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If I had a shining head
and people turned to stare at me
in the streetcars;
and I could stretch my body
through the bright water
and keep abreast of fish and water snakes;
if I could ruin my feathers
in flight before the sun;
do you think that I would remain in this room,
reciting poems to you,
and making outrageous dreams
with the smallest movements of your mouth?
-- These Heroics, Leonard Cohen
Nanami was the only option that he could choose, he’d been told, when the higher ups had cornered him one day after a mission. Otherwise, it would go to his clan.
Nanami had agreed already, and all Satoru needed to do was say yes, and this would be done with, and Satoru wouldn’t have to marry a complete stranger at all.
He hadn’t actually thought to wonder what, exactly, they had done to make Nanami say yes. Not then.
Right now, slinking home with blood flaking off Infinity to see his husband still awake and hunched over a laptop, Satoru desperately wishes that he had. But he knows now, and he knows it wouldn’t have changed anything. Nanami said yes. Satoru wasn’t willing to let him go either.
“Honey, I’m home,” he says, singsong in the way that he knows Nanami hates but can’t ever manage not to do.
Nanami’s shoulders stiffen. They don’t relax.
But he turns around, the dim light deepening the shadows under his eyes.
“Welcome home,” Nanami answers, in a facsimile of domesticity. It isn’t that he sounds cold, exactly; there’s just nothing left under the exhaustion that seems to be writ deep into his bones these days. Nanami was born an old man, Satoru used to joke, but this job of his has worn him down into ancientness.
Into a stranger, sometimes, though Nanami would say that they never knew each other well to begin with.
It’s patently a lie and Satoru knows that, Nanami has to know that, but he really sounds like he believes it.
“I didn’t have time to make dinner,” Nanami continues, and Satoru thinks to himself no shit, if you keep bringing work home with you, if you’re awake now . He thinks, you haven’t had time to make dinner for months , but doesn’t say that, either. “But there’s udon in the fridge for you. I thought you’d get in sometime tomorrow morning.”
“It already is tomorrow morning,” Satoru replies. Nanami catches his gaze, mouth twitching downwards slightly in the barest hint of the displeasure that Satoru used to pull out of him easy as anything. How fucked up is it that he’s missed that?
“Later than this, then,” Nanami allows. He doesn’t turn back to his work, at least, and Satoru wants to milk that for as much as its worth. He hustles to the kitchen and back, container of cold udon in hand, and Nanami is still there though now with a disapproving frown between his eyebrows.
“Are you going to eat that cold?”
“You do it often enough,” Satoru counters. It’s the wrong thing to say, the kind of thing that makes Nanami clam up like nothing else. But he only sighs and stands. Each step brings him closer and Satoru does the stupid thing he’s been doing the past three months, starting as a dare and a test and now firmly at a desperate fucking hope: He drops Infinity just as Nanami reaches out, pretends he’s not holding his breath the entire time.
Nanami knows, of course. He’s never so much as asked about it, probably taken it for the dare it was and decided not to play along this time, but he knows. Satoru can see it in the extra care he takes, in the slight narrowing of his eyes.
It’s the same as always, though. Nanami comes close. He pauses. He takes the container from between Satoru’s lax fingers, navigating around them like he’s a ship in treacherous waters, and goes into the kitchen.
He doesn’t touch Satoru at all, and it bothers him exactly as much as it did last time. And the time before that. And the one before that, too.
Nanami doesn’t touch him. He used to, before all this.
The microwave beeps, and then its low hum starts up. It’s followed by the sound of running water – a kettle being filled, Satoru thinks, and scrapes a smile onto his face just enough to be convincing to someone who doesn’t care to look beyond it as he follows his husband into the kitchen.
He doesn’t turn Infinity back on. He’s at home, why should he?
“Are you making coffee?” he asks, in the exact same tone Nanami had used to ask him about the cold udon. “It’s ass o’clock, you need to get some sleep.”
Nanami freezes, guilt scrawled all over his face – sometimes, he’s so easy to read. Sometimes he’s as inscrutable as a fucking marble statue.
Satoru raises an eyebrow.
“Tea,” Nanami finally concedes, and Satoru almost freezes himself. He’d been ready for an argument, to corner Nanami and have to hassle him into having something without enough caffeine to kill a rhinoceros.
“For both of us, if you want a cup,” he adds.
Satoru does not much care for tea if it comes without sticky-sweet boba. Or if it’s made by anyone but Nanami. It had been a ritual towards the end, and he still remembers Nanami looking at him with an unsmiling mouth, hands curled around a steaming mug, and saying, Gojo-senpai, I’m not going to be a sorcerer after I graduate. I’m leaving .
He’d left. He’s not a sorcerer. But Satoru still has something of him, and he’s not so selfless as to let go.
“Sure,” Satoru agrees, his mouth moving before his brain can catch up.
“Chamomile,” Nanami says rather than asks. A near-smile pulls at his lips and Satoru revels in it. “For the both of us.”
Satoru watches him navigate the kitchen and tries not to feel any kind of pleased about it – a difficult prospect, when he thinks that Nanami moves around like he’s at home. Which he should, this is his home, no matter the long hours he has. It’s their home, though Satoru hasn’t voiced that yet.
Nanami makes the tea, and Satoru reheats his udon until it’s piping hot, and when they sit down at the kitchen table, it feels like he’s stepped into another life, one he wants so badly it aches.
The thing is that Satoru can have it. It’s been nearly five years since he realized that he couldn’t have everything, five since he knew what loss was. It’s been four since he said he’d marry Nanami in what was for him a fit of pique and desperation, and for Nanami the kind of political maneuvering Satoru has only recently learned to hone his skills at; and it’s been a little less than three since the ceremony itself, since they moved in together and Nanami became part of his life for real.
There’s things that are out of Satoru’s reach. Nanami is not one of them. He can change the world – he will – and he can have this, too.
He hasn’t been home in nearly three weeks straight and he’s tired to the bone in the way that not even his reverse cursed technique can fix, and Nanami is looking at him, equally tired.
It’s peaceful.
He finishes his udon, watches Nanami in return. Bold, maybe, covetous. The planes of his face sharpened as he grew, baby fat sloughing off even as he shed some of the dense muscle that Satoru learned in a deeply mortifying shower-related incident he’d had. His shoulders are broader, hair cut so that it no longer hangs atrociously in his eyes, and even like this, he’s handsome. Satoru’d always thought it in a distant way, but now he’s faced with it in his house, something to return to, and he’s allowed to be a little batshit over it.
“You’re staring,” Nanami says. Patient, not irritated like he can be when he works late. Satoru’s proud of this strange ability he’s gained to draw Nanami out of work a little and dodge the temper that sometimes comes with it. If he times it right.
“Did you think it would be like this,” Satoru blurts out instead of answering. The tea is making him honest, maybe, or the exhaustion, or the strange bliss of having Nanami across from him in the soft, yellow light of the kitchen, just like he used to be in school.
“What, working?” Nanami glances to the side. “Yes, and no. I thought it would be shit. I didn’t think it would be this kind of shit.”
“That’s…good to know, I guess, but. Not what I meant.” Satoru doesn’t quite dare to think of it as progress ; it’s hard to, with Nanami looking so worn down, his conviction gone. Satoru wouldn’t call him lost, exactly, but it’s not a poor descriptor.
“What did you mean, then?”
“Marrying me. Or, living with me,” Satoru corrects. “Either.”
“Ah. No. For one, I didn’t think we’d be living together long-term, or functionally.”
“Don’t tell me you thought I’d just leave you to shack up in some terrible apartment halfway across the city,” Satoru says, affront not entirely faked.
“I actually thought living together, we’d make each other miserable,” Nanami answers. His mouth quirks up in a smile and Satoru hoards it with the rest. “You can’t blame me for that, Gojo-san. Our habits aren’t exactly complementary.”
Satoru just shrugs. He hadn’t expected it to go smoothly either, only he’d had faith that it would. Nanami’s too neat in some ways, too focused on things like chores and having the fridge stocked with vegetables; they’d argued plenty as students in the communal kitchens, and Satoru knows that Nanami dislikes – disliked, maybe – some of his more annoying quirks.
But it all circles back around to the fact that he hadn’t wanted to let go, hadn’t wanted to marry a stranger. And Nanami was very much a known quantity.
“I figured you’d give up on some of the stupid stuff quickly,” Satoru says instead. “And you did! That chore rota was dumb and you know it.”
“Only because your schedule is unpredictable enough to completely destroy it,” Nanami argues. It’s an old one, it feels like the natural next step in the dance they’ve been doing around each other for months now.
“I don’t control when and where curses form, Nanami! Maybe they need to get together and work out a schedule that makes it so my darling husband doesn’t have to mop the windows all the time,” Satoru says, leering a little just to take the edge of sincerity away.
“You don’t mop windows, Gojo-san,” Nanami sighs out. “You wipe them.”
“Whatever! I do the laundry, anyway.” Satoru helps himself to a sip of tea, feels its honeyed warmth slide down his throat and linger on his tongue. Nanami must have put an extra spoonful in; the thought settles gently in his chest and blooms.
Nanami hums, conceding this. He has to – he hates doing the laundry, always scowls when he irons out his crisp shirts for another soul-crushing day at the office. It’s something Satoru doesn’t mind doing now, just one of the small things that he can do for Nanami. That Nanami will let him.
“We’re more compatible than I thought we would be,” Nanami finally says. His head is tipped forward slightly as he looks into his mug; Satoru wonders what secrets he sees there, why it’s easier to look at a swirl of tea and wisping steam than at him.
“You make that sound like a bad thing,” Satoru says. He tries to make it sound like a joke and it falls utterly flat. This is more than Satoru thought he’d get, and he’s greedy for every scrap of emotional honesty he can pry out of Nanami. Neither of them are good at it.
He takes a hurried gulp of tea, air hitting his tongue halfway through it.
“Ah –,” he frowns at it, peers inside.
“Here, let me,” Nanami says, not answering his question. He only stands to take it to the sink. Satoru follows him, tethered impossibly to this man. He wants to be closer, he wants to hold Nanami like he’s never done before but been tempted to, even before their marriage.
Just this once, maybe he can.
He steps close and when Nanami turns he steps closer yet, arms loosely around his waist, head dipping to his shoulder. Not quite touching, not quite able to take that final step.
There’s a small, precise sound as Nanami puts the mug down.
“Go –,”
“Don’t,” Satoru murmurs. “Let me.” Please , he doesn’t say, but it hangs in the air between them.
He feels Nanami’s breath ruffle his hair and it nearly makes him shudder.
Satoru turns his Infinity on to make sure Nanami doesn’t push him away, makes it as thin as possible, and leans in close.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” Satoru admits into the crook of Nanami’s neck. Infinity on, so Nanami allows it.
“Working?”
“That too.”
A beat of silence.
“I already told you the terms of the deal,” Nanami says slowly. “And I explained why I took it.”
“But you’re miserable ,” Satoru bursts out. He doesn’t mean to – it’s too honest, too soon, that’s not what he has with Nanami. Satoru is untouchable and in his own way, Nanami is too. They agree more often than they disagree these days, they cohabitate and they coexist, but that’s all.
Nanami doesn’t want more.
Satoru, inexplicably, does .
Nanami lets out a slow, careful breath. His shoulders are tense again, any trace of relaxation long gone, because Satoru’s gone and opened his big mouth.
“Is that what you think?” Nanami asks. He’s quiet, a little unsure. Disbelieving, almost, except Satoru doesn’t think that’s quite right. He wishes he could see Nanami’s face, know what expression (or non-expression) he was making. He wishes he knew Nanami well enough to picture it from just the tone of his voice, the slight shift of his body.
“More what I know, than what I think. And I’m always right,” Satoru adds. It’s for the sake of the charade, the kind of bait that Nanami never fails to rise to with an itemized list of Satoru’s latest domestic idiocies.
“Your opinions on appropriate scents for fabric softeners are ridiculous,” Nanami snaps out. Satoru almost smiles, delighted. But Nanami continues, his tone gentling: “Does it matter, whether I’m miserable? Whether I hate my job or not? It’s safer than sorcery ever was, and it’s only a means to an end.”
Means to an end.
“What end?” Satoru pushes, but Nanami doesn’t answer.
Satoru thinks that maybe he can’t, that whatever the reason was that Nanami left, he’s lost sight of it.
“The guilt has to be eating you alive,” Satoru says instead, desperate, trying something else. It’s not kind. Nanami tenses, makes to flinch away, but Satoru holds him close in the cage of his arms. “We both know it, Nanami. You don’t want to be there, you don’t want to be wasting your life making people rich while other people suffer. You could come back, you could make a difference. You know that’s why they let this happen: So they wouldn’t lose a potential Grade One.”
“They let this happen so they could have someone to use to collar you,” Nanami counters, and Satoru feels the words like a kick to his chest, like Fushiguro Toji’s spear in his neck again. “I’m not – out of their influence. Not like this. But I’m further away than I would be otherwise, and –,”
“No,” Satoru interrupts him, careless, angry now. “No, you don’t get to turn this into some selfless act, Nanami.”
“I’m not,” Nanami admits. “You – this – was an easy way out for the both of us, and a way to spit in their eye while we did it.”
It hurts to hear him say this. It’s true, but it hurts. It’s not like that now, not for Satoru, and sometimes he thinks not for Nanami either.
He wants to ask Nanami if he’ll come back. Just like he had for months on end at first, until they’d had their first real fight – not just as a couple, but ever. The weeks of silence that had followed were nearly unbearable, even with Satoru on as many missions as he could get his hands on and Nanami out late, burying himself in classes and work and god knows what. Or who.
But Nanami had been home one day, and the apartment had been filled with the scent of cooking, and they’d eaten together. And Satoru had known not to ask again, no matter how much he wants to.
That was then, though. Now? He’s not sure what Nanami would say.
He doesn’t trust himself not to ask.
The silence weighs them both down.
“It isn’t,” Nanami tells him, so soft that Satoru wouldn’t hear it if they weren’t pressed this close together.
“What?”
“A bad thing. This isn’t a bad thing.”
A knot forms in Satoru’s throat, gnarled and thorned and he swallows it whole.
“It matters to me,” he offers in exchange. “Whether you’re miserable. Maybe I don’t want you to be miserable, Nanami. What – what kind of husband would I be if I did?”
Nanami is very still.
“Still a better one than I might have expected,” Nanami admits. Satoru can’t flinch from that even though he wants to. Nanami hadn’t expected anything of him at the beginning, and Satoru’d felt the same, in some ways, still reeling from Suguru’s absence even a year later. “And you don’t make me unhappy. You might be the most annoying, frustrating person I’ve ever met, but you don’t make me unhappy.”
But do I make you happy , Satoru almost asks, lips parted and the words ready to stumble off his tongue. He clamps his traitor mouth shut before they spill out; there are answers that he’s not ready to hear, and answers that Nanami isn’t ready to give, no matter the strange intimacy they’ve found themselves in. Satoru doesn’t want to ruin the moment, even if he’s already half-thinking of ways to engineer it again. A late night to make Nanami honest, maybe a good meal – one they share, with that wine Nanami likes to go with it – instead of udon for one; maybe a movie on afterwards, that they’d watch on the couch together, Nanami’s choice because he can’t stand half of what Satoru watches, calls it garbage like an old theater snob. Sometimes he watches it anyways, and Satoru will come home to him asleep with Sharknado on in the background.
Nanami’s hand gently rests against Infinity at the small of his back.
“You’re tired,” he says, quiet. “Shower and get some sleep, hm? I’ll clean up.”
Satoru understands that in some ways, it’s a dismissal, even if it’s a caring one.
He still doesn’t want to let go. Not when there’s – some end, lurking around the corner, one that Nanami doesn’t believe in but still might follow through with because that’s what he does. He always does what he says he will.
“You’ll sleep too,” Satoru answers. It’s more of a demand, an equivalent exchange. He can’t bear the thought of Nanami returning to his spreadsheets, alone in the dark, while Satoru tries to rest. “I bet you have an early start in the morning. And whatever you’re doing can wait.”
He almost doesn’t expect it to work.
It does.
“Alright,” Nanami tells him. “But only because I know I won’t get anything else done tonight.”
Whatever. Satoru will take it. Drunk off that victory, he adds, “And you should sleep with me.”
Nanami blinks at him, his eyebrows rising.
“Not – fuck. Not like that,” he says hastily, his face heating. Not not like that, he thinks, but there’s only so much he can push for. “Just, in the same bed. One time only. I promise I don’t snore.”
“That’s a lie,” Nanami answers immediately. But his face softens, and maybe Satoru’s not the only one who wants, not the only one who’s trying to make this softness between them last. “Your room, or mine?”
“Yours.” Satoru doesn’t even need to think about it as he lets go, however reluctantly. Nanami’s bedroom is sacred territory, somewhere Satoru doesn’t really enter. He knows Nanami’s been in his – for cleaning, to hunt down the comfortable hoodies that Satoru only sometimes poaches from him, to borrow a spritz of his cologne on rare occasions that Satoru’s encouraged because he does, in fact, like Nanami smelling like him.
“I’ll clean up here,” Nanami says, with something sounding suspiciously like ‘like always’ following at a low mutter. Satoru just beams at him. He doesn’t actually teleport into the shower, but he scrubs himself down faster than he has in months, brushes his teeth and changes into the softest pair of pajama pants he owns. And if he pairs it with a loose shirt that’s likely Nanami’s, that hangs low on his collarbones just so, that’s his own business.
His heart is beating hard when he opens the door to Nanami’s room, and it beats harder to see him in bed, lamp and wire-framed glasses on, hair down.
Like this, Satoru can almost pretend that it’s another part of their nightly routine.
“That was fast,” Nanami observes. Satoru shrugs, enjoying the feeling of Nanami’s eyes on him as he saunters over and lets himself fall into bed. The sheets are soft, they smell a little like Nanami. As he wriggles under them, he takes in the room: The neatness to it, the small stack of books on the nightstand, the suit and tie laid out for tomorrow, the lone succulent Shoko had gotten him years ago on the windowsill.
As soon as he’s settled, Nanami turns the lamp off, plunging them into darkness.
It doesn’t change much for Satoru even though he mourns the loss of the yellow light turning Nanami’s hair to gold. He can still see in most ways. He turns his head just to look at Nanami, only to find him already looking.
“Don’t stare at me,” Nanami says. Predictable. Almost fond. “I thought you were tired.”
“I’m not staring,” Satoru lies. “I’m just thinking. My brain, you know, is very big. Even when I’m tired it keeps on going, it’s the tragedy of being such a genius.”
“Go to sleep, Gojo-san,” Nanami murmurs. Formal, but his voice is soft, soft enough that Satoru can imagine that he cares.
No, not imagine. Nanami does , no matter how hard he tries to bury it under mundane work and an unsmiling face.
“Would it kill you to say my name?”
He only asks it because it’s dark, never mind that he can see the details of the room clear as day, feel the shape of Nanami next to him, all the markers of his existence slotting neatly into place. A universe shaped around a man.
Nanami’s quiet for a long moment. He’s watching Satoru again.
“Good night, Satoru,” he finally says, soft and almost affectionate.
Nanami doesn’t reach out, and Satoru tells himself that this is enough for now. He’s learned patience, too. He can wait.
It’ll be worth it.