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"Sir, are you listening?"
Gojo blinks, forcing the drool in his mouth to slip back up where it had been dangling precariously over the corners of his mouth. He really shouldn't be held responsible for the involuntary salivating his body does in the presence of men in tight uniform who currently had a literal hose heaved up their shoulder. It's a crime against humanity to not at least appreciate the sight.
It was sometime past midnight and a fire was being put out in 4B, where Utahime was screaming bloody murder at Meimei who accidentally left her stove on and asking for the nth time if she meant to kill everyone in the building or if she was just suicidal. He spots their building manager, Getou, trying to calm down her hysteria and effectively block her from airing out her grievances to the media who were already setting up microphones and cameras. The sirens of ambulances and the shrill echoes of the fire truck lent their already apocalyptic evening even more urgency and dramatic flare.
But Gojo cares dog shit about any of that.
The cute fireman was here again today.
Granted, he was here on a regular basis, fire-prone building and all. It was an old Western-style loft lodged in between river birch trees that got way too much sunlight during the day, the frequency of domestic fires even included as a disclaimer in the contract all tenants needed to sign before moving in. But Gojo was a fresh graduate teaching part-time at the university when Naoya suddenly decided to be interesting by emancipating and making it everyone's problem. At the end of every month, they scrapped together loose change to make rent and dine on cup noodles instead. So he really can't complain if the apartment got too hot if it got him a roof over his head and a mere 15-minute walk from the school.
And, now looking over at the way the fireman’s black shirt clung tightly on his muscled arms and an even more muscled torso: Gojo finds that he really, really can't complain.
He forces himself to cough. "Sorry, fireman-san," he appeases. "What were you saying?"
Nanami narrows his eyes at the moniker. "Uh," he begins. "I was asking if you still remember where your fire alarms are?"
Gojo doesn't even know they had those. He's not gonna say that to the cute fireman, however. "Yes," he lies. "Yes of course!"
Nanami doesn't look convinced. "Standard building regulations dictate an alarm system has to be strategically located at every floor with an occupant," he explains. "Do you know where yours is, 2A?"
Gojo flushes. He knows where I live. "It's somewhere, yes," he offers, grin spreading wider, fighting the urge not to twirl his hair. "I’m sure my roommate knows."
"Your roommate," Nanami spells out, quirking a brow at Naoya behind them, who was currently dressed in nothing but his boxer briefs and already making plans with Choso from 1C to get shitfaced on the rooftop once this blows ever. "He seems.. dependable."
"He's still young," offers Gojo candidly.
Nanami blinks, and did Gojo imagine it, but did his look tinge a more appraising gait to it. Probably noticing how he didn't even have a year on Naoya and how it showed. "You're—” he stops. “Also young."
Gojo beams. "Why," he chuckles, airy. "Yes, I am. In fact—"
"Satoru."
Gojo was going to kill Getou.
Turning around to face him and match his glare with his own, nearly snarls, "What."
“Your—uh—nephew is calling,” Getou says through gritted teeth, pointedly tilting his head back into the building in what was a universal code for we need to talk. “Seems urgent. Probably saw you on the news.”
“Megumi can wait,” hisses Gojo right back, turning back to address Nanami.
Nanami who had already darted away, taking with him those strong arms that were singlehandedly hauling a 50-ft fire hose by himself back into their firetruck. His arms flexed with each movement, the lines of his skin matching up with the beams of moonlight streaming in through the gaps of the trees. Utahime keeps yelling. Meimei keeps threatening to end her own life. Nobara has somehow started a live TikTok stream in the middle of all this.
But through it all Gojo cared dog shit.
"Stop trying to burn down my building just because you have a crush on the fireman," Getou demands.
Gojo gasps, feeling accosted. "I do no such thing!"
They were at Getou's office in the basement, mildew on the walls and the smell of stale pizza permeating the air. He was a painter on the side and lived like every other pretentious starving and tortured artist there ever was. Gojo had been modeling a heroic pose for him for his live painting class for well over an hour. His arms were starting to get sore.
"First, you leave a candle burning on for too long," Getou lists off, eyeing him suspiciously from his easel. "Then you start a cooking fire even though you can't cook for shit. On top of all that, your space heater just magically keeps overheating itself."
"Very valid reasons for common house fires," Gojo doesn’t take the bait. "Says so on Google. Look it up."
"Does Google say anything about what to do with pining idiots who would rather endanger a historic landmark than ask their damn crush for their number?" arches Getou.
Gojo sputters, his hold on the sword dropping as he starts flailing it around dramatically. "Historic!" he huffs. "Yes, I do believe our electrical wiring is a thing of the past, I'll give you that. But historic?" he gapes. "Yaga is historic. The milk in your fridge that's been there since you moved in is historic. This building, however, is not!"
"Way to totally avoid the conversation as usual," Getou quips back, shaking his head.
"Way to totally blame everything on me as usual," Gojo crosses his arms over his chest, indignant.
"Except I actually can," offers Getou, before he mumbles lowly more to himself, "Arsonist."
Now Gojo was just downright offended. "I am not," he breathes out. "An arsonist."
"What would you call yourself then?" Getou challenges.
Gojo deflates, sinking into himself as he hugged the plastic sword closer to him and looked up at Getou, blinking his eyes in mirth.
"...A hopeless romantic?"
Getou throws a whole can of paint his way.
"Sir," Nanami starts. "This is the 3rd call we've had from you this week alone. Would you like to file an official report so we can look into this?"
Gojo can't follow the words coming out of the fireman’s mouth. He can’t comprehend much of anything, really. Only that it's April, and the spring sun looks downright lustrous on his slightly tanned skin. He also learns that they change their uniforms over the seasons. Summer meant just as tight, form-fitting shirts around their chest that read SHINJUKU STATION in big bold letters, and heavy-duty pants that cinched at the waist that only accentuated his bulky frame even more. Gojo finds it all unfair and preposterous, because why do all the pretty boys get the tiniest waists? It's not fair. The fireman’s steel-toed boots give him another inch or two, and Gojo is tall, but the man is only a few inches shorter. A feat in itself. His normally sandy blonde hair is swept back today, the halo of the morning acting as backdrop to illuminate the clean lines of his face more clearly. Angular jaw. Aristocratic nose. Eyes the color of caramel.
He really was just so pretty.
But he was also currently sporting an expectant expression.
"Right, yes," offers Gojo dumbly, wistfully.
Nanami nods, reaching over somewhere in the truck to conjure up an official-looking document and pen, offering it up to Gojo's oblivious hands. "Please fill this up and we’ll get right on it."
Gojo blinks down at the legal paper with FIRE INVESTIGATION REPORT glaring right back up at him. What, he thinks and says at the same time exatly, "What?"
If Nanami was amused at his confused expression, he stifled it with a hand covering his cough. "The official report," he repeats. "You said you wanted to file one?"
Gojo did not want to do such a thing. He didn’t want to do that at all. Had he really been so blindsided by this man's beauty he agreed to put the entire building down for investigation?
Well.
Actually, now that he thought about it, yes. That was actually the kind of thing he'd do. But Getou was glaring daggers into him behind Nanami, where he just so casually wandered to under the guise of talking to one of the other firefighters. Higuruma, he thinks.
"Um," amends Gojo, tinging his voice with guilt. "Sorry, actually, I think maybe it's just been a bad week for us over here."
Nanami seems to consider this, looking over the building again and sizing it up, before his assessing eyes land back on Gojo.
"April does get notoriously hot in this side of town," he agrees. "But still," he shuffles around, feeling down his coat to bring out something. "I'd feel a lot more at ease if you had access to us. No matter what time of the day it was."
Gojo stares dumbly down at the piece of laminated paper he was just handed and tries not to buckle on his knees.
Nanami Kento. Battalion Chief of the Shinjuku Firefighter Division.
“You—” Gojo stammers, fumbling. “You want me to call you?”
Now there was definitely amusement dancing around in Nanami’s eyes. “Sure. Yes.”
“Me?” Gojo’s like a dumb grandfather clock, all pretty with no discernable, practical use. “Me.. Call.. You?”
Behind Nanami, he thinks he can see Getou facepalm and mumble something that sounded suspiciously like Oh god..
But Nanami gets right into his line of vision again. "Ring me up if you're having a bad week too," he offers with that same glint in his eye, before chucking slightly, "I probably know a thing or two about that."
Gojo blinks, not sure what he just heard. "Sorry, what?"
Now Nanami was just looking downright sheepish, maybe even shy. "Oh, well," he says, running a hand over the back of his neck. Was it a trick of the light, or were his ears actually red? "See—um. They don't normally let battalion chiefs tend to domestic fires, you know?"
Gojo faints right there on the sidewalk.