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“Are you gonna drink that?”
“Huh?” Utahime tore her somewhat glazed eyes away from the attractive non-sorcerer at the bar whom she’d been thinking of getting up and talking to. The motion made her vision swirl a bit.
Gojo tapped the shot glass that Shoko had put in front of her. “You gonna drink it?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t tell me that you want it.”
“Maybe I do.” His head lifted slightly, eyes cast toward the bar. With a slight smile that reeked of trouble, even in Utahime’s buzzed state, he looked down at her again. “Never mind. I don’t want it, and I think you’ve had enough.”
She was about to down it just to spite him, but his attention was already elsewhere. Poor Nanami, who’d drank twice as much as Utahime but still looked stone-cold sober, didn’t look drunk enough to deal with Gojo trying to steal the cherry from his old fashioned. After about thirty seconds, he fished it out himself and threw it at Gojo’s head and was visibly annoyed that he was, of course, fast enough to catch it in his mouth.
Off to Utahime’s right, Shoko and Mei Mei were giggling about something, casting looks either at her or Gojo, she wasn’t sure which, as they whispered just quietly enough that she couldn’t hear them. Ijichi, sitting beside Mei, apparently could – his cheeks went bright red just as they burst into their loudest fit of laughter.
Those bitches were up to something. She knew it.
She took a sip of her beer and bristled when she found Kusakabe glaring at her from across the round table. Who’d invited him? And, more importantly, why had he agreed to come? He’d been nursing the same whiskey neat all night, a lollipop stick between his teeth to stave off the nicotine cravings.
“What?” she asked, a bit more harshly than she’d intended.
“It’s almost time.”
“Huh?”
He reached into the empty seat between him and Nanami and placed a cone-shaped birthday hat on the table. “It’s 11:56.”
Oh, right.
Her cheeks stretched into a wide, slow grin, as she scooped up the hat. “Where did you get this?”
“I thought it’d be funny.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but Gojo tossed an arm around her shoulders. “Three minutes left of your twenties. Iori-senpai, do you have any advice for the younger generation of twenty-somethings?”
“I’d advise you to move your arm before I cut it off.”
“O-ho! Scary.”
He did not move the arm, leaving Utahime no choice but to grab it and haul it off herself. As she wrestled with it, both hands wrapped around his forearm, she froze.
She shouldn’t be able to touch him.
Why had he let down Infinity?
Her eyes flitted over to Shoko and Mei, who were both watching her with matching bemused grins, and then back to Gojo. He looked at her like she was a harmless, angry kitten. Well, if he was going to be a dumbass and turn off his wall of protection…
She gathered cursed energy in her throat, although it was a bit difficult to center her pitch due to the alcohol. Humming, humming–
“It’s midnight. Happy birthday, Iori.”
The table erupted in cheers at Nanami’s announcement, and Utahime let the cursed energy she’d been accruing dissipate into nothing. Shoko took the party hat and attached it to her head as the whole table raised their glasses and offered their congratulations.
She might not have heard his cryptic remark if everyone else’s voices hadn’t tapered off all at once.
“Yay, we’re halfway there,” Gojo murmured to himself.
“Halfway where?”
For a split second, he seemed surprised that she’d heard him, but he played it off with his usual nonchalance.
“Nothing, nothing…”
There was something about his smile as he took a sip of his melon soda that made it impossible for Utahime to let the matter drop.
“Gojo.” She turned in her chair so that she was facing him full-on. “You need to tell me what you’re up to.”
All eyes were on him as he placed the glass bottle back on the table. “Well… we kind of agreed to get married.”
~.~.~
It was a humid summer night, the air stiff and warm as the pair stumbled out of the bar. To be more accurate, Utahime stumbled and pulled Gojo along as he adjusted his weight to keep her from falling. They were the last two of their group to leave for the night.
“It’d be faster if I warped u-”
“Don’ even think ‘bout it,” Utahime slurred. “Already feel like ‘m gonna puke.”
“I told you to slow down.”
“Tha’s why I kep’ goin’.”
He chuckled. “Sure. Okay.”
They walked in silence for a while, but when they were halfway to her apartment, Utahime dragged him over to a bench. She flopped down, her head hitting the wooden back hard enough to make him wince. “‘m just gonna sleep here.”
“No.” Gojo’s voice was firm but amused. “You can’t sleep out in the open, especially when you’re only a few minutes away from home.”
He sat down beside her, and she buried her face in his shoulder. “You’re such a jerk,” she mumbled into the fabric.
“You’ve told me as much, plenty of times before.”
She was already starting to snore.
“C’mon. Or else I’ll carry you.”
“Fuckin’ do it.”
“I warned you…”
She squealed a bit as he scooped her up, bridal style, tangling one hand in the front of his t-shirt. Gojo took slower steps than necessary, careful to keep from jostling her and enjoying the slight breeze and the musky scent of wisteria blossoms.
“Gojo?” Her voice broke through the still night.
“Hmm?”
“Am I gonna be alone forever?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She looked up at him, her eyes shining with tears. “I’m twenty-five years old, and I’ve never had a serious relationship.”
“They’re overrated.”
“But what if I’m just unloveable?”
“You aren’t.”
“Promise?”
“I swear it… We’re here. I’m gonna put you down now.”
She wobbled as he sat her on her feet, fingers fumbling as she reached for her keycard, which he took to help her swipe. In the elevator, she laced their fingers together, her opposite hand wrapped around his elbow. He prayed for a power outage, but the elevator opened up to her floor much too soon nonetheless.
After watching her miss the keyhole several times, he placed a hand over hers to guide it in. The door swung open, but she turned around and wrapped her arms around his neck. For the next five years, his mind could still conjure the softness of her skin and the sweet scent of vanilla body wash mingling with the smell of beer.
Peeling her face away from his chest, she stared up at him with shimmery doe eyes that made him feel like his insides were melting. “If I’m still single in ten years… will you marry me?”
He tried to laugh it off. “What if I’m already married by then?”
“You won’t be.”
“Hah? You don’t know that.” He pretended to be affronted, even though she was right. “And tons of people would want to marry me… and not as a last resort because they’ve hit an arbitrary age they think they should be settled down by.”
She giggled. “Yeah, people are pretty dumb.”
“This is incredibly insulting to me.” It was, but he couldn’t stop smiling. Only Utahime had the power to be this adorable while being so mean. “But fine. If you’re still single on your thirty-fifth birthday – and assuming some lucky person hasn’t snagged the great Gojo Satoru – we’ll get married.”
~.~.~
“So, yeah. Five birthdays down, five to go until you have to marry me.”
No one at the table dared to breathe, wary (or eager) eyes on Utahime as she carefully put her beer back on the table.
“Gojo.” She turned to face him, her voice deceptively calm as her eyes threatened to scorch him on the spot. “Are you lying?”
“What?” He scoffed. “Of course I’m not. We made a binding vow and everything.”
She made a strangled sound, a vein popping out on the side of her forehead. “WE DID WHAT?!”
“Kidding, kidding,” he soothed, his hands held up in a placating manner. “At least about that part. We didn’t make a binding vow, but the rest of it happened.”
That appeased her a bit, but it suddenly recontextualized so many things that had happened in the last five years. “Two and a half years ago…”
Gojo busied himself with his soda, braced for impact when she put the pieces together.
“I’d been dating Suzume for seven months when I brought her to meet you all…”
Gojo edged the slightest bit closer to Nanami, the tiniest beads of sweat dotting his forehead.
“And she ghosted me the next day.” Her eyes were fiery, furious, when they pivoted back to him. “Gojo, what did you do?”
“Does it really matter?”
“Yes, it matters!” They were drawing a lot of attention, but she barely cared. “And what about that time I brought Kazuo along? Did you have something to do with that relationship screeching to a halt, too?!”
He at least had the decency to look a tiny bit ashamed, smiling sheepishly up at her as he crowded Nanami. “I did it for love?”
An enraged screech tore from her chest, but her arm paused just shy of smacking him. She settled back into her chair, an unsettling calm settling over the table as they prepared for the worst.
Shoko clutched an unlit cigarette between her teeth.
Ijichi bit his fingernails.
Kusakabe checked the time on his phone, ready to go home.
Mei and Nanami wordlessly made a bet from opposite sides of the table.
When she turned back to Gojo, Utahime’s eyes were soft and warm. “Satoru… Do you mean that, all this time…?”
He nodded, his mouth dry. It took some effort to not activate his technique when she reached for him, but her hands were tender against his face. His eyes drifted closed, although it didn’t make a bit of difference in what he could see.
Utahime stood, and her fingers crept under the black fabric of his mask.
“You should have said something…”
She pulled the fabric down, slowly pooling it around his neck.
“I wa-”
“Shh.” She pressed a finger to his lips. Her other hand was still wrapped up in his blindfold. “You should have let me know about your feelings so that I could do this–”
She yanked the blindfold backwards, making him choke as it dug into his windpipe.
Several minutes later, Shoko and Nanami were able to pry her off of a blue-faced Gojo, and Utahime wasn’t sure which was worse – that Gojo wanted to marry her, or the fact that marrying him actually didn’t seem like such a bad idea.