Work Text:
He could have changed his number.
He could have tossed aside his SIM card, gotten a new provider, and severed the last lingering link he had to the Jujutsu world.
He didn’t.
Part of him didn’t think he could .
Kento had moved on in as many ways as his weary heart could manage, but he couldn’t forget entirely. Didn’t want to forget entirely. The experiences - as shit and as soul wrenching as they had been - had been formative. Had crafted him into the man he was. Laid pavers for the man he would become.
Plus - he reasoned with himself - it didn’t do any harm. Not really. He never reached out to any of them, and with time and his repeatedly leaving people on read, he stopped receiving check in texts from them in turn.
He got another phone as well.
It was a way to keep his past life and his current life separate, in his own childish kind of way. He could receive and make calls related to his work carefree, without ever wondering if the next call from an unknown number would be an invite to a funeral of someone he’d considered family at one point or another. In the interim, he kept his other phone charged. Always waiting. Perpetually silent. A heavy weight in his briefcase that made the straps dig even deeper into his shoulders whenever he dwelled on its presence for longer than he cared to.
He was standing in the office kitchenette and preparing a cup of tea, when his colleague approached him.
“Nanami-san,” she’d smiled sweetly, an expression far too warm for the frigidity of their working environment.
“Good afternoon,” he’d replied politely, dunking his diffuser a couple of times as he forced a thin smile in her direction. “Is everything alright?”
“Oh, yes,” she nodded. “I just wanted to let you know that your phone keeps ringing from your desk. I thought it might be important, as it’s rung out a couple of times since you left for your break.”
Something sunk into his stomach and scratched at the insides, as he felt the weight of his company phone sitting comfortably in his trouser pocket.
“Thank you for letting me know,” he murmured, picking up his mug and ignoring the way the liquid rippled across its surface with the tremor in his hands. “I apologise for the disruption.”
She waved him away and excused herself, as Kento headed back to his desk, every step heavy with dread, as he heard his other phone continuing to ring. He set his mug down and braced himself, as he bent to pull his briefcase into his lap and reached into the front pocket, the vibrations skittering through the fabric and rattling into his touch.
He saw the caller ID and felt his breath briefly catch in his throat. He almost didn’t answer.
“Hello Gojo,” he offered by way of simple greeting, as he answered with bated breath. There was a soft sigh on the other end of the line, followed by a breathless laugh.
“ You answered my call, ” an achingly familiar voice chimed down the line, and Kento guiltily let it curl into his ear.
“Yes, that’s usually what people do when they’re contacted on their phones,” Kento remarked with a tone as dry as the cavern of his mouth.
There was another laugh.
“ Yeah, but you answered a call. From me ,” Gojo wheedled. “ I’m flattered. Truly I am the honoured one.”
Kento felt that familiar twang of impatience that he’d held for years every time he’d spoken with Satoru Gojo, but it was so heavily entwined with the longing and relief he didn’t want to feel that he barely had time to properly convey it before his mouth was running without him.
“I almost didn’t. I don’t expect good news to ever come to me on this line,” he admitted. “It begs the question - why are you calling?”
There were a few moments of extended silence, weighted, before Gojo let out a slow breath.
“ It’s good to hear your voice. ”
The thing in his stomach twisted violently, choking the last shred of air from him.
This was cruel. Gojo was cruel. To keep everything away from Kento’s world so thoroughly for so long, only to call up on some fanciful whim. A joke.
“Glad to have provided your daily amusement,” Kento said stiffly, and Gojo huffed down the line.
“ Nanamin~ you never take me seriously, ” Gojo said with an audible pout. “ I just wanted to see how you’re doing. Long time no chat, all that jazz. Do you still have the hair? I’m not gonna lie, it did look a little ridiculous but I kinda loved it. Iconic.”
Kento hesitated in responding. He knew himself well enough to know that falling into this discussion - casual engagement - with Gojo was dangerous. To his sanity, to his time, to his heart.
Keeping a distance from Gojo personally was one of the only ways to keep himself from the world he’d fought so desperately to leave.
“I’m doing well enough,” Kento replied quietly, resisting the urge to rest his hand over his churning stomach. “Thank you for asking. I need to get back to work, however.”
Gojo let out a long and exaggerated sigh before humming into the line.
“ Okay. It really is good to hear your voice,” Gojo said just as quietly. Uncharacteristic. So painfully sincere sounding that Kento felt a little nauseous at the concept. “ Stay in touch. ”
He hadn’t been ‘in touch’ for years, let alone stayed in it.
“Thank you for the phone call. Look after yourself, Gojo.”
He ended the call.
Kento slid the phone back into his briefcase with fingers that shook a little too much for his liking, before clearing his throat and raising his mug to his lips for a steadying pull of tea.
Satoru Gojo.
Of all ghosts to haunt Kento’s peace, of course it was him.
Kento did not enjoy working. He got some satisfaction from a job well done, but he found no pride or pleasure in dedicating more than the mandated eight hours of his life a day to something that gave him no joy and minimal reward.
He worked overtime as a necessary evil. He needed the money - the extra hours gave him a slight edge over his other colleagues, and his paycheques reflected it accordingly.
More often than not, however, he would find himself at the office for twelve, thirteen, fourteen, sixteen hours at a time. Most nights it was easiest to just drape a cold cloth over his eyes and rest for the sparse hours he could, but some nights his desperate urge for some semblance of humanity rang out. He’d force himself home, weary to his bones, and he would push himself to stay awake those few more hours to indulge . Whether it was sitting and reading a chapter or two of a book he couldn’t even keep track of in his sleep-addled state, or sitting and watching an episode or two of one of his shows he was quite literally months behind on, he would stubbornly reclaim any shred of his time that he could. More often than not, he’d succeed in that task, but at further detriment to himself.
He could feel the continued lack of sleep settling across him in subtle ways beyond the visible. He knew he was looking a little more gaunt than a man of his stature ought to. He had bags under his eyes that extended below any set of glasses he attempted to blanket them with. But it was the ways that weren’t immediately visible that wore on him the most.
His memory was stuttering. There wasn’t enough processing time in the few hours of sleep that he stole away for himself to realign and organise the day’s events. The fog that settled over his perception was a heavy one, dense and confusing.
He seemed to have a headache that pinched at the bridge of his nose, that plucked at his temples and pressed behind his eyes. It was there at all minutes of the day, at varying intensities and at varying positions, but forever present nonetheless.
Whenever he got the chance to lay down - horizontal for the brief periods he could permit it - he could feel the weight settle in all of the places he was too young to be feeling load bearing at. His hips, his shoulders, the curve of his neck, the juts of his fucking knees . The fatigue was a physical weight pressing him into his mattress and heaving a sigh out of every pore of his body as it settled, mirroring the ones that escaped his lips unbidden.
He wasn’t a social butterfly of any sorts at work, but he put in energy into being polite. Into offering advice and insight, in engaging in meaningless chatter for the sake of allowing his colleagues to slightly alleviate their own soul sapping existences. Kento knew he could come off a little blunt - a little too sharp around the edges - and he tried to remind himself that it was none of the people surrounding him’s fault that he felt cornered into the role he played.
He found himself, when moments of irritation arose, reminding himself that it was a good thing that the banal bullshit that his coworkers bitched and moaned about was the worst things they’d endured. That Ryo and Toma fighting over the same girl’s attention was actually a blessing when compared to the reality that Kento and every other sorcerer was bitterly and bitingly aware of. Kento forced himself to remember it, to keep it at the forefront of his mind as he feigned his sympathies and nodded along to animated discussions he had less than zero interest in.
“She’s out of his league, man,” Ryo huffed, as Kento hummed along.
“Not that I think that leagues are a thing, but… Wouldn’t that be for her to decide, in any case?” He asked, and Ryo looked positively betrayed at the suggestion. Wrong thing to say, then. “She sounds like a wonderful woman, however. I’m sure she’d choose wisely in that instance.”
Wisely, in Kento’s mind, would be to avoid both of the insufferable little shits to the absolute best of her ability, but who was he to say?
His attention was snagged from the frankly torturous discussion by the chime of a text on his… other phone.
It gave him pause. Not a peep from it for months, and now, twice in the same amount of weeks?
He pulled it from his briefcase and unlocked it, stomach roiling anxiously once again.
[Gojo Satoru]:
Remember the time Yaga caught you guys smoking out in the gardens and Shoko literally crawled under a hedge to get away?
Kento did remember. Vividly. He hated how the memory brought a smile to his lips for the half second it took for his common sense to kick in.
He had no need to reply. Gojo would get the hint eventually.
Whoosh.
[Gojo Satoru]:
She used to be so damn slippery. Snuck off and left you both to be absolutely roasted. Suguru was bitter about it for weeks.
Kento was too. It had been Ieri’s suggestion in the first place. Fuck, they were her cigarettes, but she’d vanished like liquid and Yaga had only had Kento and Suguru to ream.
Suguru , Jesus. Wasn’t that a name he’d tried to squash down for what felt like decades?
Those were… simpler times.
Kento did wonder where Geto was now. He’d wondered what might happen if Kento texted the number he had for him. If he reached out, explained that he was out, that he just wanted to talk - if any of that would make a difference. Give him some sort of clarity. He didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure he’d even have the right. Didn’t know what he’d say if he did.
He wondered if Gojo ever felt the same urge. If he’d ever acted on it.
His thumbs hovered over the keypad, an odd compulsion gnawing at him that perhaps he should reply. Just to acknowledge it had been received. That he hadn’t forgotten. That those memories still held space in his mind.
“Nanami, yeesh!” Ryo whined, and Kento felt a twitch of annoyance skitter through him. “Are you seriously texting while I pour my heart out over here?”
Kento let the phone slide back into his briefcase and forced a smile.
“My apologies,” he bowed his head briefly. “Do continue.”
He didn’t reply.
Kento had called in sick, for the third day in a row.
He never called in sick.
Despite his ongoing belief that work was bullshit, he was still somehow tangled up in his own deep seated beliefs surrounding respect for others and his damn reliability.
That being said, he didn’t think he could physically force himself into the office as it was. He felt so drained. Like he could sleep for days. He kind of had, really. Even then, his phone was still going off - his manager with a wave of questions, truly reflecting how little he actually knew about what the people working for him did until it was up to him to cover. Sometimes his colleagues called for the same reason. His clients called for god knows what reasons - those he didn’t answer. Eventually, he let all of them ring out. He put his phone on ‘do not disturb’ and tossed it onto his bedside table.
Which was why the sound of a text message had him blearily cracking his eyes open to look to where his other phone sat beside it on charge, the screen illuminated and tempting him into curiosity.
He knew by now. This was the third week. The third time the phone had gone off. It would be Gojo. What he hadn’t expected, when he caved in and pulled it towards him, was to see that Gojo had sent him an attachment of some variety. A photo, he found, as he opened it and his breath caught painfully in his chest.
It was a selfie - Gojo and Ieri front and centre with Ijichi loitering awkwardly in the background.
Ijichi looked as strung out as ever, and with someone like Gojo in his charge, Kento couldn’t blame him.
Ieri looked… tired. She looked a little like Kento felt, and something squirmed uncomfortably in his stomach as he realised that he would never fully be able to grasp the things she had seen and done over the years. It was easy to remember that Satoru had lost so much during Suguru’s betrayals, and just as easy to forget that Ieri had been hit by the debris as well. All that being said, she was beautiful.
Kento had an inexplicable urge to send the picture to Yu.
He’d been so incredibly fond of their senpai, had waxed poetic about her on more than one occasion - and Kento knew how enamored he’d be with this in his arsenal.
He pushed the thought aside as it chewed acid through his throat and stung at his eyes.
He turned his attention instead to the person he’d stubbornly refused to acknowledge until that point, knowing there’d be no denying how his eyes traced the image with a non physical caress.
Satoru fucking Gojo had always been - would always be - visually ethereal.
In the photo, he was all white teeth and the tiniest of dimples. His lips were glossy as they stretched across his mouth in an easy smile. His hair went every which way but tamed, and his eyes were only half covered by his shades, absolutely glittering through the image with a mere fraction of the intensity Kento knew they held in person. He’d seemingly gotten taller and had filled out his frame a little more, broader and more defined. Still, he was sharp angles and sharp teeth and soft skin and warm eyes.
Kento hated how he had always been pulled in by how breathtakingly stunning Gojo was. He was beautiful. Kento could not deny it, wouldn’t bother trying to, but he wanted to create as much distance between himself and the acknowledgment as he could at any given time.
In his weaker moments, the moments where he was too tired and too worn to put up the fight against reality, he would admit that it had never just been a physical attraction. That Gojo - that Satoru - had gained more than his casual interest over the years. That nobody had ever made as much sense to Kento as Gojo had. That nobody had irritated, enlightened, emboldened, impressed, aggravated and enamoured Kento more, despite every shred of him desperately wishing that it wasn’t the case.
His eyes flitted to the caption underneath the image and swallowed around the knot in his throat.
[ Gojo Satoru ]:
We miss you, emo kid~
Beneath that, in a separate text a few minutes later, another message had followed.
[ Gojo Satoru ]:
I miss you, Nanamin.
He stared at the phone in his hands, his eyelids heavy and his mouth dry, until sleep claimed him once more.
He didn’t reply.
————
The messages increased in frequency.
It was once a week, to once every few days, to at least once a day, going on a few months by that point.
Kento learned that it didn’t matter whether he replied or not, Gojo would still send them.
The content varied. Sometimes they were obvious signs of Gojo’s boredom and Kento landing in his nuisance crosshairs - strings of texts with just his surname, with varying amounts of extended vowel usage. Sometimes Gojo would send selfies - harder to be annoyed by, but also more difficult to ignore. Sometimes they would be random thoughts - questions better placed with google, or idle pondering about everything from dessert origins to evolutionary theories. Often times it would be shared memories, tales from their time together, an endless collection of ‘ remember when ’s and ‘ I was just thinking about the time that ’s.
Sometimes Kento indulged Satoru with a short response or a laugh react to a text, which Gojo often immediately responded to with blatant enthusiasm. They gradually worked up to short exchanges, and against every stubborn intention he had, Kento found himself looking forward to the chime of that phone for the first time since he’d gotten it.
One time, in the very darkest hours of yet another sleepless night, Kento heard the text chime ring out, glancing at the time in mild concern before opening the text.
[ Gojo Satoru ]:
It never gets easier, Kento.
First names? And at this time? Unease settled across him as he typed out his reply.
[ Sent ]:
What doesn’t?
There was no response for an extended period of time, although the typing bubbles popped up and disappeared several times over. An odd sense of anxiety continued to ramp up in Kento’s stomach, waiting for the message to arrive. Minutes felt like hours, before the text finally appeared.
[ Gojo Satoru ]:
losing someone
It was too broad of a statement. Could reflect too many incidents, too many kinds of loss. He hovered over the keyboard of his texting app and dwelled on how to even respond. Whether it would do more harm than good if he didn’t hit the target correctly.
Another text came in, followed by three more in quick succession.
[ Gojo Satoru ]:
Can I call
[ Gojo Satoru ]:
Not to talk about it. We don’t have to talk about it.
[ Gojo Satoru ]:
Would prefer to talk about literally anything else actuallyyyyyy
[ Gojo Satoru ]:
Just… please?
Kento stared down at the phone, his thumb hovered above the keyboard, and realised that he knew the answer before he’d even typed it.
[ Sent ]:
Yes
The phone rang immediately, and Kento pressed his phone to his ear as Gojo let out a breathless laugh.
“ I really thought you were going to say no, ” he said into the phone by way of greeting, and Kento couldn’t blame him for the thought. If Gojo had posed the same question six months earlier, Kento would likely have not replied at all, or outright refuted the request.
“Well… Things are different now,” Kento admitted quietly, and there was a brief silence between them, a palpable understanding between them that yes - this was a new territory for them.
“ It’s late, sorry if I woke you, ” Gojo offered quietly, awkwardly clearing his throat, and Kento could tell from the waver in his voice that whatever had happened - Satoru needed this. Needed him . He didn’t think he’d ever be able to say no again.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” Kento admitted, shifting under his sheets as he stared at the blank ceiling above him.
“ Ahhh, out clubbing like the party animal you are, I see, ” Gojo teased, and Kento huffed a laugh.
“It’s a Wednesday night,” Kento replied dryly, and Gojo tutted in response.
“You’re out of control! Wednesday night and you’re out on the town,” Gojo sighed dramatically. “You’ve changed. What happened to my sweet innocent kouhai?”
Kento rolled his eyes, but in the privacy of his own home, he let the smile on his lips linger.
“He got older and weedier and…” Kento paused, rubbing a hand over his weary face and letting out another low laugh. “He got old , Gojo. I wasn’t a party animal in my prime - now is not the time to start.”
“ You’re still in your prime, Nanamin. Don’t be ridiculous. You speak like you’re a seventy year old, ” Gojo snorted, and Kento settled further back into his bed, propping his phone against his ear as he placed a hand behind his head and draped the other across his stomach.
It felt oddly intimate - the night still and dark around him, nothing but the sound of Gojo’s voice in his ear as he let out a slow breath and stretched out his legs.
“I feel like it sometimes,” he admitted softly. “In reality though, you’re right - I’m still in my prime, whatever that means. Logic and reality doesn’t stop the physical feel of it though.”
“ You could always change whatever you need to, ” Gojo said quietly, seemingly also settling in as he made an exaggerated stretching sound. “ Eat better, exercise more, whatever other shit Yaga lectures me about.”
“Since when do you listen to Yaga?” Kento scoffed, and Gojo let out a laugh, a sound that settled sweetly across Kento’s frayed nerves.
“I don’t, and I’m frankly offended you think I even implied that,” Gojo sniffed, before a brief pause. “But… you generally did. He sometimes has a point. Don’t tell him I said that though.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” Kento drawled, and Gojo gave another little snort of a laugh.
As a general rule, Kento didn’t like talking on the phone. It was usually doom and gloom from one world or another, and he always felt stilted trying to press his way through conversations he just didn’t care about.
This, though? This was… surprisingly easy.
“I’m not the one living on a diet of primarily desserts,” Kento teased, and Gojo hummed in feigned thought.
“ You know, maybe you need more desserts. I don’t tend to be wrong about things, Nanamin, ” Gojo mused, and Kento sighed, much to Gojo’s feigned offence. “ Oi! I don’t like what that sigh implied. ”
“It only implied what a guilty conscience interpreted as truth,” Kento replied lightly, as Gojo made an indignant little squawk and a flood of affection burned through him at the sound.
They settled into a brief moment of silence, broken by Gojo clearing his throat.
“ Nanamin, I… ” he began, faltering briefly, and causing Kento to briefly curl his fingers into his sleep shirt a little. An uncertain Satoru Gojo didn’t feel right in any sense of the word. “ I worry. About you. ”
Kento stiffened in place, puzzled and flustered all at once.
“About me ?” Kento prompted, and Gojo let out another little laugh, something sad lurking within it.
“ Yeah. You were always with us back in the day, even if you kinda kept your distance. It was… nice, you know? Just to have you there. To have you with us. To be able to be there with you, for you,” Gojo explained. There was another brief, heavy silence where Kento felt his breath trying to claw its way from his suddenly tight throat. “ You feel a little too far away from me now, and I… worry. ”
In an attempt to lighten the mood a little, steer it into safer waters, Kento hummed in thought.
“Is this the Gojo way of telling me you miss me?” Kento mused, and Satoru laughed, a soft thing that trailed off into nothingness.
“ I do miss you. I’ve told you that already, ” Gojo said easily, and Kento felt his cheeks flush a little unbidden. “ I just… also miss being able to keep an eye on you. Six, even. I know it’s stupid, because you’re realistically so much safer than any of the people I see on the regular, and that’s - I’m glad for that. Genuinely. I just know how driven you can be as well, and when I talk to you sometimes, I can tell that you’re… tired. I don’t know. I think I’m rambling. I just don’t want you burning yourself out. ”
“Gojo,” Kento sighed, wondering how to broach the elephant in the room. That the both of them knew that out of the two of them, Gojo had burnt himself out more consistently than any person either of them had ever met - let alone knew well.
“ I know ,” Gojo said softly, a sigh of his own leaving his lips. “ I know what you’re thinking. I do. I just… don’t want to risk losing more people in my life, especially if they’re not even fucking around with curses and-…”
He trailed off, and Kento allowed the silence to settle between them, knowing that whatever had happened to Gojo that day was something he was trying to avoid confronting with his mind, but also seemed to be something he couldn’t let go of. Part of him selfishly wanted to be the person who could take those woes from Gojo personally, but he wasn’t sure anybody actually could.
He could offer distraction, however, and perhaps he could get some benefit for his own woes as well.
“I’ll try to look after myself a little better,” Kento murmured, hesitating just briefly on the thought toying at the edge of his mind before pulling the pin regardless. “Perhaps you could help me start. There’s a new restaurant that’s recently opened near my apartment. A lot of health food options for mains and some reportedly delicious low calorie desserts as well. Perhaps we could try it out together.”
Another silence fell between them, extending enough that Kento’s anxiety skittered up his spine, prompting him to take back his words.
“Not that you have to-“
“ Yes.”
“Pardon?”
“ Sorry. Please. Yes. That’d be... Let’s do that. Tomorrow? Let’s do tomorrow. I’ll make time. I’m already making time. I’ve mentally declined three theoretical missions already. Please don’t change your mind. Are you changing your mind? Can you stop changing your mind, please, Nanamin? ”
Kento huffed out another laugh, relief and amusement and a familiar aching affection all bubbling to the forefront at once.
“ I’m the one who asked you ,” he sighed with aching affection that he prayed Gojo couldn’t hear.
“ I’m super aware of that, because I just about fell over when you did, but! ” Kento heard Gojo slap himself somewhere, seemingly making a decision. “ I want to take full advantage of you emerging from beneath your rock, so I am insisting that you stick to your generously offered plans lest you break my spirit completely. ”
“You’re impossible,” Kento groused, settling further into his bed as the wing beats of a thousand insects fluttered through his stomach. “I’ll keep my word.”
“ I really hope you do ,” Gojo said, voice uncharacteristically and painfully soft, draping over Kento’s senses like a cloth. “ In the meantime, maybe you can regal me with some of your work stories until the sheer excitement catapults me into sleep.”
Kento indulged Gojo with his request, rattling off extensive stories about client files and all of the ridiculous office gossip he’d somehow managed to retain, until Gojo’s answers began to slur and his responses became slower. When Kento heard the soft sounds of sleep coming from the other end of the line, he intended to wait on the call just until Gojo had fallen deep enough to not wake on the disconnect tone.
Kento dozed off himself, the most at ease he’d felt in months.
He didn’t end the call.