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When her doorbell rings, she doesn’t expect Gojo Satoru to be behind it.
“What on earth are you doing here? Utahime spits. “It’s Christmas. Leave me alone.” And she means it. She had fought long and hard yesterday during the parade of a thousand curses. Her body’s tired. She’s not in the mood to have sex. She’s even less in the mood to deal with his nonsense. Gojo probably wants to brag about Okkotsu. Even Utahime heard about how he single-handedly went against Geto Suguru and won. It’s impressive, sure, but she would much rather he leave her alone. She was halfway through a cheesy Christmas movie and some hot sake. She doesn’t want her peace to be disturbed.
“Aww! I wanted to see you,” Gojo tells her. “I even brought you a present! You won’t say no to a present from an old friend, will you, Utahime?”
Utahime begins to shut her door. “Yes, I absolutely will.”
Gojo, annoyingly, shoves his foot into the crack of the door, keeping it open. He’s ditched his stupid white blindfold for a pair of sunglasses, dressed casually in a sweatshirt and jeans. He does have a few bags with him, so Utahime knows he isn’t lying, but that still doesn’t mean she has to deal with him.
“Wait!” he shouts, and she pauses, mostly because she doesn’t want him to make the scene he is absolutely capable of making. “I bought your favorite beer.”
And… well, this is odd.
Gojo doesn’t drink, or at least he hasn’t since they were young. He would always get too drunk-- passing out on Geto’s shoulder and-
Oh. Geto. She pushes the thought of him as down as deep as she can.
“You don’t drink beer,” she offers, her last-ditch effort to get him to go home.
“I bought myself something else.” Gojo puts all of the bags down then, reaching his hand into one of them and producing a bottle of Soju. “See? Care to have a drink with me?”
Utahime hates it, and she kind of hates herself, but she opens the door fully again. “Come in,” she grumps, and Gojo walks into her apartment, laughing smugly in a way that just makes her huff with annoyance.
“The beer got you, huh? I know my girl.”
“Not your girl,” she insists, the crease between her eyebrows deepening. At this point, she blames all of her wrinkles on Gojo. He’s been ever-present in her life for too long. Not even the most expensive skin cream can help her now.
“Mhm, that’s what you always say, isn’t it?” he chuckles. He places the beer down onto her coffee table, parking himself down on her couch, spreading his himself wide, taking up half of it with his stupidly-long legs. Gojo can’t ever just be somewhere. He has to devour the space in front of him, calling all of the attention to himself, a black hole, or maybe a tornado. Utahime’s never been sure which one fits him better.
He’s been to her place before, after almost every trip he’s taken to Kyoto-- for business or pleasure, or times like this when he swears he just wanted to see her. It still infuriates her to no end that he knows how to work her TV, immediately switching it to the channel that plays all of those awful Christmas movies about finding love. He turns to Utahime, then, his sunglasses sliding down the bridge of his nose. “You know, a glass would be nice?”
Utahime wishes she could wring his neck.
“When will you leave?” she asks him. She’s three beers in, sitting next to him on the couch, glaring at him under her bangs. His sunglasses came off after his first drink. My cursed technique goes to shit whenever I drink, anyway, he told her, explaining the change.
He looks to her, his striking eyes slightly glazed over. There’s a flush high up on his cheeks from the booze. He’s definitely at least tipsy, if not fully drunk. “When the bottle’s gone.” His words slur. Yeah, he’s definitely drunk.
Utahime takes his glass, throwing it back and finishing it before she pours him another. “Drink up, then. I want you out.”
“Uta…” he starts, and his brow furrows. Then, he says something that she doesn’t expect. “I can go if I’m bothering you.”
Gojo Satoru? Offering to leave? Genuinely caring about her feelings? Something must be incredibly wrong.
“Why are you here, Gojo?”
“I told you. I wanted to have a drink with my old friend.”
“That’s bullshit. If you wanted to fuck, you should have just said so. You could have been gone by now.”
Gojo scoffs, rolling his eyes at her. “Not that I’m saying no to that, but-.”
“Spit it out, then!”
Gojo leans forward, suddenly sitting up straight. “You just can’t handle someone being slightly different than you, can you? You are incapable of being flexible! Fucking perfect little rule follower, even after all of these years? Is that how you’re teaching your students?” He laughs, mean, his eyes narrowing into slits. “I feel bad for them.”
“Don’t you dare!” She fires back, her face getting hot from anger. “Don’t you dare insinuate that I’m not as good of a teacher as you are! Is that why you’re here? Just to brag? My students did phenomenal work yesterday! I know that they might not have saved the day like Okkotsu, your precious, special boy.” Gojo looks like he’s furious. Utahime’s never seen him this upset. They’ve never fought like this before, both of them on equal footing— equally as pissed, equally as volatile.
“And I know, your battle was probably just so easy.” She stands, lifting up her shirt so Gojo can see the line of bruises on her side left from one of the curses she had exorcised. “But some of us got hurt! Some of us-“
“Utahime!” Gojo shouts, loud enough that she quiets instantly, blinking away her surprise. Gojo stands, then, taking a step closer to her, closing some of the gap between them that Utahime tried to create, sucking her back into his space, devouring their distance.
“Did you read the reports? Do you know who killed Suguru?”
“It was Okkotsu. They said that he and the vengeful cursed spirit-“
Gojo sighs, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Okkotsu, for all intents and purposes, finished Suguru off. Maybe he would have bled out and died. Maybe someone would have found him and saved him. Maybe, he would have-“
Utahime fills in the blanks. “Maybe he wasn’t fatally injured with cursed energy and would come back as a special grade curse.”
Gojo just nods. “I tracked his residuals. I found him hiding in an alley near the school.” His voice is calm, emotionless in a way that threatens to reach inside Utahime’s chest and squeeze her heart until it hurts. “I killed him, Uta. I killed him!l
Utahime’s mouth drops open a little. She’s shocked that Gojo’s telling her this. She’s shocked that for the first time, she grossly underestimated him.
“My best friend. My only friend.” Gojo’s eyes start to shine with tears. It’s a shocking sight. Gojo’s big, bright eyes filled up. Those are the eyes of the strongest sorcerer. The eyes of someone who never loses.
Utahime realizes that while they may have won the war, Gojo lost his own personal battle.
“I killed him and I had to carry him back to the morgue and his blood, his blood wouldn’t come off of my hands no matter how many times I washed them. Shoko won’t look at me. I don’t know where Yaga is. I can’t put this on my students, or Megumi or- fuck!”
Gojo sits down onto her couch again, his head falling into his hands. Utahime sits next to him, placing a hand on his shoulder, pretending that they’re not shaking from the tears he’s trying to hide.
“I’m sorry, Gojo,” Utahime offers, her voice quiet. It’s all that she can think to do.
He takes a breath to steady himself, attempting to bounce back from his abnormal show of emotion. He picks his head up and turns to look at her. That shitty grin he always wears is plastered on his face again, not reaching his red-rimmed eyes. He’s such a good faker. “I’ve been bothering you for too long, haven’t I? I should go. You’re probably expecting company or busy or-” He sighs. ‘I’m sorry. I really shouldn’t have put this on you. I just-”
“Gojo,” she starts, cutting him off. “You said you’d stay until the bottle was gone, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, stay.” She gives him a tiny smile. “Unless you’re scared to finish it. For the strongest sorcerer, you really can’t hold your alcohol.” She knows it’s bait, and he does too, but he takes it anyway, breathing out slowly before he rubs his eyes clear of any grief, of any sadness. He gets himself together, trying to return to normal.
Gojo scoffs, and then he stands and walks into her kitchen, annoyingly pulling a glass from just the right cabinet on the first try. He goes back to sit with her again placing the new glass next to hers. He pours them both a shot of Soju, raising his glass in a toast. “Merry Christmas, Utahime.”
Utahime knocks their cups together. The look he’s giving her is handsome-- stupidly striking, completely different than the crying man he was just a few minutes before. Gojo Satoru will always be a mystery to her. His moment of weakness has passed, only the strongest sorcerer remaining in his place. “Merry Christmas, Gojo.”
They drink their shots. Gojo takes his surprisingly well, and after, he wraps his arm around Utahime’s shoulders, pulling her close. Now, she knows that he needs this comfort. He just doesn’t know how to ask like any normal person would. She follows his lead with a little groan, but finds herself nestling into the warmth of Gojo’s body despite any of her annoyance. It’s nice in a way that she doesn’t want to think about, lovely in a way that’s dangerous. Gojo’s surrounding her, taking up too much space inside of her, as usual, as always.
He refills her drink for her, and the two of them sit, watching the stupid movie on the TV play. The couple Utahime barely remembers kisses in front of a lit-up tree, and Utahime has to force her eyes away from the screen. Her gaze lands on Gojo, taking in his sharp jaw, his incredibly long eyelashes, the straight bridge of his nose.
“Hey, Gojo,” she starts, and he turns to her immediately, their faces just inches apart from how they’re sitting all snuggled up.
“Hmm?”
“I’m glad you came.” She feels her cheeks heat up at her words. Of course, she would have much rather continued her relaxing night alone, but knowing that Gojo came here when he needed to, knowing that he needed her at all… well, it’s just nice. It sits well with her. It makes her feel good. “This has been a shit day. It’s good to spend it having drinks with a friend.” She pulls his words from earlier, trying to tell him that she knows exactly what he meant. She understands why he’s here.
She barely gets to finish her sentence before Gojo’s leaning in to kiss her. It’s soft, sweet, so different than the other kisses they’ve shared in the heat of the moment. Utahime barely gets to return it before he’s pulling away. “Yeah,” he says. “A friend.”
It’s Utahime’s turn to kiss him, then, cupping the side of his face as she presses their lips together. Gojo sighs happily into it, his hand coming up to tangle into Utahime’s hair. They stay like that for a while, all wound up in each other, their mouths moving together as the movie plays forgotten on screen.
Utahime breaks them apart, catching her breath as their foreheads rest together. “You know,” she says. “You can stay after the bottle’s gone too.”
Gojo smiles, and Utahime can tell that it’s genuine. “Okay,” he agrees, kissing her once more. “I’d like that.”
“But not too long!”
Gojo chuckles. “Okay, okay.”