Chapter Text
T-1 wore a tie to homeroom.
It arrived as a calendar square with a whistle in its mouth and the authority of inevitability. The academy woke into rehearsal religion: doors genuflecting, signs bearing witness, hallways practicing procession. Frost had stepped back to the curb like it respected clipboards. Even the bell tower seemed to keep time with the metronome instead of its own proud spine.
Haibara added another blue commandment to the juice machine:
REHEARSAL = REAL (NO ACTING SURPRISED TOMORROW)
Under it, in pencil: unless it’s donors.
Council Room C glowed with T-1 piety. Utahime stood at the center like a liturgy that tolerated questions but not delays.
“Order of worship,” she said, and the agenda answered to its baptismal name. “Front of house—Mr. Gojo. Seating and flow—Mr. Geto. Medical—Shoko. Permits—Nanami. Facilities—Sato. Sir Tape—haunting every threshold. If you have a better idea than the plan, keep it as a bedtime story. Move.”
They moved.
Rehearsal began as a map and became a body. Clickers found their pulse. The donor wall rehearsed a queue that looked like manners. The greenhouse—legal and faintly smug—exhaled clean moisture against the glass like a promise on layaway. The air tasted of citrus and nerves and the kind of dust that only visits before applause. Whenever Gojo spoke across the room, people obeyed; whenever Geto finished the sentence, people understood. They orbited—two magnets pretending to be furniture.
“Routes over speeches,” Gojo called across the room, bright and exact, like a lighthouse that flirted. “Always. If you forget everything else, remember that.”
Geto met the line mid-stride and handed it the rest of its sentence. “Speeches can be shortened. Collisions take time.”
They traded authority the way other people trade heat. On the third pass, Geto stepped into the pinch and caught an almost-accident before it could practice itself into gospel. Gojo saw the save without looking; his mouth turned private for one heartbeat—thanks, in the wordless dialect they’d been co-authoring since the night a prefect’s flashlight wrote Geto into detention and Gojo into myth.
They kept moving.
At noon, the mirror room regarded them with the gravity of a friend who knows when you’re lying. Circles laid down easy under Gojo’s tape; lanes aligned to Geto’s insistence. The place remembered their timing and forgave nothing. In the glass, their reflections almost touched—science experiment: how close can heat stand to heat before the alarm tests itself?
“Okay,” Gojo said, setting the roll aside and opening his hands as if to show he wasn’t carrying weapons. “Let’s pull yesterday apart before it calcifies.”
Geto braced a hip against the table that had seen worse. “I took a cheap shot,” he said. The admission sounded like sanded wood: unglamorous, true. “I was angrier at the sentence ‘we’ll see’ than at you, and that wasn’t fair.”
“‘We’ll see’ is a tool,” Gojo answered, voice level. “I used it to keep the headmaster from staging a public tantrum. But I should’ve told you I was using it. The bruise was you finding out late.”
“Exactly.” Geto glanced at the taped circles, at their neat, temporary vows. “Rule: tell me first. Not because I need permission, but because I’m supposed to stand next to you when you say no.”
A knock pecked at the door. Neither of them moved. The building waited for the wrong version of this conversation; they gave it the right one.
“Counter-rule,” Gojo said, quick but not defensive. “I’m allowed to ‘we’ll see’ in public if ‘we talk’ is immediate in private. I won’t hand you surprises in burning rooms.”
“And I won’t punish you for doing your job with your method,” Geto said. “Also: if the headmaster corners you, text me a noun. ‘Presentations.’ ‘Toast.’ I’ll know to bring water or fire.”
“Done.” Gojo’s shoulders shed the last of an argument that had been standing there pretending to be a coat rack. “For the record, I told him no at 7:11 a.m. He tried to barter with tradition, I countered with occupancy and Nanami. He blinked first.”
“That is my favorite religion,” Geto said. The relief in his ribs made him fractionally taller. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Gojo studied him a second. “We okay?”
“We will be if we keep doing this,” Geto said. “Accuracy before pride.”
“Copy,” Gojo said, and his grin returned like electricity restored to a block. “Now, scholarship pass—again. I want the room to think we were born walking in thirds.”
They practiced until utility replaced luck. Gojo’s two-finger cue and Geto’s third-beat pivot threaded through the routes like a quiet melody no one would admit to humming. They argued about a water station for eighteen seconds and agreed on second nineteen, which is the kind of victory that saves lives. On the final run, the path from doors → toast → donor wall → greenhouse felt inevitable rather than suggested.
“Sixteen hundred—full run,” Utahime said into the radio. “We will end at seventeen hundred because I believe in endings.”
“We’ve learned from the headmaster,” Gojo murmured, and Geto’s mouth succumbed to an unprofessional smile.
Rehearsal was a city on rails. Utahime’s stopwatch governed like an unbending deity. Shoko’s station staged an array that could defeat both drama and dust. Nanami’s checklists performed ballet; Sato’s lanterns performed ethics; Haibara’s arrows performed prophecy. Table Six rehearsed being wrong at a volume the fire marshal would respect. The greenhouse fogged modestly and counted to forty with lawful pride.
At 16:37 a riser complained; at 16:38 Sato fixed it with a wrench and a sermon. At 16:45 a clicker jammed; Haibara performed an exorcism with rubbing alcohol and optimism. At 16:53 Utahime said “Again,” and time obeyed.
When she snapped the stopwatch shut, the room loosened like a necktie at a legal party.
“Acceptable,” she told them, which was a benediction shaped like a threat. “Do not dare fate to improvise.”
They dispersed into their carefully allotted lives. Gojo hovered beside Geto’s elbow like gravity with opinions.
“Walk?” he asked.
“Walk,” Geto said, and the hallway consented.
They touched every room that would matter tomorrow. Donor hall: bones with potential. Chapel: rehearsing truth. Truth felt like homework; tonight asked for victory. Greenhouse: quiet humidity, lights strung like patient stars, fans to low, Gary on patrol. They tested sightlines. They tested the emotional pitch of thresholds. They did not touch each other, which felt like an agreement and not a deprivation.
At the chapel side door, Gojo paused, palm to the wood as if reading a pulse. “This one doesn’t keep secrets.”
“The greenhouse does,” Geto said.
“Good,” Gojo said. “Let’s give the chapel the argument and the greenhouse the victory.”
“Deal,” Geto said, and the building allowed the division of labor.
T-0 declared itself at dawn with a bell that didn’t dare be late. The campus inhaled; a hundred lists jumped into their shoes. Morning wore a collared shirt. The air tasted like citrus and decision.
Nanami: arrivals begin 17:40. do not let Sato say “gobo.”
Shoko: hydration stations ready; volunteers trained to identify faint vs. “performative swoon.” say nice things about me later.
Utahime (to group): schedules are not options. today I am gracious only on purpose.
Haibara: the moth salutes you, commanders. Gary has memorized egress.
By ten, the greenhouse steamed like a living lung; by noon, the donor wall had put on its best behavior; by three, the quartet tuned to tenderly audible. Gojo, immaculate, moved through it like a verb.
“Doors at seventeen-thirty,” he told the ushers, voice soft enough to stand inside but loud enough to obey. “Routes over speeches. If anyone blocks an exit to tell you about 1989, love them down the hall.”
Geto tuned the circulation. A rug thought about rebellion; he negotiated it back to citizenship. A water table drifted; he escorted it to destiny. He whispered names to scholarship students and watched nerves transform into posture. Somewhere Sato said “photometrics” in a tone that soothed a trustee.
Five minutes to doors, Gojo found Geto and bumped his shoulder—their smallest unit of honesty.
“Ready?”
“Ready,” Geto said. It wasn’t bravery. It was accuracy.
“Rule?” Gojo asked, almost smiling.
“Tell me first,” Geto said.
“Exception?”
“When true,” Gojo answered.
“Go,” Utahime called, and they did.
The evening unfurled like a sheet shaken over a bed: a brief rush of wind, then a fall into place. Guests arrived already convinced of their importance; volunteers absorbed conviction and returned it as efficiency. The headmaster, properly ferns-width adjusted, delivered six minutes that behaved; Nanami hovered with a folded paper that could become law if the speech dared to grow. The donor wall performed like a solution. Complaints drained into Table Six as designed. Shoko dispensed ice and wisdom with terrifying competence. The greenhouse inhaled couples and exhaled humid gratitude. Gary posted at the arrow and judged kindly.
Gojo made confusion look temporary. “We’ll see” never showed; “right this way” sang through the room. He could redirect a billionaire with a whisper and a palm. Geto was the pressure at the edges that kept the center true. Together, without touching, they carried a building.
“Scholarship pass,” Gojo said when the air needed generosity. Their two-finger cue and third-beat pivot stitched them through ten tables like they’d rehearsed inside the floorboards. Geto supplied names; Gojo supplied ease. A donor began a corridor epic; Gojo laughed him kindly into motion; Geto replaced him with a route.
“Greenhouse at capacity,” crackled Utahime’s radio.
“Clickers at doors,” she returned. “Fans to low above twenty. Moths respected. No flame.”
“Copy,” said Haibara, saint of counting.
For a long stretch of minutes that became a chapter, everything worked. The fragile animal—plan—stood up and walked around without falling. People behaved because they were shown how. The quartet found the exact decibel that made donors generous without making them feel supervised by art.
And then, after the silent auction revealed its arithmetic and the last toast folded into dishware, the evening exhaled its last obligation.
“Strike begins on my count,” Utahime said, already reorganizing a future. “But go outside first. Thank the night for behaving.”
Volunteers poured toward the doors like a disciplined flood. Facilities produced carts that remembered their wheels. The donor wall unbuttoned itself. Shoko sent home three dramatic sighs with a Werther’s and a warning.
Gojo and Geto found each other the way magnets do when the table forgets to be wood. Not dramatic. Easiest thing all night.
“We did it,” Gojo said, which in his mouth sounded like toast and truce and beginning.
“We did,” Geto allowed. He felt taller by the weight of exactly one worry removed.
“Walk?”
“Greenhouse,” Geto said, and the decision felt like a door closing politely.
They slipped past strike in the donor hall (Sato sermonizing at a ladder), past the chapel that smelled like honesty cooling, and into the greenhouse where the air still held applause in the form of condensation. String lights hummed. The fans rumbled obediently low. Outside, rain drummed a practiced rhythm on glass—friendly palms pressed to the panes.
They stopped three paces in, as if the floor had drawn a polite border. Between them, air cooperated like it had rehearsed this, too; neither of them moved, which felt brave and ridiculous. The string lights disapproved of restraint and put halos on their ears like encouragement.
Gojo adjusted a fleck of glitter on his lapel and—deliberately—did not remove it. Geto watched the not-removing with unreasonable fondness, the same way he’d once watched Gojo pretend he didn’t like the saints under the bell tower while quietly admiring the way the stone took care of the sky.
“Congratulations on your legally humid masterpiece,” Geto said.
“Greenhouse,” Gojo corrected, pleased already. “The brand is ‘moisture with paperwork.’”
“Sexy,” Geto said.
“Inspiring,” Gojo countered, then tipped his head toward the long aisle of shadowed philodendrons. “Dance?”
“There’s no music,” Geto said automatically, because reflexes had tenure.
Gojo lowered his voice. “There’s always music. Tonight we let the fans DJ.”
He offered his hand like he was making an appointment with gravity.
Geto looked at it, then at the glass roof where the night sat patient and expectant. Honesty had run out of other directions, so he stepped in. One hand found the shoulder seam of Gojo’s jacket—heat under expensive fabric—and Gojo’s palm settled at the narrow, careful place at Geto’s back that left no room for misunderstanding. Their other hands met and hovered at diplomacy.
They swayed. Weight, breath, pivot. The fan’s steady hush set the tempo; the rain added treble. Gojo’s two-finger cue happened by reflex; Geto’s third-beat answer arrived like a practiced secret. Leaves made halos of light around them as if to mind their own business loudly.
“Tell me if I step wrong,” Gojo said.
“You’ll claim it was avant-garde,” Geto said. “Then demand a review in Council Room C.”
“Only if the critic is cute and mean,” Gojo murmured.
“Tragic,” Geto said, but the corner of his mouth counted as an admission.
They turned—small, almost not a turn, more like an agreement. Something in the old metal bench clicked once and then behaved. The air tasted like citrus and a decision arriving from a long distance.
“Say something true,” Gojo asked, keeping his voice inside their weather.
“I hate being watched,” Geto said, and waited to see if Gojo would turn it into a joke.
“I like being watched,” Gojo said—then, honest, “but not by the wrong crowd.”
He breathed once like he was testing a step before taking it. “Another true thing?”
“Proceed,” Geto said. Faintly amused. Very alert.
Gojo’s fingers flexed at Geto’s back—a private bracket. “I’ve been rehearsing ‘we’ll see’ all week. I am… not interested in ‘we’ll see’ with you.”
Geto’s pulse did a quiet, athletic thing. “You prefer?”
“‘Yes,’” Gojo said, soft and embarrassingly brave. “To… us. To whatever this is. To the part where you stand next to me and the room behaves. To the part where you tell me ‘no’ with a noun and I stop feeling alone in a burning building. To the thing that started a while ago and got loud today.”
“When did it start?” Geto asked. The question came fast, like he’d been carrying it around in his teeth.
Gojo’s mouth tilted, unpracticed at being sincere and doing it anyway. “Detention night,” he said. “The prefect’s flashlight climbed your cheek like it owed you rent, and you looked at me like I wasn’t a rumor I wrote about myself. That was the first oh.” He swallowed. “Today, when you stepped into the pinch and the accident just decided to live somewhere else—that’s when I realized it wasn’t just a crush.”
A warmth that wasn’t the greenhouse moved through Geto’s chest and made a plausible argument for staying and because there was no point lying in a room made of windows: “I liked you first.”
Gojo blinked. “You—what?”
“Don’t look so vindicated. It’s unattractive.”
“I look incredible when vindicated,” Gojo said, trying for smug and landing on breathless. “When?”
“Before detention,” Geto said. “You were under the bell tower pretending you didn’t like the saints, and you kept your hands in your pockets like you were holding the building steady. I like people who make things stand.” His thumb grazed the seam of Gojo’s shoulder like an accident that had been planning itself for weeks. “But I didn’t admit it until you told the headmaster no at 7:11 a.m. and then told me first.”
Gojo’s lashes fluttered in what might have been relief trying not to be obvious. “I was going to say something earlier but Utahime keeps time with a sword.”
“Utahime believes in endings,” Geto said. “I’m partial to beginnings.”
“Then start,” Gojo said, and for once didn’t twitch for the spotlight. He stood inside it.
Geto considered the safe joke and didn’t take it. Instead he slid his hand from shoulder seam to lapel and held. Gojo’s breath caught, then settled like a bird that had found a railing.
“Tell me no,” Gojo said, very soft. “I will reverse out of here so fast I’ll need campus security to tow my ego.”
“You’ve never needed a tow,” Geto said.
“I’ll borrow your map,” Gojo said. “I like your handwriting.”
Geto leaned in—slow enough that the string lights had time to pick a favorite. He stopped just shy of Gojo’s mouth and let the decision breathe between them.
“Door,” he said.
“Open,” Gojo breathed, every syllable consent.
Geto kissed him.
It landed like voltage finding the correct wire: clean, bright, untheatrical, utterly undoing. The potting bench offered an offended clink; the fan hiccuped and recovered; rain applauded on glass. Gojo didn’t crowd—he anchored—hand firm at Geto’s back with respectful certainty, the other bracing the bench like he was keeping the world from tilting. Geto answered with focus over force, precision over caution; the room leaned toward them in approval.
Gojo made a small sound that he probably hadn’t planned on ever making in public, even in a room that was technically private. Geto took the sound and filed it under Nothing To Weaponize And Everything To Remember.
They broke just enough for air, not distance.
“Okay,” Gojo said, reverent and wrecked. “That was—yes.”
“Filed,” Geto said, dizzy and exact.
Gojo laughed, close-mouthed to keep the laugh from escaping somewhere stupid. “How many more are permitted under horticultural jurisdiction?”
“Five,” Geto said immediately.
“That seems low.”
“Inflation exists,” Geto conceded. “Six. With audits.”
“I adore your audits,” Gojo said, and leaned back in because shamelessness had its own gravity.
Geto met him halfway, letting the angle be his choice. The second kiss found a longer line, a steadier pressure. Gojo softened under it in a way that suggested muscle memory from a future that hadn’t happened yet. When Geto coaxed, Gojo opened with palmed obedience, a quiet, unambiguous yes that ran along Geto’s spine like a fuse. It wasn’t about force. It was about fluency.
“Good,” Geto murmured, almost too quiet to hear.
The approval hit Gojo like a confession answered. He made another unplanned sound, caught it with his teeth, then failed to keep it caged when Geto’s fingers threaded into his hair and steadied the back of his head with gentle authority.
“Tragic,” Gojo whispered against Geto’s mouth, smiling a little and trying not to. “I’m going to grin like an idiot for a week.”
“You already do,” Geto said, and kissed him again for the pleasure of proving it. Gojo’s hand at Geto’s back slid fractionally higher—careful, deferential; the other curled in lapel as if he’d finally been allowed to touch the thing he’d been orbiting.
“Policy,” Gojo breathed when they surfaced. “If I say something that changes the world in my head, does it have to change the world out loud?”
“Only if it’s true enough to survive paperwork,” Geto said.
“True enough,” Gojo said, focusing, “I like you. I like you at the admin bench when it pretends not to be sentimental. I like you when you erase one line and the map obeys. I like you when you stand in an aisle pinch and the accident dies of natural causes. I like you enough to want rules so I don’t ruin this with theater.”
“Then first rule,” Geto said, and, because he could, kissed the corner of Gojo’s mouth as punctuation. “We tell each other first. No surprises in burning rooms.”
“Yes,” Gojo said. “Second rule: if the method starts to eat the plan, we say it out loud. Preferably before knives.”
“Preferably,” Geto agreed, amused and warm. “Third: no announcements. No theater. This is ours.”
“No platform,” Gojo echoed. “No homework.”
“Fourth,” Geto said, thinking of the building listening. “No getting caught on purpose.”
“On purpose?” Gojo asked, faux-scandalized. “I would never.”
“You audition for accidents,” Geto said. “No auditions.”
“Deal.” Gojo offered his pinky with sovereign childishness. Dignity had died for lesser causes.
Geto hooked it, and heat moved ceremonial between them.
They swayed again, closer now. Gojo’s thumb traced the seam of Geto’s sleeve; Geto’s shoulders remembered how to drop. Gary cruised past, saluted a fern, and stamped their corner lawful.
“Confession addendum?” Gojo asked, eyes on Geto’s mouth because he was rude in the correct ways.
“Proceed,” Geto said.
“I didn’t like you first,” Gojo said, deadpan. “I liked you loudest.”
Geto laughed—helpless, surprised. The sound did something irreversible to Gojo’s posture; he straightened and then melted, looking far too pleased to be allowed.
“You are a problem,” Geto said.
“I am your problem,” Gojo countered, triumphant and soft. “Pending approval.”
“Consideration complete,” Geto said, and—because technicalities exist to be exploited—took a third kiss like a signature. Gojo leaned into it with transparent relief, palms insisting just enough to say I’m here while the rest of him stayed obediently still.
“Approved,” Gojo breathed when Geto let him up. “With conditions: competence, punctuality, texts that use nouns.”
“You’re stealing my lines,” Geto said.
“I’m standing next to you when you say them,” Gojo said. “Union rules.”
The heat between them shifted—less spark, more banked. The kind that could last through weather.
Geto nuzzled the hinge of Gojo’s jaw once—deliberate, slow. Gojo inhaled like he’d been corrected by a favorite teacher and found he liked it.
“Again?” Geto asked, which wasn’t a question so much as a curriculum.
“Please,” Gojo said, and it didn’t sound like surrender; it sounded like relief with manners.
Kiss four drew wider, unhurried but thorough, a read-back and a promise. Gojo opened readily, learning the rhythm Geto set and answering with breath and careful hands. When Geto deepened the angle, Gojo made room like his bones had been waiting to. The fans hummed consent; rain wrote approval in dots and dashes; a leaf brushed Gojo’s shoulder and would absolutely be ruined by story later.
“Good,” Geto said again, approval sliding through Gojo’s pulse like a light left on in a safe room.
“I like when you say that,” Gojo confessed, cheeks pinked and shameless. “Academic praise kink. Tragic.”
“Duly noted,” Geto said, smiling in a way that should have come with a fire extinguisher. “We’ll draft a rubric.”
“Extra credit?” Gojo tried.
“If you stop talking,” Geto said, and then didn’t let him be good at it.
They kissed long enough to be late to something they couldn’t name and exactly on time for themselves. When they came up for breath, they didn’t separate far; their foreheads found an efficient rest.
“Rule,” Gojo murmured, breath warm. “We tell each other if this makes the world louder.”
“Exception,” Geto said, closing his eyes for one neat beat. “We make it quieter here.”
Gojo’s laugh was soft, almost disbelieving at his own luck. “You’re going to ruin every other room for me.”
“That seems like a you problem,” Geto said, not moving away. “I’ll allow it.”
“Say my name,” Gojo asked, shameless and gentle.
Geto meant to refuse out of principle. What he did was look directly at him and say, quiet as a solved problem, “Satoru.”
It hit like a pulled alarm behind Gojo’s ribs. His breath mis-stepped; the grin he’d been saving forgot its lines. His fingers tightened—still respectful, not a drag—at Geto’s waist; the other hand spread at lapel with a small tremor that would absolutely be denied in writing.
“Say it again,” he said, softer, not a demand so much as gravity.
“Satoru,” Geto repeated, same volume, same care, like handing over a sharp instrument handle-first.
Gojo blinked like a man seeing in color after too long in compliance gray. “Okay,” he said, and the okay wasn’t permission; it was inevitability. He leaned in and kissed Geto with new steadiness, deepening on the cue he was given. Kiss five tasted like relief finally getting a seat at the table.
“Note for the minutes,” Gojo whispered when he could speak. “If you deploy that in public, we will absolutely fail a safety audit.”
“Controlled environments only,” Geto said. “Greenhouses. Chapels, maybe.”
“Tragic,” Gojo said, immediately amending, “Prudent.”
They stood inside their small weather, letting it do its work. Geto’s hand skimmed down Gojo’s side—polite, claiming, slow enough to be an offer. Gojo’s breath went upright, obeying instructions he hadn’t heard yet.
“Tell me what you need,” Geto said, voice quiet enough that the fans agreed to keep it.
Gojo looked—a real look, not a performance. “I need permission to be obvious,” he said. “And I need you to keep telling me first. And I need—” He faltered, surprised by his own specificity. “—this. The part where I don’t have to guess. Where the plan and the thing I want are the same hallway.”
Geto’s thumb circled once at Gojo’s waist, patient. “Obvious is allowed,” he said. “On two conditions: accuracy, and no theater.”
“Accuracy before pride,” Gojo said automatically, and looked absurdly proud about it.
“Remarkable,” Geto said. “You can be taught.”
“Say more nice things and I’ll start submitting extra credit,” Gojo said, which would have been insufferable if he hadn’t looked so thoroughly, radiantly happy.
They swayed another measure, then another. Gojo drifted closer until the distance between them was purely theoretical. When Geto tipped him back a fraction—just enough pressure at the small of his back to make intent clear—Gojo followed the angle with immediate, grateful obedience, bones pliant, mouth parting on cue.
It wasn’t a dip; it was an informed consent form with a very pretty signature.
“Good,” Geto said for a third time, and Gojo’s cheeks went warmer than the greenhouse.
“Shoko is going to know,” Gojo said into his shoulder, speech fuzzed by proximity.
“She always knows,” Geto said. “Nanami will deduce and pretend not to until it touches a spreadsheet.”
“Utahime never,” they said together, heresy and reverence at once.
Gojo’s grin went bright enough to be illegal. “We’re unbearable,” he said fondly.
“We’ve always been unbearable,” Geto said. “We’re merely organized now.”
“Mission statement?” Gojo asked. “We regulate romance; we regulate breakfast.”
“No mission statement,” Geto said. “Mission statements invite committees.”
“Fine,” Gojo sighed, tragic. “Then—” His mouth curved. “—budget?”
“Closed,” Geto said, then took pity. “But there’s a discretionary fund.”
“Bribery?” Gojo perked up. “Name your price.”
“Competence. Punctuality. Texts that use nouns.”
“Outrageous,” Gojo said. “Granted.”
They rested there, breath evening out. The fans murmured. The rain obligingly shifted to a softer meter, as if someone had turned the night down a notch.
“Curfew,” Geto said at last, because someone had to drag the world back in.
“Is a construct,” Gojo tried, then sighed and obeyed. He tapped the potting bench twice—ritual, invented. “One last, last?”
Geto pulled him in by the lapel and delivered a kiss that was brief, indecently gentle, and completely undeniable. “Discretionary,” he said.
“Under review,” Gojo whispered, radiant. “Filed for abuse later.”
They left the greenhouse like professionals leaving a crime scene: hands to themselves, evidence everywhere. Condensation signed two neat ghost-ovals as they passed—proofs of life with good penmanship.
At the split—back-of-house one way, dorms the other—they stalled exactly the right amount.
“Goodnight,” Gojo said, etiquette trying not to be tender.
“Goodnight,” Geto answered.
“Text me you got in,” Gojo added. “Please.”
“I live two floors away.”
“Text me anyway,” Gojo said, unembarrassed.
“Needy,” Geto said, not unkind.
“Correct,” Gojo said, unashamed.
They parted like professionals who had just rewritten a policy and called it joy.
In his room, Geto leaned against the closed door until the night fit. His phone buzzed.
Lamplight: saints of horticulture approve. no lightning. mildly offended.
Geto: survived the weather. barely.
Lamplight: rules intact?
Geto: intact-ish. broke “no greenhouse after hours.” for science.
Lamplight: precedent is dangerous.
Geto: precedents are invitations for better ones.
Lamplight: stop flirting with law.
Geto: never.
Lamplight: goodnight, suguru. (you don’t have to reply.)
Geto: goodnight, satoru.
Lamplight: tragic victory. 7am? bring your brain. i’ll bring the fake smile and the real one.
Geto: now that we’ve regulated romance, we can regulate breakfast.
Lamplight: finally, policy i can get behind. see you in the morning.
Geto set the phone face down and let the dark be full instead of empty. The greenhouse lived under his eyelids—light, glass, ridiculous calm. The kisses lived everywhere else. Back in the quiet, he opened his notebook and wrote:
ledger: 1—gentle; 2—finally; 3—signature; 4—read-back; 5—punctuation (corner); 6—voltage, anchored; 7—promise (technicality).
status: ours (quietly).
filed under: satoru.