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The mission is this: Nanami Kento is to temper and restrain the situation that is behind this door.
The fact that the orders are briefed to him as if it were an actual exorcism job is somewhat hilarious, if he was the type to find comfort in inane levities. His experience in non-jujutsu society will be invaluable (a stretch), and they have insight that he may be one of the few, if the only, sorcerer that is right for the job (typical horseshit). Non-lethal force is acceptable. (As if it would make a difference.)
Nanami steels himself with a long inhale, and raps his knuckles twice on the dark lacquered wood.
“Nanami Kento, reporting,” he announces. He pauses, listening for a response. From behind the door, he feels a familiar burst of cursed energy, then hears a terrible scraping of heavy furniture against the floor. Nanami’s eye twitches – the hotel they’ve sent him to is one of the most expensive in Tokyo, all marble floors and false screen doors along the walls to appeal to foreign VIPs. The ugly-looking ottoman in the hallway probably costs more than his salary. Safe to say, anyone with a healthy sense of self-preservation and manners should not be dragging anything across the floor like that.
Though he supposes what lies beyond the door has anything but.
He swipes the keycard and pushes down on the door handle – to no avail. There’s a concentration of cursed energy where he knows the locking mechanism is, interfering with the electronics. Nanami rattles the door handle, just to know he’s tried. “Gojo-san,” he says warningly, as something else makes a bang. “Whatever you’re doing, stop.”
“Just a second!” comes the sing-song reply, and inexplicably, the sound of rushing water starts. Nanami looks left, then right, scanning the hallway for anyone else, but this suite is the only one on the floor. Safe from spectators, he tamps down the indignity and presses his ear to the door.
Yup. That’s the shower.
He can’t believe this– this– time-wasting, self-absorbed, monumental idiot . He tries the keycard and door handle again, knowing the futility. He shouldn’t have announced himself – manners or protocol be damned. He should’ve given Gojo a taste of his own medicine and marched right in.
“Aww, so eager!” There’s the signature atmospheric change in pressure for an instance of Gojo’s teleportation, then the key slot chirps a belated affirmative. “Okay, okay – come in!”
Relaxing his clenched jaw is a conscious effort. Trust Gojo to make him go through the gauntlet before Nanami has even laid eyes on him. However, it makes it all the more important to meet him with impassivity, and further discourage his antics with an unruffled visage. Unruffled, yes. He can do that.
Nanami retakes his inhale, and enters the room.
“Nanami, darling, you’ve caught your cute senpai completely by surprise,” Gojo says, voice dipping low into velvet. The heavy chaise lounge is definitely not where it’s meant to be, plush and patterned and positioned smack dab in the middle of the room. Draped across it, Gojo is dressed in nothing but his tints and a snow white towel loosely wrapped around his waist. The jut of his hip bone is dewy with water droplets, racing down his skin and disappearing into pristine terry cloth – and behind him, steam pours out of the bathroom, the hot shower still flagrantly left to blast. The lights are dimmed, and under them, Gojo tilts his chin in a way that emphasises his jawline. “Now that you’ve got me like this, whatever are you going to d–”
“I’m leaving,” Nanami intones immediately, turning on his heel.
Behind him, Gojo splutters. Somehow, there are rose petals, and a few smoulder underfoot in a vaguely alarming way. The air smells slightly singed, and Nanami thinks back to the banging noises. He pushes the door back open, and decides he doesn’t want to know.
The mission, the higher-ups, the overtime pay. It’s not worth it.
“Wait, wait, it was a joke! Nanami! Don’t ignore m–” The door clicks shut behind him, the kind to ease itself into a close, utterly depriving Nanami of the satisfaction of slamming it. He sighs (his third since arriving on this floor; his fifth since entering this building; and since receiving this mission– he’s lost count). Counter to his exit statement, Nanami leans back against the door, planting himself there.
“Nanamiiii,” comes the whine through the door. He’s reminded of that one stray cat he’d impulsively fed some leftover ham from his lunch, and it had followed him all the way home, yowling and clawing at his door all the way into the night. How had that ended again? “Come baaack. Yaga will lecture me to death if you bail.”
“Hm. Tempting,” he replies, and hears a thud from the other side. He imagines Gojo resting his forehead against the door, sulking with his glasses sliding down his nose bridge. Right, the stray cat he’d left yowling. Eventually, he hadn’t let it in, but he had carried out a saucer of water and canned tuna for it. Nanami clicks his tongue. “Get dressed. Properly. And put everything back where it was.”
“Prude!” Gojo calls out.
“Pain in the ass,” Nanami retorts. Gojo cackles, and Nanami listens to him pad away from the door. There’s a tug at his navel as Gojo’s cursed energy flares, furniture scraping and thudding into their reassignments.
When the cacophony stops, Nanami counts to sixty in his head. A minute should be enough time for the strongest jujutsu sorcerer to get dressed. Besides, it’s not like he cares if he sees Gojo’s beanpole ass – more, it’s the principle of the matter. Decorum, dignity, doing things the right way. Giving a grown man a chance to put some pants on.
A chance, Nanami discovers as he re-enters the room, that was not taken.
Gojo is sprawled on his back on the bed, head tipped off the side to watch Nanami from upside-down. He’s wearing a black shirt with two of the middle buttons done up, as well as some black briefs, before apparently calling it quits. At first glance, it’s another bout of childishness – another molehill Gojo insists to make a hurdle out of. Nanami has his disdain ready on his tongue.
But on second inspection, Gojo is quiet. Not in potentia, leashed infinity in the outline of a man, that crackling sense of imminent disruption thrumming unsettlingly through the air. The tints lie abandoned next to his hip. His mouth is a thin, unhappy line.
Nanami walks over to where some pants have been haphazardly discarded, still on their hanger. A matching black – expensive, no doubt tailored, something Gojo would passably choose to wear to a formal event. But Nanami knows everything tonight has been scripted, from the presence of the strongest jujutsu sorcerer, down to the minutiae of his shoelaces. A dog and pony show. Somehow, Nanami has been dragged into it.
“We could be killing curses right now,” Gojo says. Nanami fishes into the pocket of the pants and finds a glossy black tie. The outfit comes together in his head. All black. Simple and understated. There wasn’t any point in bedazzling a diamond. “Why the hell is the strongest sorcerer and a Grade One kissing ass for Japan’s elite?”
“It’s precisely the fact that you’re the strongest, Gojo-san. I’m simply… collateral.” Glancing around, Nanami sees the wardrobe left ajar, and sees the lone garment cover still left hanging there. “You’re the summation of the jujutsu world’s strength. Their reassurance that curses will remain only as monsters under the bed.”
“Most humans can’t even sense cursed energy. They could doll Ijichi up, call him the strongest, and parade him around for a bit.” Nanami snorts. Gojo relents, waving a hand in the air as if to say, shut up, semantics. “Okay, not Ijichi, but– anyone who could act for the night.”
The buzz of the zipper cuts through the silence that follows, as Nanami carefully peels away the garment bag to reveal a tapered suit jacket – black, of course, matte with notch lapels. “No, they really couldn’t,” Nanami says, striding up to where Gojo lays starfished.
Rising up on an elbow, Gojo tips his chin down in disbelief. “No, I really think they could.”
“No.” Nanami says it like it’s final, and throws the pants down onto the bed like a gauntlet. “Though I don’t disagree that this is an abject waste of our time–” Gojo barks a single venomous laugh, a sardonic ‘hear, hear’ to boot, “there is no suitable counterfeit to you.”
“That’s the most romantic thing you’ve said to me,” Gojo croons, swinging his legs into a sitting position. Nanami watches him slide his pants on with a straight face as Gojo obviously tries to make a seductive display of it, before realising he’s putting them on backwards.
Recovering, or possibly misdirecting from his mistake, Gojo continues. “Well? Don’t stop just when it’s getting good! Tell me more about… me! Is it my outstanding looks? Or my exceptional charisma? Oh, oh!” Hopping up into a standing position, Gojo shoots an arm up into the air, like a student beckoning a teacher. “I know! It’s these irresistible baby blues.”
With a smirk, he sweeps the strands of white out of his eyes, angling to flutter his lashes at Nanami, only to get a jacket in the face. For the second time that night, Nanami has the pleasure of hearing Gojo splutter with indignity. It’s the small joys in life.
“None of the above,” Nanami says. He pauses, and mulls the exact articulation of Gojo’s presence, even in a way that ordinary humans would perceive him. Charisma is the closest, though a dire understatement – more, Gojo is gravitational pull. Inexorable and indiscriminate, there is a primordial part of every being that recognises the power he contains, senses it– no– yields to it like one would gravity. It can be read in the constellating line of his shoulders, the supernova slice of his smile. Gojo Satoru is the strongest – like the turning of the world.
“You...” Gojo peeks out from pulling the jacket away from his face, rapt for Nanami’s next words. Nanami clears his throat. “You have a singular self-assuredness that cannot be replicated.” I trust and have faith in him, Nanami had once admitted to Itadori. Much like one would rely on a sunrise, or expect the turning of the world. Foundational.
Gojo sighs, tucking in his shirt ends and ruffling his own hair. “Should’ve known you’d just call me arrogant in some convoluted way.” He saunters his way over to a full-length mirror, propping his hands on his hips and affects a pout at their reflection. “Nanami is so Nana-mean.”
Nanami frowns. That… hadn't been meant as an insult. For a second, he thinks of correcting the other, but self-preservation stops him. He’d never hear the end of it. Gojo already spins his taciturn responses as tough love. (Whether that is true or not is… not the point. If Gojo is gravitational pull, then Nanami feels inclined to push back. Perfectly balanced, chirps a voice in his head that sounds mortifyingly like Gojo’s, and Nanami mentally shoos it away.)
“I really like that about you, you know?” Gojo says suddenly.
Nanami stiffens, furrows his brow. “That I’m… mean?”
Through the reflection, Gojo slides a grin at him. “Yup. Didn’t give a fuck that I was the Gojo Satoru when we first met. You were singular from the rest of the jujutsu world, in that way. So impartially polite it was rude.” Gojo hums, a frisson of delight. “It was fun, y’know, eking out your trust, your rare smiles, your time – knowing you were giving that to me not because I was the Limitless Six Eyes, but because I’d grown on you, at leeeast a little.”
Scraping down a side of his hair over an eye, Gojo raises an eyebrow at himself in the mirror. With dawning horror, Nanami realises it’s meant to be an approximation of his high school look. “Okaaay, senpai. You’d talk to me like that! Then walk away. So disrespectful!” Gojo laughs. “Just say no! That seemed like your mantra in life. No to your senpai. No to anyone trying to take advantage of your time. And finally, no to the jujutsu world.”
Gojo’s voice had been an animated babble, a one-man show all by himself – but the final statement was said, gently, wondrously, like the words had a taste to them Gojo was trying to figure out.
Nanami stills, embarrassed.
Was Gojo mocking him? Someone who had denounced all they had stood for, ran from his obligations like a terrified child, only to finally unbury his head and wonder why his world had been a desolate sandscape. He had realised he was an ant everywhere, anywhere– not strong enough to correct the cruelty of the world but, just maybe, strong enough to provide a moment’s relief from it.
“I envied you.”
Shock jolts through him, electrifying the hairs on his arm. Nanami gapes at the edge of the rug where he’d dropped his eyes in shame, then looks up at Gojo, not bothering to hide the baffled disbelief in his eyes. He watches Gojo shrug, as if he hadn’t just said something confounding.
“Mostly angry. Then numb. But always a little envious. I waited for someone to drag you back– we’re understaffed as it is, and I didn’t think the higher-ups would suffer the loss in silence. But the years ticked by, and you had your own life.”
“It was a miserable one,” Nanami scrapes out. He’s not sure why he says it, though it’s no secret. Gojo is the strongest, from an esteemed and wealthy clan, confident, intelligent, and– fine, devastatingly attractive. Envious shouldn’t even occur to him, least of all, of Nanami.
Gojo just nods, accepting this, and Nanami feels something loosen in his shoulders. He realises it’s not a pity party, and that Gojo isn’t aiming to be an ass. He’s trying to say something.
Nanami walks up next to Gojo, watches him fix his hair back. “God, you looked like shit when we reinstated you.” Nanami clicks his tongue at him for that. Gojo grins. “But nothing could change the fact you left on your own terms, and came back on your own terms. I really like that about you.”
At a loss for words, Nanami finds himself staring at a smudge on the mirror. He can’t breathe, he realises, around the immensity of his gratitude at Gojo’s words. It wasn’t absolution, no – there is a part of him that’ll always wonder how many people he could’ve saved if he’d stayed. But. It’s no little feeling to know the weight of Gojo’s wry admiration. That what Nanami had viewed in himself as weak and rotten was not completely unsalvageable.
Shrugging on the suit jacket and sliding on his tints, Gojo swivels on his heel and strikes a ridiculous pose – one arm hugging his torso and another folded behind his head. “How do I look, Nanamin? Devastating, right?”
Yes, he doesn’t say. It shouldn’t be so different from his usual all-black jujutsu uniform, but the flattery of the tailoring and material is undeniable. Gojo is a long lithe line of black, the surety of his shoulders accentuated by the narrowness of his waist and wrists. The matte of the fabric seems to swallow the light, making the glittering extravagance of their room seem insubstantial. Even in jest, the intensity of his eyes seem to spear him in place, and he knows it’s only out of respect that Gojo doesn’t flay open his inner workings layer by layer. It’s the jujutsu world’s best and strongest.
It’s also a grown man wiggling his eyebrows at Nanami.
I’d very much like to kiss him, Nanami thinks. Then rewinds the thought, and sighs. Oh, no.
“You sighed?” Gojo gasps, puffing up in outraged disbelief. “I got all prettied up, and you sighed! Oh! Agony! Indignity! Other dramatic synonyms, et al, etcetera!”
“Yes, yes, and yet you’ll survive. Tie your tie, will you?” Nanami says, tamping down the flush crawling up his throat, denying the traitorous thudding of his heart at the revelation. He tries to distract himself by adjusting the knot of his tie in the mirror. Similar to Gojo, he’s also wearing a suit – tailored and more expensive than what he’d buy on his own, but it’s an elegant olive green pinstripe paired with pale gold maze-patterned tie. Jujutsu Tech’s dime, so he doesn’t mind.
“Ah, well,” Gojo starts, and Nanami slides a curious glance over at the rare note of uncertainty. “How should I say this? I don’t really know how.”
Nanami stares at him.
Gojo fiddles with the ends of the tie looped around his neck.
Nanami tilts his head, a silent beckon for the punchline.
“I know how to tie an obi,” Gojo says defensively. He pulls the tie off his neck, holding it away from him between pinched fingers like one would a stinking banana peel. “It doesn’t suit me anyways.”
Carefully keeping his expression clear, Nanami takes the tie from him and steps into Gojo’s space. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that Gojo loathes to admit a failing – never built an immunity up for it as an unparalleled jujutsu phenomenon, probably.
Gojo greets him with his side profile, the jut of his bottom lip betraying the expression of forced insouciance. Slowly, Nanami raises his hands, telegraphing his movement, a silent request for Gojo to release Infinity.
“Gojo,” he murmurs, soft but firm. The other man’s eyes flick towards him in surprise, noting the absence of the honorific, contextualising it in the open request of Nanami’s expression. Gojo’s mouth tightens, then relents.
“Hmm. Call me Satoru,” he chimes, a tease and a dare. One he doesn’t really expect Nanami to take up, from the way Nanami feels Infinity dissipate from beneath his palms. A negotiation ace he immediately gives up, crumbling insomuch like a house of cards.
Nanami hesitates, letting his hands settle on the join of the other man’s shoulders. Professionalism is Nanami’s own personal Infinity; distance carefully tended to in self-preservation. Losing a co-worker to the perils of the jujutsu world is less devastating than losing a friend. Letting Gojo’s given name settle on his tongue already feels like heartache.
But Gojo is warm under his hands, his Infinity released upon his request.
Push and pull.
Balance and reciprocation.
“Satoru,” Nanami says, thankful his voice is steady when he does. Even behind the tints, Nanami sees the surprise splash across Satoru’s face, eyebrows raising. It swirls before coalescing, a slow pooling of joy. “Come here.”
Satoru relaxes his shoulders and stretches his neck out eagerly, smiling as he does so. Nanami waits for the obnoxious flirtation, the prodding at his rare sentimentality, but finds Satoru quiet under his hands as he flips his collar up.
Sliding the tie into place, Nanami fingers the fabric briefly, admiring the quality. It’s a black tie, loyal to the schema of the rest of the outfit, but unlike the matte fabric of the suit, the tie reflects light like an oil slick, a rainbow blooming over and over depending on the angle you tilt it. An infinity of colours.
Nanami quirks the edge of his mouth. Fitting, for Satoru.
“Teach me?” Satoru murmurs, as Nanami places one end of fabric over the other.
“To tie a tie?” he asks, about to readily accept. No doubt there’ll be more of these sycophantic events for Gojo to attend. Like he said, he’s just collateral today – he won’t be there by Satoru’s side for all of them. He wonders about the past instances Satoru has been obligated to – had he gone without a tie? In his jujutsu uniform? Or had he bailed entirely, as the necessity of Nanami’s assignment seemed to suggest?
“To say no.”
Nanami stills. Satoru tilts his head, a strange expression on his face. They’re silent for a second, before Nanami double-checks he has the ratio of the lengths right. Stalling.
“I don’t think you have any problem with that,” Nanami says lightly, but the puzzle pieces are clicking into place in his head.
I envied you.
It’s precisely the fact that you’re the strongest.
Restrain and temper the situation behind this door.
There is no world where Gojo Satoru would shy away from saying no. Nanami is intimately aware of the frustration of navigating Satoru’s whims, the infuriating way he carves against the grain of all sense and decorum. Unapologetic, and completely unwilling to shrink himself for things as petty as politeness. A conniving devilish imp of a man who’s self-aware he’s a nuclear bomb. The jujutsu world paces itself on the rhythm of his breaths and he knows it.
There is also no world for Gojo Satoru outside of the jujutsu world.
Nanami’s own tongue is a stone in his mouth. Satoru speaks instead. “That’s not the problem, hm?” he murmurs, his own tone like a featherweight, but it sinks into Nanami’s bones like lead. Satoru is hypothesising a world he can walk away from.
“No,” Nanami agrees. It's easier – shamefully so – to pretend that they're only talking about tonight, and not the crux of Gojo's existence. “But your attendance tonight maintains a balance between the jujutsu world and the mundane world in Japan. You'll grant us sanctions and legal exceptions to let us do our work, as well as reminding them that as long as we’re around, the existence of curses is something they don’t have to think about.”
“Boooring, really boring!” Satoru says, obnoxiously drawing out the vowels. Nanami rolls his eyes, but silently agrees. Politics always seems petty in the balance of lives. Satoru’s presence here feels like using a nuclear reactor as a disco ball.
Reaching out, Satoru hooks his fingers into Nanami’s belt loops. It’s decidedly distracting. “C’mon, bail with me?”
The second of consideration Nanami gives is damning, and Satoru grins. “No,” Nanami says, using his elbows to nudge Satoru’s arms away from his belt loops. Satoru pouts. “I’m here to keep you on track, not spirit you away.”
“Killjoy,” Satoru sighs, trying for levity but unable to hide his ruefulness. Not you too, went unspoken.
“Flake,” Nanami responds, brushing a non-existent strand away from Satoru’s temples, fingertips skimming the skin. Sorry, it said.
“Teach me then. Make me look respectable like you, Nanamin.” Satoru brushes the back of his hand against the lapel of Nanami’s suit. “This is a nice suit.”
Nanami's breath hitches.
“Balthus knot,” he blurts out, deftly buttoning up the top button of Satoru’s shirt, too busy willing away the warmth in his face to roll his eyes at Satoru’s fake gagging. “Watch carefully.”
He goes through the motions, slapping away Satoru’s prying hands when he goes, “Wait, I didn’t get that,” or “Ugh, Yaga's done chokeholds on me that are more forgiving than this.” In a couple minutes, a tie sits handsomely against Satoru’s chest, perfectly symmetrical.
“Think you can do that yourself next time?” Nanami asks.
“Nope!” Satoru replies cheerfully, and Nanami sighs. “But look at me! A lovely leash to go along with my orders.” He deepens his voice cartoonishly, and if Nanami had to guess at the impersonation, it’d be Yaga. “Play nice, Gojo. Just smile and speak as little as you can, Gojo. Don’t use Hollow Purple on the ministers, Gojo. Ridiculous. As if Blue wouldn’t be enough.”
“Not the point,” Nanami says, straightening Satoru’s jacket and buttoning it at the front. His fingers linger on the shining beetle black of the button, wondering who else gets to touch Satoru like– gets to touch, full stop.
Nanami pauses.
All at once, he feels dirty – to have answered Satoru’s display of trust with a demand for conformity. Here he is, disdaining the higher-ups parading Satoru around like this, while putting on the final touches himself. Still a salaryman following the easier status quo, he thinks bitterly.
But what exactly can he do that Satoru hasn’t entertained already? He still believes in the right way to do things, in decorum, in dignity.
Something must show on his face, because Satoru goes a little quiet. “Hey,” he says, and it’s a request for Nanami to meet his eyes. “It’s just a joke. They can’t really leash me in any way that matters. It’s a pain in the ass but–” Here, Satoru hums, slides a finger under Nanami’s collar, replacing the tightness of the tie with the lightness of his touch, “I don’t mind the leash for now if you’re the one tying it.”
He says it suggestively, honeying the words to give Nanami an out – to dismiss them with a scoff, a noise of disgust. But there’s an undercurrent of sincerity that tightens its own band around Nanami’s heart.
You really should fucking mind, Nanami thinks, with a sudden vehemence that surprises himself. You’re the strongest. You shouldn’t let Infinity down for this long. You shouldn’t let me. You shouldn’t let me.
Teach me, Satoru had asked, open and quiet, having known the futility. Somewhere there is a door, beyond it open sky. Satoru says, teach me, and Nanami says, alright, just follow along, and they step out into limitless blue. Another world, maybe. Another life.
A certain madness seizes Nanami then.
“You were right,” Nanami says, curt and short. He grabs the knot of the tie and yanks– and Satoru wheezes a little for real– and in one fluid motion, undos the cursed thing to throw it somewhere Nanami doesn’t care to register. “It doesn’t suit you.”
“Wow, aggressive, I liiike –”
“Shut up.” Nanami throws embarrassment into the wind (Satoru is embarrassing enough for the both of them), and deftly flicks open the top buttons of Satoru’s shirt. One, two– hell, let’s make it three. He arranges the edges to show a triangle of skin. The faux surprise in Satoru’s eyes widen into real shock, practically boggling at Nanami’s boldness.
“There,” he says with finality, and tilts Satoru’s chin up with a finger. Nanami looks him over, inspecting his work. Curiously, Gojo Satoru – famed for his shamelessness – has a dusting of pink over his cheeks. It’s a nice look on him, Nanami decides.
He runs his hand through Satoru’s hair for good measure, following the path down to cup Satoru’s cheek. Satoru looks suitably ruffled, somewhat careless, and completely delighted.
“Why?” Gojo asks, something like wonder in his eyes.
Nanami thinks about it. Decorum, dignity, doing things the right way. The warmth of Satoru’s body, the absence of an infinite distance. The open blue, right there in Satoru’s eyes.
“It’s the principle of the matter.”