Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The lecture hall was supposed to be empty by now.

The protest had rolled into evening meetings, which had turned into late-night arguments. The kind that didn’t solve anything, only left the air hotter, the walls echoing with too many voices.

At the front of the room, Suguru stood with his arms folded, sharp lines cut into his face by the harsh fluorescent lights. Gojo leaned casually against a desk, long legs sprawled, pretending—always pretending—that he wasn’t rattled.

The audience, of course, had overstayed.

Hidden in the highest back row, Yuji, Nobara, and Megumi perched in the shadows like spectators at a gladiator match. Their notebooks lay forgotten, pens stilled. They whispered into their sleeves, half-giggling, half-gasping, careful not to be heard. Neither of the professors had the faintest clue they were there—too wrapped up in each other, locked so tightly in their own private battlefield that the rest of the world may as well have ceased to exist.

“You’re impossible,” Suguru snapped, voice low but fierce.

“And you’re predictable,” Gojo shot back, grinning as though he wasn’t two inches from combusting. “Like an angry philosopher cliché.”

Suguru’s glare could’ve burned holes through steel. “You treat everything like it’s a game.”

“Well,” Gojo tilted his head, “if it walks like a debate club, talks like a debate club…”

“Professor Gojo,” Nobara whispered to Yuji, “is literally trolling him in 4K.”

Yuji nearly doubled over. “No, no, look at Professor Geto’s face. He’s done. He’s like two seconds away from killing him. Or kissing him. I can’t tell.”

Megumi pinched the bridge of his nose. “You two sound deranged.”

“Admit it,” Nobara pressed. “They have history. It’s too specific, too intense. No one argues like that unless they’ve either fought in a war together or—”

Yuji leaned in, eyes gleaming. “—or dated.”

Megumi groaned.

Down below, the war raged on.

“You think jokes can cover for everything?” Suguru’s voice rose, echoing across the seats. “That if you just smile wide enough, the world won’t notice you running away?”

“Better than standing still and fossilizing,” Gojo quipped.

But the grin trembled. Suguru saw it.
He always saw it.

For a moment, silence draped the hall. The only sound was Yuji’s frantic whisper: “Oh my god, oh my god, did you feel that? That was tension. Capital T.”

Nobara hissed, “Shut up, this is peak cinema—”

“Enough!” Suguru snapped, though not at the students. His eyes never left Gojo. “Enough of the jokes. Enough of the act. Do you think it was easy for me?”

Gojo froze.

Suguru took a step forward, breath sharp, words pouring like he’d been holding them back for years. “Do you think I ever stopped—”

The sentence fractured. He faltered. For once, his eloquence collapsed under the weight of what he could no longer cage.

The room held its breath.

Suguru’s voice broke. “I never stopped loving you.”

The words fell like stones into a silent lake.

Yuji’s jaw dropped. Nobara slapped a hand over her mouth. Even Megumi blinked, stunned.

Gojo stood utterly still. The smirk, the mask, the whole elaborate façade—it all dissolved. His chest tightened with something raw, too big, too dangerous.

And before he could think—before he could run, as he always did—he moved.

In one reckless motion, Satoru closed the space between them and pressed his mouth to Suguru’s.

The kiss was fierce, startled, too fast. A collision of twelve years’ worth of silence, grief, longing. Suguru inhaled sharply against him, body going rigid—then yielding, his hands finding the fabric of Gojo’s coat, clutching like a drowning man. Gojo’s palm slid up, cradling the side of Suguru’s neck, thumb brushing the rapid beat beneath his jaw.

It lasted longer than either of them expected. A few seconds stretched, burned, rewrote entire years. Their lips moved once, twice more—softer now, searching, an ember glowing under the initial flame. Sparks leapt in the air, invisible but undeniable.

Neither of them realized they had an audience. Not in that moment. Not with the world stripped down to nothing but the taste of the other’s breath.

When Gojo finally tore himself back, it was as though he’d touched fire. He stumbled a step away, chest heaving, his hand lifting as if to reach for Suguru again—only to shove it into his pocket instead.

His grin snapped back into place. Too wide. Too sharp. Fragile as glass.

“Oops,” he said lightly, voice hoarse. “Guess old habits die hard.”

Suguru stared at him, lips parted, eyes blazing with something halfway between fury and desperate hope. “You…” His voice shook. “You can’t—”

But Gojo was already moving toward the door, every muscle taut with panic.

“Goodnight, Suguru,” he tossed over his shoulder, casual as ever. But the crack in his voice betrayed him.

The door slammed behind him.

Suguru stood rooted to the floor, heart hammering, mind reeling. He touched his lips like he wasn’t sure the moment had been real.

Up in the back row, the students sat in stunned silence for a beat. Then—

“OH. MY. GOD.” Yuji scream-whispered.

Nobara clutched his arm, eyes wide with glee. “I told you! I TOLD you!”

Megumi put his head in his hands. “We are never hearing the end of this, are we?”

“Nope,” Nobara said. “Not until the wedding.”

Suguru didn’t hear them. Couldn’t.

All he knew was that, after twelve years, the war between them was no longer public, no longer academic.

It was private now. Personal.
And it had only just begun.