Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nanami is careless just once in his life, the night he discovers that monsters are real.

It’s already dark outside when he finally leaves school, and for the first time since presenting as an omega, just a few months ago, he leaves alone. Yu typically walks with him, or another of their friends. But Nanami is already running late tonight, and Yu hasn’t finished studying, and Nanami assures him he’ll be fine.

So, he leaves alone. He’s still a year away from his first heat, he knows his scent and pheromones are mild right now, and he feels relatively safe as he walks, even though it is dark and late.

He listens to music, lazy, smooth jazz playing in both ears, and he doesn’t even notice when the sounds of the city suddenly vanish around him. In fact, he notices nothing different at all—not the lack of city noise, not the lack of other pedestrians—until he’s crossing the bridge near his home and walks through a patch of air that feels ice cold against his skin, so different than the balmy spring night he had stepped out into back at school.

Nanami stops in his tracks, looking up and around curiously. He shivers, the hairs on his arms standing up from more than just the cold. He has a sudden feeling in his gut, a sense that tells him something is very wrong.

He turns off his music. Carefully removes his headphones.

He sees nothing at first, and as he cautiously walks forward, the air returns to its balmy state.

But at the foot of the bridge, a monster waits.

Nanami can think of no other way to describe it. It is simultaneously bulbous and elongated, writhing, disgusting. It has a thousand little pinprick eyes, all of which reflect light in a strange way, and all of which are staring right at him.

Nanami does not immediately feel afraid. His initial thought is that this cannot be real, that monsters don’t exist, that he’s hallucinating. But the thing at the foot of the bridge makes a hideous gurgling noise and distends outward toward Nanami, and Nanami jerks back, feeling that ice-cold air again, and then he knows fear.

He wants to turn and run but he does not want to put his back to this creature. He does not know how to fight it, or if he would even be capable, and as it moves closer, it extends strange limbs toward him, gurgling.

Nanami’s mouth opens without his permission, and he wails.

It is a piercing omegan wail, pitched for alphas to hear, a distress call, a signal that an omega is nearby and needs help.  

Nanami has never made this sound before, and it comes out of him now instinctively.

Shockingly, it makes the monster coming for him pause. It undulates bizarrely, almost hesitantly, as Nanami’s wail continues.

And then an alpha is there, between one blink and the next. The alpha settles a hand on Nanami’s nape, gentling him, and the wail cuts off.

“You’re safe now,” says a male voice, and Nanami wants to shake his head because he’s not safe, there’s a monster in front of him, but then the alpha’s hand leaves his neck, and a tall boy steps out from behind him, and Nanami watches as he moves toward the monster, seemingly unafraid.

He has pure white hair, Nanami notes. He fixates on that head of hair, letting it fill his vision, but then Nanami’s eyes go strange, and suddenly the alpha and the monster are gone.

He is alone on the bridge.

He gasps, his entire body trembling, and wonders if he imagined the whole thing. He feels like he has just awoken from the most surreal dream. He looks cautiously from side to side, and then behind him. There is nothing. For the first time, he notes how quiet it is. He cannot hear anything.

He makes a promise to himself. He will never walk home alone again, he will beg Yu to accompany him, he will—

The alpha reappears, right in front of him, out of nowhere.

Nanami isn’t proud of the sound he makes then, a high-pitched yelp, hand flying to his chest.

The alpha’s head tilts. He wears glasses so dark Nanami can't see his eyes, but he knows he’s being very intensely stared at. He realizes suddenly that the alpha is probably not much older than Nanami himself.

“How did you get past the curtain?” the alpha asks, and those words in that order make no sense to Nanami, so he shakes his head wordlessly.

This seems to intrigue the alpha even more, because a tiny little smirk graces his lips. His eyebrows, as white as his hair, rise over the rims of his glasses.

Nanami swallows heavily several times. He has no idea what’s happening. He feels like he’s losing his mind.

“What was that thing?” he asks. “What did you do to it?”

The alpha nods, as if Nanami has answered his question. He doesn’t bother to answer Nanami’s own questions, which frustrates and confuses Nanami. He’s also starting to feel a bit of alarm at being alone with an alpha he doesn’t know, despite said alpha having come to his aid.

The alpha seems to sense that Nanami is wary of him, because his smirk turns into a bright, easy smile, one not meant to make anyone feel afraid. The overall effect of such a tall alpha, with a shock of white hair and such dark glasses at night, with a blinding smile, is actually rather ridiculous.

Nanami’s shoulders relax marginally.

The alpha slides forward, right into Nanami’s space, and links their arms together at the elbow.

“I’ll walk you home,” he says cheerfully, not giving Nanami a chance to protest. “What’s your name, omega?”

Nanami bristles a little and looks up at him. He thinks he should be offended, but he gives his name almost before realizing it.

“Na-na-mi,” the alpha purrs, testing the sounds on his tongue.

“What about yours, alpha?” Nanami growls, and realizes his mistake only when the alpha’s sunny smile turns wolfish and satisfied.

Nanami had called him alpha. He tries to pull away, to free his arm, but the alpha holds on even tighter, tucking Nanami against his side, so that they’re pressed together, a line of heat.

“I’m Gojo,” he says. “Gojo Satoru.”

Nanami stays stubbornly silent, deliberately not repeating his name back to him, but that only makes Gojo laugh.

As they walk, Nanami feels increasingly like he is having an out-of-body experience. He keeps picturing the monster, half-wondering if he imagined the whole thing. The unsettled feeling in his gut tells him it really happened, and he can feel himself starting to tremble a little at the memory.

“What was that thing?” he finally asks again, cutting through the inane chatter that Gojo has been keeping up.

Gojo quiets and glances down at him. Nanami is sure that Gojo can feel him shaking. They’re pressed too closely together for him not to.

“The answer to that won’t make you feel better tonight,” Gojo says, his tone shifting. He sounds serious. “I’ll tell you tomorrow. You need rest first. Sleep.”

Nanami wants to protest. Gojo doesn’t know him. And it’s presumptuous to assume they’ll see each other again. But he’s really shaking now, big racking shivers through his entire body. He can’t find the energy to tell Gojo that he’s fine. It would be a lie anyway.

Gojo seems to know this. He pulls Nanami along, humming tunelessly, meaningless chatter picking up again. But as he’s talking, he gently uncurls their arms and, keeping Nanami against his side, moves his hand to Nanami’s nape. He doesn’t grip him again, but he brushes his fingers softly against Nanami’s skin, soothing him, fingers easy and gentle but careful not to touch the mating gland hidden just under his collar.

By the time they reach Nanami’s house, his trembling has almost entirely stopped. Gojo’s fingers on his nape halt their movement, and Nanami, tired and addled, whines miserably. Gojo chuckles and his long fingers arch into Nanami’s hair, scratching.

Nanami recognizes that he is in shock. He is vaguely aware of Gojo’s scent, though it is so unassuming he feels sure that the alpha is masking it somehow. As Gojo releases him and turns him toward his front door, Nanami leans back toward him, wanting a deeper inhale of his scent.

Gojo steadies him as Nanami wobbles on his feet.

“Are you going to be okay, omega?” he asks lowly, and Nanami swallows.

He nods, and this time he goes to his door and opens it. He is only just now thinking about his parents, about what they will say about his late return home.

Before Nanami steps inside, he looks back at Gojo. “Thank you for coming,” he says. “When I called.”

Gojo smiles. “Good night, Nanamin.”

He’s gone before Nanami can shut the door behind him.

Chapter Text

As Nanami gets ready for school the next morning and eats his breakfast, he tries to convince himself that he dreamed the entire monster encounter of the previous night.

He has been tired from studying so late with Yu recently, and though he hasn’t admitted this to anyone, he’s felt strange since he presented as an omega three months ago. He gets weird feelings sometimes, little shocks to his system, like something in the air around him isn’t right.

He’s also been… seeing things. Strange things. Glimpses of creatures like the monster he saw last night, there and gone so quickly he’s been convinced until now that he imagined them.

Now he’s not so sure. He doesn’t want to believe the incident on the bridge happened. But he remembers it so vividly. He’s not sure he can convince himself it wasn’t real.

Any lingering doubt he has vanishes as he calls out, “I’m leaving for school!” to his parents and then opens the front door.

Gojo Satoru is standing there, nearly two meters tall, dressed all in black with his shocking white hair. He’s wearing his dark sunglasses again. Now that Nanami’s mind isn’t addled with terror, he thinks to wonder how Gojo got him home last night without asking for directions. He also wonders if Gojo always wears the glasses, no matter the time of day.

“Good morning, Nanamin!” Gojo says brightly, bounding toward Nanami so quickly that Nanami cannot even stumble backwards before Gojo reaches him.

“Don’t call me that,” Nanami says reflexively, still trying to process Gojo’s presence, and with it, the undeniable proof that last night actually happened.

Gojo just chuckles at Nanami’s words, waves his hand a little like he’s brushing them away. “I can see you’re feeling better,” he proclaims brightly, as if he knows Nanami well enough to tell his moods apart.

“I am,” says Nanami cautiously. “What are you doing here, Gojo-san?”

Gojo laughs as if Nanami has said something extremely funny. “You’re so cute, Nanami-kun,” he sings, and actually reaches out and bops Nanami on the tip of his nose.

Nanami goes a little cross-eyed following the trajectory of Gojo’s finger.

“I’m here to walk you to school, of course,” Gojo says, pulling Nanami along with a loose grip on his wrist. He’s not even touching Nanami’s skin, and yet Nanami feels the heat of his hand.

“I don’t need an escort,” Nanami mutters, but Gojo simply ignores him.

Nanami is starting to think that Gojo always gets his way. He decides to change tactics. “You promised to tell me about the monster tomorrow,” he says. “It’s tomorrow.”

Gojo glances down at him, his smile brilliant. “That it is,” he agrees. He releases Nanami’s wrist now that he sees Nanami is walking with him without protest. “I don’t remember using the word ‘promise’ though.”

Nanami scowls. “Gojo-san,” he says, letting his tone complain for him.

Gojo’s smile softens. “First of all, what you saw last night wasn’t a monster. It was a curse. Grade 1. Not the strongest, but strong enough. You’re lucky I was already there for it.”

Nanami doesn’t understand the distinction between ‘monster’ and ‘curse’, but he nods anyway. “A curse,” he repeats quietly. “What did you do to it?”

Gojo’s smile turns sharp. “I exorcised it.”

There’s something proud in his voice that Nanami picks up on right away, a touch of arrogance. This is a topic Gojo knows well, Nanami suddenly understands, despite his own total ignorance. This is the first moment he realizes that an entire world exists adjacent to his own.

“You exorcised it,” Nanami parrots. He looks at Gojo. “What does that mean, exactly?”

Gojo slings an arm around Nanami’s shoulders, casual, like they’re old friends. “I took the curse off the bridge, away from you,” he tells Nanami happily, “and I wiped it out of existence.”

Nanami still doesn’t fully understand, but he gets the idea. Gojo, who is apparently used to the existence of curses, spends his time getting rid of them. He’s good at it, Nanami can tell, both by how casually he speaks of exorcism, and by the pride in his tone.

Gojo’s arm stays over his shoulders, and this close to him, Nanami can almost catch his scent. Almost, but not quite. Gojo is releasing no pheromones, and that makes him one of the more unusual alphas Nanami has ever encountered. He wants to know how Gojo is masking himself.

He stays distracted by Gojo’s presence for long enough that it is only several minutes later when he realizes they aren’t walking towards Nanami’s school at all, and he stops abruptly, forcing Gojo to stop with him.

“This isn’t the way,” Nanami says, moving out from under the weight of Gojo’s arm and glaring at him suspiciously. “Where are we going?”

Gojo just tilts his head, like he’s confused. “To school!” he reminds Nanami. “Didn’t I already tell you that?”

Nanami shakes his head. “Yes, but this isn’t the way to school.”

“Ah,” says Gojo, and his expression might be considered guilty, if he didn’t also look so excited. He’s like an overgrown puppy. “I probably should have clarified which school I was walking you to.”

He gestures behind him, and Nanami is stunned to see a school he’s never noticed before on sprawling grounds. It’s beautiful, and it’s somehow in the middle of Tokyo. He has no idea how he’s never noticed it before.

“Do you see it?” asks Gojo eagerly.

Nanami blinks. “Do I see the massive school behind you that has somehow mysteriously appeared in the middle of Tokyo?” he deadpans, his face blank. “No.”

Gojo bursts into laughter. His eyes gleam. “Good one, Nanamin! Come on, let’s go.”

His hand circles Nanami’s wrist again, as if he’s afraid Nanami might try to escape. Nanami has known him for less than twenty-four hours, but he is already sure there is no escaping Gojo Satoru. Not if he doesn’t want you to.

Nanami thinks only for a moment about trying anyway, but he dismisses that thought quickly. He knows he will be in trouble when his parents find out he isn’t at school, and Yu will worry about him. But Nanami wants to know what’s happening to him, what has changed to make it so that he can suddenly see, as Gojo called it, a curse.

He wants to know what that means.

So, he doesn’t try to escape. He lets Gojo pull him along, and then when Gojo suddenly lets go of him Nanami follows obediently without needing any incentive.

This seems to please Gojo, for he flashes a quick grin in Nanami’s direction.

“Welcome to Jujutsu High,” he says, somewhat magnanimously.

Jujutsu, Nanami thinks to himself, once again with that feeling that a whole new world is opening up to him, that pieces of his life that have never quite fit right are about to slot into place.

He’s feeling a little less optimistic two hours later, after he’s been given a tour and has met some important people who spend a lot of time asking him questions about the curses he’s been able to see, how long he’s been able to see them for, if he can sense cursed energy, and so many other questions that Nanami’s head spins.

He has already fielded a worried phone call from his mother, replied to several text messages from Yu, and now he’s sitting outside Yaga-sama’s office, listening through the closed door as the principal and Gojo—who, Nanami has learned, is still a student himself—argue about whether Nanami’s status as an omega disqualifies him from field work.

Nanami is tired and overwhelmed. It’s almost lunch time and his stomach is starting to growl.

Most importantly, now that he knows jujutsu sorcery exists, that jujutsu sorcerers like Gojo find and exorcise curses, and that Nanami himself has the inborn ability to do the same, he doesn’t want to be ripped away from this world.

Especially not for being an omega.

Thankfully, Gojo seems to agree with him.

“He has the ability whether we train him or not,” comes Gojo’s muffled voice from inside the office. “So, isn’t it better to train him?”

“Training him is one thing,” says Yaga-sama. “But sending an omega into the field?”

Gojo scoffs loud enough that the sound rings in Nanami’s ears. “Then let’s start with the training, at least. If nothing else, he needs to be able to protect himself.”

This is a sentiment Nanami heartily agrees with. He can’t always count on Gojo to show up at the perfect time. And if his eyes really have been opened to curses, if he’s going to see them and sense them now regardless of if he wants to, he would rather be able to fight.

“You can’t enroll him by force, Gojo,” says Yaga-sama.

If Gojo responds to that, Nanami doesn’t hear it. The door opens a moment later, and Gojo faces him. “What do you say, Kento-kun?” he asks, throwing Nanami off balance slightly by using his first name. “Want to enroll?”

Nanami isn’t sure this is a decision that should be made on an empty stomach after only two hours of information. He can’t just enroll in a new school without talking to his parents. He’s only sixteen.

“I need to think about it,” Nanami says, reasonably.

Gojo quirks a single white eyebrow behind his dark glasses, but nods. “Sure, Nanamin,” he says. “Take your time, but not too much of it. You’re older than the other first years, so you really need to start as soon as possible.”

Gojo clearly takes it for granted that Nanami will enroll. There’s a small part of Nanami that is completely hypnotized by how sure Gojo sounds, how reliably he seems to know the future.

“It’s a little harder for you, because you’re common-born,” Gojo continues, talking nearly as much to himself as he is to Nanami. “If you have a curse technique it won’t be inherited.” He looks absolutely thrilled at the prospect, clapping his hands a little. “How exciting!”

Having just had a crash course in jujutsu sorcery, Nanami thinks he almost understands what curse technique means. He keeps his expression flat, but inside he is just as excited as Gojo is to discover what he’s capable of.

“I need to think about all of this,” Nanami repeats, before Gojo can get too carried away. “I also need to go to school.”

He sees Gojo open his mouth and immediately holds up a hand. “I don’t mean this school,” he says.

“Worth a try,” says Gojo unapologetically. “Just remember, Nanamin, you can’t go to both schools. You have to make a choice.” He leans down a little, staring through his dark glasses. “I think we both know the smart choice to make.”

Nanami can feel his lip curling a bit at Gojo’s tone, at his clear arrogance.

It’s worse that Gojo is right, and they do both know it.

Nanami starts at Jujutsu High the next week.

His parents cycle through a variety of emotions and feelings: confusion, alarm, denial, anger, acceptance. They don’t want Nanami to go because they don’t want him to be in danger. They want him to go for almost the same reason—to reduce the risk that he might not be able to defend himself or others, especially if he’s going to be in danger regardless.

It’s more difficult explaining his decision to Yu, since he isn’t given permission to tell Yu about curses or jujutsu sorcery. He comes up with an excuse that he’s transferring to a school with a better international business program. Yu is sad but understanding, which somehow makes Nanami feel worse about it all.

“We’re still friends, right?” Yu asks him.

Nanami gives him a look. “Of course, we’re still friends. I’m changing schools, not moving out of the country.”

But truthfully, he isn’t sure how often he’ll get to see his friend. Nanami hopes he’ll find time. He doesn’t want Yu to feel neglected, or to doubt their friendship. And Nanami doesn’t want to lose his connections to the life he had when he was… normal.

Or, at least, when he couldn’t see curses.

His first day at Jujutsu High is largely uneventful. There aren’t many first years. In fact, there are only two others, and though they are polite to Nanami, he finds that he doesn’t know how to talk to them.

He doesn’t see Gojo at all the first day, or even really the first week, which is fine with Nanami. He wants time to adjust to this new life, and Gojo doesn’t seem to come with an adjustment period.

Nanami’s classes are interesting. For part of the day, he and the other first years sit in a classroom, learning theory. Nanami enjoys this. He is a fast learner, the type that Yu has always called “book smart.” Nanami reads as much as he can, even asks for extra, because he feels like he has to make up for lost time.

The second part of the day is for practical lessons. Nanami enjoys this too. He likes putting what he’s learned into practice, and he’s excited to discover his innate ability and to start really using cursed energy.

The other first years, despite being younger than him, have a head start on Nanami. They practice on their own while Nanami goes through a series of meditation exercises meant to help him both harness his energy and discover his technique.

“It’ll be something that’s completely unique to you,” his sensei tells him. “It might be something that you’ve been doing for years harmlessly without even noticing. Can you think of anything like that?”

Nanami tries, but he isn’t sure.

The first week passes without him figuring anything out, and then the teacher brings a whole bunch of weapons to class. Nanami is encouraged to lift each one. He does so with exceeding care, worried mostly about harming himself, since he hasn’t learned to use any blade properly. He feels nothing with the swords or smaller knives, and the variety of hammers and cudgels make him grimace.

It is instead a blunt blade that catches his eye, and Nanami picks it up a little reverently.

His teacher watches. “There are some weapons that are cursed weapons,” he says. “Those have their own innate power already. There are others that are just blades, but that can be imbued with your own cursed energy to become like an extension of you in a fight, a way to channel your power.”

Nanami considers this. It’s true that the blunt blade has no cursed energy of its own. It isn’t buzzing in his hand, and it doesn’t give off any particular feeling. But Nanami likes it. He likes the weight of it, the dull edge.

He feels powerful holding it, and when he says this out loud, his sensei nods.

“Hang onto it,” the teacher tells him. “Treat it as yours. Hold it when you meditate. It’s possible it’ll help you discover your cursed technique.”

It’s easier to tap into his cursed energy than it is to figure out what his actual technique is. His energy is familiar to him, something he’s always known but hasn’t had a name for. The other first years are fascinated by him, want to know how he could have possibly gone so long without knowing he was seeing curses, without realizing that what he was feeling was cursed energy.

“I didn’t know it wasn’t normal,” Nanami tells them patiently.

To be honest, it’s a revelation to Nanami that he can now feel cursed energy so easily. Not only does he learn the contours of his own energy, but he starts to learn about the energy of others. After three weeks at Jujutsu High, Nanami knows that he has more cursed energy than the other two first years, even if they know how to use what they have better than Nanami does.

At least for now.

Nanami throws himself into his practical studies, practicing with this blade daily, refining his physical combat forms. He’s sore constantly. Nanami has never had to use his body in this way before, and his muscles protest at first.

He’s also never felt more alive.

In his first month at school, Gojo shows up only a small handful of times. Nanami understands that, despite being a student himself and having his own classes, Gojo is already a special grade sorcerer, one who takes missions regularly. It makes Nanami feel self-conscious when Gojo randomly decides to watch him train, but Nanami has never been the type to be embarrassed for being a beginner at something, and when he isn’t teasing, Gojo actually offers good advice.

“You should be practicing with dummies,” he says once, after Nanami has been at school for nearly a month.

Gojo’s friend and classmate, Geto Suguru, who is usually around if Gojo is around, nods. “He’s right, Nanami. You’ve progressed a lot with the blade, but you probably won’t get better if you don’t start fighting things with cursed energy.”

Nanami brings this up with his sensei, and in short order he finds himself using his practical class time to fight dummies that have been imbued with cursed energy. The dummies aren’t really that scary. They move around a lot, which is good practice for Nanami as far as his general speed and mobility goes. But he finds it pretty easy to defeat them in combat.

In fact, he finds it ridiculously simple. He seems to know just where to hit them to do the most damage, his blunt blade, a fluid extension of his arm and energy at this point, making easy work of them.

“How did you do that?” asks Nanami’s sensei when he’s finally hit the last dummy.

Nanami looks up. He’s breathing hard, despite the fact that it wasn’t much of a struggle. He wipes sweat out of his eyes.

“Do what?” he asks. “They weren’t that hard to hit, sensei.”

His sensei’s brow wrinkles. “It should have taken you more than one hit to put them out of commission. But you dropped them with one hit, without fail. How?”

Nanami thinks about it. Then he shrugs. “I just knew where to hit them,” he admits, and the teacher looks very excited at that.

He stands one of the dummies up again and imbues it with more cursed energy, then directs Nanami to face it.

“Close your eyes,” his teacher says. “Feel your cursed energy respond to the cursed energy in the dummy. When you open your eyes again, tell me the first thing you see, okay? The first thing.”

Nanami takes a deep breath and, with his eyes closed, lets his cursed energy respond to the dummy. When he opens his eyes, lines flash in his vision, lines that cleanly divide the dummy into parts. Nanami isn’t sure how he knows, but he’s positive that if he hits the dummy at the convergence point of specific lines, he can destroy it with one hit.

“Lines,” Nanami says out loud. “Ratio lines. I can see exactly where to hit.”

His teacher’s voice is eager when he says, “Show me.”

Nanami does. He hits the dummy with his blade, as hard as he can, at the seven to three ratio point, and the cursed energy infusing the dummy dissipates instantly.

“Yes!” his sensei cheers, pumping a fist into the air. “That’s it, Nanami! That’s your technique.”

Nanami feels a thrill, shortly followed by the immediate urge to practice more, until he has perfected the technique.

“How interesting,” his teacher is saying. “We’ll have to practice more, test this out a little. A ratio technique. Fascinating.”

The other first years are also excited. They crowd around Nanami at the end of the day, asking all kinds of questions, demanding to see his technique. But it’s dinner time, and class is over, and Nanami has already loosened his tie.

“Tomorrow,” he tells them firmly, and walks away before their pouting can get to him.

The first time Nanami really gets to test his technique—aside from on dummies that his sensei makes progressively more powerful each day—is when Gojo shows up again.

“So, Nanamin,” he says one day, sliding into the seat across from Nanami in the dining hall, startling the other first years so bad they squeak in surprise.

Gojo ignores them.

“Don’t call me that,” Nanami says instantly, though he warms at the familiar greeting.

Gojo is wearing white bandages wrapped around his eyes today instead of his usual dark glasses. Nanami is pretty sure Gojo can still somehow see even with the bandages obscuring his eyes. Gojo, for his part, just props his chin on one hand and smiles beatifically.

“Is that any way to greet your amazing and thoughtful senpai?” he sings.

Nanami rolls his eyes.

“Hello, Gojo-senpai,” he deadpans, and Gojo laughs.

“That’s more like it,” he coos. His smile turns keen. “So, I heard a rumor that you discovered your cursed technique.”

Now it’s Nanami’s turn to smile. “Maybe,” he drawls, teasing.

Gojo sticks out his lower lip. “You have to tell me, Nanamin! Please? Please please please?”

“It’s so cool, senpai!” says one of the other first years.

Without turning his head away from Nanami, Gojo raises one finger and holds it up to the first year’s lips. “Shhhh,” he whispers, his voice loudly exaggerated. “I’m talking to Kento right now.”

Nanami raises a single eyebrow, but Gojo is unapologetic.

“Maybe I should show you,” Nanami suggests, and Gojo leaps up from the table.

“Yes! Show me! Let’s go now.” He’s already marching out of the dining hall. “To the training fields!”

Which is how Nanami finds himself, in short order, facing a small army of cursed dummies imbued with energy by Gojo himself, and much faster and stronger than what Nanami has previously faced.

Nanami isn’t nervous. This is what he’s been practicing for.

He takes off his uniform jacket, revealing the shoulder holster he’s taken to wearing so that he can carry his blunt blade on his back.

“Ooohhh,” he hears Gojo say.

Nanami had found a black-spotted cloth to wrap around the blade that took his cursed energy easily, so even though the weapon doesn’t look particularly dangerous, Nanami has learned how to make it an extension of himself, just like his teacher promised he would.

Nanami’s ratio technique requires close combat, so it’s something he’s worked particularly hard on over the past few weeks. He’s not the best, but he has improved a lot, so he’s pretty proud of himself as he races through Gojo’s dummies, ratio lines popping up in his vision. They put up a good fight, but as long as Nanami can hit the proper ratio point, one hit is all it takes.

He can vaguely hear Gojo and the other first years cheering him on from the sidelines, shouts of “Yes, Nanami!” and “Nice one, Kento!”

Nanami’s muscles are screaming at him by the time the last dummy falls, but he thinks he might have broken his record for fastest fight against them.

He tells himself he isn’t trying to show off.

But it certainly doesn’t hurt anything that Gojo is shouting like a maniac as he races out to Nanami’s side.

“One hit?” he’s asking, before he even reaches Nanami. “Were you measuring somehow? Can you do that with people? Have you fought anything besides dummies? Fight me! Fight me, Nanami!”

“Uh,” says Nanami, blinking.

“Let him breathe, Satoru,” comes Geto’s voice, and Nanami blinks again because he hadn’t even known he was there.

“Geto-senpai,” he greets, bowing slightly.

Gojo pouts. “Hey! How come I don’t get such a polite greeting?”

Nanami sniffs. “You haven’t earned it.”

Gojo gasps, clutching a hand to his chest, feigning a fatal blow.

“Just for that,” he tells Nanami, pointing, “I challenge you to a duel.” His smile reappears. “Come on, Nanamin, fight me!”

Nanami takes stock. He hasn’t ever seen Gojo fight, but even as a student Gojo is legendary. Nanami does not know exactly what Gojo’s curse techniques are, but he knows they’re rare, powerful, and inherited.

No one can beat Gojo in a fight.  

Nanami thinks there might be something wrong with him that he isn’t scared at the prospect. Gojo could wipe him right out of existence, and all Nanami can think about is that he could probably hit Gojo as hard as he can with his blunt blade and it wouldn’t actually hurt him.

His smile must be doing something weird, because Gojo points at him and says, “Hah! I knew it! I’ve never met a jujutsu sorcerer who wasn’t at least a little insane.”

Nanami tries to school his expression, but it’s too late.

“Alright, Gojo-senpai,” he says. He tries to keep a straight face, but he can’t help the sharp, twisted smile that curls his lips. “Let’s fight.”

Chapter Text

In hindsight, fighting Gojo isn’t Nanami’s best idea.

Not because he doesn’t win. Nanami doesn’t expect to win against Gojo. He doesn’t see this as a failure, but as an opportunity to really test himself, and losing against Gojo is probably better practice than winning against anyone else.

No, it’s a mistake because Nanami didn’t realize how exhilarating it would be to fight someone so powerful, to really let himself go, to use all of his strength and hit as hard as he can, with no fear that he will do lasting damage.

Also, Gojo is hypnotic when fighting, and he barely even does anything.

Nanami realizes right away that it’s going to be harder than he thought to even land a hit on Gojo, despite the fact that Nanami sees ratio lines across his body just like he does on everything else. He can easily pinpoint Gojo’s weak spots. He just can’t actually hit them.

He seems to bounce off some sort of invisible shield each time he tries.

Geto boos from the sidelines. “This isn’t going to be in any way useful if you don’t drop Infinity!”

“Thank you, senpai!” Nanami calls out.

“Hey!” Gojo says, feigning outrage.

Nanami isn’t entirely sure what Infinity means in this context, except that it seems to literally make Gojo untouchable. However, at Geto’s goading tone, something in Gojo shifts. Nanami isn’t sure if he’s seeing a physical change in Gojo or if it’s more a feeling, a sense that Gojo has somehow dropped into his own body a bit more.

He widens his stance a little, bends his long legs at the knees, tilts his head in Nanami’s direction. His smile is feral.

“Alright,” he says, rolling his neck and his shoulders. “Hit me, Nanami, if you can.”

Nanami feels a rush of anticipation. He knows he is far outmatched. He’s had just about two months of practice. Gojo is the product of the strength and power of an entire clan, and has been coming into that power and strength since birth.

It’s about as uneven a playing field as one can get.

But Nanami agrees he’ll never get better if he doesn’t start somewhere.

And he doesn’t think Gojo’s intention is to mock him, or to clobber him senseless just to prove he can. Gojo is the one who advocated for him to even be here, to learn to fight in the first place. He thinks Gojo wants him to get better, to be strong.

But strength alone won’t land a hit on the other boy, and landing even a single hit will make Nanami feel like he’s won something.

So Nanami needs to strategize.

Gojo is probably expecting him to immediately go on the offensive. Nanami had done that with the dummies, and it’s how Gojo has seen him fight so far. Attacking Gojo outright probably won’t work, even if he’s dropped whatever shield it is that makes him untouchable.

As he’s thinking, Nanami decides to just casually walk up to Gojo. Gojo lets him, doesn’t even move out of his stance as Nanami raises his blade experimentally and, finding a weak spot on his sternum, taps him with the blunt edge of his blade.

Gojo glances down. “Wow,” he intones. “You really got me there, Nanami.”

Without warning, Nanami whips the blade toward another weak spot on Gojo’s side, one that he spotted earlier. He doesn’t manage to surprise Gojo, but the alpha still has to block the strike, which makes Nanami smile.

He uses the momentum of Gojo’s block to swing into yet another hit, which Gojo is forced to block again. While Gojo is distracted with that block, Nanami kicks him as hard as he can in the shin. The kick doesn’t land. Gojo dances backwards before Nanami’s shoe can do much more than brush the fabric of his pant leg, but even through Gojo’s eye bandages Nanami can tell he’s being regarded with interest.

Gojo seems to anticipate every move, so Nanami makes several all at once. He drops low, aiming for Gojo’s feet, and while Gojo is distracted with that he uses his blade to unearth a clump of dirt and grass, which he flings at Gojo’s face.

As Gojo blocks it, the dirt puffs out in a cloud around him.

“Blergh,” Gojo coughs, waving the dirt away, and Nanami uses his moment of distraction to roll behind him, aiming for the tender point behind his left knee.

Gojo simply jumps straight up, legs curled under him, and lands behind Nanami again.

It’s extremely clear that Gojo is using none of his own offensive abilities. He’s dodging, nothing more. Even that is barely any effort for him. He seems to know what Nanami will do even before Nanami himself does, and he’s scaled his own prowess at close combat way back, so that he isn’t actually engaging Nanami at all.

If Nanami wants any chance to land a hit, he’s going to have to make Gojo hit him first.

Nanami swings his blade at Gojo’s crotch.

“What the fuck?” Gojo yelps, jumping backwards.

Nanami releases his blade, letting it fly, still aimed at Gojo’s most sensitive area.

Gojo bats it straight out of the air, but Nanami has reached him by then and executes a series of kicks, all aimed at the groin. As Nanami anticipated for an alpha, this makes Gojo mad enough that he finally starts to fight back, rather than just dodge.

Sadly, Nanami is no match for him. Gojo has him on the ground, gasping, between one breath and the next. He crouches over Nanami, his teeth showing in something between a snarl and a smile.

“Do you yield?” he asks, voice quiet.

Nanami stares up at him. Without looking away, he grasps the handle of his blade. It’s pure luck that Gojo slammed him into the ground not far from where it had fallen.

While Gojo is distracted looking at him, Nanami brings the blade around and whacks Gojo as hard as he can on the ankle.

Gojo’s mouth forms a surprised little ‘oh’ shape, and then he falls sideways, flopping dramatically.

Nanami can vaguely hear the other first years shrieking in victory from the sidelines. He thinks he hears Geto laughing. But his eyes are still on Gojo, who is now lying on his side facing Nanami, smiling.

“I yield,” Nanami tells him.

“You fight dirty, Kento-kun,” Gojo says.

“I can’t expect my opponents to fight honorably,” Nanami admits.

Gojo nods. “Good,” he says, seriously. “Maybe you’ll survive.”

Nanami knows to take that for what it is. This is a dangerous job he’s training for. He never wants to forget that.

Gojo displays no urgency to get up, so neither does Nanami. He looks up at the sky, letting his heart rate slow, and glances to the side when Gojo speaks again.

“You’re a good tactical thinker,” Gojo tells him. “You knew you couldn’t beat me, so you goaded me into fighting back. Did you always plan to go for the ankle?”

“I can’t give away all my secrets, Gojo-senpai,” he teases.

Gojo’s mouth quirks, and it’s only then, as they lie side by side on the grass, looking at one another, that Nanami realizes he can smell Gojo for the first time. It’s still faint, but there’s a distinct alpha scent coming from him, a hint of alpha pheromones, deep and dark and slightly dangerous.

Nanami licks his lips absently.                  

Gojo’s smile disappears.

His scent, faint as it is, does something complicated that Nanami’s nose can’t quite decipher. Without thinking, Nanami rolls onto his side, facing Gojo. He can feel his own scent glands swelling a little, working to release the omega pheromones he normally works so hard to control.

He knows he doesn’t imagine the way Gojo goes tense next to him. He can see Gojo’s nostrils flare, just a bit.

Nanami wonders what he smells like to the alpha.

Gojo’s mouth opens, but if he plans to say something, he never gets a chance. Geto walks over at that moment, looking down at them curiously. The moment is lost as Gojo stretches languidly, and Nanami has to hurriedly look away from the long lines of his body.

Any scent that he had previously smelled vanishes, firmly locked away again behind Gojo’s Infinity. Nanami still isn’t entirely sure what that is, but he doesn’t want to ask now, with an audience. Instead, he lets Geto pull him to his feet, and smiles as Geto says, “Well done.”

“Thank you, senpai,” Nanami says. “Maybe someday I’ll actually beat him.”

Gojo scoffs. “Only in your wildest dreams, Kento-kun.”

Nanami stares at him. “It’s good to have dreams, senpai.”

Gojo grins, looking delighted. He slings an arm around Nanami’s shoulders. “As long as your dreams include me, Nanamin. As long as they include me.”

After his fight with Gojo, Nanami’s sensei allows him to start fighting low-grade cursed spirits. At first, he does this only in a controlled environment, on the grounds of the school. Exorcising the Grade 4 cursed spirits is so easy Nanami just shoots his sensei a disgruntled look after he hits the last one.

He doesn’t even need to use his cursed energy.

“Someone recommended you for Grade 3,” his teacher gleefully tells him a few days later.

After Nanami is moved up to being a Grade 3 sorcerer, his teacher challenges him with Grade 3 cursed spirits. These curses are more powerful, but they aren’t very smart. Nanami is able to calculate not only where to hit them to exorcise them properly, but exactly how much of his energy he needs to use and when. He’s discovered that his cursed energy and his ratio technique work best when he expends no more energy than is required to get the job done.

It’s with the Grade 3 cursed spirits that Nanami starts holding back a little, reserving some of his energy so that he doesn’t wear himself out fighting them. Why use more energy than he needs? The way Nanami sees it, there’s no use in overextending oneself unless one absolutely must, and with Grade 3 cursed spirits, Nanami doesn’t have to.

“Very good, Kento,” his teacher tells him. “Go through a few more rounds of these curses, and maybe we can get a supervised group mission for the first years.”

Nanami applies himself to the task with zeal and determination, and less than a week later, his teacher tells them that a Grade 3 cursed spirit has been spotted not far from campus, and the first years are being sent to take care of it.

Their teacher takes them to an abandoned apartment complex, puts up a barrier, and tells them they have one hour.

The other first years, despite having more experience than Nanami, unofficially elect him the leader, probably because he’s the oldest. They’re both betas, so they have no real issue following Nanami’s lead.

They’d been briefed on the type of cursed spirit to expect, their teacher is nearby in case they need help, and Nanami, his blunt blade holstered on his back, feels relatively confident. Walking into the building, however, Nanami has a moment of strong disassociation. Three months ago, he didn’t know curses existed. Now, he’s getting ready to exorcise one outside of school.

Well, three curses. The report had been wrong about that. When Nanami and the other first years walk inside, they find three cursed spirits instead of just one. But all three of them are the expected Grade 3.

“I’ll take the one in the middle,” Nanami says, hefting his blade, and the betas fan out to either side of him.

Ratio lines appear in Nanami’s vision, and he races forward, ready.

The three of them make quick work of the curses, finishing the job in well under an hour.

The mood on the way back to school is celebratory. The other first years can’t stop retelling the facts of the mission over and over again. Nanami is hungry and is really only thinking about dinner. He isn’t expecting to see Principal Yaga waiting for them, and feels a pit open up in his suddenly heavy stomach, knowing intuitively that this is about him.

“Go back to the dorms,” his teacher tells them, and though the other first years trot off without protest, Nanami waits for his teacher and Yaga to walk away together before following. If this is about him, which he feels strongly it is, he wants to know.

He isn’t the only one. As Nanami is loitering outside Yaga’s office, trying to hear the conversation taking place within, Gojo casually strolls up.

“Heard you went on a mission!”  

Nanami glances at him. “Heard that, did you?”

Gojo just smiles. He gestures to the door. “They talking about you?”

“Probably,” Nanami admits.

“Let’s find out,” says Gojo conspiratorially, and opens the door.

Nanami presses himself against the wall, not wanting to be seen. Gojo slips inside the office, leaving the door cracked just enough behind him so that Nanami can hear.

“We can’t allow an omega to take missions,” comes Principal Yaga’s voice, immediately followed by, “Gojo, you don’t need to be here for this discussion.”

“I’m the one who brought Kento in,” Gojo says, guileless. “I feel responsible. And why can’t we allow an omega in the field, if he can exorcise curses as well as anyone else?”

Nanami leans toward the door, fighting a smile.

“Kento is extremely capable,” says Nanami’s teacher. “He’s exorcising Grade 3 cursed spirits without difficulty. He actually seems to be holding some of his cursed energy in reserve. I think he’s close to figuring out a Binding Vow, and it’s only been three months.”

Nanami tilts his head. Binding Vow?

Yaga makes a frustrated noise. “It doesn’t matter. He’s an omega. His place isn’t in the field.”

Nanami feels his hackles rise at that. His place? He’s not sure he wants to know what Yaga considers an omega’s proper place.

“He’s already strong enough to be raised to Grade 2,” adds Nanami’s teacher, trying to keep his tone calm and reasonable. “It would be an unfortunate waste of his skill and talent to restrict him from missions.”

“Not to mention wildly outdated,” Gojo mutters. “His place?” He scoffs. “Please. This is the twenty-first century. He isn’t defenseless.”

Nanami allows himself a small smile this time, hearing Gojo and his sensei vouch for him.

“Gojo,” says Yaga sternly. “You are not part of this discussion. Close the door on your way out.”

Nanami straightens up, and a moment later Gojo is there, closing the door behind him. He grins at Nanami.

“You hear all that?”

Nanami nods. Gojo sidles up close to him, threads a hand into Nanami’s blond hair.

“Well, aren’t you just a little prodigy! Ready for Grade 2 already? Not bad, Nanamin.”

Nanami forcefully fights back a flush. Gojo’s fingers are warm, the feeling of them is nice, addictive. “I’m just a fast learner, that’s all.”

“Sure,” Gojo agrees easily, ruffling Nanami’s hair once before pulling his hand free. “But you’re also skilled. Don’t diminish that.”

Nanami simply nods. “If you say so, senpai.”

“I do,” declares Gojo benevolently. He starts walking. Nanami follows him. “Don’t worry about the missions, Nanamin. I don’t think Yaga will ban you from them for long. He just needs to see sense.”

Nanami isn’t so sure. “He seems adamant about keeping me out of the field.”

Nanami doesn’t really understand why. Omegas aren’t typically restricted from opportunities, career or otherwise, outside of the jujutsu world. Yaga’s attitude, that simply by being an omega Nanami must not be put in harm’s way, does feel old fashioned.

“What have you learned about jujutsu history?” Gojo asks. “The three big jujutsu clans?”

“Some,” Nanami answers, looking up at him. “Why?”

“It might be time for a brief history lesson,” Gojo says.

“School is over for the day,” Nanami interjects, before Gojo can suggest this lesson start immediately.

“You haven’t had dinner yet,” Gojo says, though Nanami hadn’t told him that. “Come on. I’ll tell you while you eat.”

In the dining hall, Gojo devours a giant frosted confection while Nanami looks on in concern, slowly eating his own rice and vegetable dish.

“The strongest jujutsu sorcerers are typically alphas,” Gojo tells him between bites. “Selective breeding, and all that. There are always a few omegas in each generation, though, and those from higher class families usually marry into one of the big three clans, to create more sorcerers.”

Nanami frowns. That makes it sound like omegas are little more than breeding stock.

“You aren’t from a jujutsu family, but you’re powerful. A strong omega sorcerer who is nearly of breeding age?” Gojo laughs darkly, as if his words are funny.

Nothing he’s saying is amusing. Nanami can see where he’s going, though, and feels sick.

Gojo continues, his tone hard and unrelenting. “If we still lived in a time when omegas had little to no rights, you’d already be mated off to an important alpha, your sole responsibility to bear his pups and create even stronger sorcerers.”

For a moment, Nanami is completely lost for words. Then, “That’s shit.”

His words startle a real laugh out of Gojo. “Yeah,” he agrees. “It is. But we don’t live in that time anymore. You have free will and autonomy. No one can mate you without your permission.”

“Lucky me,” Nanami says flatly, but it is actually a relief. That Gojo seems just as disgusted at the practice of keeping omega sorcerers as nothing more than breeding stock goes a long way toward convincing Nanami that it isn’t something that will happen to him, despite what Yaga and the higher-ups might want.

It’s clear that Gojo is on his side. Nanami has an idea now of how much that’s worth.

He does watch Gojo curiously. He’s never smelled him properly enough to know if he’s mated, though it hadn’t occurred to him that he would be. He remembers Gojo’s scent, what little of it he got, after their fight. Even faint as it had been, Nanami can’t deny that Gojo’s sheer alpha-ness should have been enough to have him mated by now, if he wanted to be. But he’s never seen Gojo with anyone besides Geto, who is also an alpha, and Ieiri Shoko, who is a beta.

But Gojo is from one of the big three families, and he’s inarguably the strongest sorcerer of his generation. Possibly even one of if not the strongest sorcerer alive. If the goal is to produce strong sorcerers with powerful techniques, it makes sense that omegas wouldn’t be the only ones locked into unwanted matings.

Nanami figures there’s nothing for it but to ask. “Are you mated?”

Gojo doesn’t look surprised at the question. “No. Not that my family hasn’t tried. But no.”

Nanami tilts his head. “Why not?”

He’s grateful that Gojo answers seriously. “Believe it or not, Kento-kun, but if I ever mate, I want it to be with someone I choose, and who chooses me in turn. I have absolutely no interest in forcing anyone into a mating, not even myself.”

“Hmm,” Nanami hums in agreement. He looks at the cake Gojo is eating, nothing left of it now but crumbs and stripes of frosting, and says abruptly, “You should eat more vegetables.”

The serious mood dissolves instantly.

“My body is a temple, Nanamin,” Gojo proclaims, tone aghast. “Why would I fill it with vegetables?”

Nanami rolls his eyes.

Chapter Text

The higher-ups resist promoting Nanami to Grade 2.

Their excuse is that he’s too new to jujutsu, but after his conversation with Gojo, Nanami feels fairly sure it’s because he’s an omega. As long as he’s only a Grade 3, they can refuse him missions, or insist that his missions are grouped with the other first years and supervised.

Nanami decides not to spend time resenting this decision.

Instead, he channels all of his energy into improving, and by the time he’s been at Jujutsu High for six months, he’s faster, stronger, fitter, and more confident than he’s ever been.

He even finally has time to see Yu, who gapes at him.

“What do they have you doing at this new school, Kento?”

Nanami keeps his expression blank. “There’s an intense culture of sport extracurriculars there. Pretty weird for a bunch of business majors, if you ask me.”

Yu smiles at him, then laughs. “Well, you look great.”

Nanami feels himself soften. He smiles back. He’s missed his friend. “Thanks, Yu. So do you.”

Haibara isn’t the only one who notices Nanami’s developing muscles. Gojo pops up out of nowhere one day, squeezing his arms.

“Getting strong, Kento-kun!” he trills, smiling devilishly.

Nanami swats his hands away. “Hands off,” he snaps, but it’s really just a reflex at this point. “Go bother someone else.”

Gojo pouts. He’s wearing his dark glasses today, and despite the moue of his mouth, Nanami is almost certain his eyes are sparkling behind the lenses.

“Don’t you want to hear the news?” Gojo taunts.

“No,” Nanami says, and walks away.

He does feel a small curl of pleasure, though, when Gojo follows after him.

“But Nanamin! You’ve got a mission! A solo mission.”

Nanami stops walking. He looks at Gojo, his eyebrows drawn in. “What.”

“Well,” Gojo amends, holding up his hands, “a solo mission with me. How exciting! Right?”

“A solo mission,” Nanami repeats. “With you?”

“Don’t act so surprised! I’m a very reliable senpai.”

Nanami doesn’t actually doubt that. “I just didn’t think Principal Yaga would let me take any missions,” he concedes.

Gojo’s smile turns lopsided. “Well, me going with you is the condition.”

Nanami thinks about that. “An alpha chaperone?” He’s not sure if he should be insulted.

“Not just any alpha,” says Gojo, waving a finger. “Me. The strongest alpha.”

“No need to sound so smug about it,” Nanami grouses.

Gojo frowns. “But it’s true. I am the strongest. And you get to take a solo mission as long as I’m with you.” He leans down a little, bringing his face closer to Nanami’s. “Honestly, Kento-kun, this is a great opportunity for you. You get a chance to prove yourself, and you get me! The strongest jujutsu sorcerer!” Gojo leans away again, shrugs a little like it ultimately doesn’t matter to him. “Take the mission or not. But if not, just know that you probably won’t get another one for a long time.”

Nanami knows he isn’t lying. He dislikes the circumstances, but he doesn’t want to lose the chance to prove that he’s just as good as any other sorcerer. More than that, Nanami wants to know what it is about Gojo that the higher-ups trust so much, enough to send him along as extra protection, even though he’s still a student himself.

“I want the mission,” Nanami says, and then decides to push for more. “And if you’re to accompany me, I want to know about your technique.”

“Ah,” says Gojo, and then nothing else for several long seconds. “Limitless. That’s what it’s called.”

Nanami waits, but Gojo stays quiet. “And?” Nanami prompts. “What is it?”

Gojo sighs. “I can manipulate and distort space. Part of it you already know. Infinity. Infinity is a barrier that I create out of manipulated space.”

Nanami blinks. “Space? Like, on a molecular level?”

Gojo nods. “It’s pretty much impenetrable. Nothing can get past it if I don’t allow it.”

Nanami tries to process this. He has a difficult time. The idea of being able to manipulate space itself… that Gojo can do that on a molecular level… Nanami can’t comprehend it.

“This is why I can’t ever smell you,” he blurts, and then instantly flushes, pressing a hand to his mouth.

Gojo raises an interested eyebrow, but says, “Yes. I use it to block my pheromones. I can also use Limitless to move through space, uh, differently, than most people.”

“Differently?” Nanami asks, confused.

Gojo doesn’t answer with words. Instead, he vanishes. He reappears down the hall within the blink of an eye.

Nanami stares. “Did you just teleport?” he asks, dumbfounded.

Gojo reappears in front of him. He grimaces a little, like he’s not sure how to answer. “Kind of? Not really? Honestly, Nanamin, I don’t think I can explain it to you. Sometimes, I can move very, very fast.”

Nanami closes his eyes briefly.  

“What else?” Nanami asks when he opens them, because he knows that’s not all.

“Walk with me,” says Gojo, and links his arm with Nanami’s before Nanami can say anything. They stroll toward the training fields. “Infinity is one thing,” Gojo continues. “But I wouldn’t be able to do what I do with it if I didn’t also have Six Eyes.”

Nanami looks up, alarmed, and Gojo laughs at his expression.

“Your face, Nanamin! Ah! I don’t literally have six eyes,” he clarifies.

He and Nanami have made it outside. Gojo leads him to a cluster of trees.

“Here, let me show you,” he says, and then removes his dark glasses.

For a moment, Nanami can’t quite grasp what he’s seeing. Gojo doesn’t have six eyes, thankfully, but the two he has are… impossible.

They’re a color Nanami has never seen before, a blue so clear and crystalline, they look almost like diamonds. Against the stark white of Gojo’s hair and lashes, they are startling.

They’re beautiful.

Gojo himself is beautiful.

And he’s gazing at Nanami as intently as Nanami is staring at him.

“I’ve been wanting to look at you for a long time,” Gojo says, his voice quiet and intense.

Nanami’s lips part. He can’t look away from Gojo’s eyes. He swears he can see galaxies inside them. Gojo has been wanting to look at him? What is he compared to this?

Gojo stares for another minute, drinking Nanami in, and then he slides his glasses back on.

Nanami blinks, almost as if he’s coming out of a trance. “You always keep them covered.”

“Hmm,” Gojo agrees, smiling carelessly. “It never turns off, my technique. I can drop Infinity if I want, but Six Eyes is constant. I can’t stop seeing the world around me in all of its component parts, some of them smaller and also vaster than you can even imagine.”

Exorcising cursed spirits must be laughably easy for him, Nanami realizes. He can probably see the energy, rather than just sensing it, like Nanami and other sorcerers. If he can manipulate even space itself on a molecular level… can Gojo see atoms? No. That would be impossible. Right?

Either way, Nanami understands all at once both why the higher-ups agreed to send Gojo with him on a mission, and why Gojo is always able to so successfully stick his nose into everyone and everything’s business.

What power on earth could keep him out?

“Okay,” Nanami says, trying to sound nonchalant, not like his understanding of the world has been upended. “I guess you can come on my mission with me.”

Gojo bows his head a little. “Very gracious of you, Nanamin. I’m looking forward to seeing your ratio technique in action against cursed spirits.

It’s strange being in a car with Gojo. Even there Gojo can’t really stay still, bouncing in his seat as he and Nanami review the mission.

“It’s a Grade 2 cursed spirit?” Nanami asks, skeptical. “But I’m only a Grade 3.”

“Everyone knows you’re strong enough for a Grade 2 spirit,” he says dismissively. “It’s fine. Anyway, I’ll be there.”

Nanami doesn’t argue the point. He listens to Gojo prattle, trying to absorb the facts of the mission. Grade 2 curses are harder to get rid of than Grade 3, but they still can’t use cursed techniques themselves, so Nanami shouldn’t have to worry about that.

He’s progressed about as far as he can with his own technique without fighting stronger curses. This is exactly the type of opportunity he’s been waiting for.

“It’s an interesting warehouse,” Gojo is saying, and Nanami tunes back in, tries to listen to him better. “Lots of spiritual energy there. This isn’t the first time a curse has been spotted. Locals have started complaining about weird noises at night, but no one has been hurt yet, so—”

Nanami tunes him out again. They’re approaching the warehouse now, and their auxiliary manager clears her throat.

“Let’s do this!” Gojo says, and he’s out of the car almost before it stops moving.

Nanami follows him more warily, looking up at the dark, abandoned warehouse. It has a bad feeling about it, lots of negative cursed energy.

“It’s cold,” Nanami says.

Gojo, who has stopped next to him and is also staring up at the warehouse through his dark glasses, asks, “Hm? Cold?”

“Like it was on the bridge,” Nanami clarifies. “The night we met.”

“A stronger cursed spirit,” Gojo tells him, “means stronger cursed energy. Ready?”

Nanami unholsters his blunt blade and nods.

“You have an hour,” Gojo tells him as he puts up a curtain. “I’ll be close enough to help if you need it, but otherwise this mission is all yours, Kento-kun. Good luck.”

Nanami follows the trail of cursed energy inside, where it is dark, dank, and full of some kind of foul smell. He heads toward where it feels coldest and thinks about nothing but the task ahead of him.

The cursed spirit finds him before he finds it.

It definitely isn’t a Grade 2, Nanami discovers right away, because it can use jujutsu techniques. The spirit is spiny like some kind of giant, hideous porcupine, and Nanami has to channel his own cursed energy into his blade and use it to deflect the shiny, glistening quills the curse shoots at him.

“Ooooh, fresh meat,” the cursed spirit hisses, and Nanami feels a shiver of dread work down his spine.

This is not a Grade 2 curse.

Nanami thinks. He should still be able to exorcise it, as long as the curse doesn’t get any of those spines in him. They look poisonous.

Nanami hefts his blade. Ratio lines appear in his vision, dividing the spirit into parts. Nanami doesn’t waste time. He dashes forward, blade raised. But the curse is fast. It dodges and shoots more spiney quills at him, which Nanami is forced to block.

He doesn’t give up, charges again. He hits the curse as hard as he can, right on one of its weak points, and gets a quill stuck in his side for the effort.

Not only that, but the curse isn’t exorcised, despite looking like it took some damage. Nanami ignores the quill, runs forward again, blinking more ratio lines into existence.

“Ooooh, a fighter, hm?” asks the curse, dodging another hit. “Not for long! Not with my quill in you.”

“We’ll see about that,” Nanami hisses, and runs headlong toward the curse, feinting to the side at the last moment, hitting it with everything he has.

The curse falters, but it doesn’t go down.

Nanami hesitates. His side is going numb where the quill has broken the skin. When he tugs it experimentally, it doesn’t budge, just sends a spark of excruciating pain up his side.

“Fun, isn’t it?” the spirit says, cackling. “It’s barbed, little sorcerer. That numbness you feel? That will spread until it reaches your heart. And then it’s game over.”

Nanami isn’t stupid, and he isn’t prideful.

“Gojo!” he shouts, trusting that the other sorcerer will hear him.

He doesn’t wait though, simply channels more energy into his blade, as much as he can, even what he had previously been holding back.

“You’re making me work harder than I want to,” he tells the curse, and when he rushes forward again, with absolute focus on one of the curse’s weakest points, his blade strikes harder than it ever has before.

Gojo arrives just in time to see him exorcise the curse. Under the power of Nanami’s cursed energy, the spirit simply disappears.

Nanami, suddenly depleted of energy and numb on a quarter of his left side, stumbles. Gojo catches him. He looks at Nanami carefully, his glasses off. His blue eyes glint eerily in the darkness.

“Quill,” Nanami gasps, pointing to his side. “That was not a Grade 2 spirit. Stronger. Grade 1.”

Gojo’s fingers are careful as they move aside the fabric of Nanami’s jacket, the fabric torn where the spine breached it. His fingers move around the quill, never quite touching it. Nanami doesn’t bother explaining what the spirit had told him; he’s sure Gojo can see it all with his Six Eyes.

“Okay,” Gojo says, and his voice sounds calm enough that Nanami feels some of the tension leave his body. That, or the numbness is spreading. “We should get you back to school and to the infirmary.”

But at that moment, four more cursed spirits appear. One of them is relatively humanoid, walking upright. Nanami swallows. Special Grade.

Gojo shifts, stands right in front of Nanami, blocking him from view. Reflexively, Nanami’s hands raise, grasping the back of Gojo’s jacket, both for balance and for comfort. He has no illusions that of the two of them, only one is capable of defeating a Special Grade spirit.

“Well, well, well,” says the Special Grade, licking his lips. “Gojo Satoru himself. What an honor. And he’s brought along an omega plaything.” The cursed spirit tries to glance around Gojo to Nanami. “Too bad it’s dying. Such a waste.”

It? Plaything? That’s degrading. Gojo seems to think so too. Nanami is standing close enough to him that he can feel it when every muscle in his body goes taught.

“Sorry,” Gojo says tonelessly. “I don’t have time to play with you right now.”

He lifts his hand, murmurs something, and an immense flash of red light explodes out from him and toward the four cursed spirits.

Nanami squeezes his eyes shut. He sways on his feet a little, despite his grip on Gojo’s jacket.

“I got you,” Gojo says, turning and steadying Nanami, who opens his eyes. Gojo is looking at him. His glasses are still off. Nanami glances around, but the cursed spirits are gone.

“Can you walk?”

“I think so,” Nanami says. “I can’t feel my left leg, though.”

“Okay,” Gojo says. He still sounds calm, but his voice is a little hollow, unlike Nanami has ever heard it before. “I’ll help you. Let’s go.”

They make it out of the building and back to the car.

“Drive as fast as you can,” Gojo tells their auxiliary manager.

Nanami thinks he loses consciousness for a bit, because when he regains it, they’ve reached the school, and Gojo is carrying him.

“Stay with me, Kento,” he whispers, his lips in Nanami’s hair, against the shell of his ear.

“I’m fine,” Nanami mumbles, and Gojo finally laughs a little. It sounds just as hollow as his voice.

“You will be,” he says. “Shoko has Reverse Cursed Technique. You’ll be good as new.”

“What a relief,” Nanami breathes. “I exorcised a Grade 1 cursed spirit.”

“You did,” Gojo says, walking even faster. “You did great, Kento. You used a lot of cursed energy.”

Nanami smiles. He knows when he’s being complimented.

He loses more awareness after that, comes around again to see the lights of the infirmary above him, to hear Gojo and Shoko whispering heatedly. He gasps in pain. His body is very numb now, though parts of it are starting to tingle painfully.

A hand clamps down on his nape.

“Easy, omega,” comes Gojo’s voice, and Nanami instantly settles down.

He sleeps again.

When he wakes, he feels fine, like the attack from the cursed spirit never happened.

“You’re really amazing,” he tells Shoko honestly. “Thank you.”

Shoko waves him off, though she does look pleased. However, before Nanami can leave, she calls him back.

“Gojo didn’t want me to tell you this,” she says. “But I think you should know. As soon as we knew you would make it, he went and got himself into a rather heated screaming match with Yaga about sending you off on a solo mission against five cursed spirits, one of which happened to be Special Grade.”

“Has he gotten suspended?” asks Nanami, fearing the worst, but Shoko shakes her head.

“Nothing like that,” she says. “The higher-ups are so afraid Gojo might turn his back on jujutsu society, or wake up one day and decide he’d rather be a curse user than a sorcerer, that they can’t really do anything to him.”

That makes sense. Especially now, knowing what he knows about Gojo’s abilities, Nanami can see how he would be a formidable opponent if he ever switched sides.

“He didn’t leave your side, Kento. I’ve never really seen him so worried. Watch your back,” Shoko tells him. “That mission never should have gone to you, and whoever assigned it knew that.”

Nanami thinks about that as he walks back to his dorm. He realizes it would be a fairly simple way to get rid of him, if the higher-ups no longer want to deal with an unruly omega sorcerer. Either that, or they hoped it might scare him away from wanting missions at all.

Neither prospect feels promising.

Nanami tries to find Gojo, just to ask his opinion, but Gojo is nowhere to be found. Apparently, he’s been sent off on an important mission with Geto, one that could keep him away from school for a while.

When he finally does come back, there’s something off about him. Nanami hears rumors that Gojo fought another sorcerer and finally unlocked the full potential of his technique.

He never gets a chance to ask him about it, even though he wants to.

At the end of Nanami’s first year, Geto massacres over one hundred civilians and leaves Jujutsu High behind.

The mood at school is somber. Nanami is shocked, moving through the halls like a ghost.

He is worried about Gojo, who wears bandages over his eyes all the time now, but acts like his normal, cheery, untouchable self. Nanami feels strange when he sees him, like behind Gojo’s bandages, something is broken.

He says nothing, though, because Gojo is repelling all comfort and sympathy right now, even from Shoko, one of Gojo’s only other really good friends.

But then, a couple of weeks later, Nanami is awoken late at night by a knock at his dorm room door. He stumbles out of bed, disoriented and sleepy, and opens the door with an angrily muttered “This better be good,” only to find Gojo standing there.

“Oh,” Nanami says, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He resists the urge to tame what he is sure is a blond bird’s nest on his head. “Gojo-san.”

Gojo says nothing. He’s dressed in his day clothes, even though it’s two in the morning. His bandages are wound tightly around his eyes. His body thrums with visible tension.

Nanami feels momentarily frightened. It’s been several weeks since their mission together at the warehouse, and with Geto being expelled, Nanami hadn’t expected to see much of the alpha.

But here he is, outside Nanami’s door.

It’s that he’s so quiet that Nanami finds frightening. Gojo is never quiet. He’s always loud, vibrant, alive. He was quiet like this after Nanami got hurt. A quiet Gojo is an unpredictable Gojo.

He’s like a shadow of himself, standing before Nanami.

Nanami doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what Gojo wants from him, and so he lets his instincts take over and he drops his ironclad control, and he releases into the air his most comforting, soothing omega pheromones.

Gojo sighs, a tiny, barely audible sound.

“Do you want to come in?” Nanami asks him, and steps aside, and watches as Gojo enters his room for the first time.

He looks somehow both tall and small. He stands just inside the door without taking a step further.

Nanami reaches for the light switch, but Gojo’s entire body flinches. Nanami quickly pulls his hand back, hesitant, not entirely sure how to handle Gojo right now.

“Gojo,” he says, his voice barely a whisper but still loud in the otherwise silent room.

Gojo’s head turns toward him. Nanami fills the room with the most soothing pheromones his body can produce, the kind he would use on inconsolable children, or raging alphas. Gojo isn’t either of those things, not right now, but he still sways forward a little, off balance, and Nanami barely catches him as the tall alpha tips right into him, face in Nanami’s neck right by his scent gland.

His lips press against Nanami’s skin, a scalding brand. Nanami freezes. For a moment he stops breathing. He isn’t sure if Gojo knows what he’s doing.

Gojo is deceptively heavy, and Nanami stumbles a little as he tries to balance his weight. Slowly, like he’s coaxing a wounded and scared animal, he leads Gojo to his bed. The alpha follows without a word, keeping his face in Nanami’s neck the whole time.

When they reach the bed and Nanami pushes just the slightest bit on Gojo’s shoulders, the alpha’s knees fold and he sits, upper body swaying. Nanami didn’t know his pheromones could work this quickly, but Gojo is acting almost drunk on them already.

Nanami kneels down, and Gojo’s gaze behind the bandages follows him.

“Shoes,” Nanami whispers, and helps Gojo toe off his shoes, then lift his legs onto the bed.

Nanami stares at him for a moment, bewildered at both the sight of such a powerful alpha in his bed, and at the sight of such a powerful alpha who can’t even really move on his own right now.

This is grief, Nanami suddenly realizes. This is a Gojo Satoru who has not slept in what is probably a week or more, who most likely hasn’t even eaten, who needs rest so badly that one whiff of Nanami’s pheromones nearly knocks him flat.

This is a more fragile and vulnerable Gojo than Nanami has ever seen before, and might ever see again.

He is deeply terrified of doing the wrong thing and scaring him away, or somehow making the situation worse.  

But the Gojo who melts into his bed, snow white hair fanning out on his pillow, doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere. In fact, Nanami thinks he might already be asleep, and he steps away from the bed, thinking that he’ll spend the rest of the night in his desk chair, watching Gojo. Just to make sure he’s okay.  

But a hand reaches out, whip quick, and grasps his pajama shirt before he can take more than a single step.

Nanami turns back to the bed, and sees Gojo with his bandages off, one hand holding onto Nanami. His eyes are slits, just the smallest sliver of blue visible. He tugs, pulling Nanami back, then down, until Nanami nearly sprawls on top of him. He tries to move, to give Gojo more space, but Gojo holds him tightly.

“Stay,” he murmurs, his voice a tired rumble. His lips press against Nanami’s temple, his next words a warm puff of air against skin. “Stay with me.”

Nanami remains tense for a moment, not sure if Gojo actually wants this, if he knows what he’s doing, if he’s just delirious with exhaustion, if he’s going to wake up hours from now regretting that he came here.

He relaxes when he realizes he can’t control any of that. Gojo feels his body loosen and he relaxes in turn, sinking even further into the bed, Nanami still half on top of him.

“Stay,” Gojo manages to say one more time, the word almost inaudible for how tired he is. His slitted eyes close, his face finds Nanami’s neck, and his breathing evens out.

He is asleep within seconds.

Nanami stays awake for much longer. He slowly lets his calming pheromones taper off. Gojo stays asleep. Eventually Nanami joins him, wondering what it means that Gojo chose to come here when he needed help.

That Gojo came to him, chose him, trusted him enough for this, is not something Nanami is ever going to forget, or take lightly.

Gojo is still sleeping when Nanami wakes up for class the next morning. It’s his last week of school and he doesn’t want to miss anything, so he doesn’t think Gojo will mind if he goes. He leaves the alpha asleep in his bed, peeking through the door before shutting it all the way, but Gojo doesn’t stir.

When Nanami returns to his dorm later that afternoon, Gojo is gone. On Nanami’s desk, however, is his favorite sandwich from the café up the road, still warm when Nanami picks it up.

He smiles.

His first year ends without circumstance. Nanami doesn’t get another solo mission, but he also doesn’t seem to be banned from group missions either. Either way, he doesn’t have to think about it until his second year starts, and before then he gets to spend some time with his parents and with Yu.

He sees Gojo over the summer only once, when he and Shoko show up unannounced on Nanami’s birthday and kidnap him for dinner. He’s lucky that he’d already celebrated with Yu earlier, because he’s not actually sure how he would explain Gojo and his bandaged eyes.

The three of them end up at a karaoke club, Nanami ends up drunk, and Shoko and Gojo end up singing Madonna songs into the early hours of the morning.

Gojo walks Nanami home.

“You and Shoko-san didn’t have to do this,” Nanami says, proud of himself that he’s not slurring his words together.

“Of course we did,” Gojo tells him. He hangs onto Nanami’s arm to keep him from stumbling. “You deserve a party.”

“It was nice,” Nanami admits. “Thank you.”

Gojo turns to face him once they reach Nanami’s house. “Happy birthday, Nanamin,” he says, and presses a kiss to Nanami’s forehead.

Nanami watches him walk away, stunned.

The next morning, he isn’t convinced he didn’t dream it all. But he can still feel the tingle of Gojo’s lips on his skin.

Chapter Text

Two months after his seventeenth birthday, when Nanami has finally started his second year, he wakes up feeling itchy.

At first, he thinks nothing of it. His scalp is a little tingly, a feeling that travels down his neck and into his back. He can feel it in his fingertips. He starts to feel warm, warmer than usual, too warm for his school uniform.

But those things in and of themselves aren’t enough to tell Nanami that anything is unusual.

In fact, it’s Gojo who starts acting strange, at first simply by showing up.

He hasn’t been around much the last few months, not since… well, not since Geto. Everyone knows that Gojo isn’t really a student anymore. He hasn’t been one for a while. He takes mission after mission, staying away as much as possible.

Aside from the night he spent in Nanami’s room, too tired to do anything other than lie in Nanami’s bed and silently grieve, and the night he and Shoko took him out to celebrate his birthday, Nanami hasn’t seen him.

But the morning Nanami wakes up feeling itchy, Gojo is there, leaning against the wall outside his dorm room door the second Nanami opens it.

“Gojo-san,” Nanami says, surprised. He’s already feeling warm, but he flushes even more at the sight of the tall alpha.

Gojo looks tired, as tired as he can look with a black blindfold covering his dark circles. His shoulders are slumped a little inside his black hoodie. But he straightens when Nanami steps out into the hall, and his lips curl into a smile.

“Hi, Nanamin,” he says. It’s the first thing he’s said to Nanami in weeks, and his voice is so welcome that Nanami doesn’t even protest the nickname.

He thinks, for a moment, of the kiss Gojo pressed against his forehead after his birthday. He clears his throat, hurrying forward.

“What are you doing here?”

Gojo shrugs, but he falls into step with Nanami as the younger heads for the dining hall and breakfast.

“It’s been a while since I was back,” Gojo says. “I missed it. My darling kouhai needs me, all grown up and in his second year” he sings, reaching out and tapping Nanami on the nose, then ruffling his hair.

Nanami smacks his hand away, but can’t help the pleasant warmth that suffuses him.

Gojo tilts his head. His nostrils flare slightly. “You feel alright, Nanami?”

Now it’s Nanami’s turn to shrug. He glances sideways at Gojo, confused as to why he’s asking. “Fine, I think.”

“Hmmm,” Gojo hums, and says nothing else. He does pull up one corner of his blindfold, staring at Nanami sideways with a single, unbelievable eye.

Nanami shivers a little, as he has done each time he’s seen Gojo’s Six Eyes uncovered. He wonders what Gojo sees when he looks at him. He has never actually worked up the courage to ask. He’s just stubborn enough to not want to give Gojo the satisfaction, and he’s also not sure he wants the answer.

But today, Gojo stares at him for a long time.

“What is it?” Nanami finally asks. “Is something wrong?”

He touches his face reflexively, almost self-consciously. But Gojo only smiles and covers his eye again.

“Nothing is wrong. Can’t I just be happy to see you?”

He doesn’t give Nanami a chance to answer, as he immediately starts babbling about his latest mission. Nanami is grateful. He’s not sure how he would have responded.

Gojo stays suspiciously close to him that morning. Sits with him at breakfast and eats something that looks sweet enough to give Nanami cavities just from the sight alone. They are drawing attention from the few other students who are around. Well, Gojo is drawing attention. If he’s aware of it, he isn’t giving any sign.

When Nanami gets up to go to class, Gojo follows him.

“Okay, seriously,” says Nanami, putting a hand on Gojo’s chest to stop him from following Nanami right into the classroom. “You’re being strange. What is going on?”

Gojo doesn’t answer. He looks down at Nanami’s hand on his chest, and his entire body twitches.

Nanami yanks his hand back. “Sorry,” he murmurs, though he isn’t entirely sure why he’s apologizing. He desperately tries to restore some kind of equilibrium between them. “Stop following me around,” he orders. “You’re being a nuisance. Go make yourself useful.”

Gojo grins. “Sir, yes sir,” he trills, and pushes Nanami forward into his classroom before prancing off down the hall.

Nanami thinks that’s the end of it.

But the itchy feeling under his skin gets worse, and he gets warm enough that he finally removes his jacket, and Gojo is there again as soon as Nanami’s classes are over for the day, stuck like a burr in Nanami’s side.

Nanami decides to act as if this is completely normal. He is, truthfully, bewildered. But he’s also feeling weirder and weirder in his own skin in a way that he can’t explain and that has nothing to do with Gojo.

At least, not until it suddenly has everything to do with Gojo.

As always, Gojo is using his Infinity to mask his pheromones. Nanami is used to this, to not being able to smell him. It’s never bothered him before. He prefers his own scent to be masked as well, so he can’t begrudge Gojo whatever sense of security or privacy he derives from hiding his alpha scent.

But suddenly, that evening, after Gojo has inexplicably refused to leave Nanami’s side, going so far as to hang out in Nanami’s dorm with him, Nanami decides that all he wants in the world is to be able to smell Gojo. He hasn’t been able to stop moving for a couple of hours now. He can’t sit still, can’t stop shifting in his desk chair, can’t stop surreptitiously watching Gojo as he lounges like he belongs on Nanami’s bed.

Nanami is more aware than he has ever been of Gojo’s presence. He can feel his cursed energy, can sense how big, how consuming his presence is. He wants all of it, all of Gojo. He wants to be able to smell Gojo’s alpha.

This thought, this desire, is what finally clues Nanami into what’s happening.

“Shit,” he growls, standing up, aware of every part of his body as he hasn’t been all day. “Fuck.”

Gojo is in front of him between one blink and the next. His blindfold is off. He watches Nanami carefully with the full force of his aquiline eyes.

“Nanami?”

Nanami glares at him. “You,” he hisses, poking Gojo viciously in the chest. “You’ve known all day, haven’t you?”

Gojo can’t quite conceal his guilty expression, and Nanami groans miserably.

“I don’t need you shadowing me like some kind of protector, Gojo-san,” Nanami says flatly. “What do you think is going to happen to me here, at school?”

“It’s your first one,” is all Gojo says, sounding almost plaintive.

Nanami sighs, but he doesn’t disagree, or even counter Gojo’s point. “I need to go see Shoko-san.”

Gojo nods. “Let’s go.”

“You don’t need to come with me.”

Gojo pouts, expression ridiculous, but his voice is very serious when he says, “I really do, Nanamin. Please let me.”

Nanami rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t stop Gojo from coming along as he makes his way toward the infirmary. Not like he could stop Gojo, not if Gojo has made up his mind about it. He’s so flighty it’s easy to forget that Gojo is an immovable object.

Nanami tries desperately not to read anything into Gojo’s current behavior. He’s just being protective, that’s all. It doesn’t mean anything. Sure, he’s protected Nanami before. He’s even kissed him once, sort of. But there’s no way he wants Nanami as an alpha wants an omega. He’s never given any true sign of it.

This line of thinking makes Nanami grumpy, and so it’s with a little more force than is necessary that he shoves open the door to the infirmary, startling Shoko, who raises both eyebrows when Gojo trails in after him.

“What are you doing here?” asks Shoko. “You didn’t get hurt, did you?”

“I never get hurt,” says Gojo haughtily.

Shoko makes a face. “I was talking to Nanami.”

Nanami tries to ignore Gojo. “I’m going into heat,” he says, and is proud that he doesn’t even blush.

Shoko, ever professional, just nods. She makes her way toward a cabinet of supplies. “Do you want an inhibitor?”

Gojo makes a noise in his throat, low and sort of growly, but Nanami speaks before he can. “No,” he says. “It’s my first one.”

“Ah,” says Shoko. “Got it.”

He’s glad that Shoko doesn’t ask questions. She’s a beta, but she’s obviously well versed enough in omega biology to know that omegas should never block their first heat. He has to go through it this first time, just to regulate his cycle.

“Here are some options,” she says instead, turning back around. Her gaze lands on Gojo, taking in again his uncovered eyes, but when she speaks it is obviously to Nanami. “Do you want him here? I can kick him out.”

Nanami doesn’t look, but he can feel Gojo tense, the lines of his body suddenly taught.

Nanami thinks about it for a moment. It’s true that Shoko can make Gojo leave, and then Nanami can deal with this on his own, without his overgrown shadow. He has a hard time believing that Gojo wants him, but Gojo clearly wants something. He had known that Nanami would be going into heat, and he had come back.

He hadn’t left Nanami’s side all day.

“He can stay,” Nanami decides, and the tension in Gojo’s body dissipates.

Shoko glances between them for a moment, surprised, but nods. She holds out a syringe. “Emergency birth control.” Another syringe. “Anti-nausea.” A bottle of pills, which rattle as she holds them up. “Basic pain killers.”

Nanami takes a deep breath. He glances sideways at Gojo, somehow unsurprised to find him looking back.

He may not know what Gojo wants, exactly, but Nanami has always been practical. “All of them,” he tells Shoko.

Ten minutes later, Nanami has two bandages on his left arm after the shots and a little case of pain killers in hand.

“You need water,” Shoko orders. “Lots of it, as many bottles as the dining hall will give you. Some non-perishable food would also be good, and then fresh fruit and vegetables each day if you can get them.”

Without saying a word, Gojo warps away. Nanami, surprising himself, misses him almost immediately. But he’s sure that when he returns to his room, Gojo will be there with water and food. He tries to ignore the butterflies fluttering in his stomach. He tries not to get ahead of himself, but it feels like Gojo is taking care of him, the way an alpha takes care of an omega they’re interested in.

“Are you sure this is okay, Nanami?” asks Shoko gently. “You can tell him no. I know it’s a novel concept, but he can’t always get everything he wants.”

Nanami shrugs uncomfortably. “I know that,” he says, and he does. He knows that he could open his door and tell Gojo thanks but no thanks, and the alpha wouldn’t pressure him at all. He would simply leave.

But that, the idea of Gojo leaving, makes Nanami want to cry. “I don’t want to do this alone, Shoko-san,” he says quietly. “And I know Gojo can be careless of others, but I don’t think he wants to hurt me.”

“No,” Shoko says, in agreement. “Never you.”

There’s a weight to her words that Nanami doesn’t fully understand, but he feels itchy and antsy and warm, so he simply thanks Shoko and leaves. As he suspected, Gojo is already in his dorm when he arrives, along with two full cases of water bottles and more food than Nanami thinks he could eat in a week.

It’s only his first heat, so he isn’t fully sure what to expect, but it shouldn’t last longer than three days.

Instead of saying this, Nanami looks at Gojo and nods. “Thank you.”

Gojo looks shockingly out of place in Nanami’s dorm right in that moment, like he’s both too big and too beautiful for it. His white hair is falling softly over his eyes, which are still uncovered. He stares at Nanami almost without blinking. Nanami desperately wants to know what he’s thinking.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” Nanami asks him, trying to break the tension.

Gojo finally blinks. “Are you asking me to leave?” The words seem almost forced out of him.

Nanami shakes his head. “No, I’m not asking you to leave.” The lines of Gojo’s body relax. “But I’m not sure what’s going to happen, I don’t know what I’m going to want, and…”

Gojo’s big hands land on Nanami’s shoulders. “I just want to help you,” he says. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

Nanami must make a face at that, because Gojo huffs out a laugh.

“You’re crazy if you think I’m not going to want you in the throes of my heat,” says Nanami bluntly, and he knows he doesn’t imagine the way Gojo’s fingers tighten on his shoulders. It takes more willpower than he expected not to blurt out that he wants Gojo even without a heat. “What I’m asking is, will you give me what I want? Willingly? Without feeling obligated, or like you’re satisfying some misplaced sense of duty?”

Now it’s Gojo’s turn to make a face. “Nanami, I came all the way back here just for you.” His voice sounds more vulnerable than Nanami has ever heard it. He wishes he knew if it was genuine. He thinks it is. “I will give you gladly anything you ask of me. No obligation, no duty. Just you.”

And isn’t that something.

It could go to Nanami’s head, the power that he suddenly realizes he has over Gojo. But he’s too warm and itchy and uncomfortable in his own skin to let it, so instead he just breathes out in relief, knowing he isn’t alone.

He reaches up, grasps Gojo’s arms. Gojo’s hands are still on his shoulders. “If this is going to work, Gojo-san,” he says quietly. “I think I need to be able to smell you. Properly.”

Gojo doesn’t hesitate. He lifts one hand and makes a sign, flicking it toward Nanami’s door. A warding, Nanami thinks, for silence and privacy. And then he drops his Infinity.

Nanami’s knees crumple.

He doesn’t hit the floor only because Gojo catches him under the arms, but his head lolls to one side, he is nearly insensate, he is overwhelmed by alpha scent.

Gojo’s pheromones suffuse the small room instantly, permeating everything. The top note is the heady force of Gojo’s wanting, ripe and strong and immediate and entirely Nanami’s. This is what he’s been hiding behind Infinity? He’s wanted Nanami, like this, the entire time?

Nanami is spiraling rapidly into his heat, and so he only vaguely processes this. But what his nose tells him is undeniable. Gojo absolutely wants him.

Underneath Gojo’s incredible want are other sensations Nanami can taste on his tongue when he opens his mouth. Gojo’s desire to protect is nearly as strong as his want. There is pride in his pheromones, and arrogance, and a dark curl of satisfaction.

It is a cocktail that has Nanami’s head spinning. He can feel it when his own scent and omegan pheromones bloom outward in response to what Gojo has released.

Gojo pulls him up, holds him against his chest. The sound of his inhalation is sharp in the quiet room.

“Oh, Nanami,” he breathes, sounding awed, and buries his face in Nanami’s neck.

That’s all it takes.

Nanami is gone. He dives headfirst into his heat. Gojo’s scent is too strong, and Nanami does not even try to resist its siren call. Gojo’s arms around him feel secure. The room feels safe. Nanami is utterly convinced that there is no power in the universe capable of harming him right now, not while Gojo is here, protecting him.

His rational mind slips away. His omega fully emerges, and Nanami nuzzles into Gojo’s chest, purring. The strongest alpha he knows is going to take care of him. He has never felt so secure.

Gojo lifts his head from Nanami’s neck and stares at him with wide blue eyes. “You trust me this much?” he asks, his voice so quiet Nanami almost can’t hear it. He strokes Nanami’s hair, his face, his lips. Gojo’s pheromones go even stronger, richer, deeply pleased and possessive and protective.

Nanami goes weak-kneed again at the force of it, whimpering. His body is hot now, nearly on fire. Slick pools at his entrance. He squirms in Gojo’s arms, wanting.

He finds himself suddenly on the bed on his back, Gojo over top him. He does not know how they got there so quickly, if Gojo can move that fast, or if he warped them without Nanami noticing. He is distracted by how blue and bright Gojo’s eyes are in the dim lighting of Nanami’s room. His hair shines like a halo above his head.

Gojo leans down, pressing his lips to the high points on Nanami’s cheekbones, to both of his eyelids, his chin, and finally his lips.

Nanami sighs into the kiss, his toes curling. Gojo kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him, and his long, clever fingers make quick work of Nanami’s clothing, and then his own, and Nanami is nearly drunk on his lips before he realizes that they are both naked.

Gojo is lean all over, body whittled into a perfect shape, his musculature like a sculpture. He is the most beautiful man Nanami has ever seen.

“Satoru,” he gasps, almost begging, and Gojo’s pupils blow wide, black nearly swallowing the blue.

“Kento,” he says, and kisses him again.

Gojo’s hips move against him, lighting up all the pleasure centers in Nanami’s brain. He arches up into Gojo, making a small, desperate keening noise into Gojo’s mouth. He can feel the length of Gojo’s hardness, and he shifts restlessly, wanting it.

Gojo pulls away from his lips and kisses down Nanami’s throat, leaving a burning trail in his wake.

“You don’t have to think about a thing,” Gojo murmurs into Nanami’s skin. “I’m going to take such good care of you.”

Nanami shudders. Gojo stops at the juncture between his neck and shoulder and bites, rolling Nanami’s skin between his teeth. He avoids Nanami’s scent glands, and he doesn’t have access to Nanami’s mating gland from this angle, but the bite still has Nanami seeing stars, has him wanting more.

“Satoru!” he says, voice a gravelly groan.

“Make you feel so good,” Gojo slurs, moving down Nanami’s chest, rolling first one and then the other nipple between his teeth.

Gojo isn’t even touching him where he wants to be touched, yet Nanami feels as if he could come already. He’s never been so hard in his life, leaking onto his own belly. Slick pools out of him, making him wet.

He doesn’t even have the capacity to feel embarrassed. His bodily reactions are out of his control, all part of his heat.

Gojo seems to have no patience for teasing either of them. He settles like a big cat between Nanami’s legs and looks up at him through snow-white eyelashes as he takes his first lick at Nanami’s cock.

Nanami’s hips thrust up of their own volition, and then Gojo’s hands are there, holding him down, and Gojo’s mouth is on him.

Nanami’s vision whites out. His back arches. He is gasping Gojo’s name, over and over again, which only seems to encourage the alpha, who worships Nanami’s cock with his mouth.

“Pretty Kento,” Gojo breathes, kissing the very tip of his dick. “So pretty.”

Nanami can’t really process that right now, Gojo calling him pretty. He just knows it pleases him, makes something warm curl up in his chest. He reaches down, lets his fingers tangle in Gojo’s white hair, tugs a little to show his appreciation.

As Gojo’s mouth descends on him again, Nanami feels one of his hands move lower, until one longer, slender finger circles his entrance. His fingers tighten in Gojo’s hair.

“Please,” Nanami whispers, and just like he promised, Gojo gives him what he wants.

His first finger slides in, the way made easy by Nanami’s slick. That’s really all it takes, the feel of that long finger inside him, the heat of Gojo’s mouth around him. His heat makes him sensitive to everything about Gojo right now, his smell, his pheromones, the feel of his fingers and mouth. Nanami comes with a little cry, nails scraping Gojo’s scalp.

The alpha moans around him, finger still working, and as Nanami shivers and shakes and starts to come down from the high of his first orgasm, Gojo slides another finger inside. Nanami clenches around him, his body ready, seeking more.

A litany of little breathy pleases fall from his lips, his head tosses from side to side on the pillow, his fingers create knots in Gojo’s hair. He’d heard that heat sex with the right partner, someone you trusted and cared for above all others, could be one of the greatest experiences ever.

But he hadn’t known, not until now.

Now that Nanami has come, his pheromones are mixed with Gojo’s. Their own unique scent combination permeates the room, a smell that clouds Nanami’s mind and makes him desperate for anything that his alpha is willing to give him.

Gojo pops off his dick with a low groan and kisses his way back up Nanami’s stomach and chest, up his neck, his jaw.

“Give me your mouth,” Gojo says. “Pretty Kento, give me that pretty mouth.”

Nanami can taste himself on Gojo’s tongue. He can feel himself flush across every inch of his body. No one has ever complimented him like Gojo is complimenting him now. They kiss, and kiss, and kiss, and Gojo works a third and then a fourth finger into him.

“You’re so ready you hardly even need this,” Gojo tells him, pulling his fingers out and then pushing them back in again. He’s right; Nanami’s body offers no resistance. “What a good omega.”

Nanami shudders, a full-body spasm, and then he whines.

“Please,” he begs, though he makes almost no sound. His mouth forms the shape of the word.

Gojo is staring at him with his own mouth slightly open, looking like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.

“Okay, Kento,” he says, kissing the corner of his lips. “I’ll give you what you want.”

Gojo fills Nanami’s entire field of vision. Anything outside of the space that Gojo takes up above him ceases to exist. He hardly even feels it when Gojo slides a pillow under his hips.

“Look at me,” Gojo says, leaning down so that their faces are close together.

Nanami hasn’t looked away from him even once, but Gojo has threaded a bit of alpha command into his voice now, so Nanami stays focused on his heavenly eyes as Gojo’s cockhead finds his entrance, and he doesn’t look away as Gojo smoothly slides all the way in.

It’s so good that tears gather in the corners of Nanami’s eyes. Gojo leans down and licks them away.

“God, look at you,” Gojo says, nuzzling his cheek against Nanami’s. “You feel lovely inside, Kento. So warm. So wet.”

Nanami hadn’t known Gojo could talk like this, he’s always so ridiculous. The praise he unleashes now goes straight to Nanami’s head. He feels like he’s floating.

And then Gojo moves. Small, shallow thrusts at first. Once Nanami is used to those and begging for more, Gojo angles his hips differently, sliding in and out of Nanami in deep, wonderful thrusts. Nanami’s whole body locks up around Gojo, and then Gojo whispers, “Shhh, I got you, baby, I got you,” and Nanami hadn’t even known he was making any noise.

And then Gojo hits a spot inside him that turns Nanami’s body into liquid. He comes again instantly, his limbs going totally pliant, falling soft and open from where they had previously been wrapped around Gojo.

“That’s it,” Gojo moans, hips moving faster. “You feel good?”

Nanami makes a garbled sound deep in his throat. “Mmmm,” he manages to groan. “Satoru, so good. So good.”

Gojo licks along the line of Nanami’s neck, suckles on his skin, nips at him. The drag of his cock in Nanami’s body makes his eyes roll back in his head, for all that he’s come already, twice.

“Y-y-you can,” Nanami stutters, trying desperately to speak. “You can… inside.”

It’s Gojo’s turn to shudder now, up and down his perfect body, and the rhythm of his hips falters, and he whines a little into Nanami’s neck and comes, shaking.

Nanami relaxes into the bed, sated for now. He’s tingling pleasantly all over, and he can move his arms again, so he reaches up to hug Gojo close to him, to pull his weight comfortably down on top of him, but then Gojo raises up onto his hands and there’s a feral light in his blue eyes.

He pulls out of Nanami and slithers down his body and lifts Nanami’s legs over his shoulders and licks a long, wet stripe up Nanami’s spent cock.

“Gojo!” Nanami shouts, hoarse.

Gojo looks up at him, his eyes lidded and heavy, and pushes his fingers into Nanami’s body. He fingers his own cum out of Nanami and then spreads it over Nanami’s belly, smearing it into his skin.

Nanami watches, wide eyed, a little grossed out, overwhelmed by this show of possessiveness from Gojo. His legs are still up on Gojo’s shoulders, but as soon as the alpha is satisfied, he lowers them and crawls back up Nanami’s body. He kisses him once, deeply, and then falls onto his side, pulling Nanami in close.

Nanami, his head clear again, at least for the moment, purrs happily as Gojo strokes one big hand languidly up and down his side. “You okay?” he asks Nanami quietly, nose buried in the space behind Nanami’s ear. “Feel good?”

“Hmmm,” Nanami hums. He stretches a little. “Yes. You’re a good alpha.”

Gojo freezes against him, and Nanami tenses, wondering if he said something wrong. But then Gojo curls even tighter around him, presses his entire face into Nanami’s neck, and rumbles out his own purr, a deep, alpha purr, so strong Nanami can feel the vibrations.

It’s the most adorable thing he’s ever seen Gojo do, and he doesn’t resist the urge to curl a hand in Gojo’s hair. He’s still a little bit in awe of the fact that he gets to have this, gets to have Gojo like this, at least for now.

He hadn’t guessed that Gojo might be a cuddler. He’s never shied away from casual touches with Nanami. A hand on the wrist, on his back, an arm around his shoulders, that’s been common for as long as Nanami has known him. But Gojo has always used Infinity. Has always kept some part of himself masked.

He doesn’t do that at all now. Every part of him is laid bare for Nanami.

“You smell very happy about something,” Gojo murmurs into the skin of his neck.

Nanami smiles. “Do I?”

Gojo’s fingers tickle Nanami’s waist. “Yes. What is making you smell so happy, omega? Hmm? Could it be the wildly handsome and powerful and good alpha taking care of you?”

Gojo’s tone is teasing, as light and airy as it ever is. But Nanami feels especially attuned to him right now, and he thinks he detects a hint of vulnerability in his voice. Instead of teasing back, Nanami goes with the truth.

“Yes,” he says easily, and is rewarded with a tiny, shocked inhale from Gojo. “He would be an even better alpha if he got me some water.”

Gojo doesn’t even bother getting up. He simply warps the five-foot distance between the bed and the packs of water bottles, grabs two of them, and warps back. He doesn’t give Nanami time to comment, instead pulling him up and rearranging them on the bed, so that Gojo is propped up on Nanami’s pillows and Nanami is settled between his legs, his back to Gojo’s chest.

Gojo coaxes him into drinking one of the water bottles in its entirety, which Nanami does slowly so as not to upset his stomach.

It hits Nanami about halfway through the bottle that he and Gojo just had sex. They fucked. Nanami pauses with the bottle halfway to his mouth, flabbergasted. Gojo just fucked him. Nanami came twice. He has Gojo’s dried cum all over his belly.

“Everything alright?” Gojo asks, noticing Nanami’s stillness. He has already finished his own water and is now rubbing Nanami’s arms and sides and the tops of his thighs.

Nanami drinks a little more to avoid answering. He doesn’t know how to tell Gojo that he can’t believe they just had sex. Gojo would absolutely laugh at him.

“I’m fine,” Nanami says, snuggling further into the lean curve of Gojo’s body.

He is fine, that’s the truth. He gets this for three days at least. He’ll enjoy it while it lasts. And he’ll always remember the time he saw the Gojo Satoru naked.

After Nanami has finished his water, Gojo helps him to the bathroom. He picks Nanami up, murmurs, “This might feel weird,” and then warps both of them to what Nanami assumes is Gojo’s private bathroom.

It does feel weird, and Nanami thinks that if Shoko hadn’t given him the anti-nausea shot, he might have thrown up.

Gojo cleans him up a little. He looks especially sad to wipe all of his dried cum off Nanami’s belly, but perks right up again when Nanami, having briefly lost control of his mouth, tells him he can do it again if he wants.

They make it back to the dorm in one piece, and back onto the bed, and Nanami curls up again with Gojo behind him, and feels safe, and loved, and protected.

Eventually, Nanami starts to doze off. He’s only peripherally aware of anything, unsure if Gojo also sleeps. He thinks not, because he can vaguely feel Gojo’s hands moving through his hair and lightly over his body. His touches now are comforting, not sexual, and they send Nanami into a light sleep.

He isn’t quite sure how long he sleeps, but when he wakes again it is very dark. He whines a little, not sure what woke him, not fully remembering what’s happening.

Then Gojo is there. His scent is immediately soothing, though his presence reawakens Nanami’s heat. His desire roars in his belly, unignorable.

“Shh,” Gojo murmurs. “You’re okay, Kento.”

Gojo puts him on his belly, moves his legs apart, and fucks into him slowly.

Nanami sobs a little into the bedsheets, the fire inside him burning even brighter. His hands reach in front of him, grasping for purchase, seeking something to hold onto. Gojo balances on one hand and reaches his other forward, tangling his fingers with Nanami’s.

Tension builds in Nanami’s gut. Gojo angles his hips just right, hits Nanami’s prostate, and Nanami gasps.

“Oh,” he says, moaning. “R-r-r-right there, Satoru.”

Gojo chuckles lowly right in his ear. The press of his cock inside Nanami is relentless. He hums a little, lowers his head to the space between Nanami’s shoulder blades and up a little. He noses lightly at Nanami’s mating gland.

Nanami’s heart threatens to beat right out of his chest. He sees sparks behind his eyes. He clutches tightly at Gojo’s hand.

“Please,” Nanami murmurs, though he isn’t sure what he’s asking for. A bite on the mating gland, for Gojo to fuck him harder, to come. Maybe all of those things.

Gojo doesn’t bite him, but he does let go of Nanami’s hand to grasp his hips, lifting him up a little. The new angle is perfect, so perfect Nanami cries out. Gojo’s hips snap forward, harder than before, and he keeps up this new pace until Nanami is whining desperately and begging for release.

Only then does Gojo say, breathlessly, “Come for me, little omega,” and Nanami does.

He goes boneless, held up at the hips only by Gojo’s strong grip, which lasts until the alpha himself comes in hot stripes all over Nanami’s back.

“Gojo,” Nanami groans, but only half in protest. He realizes that, though Gojo is more in control of himself than Nanami is, even the alpha is partially at the mercy of Nanami’s heat pheromones. He probably can’t help what he’s doing.

“No?” asks Gojo quietly, running a finger through his release, raising goosebumps on Nanami’s skin.

“It’s okay,” Nanami admits, his voice an exhausted murmur. “Like it.”

Gojo chuckles again, pleased.

He makes sure Nanami drinks another bottle of water, and he makes him eat a little, too. He takes his caretaking duties much more seriously than Nanami thought he would, making sure Nanami is comfortable, that he has everything he wants, that he’s happy.

Nanami watches him flit about the dorm room with pleasure. This would be obnoxious all the time, he acknowledges, but during his heat, he doesn’t mind it so much.

Having Gojo wait on him hand and foot is definitely something he could get used to.

Eventually, Nanami falls asleep again. Gojo curls around him, sturdy and warm. Nanami rests easy.

Chapter Text

Nanami sleeps for several hours, and when he wakes, his body is burning again. He gasps, squirming back into Gojo.

Gojo is already hard. Nanami can feel the eager press of his erection against his back. Gojo’s palms slide up his chest. One arm locks there, curling around Nanami from behind. The other hand grasps his jaw and tilts his head, and then Gojo kisses him, and it’s filthy and wet immediately, and Nanami moans helplessly.

“Come here,” Gojo says into his mouth, and Nanami doesn’t know how much closer he can get, but then Gojo abruptly rearranges them, sits up, lifts Nanami up by the hips, seemingly effortlessly, and settles him firmly in his lap, so that Nanami can feel the hot press of his cock between his cheeks.

Nanami whines. “Please, Gojo.”

“Sorry, what’s that?” Gojo asks him, tone lilting. “What’s that you called me?”

“Go-o-o,” Nanami gasps, pushing back into him. “Satoru, please, please!”

Gojo lifts him again, positions him, and then lowers Nanami down onto his cock in one smooth, easy motion. Nanami’s mouth opens but no sound comes out. He is already slick and open, so there’s no pain, but he feels full immediately. As soon as he’s capable of making noise again he groans deep in his chest, letting his head fall back onto Gojo’s collarbones.

Gojo chuckles darkly in his ear, licks at the shell of it. “Good?” he asks.

Nanami can only whimper deliriously. The press of Gojo inside of him is so good he can’t think.

Gojo stills entirely. Nanami whines, hands scrabbling backwards, trying to find some part of Gojo to hold onto.

“Good?” asks Gojo again, without moving.

Nanami nods desperately. “Yes,” he breathes, “good. So good. Satoru.”

Gojo rewards him with a kiss to the neck, and then he finally moves. He keeps a firm grip on Nanami’s hips, and Nanami feels weightless in his hands. From this angle, Gojo hits his prostate each time he thrusts.

“Oh,” he gasps, breathless, each time Gojo presses against that spot inside him.

Just like the first time, Nanami doesn’t last long. “Touch me,” he says, when he’s close. “Please, Satoru, touch me.”

Gojo tweaks one of his nipples. “I am touching you,” he teases, a smile in his voice.

“Nooo,” Nanami says, and reaches up. His own grip on Gojo’s hand is weak, but Gojo lets him pull his hand down, until those amazing fingers wrap around Nanami’s cock.

“Touch me,” Nanami says again, and Gojo does.

He moves his hand on Nanami’s cock in time with his thrusts, and just as Nanami starts to lock around him in orgasm, Gojo licks, long and slow, over the mating gland just below the nape of his neck.

Nanami comes so hard he sees sunbursts behind his closed eyelids. His mouth is open in a soundless scream. Gojo is panting behind him, tongue laving over Nanami’s mating gland.

“Kento,” he gasps, hips faltering. “Kento, Kento.”

Nanami is still shaking from his orgasm, and he’s still hard. “Knot,” he says, urgent, desperate for it. “Knot, Satoru. Knot.”

The hand that isn’t still wrapped around Nanami’s cock clenches on his hips. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. Anything for you, baby.”

Nanami shudders. He presses his hips down, seeking more.

Gojo moves. Before Nanami can even blink he’s on his hands and knees, Gojo behind him. Gojo presses a hand between his shoulder blades, lowering him even more, and Nanami goes easily, front pressed into the mattress, hips up.

Gojo slides back into him, and it’s so good Nanami sighs in relief. Gojo wraps one arm around Nanami’s hips, holding him in place, and braces himself with his other hand. He leans over Nanami’s back and starts licking at his mating gland again, sucking on the skin there.

Nanami is content not to move, to let Gojo work over him, to let Gojo do whatever he wants, as long as he gets his knot at the end of it.

And it isn’t long before Gojo starts letting out his own little whimpers, the press of his hips getting shallower. Nanami wants to drown in the way Gojo sounds right now, wants to bottle this feeling of being so wanted by the world’s strongest alpha.

Another few thrusts, and Nanami can feel the swell of Gojo’s knot against his rim.

“Don’t hold your breath,” Gojo says quietly. “Breathe.”

Nanami breathes. The next time he exhales, Gojo presses his knot past Nanami’s rim.

“Yes,” Nanami hisses, nearly mindless in his pleasure. “Yes. Give it to me.”

“Holy fuck,” Gojo moans.

Neither of them move for a moment. Nanami’s mouth is open. He pants into the sheets beneath him. His hands clench around his pillow.

Gojo’s face is pressed into his back, between his shoulder blades. His lips drop hot kisses onto Nanami’s skin. His hips start moving in little aborted thrusts. There isn’t much he can do, not with his knot now swelling inside Nanami, but his angle is just right, and the pressure is amazing, and Nanami can feel his toes curling.

“Satoru,” Nanami slurs, trying to thrust back to meet his movements.

Gojo moves the arm that has been curled around his hips and splays one big hand over Nanami’s belly. Nanami is so full of him he wonders if Gojo can feel it. The thought makes his eyes roll up in pleasure.

“Please,” he whimpers, close again already. Just knowing that Gojo’s knot is inside him is enough. He wants Gojo to come inside him, he wants to be full, he wants to please his alpha, he wants—

“Fuck, Kento,” Gojo gasps, and it’s only then that Nanami realizes he said all of that out loud. “I need to bite, I need to bite, need it—”

Nanami starts begging. He is shameless. He squirms so much that Gojo finally has to forcefully hold him still so that he doesn’t hurt himself.

“Please,” he begs, relentlessly. “Please, Satoru, please. Bite.”

Gojo whimpers, breath ghosting over Nanami’s mating gland. When he bites, though, it’s off to the side, at the juncture of Nanami’s neck and shoulder.

It’s not where Nanami wants it, not where he wants to feel Gojo’s teeth, but it still feels good, still makes him seize up on Gojo’s knot, orgasm ripping through him. Gojo keeps his teeth and his knot locked in Nanami, and a moment later he lets out a muffled keen, and comes in pulses inside Nanami’s body.

He comes for a long time, as alphas tend to do when they’ve knotted. Nanami is still reeling from his own orgasm, but a satisfied purr resonates in his chest. His alpha has pleased him, and he has pleased his alpha in turn.

When Gojo finally unlocks his jaw and releases Nanami’s skin from his teeth, he licks over the puncture marks in apology. He shifts slowly and carefully, until they’re both on their sides, Gojo curled around Nanami from behind, locked together by his knot.

Nanami is satisfied. He knows Gojo can smell it on him. But he’s also still lost enough in his heat to lament that Gojo didn’t bite him where he wanted it most, on his mating gland. And that sours his scent enough for Gojo to raise his head.

“What is it?” he asks.

Nanami shakes his head, feeling pathetic, but Gojo is persistent. He licks at Nanami’s neck again, shifts his hips so that Nanami gasps.

“Tell me.”

Nanami inhales. “You didn’t… on my gland, you didn’t…” he trails off, unsure.

Gojo sighs. He nuzzles Nanami’s mating gland a little, then moves to the side of his neck and starts licking his scent gland, releasing more of Nanami’s pheromones into the room.

“That isn’t something that should be done in the heat of the moment,” Gojo murmurs.

Nanami knows that. He knows. And yet. “Do you not want me?”

Gojo gently grasps his jaw and tilts Nanami’s head. He makes sure Nanami looks into his eyes. “My knot is currently inside you and you think I don’t want you?”

When he says it like that, it does sound a little ridiculous. Nanami can’t help it; he laughs. Gojo kisses him, stealing his laughter.

“Just so we’re clear,” Gojo says against his lips. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone.”

Nanami’s eyes go wide. “Oh.”

His scent must balance out again, because Gojo rests his head on the pillow behind Nanami’s and begins stroking his side in soothing motions. Nanami isn’t sure what to say in response to being told he’s wanted by the most desirable alpha he knows. Thankfully, Gojo doesn’t seem to expect a response. He’s making small, satisfied noises behind Nanami, hand moving in languid strokes up and down Nanami’s side.

The next two days pass in much the same manner. Nanami sleeps when he can. Gojo fucks him silly when he’s awake, and feeds him when he’s not fucking him. They drink all of the water. They make several trips to and from Gojo’s private bathroom.

Nanami’s mind and body are hazy centers of pleasure, his awareness fleeting, his focus entirely on himself and Gojo.

What he remembers most from those days is the easy way Gojo holds him, like he’s something worth holding. He doesn’t use Infinity at all, at least not when Nanami is awake to notice. There’s never a moment when Nanami cannot feel his skin, or smell him.

He falls a little bit in love with Gojo over the three days of his heat. He thinks it would be impossible not to love this version of Gojo, who is in turn soft and cuddly and affectionate, and then protective, possessive, and unyielding.

He makes Nanami’s head spin.

For three days, he is Nanami’s world.

Late on the third day, Nanami’s heat breaks. It’s like emerging from underwater, or some sort of lust-induced cloud.

Gojo senses it right away. He nuzzles into Nanami’s neck, inhaling deeply. “Over?” he asks, and Nanami nods.

“Yeah.”

He feels a little sad, honestly. Granted, he’s eager to get back to classes and to start training again, but he got Gojo Satoru all to himself for three days, and he’s not sure when that will ever happen again, outside of his next heat. Assuming Gojo wants to help him again.

Gojo’s arms wrap around him now, comfortable and familiar. They are facing each other, and he licks at the hollow of Nanami’s throat.

“You’re thinking too much,” he murmurs. His eyes are closed, like he’s still half asleep.

He kisses Nanami, soft and lazy at first, then with his tongue, and his teeth, and the feral energy that only Gojo can bring. Eventually, Gojo’s hands reach for his ass, squeezing. He uses his grip to pull Nanami even closer, hikes one of Nanami’s legs up over his hip. Nanami gasps at the friction, his cock filling, interested in the proceedings.

When Gojo slides one long finger down to Nanami’s entrance, circling, Nanami is surprised. He had assumed that Gojo would leave once his heat finished. He’s essentially been keeping the world’s most important jujutsu sorcerer captive for three days. He knows Gojo is busy, that he must have declined missions to be here.

Gojo lives for the job. That he is choosing to stay now, when he could easily leave, means something.

“You feel so good,” Gojo hums as he slips his finger inside Nanami’s body.

Nanami gasps, his body warring between pushing forward into Gojo and back onto his finger. With his heat broken, he isn’t producing much slick anymore, but Gojo has fucked him so many times over the past three days that his body welcomes this intrusion more than anything.

“One more time?” asks Gojo, and Nanami nods, drops his own kisses onto Gojo’s neck and shoulders.

There’s no heat influence now. Their pheromones aren’t going crazy, though the room still smells pleasantly like a mix of both of them. There’s no desperation, no whining or begging or teasing. Just Satoru and Kento, entwined because they want to be, because they don’t want to let go of one another yet.

Gojo puts his lips to Nanami’s forehead and slips inside him. One hand cradles Nanami’s head; the other splays on his back between his shoulder blades, the tips of his fingers just brushing Nanami’s mating gland.

In this way Gojo rocks into him, slow and steady, unhurried. It feels more intimate than anything they’ve done so far.

“You’re so good, Satoru,” Nanami says between kisses. “You’re so good. Feel so good inside me.”

Just like he expected, Gojo shivers at the praise. He buries his face in Nanami’s neck, hair tickling his chin. His hips speed up only marginally, though. He must want to keep the slow pace.

They come together quietly, breathing into the other’s skin. Nanami feels affection bloom in his chest as Gojo shudders in his arms, and wonders if this is a dangerous feeling. The thought is only fleeting, though. He’s tired and nicely wrung out, and he falls asleep as Gojo is cleaning them both up.

When he wakes again, it is the middle of the night, and Gojo is gone.

Nanami viciously suppresses his heartbreak, and almost succeeds. He shouldn’t be so upset. He knew this would happen. No universe exists in which Gojo Satoru can actually be his. It’s an impossibility, and the sooner he accepts that, the better off he’ll be. Gojo belongs to the world of jujutsu more than he can ever belong to a single person.

Nanami gets out of bed, stretches, and starts cleaning. His room smells like sex and Gojo’s pheromones. There are empty water bottles everywhere. Nanami starts throwing things away. He pulls all the pillows off his bed. Strips off the sheets to wash them. Bundles his clothes into a laundry pile.

He’s collecting food wrappers and the empty water bottles when he finds the note, a single torn slip of paper, that simply says, ‘see you later, Nanamin!’ There’s a glossy set of lip prints next to the words, and Nanami stands there, holding the note, smiling stupidly, as he thinks of Gojo applying lip gloss just to kiss a piece of paper for him.

After that, he notices that Gojo left behind a jacket, one saturated in his scent. He finds some candy wrappers, and a small stash of uneaten sweets in one of his desk drawers. A pair of Gojo’s dark glasses are lying haphazardly on the floor. Nanami picks them up and places them on the desk.

These are all undeniable signs of Gojo’s presence, a reminder that he isn’t gone forever, just for now.

Nanami wishes it wasn’t enough to lighten his spirits so much, but it is. He feels unbearably fond right in that moment, looking at the small collection of Gojo’s things in his room, so fond that he has to sit down for a moment to collect himself.

Maybe he hasn’t been giving Gojo enough credit. Maybe Gojo did already choose him, and has been showing Nanami in all the small ways he knows how. Maybe this is Gojo trying.

Nanami’s resolve steels. Maybe he should try too, harder than he has been.

He finally puts on Gojo’s jacket and lugs all his laundry down to the washing machines, sits awake into the very early hours of the morning by himself, watching his sheets spin.

If he smiles like an idiot the whole time, well… he doesn’t much care.

No one is there to see it.

Chapter Text

Gojo and Nanami sharing a heat isn’t really something that can stay a secret, even though Nanami wants it to. These things have a way of spreading around.

So, he isn’t entirely surprised when the other Jujutsu High students look at him in the days following his heat with a mixture of emotions plain on their faces: interest, envy, and disbelief are the primary ones Nanami notices.

He ignores everyone, including his own cohort.

Gojo, of course, basks in the attention whenever he deigns to show up again, preening at all the looks he gets and even hamming it up a bit, waiting for Nanami outside his classes, sitting with him in the dining hall, walking him to and from the training fields.

“Don’t you have important things to be doing?” Nanami grumbles, after the second time he leaves class to see Gojo leaning against the opposite wall, waiting for him.

Nanami is trying. But he can’t fully change who he is at heart.

“Are you implying you aren’t important?” Gojo shoots back, grinning.

Gojo can’t really change who he is at heart either.

It’s lucky that their dispositions work so well to balance each other out.

When it’s almost time for Nanami’s next heat, several months later, he tells Gojo he’s going to ask Shoko for the inhibitor. He doesn’t want to miss three days of school, and he doesn’t want his heat to turn into an excuse to spend time with Gojo. He wants to be able to do that even without his heat.

Gojo just shrugs when Nanami tells him. He wraps an arm around Nanami’s waist and leans in, nosing at his scent gland. They’re out on the training fields, in plain view of anyone who looks in their direction. Nanami tenses a bit, but Gojo just smiles, refusing to let him go.

“That’s fine,” he murmurs into Nanami’s neck. “We don’t need your heat to fuck.”

Nanami can feel himself flush. He swallows. “We don’t?”

Gojo looks at him. “Nope,” he drawls. He pulls up one side of the dark blindfold he’s wearing today to gaze at Nanami with a crystalline eye. His gaze flickers between Nanami’s eyes and his lips. “Do we?”

Nanami feels a little faint. “I guess not.”

Which is how he finds himself, not even an hour later, propped in Gojo’s lap in Gojo’s own room, hips rolling as he rides him.

“Just like that, baby,” Gojo breathes, hands curled around Nanami’s waist, fingers pressing into skin. Nanami moans shamelessly. “Come on. Come on.”

Nanami can’t help but laugh a little. “I’m not sure what else you want me to do,” he gasps, hands gripping Gojo’s shoulders.

“Kiss me,” Gojo demands.

Nanami smiles, and does.

Nothing much manages to stay secret at Jujutsu High. So, it isn’t long before the looks Nanami gets from other students transform into rumors that he and Gojo are, somehow, if everyone’s eyes and ears are to be believed, a couple.

Nanami doesn’t even bother responding to those rumors, because it’s no one’s business what he and Gojo are.

And anyway, Nanami isn’t quite sure himself.

He just knows they’re something.

When he’s on campus, Gojo seeks Nanami out. Sometimes to fuck. Sometimes just to be with him, to spend time in his company. Sometimes he watches Nanami read, or interrupts Nanami while he’s reading, or demands to be read aloud to.

Sometimes Gojo helps him train.

Sometimes Nanami cooks for him, with the limited resources he has at school.

Nanami uses inhibitors for his next several heats. When his fourth heat rolls around, he’s near the end of his third year, Gojo isn’t even a student at all anymore, and he and Gojo have been… well, whatever they’ve been, for the past two years.

“You gonna block this heat too?” Gojo asks him, and Nanami shouldn’t even be surprised anymore that Gojo seems to know exactly when his heat is approaching.

It is the first time Gojo has asked, though, which must mean something.

“I don’t know,” Nanami answers, though he had been planning to. He raises an eyebrow. “Why? Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”

He’s thankful, as always, for Gojo’s tendency to get straight to the point when he wants to.

“I’m going to have a rut soon,” he says. “At the same time as your heat, in fact.”

Nanami blinks. That’s… that’s…

Gojo, wearing dark glasses today, lowers them on his nose so that he can stare at Nanami unhindered.

“I usually block my ruts,” Gojo admits, which doesn’t surprise Nanami, as Gojo has never once mentioned or experienced a rut in the years he’s known him.

“But I could not block it this time. Let it happen. And we could spend the time together.”

Nanami stares at him. His mouth opens, but no sound immediately comes out. His heat and Gojo’s rut, coinciding?

“That sounds…” he begins.

“Fun?” supplies Gojo.

“Messy,” finishes Nanami.

It’s only because he’s watching Gojo carefully that he sees a flash of disappointment in his eyes, there and gone so quickly that at any other time Nanami might have said he imagined it. Gojo shoves his glasses back up his nose, nods quickly.

“Yeah,” he says, tone so careless it sounds like its being filtered through clouds. “It probably would be pretty messy.”

Nanami holds up a hand. “I didn’t say I don’t want to.”

Suddenly Gojo is right up in his space, glasses entirely gone, their faces centimeters apart. Nanami doesn’t think he’ll ever get fully used to Gojo’s eyes. He hopes he doesn’t. He always wants to feel his stomach swooping when Gojo looks at him.

Nanami decides to be brave.

“I want a few things,” he starts, “if we do this.”

Gojo just stares at him, says nothing.

Nanami holds up a finger. “I want a kitchen, stocked with fresh food.”

Gojo nods, like it’s that simple.

Another finger, two of them up like a peace sign, an offering, a secret message. “I want privacy. And more space than here in the dorms.”

Gojo nods again. “My estate,” he says. “More space. Private. A kitchen.”

Nanami has so many things to say about that, about this sudden invitation to the Gojo estate, but he stays focused.

“I’m taking the emergency birth control,” he says next, and is relieved when Gojo nods.

“Well, duh, Nanamin. I’m not ready to be a father yet. And you haven’t even graduated.”

Nanami’s breath catches for a moment. Gojo looks so guileless he isn’t entirely sure if the alpha is aware that everything he just said implies a distinct and solid future for the two of them.

Which sort of brings Nanami to his final point.

“I want you on my side, when the higher-ups inevitably decide they’ve had enough of you fooling around with a common-born omega.”

Gojo’s expression hardens, as if he himself didn’t call Nanami common-born years ago.

“They wouldn’t dare,” Gojo starts, but Nanami cuts him off.

“They already do, and you know it.” Nanami takes a deep breath. Now or never. “I’m not a toy, Satoru. I don’t want to be tossed aside when someone else decides I’m not worth much anymore. Or when your family pressures you into a mating with an omega from one of the important clans.”

Nanami doesn’t think he could stand that. He certainly couldn’t watch it happen. It would break some part of him, to see Gojo mated to someone else.

“That isn’t going to happen,” Gojo says fiercely. He pulls Nanami all the way into his arms, holds him tightly, says into Nanami’s ear, “You are mine. They can take you away from me when they can pry you out of my cold, dead hands. And since I can’t be killed, and will kill anyone who even tries, anyone who touches you, that simply. Won’t. Happen.”

His last word is a snarl, a dangerous alpha sound, and Nanami shivers. Gojo brings a hand to his nape, stroking, and the motion is so gentle compared to his words that Nanami feels vaguely disoriented.

“Do you understand?” asks Gojo lowly.

Nanami nods. Gojo’s words, you are mine, float in his head. He can feel his mating gland swell, just the tiniest bit. “Yes.”

He does. He understands. This is probably as close as Gojo can get right now to telling Nanami that he loves him, that he wants him, wants a life with him. Nanami feels the weight and the promise of it.

“Okay, then,” he says quietly, bringing one of his own hands up to Gojo’s hair, tugging softly.

It isn’t so bad, he thinks, having the impenetrable Gojo Satoru for his own.

Gojo pulls away just enough to look at him. “Okay?”

Nanami nods. “Okay. Let’s share our cycles.”

Gojo crashes their lips together, laughing. “You won’t regret it, Kento,” he says between kisses.

This isn’t something Nanami needs to be told.

He already knows.