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silentscrying · 23 days ago

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🏀 buzzer beater | chapter SEVEN.

nba!gojo x manager!reader

summary: you thought you'd gotten rid of arrogant NBA star satoru gojo when he left the curses after your first year in basketball management. but when your contract is up three years later, you find yourself working with him once again as the manager for the sorcerers. as you navigate playoff season alongside long-time friend ieiri shoko and the sorcerers' insufferable star player, you start to realize his sudden departure from the curses may not have been what it seemed, and maybe gojo isn't exactly the person (or player) you thought he was, either.

warnings: language, so many character cameos, denial is a river in egypt, chaos. || sfw. 2.4k words.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE Utahime's not in this welcome party," Gojo grumbles as you descend the steps off the jet. You just snort, and then Yuji skips the last three steps and starts running across the tarmac. Nitta, despite your insistence that she didn't need to, has met you at the airport along with two of the Samurai players.

“Christ,” you say as Yuji drops his bag on the ground, leaving it unattended.

“Choso!” he shouts, practically leaping onto the player on Nitta’s right. The taller man has a mess of brown hair wrangled into space buns, and he ruffles Yuji’s hair when he sets him down.

“Good to see you before we beat your ass.”

The man beside Choso opens his arms expectantly. “No love for your brother?”

“Todo.” Choso crosses his arms. “I’m actually his brother.”

“Half,” Todo retorts.

“Half is more than you.”

“We’re bonded by the college oath,” Todo says solemnly, pulling Yuji into a hug.

“Kari!” you yell, and she grins and meets you halfway. “Oh my god. It’s been too long.”

Akari Nitta, your small forward in college and also your senior year roommate. “I missed you,” she says as she pulls you into a hug. “How’re the Sorcerers? You like it there, they treat you well?”

“Good, yeah. I’m happy,” you say, honestly. “You?”

Akari’s been with the Samurai for four consecutive seasons now, and you already know she has no intention of leaving. She loves it there, loves the team, and you can’t deny how excited you are for this round of the competition.

It’s the best kind of game, you think, when the teams are evenly matched and actually respect one another. But you’re still worried—the issue now isn’t that they’ll play dirty, like the Phantoms. It’s that they’re good. Really good.

“Nitta,” Kento greets, holding out a hand. “Good to see you.” He glances over her shoulder, at where Yuji is talking animatedly with Choso and Todo.

“You too, Nanami.” Nitta follows his gaze and chuckles. “Haibara’s wrangling the rest of them at practice. I said family only, and then Todo basically forced himself into the car. At some point it’s just easier not to fight him.” Kento chuckles and nods at Nitta before falling back in with the rest of the team.

Haibara played for the Sorcerers before getting traded a couple of years back. You don’t know him personally, but you know your team is very fond of him. Ieiri catches up with you and strikes up a conversation with Nitta, and the three of you follow the team through a wide hangar and to the line of vehicles waiting outside.

“Still think you should’ve stayed with me,” Akari tells you as you board the bus that’s taking you and the team to the hotel.

You grin. “It’d be preferable. But I have to babysit.” She laughs and squeezes you on the shoulder before pulling Choso and Todo away from Yuji, herding them back into the car to get back to their own team.

You watch the old city go by through the bus window, thankful you don’t have to try to navigate driving the streets of Savannah yourself during rush hour. The scattered horse-drawn carriages and swarms of warm-weather tourists punctuate every street corner, and though it’s nowhere near the same extent as the chaos of New York, you don’t envy the ones who have to focus on the roads instead of the river, running silvery-blue in the evening light.

Gojo briefly tries to sing again in the back of the bus, and he only gets as far as “concrete jung—” before somebody silences him with a thud that you assume is a backpack, if his offended squawk is anything to go by.

"What part of this place looks like concrete to you?" Megumi asks dryly.

Even the day before the game, you see Samurai jerseys and hats dotting the sidewalks, a few flags hung in the doorways of shops.

First seed, you think, staring out the window at the slowly darkening streets. You hope the team can pull through.

—

Iori Utahime is looking at Gojo like she’s going to castrate him on the spot.

“Utahiiiime!” he sings. “It’s been so long!”

“Not long enough,” she says, crossing her arms and turning up her chin. Long, purple-streaked hair falls past her shoulders, the back tied up in a bow you’ve never seen her without. “Any chance you’re less of a menace than you used to be?”

“No,” says a voice from behind you, and you’ve never seen a person’s entire countenance shift so quickly as Utahime catches sight of Ieiri and immediately breaks into a grin. She sprints toward her, launching into her arms.

“Shoko!” she shrieks, and Ieiri laughs and wraps her arms around her. “I missed you!”

“Utahime,” she says warmly. “How’ve you been?”

They launch into conversation—or, Utahime launches into conversation while Ieiri smiles pleasantly and nods along—and Gojo is forced to abandon his quest to annoy Utahime in favor of actually doing his job and playing basketball.

“She just doesn’t get me like you do,” he whispers on his way past.

“I don’t get you,” you retort, but he’s already gone.

The atmosphere in the Samurai stadium is entirely different than the rest of the games you’ve been to—this is a rivalry, sure, but a friendly one. Players greet each other across the court, the boys ecstatic to be reunited with Haibara, and the fans seem to be aware of the connections across the two teams. There’s significantly less hostility than you’ve gotten used to as the Sorcerers are introduced.

You catch a glimpse of blue hair in the front row of the home side and realize Kasumi Miwa is here. She’s already attracting quite a bit of attention, a massively successful WNBA player herself. You played with her in college, too, but you know she’s here for their point guard, Kokichi Muta.

Gojo stands at center court, ready to take the tip-off against Noritoshi, the other Kamo on the Samurai. You don’t remember quite how he’s related to Choso, but it’s amusing just how intertwined all the players on the court are right now.

For a second you think Kamo’s going to win the tip-off, but Gojo’s arm shoots up out of nowhere and then he’s running with the ball. He darts around Kamo and passes to Yuji, and the Sorcerers are 2-0 within the first thirty seconds of the game.

And then Haibara gets one in, and they’re tied. And then Gojo nails a three-pointer. And then Choso does, too.

Your neck is starting to hurt from how much you’re snapping it back and forth, both ends of the court in constant play as the advantage shifts every other minute. Megumi isn’t starting today, and you can feel his anxiety even from your place near the hall doors.

This game is insane.

Toward the end of the first quarter, Megumi subs in for Toge, and the second he hits the court he plays as if he never left. Kento lobs the ball his way and Megumi scores another three, and then Ino slips by Todo and leaps, fingers almost touching the hoop as the ball slams in.

It’s one of the tightest games you’ve seen in a long time. They’re always within five points of one another, back and forth, back and forth. The Sorcerers are leading at halftime by two, but it’s not a lead anyone is confident in.

While the team is back in the locker room, you slip over to the home side to talk to Kasumi. She grins and tugs you into a hug. “Alley-oop!”

You laugh, the stupid nickname so familiar falling from her lips. “Kasumi!” You pull back and smile. “How’re the Shadows? Do you love it? You fucking killed it this last season.”

She flushes a little, never having been big on accepting compliments. “Ah, I’ve got a great team.”

You arch a brow. “And they’re lucky to have you.” Taking mercy on her, you switch the subject. “So things with Kokichi are going well.”

She gets that dreamy look in her eyes, and you decide Kasumi and Muta are maybe the only couple you’ll accept being this fucking sappy all the time. They’ve been together since your senior year of college, and you’re pretty sure the basketball gods made them for each other.

“I think he’s gonna propose soon,” Kasumi whispers, and you have to clamp a hand over your mouth to stifle a squeal.

“Kasumi,” you gasp.

She giggles. “Don’t say anything. He just can’t keep secrets from me. He’s not slick.”

You mime zipping your mouth and tossing the key, and she pretends to unzip it as she asks, “What about you? How are things in the Southeast?”

“Hot,” you say. “Humid. Busy. But good.”

“And Gojo?”

You blink. “Gojo?”

“Uh, y’know, star player, six three, easy on the eyes?” She raises her eyebrows like she knows something, and the implications hit you all at once.

“Oh my god, Kasumi.”

She blinks innocently. “Reunited after three long, long years. No romanticism in that?”

“We work together,” you hiss, which feels like a gross understatement. “And he’s…”

She raises a brow, waiting. You can feel the heat creeping to your cheeks. It’s such a ridiculous notion that you don’t even have a proper response.

“I honestly think he just became tolerable,” you say. “God, I wouldn’t date—”

“Oh, you say that now,” she says, a smug curve to her lips.

“What does that—”

“Oh, look at the time.” You follow Kasumi’s gaze to where the players have started filing back into the gym. “Back to your coworker, you.”

“Kasumi Miwa—”

“I love you too!” she beams. “Good to see you. Really.”

Rolling your eyes, you wave your left hand at her, pointing discreetly at your ring finger as you retreat across the gym. You watch as the bright red returns to her cheeks and return her smug grin from earlier.

God. Easy on the eyes.

It’s not like Gojo’s not attractive. Girls fawn over him and you can understand why, objectively. Tall, strong, all lean muscle, those stupidly bright blue eyes and whiter-than-white hair. But he’s one of those guys who’s just hot until he opens his mouth.

Even if he hasn’t been quite as annoying lately, the natural progression of a conversation about Kasumi’s soon-to-be-fiancé should not be to start talking about Satoru Gojo.

On the sidelines, he winks at you, and your roll your eyes but have to turn away before he sees the heat rising to your cheeks. Not helping right after Kasumi decided to put those thoughts in your head.

Fucking hell. What’s wrong with you?

You shake off the encounter as the game starts back up. You might’ve had the lead before the half, but the Samurai come back strong. Very strong. Todo is impossible to get around, he’s everywhere at once, and Muta is making shots from insane distances while Choso just keeps dunking. The disadvantage to having played with Haibara is that he knows the way the team plays, and he seems to have relayed whatever tips he can to his teammates.

But it goes both ways. Kento knows every shot Haibara will take before it happens, and Yuji and Todo are so tuned into each other’s movements that they can’t get the jump on the other.

It’s insane and it’s stressful but it’s damn good basketball. With damn good people, too. Yuta gets knocked down and Todo helps him back up. Choso keeps making faces at Yuji across the court. When Choso dunks right over Ino, you even hear Gojo let out a low whistle of appreciation for the shot.

When the buzzer signals the game’s end, the Sorcerers have lost by three. Muta scored the winning shot, and after the game is called he runs right off the court to sweep Kasumi up in a hug. Across the court, you see Gojo terrorizing Utahime again, Kento bumping fists with Haibara, Choso and Todo crowding Yuji as Megumi watches in amusement.

Nobara sighs as she looks up at the scoreboard. 81-78.

God, it was close. Really, really close.

It’s one game, you tell yourself. They can swing it. They’ve got time.

The mood after the game is a weird mixture of excited and tense—the guys knew they were walking into a match with a better ranked team, but now they’re feeling it. It’s the hardest they’ve had to play in a while, and Yaga and Kusakabe are talking strategy before they even hit the locker room.

You get back to your hotel room late, another night of emails and scheduling and a too-bright screen, and when you get back, Ieiri is smirking at you.

“What?”

She nods to your bed. “Had a visitor a while ago.”

You follow her gaze to a folded pile of blue and green fabric on the end of your bed, a note on top of it. “Oh my god.”

You know what that is. You’d know it from a mile away, because you wrote the renewal contract for it, because it’s been scattered throughout the stands at home games, because you’ve approved ads and worked on shoot screenings with Nobara.

The shirt is soft in your hands, and you pick up the note, scrawled on a piece of paper torn from the hotel notepad.

figured our star manager deserved free star merch, right? you’re welcome!!!!!!

His handwriting is messy and slanted, the line of exclamation points nearing horizontal toward the right edge of the page. It’s so incredibly boyish you have to stifle a laugh, and in place of a signature Gojo has doodled his own face in the corner: a little circle with spiked up hair and a black headband, tugged over his eyes like a blindfold. Probably because he didn’t want to deal with drawing eyes, you think.

The shirt’s in your size, a long-sleeve that starts out blue and washes into a light green in a vertical gradient. LIMITLESS is printed across it in a thin sans serif, a Nike swoosh twisted into an infinity sign above the T.

“Idiot,” you mutter. Star merch. Arrogant idiot who sneaks into hotel rooms to leave his own merch and assumes you want it. Actually, he probably knows you don’t. That’s why he didn’t give it to you in person. That makes it worse. He’s just taunting you in his typical Gojo way.

You toss the shirt into your bag and slide the note into your laptop case, not seeing a recycling bin. Ieiri chuckles, and you look up at sharply. “What?”

She holds her hands up, palms out in surrender. “I didn’t say anything.”

When you try to fall asleep, staring at the shadowed popcorn ceiling, you’re reeling. Kasumi’s words pinball around your skull like it’s an echo chamber. The Limitless shirt sits heavy in your bag against the wall. Gojo winks in your mind’s eye. You feel his hand curled over yours, pen in your fist.

You hope you don’t dream.

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