Archive of Our Own ^beta

The room was quiet, save for the occasional hum of traffic murmuring through the windows like ghosts too tired to haunt.

Nanami lay still, spine flat against the mattress, one arm tucked under his head. The other rested on his chest, steady. He hadn’t moved in nearly an hour. Not since Gojo had shifted beside him, thrown a leg across his own, and—without warning or awareness—settled into sleep like it was the easiest thing in the world.

The blanket had slipped from Gojo’s shoulder. A pale curve of collarbone gleamed faintly under the moonlight slanting through the blinds. His hair, white and soft in this hour, fanned messily over the pillow they shared. Nanami could feel the weight of Gojo’s breath where it touched the space between his neck and shoulder—warm, shallow exhales, one after another, each one a quiet proof that he was still here.

He looked peaceful.

Too peaceful.

Nanami’s eyes followed the slow rise and fall of Gojo’s back, the faint hitch in his breathing that came with deeper sleep. One hand was curled near Nanami’s ribs, loosely fisted, like even in unconsciousness Gojo refused to let go entirely. His fingertips brushed fabric, skin, something real.

The silence between them wasn’t unfamiliar. But tonight, it felt different. Not colder—just… louder.

Nanami blinked up at the ceiling, his gaze tracing the spidered pattern of faint cracks in the plaster. He hadn’t asked to stay over. Gojo hadn’t asked him to leave. The entire thing had unfolded wordlessly, as it always did lately—shared dinners bleeding into shared nights, conversations tapering into physical nearness like punctuation marks too soft to speak aloud.

He turned his head slightly, just enough to look at him.

Gojo’s lashes were pale in the dark. His lips, parted ever so slightly, moved with each breath. He looked younger like this. Softer. More like the boy in those old photos—before the weight, before the war, before the names they didn’t say out loud anymore.

Nanami’s eyes lingered on him longer than they should have.

He hadn’t meant to memorize the curve of that jaw, the faint scar beneath one eye, or the way the corner of Gojo’s mouth tugged upward even in sleep—as if somewhere deep down, he still remembered how to smile without effort.

But he had.

And now, lying here, skin still warm from the echo of Gojo’s hands, Nanami couldn’t help the quiet thought that drifted uninvited into the quiet: Who does he see, when he closes his eyes like that?

Not asked out loud.

Not tonight.

Maybe not ever.

Nanami let his gaze drift down—over the way Gojo’s fingers twitched faintly in his sleep, the faint imprint of his wrist pressing into Nanami’s side.

He always touched like that—casual, unthinking. A brush of fingers on the small of Nanami’s back in the kitchen, a hand resting briefly on his thigh during car rides, the way he’d reach out mid-conversation, like touching Nanami anchored the words.

There were nights when Gojo would reach for him with a quiet urgency, press their mouths together like a secret too heavy to speak. His hands were always warm. Always familiar.

But never searching.

Never asking who are you, really—because he already thought he knew.

Gojo kissed him like it was muscle memory. Held him like a habit. A good one, even. One he never seemed in a hurry to break.

But sometimes, when Nanami was honest—brutally, unforgivingly honest—he felt like he was being touched through the veil of someone else’s memory.

As if the rhythm of Gojo’s fingers across his spine came from some old song they used to dance to, only now played in the wrong key.

He didn’t pull away. He never did.

Not when Gojo leaned over him, voice low and distracted, murmuring jokes against his neck. Not when Gojo’s hands slid under his shirt, open-palmed and reverent. Not even when, one night weeks ago, Satoru whispered his name—not his name—half-asleep and unaware.

Nanami hadn’t moved. He’d only exhaled, slow and steady, like if he was quiet enough the moment wouldn’t count.

And Gojo hadn’t noticed.

Or maybe he had. Maybe it was easier not to say anything.

It wasn’t the sex. It was never just that. There was care in it, always. There was warmth. But sometimes Nanami couldn’t shake the feeling that Gojo’s eyes never truly settled on him—not entirely. That somewhere, behind the playfulness and touches and honey-dipped smiles, Gojo was still trying to hold on to someone else’s outline, even as he pressed kisses to Nanami’s skin.

He wondered, with a calm sort of dread, whether it was easier for Satoru to love him because he didn’t ask for all of him in return.

Nanami hadn’t expected to fall. But he had. And now, lying here in the quiet hush of Gojo’s apartment with the weight of that leg draped over him like a promise not fully made, he couldn’t help but wonder what it meant to be wanted like this—in pieces. Wanted in the shape of what was left.

The silence was still, but not heavy. Just stretched thin between them like thread pulled taut—not quite breaking, but fraying around the edges.

Gojo stirred faintly in his sleep, forehead nudging against Nanami’s shoulder, breath tickling skin. His fingers flexed once where they rested near Nanami’s ribs, as if dreaming of holding tighter. But even asleep, he didn’t. He never did.

Nanami closed his eyes briefly, feeling the dull pulse of the ache that had taken up quiet residence in his chest. It wasn’t dramatic. It never was. There were no slammed doors or whispered lies. Just the lingering echo of things unsaid, piling up between them like dust in corners neither of them swept.

Their relationship—if it could be called that—was all warmth and surface: gentle teasing over coffee, late-night dinners eaten shoulder to shoulder, the comfort of another body in bed after long days. They didn’t fight. Gojo made him laugh more than he cared to admit. There were moments, in the quiet lull between work and sleep, where Nanami almost believed it could be enough.

But it always came back to this: the imbalance. The way Gojo loved openly, recklessly, but withheld just enough of himself that Nanami never felt the ground under his feet.

He gave pieces. Always pieces.

A hand on the back of Nanami’s neck as he leaned in too close during a briefing. A thumb brushing his lower lip as if erasing a thought. The kind of intimacy that came easily to someone who had once given everything away and lost it all.

Sometimes, Nanami wondered if that was why Gojo kept things so light with him—never pushing, never asking. As if afraid that wanting more would cost him something again.

So instead, they existed here. Together, but slightly misaligned. Like two magnets turned the wrong way: close enough to feel the pull, but always just shy of clicking into place.

Nanami shifted just enough to reach for the blanket and pulled it over Gojo’s shoulder. The man sighed, turning his face into Nanami’s collarbone.

He didn’t wake. He never did.

Nanami’s hand hovered for a moment before resting lightly on Gojo’s back. His palm fit neatly between his shoulder blades.

A simple gesture. Steadying.

He could feel the faint thrum of Gojo’s heartbeat under his fingertips.

Still here. Still breathing.

But somewhere deep in Nanami’s chest, the question lingered—for how long like this?

Gojo shifted again, subtly this time—his cheek pressed against Nanami’s shoulder, breath steady, eyes still closed. He mumbled something indistinct, a sound more than a word, fading before it could form.

Nanami remained still. He knew better than to read too much into the things Gojo said when he slept. But it wasn’t the words that unsettled him.

It was the pauses.

The little silences that folded into their nights like creases in paper—small, forgettable, until they stacked on top of one another. A hesitation after laughter. A thoughtful stillness in the middle of touching. The way Gojo’s eyes, bright and unguarded around others, sometimes grew distant when Nanami reached for him too softly.

Satoru was generous with his affection. Always had been. It spilled from him carelessly, like sunlight through cracked windows. He draped himself over Nanami on the couch. Held his wrist too long after a spar. Ducked his head to steal a kiss when no one was looking—as if affection were a game he always meant to win.

But beneath all that warmth, Nanami had learned to hear the quiet. The ghost-note humming just beneath the surface.

There were times—rare, but unmistakable—when Gojo looked at him and wasn’t quite here. His eyes would fix just past Nanami’s shoulder, his hand still on Nanami’s waist, but the grip slackened. Not enough to let go. Just enough to feel the shape of something missing.

Nanami never asked. Never pressed.

There was too much history in those silences. He could feel it sometimes, curled at the edge of Gojo’s voice when he spoke of the past. The weight behind names spoken carefully—or not at all. Suguru. Haibara. The pieces of a life built in their absence.

Nanami didn’t envy them. But he couldn’t ignore how tightly Gojo still held their outlines.

Maybe that was why Gojo never spoke about the future. Why his affection always lived in the now. He gave love like it might vanish mid-sentence.

And Nanami—he took it. All of it. Without asking for promises he knew Gojo didn’t know how to keep.

But tonight, as the sky outside lightened from black to indigo and Gojo slept soundly at his side, Nanami let the silence stretch a little longer.

He stared at the ceiling again.

One heartbeat. Two.

Then, softly—almost to himself:

“Who are you dreaming of tonight, Satoru?”

The question sat unanswered in the stillness, dissipating like breath in cold air.

Gojo made a soft sound against Nanami’s skin—content, untroubled. His fingers curled closer. His presence, even in sleep, filled the space between them so completely it felt like drowning in sunlight.

But Nanami lay there, wide awake, haunted not by noise but by what wasn’t said.

There were nights like this, more often than he liked to admit, where sleep didn’t come. Nights where the rhythm of Gojo’s breathing and the quiet intimacy of shared heat only made Nanami feel more alone. It was in these hours, suspended between darkness and morning, that the thoughts came hardest. The looping kind. The ones he never spoke aloud.

If you could see yourself through his eyes, would you still stay?

It wasn’t insecurity. Not exactly. Nanami knew what he offered. He knew he was steady, patient, someone Gojo could rest beside without explanation. That had always been his strength—his stillness, his clarity. But love wasn’t a ledger. There was no clean equation to measure the weight of being enough.

And still… sometimes he caught it. A flicker. A shadow passing through Gojo’s gaze when Nanami said something too softly, touched him too gently.

Like he reminded him of someone else.

Like Suguru.

Suguru had been an upperclassman—respected, charismatic, untouchable. Nanami had watched from the sidelines, aware of Suguru’s magnetism, his effortless command over everyone around him.

He remembered how Suguru moved through the halls like he belonged to another world—a world that Nanami, diligent and steady, could observe but never quite enter. There was a quiet strength there, a raw softness under the surface that few saw but that Gojo never stopped trying to reach.

Nanami had admired that, from afar. And now, lying here, he felt the old distance stretch taut between them—not just because Suguru was gone, but because Gojo’s heart still seemed anchored to his memory.

There was no point in asking. Gojo would only smile, pull him close, say something clever and disarming.

But the doubt was persistent.

Do you ever wonder, when he kisses you, if it’s someone else’s name behind his teeth?

Not always. But some nights, when Gojo’s touches were too tender, too practiced—when his mouth skimmed Nanami’s jaw with a familiarity that felt older than the time they’d shared—it was hard not to ask the question in the quiet of his own mind.

Would he still touch me this way if Suguru had stayed?

A cruel thought. Pointless, even. But the mind was a traitor at 3 a.m., and Nanami—tired, bare, sleepless—had no defenses left against the echo.

Beside him, Gojo shifted again. His arm slid fully around Nanami’s waist, pulling him closer. A content sigh, like instinct. Like he needed to be near him. And for a moment, the ache in Nanami’s chest softened.

Still, the question remained. Pressed into the space between their bodies. Unspeakable. Heavy.

And Nanami, wide-eyed in the dark, let himself feel it fully—for once, without trying to push it away:

If you still had him… would you still be here, touching me like this?

Nanami’s breath slowed, the steady rise and fall of his chest syncing with the faint rustle of the sheets. His eyes fluttered shut, but the edges of his mind remained tangled in shadowed thoughts—those same questions circling, never quite settling.

He imagined Gojo’s smile—the careless lightness that made the world seem a little less heavy. The way his laugh spilled out without warning, infectious and bright, like sunlight cutting through clouds.

But beneath that smile, beneath that laugh, was something else. A silence that spoke louder than words. Ghosts Nanami couldn’t touch. Shadows shaped like Suguru.

Even as sleep began to pull at him, soft and insistent, Nanami’s heart clung to the ache—an ache wrapped in warmth and uncertainty, in love tempered by absence.

His last waking thought was fragile and unspoken: I don’t want to be second choice.

The darkness folded over him like a quiet promise.

Days passed in a steady, uneasy rhythm. The apartment smelled faintly of coffee and rain—two constants that marked their lives but did little to anchor the spaces growing between them.

Gojo was as warm as ever, his smiles still bright enough to light a room. But beneath the easy charm and teasing words, a wall rose higher with each passing moment—a careful fortress built to keep something locked away.

He avoided the silences that went too deep, sidestepping the moments when his gaze might linger too long or when his voice might falter. Vulnerability was a word he never said aloud. Not to Nanami. Not anymore.

Nanami watched it happen in small pieces—the way Gojo’s eyes darted away when the conversation slowed, the way his fingers brushed past Nanami’s without really holding, the way he laughed a little too loud, a little too fast, to cover the spaces where something unsaid lived.

And Nanami, for his part, became a master of quiet endurance.

He pretended not to ache.

He learned to swallow the questions that burned at the edges of his throat.

He learned to turn away from the moments when his heart wanted to break open, just so Gojo wouldn’t see.

Their tenderness remained—a fragile thread strung tight across the widening cracks—but it was no longer enough to hold them whole.

In the quiet hours, when Gojo was out or asleep, Nanami’s mind traced the fractures.

How long before the silence grew loud enough to shatter the careful balance?

How long before someone let go?

Then—Geto returned.

No announcement. No warning. No dramatic entrance to mark the end of years presumed final.

He simply appeared. Quiet, unassuming. Hair longer. Eyes older. His voice softer than memory allowed.

Word came in the form of a message passed down through allies, muttered in half-disbelief by sorcerers who had sworn he was dead, gone, undone.

But he was not undone. Not entirely.

Gojo didn’t speak the moment he found out. He simply stood there—still, impossibly still—like something ancient inside him had been called home.

Nanami watched it happen.

He watched the way Gojo’s eyes changed. The way his shoulders dropped beneath the weight of something only he could feel. It wasn’t shock. It wasn’t relief.

It was recognition. A quiet, aching knowing.

Nanami said nothing.

He didn’t ask if Gojo was going to see him. He didn’t need to.

He just nodded once, like permission, though he didn’t remember giving it.

That night, the apartment felt colder.

Nanami sat at the edge of the bed and stared at the floor for a long time. The light from the hallway bled across the hardwood, pale and indifferent.

He thought of Geto—not as the myth, not as the name whispered like a scar—but as the boy he once knew. The senior who moved through the world with quiet fire and sharp kindness. The boy Nanami had admired always, from a respectful distance.

The boy Gojo had loved without hesitation.

And now he was back. Scarred, yes. Changed, yes. But not gone. Never really gone.

Nanami lay in bed that night and stared at the ceiling, same as always.

Gojo didn’t come home until late.

When he did, he moved quietly, like he knew something delicate had already cracked.

He didn’t say where he’d been. He didn’t say Suguru’s name.

Nanami didn’t ask.

He just turned his head slightly toward the sound of footsteps. Gojo paused in the doorway, silhouetted in the glow from the kitchen.

They looked at each other for a long moment—long enough for the air to shift.

Then Gojo crossed the room and lay down beside him, close but not touching.

Nanami stared at the ceiling again, blinking slow.

He thought: this is the beginning of the end.

But what he said was, “You’re late.”

Gojo hummed, quiet. “Yeah.”

And then silence.

Not tender. Not cruel. Just… silence.

Nanami didn’t meet Geto until a few days later.

Not through intention. Just inevitability.

It was in a half-lit hallway of the school, after a mission briefing—Gojo’s steps ahead of him, casual in that practiced way of his. And then—

There he was.

Geto Suguru.

Not the myth, not the monster. Just… a man.

He looked smaller than Nanami remembered. The sharp edges of youth worn down by exile and war and whatever else had hollowed him out.

His clothes were simple. His voice, when he greeted them, was lower, like it didn’t want to echo. His posture had a stillness that felt new, or maybe just unfamiliar.

He didn’t look like someone returning to reclaim anything.

He looked like someone uncertain if he still had a place to stand.

Gojo smiled when he saw him. Not the wide, sunburst grin Nanami knew too well, but something smaller. Softer. Almost reverent.

Nanami stood just behind him, still, silent.

Geto’s eyes flicked to him, and he gave a short nod. There was no tension—only exhaustion. No challenge—only a deep, aching caution.

“Nanami,” he said, like the name itself was a familiar object left in an old room.

“Geto-san.” Nanami’s voice was even, but not cold.

Their eyes held for a breath longer than necessary, then passed on.

Gojo filled the space easily, talking—about nothing, really. Letting words patch over the quiet like wallpaper. But Nanami saw it. The way Gojo leaned in, not close but toward. The way his voice changed when he spoke to Suguru—not louder, just… gentler. A tone Nanami hadn’t heard in months.

And Geto—he didn’t reach for it. He didn’t meet it with the easy rhythm of the past. He only nodded, once or twice, his gaze distant, brow tense with restraint. A man unraveling slowly, but trying not to bleed in public.

Nanami felt no jealousy. Not quite.

Just that same quiet ache—the one that lived in the spaces between gestures, in every hesitation Gojo didn’t know he made.

That night, Gojo didn’t speak much.

He stood in the kitchen longer than usual. His back to Nanami. His hand resting on the counter like it needed somewhere to steady itself.

Nanami leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching him in the reflection of the window.

“He’s not who he was,” Gojo said finally, low.

“No,” Nanami replied. “Neither are you.”

That silenced them both for a while.

And Nanami didn’t ask the question rising in his chest. But will he be who you need?

Because the answer was already moving between them, wordless and real.

Gojo didn’t speak to him for three days after that.

Not in anger. Not out of spite. Just... absence.

He was still there—Nanami heard the front door each night, the shower turning on, the quiet rustle of clothes being shed in the dark. Mornings passed with Gojo slipping out before Nanami rose. Nights ended with the dip of the mattress and a body beside him that didn’t reach out.

He was there, but not with him.

And Nanami—he didn’t chase him.

He folded his silences into sharp corners, drank his coffee without comment, and told himself this was temporary. Just a shift. Just a ripple.

But the ache settled in deeper.

By the second night, Nanami stopped pretending to sleep before Gojo returned. He lay awake and listened. To the hush of keys in the lock. To the pause in the hallway. To the sound of breath held, then released.

Gojo never said his name.

Never touched him.

And Nanami never asked why.

He’d known, from the beginning, that love with Satoru Gojo was like walking beside a storm—beautiful, impossible, and never fully touchable. But knowing didn’t make it easier to watch him drift out to sea while standing on the shore, calling for nothing.

When the third day broke, pale and cold, Nanami sat alone at the edge of their shared bed and looked out the window, eyes drawn to a city just beginning to stir.

He thought of Geto again—how hollow he looked. Not dangerous. Not triumphant. Just... returned. How he hadn’t even tried to reclaim anything.

And yet, Gojo had gone to meet him like a man pulled by tide.

Nanami exhaled, slow. Rubbed a hand across his jaw.

This wasn’t jealousy. It was grief for something that hadn’t yet ended but was already slipping away.

He wondered if Gojo would notice—if he left.

It was a late afternoon, sun stretched thin across the rooftops of Jujutsu High, light softening into the blue-gold hush that always felt like the edge of something.

Nanami hadn’t planned to see it. He wasn’t looking for anything. But there they were—Gojo and Geto—standing beneath the camphor trees behind the training hall. A spot too quiet, too familiar.

They stood close, not quite touching.

Geto spoke first. His voice didn’t carry, but the shape of it was gentle. Confessional. Gojo listened, head slightly bowed, the wind playing with the fringe of his hair.

Nanami couldn’t hear the words.

Didn’t need to.

The way Gojo looked at him—soft, ruined, worshipful—was enough.

It was too long a conversation.

Too much unspoken, unfolding like slow forgiveness or the beginning of something else.

Nanami stood still a long moment, watching the space between them bend and never break.

It could’ve been closure.

It could’ve been a door reopening.

And Nanami didn’t know which would hurt more.

The ache didn’t come all at once. It uncoiled slowly beneath his ribs, heavy and quiet. The kind of pain you don’t react to. The kind that simply settles in, like you were always meant to carry it.

“You okay?” Itadori’s voice broke gently into the silence beside him.

Nanami startled slightly—he hadn’t noticed them arrive.

Megumi stood on his other side, unreadable as ever, but the tension in his shoulders was softer than usual. Protective, almost. Quietly bristling in the way only someone who’d learned to care too carefully could be.

“I’m fine,” Nanami said, too quickly.

Itadori didn’t believe him. Megumi didn’t pretend to.

But neither pushed.

They just stayed there—one on either side—as if their presence alone might be enough to hold him steady.

And somehow, in that small mercy, Nanami felt the thing that should have hurt finally break.

He didn’t move. Didn’t speak again.

Just watched as Gojo reached out, finally, to place a hand over Geto’s heart.

And Geto—tired, ragged, open—closed his eyes and leaned into the touch.

Nanami looked away.

That night, the apartment was still.

Gojo was already home, seated on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees, head bowed as if he’d been waiting a long time and didn’t know how to begin.

Nanami stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He didn’t remove his coat. Didn't cross the room.

He looked at Gojo—really looked—and something inside him broke with astonishing quiet.

“I saw you today,” he said, voice low. Not accusing. Not bitter. Just tired.

Gojo looked up, startled, eyes too wide. “Nanami—”

“You don’t have to say anything, Satoru.” Nanami’s tone was calm. Controlled. But inside, he felt anything but. “I understand. He was here first.”

Silence cracked open between them.

Gojo stood too quickly, as if trying to reach him could undo it. “No. No—Kento, it’s not—”

But the words faltered. He stepped forward and then stopped, like even his body couldn’t decide what it was allowed to do.

Nanami didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away.

“I’m not angry,” he said, softer now. “I don’t think I ever was. But I won’t stay and wonder every day if I’m enough only because he wasn’t here.”

Gojo’s breath hitched. “It’s not like that. You don’t know—what he and I—what we were—” He dragged a hand through his hair, desperate, stumbling. “It’s not the same. You're not a replacement, you're not—”

“I know I’m not,” Nanami interrupted, evenly. “But I feel like one. And that’s not something you can explain away.”

The silence that followed wasn’t hollow.

It was full. Of all the things Gojo didn’t know how to say. Of all the places Nanami could no longer wait to be reached.

Gojo stepped closer. His hands hovered, almost touching, then fell away again.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he said, voice breaking around it. “Not you. Not now.”

Nanami’s eyes burned, but he didn’t let it show. He simply nodded once. “Then maybe you should’ve looked at me like you wanted to keep me.”

He turned, slow and steady, and walked to the door.

Not out of anger. Not out of punishment.

But because love—when it hurts this much—demands mercy. Even if that mercy is walking away.

The door closed softly behind him.

And Gojo stood there, alone in a room still warm with the shape of someone who loved him deeply and selflessly.

It was early morning when Geto found him.

Nanami had taken refuge in a quiet café tucked behind an old shrine—one of those places where time slowed, where the clink of porcelain and the low hum of conversation softened the sharp edges of thought.

He sat alone at a window table, coffee cooling untouched beside him, coat draped neatly over the chair. He didn’t look up when the door opened, didn’t react when someone approached.

But when Geto sat down across from him, Nanami stilled.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

The last time they’d truly seen each other—really seen each other—was years ago, in another life. When Nanami was a student with more edge than softness, and Geto was still revered, his name still spoken like light instead of shadow.

Now, there was only this: two men weathered down to their bones.

Geto looked tired, but clearer somehow. The kind of clarity that comes only after breaking completely.

Nanami’s voice was quiet. “Did he send you?”

“No,” Geto said. “He doesn’t know I’m here.”

Nanami’s eyes flicked up then, just briefly—measuring, uncertain.

“I’m not here to fix anything,” Geto added. “I don’t think I could. But I needed to see you.”

He folded his hands on the table. Not defensive. Not rehearsed.

“I wanted to thank you.”

Nanami blinked. “…For what?”

“For loving him,” Geto said simply. “In the way I couldn’t. In the way he needed, after I left.”

Nanami’s breath caught, just once.

Geto went on, soft but certain. “You kept him whole. I don’t think you even know that. But I saw it the moment I looked at him again—how much of him stayed standing because you were beside him.”

Nanami looked down at his coffee, throat tight. “It wasn’t enough.”

Geto nodded, but didn’t argue. “Maybe not for him, right now. But it was enough. And it mattered.”

Silence fell between them again, not cold—just reverent. Like both of them were grieving something quietly together, without needing to name it.

Then Geto smiled, faint and sad. “I’m not here to take him back. I couldn’t, even if I tried. He looks at me and sees everything we were. He looks at you, and sees everything he wants to be.”

Nanami didn’t respond. He wasn’t sure he could.

But something loosened in his chest—a thread pulled gently free from the knot.

Geto stood after that. No lingering. No parting wisdom. Just a hand briefly resting on the table between them. A gesture of peace.

And then he was gone.

Leaving Nanami alone, with a cooling coffee and the taste of something bitter and clean.

Closure, perhaps.

Or the beginning of something not yet ruined.

It was late when they saw each other again—Geto and Gojo.

The school grounds were still. A rare kind of peace stretched thin over the night. Gojo stood beneath the same camphor trees where they'd first spoken after Geto's return, eyes cast to the sky like it held answers he could no longer hear.

Geto found him there. Quiet. Worn. Not waiting—but maybe hoping.

He didn’t say anything at first. Just stood beside him, hands in his sleeves, gaze tracing the shape of their shared youth in the branches above.

Gojo broke the silence.

“I lost him,” he said.

Geto tilted his head, but didn’t pretend to misunderstand.

“He’s not lost,” he said gently.

Gojo exhaled, sharp, like it hurt. “I didn’t mean to make him feel like that. Like he wasn’t… enough.”

“I know.”

“I don’t love you anymore.” It came out like a confession. “I don’t want that anymore.”

Geto smiled—small and real. “I know that too.”

Gojo looked at him finally, and what he saw there stilled him: not longing, not regret—just peace. And something deeper. Something like mercy.

“I loved you,” Geto said, voice low. “But we broke that a long time ago. I came back to make peace, Satoru. Not to stay. Not to take.”

His gaze softened. “He thinks you still belong to me.”

Gojo flinched. “He said—he said I looked at you like—”

“Like a ghost,” Geto finished. “You do. But not because you want me.”

He turned then, facing Gojo fully. “He loves you. I can see it, even when you can't. And you love him—so much it terrifies you. That’s why you hesitated.”

Gojo swallowed hard, eyes wet. “I don't know how to be what he deserves.”

“No one does.” Geto’s voice cracked slightly. “But you try. You stay. That’s how he’ll know.”

Then, quietly—“Go to him. You don’t need to fix this all at once. Just don’t let him keep thinking he’s second to someone who only came back to let you go.”

A beat passed. Then another.

And in that space, something inside Gojo—wound tight for too long—unspooled.

He stepped forward suddenly, arms wrapping around Geto, clinging without shame.

Geto held him once—one last time—and then let him go.

Like the past finally setting him free.

The rain fell hard, thick and unrelenting, blurring the city lights into smears of gold and red. It wasn’t the kind of rain you could run through and forget—it was the kind that soaked into your bones, the kind that washed everything away but left the weight behind.

Gojo found him there.

Nanami stood at the edge of the park, coat undone, hair plastered to his forehead, eyes fixed on the puddles forming beneath his boots.

For a long moment, Gojo just watched.

The steady drip of rain mixed with the steady ache in his chest.

“Nanami.”

The name was a breath, a plea.

Nanami didn’t turn.

Gojo stepped closer, the wet crunch of gravel underfoot loud between them.

“I’m sorry,” Gojo said, voice raw, shaking like the storm around them. “I was scared. I didn’t know how to be what you needed. But I want to try. I want you.”

Nanami finally looked up.

His eyes, dark and steady, met Gojo’s.

“No more ghosts,” he said softly. “No more waiting for you to come back from them.”

Gojo reached out, hesitating just a moment before his fingers brushed Nanami’s damp cheek, wiping rain—and maybe something harder—away.

“I’m here,” he promised. “Not because of the past. Not because of him. Because of you.”

The rain kept falling, but the world narrowed to the space between them.

And for the first time in a long time, Nanami let himself believe it might be enough.