Archive of Our Own

It really didn’t have to come to this.

It’s the first coherent thought that crosses your mind as you draw your legs up from where they slung off the sides of the low couch. You push against your feet, the cool leather a welcome relief against your heated skin as you scoot further up the smooth surface. The distinctive flick of the light switch reverberates down the hallway, and a faint glow illuminates the ceiling above you, bringing the skip-trowel texture composing it into focus. Your eyes follow where the light catches the amalgamation of ridges and valleys, as your breath finally evens down from its rapid rhythm.

The unique sound of a kitchen cupboard closing shut pulls you from your daze. The slow thud of approaching footsteps on polished hardwood follows it, resonating in the dim, quiet space. You close your eyes, take a deep breath, and you fail to stifle the soft chuckle that bubbles up within you, a laugh at your own expense as the absurdity of the situation washes over you.

Because it does dawn upon you now, the silliness of it all. All of this time, all of the mental energy poured into holding onto a secret with a declining half-life, only to have your efforts inevitably undone. 

Only now, in the clarity granted by hindsight, does your mind flit to a memory as clear as day, back to several months prior, when the catalyzing encounter of the saga that eventually led to this moment that brought you to uncover a new facet of Nanami’s desires and to confront the particularities of your own.

“I don’t know, Ino… Maybe you should hold off on the more demanding missions for a bit. Isn’t this your third injury in just as many weeks?” you asked as you offered the younger sorcerer the energy bar you’d just unwrapped for him.

“And risk missing out on some field practice? Hell no!” Ino replied indignantly. “I’m only Grade 2 on paper, you know this. This is a minor setback, no big deal!” He tapped his cast for emphasis and nearly dropped the bar he’d seemingly forgot he was holding in the process, just barely catching it with his mouth before it fell to his lap. You could only shake your head as you watched the goofy scene unfold.

The past few weeks had seen a relentless surge of curse-related activity as the Tokyo metropolitan area entered what was typically its most hectic time of year. This time around, the busy season had resulted in every active sorcerer effectively forced to work on-call as they were assigned to successive missions which, more often than not, stretched the boundaries of their capabilities. You’d witnessed it yourself, as a Grade 2 instructor assigned to quite a few field missions that increasingly erred on the higher side of your experience level.

You’d had your start as an instructor at Jujutsu Tech at the same time Ino joined, first meeting at orientation, and over time, you’d grown to know and appreciate him like a younger brother. While his tenacity was usually admirable, it also worried you at times, particularly recently. He’d been pushing himself, even going as far as volunteering for the type of missions that would result in his current predicament: sitting in one of Shoko’s examination rooms with a broken arm freshly wrapped in a cast, awaiting his next round of RCT treatment.

“Besides,” he continued, “I was assigned with Nanami-san, and when I tell you that you would’ve loved to see him in action today,” he said, his tone tinged with a not-so-subtle playful lilt that did not escape you. “He kicked some serious fucking ass out there and I bet you would’ve—”

A heavy, exasperated sigh emanated from the entrance behind you.

“Ino, your energy would be better spent focusing on recalling facts rather than on the retelling of hyperbolic stories.”

The interjection came as a distinctively calm voice, one carrying a uniquely measured cadence, and did not require you to turn around to identify who it belonged to.

You shot Ino a warning look as you both watched Nanami Kento cross the few strides that took him to the opposing side of the infirmary bed. He dropped a thin stack of papers onto the examination room counter before his eyes met yours, a smile and a wordless greeting passing between you as his head slightly dipped in a respectful bow. You responded with a nod of your own, as you tried to mentally downplay the soothing wave of warmth that washed over you.

You were still slowly being acquainted with Nanami, who had recently made his return to the school, mostly via common interactions with his protégé, much like the one you were having now. Theirs was a bond you’d watched form and grow in real-time, largely thanks to Ino’s incessant updates.

But you’d also made observations of your own, taking notice of some unique and understated traits that only further piqued your curiosity about the man dubbed the 7:3 sorcerer.

As a teacher yourself, you’d been particularly sensitive to his affinity for mentorship with students and established sorcerers alike. They were the kind of observations that made you wonder about the specifics of what had made him leave in the first place, and even more curiously, about what had compelled him to return.

There was also something just so singular about how Nanami conducted himself. His was an even-tempered presence, bearing a quiet confidence that made him such a steady and welcome counterbalance to the otherwise frenetic atmosphere at the school. It simply made him such a pleasant person to be around, and lately, it was more often than not that you’d catch yourself, as you did in this moment, stealing fleeting glances at him as he draped the tan-colored suit jacket he’d been carrying over the examination chair before taking a seat.

“Pfft. What hyperbolics?” Ino’s mouth stretched into a wide grin as he turned away from Nanami and back towards you. “You truly should have seen it! Five hefty curses cornered Nanami-san, and he had to find a way to…”

And that’s when it first happened.

You’d glanced over just in time to catch sight of Nanami using his left hand to skillfully undo the cuff of his right sleeve, folding it neatly over itself until it reached his elbow, gradually revealing the perfectly toned arm underneath. By the time he was repeating the process on his other arm, the quiet precision of his movements and the hypnotic rhythm of controlled and focused intent had you completely spellbound. 

Though innocuous in its practical purpose, the act held such an airy allure, one you thought couldn’t possibly be solely attributed to the overhead halogen lighting. It was such a soft radiance that highlighted the contours of his forearm, well-defined and solid, like someone who didn’t need to prove anything. When he picked up his pen, twirling it once in his fingers before he began tackling the preliminary portion of his report, Nanami did it effortlessly, as if all of this was nothing.

Not knowing that to you, it would become everything.

It hadn’t even registered with you yet at the time; the extent to which one too many furtive glances had been enough for a seed to take root in your heart, its insidious vines coiling around your unsuspecting mind.

“Hey, are you even listening?” Ino’s sudden, rambunctious voice, along with the lamenting intonation it carried, pulled you back to reality.

Only now did you realize that you’d decidedly relegated Ino’s voice to the background, prompting you to return your attention to him, but not before catching the fleeting upward curve of Nanami’s eyebrow along with the hint of curiosity discernible even through his near opaque lenses as he raised his head, his eyes meeting yours for the briefest of moments.

Agitation coursed through you by the time you turned to Ino, as you quickly processed the embarrassing fact that his loud comment might have exposed your moment of indiscreet inattention.

“I am listening, Ino, if only because you are speaking entirely too loudly for me to do otherwise,” you said, your words strained by the anxious tightening of your jaw. 

You thought you’d detected a light scoff emanating from Nanami, so subtle, so nearly imperceptible that you wondered if you’d imagined it. You didn’t dare look his way to confirm it.

“Fine!” huffed Ino. “Then you can read about it in my report, just like everyone else! Oh, speaking of which, Nanami-san graciously offered to fill it in for me, you know, since my good arm is out of commission! Isn’t he the best?”

Nanami cleared his throat before intervening. “Ino, I’m rather keen on leaving on time today, so please, let’s focus on this?”

You took this as your cue to exit what could only become an increasingly compromising situation for you, keen on avoiding any further embarrassing displays of distraction.

“I’ll leave you two to it. I have an assignment of my own for which I should be preparing… Ino, please do the reasonable thing for once in your life and try to get some real rest, will you?”

You trained your eyes on the exit door as you headed towards it, determined to resist the urge to get distracted again, a flimsy plan that failed as soon as you realized where you’d left your phone.

On the counter.

Next to Nanami.

You took a deep breath to steady your nerves before you made your way around the bed to quietly retrieve your device from the counter, hoping that Nanami’s focus would remain on the report he was so diligently filling—a prayer that was only half fulfilled.

“Kawasaki City?” he asked, his voice coming unexpectedly, gently, and you were grateful that his eyes did not immediately leave his report, because you simply could not prevent yours from surreptitiously glancing over to catch one final glimpse at the hand that gripped his pen, at the way the light caught the fine hairs on his forearm.

You didn’t realize how long a silent pause had elapsed until Nanami halted his scribbling and lifted his head, curious eyes peering at you over the rims of his signature goggles. You quickly made a mental migration back to his question, your distracted mind only now registering that he was inquiring about your assignment.

“Ah yes, that’s the one… The zone’s been mostly cleared now, but they’ve assigned a small squad of us to do one final sweep before sending in the cleanup crew.”

“I see,” he said, pausing briefly. “Good luck, and be careful out there.” Sparse words heavy with sincerity.

“Thank you, Nanami.” Your reply came out meeker than you’d liked, something you cringed at internally before you grabbed your phone and finally shuffled towards the exit and out of the room.

“Ino—” Nanami started, eyes still on the door, warning already well-laced within those two syllables.

“Nanami-san. All due respect,” Ino cut in, not even pretending to attempt to conceal his self-satisfied grin, “but you’ve got to let me cook. Can’t you see I’m trying to talk you up? At this point, you’re just getting the way!” His lament was carelessly loud enough to be audible from the corner you’d just turned into the hall.

But hear it you did not, as you were too preoccupied with a conundrum of your own, the one consisting both of taming the small flame that had ignited within you and of fighting off the vivid imagery along with its significantly less tame derivatives that lingered and threatened to slink into your mind. The ones that would mark the first instances of perceiving Grade 1 sorcerer Nanami Kento in a decidedly different light.

Weeks later, the shortage of level-matched sorcerers required to meet the moment of this prolonged crisis remained persistent, resulting in teams and assignments being in a perpetual state of flux. Amidst this chaotic reshuffling, you found yourself paired with Nanami on a mission for the very first time. Some part of you briefly wondered which stars must have aligned to favor these auspicious circumstances before you decided against putting a question mark where fate had placed a period.

Today’s mission found you both on this sunny early afternoon, tasked with ridding a shrine of several cursed spirits who were intent on disrupting the area during its peak season and on terrorizing its poor visitors.

It was an assignment that quickly revealed itself to be a test of endurance rather than strength; numerous hordes of low-level curses had congregated around each of the seven entrances, six of which you’d spent the better part of the morning purging of their unwelcome intruders. In a bid to optimize energy and recovery, you’d suggested that you alternate turns exorcising the swarms, a strategy that now found the two of you hiding behind each of the two opposing pillars of the gate that marked the final entrance left to clear.

It was your turn to take on this next wave of curses, and by now, the searing soreness of strained muscles you’d rarely ever asked so much of had become difficult to ignore. Using the tip of the spear that comprised your cursed tool, you steadied yourself on shaky legs that you could almost hear screaming in protest, as you remained determined to conceal any sign of struggle and to see this final stretch through.

“Are you alright?” You heard Nanami call out from the opposing pillar, his tone edged with genuine concern.

God, this is embarrassing, you thought to yourself and could only nod at him, refusing to speak just yet for fear of betraying the shakiness in your voice, avoiding eye contact lest any evidence of your growing weariness become apparent.

Target focus, target focus, you repeated to yourself, like a mantra, as you steadied your trembling hands, turning your attention towards the horde of curses approaching on the horizon. If you could just manage to reach that first target, land that first blow, and chain it to activate your technique, the rest of the combat sequence would fall into place.

“Stay put, I’ve got this,” Nanami said as he suddenly left his post, crossing the distance between himself and the oncoming swarm in a few long strides before you could process, let alone protest what was happening.

You leaned onto your spear, repositioning yourself to face the sorcerer, just in time to watch him tighten his wrapped tie around his right hand and to witness the surge of cursed energy as it lit up his fist before he landed a decisive blow onto the first curse, staggering it and knocking it into the line of curses who’d blindly followed close behind. You watched as Nanami landed rapid, precise 7:3 blows with swift, successive slashes of his blade, only now realizing that this was your first earnest look at him in the heat of the battle.

And what a sight it was.

One right hook.

Two left slashes.

Repeat.

He set out with a slow rhythm, a cadenced dance of contained destruction and speedy precision. There was a controlled fury in his movements, a certain juxtaposition of sheer strength and disciplined composure, ridges of forearm muscles moving rhythmically as he landed one incisive blow after the other. As the density of the oncoming horde increased, so did Nanami’s tempo, so much so that for a brief moment, your fatigued eyes struggled to track his rapid movements.

The 7:3 sorcerer had decidedly entered a state of flow, seemingly unfazed by the volume of curses that threw themselves at him in a last-ditch effort to hold down the last fort of their invasion, forming the linchpin separating them from their assured demise.

Finally, it came down to the final three curses, far more imposing in stature than the previous, their presence heavy with the weight of their power, the apparent leaders of this enterprise.

All this appeared to be inconsequential to the indefatigable Nanami Kento, who unleashed a single, forceful blow that tore through all three curses at once, chopping them down right at their weak spot, thus putting an end to their onslaught, once and for all.

A tingling warmth flowed through you, easing some of the tension in your aching muscles, and you thought that maybe it was something beyond mere tiredness that accounted for this particular tremor traveling down your legs.

You trudged over to where Nanami stood, finding him still visibly recovering as he brought the back of his hand up to wipe his forehead, displacing the loose strands of his neatly disheveled hair. The sleeves of his cerulean shirt were pulled back, revealing a toned arm dotted with small beads of sweat, and accented by his signature watch, which gleamed as it caught the midday sunlight.

It suddenly occurred to you that you must have been staring when you caught a glint from Nanami's glasses as he shifted, and you watched as he scrutinized you, appearing to conduct a subtle but thorough assessment of his own.

“How are you holding up?” he asked, a light strain accompanying his words, his chest slightly heaving from exertion as he still caught his breath.

I should be the one asking you that, is what you wanted to reply.

“I’m completely fine… How about you?” you said instead, attempting to ground yourself by counting the patterned spots adorning his tie, now only loosely coiled around his hand.

“Good,” his reply came laced with relief, as though a weight was lifted off his shoulders, and you felt his eyes linger on you for a brief moment before he followed up, “I’m fine as well.”

You found yourself nervously shifting your weight from foot to foot, each fidgety movement pushing the sharpened point of your spear to dig deeper into the cool grass as you hesitated in your next words.

“Thank you for taking on that last wave,” you said, still taking a trivial mental tally of black spots on yellow fabric. “You sure made light work of clearing them.”

A quiet twinge of self-consciousness rippled through you as soon as you uttered the words, and you winced internally as you silently hoped that they didn’t fall as flat with him as they sounded to you. You lifted your gaze, catching his for the brief moment it took him to turn his back to you, and you told yourself that you were imagining the faint flush that appeared to creep up his neck, just above his collar. You convinced yourself that the way he’d pressed his lips into a thin line was not a smile, nor even a suppressed iteration of one.

“It’s not a problem,” Nanami said over his shoulder. You watched curiously as he walked back the few steps that separated him from the spot where the discombobulated remains of the final three curses still lay. He knelt down to pick up what appeared to be an object dropped by one of the large curses, before he began to make his way back to you, his gaze still not quite returning to you. 

“The truth is,” he continued, “I wouldn’t have been able to conserve this much energy had you not handled the previous waves as effectively as you did.”

Surely, these were but the polite words of a Grade 1 sorcerer towards his Grade 2 colleague. 

Surely, it was the nebulous product of a tired and overactive imagination, and not an undercurrent of timidity you were detecting in his voice. 

And surely, you’d tell yourself later, as you’d replay this interaction in your mind, it was the adrenaline propelling you in the moment, driving your unusual urge to keep a conversation going.

“Still, Nanami…” you chirped, feigning a confidence you did not yet feel you had, “At the risk of employing Ino’s terms, you did sort of hard carry me at the end there…”

This earned you a small scoff from the stoic sorcerer, a tiny but remarkable crack in his otherwise guarded demeanor, a pleasant surprise.

“Absolutely not,” he said before finally meeting your gaze from beyond his tinted lenses. “It was a team effort, and we made a good team.”

“Eh, I don’t know…” you replied, averting your gaze with a non-committal hum.

“You don’t know if we make a good team?”

You threw a glance his way, and this time, the tiny amused lift of his lips was unmistakable.

“No, yeah, I think we do,” you replied as nonchalantly as you possibly could.

“Good. I think so too.”

Surely, there was no deeper significance to this.

Regardless, he’d completely disarmed you of the remnants of your unperturbed veneer, and you found yourself mirroring his smile, not that you could even help it if you’d wanted to, not after he punctuated his statement with such a natural utterance of your name.

As you fought the urge to break the connection of his gaze and to hide from the unexpected vulnerability it was drawing from you, you steadied yourself by bringing your second hand to the worn wood of your spear, its familiar texture a slight comfort against the nervous tremor in your grip, further digging it into the soft dirt surface of the ground. It crossed your mind that at this rate, you just might find the planet’s core before this conversation ended.

Nanami held up the object he’d just picked up, revealing it to be a small wooden placard.

“We should return this where it belongs,” he said, thankfully moving on from the suspended moment. “I believe I recall which gate had its signage missing.”

As you descended the shrine’s sloping grounds, the crunch of the gravel path underfoot sounded a soothing rhythm to an easier, more natural conversation as you recapped the mission’s events thus far. Nanami’s memory proved to be correct, so you both stopped before a small gate by an off-beat path right by the third main entrance, one which notably had a bare signpost.

You watched intently, captured by the quiet precision of his movements as he meticulously reattached the placard to the side of the gate, and you couldn’t help but marvel at the duality demonstrated within the time span of a single mission; the handiwork of hands that were dispensing righteous destruction a few minutes ago, now engaged in an authentic act of restoration.

Nanami backed up after having completed this endeavor, and only then were you able to make out the aged inscription on the wooden placard:

Destiny’s Path

Much like at the moment you were assigned to this mission, with this partner, your mind flitted to the notion of fate’s inescapable decree.

Several months separated you from that first joint mission, and you and Nanami now found yourselves engaged in an exercise that was as experimental and intimate as your blooming relationship.

“Alright, so the cabbage into eight wedges first and then cut each of those in half, the sweet potato and carrots cut into one-inch chunks, and then for the okra, you can just sever the stems.” You instructed, as you carefully placed a kitchen knife into his hand, handle first.

“Yes, chef,” he replied solemnly, a mirthful smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

It was his spirited refrain, one he’d now delivered for the third time this evening, earning him yet another snicker from you. Though it was his kitchen you were occupying, he’d gladly adopted the role of sous-chef for the night.

A comfortable silence hung in the air for a moment, and the reality of the situation settled. A Friday evening in Nanami’s apartment, the rich aroma of onions and bell peppers melding with sautéed beef in a pan wafting through the kitchen along with a tomato and cayenne broth simmering in a stockpot. It comprised the beginning of a savory West African peanut stew recipe you’d committed to share with him some weeks ago, a promise Nanami was now holding you to via a rather impromptu dinner night. An array of emotions swirled and commingled within you; a blend of nervousness and elation, of novelty and familiarity. 

There was no label, none that you knew of at least, for the melding of your identities through a cultural dish whose preparation you knew like the back of your hand, and yet felt like you were learning for the first time all over again. You’ve tried to articulate the simplicity with which Nanami welcomed you into his space, to put into words the inexplicable but deeply satisfying sense of belonging that he instilled within you through acts like this one.

Underlying all this was a certain permissiveness to allow yourselves to drop the formalities imposed by the limitations of the workplace, of getting a glimpse into the reserved sorcerer in a rare, relaxed form, into undiscovered shades in his voice, and into an utterly understated playfulness that you were quick to find both endlessly surprising and positively delightful. It truly was a nameless sentiment, something of a catalytic blur, a steady whisper in the background of shared breaths and of casual touches.

It was almost dizzying.

But not as dizzying as watching Nanami pull back the sleeves of the black polo shirt he’d changed into in two swift movements, leaving you no time to prepare nor to brace yourself against being unexpectedly faced with his exposed forearms.

Your breath slightly hitched at the sight.

In theory, your simmering broth, along with the meticulous process of sautéing your beef chunks with the bell peppers and onions you’d just added to your pan, should have sufficed to keep your attention.

In practice, the steady and rhythmic sound of Nanami’s knife striking wood only underscored what you could only imagine being an unmatched display of dexterity and an effortless masterclass in precision as he worked right beside you, each audible cut drawing you, enticing you to take a peek.

Just checking on his progress was how you’d shamelessly rationalize it in your mind.

So here you were, inconspicuously shifting your gaze over to his cutting board and, just as expected, your eyes fell upon a riveting sight. You caught the edge of your lower lip, observing Nanami’s slender, nimble fingers as he guided the knife over the firm yet yielding raw sweet potato, which, in turn, offered a slight resistance at each slicing movement, causing the muscles in his forearm to flex and his veins to ripple beneath his skin like tiny, pulsing rivers.

Those glorious veins.

How much time had elapsed as you watched, mesmerized by the way they disappeared and reemerged under the surface of his skin? What stopped you, really, from grabbing his arm right then and there, from tracing the constellation of every single vein that ran down from his fingers to the taut skin above his wrist, right down to where the fabric of his rolled-up sleeve bunched up on his forearm? All you’d know for sure was that after a while, Nanami paused mid-slice and glanced at you.

“I’m not doing this wrong, am I?” he asked, in a tone carrying an undercurrent of genuine concern.

“What? Yes. Ah, no. I mean, you’re doing great, don’t stop.”

It was a stammered reply, delivered almost too quickly, definitely too loudly. You turned back to your task at hand, the stove’s once comforting warmth now only serving to intensify the heat crawling up your neck and rising towards your flustered face.

You felt Nanami’s gaze linger on you for a bit before he resumed, his movements now slightly slower and carrying a renewed diligence. For a moment, you felt small a pang of guilt at the thought of having potentially planted a seed of doubt in his mind as a result of your shameless ogling, a sentiment that quickly faded away after he cut the last of the sweet potato, slightly shifting his angle, granting you an even clearer, more direct view of his effort as he took on slicing the carrots. Those offered less resistance, so when he started once again, it was in a brisker rhythm, each motion, each accompanying sound a note in the sinewy symphony of movement before you, capturing your full attention. There was no denying it now.

This was decidedly a thing.

Nanami finally threw a sidelong glance in your direction, and this time, you were sure that he’d caught you red-handed; you couldn’t even pretend to be subtle anymore, and you fully expected him to finally call you out on your staring when your eyes met and he spoke again.

“So is it wood then?” he said, a statement more than a question, breaking neither his gaze nor his rhythm as he continued to chop the vegetables.

His seemingly random question juxtaposed with his casual demeanor had completely thrown you for a loop. For the few seconds you tried to decipher it, your mind was in a bit of a whirlwind, and you briefly thought that perhaps it had finally happened, that you’d finally lost your mind, that you were far enough gone that you were now hallucinating and hearing nonsense.

“I’m sorry… Wood?” you asked, completely puzzled.

“Your secret ingredient for this dish? I’m assuming that’s what that’s about,” he said as he gestured his head towards the stove, bringing your attention to the wooden spoon you’d distractedly long since let slip out of your fingers and fall into the stockpot, nearly fully submerged in the broth.

“Ha. Very funny,” you said, trying and failing to suppress a snicker at just how ridiculous this situation, and the circumstances that led to it, were. “You should be minding your carrots, sir.”

You reached for the tip of the spoon that was still accessible and carefully tried to pinch it at an angle that would spare your fingers from being burned on the edge of the red-hot pot.

“Yes, chef,” Nanami’s voice broke the tense silence just as you were about to retrieve the spoon, and something about the comedic delayed timing of his response sent you over the edge as you let the chortle you didn’t realize you’d been desperately holding escape your lips, along with a sudden movement that only served to push the distressed spoon to slide deeper into the pot.

“Damn it, look at what you’ve done!” you cried out, your giggles betraying your attempt to mask your amusement.

Nanami chuckled as he reached his arm over, muscles flexing with the extension, coming to the rescue just in time to grab the tip of the spoon’s handle by the last few millimetres that remained safe. Just as he expertly brought the spoon into the adjoining sink for rinsing, a sharp exhale escaped him, transfiguring into an earnest burst of laughter, rich and unrestrained.

“I’m glad my troubles, which you caused, by the way, amuse you so much.” You brought a hand to your face, partly to cover what was now decidedly a shared laughter between you two, partly to conceal the embarrassment you felt about what your indiscretion had brought you.

“Thanks,” you said sheepishly when he handed you the now clean spoon, before adding with caution, “I know you want to, don’t say it again.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied with a smirk and a rising intonation as he resumed cutting the vegetables, an anticipated implication that he would defy your request.

You told yourself that there would be ample time later, for entertaining the colorful thoughts that permeated as a low hum in the background of your mind for the remainder of that evening, as you stole more subtle glances at him throughout the rest of your dinner prep, as you later chatted away over a successfully prepared meal. That you’d admonish yourself later tonight, for engaging in the all too tempting mental exercise of imagining other uses for Nanami’s arms, and for relishing in the creative results this yielded.

Slipping.

The threadbare mask you’d painstakingly managed to keep up thus far was now slipping.

The closing weeks of the first term of the new school year found you firmly ensconced in what was now a deepening romantic relationship with Nanami. By now, you’d long since stowed it neatly at the back of your mind; the notion that each passing day only inched you closer to that future, inevitable moment when you would be pushed to confront whatever consequences would come out of the sweet release of disclosure.

An inflection point would precede all this, however — a pivotal moment you would only pinpoint in retrospect, arriving on a late July afternoon marked by a suffocating heatwave.

The beads of sweat were finally beginning to cool on your forehead as the minutes ticked by. The small fan Nanami had placed on the coffee table before you a few minutes prior served as a scant but much-appreciated last defence against the thick, humid air, which had long since frizzed the edges of your once-sleek, silk-pressed hair.

About half an hour had passed since you’d both languidly stumbled into this unused office, desperately seeking refuge within what was seemingly the sole room in this building benefitting from a window that did not directly face the scorching midday sun, an oasis in a school building whose air conditioning had fallen to the whims of Murphy’s Law and had ceased to function during the city’s warmest week on record.

Nanami sat at the desk toiling away at some mission report while you were slumped on the adjacent couch, tackling a lesson plan, each of you battling on different fronts of the same war against the heavy, humid air.

The usually lively post-lunchtime coworking session you’d both been looking forward to had thus taken a sluggish tenor as you tried to focus on each of your tasks while holding onto the last bit of sanity amidst these terrible conditions that were anything but workable.

You’d swapped the hot tea you’d normally share at this time with a much less optimal cold drink that wound up being more ice than coffee, and instead of the usual buzz of conversation often consisting of Nanami delivering his scathing commentary on the latest episode of the new baking reality show you’d both been watching in tandem, a quiet stillness descended on you, only intermittently interrupted either by a sigh, the clacking sound of his keyboard, or the scribbling sound of your pen gliding across your tablet.

Out the cracked window, the cheerful chatter of some students who had gathered outside around some cold refreshments could be heard, and you wished you could emulate a fraction of their eager energy.

Only once the pen you’d been holding flew out of your hand, bouncing past your feet and rolling down somewhere under the couch, did you realize that you’d been absentmindedly tapping it against your knee in your fidgety distraction, its unceremonious clattering sound pulling you out of your contemplation.

You bent down and lazily padded the area just underneath the couch, first with your foot, then with your fingers, but they came up empty, finding only the ridged hardwood floor.

“Ah, shit,” you muttered under your breath. Now was not the time for this.

A very irrational reevaluation of the merits of completing a lesson plan in time for said lesson began to creep into your thoughts, and just as you began to contemplate abandoning ship for the day, Nanami calmly rose from his seat and made his way towards you, having observed the entire debacle out of the corner of his eye.

“This damn pen…” you bemoaned as you padded the same area over and over again, as though it would magically materialize after the umpteenth pass.

“I’ll get it,” Nanami said coolly as he crouched by you, right in the cramped space separating the coffee table from the couch that seated you.

You lifted your head, and it was in this newfound proximity that you took in just how much his tone contrasted with his demeanor, and how affected he was by these sweltering conditions.

It was evidenced in the way his disheveled hair clung onto his sweaty forehead, his tie off and draped over his shoulders, in the way the first two buttons of his shirt were undone, exposing his gleaming collarbone and in the haphazard manner by which his sleeves were pushed back to his elbows, wrinkled and uneven. It had you wondering whether it was just you or if this heat wave somehow managed to melt away a certain poise Nanami usually carried, giving him a rugged, slightly more cavalier allure that even you found to be rather novel.

It crossed your mind that perhaps it was a different kind of heat, one that had little to do with the weather that held dominion over these wandering thoughts.

Nanami brought his knuckles to the floor, extending his legs behind him and holding his body straight and taut as he flexed his arms, lowering himself in a controlled movement before dipping his head to glance underneath the couch. He reached one hand just by your right foot, while expertly hovering his chest just a couple of inches above the floor. The subtle bulging of his muscles beneath his shirt as they tensed certainly did not escape you.

Your eyes flicked first to the pen Nanami was now handing you, then back to his face, where you found a nearly imperceptible air of contentment and the beginnings of an amused smile. A silent testament, you thought, to his successful little expedition.

“Lifesaver,” you said, returning his smile. “My students get to have a class tomorrow, thanks to you.” Your attempt at feigning a relaxed demeanor held, until, that is, your fingers brushed against his as you took the pen, and you tried to suppress the involuntary hitch in your breath at the contact.

Get it together, girl, you thought to yourself, as you watched Nanami bring his hand to the floor, still without a word, expecting him to return to his seat.

Instead, with a measured exhale, Nanami lowered himself back towards the ground.

“I can feel it, you know…” When he finally spoke, it was barely audible over the buzzing fan, addressing the floor more than you.

“Hmm?” you said as you cautiously glanced down towards him.

“The tension.” He concluded his sentence, his voice even, low in tone yet loud in the relative silence. He held the position, his body a straight line from shoulders to toes, arms at a near-perfect right angle. His eyes kept straight ahead, and you could’ve sworn that it was only once your eyes traced over his arms, sparse hairs smoothened by the glistening sweat, that he finally extended them, raising himself in a smooth movement with a light grunt as he exhaled.

You felt your chest tighten.

“What tension?” you asked, unsure why you were murmuring, fairly sure that you should be bracing to hear whatever he had to say next.

“One,” he let out, his voice a low rumble, tilting his head up and peering at you through the blonde strands of hair that now fell over his eyes, holding your gaze just long enough for it to be noticeable, before his arms bent again, exerting muscles that revealed a striking pattern stretched over clearly defined veins. He lowered himself once more and pushed back up, a swift movement this time.

“Two,” he spoke again as he lowered himself into what was now clearly yet another push-up.

Amid this unbearable heat and out of seemingly nowhere, Nanami Kento had broken into some damn push ups.

“The tension. In my neck, through my shoulders, down to my lower back. That chair is stiff, less than ergonomic. And sitting in it all day…” he trailed off, his eyes lingering on you before he counted again.

“Three.”

Despite the now unmistakable smirk stretching Nanami’s lips, his tone was deceptively even, holding a rough rasp devoid of any strain, and it went straight to your core, trickling as a tingle down between your legs as your throat suddenly went tight and dry.

“Sitting in it all day…” he started again, picking up where he left off. “Something about the stretch of this exercise brings me so much relief.”

Nanami returned his focus to the space on the floor, right between his palms, allowing you the opportunity to keenly observe him. By now, he’d slipped into a fluid rhythm, each push upwards, each descent executed with control. His breathing was audibly rhythmic, quick exhales as he pumped his arms taut, muscles shifting as they flexed. He made the whole thing look so effortless, so damn hot.

You mentally clung to the justification that you were truly defenceless with your eyes here, on Nanami, on his flexing arms but your thoughts decidedly elsewhere, faced with your traitorous mind and the trips it took down memory lane, back to other occasions during which you’d witnessed Nanami engaged in a similar exercise in a much different context, echoes from moments of shared passion past. You tried to defend yourself; it wasn’t your fault if, suddenly, momentarily, it became the most rational idea in the world to join him on this office floor and to slide yourself just under him. That if you were quiet enough, perhaps you could avoid being heard over the whirring sound of this fan, fluting up in the air and traveling out the ajar door and window, and—

That train of thought sent a jolting awareness of your surroundings, of your location, surging you back to reason.

“Sixteen,” you heard Nanami’s voice reemerging to the forefront of your mind.

You straightened your spine, pushing the capped end of your pen into your thigh in a misplaced attempt to maintain what little grip you had remaining on yourself and to find your footing, refusing to concede defeat to this dangerous game he had instigated.

“Nanami-san,” you started, the formal addition of the honorific to his surname eliciting a light chuckle that settled into further reinvigoration as he rose again, his muscles scrumptiously straining with push-up number God-knows-what as he picked up the pace. “I don’t know if the heat finally got to your head, or if this is your very roundabout way of asking for a massage or what, but you are doing entirely too much and I should—”

“Did someone say massage?”

A familiar, boisterous voice rang in the tense silence, causing you to jump in your seat and prompting Nanami to snap his head up towards the door. “I heard—Woah, you two are living good in here! Why are you gatekeeping the cool room?”

“Gojo, have you ever heard of knocking?” Nanami said, his tone finding a level of acerbity that was even further pronounced than the one he typically addressed him with.

“So mean to your favorite senpai, Nanamin… Besides, door’s wide open, and you don't seem to be busy working, so it’s fair game, right?” He looked to you for a confirmation you were still far too shaken to give, even if you’d wanted to humor him.

Gojo appeared to be the least affected by the heat wave out of everyone. He’d maintained his usual energetic demeanor, which he displayed now by shamelessly waltzing into the office like he personally owned it. “Oh, hey… Where the hell did you find a fan?”

Nanami let out an audible sigh that sounded more like a groan, rising from what would be his final push-up for now into a kneeling position before getting back on his feet. For what felt like the first time in forever, you could finally feel yourself breathe again, Gojo’s interruption having managed to defuse the dangerously charged energy that almost had you willing to risk it all. Only when the heat made a resurgence to the forefront of your mind did you realize just how dangerously dulled your senses had been rendered.

“Nanamiiiin, I’m so good at massages. Relax and let me give you one…” Gojo said as he extended his arms forward and wiggled them towards a defenceless Nanami.

“Absolutely not,” Nanami said firmly, backing up towards where you were still seated on the couch, only cornering himself and you in the process.

You scooted aside on the two-seater, grabbing your tablet in one hand and gently pulling on Nanami’s arm with the other, enacting your spontaneous plan for a quick escape.

“Come on, Nanamin,” you crooned, using the sobriquet Gojo relentlessly employed. “You were just complaining about the tension, right? Gojo barely seems to feel the heat, and he’s far stronger than me. I’m sure he’ll do a better job than I could ever dream.”

A few swift movements and you’d maneuvered up from the sofa, and stood behind the desk, decidedly flipping the positions you and Nanami had taken for the afternoon.

“She is so right!” Gojo explained, only further reinvigorated by your endorsement. “Sit back, Nanami! It will be my honor to take care of my bestie!”

You kept your gaze on Nanami as he fixed you through narrowed eyes that telegraphed the quiet wrath he had for you for this transgression, for the ultimate act of betrayal it was to inflict Gojo Satoru upon him, a man for with virtually no concept of personal space, on an unbearably humid day like today, no less.

Under different circumstances, you would feel a tiny twinge of guilt for pulling a gambit like this; alas, Nanami had chosen his game, and you’d chosen yours in turn, one that just so happened to involve the exploitation of the godsend that was a classic and chaotic Gojo-induced distraction. So instead, you snickered in your corner as you watched the white-haired menace slide himself behind Nanami and unnecessarily wrap his arms around his chest, eliciting a visceral swat of a hand, along with a cautionary “Don’t” from his visibly irritated counterpart.

You caught Kento’s eye and met his challenging look with a smirk not unlike the one plastered on his face not two minutes ago, when he’d subtly yet relentlessly teased you.

Would there be hell to be paid later? Probably. But for now, you could at least slip away while the two former schoolmates bickered. Now you thought that perhaps joining the students in partaking in refreshments wouldn’t be such a bad idea. You could use a chance to cool off.

And to stop yourself from slipping any further.

If your so-called mask had been hanging on by a thread, it was not in a single moment, but gradually, over the months which followed, that it completely chipped away, much like driftwood being nudged away from the shore by the lapping of gentle waves. 

As you and Kento spent more time together, you both grew more comfortable around one another, becoming more honest and comfortable, and gradually uncovering each other’s strengths and flaws, preferences and aversions, virtues and vices with an acceptance that felt natural and easy.

Your bond had strengthened by now, having long since crossed the line delineating work from life partners, and you were now bound by a promise to make the ultimate promise to one another.

In between these deeper, candid moments, smaller revelations emerged: the subtle ticks and habits, the unintentional mannerisms and underlying drives, the little unspoken details that were concomitant with a blossoming courtship. Suffice it to say that you’d inevitably shared your predilection for Kento’s arms in many ways, some less subtle than others.

On one such occasion, it had slipped out a confession concealed in a question, one day as you were having breakfast together. After some light prodding from your part, Nanami finally relented and gave you an answer other than “everything” when you’d playfully asked him what his favorite feature of yours was; “fingerprints of joy” was the exact term he’d used as a simple yet touching description of your dimples whenever you’d smile, an answer that made you seriously consider tempering your response once he’d inevitably flip the question back to you.

Tried as you might, you ended up being significantly less civil than he was, “my favorite necklace” being one of the bolder terms you’d not-so-facetiously employed, contrasting the softer, playful drag of your finger over his bicep.

The comfortable rapport that had settled between you was not one you took for granted; it was one of the few wherein you could simply be yourself and not have it be “too much”; it was the same intimacy that unveiled the tormenting tease beneath Kento’s surface. And there was an inimitable joy derived from appreciating the man that you loved, warm fuzzies associated with making him blush, or smile, or laugh, whenever you flipped the usual script and when it was you who placed him in the crosshairs of your playful provocation, for once.

By now, you were reasonably convinced that the storm had sufficiently passed, and you figured you could breathe easier, relieved that the passage of time, along with a normalized exposure to Nanami Kento, had successfully dulled the more ardent manifestations of your fixation with your favorite physical trait of his.

What you certainly did not expect was for what you would only later understand to be a dormant force to re-surge with a furious vengeance in the early hours of the morning during a quick weekend getaway.

It was a trip you’d secretly planned in a relatively short time, fueled largely by an experience you’d had one evening just a few days prior, when your fiancé had returned home exhausted after a tough mission closing out a gruelling multi-week assignment.

Though you weren’t unused to the physically and emotionally taxing nature of your duties, you’d hated what you’d seen that night, in the culmination of weeks of relentless work with no break. Reserved as he was, Nanami was not infallible. You’d grown to know him very well by now, more than anyone else; you’d immediately detected the telltale signs of exhaustion, made apparent in his tone, devoid of its usual edge, and in the weariness etched on his face, and perhaps more evidently, in the way that he’d completely crashed as soon as he’d dragged himself out of the quick shower he’d barely managed to stay awake to take. He was burning out, long overdue for a break.

That night, you stayed up in the early hours of the morning, concocting your plan.

You’d worked through most of the night to pull as many strings as a Grade 2 sorcerer ostensibly could, drafting messages aimed to cash in on the decent amount of goodwill you’d garnered amongst your colleagues over the past few years. Ultimately, however, what truly helped you bring this endeavor over the finish line was leveraging your connection to one of the owners of a top-of-the-line, nearly always sold-out kikufuku shop, in conjunction with what was now a burgeoning friendship with Gojo. Although, in retrospect, you suspected that the fellow teacher would have settled for having any involvement with a plan of keeping a secret from Nanami as being adequate compensation. 

By the time you’d clocked out on the following day, you’d managed the impressive feat of securing some overlapping time off for Nanami and yourself, and of successfully planning a short couple’s getaway.

A few days later, the fruits of your labor surfaced in the form of a considerably more tranquil version of Nanami.

Today was already the final day of what now felt like too short of a trip, and having opted to sleep in on the two mornings prior, you’d both made it a point to wake up early in order to catch today’s sunrise over the beach. With the consequences of a very late night still weighing heavily on your eyelids, you’d both emerged from a gruelling battle against sleepiness, just barely victorious.

It was just before five in the morning when you were groggily strolling the sandy beach situated just behind the resort you were staying at.

An inconspicuous glance at Nanami disclosed his relaxed posture and his softened facial features, a stark departure from the overstressed man who’d slumped into your shared home a few days ago. Your heart warmed now, as you observed him in this relatively rare form, dressed in a relaxed t-shirt and khaki shorts, arms moving in a loose, subtle swing as he walked carrying his sandals in one hand and a beach blanket in the other, how his hair was ethereally tousled by the whispering late summer ocean breeze.

He was lost in thought, chest rising and falling in deep, intentional breaths, and you hoped that he too, was taking in the salty scent of the ocean, that he too, could anchor himself in the serenity of the moment as the sound of the waves set a gentle rhythm to your sleepy steps, that he could ground himself in the soft feeling of warm sand yielding under his bare feet. And if this moment could serve as a modicum of respite, as a sliver of an escapist refuge both now and in the inevitable future moments when they would be called for, then you would consider your mission as being accomplished.

You halted your march just as the sky began to blush with hues of golden orange, towards which you turned, and Nanami followed suit, setting down the blanket he’d brought for you to sit on. You hadn’t made it too far from the resort, just enough to escape the early morning crowd; only a few other fellow beachgoers were sparsely spread out on the semi-secluded section of the beach. You settled onto the left end of the blanket, expecting him to join beside you, only to feel the unanticipated pressure of his body behind you instead.

Nanami carefully repositioned himself, gently snaking one arm around your waist and the other around your shoulders, pulling you toward him and enclosing you in a tender hug from behind. You mentally traced his movements by the way his warm breath moved from fanning the top of your head, over the back of your neck, and onto the side of your cheek, as he punctuated his journey with a soft kiss just below your jawline before his head settled on the right side of yours.

You closed your eyes, a contented sigh escaping your lips, and you wished nothing more than to ingrain this little haven of tranquility into your mind, for it to become the unforgettable safe place to which you could always revert.

Just as you turned your gaze to witness the sun now making its definitive ascent over the ocean, you thought you felt Nanami’s grip tighten ever so slightly in a shift so nearly imperceptible that you questioned whether it had even happened. It was a concern that quickly became secondary to your sudden awareness of the flimsy nature of the fabrics comprising his cotton t-shirt and your mesh cover-up forming the trivial barrier between his warm, well-defined arms against your cool skin, to the compromising position you now were in.

A sudden tension traveled through your body, seeking a place to nest as you fidgeted with the hem of your top, trying to return your focus to the wonderful scene unfolding ahead.

“What a perfect sunrise,” you ventured, in your best attempt to sound casual.

Nanami only offered a low hum in agreement, resonating and vibrating through your ear. And then, you felt it again: a slight upward shift of his hold, a minute increase in pressure.

This time, it was unmistakable.

Every sensation intensified tenfold in that moment. His muscular chest pressing into your back, his breath tickling your neck, the crook of his arm resting gently just below your chin, close, so dangerously close that you could lick it.

Without much thought, you brought your hands up and closed them over his biceps, at least as much as they could possibly wrap around their circumference, and slid over them, getting a good feel for the flexed muscles underneath his skin, until you landed on his elbows.

And then you pressed inwards.

Your move met no resistance, resulting in his caged arms further tightening across your chest. A sharp exhale escaped your lips as the feeling reverberated through your body, sending a shiver down your spine and straight to your core. You instinctively brought your thighs together, their friction only exacerbating the very sensation you were looking to evade. Your breath hitched, and you felt your mouth go dry.

As you tilted your head, leaning further back into Nanami, something you didn’t think could be possible, you could now distinguish the accelerating thumping sound of your heartbeat against your chest just under where his arms held you. You couldn’t imagine that he wasn’t privy to the escalating effect this all had on you.

He sat up straighter, a shift in movement that pushed his elbow right below your neck. Again, you felt it, gradual pressure—measured, steady, much like its perpetrator.

Just within biting distance, came the intrusive thought, popping into your mind like a sudden gust of wind in still air. It would be the first of many over the next few minutes, and you didn’t exactly know how much time passed as you staved off the ones that erred on the more wanton side of things, the ones that had you making a mental, logistical calculus of how much you could reasonably get away with, on this waterfront sparsely dotted by a few fellow beachgoers.

Nanami’s steady voice suddenly rumbled behind you, almost rattling you. “Quite the breathtaking sight, well worth the early wake up.”

And before you knew it, it was over. The sun was now up in earnest.

Nanami slowly loosened his grip on you, and still, you almost toppled to the side as you returned to reality, to where you were, to your packed itinerary for this final day of this short getaway, the one you’d meticulously planned and shared with Nanami with an excitement he’d reciprocated, a plan you found yourself now willing to completely discard and replace with the other, much simpler one you now had in mind.

You slowly turned to face Kento, attempting to gauge his body language, and found his eyes still fixed on the soaring sun behind you,  engaged in a slow cross-arm stretch, and you could almost see the tension release and exit through his gentle sigh. If he was perturbed at all, he showed no signs of it.

Then, with a sudden shift, he switched arms, locking eyes with you.

“Shall we get breakfast, then?” he asked, casual as ever. “That concierge did a solid job pitching that brioche French toast. I’m itching to try it now.”

And had you not known him better, you would’ve missed the near imperceptible lilt of the tone of his voice, the hints of mirth crinkling at the corner of his eyes, the echoes of a knowing smirk under his deceptively soft smile.

You would have missed these details, had you not known better, following this sunrise that would long stick with you, for all the improper reasons, and you wouldn’t have suspected that, far more likely than not, Nanami Kento knew exactly what the hell he was doing.

The evening on which your suspicions were confirmed came a few months later, on the tail end of a chaotically busy period.

The combined effects of missed dinners and hurried goodbyes, of long work shifts and scheduling conflicts, had compounded, barely affording Nanami so much as a stolen moment with you, much less the quality time he yearned for.

Arduous missions stretched late into nights, and he’d find you home long after you’d lost your battle against somnolence; on your end, you could almost hear the guilt of your failure to stay awake ring loudly in the silence of the early hours of the morning, when you’d find Nanami crashed next to you, with exhaustion spelled on his face.

Canceled lunch dates were communicated in brief text messages you’d punctuate with goofy animated GIFs, a consolation tactic Nanami would’ve otherwise found to be endearing had it not carried the very calculated mandate of allowing you to evade his enquiries about whether you’d found the time to eat your first meal of the day.

Pure intentions and poor luck, right places but wrong times, and the universe appeared to be conspiring against you.

All the while, sitting just beneath the surface, was the simmering unease, steady as a metronome whose pulses were the moments of lucidity that pulled Nanami out of the comfortable shroud of the feigned normalcy he’d allowed himself to slip into. It was the same sentiment that caused his throat to constrict after encountering those occasional close-call encounters that had him face a formidable cursed spirit, the same feeling that transfigured into a pit in his stomach whenever it was you who was out on the field, and he hadn’t heard from you in a while. The ever-present threat now carried the weight of something unprecedentedly precious, and every once in a while, he would be subjected to reminders that were as intangible as they were painful, reminders that this line of work remained incredibly dangerous, and that this could all come to a very sudden end.

The Jujutsu Tech car came to an abrupt halt, jolting Nanami out of his contemplation.

His fingers brushed the cool metal of the door handle just as he peered into the rearview mirror from the backseat, and when his eyes locked with those of the colleague he’d spent the bulk of the week with, he found a weary gaze, reflective of the relentless pace of their recent assignments.

“Thank you for waiting, Ijichi. I should only be a few minutes,” Nanami said, giving the assistant manager an appreciative nod before exiting the car and making his way towards the training field.

On the radial bridge between surrender and acceptance, Nanami often found gratitude to be his only path out of ruinous rumination.

So today, he chose to be grateful.

Grateful for having cleared his mission much earlier than expected, and for the time this afforded him to take a trip to the campus facilities, to shower and to get into a clean change of clothes, in the hopes of catching you just as your lesson ended.

Grateful for Ijichi chauffeuring him from the dorms back to the training field where he could wait for you to wrap up your lesson and for agreeing to drive you both back home, together, finally for the first time in weeks.

Grateful for the current moment that granted him this sight of you, mid-lesson as you supervised a hand-to-hand combat session for a group of students, a view he’d grown both so fond and so familiar with.

The aluminum bleachers squeaked under Nanami’s weight as he took a seat, his eyes never leaving you as you paced behind the three pairs of students engaged in their bouts, occasionally stopping either to correct a stance or to provide some feedback. The visual transported him to a similar moment that found him on this very row of seats a little over a year and a half ago, a memory as sharp and clear as if it had occurred just yesterday.

You were alone when he noticed you.

Only a few weeks removed from the day he’d traded his briefcase for his blunt sword, an inexplicable unease and sense of displacement still loomed over Nanami’s head even as he walked the once-familiar campus grounds. His quest to locate a quiet spot to enjoy a late lunch in peace and away from one particularly aggravating Gojo Satoru led him to these training field bleachers.

He’d resigned himself to a life of relative solitude from the moment he’d crossed the threshold out of his office building for the final time, intent on leaving any semblance of his paltry attempt at a civilian’s life behind. The Jujutsu world had always been less than ideal, and a return to this life had meant making certain self-evident vows to himself, one of which being that he wouldn’t drag anyone into his orbit while he was active.

Never had he imagined that he would be the one dragged into someone’s orbit. Into yours.

You’d emerged from the field house on that early fall day, just as he opened the bento box he’d packed with the previous night’s leftovers. Even from this distance, he recognized you as the Grade 2 instructor he’d been vaguely acquainted with via cursory greetings, the one he’d continuously heard Ino speak so highly of.

Nanami observed as you entered a sequence of practice drills with your cursed weapon, a long spear that you worked so fluidly, as though it were an extension of your body. Each of your moves was a masterclass in balance between power and restraint, each strike precisely measured, each swing calculated. He watched as you thrust your weapon into wide, controlled motions that sent the long drapes of your skirt twirling in the wind, dark curls whipping around your face with your movements, the autumnal afternoon sun warmed your brown skin with a soft honeyed glow. By the time his phone vibrated to signal the end of his break, Nanami glanced down, only to find his bento untouched.

Perhaps he was compelled to take a few more late lunches following that day.

When Ino indirectly called him out on this new habit of his, it was Nanami’s ingrained inability to stray too far from candor that rendered him unable to outright deny the younger sorcerer’s cheeky hypothesis, that the true reason he’d opted to spend so many recent lunch breaks eating at those benches rather than the significantly more comfortable break room was because “the view was better out there”. Nanami understood from the moment he’d uttered his vague non-answer that it would mark the first point of exposure.

This inevitability was confirmed, a few weeks later, the cat decidedly out of the bag when Yuuji made a grand display of throwing his two thumbs up through the window just as Nanami slid into the booth seat across yours at a nearby cafe one day as he’d invited you to have tea after clearing another mission together.

“You do so well with Yuuji,” you’d said, once the teen was out of sight, dragged away by the sleeve by the young Nobara. “That boy is very lucky to have you as his teacher.”

“Well, technically I’m not a teacher,” Nanami replied in a tone that failed to convince even himself.

“You teach him things, Nanami. That’s the textbook definition of a teacher.”

A silent pause settled between you. Nanami stirred his tea absentmindedly as he watched you cut the apple strudel you’d ordered into smaller pieces.

“I’ve been thinking about joining the faculty,” he said, the words barely formed before leaving his lips.

“Oh, that’s wonderful, Nanami! I would be so thrilled!” you exclaimed. Nanami watched you quickly straighten up in an obvious attempt to dial back your expressed excitement, but he’d already witnessed you perk up, your genuine reaction stirring something deep and pleasant within him.

“We all would,” you quickly added. “Especially Gojo. You know he would immediately take credit for it.”

Nanami brought his eyes shut and rubbed his temples at the thought, “Please, I’m not even there yet. I’ve not talked to Gojo about this…” He paused again, opening his eyes to lock onto yours. “Or anyone else, for that matter.”

“Oh… So I’m getting the exclusive?” You replied in playful conspiracy. ”I feel so privileged.”

Nanami nodded quietly with a light, nervous chuckle, picking at the biscuit on his plate but not finding the will to take a bite from it.

“But in all seriousness, you should go for it. You’re a great mentor and a skilled sorcerer. The school could badly use someone like you.”

To this, he said nothing, his eyes wandering out the window in contemplation.

“However,” you ventured after a brief moment. “If you have any reservations, and you ever want to talk about them…” You trailed off, leaving the invitation suspended in the air.

Nanami’s reservations were so many, most of which he couldn’t possibly attempt to articulate even as they jockeyed for position in his mind. When he glanced back at you, he could sense you hanging onto his silence.

“You’ve done this for a while. Tell me your best piece of advice about teaching.”

He watched you gather your thoughts, pressing your lips together and narrowing your eyes like he’d seen you do countless times when a student would ask you a question and you would carefully formulate an answer.

“If you ever forget what it’s like to be a kid, get out. There’s no point in doing any of this if you can’t place yourself in their shoes, or yours, ten, fifteen years ago. As long as you remember the powerlessness and the lack of agency that comes not only with being young but with being condemned to our way of life, to seeing curses…” Nanami watched you pause to take the first bite at a piece of strudel, and as you chewed, he could almost see the rest of your thought forming through your eyes. “It’s such a burden, one no one should bear alone, least of all a child. At least, that’s how I see it.”

Before this moment, Nanami had tried repeatedly so, to qualify this magnetic draw to you, to label it. Was it the juxtaposition of the soft-spoken instructor against the fierceness you appeared to carry? Was it your nuanced condemnation of a system, all the while dedicating yourself to its people?

Perhaps it was at this moment, Nanami would ponder later, that he’d decided that this way of life was one worth living rather than simply surviving.

“Hey, you. You look familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?” the playful tone of your voice snapped Nanami, who had been too engrossed to notice your approach, back to the current moment.

Gratitude.

He rose from his seat, bringing his hands up to gently cup your face, and leaned in to brush his lips against yours in a tender kiss. You froze momentarily, caught a bit off guard; for as physically affectionate as you now were with one another, neither of you was usually the type to engage in public displays of this, particularly not on campus. Today, Nanami quietly broke this unspoken precedent.

Only the first of the several he would break later.

“We have a ride, if you’re ready to leave now,” he said after he slowly pulled away. The notes of your lip balm were of vanilla, but to him, they carried the familiar taste of a fragile slice of happiness.

“Yeah… I’m beyond ready,” you murmured, still reeling a bit at the surprise, at the intensity of the moment. “Let’s get the hell out of here before I get roped into some last-minute bullshit, like last week.”

If the lapse in Nanami’s usual propriety was displayed in that one kiss, yours would manifest in several ways before you made the short ride back to your shared apartment.

And much as he’d done on so many occasions from the training field bleachers, Nanami simply watched you.

He watched as you leaned into him in the backseat of the car, running your hand against his thigh, innocently at first, then moving dangerously close to his crotch with every caressing stroke. The self-satisfied grin that stretched your lips as you detected a hitch in his breath did not escape him.

He watched as you teased him on the elevator ride up to your apartment as you pressed your back against his front, giving him a subtle, deliberate press and grind and catching his eyes in the reflective panel, just in time to watch his gaze falter ever-so-slightly. This, too, he’d remember.

He watched you, knowing that you enjoyed all of it, that you thrilled at the mischievous pleasure it was to poke the agitated bear, and he let you have your fun, exercising a restraint he didn’t think himself capable to maintain after a long, stressful and restrictive week spent nearly entirely away from you.

But as soon as you crossed the threshold into your shared apartment, as soon as he shut the door behind him and turned around to find your hands gripping onto his tie, pulling, yanking, his face down towards yours, almost too zealously?

Nanami decided he’d watched long enough.

He pushed back into you, his hands working in concert as one brought your fists together and off their hold while the other slipped into your hair, kneading your scalp down to the base of your nape. Assertive yet tender, his touch was a study in contrasts, sending a single, tantalizing shiver down your spine, igniting into a fizzing warmth in your stomach.

Your tongues met right before his searing lips closed onto yours in a kiss that was so urgent, so fervent, dripping with an eagerness you hadn’t felt in a while. He swallowed your whimper as your back lightly hit the vestibule wall, a reaction that wrenched a low, self-satisfied growl from his chest. Nanami could feel it now, more than ever—several days’ worth of unmistakably pent-up energy coalescing into a single, white hot ache.

He was unwilling to relinquish any closeness, not even now, as you peeled off him momentarily with a small, breathless gasp, two of your quick, heaving breaths to each of his. He felt your drumming pulse on his lips as he settled into the side of your neck, his mouth just below your jawline.

His mind replayed the slightly disappointed expression he’d discerned on your face earlier this morning, which now felt like a lifetime ago, after a phone call he’d later admonish himself for taking summoned him, along with his fellow Grade 1 sorcerers, to the school for a meeting that definitely could have been an email, just as you’d brought him a cup of orange juice to pair with his toast. He heard himself groan out in frustration now, at the memory of the first breakfast you were having together in weeks being unceremoniously cut short, and he nipped at your throat, eliciting a moan from you that faded into the background of the hazy, regretful thoughts that were reinvigorating him to make up for lost time.

The late afternoon sun was mostly blocked out by the heavy living area window curtains, which had remained drawn, a testament to the hurried exits you both made earlier. Nanami’s eyes were slowly getting accustomed to the dark, just enough to catch your warm brown eyes searching his as you gently pressed your palm against his chest, blinking up slowly at him with an unreadable gaze. He sensed you shifting your left foot behind your right one and glanced down just in time to watch you slip out of your second shoe, but not before you slid your knee up the inside of his leg, pressing and rubbing against his crotch teasingly, evoking an uncontrolled hiss out of him at the unexpected contact.

“Missed me, Kento?” you crooned.

A light chuckle rumbled up through Nanami’s chest. “Maybe just a little,” he mumbled.

“Just a little? Just maybe? Come on now. We’re well into a few weeks married now. Surely you can be more honest with me,” you replied, in mock offence.

“Oh, you don’t find me honest?” he said with a scoff, something dark in his response.

Instead of pulling away from this newfound, compromising position, Nanami doubled down, firmly pressing his hips to yours, forcing your leg back down, and you found yourself now trapped between the wall and the visibly voracious man before you. 

For the brief second he brought his head down to your shoulder, with his hot breath ghosting over your neck and his lips grazing your ear, you expected him to say something, to call you out, to chastise you, but instead, his response came as a slow, deliberate roll of his hips against yours, ensuring you felt every last inch of the increasingly stiffening problem you’d helped create against your core.

You arched into him with a throaty gasp as his lips found the base of your throat once more, lightly nibbling. His hand closed on your hip, firmly gripping it in place as he leaned against the wall to summarily kick off his shoes, not unlike you just did a mere few seconds ago.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” you ventured, in between the two languid grinds of his hips that pushed his thigh to settle between your legs. “Are you honest?”

The dark chuckle preceding Nanami’s reply should have served as your first warning.

“Are you?”

His fingers twisted around the hem of your shirt, and you could already tell, in the way he pulled it over your head in one swift movement, lobbing it over his shoulder with a dexterous flick of his wrist, that he would waste no time in dispensing with your clothing, that his desire to ignite this fuse burned just as brightly, perhaps even more fiercely, than your own.

You’d barely heard your top land unceremoniously on the linoleum floor before feeling his fingers reaching to do the same with your camisole, goosebumps erupting where he grazed your skin, spreading like wildfire. You pulled at his tie again, pulling him down and planting another kiss on his lips, something slower, more sensual than the first. Only when its straps slipped down your arms did you realize that he’d used the moment to unhook your bra, and you shook out of it, letting it clatter to the floor as well.

Your second attempt at undoing his tie was thwarted once more, something slightly rougher in the way he grabbed your hands and drove them back down to your sides.

“Turn around,” Nanami said, brusquely. The space was quite dark, but you didn’t need to discern the expression on his face to understand that the strained gentleness of his tone did not make this any less of a command, one you gladly obliged.

Your steadying hands met a texture, cooler and smoother than expected, meeting a bit of resistance as they glided over the surface. You felt a bit heady for the short moment it took you to reorient yourself, to realize your compromising position, to recognize the blurry outline of your own reflection in the flat, full-length mirror mounted against the vestibule wall.

You stilled and patiently waited, agitation melding with eager anticipation as your mind associated a vivid visual with the sound emanating behind you, one of the audible friction of sleeves sliding upward against bare skin, an enticing prelude of what you knew was to come.

Nanami trailed his hand along the waistband of your skirt, the one he loved so much; it looked so good on you, it was so easy to remove. He hooked his deft fingers and slowly slipped them downwards until he met the resistance of the thickest part of your thighs, pushing past before allowing gravity to complete the endeavor. Your senses heightened as he haltingly did the same with your underwear; the slickness of your arousal was untouched but felt, unseen but heard as he peeled off the final barrier covering you, the faint rustling of your underwear dropping onto the flooring marking the definitive end of his task.

Through the reflection, you’d observed Kento’s actions.

Through the reflection, he’d observed you.

Your stomach fluttered with an invigorating sensation, and you thought you could weep in restless anticipation.

“Truth framed in silver,” he said, his tone guileful, his voice growing huskier with each word as he hovered his lips just above your ear, “the mirror never lies.”

The shift in tenor of this encounter was suddenly palpable, and just as you were about to offer your best attempt at a matching response, his arm encircled you at the waist and he pulled you back towards him with a strong press of his fingertips into your hip, sending a jolt that went straight to your core. You caught it all in the reflection, a sight so deliciously distracting that you failed to notice his other hand surreptitiously sliding down between your legs.

Nanami hovered just over you, fingers lightly brushing against where you desired him the most, just long enough for you to suffer the ache of unspent need, just close enough for you to feel the pressure which had built within you and was now left hanging, and he found just enough dampness to gauge how utterly aroused you were. You bucked at the contact, barely stifling an impatient moan, eliciting another low scoff from Nanami, your second warning of the evening.

That Nanami now held the upper hand, and that you would suffer a bit for it.

For a moment, you thought about how quickly the tables had turned in this little back-and-forth. If you were going down, you thought, it wouldn’t be without a fight. Just as you had half a mind to formulate a witty, provocative comment to retain some semblance of a footing in this battle of wits, Nanami slid his middle finger into you, hooking it upward, finding, in record time, the spot he’d long since learned to reduce your body to pure need.

An unbridled, breathy moan cascaded out of your lips, ringing loudly in the charged silence, a sound almost as obscene as the lack of resistance met by his articulate finger, and as the slick sound it made. You didn’t have to look up to feel Nanami’s steady gaze on your face as he took in every last detail of your reaction.

His fingers moved with gentle insistence, picking up a controlled but unrelenting pace. His ring finger joined a short moment later, padded tips rubbing against the most sensitive parts of your walls, moving with intensity, with intent, carrying the express purpose of proving a salient point. The slow pleasure building at the base of your spine had you squirming, incrementally bending down, instinctively going as low as Nanami’s grasp would allow you, his arm otherwise holding you firmly in place.

“Kento…” you whimpered, squeezing your eyes shut as you fought to stay tethered to reality.

“Don’t look away.” It’s another command uttered into your ear, traveling straight between your legs, his tone carrying a slight harshness this time and you opened your eyes, meeting what you knew to be a deeply watchful gaze, even as you only barely began to make out his features through eyes that were still getting accustomed to dimly lit surroundings.

Your head dropped slightly, and your eyes returned to the reflection of his hand and of his fingers. He picked up the pace, his movements growing more dauntless, as if he was putting on a show with an air of nonchalant pride. Your eyes glued to the sight of his calloused fingers repeatedly rubbing against that one sensitive area, the one he’d learned to relentlessly exploit in moments like these, whenever he both wanted and needed to bring you to a quick undoing.

It was too much; the feeling of Kento’s long fingers working you, the sounds they made and how they mingled with your escalating whimpers; the occasional brush of his palm against you, the sensation of the wet line of kisses he traced from your bare shoulder to the side of your neck, his quickening breath on your exposed skin. You felt all of it, each element inching you closer towards the sweet solace of release after over a week of having to go without.

But what ultimately did it was the reflection in the mirror, the one that granted you an angle you were unused to, a visual whose details you were already committing to memory. There was just something about witnessing his fingers and the way they drove into you, twisting, seeking to unlock the deepest parts of you.

Your knack for ascribing meaning to the abstract concepts, a strength you often leaned on as a teacher, was now squarely working against you, etching indelible associations into your mind.

Like the manifestation of sheer strength earned through repetition and grit, the one Kento drew from to defeat those curses on a regular basis with dexterous swings of his arm, the same strength that now held you against him, the same strength powering his movements.

Or the precision he’d used that first time you’d watched him chop those vegetables in his kitchen, what now felt like eons ago, and how it was analogous to the way he was now driving into you with practiced precision.

Or even the rhythmic pull of the muscle against the edge of the fabric of his shirt sleeve and the way it sat snug on the curve of his forearm, adorned by the gleaming band of his watch, its cool metallic band occasionally brushing against you as he moved.

It was like that distant memory of the first time you’d been taken with the way he’d rolled up his sleeve in that infirmary, a quiet assertion of competence, of power, as he’d prepared to bring his task of filing his report to completion.

And how it was now you that Nanami Kento sought to bring to completion.

It was the last coherent thought you formed before the coil within you finally tightened beyond capacity. You were desperately chasing your imminent release, your hips rocking helplessly against his fingers, against his palm, greedily chasing that friction, and suddenly you were there, right over the edge. Words of warning sat on the tip of your tongue, not quite fully formed, but when your eyes focused on his, you saw the exact moment he read you.

“Tell me how you’ve missed this,” he said, and it was a gentler tone that carried words that appeared to be for him as much as they were for you. “Show me.”

“Fuck, I’m—,” you breathed, trying but failing to catch the thought before it escaped you.

The first part of his request would go unfulfilled; you wouldn’t get the words out, except for a light curse as you were hit with the thrilling force of your release. As for the latter part, he wouldn’t have to ask twice.

You clenched around his fingers, hard, quivering through the breathless cries that fluted up into the air as you tipped your head back into his chest, clutching the arm that was still holding on to you. Nanami gave one insistent final press into your upper wall before stilling and letting you ride out your climax, soft praises in his low voice spilling into your ear, words you could only discern once your moans subsided moments later, once you began to come back to yourself.

When you reopened your eyes, you caught, in the reflection, the intense gaze of the architect of your unraveling and found something familiarly ruthless brimming just beneath the surface.

Nanami was far from being done with you.

The realization sent another tingling between your legs, causing you to inadvertently clench around the fingers you only now registered had remained inside you. After a moment, he began to pull them out in a tantalizingly slow, drag, and you certainly didn’t miss the very deliberate brush of his hand back down against you, your slippery release aiding the downwards slide of his palm, past his wrist and just far enough to feel the ridges of his forearm which formed an unfamiliar but welcome sensation for your muscles to naturally clench around.

It crossed your mind that Kento was being premeditated in his movements, a hypothesis that was almost immediately supported once he rubbed his palm down once, twice, and a third time against your sensitive flesh before pulling away, meeting the slightest resistance as your body instinctively bucked up against his hand, and as it tried to keep a hold on it before he lifted his hand to your eye level. And when he extended the fingers of his hand, moving them slowly, presenting the sheen of your slick on them, showcasing with excruciating detail the mess you’d made on him, you understood that this man was dead set on being particularly relentless this evening.

Nanami leaned deeper over your shoulder, his ear pressed to your cheek, and brought his fingers to his mouth, licking them off, one by one, slowly, meticulously, his eyes fixed on yours through this once innocuous mirror, and all you could do was watch, exhale at the sight, and try not to lose the remainder of your mind at his low hums of satisfaction, at the sloppy sounds of his tongue laving over his fingers, and then down his arm over where he’d just dragged it against you.

A fucking menace.

Once he was through, Kento took half a step back, and you instinctively backed up into his steps, into him, knees feeling a bit shaky as your bare ass met his rigid hardness prominent even through the barriers provided by his pants.

The contact jolted some lucidity back into you, returning your capacity to discern further beyond the shapes reflected to you, to spot the nuances, to study the facial expressions you’d spent the last couple of years learning, a subject you could confidently teach an extensive course on from sheer memory. You could see them now, the small tells you’d picked up on throughout your relationship, evidenced in this particular furrowing of his brows, in the tightness of his jaw, in the way his shoulders were drawn taut in an attempt to contain an inordinate amount of tension. They were the ones confirming that Nanami Kento was also only hanging on by a thread, that maybe you still had a chance to recoup some of your lost ground, that perhaps you shouldn’t count yourself out just yet.

It was a notion that revitalized you.

So you bent over, leaning onto your hands on either side of the mirror’s edge, and pushed back against him, something of a long, most deliberate grind, your bare backside brushing against the fabric of his pants to which he let out an audibly sharp exhale and a small jump back from behind you.

“There you are,” you murmured playfully, releasing a self-contented giggle as you felt him twitch within the confines of his boxers.

You leaned further back, trying to reach him again, seeking to recreate that enticing friction, but Kento was more swift this time around. He caught you, pulling you up and firmly holding you flush against his chest.

“Tell me—” he started, his hot breath causing you to inadvertently buck into him, interrupting him. He steadied himself in recovery, snaking his arm around you and across your chest, returning his mouth to your ear and locking eyes with you once more before resuming. “Tell me, was it honesty from your part when you copped out, that one time I held you like this?”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” you replied defiantly, feigning ignorance of the dire direction in which this conversation was headed.

Because you knew damn well what he was referring to. You’d known it, as soon as Nanami’s arms slid around you from this angle, squeezing the top of your chest in this particular way, the memory of that long weekend at the beach resort came rushing back to you, carrying along with it the feel of warm sand between your toes, the sound of crashing waves, the taste of salt on your lips, and the feeling of coming this close to tipping over even as you were held in place, of falling even as you sat firmly on sand, of vocalizing that one thing you’d wanted from Nanami for a while.

He nipped at your earlobe, bringing you back to attention, before continuing, “Was it honest of you to dangle that carrot, only to pull it all away?”

You scoffed at his playful audacity. “Alright, Kento. Let’s not be revisionist here, I’m not the one who pulled away.”

“Ah, so you do know what I’m talking about. Good. Because never did I think that I would be led on by my own wife,” he said in a tone tinged with mock offence.

“Led on b— Please. Don’t even start. You and I both know you weren’t going to do anything.”

He let out a short, amused chuckle at your indignation, followed by a low hum as his eyebrow shot up in a questioning arc. “Elaborate. What do you mean by “anything”?”

You felt his words pierce through your thin veneer of indifference and land deep inside you, where the truth lay.

“At the beach, Kento? In broad daylight in the early hours of the morning, in public? Yeah, that’s not you,” you retorted, feeling your air of defiance slip with every word. Uncharacteristically off your bantering game, you tried not to wince at your rather meager attempt at evading his question.

“What’s. Not. Me?” He said as he held your gaze, a brazen challenge in his tone as he shifted his arms higher, squeezing tighter with each emphasized word, visibly not falling for your prevarication.

You felt like a weary tightrope walker, precariously swaying above a silent, perceptive audience of one, faltering in this fool’s errand that was the maintenance of this delicate self-imposed balance, tired legs wobbling, begging you to put an end to this self-inflicted turmoil, to give in to gravity and to allow yourself to fall.

Through this damn mirror, you locked eyes with Nanami, finding them heavy with intent.

And suddenly, it wasn’t so dark anymore.

“You want something,” he said softly, not a question but a declaration.

Was it the spark you saw in Kento’s eyes in the moment as he’d cornered you towards the edge of the invisible cliff?

Was it that some of the pent-up tension you’d just released had taken some of your inhibitions along with it, replaced with a hazy, slightly more relaxed perception?

Or was it simply easier to peel away from the safety of timidity into the fire of candor when it was through the artificial buffer of a mirror?

Whatever it was, it had certainly emboldened you.

Here goes everything.

“Mirror never lies, right, Kento?” You’d had no intention of reprising his words when they tumbled out of your mouth in a soft whisper. “So why don’t you tell me what it was that stopped you from finishing what you started, back then at the beach?” you heard yourself say in a tone you barely recognized, tremulous with a blatant, reciprocal lust. “From finally putting me into a real headlock and—”

You cut yourself off just as you witnessed a darkening spark cross Nanami’s eyes, brief but perceptible enough to make your stomach flip. He closed on the remaining space that turned his hold into something closer to the one you’ve been seeking for so long, with the crook of his elbow nuzzling into the base of your throat, just off center, the sensation causing you to squeeze your thighs together, and your heart to pound through your chest.

“And… What else?” he whispered, matching your low volume, warm breath brushing your nape. “Complete that thought for me.”

You shook your head, a motion that was not so much to express your negation as it was to dispel the trance threatening to take over your mind. When you opened your mouth again, an uncontrolled, nervous scoff preceded your words.

“Just answer the question, Nanami.”

You reached your arms behind to hold him on either side of his legs, a blind attempt at maintaining some form of tactile control, realizing only now, how fully clothed he was, versus how you decidedly were not, as you ran your hands over the soft fabric of his trousers; it was a striking manifestation of your positions in this balance of power, in this repartee. You felt his next deep chuckle more than you heard it, but this time you could sense an undercurrent of agitation, of your man’s willpower slipping, palpable, like static before a storm.

And so, you added, “Or will you back out of this too?”

Nanami pushed slightly into you, and you brought your hands back on either side of the mirror, steadying yourself once more.

“I see,” he started. “So you don’t think I can wait you out?” he said, rocking into you in slow movements, the sensation of his rigid length all but contradicting his statement. “You know, I was just thinking about how lucky I got with today’s assignments. Two short missions, a couple of hours each, an in-and-out, really.” He paused to gently move a loose strand of hair that had fallen over your eyes aside. “My day was a cakewalk. But yours? Early morning class, back-to-back training sessions… I’d imagine you’re tired, that you just want to lie down, therefore I’ll just wait, until you inevitably—”

He cut himself off with a hiss that extended into the lowest of groans.

You felt it before you realized that you’d decidedly let the intrusive thought win; the sinking of your teeth, more nibble than bite, into that soft compressed roll of flesh, by the elbow’s bend, just on the inside of Nanami’s arm.

It was what set him into eager motion, and everything moved so quickly after that. You spotted the decisive moment in his eyes, carrying their first visible sign of reciprocal lust.

Nanami released his grip for the first time since you’d entered the apartment, a major concession to his overpowering stance, and you nearly fell forward at the sudden shift. You watched him disappear behind you, into the obscurity of the room, as he seemingly leaned down into something of a lunge. You heard the sound of a heavy drag against the floor, followed by that of objects softly tumbling onto the ground.

“What are you—” you started.

Before you knew it, Nanami caught you by the waist once more, and gently but firmly pulled you aside as he made way for what he was sliding towards the mirror, settling it between the wall and your feet. It took you a moment to discern the distinctive shape of the entryway bench that had long graced the entrance of your home, a small navy blue couch, upholstered in supple leather, stylish in appearance, dual in it’s practicality, of serving as a spot to sit while putting on the shoes that it now clearly no longer held.

You lifted your gaze towards the mirror, and found something eagerly desirous having replaced the playful front Nanami had managed to hold thus far; if you were silently telegraphing your keenness, he was responding in kind, his eyes not leaving yours as he gently nudged you forward, your feet lifting to hang over the edge of the small couch as you kneeled onto it.

He held your gaze still, and instead of perceiving his movements, you were left to rely on the sound of a sharp metallic clink resounding loudly in the silence, followed closely by the distinctive whispery rasp of his leather belt gliding against a thick fabric and punctuated with a brisk zipper sound. When he settled behind you, returning to the proximity you’d gotten accustomed to, Kento was armed with a familiar, damp hardness that you felt on the small of your back.

For as uncharted as the territory of this angle was, you both moved wordlessly, as if this were a well-practiced dance. You lowered yourself to bring your palms flat onto the bench, your hands sliding across the smooth leather. You aligned your back, lifting your hips up and spreading your knees apart, just enough to feel an aching breeze on your core.

Nanami climbed in earnest behind you, teasing his tip right against where his fingers had worked you a mere few minutes earlier, a slow, torturous, repeated motion he relished in for some long, excruciating seconds. You whimpered in lament, struggling to deploy the words of defense and mercy dancing on the edge of your tongue. Only when you began to squirm did he place his left palm on your back, holding you in place as he began to steadily press into you, inch by inch, until he filled you, deliciously so. Short, breathy moans escaped your lips with each press, and they were met with a low, restrained hum emanating from your lover, as you adjusted to the thick, welcomed intrusion, and he waited for you as you did.

After a moment, you were practically vibrating with an unabashed need for friction, something he caught on to. He pulled you at the hips, bringing your back flush onto his chest, keeping you both on your knees. You could now admit that you both loved and hated this mirror, for the newfound angle it gave you as you watched Kento’s right hand slide up from your hips, slowly, torturously caressing you along the way, kneading the fleshy skin that sat on the side of your breast, up until his arm found its gratifying destination.

This time around, there was no half-measure when Nanami hooked his arm just below your throat, constricting you with the right amount of pressure that allowed you ample ability to breathe, but that would deny any movement beyond that, something you realized as your back arched instinctively both at the anticipation and the actual hold. Despite having barely moved since he entered you, you could feel your pleasure mounting exponentially.

Your eyes met once more, and you realized that he’d been keenly observing you, studying your face as you went through all these motions. While his gaze was electrifying, you saw hints of the Kento you knew surfacing, burning with lust and love, always prioritizing your pleasure, your well-being. And there it was, conveyed through the simplicity of a glance, the truth that there wasn’t a safer place on earth to be.

You watched the corners of his mouth twist up into a soft smile, a crinkle in his eyes which spoke equal parts of mischief and affection, forming quite the juxtaposition with the successive prompts he threw at your reflection.

“You enjoy this, don’t you. Whenever I wrap my arms around you? When I hold you like this, while I’m inside you?”

There was a newfound roughness in Nanami’s voice as he emphasized the last word with a tightening of his right arm around you, along with a deep press of his left hand fingers into your hips. You moaned and bucked your hips at the combined sensations, at the implication, the truth, the underlying desire of words said in such an even tone. You were intent on pushing him to give you what you needed, but he held firm, granting you only half of what you craved with this hold, completely denying you the motion portion of this equation you’d grown so desperate to solve.

“Tell me, honestly,” he emphasized employing the word that had become the refrain of the evening, “Let me hear you, my love.” It was quite discernible now, even in this compromising position that had you at his mercy; the thick lust in his voice, reminding you that the effect he was having on you was not so one-sided, and that he needed to hear you, just as much as he wanted to.

“Yes…Yes, I do,” you breathed, words slipping out as a ragged exhale, and you felt a sting of tears at the sudden intensity of a confession you’ve carried too long, one you somehow could only bring yourself to make in this current moment.

“Yes, you do,” Nanami repeated, his voice reduced to a low hum, but you could hear his approving smile even as he tried to conceal it, his eyes fixing you as though to speak to the deepest parts of your soul. “That’s my girl.”

You keened at his praise, your legs reflexively twitching with a forceful movement that sent the weight of your body shifting precariously off to the side. You let out a gasp, expecting to tip over before Nanami strengthened his hold and repositioned you back firmly onto him, pinning you down by keeping one arm around your chest, and the other encircling your waist. The new angle pushed him deeper still into you, eliciting a whimper from you and a whisper from him, words traveling directly into your ear.

“Let’s not fall now,” he said, in a tone that was already softer, palpably affectionate, “not yet.”

Always there to catch you.

It ruined you beautifully, in the moment, the fact that Nanami had not only mastered the art it was to rile you up, but he’d also long since known about this particular little inclination you’ve carried since forever, that he’d sat on this power, his teasing dispensed as an excruciatingly slow, intensifying burn over the last few months.

None of it mattered now, because he began to move and despite the unmistakable eagerness dripping from both of you, Nanami took his time in taking you from stillness to stride, setting off in a carefully slow but powerful pace as he drove himself into you.

And fuck, did it feel so good.

He rocked his hips into you as you rutted back against him, as much as your limited range of motion allowed you, at this foreign angle that did not take away from the familiarity of this dance. 

You squirmed as he drove into you with incredible precision, gradually picking up the tempo with each stroke, his measured gaze never leaving you, and even in the throes of escalating rapture, you discerned a strain in his expression, carrying an undercurrent of something carnal. You were panting, trying to catch your breath as he moved you against his hips effortlessly, making you feel each thick inch as his arm applied a deliciously punctual pressure against your upper chest with every thrust.

It felt both rough and tender. The visual was doing so much for you, too much, but still you fought the urge to shut your eyes for the umpteenth time to ground yourself, and Nanami caught this, attentive as ever.

“Stay with me,” he said, as he squeezed you ever so slightly to get your attention, your muscles immediately clenched around him in response, and he groaned at your reflexive reaction, renewing his intention of keeping up the pressure and on keeping you contained until he’d achieved his singular objective.

Your eyes desperately searched for a focal point, landing on themselves in the mirror’s reflection. You barely recognized the woman it presented, hair wildly disheveled, makeup sensually smeared just like as you barely distinguished your voice, with the wanton moans and the vocalized feedback aimed at the man in the reflection, as you told him how good he was making you feel, as you asked him to go harder, and as you let him know that he’d found it right there, the perfect spot, just like he always did. You’d grown more vocal, loud enough to be heard over the increasingly rhythmic slapping sound of your skin against his, and to match the volume of the words Kento was in turn, directing at you, words that only belonged to you and that bound you to him in ways that transcended what your bodies could ever achieve.

You felt yourself unraveling, your pleasure mounting as you visually took in the intimate spectacle unfolding in front of your eyes. Nanami was attuned to you like a piano string was to its tuning fork. He’d learned to find the things that made you tick and where you needed him the most. He’d practiced how to calibrate himself to the right rhythm, to the perfect angles, using your expressive reactions as his North Star. And in the same way he’d learned all this, he could always tell when you were close to climax, just as you were now.

“Let go for me, my love,” he whispered to your reflection, his voice rough with need.

The thunderstorm of pleasure had long been on the horizon, but that first cold ripping sensation of lightning always caught you by surprise. Your body pulled taut with gratification, and you came, quicker and louder than the first time, convulsing at the rapturous intensity of your orgasm, your pleasure hitting you in waves, trapped, constricted, with nowhere to go but in on itself. You tried to cling to your vague awareness of Nanami’s gentle coaxing, to his encouraging words as he nibbled at the shell of your ear and saw you to completion, his thrusts slightly relenting in tempo but not in intensity.

When you came to, it was to witness your slumped body leaning against your husband, breath still evening, and you could not help the smile gracing your lips, and the joyous delirium it manifested. His grip had loosened by now, and he was stilled, but still inside you, his chin resting on your shoulder as he watched you.

Nanami’s wonderful arms lowered to hold you at the hips again, and you gripped them, leaning on them as you tilted your face backwards and to the side, and you caught his lips in a searing kiss, one that was slower, lazier but also so dizzying, the only reminder of your predicament was the instinctual roll of your hips and the clenching that came along with it as the kiss deepened.

After what felt like long, radiant minutes, he brought you both down onto the small couch and gently broke the kiss to turn you over at the hips, lowering you onto your back in a single, swift movement. You felt his weight carefully sit atop you as he straddled you at the waist.

You peered up at Kento, at your beautiful man, a thin sliver of light slipping through a narrow gap in the window curtain ethereally bisecting his face in a golden diagonal path that illuminated his left eye, over the bridge of his nose, and gliding down the hollow of his right cheek. He was still clothed, except for his unzipped pants; still relatively composed, barring his rumpled shirt, his tousled hair, and the lipstick marks smudged on and around his lips and down the side of his jaw.

You could detect it, as clear as day, that something had switched within him. Gone was the playful, mischievous man who wanted to prove a point, who sought to get the last word, who endeavored to wring an admission out of you in the name of the little teasing game you’d both slipped into. Replacing him was a more heartfelt iteration of himself, the one you knew to be less relentless but no less restrained in his passion, and who would aim to both come and watch you come, face to face, where he could read you, like his favorite book.

Kento sat back on his knees, looping his finger into the knot of his tie, loosening it just enough, in the way he knew you loved to watch him do. He took your hands into his and brought them to the dangling silk fabric, finally letting you complete this task, finally indulging you in yet another small fixation.

Nanami looked down at you, running a finger along your deep-toned cheek, and for the first time in this encounter, he grounded himself in the moment. There had been a time, in a not-so-distant past, when he would feel almost guilty on occasions like this, whenever he’d found himself yielding to the warm, effervescent energy that surged from his chest.

For so long, choosing happiness while being ensconced in this particular field of work felt nothing short of selfish, foolish, and delusional. But somewhere along the lines, Nanami had become an inadvertent student of yours, and what he’d learned was that there was a deeply repressed side of him, silently yearning for a sliver of the joy he’d worked so hard convincing himself he didn’t need.

Teacher to many, even to him in some ways; you’d been the one who’d forced him to confront the fact that the line delineating blind selflessness from being a coping mechanism was as thin as it was blurry. There was a certain pattern of behaviors, one that saw Nanami conceal survival in virtue, that you’d called him out on quite a few occasions. 

A late-night phone call in your early days together that had you both up way past your usual bedtimes. 

A lunch date while picking up the emotional pieces after a tough mission. 

An argument the two of you had, after you’d called him out just as he was about to slip into what he could now retrospectively admit to be this self-preserving cocoon of self-sacrifice, call-outs he knew deep down to be true, to be well-intentioned in their objective of saving him from himself, and for which, after some self-reflection, he loved their messenger all the more.

But sometimes, Nanami’s appetite for what had long eluded him surfaced in a simpler form, like the one of a man and his lover, happy to be reunited after several days of work getting in the damn way.

And now, Nanami chose happiness. 

Now, he’d allow himself to have this one thing.

“Hey, handsome…” you started, pulling him back to the present as you brought a finger up to his cheek and lightly poked at it, “You good?”

The corners of his lips twisted into a tired smile, and his response first came as a gentle, reverent kiss on your forehead. Then your temple. The outer corner of your eye. The top of your cheek. He spoke in between each of these, over a week’s worth of tension, of stress and frustration defused into sincere words.

“So many… fucking... assignments... I… I’m sorry,” he said solemnly, and the vulnerability in his tone was audibly palpable to you. His words suddenly reminded you of the way this had all started, about the yearning and eagerness you had for one another after a dreadful few days of going without.

“I know. Not your fault,” you said quietly.

“I’m here now… Not leaving…” he continued, as his lips moved down to your jaw, to the pulse on your neck.

“You’re here, Kento,” you whispered, words that you hoped could reassure him as much as they did you.

Nanami rose slightly onto his knees, positioning himself between your legs. You felt him pause briefly, right at the edge of entering you once more. With a shuddering sigh, he slipped back into you with silky swiftness. You moaned at this first thrust, as he pushed firmly into you, holding himself in the deepest part of your core for a moment before moving again. This time, Nanami was less verbal, more focused; you were less pent up, more present, more sensitive to the way he poured his feelings into you, pure passion conveyed through his movements.

You knew of this demeanor well, of this determination set in his eyes; the express intention of keeping himself just on the edge, of delaying, of denying himself the solace of release until he could wring one more orgasm out of you, and directly watch you fall apart for him.

Always so considerate. Always so stubborn. Could he not give in for just this once?

“So good, Kento,” you managed to get out, shifting the rest of your energy towards a mission of your own, of coaxing him to finally let go and to finally finish inside you. You writhed up to meet him halfway, desperate to have him bury into you, clamping down around him every time he pulled out of you, feeling your determination and pleasure mounting in tandem.

Your eyes met and Nanami must have detected your intentions because he shut his closed, eyebrows knitting in concentration as he sat back onto his knees and pulled you by the hips, maneuvering you closer to him with one hand and reaching to palm your breast with the other, doubling down on his own objective of bringing you to your release.

You waited until he moved to switch his attention to your other breast before you grabbed his hand, brushing it up against your throat, and you felt Kento’s fingers hover over its column just as your mind did over the idea of settling them there; an intrusive thought you would have allowed yourself to verbalize, had you not embarked on a different mission of your own. Instead, you enlaced your fingers with Kento’s and pulled his arm, brushing it against your lips, nibbling over his wrist, over his forearm, eyes still on him as you watched him barely withhold a hiss at the contact, visibly hanging on to his composure by a thread.

And for the second time that evening, you closed a soft bite over his arm.

Kento’s eyes snapped open and locked onto yours with a searing intensity that made your breath catch, and you found, etched into the depths of his gaze, a silent yet familiar narrative of unraveling, one you could cite chapter and verse.

You watched as his initial shock bled into amusement, a reaction attesting not to a fluke but to an affinity, a path newly discovered, a new door unlocked. You felt yourself teetering dangerously on the edge of your own release, thighs quivering as your mind registered Nanami’s peculiar reaction to his arm under your teeth.

“That’s not fair. You can’t do this,” he said with a breathy chuckle.

“Then stop me,” you whispered back, your tone laced with provocation as your lips nibbled over his arm, your teeth just barely grazing him.

Nanami was still watching you, still resolved to maintain his composure, but you could feel it in the way his pace picked up, his thrusts now slightly more erratic, slightly less precise. You knew he was close, as sure as you knew what it would take to tip him over.

You bit down again, a bit more forcefully this time, and he let out a guttural groan in response, as he watched you through half-lidded eyes, desperately using what remained of his will to keep his eyes on yours, as he always did.

“Please, please fill me, Kento,” you moaned, your play at speaking to his depths, your final attempt at coaxing him to come with you, wiggling your hips as they came up against his, throwing everything at the wall, anything to take him with you as you spasmed with the eagerness of your pleasure and barrelled towards your release.

“Fuck,” Nanami cursed with a hiss, as he yanked his arm away from you and pinned both your hands on either side of your head, his fingers interlacing yours as he leaned his head down to your level, shifting all of his weight to his hips, sinking deeper into you. The dam was finally breaking, his rhythm faltering recklessly, his hips a stuttering pace, finding a tempo that smoothed into the pure, mutual longing you’ve had to keep at bay for over a week. You felt the bench slide and shift under his forceful thrusts. 

And when Nanami choked your name against your lips, it was with a reverence that eclipsed any other form of praise he could muster.

You vaguely heard yourself begging him greedily, praising him deliriously, thanking him sincerely until you cut yourself off with your own long, unabashed moan just as you tipped over the edge. You wrapped your legs around Kento’s waist, bringing the balls of your feet to the small of his back and arching deeply into him, clenching onto him as you quaked through another rippling climax.

And now, you felt it. Now, the paragon of self-control that Nanami Kento was would finally yield to the limits of his restraint.

Nanami held you down in place in a firm hold, and huffed out a short scoff followed by a low grunt. He gave a brisk, fluid double thrust before he spent himself into you, his release coming as hard and long as the groan that ripped through his lips as he pressed and held his hips to yours. A shiver of pleasure shook you, your hips bucking into his instinctively as you felt each pulsing tremor of his release sputtering deep inside you. You opened your eyes to catch a quick glimpse of his face inches from yours, his eyes glazed over, his smile soft, satisfied, spent. You felt a blooming sensation in your heart as you witnessed Kento arrive at the destination he so deserved. This right here, you thought, was your antidote to everything.

It always was a deliciously nebulous feeling, and this time was no exception; you’d tried it countless times before, to temporally orient yourself within the first minutes that followed Kento taking you to orbit and back like this, always finding yourself unable to know how long you’d stayed in place like you did now, with his full weight on your body, still deep inside you. How long did it take for your fingertips to make the full journey spanning the small of his back to the nape of his neck, stroking feather-light touches that glided slick with sweat, until they found his undercut, right where his hair clipped close and where his scalp was the warmest to touch? You both lay there for a moment, as your breaths slowed, basking in the aftermath of a most sincere act of love.

Lost in a hazy fog, you’d nearly forgotten where you were until the metallic clang of your ring hitting the bench leg as your hand hung off to the side jolted you back to reality. You absentmindedly ran your hands along the leathery texture, only for the time it would take for your thoughts to flit back to a blurry memory that clung to the edges of your mind.

Several months prior, one of your nightly strolls together finds you and Kento in a boutique furniture store. You’re seated on the plush leather entryway bench that caught your eye as soon as you entered the shop.

“Look. This thing is comfortable as they come, doubles as a shoe rack, good quality, and it’s on sale? I’d say it’s a solid buy,“ you say.

Nanami hums softly, in contemplation. “This isn’t just you wanting it for yourself, is it?”

“This is for your apartment, Nanami.”

“It is, but with the amount of time you’ve been spending there…”

“Oh, so I’m overstaying my welcome now? Is that what I’m hearing?”

“Don’t do this. You already know you’d be over more often if you’d let me have it my way.”

“Well, any more and I would be living there.”

“Perhaps you should be,” he says, his tone devoid of jest.

You pause at the implication of his words. “Is this your not-so-subtle way of soft launching cohabitation, Kento?”

“And if it is?”

You turn on your half of the small couch, rotating your body towards him, and you find him fixing you, serious as ever. You narrow your eyes at him. “Really? Despite what has to happen first?”

“Specifically because of what has to happen first.”

It’s a commitment he makes so easily, as if it is the most natural thing to say, in the middle of a random furniture shop after an impromptu leisurely weeknight walk and some froyo.

You brought your hand back up in the air, your contemplation bringing you to fix your wedding ring on your finger, as you lay your back on this small cushioned bench, which you now recognized to be quite the symbolizer of a new beginning, even tonight, in a twisted, unusual way.

“Are you alright, darling?” Nanami’s voice reached the foreground in your distant haziness.

Silly, idle thoughts converted into your response before you could stop them.

“We just made another use for it…”

“Hmm?” he mumbled against your ear, where his lips still rested. “Another use for what?”

“This little bench of ours. Doubles as a shoe rack, triples as…” You trailed off, letting the suggestive connotation hang in the air.

“A good investment,” he concluded after a short moment with a light, almost timid chuckle, as if he hadn’t yanked the piece of furniture himself, just minutes ago, as if he hadn’t just boldly taken you on it.

You mirrored his amusement as you reveled in your amazement at the diametrically opposed dualities of this man. Because now it was the more tempered version of your Kento resurfacing, the one who left a gentle trail of kisses that were as wet and hot as the fluid spilling off the sides of your thighs as he slowly slipped out of you, and shifted off of you. Nanami brought his lips to yours in a play to swallow the inevitable whimper he knew you’d emit, your usual protest at this kind of friction and its resulting loss of contact.

“Stay here…” he instructed softly, as he peeled himself off the bench.

And this is how you found yourself lying on your back, staring at the suddenly mesmerizing portion of the vestibule ceiling you’d never had the opportunity to pay particular attention to. Your eyes were here, tracing its unfamiliar pattern, but mentally you were tracing another line, the one which took you from that fateful first encounter at the infirmary, what feels like forever ago now, to the present moment that had you catching your breath and chuckling to yourself in both disbelief and contentment.

In retrospect, this fixation with his arms was so silly. In the grand scheme of things, it was so small. It always was the small things with Nanami. Like the way he tends to keep his footsteps light, like he was doing now, as he crossed the distance to the master bathroom, and flicked the lights on along the way. Or the gentleness of his movements as he reemerged in your field of view for the time it took to help you sit up and handed you a glass of water before disappearing as he crouched down beside you, bringing a warm damp cloth to clean you up, soothingly stroking his fingers along your shoulder as he did so.

You finally turned to meet his gaze, your mind still in a haze, and you watched as he moved swiftly, wordlessly sliding his two arms underneath you to lift you up, carrying you bridal style.

It’s the small things, but also everything else.

Because it wasn’t a small thing, that all of the dangers in the world lay outside this door, outside this room, the fact that right now, wrapped in these wonderful arms of his, is where you felt the safest.

It was no small thing that all of your worries, all of your troubles, all of your insecurities, could be cast aside in his presence, granting you a kind of freedom that was so difficult to hold on to while around others, the one to unapologetically be yourself.

It’s not a small thing, that even now, as you let your hand travel up the firm planes of Nanami’s pecs, up to his defined collarbone, over the beautiful curve of his shoulder and down his sculpted bicep, that not even this warmth and strength came close to accurately representing the full sense of safety you felt with him.

It was a safety that went far beyond the physical; for as cautious as you’d always been around shedding your inhibitions, for as nervous you were about opening yet another layer of yourself, to confidently accept yourself and to allow yourself to be accepted, there wasn’t a single person on this planet that you could trust more.

It made you wonder if you would ever be equipped to justly convey such a precious feeling.

You pressed your cheek against Kento’s chest, listening to his breathing and his heartbeat as he maneuvered across the apartment towards the master bathroom.

“You enjoyed that a little too much,” you said, finally breaking the comfortable silence that had settled between you.

“What part? You’ll have to be more specific,” he playfully replied as he glanced down at you.

“You love tormenting me.”

“Tormenting you? Need I remind you that it was, in fact, you who started this?”

“No, you started it, with that kiss at the school. Never had you do that before.”

“Oh, am I not allowed to miss my wife?”

“Ah, so you did miss me. Finally, he’s honest.”

Nanami gently eased you down on the bathroom floor, right next to the bathtub, which was still filling up, and just in front of the mirror, through which your eyes met.

“It’s not my fault we seem to need a mirror to be candid with one another,” he said with a smirk.

He wrapped his arms around you once more, hugging you from behind. They were relatively small, but in the bright overhead ceiling light, they were prominent; you brought your fingers up them, to the small bite marks on his forearm.

“Tread lightly, Kento,” you started in a reciprocal tone, “This is a two-player game now.”

Nanami knew this well, and for this, too, he would be grateful.