Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The morning sunlight slanted through tall arched windows, catching in the dust that hung above the rows of seats. The lecture hall was already half-filled, chatter rippling across it like a tide, until the door opened and silence followed like instinct.

Professor Geto Suguru stepped to the podium with the quiet confidence of someone who had no need to command attention — attention arrived, obedient, the moment he entered.

He was not theatrical, not like some professors who thrived on antics or showmanship. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t gesture wildly. Yet there was something magnetic about him: the precision of his words, the calm cadence, the way he looked directly at his students as if each of them mattered.

He set down his leather satchel, removed a neat stack of notes, and began.

“Philosophy,” Suguru said, “is not about answering questions. It’s about learning to live with them. Questions are the beginning, not the end.”

Pens scratched. Laptops clicked. In the third row, Nobara Kugisaki elbowed Yuji Itadori, who was slouching in his chair, whispering, “See? He sounds like a cult leader again.”

Yuji grinned and whispered back, “A really cool cult leader. The kind you’d join voluntarily.”

Nobara rolled her eyes, but she was already scribbling the words ‘Questions are the beginning, not the end’ into the margin of her notebook with a little star next to it.

Across the aisle, Megumi Fushiguro leaned back, arms crossed, unreadable as ever. But even he wasn’t immune; his pen moved as well, copying down a line about “responsibility to truth.”

Suguru carried on, oblivious — or perhaps perfectly aware — that half the class was transcribing his every sentence as though he were scripture. He wasn’t performing; this was simply who he was.

By the end of the lecture, students were buzzing. Some lingered to ask questions, others to hover near him as if proximity alone might lend them a fraction of his composure. Suguru answered each question with patience, his dark eyes steady, his expression serene.

It had been a year since he joined this university’s Faculty of Humanities. A good year, by most measures. He’d carved out his rhythm, his place. He was respected. Admired. Perhaps even beloved.

And yet, when the department chair asked him to attend an “important announcement” later that week, he felt only mild curiosity. Another funding shift, he assumed. Another administrative shuffle. The world of academia spun endlessly around budgets and politics; he had learned not to expect much.

He didn’t know. He couldn’t have known.

The faculty common room smelled faintly of chalk and bitter coffee. The chairs were mismatched, the carpet worn thin in the middle where generations of scholars had paced their frustrations into it.

Suguru arrived early, as was his habit. He carried his notebook, found a quiet corner, and sat. A few other professors trickled in: Nakamura from Sociology, Ito from Comparative Literature, Hoshino from History. They nodded politely, murmured greetings.

“Apparently they’ve hired a new professor in the sciences,” Nakamura whispered as he sat. “Mathematics, I think. They’re making a whole show of it.”

Suguru raised an eyebrow. “Mathematics?”

“Yes. Supposed to be some prodigy. Won every international competition as a student. Published before he was twenty. You know the type.” Nakamura sighed, adjusting his glasses. “They’ll shower him with funding while we scrape by.”

Suguru gave a faint hum of agreement. He’d seen it before. Humanities departments cut, sciences inflated. It was an old story. Still, he couldn’t summon much irritation. Another mathematician was hardly his concern.

The room filled slowly, the hum of conversation growing. Then the dean entered — smiling too widely, with the air of someone about to unveil a prize.

“Colleagues,” the dean said, clapping his hands once for attention. “Thank you for coming. Today we welcome a new member to our faculty. A scholar of extraordinary talent, whose work has already brought international recognition. I am delighted to introduce Professor Gojo Satoru, Department of Mathematics.”

The name hit like a crack of thunder.

Suguru’s pen slipped from his fingers.

The door swung open. And there he was.

Gojo Satoru looked almost the same, yet entirely different.

His hair was still a wild shock of white, defying gravity as though it had a will of its own. He was still tall, broad-shouldered, irritatingly radiant. The tinted glasses — yes, he still wore them indoors, ridiculous and arrogant. His smile was a slash of brilliance, as careless as it was calculated.

But he was older now. Lines at the corner of his mouth, a new weight to his presence. And yet, when Suguru’s gaze locked onto him, all he saw was the same boy — the boy who had once set his world on fire and then walked away without looking back.

For twelve years, Suguru had managed not to think of him. Or at least, not often. A passing memory here, a ghost of laughter there. A scar he never touched.

And now, suddenly, Satoru was standing across the room, grinning like nothing had ever happened.

“Yo,” Gojo said easily, flashing a two-fingered wave. “Hope there’s free coffee here, or I’m walking back out.”

Laughter rippled across the room. Professors smiled, charmed despite themselves. Suguru sat perfectly still, expression smoothed into porcelain calm, though his chest was a storm.

Gojo’s gaze swept the room, casual, unbothered. Then it landed on Suguru. Froze.

For a fraction of a second, the grin faltered. His head tilted, as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The tinted lenses hid his eyes, but Suguru knew. He felt the jolt.

Twelve years collapsed in an instant.

“Well, damn,” Gojo said at last, his voice lighter than air, though his shoulders had stiffened. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

All eyes turned to Suguru.

He rose smoothly, every motion deliberate, and inclined his head the barest degree. His voice was even, cool. “Professor Gojo.”

A murmur ran through the room — recognition? Surprise? The air thickened.

Gojo scratched the back of his neck, still smiling, though it looked more like armor than amusement. “Professor Geto. Long time. You haven’t aged a day.”

Suguru’s lips curved into something that was not quite a smile. “Twelve years is not ‘a day.’”

The silence after was sharp, charged.

Someone coughed. The dean clapped his hands again, flustered. “Yes, well! We are fortunate indeed to have such distinguished scholars among us. Perhaps we should move on—”

But the room wasn’t listening anymore. The tension between the two men was palpable, electric.

Suguru sat down, spine straight, hands folded neatly atop his notebook. His face betrayed nothing. Inside, however, his thoughts were a torrent.

Why here? Why now? Of all the universities in the world…

Across the room, Gojo lounged into a chair, long legs sprawled, posture careless. But his hand tapped once, twice, against his knee — the only sign of unease.

He stole another glance at Suguru, and the thought he refused to say aloud burned through him:

You’re still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever ruined.

The meeting droned on. Words about funding, about upcoming conferences, about administrative changes. Suguru heard none of it. His mind was a taut wire pulled between past and present, memory and reality.

Gojo, predictably, interrupted with a joke about budget cuts, earning more laughter. He looked effortless, dazzling, untouchable. Exactly as Suguru remembered. Exactly as Suguru despised.

When the meeting ended, colleagues swarmed around Gojo, eager to introduce themselves, to bask in his glow. He played along, charming and ridiculous, until the crowd thinned.

Then it was just them.

Suguru gathered his notes slowly, deliberately, refusing to be the first to speak.

Gojo shoved his hands in his pockets, sauntered closer, and said softly, “Hey, ‘Guru. Long time no see.”

Suguru looked up at him, expression blank. His voice was calm, steady. “Twelve years. Yes.”

Gojo tilted his head, glasses slipping down just enough to reveal a flash of those impossible blue eyes. “Miss me?”

Suguru’s breath caught — only for a second, only enough that he hated himself for it. Then he rose, leveled his gaze, and replied:

“No.”

He walked past him, coat brushing against Gojo’s sleeve. The air between them crackled.

Gojo grinned after him, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

Liar, he thought. Because I missed you every damn day.

Chapter Text

The campus café was always too crowded after morning lectures. The tables wobbled, the chairs squeaked, and the coffee tasted like burnt cardboard, but still the place buzzed with energy, alive with conversation.

Yuji Itadori dropped his tray down onto a table with a clatter, nearly knocking over Nobara’s drink.

“Careful, idiot,” Nobara hissed, yanking her latte out of reach.

Yuji grinned sheepishly, his blond-pink hair sticking up in the usual chaotic fashion. “Sorry, sorry. I just ran the whole way here. You will not believe what I just saw.”

Megumi Fushiguro raised an eyebrow from across the table, where he sat hunched over a black coffee. “Knowing you, it’s probably something stupid.”

“No, no, this is good,” Yuji insisted, leaning forward conspiratorially. “I saw Professor Gojo and Professor Geto walking down the hall together.”

“...And?” Megumi asked flatly.

“And,” Yuji said, lowering his voice like he was delivering state secrets, “they either wanna kill each other… or fuck each other.”

Nobara snorted so hard she nearly choked on her drink. “Oh my god.”

Yuta Okkotsu, who had just slid into the seat next to Yuji, blinked in alarm. “Wait, what?”

Even Inumaki, perched at the end of the table with his headphones half on, looked up, eyes glinting with mischief. “Salmon,” he said knowingly, which everyone at the table interpreted as: He’s right.

Yuji spread his hands, triumphant. “See? Even Toge agrees with me.”

Megumi pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering, “You’re insufferable.”

“No, no, listen!” Yuji said, practically bouncing in his seat. “You didn’t see the way they looked at each other. It was like… like sparks. Like ‘I hate you but also I still dream about you’ kind of sparks.”

“Yuji.” Megumi’s tone was flat as stone. “You’ve been watching too many dramas.”

But Nobara leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “No, wait. This actually makes sense. Think about it: they’re both stupidly good-looking, they’re both geniuses, they both have reputations—”

“Reputations?” Yuta echoed, looking lost.

“Yes, reputations,” Nobara said impatiently. “Professor Geto is the untouchable, perfect, terrifying-but-hot cult leader type. And Professor Gojo is… whatever the hell he is. A walking disaster in sunglasses.”

Yuji nodded vigorously. “Exactly! And when you put them together, it’s like… kaboom.” He clapped his hands together for emphasis.

Yuta laughed nervously. “I don’t know… Professor Geto doesn’t really seem like the type to, um… kaboom.”

Nobara arched a brow. “You’ve clearly never seen the way he looks at people when they ask a stupid question. That man could kill with a glance. Which means,” she said, jabbing her straw toward Yuji, “you might not be entirely wrong. It’s either sexual tension or homicide. Maybe both.”

Inumaki smirked, pulled out his phone, and tapped a few words. He slid it across the table: We should start a betting pool.

Yuji lit up like a Christmas tree. “YES. Oh my god, yes. This is gonna be huge.”

Megumi groaned, slumping further into his chair. “You’re all idiots.”

But even he couldn’t quite suppress the image of his two professors — Gojo’s lazy grin, Geto’s cool mask — colliding like flint and steel.

The same afternoon, the cafeteria was bursting at the seams. Students milled about with trays, searching in vain for open seats.

Suguru entered quietly, tray balanced neatly in one hand. He had a cup of tea, a small salad, a bowl of rice. Simple, balanced, precise.

He scanned the room. Every table was full.

Then his gaze snagged on a familiar figure sprawled at the far end, one long leg thrown out carelessly, sunglasses perched on his nose even indoors.

Satoru Gojo.

Of course.

Of all the people, of all the days—

Suguru’s jaw tightened. He considered leaving. He considered walking right back out and finding somewhere else, anywhere else, to eat. But the cafeteria was crowded, the hallway worse, and the thought of showing weakness — of yielding — made something cold twist in his gut.

So instead, he walked forward.

Gojo spotted him instantly. His grin widened.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Professor Geto,” he drawled, waving a candy bar in greeting. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Suguru gave him a thin smile. “There are only so many places to eat on campus.”

“Yeah, but you don’t eat ,” Gojo teased. “You, like, sip tea and glare at people. It’s your whole thing.”

Suguru set his tray down at the only open seat — directly across from him. He sat with elegance, smoothing his shirt as though he hadn’t just made a decision that felt like stepping onto a battlefield.

Gojo leaned forward, propping his chin on his hand. “Twelve years, and you still eat like a monk.”

Suguru’s gaze flicked to the half-empty candy wrapper on Gojo’s tray. “And twelve years, and you still eat candy bars for lunch.”

Gojo laughed, bright and careless. “Some things never change.”

“Some things should,” Suguru murmured.

The air between them thickened instantly, like static before a storm. Conversations around them blurred, the clatter of dishes faded. It was just them, locked in a duel of words sharpened by twelve years of silence.

Gojo tilted his head, smile still plastered on, though his eyes behind the glasses were sharp. “Still think you’re better than everyone else, huh?”

Suguru didn’t flinch. “No. Only better than you.”

That earned a bark of laughter, loud enough to draw glances from nearby tables. Gojo threw his head back, grinning. “God, I missed this.”

Suguru’s fingers tightened around his teacup. “I didn’t.”

At the next table, Yuji nearly knocked his drink over in excitement.

“Oh my god, it’s happening,” he whispered furiously, clutching Nobara’s arm.

Nobara’s eyes gleamed as she discreetly angled her phone camera. “Shut up, don’t make it obvious. This is gold.”

Yuta looked like he wanted to sink under the table. “We’re gonna get expelled.”

“Shh!” Nobara hissed. “History is being made.”

Inumaki, without shame, leaned his entire phone against a water bottle, camera rolling.

Megumi muttered, “You’re all insane,” but even he was watching from the corner of his eye.

At the professors’ table, the battle continued.

Gojo unwrapped another candy bar, leaning back lazily. “So, what, you’re still the serious, broody philosopher? Mister ‘Life Has No Answers’?”

Suguru sipped his tea with infuriating calm. “Better than being a man-child who hides behind jokes.”

“Aw, you wound me,” Gojo said, pressing a hand to his chest in mock hurt. “You used to like my jokes.”

“I used to like you, ” Suguru said softly, the words slipping out before he could stop them.

For a split second, silence.

Gojo’s grin faltered, just barely. Then he recovered, leaning forward, voice low. “Yeah? And whose fault is it that you don’t anymore?”

Suguru’s hand stilled on his cup. His mask slid back into place. “Eat your candy, Satoru.”

The table between them was a live wire, every word a spark.

And from across the cafeteria, half a dozen phones captured it all.

By nightfall, the video was everywhere.

The campus message boards. Group chats. Social media feeds. A grainy clip of Professor Gojo leaning forward with a grin, Professor Geto staring him down with ice in his veins. The caption:

“They either wanna kill each other or fuck each other. No in between.”

The views climbed. The comments multiplied.

Team Kill.
Team Fuck.
When’s the next episode of Professors: The Soap Opera?

Yuji scrolled through the chaos with glee, cackling. Nobara updated the betting pool spreadsheet. Even Megumi had to admit, grudgingly, “This is getting out of hand.”

But the campus was alive with it. And neither Gojo nor Geto knew — not yet — that their private war had just become very, very public.

Chapter Text

The announcement came in the most sterile way possible: an email from the Dean’s office, sent out to every staff and faculty member at midnight.

SUBJECT: Strategic Reallocation of University Resources

The body was full of bland bureaucratic language — “optimizing funding,” “realigning priorities,” “strengthening STEM competitiveness.” But everyone knew what it really meant: cuts. Programs slashed. Departments gutted.

And most of those cuts would fall squarely on the humanities.

By morning, the campus buzzed with unrest. Students clustered in groups, whispering, angry. Flyers were already appearing on walls, printed hastily overnight: Save Our Departments. Education Is More Than Profit.

Suguru Geto read the email twice, then set his phone down. He sat in his office surrounded by books — thick tomes of philosophy, slender volumes of poetry, religious texts lined neatly along the shelves. His fingers tapped the desk in slow rhythm.

It was not unexpected. He’d seen the trend for years. Funding drifting away from history, languages, philosophy, toward the sciences, toward technology. “The future,” they called it.

But it still filled him with a quiet, burning anger.

Because the future, he thought, meant nothing without understanding the past.

That afternoon, his lecture hall was overflowing. Students packed into the seats, spilled into the aisles, stood pressed against the back wall.

Suguru stepped up to the podium, dark robes falling around him, long hair tied neatly. His presence was calm, commanding.

“I assume you’ve all heard about the email,” he began.

A wave of murmurs swept the room.

He raised his hand. Silence fell instantly.

“Then you know,” he continued, “what this means. Not just for this university, but for all of you. For the world you are meant to shape.”

He spoke without notes, without hesitation. His voice was even, but every word carried weight.

“Philosophy. Literature. History. Religion. These are not luxuries. They are not hobbies. They are the foundation upon which every society rests. Without them, technology is blind. Science is deaf. Progress is hollow.”

A ripple of applause. Students leaning forward, eyes wide.

“You came here to learn not only how to work, but how to think. Not only how to make, but how to question. To imagine. To doubt. To hope.”

The applause grew louder. Suguru let it wash over him, but did not smile.

“They will tell you that mathematics, physics, engineering — these are what matter. That human thought is expendable. That human culture is irrelevant.”

A sharp edge entered his voice, his composure cracking just slightly.

“But without human thought, there is no meaning to any of it.”

The students erupted in cheers. Phones recorded. Notes were scribbled. Suguru stepped back, letting their voices rise, letting the spark he had lit spread like fire through the hall.

Meanwhile, two buildings over, Satoru Gojo lounged on the edge of his desk, sunglasses reflecting the afternoon light.

His classroom was noisier, less reverent than Suguru’s. Students laughed at his jokes, argued freely, scribbled equations on the board while Gojo heckled them from the sidelines.

And yet, when the topic turned — as it inevitably did — to the funding email, the room shifted.

“So,” Gojo said lazily, twirling a marker between his fingers, “you’ve all heard the news. Humanities funding down the drain. More cash for math and science. Means I get to keep my fancy chalk budget.”

A ripple of uneasy laughter.

“Let me be clear,” Gojo continued, stretching like a cat. “Math is important. Physics, engineering — sure, sure. They build the world. They keep the lights on. They pay the bills.”

Someone raised a hand timidly. “But… don’t you think the humanities are important too?”

Gojo smirked. “Important? Sure. But bills don’t pay themselves, sweetheart. You think philosophy’s gonna build you a bridge?”

The class chuckled nervously.

But Gojo’s grin wavered, just for a moment, behind his glasses. Because deep down, he did think it mattered. He thought about the nights twelve years ago when Suguru would read aloud to him from books Gojo couldn’t pronounce, about the way Suguru’s voice softened when he spoke about meaning, about beauty, about belief.

He shook the thought off and clapped his hands. “Alright, enough doom and gloom. Back to integrals. They’ll outlive us all.”

The students groaned, but the tension broke.

Gojo leaned back against the desk again, grinning wide, but his thoughts were elsewhere.

That night, the corridors of the humanities building were quiet. The protests hadn’t started yet — those would come in days. For now there was only simmering tension, whispers, plans.

Suguru walked alone, papers tucked under his arm. His mind was still alive with the energy of the lecture, the students’ cheers echoing in his chest.

He turned a corner — and stopped.

Gojo was leaning against the wall near the faculty offices, hands in his pockets, glasses catching the dim light.

“Professor Geto,” Gojo drawled. “Nice speech today.”

Suguru’s jaw tightened. “You watched?”

“Nah,” Gojo said with a grin. “Didn’t have to. Half the campus is talking about it. You’re practically a rockstar.”

Suguru brushed past him. “Don’t waste my time.”

But Gojo fell into step beside him. “Aw, don’t be like that. I actually thought you were pretty good. Stirring. Inspiring. Almost had me ready to pick up a picket sign myself.”

Suguru stopped, turning on him sharply. “Then why didn’t you?”

Gojo blinked.

“Why didn’t you stand with your students? Why didn’t you use your voice, your influence, to support them?” Suguru’s voice rose, the calm mask cracking. “Because it’s easier to joke? To pretend you don’t care?”

Gojo’s grin thinned. “I teach math, Suguru. Not revolution.”

“And you call me self-righteous,” Suguru said bitterly. “At least I stand for something.”

They stood in the empty corridor, the air between them vibrating with old anger, old longing.

Gojo’s voice dropped, softer, sharper. “And you never stopped being self-righteous.”

Suguru stepped closer, eyes flashing. “And you never stopped being a coward.”

For a moment — a dangerous, electric moment — neither moved. The silence was heavy with everything unsaid.

Gojo’s pulse jumped. He remembered another night, long ago, when Suguru had pressed him against a dorm wall with the same intensity, though the air between them had been warmer then, filled with laughter, with kisses, with the heat of youth.

Suguru looked away first, jaw clenched. “Stay out of my way, Satoru.”

He walked off, leaving Gojo standing alone in the corridor, smile finally gone.

Gojo tilted his head back, staring at the ceiling. His chest ached with something he refused to name.

“Twelve years,” he muttered. “And you still know exactly where to hit.”

But he wasn’t the only one.

As Suguru walked away, his hands tightened around the papers until they crumpled. His composure was intact, but inside, his heart thundered. Because Gojo was the only person who had ever called him out and made it sting. The only one who had ever gotten under his skin.

And now, after twelve years, he was back.

Chapter Text

The lecture hall was too small for the crowd it had drawn. Students crammed into every seat, stood along the walls, sat cross-legged in the aisles. Some had climbed onto the windowsills for a better view. Phones and tablets already glowed in their hands, ready to record.

The banner at the front read in bold, bureaucratic font:

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSITY?

It was supposed to be a polite panel discussion. A balanced set of viewpoints from different departments, moderated by a weary administrator. A showcase of civil academic discourse.

But then someone — no one would admit who, later — had suggested putting Professors Geto and Gojo on the same stage.

And suddenly, what was meant to be a dull afternoon had turned into the hottest ticket on campus.

Suguru Geto sat at the panel table, posture perfect, suit immaculate, dark hair tied neatly at the nape of his neck. He radiated calm authority, the kind of presence that made a room hush without him even speaking. His notes were organized in a leather-bound folder, though he hardly needed them.

Beside him, Satoru Gojo slouched like he was in a café, one ankle over his knee, sunglasses on despite the dim lighting. He had no notes. He had, in fact, brought a lollipop, which he twirled between his fingers like a child plotting mischief.

The moderator, a gray-haired vice dean, cleared her throat nervously. “Welcome, everyone. Today’s panel is meant to open a constructive dialogue about the direction of our university in these challenging financial times.”

A polite smattering of applause. The students didn’t care about constructive dialogue. They were here for blood.

“Professor Geto,” the moderator continued, “perhaps you’d like to begin.”

Suguru inclined his head and stood. His voice was measured, resonant, filling the hall with ease.

“The email we all received last week makes it clear: the humanities are once again under threat. We are told that to survive in the twenty-first century, we must prioritize mathematics, technology, and the so-called hard sciences. That human knowledge is a luxury, and human understanding is expendable.

“I reject that premise entirely.”

Applause thundered from half the room.

Suguru waited for silence before continuing.

“Universities are not factories. They are not pipelines for producing obedient workers. They are communities of inquiry, of thought, of meaning. To cut philosophy, literature, history, religion — to starve these disciplines — is to amputate the soul of education.

“Science can build a bridge. But philosophy asks: why do we cross it? Science can split the atom. But religion asks: should we? Without that balance, without that context, knowledge becomes dangerous.”

His gaze swept the hall, sharp and steady. “To fund science at the expense of humanity is to forget what makes us human at all.”

The applause was thunderous now, students stomping their feet. The moderator tried to quiet them, but it was no use. Suguru sat, composed as ever, though his eyes gleamed with quiet fire.

“Thank you, Professor Geto,” the moderator said weakly. “Professor Gojo, would you care to respond?”

Gojo popped the lollipop into his mouth, stood lazily, and stretched like a man waking from a nap. He turned his sunglasses toward the audience, and the room quieted almost involuntarily.

“Okay,” he began casually. “First of all: Suguru’s speech? Beautiful. Really moving. Ten out of ten delivery. The man could start a cult tomorrow, and you’d all be signing up for matching robes.”

Laughter erupted, even from Suguru’s loyalists.

Suguru’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

“But,” Gojo continued, pacing slowly across the stage, “let’s talk reality. Humanities are great. Philosophy is deep, literature is inspiring, history is important — sure. But you can’t eat a sonnet. You can’t power a hospital with Plato. You can’t design a vaccine with Kierkegaard.”

A low murmur rippled through the hall. Gojo raised a finger.

“I know, I know — you’re about to tell me, ‘But Satoru, meaning matters! Humans need context!’ And yeah, I get it. But let me tell you something: without money, without jobs, without progress, nobody gives a damn about Aristotle. Philosophy doesn’t pay rent.”

Gasps and laughter mingled. Suguru’s eyes narrowed.

Gojo grinned. “Now, math? Math is everywhere. Every bridge, every phone, every satellite — you’re living inside my subject. And unlike you poor bastards writing essays on Nietzsche, my students graduate and actually get hired.”

The STEM students roared with approval. Phones recorded feverishly.

Gojo spread his arms wide. “So yeah, the funding shift makes sense. It sucks, but it’s survival. And last I checked, survival comes before enlightenment.”

He dropped back into his chair, lollipop between his teeth, and winked at Suguru.

Suguru stood again, slower this time, controlled but visibly simmering.

“You speak of survival as though that is all human beings are capable of. As though we are nothing more than animals, feeding ourselves and building machines. But survival without purpose is not living. It is existing.

“And forgive me, Satoru, but your glib dismissal of philosophy reveals more about your own cowardice than about its value.”

A shocked ooooh swept the room. Gojo tilted his head, amused.

Suguru pressed on, voice sharpening. “Mathematics may design your machines, but philosophy ensures they serve humanity, not enslave it. Science gave us nuclear power. Philosophy was what restrained us from destroying ourselves with it. The very freedom to ask why is what separates us from machines.”

He leaned forward slightly, gaze fixed on Gojo. “Unless, of course, you’re content to be one.”

The crowd exploded. Cheers, shouts, gasps.

Gojo stood again, rolling his shoulders, smiling wider.

“You’re adorable when you’re mad, Suguru,” he said sweetly, to a chorus of laughter.

Suguru’s composure faltered just for an instant, a flicker of something sharp and personal flashing in his eyes.

Gojo seized it.

“You say I’m a coward for not standing with the students. But maybe you’re the coward. Maybe you cling to philosophy because it’s easier to live in the clouds than down here in the mud, where things actually get built, where choices actually have consequences.”

The room was electric now, divided down the middle. Half cheering Suguru, half roaring for Gojo. Phones streamed live to social media.

The moderator tried desperately to interject. “Perhaps we could—”

But neither man heard her.

Suguru’s voice cut sharp as a blade. “And perhaps you mock meaning because you’re afraid of it. Because once upon a time, Satoru, you believed in more than jokes and equations. And it terrified you.”

A stunned silence fell for half a second.

Gojo’s grin slipped, just for that heartbeat.

The students didn’t notice — they were too busy reacting to the spectacle. But Suguru saw it. He always saw it.

And Gojo saw the flash of regret in Suguru’s eyes immediately after, like he’d revealed too much.

The silence shattered into chaos — cheering, chanting, laughter, whistles. The moderator banged her microphone in vain.

“Alright!” she shouted. “That’s enough! Thank you, Professors, thank you! This concludes—”

But the students were already on their feet, some chanting “GETO! GETO!” others shouting “GOJO! GOJO!” The entire hall was alive, vibrating with energy. Phones uploaded clips to Twitter, TikTok, Instagram. By the end of the night, the hashtag #GojoVsGeto would be trending nationwide.

Backstage, when the moderator finally managed to herd them out of the hall, the noise still echoing behind them, Gojo and Suguru found themselves alone in the green room.

Suguru sat heavily, rubbing his temple.

Gojo leaned against the doorframe, smirking. “Well. That went better than expected.”

“You’re insufferable,” Suguru muttered.

“Mm,” Gojo hummed. “But you missed me.”

Suguru looked up sharply, eyes narrowing.

Gojo’s smile didn’t reach his eyes.

Chapter Text

The first weeks after the debate were like tossing gasoline on a fire that had been waiting years for someone to strike a match. Satoru and Suguru were a spectacle on their own — both tall, commanding, impossible to ignore — but now that they’d been seen clashing publicly, the campus latched onto them with the same fervor it usually reserved for celebrity scandals.

It wasn’t just whispered gossip anymore. It was hashtags.

#GojoVsGeto trended on student Twitter for three days straight. Someone with too much free time on their hands cut together clips of the debate, splicing Suguru’s pointed critiques with Satoru’s shameless jokes, overlaid with dramatic music. It went semi-viral across other universities, and suddenly strangers were weighing in: “Clearly Professor Geto is the intellectual powerhouse.” “No, Professor Gojo ate him alive and you’re all just blinded by his cheekbones.”

On Reddit, an entire thread popped up titled: The Saga of Gojo vs. Geto: Academic Enemies, Secret Lovers, or Both?

Yuji found it, of course.

He slapped his laptop shut dramatically in the cafeteria, nearly spilling Megumi’s soup. “Guys. GUYS. You have to see this. I KNEW it wasn’t just me!”

Nobara snatched the laptop out of his hands and scrolled with the speed of a professional stalker. Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh my god, there are memes. Look at this one—”

The image was a screencap from the debate: Gojo leaning back in his chair, smirking like the devil, Suguru leaning forward, frowning so sharply it could cut stone. Someone had captioned it: ‘They want to kill each other.’

The next slide showed the exact same image, only with pink hearts doodled around their heads. Caption: ‘They want to fuck.’

Yuji nearly choked on his rice. “SEE? I TOLD you!”

Megumi groaned, shoving the laptop back toward Yuji. “You seriously need new hobbies. You’ve turned into a conspiracy theorist.”

“No, listen, listen!” Yuji jabbed at the screen, eyes wide. “It’s the way they look at each other. There’s tension. TENSION. And not just rivalry tension, if you know what I mean.”

Nobara cackled. “I’m with him on this one. I’ve seen enough dramas. No one stares at their ‘enemy’ like that unless they’ve kissed them at some point.”

Yuta, gentle as ever, flushed scarlet and muttered, “Maybe they just… really hate each other?”

Inumaki offered his usual succinct contribution: “Salmon.” Which, as far as anyone could tell, meant ‘I don’t buy it either.’

Yuji slammed his hand on the table. “Mark my words. They were together. They totally were. And now it’s this tragic lovers-to-enemies arc playing out right in front of us!”

Megumi muttered something about “too much screen time rotting your brain,” but even he didn’t deny there was something strange about the professors’ dynamic. The whole campus had seen it.

The faculty, of course, were less amused.

By the third faculty meeting of the semester, whispers were already circulating among the older professors. Professor Ieri rubbed her temples every time Satoru strolled in late, sunglasses on despite the windowless room, offering some ridiculous quip. Professor Nanami, the ever-serious economist, had once muttered to Suguru: “I admire your patience. I would have strangled him by now.”

Suguru didn’t respond, but the twitch in his jaw said enough.

It was becoming a pattern. Whenever a discussion turned even vaguely toward funding or priorities, Satoru found a way to needle Suguru. Not enough to get himself in real trouble — he had tenure now, after all — but enough to make it impossible for Suguru to ignore him.

“Of course, philosophy is important,” Satoru said once, leaning back in his chair, voice dripping with exaggerated earnestness. “Without it, how would we all learn to argue about the meaning of chairs instead of doing math that, you know, actually funds the lights in this room?”

The snickers from the STEM side of the table had been immediate. Suguru’s glare, sharper than any knife, was the only thing that silenced them.

“Better to question the meaning of a chair,” he replied coolly, “than to be one.”

Even Utahime couldn’t quite hide her smirk at that one.

It was late one evening, the hallways mostly empty, fluorescent lights buzzing faintly. Suguru stood by the vending machine, waiting impatiently as it groaned to spit out a paper cup of bitter coffee. He had papers to grade, petitions to organize, and a headache forming behind his eyes.

Naturally, that was when Satoru appeared.

He strolled up like he owned the corridor, sunglasses perched precariously in his hair, tie already half undone though the day wasn’t quite over.

“Well, well,” he drawled, leaning a shoulder against the wall beside the machine. “Professor Geto, haunting the halls after hours. Should I be worried? Are you summoning demons from the philosophy department again?”

Suguru didn’t look at him. He plucked the cup from the dispenser, took a sip, winced at the taste. “Do you ever stop talking?”

“Not when you’re around,” Satoru said with a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s too much fun watching you pretend you don’t enjoy it.”

That earned him a sharp look. For a heartbeat, their gazes locked — Satoru’s playful, Suguru’s steady and cold. But the steadiness cracked, just a second, and Satoru saw it.

Then, Suguru’s eyes went back to being sharp and distant. “You still think the world bends just because you walk into a room.”
For a split second, something in Satoru’s grin faltered — a crack where disappointment leaked through. Then the mask slid back into place, effortless.
“Guess you’d know best,” he said lightly, though his hands shoved deeper into his pockets.

The pause that followed was taut, suffocating. Suguru turned on his heel without another word, coat flaring as he left.

What neither of them noticed — or maybe they both did, and simply pretended not to — was the small group of students huddled at the end of the hall. Yuji among them, of course, eyes wide with glee.

“DID YOU SEE THAT?” he hissed once Suguru was out of earshot. “That was— that was— sparks! Literal sparks!”

Nobara folded her arms, smug. “I’m telling you, exes.”

Megumi groaned. “Why do I even hang out with you people?”

Later that night, back in his office, Satoru leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. His desk was a disaster: candy wrappers, student exams half-graded, a half-empty coffee cup. But his thoughts weren’t on the mess.

They were on Suguru.

On the way his voice had dropped at the vending machine. On the way his eyes had softened, just for a second, before snapping back into that practiced mask.

It drove Satoru insane. Not because Suguru was cold — he’d expected that after twelve years of silence — but because beneath the cold, he could still see the boy he once knew. The boy who had laughed with him in libraries, kissed him in empty classrooms, whispered impossible dreams at two in the morning.

And he wanted him back.

He hated himself for it.

Because every time Suguru looked at him with that mixture of disdain and disappointment, Satoru was reminded of how thoroughly he had ruined it all.

And yet.

And yet.

God, he still wanted him.

The spectacle continued to grow. Students swapped screenshots of the vending machine encounter, even though no one had caught the words. “The look on Geto’s face!!” one caption read. “Tell me they didn’t have history.”

By the end of the week, the debate wasn’t just about funding anymore. It wasn’t just about philosophy vs. math. It was about them .

Enemies. Ex-lovers. Or both.

Even Satoru didn’t know which answer terrified him more.

Chapter Text

The weeks after the vending machine encounter brought no peace.

If anything, their interactions became sharper, the edges less polished. The students joked, the faculty sighed, the administration worried about “optics.” But beneath all of it, between Suguru and Satoru, something heavier pressed down like a storm waiting for release.

It wasn’t just spectacle anymore. It was personal.

The first real crack came in lecture hall B102, during an interdisciplinary panel about “Innovation and Tradition in Higher Education.” The irony wasn’t lost on anyone.

Suguru, of course, gave a measured, incisive statement about the responsibility of academia to society. His words were elegant, layered, thoughtful. He had the audience of students hanging onto every syllable.

And then Satoru opened his mouth.

“I’m just saying,” he drawled, legs sprawled carelessly under the table, “if I wanted to hear sermons about responsibility, I’d go to church. People come here to learn how to think. And sometimes thinking means solving integrals instead of debating whether Plato would’ve liked Twitter.”

The students laughed, but the laughter was uneasy, glancing at Suguru to see his reaction.

Suguru’s jaw tightened. He turned to him slowly, voice low but cutting:

“You never take anything seriously. Not then, not now. You’re still the same boy hiding behind jokes.”

A ripple went through the room. Professors stiffened. Students froze mid-note. Even Satoru blinked — not because the accusation was new, but because hearing it aloud, in public, hit differently.

His smirk faltered for just a fraction of a second. Then he leaned back, flashing his sunglasses like armor.

“And you?” His voice carried sharpness it rarely did. “You’re not the boy I knew either. You sold your soul to the system you used to hate. Congratulations, Suguru. You’ve become exactly the kind of professor we used to laugh at.”

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Suguru’s expression didn’t break, but his hands clenched on the table, white-knuckled. He said nothing further.

The moderator cleared his throat nervously and moved on, but everyone in the hall knew the real debate had already happened.

That night, Suguru stayed late in his office. Papers piled high, books half-opened, candle of exhaustion burning low. He told himself he was grading. He told himself he was preparing tomorrow’s lecture.

Really, he was replaying the words in his head.

You sold your soul.

The accusation sat heavy because it wasn’t entirely wrong. Once, long ago, he and Satoru had been on the same side of the barricade — mocking the system, dreaming of remaking it, running wild through corridors that had tried to tame them. And now, here he was, in a buttoned shirt and tie, sitting beneath the same institutional logo he had sworn he’d never kneel to.

He rubbed his temples. He hated that Satoru still had the power to unmoor him.

The knock on his door startled him. He looked up, expecting a student. Instead, it was him.

Satoru leaned against the frame, casual as ever, but his expression lacked the usual cocky veneer. He looked almost… uncertain.

“You’re still here,” he said simply.

Suguru’s lips curved in a humorless smile. “Unlike some people, I take my job seriously.”

“Touché.” Satoru stepped inside without invitation, closing the door behind him. “I figured you’d be here. You always did love playing the martyr.”

Suguru bristled. “And you always did love barging into places uninvited.”

“Guilty.”

Their eyes met, the silence stretching taut.

Finally, Suguru set down his pen. His voice dropped, softer but sharper. “Why do you do it?”

Satoru tilted his head. “Do what?”

“Turn everything into a joke. Undermine. Refuse to take a stance until it’s too late. Today—” His jaw tightened. “Today you humiliated me in front of my students. And for what? A laugh?”

Satoru’s grin faltered. He shoved his hands into his pockets, looking away. “You think that’s all I am, huh? A clown for cheap laughs.”

“If the shoe fits.”

That one landed. Hard.

Satoru chuckled, but it was hollow. “Better than being chained to a desk, lecturing about meaning while you’re suffocating under it.”

The words hit back, sharper than intended. Suguru felt them like a blade.

The room grew heavier. The hum of the old radiator filled the silence.

Finally, Suguru spoke, softer this time, almost against his will. “You used to stand with me, you know. You used to care. About students, about the future. About me.”

The last two words slipped out before he could stop them. He cursed himself for it, but it was too late.

Satoru froze. His mask cracked — just a hairline fracture, but enough.

“Don’t,” he said quietly, and it was the most unguarded he’d sounded in years.

Suguru’s chest tightened. He forced a scoff, picking up his pen again like a shield. “Where did that Satoru go?”

Satoru swallowed, searching for words, but none came. He settled for leaning back against the bookshelf, pretending it was just another late-night conversation, just another round of their endless sparring.

But Suguru could see it. The old wound. The old hurt.

And for the first time in twelve years, he wasn’t sure if the chasm between them was entirely impassable.

The clock ticked toward midnight. Papers lay forgotten. Two men who had once shared everything stood on opposite sides of the same room, both too proud to step closer, both too broken to walk away.

Satoru finally pushed off the bookshelf, adjusting his sunglasses though the room was dark. “You should get some sleep, Suguru. You’ll give yourself wrinkles.”

Suguru snorted. “And you should try growing up. But I doubt either of us will change.”

Their eyes met one last time. For a heartbeat, the years fell away, and they were twenty again, standing too close, daring each other to blink first.

Then the moment shattered.

Satoru shoved his hands back in his pockets, grin sliding into place. “Goodnight, Suguru.”

He left before Suguru could reply.

When the door clicked shut, Suguru sat in silence, staring at the empty space where he had stood. His chest ached with a question he would not, could not, voice aloud.

Where did you go, Satoru? And why do I still want you back?

Chapter Text

The campus hadn’t changed.

Suguru sometimes thought about that, walking its old stone paths in the present day — how the ivy clung to the walls the same way it had when he was twenty, how the library’s heavy doors still groaned with the same complaint, how the echo in the lecture halls carried the same note.
But back then, sixteen years ago, everything had been different.

Suguru had been a second year, already known for his precision in seminars, his quiet but devastating way of dismantling an argument until it lay in ruins. Professors adored him. Classmates feared him. He had built his reputation carefully, with discipline and intellect, never letting anyone close enough to disturb the balance.

And then came Satoru Gojo.

First-year, mathematics. Six feet of chaos wrapped in an ill-fitting hoodie, hair a wild mess of silver, eyes hidden behind sunglasses even indoors. He arrived late to everything, carried candy bars in his backpack instead of notebooks, and had a reputation for either sleeping through class or solving problems in ways that made even the professors mutter. His laughter rang too loud in the quiet corridors; his energy was a constant disruption, like lightning looking for a storm.

Suguru had dismissed him on sight. A loudmouth. A clown. The kind of boy who mistook arrogance for charm.

Until the day in the library.

Suguru had been reaching for a book on medieval mysticism — top shelf, just out of comfortable reach. He stretched onto his toes, fingers brushing the spine. And then another arm shot out across him, long and careless, knocking into his own.

“Oops,” a voice drawled above his head. “Didn’t mean to crowd you, sunshine.”

Suguru froze, the heat of that casual touch still burning his sleeve. He turned, slow and sharp, only to find Gojo grinning down at him, one hand gripping the book, the other braced against the shelf right beside Suguru’s shoulder.

Close. Too close.

Suguru’s eyes narrowed. “That’s mine.”

Gojo tilted his head, flashing teeth. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law, professor.”

“I’m not a professor.”

“Could’ve fooled me. You sound like one. Deadly serious, scary-smart, the whole vibe.” He tapped the book’s spine lightly before letting it drop into Suguru’s hands. “Here. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

Suguru hated how flustered he felt. “You’re insufferable.”

Gojo’s grin widened. “And yet, here you are, still talking to me.”

It started small — accidental encounters in the library, heated debates in the back of lectures, Suguru’s irritation against Satoru’s relentless mischief. But irritation gave way to something else.

By winter, they were sharing tables in the campus café. Gojo would sprawl with his long legs under the table, waving a candy bar for dinner. Suguru would bring actual food, roll his eyes, and inevitably end up feeding him half of it.

They argued about everything.
About mathematics versus philosophy, about the nature of truth, about the future of the world.

“You can’t measure meaning,” Suguru would insist, leaning forward, dark eyes alight.
“And you can’t argue with gravity,” Satoru would shoot back, tearing into another candy wrapper.

Their conversations stretched into the night, the café’s staff flicking lights to warn them it was closing. They would spill out into the cold air, still arguing, shoulders brushing as they walked back to the dorms. Sometimes Gojo would tilt his head back and laugh at the stars, and Suguru would find himself staring too long, wondering how a boy who looked like chaos could also look like freedom.

And every night, Suguru would lie awake too long, wondering why Gojo’s laugh echoed in his chest long after it faded.

It happened in the library again.

Suguru was seated at a long table, books spread around him like a fortress. He was writing notes, deep in thought. Gojo arrived without announcement, dropping into the chair beside him with a theatrical sigh.

“Studying again? You’re killing me, Suguru.”

“You wouldn’t survive an hour without me,” Suguru muttered, not looking up.

Gojo leaned across him, reaching for a book on the other side of the table. His arm brushed against Suguru’s. Just an accident. Just contact. But Suguru’s pen slipped, ink smearing across the page.

Gojo noticed. He stilled.
“Sorry,” he said, softer than Suguru had ever heard him.

Suguru didn’t reply. He couldn’t. The warmth of that touch lingered long after the arm was gone.

It was late — past midnight, a forgotten lecture hall. They had been arguing, again, their voices echoing off the walls. Gojo had been mocking Plato. Suguru had been furious about it.

“You don’t take anything seriously!” Suguru snapped, pacing the aisle. “Not class, not life, not—”

He broke off, too breathless, too angry.

Gojo leaned against the blackboard, grinning lazily. “And you take everything too seriously. It’s a wonder you haven’t exploded yet.”

Something snapped.

Suguru stormed forward, words sharp and ready — but they never made it past his lips. Gojo’s hand shot out, fingers wrapping around his wrist, startlingly firm, startlingly warm. Before Suguru could shake him off, he was pulled forward, the space between them collapsing in an instant.

The kiss collided into him. Clumsy. Desperate. A crash more than a caress — teeth knocking, breath tangling, too much and not enough all at once. But it burned. God, it burned.

Suguru froze, his mind reeling, body rigid with the instinct to resist. And then, against every rule he had built for himself, every wall of discipline he had so carefully maintained, he yielded. Melted. His free hand fisted into the rough fabric of Gojo’s hoodie, dragging him closer, as if letting go would mean falling apart.

Gojo’s mouth was warm, insistent, reckless, tasting faintly of sugar and salt, like the candy bars he was always shoving down. The pressure of him was overwhelming, his height bending down into Suguru’s space, his grip on Suguru’s wrist a tether that refused to let him retreat.

When they finally broke apart, the air between them crackled with the ghost of it. Both were breathless, foreheads nearly touching, Suguru’s chest heaving like he had been running, Gojo’s grin crooked but unsteady, his sunglasses pushed askew.

Suguru whispered, “That was—”
“About time,” Gojo finished, still grinning, though his cheeks were flushed.

Suguru should have pulled away. He didn’t.

After that, they were inseparable.

They studied together, argued together, slept tangled in dorm beds too small for them both. Suguru’s notebooks filled with neat lines of philosophy, sometimes interrupted by Gojo’s doodles in the margins. Gojo’s problem sets were often smeared with Suguru’s handwriting correcting a mistake or adding a thought.

They developed rituals. Gojo would sneak into Suguru’s dorm with contraband snacks; Suguru would force him to drink tea instead of soda. On rainy days they’d sit pressed against the glass of the library windows, watching the water turn the campus into something dreamlike. Suguru would pretend to be annoyed when Gojo leaned on his shoulder and fell asleep, but he never moved him.

Their friends began to roll their eyes when they walked into rooms together. Professors pretended not to notice the way they sat too close, whispered too often, laughed too hard.

It was a whirlwind. Youth, brilliance, passion. They loved as if they had forever.

Suguru sometimes thought they could remake the world. With Gojo’s fire and his own steel, what couldn’t they do?

But even then, the cracks showed.

Sometimes, when Suguru tried to talk about the future — about careers, about what they might become — Gojo grew quiet. Jokes slipped into the space where honesty should have been.

“You’re thinking too much,” he would say, brushing it off with a grin.

And when Suguru pressed, Gojo pulled away. Not physically, not always, but in ways Suguru could feel — walls rising where there should have been none.

It was subtle then. Barely noticed. A discomfort shrugged off, a tension smoothed over by laughter and touch.

But Suguru felt it.

Even in those golden days, he sensed it: that Gojo loved with a brilliance that lit the sky — but feared the weight of anything that might tether him to earth.

Suguru didn’t know it then, but that was the beginning of the end.
And yet, at twenty, with Gojo’s mouth on his, with laughter filling the night, he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Because in that moment, with all of youth’s arrogance, he believed they could outlast anything.
Even the cracks.

Chapter Text

The end didn’t come all at once.
That was the cruelest part, Suguru thought later — how love didn’t simply vanish in a single night, but eroded, like stone beneath running water. One careless word at a time. One laugh at the wrong moment. One silence that lingered too long.

They had been together nearly four years. An eternity, at twenty-three. Long enough that Suguru could no longer imagine his future without Satoru in it.

Suguru was in his final year, the pressure of exams and thesis work pressing down like lead. His desk was a battlefield of open books and paper stacks, ink bleeding from endless scribbles about truth, morality, the meaning of human existence.

Gojo never knocked. He would burst into Suguru’s apartment balancing snacks in one hand and a half-open math text in the other. Without ceremony, he’d sprawl across Suguru’s bed, shoes still on, sunglasses perched ridiculously even at midnight.

“You’re gonna bury yourself in all that thinking,” he’d say with his trademark grin, ripping into a bag of chips. “You’ll dig so deep you’ll pop out in Australia.”

Suguru didn’t smile. Not this time. His eyes burned from too many sleepless nights, his patience worn thin.
“Satoru, I need to focus.”

“You always need to focus.” Gojo crunched noisily, scattering crumbs over Suguru’s blanket like careless confetti. “Relax. Life’s short.”

“Exactly,” Suguru snapped, slamming his pen down, ink blotting the page. “Life is short. And what are you doing with it? Eating sugar at two in the morning?”

Gojo raised an eyebrow, unbothered. “Better than writing five hundred pages no one’s gonna read.”

The words were a tease. But they cut anyway.

It wasn’t that Suguru doubted their love. He didn’t. He had never felt anything so consuming, so inevitable. He wanted a life with Gojo — a real one, beyond university walls. A home together. Maybe even more.

But every time Suguru tried to broach the subject, Gojo slipped away behind jokes.

“What happens when we graduate?” he asked one night, lying beside him in the dark. His hand traced absent circles on Gojo’s chest, steady as his own heartbeat. “Where do you see us going?”

Gojo stretched, yawning, eyes hidden even in the shadows. “To bed, preferably.”

“I’m serious.”

“Ugh, I know. That’s the problem.” He pulled Suguru closer, pressing a lazy kiss to his forehead, sugar still clinging faintly to his breath. “Don’t overthink it. We’ll figure it out.”

Suguru lay awake long after Gojo’s breathing evened. The ceiling above felt endless. He wanted certainty. Gojo gave him only evasion.

The fight began in the philosophy department’s lounge, of all places.

Suguru had just delivered a practice presentation for his thesis defense. Professors praised him. Students looked on with awe. He should have felt triumphant. Instead, he found Gojo lounging in the corner, yawning, clapping slowly like it was all a game.

“Bravo, bravo. Truly inspiring. The fate of the universe decided by one man and a stack of dusty books.”

Suguru’s smile froze. “You could at least pretend to care.”

“I do care.” Gojo stretched long limbs, his voice dripping with mock gravity. “I care deeply about whether the cafeteria’s still open.”

A couple of underclassmen laughed. That laughter cut through Suguru like glass.

Later, behind closed doors, Suguru confronted him.

“Why do you do that? Why do you make everything into a joke?”

Gojo sprawled on the bed, arms behind his head, the very picture of nonchalance. “Because life’s a joke, Suguru. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

“No.” His voice shook with restrained fury. “Life matters. What we do matters. What we are—”
He broke off, chest tight, throat raw.

Gojo sat up, squinting, the smile faltering. “What we are?”

“Yes.” Suguru forced the words out. “Us. You and me. Do you even think about our future?”

For one heartbeat, something unguarded flickered in those bright eyes — fear, naked and unshaped. Then the mask slammed down, grin sharp and too wide.
“Future, huh? Sure. You’ll be a professor. I’ll still be devastatingly handsome. And we’ll argue about whether Plato would’ve survived calculus.”

“God, you’re impossible.” Suguru’s voice rose, trembling. “I’m talking about us, Satoru! Living together, building something real. A family, maybe. Do you even want that?”

The silence stretched, heavy as stone.

Then Gojo laughed. But it was wrong. Cold, sharp, a blade instead of a balm.
“A family? With me? Please. You’d be better off adopting a dog. At least it wouldn’t get bored every time you start moralizing about the universe.”

The words struck like a blow to the chest. Suguru staggered back, breath gone.

Gojo froze, realization dawning too late. No joke could soften it now.

“You don’t mean that,” Suguru whispered, his voice raw.

Gojo opened his mouth. Closed it. For once, silence.

Suguru shook his head, vision blurring. “I thought you were with me in this. That we were building toward something. But you’re still just a boy hiding behind cheap laughs because you’re too afraid to stand still.”

“Maybe I am,” Gojo muttered, quieter than Suguru had ever heard him.

That was the end.

Suguru grabbed his coat. The door shut hard behind him, sealing the room — and Satoru — away.

They didn’t reconcile.
Texts went unanswered. Calls ignored. When they passed on campus, Gojo laughed louder than ever, drowning the hollow space with noise. Suguru buried himself in work, carving out his thesis with brutal efficiency.

By graduation, they weren’t speaking at all.

Twelve years later, standing in the university hallway, Suguru still felt the echo of that wound. The words hadn’t dulled with time. A dog. Better off with a dog.

He wondered if Gojo remembered. If he ever regretted it.

But when Suguru glanced at him now, across a faculty meeting or in the cafeteria line, Gojo only ever grinned. Quipped. Deflected.

Suguru knew the truth anyway. He saw it in rare quiet moments, in the shadow behind those sunglasses. The hurt had been real. For both of them.

But Gojo would never admit it. Not out loud.

So Suguru carried the weight alone, stitched into his bones, disguised beneath his cold and measured words. And Gojo carried his behind a mask of jokes, too bright to be real.

They had been everything to each other.
And then, in a single careless moment, nothing at all.

Chapter Text

The campus looked different when it was covered in signs.

Bright swaths of fabric, hastily painted banners hung from the library railings, posters plastered on every door. Save Philosophy. No Cuts, No Compromise. We Deserve More Than STEM.

Students clustered in groups across the main quad, chanting, clapping, their voices carrying into every corner of the university grounds. The air buzzed with a strange electricity—equal parts fear and hope, the feeling that something was about to crack open.

Suguru stood at the center of it, a dark coat flaring behind him as he mounted the steps to the administration building. His presence was magnetic. Even before he spoke, students hushed.

“This university was built on more than numbers,” Suguru’s voice rang out, deep and commanding. “It was built on ideas. On debate. On meaning. Without the humanities, we are not an institution of higher learning—we are a factory. A factory that produces workers, not thinkers. That churns out cogs, not citizens.”

The crowd erupted in cheers. Phones lifted to capture every syllable. Suguru’s face, calm but burning with conviction, would be all over campus social media within the hour.

At the edge of the crowd, Satoru leaned against a lamppost, sunglasses reflecting the swelling mass of students. His mouth curved in its usual grin, but inside, he felt something twist.

God, Suguru had always been like this.

Even at twenty. Even in that cramped classroom where he’d argued circles around professors twice his age. He had always been able to catch fire, to make people lean forward, to make them believe.

Satoru used to love that fire.

He still did.

Officially, Satoru was neutral. The math department chair had made it clear: professors should not be “encouraging unrest.” The dean had warned him twice already about his “tendency to undermine the chain of command.”

So Satoru played the fool. He shrugged when asked about the protests. He claimed not to know when budget reports were due. He “accidentally” misfiled recommendations for STEM expansion.

If anyone looked closely enough, they’d see the sabotage for what it was. But no one did. Who would suspect the clown?

Suguru didn’t see it. Or maybe he didn’t want to.

To him, Satoru was the same as ever: glib, detached, unwilling to stand beside him when it mattered most.

And maybe, Satoru thought bitterly, maybe that was all he deserved.

The confrontation happened on the second day of sit-ins.

Students had taken over the philosophy building, filling the hallways with sleeping bags and empty coffee cups. Suguru walked through them like a general through his troops, steadying their resolve with quiet words.

When he stepped outside, Satoru was there, hands shoved in his pockets, grin in place.

“You’re really making a mess of things, huh?” Satoru drawled. “Admin’s gonna have a heart attack. I might send them flowers.”

Suguru’s eyes flashed. “Is this a joke to you?”

“Everything’s a joke to me, you know that.”

“Not this.” Suguru’s voice was ice. And loud enough for students around them to hear. Heads turned. Phones angled.

“You stand there, smirking, while the rest of us fight for our survival,” Suguru pressed on. “Do you have any idea what it means if this department closes? What it means for these students? For me?”

Satoru tilted his head, still smiling, though it felt brittle. “Relax, Suguru. They’re not gonna bulldoze the building tomorrow.”

“You never change,” Suguru snapped. “You never take anything seriously. When it matters most, you shut yourself off.”

The words landed with the weight of twelve years. A blade pulled straight from the past.

Satoru felt it cut, sharp and deep.

He could’ve fired back. He could’ve deflected, as always. Instead, for one fragile moment, he let the mask slip.

“Maybe I shut myself off because I feel too much,” he muttered.

Too quiet. No one caught it but Suguru, whose eyes widened—just slightly—before narrowing again.

The students around them buzzed with tension. They couldn’t hear everything, but they saw enough. Two professors, standing too close, eyes locked, sparks flying. Phones caught every second.

Online, the “Gojo vs. Geto” threads exploded once more. Are they enemies? Lovers? Both?

That night, Satoru sat in his office long after the lights went out across campus. Papers littered his desk. His chair creaked as he leaned back, staring at the ceiling.

He could still hear Suguru’s voice. The fury. The disappointment. The echo of a wound that hadn’t healed.

You never take anything seriously.

Maybe Suguru was right. Maybe he had never been capable of it.

The memory clawed its way back—the fight. The words he’d thrown like knives. Better off with a dog.

God, he hadn’t meant it. Not really. He’d been scared. Backed into a corner by the weight of someone else’s certainty. And he’d lashed out the only way he knew how—cruel humor, a shield made of sharp edges.

Suguru had walked away. And Satoru had let him.

Because what right did he have to ask him to stay? What right did a man who couldn’t even admit what he wanted have to ask for forever?

He’d tried, over the years, to find something—someone—to fill the silence. He went on dates, even let himself linger in a stranger’s eyes, allowed a hand to brush against his. But it never went further. Not even a kiss. Not a touch that lasted. None of them were Suguru. None of them could reach the hollow place Suguru left behind.

He was thirty-five now. Brilliant, yes. Respected, feared, adored, mocked. But at the end of the day, he went home alone. Always alone.

And when he saw Suguru—standing in the quad, voice ringing like a bell, students hanging on his every word—he felt the ache all over again.

He didn’t deserve to want him back.

But he did.

God help him, he still did.

Meanwhile, Suguru lay awake on the philosophy department couch, students camped around him in a fortress of solidarity. His mind should have been on strategy, on the petitions, on tomorrow’s speech.

Instead, it replayed the look on Satoru’s face.

For one instant, the mask had slipped. Just long enough for Suguru to see the boy he used to know, the boy who once stood beside him and whispered promises into the dark.

But it was gone as quickly as it appeared. Replaced by smirks and shrugs, the same walls that had driven them apart.

Suguru hated him for it.

And hated himself more for still caring.

The protests stretched on. Meetings with administration grew tense. Professors whispered in hallways. Students grew louder, angrier, bolder.

At the center of it all, two men circled each other—caught between past and present, anger and longing, the wound that had never truly healed.

And for the first time in years, Satoru Gojo found himself afraid.

Not of losing his job. Not of the dean’s scoldings.

But of losing Suguru all over again.

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.

Chapter Text

The decision arrived on a Wednesday morning, tucked neatly into a mass email that none of the professors bothered to read until the dean mentioned it in the afternoon faculty meeting.

“In recognition of their spirited contributions to recent discussions on academic funding, Professors Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru will represent our university at the International Conference on Higher Education in Seville, Spain. Their combined presence will serve as an emblem of both our prestige and our… diversity of thought.”

The word “spirited” had been chosen carefully. So had “diversity.” In reality, the entire faculty had collectively sighed in relief the moment the plan was approved. Ten full days without Gojo and Geto turning every departmental meeting into a cage match, without students chanting in the quad because their favorite professors had taken potshots at each other in class, without memes being emailed to the administration under the subject line: Professor Thirst Post #276.

“Prestige, my ass,” Professor Nanami muttered in the staff room.
“It’s an exile,” another professor said. “Academic witness protection. If we could send them to the moon, we would.”
“I’ll drink to that,” sighed a third, raising her coffee like a toast.
Even Yaga, the eternally stone-faced head of the department, cracked the faintest hint of a smile. “Seville is far enough,” he murmured, like an executioner satisfied with the blade’s edge.

The students, naturally, treated it like the announcement of a new Netflix season.

Within ten minutes, Nobara had created a thread on Reddit titled:
“Gojo vs. Geto: Spain Arc – Countdown & Predictions.”
OP: NobaraKugisaki4ever
Place your bets, folks. Ten days of them trapped together on foreign soil. Possibilities:

• They kill each other.
  
  
• They fuck.
  
  
• Both (in that order).
  
  

Megumi, predictably, posted only once:
This is embarrassing. Stop.

Yuji, on the other hand, was all in.
I give it three days before one of them is live-streaming from a tapas bar ranting about Aristotle or the quadratic formula.

Replies rolled in instantly: memes of bullfighters with Gojo’s sunglasses, fanart of Geto brooding under an Andalusian sunset, even a countdown clock with dramatic background music.

By nightfall, the “Spain Arc” had already gone viral across the student body. And Yuji, Nobara, and Megumi carried a secret weight: they knew. Just the three of them. The kiss. The confession. The tension. No one else could ever know—yet.

Suguru arrived at the airport with a slim leather carry-on and the air of a man walking to his own execution. He wore a black linen shirt, sleeves rolled neatly, hair tied back—elegant, understated, every inch the dignified philosopher.

Satoru showed up twenty minutes late with three oversized suitcases, a neck pillow shaped like a cat, and sunglasses so reflective they nearly blinded the TSA agent.

“You know it’s ten days, not ten years, right?” Suguru asked coolly as he watched Gojo struggle to drag his luggage cart.

“Baby, this is the minimum,” Gojo replied, tossing a grin. “I need one suitcase just for my skincare.”

“You don’t even wash your face properly.”

“And yet,” Satoru beamed, lowering the glasses dramatically, “flawless.”

Suguru pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering something about divine punishment.

On the plane, Suguru immediately opened a heavy paperback: Philosophy and the Future of Human Knowledge. He angled himself toward the window, headphones in, posture screaming do not disturb.

Gojo lasted precisely five minutes before he started entertaining the flight attendants.
“Excuse me, miss, can I get three bags of peanuts? Not for me—for my emotional support philosopher. He’s brooding and needs protein.”

The attendant laughed. Suguru did not look up.

“Also,” Gojo continued, “what’s your sangria policy midair? Asking for research purposes.”

“Sit down,” Suguru hissed without glancing up from his book.

“Aw, he speaks!” Gojo leaned over, nearly spilling into Suguru’s lap. “Hey, what are you reading? Philosophical treatises on the tragedy of being too hot and too smart?”

“It’s about silence,” Suguru snapped. “You should try it.”

The row behind them snickered. A group of students—by sheer bad luck or fate—were also on the same flight, headed to Spain for study abroad. They immediately started recording discreet clips, uploading them with captions:
“Spain Arc: Episode 1 already delivering.”

Hours into the flight, the cabin lights dimmed. Suguru was making notes in the margins of his book when Satoru, sprawled beside him, nudged his shoulder.

“You’re still doing that thing,” Gojo said softly.

“What thing?”

“Writing so hard the pen might break through the page. You used to do that in undergrad.”

Suguru froze for half a second before replying flatly: “Observation doesn’t equal insight.”

But his ears felt hot. Damn him for noticing. Damn him for remembering.

Gojo leaned back with a satisfied hum. “Still the same, then.”

Suguru gritted his teeth and turned back to the window, staring at the endless night sky. The memories had already cracked open inside him, uninvited. Post-kiss tension settled like invisible smoke. Every brush of Gojo’s arm, every laugh, every careless tilt of his head sent sparks Suguru hadn’t expected to feel midair. Gojo, for his part, seemed both thrilled and dangerously aware of how close he had come to letting it all surface.

Seville welcomed them with a blast of golden sunlight, whitewashed buildings, and the smell of oranges drifting in the air.

“Romantic, isn’t it?” Gojo stretched, tilting his head back as though he owned the whole city.

“We’re here for work,” Suguru said, tightening his grip on his luggage.

“Work can be romantic.”

“Only you could make accreditation policies sound like foreplay.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

They walked side by side into the hotel lobby, silent for a few beats. Their rooms were, of course, right next to each other—an administrative oversight or, more likely, a cosmic joke.

The concierge handed them key cards. “Señores, adjoining rooms. Please enjoy your stay.”

Suguru’s jaw twitched. Gojo smirked, twirling the key between his fingers.

“Well, neighbor,” he said, “shall we toast to exile?”

Suguru gave him a long, unreadable look. Then he turned, rolling his suitcase down the hall, leaving Gojo whistling after him.

Back home, the countdown thread updated with grainy screenshots from the plane: Gojo mid-gesture, Suguru mid-eye-roll.

Yuji: IT BEGINS.
Nobara: I swear if they don’t at least kiss in Spain I’m dropping out. (She nearly wrote ‘kiss again,’ but caught herself—better not to give everything away. Some secrets were worth keeping.)
Megumi: You’re all insane.
Random user: nah fam this is better than Netflix

And so the “Spain Arc” officially began—half exile, half spectacle, with the weight of a decade pressing between them, the Andalusian sun spilling gold overhead, and three students carrying a truth the rest of the campus could only meme about.

Chapter Text

The Hotel Los Alcázares gleamed white under the Sevillian sun, its tiled courtyard filled with the scent of oranges. Professors from across the world milled in the lobby, exchanging business cards, buzzing about plenary sessions and networking dinners.

Suguru barely listened. His eyes were on the key card in his hand: Room 512.

Their rooms faced the same sunlit hallway. Suguru walked stiffly, suitcase wheels clicking, posture immaculate. Gojo sauntered behind, dragging his absurd mountain of luggage as though it weighed nothing.

“Door to door neighbors,” Gojo sang. “It’s destiny, Suguru. Admit it.”
“It’s negligence,” Suguru corrected. “Administrative oversight.”
“Tomato, tomahto.” Gojo winked, sliding his card into the lock with a flourish. “You’ll be asking to borrow my toothpaste by day three.”

Suguru’s door closed with a definitive click.

Hours later, after the long haze of registration, introductions, and a buffet dinner crowded with strangers, Suguru returned to his room. He was loosening his tie when a knock rattled the door.

Knock-knock-knock.

He ignored it.

“Room service!” a too-familiar voice chirped.

Suguru pressed his lips together, unmoving.

“Special delivery,” Gojo continued. “Your favorite annoying mathematician.”

With a resigned sigh, Suguru opened the door.

And there he was. Gojo, barefoot in the hotel hallway, wrapped only in a white bathrobe embroidered with the hotel crest, hair damp from the shower, sunglasses still perched ridiculously on his face.

Suguru closed his eyes briefly. “Do you ever consider dignity?”
“Every morning,” Gojo replied. “Then I throw it out the window.” He wiggled his fingers and gave a little twist, gesturing toward an imaginary window like it was a casual magic trick. He leaned against the doorframe, grinning. “So. Want to come watch bad Spanish soap operas with me?”

“No.” Suguru started to close the door.

Gojo wedged his foot into the gap. “C’mon, don’t be so cold. We’re colleagues abroad. Bonding time.”
“We are here for a professional conference.”
“Exactly! Nothing says professionalism like Pasión de Matemáticas at 9 p.m.”

Suguru stared at him, unimpressed. But his pulse betrayed him, quick and erratic. The memory of that kiss—abrupt, searing—lingered between them like static.

“Go back to your room,” Suguru said finally. “Before someone sees you like this.”

Gojo chuckled but obeyed, backing away slowly, hands raised in surrender. “Fine, fine. Business only. But don’t act like you don’t miss my charm.”

The door shut with more force than necessary.

Suguru leaned against the wood, exhaling. His heart drummed with anger, with memory, with something he refused to name. He could still feel the brush of lips that had broken twelve years of silence.

On the other side of the wall, Gojo flopped onto his bed with a groan.

“Smooth, Satoru,” he muttered to himself. “Show up half naked at his door. That’ll fix everything.”

He buried his face in a pillow, laughing bitterly. The truth was unbearable: he hadn’t slept properly since that kiss. Every time he closed his eyes, it replayed, followed by the way Suguru had looked at him—conflicted, furious, vulnerable.

And every joke he made was armor. Because if he let the silence stretch too long, the truth would pour out, and the truth was dangerous.

The next morning, they met for coffee in the hotel restaurant. It was supposed to be neutral ground: croissants, bitter espresso, polite conversation.

“Today’s plenary,” Suguru said, scanning the schedule. “You’re listed as co-chair for the institutional showcase panel. Innovative Pedagogies in the 21st Century.”

“Catchy,” Gojo said, stirring sugar into his cup. “I’ll juggle equations while you quote Kant. The crowd will love us.”
“This isn’t a performance.”
“It’s literally a performance,” Gojo countered. “Theater for bureaucrats. You and I just have better stage presence than most.”

Suguru’s eyes narrowed. “If you treat this like a joke, you’ll humiliate the faculty.”
Gojo sipped his coffee, smile fading just enough to show the sting. “Relax. I’ll behave. For you.”

Suguru looked away quickly, throat tight.

That night, they found themselves in the lounge, notes spread across a small table. Outside, the Sevillian streets buzzed with flamenco music, but inside, their focus was a mess of slides and bullet points.

“We should outline contrasting perspectives,” Suguru said, marking a page. “Philosophy and quantitative sciences. Showcasing the breadth of the university.”
“Cool, so I’m the clown, you’re the tragic hero,” Gojo muttered.
“This isn’t about you.”
“Everything’s about me, Suguru. Haven’t you noticed?”

The barb hung in the air.

Suguru’s jaw clenched. “This is exactly the problem. You never—”
“Take things seriously?” Gojo finished for him, tone light but eyes sharp. “You’ve used that line before.”

The silence stretched.

Suguru leaned back, crossing his arms. “If you can’t separate your ego from the work—”
“I can,” Gojo interrupted. For once, the grin slipped. “I just… I don’t know how to be serious without dying of heartbreak.”

Suguru froze. The words weren’t a joke. For a moment, Gojo looked painfully bare, stripped of the usual bravado. Then, just as quickly, the mask returned.

“Anyway,” Gojo said, clapping his hands. “Let’s split the slides. You do your philosophy magic, I’ll throw in some graphs. Easy peasy.”

Suguru stared at him for a long time, the ghost of that honesty still echoing. He wanted to press, to demand more. But the air between them was already charged, too fragile.

“Fine,” he said quietly. “Strictly business.”

As they packed up, Gojo stretched, his shirt pulling tight across his frame. “By the way,” he said casually, “we’ve got free afternoons after the panels. Ever been to the Alcázar? Or seen the cathedral? We should play tourist.”

“No,” Suguru said instantly.

“No, you haven’t been? Or no, you don’t want to go?” Gojo tilted his head, smirk tugging at his lips.

Suguru didn’t answer.

“Thought so,” Gojo said, softer now. “You’ll say no, but you won’t mean it.”

Suguru slipped his papers into his folder, deliberately avoiding his gaze. “We’re here for work.”

“Sure,” Gojo replied. But there was something in his voice—hope, maybe, or challenge. “We’ll circle back to that.”

Back in the hallway, they paused before their rooms.

“Goodnight, Suguru.”
“Goodnight, Satoru.”

Two doors closed almost in unison. Two men leaned against opposite walls, staring into the dark, thinking the same thing:

How much longer can we pretend this is only business?

Chapter Text

The plenary hall was a sea of anticipation. Chandeliers glimmered above a hundred rows of red velvet seats. Academics filled every chair, laptops open, ready to tweet and blog about the “Future of the University” panel.

Suguru adjusted his tie at the podium, scanning the audience. He hated spectacle, hated the cheapness of applause—but this topic mattered. Philosophy mattered. A university without a soul was an empty factory.

Beside him, Gojo lounged in his chair, sunglasses glinting, posture relaxed as if this were a comedy club and not the most important session of the conference.

The moderator cleared her throat. “We now welcome Professors Geto and Gojo, from Tokyo Metropolitan University, to open our discussion.”

Suguru rose. His voice was calm at first, deliberate, the cadence of someone who had rehearsed every phrase.

“A university,” he began, “is not simply a training ground for industry. Nor is it a bureaucratic machine for producing credentials. At its best, it is a place where young people confront the vastness of knowledge—and of themselves. Philosophy, literature, the humanities—these do not provide quick profit, but they shape the moral spine of a society. Without them, we risk creating generations who are efficient, but empty.”

A hush swept the room. Heads nodded, pens scratched furiously across notebooks. Suguru’s eyes shone with conviction.

He was in his element.

Then Gojo stood. His very movement shifted the energy of the hall.

“Beautiful,” he said, clapping slowly. “Really. I almost cried. But let’s get real.”

Laughter rippled. Suguru’s jaw tightened.

Gojo leaned casually on the lectern. “Universities today? They’re broke. Governments want numbers, parents want jobs, students want debt forgiveness. If we tell them: ‘Come, find your soul with Plato,’ half will run screaming. The other half will post about it on TikTok. And no, Professor Geto, TikTok is not a new branch of phenomenology.”

The room erupted. Even the moderator stifled a smile.

Gojo pressed on, sharp, playful. “We need math, science, tech—tools to keep the lights on. Philosophy? Sure. Literature? Yes. But let’s not pretend we can run a university on Aristotle alone. Unless he invents an app.”

More laughter. Applause.

Suguru glared at him, but Gojo’s grin softened, almost apologetic. “Still—he’s right, you know. Without people who remind us why we’re building anything at all, the rest of us are just very clever monkeys with calculators. That’s why you need both of us. The dreamer and the clown. The compass and the map.”

The hall burst into ovation.

What neither of them intended happened: their words wove together. Suguru’s earnest plea for a university of spirit and Gojo’s brash pragmatism collided, then fused.

The audience adored it. Phones shot up, recording. Tweets flew:

“Best panel of the year—Geto + Gojo are fire together.”

 “They should just co-run a university.”

 “I came for education policy, stayed for the romantic tension???”

Even academics who rarely agreed on anything were on their feet.

By the end, they were celebrities of the conference.

In Tokyo, the student dorms buzzed. Yuji had a laptop propped on a pillow, Nobara perched beside him, Megumi trying (and failing) to look unimpressed.

On screen: the recording of the Seville panel, subtitles scrolling in real time.

“OH MY GOD,” Nobara screeched. “Look at them! They’re like—professor rock stars!”

Yuji grinned. “They’re so cool. Like, Geto’s speech? Gave me chills. And Gojo-sensei just—BAM! Punchline!”

Even Megumi’s lips twitched. “They… complement each other.”

“Complement?” Nobara smacked his arm. “They’re flirting!”

Across the room, Yuta and Inumaki leaned in from another laptop, both transfixed. Yuta’s ears were red. “It’s… kind of inspiring. The way they argue but… listen.”

 Inumaki simply said, “Salmon,” which everyone correctly translated as They’re perfect together.

Within hours, the thread “What will happen Spain?” was trending in the student group chat.

The applause still echoed when they slipped into the backstage corridor, the heavy curtain falling behind them.

Suguru set his notes down with too much force. His hands trembled, though whether from adrenaline or fury he couldn’t tell.

“You did it again,” he said, low and sharp.

Gojo blinked. “You’re welcome?”

“You turned a serious conversation into entertainment. You made it about you.”

Gojo tilted his head, grin unwavering. “About us, actually. Did you hear the applause?”

“That’s not the point!” Suguru snapped. “This isn’t a circus. The role of philosophy in education deserves gravity. And you—” He stopped, breath ragged. “You trivialize everything.”

For once, Gojo didn’t fire back immediately. His shoulders slumped, only slightly.

“It’s not trivial,” he said quietly. “It’s survival. If I don’t make them laugh, they won’t listen. If I don’t shine a little too brightly, they’ll forget about me. And… I can’t afford to be forgotten. Like by you.”

The words hung between them, heavy.

Suguru’s anger faltered, replaced by something raw. "I've never..." But he swallowed it, refusing to give in. “You’re impossible.”

“And you’re relentless,” Gojo returned, eyes suddenly fierce. “You bury yourself so deep in principles you can’t breathe. I watched you once, remember? Loving me, hating me—always with rules around your heart. Do you even know how to let yourself be seen?”

The silence that followed crackled with heat. Neither spoke the one truth on both their tongues.

At last, Suguru gathered his papers, spine rigid. “We present again tomorrow. Don’t be late.”

He walked away, leaving Gojo leaning against the wall, fists tight at his sides, smile long gone.

Out in the conference hall, the crowd still buzzed, strangers posting clips of their “perfect chemistry.”

 Backstage, they were anything but whole.

Chapter Text

The second day of the conference had been another triumph.

Suguru had spoken first, carefully articulating the long arc of education, the heritage of human thought, the sacred responsibility of passing wisdom forward. The hall had listened in reverent silence, pens scribbling, heads nodding.

Then Gojo had taken the floor, cracking jokes about university cafeterias and broken printers before landing unexpectedly sharp on funding inequalities and the need to democratize access. The audience had roared.

Together, again, they had become the act everyone wanted to watch. Together, again, they had reminded each other why they could never truly escape the gravitational pull of one another.

But once the session ended, Suguru escaped.

Seville unfolded around him like a painted tapestry. Narrow alleys with flower boxes dripping red geraniums. Whitewashed walls glowing in the late-afternoon sun. The smell of oranges, of grilled sardines, of dust warming under centuries-old stone.

He wandered without plan, without map. Tourists swirled around him with cameras and guidebooks, but Suguru drifted as if in another layer of the city—half there, half inside his own thoughts.

Gojo’s words from backstage yesterday still clung to him: I can’t afford to be forgotten. Like by you.

Suguru scowled at the memory. He wanted to dismiss it, laugh at Gojo’s theatricality. And yet…

He paused on a bridge overlooking the Guadalquivir River, sunlight glinting off the water.

What would it be like, he wondered, to actually walk here with him? If only Gojo could stay quiet, let the city speak for them both. Could he do that? Could Satoru Gojō—human hurricane, relentless jester—ever walk silently at his side?

He doubted it. But the thought lodged stubbornly in his chest.

By the time he returned to the hotel, twilight had wrapped Seville in a violet glow. The open-air terrace was nearly empty, tables set with flickering candles.

Suguru intended to eat quickly, alone, then retreat upstairs. But then he heard it.

“Oi, philosopher.”

Gojo sat sprawled at a corner table, a jug of sangria glistening with condensation, glass already half-filled. His sunglasses were off for once, resting on the table. His eyes, exposed, caught the candlelight in shards of pale blue.

“Join me?” Gojo lifted his glass in invitation. “Unless you’re too busy brooding in the shadows.”

Suguru considered refusing. He even turned half away. But the terrace was empty save for them, and something about the warm air, the sound of distant guitar music drifting from the street below, tugged at him.

He sat.

Gojo grinned, triumphant, and poured for him without asking.

The first sip was tart, cool, deceptively sweet. Citrus slices floated around the glass.

They ate small plates of tapas in companionable silence at first: olives sharp with brine, manchego cheese, patatas bravas with fiery sauce. For once, Gojo didn’t fill the silence with chatter. He just watched him, strangely careful.

Finally, Suguru broke. “You enjoy this too much.”

Gojo tilted his head. “Enjoy what?”

“Performing. Making everything into a spectacle. Even here.”

Gojo toyed with an olive pit. “Maybe I do. Or maybe it’s the only way I know how to survive.”

That sobered the air between them. Suguru frowned. “Survive?”

For a long time, Gojo didn’t answer. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, stripped of its usual bravado.

“You think I’ve been living some grand, brilliant life without you. You’re wrong. After you left—after we ended—there was no one else. No one who could… read me. Not really. People see the genius, the showman, the impossible brain. They laugh at my jokes. But it’s empty, Suguru. Empty for years.”

Suguru’s breath caught. He had not expected honesty. Not from him.

Gojo lifted the glass, gaze hidden in its red depths. “What good is brilliance if no one knows who you are beneath it? You read me once. Better than anyone. And when you walked away—well. The spotlight is very cold when you’re standing in it alone.”

Suguru looked away, throat tight. The plaza beyond the terrace glowed with lantern light. Laughter floated from passing tourists. For a moment, he hated them—their ease, their unburdened joy.

“I lost faith in the academy,” Suguru admitted, surprising himself with the confession. The sangria loosened his tongue, but it was more than drink. It was the gravity of Gojo’s eyes, the rare seriousness of his tone.

“I thought philosophy would be my anchor. That if I poured everything into it, I’d find clarity. Instead… I’m drowning in bureaucracy. Grant proposals, budget wars, performance metrics. I barely recognize the ideals that drew me here.”

Gojo’s mouth quirked, but it wasn’t a smirk. “So the philosopher admits he’s lost.”

Suguru exhaled, long and slow. “Sometimes I think I’ve wasted years.”

The words hung there, and Gojo didn’t immediately dismiss them with humor. Instead, he leaned closer, voice almost gentle.

“You haven’t wasted them. You’ve carried them. You’ve carried everyone. Even when it broke you.”

Suguru turned sharply toward him, caught by the tenderness in his tone. For an instant, he saw not the clown, not the showman, but the boy he once kissed in a quiet classroom, the boy who had whispered impossible dreams into the night.

The memory ached like an old scar.

The terrace emptied slowly around them. Other diners drifted away, waiters cleared plates. Soon only they remained, two stubborn figures at a corner table, voices low, glasses refilled too many times.

Suguru realized the staff were hovering, politely waiting for them to leave. Heat rose in his cheeks—not from drink but from the intimacy of being the last ones left, as though the city itself had shrunk to just them.

He pushed back his chair. “We should go. Before they throw us out.”

Gojo stood too, but made no move to separate. “Your room or mine?”

It was said lightly, but the undertone was unmistakable.

Suguru rolled his eyes, but his pulse quickened. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous is my specialty.” Gojo’s grin softened. “But really. If we linger here any longer, they’ll charge us rent for the table.”

The walk through the quiet hotel corridor was absurdly tense. Their shoulders brushed once, neither pulling away.

Suguru fumbled his keycard at the door. Behind him, Gojo leaned lazily against the wall, watching with infuriating amusement.

Finally the door clicked open. Suguru turned. “Fine. Come in. But only because it’s late, and I won’t have the staff gossiping about us loitering like students.”

Gojo’s smile was sharp, victorious, but his eyes—his eyes were raw.

Suguru stepped aside. The door closed behind them with a soft finality.

Chapter Text

Warm hotel darkness spilled over them—amber from the desk lamp, the city’s sodium glow crawling across the carpet through the slit in the curtains. The air was a blend of chilled AC and the residue of their evening: citrus-sweet sangria clinging to their tongues, the ghost of grilled garlic and smoked paprika in their clothes, a thread of soap from the washroom that drifted faintly, something like white tea.

Satoru stepped further in first because Suguru didn’t quite move. There was nowhere to stand that didn’t feel like a decision. The bed—white, made, inevitable—took up the center. Two straight-backed chairs sat by the tiny bistro table, a TV that wouldn’t get turned on, a narrow desk with a silver pen in a leather blotter. The balcony door was slightly opened; a single linen shirt hung over the chair out there, its sleeves lifting in the faint current.

Satoru wanted to laugh at himself for noticing the shirt, for the way his entire body read that careless drape as evidence that Suguru had been staying there like a monk, immaculate and unsettled, pretending not to be. He didn’t laugh. He looked at the bed and felt everything in him coil.

He sat on the edge of it because there wasn’t anywhere else to go that wouldn’t feel more intimate.

“So,” he started, as if they were still on the terrace under those ridiculous dangling lights; as if the world hadn’t tilted on its axis halfway through the second pitcher of sangria when Suguru’s smile turned soft and then shut like a door.

“I know what you’re going to say. Or I don’t, actually—maybe I just think I do, which is basically my brand, isn’t it? Thinking I know and then—”

“—Satoru.” Just his name, quiet, a warning that wasn’t quite a warning. Suguru flicked on the bathroom light, and the door threw a rectangle of brightness across the room. He disappeared within it. Water started, low and steady. Satoru stared at the open doorway and saw Suguru’s silhouette in the mirror: shirt cuffs pushed up, hands under the tap, throat working as he bowed his head. Ritual. Delay. Or both.

“Look, I—” Satoru heard his own voice as if it were someone else’s, too fast, too light, rehearsed in a lifetime of avoiding the ground beneath his feet.

“Dinner was good. The part where you didn’t eviscerate me in front of the visiting scholars was also great. Ten out of ten, would dine again. Do we…continue to talk?” He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck and found the dampness of Sevilla night still there. “Because I can talk. God, can I talk. I can lay out the math of every bad decision I made and name them like constellations. This one is the Icarus Cluster, that one’s the Flew Too Close to Fear, this one—”

“Satoru.” The water cut off. Suguru’s voice was low and even and did something to Satoru’s spine. The bathroom light stayed on. Suguru didn’t step out.

Satoru swallowed. He wanted to stop. He didn’t stop.

“Or we can not talk. We can do the very adult thing where we pretend none of it was—”

Suguru appeared in the doorway, dry hands trailing the hem of his sleeves down. He didn’t look at Satoru at first. He crossed the room and slid the balcony door open the rest of the way. He lifted the linen shirt from the chair, shook it once with a contained, almost painful precision, folded it in half and then in thirds, aligned the edges with fingertips that had always been careful, always exact. He set it on the bistro table like a truce flag or a weapon; Satoru couldn’t tell which.

“You’re doing that thing,” Satoru said, a little helplessly, “where you order molecules just to keep your hands busy.”

Suguru’s mouth moved in something like a smile and then didn’t. He straightened the curve of the remote on the desk, nudged the lamp’s cord so it ran flat against the wall. Satoru watched him, every breath a count. There was a wet line of light at the corner of Suguru’s eye from the bathroom glow.

“They had jasmine in the courtyard,” Satoru said into the hush. “Did you see? It hit me when we came back in. It was… god, I wanted to tell you it smelled like your first apartment in spring when you put that stupid pot out where it only got two hours of sun and you were offended it didn’t thrive.”

He shut up because it was stupid, because he was making fun of a plant to keep his ribs from breaking open. Suguru’s hand paused on the lamp cord. He breathed out through his nose.

Satoru tipped back on his hands, spread his knees a little, like he was making space for the truth if it wanted to come sit between them.

“I could say I was young,” he heard himself admit softly. “I could say I was scared. I could blame the college, the pressure, the way everything felt like it was going to swallow me if I let myself have anything good. All of those things would be true and none of them would be an answer.”

Suguru’s shoulders curved with a breath. He turned at last and looked over at Satoru, through him, past him, and then finally settled on him like a verdict. There was nothing explosive in his face. There never had been; he was not an explosion. He was the moment after, when you understand what has changed.

The bed under Satoru’s hands was cool and too neat. He wanted to apologize until there were no words left in him.

He wanted to touch. Both wants flooded and canceled and he said instead, too quickly, “I’m sorry. I’ve been sorry for so long it has teeth.”

Suguru walked toward him.

It was not dramatic. He didn’t stalk or prowl; he didn’t look like anything but a man who had decided to stop standing. He came to the edge of the bed and Satoru’s mouth went dry. The desk lamp hummed. Through the wall there was a distant elevator bell and someone laughing too brightly, and none of it existed because Suguru was here, placed between Satoru’s knees, hands loose at his sides, watching him as if waiting to see which way he’d jump.

Satoru’s throat clicked. “If you’re going to tell me to get out,” he whispered, a hint of sadness threading his words, “just—do it quick.”

Suguru’s gaze flickered over Satoru’s face, and something in it broke.

He didn’t push. He didn’t pull. He leaned in, and Satoru met him halfway—and then there was no halfway, there was only shock—shock that something remembered could be so painfully new. Suguru’s mouth opened on Satoru’s with a rush of breath that sounded like surrender and felt like anger. Satoru made a noise that was not quite a word, caught at Suguru’s waist and then at the back of his neck when he realized the first place was too much and the second was somehow worse.

Suguru kissed like he had been refusing to for years. Teeth, heat, a muffled curse that might have been Satoru’s name, might just have been air. He pressed Satoru back with the weight of his body, and Satoru went because that was what he had always done with Suguru—follow the gravity. The mattress dipped; the bed creaked in a small, shocked protest. They broke for breath and didn’t, breath spilling in each other’s mouths, the taste of wine and citrus and the bitter whisper of hotel toothpaste. Satoru’s hands found the hem of Suguru’s shirt and slid under, palms flattening to the long heat of his back, the knotted line of his spine, and God, he remembered this. The way Suguru’s skin ran too hot under his clothes, the way he shivered when fingers skimmed the notches of his hips.

Satoru tried to say something—some terrible joke, instinctive, a floatation device tossed at a riptide. “If the neighbors complain we can tell them the conference panel is—”

“Don’t,” Suguru said against his mouth, almost gentle. “Satoru. Just—shut up.”

It wasn’t cruel. It landed like a hand over his racing pulse, like a calm pressed to a fever. Satoru’s lashes flickered, and then he obeyed, turning the impulse into a different one: he moved his mouth to Suguru’s jaw and hushed himself with skin. He kissed beneath Suguru’s ear where the soap still clung, breathed him in, opened his mouth and licked. Suguru’s breath slipped; his fingers tightened in Satoru’s hair at the base of his skull, and then loosened again as if he were reminding himself not to hold too hard.

The bedspread rustled as they shifted. Suguru’s knee slotted between Satoru’s thighs, and Satoru rocked helplessly against it, heat stinging through denim. He was embarrassingly close to shaking. Years of not touching does that to a man. He sat back up and got his hands on Suguru’s shoulders and then his chest, pushing the shirt up and off, and Suguru let him, lifting his arms, the fabric whispering over his knuckles. Satoru got lost for a second just looking—at the plane of his chest, the smooth, tensile strength of him, the old scar near his ribs that Satoru had kissed a hundred times in memory and not once in more than a decade. He leaned down and put his mouth on it now, open and reverent.

Suguru’s hand came to the back of his head, thumb stroking behind his ear. “You always—” He stopped, inhaled, exhaled. “You always do that.”

“Do what?” Satoru murmured against skin, already hunting for other places to worship—the notch of collarbone, the hollow of throat where a pulse fluttered.

“Turn the things that hurt into things you can love.”

It gutted him. He didn’t try to answer. He dragged his mouth down over Suguru’s sternum, slow because he could be, because he was learning the bravery of silence. He tongued a nipple until it peaked hard against his lips, and Suguru’s breath stuttered, his hips shifting forward, the subtle demand of it lighting every nerve in Satoru’s body. He mouthed his way lower, the salt of sweat starting at the small of Suguru’s chest now that his shirt was gone, the warmth of him a tide. The room smelled like their night, like them, and like something that began with the soft plastic click of a hotel lotion cap.

Satoru’s head snapped up.

Suguru was the one who had reached for it, blind hand on the bedside table dragging the little bottle toward them by the tips of his fingers. He turned it in his palm without looking at the label, expression unreadable, mouth parted from everything that wasn’t words. “We don’t have—” he said, quietly pragmatic, as if confirming a missing citation. “So we’ll use this.”

Satoru swallowed. “It’s not ideal.”

“It’s not ideal,” Suguru agreed, gaze holding his as if there was a thesis paper pinned to it, something about compromises one made when the world happened all at once. He tilted his head, a shadow-smile, feral and soft. “It’s enough.”

Satoru sat back and let his knees fall wider to make room for the space between them that wasn’t space at all. He took the lotion from Suguru’s hand, and the closeness of the exchange made something in him shake again, ridiculous, exquisite. He let the small bottle rest on the edge of the bed beside him, a quiet promise for later, untouched for now.

“Come here,” he said, quiet.

Suguru’s mouth softened. He crawled closer on his knees, then he was straddling Satoru’s thigh, weight pressing down in a way that turned Satoru’s exhale into a sound. Suguru braced a hand above Satoru’s shoulder on the headboard, muscles in his arm flexing; his hair was still tied back with that black band he used, severe and insufficient. Satoru reached up without thinking and slid his fingers under it, tugging. The band gave. Suguru’s hair fell, dark and heavy, and Satoru made a reverent, involuntary noise, as if he had been starving and someone had put a bowl in front of him.

“God, you’re—” He stopped himself, but the word had already fallen between them. Beautiful. It was in his eyes, if not in the air.

Suguru heard it anyway. Something hungry moved through his expression. He dipped his head so that his hair curtained around them both and kissed Satoru again, slow this time, a test of how much the silence could hold. Satoru’s hand slipped down, along the open V of Suguru’s trousers, inside, and Suguru exhaled into his mouth, that measured composure fracturing. Satoru touched him with knowledge and with apology, fingers curling around him, stroking, the touch imperfect and present because it was this, it was now, it was them. Suguru’s forehead landed on Satoru’s, their breaths mixing, both of them making sounds they couldn’t put away anymore: soft broken groans, a choked little laugh that wasn’t humor but relief, Suguru’s name shaped around Satoru’s teeth like a prayer.

“Lie back,” Satoru whispered, dizzy with the need to give, to be the ground for this. “Let me worship you.”

A muscle jumped in Suguru’s cheek. “You always want to.” His voice was frayed, not mocking. He drew back a fraction, eyes lowering to Satoru’s mouth, and Satoru watched the decision as it formed. Then Suguru shook his head once. “Not tonight.”

Satoru’s pulse thundered. “What do you want?”

Suguru’s smile was the sharpest, softest thing Satoru had ever seen. “You,” he said, and it landed like doctrine. He planted his hands on Satoru’s shoulders, pushed, and Satoru let himself be placed against the headboard, back meeting wood, legs splayed, body trembling. Suguru stood on his knees and shoved his trousers down and off with an efficiency that made Satoru’s mouth go dry; the fabric scratched over skin, and then he was there, bare and impossible, all lines and heat and that spill of hair around his face. He caught the hem of Satoru’s shirt and pulled it up, up, impatient, and Satoru tore it off the rest of the way because his hands wouldn’t cooperate with buttons anymore.

Then Suguru’s hands slid to Satoru’s waistband, steady now, and Satoru lifted his hips without a word, letting him strip away the last barriers until there was nothing left between them but skin and the rough ache of wanting.

Suguru’s palm slid down Satoru’s chest, over his abdomen, a steady weight that made him arch. He took the lotion back without asking and squeezed it into his hand, then reached between Satoru’s legs with a deliberation that rang like a struck bell. His fingers were clumsy for one heartbeat and then not at all—knowing exactly where to go, how to touch, how to stroke. Satoru’s head thumped back. He swore, breath hitching, a rough, helpless sound that scraped the back of his throat.

“Fuck,” he said, not a joke, just a truth. “Suguru, I—”

“Hush.” Suguru’s mouth curved. He didn’t look away from Satoru’s face as he slicked him, slow, patient, a ritual unspooling. “I told you. Be quiet.”

Satoru nodded, eyes closing on a shudder, fingers flexing at Suguru’s hips and then digging in when he couldn’t hold on to not holding on. He could feel his own pulse at the base of his skull, in his grip on Suguru’s skin, in the desperate press of his hips. He opened his eyes when Suguru stopped touching him not because he wanted it to end but because he needed to see where it went.

It went to the nightstand drawer. Suguru found the spare pillowcase and folded it, set it behind Satoru’s back to cushion the angle. He lifted Satoru’s chin with two fingers, kissed him once, twice, a third time that was deeper than the first two combined, as if the third was a verdict on the others. “I’m not throwing you out,” he said, soft, precise. “And I’m not forgiving you.”

Satoru’s breath stuttered. “I know.”

“Good.” Suguru’s hand ghosted down, cupping him with a gentleness at odds with the heat in his eyes. “Then listen.”

He shifted, drew Satoru forward by the hips until his lower back was flush to the headboard, thighs open over the mattress. He knelt astride Satoru’s lap and slicked Satoru’s fingers with his own, guiding them down, down. “Do it,” he said, voice like a thread pulled through fabric. “Prep me.”

The words stripped something in Satoru to the bone.

He didn’t joke. He didn’t speak at all. He pressed his fingers where Suguru wanted them, and Suguru exhaled, jaw tightening, a low, gorgeous sound lifting from somewhere deep. The lotion was flimsy, too thin, and Satoru went slow to make up for it, to make sure the glide didn’t bite. He leaned forward and mouthed at Suguru’s throat while he opened him—one finger, then two, deliberate, careful, his other hand gripping Suguru’s hip hard enough to bruise because the control was costing him. Suguru rocked into him, controlled, then less controlled, the motion trembling through his thighs and into Satoru’s hands. His hair fell around them both, brushing Satoru’s cheek and mouth with clean, dark silk. Satoru pressed a kiss to the hinge of Suguru’s jaw and felt him swallow.

“More,” Suguru said, voice gone rough.

Satoru gave it. He slid deeper, curled, listened to the wet sound and Suguru’s breathing, calibrated to both. The scent of lotion and sweat and their bodies tangled with the faint jasmine that had snuck in through the balcony door. The headboard tapped the wall when Suguru’s control slipped another notch, and Satoru had never been so stupidly grateful for a sound. He worked him open with reverence and a little greed, each small loosening like a reason to breathe.

“Perfect,” he whispered before he could stop himself. “God, you’re perfect.”

Suguru didn’t tell him to be quiet for that. He tipped his forehead to Satoru’s and closed his eyes like he was tasting the word.

When Suguru finally caught Satoru’s wrist and stilled him, they were both shaking. Suguru drew Satoru’s hand away, sticky and trembling, and laced their fingers for a heartbeat, squeeze to squeeze, as if translating something unsayable into pressure. Then he reached back and took hold of Satoru, slick palm, certain grip, and Satoru swore again, eyes rolling. He lined them up, breathed out long and level, and looked at Satoru the way he used to look at him across a library table when they were twenty-two and ruining each other with the idea of what their lives could be.

Suguru had commanded softly, “Put your hands on me. Everywhere.”

Satoru obeyed. He slid one hand to the small of Suguru’s back and the other around his waist, forearms bracketing him, fingers splayed as if he could hold him, as if he could keep the world steady by holding Suguru steady. He felt the exact second Suguru sank down—every ring of heat, the blunt stretch, the helpless clutch of muscle around him—and the sound he made was unlike anything Satoru had heard from himself in twelve years. Suguru breathed out, head tipping back, a ragged moan torn loose and unashamed. He took Satoru slow at first, eyes open, mouth parted; Satoru could feel how he worked himself down, the careful patience giving way to need, to a rhythm that built without permission.

“Look at me,” Suguru said through his breathing. “Satoru.”

“I am,” Satoru answered, wrecked and reverent, and he was—watching the way Suguru’s mouth softened when it hurt just right, the way his hands found Satoru’s shoulders and then his hair and then his face, the way his hair swung and brushed Satoru’s chest. He dragged him in, kissed him messy and hungry, and Satoru met him with everything in him, with the years he had wasted and the years he wanted. He tried to say something honest—You’re beautiful, you’re mine, I’m sorry, I love you—and what slipped out, helpless, was, “Baby—”

Suguru’s intake of breath was sharp, startled, as if Satoru had reached up and untied something he hadn’t meant to. His hips stuttered; his eyes flared. Then he set his jaw and rode him deeper.

The room was full of the sounds they made: the wet, obscene slide; the creak and thump of the headboard; their voices, low and high and breaking. Suguru said his name like a litany—“Satoru, Satoru”—and the syllables splintered Satoru in places he thought had calcified. He held Suguru’s hips and then his waist and then his back, palms roaming and greedy, skid-slick with lotion and sweat. He kissed what he could reach: Suguru’s mouth, his chin, his throat, the top of his chest; he felt Suguru’s heartbeat on his tongue.

“Harder,” Suguru said, and Satoru’s hands clamped as if the word itself had hooked them. He lifted his hips into him in answer, thrusting up to meet the motion, and Suguru broke on him, sound cracking, hair flying. He moved like water—like he had learned all his life how to undulate, how to take and push, then take again, not retreating so much as rolling. Satoru was out of his body and more inside it than he had ever been, breath exploding in staccato bursts, hands everywhere because everywhere felt like not enough.

Suguru’s mouth found his again and they breathed each other like oxygen, frantic, sharing the same narrow strip of air until neither of them cared about air at all. Satoru’s laugh stuttered out broken when Suguru clenched around him on a downstroke; it turned to a groan so deep it felt dragged out of him with a hook. He couldn’t stop saying please, couldn’t even hear himself past the roaring in his ears. Please like a vow, please like an apology, please like a man who was both lost and found.

Suguru’s fingers bit into Satoru’s shoulders. He dragged his mouth down to Satoru’s jaw, then his throat, teeth catching, kisses turning wet and open and a little wild. The lotion’s scent faded under the heat; the smell of sweat and skin and night was all that was left. Suguru rocked faster, then slower, then deep, a pattern that wasn’t a pattern, something instinctive and ruinous. Satoru felt it building—low and heavy, a coil he knew would not unspool without taking him apart.

“Don’t,” Suguru panted, and Satoru froze, terror knifing through the haze.

“Don’t what—”

“Don’t stop.” Suguru’s laugh was a breathless, shredded thing, and if Satoru had room for pride he would have been proud of having made it. “God, don’t you dare stop.”

He didn’t. He didn’t, and he wouldn’t.

Suguru’s pace was erratic now—wild, punishing, and tender in the same breath. Every downward thrust dragged a guttural sound from Satoru’s chest, every grind made him see stars. His hands were all over Suguru, trying to hold and memorize every inch at once: gripping his hips, sliding over sweat-slick skin, tracing the ripple of muscle along his back.

Suguru moved like he owned the rhythm, like the last twelve years had been nothing but the stretch of a single withheld breath. His hair fell in dark sheets across his face and shoulders, sticking to his temples, brushing against Satoru’s jaw whenever he leaned close enough. Satoru tried to kiss him, clumsy and desperate, but Suguru swallowed the attempt with his own mouth, pulling him into a kiss so wet and consuming that Satoru forgot how to breathe.

“Fuck—” Satoru choked when Suguru sank down all the way, hips pressed flush. His eyes rolled back and he clawed at Suguru’s thighs. “You feel… you feel so—God, Suguru—”

“Say my name,” Suguru panted against his ear, voice rough with effort, riding him with a punishing roll of his hips.

“Suguru,” Satoru gasped, and it came out like worship. Again, louder. “Suguru—”

“Yes.” The word was almost a growl. His hands clutched at Satoru’s shoulders, fingers digging deep, pulling him closer as if he wanted to disappear into his skin.

The bed protested under them, wooden frame thudding against the wall with each slam of Suguru’s body down onto him. The sounds were obscene, slick and wet and loud enough that the thin hotel walls might as well not exist. Satoru didn’t care. He couldn’t. He was drowning in him, drowning in the heat and the smell and the broken sounds Suguru made when he angled just right.

Suguru leaned back suddenly, hair spilling down his back as he braced his hands on Satoru’s chest, arching above him like a vision, riding harder, deeper. Satoru could only stare, mouth open, because he had never seen anything more devastatingly beautiful.

“Ride me, baby—” The word slipped out once again before he could stop it, raw and strangled. His whole body seized with the shock of it.

Suguru faltered—just for a heartbeat, his eyes snapping down to meet Satoru’s. Something unreadable flashed there: pain, want, memory. Then his jaw clenched, and he slammed his hips down harder, faster, grinding deep until Satoru was moaning helplessly into his shoulder.

“Don’t stop,” Suguru gasped, hair plastered to his cheek. “Don’t you fucking stop now—”

“I couldn’t—” Satoru’s voice broke, desperate and reverent. “I couldn’t even if I tried.”

They were both close, the rhythm tipping past control into chaos. Suguru was trembling, whole body taut, head bent as sweat dripped down his temple. He muttered Satoru’s name again and again, each repetition sharper, like a blade carving through the years between them.

Satoru felt it break inside him like a wave. His grip on Suguru’s hips turned bruising, helpless, pulling him down to take him even deeper, to keep him there. “Come with me—” he pleaded, almost sobbing.

Suguru crashed their mouths together, desperate, biting at his lip as his hips stuttered. Their breathing tangled, frantic, hot, mouths open against each other, swallowing the other’s sounds. They clung tighter, like letting go would kill them.

And then—release.

It ripped through them almost simultaneously. Suguru cried out, raw and unguarded, grinding down in shuddering rolls as his body convulsed around Satoru. Satoru came with him, clutching his hips like a lifeline, thrusting up into him with a broken, keening sound. His orgasm tore through him so hard it hurt, blinding, leaving him gasping Suguru’s name like prayer and confession both.

Suguru’s voice was ragged in his ear, chanting “Satoru, Satoru” as he shook apart on top of him. Satoru moaned back into his mouth, hands everywhere, gripping, soothing, worshiping. Their foreheads knocked together, their lips still brushing, hot breaths mingling as they fell apart at the same time, caught in the same violent wave.

It took long seconds for their bodies to stop jerking, for their breaths to slow from desperate gasps to ragged inhales. Suguru slumped forward, hair spilling over them both, forehead pressed to Satoru’s shoulder.

The room was full of the scent of sweat, cheap hotel lotion, sex, the faint ghost of jasmine that somehow still lingered. The sheets were a mess beneath them, damp and tangled.

Satoru wrapped his arms around him instinctively, still trembling, his lips brushing Suguru’s temple. He wanted to say I love you. He wanted to say don’t leave me again. What he whispered instead, hoarse and almost broken, was, “Twelve years, Suguru. I missed you every fucking day.”

Suguru didn’t answer.

Minutes passed. Their skin cooled, their bodies stuck together with sweat. Slowly, carefully, Suguru shifted off him, lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. His chest still rose too quickly. He said nothing.

Satoru lay there beside him, eyes tracing the ceiling in the dim light, lips tugging into a faint smile. Not joy, not triumph—just fragile relief that he got to have this again, even once.

But his eyes, when they slid to Suguru’s profile, were empty. Because he knew—this didn’t mean he had him back. Not yet.

Suguru kept his silence, hair spread across the pillow, eyes open in the dark. Awake. Guarded. Unreachable.

Chapter Text

Morning had come too early, a pale slice of light cutting through the hotel curtains. The air in the room was thick, heavy with sweat and lotion and the memory of what they had done. Satoru woke first, stretched out on his back with the sheets twisted around his waist, Suguru’s hair brushing his shoulder. For a moment, in that fragile silence between sleep and waking, it felt like nothing had ever changed—that they were twenty-one again, drunk on each other, in some dorm room they weren’t supposed to share.

Then Suguru stirred, and reality crashed back.

He shifted away almost imperceptibly, turning on his side, eyes fixed on the wall. His voice, when he finally spoke, was steady, almost casual. “What time is the first panel?”

Satoru swallowed a dozen answers that wanted to come out instead: I love you. Stay here with me. Don’t act like this didn’t happen. He propped himself up on one elbow, forced a yawn. “Nine-thirty. We’ve got time.”

“Good.” Suguru sat up, hair tangled, the sheet sliding down to his waist. He didn’t look at Satoru as he swung his legs out of bed and padded naked toward the bathroom. The sound of the shower running was sharp in the quiet room.

Satoru lay there, staring at the ceiling, smiling faintly like a fool because every inch of him still ached in the best possible way. Last night had been fire and ruin and salvation all at once. But when Suguru came back out, dressed neatly again, adjusting his sleeves like armor, that smile faltered.

They didn’t talk about it. Not in the room. Not on the walk to the conference. Not when they passed each other in the hotel lobby, carrying the masks of colleagues instead of the wreckage of lovers.

By the time they were seated at the long table on the stage, the room filled with scholars and students and the restless hum of conversation, it was as though nothing had happened at all.

Except it had.

Every glance between them carried too much weight. Suguru’s eyes were steady, calm, fixed on the notes in front of him, but when Satoru let his gaze linger too long, there was a flicker—something raw, quickly shuttered. Satoru forced himself to focus on the questions, the debates, the sparring that everyone had come to watch. Outwardly, he tried to be the same as ever: sharp, smug, irreverent.

But inside he could still feel Suguru’s nails on his shoulders and hot breath on his lips.

Back in Tokyo, thousands of kilometers away, students huddled around laptops in the campus café, watching the livestream. Yuji was the first to notice.

“Look at him,” he muttered, pointing at the screen where Satoru sat angled slightly toward Suguru. “He’s not even hiding it anymore. That’s the look of a man in love.”

Nobara leaned closer, eyes narrowing. “Oh my god, you’re right. He’s staring at him like a golden retriever. That’s disgusting.” She grinned, delighted. “I knew it. I told you.”

Megumi, slouched in his chair with arms crossed, didn’t even glance up. “You’re imagining things. They’re just arguing like they always do.”

“They’re not arguing,” Nobara shot back. “Look at the way Geto-sensei just smirked. That’s not an academic smirk, that’s a bedroom smirk.”

Yuta blushed faintly, fidgeting with his pen. “I don’t… I don’t know. Maybe it’s just us reading into it?”

Inumaki, chewing on a pastry, shrugged without comment.

Yuji shook his head, eyes wide. “Nope. Something changed. I’m telling you, Gojo-sensei’s got it bad.”

Back in Seville, Satoru knew it too. He felt transparent, like everyone in the auditorium could see right through him. Suguru, on the other hand, wore his composure like a second skin. When the panel ended, he thanked the audience with perfect politeness, and Satoru had to clench his fists to stop himself from reaching out.

Later, in the quiet of the hotel corridor, he tried anyway.

“Come with me,” he said, leaning against the wall outside Suguru’s door. His tone was too casual, his heart hammering. “Let’s go see the city. You can’t come all the way to Spain and not actually look at it.”

Suguru exhaled through his nose, hand pausing on the doorknob. “We have more panels this afternoon.”

“They’ll survive without us for a few hours,” Satoru said, pushing. “C’mon, Suguru. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

There was a long silence. Suguru’s shoulders eased by a fraction. Finally, he turned the key, tossed it on the desk inside, and dropped his suit jacket on the bed. “Fine. A few hours.”

The streets of Seville were alive with sunlight and sound. Narrow alleys lined with orange trees, balconies dripping with flowers, the air rich with the scent of oranges. Satoru walked beside him, hands shoved in his pockets, fighting the urge to brush against him with every step.

They stopped first at the Cathedral, its massive Gothic spires reaching toward the sky, shadowing the square below. Inside, the cool air smelled of stone and incense. Sunlight poured through stained glass windows, casting colors over Suguru’s face. He tilted his head back to take it in, and for a moment Satoru just watched him, heart aching.

They climbed the Giralda Tower, winding their way up the ramps until the city unfolded beneath them: whitewashed walls, terracotta roofs, the river cutting through it all like a vein of silver. Satoru leaned against the stone and murmured, “Not bad, huh?”

Suguru didn’t answer, but the corners of his mouth softened.

From there, they wandered to the Real Alcázar, its arches and mosaics glowing in the sun. The gardens were lush, fountains bubbling, peacocks strutting across the grass. Suguru lingered in the shade of an orange grove, fingers trailing over the rough bark of a tree. For a heartbeat, his expression was unguarded, almost peaceful.

Satoru memorized it.

They ended up at Plaza de España, where the sweeping semi-circle of the building glittered with tiled alcoves and small bridges over canals. Street musicians played nearby, the strum of guitars carried on the breeze. Satoru bought them each a paper cup of horchata, insisting Suguru try it.

“It’s sweet,” Suguru said after a sip, brows lifting slightly.

“Like me,” Satoru shot back with a grin.

Suguru huffed, shaking his head, but there was the ghost of amusement in his eyes.

By late afternoon, they crossed the Triana Bridge, the river glinting gold beneath them as the sun dipped low. The crowd thinned here, leaving them a pocket of quiet. Satoru walked close enough that their arms brushed. The need was unbearable.

He reached out. His hand closed over Suguru’s. Warm. Solid. Suguru startled but didn’t pull away immediately. For one suspended moment, it felt easy, inevitable.

Satoru turned, heart in his throat, and pressed his mouth to Suguru’s. It was gentle at first, hesitant, but Suguru responded almost instantly, lips parting, deepening the kiss. The world tilted. Satoru’s chest flooded with relief, with heat, with the dizzying certainty that this—this—was what he had been missing for twelve years.

Then Suguru pulled back. Slowly, carefully. His hand slipped free.

“Don’t,” he said softly, eyes lowered.

The single word gutted him.

Satoru watched him turn away, the light catching in his hair, his shoulders set like stone as he continued across the bridge. He didn’t look back.

If I don’t change, Satoru thought, the words heavy as lead, if I don’t finally stop acting like I do… he’ll walk away again. And this time, it’ll be forever.

Chapter Text

The plane touched down at Narita under a sky the color of slate. 

In the terminal, the crowds moved like currents around them. Suguru’s hand brushed against Satoru’s as they reached the luggage carousel, and felt that familiar tug—a mixture of nostalgia and want.

Seville felt a world away—sunlit plazas, jasmine-scented evenings, Suguru’s hair brushing Satoru’s cheek in a hotel bed. Now there was winter in the air, raw and cutting, and the weight of Tokyo’s gray skyline pressing down on them both.

“Wait,” Satoru said, catching Suguru’s wrist gently. “Just for a second… can I—”

Suguru’s gaze flicked to him, sharp and unreadable. There was a pause, a heartbeat where Satoru thought maybe, just maybe, Suguru would lean in, let the barrier drop.

“Don’t, Satoru…” Suguru said finally, voice low but firm.

“Right… public, busy… yes,” Satoru murmured, a grin tugging at his lips despite the ache in his chest. “Your rules, always.”

Suguru didn’t respond, only adjusted his coat and stepped back slightly.

“Taxi?” Satoru asked, nodding toward the line of cabs waiting outside.

“Separate,” Suguru said, already moving. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

They parted with a brief look, a nod, like some strangers. Satoru’s smile lingered, bittersweet. Suguru’s figure disappeared into the crowd, each heading to their own taxi, the warmth of what could have been folded into the cold Tokyo air.

The next day on campus, the air was already thick with tension. 

Students were gathering in knots around the main quad when they arrived, paper signs held high, voices carrying over the wind. The banners snapped: Save the Humanities. No Cuts. No Silence.

Satoru shoved his hands into his coat pockets, tipping his sunglasses down his nose to take in the scene. “Well, well. Looks like someone’s been watching too many revolutionary films. Do you think they’ll start storming buildings next? Should I bring popcorn?”

Suguru ignored him. His gaze swept the quad, taking in Yuji’s determined face at the front of the crowd, Nobara with a megaphone in hand, Megumi slightly behind them with his arms crossed like he’d been dragged into this but wasn’t about to walk away.

“They listened,” Suguru murmured, more to himself than to anyone else. His chest tightened with something that was almost joy. They actually listened. Every lecture, every word about the value of humanistic inquiry, about not surrendering their voices to bureaucrats—these students had taken it all in. And now they were giving it back to the world, louder than he ever could alone.

Yuji caught sight of him and brightened, waving. “Sensei! You came!”

Nobara turned, grinning. “Geto-sensei, we’re about to start the speeches. We saved you a spot!”

Suguru inclined his head, warmth spreading through him despite the cold air. He could feel Satoru’s gaze on him but didn’t turn.

“Look at you,” Satoru drawled, trailing behind. “Proud father watching his ducklings take their first quacks.”

Suguru glanced at him once, sharp enough to cut. “They’re not playing games, Satoru.”

“And what do you call this?” Satoru gestured lazily at the crowd, the handmade signs, the cluster of reporters who’d already begun sniffing around the edges. “Street theater? Performance art? A live-action thesis defense?”

But Suguru wasn’t biting. His attention was on the podium cobbled together at the foot of the library steps. Yuji was already climbing it, megaphone in hand, voice cracking at first but steadying as he looked out at his peers.

“We’re here because they think our voices don’t matter. Because they want to silence entire fields of study, erase whole disciplines, as if the past doesn’t teach us about the present. We won’t let them.”

The crowd cheered. Nobara shouted something sharp and triumphant into her own megaphone. Megumi muttered under his breath but didn’t move away, his eyes flicking occasionally to where Satoru and Suguru stood.

Satoru rolled his shoulders, trying for nonchalance. But his eyes kept drifting to Suguru, who was utterly still, utterly focused, like the cold wind and Satoru’s jabs didn’t exist. He watched him watching them, his students, his cause, and something inside Satoru twisted.

Twelve years ago, he would’ve been the center of Suguru’s world. Now it was these kids with their signs and their chants, and the thought clawed at him. He didn’t know how to want anything without wanting all of it—Suguru’s time, Suguru’s focus, Suguru’s heart. And Suguru was pouring all three into the students, while Satoru hovered at the edges like an unwanted shadow.

When Suguru stepped forward to speak, the quad fell quiet. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

“You’ve done what every generation dreams of,” he told them. His voice carried, deep and steady. “You’ve taken your education into your own hands. You’ve seen injustice and answered it with courage. You remind us that scholarship isn’t just about books and classrooms. It’s about living, breathing resistance. About humanity.”

A roar rose from the students, echoing off the stone buildings.

Satoru’s throat felt dry. He wanted to laugh, make another joke about ducklings or ducks, but the words died. Because for the first time in years, he was seeing Suguru exactly as he remembered him—radiant, uncompromising, magnetic. And it hit him like a punch: he was falling in love all over again, and it was killing him.

The protest lasted hours. Students chanted, held signs, sang songs. Faculty members peeked nervously from windows. Reporters snapped photos. Suguru stayed with them the whole time, listening, guiding, steadying.

Satoru leaned against a lamppost, outwardly bored, but his chest ached. He told himself he was only there to keep an eye on Suguru, to make sure he didn’t get himself arrested. But when Suguru’s hand brushed his sleeve once in passing—barely a second, just grounding himself—Satoru felt it like a brand.

By late afternoon, the administration finally descended: the dean flanked by two assistant provosts, frowns carved into their faces like stone.

“This gathering is unauthorized,” the dean barked, voice sharp over the megaphone. “You are disrupting campus operations. If you do not disperse immediately, disciplinary action will be taken.”

A ripple of uncertainty passed through the students. Yuji tightened his grip on the banner he held, Nobara raised her chin defiantly, Megumi muttered something that sounded suspiciously like this is stupid but didn’t move.

Suguru stepped forward. “With respect, Dean, these students are exercising their rights. They have every reason to be here.”

The dean’s eyes narrowed. “Geto-sensei. You are an employee of this institution. Encouraging this behavior will have consequences.”

Satoru could almost see the choice forming in Suguru’s mind. He’d seen it a hundred times before—Suguru weighing risk against principle, always leaning toward principle no matter how sharp the edges.

“I stand with them,” Suguru said, voice calm but unyielding.

A gasp rippled through the crowd. The dean’s face reddened.

Satoru smirked from his spot against the lamppost, though his chest was a battlefield. Of course he does. Of course he can’t help himself. He pushed off the pole and strolled over, inserting himself at Suguru’s side like he’d been there all along.

“And if you’re going to punish him,” Satoru added lightly, “you’ll have to punish me too. Which, honestly, I’d love to see you try. Wouldn’t that make the papers.”

The students erupted in cheers, the tension breaking for a moment. Suguru shot him a sidelong look—half exasperation, half something else. Satoru just grinned.

But under the grin, his heart was pounding. Because he knew what the students didn’t, what the dean didn’t: he wasn’t standing there out of principle. He was standing there because he couldn’t stand to let Suguru fight alone.

The dean muttered about suspensions, about hearings, about consequences. But the students only chanted louder. Save the Humanities. Save the Humanities.

And Suguru stood among them, tall and steady, his voice blending with theirs.

Satoru stayed too, his usual jokes fading into silence. He didn’t belong here, not really, not in their cause or their fight. But wherever Suguru was—that was where he’d always end up.

And if it meant watching Suguru shine while his own chest cracked open with longing, then so be it.

Chapter Text

By the third day, the protest had outgrown the quad.

What started with a few dozen students now stretched across half the campus, banners strung between lampposts, chants echoing off lecture halls. Entire departments had joined—philosophy, literature, history—voices raised in unison. Someone had set up speakers, blasting speeches live from the megaphone. And online? The hashtag #SaveTheHumanities was trending across Japanese Twitter, clips of Yuji and Nobara’s fiery speeches ricocheting around the internet.

Suguru stood at the edge of the crowd, coat collar pulled high against the wind, watching as his students transformed into something bigger than themselves. They weren’t just kids anymore. They were leaders, voices that refused to quiet. Every chant was a testament, every banner a manifesto.

He felt… proud. Fiercely, helplessly proud.

Satoru leaned against the low wall near him, sunglasses perched even in the dim light, popping a stick of gum into his mouth with a snap. “Well, well. Look at this circus. They’re gonna start selling tickets next.”

Suguru didn’t even flinch. “It’s not a circus.”

“Oh? Looks like one. Music, costumes, chanting crowds…” Satoru waved a hand at the painted signs and the students with drums. “Give them a lion and it’s practically a Roman coliseum.”

Suguru cut him a look, dark and unwavering. “This is what education is for. To give them a voice.”

Satoru smirked, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He’d been watching Suguru more than the students—watching the fire in him, the way his spine straightened when he stood among them. And every time, it hit him in the chest. He could joke all he wanted, but the truth was burning a hole in his ribs: he was in love with him, and Suguru was throwing himself into danger for something bigger.

By noon, the administration struck back.

The rector’s announcement blared from campus speakers, sharp and unforgiving:

“Any student who continues to participate in these unlawful gatherings will face immediate suspension. Dormitory privileges will be revoked. Repeated offenders will be permanently expelled.”

The crowd wavered. Some exchanged nervous looks, a ripple of unease moving through them. A few lowered their banners.

Yuji’s hands shook on his megaphone, but he lifted it anyway. “They can’t scare us into silence! That’s exactly what they want!”

Nobara shouted, “If we stop now, it’s like we never existed!”

Megumi muttered under his breath, but he didn’t leave either.

Suguru stepped forward, climbing onto the low stone steps where everyone could see him. The murmurs quieted. His voice, when it came, was steady as stone.

“You are not children to be frightened into obedience. You are scholars. Citizens. Humans with the right to speak. If the price of that is suspension, then they’ll have to suspend us all.”

Cheers erupted, strong enough to shake the winter air.

Satoru tilted his head back, blowing out a breath that misted in the cold. “You’re going to get yourself fired,” he muttered.

Suguru didn’t look at him. “Then so be it.”

The sirens arrived an hour later.

Blue and red lights cut across the courtyard, police vans rolling up to the gates. The crowd shifted uneasily, chants faltering as uniformed officers poured out, helmets glinting, batons at their belts. The rector appeared again, flanked by administrators, his voice magnified by a portable loudspeaker.

“This demonstration is over. Disperse immediately, or the authorities will clear the grounds.”

The students froze. Fear spread like static in the air.

Suguru moved.

He walked straight into the open space between the police line and the crowd, coat billowing in the wind, black hair loose around his face. The officers stopped, startled by the tall figure planting himself firmly in their path.

“These students are peaceful,” he said, voice ringing across the quad. “They are exercising rights protected by law. To threaten them with force is a disgrace to this institution—and to the country we claim to serve.”

The crowd erupted behind him, cheers mixing with nervous shouts.

Satoru’s stomach twisted. He hated this. Hated watching Suguru throw himself in front of danger like his body was a shield. He wanted to drag him back, shake him, scream don’t you dare put yourself on the line like that again.

Instead, he laughed. Loud and easy, striding out to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him.

“Hey, officers!” Satoru called, removing his sunglasses with a flourish. “Don’t mind us, just your friendly neighborhood professors. Promise we don’t bite.” He grinned wide, radiating charm. “Though I can’t vouch for my colleague here—he might lecture you into submission.”

A ripple of laughter passed through the students, tension easing by a fraction. Even the police seemed caught off guard. Satoru kept going, his tone light, flippant. “Really, now. You want your names in tomorrow’s headlines? Police Drag Star Professors Out of University for Protesting Budget Cuts. Doesn’t sound good, does it? Imagine the tweets. Imagine the memes. You’ll never live it down.”

The officers shifted, uncertain. The dean bristled. “Professor Gojo, this is not a performance.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Satoru said brightly. “With all the costumes and yelling, I thought we were in a Kabuki play.”

The crowd laughed again. The officers hesitated. And Suguru, beside him, gave the smallest exhale—a sound so soft Satoru almost missed it. Relief.

But Suguru didn’t move. He stood tall, unwavering, voice cutting through the air once more. “If you want to remove these students, you’ll have to go through us first.”

For a suspended heartbeat, the entire campus seemed to hold its breath.

And then the students roared. Louder than before, louder than the sirens, their chants rising like thunder: Save the Humanities! Save the Humanities!

The police didn’t advance. The administrators muttered, retreating slightly. The rector’s threats rang hollow against the tidal wave of sound.

Suguru stood at the front, calm and immovable. Satoru stood beside him, grin sharp and careless, though inside his heart was a storm.

Because this was who they were—always had been. Suguru, the immovable force of principle. Satoru, the reckless shield who refused to let him fight alone.

And God help him, he was still hopelessly in love with every inch of it.

Chapter Text

By the morning after the standoff, the campus was buzzing with more than protest slogans.

“Did you see the way Gojo-sensei was looking at him?” whispered a girl in the library, voice carrying just far enough to make three others lean in.

“I thought he was just being dramatic,” her friend said. “But—no. That wasn’t casual. He looked like—like—”

“Like someone in love,” the third supplied, bluntly.

And once the thought was voiced, it spread like wildfire.

By lunchtime, the rumor had drifted across the cafeteria. Groups of students leaned close over trays of curry rice and bentos, whispering, eyes darting toward the tall white-haired professor laughing too loudly in the corner, or toward the dark-haired one who strode past without acknowledging him.

Yuji heard it in three separate places before he even sat down. By the time Nobara dropped her tray across from him, he was practically vibrating.

“People are finally noticing, huh?” he said, nodding toward the commotion around the quad.

Nobara rolled her eyes, stabbing a piece of tofu with her chopsticks. “Took them long enough. Honestly, I was starting to think everyone’s blind.”

Megumi, sliding in beside them, didn’t even look up from his rice. “It’s not exactly subtle.”

Yuji leaned in conspiratorially. “I mean, come on. Gojo just melts the second Geto gives him even half a smile. It’s ridiculous.”

Nobara smirked, pretending to lecture him. “Ridiculous? Please. I call it poetic justice. Finally, people are catching on to his big dramatic heart. And it’s hilarious watching him fumble whenever Geto-sensei notices him.”

Megumi flicked a grain of rice at Yuji, deadpan. “You mean… like a puppy.”

Yuji laughed. “Exactly! A blushing, whining puppy.”

Nobara leaned back, mock sighing. “Honestly, I live for this. Every little glance, every subtle touch—Gojo-sensei dies a little inside every time. I’d pay for front-row seats.”

Megumi rolled his eyes again, but his lips twitched. “You two are hopeless.”

Yuji grinned. “But we’re right.”

In the faculty lounge, the whispers were quieter but no less persistent.

“Reminds me of when they were students,” one older professor murmured, stirring sugar into his coffee. “Those two were inseparable. Practically attached at the hip.”

Another raised a brow. “Inseparable how?”

A shrug, a conspiratorial look. “Let’s just say… there were rumors even then.”

The conversation dropped into hushed tones as the lounge door opened, but the seed was planted. Nostalgia and suspicion tangled in the air.

And then came the video.

Someone had filmed it on their phone: Suguru stepping in front of the police, his coat whipping in the wind, voice carrying calm authority. And then Satoru, striding up beside him, sunglasses off, grin blazing, tossing lines like a comedian to break the tension.

The clip was edited, re-uploaded, subtitled, shared. By the end of the day it had a hundred thousand views. By the end of the week, a million.

“Professors Who Protest Together, Stay Together.”
“Academic Power Couple: Gojo & Geto.”
#GetoGojo trended worldwide.

Students made edits with cheesy love songs. GIFs of Satoru grinning at Suguru spread like pollen. A screenshot of the two standing inches apart was captioned: That’s not just solidarity, that’s soulmates.

Suguru saw it by accident, when Yuji thrust his phone under his nose between classes.

“Geto-sensei, look! You’re famous!”

He stared at the grainy clip, at himself standing rigid, at Satoru laughing too brightly beside him. The comments scrolled endlessly beneath:

God, the way he looks at him.
Protective boyfriend energy.
Are they…?

Suguru’s stomach knotted. He handed the phone back wordlessly, striding away before Yuji could ask.

For Satoru, though? It was oxygen.

He sprawled across the staffroom couch, sunglasses perched low, scrolling through memes of himself with a grin like he’d just been crowned king.

“Look, Suguru,” he said later, holding up his phone with an obnoxious laugh. “Apparently we’re the internet’s new OTP. Should we start a fan club? Maybe sell merch? Mugs, t-shirts?”

Suguru’s silence was sharp enough to cut.

Satoru’s grin faltered. He slipped the phone away, covering the sting with a drawl. “What? Don’t tell me you’re embarrassed. We look great together. We always have.” 

Suguru turned on him then, eyes dark, voice low. “This isn’t a game, Satoru. These are our lives.”

And that—that was the knife. Because for Satoru, the rumors weren’t a threat. They were proof. Proof of what he’d been trying to say without saying it: that anyone with eyes could see how much he still loved him.

But for Suguru, it was exposure. The past clawing its way into the present, threatening to drag both of them under.

By week’s end, the students were relentless.

In the quad: “They’d make such a power couple.”
In the library: “Did you hear they used to be inseparable?”
Online: fanart, edits, shipping wars.

The campus wasn’t just on fire with protest anymore. It was on fire with them.

And Suguru realized, with a sinking weight, that no matter how much he tried to bury it, their private history was surfacing. Piece by piece.

He had spent twelve years building walls, and now the internet had taken a sledgehammer to them.

And Satoru—damn him—wasn’t even trying to stop it.

Chapter Text

By dawn, the campus was already barricaded.

Students had dragged benches across the gates, banners strung between lampposts, desks stacked in doorways. Cardboard signs sprawled across the pavement in black paint: Education is not expendable. We will not be silenced.

Suguru walked among them, coat tugged tight against the February chill. He saw Yuji at the front line, hair messy, eyes blazing. Nobara tying banners to the gates with steady hands. Megumi, arms folded, jaw set, standing watch as though daring the world to challenge him.

His heart clenched. They’ve grown. They’re no longer my students—they’re leaders.

The sirens cut through the morning air.

This time, the police came heavier: vans pulling up, shields and helmets gleaming. The sight rippled through the crowd, but no one moved. Arms linked, voices rising, they formed a wall across the entrance.

And then the journalists arrived. Microphones, cameras, flashing bulbs. Reporters barking questions, lenses hungry for drama.

Suguru exhaled slowly. This is it. The point of no return.

He climbed onto the low wall, the same spot he had spoken from before. But this time, his voice was different.

It thundered.

“You call this unlawful. You call this disobedience. But what is unlawful is cutting the heart out of education. What is disobedience is silencing the voices of the next generation.”

Students roared in approval, chants swelling behind him.

“I will not stand by while human knowledge is treated as disposable. If you must take someone, take me. If you must fire someone, fire me. I will not betray them. I will not betray what we stand for.”

His voice cracked on the last line, not with weakness, but with conviction so fierce it drew shouts, chants, fists in the air.

The police shifted uneasily. Cameras snapped like gunfire.

And then Satoru stepped forward.

At first, it was the usual grin, the cocky drawl: “You’ll have to fire me too, you know. I’m not exactly good at following rules.” The crowd laughed, tension easing.

But then he did something different. Something no one expected.

He took off his sunglasses. Met Suguru’s eyes. And moved to stand right beside him, shoulder to shoulder, facing the line of shields and cameras as if they were one body, one front.

And in that instant, the crowd erupted.

Students screamed, cheered, clapped, chanted their names together—Gojo! Geto! Gojo! Geto!—as if the two professors were no longer separate entities but halves of a single fight.

Journalists leaned forward, hungry. Cameras flashed. The image was captured—Suguru, solemn and blazing with conviction, Satoru, bright and unflinching, side by side against the world.

The rector barked orders no one listened to. The police hesitated, unwilling to drag away star professors live on national television.

And when the sun dipped low and the crowd finally thinned, the standoff ended not with violence, but with victory. Temporary, fragile—but victory nonetheless.

By nightfall, the campus was nearly deserted. Signs fluttered in the cold breeze, trash cans overflowing with empty bottles, stray banners left behind like discarded flags of war.

Suguru sat alone in a dim lecture hall, the fluorescent lights overhead humming faintly. His coat lay across the desk, his hands folded on top of scattered papers. He stared at nothing.

The door creaked. Footsteps echoed.

“I thought I’d find you here,” Satoru said softly, leaning against the doorframe. His voice was tired in a way Suguru rarely heard.

Suguru didn’t move. “Shouldn’t you be out celebrating? You love a good performance.”

Satoru walked closer, stopping at the desk, leaning against it casually. “I wasn’t performing.”

Suguru’s laugh was bitter. “That’s all you ever do. Masks. Jokes. A smile big enough to cover the cracks.”

Silence stretched. Satoru’s grin faltered, his throat working.

Suguru looked up then, eyes burning. “Why did you do it? Why did you stand beside me all these days? After everything—after telling me I’d be better off with a dog than with you—why?”

Satoru froze. His heart lurched back twelve years, to that day, those words. Words he had spat like knives because he hadn’t known how else to survive.

His voice was rough when it came. “Because I couldn’t stand to see you fight alone.”

Suguru stared at him, pain sharp in every line of his face. “You don’t get to play the hero now. Not after saying that. Not after humiliating me like that.”

Satoru closed his eyes, swallowed hard. When he opened them, there was no mask left. Only raw truth.

“I said it,” he whispered, “because I was too in love with you to bear it. Because every time I looked at you, I thought— ’This is it. This is everything.’ And it terrified me.”

The words hung in the air, fragile as glass, heavy as stone.

Suguru’s breath caught, his fists clenching on the desk. His lips parted, but no sound came.

The silence stretched between them, thick with twelve years of unspoken grief.

And when it broke, it wasn’t with forgiveness. It wasn’t with embrace. It was only the ragged sound of breath, the unhealed wound of truth laid bare.

Chapter Text

The silence was unbearable.

The walls of the lecture hall held it like a vault, thick and merciless, stretching out after Satoru’s words until it pressed on Suguru’s chest like weight.

Too in love with you to bear it.

Suguru stood up, restless. It rang in his ears, fragile and brutal at once. He wanted to shout at him, to laugh in his face, to demand why it took twelve years and a riot for him to finally say it aloud. But his body betrayed him: breath caught, fists clenched, lips parted with nothing to fill the gap.

The silence fractured at last—not with anger, not with forgiveness, but with Satoru’s voice.

Low. Rough. Stripped bare.

“I know it’s not an excuse,” he said, stepping closer, his hands hanging helplessly at his sides. “God, I know it’s not. But I was young, and I was so damn stupid. I hurt you with one ugly, thoughtless sentence, and instead of crawling after you and begging for forgiveness, I hid behind my pride. I thought if I laughed it off, if I pretended it didn’t matter, then maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe I wouldn’t feel like my entire chest was caving in without you.”

Suguru’s head lifted slowly, his eyes narrowing, but he said nothing.

Satoru swallowed hard. His words tumbled out, clumsy but urgent, as if they’d been trapped for over a decade and were only now tearing free. “I never showed you I was willing to change. I mocked everything serious, everything adult. I was terrified of it. Terrified of… of being someone who could stay. Because staying meant being vulnerable, and I didn’t know how to do that.”

He exhaled shakily, raking a hand through his messy white hair. “And I lost you because of it.”

The fluorescent lights hummed faintly overhead. Dust motes floated in the air like slow sparks. Suguru stared at him, unreadable, his pulse hammering against his ribs.

Inside, his mind was chaos.

Is this real? Is he finally—?

Part of him, the part that had nursed the wound for twelve years, wanted to sneer, to tell him an apology now was meaningless. Another part—the part that still remembered laughter spilling in dorm rooms and the way Satoru once kissed him like the world was ending—ached with the rawness of it.

He wanted to forgive. He had, in small ways, already forgiven. But forgiveness was not the same as surrender, and his pride was a wall still standing.

Suguru let out a long breath, half seated, half leaning back against the desk, shoulders heavy with the day’s exhaustion. The protests, the speeches, the police… and now this. He closed his eyes briefly, gathering the shreds of his composure.

When he opened them, Satoru was closer.

Too close.

Suguru stiffened but didn’t move as Satoru reached out, hand trembling just slightly, and cupped his cheek. His palm was warm, almost burning against Suguru’s cool skin.

“Suguru,” he whispered, voice breaking. “Please. Twelve years without you…”

The words slipped straight through Suguru’s armor. His throat worked, and before he could stop himself, his hand lifted and pressed over Satoru’s, holding it there. The simple contact was too much and not enough.

His eyes softened with pain and longing as he echoed, quiet as a confession: “Twelve years without you.”

Satoru’s breath hitched. His thumb brushed unconsciously against Suguru’s cheekbone, tender, reverent.

“I still love you,” he whispered. “Never stopped.”

And then he leaned down, closing the last sliver of distance, and kissed him.

It was not the hungry, desperate clash they’d shared in Seville. It was softer, hesitant, trembling like it might break. The press of lips was brief, uncertain, but it carried the weight of years unsaid.

Suguru’s heart rebelled against him. His pride screamed no, but his body betrayed him—he kissed back, a fleeting press, an admission in silence.

When they broke apart, breath mingling, Satoru didn’t retreat. He rested his forehead against Suguru’s, eyes closed.

“Please,” he murmured, “just talk to me. Let me near. You don’t have to take me back. Just… let me close again.”

Suguru’s eyes fluttered shut. The pain of it was almost unbearable. He wanted to say yes, to collapse into him, to let twelve years of longing dissolve. But the memory of betrayal was still sharp.

“I don’t know if I can forgive you,” he admitted, voice hoarse.

“I know.” Satoru’s fingers tightened slightly where they held him. “But I’ll wait. I’ll prove I’m different. Just… don’t shut me out. Not again.”

Suguru drew a shaky breath, leaning back against the desk fully, but not pulling away. He was so tired—of fighting, of pushing, of pretending he didn’t care.

“You exhaust me,” he murmured, half bitter, half fond.

A faint, trembling smile tugged at Satoru’s lips. “Yeah. I’ve heard that before.”

“Not a compliment.”

“I’ll take it anyway.”

Suguru almost laughed—almost. Instead he just shook his head, the faintest trace of exasperation softening his expression.

Silence settled again, but this time it wasn’t suffocating. It was fragile, tentative, like the air after a storm.

Finally Suguru said, “No more running.”

Satoru opened his eyes, and for once they held no mockery, no deflection. Only raw sincerity. “No more running,” he echoed. “I’ll take things seriously. I swear.”

“And I…” Suguru’s voice faltered, then steadied. “I won’t turn you away at every step. That’s all I can promise right now.”

It was not reconciliation. It was not a clean slate. But it was something.

A first step.

Satoru exhaled, relief trembling through him. He lowered his hand but slid it down to clasp Suguru’s, fingers curling firmly, grounding them both.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Suguru didn’t answer. He only let their hands rest together, and for the first time in twelve years, the silence between them was not an empty chasm.

It was a bridge.