Chapter Text
The clouds are dense, moving slow and bleached a sour shade of blue-white that's so heavy you can almost taste it. Gojo is high. He's floating above his own body. It's not often he does this, hasn't been a habit since he was a rebellious teen with a taste for doing the wrong thing, with Ieri and Suguru at his side to stop him from going too far.
He's laying on his back on an old bench—so far from the rest of civilisation that humanity may as well not exist at all. It's all ancient, untouched for too many years by anyone other than a Gojo and he stares at the moon beams gracing the terracotta. How with every flutter of his breath the dust motes are disgruntled into moving, disappearing elsewhere.
There's very little of the world that isn't under observation. Every city is a surveillance state and it's only here, in the very outskirts of the countryside, where Gojo can say with certainty that he's not being watched. The sprawling manor that his ancestors had built brick-by-brick is beautiful but he never bothers to go inside, choosing instead to wander around the estate whenever he needs space from the outside world.
He had lunch with Nanami a few days back. It had been peaceful and this peace set him on edge because it was all wrong. Gojo Satoru does not know contentment. It is as foreign to him as any other language. They had spent much of their time together talking about the kids and Gojo felt sick, like the rug was going to be pulled from under him at any moment. But it wasn't.
The moon is at its highest point, hanging like a precious gem and Gojo focuses on it through the haze, thinking of how Nanami's eyes had glimmered under the afternoon light. How his own eyes grow more blank with each passing day, more like puncture wounds than vessels through which to see.
He wanted to talk about more but couldn't bring himself to broach the boundary of their personal lives. He feared that he would blurt out some sort of confession in a fit of madness and that Nanami would rightfully retreat.
The truth is that desire is eating him up like something corrosive, painting him with burns and tearing into him with endless rows of teeth. Gojo wants Nanami and yet he does nothing about it.
The last time Gojo wanted someone, he killed them.
Suguru was his Judas. A victim of the system, of a fate neither of them could truly understand at the time. He thinks that this comparison must be egotistical, because that would make him Jesus, the son of an apathetic God. But is there any reason he's not? Gojo is giving his life for the world. No one can deny this for the truth it is.
Oh, how he wishes otherwise.
***
Gojo has just gotten done teaching the first years. He'd headed straight to the staff room in search of food but that feeling emerged again. The one that tells him he's coming undone, a spool that's not been wound up the right way. Rage is a common denominator. He feels it most days. A rage so deep that he could dip his toes in the pool of it, could take a swim and still have enough left over to share. It's grown hands to claw at him, an undercurrent to every other emotion.
"You're doing it again," says Nanami. He's sipping a coffee that probably has enough shots to keep anybody else wired for days. He doesn't usually spend his time relaxing in the staff lounge, preferring to give the school a wide berth if he can help it. It must be a mission day.
"Doing what?"
"Shooting daggers at the table."
"Oh." Gojo lifts his laser-focused stare and smiles in what he hopes to be a nonchalant way. "I was practising my happy face. Guess it needs work."
Nanami looks at him in a lot of ways. Gojo has been subject to enough of Nanami's exasperation to be able to decipher each one of his expressions. Yet, he's never looked at him with pity. It's one of the things that keeps him sane, knowing that no matter how anybody else looks at him, Nanami doesn't pity him, and doesn't treat him like a wounded animal.
At this moment, Nanami is peering at him with a raised brow. "You expect me to believe that?"
"You always exceed my expectations, Nanami."
To fight a war is to admit defeat—one way or the other, you lose something. There is no war at present. Not one that requires fists or domains. Gojo is still reeling anyway. This is what years of burden does to a person. He was never just a child. Gojo was always something more: a weapon, saviour, a soldier. You name it.
Time stacks on top of itself again and again until one day, he's looking at someone else in the mirror. These days his eyes are the bluest that they've ever been, but it counts for less now that he knows what they mean.
"I think you rarely say what you mean, and it's, quite frankly, insulting." The coffee is finished, so Nanami's full attention is now on Gojo. This means trouble. Nanami's discernment is better than most, and the way he's staring makes something prickle beneath Gojo's collar.
"What do you want me to say? The truth?"
Nanami softens at that. It's rare to witness, a half-smile pulling at his mouth. "That would be a start. Yes."
Addiction comes easy to Gojo. He was conditioned to be the pinnacle of jujutsu society and in doing so, he learned that anything can give you a hit of dopamine. Gojo was taught to adhere by the rules but this only makes misdeeds more appealing. So, he walks the line, doing just enough for him to feel less like a robot. For a while, it had been gambling in the seedy underbelly of Tokyo. This lost its appeal when he kept winning, game after game.
Now, he wonders if Nanami is another form of addiction. If everything he's ever felt is just a product of rebellion then are those feelings real? Did he only love Suguru because he knew it was the wrong thing to do? Does he only want Nanami because it will never work out?
I revel in my misery. In the relief of being real. I make a home out of my grief and find comfort in retreating inwards.
Gojo Satoru is a masochist of the highest degree.
"You're asking for too much." He can't do it. There is no way to be truthful when he doesn't know what the truth is.
Gojo understands why people can die for their beliefs when he hears Nanami laugh. His belief, though, isn't in any higher power. No, there's nothing out there in the universe that means anything to him, dead air on dead planets as far from any sense of reality that Gojo can muster. His belief is here, before him, in the sorcerer who carries a blunted blade.
He's never been religious but he feels godliness take grasp of his soul and deliver a dooming message.
Gojo's turned Nanami into a trigger. A gun pointed straight at his head. He's given himself a weakness and he doesn't know how much longer he can go on like this. Fear is making a home in his chest, changing the landscape of his body in irretrievable ways, telling him that it's always been there and that if it hasn't then it should have been. His heart flips, becoming concave and the wrong kind of love spills out of him in waves. All the while, he wishes for something different but there are no stars big enough to encompass the magnitude of his desire, the useless curve of his mouth.
"I can't help you if you won't let me," Nanami says, when his bitter laugh has petered out to nothing but a memory. He's not wearing his glasses, brown eyes slanted in concern.
The summer after Haibara died, Nanami had gone home on extended leave. He didn't tell anyone but the teachers. Gojo had visited his dorm room for some reason or the other, only to see it vacated. The air had been punched out of him before he could even consider the implication. That Nanami was gone, another empty bed to add to the tally of all the others.
Gojo wasn't in love with him yet. He just didn't want to be alone. Spending time with Shoko was a reminder of their mutual loss and neither of them could bring themselves to do anything but sit in silence. He had thought that Nanami would understand. But Nanami ran away and Gojo was betrayed once again.
It was selfish to think Nanami could be the solution to his problems. Now, a decade later, Gojo realises he never stopped being that selfish child. He's still looking at Nanami, wanting an answer for this indescribable emptiness that wracks his insides, chasing a rush that will run out sooner or later.
And it will be sooner rather than later. Gojo is too smart to assume otherwise.
"It's bold to think I need your help."
Nanami looks upwards for a moment and it looks like he might be speaking to God, asking Him for patience to deal with the person in front of him. Knowing Nanami though, it's more likely he's just suppressing the urge to curse.
"Maybe not. But I'm here if you ever do." Nanami's as neutral as ever, crease between his brows smoothing out as he talks. From here, Gojo can see each individual eyelash and how they brush his cheeks when he blinks. He's suddenly overcome with jealousy. He wants to be to be that close to Nanami without having to give a reason for the proximity.
Ieri had said once, that Gojo's technique is infinity but that his curse is being starved of touch, always looking for his next fix.
He's an addict at his core.
***
There's a sort of joy that Gojo feels very rarely. He's shivering under the weak light of a waning sun, frostnip surely setting into his extremities. This doesn't stop him from grinning, looking out at the slope below where Megumi is struggling to stay upright on his board as Itadori laughs at his efforts. The display continues on for a few more seconds before Itadori seems to feel pity and he reaches out to steady the other boy along with Kugisaki.
He doesn't ever take credit for who Megumi has become. Make no mistake. He may have saved the child from clan life but he did it out of more than just altruism.
If I was a good person, I would have kept him away from sorcery altogether.
Gojo was a kid himself when he became a guardian to both Tsumiki and Megumi. He wasn't a father, was barely able to look after himself back then, especially in the wake of Suguru leaving.
Then came the blow of Tsumiki's curse. He may have never been a father but that didn't stop the self-hatred, the idea that he should have been able to stop it.
Sometimes, he wonders how they had grown so quickly. Even with Tsumiki in stasis, he can see the person she could have been.
Gojo takes no credit for Megumi except for when he's like this, cackling at Kugisaki falling face-first into the snow. He knows for certain that Megumi would never have let himself laugh like that as a Zenin.
Or maybe he's kidding himself. Looking for something to assuage his guilt.
Nah, he thinks, watching the kids squabble, I'm right.
Just as he reassures himself of this, Megumi turns and looks up at him, eyes like green gems. He's waving and Gojo waves back, standing on the balcony but feeling less removed from the world for a moment.
He sends a silent thanks to Kugisaki for insisting on this trip before he sets about joining the kids for skiing.
***
"You look different," Nanami says, when they're halfway through a mission that's led them deep into the suburbs, chasing a curse that's taken the shape of a man. Gojo doesn't question its form. He knows that humanity's greatest fear is looking in the mirror to behold all it's become.
They're going in circles and the sudden remark breaks up the monotony but also startles Gojo, who had been trying to clear his head of all thoughts so he can focus. Now, he's spinning out, wondering what Nanami means.
"Different? How?"
Nanami is at his side. They're walking at the same pace, feet hitting tarmac as they head further into suburbia. Nanami pivots slightly, scrutinising his visage and Gojo can't help the way his heartbeat stutters—not when Nanami's gaze spends a bit longer on his mouth than anything else, dragging slowly back up to his eyes.
"I'm still trying to figure that out," he replies before looking away, one hand adjusting his glasses as he does. Nanami is cruel for dangling what Gojo wants in front of him. He's crueler still for not knowing it.
Divinity doesn't flow through Gojo. No matter how much people might believe otherwise. Nanami—with his iron will and his ivory bones—is closer to divine than anything that Gojo could shape with his hands.
Is it not justice which keeps the world turning? The idea that right will always prevail wrong? He wonders when his own world was knocked out of orbit, tilted on its axis toward something unobtainable.
Gojo, so much like a God, finds himself at the altar of Nanami Kento. He cannot tell right from wrong.
It shouldn't be an unpleasant feeling but he thinks that the only person that could ever have loved him was the wrong one— dipped in shadow to be carved out in the worst way—and he's long gone now anyway. The only person that could love him was someone disastrous enough to feel that way, and the one he wants now is so far away from wanting him that touching the stars are a more reasonable goal.
Gojo feels debauched in his own isolation. He's sick of bathing in a pool of wretchedness, of craving tenderness so much that there seems to be a fundamental lack at the centre of him.
It's abrupt when Nanami speaks, voice louder in the strangely empty street. "Were you mad when I returned?"
It shouldn't be obvious what he's referring to but it is. Nanami graduated and left for years. Gojo considers if he should have been angry when Nanami reappeared one day, standing at the door during a staff meal like a ghost that couldn't quite figure out where he belonged.
Mostly, he was relieved. A large part of him must have been waiting, must have known he would be back, because the relief flooded him and Gojo has never forgotten how that felt.
"I've never been mad at you, Kento. Not for anything."
It's more than Gojo had been willing to reveal but he doesn't think he could stand to lie right now. Nanami slows to a complete stop. He looks like he might say something but he falters, golden in his misgivings, face crumpling into something indecipherable. All at once, Gojo feels older, resigned to his own suffering with the realisation that he can never measure up to the man in front of him. And maybe that's a good thing because Gojo Satoru is a wilted flower, too used to the sun to know anything else.
Then Gojo is being pulled into a hug and everything becomes secondary to this moment. Nanami's hands are high on his back, holding tight. He smells like pastries, all cinnamon and sugar. Gojo doesn't get a chance to speak before Nanami is leaning in close, mouth brushing Gojo's ear.
"The woman standing by the red car to the right of you is giving off cursed energy." Then they're both pulling apart to assume their positions.
Gojo was too busy being in love to even notice the curse so close.
Even when the curse is reduced to smoke, all that's on his mind is whether Nanami tastes as much like cinnamon as he smells.
***
Imprisoned in a prison with no doors—a space stretching out into nothingness—is at first no cause for concern. Gojo Satoru has been primed to be the best since the day he was born, wailing loud enough to make the midwife wince. When he couldn't immediately get out — well, that proved to be a bit of a problem. Outside the pocket dimension was a whole host of issues that he needed to attend to. So, Gojo tried everything he could think of.
None of it worked.
He's worked out a schedule. There is no sense of night or day in the prison realm. Gojo only has his own heartbeat to note the passing of time. It's been close to a month. He blinks out of sleep every day and sits for a while, brainstorming for a new trick to try. This goes on for what feels like hours.
Nothing ever works. It doesn't stop him from trying.
It's at times like these that he's thankful for the brief reprieve that sleep offers him. The all-encompassing white of the realm burns into his corneas, searing in its brightness. Gojo is sitting on the floor, hands useless at his sides.
This is the point at which he waits for himself to break down. It should happen, but it doesn't. Gojo wants to scream and yell and shed tears because he's trapped and alone and inadequate. For the first time in his life, he has no solutions. But he doesn't break down. Instead, he soothes himself with the thought of being released.
They're working to get me out.
Gojo knows how intelligent the other sorcerers are. He might not be able to do anything from here, but out there they have countless resources at their disposal. It's only a matter of time. His students would work day and night to get him out. Even Kugisaki, who claims to be irritated by him, would be pushing Itadori and Megumi aside to have a crack at it.
It's easy to go insane in isolation, and these are the thoughts that stop him from tipping over the edge.
It's when he thinks of Nanami that he starts pacing. He had been going to confess. That very day, before they'd all been told to head to Shibuya, he had planned to pull Nanami to the side and say the words that had been inside him for years now. Gojo was going to say, I want you more than anything.
Fate turned out to be cruel, stomping on his plans and making a fool of him.
Days pass. Gojo counts the seconds of his pulse. More days pass.
This is my punishment, he thinks, one day when he's already exhausted himself, I believed myself to be a saviour and now when I need saving no one has arrived.
The ground is cold beneath him as he lays, limbs akimbo. No matter what he does, the endless white is never marred.
Is this all a cruel joke intended to teach me a lesson?
He clutches at his chest where he's sure a heart-shaped bruise is forming, dark and bloody to justify this pain.
When Gojo last had free-time, he had forced Nanami to come with him to the old clan estate. Why have you never mentioned this place? Nanami has questioned. The grounds were covered in snow but even then it had looked both abandoned and impressive. Gojo didn't know how to explain that he's always been as ashamed of his family as he is proud. He had only smiled before throwing open the doors and leading them inside.
They spent the afternoon there, beside the warmth of the hearth, talking about anything that sprung to mind but never tipping into unspoken territory. Gojo didn't see the point in talking about the past or unearthing points of pain. Exchanging shared memories would have felt like a death of it's own—an exercise in discomfort.
He regrets not doing it now. He wishes that he had told Nanami that he had always wanted to be his friend in high school, even when the younger boy had pushed him away. That he had been jealous everytime Nanami came back from break with enough homemade food packed to last him weeks.
I should have at least told him that I waited years for him to come back.
Gojo misses Nanami more than he misses the feeling of sunlight grazing his skin.
I'll wait again. I know he'll arrive. Sooner or later.