high school au based on the aforementioned tweet.
"what the hell are you doing?" gojo's voice booms inside the empty restroom. nanami jolts, then eases back against the washtand as soon as he recognizes the brash cadence of his senior. "cleaning up," he says, perfunctory in the way he gestures at the spread of gauze & isopropyl alcohol. bloody dressings pile on the bowl, the bright red blood watered down into a vibrant pink. "what else?" he's managed to stop and patch the flow on his side, but his arm keeps giving him trouble, a gash where the curse clawed at him, the cut about six centimeters long and deep, flaps of skin revealing just a hint of subcutaneous tissue when spread apart.
gojo takes one look at him; blues flash with surprise and reproach. "shoko," he orders, no room for argument. "she's busy," nanami quickly retorts. "she's taking care of the assistants in the infirmary, remember?" "they can wait," gojo says, like it's the answer to the world's most obvious riddle. "i can take care of myself. besides, they're in much worse shape than i am." the senior's eyes narrow, clearly unused to rebuttals on his authority. he cuts the distance between himself and the younger student, face twisting in a disapproving scowl at the sight before him. "what a mess," he clicks his tongue, pointing at the cut, "you're not going to be able to fix that with closure strips. it's too deep. you got thread?" "yes, but," and he watches gojo pick at his supplies, snapping the lidocaine ampule open and filling up a syringe with anesthetic. it happens so quickly, nanami can hardly keep up. he wants to scold the older boy for not putting on gloves, and gojo seems to read his mind, because he grins and dangles the syringe between his thumb and forefinger. "don't worry, i'm sterile." the blond scoffs. "do you even know what you're doing, gojo-san?" "you think i'd wing it?" gojo asks, grabbing the boy's arm and inspecting the gash near his elbow. it's clean, already washed with saline solution, and when gojo carefully spreads the edges of the wound, he can see exactly just how deep it goes. "i may wing a lot of things, but i would not wing fixing up my dear kouhai, nanami-kun. you think too lowly of me." it's as sincere sounding as just about every other word that comes out of the special grade's mouth, which is to say, not a lot. "yeah, well, i can take care of it," nanami insists. "i was doing just fine." gojo rolls his eyes. "nanami-kun, don't be stupid, you can't stitch this up on your own. if you don't want to have shoko patching you up all the time then you just have to get better, alright? the less weak you are, the fewer injuries you get - simple as that." the concise, casual put down makes him glower, but gojo isn't saying anything he doesn't already know, nothing he doesn't already think about himself, so he sighs and extends over his arm to the older boy, who raises his eyebrow. "get on with it, then, gojo-san," he says. and, as an afterthought: "please." it takes gojo a second, as though he wasn't expecting nanami to acquiesce so quickly, but he nods and uncaps the syringe. after applying the local anesthetic, he tears open the suture package, takes it in the needle driver and begins to effortlessly stitch shut the wound. while he didn't think gojo was actually going to wing it, it's still impressive handiwork. it also hurts minimally; nanami can only feel the vague pressure of the needle piercing into his skin every time gojo closes up each stitch. the older boy looks perfectly focused on the task at hand, too; his eyes honed in on the gash disappearing before him.
after some silence, it makes him compelled to ask, in spite of himself. "how did you learn how to do this, gojo-san?" it doesn't compute with the image nanami has of the senior. he can't imagine him getting injured, nor can he imagine him fixing up others' wounds for no reason - not an indictment of his personality, for once; just an observation on gojo's nature and the way sorcery works. they do get lessons about basic wound care, but the bulk of this system seems overreliant on its rct performers and vague notions of sorcerers' strength. gojo doesn't reply for a while, too focused on tying up the knot of his third stitch. he only needs a fourth one to finish. "i learned when i was a kid," he says, making nanami's eyes snap open. "i didn't always have RCT and infinity only worked half the time. i had to figure out how to look out for myself." "how to look out for yourself?" he repeats, and gojo nods, pushing the needle in for the last stitch. "you were exorcizing curses on your own?" it sounds obvious, in hindsight, but he still finds it difficult to imagine. gojo, possibly half as tall as he currently is right now, half as old, fighting curses dozens of times bigger as himself, and for what? for training? for fun? for his clan's bragging rights? "yeah," gojo says. "if i got roughed up too bad, they'd heal me, but mostly, they hoped i'd heal up on my own, so," he shrugs as though it makes perfect sense, and nanami feels a sudden surge of anger, vague & made all the more irritating due to its vagueness, sitting like a rock in his stomach & refusing to budge; the pain of his injuries paling in comparison. he sighs. "i see." and, just like that, the boy's done. nanami watches him wipe the stitches with alcohol and gauze, and he knows he's just trying to do a good job, knows it doesn't mean anything, but it still makes the back of his neck tingle. "thank you, gojo-san," he says, a little sheepish, to which gojo's eyes soften before his face breaks into a signature smirk. "just don't get beat up anymore, alright? if you ever wanna train, i'm available." nanami huffs, but he can't help the twitch of the corners of his mouth. truth is, gojo has never been busier. "sure," he says. "alright."
