Chapter Text
Gojo Satoru simply adored Iori Utahime.
She was a rather innocent looking student when he first glanced at her, and he marveled at her neatly kept hair and her dignified disposition with her hands folded together on top of her stomach. Though she seemed to possess an air of someone who was refined and serious, Gojo thought that she looked better suited to be inside of a dollhouse instead of fighting curses. What was she doing here?
This perspective changed when he had delightfully discovered that sweet, proper Utahime had a fiery temper simmering underneath her, like a keg just waiting to be lit.
And boy did he love to light that shit up sometimes.
He spotted Shoko and Utahime chatting among themselves in their own corner down the hallway. He and his two classmates had only known Utahime for half a year, but it was Shoko in particular had gotten along splendidly with the upperclassmen.
He watched as Shoko said something to Utahime with a careless wave of her hand that made her laugh prettily, and Gojo admired her in that moment. How the sunlight from the window beside them casted a halo on her dark hair. She looked like an angel.
“UTAHIME-CHAN~,” he half-sang, half-blasted loud enough to give a heart attack to some poor student nearby.
Walking leisurely alongside him, Geto simply smiled and lightly reprimanded him for his tone. Shoko on the other hand spared him a cool, unimpressed look, like she’d found out that one of her lab rats managed to break out of it's container.
Gojo ignored them all but one.
Utahime herself had physically flinched and turned to scowl at him, but whatever acid she tried to direct at him was dampened by her pink cheeks and flustered expression, clearly mortified by the amount of unwanted attention she was getting.
He smiled broadly and stopped close to Utahime—completely aware that she did not want to be anywhere remotely near him and his insufferable personality—and bent down to peer directly into her wide eyes, brown and warm, letting his glasses slide down his nose to reveal his own blue ones, and waited.
She was forced to step back and placed a hand to her chest, obviously appalled by his behavior. Gojo had to hold in a snort at that. She truly was a princess like her namesake suggested—
“Lower your voice!” she bursted up at him, her own voice rising. “And refer to me as Utahime-senpai, your senior!”
Ah, there we go…, he mused to himself, unaware of the feeling of something minuscule but extraordinary start to bloom within him, and egged her on for the rest of that afternoon.
After that, for the next 13 years in between separate duties and their time together, Gojo learned the different facets of the gem called Utahime.
There was the obvious, like how easy she was to anger, or how painfully blunt—if not a little socially clumsy—she was, which both amused and enamored him to no end. Sometimes she can be too formal and stubborn as well, traits that he worked hard to convince her to ease up on.
As they became closer to one another, he discovered that while she had passion, she had a hard time translating that into clear affection, mostly due to her conservative and religious upbringing. And perhaps the part of her that surprised Gojo greatly was how forgiving she was, no matter how anyone treated her—something that astonished, mystified, and pissed him off all at once.
However, the one thing that he loved the most had to be her indomitable spirit. A refusal to be subdued by anyone who came her way.
Well, almost anyone.
“Oi,”—he registered a very familiar presence as he dozed off sitting on his comfy chair—“you're missing a meeting. About your own students. I reminded you about this three times, just this afternoon. And I shouldn’t have to!”
With one finger he slid his blindfold down one eye to observe her. Utahime looked regal in her clean kosode, even as she crossed her arms and cocked her hip to the side in righteous exasperation. Her full glossy lips were pulled to a deeply unimpressed frown on her scarred face. And despite knowing she wouldn’t get far, she looked poised to hit him with a rolled up paper in her fist.
13 years later had made her all the more beautiful in his eyes, he thought right then and there.
Gojo pulled down his blindfold completely and propped his head on his fist, letting his starlight hair fall over his brow. Shooting her one of his most charming smiles, he opened his mouth to respond.
“Utahime, I think you’d make a very sexy librarian if sorcery doesn’t work out for you.” He batted his lashes at her. “Agree?”
“The only thing I agree with is Shoko’s suggestion of strapping you to her operating table and stitching your mouth shut,” she deadpanned, tragically accustomed to his ridiculously off-handed remarks.
“You two have been plotting behind my back for the last decade,” he thought out loud, pleased that she would discuss about him with others when he’s not around her. Even if it’s about doing harm to him. Oh well.
Gojo stood up. “Don’t you think it would be terrible if something bad happened to me? How it would affect our precious students if such a strong, good-looking guy like myself were to be incapacitated by someone we trusted so much!” Feigning shock, he squished his own cheeks to piss her off. “It would just break their little hearts, wouldn’t it? Please think of them more often Utahime-sensei.”
Outraged, she stomped right up to him and wagged her paper at him furiously. Too easy, and right where he wanted her. “You’d be thinking of them if you were at this damn meeting—”
“About that,” he cut her off while smoothly lifting her off the ground, earning a yelp from her, and sat back down in his seat, this time with her on his lap.
“Gojo,” Utahime began in a warning tone when she saw a look in his face that she knew too well. One that spelled mischief. She had to brace her arms against his chest when he brought her close to him for the first time in nearly two months. The corners of his mouth tilted up when he felt her relax against him a bit.
“I have a better idea: let’s have our own meeting instead,” Gojo encouraged her in a low voice. He quieted her completely when he placed a hand on her cheek and gazed into her eyes, still as warm and limpid as ever. He brushed his lips against hers. “Ours would be much better, don’t you think?”
When he kissed her, he felt complete. Though Utahime was his shy lover, she was no less passionate, and readily deepened the kiss with him, her small hands clutching his arms as he moved his lips with hers. When Gojo felt her sigh into the kiss, he felt himself fall in love with her all over again.
Removing his lips from hers far too early, he stroked his thumb at her bottom lip. She was breathless already.
“See?” he whispered, coming close again for another kiss. “Look at how much fun we're having so far.”
That last statement doused her like ice water.
Gojo watched her grow horrified with the realization of her own actions despite herself. Utahime snapped out of her daze and slapped her palm over his mouth. “No! No more!” She did her best to put some steel into her next words. “We need to leave. Now.”
“Wh—?” he muffled into her hand, trying to hold her still again. “We’re not done yet!”
“Well I am!” She stood up quickly and unevenly like a newborn deer, trying to shake off the effects of that wonderful kiss he gave her and was silently thankful that he allowed her drag him out the door.
Meanwhile Gojo had half the mind to pull his blindfold back up over his eyes, too busy licking his lips and tasting the green tea she must have had earlier on his mouth, and the cherry lip gloss across his lips. It was a delicious combination, one that had him wondering if there would be seconds of it tonight….
Utahime stopped so suddenly as if she had actually heard his thoughts, that it was only thanks to his quick reflexes that he did not crash into her significantly smaller frame and send them both tumbling onto the floor. They were just outside the huge space where everyone was expecting them.
Still holding his hand, she huffed out a breath, trying to regain some of her composure, and turned her head a fraction behind her. Even from that angle, Gojo could see her pink cheeks and traces of her flustered expression. It all gave him a weird sense of déjà vu that had him tilting his head at her.
“Later,” she mumbled quietly, breaking him out of his thoughts before finally joining the rest of the staff in the (much more boring) meeting. She left him standing dumbstruck in the middle of an empty hallway grinning to himself.
Yes, Satoru Gojo very much adored Utahime Iori since the day he discovered her. Then, now, and until the end of time, he decided to himself.