Work Text:
"So then?"
"Then that was it," Gojo explains, reclining himself more comfortably into the patient chair. "I told Nanami — not so bright, Shoko — that it was a done deal. He gets paid overtime so long as he agrees to mentor the Sukuna vessel when and if needed."
Shoko adjusts the penlight currently poised in front of his eyes, dulling it down a few notches. "Uh-huh," she hums. "And he agreed just like that?"
"Well, you know how that kid gets," muses Gojo, absentmindedly toying with the straps of her stethoscope. Shoko uses her free hand to slap his hands away. "He needed a little more convincing."
"Of what?" she asks.
"He wanted to make sure Yuji wasn't corrupted," Gojo supplies.
Shoko pauses, pulling down the penlight just enough to peer into his face. She raised a brow in question.
"Right?" Gojo starts nodding vehemently along. "That was my exact reaction too." He gestured for her to continue. Shoko did so cautiously, still a little confused, shining a light down his eyes again. "Something about making sure Yuji was a good kid who listened well and wasn't a self-sacrificing idiot like most sorcerers he knew."
"But that's exactly who Yuji is.”
"Nanami doesn't need to know that," Gojo chides. "At least, not yet."
Shoko clicks the penlight off. Gojo blinks some of the disorientation away, moving to sit upright again only to be stopped by her fingers pushing him back down.
"Not just yet," she says. "We still have to do your eye drops."
Gojo pouts. "But I hate them. They're minty."
"Missed the part where I care," Shoko replies breezily, already fishing between the drawers for the box. Turning back to face him, warns in a low voice, "Open your eyes or I'll make Yaga come in and force them open again."
Gojo stubbornly wretches them close even tighter, turning his head away. "Are those drops really necessary?" he groans. "I can do RCT myself, you know!"
"Then why don't you?" mocks Shoko, fed up and maybe a little annoyed at a portion of her calendar always being blocked off the first Monday of every month no matter she had about a hundred other patients to tend to. She snaps off the latex gloves and gestures to him irately. "Heal those sore eyes yourself then."
Gojo cracks open his eyes, reaching out to tug a strand of her hair. "So snappy today. Woke up on the wrong side of the bed?"
"Shut up and sit still," Shoko pushes him down again with more force. "And no crying. Or else we'll just have to do it again."
"Fine," Gojo grits his teeth. Shoko stands over him, the light of the clinic halo-ing around her. "Just — just tell me when."
Shoko carefully situates the drops exactly an inch from his eyes. Gojo grabs onto her robe in anticipation. "When."
After, when Gojo tried his best not to blink the menthol away in his eyes and let it sit lingering for at least a minute as per doctor's orders and Shoko stood glaring over at him to make sure he really didn't, they were now making their way to the nearest pharmacy with nothing but the crunch of their footsteps in the snow breaking the winter evening silence.
"What cocktail of poisons do you want to try on me today?" Gojo asks.
Shoko uses the hand looped around his arm to give his bicep a squeeze. "You know I took the Hippocratic oath, right?" she rounded them on a corner. "So you know I mean no harm."
"And yet you're always peddling me drugs," Gojo looks down, frowning when he notes, "Your hands are freezing, by the way. Want my gloves?"
"Okay," says Shoko, fishing her arm out of his and tugging on his gloves. "It's the clinic. And the alcohol. And the constant washing of my hands."
"Okay," replies Gojo, reaching out to loop her hand against his elbow again. “Damn clinic then.”
They reach the drugstore where Shoko promptly buys out an entire shelf worth of painkillers and nevanacs, arguing that on top of having fucked up eyes Gojo apparently also had a fascinatingly fucked up immune system that could potentially contain an atomic bomb if he so wished. Gojo slings the copious amounts of pills under his arm and opens the door for her, not before drily commenting, "Hate to sound like a broken record here but is this all really necessary?"
"Yes, yes," Shoko gestured at him impatiently to get out, weaving her way into his coat pocket once he did. "All very necessary. Nothing but the best for the six eyes and the Gojo heir, yada yada yada."
"Still cold?" Gojo asks.
"Aren't you?" retorts Shoko.
"Infinity prohibits me," Gojo says, smugly. “You wanna get a drink?"
“Today?”
Gojo waves vaguely at his eyes. “When this gets better.”
“Depends,” Shoko hums. “You buying?”
"Ieiri-san," Gojo smirks down at her, tucking her hand further into his coat. "Don't I always?"
✦
A few weeks into the winter of their shared end of the world: Shoko amputated six limbs just that day alone, Nanami is now singularly motivated to earn that paid holiday off in Malaysia by way of sending a dozen corpses her way, and Ijichi cannot stop wheeling in more and more transfigured humans. By the time she makes it out of the clinic and the sun is just shy of setting, Gojo falls into step easily next to her. He says nothing, instead just guides them to the nearest konbini.
"Asahi Super Dry?"
"Really?" Shoko blinks, appraising the bottle he was raising. "After all this time, that's still your picked poison?"
Gojo shrugs, adding a few cans to their basket. "Beer is beer."
“You don’t drink,” Shoko points out.
“What can I say?” Gojo looks over the cigarette aisle. “It’s the winter blues.”
They pick up more bottles of yuzu-flavored umeshu along with a couple bags of honey chips, wandering back out into the winter night after Gojo paid. December in Tokyo was so often biting, the wind lapping into their skin and settling into the marrow of their bones; but it was an odd rarity, how it was now: the sun still so blue-tinted against the sky, the light from the neighbouring houses spilling out into the sidewalk and touching everything sort of golden. Snow crunches quietly underfoot as they cross the forest behind the school compound, familiar footsteps dragging them to a familiar park.
"They don't work," Gojo says first, once they've situated themselves on a bench and Shoko opened their first can of beer. He takes a swig and passes it back to her. "The drugs."
Shoko's face fell. "No."
"Yeah," insists Gojo, tearing apart a packet of Calbee and handing it to her. "None of them work. I tried the different dosages like you asked me to."
"And?" Shoko prods, setting down the beer and opting for his umeshu instead.
Gojo turns and gives her a knowing look, almost as if to say, Sorry.
Shoko clicks her tongue slowly. "Right then," she takes a generous sip before adding, "I'll — I'll figure it out."
"Figure what out?" Gojo asks, blowing out puffs of air and seeing them form rings around his mouth.
"Your dosage — or your NSAIDs — or something," Shoko supplies distractedly, watching his breath hang in a cloud, pale in the moonlight. She slashes her hand through them, earning her a playful shove from Gojo.
"And besides," Gojo turns to look at her, more seriously now. "What's so important about it anyway?"
Shoko worries at her bottom lip, chapped in the cold. “Because that's not good,” she admits glumly. “We have to figure out how to sedate you. Or else one day you’ll show up on my operating table, and there’ll be no antibiotic or anticoagulant that’ll work.”
Gojo blinks, and seems to think on it for exactly three seconds, before gulping down a generous amount of umeshu and going, "Eh."
Shoko kicks him in the shin. "Aren’t you worried at all?"
"I'm sure you'll figure it out," Gojo assures her, passing her the last of his umeshu bottle. "If you don't, I promise not to scream when you're cutting into my skin."
"That's not funny," grimaces Shoko, finishing the rest of the bottle in one go. Her cheeks were now starting to flush from the alcohol and the cold.
"Missed the part where that's true," parrots Gojo back, looking over at her in amusement. When the frown on her face still didn't let up, he sighed and fished for the hot pack on his coat, tucking it snug in her hands. "It'll be fine. I have RCT. And you should really do something about these hands."
Shoko sniffles a little. "It's the clinic."
"Okay," Gojo says softly, facing back to look at the wide expanse of the park. "It's the clinic."
They drink in quiet for awhile, all the while, drinking in: the soft wind blowing against the pine trees, the sound of the winter sparrows chirping in the forest, and basking in the general hum and drum of Tokyo in the 24th before things got unbearably wide and too large to fill in the gaps of their grief.
Shoko finishes her bottle first, makes a face, and decides, “You know what, I've decided I don’t really like yuzu beer. Let’s not get this flavor again,” she declares. “We can get the ume flavored ones next or even just sake. We’ll heat it and put it in a thermos, pack some side dishes, maybe some squid; it’ll be nice.”
Gojo just hums in agreement. "Should we?"
"I think we should," Shoko starts nodding solemnly, her nose and ears and neck tinging red. She was chattier when she was drunk, even more so, Gojo thinks, tonight. "We really should."
"Then we will," supplies Gojo, taking the bottle away from her and gathering the rest of their things. He unclasps his jacket and wraps it around her, picking up their trash and throwing it in the nearest trash bin. He comes back to find Shoko looking somberly at one of the stray cats in the compound — the rare ones Yaga didn't immediately donate to the local pet shelter — a black Lykoi cat.
"It's here again," she notes quietly.
Gojo looks on. "It is."
"Gojo?"
"Yeah?" he turns to face her.
There's a beat that passes, Shoko just looking at him and trying to unspool some of that sadness in his eyes. Sadness he saw in hers too. Eventually she breaks into a small smile, still a little sad and maybe a little watery, but a smile nonetheless. Overhead, the church bells were ringing.
"Merry Christmas."