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December 7th, 2018
Three days post-Incident, Gojo drags Hiromi out of the metaphorical hole he’s rotting in to join the others for lunch. It’s not the first time Gojo’s tried, but it is the first time Hiromi doesn’t refuse. He’s not sure what the point is in bonding but he can understand the others see it as a gesture. And while it’s not needed and not appreciated, it does soothe a tension Hiromi hasn’t yet learned to navigate in this new reality.
Lunch is surreal. An occasion lofts over it but no one enlightens Hiromi as to what. He figures it out soon enough, though. The cake with a home frosting job and jumbo candles in the shapes of a 2 and a 9 does most of the work. After the wish theatrics and scarfing down a serving of cake, the teenagers present Gojo with silly knick-knack gifts. Chief among them is a gaudy pair of plastic sunglasses with neon pink frames in the shapes of stars. Gojo adores them, of course. And he looks nice in the sunshine despite them, too, with his monstrous laugh and a dopey grin. Who would have guessed?
Later, after the students and faculty have all gone and it’s just the two of them, Gojo finally gets to the point of the field trip. He tells the sunset, “I’m in love with a dead man. How fucked up is it that he didn’t know?”
Hiromi cannot imagine someone being unaware of Gojo’s feelings. “He knew.”
"But not because I told him.” Gojo presses his lips together like he’s heard it before but doesn’t want to confront it. “Do you have a problem with it? Like… morally speaking or whatever?”
Hiromi probably should. “Not really.”
“Good.” Gojo’s breath fogs in the chill. “You’re like him, you know. Not physically—he was tall, you’re not. He was blond, you’re not. His ties were ugly, and on weekends he never matched his socks. He knew… He knew everything there was to know about me.”
Hiromi knows too much despite knowing nothing, but it’s not nearly enough for a fair fight. “Poor guy.”
Gojo laughs with one brilliant eye snagged on Hiromi, ridiculous star-shaped sunglasses sliding down his nose. “Yeah, he’d say that, too.”
The breeze flutters across the bridge of Hiromi’s nose all mountain fresh and winter-crisp.
“He was a good man,” Gojo says, leaving no room for debate. “Meant well. Better than the rest of us. You’re like him in that way, too.”
“Not really.”
“Yes, really.” Gojo’s gaze slips to meet Hiromi’s eye. “And it’s not just me who sees it.”
“You have a point somewhere in all this?”
Gojo indulges the sunset with a wry smile. “No. I think I’m done making points, to be honest.”
“You know, people only say that when they’re trying to hide that they’re not, actually.” A beat. “Honest.”
“I know what you meant. When’s your birthday?” Gojo asks.
They’ll probably be dead by Hiromi’s birthday and they both know it. This is, Hiromi is learning, an on-brand deal for Gojo. For the hell of it, Hiromi lies, “May.”
A few minutes pass, just the two of them and the frosty mountain air clearing out Hiromi’s sinuses.
Gojo takes a weary but intentional breath. “We don’t tend to mourn like you might be used to. Sorcerers, that is. It just sits different with us. But that’s not what this is about.”
Generally speaking, Hiromi tends to be insulted by such poor liars. But that’s not what this is about, either.
“What was his name?” Hiromi asks, half-expecting the mountains to devour it.
“Nanami.”
Nanami. Hiromi wonders how it was spelled and if his given name was crafted with intention. Hiromi’s was—his mother once told him the story of how she sat down and wrote out a hundred kanji, considering which collection of strokes best embodied the life she wanted for her son. She’d be disappointed in him now. Hiromi traded his virtues in for a gavel and every now and then it presses in on him like this. How there’s no taking it back.
Gojo swings the Executioner’s Sword with a flourish, jabbing with perfect alignment. Eighteen days, Kusakabe’s been trying to beat this posture into Hiromi’s muscle memory. A midwinter glow stretches across Gojo’s skin and hair. Pinks, oranges, deep sunset yellows—the ambiance twists and twirls with ballroom flair.
Gojo turns the sword over, examining it from every angle before holding it aloft with the blade pointed towards heaven. He looks like a movie poster hero. “Nifty.”
“Must you be good at everything?”
Gojo grins wide and easy. “It’s attractive, right?”
A little. “No.”
“Can it hurt you?” Gojo wags the Executioner’s Sword at Hiromi as if the entendre is thick enough to mistake it.
“No idea.”
“Wanna give it a try?” The coquettish tone isn’t even subtle.
Hiromi considers too long how to play it, but what does it matter when Gojo’s going to get his way? “Are you seriously asking to stab me?”
“Just a little!”
For a long, mortifying moment, Hiromi considers it. “No.”
“Just with the literal sword, or…”
Hiromi doesn’t know why he’s still here. Surely he can just take back the Executioner’s sword; Gojo only holds it because Hiromi handed it over. But there’s tension he’s reluctant to break. The dangling question mark is too good at hiding what’s churning beneath. Gojo makes everything sound reasonable until you’re drowning in it, wondering what sort of dumbass you had to be to willingly throw yourself into this typhoon.
Hiromi is a genre-defying train wreck by this point. What sort of dumbass? All of them.
The sex is a mistake. Hiromi can admit that as soon as ten seconds afterwards, sprawled out on his back, on top of a futon too plush for how rickety his room is. Gojo’s lanky limbs don’t correlate to the grizzly crushing Hiromi from sternum to knee. Gojo smells nice: a sweet aroma wafts from his hair, and his skin radiates a pine undertone. It’s comfortable despite the way Hiromi’s practically wearing Gojo like a blanket. For a long moment, he flirts with a nap.
“Well,” Gojo says, his voice muffled by the crook of Hiromi’s neck. “That didn’t help as much as I thought it would.”
If Sukuna doesn’t murder this guy, Hiromi’s going to.
“Sorry?” Hiromi wriggles out from under Gojo’s massive frame and sits up against the wall. Everything is sticky. Regret weighs on Hiromi’s lungs heavier than Gojo’s chest.
“Don’t need to be, really.” Gojo pairs a raspberry with a dramatic huff and clamps onto a pillow, burrowing his face and stretching down to his toes like a cat. He doesn’t bother covering himself but he clocks Hiromi clutching a sheet to his lap with amusement as he peeks out from behind the pillow. “You tried.”
“You’re terrible, you know that?”
“I know.”
“I don’t even like you much.”
Gojo’s chuckles bubble in his throat. “I know that, too. But I like you a lot, if it makes you feel better.”
Hiromi has no idea what he’s supposed to do with that. “The flattery is unnecessary.”
“But it’s nice, sometimes.” Gojo turns his head, tucking his other cheek to the pillow as he watches the odd snowflake flutter past the window. “Or so I’ve heard.”
It’s an easy score to identify. That dead man Gojo’s in love with has been haunting their narrative since the prologue and Hiromi doesn’t mind nearly as much as he should. Plenty haunts him, too; maybe this is what they’re meant to be for each other. Liminal, soaked in damage control. Hiromi longs for a world where he’s half as curious, and maybe a quarter as prone to chasing rabbits.
“This was a bad idea.”
“It really was.” Gojo’s eyes slip closed, the sparse light sneaking from the window behind him into his eyelashes. It’s getting darker earlier—barely four-thirty and already the sun’s creeping away. Hiromi waits a moment, savoring the swelling of nerves in his stomach. It’s nice to be afraid of something mundane, if only for a second.
“You’re going to stay, then?”
One of Gojo’s eyes peer up, suddenly wide awake. The other stays hidden. “That’s a bad idea, too.”
Hiromi has never rolled his eyes so hard in his life. The nakedness only compounds it. He should hop in the shower. Kick Gojo out, presuming he can. Wash the sheets and drink on Gojo’s dime until he forgets the month of December exists. He’s going to do about half of it. “Lots of stuff shouldn’t be happening. You seem like you want to stay.”
When Gojo keeps his peace, Hiromi knows he hit a bullseye.
It’s undignified to crawl out of bed but Hiromi manages to navigate something more of a slide and tumble that’s no less embarrassing. He slithers into a pair of boxers and locates one sock. The other one has disappeared. “Come on, let’s at least clean up.”
Gojo lets Hiromi haul him up by both hands and from there it’s easy to get both of them into the bathroom and freshened up. Gojo’s too much for Hiromi’s clothes but buried in the bottom of a duffel bag, Hiromi finds him a pair of basketball shorts he snagged the wrong size of from a big box store, not too long after everyone’s brains got a little rewired.
Settled back down, still watching the window, voice quieter than Hiromi’s ever heard it, Gojo asks, “You think they’ll miss me? If that’s what it comes down to? In that soul-crushing, devastating, only kintsugi will fix me sort of way?”
“Of course they would.”
“Hmm, I used to think so, too.”
Settled on the futon, backs to the wall, knees to their chests, Hiromi lets more bad ideas tumble around in his head. Eventually, he figures he should just ask. “What do you think now?”
For a stretch, Hiromi thinks Gojo’s bottom lip might split under the pressure of his teeth. “I don’t want people feeling bad when they think about me after I’m gone. That’s the worst outcome. Not the dying, but the part where it lingers and hurts forever, until they’re gone, too. It’s part of the cycle we’re caught in but I don’t know how to stop feeding it.”
There’s little to say in response to such a brutal confession. “Well, you’ll have plenty of time to figure it out, yeah? You’re not going anywhere. Not a chance.”
But that’s a lie, too.
Two days later, they’re sitting in Hiromi’s window and even though it’s freezing, Gojo’s back to wearing nothing but the shorts Hiromi stole from the local Target. They’re small and tight on Gojo, but the alternative is Gojo lounging around fully nude and Hiromi has already concluded that this new version of him intent on trying new things is not responsible enough for that.
“Do you think I’m selfish?” Gojo asks, right before he chokes on a high school drag from Hiromi’s cigarette. Seems Hiromi’s not the only one experimenting.
Hiromi thanks the gods for the teeth-clenching chill because it’s all that stops him from losing the war against how unintentionally hilarious that question is. Deadpan, Hiromi asks, “Do I think you’re selfish? A little, yeah.”
“That’s not bad. Seems like an all right thing to shoot for, yeah? Just a little selfish. I’d be pissed to be considered a saint. How boring.” Gojo hands back the cigarette without going for another puff, pink in the cheeks as he quashes his cough.
Hiromi wonders if that’s part of his technique, too, but they gave up pretending they’re talking about jujutsu days ago. “I miss being boring.”
“Pfft! No you don’t. You just think you deserve higher quality crazy in your life.”
Hiromi’s only saving grace from that read is that Gojo doesn’t seem capable of giving more than two fucks at any given time and both are devoted to himself.
“Tell me something stupid,” Gojo demands with a hoarse voice. “From when you were working. Or a secret— Oh, what’s the nastiest thing you had to keep to yourself?”
“There’s no end to privilege.”
Gojo cackles with hyena violence. “Fuck, I hope not.”
“Then why do you think I’ll tell you anything?” Hiromi’s sure he knows, but when has he ever not demanded clarification?
“Mostly because I think you’re a little soft on the inside, and you’re tired of keeping it in.”
How novel, to be considered soft. Hiromi has always felt too rigid—like inflexible hardwood prone to shattering.
“Maybe I need to pass the Bar before I’m worthy of confession,” Gojo goads.
Oh, Hiromi realizes. He’s offering to listen. This is the resolution of their quid pro quo. Hiromi examines the naked lines of Gojo’s arms and chest, his stomach stretched across flawless posture.
Maybe something small. Something irrelevant but never confessed. Another new experience.
“I won’t tell you about clients, but if you want to know something about me, about my—” It’s more awkward to explain than Hiromi assumed. Backtrack. “There was a woman I dated casually for a long while. It wasn’t romantic. It’s just that being single in the professional world is hazardous, especially when you don’t conform. You get overlooked, left behind, etcetera. You’re tolerated instead of nurtured. Maiko and I ran in the same circles so it was convenient to pair up. Helped keep busybodies and bigots off my back. Got her a promotion.”
“Work wife,” Gojo said, nodding along with a poorly hidden snicker. “Nanami had one, too. Had a few, actually, but they never lasted long. Does that make them work girlfriends? Work flings? Who even knows. That man despised a label. By the time I met any of them, they were well on their way out the door. Worked out nice for me, though.” Gojo’s blinding grin catches a shine from the sunset. “So she dumped you even though you didn’t even want her, huh?”
“We’d always agreed it’d end if either of us found someone.”
“Still sucks to be on the losing side of that deal.”
In the end, Hiromi can’t just not ask. “Is that the deal you were stuck in? ‘Til something better? Or were you the something better?”
Gojo watches the snow flutter across the cracked window, brushing Hiromi’s smoke away, into the mountains. “I plead the fifth.”
“What you should do is stop watching American TV.” He takes one last drag off the cigarette and stamps it out in a saucer before tugging the window closed. There are three more butts crowding the makeshift ashtray and the space is too tiny for them all. Hiromi could find a bigger saucer but he needs the shame of overcrowding to keep from lighting another one. There are only seven more in the pack and he refuses to get another when they’re gone. It’s almost as irritating of a problem as the cracked panes and leaky seals around the windows.
Gojo snags Hiromi’s wrist and tugs until Hiromi moves from the window ledge to the floor. He frames Hiromi’s hips with his knees and lays both palms across his cheeks. The kiss is far gentler than any they’ve shared throughout all their mistakes, even through the acrid Marlboro tang. Deft fingers travel into Hiromi’s hair, down his neck.
“There’s a universe out there where this works, you know,” Gojo breathes, the words half lost but too bold to be ignored. His wandering hands finally settle, each of them clasped with Hiromi’s at their sides. “Where we’re not the dangling epilogue of some other tragedy. I believe that. You should, too.”
“Oh? So you do have a conscience somewhere in there.”
“Of course. Remember? Only a little selfish. You should take a page from that book, too, if you want to make it on the other side.”
He’s not wrong but it doesn’t work like this, either. “You don’t have to flatter me with fantasies. I know the score. I know what we’re doing.” Hiromi’s courage wells. This is the only solid ground. The only certainty there is. “I know what you’re getting out of this. And I know how it ends.”
For the first time since Hiromi’s known him, Gojo looks cowed but the moment is fleeting.
“Pessimist.” Gojo’s hand is warm. His fingers curl tightly in the spaces between Hiromi’s knuckles. “I’m gonna prove you wrong.”
And that one, Hiromi decides to believe.