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Gojo’s coming out of the bathroom when he hears it. His shirt is still only halfway over his head, and his mouth is open to yell something obnoxious into the kitchen, but whatever the thought was had come to a screeching halt when the sound happened. He pauses for a few seconds longer, still frozen in shock, until it happens again.
“Ack-choo!”
Gojo’s brain finally restarts, and, only lightly getting tangled in his sleeves as he moves quickly down the hallway, skids to a stop in the entry to the kitchen. Nanami is sitting at the dining table, prim and proper as always, steadily working his way through breakfast as if absolutely nothing had happened, Gojo’s portion neatly laid out across from him.
“What was that?” Gojo exclaims. It’s been quite a while since he’s been so downright bewildered.
“What do you mean?” Nanami says, only barely glancing up. “Your breakfast is cold. You take too long in the bathroom.”
Gojo gets slightly distracted as he speaks, too busy admiring the line of Nanami’s shoulders in a dress shirt still uncovered by his tan suit jacket. Not that he’s against the suit jacket, not at all, it invites the imagination, but he does appreciate every opportunity to see him without it, especially in the warm morning light of the kitchen, when he still has his civilian glasses on, when the sun glances off his blonde hair and creates a kind of halo around him. It’s because he’s staring so intensely at Nanami, and because he has very good eyes, that he notices there’s a slight droop to Nanami’s shoulders today, and a pale cast to his skin. He’d have noticed these things anyway, but they certainly aren’t made more subtle by Nanami lying to him about the unignorable, atrocious, downright earthquaking-ly loud sneezes he’d let loose a minute ago. Gojo raises his eyebrows.
“Well, I assume it has something to do with the reason you sound like your voice box has been dunked underwater for a few weeks,” Gojo says, then grins lasciviously. “Or is that a new kind of flirting you’re trying out?”
Nanami rolls his eyes. “You’re hearing things. Just because your eyes are too big for your head doesn’t mean your ears— ahh-choo!”
Gojo’s sure whatever insult Nanami was halfway through would’ve been scathing, if he wasn’t impolitely interrupted by maybe the most violent sneeze Gojo’s ever witnessed, and he once killed a curse formed by a fear of the common cold. Nanami snorted rice across the table. It was both disgusting and incredible.
Gojo slowly reaches towards the counter to pluck a tissue from the box, and ambles up to the table, sliding into his seat across from Nanami. “Sooo,” he begins, as Nanami takes it from him and groans, dropping his head into his palms. “Shall we call Shoko?”
“I’m fine,” Nanami says. Gojo tsks, and reaches over the table to lay a hand on Nanami’s forehead. Nanami always runs warmer than Gojo, but this morning, he practically burns Gojo’s palm, and he reacts accordingly, pulling his hand away and shaking it with a hiss. Nanami glowers at him. “Stop touching me. Eat your food. I’m leaving for work in ten minutes, with or without you.”
“Right,” Gojo says. “What grade is your assignment today, a two?”
“Semi-grade one, but I’m supervising Ino and Nitta,” he says, standing and walking to the sink with his dishes. “The last time they were sent out together, Ino nearly lost a hand trying to do some Internet challenge, I don’t kn—achoo!”
“Right, right,” Gojo says. “Those crazy kids. Sending Megumi out there with them would probably be enough of a deterrent, and—catch!”
Gojo tosses—okay, throws—Nanami’s abandoned chopsticks at him. Nanami always leaves his utensils at the table, and Gojo always chucks them at him, full force. The first time he’d done it, Nanami had smacked him on the back of the head, despite Gojo’s protests that it was a necessary test of his reflexes, and that it didn’t matter that he’d thrown them since Nanami had caught them. More recently, it’s become a kind of game for Gojo to see if he can catch Nanami off guard, which he never can. That makes it quite telling when, despite the warning, Nanami barely looks up before the chopsticks hit Nanami square in the shoulder and fall to the floor with a clatter. Gojo looks at him. Nanami looks back. Gojo stifles a laugh. Nanami looks to the ceiling in defeat.
Nanami sneezes.
Gojo opens his mouth to tell Nanami maybe he should see Shoko before the mission, she’d probably fix him up if he asked nicely, but what comes out of his mouth instead is oh, shit! when Nanami leans over and pukes into the sink.
- - - - x - -
Gojo wasn’t particularly concerned before, but his anxiety mounts as Nanami actually lets Gojo clean him up and put him back to bed. He barely even protests the lewd jokes Gojo makes as he undresses him and slips him back into his flannel pajama pants and sleep shirt. THe longer Gojo touches him, the more he notices that Nanami really is warm, and when he makes Nanami let him check, he’s running a pretty sizable temperature. Shoko’s verdict is also not providing a particularly positive outlook on Nanami’s immediate future.
“Man, if it’s taken Nanami out, it must really be bad,” She says on speaker phone as Gojo disinfects the sink, gagging a little himself. Normally he doesn’t do puke, but, well, extenuating circumstances. The things one does for love, eugh. “But it sounds like he just caught Itadori’s flu.”
“Yuji had the flu?” Gojo says. Nanami had seen Yuji two days ago, but Gojo had seen him yesterday, and he’d seemed totally normal, bouncing off the walls and begging Gojo to chuck him across the field, which he’d done, as a good, obliging teacher. “That kid bounces back faster than a shrink-wrapped Squishmallow. And you’re sure you can’t just come patch him up? I’ll teleport, you won’t even have to take the train!”
“That’s not an incentive.” She scoffs, and there’s a pause in which Gojo assumes she’s taking a drag of her cigarette. “And no, it’ll probably get even worse, but it’s better if he waits it out. Short answer is that it makes my job easier next time if I let him suffer now. Buy him some medicine, make him some soup, piss off Yaga by calling out of work.”
He huffs. Great. “I know how to take care of a sick person, Sho,”
“Riiiiight. I remember when Megumi had that stomach bug. One of your top ten most pathetic moments, truly.”
“I don’t even have ten pathetic moments!” He exclaims, flinging his arms out, and flinging soapy water across the counter, and his phone, in the process. “I don’t even know the meaning of the word pathetic! You’re the pathetic one!”
“Keep that confidence, and stop panicking. He’ll be fine. Bring ‘im in if he bursts into flames.”
With that, she hangs up on him. Gojo leans against the counter, and takes a deep breath, in and out. He can handle this. He’s handled much worse, handles much worse than a sick Nanami on a daily basis. And he’d already pissed off Yaga by calling out, thank you very much. He’s just never seen Nanami sick before. He’s barely even heard him sneeze, and he’d fully expected himself and Nanami to trudge on in to work, and he’d been prepared to laugh at Nanami for allowing himself to need Ino’s help this time. But it’s fine, Gojo knows him, knows him almost as well as he knows himself. He’s got this.
Gojo pushes off the counter and shakes out his limbs, dispersing some of the nervous energy. He wipes the water from his counter and phone. He gets some rice soaking for okayu. He’d changed back into his own sweatpants and t-shirt after dragging Nanami back to their bedroom, but he walks back down the hall and grabs a shirt from the laundry basket outside the bedroom anyway, feeling a little grimy from the cleaning, before pushing open the bathroom door and opening the lower drawer.
Despite having lived with him for nearly eight months, and having slept over at a steadily increasing rate for three years before that, he’s never actually looked in the first aid drawer. Gojo, of course, never needs first aid, and Gojo’s not sure he’s ever seen Nanami get so much as a papercut. He gets major, life-threatening injuries that Shoko has to stitch back together once a month, but nothing household would dare touch him. Not just sick, Gojo’s never actually seen Nanami particularly physically vulnerable in any way, despite all of their time together. It’s weird. It’s unnerving. He’s sure it feels worse for Nanami, who’d probably prefer to be independent of his own blood cells, if given the chance. Gojo sighs. He’d already taken tomorrow off, to find a rare day when the two of them could escape responsibility together, go out to lunch and wander the city. Gojo’d made a lunch reservation at a new upscale Thai restaurant that’d opened up a few blocks away, and he’d been looking forward to wowing Nanami with a new silk shirt and an arm at his elbow.
None of that is particularly new, but Gojo misses him, misses just hanging out with him, instead of one of them waiting for the other to return home or catching a few hours of sleep together at one end or the other of one of Gojo’s flights. The Jujutsu world has somewhat stabilized in recent months, but that just means they’re sending Gojo farther out, on longer stretches under the guise of observation or prevention, keeping him from standing in one place for too long. He knows Nanami misses him too, even if he is too proud to admit it. Nanami had alluded to something he’d planned for the weekend as well, but it looks like they’re both going to have to postpone it to a time when they can completely enjoy their time together. Gojo’d also texted Ijichi to postpone his flight by a day, so he supposes that if nothing else, they’ll have three days together instead of one.
He grabs some anti-nausea medicine and some painkillers, too, just in case. Nanami hadn’t told him what exactly he was feeling, but Gojo had gotten the gist based on his squinting. Headache, probably, to really complete the experience. Nanami never did things by halves.
Finally, Gojo fills up a cup of water in the bathroom and quietly reenters the dim bedroom. He places the medicine down on the side table along with the water—he needs to check if Nanami can actually take either of them on an empty stomach—when Nanami turns to face him.
“-toru?” Gojo catches, Nanami’s voice thick with sleep and pain. “Wh’re you still home?”
“Y’know how much I love to cause scheduling problems! Plus, Shoko’s maliciously withholding the RCT, so we’re gonna have to ride this out,” he murmurs, sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed and ghosting his had over Nanami’s forehead, unsticking his damp hair from his skin. “How’re you feelin’, babe?”
Nanami just groans in response, which Gojo supposes is valid, before another attempt at a real sentence. “You should go t’work. I’ll be fine. The students-”
“Will live,” Gojo says, running his hand through Nanami’s hair. “They’re capable. You, on the other hand…”
Nanami rolls his eyes, before wincing. Gojo grimaces alongside him.
“I brought some medicine over for the headache, but I’m not sure if you can take it on an empty stomach. Food’ll be another half hour, unless you think you can handle some crackers. There’s water, if you want it, and anti-puke.”
Nanami drags an arm out from under the covers and reaches in the direction of the water, so Gojo puts himself in the way and helps Nanami sit up before handing him the glass. He takes a few sips before trying to lean over and put the glass back on the table around Gojo. Gojo intercepts, taking the glass from him and placing it back on the side. Nanami can glare at Gojo all he wants, but Gojo’s gonna take care of him if it kills them both.
After getting him to take some of the anti-nausea medication as well, Gojo moves to stand back up, saying, “I’m gonna go get the food cooking, and I’ll—” when Nanami reaches out and grabs him by the wrist.
Gojo gives him a small smile. “And I’ll be right back.”
Nanami huffs and rolls his eyes, but turns his eyes away, and the tips of his ears are just slightly redder than they were a minute before. He lets go of Gojo’s wrist and hunkers back down under the blanket. Gojo leans down and presses a kiss to his skull as he stands up.
After setting the rice to a simmer, Gojo walks back to their bedroom, grabbing a couple of Nanami’s books on the way, on the off chance Nanami decides he feels well enough to do something. If there’s one thing Gojo hadn’t expected himself and Nanami to have in common, it’s the fact that they both detest being bored, would rather die and kill than be bored. Megumi tells Gojo he needs to get some kind of diagnosis, but Gojo thinks this is a perfectly acceptable viewpoint to have. Gojo’s not sure if Nanami’s actually lucid enough to keep up with the one he’d just started—some huge, convoluted sci-fi novel Gojo’s been trying to piece the plot together for via Nanami’s sporadic reading update text messages—so he grabs one of his shitty romance novels, too. Looking at the cover, it still makes Gojo laugh a little, imagining Nanami reading grocery aisle bodice-rippers, even though he himself had picked up a couple of Nanami’s to read on long flights. He’ll probably take this one next, considering the illustration is a lurid drawing of two overly buff men on horseback gazing longingly at one another. Gojo wonders if Nanami actually ordered this one, rather than picked it up on a whim at the secondhand bookstore.
Returning to the bedroom, Gojo sets the books down on the side table before acquiescing to Nanami’s wordless request, sliding in next to him under the covers where Nanami has pointedly pulled them back. As soon as Gojo settles in, propped up slightly against the headboard, Nanami turns to lay his head on Gojo’s chest and throw an arm over his waist. It doesn’t shock him quite as much now as every minor touch did back when this first started, but it still surprises him. Unsurprisingly, Gojo’s much more tactile between the two of them. At first, Nanami used to go stiff as a board every time Gojo would so much as punch him in the arm, unless they were otherwise, ah, physically occupied. Nowadays, though Nanami doesn’t mind Gojo’s clingling, he doesn’t often initiate like this. Gojo curls his own arm around Nanami, feeling like Nanami’s searing a hole straight through where his head lies over his heart.
“I can’t believe you didn’t go to work,” Nanami murmurs, eyes closed, sounding as disdainful as he can with one half of his mouth pressed to Gojo’s shirt. “You have more important things to be doing than rotting around the apartment.”
“Do I, though? I distinctly remember you saying that my last overseas mission was like ‘dressing up their favorite warship for a dog show and sending it out to chase its own tail,’” Gojo muses, then heaves a put upon sigh. “Which, Kento, I’m still offended about. You know I’m so much more than their favorite warship! I’m also their best!”
Nanami hits him, which is to say, he lifts up his hand in a fist from where it’s sitting on Gojo’s chest and lightly thunks it back down. “You’re insufferable. I was just under the impression that you were attempting to play by their rules—act-choo!”
“Ew,” Gojo says, grabbing a tissue from the side table and handing it to Nanami, which he takes with no small amount of ire. “I can’t imagine it’ll set me too far back in their good graces to take a few days off. And hey, if it does, it’ll have been worth it to see you snot all over me.”
“I hate you. What do you mean, a few? Don’t tell me you moved your flight,” Nanami sighs.
“Man, I didn’t know you’d be so desperate to get rid of me, and in your time of need!” Gojo says. He’s not particularly interested in rehashing this conversation. Gojo complains about the higher ups, Nanami tells him to care less. Gojo tells him the secret to success is getting them to loosen what they think is his leash. Then he does something guaranteed to make them tighten it again, and Nanami tells Gojo not to be so reckless. It’s a system they’ve got going. “You’d get rid of me faster if you went to sleep and let your immune system fix you up.”
“You said you started something cooking. I’ll just have to wake up again for that—at-choo!”
Gojo tilts his head. “That’s true, but I bet talking like this doesn’t feel very good.”
Nanami hums. He’s quiet, for a few moments, before saying, “Read to me?”
“‘Course,” Gojo says, grabbing the silly cowboy book from the side table. Normally it’s Nanami reading and Gojo drifting off, but Gojo happily takes on the role from time to time, the Six Eyes serving their highest purpose of night-vision readers. “Don’t fall asleep on me.”
“I won’t,” Nanami says. “I haven’t read this one yet.”
“You know, I’m still mad you hid this little hobby from me for so long. You would’ve gained my respect much faster if you’d told me back in high school that you enjoyed middle-aged mother smut books,” Gojo says.
“Shhhh,” Nanami tells him.
So, for twenty minutes or so, Gojo’s voice washes over them in the dim, quiet bedroom, peaceful in spite of Nanami’s occasional earth-shaking sneezes and shivers, slivers of sunlight cutting in from under the curtains to carve little paths of day across their deep blue bedspread. When Gojo’s timer runs out, he extracts himself from Nanami’s hold and pouting (invisible to any who are not highly trained experts) and quickly tosses okayu into a bowls with some green onion and sesame, grabbing a couple of pieces of candy from the bowl on the counter for himself as well. He also collects another book, per Nanami’s request, an old favorite he can fall asleep to.
Now that Nanami’s stomach has settled a bit, he’s able to get down most of the bowl without too much complaint, and they both settle back into bed. The day passes fairly uneventfully after that. Nanami dozes in fits and starts, Gojo reading aloud from the beat up romance when he senses that Nanami’s close to awake and from Nanami’s sci-fi giant when he’s not. He spends a while texting Megumi, who informs him that he, Nobara, and Yuji have not been following his training instructions and instead have stolen his credit card, which is, of course, Gojo’s fault for leaving it in an accessible area. Gojo’s so proud of them, the little monsters. Yuji texts him separately to inform him that they’ll make sure to stop at that bakery he likes to pick up cake for Gojo and bread for Nanami to eat when he feels better, and Gojo’s sure there’s a get well soon message on Nanami’s phone, as well.
By the end of the day, Gojo feels less antsy than he thought he would feel, cooped up at home, and he supposes it has something to do with the extended contact to Nanami. He doesn’t feel the need to move, move, move quite so potently when the main draw of his attention is lying on top of him. Maybe they should try to do this more often, Gojo thinks. It’s actually pretty sad that this is maybe the third time they’ve ever done something akin to sleeping in together. Gojo doesn’t sleep much anyway, since he doesn’t really need it and doesn’t particularly enjoy it, but he is kind of enjoying watching Nanami sleep, until about halfway through the night crossing into day two when Nanami interrupts Gojo’s new k-drama binge to throw up all over himself, the bed, and Gojo. It’s traumatizing to everyone involved.
Things are considerably worse on day two. Nanami can’t keep anything down even with the medicine, and after Gojo wipes him down in the shower and changes the bedding, he has to resort to lying right at the edge of the bed with a trashcan within leaning distance. His internal temperature fluctuates wildly between freezing and burning hot, and when Gojo checks his temperature again, he’s over 39℃, which he’s pretty sure would mean a hospital visit for a normal person. When he calls, Shoko tells him to suck it up, in her wonderful bedside manner. When Nanami’s body finally decides to settle on burning hot, experience-wise, Nanami resorts to laying on top of the bedspread as Gojo supplies cool towels to lay on the back of his neck, insisting the Gojo lay just close enough that Nanami can clasp a loose hand around his wrist.
Things are back to where they started on day three, except for Nanami’s greatly increased embarrassment.
“You can go,” are the first words out of his mouth when he wakes up the next morning, facing away from Gojo. “I’m fine. You don’t have to stay.”
“It’s o-kay, Ken, everybody’s gotta get sick sometime, including you! And, well, except for me,” Gojo says, in a sing-song-y tone.
Nanami sighs. “It’s been years since I’ve been even near that sick. I don’t know if I’ve ever been that—achoo!—sick.”
“You don’t gotta justify it to me,” Gojo says. “It’s not like you’ve got any control over it.”
“Don’t remind me,” Nanami murmurs. Gojo wonders if maybe that’s why he’s refusing to look at Gojo this morning. Maybe not yesterday’s vulnerability on its own, but the fact that this is something Gojo is immune to.
“And, hey,” Gojo continues after a few moments, sliding closer to Nanami and hooking his chin over his shoulder. “you’ve dragged me through the aftermath of some pretty shitty migraines.”
Nanami huffs a sigh. Gojo knows for a fact that Nanami would be playing nurse for him through the whole migraine if the Six Eyes let him be within ten feet of another person without electrocuting his brain. Finally, Nanami turns around to face him.
“Your breath is rancid,” Gojo says, and Nanami hits him again, but his mouth shifts up just a tick. “But overall, this has been a pretty nice romantic getaway! I got to have you clinging to me for once!”
Nanami reaches up and runs a hand through Gojo’s hair. Gojo leans into it like a cat, and Nanami scratches his nails through Gojo’s undercut.
“You know, I had a nice evening planned out for us,” Nanami starts in his nasally voice, and the look on his face changes to one Gojo can’t quite pin down. Resolve, maybe?
“Yeah?” Gojo says, and Nanami pulls his hand back to rest on the side of Gojo’s face.
Nanami nods. “I figured you’d book us for lunch at that place Shoko mentioned, so I thought we’d go pick up ingredients to cook,” Gojo gives him a wry smile. Lunch was meant to be a surprise, but there’s very little they can get by one another anymore—you’d think Nanami had a few extra eyes trained on Gojo, as well. “But I had a list ready already, for dinner and dessert. We were going to pick up candles to light the table, and you were going to buy me flowers.”
“So sure?” Gojo interrupts, and Nanami rolls his eyes at him.
“Hush. You were going to buy me flowers, because you like to show off, and then we were going to come home and cook, and you were going to complain that your hands are too soft to chop vegetables. And I’d agree, and say it’s about time someone put you to work,” Nanami pauses, considers his next words. “I’d be a little too quiet through dinner, or maybe a little too—achoo!—chatty. Or I’d be just as I always am, but you’d notice something, like you noticed my facial expression a few moments ago, and I’d notice you noticing, as I have. And you’d ask.”
Gojo’s eyebrows are furrowed, at this point, and he’s got a confused smile on his face. Nanami’d started this story so predictably, and Gojo had thought he’d known where it would end. Their paths are so well worn, Gojo’s a little incredulous at his worry from barely two days ago that he would somehow mess up with Nanami, not take care of him right, when they take care of each other in smaller ways a thousand times a day. Now, he’s not sure where Nanami’s taking him, but he knows that’s right where Nanami wants him, so it’s not too terrible an unknown.
“What’s that about?” Gojo says softly.
Nanami swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing, before turning and coughing harshly into his elbow for a few seconds. Gojo leans back to grab the glass of water from the table, which Nanami takes and drinks gratefully, before trying to lean over him and put it back down before Gojo intercepts, mostly just for consistency’s sake.
“Right. And I’d say something like, well, we never really know how much time we have, in this profession, and the two of us rarely have time together anyway,”
“You are such a pessimist!”
Nanami’s mouth shifts into a real half-smile. “I’m a realist. So you know I mean it when I say that, as shocked as I was to learn that I enjoy spending what little time I have alive with you, that I’d like to continue doing so for as long as I can.” Gojo’s brows furrow deeper, and a thought occurs to him, but Nanami barrels on before Gojo’s mouth is fully open to voice it.
“And then I would’ve walked to the living room to retrieve an envelope hidden in a pile of paperwork on the coffee table that Itadori would’ve come in and left while we were shopping, an envelope I gave him the other day apparently in exchange for the flu, an envelope which you wouldn’t have noticed because you’ve been avoiding that stack of grading like the plague for two weeks. And then I would’ve said something about how much I love you, and how I don’t say it as often as I should—ach-choo!”
Gojo can hardly breath, and it could be that he’s somehow catching Nanami’s flu, but he doesn’t think that’s it. “And then?” Gojo says, when Nanami’s done blowing his nose.
“And then,” Nanami says, through what sounds like twenty feet of mucus, “I would’ve asked you if you might like to marry me.”
“Oh,” Gojo says, and he’s grinning, now. Nanami’s smiling. Gojo’d cracked the curtains a little more before Nanami’d woken up, to let the late morning light come through today, in hopes the worst of the fever had passed. “And Yuji’s flu ruined all of that?”
Nanami nods.
“Is the offer still on the table?” Gojo asks giddily.
“I suppose,” Nanami says. “If you’d be interested.”
“You’re such an asshole,” Gojo says, “but sure, I’d be good with spending the rest of our measly lives together.”
“I’m the asshole?” Nanami starts, before Gojo places his hand over Nanami’s mouth and kisses the back of it, as close as he’s willing to get, under the circumstances.
“I can’t wait to tell the kids their parents are no longer divorced!” Gojo exclaims, before Nanami sneezes all over his hand.