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Utahime is shocked when she realizes that she’s holding Gojo’s hand. It’s not the act itself that is surprising—he’s held her hand many times in the past few months—but the fact that she has been able to grab onto him without being blocked by his Infinity is quite unusual indeed.
He keeps the barrier in place without conscious effort, untouchable to outside forces. Yet here he is, letting down the invisible wall that divides him from everyone else. For her.
“What’re you smiling about?”
Her cheeks warm slightly when she sees him grinning down at her over the top of his sunglasses, and she laces her fingers through his. “Your Infinity is turned off.”
“Oh yeah.” He gives her hand a light squeeze. “It usually is when you’re around.”
~.~.~
She’s still tentative to initiate contact, always expecting to encounter the Infinity, but, every time she reaches out to him, his skin is warm and soft and tangible . More than this, it seems that he wants to be touched as much as she wants to touch him. He’s careful, too, almost as if he’s afraid that if he leans too far into her touch it’ll be taken away from him. At some point, she falls into the habit of rubbing small circles into his skin to quietly reassure him that she’s not going anywhere.
It’s with humor that she notes that the only time she’s ever able to get a bit of peace and quiet is when she holds his head in her lap or runs her hands along his back or some other mundane form of touching that seems to mean much more to him. He’s always been the only person who genuinely aggravates her, able to get under her skin with juvenile goading and pressing buttons she never knew she had in the first place. The pieces had fallen into place early into whatever-the-heck-it-is-they’re-doing-now when he’d admitted how much he likes seeing her with her cheeks flushed and eyes blazing in anger. According to him, she is at her most attractive while trying to murder him. But whenever she holds his hand or clings to his arm or lies draped across his chest, he gets oddly quiet. The usual stream of insults and taunting that pours from his mouth day in and day out runs dry. It’s kind of nice to not be mocked once in a while, but it also feels… wrong.
Gojo isn’t Gojo if he’s not being an ass.
She’d rather die than admit it, but half of the fun of being around him is the constant teasing. So she decides to goad him a bit the next time he comes over.
They sit on her couch—or more accurately, she sits and he lies across her lap, his long legs dangling over the armrest. It’s quiet between them, but he seems content and she supposes that she feels comfortable, too.
“How was your mission?” she asks after a bit.
He huffs. “Boring.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Eh, I guess boredom is better than the alternative. Still, it’d be nice to really get to cut loose once in a while.”
“Poor thing. Being the strongest must be so rough.” Her voice drips with sarcasm.
“Yeah, but I don’t wanna be weak like- Hey!”
She’d withdrawn the hand that was playing with his hair, and his reaction makes her smile a bit as she puts it back and lets her nails scrape gently along his scalp. He hums in contentment.
“You like that?”
“Mhmm. Like it when you touch me.”
“Oh?” Of course, she already knew this, but, for some reason she can’t quite name, she’s glad to hear him acknowledge it out loud.
“Feels nice. Cozy.” He rolls over so that his nose is buried in the fabric of her hoodie. “Safe,” he mumbles, his voice muffled.
She continues massaging his scalp, and it’s not too long before she feels him twitching with sleep.
~.~.~
They’re laying in her bed the first time he brings up his childhood. He mentions off-handedly that the kōjitsunagi pattern on the throw blanket she’d used to cover them reminds him of the tapestries in the library at his family’s estate.
“Something wrong?” He peers up at her through thick, purplish-white lashes when she stills beneath him. He’s draped over her like a second blanket, his head resting against her chest.
“Nothing. It’s just… you’ve never talked about your family before.”
“I haven’t? Huh.” His expression is pensive for a moment. “Does that bother you?”
“Not really,” she answers honestly. “But I can’t say that I’m not curious.”
“Anything you wanna know?”
“Hmm… What’s your mother like?”
He scoffed. “Why do you want to know about her?”
“I’m just curious. I didn’t know it was a sore subject.” Her voice is a bit defensive.
“It’s not. Shit. Lemme think…” He rolls onto his back, and she follows, curling up into his side as he ponders his answer. “She had white hair, like me.”
“Blue eyes?”
“No. Both my parents had brown eyes.”
“Mutation, then.”
He laughs a bit. “You make me sound like some kind of freak. My eye color comes from Six Eyes, not some kind of deformity.”
“You are a freak.”
He turns onto his side, biting his lip suggestively as he drags his fingers from her hip to her sternum. “I guess I have been proving my freakiness for the past hour…”
“You’re insatiable.” She can’t summon any real annoyance. “It seems like you’re trying to change the subject though.”
“What else do you want to know?”
“I asked about your mother, and the only thing you seem keen to divulge is her hair color. What was she like?”
“Uh… I guess… Nice? In comparison to the rest of the clan, anyway.”
She waits for him to continue, but he seems lost in thought. After a bit, she prompts, “How so?”
“Well, you know how all the old clans like to keep women in their place.” His lip curls in disgust. “She tried her best to shield me from all the bullshit politics, but they separated us when I was still a kid. Supposedly for my protection.”
Although his expression is kept carefully blank, she’s spent enough time around Gojo to see the slight glimmer of pain in his eyes. “I’m sorry-”
“No need for that.”
“But still.” She reaches out a hand to smooth across his cheek, and his eyes drift closed as he leans into her touch. “That must have been difficult.”
“It was.”
He doesn’t say anything more on the topic for the rest of the night.
~.~.~
He tries to act unbothered, but Utahime feels the tension in Gojo’s shoulders, the way he has to force himself to unclench his jaw every few minutes. She mutes the television program that they’ve been pretending to watch for the better part of an hour.
“You’re worried about him, aren’t you?”
He pulls his hand away from hers to ground his hand into his blindfolded eyes but doesn’t deny it.
“Would it help to talk about it?”
She can tell that he considers this, but Gojo has never been the best at speaking candidly about his feelings, preferring to deflect with humor even as he wordlessly begs her to touch him, comfort him, more than usual.
“It’s just…” He trails off, clearly struggling to articulate the words he wants to say. “He’s so young, and those pieces of shit talk about his life like… They don’t care that he’s a person. Hell, the only reason I was able to get them to hold off on executing him at all is because they’re keen to use him as a weapon.”
From what she has gathered about the situation so far, others would accuse him of the same thing. His mind seems to wander to the same place when he adds, “Having Yuji consume more of Sukuna’s fingers is a dangerous gamble, but I’ve assured him that it’s his choice. I can't stop him from doing what he thinks is right, helping to save people. But kids should get to enjoy their youth. It pisses me off to see him treated like… like…"
"Like they treat you?" She fears for a moment that she's overstepped some invisible line. He tears the blindfold away from his face, and his soft, white hair flies everywhere as he throws his arms around her, burying his nose into the juncture of her neck and shoulder. They don’t talk much for the rest of the night, and she says nothing if he’s a bit clingier than usual.
~.~.~
His frustration with constant missions has grown throughout the time they’ve spent together. Not that he’d ever really tried to disguise his annoyance at constantly being sent here and there and everywhere to exorcise curses no one else was strong enough to handle. He’d roll his eyes and huff a bit, but he always took off quickly and handled whatever needed to be done.
When he’d begun spending more of his freetime at her place in Kyoto, she noticed he would take longer and longer to leave, and, when he came back—whether it was a couple hours, a few days, or a couple weeks—his mood was inevitably sour. He’d usually perk up in a matter of minutes, but sometimes he would be snappish for hours, which, being Utahime, she couldn’t take lying down. Once, he was behaving so petulantly that she tried to throw him out. He’d cooled off instantly and she relented and allowed him to stay, and he was so gentle and doting for the rest of the night that it was impossible to stay mad at him.
Her body stills above his as his phone vibrates against the nightstand, but he holds onto her hips when she tries to climb off. “It could be important,” she points out, but she’s cut off by him thrusting his hips sharply upward.
“Don’t care,” he murmurs into her neck as he suckles at the sensitive skin behind her ear.
“Gojo-”
“What happened to Satoru?”
“Saturo isn’t a brat like Gojo,” she grouses, but she’s letting herself enjoy more now that the phone has stopped buzzing.
The reprieve is short-lived though, lasting for mere seconds before the second incoming call rattles the nightstand. He tries to ignore it, but, when she opens her mouth to protest, he grabs it suddenly and answers. She feels a bit sorry for the poor soul on the other end who is now dealing with an irate Gojo.
“Fine,” he says after listening for a minute. “I’m on my way.”
She can see him deliberating on whether to finish what they’ve started, but the moment’s already ruined. They dress quickly, and he warps off to who-knows-where.
When he comes back a few hours later, she’s asleep, but she stirs at feeling him slide under the covers behind her. It’s 2:16 a.m., according to her phone, and she rolls over to rest her cheek on his chest. His body relaxes as she settles into the crook of his arm.
“How’d the mission go?” she asks, voice heavy with sleep.
“Mission s ,” he corrects. I finished the first one in under an hour, and they immediately sent me to deal with another one that took a bit more time to exorcise.”
“Mm…” She burrows her nose into his chest. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“Me too.” His hand trails absently up and down her spine, and it’s getting hard for her to keep her eyes open even though she really wants to make up for the time they’d lost. She’s just on the cusp of sleep when he speaks again. “I wish they’d leave me alone so I can spend more time with you.”
She isn’t sure how to respond to that, so she answers honestly. “So do I. But we have responsibilities.”
“I have responsibilities.”
Seized by indignation, she jerks her body away from him, ignoring how cold the room suddenly feels. “Do you have to mock me every chance you get? I may not be a special grade, but I-”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he interrupts. He sits up beside her, leaning his head against the knees folded up to his chest. “You know it’s different… for me. It feels like-” He cuts himself abruptly.
“Hmm?” Intrigued as she is in what he was about to say, the late hour is tugging her consciousness back toward slumber.
“Never mind.” He pulls her back against his chest, burying his nose into her hair and inhaling. “It’s nothing.”
The noise of protest she makes comes out more as a whine. “Tell me,” she insists. It’s a losing battle trying to keep her eyes open.
“Tomorrow… or, technically I guess, later today.”
“Promise?”
His breath tickles her ear as he lets out a laugh, but she’s asleep before her brain can process his answer.
.
Faint, pink tendrils of dawn are just beginning to creep over the horizon when Utahime wakes up with a start. The other side of her bed is empty, and cold.
.
Sorry, new mission. This one’s gonna be at least a week :/
She re-reads his message over and over again and tries to ignore the weight that’s settled in the pit of her stomach.
~.~.~
He looks like shit when he shows up at her door six days later, and she makes a mental note to buy him as much discounted candy as she can carry out of the store tomorrow. Although he seems to be free of physical injuries, there’s something terribly wrong about the imitation of his usual smile he flashes her as she steps aside to let him into her apartment. The vaguely gnawing fear she’d felt for the past week turns into a black hole in her chest when he flicks off his sunglasses and she can see the bruise-like bags under his eyes.
“What happened to you?” she asks, a bit panicked. It’s not even six a.m., but her grogginess vanishes as she pulls him toward the couch.
His face scrunches in confusion for a fraction of a second before the fake smile is back. “Wow, what a greeting. I missed you, too.”
Ignoring his attempt to brush aside her concern, she takes his face in her hands and smooths her thumb against the puffy skin under his right eye. “You look like you haven’t slept in days.”
“I haven’t.”
“Why not?!” It’s incongruous with the worry she feels, but she can’t stop herself from lashing out and slapping him in the shoulder.
The smile slips off his face, and his crystalline eyes, suddenly hollow, dart away from her.
“Are you hurt, Satoru?”
He scoffs. “Of course not.”
“Then what happened?”
His eyes flutter closed as he sighs, knowing her well enough to know that she’s not going to simply let the subject drop. “I had to wipe out a string of special grades that stretched from Mali to Kenya. No big deal, really, but I wanted to be done quickly so I didn’t take breaks after the first couple days.”
“You could get hurt.” She ignores the look of derision he shoots at her. “Not taking care of yourself will make you sloppy. You shouldn’t be so reckless.”
“What does it matter?” He flops backward into the couch cushions, and she doesn’t even think to scold him for placing his feet on her coffee table.
“The hell is that supposed to mean? Do you have a death wish or something?”
“So what if I do.” She’s stunned into silence, and he studies her cautiously for a moment before glancing away and adding, “It’s not like anyone would care.”
Satoru has said many hurtful things to her over the years, both intentional and accidental, but Utahime is unprepared for the wave of anguish his words cause her. Her hands, folded primly in her lap, get blurrier, waterier the more she stares at them. “Glad to know that I’m a no one to you.”
He pulls her into his lap and presses his soft, warm lips against hers. Time freezes as she lets herself melt into him, but reality crashes back against them both when her phone alarm blares out its annoying, repetitive jingle. She reluctantly leaves to fetch it from her bedroom, tossing it onto the coffee table and rejoining Satoru on the couch.
“I have to go to work.”
When she sits on the couch beside him again, he leans over to rest his head on her shoulder. “I should probably go check in on my students, too. Let ‘em know I’m back.”
Even while he’s speaking, she can feel him resisting the pull of sleep. “Uh-uh. You’re staying here and catching up on sleep.”
She can feel the corners of his mouth curling in a smile. “You’re so bossy. I love it.”
“I know.” She coaxes him off the coach and leads him to her bedroom, ignoring the smug look on his delirious face as she strips him out of his clothes. She also ignores his attempts to pull her into the bed with him.
It makes her smile when he hums in contentment as she pulls the covers over his lanky form, and he grabs a pillow from her side of the bed and holds it to his chest. “Smells like you,” he murmurs sleepily.
The only classes she teaches are in the morning and the faculty meeting held every Wednesday is postponed this week, so she should be able to be back home by noon. After a quick breakfast, she takes the early train so that she can get ahead on grading and paperwork before classes start.
As if the universe is conspiring against her, the day drags on, and she regrets not cancelling classes altogether. With today being a holiday, she’s sure that her students would be more than happy to spend some time out of the classroom. One colleague after another stops her on her way out after she’s finished teaching, and it’s nearly two o’clock by the time she finally makes it back to her apartment. Satoru is still fast asleep in her bed, sprawled out like a starfish, and quietly closes the door behind her as she starts making lunch (or dinner or whatever the hell one calls a full meal in the middle of the afternoon).
She startles at the feeling of arms wrapping around her waist while she’s stirring a pot of curry. “Aww, were you gonna bring me breakfast in bed?”
“Keep it up, and I won’t feed you at all.” He whines pathetically about how mean she is, to which she mutters, with a smile, “Spoiled brat.”
“You love it.”
He’s not wrong.
They eat in relative silence, and she’s glad to see, as she studies him across the table, that he looks a lot better than he did before she left. Refreshed. She chews slowly, dragging the meal out as she tries to find the right words for what she wants to ask him. He raises an eyebrow when he catches her staring at him, and now is as good a time as any.
“This morning… What did you mean when you said that no one would care if you died?”
He shrugs before pushing his chair away from the table and standing with a languid stretch. “Nothin’. Must’ve been the lack of sleep.”
If he thinks that retreating to the living room will make her drop the matter, he’s wrong.
“Wait.”
She reaches for his hand, but his Infinity is up and her hand slides away without making contact. He pauses anyway at the sound of her voice, hovering in the threshold between the living room and the kitchen.
“Before you left…” She knows he won’t know what she’s talking about. “You promised that-”
“Hime.” Her eyes remain fixed on her feet until he tilts her head up by the chin to look him in the eye. The softness she finds there makes her feel weak. “Thank you.”
He kisses her more gently than usual, and his fingertips carefully trail up under the sleeves of her kosode as if they are memorizing the contours of the skin there. Her own hands find purchase on his shoulders, one sliding upward to caress his cheek. The silvery stubble he hasn’t been able to shave yet is as rough against her palm as his lips are soft against her own, and it feels too soon when he pulls away to let her breathe (even if she is getting a bit lightheaded).
“What… What’re you thanking me for?” she finally asks, breathless and oddly self-conscious under the intensity of his gaze.
It’s his turn to look shy. One hand plays with the hairs at the nape of her neck while the other cards through his own white locks. “Just for… being different, I guess.”
She scowls slightly. “I have no idea why I thought you would say anything other than an insult.”
His eyes widen with panic, and it takes all of her willpower not to laugh at how adorable he looks when he’s reduced to a stammering mess. “That’s not what I meant at all!”
“Oh?” It’s a bit cruel, but she can’t stop the grin splitting her face at his discomfort. She’s never once seen the unflappable Gojo Satoru so flustered. “Then enlighten me.”
Taking mercy on him, she leans up on her tiptoes to kiss the side of his mouth. A small apology as she winds her arms around his neck. His lips graze her crown, and she feels him take a shaky breath before speaking almost too quietly for her to hear. “You’re the only person who doesn’t use me.”
Her heart breaks for him, and she holds him tighter. She doesn’t expect him to elaborate, but, a few minutes later, when he’s sitting cross-legged on the couch with her head in his lap, he does. “The higher ups tolerate me as long as I’m the strongest, but they’d get rid of me in a heartbeat if they could. In fact, I have a feeling that they’re already scheming…”
She lets her eyes drift closed, even if doing so won’t make the guilt she feels disappear. “If I’d gotten to Kokichi before he got away…”
“Don’t.” He taps the center of her forehead. “We don’t know that that would’ve changed anything, so there’s no point blaming yourself. Besides, they’ve probably got a dozen contingency plans on the backburner to whip out the second they see an opportunity. My clan’s the same way-” The more he speaks, the more heated his voice becomes. “-sucking up when I’m around and then talking shit and plotting once I turn my back.”
The fingers of his hand resting on her stomach clench and unclench as he rambles. She brings the hand up to her face and places soft kisses on his knuckles. It’s a gesture he always does to her when she’s upset, and she’s glad to see that he seems to find it just as soothing as she does.
He smiles wryly down at her. “I know you love my personality…”
“Tch.”
“Yeah. Sure. Whatever… But would you believe me if I said that I might use arrogance as a defense mechanism?”
“I’ve known that for a long time, idiot.”
“You have?” She’s surprised that he looks so surprised. “Since when?”
“Uh… I wouldn’t keep inviting you over if I hadn’t seen through that veneer pretty early on. This,” she twirls her fingers awkwardly, still unsure of exactly what their relationship is even after so much time has passed, “would never have happened if there wasn’t at least a little bit more to you than what you let on.”
“Huh.” He twirls a strand of dark hair around his long fingers, saying nothing for a while. When he speaks again, she’s shocked by the change of topic. “Hime… Why don’t you like to be seen in public with me?”
“Oh, I… uh…” She feels her traitorous face blushing. “I, uh, actually thought that you didn’t want that.”
A peal of laughter escapes him. “So I’ve been scaring myself for months over whether I should ask to take you out on a date, and you’ve just assumed I wouldn’t want to? That’s hilarious.”
“It’s… kind of sad.” Her face must be as red as a tomato, but she laughs along with him. “Wait. You were scared? The Strongest Sorcerer?”
He smiles sheepishly. “We just established that I’m not as confident as I let on.”
“Yeah, but…” She worries her bottom lip between her teeth, lowering her gaze to keep him from seeing the tears forming in the corners of her eyes. “It doesn’t take a genius to see that… Well, we’re in totally different leagues.”
“Wow, who’s arrogant now? You really think you’re that much hotter than me?”
Glaring daggers at him as she shifts into a sitting position, she snaps indignantly, “You’re unbelievable. I’m not going to spell it out for you, asshole.”
“I’m only joking.” He sweeps her bangs to the side to kiss her forehead apologetically. “But you really do sell yourself too short. You’re beautiful, Hime.” Before she can argue, her face is cradled in his hands. He kisses her biggest source of insecurity tenderly, reverently. “And kind.” He kisses the opposite cheek. “And funny.” A kiss on the nose. “And strong.”
Her lips part slightly as he kisses them, and she welcomes the slide of his tongue against hers as he unties her hakama. His hands are desperate as they move under the kosode to roam across her back, her sides, anywhere he can reach, and it’s moments like this that she actually enjoys his greediness. He touches her like more is never enough, like she will disappear like a puff of smoke before he’s had his fill.
And, in their line of work, there are no guarantees that they will be able to enjoy any of this tomorrow.
They stay like this, her straddling his lap while their hands and lips drink in every bit of skin they can reach, for what feels like forever before he seems to come to a decision. “You’re also the first person I’ve been with, like this, who isn’t just after my money or my name or whatever.”
There’s so much earnestness and hurt in his eyes that she can’t hold his gaze. She kisses him deeply and, when she pulls away to rest her head on his chest, teases, “I’ll take your money if you really want me to.”
His laugh vibrates through his chest and into her ear pressed against it, and he rests his chin on top of her head. She wonders what he’s thinking about for a moment, but he doesn’t keep her in the dark. “Let’s go out tonight.”
“Really?” She pulls herself up and rests her hands on his shoulders. “Where to?”
“Hmm… Do you feel like joining in the festivities, or would you rather just get dinner?”
“Honestly, it doesn’t make any difference to me either way.”
.
After having such a late lunch, they agree to have dinner after eight. He refuses to tell her where they’ll be eating, but she’s been instructed to dress up for the occasion. She deliberates in front of her closet (while he’s warped off to “run a couple of errands”) for nearly half an hour before settling on a simple but elegant black dress that’s appropriate for the autumn chill.
She’s just finished her makeup when the doorbell rings, and she can’t see his face around the enormous bouquet of red and white roses he’s holding in front of him. It’s a bit overkill, but her heart is liable to leap out of her chest from feeling so… cherished. And the way he looks at her outfit over his sunglasses doesn’t help either.
“I still need to finish my hair,” she informs him as the door swings shut. She looks around for a vase, but she doesn’t own one large enough to hold all the flowers he’s brought with him.
When the final touches of her elegant updo are in place, he rises from the couch to meet her. It’s at that precise moment that his phone starts ringing, and, although she knows that there’s no avoiding duty, the disappointment is overwhelming.
He yanks the phone out of his pocket and silences it without even checking the screen. “They can deal with whatever it is for one night,” he says blithely as he presses ignore on the next incoming call.
When her phone, placed carefully in a silver clutch along with her wallet, starts blowing up as well, she opens the notifications. Her face pales as she reads text after text, calling for all sorcerers above grade 2 to mobilize. “Something’s happening in Shibuya.”
~.~.~
Everyone always says that sorcerers never die without regrets.
Utahime wishes that she hadn’t taken their time together for granted. She wishes that she had put her pride aside and told him how she felt feels about him, even if it had ended in him mocking her.
You’d think that days, weeks, and eventually months of fighting stray curses and curse users and attempting to hold the world together (if only for her students’ sake) would make someone collapse into a coma-like sleep whenever there are a few hours for rest, but it’s not the case for Utahime. She clings to his t-shirt long after the scent of his cologne has faded, tossing and turning for hours until the tears finally put her to sleep. When she finally drifts off, she dreams of warm hands, soft lips, and tender words that promise both everything and nothing.
Dozens of languishing, wilted roses are her sole companion when she wakes up.
.
His birthday comes and goes, and she forces herself to eat a slice of too-sweet cake, since there's nothing else she can do for him at this point.
~.~.~
She wishes she could say that she helped free him, but Yuji and Megumi did all the work. He was borderline feral when he was released, his eyes too wide, too dark, and his smile more than a little crazed. It was all over for Kenjaku once Gojo Satoru laid furious eyes on him, and, just like that, the nightmare of the Culling Games is over. Now comes the task of rebuilding a society from the ground up.
But that can wait until tomorrow.
Satoru falls apart the minute they’re alone, and Utahime lets herself fall to pieces right along with him. Apologies flow as freely as tears, even if neither is sure exactly what they’re apologizing for.
“Fuck.” He groans into her hair. “I didn’t think I’d get to touch you again. That was the worst part.”
“Me either.” Her voice comes out as a choked sob. “I was so…”
He pulls away just enough so that he can angle her face toward his, and his red-rimmed eyes shine like twin neon lights. “I love you. I’m absolutely, unbelievably in love with you. And I’m so pissed at myself for not telling you sooner.”
The “I love you, too” has barely escaped her lips before he’s kissing her within an inch of her life.
Yes, rebuilding a society from the ground up can wait until tomorrow.