Work Text:
-Before-
The crush of the grind isn’t just on Nanami’s body. It’s his mind and his drive that he feels slowly flattening. Knowing it’ll come to an end with an easy life is only barely enough motivation, but the alternative is going back to being a sorcerer, and there’s simply no universe in which that outcome is the better option.
That thought is tattooed onto Nanami’s frontal lobe as Gojou Satoru intercepts him on his way to the office one day.
“Nanami,” Gojou says, half-smiling like it hasn’t been five years since they spoke. “Any chance I could borrow you for a quick job?”
“No,” Nanami replies, voice curt, expression flat. “I have a meeting today.”
Gojou laughs, sliding his hands into his pockets and falling into step beside Nanami. “Ah, should have known you’d say that. You look all professional.”
Gojou lifts the edge of his wrap up to peer at Nanami with one piercing blue eye.
“I probably can’t afford you anymore,” he says, still smiling as he fixes the wrap back in place. “Ah, well, I tried. No need to bother a busy man.”
“Thank you for understanding,” Nanami says.
Gojou leaves him in a blink, gone as fast as he came, and Nanami just keeps on walking. If he’s being honest, he’s surprised it took this long to get Gojou to try and drag him back. Gojou certainly never was a stickler for rules, and Nanami swearing he’d never return to the college is just another one of those blurry lines to a man like that.
Ah, well.
Nanami goes to the office to find out his aforementioned meeting has been cancelled by his devil-may-care boss, so he works all day, goes home, makes himself a perfectly portioned dinner for one, listens to one episode of a true crime podcast about a decade old cold case, and sleeps like the dead until his alarm goes off. When he wakes up and grabs his phone to quiet the sound, he is more than a little surprised to see Ijichi has texted him. Some cold, slimy feeling is in his fingers as he opens the message.
Nanami. I think I am the only one who can relay this message to you. Please call me when you see this.
“Shit…”
Nanami calls the number, sliding his feet onto the ground to sit on the edge of his bed, and waits for the sound of a familiar voice.
“Ah, Nanami, I am sorry to have to tell you this…”
Ice water sliding in through his blood and joints.
“It’s Gojou… he went out on his own to exercise a special grade yesterday morning.”
Slimy, like dead fingers around his throat.
“He never came back. After sending out a search party, his… body was found around midnight.”
“Idiot…” Nanami breathes the word, nearly dropping the phone before he remembers Ijichi is on the other end.
“There will be a service.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Nanami forces himself to say. “Send me the details, please.”
Nanami gives himself 30 seconds to put his head in his hands, think about crying, and decide not to. Then he gets ready for work.
Only, as he’s walking to the office, Gojou Satoru intercepts him at the exact same city block, with the exact same half-smile on his lips.
“Nanami,” he starts off and Nanami feels his eye twitch. “Any chance I could—”
“You piece of shit.” Nanami brushes him off and keeps walking, forcing Gojou to jog after him.
“Hey, did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?” Gojou asks.
Nanami barely keeps his anger off his face. “I don’t know what the hell you’re pulling with letting the college think you’re dead but it’s despicable.”
Gojou lifts one edge of his eye wrap, blue eye a little watery with confusion. “Am I supposed to be dead?”
“Yes,” Nanami says through grit teeth.
“Oh.” Gojou slides his hands into his pockets. “Well, I guess this is more complicated than I realized. Must be some kind of curse that’s messing with timelines.”
“Are you kidding me?” Nanami wheels around on him, annoyed that he can’t look Gojou in the eye to say this. “You’re the number one sorcerer in the entire world. Deal with it.”
Nanami keeps walking, and Gojou doesn’t follow, just calls after him, “It’s okay! I probably can’t afford you anyway!”
When Nanami shows up to the office and sits down at his desk, his coworker turns to him with a glazed over look in his eyes. “Meeting got cancelled.”
“Meeting…” Nanami’s brows knit.
The guy huffs. “You forgot? Guess you got lucky.”
Nanami turns back to his screen, ice water creeping around his ankles. The date on his computer is the same as it was yesterday.
“Fuck.”
He gets up and takes off for the front doors, phone in hand, dialing Gojou’s number.
“Hey!” Gojou answers brightly, like he never had a doubt in his mind.
“Where are you?” Nanami asks. “Don’t get too far.”
“That’s what I like to hear!”
-
Gojou stands like an exclamation mark painted onto the mouth of the concrete tunnel. He pulls the wrap up to peer inside the darkness briefly before fixing it.
“Well, this is definitely fishy. You can feel it right?”
Nanami nods, checking to make sure his blade is fixed in its holster. “Yes, but it’s not nearly enough energy to make me think it can alter timelines.”
“Or kill me,” Gojou says with a smile. “Damn. Here I thought we had a fight on our hands. Ah, well, let’s walk through anyway.”
They set off through the tunnel, taking the narrow service path with Gojou leading the way, and Nanami behind him. As they ride the midway point, Gojou’s body straightens up like he’s been electrocuted, and he turns to Nanami with a smile. “Found it.”
Lines begin to glow across Gojou’s face and body, like a net made of pure light. Nanami rushes forward to try and free him, but as soon as he touches Gojou, the light ensnares him as well, and the highway tunnel disappears, replaced with something else entirely. The sights are impossible to look at, constantly changing, incomplete images of things that unnerve Nanami’s entire brain until he feels like he’s drowning.
“Pure chaos,” Gojou says, and pulls his eye wrap fully off. “Better stick close, Nanami.”
On instinct, he positions himself back to back with Gojou, but that only forces him to look at this corrupted visual landscape. Like a virus in his eyes.
“Gojou.”
“Hm.” Gojou sounds like he’s frowning. “Something’s not right. I can’t bring out my domain.”
“Shit.” Nanami pulls his blade and presses his back closer to Gojou. “What’s the plan?”
“Same as always, Nanami. Find the curse. Exorcise it. You know the drill.”
As soon as Nanami turns to Gojou and sees the edge of that overconfident half-smile, Nanami feels the edge of something white hot in his own stomach. He drops his gaze to see that bright light, like fishing line, piercing through them both. He watches the line paint up Gojou’s body like a pencil, and the man simply splits apart in two.
Nanami follows in perfect sync, like a good student.
-
Nanami wakes up to the sound of his alarm on his phone. Laying paralyzed in his bed, he listens to the fake forest noises that are meant to rouse him for work.
A dream? A nightmare? Guilt?
He sits up, half expecting to find that light still piercing through him, but there’s nothing. Just the clothes he went to sleep in the night after he refused Gojou the first time. Breathing through the panicked confusion, Nanami takes up his phone and checks the date.
Still Thursday. Scrambling into clothes for the day, Nanami grabs his blade and takes off running for the block where Gojou will intercept him. The guy is standing there waiting, though this time, there’s a surprised tilt to his head.
“Nanami, are you late?” he asks.
“We’re stuck in a time loop,” Nanami says without ceremony. “We need to plan more effectively or we’ll die again.”
Gojou’s lips part, then he slides his hands into his pockets. “Well, well, looks like I found a good one.”
They take a cab together to the overpass, and once they’re standing outside, Nanami tells him everything that already happened, including both of them dying at the hands of an unseen curse.
“Chaos, huh?” Gojou clicks his tongue. “Seems like a bad match for me. No wonder we died. But you should be good for this one. What better to fight disorder than a pissed off nine-to-fiver with a knife?”
Nanami glares at him. “You’re in a good mood because you haven’t died yet. Take this seriously, please.”
Gojou salutes him. “Sir, yes sir.”
Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Nanami leads them into the tunnel, stopping right before he saw the lines of light appearing on Gojou’s body last time.
“Any further and it’ll pull us into its domain,” Nanami says.
Gojou points his finger past Nanami’s face and fires off a flash of his red power. It flares by like a sunburst. The dead center of the tunnel ripples like water, and the netting made of pure light shimmers into view.
“Found it,” Gojou says. “That’s a strong one. I can hardly feel.”
“That’s what got us killed last time,” Nanami tells him.
“Don’t worry,” Gojou says. “I’ll figure it out.”
-
I’ll figure it out.
That’s what he says, minutes before dying, seven times in a row.
Nanami spends weeks trying to save Gojou. At least, he thinks it’s weeks. There is no way for him to keep track when everything resets every 24 hours and it starts to feel less like a day and more like a scab he’s picking open for fresh blood.
At first, they both die. Whether meeting their end simultaneously like harmonizing instruments, or Nanami following after Gojou like a loyal hound, it begins to feel inevitable. Nanami anticipates the crescendo of the song, memorizing each part until he can feel his own death moments before it comes. He may not know what will kill him, but he knows this change in tempo.
It’s easiest when they both go together. Nanami does everything he can think of to protect Gojou, and the only reason it doesn't work is because he’s too focused on his job as guardian. When Gojou dies first, it feels like a stain spreading over Nanami’s clothes until he inevitably gets too angry to focus and meets his own end.
Nanami’s next tack is how he starts dying before Gojou— reckless attempts at getting ahead of the curse. He doesn’t even wait for Gojou on the street corner, just heads straight to the highway tunnel and investigates on his own. Every time he thinks he’s learned something useful, it’s followed by a net of pure light that rips him apart like shredded paper.
Dying alone is more familiar. It’s how Nanami thought he would go before he gave up being a sorcerer. Setting off by himself with his blade to get devoured by a curse he can’t see reminds him of why he left this line of work in the first place. What sane person would choose this life over something safe? And yet, there’s a comfort to it. Every time he steps into that chaotic other world to go searching for a monster, only to be torn limb from limb with no one but himself for company, there is a voice in the back of his mind that says, I told you this would happen.
Next, Nanami tries for a very long time to craft the perfect incantation that will get Gojou to abandon his task. This thing will kill you. It’s already killed you. It’s killed us both hundreds of times and even you can’t stop it. It’s nothing and it’s everything and it’s bigger than you.
And Gojou Fucking Satoru does not heed his word.
Someone’s gotta try.
So Nanami does something different. He goes with Gojou and simply does nothing. He watches the other man work, watches him get pulled into another world, watches him become a hundred little pieces of the world’s strongest jujutsu sorcerer. A stain on Nanami’s shoes.
At first, he is hoping to learn something from the way Gojou dies. Perhaps this monster will reveal itself in some miniscule way, some tiny mistake that only Nanami can see when he’s paying attention. He’s not really conscious of the shift that happens. It’s a gradual thing. The start of his admiration for the way Gojou dies. He begins to feel like he’s attending a performance. Gojou never asks him what he’s doing. He’s too absorbed in his own little world to see Nanami hanging back, arms folded, waiting for the blood to spill.
After weeks of repeats, Nanami takes the next step. In that darkened, empty tunnel, only mere steps from the entrance to the other realm, Nanami pushes Gojou with his palm on the center of Gojou’s back, just to hurry it along.
Gojou turns to look at him. Well, no, Gojou doesn’t look at anything anymore. Gojou feels Nanami the same as he feels everything else— through an opaque black veil of mourning that he has dutifully worn since the old days. To Gojou, everything boils down to the same raw parts.
“Nanami?” Gojou says his name like he’s only just noticed his companion.
The net of light doesn’t come.
Nanami looks around for a change in the landscape, something to make sense in the chaos. Gojou faces him fully and Nanami can feel the subtle change in his posture, minor to major, as Gojou’s lips quirk up.
“Are you Nanami?” Gojou asks.
His curse power is diamond sharp between them.
“Maybe not,” Nanami says, brows knit.
Why aren’t they dying?
“Huh.” Gojou’s still smiling, and that’s when the net falls, illuminating the shape of Gojou’s eyes bound beneath black fabric. It’s messier than usual, the barest hint of anger in the way Gojou’s body rips apart, and Nanami can hear applause before razor sharp silk cuts the tethers of the dream.
Nanami wakes in his bed to the sound of his alarm.
He gets up, showers, eats, dresses, and leaves to go kill Gojou Satoru once again. Pushing Gojou reliably buys him more time in the other realm, but as soon as Gojou faces him as a potential threat, Nanami buckles and they die again, countless more times. He’s not sure why Gojou coming after him still scares Nanami when they are so clearly trapped in this cycle together. It doesn’t matter if Gojou kills him when he’s just going to wake up in his bed anyway, but Nanami still hesitates.
It’s probably Gojou’s smile that keeps tripping him into submission.
Even when he looks at Nanami like he’s thinking about killing him, that smile is always the same.
Nanami stays passive for a good, long time, nudging Gojou into the net to see if he can force a different effect. All he gets is a hundred more small conversations about whether or not Nanami is real or an illusion.
Several identical deaths in a row, and Nanami decides to play the part.
“Nanami?” Gojou looks at him without looking at him.
“No,” Nanami answers. “Not this time.”
And Gojou still smiles.
“Which one was it?” Gojou asks. “Whose death pushed you over?”
Nanami shakes his head. “This one hasn’t happened yet.”
Gojou’s lips tweak, a stray note playing too sharp. “Interesting.”
Nanami pulls his blade out from its holster on his back. “I hope you understand.”
“Sure,” Gojou says, lifting his hand.
Before he can cross his fingers for infinite void, the net embraces him, and Nanami raises his weapon for the crescendo, like a conductor. He’s memorized these blood splatters, and the way everything falls so heavily to the ground, never as quickly as expects. There’s always a ripple afterwards, his curse power acting up with one last dramatic flare. It passes over Nanami swift and sharp. Gojou is spectacular, even in death.
Nanami follows soon after, feeling the weight of the shackles that bind him to this man.
-After-
“Nanami?” Gojou answers the call on the first ring. The sound of that dry voice in his ear is shockingly warm after all those years.
“I have something to ask you,” Nanami says.
Gojou laughs, mostly to himself, and Nanami sighs.
“Why are you laughing?”
Gojou sinks lower onto his couch, propping his bare feet up on the table. “I knew you’d call eventually.”
Nanami tsks through the phone, and Gojou grins at the wall. “You know everything, huh?”
“Oh, definitely,” Gojou says, gaze drifting to his kitchen, wondering if he has spare tea. “What was it, then? I’m guessing you had to exorcise something at the office? Or did you just miss me?”
When Nanami speaks, Gojou hears the first sign of the years it’s been since they’ve seen each other. “Had a run in with a special-grade. I took care of it.”
“Ooh,” Gojou whistles. “I bet you swatted it like a fly.”
“I think it’s time I came back to the college,” Nanami says, and Gojou can’t quite place the emotion in Nanami’s voice that changes it, but it makes him sit up straight.
“I’ll meet you there,” Gojou says. “Give you a warm welcome.”
“See you soon.”
Gojou stares at his phone for a minute after hanging up, trying to figure it out. Older. He sounds older.
Of course, Nanami beats him there. Knowing him, he was already on his way over when he called Gojou. Walking into the common area and finding him there with Shoko opens up those five years like an endless chasm. Nanami stands there in a crisp white suit, hair impeccably done, and he somehow looks ten years older than Gojou. He wears it well though. Nanami is maybe the only person who can make exhaustion something handsome.
“There you are,” Gojou says, walking up to them. “You’re a sight for six eyes.”
Nanami turns to face Gojou, and the way he folds his arms across his chest makes Gojou stop short of trying to touch him. “I see your sense of humor hasn’t improved.”
Gojou smiles at him. “Your fashion sense has.”
It’s not a curse that keeps Gojou from touching Nanami. He simply watches Gojou with such scrutiny that Gojou stays away— a warning bell that only Gojou can hear. Shoko pats Nanami’s arm, giving him a look half as a friend, and half as a professional.
“We’ll talk later,” she says and heads out.
When the door shuts behind her with a soft click, Gojou asks, “Are you really here?”
Nanami doesn’t move, but his eyes narrow and Gojou imagines himself covered in those ratio points of Nanami’s technique. Painting weaknesses onto Gojou’s body.
That look vanishes and Nanami says, “Yes. I’m really here.”
Gojou tilts his head to the side. “That special grade must have really did a number on you.”
“It did,” Nanami says. He checks his phone and makes a quiet noise. “Sorry. My landlord is getting fussy about breaking my lease early.”
“You’re moving too?” Gojou perks up. “Oh, Nanami, you shouldn’t have.”
Nanami pockets the phone and regards Gojou with an expression of indifference he might give to a well fed cat begging for scraps. “I got tired of the view.”
Gojou smiles, arms lazily crossed. “Something definitely different about you. What happened out there with that special grade? You look like you grew, but I’m still taller than you.”
Nanami slides his hands into his pockets. “Someone should know how to stand up to you. Don’t you think?”
Gojou smiles again. “I’ll allow it.”
“You’ll have to,” Nanami says simply. “Tell me about your new students.”
-
They talk about the new crop of sorcerers and Nanami doesn’t once relax. Gojou is starting to pick up on it. It’s not dissimilar to what Gojou does regularly with his limitless power. The difference is that Nanami doesn’t have the curse energy to back up that vigilance. Maybe he’s gotten stronger since Gojou last saw him. He certainly looks tested.
“A promising lot,” Nanami quips. “I’d say I can’t believe you took on the Fushiguro kid, but you’re you. So of course you did.”
Gojou lets out a sigh. “Such a troublemaker too.”
“Is he?” Nanami asks, gaze sharpening almost imperceptibly.
“Sure,” Gojou says, catching his gaze like a thorn. “Like you were.”
“Hm.” Nanami checks his phone again. “I should get back. I have to arrange for the movers.”
“Let me know if you need help,” Gojou sings it at him as Nanami leaves.
“You’ve done enough.” Nanami says as he heads for the doorway.
“Nanami,” Gojou calls, waiting for him to turn and face Gojou again. “Missed you.”
Nanami holds his gaze for a second too long and then takes his glasses off to wipe them on his tie, like the words have splattered unpleasantly onto his face. He puts them back on and says, “Thank you.”
Gojou lets him go, puzzling over this version of a person he once knew. Nanami stands tall and unflinching like a statue. Ready for action, but still calm. This can’t have been the result of just one mission. A change like this doesn’t happen overnight. The Nanami he knew before was so rattled by loss of life that he hung up his weapon and uniform to stay out of the fight.
This Nanami has made a choice. This Nanami brought his blade to catch up with his friends.
So Gojou follows him home. It’s easy enough. Gojou’s abilities make it child’s play to stay hidden. The annoying part is finding a good perch to spy into Nanami’s apartment. It’s mostly in boxes, and the blinds in his bedroom are drawn, but Gojou can see an unwrapped armchair and an electric kettle beside a notebook on a coffee table. Nanami comes home, takes his jacket off, and pulls his phone out.
Gojou feels his pocket buzzing. Smiling, he answers, “Yo.”
“It’s rude to stare,” Nanami says, walking up to the window across the way.
Gojou waves from the adjacent rooftop. “You didn’t think I’d let you come back to the college without doing a thorough check, right?”
“Of course not,” Nanami says. “How do you take your tea?”
“Extra sugar.” Gojou rises to his feet. “I’ll be there soon.”
Nanami’s door is unlocked, which really drives it all home. It’s not a gesture of trust. It’s a gesture that says, I know what’s coming and I can handle it.
Gojou whistles, stepping into the boxed up living room with a couch wrapped in plastic. He sits on the edge with a loud crunch, and Nanami takes the uncovered armchair. The electric kettle is still heating up.
“So,” Gojou starts, resting his elbows on his legs. “Are you gonna tell me what happened or do I just have to guess?”
Nanami crosses one leg over the other, staring at Gojou behind his glasses. “I know you like games.”
“So I’ll guess,” Gojou says, rubbing his hands together. “A job went sideways on you, a job you had no intention of taking. Hmm, maybe someone sought you out after you accidentally outed yourself as a sorcerer?”
“Lukewarm,” Nanami says.
Gojou starts to smile. “Dragged back in without permission, huh?”
Nanami lets his breath out through his nose.
“I’m right,” Gojou says. “Nothing Nanami hates more than getting messy on someone else’s account.”
Nanami takes his glasses off, setting them onto the table with care.
“Did you lose someone?” Gojou asks.
“Cold,” Nanami replies.
Gojou leans back with another plasticy crunch. “No loss of life? Really?“
“None,” Nanami says.
The kettle starts to bubble quietly.
“You lost something,” Gojou says. “You’re not the same man who quit on me all those years ago.”
Steam starts to rise up in little wisps around Nanami’s face. “You’re right about that. I was completely unprepared for this job.”
“How unlike you,” Gojou says, fixed on the way Nanami barely moves. It’s almost like he’s hostile, but that’s not quite right. If he were gearing up for a fight, there would be tension in his shoulders, his neck, his fingers. This Nanami is perfectly still.
Gojou leans forward again, chin in his hand. “You’re calmer than you’ve ever been though. Is that it? You lost some of your old fear.”
The kettle clicks and Nanami uncrosses his legs. “Something like that.”
He leans forward to pour the water into two mugs, nothing in his demeanour changing as he starts to explain.
“I made myself vulnerable with such a demanding routine. Only ever sleeping enough to keep working. I slipped up. It must have known I was a sorcerer and latched onto me to feed off of.”
The scent of sharp black tea starts to waft through the air as Nanami doctor’s Gojou’s tea for him and then pushes the mug into his reach.
“It was strong enough to have a domain even before it started leeching my energy. Trapping me was simple. It did it while I was sleeping, and kept feeding off of me while I was inside.”
Gojou puts a hand on the coffee table as if he’s going to pick up his mug, but he just stays there, feeling the heat coming off of it.
“Its technique was some kind of illusory spell. It used my own memories and curse power to build a realm perfectly suited to trap me.”
Gojou tilts his head. “Impressive. You weren’t lying about a special grade. Still, even those have limits to their power. It can’t have been endless.”
Nanami gives a slight shake of his head, stirring a little bit of sugar into his tea, the metal spoon gently scraping against the ceramic. “It was a time loop. Everyday the realm reset according to certain parameters. And I was left to puzzle out what was causing the loop. It was smart of it to come after a sorcerer. The red herring of a creature was too tempting for me to ignore. I overlooked the curse’s actual body in favor of an outside threat.”
“What did the big bad monster look like?” Gojou asks.
Nanami sets his mug aside, reaching across the table toward Gojou. When he touches the front of Gojou’s wrap, Gojou thinks he knows the answer, but he still lets Nanami touch the outline of his closed eye. Nanami trails his finger down over the slight curve of the lid, and lifts the black fabric up to look Gojou in his eye.
“It looked like you.”
Nanami lifts the wrap, pulling it off Gojou’s head and gingerly setting it onto the table beside their undrunk tea. Immediately, Gojou runs a hand through his hair to fix it, autopilot kicking in when he’s across from someone so put together.
“I should have seen it sooner,” Nanami says. “But I was afraid.”
“Sounds like a scary monster.” Gojou wants to be playful, but it’s harder when Nanami won’t give him any room.
“I wasn’t afraid of the curse,” Nanami says, leaning back in his armchair. “I was afraid of you.”
Nanami starts to loosen his tie, tugging on the knot and leaning away. “The thought of ever being your enemy terrified me. Your power is greater than any curse. Knowing you keep it activated at all times, like a diamond knife you never put down, it always frightened me.”
Watching the fabric slide off of his neck, Gojou sees now the root of this change. Nanami tosses his tie onto the table.
“This curse read me like a book. At first, it fed off my sorrow. It made me watch you die at the hands of some other beast. And then it fed off my fear when it made us adversaries.”
Nanami undoes the top two buttons of his shirt, and lets his breath out like it’s been pinned in his chest for years.
“I’ve seen you die so many times, I could paint it from memory.”
Gojou breathes in while Nanami settles, mesmerized by the steam Nanami is letting off.
“It wasn’t enough to kill you, either,” Nanami says, carefully rolling up the cuffs of his sleeves. “I had to want to kill you. It didn’t want self defense or desperation. The curse wanted disrespect. It wanted me to spit on you after I’d killed you. I’m guessing this is how it’s consumed others. Getting people to lose themselves entirely.”
Nanami leans his head onto the back of the chair, and his torso swells with a deep breath. Gojou half expects to see a scar on the triangle of skin showing underneath Nanami’s shirt— a mark to show those cut ties— but he’s still spotless.
“I never thought about the effects of staying inside of someone else’s domain for too long,” Gojou says. “What it could do to someone.”
“You wear yours on your skin,” Nanami says, eyes closed. “And it’s like you’re frozen in time. It only makes sense that being trapped inside someone else’s would age a person.”
Gojou rises up from the couch, stepping around the table to get closer to Nanami. He wants to see for himself. Nanami looks at him, neutral, unimpressed. A statue can’t hurt anyone, but it somehow feels like Nanami is armed. Gojou touches Nanami’s chin, fingers smoothing over the lines by his mouth, and the crows feet around his eyes.
“How long were you in there?” Gojou asks.
“I have no idea,” Nanami answers. “Shoko is going to see me tomorrow and try to figure out if anything happened to my body. But I feel fine, if that’s what you want to know.”
Gojou has Nanami’s face in his hand, but the completely unemotional look in Nanami’s eyes twists in his chest. Selfish, yes, but that’s not at all what Gojou wanted to know.
“Did you spit on me? After you killed me?”
“Ah.”
Nanami holds Gojou’s gaze, and he can see it as clear as day, that lack of fear. It crackles down Gojou’s spine like an electrical storm.
“Does it really matter if it wasn’t you?” Nanami asks.
He sits up, making no move to extricate himself from Gojou’s hold, just keeps talking.
“You don’t care what I did to a puppet. You’ve always been capable of shelving the past like unwanted clothes. It’s the future that interests you. Am I wrong, Satoru?”
Gojou’s hand grips tighter all its own at the sound of Nanami gifting that name back to him in the silk of his voice.
“I don’t have an answer for you,” Nanami says. “All I know is that you don’t scare me anymore. And if I’m going to be doing shit work that no one can see, I’d rather be working with someone who can put me to good use.”
Gojou’s back straightens like he’s stepped on a nail. It hits him square in the chest, how strangely exciting it feels to look into the eyes of someone who doesn’t care what Gojou could do to them. Someone who knows exactly how dangerous he is, but even if they wanted to, they couldn’t be afraid.
Cauterized.
“I take it you can find some work for me,” Nanami says.
Gojou’s fingers are still pressing dimples into Nanami’s cheeks. “You know we’re always short staffed.”
“Figured,” Nanami says. “They still hate new blood over there.”
Gojou doesn’t let Nanami go, staring into disaffected eyes and wondering why his pulse is racing like there’s a gun pointed at him. This isn’t a fight. He’s pretty sure it never will be a fight with Nanami. But there’s some kind of challenge in that unmoved expression, the new lines on an angular face, the familiar person in a crisp, new suit.
Nanami gives a barely audible closed-mouth sigh, gaze flicking back and forth between Gojou’s eyes, and he says quietly, “You look exactly the same.”
Gojou’s breath leaves him like he’s been punched, eyes going wide, and something snaps deep inside him. Something stupid, something desperate, something that sends him to his knees, scrabbling at Nanami’s belt like a teenager with something to prove.
When Nanami kicks his legs apart without comment, Gojou whines like a dog. Why is it better like this? Nanami barely assists, just lets Gojou swallow his cock like a starving man and watches with his chin on his fist. The same two eyes that used to look at him in awe, now tinged with this strange expectancy that he never would have dared before.
Gojou pulls Nanami in by the hips, eyes sliding shut as something base and wild unwinds inside him. He feels it hot in his stomach and slick on his tongue and aching between his own thighs. A humming sigh escapes him when he’s got Nanami so deep he can’t talk, and he wonders if this is what Nanami expected when he left his front door unlocked.
“Even now,” Nanami speaks with breath tangled in his voice. “It’s easier to fuck a curse then it is to touch you.”
Gojou starts moving his head in earnest, his own power pulsing against Nanami’s skin. Maybe if he moves fast enough, he can make Nanami confuse the touch of limitless void with his own mouth. When Nanami finally starts to relax, hand gripping the back of Gojou’s hair, melting into the armchair, Gojou sighs once more like it’s him up there.
“You always were a sore loser,” Nanami says with just a hint of strain.
Gojou shivers, arms winding around Nanami’s thighs. He won’t stop, can’t really, trapped in his own need to see this through to the end. He wants to feel Nanami come, wants to swallow it and hear Nanami tell him that it’s about time he start carrying his own damn weight. Maybe he’ll scold Gojou like a student while he wipes his own mess off Gojou’s lips.
Digging his fingers into Nanami’s legs, Gojou moans around Nanami’s dick. He’s not sure anymore, who left and who came back, but it’s starting to feel like he needs this.
Just a moment in between.