Work Text:
Gojo is sold at seven.
He remembers, faintly, ringing in his ears: shots flying off from every corner of the house, hands tugging at him from one place to another, so many voices yelling at him to run or stay or hide or show himself. But maybe the most damning of them all was the one inside his head, that at the ripe of seven, just knew so intrinsically: he was already worth dying for.
The people who took him were willing to sacrifice as much.
The entire lineage of a clan, apparently.
Gojo is sold at seven: that means for the next decade and some he was brought up to behave in a way that polarized what all seven year olds should have been doing. In the place of a toy, was a Berreta silencer. Bedtime stories were militia warfare gunned down to his brain. Arts and crafts became dismantling a bomb in record time. Sports became learning how to run with lightning at his feet.
"Nanami."
And so it is uncharacteristic of Gojo, quite—the last time his stomach had bubbled the way it is now, the last time he’d found himself gasping for breath the way he is now, he’d put a hole through the wall with his fist (Yaga had only been duly impressed) and had to learn to write with his left hand. All the better, he is ambidextrous now.
No, Gojo is usually good at keeping his calm: usually he can bite back the poison, spit the venom out, quell the flames of fire licking up the back of his neck and put on a cold front. A united front. A born and bred killer facade.
Usually.
But this is not usually anymore, and he is not seven years old.
"Nanami."
Nanami looks up, still munching on his pasta and blissfully unaware of the coiling anger in his stomach. "Yeah?"
Gojo breathes in once, twice. "Where were you last night?"
"I just told you," Nanami says slowly, picking up on the thinly veiled tension. "I crashed at a friend's place."
Gojo is trying hard to labour his breathing, breaths coming out in short pants. "And you couldn't have told me that through a text message?" The sunlight streaming in through their usual brunch place now seemed accosting, if not, accusing. "Not a single call or anything the whole fucking night. Do you know how long I stayed up for you?"
"I didn't ask you to."
"But it's common courtesy—"
Nanami scoffs. "You're one to talk about common courtesy. Is it common courtesy to always end the date early?” he starts. “To run off in the middle of a movie or go days when I don't even know if you're still in Japan?"
Gojo deflates a little. But not enough. "You know I only do that because—"
"You have super important matters to do somewhere and you're urgently needed all the time, I know," Nanami waves him off exasperatedly. Levelling him with a look of his own, adds, "But you don't hear me complain."
Gojo refused to back down. "This is different," he reasons, voice steeling. "I don't know any of the work friends you went out with last night—"
"Oh," at this Nanami relaxes, seeming to have put two and two together. "Is that what this is? Don't worry. You know him. It's only Haibara."
A beat.
Gojo forces himself to clench and unclench, moon-shaped scars imprinting on his skin with how much force he's pressing into his hand. "Haibara," he breathes out so slowly, lacing the name with venom. "As in your childhood best friend and ex, Haibara?"
Nanami's eyes sharpen again. "And what's that supposed to mean?"
Gojo holds the stare, trying to will his erratic heart down and not implode right then and there. "Nanami," he begins like a whisper, trying for placating. "You know how I feel about him."
"And like I keep telling you," rebuts Nanami with his own brand of steel, thin but just as slicing. "There is nothing there anymore. We're just good friends now."
"I believe you," Gojo implores easily, because it was, easy: to believe him. He runs his hands through his hair, if only to temper down the growing pit of anxiety. "It's just—"
"What is it?" Nanami prompts him.
Gojo is sold at seven and given the world: but, and this is what eats at him most of all, he was never taught how to share. Not his toys nor his guns. Not—
"It's him I don't trust," Gojo finishes, the truth splitting itself from his heart. He was taught it all, the art of negotiation: posture open, voice light, eyes agreeable. Everything about setting up the bait, luring in the pray. But damn it all to hell: “I don't trust him around you.”
Nanami is quiet for a moment.
Gojo tries not to read him like how he's taught, giving this—whatever this is—space to grow without any of his extracurriculars muddying up the sanctity of their relationship. But he's never been taught that the world didn’t belong to him by birthright. And when it came to Nanami, he finds he doesn't ever want to know.
"I know you have... issues," begins Nanami lightly, leaning forward to catch Gojo's wandering eye that looked anywhere but at him. "But tell me this," Nanami says, and then: "Do you trust me?"
Gojo doesn't take a beat to answer. "With my life."
And oh, what a life it was.