutiny would make him uncomfortable if it didn’t feel so nostalgic.
“I don’t have time,” Gojo says, which Nanami sympathises with, and then, less so, “Though I imagine I’d be a great cook. I wouldn’t want to show you up.”
Nanami just rolls his eyes, pours himself a second glass of the wine Gojo had brought (nicer and more expensive than the one he’d bought himself, softening the guilt of the expenditure). “You haven’t changed much.”
“Why,” Gojo says, with a saccharine smile, “did you think I was already perfect?”
“On the contrary. You’re as annoying as you were then.”
Well, something has shifted, but maybe it’s both of them, relative to each other. Gojo seems more stable than he did when he was eighteen and wild and heartbroken. Nanami, meanwhile, feels like tectonic plates had started drifting beneath him the day Haibara died, and never stopped. One wrong step, and the ground could open up.
“Wash your hands,” Nanami says. “You can help me form the meatballs.”
There’s something surreal about it. Nanami is twenty-two and still alive and drinking expensive wine, and Gojo Satoru is sitting at the table in his apartment. The sauce is simmering on the stove, and Gojo’s pale brows are furrowed in concentration as he rolls pork and onion and corn-starch between his palms. Gojo is blessedly not making innuendos about the meatballs. Gojo is talking about people Nanami hasn’t allowed himself to think about in years.
Gojo ticks them all off his fingers as he talks.
“Shoko graduated from medical school, of course, and she’s working full-time in the infirmary now. And I think she’s trying to quit smoking again, but God knows with her. Ijichi – hey, do you remember Ijichi Kiyotaka? The forgettable one with the glasses? He’s an assistant director now. Yaga has become a nightmare, recently, I don’t know if it’s because he’s my boss now, but he’s driving me to madness, seriously.”
Five years ago, Nanami would have scoffed at the idea of Gojo, of all people, becoming a teacher, but it’s almost believable now. He’s certainly good at talking.
“Didn’t Ieiri-san want to accompany you tonight?” Nanami doesn’t care too much about the others, but he misses Ieiri, he realises.
Gojo wrinkles his nose at a misshapen meatball, before rolling it back into a perfect sphere. “She was convinced you’d kick us out. I’m pretty sure she owes me money, now.”
It’s strange to think that they’ve spoken about him, that Nanami might have left any sort of hole in his absence.
He finishes his glass, and says, “You did a good job with the meatballs.”
Gojo beams. “I told you I could be an excellent chef if I put my mind to it.”
The lilting of Gojo’s voice washes over Nanami as he heats oil in the pan, soon accompanied by the sizzling and the aroma of cooking pork. He serves the meat with rice and salad – the daikon radishes he’d noticed in the store, cucumber, sesame seeds.
The hum of pleasure that Gojo makes as he bites into the niku-dango is reward enough for the unexpected evening.
“Damn it, Nanami,” Gojo says. His eyes are wide and very blue. Nanami isn’t sure when he removed his sunglasses. “If you’re trying to make me fall in love with you, you can just admit it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nanami mutters. “Anyone can make niku-dango.”
“Whatever. I'm sure no one could make it like you. This might be the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.”
Nanami attempts to focus on his own food, but Gojo finds a way into his space, somehow, even with the table between them. He steals a meatball from Nanami’s plate with a deft movement of chopsticks, leans across to try the wine, predictably pulls a face. He does not stop talking, even while eating. This, Nanami had remembered. He looks away, resolutely, when Gojo licks sauce from his fingers.
It should be annoying. It is annoying. If Nanami’s more relaxed than he’s been in years, that’s nobody’s business but his own. If Gojo’s exaggerated praise makes his face heat, well. He can blame the wine.
“I should’ve brought you a cake,” Gojo ponders, when their plates are empty and the bottle is almost finished. “Although you don’t like cake, do you?”
“Not much,” Nanami says. He’s pleasantly tipsy, warm with the wine and the meal. “If I knew you were going to ambush me, I would’ve made something for dessert.”
Gojo shakes his head. “No, I don’t want anything else. I guess I just wanted to make sure you were happy here.”
The words take a second to make any sense, Gojo's brain making connections that Nanami's struggles to follow.
“I am happy,” Nanami says, slowly. And he is, he thinks. Right now, at least.
“Hmm. Are you sure?”
Nanami sighs. “Gojo-san, please don’t make me repeat myself. You know I can’t do what you want me to.”
Gojo’s gaze is searching, but then he shrugs. “Suit yourself. Just… you know, whatever. I should head home.”
Nanami walks him to the door, suddenly feeling too stiff and formal. He wants, irrationally, to ask Gojo to stay, but he knows that request would be just as unreasonable as the unspoken one that Gojo has asked of him. In many ways, he supposes it’s the same question.
“It was good to see you, Nanami,” Gojo says. He sounds genuine. “Thanks for the meal.”
“Thank you for visiting,” Nanami says. “Although I would appreciate a warning before you show up next time.”
“Three to five business days in advance,” Gojo promises, with a quick and blinding smile, and then he disappears before Nanami can even open his mouth to say goodbye.
Nanami wakes up the following morning with a headache, an empty apartment, and the sense that one of the fault lines has opened up beneath him, after all.
IV. Soufflé pancakes
And, of course, Nanami is dragged back into the whole mess of it. The pendulum swings again, pulling him back towards the epicentre of his old life, like the sea towards the moon.
Gojo laughs at him down the phone, because he’s a prick, and Nanami misses him so badly that it aches.
“I imagine that you and Ieiri-san have bet money on me again.”
Gojo’s glee is audible even through the crackling line. “Not this time. We both knew you’d change your mind eventually.”
Nanami hangs up, and considers throwing his phone into the passing traffic.
On paper, it’s an objectively bad decision. Sorcery earns him a fraction of the wages from his old company. That distant dream of a warm country and an ocean view is pushed back into the unobtainable. Not that it matters, because Nanami will probably be dead by the time he’s thirty.
But he hates sorcery less, and that is what makes him return.
Nanami had left the school before formally graduating, a year short of a qualification, but Yaga doesn’t seem to care. They’re short enough on professional sorcerers that Nanami’s return isn’t warmly welcomed, exactly, but it’s welcomed. A few weeks of training and assessment and he’s in the field again, with his shiny new promotion, grade one, like a brand on his forehead.
Nanami is good with numbers, but he’s better at killing. He doesn’t know what that says about himself, and he doesn’t care to give it too much thought.
(“Congratulations,” Gojo had said, slipping the letter onto Nanami’s new desk, in his new office. “How does it feel to be one of the most powerful sorcerers in Tokyo?”
“Underwhelming,” Nanami had said, flatly, and Gojo had laughed.
“Would it kill you to be proud of yourself?”
“Please get out of my office.”)
He doesn’t see Gojo much. Both of their schedules are busy, and Gojo’s even worse than his, always in high demand.
Still. Gojo smirks at him across the table during staff meetings, apparently constantly and smugly amused by Nanami’s presence. He waves at him in the corridor, appears in his office at inconvenient times to complain at length about Yaga or the higher-ups or jujutsu society as a whole. Shows up at his apartment, sometimes, that earlier promise of advance notice forgotten. But then he's always whisked away again, to the next mission, to the next job, the next meeting.
It's not like Nanami had been expecting anything different.
Nanami spends more time with Ieiri, in one way or another. Either he’s in the infirmary, letting her roll her eyes at him as she sorts out whatever blood-stained mess he’s got himself into (“You don’t make my job easy for me, Nanami," like it's his fault that the work they do is shit), or drinking with her at her favourite izakaya, or taking a smoke break under the awning of the infirmary building.
(He hadn’t smoked as a salaryman, always only a social smoker, always too financially cautious. Now, he finds it gives him something to do with his hands when they’re not wrapped around a weapon. There’s a sort of companionship, at least, in the way that he and Ieiri share the same vices.)
(“You really need to start buying your own cigarettes,” she always mutters. “You’re lucky I like you.”)
Things are slow for a few years, and suddenly they speed up.
There is the threat of war, and Geto Suguru’s reappearance, and Nanami sees even less of Gojo than he had before.
In Kyoto, in December, Nanami Kento performs four consecutive Black Flashes. The record is meaningless to him.
In Tokyo, the same night, Gojo Satoru eliminates the curse user (the classmate, the friend, the memory) Geto Suguru.
Nanami only hears the news from the report that Yaga hands to him. A large proportion of the useable courtyards and buildings of the school are nothing but rubble now. Yaga’s office remains unscathed, but Nanami’s own office has lost its external wall.
“Congratulations on the new record,” Yaga says.
“Thank you,” Nanami says, mechanically.
Yaga looks at him with something that could be sympathy. “This is going to be a difficult time for us all. If you ever need to discuss anything, Nanami-san –”
“I won’t,” Nanami says, “but thank you.”
He accepts Ieiri's invitation for drinks, not because he wants to drink, particuarly, but because he’s not willing to spend the long winter evening alone. She’s invited Gojo, too, apparently, but he’s nowhere to be seen. They’re both subdued and have little energy for conversation. The bags under Ieiri's eyes look like bruises.
“Is there going to be a funeral?”
Ieiri swirls the beer in her glass, stares into the resulting flurries of foam. “The corpse was missing.”
She says the words clinically. The corpse, like it could be anyone.
“His allies?”
Ieiri shrugs. “Probably. God knows. Even if they bury him, I don’t think he’s ever going to rest in peace.” She drains the rest of her drink. “I should warn you. Satoru doesn’t know about all of that. It’s best if he thinks Suguru is nice and safe in the Geto family grave."
Nanami frowns at his own drink. “Have you spoken to him yet?”
“I saw him yesterday. I think he’s coping, but you know how he is. It can be difficult to tell. He’s throwing all his energy into helping the Okkotsu kid.”
Gojo arrives eventually, armed with a too-bright smile and an old pair of sunglasses. “Well, you both look dreadful!”
“Gojo-san,” Nanami greets him, cautiously.
“Where have you been?”
“Kenya,” Gojo says, as if that explains anything. “Is anyone going to buy their travel-weary senior a drink, or are you both just going to sit there?”
“Pay for it your damn self,” Ieiri mutters, but she buys him a melon soda, orders a side of salted edamame and another two beers, although Nanami has barely touched his first.
If Gojo is putting on an act, it’s a convincing one. He launches into an elaborate and confusing story about his journey, about Okkotsu Yuta, about the sorcery community in Kenya, and how they could adopt some of the administrative practices here.
It wears Ieiri out, and Nanami can see it in the way her face shutters off. She makes an excuse when her drink is finished, something about an early commitment tomorrow, and leaves the two of them alone.
The air shifts, almost imperceptibly. Gojo lets his head thump against the sticky table, shoulders sagging, like a puppet with cut strings.
“Gojo-san –”
“I’m fine, Nanami, I’m just tired. Don’t ask me about anything, okay?”
Nanami hadn’t planned on asking. He needs to say something, though, before Gojo seals everything up within himself and he misses his chance. “I’m sorry this has happened the way it has.”
Gojo’s voice is muffled. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Nanami is no good at this sort of thing. He carries his own grief like a shadow, always there, but he’s so accustomed to it by now that it’s easy to ignore, until the sun catches it at a certain angle.
“Fine. I don’t want to talk about it, either.”
Gojo glances up at him through the hair falling into his eyes. His sunglasses are crooked on his nose. He looks too young, suddenly, to be who he is. “Let’s go somewhere else. I hate places like this.”
They leave their unfinished drinks on the empty table, and Gojo takes Nanami’s wrist, the contact like an electric shock through his body without the buffer of Infinity, and then the world moves sickeningly around them.
When the universe reforms, they’re in the living room of Nanami’s apartment.
“Sorry,” Gojo says, with a twist of his lips. “I guess I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”
They always seem to be returning to each other, Nanami thinks. An endless game of push-and-pull, and he isn’t sure who’s winning.
Gojo doesn’t let go of Nanami’s wrist.
“What do you need, Gojo-san?”
“You know what I need,” Gojo says, and Nanami finds that he does.
He leans forward, or maybe Gojo pulls him forward, but either way their lips are crushing together and Nanami is kissing Gojo Satoru, of all people. What is worse is that it doesn’t even surprise him.
It’s undignified, at first, too much teeth and tongue, Gojo’s sunglasses pressed uncomfortably into Nanami’s nose. But then Gojo’s hands tangle into Nanami’s tie, into his hair, and they fall into the rhythm of each other. Gojo tastes like melon soda and salt and he kisses Nanami like he’s been starving for this, and perhaps he has been. Perhaps they both have.
“What do you need?” Nanami repeats, dizzy with the rush of it all, with the warmth of Gojo’s lips on his neck.
“Touch me,” Gojo says, so Nanami does.
Somehow, they make it into Nanami’s bedroom, and Gojo’s pulling off his own shirt, undoing the buttons on Nanami’s. Gojo lets Nanami take control, in a way Nanami hadn’t expected, hadn’t even allowed himself to consider. Gojo is pliant and trembling beneath Nanami’s touch. He gasps, a sharp inhale, when Nanami runs his fingers down the smooth, unscarred skin of his torso. His breath hitches again when Nanami holds him down by the hips.
“Please,” Gojo breathes, “Nanami, please, please – ”
This can’t be healthy for either of them, Nanami knows, but there’s a desperation to all of it, an inevitability. Like the hurtling collision of two stars, like a haemostasis, like flesh meeting over a healing wound.
He feels drunk from the noises Gojo is making, from the drag of his teeth across his skin, from his name in Gojo’s mouth, and he realises he has needed this ever since he was twenty-two and lonely and miserable. Gojo beneath him, the void of his pupils, the night swallowing the sky.
“That’s good,” Gojo is saying, again and again, and this is when Nanami realises it’s over for him, that this will ruin him forever. “You’re so good, always so good for me, Nanami, fuck.”
It’s too much. Nanami sticks two fingers in Gojo’s mouth, just to shut him up. He’s unprepared for the heat that flashes through him when Gojo’s perfect lips close around his fingers and suck, the rasp of his tongue against Nanami’s fingernails. It’s over for Nanami infuriatingly and humiliatingly soon afterwards, and Gojo follows him, his fingers digging hard bruises into the muscle of Nanami’s arms.
“You’re so full of surprises,” Gojo says, not even a minute later, drawling the words. “Every time I think I’ve got my head around you, you prove me wrong. Who would have thought, huh?”
Nanami closes his eyes. “Do you ever stop talking?
“I can think of several ways that you could make me,” Gojo says, “but it seems that you’ve already figured some of them out.”
Nanami regrets everything that has led his life towards this moment, towards this man. “You’re insufferable,” he says, without vitriol. Even the regret is half-hearted.
Gojo hums. “You know, you say that a lot for someone who seems to quite enjoy suffering me. Or neither of us would be here.”
He’s right. Nanami will not admit to it.
There’s a few minutes of silence, and Nanami thinks Gojo has fallen asleep. He’s debating how much he’ll hate himself in the morning if he doesn’t shower now, when there’s a movement beside him.
“Goodnight, Nanami,” Gojo says.
Nanami turns onto his side, to face him. Gojo is only inches away, but his face is almost indiscernible in the darkness. He knows Gojo can see him, knows that Six Eyes will be cataloguing every frown, every breath, every movement of his eyelashes. It doesn’t make him as uneasy as it should, not anymore.
“Goodnight, Gojo-san,” he says. “Get some sleep.”
Nanami’s own sleep is restless. He dreams of a dark ocean, of someone drowning. Maybe him, maybe someone else.
He’s surprised to find Gojo still beside him, when the cold light of morning spills in through uncovered windows. He’d assumed, perhaps unfairly, that Gojo would slip away during the night, leaving Nanami to hold onto a memory that neither of them would talk about again.
But Gojo is here, sleep-rumpled and vulnerable, if he could ever be described as that. He stirs as Nanami does, squints at him through white lashes, a lazy grin on his face.
“You stayed,” Nanami says, and Gojo reaches out to sleepily push the hair from Nanami’s eyes.
“So did you.”
Nanami huffs, daring to press a kiss against the inside of Gojo’s wrist, foolishly embarrassed by the quiet intimacy of the act. “This is my bed.”
“You know what I mean. Hey, guess what, I slept pretty well for once. Maybe I just needed a change of scenery. You kinda snore, though.”
A muscle twitches in Nanami’s jaw. “You are terrible at sharing bedsheets.”
Gojo laughs, and wriggles closer to Nanami. "I was cold." He presses a cool cheek against Nanami’s shoulder. “You’re warm.” He somehow contrives to tangle their limbs together until Nanami’s not sure he’ll ever be able to extract himself. “Mhm. This is nice.”
It is nice. Another thing that Nanami is not quite ready to confess to.
He doesnt know whether to be reassured or concerned be Gojo's lighter mood this morning. All he knows is that this isn’t going to be straightforward for either of them.
“What do you want for breakfast?”
“Ooh, can I choose anything?”
“Within reason.”
Gojo hums, tracing a nail across Nanami’s chest. “Pancakes, with whipped cream. And maple syrup.”
Nanami has never bought maple syrup in his life. “Fine. Although you’ll have to let me get up. I’ll need to buy the ingredients.”
“This is why you’re my favourite, Nanami,” Gojo says, sweetly, and Nanami can still hear the words like honey in his head, forty-five minutes later, syrup and strawberries in the shopping basket.
V. Yakiniku
“The meat is clearly the most important part of a barbeque,” Itadori is arguing outside, each word emphasised by the stab of a skewer into the air. “Everyone knows this. Is this like, a countryside thing? Do they not have meat in wherever-the-hell?”
Kugisaki is glowering at him. “Of course there's meat, idiot, you’re missing the point. I just think the experience is more than the – hey, hey, watch out with that!”
“Is it safe to leave them unattended?” Nanami asks. He is mostly unconcerned, although he would like to avoid Kugisaki losing an eye under his supervision.
Gojo snorts. “If they kill each other I might get another day off. Maybe even two.”
The sun is warm through the open window of Gojo’s kitchen. Gojo is at his familiar place on the counter, and Nanami is slicing vegetables – onion, green pepper, mushroom, aubergine.
Nanami tuts. “Don’t joke about that."
“Days off are nothing to joke about,” Gojo agrees, and slides off the counter to wrap his arms around Nanami’s waist from behind, to press a kiss to the side of his neck.
Nanami’s knife does not falter in its rhythm. “Careful. The kids might notice.”
“They won’t.”
He’s right. Outside, Kugisaki has somehow obtained the skewer, and Itadori is running and swearing. Fushiguro watches them both from the table, impassive.
Nanami should probably intervene.
“Besides,” Gojo adds, “I think they’ve already worked out what’s going on.”
Nanami wishes he had worked out what’s going on. They both know they need to have a conversation.
Not now. Teeth gently replace lips above Nanami’s carotid artery, and Nanami elbows Gojo away before he can leave any visible damage. “Do you ever stop?”
Gojo’s grin is wide. “Imagine how miserable you’d be if I did.”
“You’re always so presumptuous,” Nanami says, setting the knife down, and Gojo's grin widens when he realises he's won. Nanami lets Gojo pull him closer, to work his hands under Nanami’s shirt, over his spine. “Why are you always assuming you know what I want?”
“Someone’s got to let you know,” Gojo says, lightly. He leans down, just slightly, to kiss him, both languid and hungry. It’s embarrassing how, even now, after over a year of this, the taste of him still makes Nanami’s brain falter.
“I know what I want,” Nanami says, pulling away, and Gojo raises his eyebrows behind the blindfold.
“Oh? And what’s that?”
“Nanamin,” Itadori calls, drawing out the final syllable as he skids through the open door. “I think the grill is hot enough if you want to…” He trails off, eyes flicking between the two of them. “Sorry, am I interrupting something?”
Nanami picks the knife back up, face hot. He manages to keep his expression somewhere near neutral. “Not at all. We’ll be just a minute, Itadori-kun.”
“Great!” Itadori’s already on his way out of the door. Nanami’s never seen him stand still for more than a minute. “The uh, the skewer might be in the lake, though.”
Nanami sighs. “It’s fine, there are more. Satoru can retrieve it later.”
Gojo squawks in outrage. “Hey, why me?”
Nanami glares at him, once he's sure Itadori is out of earshot. “Consider it an apology for nearly embarrassing us both in front of my student.”
Itadori is a good student, even if Nanami is not formally his teacher. He listens to Nanami’s instructions with wide and earnest eyes.
“It’s straightforward,” Nanami tells him. “As long as the meat isn’t directly above the charcoal, it won’t burn quickly. The aim is to cook it all the way through, rather than to cook it as quickly as possible. That’s how you end up with food poisoning.”
Itadori applies himself to grilling with the same determined enthusiasm that he brings to battle. It’s strange to think of him as the vessel for a dangerous curse user, his tongue sticking out as he pokes at the beef slices. Only fifteen, and yet his death sentence is written out. There are grass stains on his knees.
Nanami tells himself he is good at compartmentalising. He doesn’t let his gaze linger on the tree across the lake, not anymore.
“I knew you’d like Yuji,” Gojo murmurs, voice low enough that only Nanami will be able to hear. “I'm glad. He needs guidance from someone like you. Someone steady.”
Nanami doesn’t know if he is that person, but he supposes he can try to be.
There is a lot that Nanami Kento wants, and a lot of it is selfish. He wants it to be late summer forever. He wants the beginning of the cicada season. He wants the sunlight in Gojo’s kitchen to sink into his ribcage and light up the darker spaces inside there. He still wants that house by the sea, but now he doesn't want to be there alone.
He wants Itadori Yuji to live forever, for these students to have something that he didn’t.
Some of these things, he can have. The rest he will have to let go of.
That doesn’t matter right now. It’s late summer, and the sun is reflecting off the lake, and he is here, after all.