Chapter Text
When Iori Utahime woke up, she barely had the chance to yawn before realization dawned on her. When it did, she let out a curse. Kuso!
The fact that she woke up in the first place wasn’t the problem. She typically slept all throughout the night if undisturbed, but Utahime had been woken up by one too many midnight calls from Gakuganji-sama for this sort of thing to faze her. No, the issue was how she woke up.
With her leg and arm thrown over Gojō Satoru—her head against the side of his chest and her fingers interwoven with the hairs at the nape of his neck. Kuso, again!
She quickly and quietly extracted her limbs from his person, and tentatively checked if he was awake.
She could hardly see in the darkness of her room, the curtains drawn as they were and all the lights off in her apartment. The only source of light remaining was the faint moonlight that slipped in from under the blinds and curtains, and the red, blinking glow of her digital alarm clock. But still, she made out what she could.
He was sleeping on his back, one arm folded onto his chest, and the other—the one she’d been sleeping under—raised above his head, like he had no cares in the world.
He didn’t seem awake, but one could never be too sure with Gojō… She inched her way out of the bed, listening to see if the noise would jolt him awake. She turned back, watching his nose for any twitches, and his eyelashes for any fluttering. Nothing. Everything about him seemed perfectly still except for his chest rising and falling with every slow, deep breath. And now, she was just watching him sleep like a creep. Kuso, kuso!
With that, she sighed, and made her way to the kitchen for a glass of water.
She filled her glass up to the top, and pulled out a chair from the table before sitting down opposite from the stove. She hadn’t read the clock in her room, but she could now see it was 4:23am.
Utahime theorized that Gojō usually came to bed anywhere from 3:30am to 4:30am. She didn’t actually know if “usually” even applied in this situation though, because him sleeping in her bed—with her in it!—was a fairly recent development.
They’d only recently begun this thing they’ve been doing, where Gojō made a habit out of accosting her in the middle of her weekend errands, and following her home after.
Hell, even on some non-busy weekdays, Utahime would come home and find Gojō already there—prepared to invade her space and drive her up the wall.
Although she maintained that this was mostly due to Gojō’s base existence as a nuisance, she couldn’t plausibly deny the role she’s played—and continues to play—in facilitating this whole thing.
Everyone knows that you’re not supposed to swat at the bee that keeps buzzing around you. You’re meant to ignore it, and if you are patient enough, it’ll eventually move away as if it was never bothering you in the first place.
Unfortunately, Utahime has never known such (or any, really) patience or cool indifference when it comes to Gojō. (In her defense, he was much more provoking than your average pest.)
So, for reasons she wasn’t at all comfortable confronting or even acknowledging, she could maybe see how the things she did didn’t exactly scream “go away, and stay gone, Gojō Satoru!”
She definitely didn’t have to make him hold her purchases when she went shopping at the outlets ("Stop complaining! If you're here, you're going to make yourself useful. Is this really the same idiot that goes around proclaiming his strength to anyone that can hear?"), nor was she required to waste her breath lecturing him about the importance of carefully picking produce ("And to make good takuan (pickled daikon radish) you should get a heavy daikon with no soft spots. Look, feel this one!") when she knew good and well that Gojō had never pickled anything a day in his life, and wouldn’t be starting anytime soon.
He probably wouldn’t have been making himself right at home in her apartment if she didn’t buy some of the snacks he’d surreptitiously place into her cart when she wasn’t looking (“Pick only one kind of candy, you absolute man-child!”). Making a space on her shoe rack for the house slippers he bought himself (“What about my precious feet, Utahime? Men don’t like bad hosts, you know.” / “You’re not my guest, you brat!”) probably wasn’t helping matters either.
And of course, if she didn’t force him to take a nap on her bed that one day, he would’ve never gotten accustomed to sleeping anywhere near her at all.
The brilliance of Gojō’s grin came back full-force, and he pulled his blindfold up so that Utahime could see the mischievous glint sparkling in his eyes.
“What’s this? Utahime-senpai wants me to sleep in her bed?”
The sides of Utahime’s face felt so warm that she was sure she was tinged pink. Once again, she was driven to the brink of extreme annoyance and embarrassment by the hands of Gojō Satoru, Utahime did what she did best in these kinds of situations: avoided the underlying context of his leading question, instead wielding propriety and logic as weapons against his goading.
Such defensive measures were never truly successful, of course, but there was something to be said about familiar routines.
“It’s a perfectly reasonable request. You’re already here and who knows when a pest like you plans on leaving? I don’t need you dropping dead from exhaustion on my conscience. You’re lucky I’m even offering you my bed, you ungrateful brat. Unlike you, I have the sense to invest in useful things like a quality mattress and blackout curtains.”
She’d done her best to keep her voice even, and refrain from any yelling. It was bordering on shrill, sure, but still relatively composed. Who was she fooling, though? Even she knew it was only a matter of time.
“You know… if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were just a concerned senpai looking out for her kōhai.” He leaned into her quite closely before continuing,
“But of course I do know better—I’m the strongest, after all—so I can recognize this plot for what it really is: an attempt to get the Gojō Satoru into bed!”
He barely gave her a chance to turn her sputtering indignation into a vicious comeback before he grabbed the bottom of her shirt and started toying with it.
“Don’t be embarrassed, Utahime! It was a valiant effort, and, you know, you almost persuaded me with all that talk about blackout curtains and top-quality mattresses—though I could’ve done without all the insults and namecal-"
She smacked his hand away, and balled her own up at her side as she glared up at him from where he leaned casually against the counter.
“Fine! Drop dead for all I care! See if I’ll offer you help ever again, you absolute idiot! What an ungrateful assho-”
He grabbed her wrist as she started storming away from the living room area.
“Ah, don’t be like that, Utahime. I’ll tell you what, why don’t you come lay down with me, hm? Surely you won’t leave your dear guest in a dark room all by himself, will you?”
She’s still not sure what possessed her that day that all she did was huff and drag him into her bedroom. The heat had finally began to dissipate from her cheeks as she mentally reentered into senpai mode.
“You’d better lay down and sleep, and don’t get up until you feel properly rested! I’ve only decided to be here to supervise that, and make sure you don’t get up to any funny business in here.” She parked herself on top of her bedding on the left side—criss-crossed with her back against her headboard—and grabbed the mystery novel she’d been reading from her nightstand.
“Honestly… warping all around Japan without proper sleep. How reckless can one idiot be,” she mumbled to herself.
Gojō, to his credit, just let out a slight chuckle and said “Yes, senpai’” with a smirk so smug, it washed away any of the good will earned by using the appropriate honorific.
She knew he was a relatively light sleeper, but that he also had no trouble getting himself to fall asleep in the most random places. With that, she payed him no mind as she got into her book. She kept the lamp nearest to her on the lowest setting so that she could see—figuring Gojō would be fine as long as he kept his blindfold on.
She underestimated the effects of a dimly lit room combined with the puttering of rain hitting the surfaces of Kyōto, though, and shortly found herself putting her book down and tucking herself under the covers before she gave into the lull of sleep.
When she woke up an hour later, it was tucked against Gojō—her nose breathing in the smell of his freshly-laundered black t-shirt. She jerked up and away from his body and ran straight into the bathroom to splash some water on her face and attempt to wash off any remnants of horror in her expression.
When Utahime returned, he had pulled himself up against her headboard, and sat atop her covers with his legs crossed at the ankles, spinning his blindfold around his index finger. His eyes tracked her as she reentered her room, and before she had a chance to speak, he got off the bed and quickly stood before her.
"Thanks for the cat nap, Utahime. It was just so refreshing," he purred, stretching out in front of her. She held onto the annoyance rising through her, and tried to smack him right in the middle of the chest he was pushing into her face, but was blocked by his infinity. She practically pushed him out the door with how fast she was on his heels, telling him he should be properly rested enough now and had no reason to be idling in her home.
He was laughing even as he paused to slide into his shoes, and when he turned back to her, she could still see the irritating mirth all over his face.
"Later, bedhead!" He even tugged on a piece of her hair for good measure. Before she could retaliate, he'd warped off to wherever the hell he went at such an hour.
She didn’t want to talk about it, and luckily enough for her, he waited some time—and several additional shared naps later—before poking at the subject so directly again.
“Ah, Utahime wants me so badly,” he’d told a young cashier behind the register.
“It’s why she can’t help but wiggle her way into my arms every time she sleeps near me! I could never fault her, of course, she’s just too cute. Isn’t that right, Hime-chan?”
Utahime was mortified. Not because he was acting as if he was her lover in public—he did this bit more often than not these days—but because she was being forced to acknowledge that there was a grain of actual truth in what he was saying.
The cashier had given them a tight smile and announced their change, but Utahime had been too lost in thought to register it, so Gojō was the one who thanked the young man and steered them out of the market, bag in one hand, and Utahime’s in the other.
She wasn’t sure how she hadn’t put this together before, but it was obvious to her now that she was the one orchestrating the entangled positions they kept finding themselves in.
How many times has she seen him fall asleep in the most precarious positions during their schooldays and remain totally still—balanced on chairs with his feet kicked up, and upright in repositioned desks?
And how many times had she fallen off her twin-sized bed in her old dorm room, and been told by Shōko-chan and Mei-chan that she kicks in her sleep?
There was only one explanation: it was her who was gravitating towards Gojō in his sleep, and attaching herself to him like… like a starfish stuck to an oversized rock!
This was a new level of unacceptable, and she vowed to herself that she’d never sleep next to Gojō again, much less drape herself over his person! And really, this kind of behavior was totally undignified!
What was she doing, having Gojō Satoru over at her apartment at all hours of the day, tangled up under the same covers as her, leaving his scent all over her sheets?
What was this thing that was going on between them all about, anyways! What was it about him that was making her act like this? Her mother would be scandalized!
This critical realization and new-found return of her senses had come to Utahime only yesterday, so that she’s found herself wrapped up around Gojō once again today really wasn’t a good thing at all. Hence, all the kusos.
With no more excuses to keep herself awake and out of her room, she gulped down the rest of her glass, gave another glance to the clock, and let out one more long-suffering sigh before making her way back to bed.