Link:
AO3
Rating: General Audiences
Category: M/M
Fandom: 呪術廻戦 | Jujutsu Kaisen
Relationship: Gojo Satoru/Nanami Kento
Language: English
Additional Tags: During Canon , Pining , Light Angst , Jujutsu Kaisen Manga Spoilers , Slight Manga Spoilers , Relationship Study , Pre-Relationship , intentional lowercase , Ambiguous Relationships
Posted at 2022-12-25 Words: 1105 Chapters:1/1
Summary:
with their profession, you’d think they’d be over the whole pining thing by now.
but no.
Please note!
this contains manga spoilers so anime-only watchers beware. hopefully, its not very blatant and its more of a blink and youll miss it type of deal.
hope you enjoy
_____
geto suguru is the first and last springtime of gojos satoru’s life. the one that gave color to his all-seeing eyes.
if you had to contain the most strongest sorcerer’s youth into one word it would be “suguru.”
nanami kento is no fool.
he was just a blip in gojo’s radar.
someone to tease and make fun of when it struck gojo’s fancy, his gaze never lingering for more than a second (but to nanami they were an eternity— pockets of infinity clawing at his chest). nanami is stuck frozen in place and he lets himself be consumed by an everlasting sky staring right at him. but then geto laughs at something shoko has said and the spell is broken. gojo perks up at the sound and nanami is left to watch as the ocean drifts back to its natural course like a wayward sailor coming home.
nanami has made peace with it. for who else could ever be worthy of the honored ones lofty gaze and undying affection?
let them be each other’s spring. the world is cruel enough as it is already.
when he comes back to jujutsu high, gojo satoru is still annoying as ever.
but without a certain someone by his side, he has learned to hone his grating laughter into weapons and his smiles as shields on top of the constant thrum of his infinity. putting on an incredible display of distance and power as if it wasn’t so painfully obvious to those who know him that he never came back the same after killing his best friend.
how he stands so close yet so far from nanami than the time they were both in high school (even though they’re supposed to be colleagues now).
simply, it means gojo’s grown.
devastatingly, he’s further from nanami than ever before.
an accumulation of insignificant regrets that spans an entire lifetime between them.
gojo’s an adult now. they both are.
so like any responsible adult, nanami gathers the tiny pieces of his stubborn heart and swallows it down his throat never to see the light of day.
what a heavy curse it is to love the most powerful sorcerer.
(is this what geto-san felt like whenever he consumed curses? nanami wonders. it’s painful.)
he doesn’t mention to gojo that it’s becoming more and more obvious that their shoulders touch a moment too long when they drink after a long day at work exorcising curses, that gojo doesn’t have to bring him souvenirs from his travels, that gojo doesn’t have to send him long nonsensical texts filled with silly anecdotes of his life.
that these buried infinities in his chest are turning into a black hole, pulling him back to those eyes that contain multitudes.
nanami stood no chance.
he accepts his defeat with grace.
no one could best the strongest sorcerer at his own game of pretend, after all.
so he lets him self fall.
and become one with the wind, content with being as insignificant and invisible in the face of a turbulent infinity.
_____
and yet.
the six eyes see all. not even the wind escapes its pull.
gojo satoru is no fool.
the aloof first year was a persistent spot in his vision.
nanami kento was always there, hanging around at the edge of his periphery, casting a gloomy shadow with his silent and somber demeanor. he can never get nanami in focus since he’s always so flighty and so far away. it was annoying, gojo wanted to scratch his eyes out just to make them stop noticing someone so boring. when he does get near enough to bother nanami — yes, his mere existence being annoying is a perfectly justifiable reason to annoy him back, in gojo’s book — the kid doesn’t even look back at him and bolts to the nearest exit (for some reason it bothers him that he didn’t even get to see what color nanami’s eyes were, those stupid bangs always in the way).
but then geto calls out to him, a mission is given, shoko treats them their wounds like the idiots they are and nanami is forgotten as more interesting sights paint over such dull existence.
and so, seasons change, regrets pass. spring may have come and gone, gojo may have never taken back his youth, but the wind is always there as time marches on.
it’s relentless that way.
he realizes this when nanami kento came back to the jujutsu world.
his kouhai grew into a dependable sorcerer, sturdy and precise in his efforts, making sure that no action is wasted. unlike him, who makes everything tedious and infuriating for everyone involved.
but, surprisingly, nanami braves through it — braves through him — like a steady lighthouse against a dim seaside thunderstorm.
how come gojo had never truly noticed it before? the inner strength nanami possesses, in order for him to come back to this world full of everlasting regrets.
simply, it means nanami has grown.
devastatingly, gojo aches for something he never had.
a span of infinite divisible instances that they never made happen.
nanami’s an adult now. they all are (even though they did the growing up way before they had a chance to taste their first drink and indulge in destructive vices).
so like any petty child used to getting what it wants, gojo takes any crumb nanami throws at him while demanding for more.
(maybe love isn’t the most twisted curse, after all— maybe it’s him, holder of the six eyes and limitless, gojo satoru.)
he doesn’t tell nanami that he finds himself counting the rare instances when he smiles, doesn’t tell him that he has memorized the way serenity is found in the upturn of his lips, he doesn’t tell nanami that he lets his six eyes feast on the shine in his brown — brown! — eyes whenever gojo does something stupid just to see nanami laugh.
with nanami, everything just seems so normal as if he wasn’t fighting curses all his life, as if those old geezers never mattered, as if he wasn’t the strongest sorcerer, the holder of the six eyes and limitless.
nanami sees right through him, past his six eyes, and sees only gojo satoru. a broken mess of a man.
despite it all, nanami stays.
and gojo is grateful.
in the end, what nanami doesn’t know, is that even though geto suguro may have been gojo satoru’s spring, nanami kento is the fearless wind that carries gojo satoru past spring, past autumn, and into the infinity of a bright unknown.
(gojo wants to be the wind at nanami’s back too.)
maybe both of them are fools after all.
_____
Additional Tags: Gojo Satoru Being an Idiot, Theyre both idiots actually, teenage gojo is a menace to his crush, nanami cant catch a break, yet another nanago fic containing metaphors involving infinity, its gojo we're talking about here
Notes:
happy holidays!
what better way to get into the holiday spirit than by posting a nanago story about youth and spring lol.
but for real though this has been in my drafts for little while now and i only had time to fix it up a bit and post it just recently. this was lowkey inspired by the jjk director interview where he describe geto as gojos “blue spring/seishun” and my idiot brain decided to be like HM HOW TO MAKE IT ABOUT NANAGO THO. i dunno i just love thinking of nanago as these two adults who found that they can still love after everything thats happened to them. that yes, your first love may be irreplaceable but to fall in love a second time can still be something so meaningful. somehow i ended up writing both of their povs and decided to go thru with it. and why not match the number of sentences while im at it? clearly i am going insane.
nanago has so many good fics and mine is just a humble attempt to contribute to the tag.