Chapter Text

September, 2009

The train was packed. Iori Utahime had unwittingly caught the tail end of Tokyo's morning rush hour and was slightly bewildered by the crush of people hurriedly pouring into the doors as a merry little tune burbled overhead. She had been lost in her own thoughts, rehashing the mission that still had her a little breathless from adrenaline. Discomfited as the compartment grew more compressed, Utahime tugged the tight cuffs of her long-sleeved t-shirt over her bruised knuckles to avoid any curious stares. 

They would be easier to hide in the sleeves of her kosode. Maybe she should go back to wearing her miko attire. She was used to it, after all. Utahime tried to fan herself, feeling sweaty in the accumulating crush of the subway compartment. Her athletic wear was tight. She had already caught a dead-eyed salaryman staring at her ass. She had glared at him, letting him know that if he touched her, she would break his fingers. 

The fact remained that her modest little miko outfit hadn’t precluded her from being felt up at clan meetings and weddings, so what was the point really? She couldn’t break any fingers there. Not weak little Iori Utahime, no clan and no status.  

Utahime grimaced slightly as another already-weary office worker jammed herself into a small gap, her briefcase jabbing Utahime in the ribs. It was stuffy and loud with the doors still open, and she could feel the bruise forming beneath her yoga pants where the long gelatinous arm of the curse had lashed out to topple her. It had smacked her sideways against the wall, catching her by surprise. Utahime was trying to decide whether it merited a trip to find Shoko or not. Her hip ached, and she probably had a welt on her thigh where the curse’s springy arm had connected with her body. It had felt like a smack from a rubber slipper. She winced as she ran her palm over the spot. 

The athletic wear was a nice experiment, but the layers of her miko outfit would probably have absorbed some of the impact.

She frowned, growing irritable as more people squashed themselves onto the train compartment, pushing Utahime further into the swell of people. She grappled for a handhold on the rail above her, feeling the press of other people’s bodies around her. A different salaryman at her left sniffed loudly, blinking slowly at her with bovine disinterest as Utahime glared at him for stepping on her sneakers as the doors finally closed. 

Her throat hurt too. She had taxed it during the mission. It was probably the only thing holding her back. 

Utahime’s eyes flickered up to the salaryman again and his indifferent, thousand-yard stare. The conditions were perfect, really. This man couldn’t care less about her, her sneakers, or even his space on the train. Utahime looked to her right and saw the office worker swaying slightly with the gait of the train, lost in thought, her face completely passive. Sandwiched between them, Utahime wouldn’t even have to be very loud. A very simple singsong, soft like she just had a tune stuck in her head, and they’d be a bit confused, a little foggy, and they’d step away from her, feeling nothing bad or obstinate because they were hardly registering Utahime at all. There would be hardly any emotional feedback looping around and undoing what she was trying to do. 

Utahime wondered if she might accidentally cause a kind of domino effect of jostled commuters if she didn’t do it loudly enough. Her voice was too strained for that, although the indifference in the train compartment might have meant that her technique would be at peak efficacy. If she hadn’t used to finally bamboozle the curse before it smacked her into another wall, she might have had the strength. She had cast one of her Six Tricks just in time before its fist slammed down on her. 

The coin jumps from one hand to the next. 

But a few little lilting phrases under her breath wouldn’t hurt that much, just some beguiling words in her singsong voice, a bit of misdirection, and Utahime might have a little more space to breathe and take inventory of her injuries. She swallowed, summoning up a little lick of cursed energy from her belly to check how resonant it could be. 

Not much left. She ought to save it just in case.  

But if she just concentrated on the two commuters crowding her in, she wouldn’t need much of her cursed energy. Utahime had six malleable tricks, said in her singsong voice, to touch someone’s thoughts. Six tricks with such potential to misdirect, undermine and confound, but requiring so much concentration and the bodily strain of her cursed speech that sometimes she wondered if it was worth it. She often resorted to her fists rather than taste the blood on her tongue. At least she was quick and nimble. She could strike like a viper. Cute, weak little Utahime. That was just another of her misdirections. 

She swallowed, feeling the impish smile that she couldn’t control touch her lips, as she licked her cursed energy over her words, fashioning in a lilt that was always wrongly called a song. 

“ Watch the coin, ” Utahime whispered slyly in her undulating voice.  

The two commuters' eyes fixed on her, and Utahime saw the swirl of her cursed energy in their pupils, their expressions turning placid. She cast her trick.

The coin changes visually. 

“ I’m large, don’t you think? ” Utahime whispered in her sweet iambic modulation. “ Too large. There is a crush of people in here, so it is easy to believe. ” 

She braced for the rebound that their emotions might cause, but the two simply moved backwards without speaking, as Utahime's throat burned hotly, like she had swallowed a sip of boiling tea. The light of her cursed energy went out of their eyes. 

The air around her was a little freer though and Utahime felt her mouth relax out of the tiny trickster’s smile that she rather hated. It was a tell, after all. 

Her throat really hurt now. She should probably find Shoko, but that would probably require waking her up or dragging her out of someone’s bed. A bath and some good whiskey before a long nap would probably sort Utahime out. 

Utahime didn’t like to confess her injuries, even to Shoko. She had a lot to prove. She was still only a Second Grade Sorcerer. 

As she exited the subway with the throngs of people, Utahime suddenly became aware of her phone vibrating urgently in her backpack. Squinting into the summer morning sunshine, she fished it out, flipping it open. She frowned, heart in her throat.

27 messages, 4 missed calls. 

And even worse — all of them were from Gojo Satoru. She gritted her teeth, about to open one of them when the phone started ringing again. The night of exertion battling the curse, her bruises and her aching throat suddenly made her feel washed out. 

“Yes, Gojo?” she snapped into the handset. 

“Utahime, thank fuck,” Gojo’s voice breathed into the phone. “Why haven’t you been answering?” 

“Subway,” she answered tersely, slightly less sure that he was only phoning to annoy her. “Everything okay?”

If this was a prank, she would rather he get straight to it so she could get home to her shitty little apartment and her indulgent soak in the tub. 

“I need your help. Urgently.” 

Utahime slowed, feeling the throngs of commuters stream around her. 

“ My help?” she repeated, her voice laced with scepticism. 

“Yes. Only you. It has to be you,” Gojo didn’t usually sound so serious. “It’s something big, Uta.” 

Utahime stopped in her tracks, feeling a knot in her stomach quickly bind together at his tone. She had heard him speak this way before, his voice deepened by something grave and heavy, like a millstone was weighing it down. 

“Are you messing with me, Gojo?” she asked quietly into the phone. 

“No,” he said, with no promises attached to tell her that he was surely lying. “I need you to meet up with me as soon as you can. Are you rested? Your cursed energy, I mean?” 

Utahime gripped the phone in frustration at herself. It was a mission. He needed her help to fight something monstrous and she had dipped into her limited cursed energy to get a little elbow room on the train. Stupid. Foolish. 

But, as much as it annoyed her, a mission with Gojo was probably the kind of accolade she needed under her belt. Gojo would never recommend her for promotion, but it would mean something to the review board that she was his comrade of sorts. 

That he had needed her. 

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said breezily. “Where are you?” 

He gave her the address and Utahime turned and hurried back towards the subway, her sneakers squeaking as she approached the escalators again. She heard Gojo’s voice get crackly as she rushed into the bowels of the metro again. 

“Uta, hurry and don’t tell anyone you’re coming.” 

Utahime looked uncertainly up at the face of the looming government building, glinting in the bright sunshine, tall and starched. Miserable low-grade curses loved government buildings, and they usually droned above the tops of the heads of queuing citizens and weathered officials, slithering along the ceiling and ruining paperwork. She could see a few flyheads clattering against the glass when she entered but could sense nothing big and dark that might cause something so calamitous that Gojo would need her. Her spine tingled with the curiosity of what awaited her, her fingers moving deftly by habit, ready to misdirect, ready to cast. She ignored the low-level curses she encountered in the stairwell, because she had to reserve what cursed energy she had left for whatever awaited her. 

She checked Gojo’s text message again for directions, making sure she really was on the correct floor. Social Services. 

She looked up from the screen, about to turn around and check again, when she saw the familiar shape of a tall body and a shock of white hair. Gojo spotted her, relief flooding his features only for a second before his smile turned into something she recognised. He was going to tease her. 

“You found me,” he said as she rushed over. 

Utahime frowned, confused and unsettled that he didn’t sound as urgent and hushed as he had on the phone. She shook her head slightly in confusion, shaking away threads of suspicion, taking in this version of her schoolmate standing in front of her. He looked different from the last time she had seen him — he looked taller, his shoulders a little broader, and his sunglasses and his school uniform were missing. He was wearing a pair of navy chinos with a crisp white button-down shirt and his usual mop of spiky white hair was parted and combed back. He looked scrubbed, business-like. Older, suave, handsome. 

Utahime narrowed her eyes. 

“Why do you look like that?” she asked suspiciously. 

He looked down at her and the way she was dressed like she had been to the gym. 

“Why do you look like that ?” he shot back in confusion. “You look like a slutty yoga instructor.” 

Utahime blushed, scowling, pulling the sleeves of her tight shirt down over her knuckles again, grappling for the modesty she was used to. 

“I’m just getting back from a mission. Figured it might help my range of movement to dress in my training gear,” she grumbled dismissively, a familiar feeling of discomfort rising in her belly from being around him. “What is going on?” 

Gojo’s face sobered slightly, his Six Eyes sliding up and down her body. He was looking deeper than her tight clothing, she realised, and it made her feel even more exposed.

“A mission? Your cursed energy—”

“It’s fine. I’m fine,” Utahime interrupted sharply. “Tell me what is going on.”

“I need you to do your little witchy-woo,” Gojo said in hushed tones, wiggling his fingers cartoonishly. “Your little abracadabra.” 

Utahime felt her temper flare at his condescension. 

“I’m leaving.” 

Gojo grabbed her wrist as she turned to storm off, dragging her backwards a little too roughly. 

“Please, Uta. This is serious.” 

That grave tone returned to his voice, making her freeze in her tracks, pushing away from his body because he had yanked her a little too close for comfort. The last time she’d heard that tone, it had been at the end of his innocence, the desolation of a love he could no longer defend. 2007. Probably the last time she had spoken to him. He had been a kid then. They both had. 

Utahime looked up into his face, into bare eyes that were glistening and cerulean, her lips parting. She really hadn’t seen him in a while. The fluorescence of the lighting was doing something strange to the eerie, ancient magic of his eyes. Could it be that Gojo Satoru had grown even stronger in the two years since she had seen him? Utahime pressed her lips together. More power meant more enemies. 

Gojo’s fingers slowly let go of her wrist when he realised that she wasn’t storming away. 

“Have a look.” he said, jerking his chin towards the door opposite them in the hallway. 

Utahime squinted, the light from inside the office causing a glare through the panel of glass in the door. Sitting on a sofa against the window was a little boy, arms crossed and glaring while he kicked his feet. On the floor in front of him, Utahime could make out a little girl doing a puzzle on the coffee table. 

“Gojo,” Utahime gulped, “who are those children?” 

Even through the door, Utahime could sense the cursed energy coming off the boy in waves as he sulkily hunched on the sofa. Her eyes darted to the little girl. Nothing there. Not a drop of cursed energy. 

There was something about the boy that tugged at Utahime’s memory. 

“That’s Fushiguro Megumi,” Gojo explained, standing behind her as Utahime was drawn slowly to the glass, “and his step-sister, Tsumiki.” 

Utahime swallowed her gasp of shock, feeling it ache in her throat as she pushed it down like she had swallowed a bone. 

“Toji,” she said softly, remembering everything the name Fushiguro meant. 

Her mind running a mile a minute, Utahime reeled around to look at Gojo. Because in this case, Fushiguro didn’t mean Fushiguro at all. 

“Gojo, what are you doing with these kids?” 

“I’m stopping something. And the non-sorcerer world is interfering just a little bit.” 

“You’re hiding them from the Zen’ins,” Utahime whispered, putting her hands on the glass, covering the image of the children, wishing she could really make them disappear. 

In their world, one of the worst things you could be was innocent. Utahime looked at the girl again, at how no light swirled around her, the ultimate calm of her aura in comparison to her step-brother. To the Zen’ins, that was a greater sin than being a child. 

“Well, I tried. I’m trying. This social service woman is poking around my phoney adoption paperwork,” Gojo whispered peevishly. “Their school flagged some anomalies in our family setup.” 

He was always tall, but Gojo seemed to loom over her as Utahime searched his face, finding it vaguely comical that his hair was parted and gelled so neatly. Of course — he was trying to look older. 

“You adopted them?” Utahime hissed in disbelief. “You’re nineteen .” 

Gojo couldn’t help the wry smile that tilted his mouth. 

“Well, that’s not exactly what the paperwork says. It says I’m 25. Guess you’re not my senpai after all.” 

Utahime rolled her eyes, but she could not fight the feeling of dismay when she realised the power and money of the clan that Gojo headed up and how easily it could shape its wants and desires around the strictures of the non-sorcerer world. It annoyed her, because institutions like the clans and the Higher Ups seemed to disregard the fact that she, in her weakness, could do the same thing if she chose to. 

“Gojo,” she said, her teeth grit together. 

“Hey! Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t think I would have to actually defend anything I wrote down,” he said, throwing his hands up. 

“You want me to make the social worker believe it,” Utahime realised, feeling restless in the long governmental department. 

There was no battle. No opportunity to prove herself like that. She was not Gojo’s comrade — she was a means to an end. 

“Yes. Please, Uta. It won’t even take two seconds of your time,” Gojo said this with a rush of boyish eagerness that flew in the face of whatever the fraudulent documents that were lying on the desk in that office said about his age. 

Utahime studied his face again and his strange, unsettling beauty. She was piecing this scene together slowly. Those sunglasses were off for a reason. Gojo had tried to charm this woman already, and that was a problem. 

“Gojo, does the social worker like you?” Utahime asked flatly, putting her hands on her hips wearily.

He looked startled by her question, before his mouth tipped into a smile again, a dimple appearing on one cheek. 

“Who doesn’t like me, Uta?” he asked lightly, a chuckle tinting his words. 

Utahime narrowed her eyes. 

“Have you annoyed her?” she rephrased tersely, crossing her arms 

“Is that relevant?” Gojo asked, and she could see the smile jumping in his eyes. 

“It's relevant because if she’s had an emotional response to you, I can’t always work around it. Emotions rebound. I can meddle with her thoughts and her impressions, but emotions cause a gut feeling that tends to circle around and undo my technique.” 

“Oh,” Gojo said, his face falling a little. “Can you still try? I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t serious.”

Utahime sighed, realising her mouth might bleed from this and Gojo would see it. 

“The children. Didn’t they back up your story? Do they not want to live with you?” Utahime asked quietly, feeling a sudden pang for the little boy glaring on the sofa, his bony little knees bouncing. 

“Oh, they did. They’re pretty cold-blooded liars actually. It was a bit creepy but I guess it's a survival adaptation,” Gojo chuckled. “But the lady isn’t super convinced that I didn’t just coach them on how to answer the questions that the school asked. Which, obviously, I did.” 

Utahime watched the grin fade from Gojo’s mouth once again. There was a shadow in the back of his eyes that she saw him try to blink away. 

“Please, Uta. You’re the only one I can ask to do this.” 

Utahime’s stomach turned over, feeling a strange sensation at the realisation that Gojo — of all people — did actually need her. It meant something to ask another sorcerer for a favour. 

“Fine. I’ll try,” she conceded quietly. “It might not work, but I’ll try. 

“Thank fuck! Thank you, Uta!” Gojo enthused, dragging the backpack off her shoulder and inadvertently bumping a bruise from where she had collided with the wall during her mission. “Just follow my lead. Don’t get mad. Just go with it, okay?” 

He flung her backpack down into the hall. Before she could reply, Utahime felt Gojo fling the office door open, making it clatter against the wall. He dragged Utahime into the room with him, his hand nestled into her waist. 

“She’s here. Her pilates class ran late,” he chirruped. 

Utahime opened her mouth to greet the startled women sitting behind the desk, when the little girl building a puzzle on the coffee table flew up, throwing her arms around Utahime’s hips.

She buried her face in Utahime’s stomach. 

“You’re finally here,” she mumbled plaintively. “Can we go home?” 

Utahime touched the girl’s shiny ponytail, her fingers shaking, absolutely bewildered but hoping it didn’t show. 

“Soon,” she swallowed, petting the girl’s hair. 

Megumi glowered from the sofa. 

“I’m hungry,” he said in a hollow voice, and then as a reluctant afterthought. “Mommy.” 

Utahime froze, her hand stilling on Tsumiki’s hair. Her heart rose like a bubble in her throat, her temper flaring as her eyes flicked warily to Gojo, his arm still around her waist. He smiled at her, unperturbed, and then down at the little girl and her death grip on Utahime. 

Tsumiki lifted her face, her chin resting on Utahime’s stomach. 

“We left our lunchboxes at school. We didn’t have time to grab them,” she explained, sounding a little teary and overwrought. “And Daddy made us Hello Kitty rice balls today.” 

Utahime could feel her heartbeat in her stomach and behind her ears. She was starting to get an inkling of what exactly the anomalies were regarding the adoption. 

“Finish your puzzle, darling. We’ll be out of here soon.” 

Utahime was going to kill Gojo. She was going to punch through his face. She calmed herself down by imagining the crack of bone. 

“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” she said politely to the woman behind the desk, who was watching this pantomime over the edge of her glasses. “What seems to be the problem?” 

The woman looked unmoved. That could be a good thing, if Utahime was there to smooth over the bumps in someone’s contrary thinking, indifference was always the best starting point. But it was entirely possible that Utahime was just looking at an adept poker face. 

The social worker’s eyes flittered over Utahime’s athletic wear and then up to her face, revealing nothing. Utahime winced because she felt Gojo’s hand slide down the curve of her waist and rest on her ass. 

“My name is Ohashi Yori. Following an inquiry by the children’s school, I have some questions for you and your…husband.” 

Utahime weathered the breaking wave of that word with a slow blink. Her hand slid down and pushed Gojo’s palm off her ass. She felt her face slowly transform, her little impish smile touching her lips before she could properly strategise when she should deploy her defensive technique. She was panicking. 

“ Watch the coin,” she sang, washing her words with cursed energy, her heart pounding. 

Ohashi Yori’s eyes widened just a little, before settling into something placid. Utahime saw the swirl of her energy rotating around in the dark irises of the woman opposite her. Utahime cast a trick.

The coin changes visually. 

“ We’re young, aren’t we? ” Utahime’s singsong voice slipped silkily across the surface of the desk, a pretty, coaxing noise. “ But we’re very capable. We are dressed in ways which confirm our story, so it is easy to believe .” 

“You are young. But capable,” The social worker repeated as if it had been her observation, but frowned slightly, because her gut instinct was interfering. “You are the adoptive mother of these children?” 

Utahime licked more cursed energy onto her words, like the wet slide of a calligraphy brush. 

“ I’m the adoptive mother of these children, aren’t I? ” she said softly, her voice undulating teasingly. “ Young, capable, happy mother. The children knew me, so it is easy to believe. ” 

The social worker smiled, her thoughts changing, smoothing over. Utahime’s throat burned, feeling a little flayed at the heat of cursed energy boiling up from her stomach and through her vocal cords. She didn’t have much left. Her heart sank as the case worker’s brow twitched again when her eyes fell on Gojo. Ohashi turned to look at Utahime again, eyes swirling with the blue of Utahime’s technique, but her dislike for Gojo fighting her logical mind. She looked down at the paperwork in front of her, reading something and then glancing up. 

“Your name is Gojo Utahime? The adoptive mother that the school has never seen?” The social worker asked, almost to herself, frowning deeper as she struggled with the confusion, the backwards traffic of Utahime addling her mind and her stubborn, suspicious emotional response to Gojo, “You are this man’s wife?” 

Utahime glared at Gojo, but her throat was on fire, rubbed completely raw by the acid of her cursed energy and struggling with the persistence of the woman. She wished she wasn’t smiling in the way her technique made her, because she was sure it made her look like a co-conspirator. Her naughty, cunning little smile.

She slathered her words with cursed energy and they soaked them up, a piece of bread dropped into soup. 

“ I am this man’s wife, aren’t I? ” Utahime purred melodiously, her voice cracking just a little at the rising intonation at the end. “ It says so on the paper, and here I am, so it’s easy to believe. ” 

The social worker smiled, and looked down at the papers in front of her, nodding when she read something there. Utahime blanched. That fucker really had written her name there. 

Utahime needed to end this, because she was at her limit. She could feel a copper taste on the back of her tongue. She spread the thinnest layer of her cursed energy on her words. 

“ This man is a buffoon, isn’t he? ” she lilted coaxingly, letting the woman have space in her prejudice where Utahime could meddle with a thought. “But the children are safe with him. They look at him with trust, so it is easy to believe. ” 

The woman nodded, her eyes fixed on the phoney papers. 

“I’m sorry to have taken up your time,” she murmured. “It was just due diligence.” 

Utahime nodded too, swallowing blood. She felt worn thin, adrenaline and annoyance and shock powering her legs as she stood up with Gojo. He looked down in mild surprise as she threaded her fingers through his, her slim fingers barely making it over his knuckles. Utahime held out her hand to Tsumiki, and the girl jumped up to clasp it.

“ There’s no need to follow up on a happy family, is there? ” She rasped to Ohashi, mustering the last few drops of her cursed energy to thread through the singsong cadence of her voice, “ You are completely satisfied and might even forget the details of this case by this evening. He is holding my hand and I am holding Tsumiki’s hand, so it is easy to believe. ” 

“Thank you for your time, Gojo-san,” the social worker smiled tiredly, giving Utahime a slight bow. 

Utahime blinked when she realised that Ohashi Yori was addressing her. She returned the bow stiffly, swallowing the blood again and hoping none of it was on her teeth. The little smile relaxed off her mouth at last. She beckoned Megumi off the sofa as they left, Gojo’s hand still clasping hers.

“Thank you, Utahime,” Gojo whispered as they hurried out of the building, taking the stairs instead of the elevator so they could get out of there quicker. “I can explain.” 

“I am going to fucking kill you,” Utahime whispered through her teeth to Gojo, her voice ragged, breathless from their four-person clatter down the stairs, worn to nothing by the exertion of her technique. 

They barrelled out of the building into the hot, late summer morning, once again stumbling into the busy foot traffic of Tokyo’s commuters. 

“Single parents can’t adopt. I improvised because I couldn’t leave it blank,” Gojo objected defensively as they darted out of the line of sight of any windows. “It was just fake paperwork, Uta. I didn’t expect anyone to actually follow up.” 

Utahime wrenched her hand out of his and punched him at point-blank range like he was a plank of wood in training. For the first time since she met him, Utahime’s fist connected with the hard muscle of his chest, making him grunt and step back. 

Utahime’s eyes shone with satisfaction at finally landing a blow on him. She saw Megumi smile slightly, and she had a sudden rush of affection for this child she didn’t know. 

“Ow. Not fair,” Gojo grumbled, rubbing the spot below his collarbone where she had punched him. 

“You wrote my name?” she hissed, her bruised knuckles aching, her voice too strained to be anything above a whisper. 

Gojo couldn’t help the smile on his mouth, and it made Utahime flush, her temper rising again. He was about to say something teasing. 

But before Gojo could reply, she felt a tug on her hand, and Utahime looked down distractedly. A pretty little face was turned up to hers. 

“I’m Tsumiki.” 

Utahime’s heart sank. She was still holding the little girl’s hand, maybe a bit too tightly, as her mind raced. She relaxed her grip a little, remembering herself, remembering that there were two children present. Two abandoned children, just like her. 

“Hi, I’m Utahime,” she whispered in her strained voice, smiling a little falteringly. 

Tsumiki slapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a sudden, shy giggle. But it was another voice that answered Utahime. 

“We know,” Megumi’s voice was too cynical for a child, too ironic, and it made Utahime feel uncomfortable, weighted, unhappy. “Gojo told us your name…to tell our teachers at our new school.” 

So she had been the paper mother to these children for a while. It made her feel a little faint. 

“You’re Megumi-kun?” Utahime whispered, resisting the urge to put her hand on his spikey hair and smooth it out. “Is he feeding you?” 

Something shifted in the big green eyes at the suggestion in her tone that Utahime also thought Gojo was an idiot. 

“Yes. Not Hello Kitty rice balls though,” Megumi muttered, his eyes narrowing. “Tsumiki was lying about that. Like you were to that lady.” 

Utahime winced. She was a liar. A trickster. What she did wasn’t a song, no matter what her parents had called her. 

“You can’t talk anymore? Your voice is gone?” Tsumiki suddenly interrupted, her head cocking, a giggle building up again in her voice.  

“Yes. I used it too much,” Utahime croaked, with a little rueful smile.  

Megumi’s gaze was piercing. 

“But you’re a sorcerer too. Like Gojo?” he observed dubiously, but the subtext was clear. 

Why did your power run out, if you are like Gojo? If you are like me? 

This little boy was stronger than she was. His cursed energy was dormant, surging and unrefined — pure, untrained potential. Even so, he had probably never used his cursed energy defensively so possibly couldn’t even imagine being without it. 

Wait. 

He was a Zen’in, she remembered, and a little panicky realisation crashed down on her. Utahime’s gaze flickered to Gojo in alarm, and his face was set. There was no grating boyish grin. Gojo wasn’t just hiding these children. 

This boy had the Ten Shadows Technique. Gojo had snatched him away. 

The silly fake paperwork was a kind of netting. Gojo was covering all his bases in case the Zen’ins dared to defy him. He was hiding them in plain sight, because you couldn’t exactly steal them away from a public school classroom. Too many questions would be asked. 

“Gojo and I are different,” Utahime explained in her ruined whisper, dragging her eyes away from Gojo and back to the little boy. 

A headache was threatening. She was truly exhausted now, injured, and, if she was honest, frightened. Gojo was mixing her up in something large and complicated. The clan politics always made her feel small and inconsequential. She felt like a child in comparison — immature and insignificant. 

“Tsumiki doesn’t have it,” Megumi blurted, “so she can’t see them. Just me.” 

Tsumiki huffed, glowering at Megumi for revealing this, as if it might undermine her in Utahime’s esteem. 

“Then you should protect her.” 

Gojo’s sudden interruption was in a low voice, and Utahime felt him grasp her arm at the elbow, drawing her attention away from the children; a signal. He needed to speak to her. She had never seen Gojo behave like she was his comrade, his equal. It made her blood feel cool and thickened, rising water. And she had never heard Gojo say anything like that in her life. 

Serious. This was very serious. 

This was a sea change. Would Gojo protect her? Gojo would protect a comrade, wouldn’t he? But he would discard a means to an end. 

“You said you were hungry, Megumi-kun.” Utahime croaked, head swimming, her pulse feeling too low, “Let’s get a snack.” 

“Did you hypnotise that lady, Utahime-san?” Tsumiki asked, ice cream on her top lip, forgetting to take bites as her fixation on Utahime grew. 

She had refused to let Utahime’s hand free once they had their treat. She hovered at her side while Utahime had ordered the ice cream, as if she was fearful her false mother might fade into mythology again. Gojo was strolling alongside them. He had yanked the shirt out of the waistband of his chinos and rolled up the sleeves, shaking his hair into a mess that fell into his eyes. He was scoffing down a chocolate ice cream and helping Megumi kick a pebble along the pathway as they walked. Utahime, her shoulders stiff and her body weary, tried to keep her tone moderate as her frustration and discomfort with the situation mounted. 

“Something like that. I meddled with her thoughts.” 

The ice-cold lolly was soothing Utahime’s throat, turning her lips red, making her buzz with sugar. They stopped by a patch of shade on the path so that Megumi could select a different pebble to kick. 

“Gojo didn’t tell us that you could do that,” Tsumiki said, her curious gaze voraciously taking in every aspect of Utahime. 

“Unsurprising,” Utahime muttered, throwing a look sideways to Gojo devolving even further into his teenage self, grinning at her behind his sunglasses as the ice cream started dripping over his knuckles. 

“Are you Gojo’s girlfriend, Utahime-san?” Megumi asked accusingly, his big green eyes narrowing like this was a litmus test for Utahime’s good taste. 

“Yeah, are you?” Tsumiki asked, her expression blooming into surprise and anticipation. 

Utahime coughed on a mouthful of ice lolly. 

“No, I’m not his girlfriend. I’m—” 

She didn’t know what she was to Gojo Satoru, actually. He had always made her feel a little bit insignificant in the unfolding tapestry of the Jujutsu world. It made it all the more confusing why he had written her name down on falsified adoption paperwork. 

She flushed, remembering how she had threaded her fingers through Gojo’s, the Smile of the Imp on her face, and lilted out the lie, the misdirection, in front of the social worker. 

I am this man’s wife, aren’t I? 

“I’m her kohai,” Gojo explained teasingly, nudging Utahime in the ribs, grinning gamely before dipping his head to lick his ice cream before more melted over his knuckles. “We went to high school together. Such a good senpai.”  

Utahime rubbed her side, glaring at Gojo, annoyed at how he was dangling the respect he always denied her right in front of her face. 

“But you could make him think you were his girlfriend,” Tsumiki giggled, her eyebrows waggling. “You could hypnotise him.” 

Utahime felt her face flush with a fresh and unexplained heat. 

“As funny as that would be, it doesn’t quite work like that,” she said quietly, hoping the stammer in her voice was mistaken for a relapse from straining it in the social worker’s office.  

The fact was, when she was a teenager, she had thought about it before and how humbling it would be to make him think that he liked her — the mighty Gojo Satoru reduced to simpering around little, boring Iori Utahime, and suffering the humiliation of her rejection. It would be too delicious. 

But she only had Six Tricks and she couldn’t change how people felt. The best she could hope for is making him remember something a little bit differently. That was the hardest trick to cast. 

The coin is behind your ear. 

The whole thing was moot, however, because her technique couldn’t get past his Infinity anyway. Besides, he would see that stupid little impish smile touch her lips, and would immediately guard against her attack. Clearly following the same train of thought, Gojo snorted, ruffling Tsumiki’s hair. 

“You’re forgetting that I’m the Strongest,” he reminded her with a sly grin, “so Utahime’s little Jedi mind trick couldn’t affect me if she tried.” 

Megumi rolled his eyes, unimpressed. Utahime once again felt the heavy feeling of realising the cynicism of this child, when he couldn't be more than six years old. 

“Utahime-san’s thing is cooler than anything you can do.” 

Utahime shot Gojo a smug look as he gaped theatrically at Megumi’s words, the long, articulate fingers of his right hand over his heart. Utahime swallowed, because Megumi clearly had never seen what Gojo could do with a casual flick of those fingers. 

“Well, do you have a boyfriend, Utahime-san?” Tsumiki pressed, her eyes glistening eagerly, uninterested in things like cursed techniques and a world she couldn’t see for herself. 

Utahime felt her cheeks burning yet again, and started wrapping her ice lolly stick up in its packaging, fussing with it to mask her discomfort. 

“Uh, no. I don’t” 

The closest thing she’d had to a boyfriend had been a non-sorcerer, a means to an end, a furtive and undignified fumbling encounter to get rid of more of the innocence that she didn’t want. Afterwards, unsatisfied and embarrassed, she had used her technique to make him remember the night entirely differently, editing herself out of it, confounding his memory. 

A sleight of hand. 

“Gojo has lots of girlfriends,” Megumi reported blankly. 

“Great.” Utahime deadpanned, narrowing her eyes at her kohai and wondering what lasting effect having a nineteen-year-old foster parent would have on these children. 

“Why don’t you two play on the swings?” Gojo said quickly, shoving Megumi a little in the direction of the park playground. “I gotta talk to Utahime about grown-up shit.” 

Tsumiki looked longingly at the available swing set and then back at Utahime, conflicted. She bit down on her thumbnail, her eyes flicking between these two poles. 

“Utahime-san, please don’t leave while we’re playing,” she said in a small voice, her brow furrowed. 

Utahime’s heart sank. Where was this child’s real mother? 

“I won’t. Don’t worry, I’ll be here when you get back.” 

Satisfied, Tsumiki shoved her unfinished ice cream into Gojo’s hands and tugged a reluctant Megumi towards the swings. Once they were out of earshot, Utahime rounded on Gojo, resisting the urge to shove him in her frustration. 

“Gojo, what the fuck,” she growled, her voice still too weak to raise completely. 

“Uta, listen—” 

“That boy has the Ten Shadows Technique. The Zen’in clan is—” 

“Toji was going to sell him to those people, Uta,” Gojo interrupted her quietly. “Megumi was his trump card.” 

Utahime schooled her features, trying not to let her disgust show, as she turned to look at a little boy pushing his sister on a swing, frowning in concentration as she giggled into the sky. 

Fuck. 

Part of her desperately wanted to walk away from what she saw looming, the terrifying thing that Gojo had wrapped her up in already. To stay would mean to claw at everything unspoken about their society, to declare herself to a side in a developing Cold War. But if she left now, she could go back to her shitty apartment, soak in the tub, take the next mission assigned to her and slowly try to drag herself up the ranks in the actual war they were all sworn to. 

But when Tsumiki got off the swings and found Utahime gone, the worst part of her character would be proven to be true. Utahime really would be a liar after all. Deceiver. Charlatan. 

“You wrote my name,” Utahime said hoarsely, trying to make Gojo see what he had done. “You involved me in this. Were you ever going to tell me?” 

“I knew I could trust you,” Gojo murmured. “It had to be you, Uta.” 

Tsumiki’s ice cream was melting in his hand. Utahime took it from him silently, walking away to drop it into the rubbish bin next to the path, her heart pounding. He had told a lie, changed the facts, and Utahime tried to push away the idea that she should feel special that he had chosen her. 

That would be as phoney as those papers on the social worker’s desk. Gojo hadn’t chosen her any more than he had adopted Megumi and Tsumiki. She walked slowly back to Gojo, pushing her hair out of her eyes, letting the truth settle. 

Gojo looked down at her, his face still, letting her work it all out. 

“You’re recruiting him,” Utahime whispered, turning to watch Megumi take a turn on the swing, his little legs not reaching the ground so his sister had to push him. “This is just the start of your plan.” 

Gojo studied her over the edge of the blackened-out rounds of his sunglasses, his summer-blue eyes steady and faceted, standing too close to her as usual, with his hands in his pockets. Utahime tipped her face up to his, trying to make out what was different about him, finding her cheeks warm when he smiled smoothly at her like he was trying to charm her. 

She almost scoffed, because she was the charmer. 

“Come home with us, Uta,” Gojo said, his voice soft and intimate, almost lost on the summer breeze in the leaves. “I have a favour to ask.” 

But they didn’t go directly home. The day turned into a romping outing across Tokyo, with shopping packets and sugary treats piling up as they went. Tsumiki, her eyes glistening, followed Utahime like a duckling, fascinated, mimicking, giggling, questioning. Utahime knew that Gojo was dragging her along to prolong her refusal, wearing her out as much as the kids. He pouted as she refused his lavish offers of clothes and trinkets, waving his credit card around, as giddy and coaxing as Tsumiki. Utahime lingered, exhausted, waiting for him to ask the favour. 

As the sun set and the city cooled, they watched the fireworks of a small festival over the water. Utahime watched the flashes and blue and red over their faces, gritting her teeth for the inevitable, realising that Gojo was asking his favour already. 

Megumi fell asleep in her arms on the train, his cheek on her shoulder, soft little breaths in her ear. And while Tsumiki tried to fight it, Gojo had to carry her off the train, because she had dozed off against his shoulder. Utahime watched him jab at the elevator button in the fancy high-rise building, trying to juggle a sleeping seven-year-old and all the packets of shopping strung over his arms. 

It was too late to keep little kids up, Utahime wanted to scold, and they missed bathtime and didn’t brush their teeth. 

But as they stepped into the lavish sprawl of the penthouse suite, the city flickering beneath them, she held her tongue, following Gojo’s lead, Utahime helped to lay the sleeping children together on a vast bed in what was obviously the guest suite. One side of the bed was strewn with a Jungle Book blanket and the other covered with cutesy stuffed animals, and there were toys and books everywhere, clothes spilling out of the dresser drawers and flung over a sleek armchair in the corner. 

“They don’t like to be separated at night,” Gojo explained softly, as Utahime tugged the blanket over Megumi. 

“Why are they not at the Gojo Clan compound? Surely it’s safer there?” Utahime asked in a whisper. 

Gojo smiled a little ruefully. 

“I’m figuring it out,” he shrugged. “I’ve only had them a few weeks.” 

“Can you protect them, Gojo?” Utahime asked as Gojo pulled the door shut. 

“Of course I can,” he answered shortly.

The lights from the city lit the kitchen and Gojo didn’t flick on the lights. He and Utahime stood there in the half-light in silence. Utahime waited for the favour to be asked out loud, rubbing her eyes, feeling the strain of her sleeplessness like a heavy coat. 

“You wanna stay over?” Gojo asked, looking down at her and smiling slightly, his gaze moving over her face, his eyes glowing catlike as they were wont to do in low light. 

“Fuck off, Gojo,” Utahime grumbled, glowering at him, flushing. 

Gojo put his hands up defensively. 

“What? You seem tired. It’s late,” he explained with a teasing laugh. “No boyfriend waiting up for you.” 

“Famously,” Utahime rolled her eyes, feeling herself get prickly. 

Gojo chuckled boyishly, shaking his head in disbelief. 

“You really can’t hocus pocus a guy into committing to you? Like, y’know, your coin trick thing?” 

Utahime scowled. 

“I’ve already explained. I can’t manipulate emotions,” she huffed tiredly. 

“You gotta admit, that’s pretty fucking funny, Uta. You literally have a mind control technique but you can’t bamboozle yourself a boyfriend?” Gojo cackled. 

“It’s misdirection, not mind control,” she reminded him tartly. 

Gojo’s laugh faded in the dark room, and he resumed his steady scrutiny of her. 

“You can convince people into choices, though?” 

“It works best if their emotional investment is low.” 

“Like, I might convince you to buy something? Or eat where I want to eat? Or watch what I want to watch?” 

Utahime let Gojo’s nonchalant words fade into the cavernous space of his shiny, expansive penthouse suite.

“What do you want me to do, Gojo? Just say it.” 

“I need you to join me too. Help me. ” 

“I’m already your ally. Tell me what you want me to do.” 

“I need your help with these kids. With Megumi.” 

“Get a nanny.” 

“Not that kind of help,” Gojo crossed his arms, leaning back against the kitchen island. “You’re right that I’m recruiting Megumi, not adopting him. But I need him to stay on my side. I need him to turn out good.” 

“You want me to Jedi mind trick them into being good kids?” 

“No,” Gojo’s face was hard, serious and absorbed. “I need you here for their morality. For continuity. For normalcy.” 

“Gojo, I’m a Jujutsu sorcerer, not a surrogate mommy.” 

I could die tomorrow. 

“This is about the Jujutsu world, Utahime. Can you sense it? Megumi’s potential? We’re not babysitting here. We’re moulding our allies.” 

Utahime rolled her shoulders, feeling the prickle down her neck, remembering feeling the little boy’s dormant, heaving cursed energy when she held him on the train.

Gojo was recruiting her too. 

“He’s a child,” she choked out. 

Gojo’s face shadowed, something flashing in his eyes that made Utahime go still. 

“Exactly.” 

Silence settled again, and Utahime restlessly moved her feet. 

“It’s dangerous for someone like me,” she whispered, hating that she had to even reference the fact that she wasn’t like him, wasn’t fathomlessly strong. 

“Let me protect you too.” 

Utahime ignored that, her skin prickling with goose flesh at his gentle tone, an unlikely costume for Gojo’s voice. 

“You want me to stay here with them,” she deduced faintly. 

“With me too,” Gojo said, flashing her a smile. “I’m not just saddling you with two kids and moving out. Not when it’s this important.” 

Utahime sighed, rubbing her temples. 

“What else? Gojo, be explicit.” 

Gojo smiled briefly, and Utahime felt that slippery feeling of inevitability, the weariness coming over her that it would always end up in this way. 

“I need you to use your technique whenever it’s called for. Like you did today to the social worker. Whenever anyone asks questions about the kids or…about us. And I need you to trick the Gojo Clan if it comes to that.” 

Utahime stared at him, her lips parting, waiting for him to shout out a laugh at her gullibility at the first sign that she believed him. Of course, he didn’t write her name down on that paper because he trusted her, or because he held her in such high regard. It was because Utahime’s technique could put a stamp of authenticity on the lies he told. 

“Why would we need to trick the Gojo Clan?” 

“About us being married and stuff,” Gojo said, looking uncertain for the first time. 

Utahime’s heart stuck to her ribs, an uncomfortable throbbing like Gojo had landed a blow on her sternum. 

“Why do you need to tell them? You’ve got your fake adoption papers and if a fake mommy shows up every now and then, no one is going to ask any questions.” 

Her mouth felt dry, but she put her hands on her hips, squaring up, trying to make herself bigger as he leant into her space, earnest and overpowering, his hands in his pockets and a concentration on his face that unnerved her. 

It made her feel like all the stupid man-child things, his grating laugh, his disrespectful jibes and his strange high-energy cavorting were all part of a very purposefully built façade. They were vestiges, but they weren't fully real anymore. 

“It’s not actually about the school. It’s about money, among other things,” Gojo mumbled, rubbing the back of his head. “It’s one way that I can protect you. Gojo Clan lawyers won’t be fooled by fake papers alone. You could be part of my clan. People won’t fuck with you so much, Uta.” 

Utahime scowled, her face hot again. She hated that Gojo could dangle that too — the fact that she had no clan, no fortress. 

“If it’s about money, you should have asked Mei Mei from the start.” 

Gojo’s face softened into a sudden smile, as the two of them cast Mei Mei into the imaginary role of surrogate mother and rewrote the play with Mei Mei’s cheerfully unscrupulous behaviour in each scene. 

“Should I have?” he mused softly, his grin turning lazy. 

Utahime lapsed into a fretful silence, her leg bouncing, studying Gojo’s face, feeling constricted by her indecision and her fear of what she was mixed up in. 

“It wouldn’t be real, Uta,” Gojo assured her. “And it wouldn’t be permanent. Just a little occasional hocus pocus and a change of address.” 

A bit of misdirection. 

She swallowed, exhaustion crashing down on her again. 

“Fine.” 

Gojo nodded slowly, absorbing what it meant for her to capitulate. She was officially joining his ranks. 

“You wanna stay over,” he repeated, his mouth tipping up at the corner. “Gojo Utahime?”

She rolled her eyes at him. 

“Stop, it’s weird.” 

“I'm fucking with you. You’re tired. Just stay. I’ll give you something to sleep in.” 

Utahime didn’t get the long soak in the tub that she wanted, because she was so exhausted that she feared she might slip under the water. She jammed her arms into the t-shirt that Gojo left on the bed, ignoring the basketball shorts because she was too overheated from her bath. She crawled wearily over the coverlet and fell asleep on top of the blankets, clutching a huge pillow in an Egyptian cotton pillowcase, slipping into dreamless sleep. 

The morning sunshine flickered over her face, but Utahime was suddenly aware that someone was watching her. 

Her eyes cracked open.

Fushiguro Megumi was staring at her, his eyes narrowed, his fists in balls at his side. She started, flinging herself up into a sitting position, dragging the pillow in front of her in embarrassment because she was still only on top of the blankets, her legs bare, and the t-shirt had ridden up over her ass. 

“You said that you weren’t his girlfriend,” Megumi mumbled accusingly. 

Utahime nearly jumped out of her skin as the bed moved beside her and Gojo Satoru propped himself up on his elbows, the blankets sliding down his bare torso. Utahime squeaked, her cheeks flaring with heat. 

“She’s not,” Gojo chuckled teasingly, sleepily ruffling his bed hair. “I told you, Megumi-chan, Utahime is my wife.” 

Chapter Text

Utahime glared at Gojo as she sipped coffee, drumming her fingers on the paper-thin bone china of the cup. It was very early in the morning, but there was no way that anyone in the household was going back to sleep, certainly not after Megumi had alerted a gleeful Tsumiki to the fact that Utahime was still there. 

Now Megumi and Tsumiki were eating cereal at the kitchen island, talking placidly to each other as they showed each other the relative sizes of the marshmallows on their spoons. 

Utahime felt disconcertingly younger than her years as well, standing in the shiny kitchen, drowning in Gojo’s t-shirt, his basketball shorts rolled over several times at the waistband to stay over her hips. Gojo was doing a terrible job of peeling kiwis at the sink, wearing nothing but a pair of sweatpants as the juice of the mushy fruit dribbled down his forearms. 

She wondered if he did this kind of thing to her on purpose. He looked so sleek and comfortable in his own skin, nearly naked and beautiful, his sunglasses on the edge of his nose and his messy bed hair falling over his forehead. And by contrast, she was dressed in his clothes, all her movements made comically floppy by how oversized they were, like she was not a 22-year-old woman, but rather two children on each other’s shoulders in a trench coat. 

“You’re wasting your time with this kiwi. Megumi doesn’t eat green things,” Gojo was humming thoughtfully. 

Utahime checked to see if the kids were listening before she dipped her head for a discreet confrontation. 

“Why the fuck did you crawl into bed with me last night?” she hissed. 

Gojo was unperturbed by her tone. 

“Well, firstly, it’s my bed. And secondly, you passed out on top of the covers so I didn’t crawl in anywhere with you,” Gojo murmured, licking his palm and dropping another butchered kiwi onto the platter. 

“You could have slept on the sofa,” Utahime grumbled. 

Like any decent person would. 

Gojo flashed her an amused grin, as if he found her adorable. 

“Was your innocence ruined? Are you a fallen woman now?” Gojo teased, poking Utahime in the cheek with a sticky finger.

Utahime smacked his hand away on reflex and blinked in surprise as it connected with a wet sound. 

“It’s unnecessary, Gojo. Your wife story isn’t going to hold any water with the kids. They know it’s a farce,” she grumbled, looking down at the messy pile of fruit that Gojo was cutting up for them, rubbing some of the juice off her cheek where he had touched her. 

She didn’t realise that Gojo didn’t keep his Infinity up all the time. Maybe it was only something for the public realm? Here, with her and these children, maybe it was safe. 

“You could make them believe it,” Gojo said softly, glancing over at the kids now, something a little grey shadowing his voice. 

Tsumiki was showing Megumi how to do the word search puzzle on the back of the cereal box, kneeling on the stool, her voice high and resonant with the relative authority of being seven when Megumi was only six. 

“I don’t want to,” Utahime said firmly, holding his gaze. “They don’t need to be tricked. It’s the same lie as before, just they have a little kernel of truth added by the fact that I actually exist. They can keep telling it.” 

He met her gaze evenly, absorbing her words like it meant something layered to him, as the half-forgotten juice of the kiwi slipped through his fingers. 

Suddenly, Gojo slid his middle finger into his mouth to the knuckle and fluttered his eyelashes at Utahime, like the sweetness of the fruit made him weak at the knees. She rolled her eyes as he pulled it out of his mouth with a pop. There never seemed to be any consistency with him. She couldn’t make it out, the way he vacillated between silly, vapid, grating, serious, principled and intimidating. 

“If you’re gonna stay here, you might as well share the big bed with me. It doesn’t bother me. Don’t you remember sleepovers in high school in Shoko’s room?” Gojo flicked more mutilated kiwi fruit into the pile, “Same thing.” 

Utahime flushed and took a sip of her coffee to hide her heated cheeks. She remembered the sleepovers on rainy weekends, every student in the school sharing a six-pack of illicit beer, eating trash from the vending machine and falling asleep like rag dolls toppled from the toy box. Utahime remembered seeing Shoko snoring softly with her cheek on Geto’s thigh, and Gojo’s eyelashes soft as a feather on his cheeks as he pressed his face into Geto’s neck.

Gojo was wrong. It wasn’t the same thing for her, not for uptight little Utahime. 

“Did I say that I was going to stay here?” Utahime asked softly, her voice feeling like suede as she tried to hide a faded embarrassment. 

She had always wanted to be worldly like they were, and something about the way he was so nonchalant about something that made her feel flustered resurrected an ancient feeling. She had just started to feel like she could be like that — more worldly — a real sense, but now this. Now Gojo.

“You prefer your shitty little basement apartment?” Gojo scoffed, slapping the last scalped kiwi onto the platter. 

Utahime gawped at him, and then her eyes narrowed suspiciously. 

“How do you know where I live?” 

Gojo smiled naughtily at her, licking his thumb and then wiping his hands on his sweatpants. 

“Because it’s standard issue. The Higher Ups assigned it to you, didn’t they?” 

Because Utahime didn’t have anywhere else to go, nor did she have a wealthy clan behind her to contribute to her living. The cup in her hands suddenly felt overly heavy. 

“Yeah,” she said softly, thinking of a modest, long-ago house in the mountains that shared a fence with her grandparents. 

She wondered if the orange tree was still there. 

“Well, then the Higher Ups should come to believe that you live here. They should believe you haven’t stayed there for some time.” 

A flash of eagerness flicked through Gojo’s expression. He turned away from his platter of mushy fruit and grabbed Utahime’s shoulder enthusiastically. 

“Ooh! I’ll come with you to tell them that you no longer need it.” 

Utahime sighed, turning to rinse her cup, elbowing Gojo aside, brushing his hand off her shoulder. He wanted the greedy opportunity to go and needle some geriatric person out of their stoicism. The mention of the Higher Ups was a heavy, sobering reminder of why she would get herself mixed up in this farce — there had to be a better way for this all to work, and Utahime desperately hoped it was a system where she didn’t feel trampled underfoot. She glanced at the children at the counter, representing two opposite poles of value in the current schema of jujutsu society. A powerful boy, a useless girl. She realised that she was operating on instinct, jumping both feet first into this mess that Gojo had involved her in, but it was simply because Gojo’s opposition to the status quo represented something different, something impactfully subversive. Importantly, it was not a subversion that discarded Tsumiki. 

She knew from experience that it was horrifying to imagine a system that would discard Tsumiki. 

The strong should protect the weak. Utahime remembered Gojo’s words in the park when Megumi had blurted out that Tsumiki couldn’t see curses. Had Gojo really said that? Utahime cleared her throat, falling back into her old surreptitious ways of playing the system as much as she could as a small, weak nobody. 

“No, it would be more convincing if they uncovered the fact that I don’t live there on their own. That way, the truth they discover seems like our lie of omission.” 

Gojo watched her face, a smile growing on his lips. 

“Wow, you’re cold-blooded, Utahime,” Gojo marvelled teasingly. “You’re a more proficient liar than these kids. And you’ve seen what kind of show they can put on.”

Utahime scowled at him. 

“I’m not proud of it. It’s part of my technique. Strategically, I need to measure what can be most easily believed. Finding the grain of truth, or the thing that they already believe, makes it easier to manipulate their thinking.” 

“What prejudices can a curse have?” Gojo asked curiously. 

“Well, if I am quick and explosive in my attacks, and the curse sees that, it is easier for me to convince it that I am quicker than I am. Or it’s easier to feint or dodge because I can make them think I am moving into spaces that I am not.” 

Her voice faded slightly at the end, realising that she was talking too loudly about violent things in earshot of the children. And slowly, discouragingly, she realised that Gojo could actually do the thing she just pretended to do - disappearing into thin air, moving quicker than the eye, materialising out of the ether somewhere else. 

“Will you show me?” he asked, catching her off guard with his personable tone. 

“My technique? You’ve already seen it.” 

“No, I wanna see how it feels.” 

Utahime blinked, wondering why it felt a little scandalous, a little taboo to even suggest it. 

“Uh, I can’t,” she mumbled. “you said so yourself. Nothing gets past your defences.” 

Gojo grinned, absently pushing back his hair from his forehead, where there should be a scar and there wasn’t. His hair flopped forward again and he put down the knife he had been paring the fruit with. 

“You sure?” He chuckled, “I’ve already let you hit me twice.” 

Utahime opened her mouth to retort when she slowly became aware of Megumi and Tsumiki’s discussion getting a little heated at the kitchen island. They were arguing over who would refill their orange juice cups. Megumi was trying to wrench the jug away from Tsumiki, whinging at her to stop trying to take it from him. 

“Hey, don’t fight. Gojo will pour it for you,” Utahime interjected softly, looking pointedly at Gojo to step in. “Have some kiwi and then we’ve got to get you to school.” 

She brought the platter over to the kitchen island and the kids looked at the slimy green mess dubiously. 

“That looks gross,” Megumi pointed at it. “Mushy.” 

Gojo had done a terrible job peeling the fruit. Utahime choked on her laugh at the sad pile, gathering together a few slivers. 

“But it’s super yummy. Besides, if you don’t eat lots of mushy green things, your teeth will fall out,” Utahime reported dryly. “It’s scientific fact.” 

“Really?” Tsumiki looked conflicted. 

“Yeah, it’s called scurvy. You can look it up at school,” she gave them a bright smile. “Here’s a fork.” 

She dragged a sliver off the platter with her thumb and forefinger and dipped her head to eat it before it slithered out of her grip. Tsumiki giggled at the scene, and Utahime smacked her lips in satisfaction at the tartness. 

“Gojo doesn’t eat green things either,” Megumi observed sceptically. 

“Then he can expect scurvy any day now,” Utahime told him confidently, nudging the platter towards him. 

Gojo pointedly leant over and fished some kiwi off the plate, showing it messily into his mouth so that some of the juice ran down his chin. Tsumiki giggled at that too, a little bit more shyly, before extending her fork and taking a badly cut wedge. 

Utahime smiled at Megumi as he cautiously did the same, while munching on another mouthful herself. These were imported from France, these kiwis. Utahime realised these kids were in for an upbringing she could never have imagined in her wildest dreams. She tried not to look uneasy as a wave of uncertainty troubled her equilibrium. 

“Uta, you should come with me to the school. You need to do some alakazam,” Gojo said quietly, breaking the high, whistling sound of her thoughts, a forgotten steam kettle in her mind. 

Her mind had lapsed on what she had agreed to do, as she straightened up, feeling so very unready suddenly, so childlike, in Gojo’s clothes. She hardly wanted to say it, in case Gojo had a box of Lost and Found from all his paramours for her to root around in to piece together an outfit. 

“I don’t have anything to wear to do that,” she said distractedly. “And we won’t have time to get to my place before they need to—“ 

Gojo grinned, a smug, excited flash of a smile, like a boy who was imminently going to show off. He moved into her space like liquid, his sunglasses slipping down his nose so that she could see a flash of something in his eyes, more purple than usual maybe. 

“Tsumiki, watch your brother for a second,” he murmured, before he grabbed Utahime by the waist, and yanked her towards him, his hands meeting behind her back.

She yelped, putting her hands out instinctively, expecting to connect with Gojo’s bare chest. Instead, the sensation was as if Gojo had dragged her through a bead curtain, bits of matter clinging to her face, like breaking the surface tension of water. 

She gasped, her stomach turning, realising that up was now down, and yet her feet were planted solidly on the floor. Gojo was almost cackling, enjoying her discombobulation, shaking her slightly with his laughter, trapped in the loose circle of his arms. 

“What the fuck was that?!” Utahime spluttered. 

“Been working on that,” he said happily. 

She looked over her shoulder to see that Gojo’s hands were locked together in a tight, ritualistic clasp. Of course, this was jujutsu, not flirtation. 

She pushed out of his arms, making him chuckle afresh, and glanced around worriedly. Her mouth fell open in surprise, realising they were in her dark, studio apartment, her things all exactly as she had left them two days before when she left for her mission. Her futon wasn’t rolled away and her book was open on the little table in front of her tiny TV. 

“Grab your stuff quickly. You’d be surprised what those two can do in five minutes,” Gojo urged laughingly, nudging her shoulder with his fist. 

“Did you… teleport? To my apartment ?! That’s miles and miles from—“ Utahime mumbled in astonishment, forgetting that she always wanted to remain indifferent to Gojo and the staggering things that he could do. 

“Yes, I’m working on an even longer range. And also doing it remotely, so I don’t have to go along too. But I gotta drop my Infinity to do it, so it’s sometimes a bit of a trade-off,” Gojo explained conversationally. “Can you hurry? I’m not joking about how destructive those two can be.” 

Utahime, still a bit shell-shocked, turned robotically to search for a bag to shove things into. She remembered watching Gojo spar during high school and wondered if, at the moments when it looked like he moved faster than the eye could track, he was actually moving through space.

“You can just blip yourself over anywhere in the world?” she asked in a dazed mumble, pulling open her dresser drawer distractedly. 

“Not anywhere. There are a few conditions. I need to know where I’m going,” Gojo answered, his eyes fixed on the drawer she had opened with a teasing smile curving his mouth. “What’s in there, Utahime?” 

Utahime looked down, saw the lace and mesh of the sexy underwear she had bought as a symbolic gesture of her new life in the city, and slammed the drawer shut. 

“Please get all the bottles and tubes out of the bathroom into the bag under the sink,” she commanded, her cheeks hot. 

Gojo, smiling too much for her liking, shrugged and obeyed, while she continued hurriedly to jam things into a bag. The bathroom was really just an alcove, like someone had converted a closet into a washroom so it wasn’t even like he had left the room. So, only after she was certain that he was absorbed, could she hesitantly go back to her underwear drawer. She had probably been overly hasty in getting rid of so many of the plain cotton underwear of her high school days, but it had been intoxicating to the point of delusion to imagine a sexy, reckless, exciting life while she browsed through the romantic lingerie in the Tokyo stores that she had been previously too shy to go into. She had splurged on pretty, flimsy, soft, ephemeral sets as well as dark, racy, minimal ones. Utahime, scrimping on everything else, living in a little dark box supplied by a sorcerer housing committee, always had on expensive lingerie underneath her clothes. It started as a giddy, flippant comment to justify her fiscal irresponsibility to say that she could die tomorrow, but two years into her life as a sorcerer and the copper sheen had gone off the statement. 

I could die tomorrow and here I am. Alone. Untouched. 

So she wore the expensive lingerie and nobody knew about this habit she kept feeding and only one inconsequential person had seen any of it in any kind of romantic setting. And she hadn’t even had time to get most of it off before it was all over. And it had been deflating rather than titillating to clean cum off the sheer mesh of a romantic bralette in the morning. 

“Utahime, why do you have so many damn tubes ?” Gojo was grumbling in the bathroom, and she winced at the clattering noises. 

She hesitated. If anyone searched this apartment, wouldn’t it be strange if she had left all of her sexy lingerie behind before she went to live at her lover’s place? Was she starting to be paranoid to imagine that anyone cared enough about her to rifle through her things? 

Not real, she reminded herself firmly, and therefore no reason to get flustered. 

“I’m done, let’s go,” she called in reply, blushing as she zipped up her bag over piles of lace. 

Gojo came out of the small bathroom, dipping his head because the doorframe was so low and he was so tall. 

“Wait, take off those clothes first,” he said quickly. 

Utahime stared at him, her heart in her throat. 

“What?” 

“Leave my clothes here. The ones you have on,” Gojo explained. “Something to help them believe. Some prejudice.” 

Oh. 

“Face the wall.” She said quietly, unzipping her bag again, “If you turn around, I will slap you.” 

Gojo looked amused, but slowly turned around to face the wall, rubbing the buzzed undercut, his hair still sticking out at odd angles from sleep. Utahime watched his turned back, with a little dull alarm making her pulse wobbly. So he thought that someone might come here too? People in power definitely cared more about Gojo than they did about her. Did they watch his comings and goings? Could they do it effectively if he could move on an astral plane that no one else could? 

Utahime slid Gojo’s basketball shorts off her legs first and grabbed a gauzy thong off the top of her bag and hurriedly pulled it on. She prised out a summer dress from her bag and flicked it out, hoping it wasn’t too creased for a trip to the school. 

“There,” she said, flinging Gojo’s clothes onto the stool in the corner. 

“Nah. Put them on the floor by your futon.” Gojo instructed lazily.  

Utahime said nothing, dropping the clothes onto the floor like he had just stepped out of them, her ears buzzing with embarrassment. 

“Let’s go,” she mumbled, picking up her bag and stepping towards him, like he was a train compartment. 

He seemed to find that funny, as he handed her the little toiletry bag into which he had gathered all her things. 

“Here, I need both my hands.” 

Once again, he yanked her towards him, but it wasn’t really into an embrace. It was into space and time. 

Utahime’s stomach lurched, her cheek landing against Gojo’s naked sternum as they suddenly tipped backwards this time into his kitchen. It was the strangest sensation, because the earth was still underneath her feet, but her inner ear knew that atoms had sucked inwards into a new shape. 

Gojo laughed, grabbing her shoulders and setting her straight on her own feet as her equilibrium settled, like she was a vase wobbling on a bumped table. Megumi and Tsumiki looked up with very little interest, at their two pseudo-parents materialising out of thin air. 

“Okay, go brush your teeth!” Gojo said happily to the kids. “I’m getting dressed and then we’re leaving for school.” 

Utahime stood in the kitchen with her bags, listening to Gojo rally the children into action. She glanced at her reflection in the shiny surface of the fridge. Her hair was unbrushed, her face bewildered, and one strap of her summer frock had slipped down her shoulder. She pushed it back up, her heart thudding as she once again came to realise how strong Gojo was. It must have taken a ridiculous amount of cursed energy to do what he just did and he looked fresh, unperturbed, teasing Megumi at the bathroom sink somewhere in the distance. 

She closed her eyes, taking stock of her cursed energy, wondering how she would cope if she had to keep using it to hide in plain sight and undertake the missions assigned to her. She would have to get quicker. It was the only way. 

Utahime could sense the principal’s embarrassment when Gojo sprang into her office, dragging Utahime in behind him, their fingers threaded together. 

“Hey!” he sang. “It’s me again!”

“Gojo-san, good morning. I am very pleased you came in today since I must apologise for yesterday. Social services called me—“ she stammered, rising to her feet and stumbling when Gojo seemed to unfold to his full height in front of her, dressed like a slouchy tech billionaire and not the 25-year-old father he was supposed to be portraying. 

This was a fancy school. Utahime was sure this principal was a veteran of weathering entitled parents. But this woman could sense it. She could sense that Gojo was different and that he could inspire fear. She no doubt had thought that this was yakuza business or something similar when Gojo had rolled up to the school with some recalcitrant children in designer clothing and thrown money and a glib explanation at the administration. The principal could sense it was shady, she just couldn’t figure out why. Utahime almost felt pleased that her lie would put her mind at ease. 

Gojo was waving her apology aside impatiently. 

“Don’t sweat it,” he said breezily. “But I would like you to meet my wife, since that’s what caused the misunderstanding.” 

The principal’s eyes landed on Utahime with her hair swimming around her almost bare shoulders in a summer frock. Her colour was raised from the warm weather outside and from Gojo sliding his hand into the crook of her waist, exactly as he had done in front of the social worker. Utahime wanted to scold him for laying it on too thick, because it could create an adverse impression that she’d have to work even harder to overturn. 

“This is Gojo Utahime,” Gojo charged ahead breezily, the grip on Utahime’s waist causing the fabric of her dress to bunch. “Utahime, this is the children’s principal, Kumagai Minori.” 

Utahime’s heart thudded heavily as she drew up some of her cursed energy and cast a trick before the woman could speak, before she could notice the Smile of the Imp change Utahime’s face. 

The coin changes visually.

Utahime took in a breath of muted relief as she saw the blue of her cursed energy flickering to life in the woman’s pupils, swirling in the darkness there. 

“I am the woman that he says I am, aren’t I?” The singsong of Utahime’s hypnotic voice warbled over the syllables. “The phone call from Social Services confirmed that I exist, and he is touching me so intimately, so it is easy to believe.” 

“You are Gojo Utahime,” the Principal said, almost as if she were thinking aloud. “I am very relieved to meet you at last.” 

Quickly, Utahime cast another trick, concentrating hard for the most difficult one in her repertoire, because she needed to manipulate a memory. 

The coin is behind your ear. 

“ We have met before in person, haven’t we?” She lilted, “ You might remember a brief encounter, but I was overshadowed by this man. This man is loud and energetic, so it is easy to believe.” 

“Now that I see you together with Gojo-San, I feel like we may have briefly met in person. I’m just trying to remember where.” 

Utahime's trickster smile deepened, the inevitable satisfaction of her technique getting traction, sinking its teeth in. 

“ You remember that it was in passing in the street, don’t you?” Utahime’s voice rocked over the modulating syllables, “ And you’ll probably feel a little foolish for making a fuss. But we seem so warm and kind now that you’re not fretful about it. One day, you’ll tell this as a funny anecdote to your close friends and say how you couldn’t believe you forgot meeting me. You are so busy and so overworked, so it is easy to believe.” 

The woman was smiling a little ruefully, as if she were already imagining the tale. Gojo looked on eagerly at the exchange. 

“Damn, your voice is so creepy, Uta,” he marvelled.  

Utahime glared at him to shut up, so that he wouldn’t barge into the woman’s attention and unravel what Utahime was trying to do. 

“I think I remember where it was, Gojo-san,” she said placidly. “You must forgive me; I meet so many parents.”

Satisfied that she had meddled with the woman’s memory just enough to give them the benefit of the doubt, Utahime changed back to fiddling with her impressions, curving into Gojo’s body and placing her hand on his chest, hoping it didn’t look as awkward as she felt. Gojo blinked in surprise at Utahime's new posture, leaning into his body. Utahime felt something strange, like the air didn’t touch her skin any longer, a kind of weightlessness. She realised that Gojo’s Infinity had encased her. 

She cast her trick, hoping the cursed energy would flow outwards past the barrier. 

The coin changes visually. 

Her technique met no obstacle on the way past the Infinity that sealed around her.  

“We are a lovely, sweet couple, aren’t we?” she purred enticingly to the woman’s mind. “Your suspicions were clearly completely unfounded. You can put your concerns of nefarious things aside since we are exactly who we say we are. We are smiling and holding each other tenderly, and the children seem so settled, so it is easy to believe.” 

Digging for the kernel of truth to exploit when she cast her trick, Utahime had been struck by that last observation. The children, for all their bickering and Megumi’s obtuse reactions to Gojo, were settled. Gojo hadn’t even had them for a full two months yet and somehow they had found a very comfortable stride together. They both trusted him. 

She glanced at him to see whether further lies were needed, but Gojo was looking curiously at the hand she had put on his chest. Her throat was starting to burn, so Utahime stopped abruptly, hoping the job was thoroughly done. In her mind, she hid the coin in her sleeve, and the swirling blue went out of the woman’s eyes. She stepped away from Gojo, thinking public displays of affection would be untoward in a principal’s office, but he kept his hand tucked in her waist. 

He piped up as the visible effects of Utahime’s technique faded. 

“Maybe we should talk to the children’s teachers too?” he suggested, nonchalant. 

Utahime’s gaze flicked up to his, trying not to betray that she was worried that she would run her cursed energy dry when she could also be assigned a mission at any moment. 

“I don’t think that’s necessary. I’ll clear up everything,” the principal assured them quickly. 

“Cool, maybe next time then,” Gojo yawned, barely civil when he wanted to be. “Anyway, we’ve got places to be and I’m sure you’re busy.” 

His palm slid out of the curve of Utahime’s waist, and grasped her hand again, threading their fingers together almost pointedly, like he had decided it was the ultimate corroboration of the farce they were committing. 

The principal bowed deeply, but Gojo was suddenly impatient to go, like he was satisfied that Utahime had sufficiently bamboozled her and not wanting to waste further time with small talk and civilities. 

He tugged Utahime out of the room, waving happily as he went and yelling something about a donation and the music programme. Utahime looked down at their joined hands as they walked through the staffroom and into the sunshine again, wondering why he hadn’t let go of her even once. Gojo jerked to a stop in the garden outside the administration building. 

He suddenly used his grip on their threaded fingers to angle her knuckles up to his face, frowning behind his sunglasses as he noticed that they were all dusted with darkened colour and redness. 

Oh. In the office, when he had looked so intently at her hand on his chest, he had been taking stock of this. 

“You’re injured,” he noticed, with something like curiosity in his voice, and she wondered if the Six Eyes could somehow see that she was also bruised up and down her left side where she had collided with the wall. 

“Yes, I had a mission yesterday, remember?” 

Gojo took her other hand, laying the palm over the crook of his fingers to inspect them, finding that they were bruised too, and that on that hand, the skin was split on one knuckle. 

“You use your fists too? Hand-to-hand combat?” 

Utahime hiccuped a laugh, hoping her fingers didn’t tremble because Gojo’s hands were warm and that surprised her. 

“Yeah, I have to. Cursed tools too. How do you think I kill curses? Can’t exactly befuddle them to death.” 

“Huh.” 

Gojo dropped one hand without further comment and carried on walking, still tugging her slightly along by their threaded fingers on the other. They walked through the pristine gardens and down the steep steps that would lead them off the school grounds and into the bustle of the city again. 

“I don’t remember you combat training in high school,” he commented at last, looking out into the street and not at her. 

“We were in different leagues, Gojo.” 

“It’s not what I expected,” he murmured. “Your technique.” 

That annoyed Utahime, because he had always teased her for being weak and to hear that he hadn’t fully understood what she could do was incredibly grating. She tried to yank her hand out of his grip at last, and he turned, eyebrows raised like he was confused by her sudden insurrection, refusing to release her hand and too casually strong for her to overpower.

“We’re off school grounds, you can let me go,” Utahime said coldly.

Gojo reacted by rounding on her slowly, drawing her nearer by their joined hands, like a little dance to which she didn’t know the steps. Startled, Utahime seized up, tipping her head back in surprise as he let go of her hand at last, and both of his palms moved around her waist instead, pulling her close. His grip wasn’t gentle though. She could feel his fingers pressing into her bruises on her left side and she schooled her expression so that she did not wince, did not betray further weakness. 

“Utahime, the Zen’in Clan watches the school. That’s why I’m hovering over Megumi and Tsumiki for now and not just dumping them with some minder. I need to be able to ensure their safety myself.” Gojo explained, his tone cool but his mouth smiling, “So if the Zen’in informant is watching the children, then they’ve seen this. They’ve seen us. And they will leak this bit of gossip to the Higher Ups.” His smile grew a little teasing, “Plant a seed of proof to make the bigger lie believable, remember? So they think this is the lie we’re hiding. It’s a misdirection. This is your idea.” 

Utahime couldn’t help but be visibly angry now, furious that Gojo hadn’t told her any of this, furious that he had once again kept her in the dark about the dynamics of his plan and the dangers that lurked. 

“Gojo, you can’t fucking spring this information on me!” Utahime raged, slamming her fist into his pectoral, making him gasp out a laugh of pain as she tried to wiggle out of his grasp on her waist, “We are supposed to be...allies!” 

She nearly said ‘partners’ but she did not want Gojo to scoff. She was a ‘partner’ in the same way that six-year-old Megumi was. 

Gojo’s grip drew her closer, his body shaking with laughter, and Utahime struggled, wanting to claw his eyes out at his manufactured fond expression — which looked too much like condescension for her liking — and his casual handling of her body. He drew her up into her toes as he pulled her close and she tried to push against him in resistance, her palms squarely on his shoulders and shoving backwards.

Then she sensed it and her elbows locked. They were being watched. Utahime’s neck prickled with the awareness of a cursed energy signature she didn’t know hovering nearby. It wasn’t moving. It was lurking, waiting while they were stationary. 

“Can you sense their cursed energy behind me to the left? Their informant?” Gojo murmured, even though his grin didn’t slip. “This is good, Uta.” 

Utahime’s cheeks burned and she gasped as Gojo dipped his head. His mouth, warm and soft, pressed against her neck below her ear. 

“Keep fighting, Uta. This looks more real to me. Looks cute.”

His words moved against her skin, his voice rumbling right into her artery, speaking the lie into her blood. The effect of his mouth against her neck was almost instant and Utahime’s lips parted soundlessly, her skin flushing with a fresh wave of heat from head to toe. 

“Satoru,” she squeaked helplessly, unsure how to make the sensation stop. 

Aroused. She was instantly, frighteningly aroused. She could feel how wet she was, and she squirmed in his grip against this humiliating susceptibility. Devastatingly, he bit her, the smallest nip that had the hot warmth of his mouth turn blistering. Utahime almost whimpered. 

“It’s okay, you can push me away in a huff. I think anyone who knew us would expect you to,” Gojo pressed these words huskily against the spot where he had bitten her. “Even if we were lovers.” 

She tried to gather her thoughts and all her resilience and pushed against his chest with her palms again. Gojo laughed loudly, releasing her back onto the flats of her feet as she stared at him in bewilderment, biting down resolutely on her bottom lip to keep in the stammering she knew would accompany anything she tried to say. 

“Now we wait. And we deny everything,” Gojo said conspiratorially, his smile looking like he was about to cast Utahime’s technique. 

Utahime stared up at his face in mute shock, struck by lightning and wondering if she were now just ash to be carried off on the breeze. She had always hated the casual liberties that had been taken with her body, which she had been forced by her status to ignore — the roving hands and the insulting touches. She couldn’t account for why Gojo’s barely-sanctioned touch had made her feel this way. Why, after all her training, when he kept grabbing her didn’t her body immediately take a defensive posture? 

She did not need to reply, because he once again grasped her and pulled her out of the main line of the pedestrian traffic, bundling her into the lee of a building. He clasped his hands behind her back and they disappeared, the world narrowing to a marble. 

She gasped as she tipped backwards through the fabric of space, but opened her eyes to the stationary world inside Gojo’s apartment. 

Gojo was looking down at her, his face very still, betraying nothing. 

“You okay?” He asked, and she had the sensation again that he was stripping back layers with his Six Eyes, looking for fissures in her Cursed Energy. 

She cleared her throat.

“Uh, yeah, fine.” 

For the first time that day, she saw Gojo look uncomfortable. 

“Sorry that I...you know…your neck.” 

Utahime held his gaze, her cheeks hot, waiting for him to show that he was teasing her so that she could hit him again. 

“It’s fine,” she said shortly, her jaw tense. 

“I didn’t want to kiss you on the mouth outta nowhere,” Gojo said, tilting his head. “In case it was, y’know...your first.” 

Utahime pushed him away suddenly, her temper boiling up so rapidly it was like he got tipped backwards in the blast radius. 

“It wouldn’t have been!” she almost yelled. 

Utahime had spent the time since she had graduated trying her damnedest to distance herself from her teenage persona. Boring, uptight, provincial… prudish. And Gojo, Gojo, her kohai, could so deftly undermine that in one sentence. 

Gojo blinked at her. 

“You wanted me to kiss you in the mouth?” he asked hesitantly. 

“What?!” Uta snapped, scowling in confusion. 

“You’re angry that I didn’t kiss you?” 

“No, Gojo, I’m angry that…” she began hotly and then realised that she couldn’t put it into words that he would ever understand. “...never mind. You wouldn’t get it.” 

Gojo was silent, studying her face over the edge of his sunglasses, calculating something. 

“I’m sorry. I just noticed that something happens whenever I touch you and I thought maybe it was because you’re a—” 

“I’m not!” Utahime spat, mortified that he could tell that she was unaccustomed to holding hands or being caressed because these were intimacies and not impertinences. “Fuck, Gojo! I’m not a virgin. I’m not a prude.” 

Gojo stared, his eyes trailing over Utahime’s breathless, angry face, an uncomfortable silence settling. 

“Then is it because it’s me?” Gojo asked. 

Utahime pressed her lips together, taken aback by his tone, which wasn’t teasing for once. 

“Maybe,” she replied distractedly, her anger syphoned away too quickly. “I’m just not used to it.” 

Gojo was silent, a mercy while Utahime tried to compose herself. 

“I’m not used to it either,” he said at last, “so I’m sorry if I’m too rough when I touch you or I take it too far. I’m outta practice.” 

Utahime swallowed, bewildered, unaccustomed to the softness of his voice, the low volume, the confiding tone. 

“Really? Megumi says you have lots of girlfriends,” she snorted, trying to be funny in the face of his unsettling gentleness. 

“Megumi? Megumi who only just learnt how to count?” Gojo scoffed, his smile twitching. 

“He’s a smart kid. I’m sure he knows his exponential notation by now,” Utahime shot back.

Gojo’s grin was slow to bloom, and for the first time, it made Utahime feel relieved rather than annoyed to see it. 

“Are you calling me a slut, Utahime?” he asked playfully. 

Utahime narrowed her eyes out of habit. 

“You called me a virgin,” she retorted defensively. 

Gojo bit his lip as if he were trying to reign in his smile. And then suddenly, it faded on its own. 

“I’ve never had a girlfriend,” he said simply. “And I’ve only ever had one boyfriend.” 

Utahime’s heart sank, remembering a scene she couldn’t approach, a long body crumpled, slouching on some steps in the face of a terrible betrayal. And Gojo’s voice afterwards, innocence destroyed. 

“Megumi was lying?” she asked, her voice a little raspy, emotions that she thought were long faded suddenly bubbling out of a freshly made tear in the surface of her heart. 

“Nah. He’s not. ‘Girlfriends’ isn’t the word I'd use though,” Gojo shrugged. 

“No ‘boyfriends’ then?” Utahime used air quotes to underscore her ironic tone. 

“Occasionally,” Gojo smiled pleasantly. “And you, Utahime? Do you have lots of ‘girlfriends’? ‘Boyfriends’?” Gojo used her air quotes too. 

Utahime looked away sharply, thinking of her drawers full of sensuous undergarments, the urges towards recklessness that she felt welling up from time to time. 

“Infrequently,” she muttered. 

And Utahime felt a strange sensation coming over. It was the realisation of kinship — of sameness — and Gojo was an unlikely source of that feeling. 

“Then I can understand why you react the way that you do when I touch you,” Gojo said calmly. “And I hope that you can understand why I’m so rusty when it comes to…being sweet.” 

The subtext rushed into Utahime’s brain too quickly. Gojo was only used to being rough, raw, sexual. She remembered, with a small squirm, the way he had bitten her neck and how hot his mouth had been on the skin beneath her ear. 

“I understand,” she said, looking away with hot cheeks.

“We can practise if you like,” Gojo suggested suddenly, rubbing the back of his head. 

Utahime’s eyes snapped back to his, her words strangled by her shock.

“What?’ 

Gojo didn’t smile, and she almost wished that he would. He just studied her face. 

“Anything. Anything that makes the way I touch you feel normal,” he said quietly. “So you don’t always have to use up your cursed energy all the time convincing people we’re a married couple.” 

Utahime tried to control the irrational spike of temper that he was once again alluding to the fact that she was weak and that her cursed energy was finite. Her embarrassment was bubbling up to a boiling point, and so she changed the subject abruptly at the mention of their fake marriage. 

“Gojo, why is it important that people believe we’re married? I understand the school, but…everyone else? The Zen’ins? Your clan? Does it have to be marriage? Why not…the other thing.” 

Utahime hated that she couldn’t say any other word like the one she meant — lover, mistress, whore, concubine…

Gojo took a moment to answer, choosing his words carefully with a degree of circumspection she didn’t know he was capable of. 

“You don’t want them to think the other thing is true, Utahime. Not the Zen’ins in particular.”  

She remembered one particular smug grin in the crowd at a Clan wedding where she performed as a Miko, and a horrible moment when she was caught alone in a room and the things offered to her in exchange for her career as a sorcerer, for her dignity. 

“Okay,” she said hoarsely.

“And my Clan. They’re fucking awful. They’d probably try to kill any mistress of mine that they didn’t feel was suitable,” Gojo said darkly, his jaw twitching. “But a wife, even someone who didn’t come from a mighty clan, might still be useful.” 

“Useful?” Utahime repeated, her mouth dry, seeing a shadow come over Gojo, the vulnerability gone and the anger she now recognised taking its place. 

“For heirs. To pass on Limitless.” 

“Oh,” she mumbled. 

“It’s a case of interlocking lies, one corroborating the other. I needed the wife for the papers to keep the kids and trick the non-sorcerers. And then, to protect you, the Zen’ins and my clan have to believe the same lie,” Gojo outlined carefully. “I’m sorry that I wrote your name, Uta. But it really had to be you. Only you could do what needed to be done.” 

Utahime absorbed his words. 

“Will you change things, Gojo? Really?” she asked softly. 

“Yes. I’m going to change everything. The Clans. The Higher Ups,” Gojo said, eyes flickering with a new heat over the tops of his sunglasses. “Megumi is one of the links in the chain. And so are you.” 

Utahime nodded slowly, thinking of everything she wanted gone. 

I could die tomorrow. What would have been the point? Untouched. Weak. 

“Then, we carry on lying.” 

“The bathroom is all yours,” Gojo announced, coming back into the vast open plan living area with damp hair and dressed in leisurewear that Utahime could have recognised from their school days. He was prone to sameness, continuums, she had noticed. That’s why his adult persona in the Social Services wing had seemed so confusing. The colour palette had been wrong.

Utahime was washing the dishes, her mind working to put the threads of her situation into piles, while Megumi and Tsumiki quietly worked at the coffee table in the living room area, talking softly to one another as Utahime had learnt was their habit, only raising their voices when they disagreed or when including adults in their discourse. Megumi had a small whiteboard in front of him and Tsumiki was overseeing his practice of kanji, hovering over his shoulder with a rag she had taken from the kitchen, ready to intervene with her usual Big Sister sagacity. 

“Sure. Let me finish up first,” Utahime said distractedly, wiping her hands on her dress. 

“Then the kiddos,” Gojo said, jerking his thumb towards the two. “I usually run the bath water for them, but they manage on their own otherwise.” 

“Yes, they’re big enough,” Utahime smiled, because she noticed that little ears had pricked up, knowing they were being talked about.

“Do we have to go to bed so soon?” Tsumiki asked, with a coyness to the way she was about to beg, a child unused to wiles. 

“Yup. ‘Fraid so. You’re small and your brains aren’t completely done cooking,” Gojo told them, starting a search around the kitchen for something, pulling open and slamming shut doors and the fridge, moving aside the clutter of cohabitating with children. 

Utahime opened her mouth to ask what he was looking for, but was cut off by his hoot of mirth. 

“Oooh! There’s one strawberry cream mochi left!” he crowed, moving a school book and the upturned bowl that Utahime had been using to hide it. 

“That’s mine,” Utahime said firmly, even though she didn’t particularly like sweet things. 

The kids were watching. It was the principle. 

But Gojo’s grin was naughty, showing there was no way he was going to listen to her. He reached forward and took the treat between his thumb and his forefinger and paused, waiting for her to make a further sanction on his behaviour so that he could roundly ignore it. 

“Gojo,” she said warningly.

He lifted the mochi off the plate, his grin deepening. 

“Aww, Utahime,” he complained teasingly, like he was paying any heed to her commands at all. 

“Put it back,” she scolded, like he was a puppy. 

“Make him, Utahime-san,” Megumi suddenly piped up from the middle of the living room, the first truly childlike smile on his face that Utahime had seen. 

“Yeah! Hypnotise him!” Tsumiki chimed in. 

Gojo licked his lip as he smiled, deeply amused, lifting the mochi towards his mouth. 

“Yes, Utahime-senpai,” he said dryly, as he prepared to take a bite. “Make me. I did say that I wanted to feel what it’s like.” 

Utahime looked at the children, feeling her heart pounding, but trying to be nonchalant. 

“I told you guys. I can’t,” she murmured. “Gojo-san’s defences are too strong.” 

Gojo hummed contentedly, closing his eyes as he bit into the mochi. Utahime took the split section to cast her trick, hardly hopeful that it would work, but that at least at that moment he wouldn’t see the impish smile touch her mouth. 

“Watch the coin,” she whispered. 

Gojo’s bite into the mochi stalled, freezing. She couldn’t be sure that her cursed energy was swirling his eyes because they were already so blue. 

The coin jumps from one hand to the next. 

She poured her cursed energy heavily over her words, making them as concentrated and potent as she could without pulling the plug out of it. 

“ I am over by the children, aren’t I?” Utahime sang out in her eerie lilting voice. “You saw me move towards them before we started speaking, so it is easy to believe.” 

Gojo turned his head, only for a second, as if to check whether the inkling he had was at all correct. While it was always harder to trick sorcerers, Gojo was fighting it harder than anyone she had ever encountered. 

But his slight lapse in attention meant that Utahime could reach forward and snatch the mochi out of his hand, moving as fast as she could, the little viper that she could be. In her mind, the coin was tucked away, and Gojo blinked, as the children started to giggle at his open mouth and his empty hand. 

“Besides your abilities, battles are about tactics,” Utahime said to them, an echo of a dogeared phrase from Jujutsu High. 

Gojo was staring at her, his mouth still open. Utahime felt triumphant, hardly believing that she had actually managed to make her technique effective on him, even if it was only very briefly. 

“Uta…your voice…” he mumbled at last, his voice roughened. 

But Tsumiki was nudging Megumi gently, smiling encouragingly. 

“Show her,” she whispered, as if Utahime had performed a little ditty and Megumi should respond in kind. 

Little Megumi nodded, his face serious again, and he slowly got off his knees and off the carpet. The whole apartment went quiet as Tsumiki reached over and flicked off the lamp beside the expensive sofa. Megumi’s little hands clasped together, making Utahime think of Gojo’s hands clasped behind her back on the street, an ancient ritualistic shape. However, Megumi’s small hands made a different formation. Suddenly, out of the shadow behind him burst two wolves, blossoming out the darkness, one white and one black. Utahime held her breath as Tsumiki hopped in excitement beside her step-brother, giggling at Utahime’s reaction, and the Divine Dogs of the Ten Shadows technique padded around the dark-haired little boy, threw back their heads and howled. 

“He really has it,” Utahime mused into the darkness, staring upwards to where the ceiling should be. “The Ten Shadows Technique.” 

“Yup,” Gojo said, elsewhere in the large bed, equally awake. “You agreed to all this before you were sure?” 

Utahime let his words sink in, tracing out a pattern on the coverlet that no one could see. 

“I guess I just trusted you. And my intuition.” 

Gojo chuckled, but he was completely still, like his voice came out of thin air, like he wasn’t actually there. 

“This is going to go on for a while,” she realised softly. 

“Yes,” Gojo’s disembodied voice agreed in the dark room. “In some shape or form.” 

Utahime let that sink in. She ought to be ready to think on her feet about the next move, because this domestic arrangement was only one manifestation of what Gojo’s plan entailed. This was the early stage. 

“Uta, do you know what your voice sounds like? To the people under your technique?” Gojo suddenly asked, his voice sounding even further away. 

“Yes, yes, I know. You said it’s fucking creepy,” Utahime replied impatiently, rolling her eyes even though he couldn’t see her face. 

“No,” Gojo murmured. “Not creepy.” 

Utahime frowned, unsure what to say, confused by his tone. Silence swam around them again, in between the reeds of the dark bedroom, the shutters keeping out the city lights. 

“Sorry that I called you a slut today,” she blurted out abruptly. 

Gojo chuckled again, not his usual laugh, but still deeply washed with his amusement. 

“Sorry that I called you a virgin.” 

For some reason, his darkly tinted voice made Utahime feel her face heat, her heartbeat picking up. She could feel the reckless urge boiling up inside her, an overfilled glass, the usual way that she felt moments of youthfulness and energy swell up in deeply concentrated pockets, pushing aside the part of her that felt cynical and world-weary and the parts of her that felt untried and green. 

“We can…practise,” she whispered, hardly believing her own voice. “Like you suggested. Just not in front of the children.” 

Gojo shifted, now no longer a voice, but a body too. 

“Now?” he asked quietly. 

Utahime swallowed, feeling her body sweep with heat again. 

“Sure.” 

Utahime’s stomach jumped as she felt the mattress dip — Gojo easing over to her. His hand slid down her arm, his fingertips skimming over the back of her hand, then threading their fingers loosely together, rubbing his thumb in the sensitive flesh of her palm. It tingled everywhere he skimmed his fingers.

“Like this?” he whispered. “I’m likely to touch you like this in public.” 

“Yes,” Utahime’s throat was tight.

Gojo’s voice was at her temple, almost making her jump when she realised his proximity. 

“We could have a code,” he whispered with a light laugh. “Three circles means danger.” 

She smiled in the dark, not sure she trusted her voice to make the joke that sprung to mind – that he’d wear a hole in her palm, because everything seemed so fucking dangerous. 

Utahime had almost adjusted to the gentle caress of his thumb against her palm, of hearing Gojo’s breath and feeling it move her hair slightly, when he unthreaded their fingers and slid his hand over her hip and rested in the curve of her waist, where he had touched her in front of the principal and the social worker, where his fingers had gripped her tightly. This time his touch was featherlight, skimming and gentle, only slightly pushing up the hem of her pyjama t-shirt. The side of his thumb brushed a sliver of bare skin on her stomach and she almost winced at the way her skin jumped in response. 

“Like this, Uta? I think I was too rough before.” 

“This is better.” She managed, biting down on her lip so she didn’t gasp as the thumb dipped more convincingly under her shirt and gently swiped a caress into the skin of her lower belly. 

She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting to moderate her urges, as her heart hammered in her chest, a disastrous excitement bubbling up in her belly. She knew what the next thing he would reattempt was and it made her almost squirm to remember how potent it had been the first time. Perhaps this would be better — a desensification. 

“Should I kiss your neck, Uta?” he whispered. 

“Yes.” 

But just like last time, the moment that Gojo’s mouth touched the sensitive skin beneath Utahime’s ear, she felt arousal bolt through her like a spear. His mouth opened against her neck, too hot, too much, and she unwittingly grasped the fabric of his shirt, suddenly desperate. She tried to keep the whimper in as, to her dismay, he sucked gently on her skin, causing a throb deep in her pussy that caused her to draw up her legs, a shuddering wave in her body. 

“Fuck,” Gojo breathed out against her neck, and Utahime felt like she could faint at the realisation that he had noticed how she was reacting. 

He sucked harder against her skin and she whimpered, quickly smacking her palm over her mouth to keep in her humiliating susceptibility. 

“No,” Gojo groaned against her neck. “Don’t cover your mouth.” 

The hand that was in the curve of her waist suddenly slid down under the waistband of her shorts, his middle finger parting her cunt easily and sliding into her. Utahime gasped, because she was so wet that he slipped into her with no resistance, because his fingers were so long that she hitched up on the bed at the sudden hint of pleasurable fullness. 

“Holy fuck,” Gojo groaned in the darkness. “Holy fuck, Uta. You’re so wet.” 

She suddenly could feel his cock, hard against the side of her leg, and she stuttered out a breath as he drew his finger out of her, slippery over her clit now, a firm circle that made her jolt. 

She hitched out a moan, trying desperately to be quiet, because the way he touched her made her feel that same sensation moving through space in the wrong direction. She was going to come, she realised, her head pushing back onto the pillow as Gojo's fingers sliding inside of her, the palm of his hand on her clit, made her back curve against the plane of the bed. She could feel him rubbing himself against her thigh, breathless, whispering.

Utahime had to catch her cry in her hand, muffling it as the pleasure crashed over her.  All her muscles were tense as she arched, whispering his name against her palm because it was too much and he didn’t stop until she eased, the bones melting, and they lay breathless side by side in the dark. 

In silence.

Chapter Text

Utahime felt her breath slow down, but every time she let the realisation of what had just happened stand on its own legs, her heart began to race, anxiety twisting her guts. After slowly sliding his fingers out of her, Gojo cautiously eased his hand out of the front of her shorts, settling on her stomach instead. Just the fingertips though, like his hand was poised to press a chord into a piano keyboard. She waited, heart hammering, for who would break the silence. 

His lips were against the side of her head, catching on her hair when he spoke. 

“Is it okay that that happened?” he rasped, and something about his hesitant tone changed the key of the tension in the room. 

Utahime could take a breath, feeling the tingling of her receding orgasm now instead of the strictures of her anxiousness alone. Something pleased her about the fact that it had happened so fluidly, a natural effect, the glass overfilling, like it did in her belly when she felt this way, but in reality and not in the tumult of her mind. 

“Yes,” she whispered, dazed, slightly surprised at herself. “I think it’s okay.” 

“Oh, good,” Gojo said quietly. “I liked it.” 

Utahime’s stomach tingled at his frankness, and she blinked into the darkness, marvelling that he could be so forthright. She nearly shifted uncomfortably, wondering if this was the kind of candour that came from being sexually uninhibited, experimental, sensuous. She turned her body slightly toward his. 

“Do you want me to…um…” she murmured, and she touched him properly for the first time, her hand gently landing on his abdomen, onto a soft white t-shirt that she couldn’t actually see, slightly touching his bare skin where it had ridden up. 

She felt Gojo’s skin jump under her fingertips, and he made a little sound, something like an exhale, and then he ground out a chuckle, more gravel in it than normal but still teasing. 

“Are you offering me a handjob, Utahime?” 

Utahime felt her body flash with heat again, a wave of hot emotion washing over her, because she didn’t really know what she was offering, only reciprocity. She wasn’t sure whether her sexual experience was typical, but she had never given a handjob before. Only blowjobs. It seemed to her that she had somehow hurdled a necessary milestone, or got the whole thing backwards, but she had never been bold enough to discuss it with anyone to make sure. However, the fact remained — she didn’t want to be the only one gasping in pleasure into the darkness, revealing everything secret about themselves. 

She remembered the moments when she had wished that she could use her technique on Gojo to make him dangle after her. Wouldn’t it be delicious?

“I thought I should reciprocate,” she mumbled. “Seems fair.” 

Gojo was silent, and his fingertips on her stomach eased outwards, his palm landing softly on her skin like a flightcraft settling. They lay there, palms touching each other, practising what they lacked. 

“An exchange?” Gojo asked playfully, and she could hear the shape of his mouth, that he was smiling. 

“Sure,” Utahime said quietly. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.” 

Utahime suddenly panicked, realising that she ran the risk of being mediocre at something she hadn’t tried before, when he had made her see stars with his fingers. The potential disparity between his sexual prowess and hers was too great a shame to contemplate. 

“Or I could use my mouth,” she amended quickly. “If you prefer?” 

Gojo choked softly in the darkness. Utahime wondered, her cheeks hot, if she should have phrased it differently, say it in a more raunchy way. 

Do you want me to blow you, Satoru? Do you want me to suck you off, Satoru? Do you want to fuck my mouth? 

“That seems even less fair,” Gojo said at last, his voice taking on an unreadable, rusty quality. 

“I’m good at it,” Utahime said, without thinking, without realising that he wasn’t privy to her train of thought. “I promise.” 

“Fuck, Uta,” Gojo whispered. “That’s not what I meant.” 

Utahime’s retort died on her lips, disarmed by Gojo’s voice stripped bare of the smile for a moment. There was something germinating inside her, in the very small terrarium of the moment. This wasn’t about jujutsu society at large, or clan politics or relative strengths or weaknesses and the balance of power. And that felt comforting. Strangely, for the first time in a while, Utahime did not feel like a symbol of herself. Rather, she was just a young woman, just herself. And Gojo seemed to her in the darkness to be simply himself, an equivalent of hers. There was no point to this scenario, no greater significance in the fabric of history, just two people who were barely finished being teenagers, reaching out towards their deficiencies and their desires, and encountering each other. 

“Did your infrequent boyfriends tell you that?”

Utahime nearly retracted her hand from his body, because she did not want to be teased about what her fumbling paramours had said to her, or the times her head was pushed down and she acquiesced, because she wanted something from the liaison too. She wanted exactly that — liaison, linkage — to connect to someone, to connect to the gaps in her knowledge of the world and of her selfhood, to show her what she liked and that she was alive and human. That there was pleasure in the world and not only curses.  

Her penchant for romantic underwear was just a simulacrum of the same desire. 

“Yes,” she said, slightly testy, holding her ground, doubling down on her position stubbornly, as was her wont. 

“Do they reciprocate?” Gojo asked softly, still slightly teasing her she imagined. “With their mouths?” 

Utahime once again experienced the uncomfortable sensation of her anger funnelling out the bottom of her emotions too quickly, sucking down some her pulse in the undertow.

“No,” she answers hollowly, because she might as well be honest if he was going to be. 

Gojo was silent, the seconds ticking by, marked by Utahime’s heavy heartbeat. 

“You want me to show you?” he asked at last, and she could again hear the shape of his smile in his voice. “I’m also pretty good at it.” 

Gojo’s hand moved slowly, the fingers grasping into the waistband of her shorts, a grip like he might tug them down, and yet he didn’t. 

“What? But then...it definitely wouldn’t be fair,” Utahime stammered. 

“Yeah, see Uta, I already came,” Gojo said with a little laugh. “I need some downtime before anything else.” 

“You... came ?” she repeated incredulously.

“Uh, yeah. When you did. Not my proudest moment.”  

He didn’t sound like he was perturbed. His voice sounded lazy, comfortable. Utahime’s lips parted, wondering why this could be so frank, so fluent, when all her previous experiences had been so wooden and stilted. 

“Oh, I didn’t notice,” Utahime said quietly. “Were you going to tell me?” 

Gojo shifted, and Utahime suddenly could see the vague outline of his head and his shoulders as he propped himself up on one elbow. 

“Probably not. But then you started offering sexual favours and boasting about how good you are at sucking dick,” he murmured in amusement, his fingers still hooked in the waistband of her shorts. “So I figure this is a safe space to tell you that  I creamed my pants listening to you come.” 

Utahime squeaked, the only sound she could make as her temper flared at the same time that she found his words pathetically funny, tragically arousing. 

“I didn’t boast about it!” she protested, her voice strangled by warring emotions. 

“Well, it piqued my competitive nature, Uta,” Gojo said nonchalantly. “You want me to? Reckon it would give me the breather I need.” 

The air of the room felt cool on Utahime’s cheeks. 

“You...go down on me and then...I go down on you?” she stammered, and sucked in a little breath, because Gojo leant forward and kissed her in the hollow of her throat, a chaste little press of his lips. 

“Could be fun?” he said softly. “Doesn’t have to mean anything, like you said.” 

Utahime’s body prickled with this closeness, curiosity and arousal nudging her even closer to him and what he offered. 

“Okay,” Utahime murmured, and she caught the hem of his t-shirt the same way he had gripped the elastic of her shorts. “Take off your shirt.” 

“I’m taking off all my clothes. Just a heads up,” Gojo chuckled in the dark. “But you don’t have to.”

Utahime felt her throat bob, biting her lip as the bed shifted and she heard the brush and flutter of fabric. As she felt Gojo do some kind of gymnastics to get out of his sweatpants, she slid down her own shorts, and quietly pulled her pyjama shirt over her head and let it swim into the tide of the bedclothes. 

He exhaled his smile as he rolled back to her under the sheets, his hand returning to the spot in her waist where he had claimed a tract since the moment she walked into the social worker’s office, but flinched as if she were a stovetop to discover that he touched bare skin now. 

“Shit,” he breathed out, a marvel. 

Before Utahime could fashion a reply, Gojo kissed the well of her throat again, and over her heart. Hesitantly, she reached up and touched his hair as he did so, finding the fact that he allowed this to be a dizzying intimacy. It was only in the heights of her temper that she ever tried to lash out at him, because the red mist meant she had forgotten that he was untouchable. But Utahime, in rational moments, had never bothered to even try to touch Gojo — no comforting pats, no high-fives, no nudges or pinches. It was well documented that there was no point. And now, he had let her touch his stomach and let her thread her fingers into his hair. His little hum of appreciation tickled the skin of her stomach as he kissed it too. 

Gojo didn’t try to be coy, and Utahime gasped around the heart stuck in her throat, as he moved her with little effort, his hands gripping her hips as he slid down onto his stomach between her legs. 

Utahime covered her burning face with her hands, her courage failing her slightly, wanting for a panicky second to tell him that he didn’t have to do it after all. 

“No, touch my hair again,” Gojo complained softly. 

As she moved her hands from her face, she felt him press a kiss, chaste as all the others, directly against her clit. She jolted, sliding her hands into his hair like he asked, gasping softly. His lips parted as he pressed another kiss against her cunt, the warmth of his tongue making a wave of tension move her body from the apex where his mouth moved on her body to the crown of her head. His tongue swirled around her clit, and her grip tightened on hair as she moaned. Part of her brain wondered if he was smiling now, as he opened the heat of his mouth against her cunt, and he gently sucked, his grip on her hips turning firm so she couldn’t slam her thighs shut, couldn’t twist out of his hands. 

“Fuck, fuck, Satoru!” she gasped, squirming as he pleasured her, her mind whiting out at the soft, slippery satisfaction, no harsh friction only delicious feeling. 

Gojo laughed, and the vibration made her neck arch, her head falling back. 

Gojo slid two fingers into her, curling them in a way she didn’t expect, and she cried out because it somehow rounded out the sensation, pushed her even closer, as his two fingers swirled inside her, rubbing a circle rather than fucking, and his tongue flattened against her clit. 

She didn’t want him to stop. As she gasped, trying to bite back her moans, she was already irrationally certain that she couldn’t not feel this again. Her grip was tightening on his hair, as she writhed, locked in his grip, too susceptible, too responsive. 

“Don’t stop, please,” she whimpered. “Fuck, please.” 

He hummed, and she was glad for the darkness and the fact that he couldn’t see her face as she squeezed her eyes shut, helpless in her pleasure. She bit off the end of her cry of pleasure, trying to be quiet, as her orgasm crashed down on her and she folded into it, her thighs closing around his head, over the backs of her hands where she had her fingers threaded in his hair. 

Utahime exhaled raggedly, a gasping gait to her breath, letting the world snap back into place. Slowly, she relaxed, her breath still trembling, and her thighs eased back from where they had trapped Gojo. 

“I’m sorry,” she breathed, swallowing. 

“Don’t be.” 

“That was…” she murmured, but she couldn’t finish the compliment, because even now, she didn’t want to inflate Gojo’s ego. 

“Are you always so sexy when you come, Utahime?” Gojo asked, edging up, and she could feel that he had moved onto his knees between her spread thighs. “Holy shit .” 

His question caught her off guard, and she could not tell if he was teasing her or complimenting her. 

“Oh fuck off,” she scoffed. 

“I’m serious. It’s a fucking crime if even one of your random hookups missed out on that,” Gojo marvelled in the dark. 

Utahime’s stomach fizzed at his words, confusion making her prickly. No one had ever made her come before except herself. 

“Shut up and switch places with me,” she commanded hotly. 

Gojo laughed, flopping heavily over as Utahime lifted her almost boneless body off the bed, her head rushing as she edged onto her knees, feeling around for Gojo. He caught one of her hands and guided it to his thigh. She crawled forward, her heart beating, sensing that he had propped himself up against the headboard. Kneeling between his legs the way that he had between hers, she tried not to think of what his expression might be. Somehow, for the first time ever, it was exciting to think about what she was about to do, her body still warm from pleasure. She imagined Gojo experiencing what she had just felt and the thought made her stomach flip over. She hadn’t considered that witnessing the moment of orgasm, the sound of it, could be erotic, and now that Gojo had put it in her mind, she wanted to judge for herself. 

The night air cool was on her bare skin, as she knelt in front of Gojo, her dishevelled hair swimming around her naked shoulders, feeling her nipples peak in the chill. 

Gojo was humming softly, an affirming, appreciative noise, and he peeled her hand off his thigh, guiding it to his cock instead, wrapping her hand around it with his over hers, then showing her a leisurely glide along the length of his dick, slick from precum. Her stomach clenched, because she realised how big he was, how thick, how long. Because of course, he would be better than everyone else. 

She leant forward, and licked along the length of his cock, swirling over the tip with her tongue, tasting the faint, gentle salt of him. 

“Fuck .” 

His curse was vehement, visceral, and it made her smile, made her nipples tingle. 

“God, I’m glad it’s dark in here,” Utahime whispered, before she dipped her head and did it again, licking the head of his cock and taking just the tip of it into her mouth against the flat of her tongue. 

Gojo’s laugh was ragged and surrendering, gasping and hitching as her tongue moved on the head of his cock. 

“Uta, I can see,” he laughed, his voice unsteady between his laughter and helpless arousal. “I don’t need light in here to see everything.”

Utahime froze, realising that he had seen every jolt of her body, every flicker of pleasure he had caused her. He could see all of this — her naked on her knees between his spread thighs, the tip of his dick in her mouth. 

Without taking her mouth off his body, her eyes flickered up, experimentally, to where his face must be in the dark. His laughter stuttered out abruptly and Utahime thought again about how it would feel to have him at her mercy, mesmerised by her. How delicious. 

She opened her mouth a little wider, taking more of his cock into her mouth. Gojo hissed, and she could practically feel the vibration of his body trying to hold back from bucking up into her mouth. She wrapped her fingers around the base of his dick, eyes watering, slowly bobbing her head. 

“Shit, shit, Utahime, I’m not gonna last,” he stammered out. 

She gagged slightly, because he pushed forward a little, and she let him slide deeper into her mouth. Gojo’s breathing grew shallower, and Utahime nearly jerked back in surprise as his hands touched her head, gentler than she had imagined, his thumbs on her cheeks. 

She let him slip down her throat, as he bucked up into her, swearing, breathless. His short involuntary thrust made her gag again, her eyes wet. 

“Hime, I can’t… You better tell me if you don’t want me to cum in your mouth….because I’m going to if you don’t… I can’t last,” he gasped out. “It’s too good.” 

She smoothed her free hand along the top of his thigh, her heart racing, feeling giddy at the triumphant, heating idea — the most powerful sorcerer in the world, lost, coming apart in her mouth. 

Her eyes streamed, as Gojo shuddered in pleasure, groaning. The pads of his thumbs pressed into her cheeks, and she felt him jerk, spilling into her mouth. For a thrilling, frightening moment it was too much; too much cum, too deep in her mouth, too big, too thick. But his fingertips, almost joining at the nape of her neck, were so bewilderingly gentle, not dragging her down harshly on her cock. She let him ride it out in decreasing pleasurable spasms, a gasping moan rocking every aftershock, more cum seeping into her mouth with every jolt. 

Gojo was right. It was erotic. 

Slowly, she eased off him, straightening up gradually, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand as she swallowed. It felt a little unsettling now that she knew he could see her in the dark, kneeling between his thighs, naked and her hair loose. 

His hands shot out and grabbed her around her ribs, yanking her forward onto his chest. She felt his softening cock, sticky from her mouth, pressed between them against her bare stomach. 

She wasn’t sure why she panicked that he might kiss her, considering what they had just shared. Kissing felt like it would make it mean something else. Somehow, she didn’t doubt that Gojo would happily kiss a person when his cum was still in their mouth. 

“Uta, that was amazing,” he breathed. “You have every right to brag about sucking dick.” 

“Gojo,” she said warningly. 

“Sorry that I came in your mouth,” he said, and nothing about his lazy, happy tone suggested that he was actually repentant. 

Utahime huffed out a laugh. 

“Do other friends have to apologise for the things that we apologise for?” she asked dryly. 

She felt his laugh rumbling in his chest, making her blush, because her tits were pressed against it. 

“So we are friends.” 

He said this like Utahime had said that they weren’t, and it made her a little puzzled. But his voice was playful, and truly boyish, happy. It wasn’t the grating, turned-all-the-way up childishness she was used to from him. She wondered absently if Gojo also sometimes felt like just a symbol of himself. 

“Sure, we’re friends.”

Then Utahime remembered that she had told him that they were allies. She hadn’t realised that maybe that had bothered him. It struck her that Gojo might find it easy to accumulate allies, but she wondered if he didn’t cope so well making friends.

“So this is okay? Being like this?” Gojo asked hesitantly. “Having…fun?”

Utahime reached up into the dark, and once again touched his hair. It was strangely soft, but she was so intrigued that she could touch it now. White. She had thought it so ethereal and alluring when she first met him, and then she had tried not to think about him at all after that. Everyone looked at him wherever they went, everyone was impressed by him, even if they didn’t know what he could do or who he was — because he was so beautiful. 

“Yes, it’s fine,” she said quietly. “We can mess around. It will probably help us seem more comfortable and intimate in front of other people.” 

Gojo absorbed her words, hitching her up slightly against his chest, making her huff out a little breath because her bruises still hurt and his hands were still wrapped around her ribs. She was small, but it was a reminder that he was also physically powerful and able to lift her with no effort, hand her from one palm to the other if he chose. 

“Are there rules to this?” he asked casually. 

“Do you ask me so that you can break them?” Utahime asked wryly, making him laugh as she tugged on a lock of his hair. 

“You’re so cynical, senpai,” he mused. 

“I don’t know about rules for now. It’s late, I can’t think straight. Just maybe…not in front of the kids,” she answered, feeling sleepy and warm against him. 

“Cool. You better put on clothes then, cos Megumi is probably going to come here and wake you up in the early hours again. He keeps checking that you’re still here.”

Utahime nodded, pushing herself up, away from his chest. She pulled her shorts over her hips in silence. She couldn’t find her shirt in the dark and she didn’t want to turn on the light just yet. Gojo took her wrist, hooking a shirt onto her fingers, reminding her that he could see and she couldn’t. As she slipped it over her head, she realised it was actually his. 

“Just wear it. I only put it on for bed as a courtesy,” Gojo chuckled, the bed bouncing as he flopped onto it heavily. 

She pulled his shirt over her head, sinking down into the blankets after. 

“Utahime,” Gojo said in the darkness, as if everything had reset, his voice sounding sleepy.  

“Yes, Gojo?” She said patiently, smelling his scent on the t-shirt she was wearing, reminding her of yesterday when the world was different.

“Can you take the kids to school tomorrow? I’ve got some stuff to do.” 

“No problem,” she said softly, turning onto her side, her head sinking into an expensive pillow and actually enjoying it this time. “Good night.”

“Good night, Uta,” Gojo yawned. 

Utahime stiffened, because Gojo rolled over and pulled her towards him, tucking her into the shape of his body, his arm underneath her crossing her chest and grasping her shoulder. She opened her mouth to protest as his leg slid between hers, but then she felt it again. 

It was the atoms stopping before they hit her skin, a sheath slipping over. 

Gojo had wrapped her up with him in his Infinity. 

Utahime had her own sweatpants on in the kitchen as she made a more traditional breakfast than cereal for the children, but she awkwardly tucked Gojo’s voluminous shirt into the front waistband so that it didn’t get in the way of her cooking. Gojo hadn’t been awake yet when she heard the door squeak, pushed open quietly, and she had peered over Gojo’s sleeping body to see a little face peeking into the crack in the door. 

“Hungry?” she whispered over the cloud of expensive linens, hoping Megumi couldn’t see from over there that Gojo’s hands were on the outside curve of her thighs, his face in her neck. 

“Thirsty,” Megumi said quietly, reluctantly. “Tsumiki’s still asleep.” 

So Utahime had eased out of Gojo’s grip and he let her go easily, rolling over once she was gone, fine without her. 

And she had sat with Megumi, in nearly complete companionable silence, at the kitchen island, as they both drank glasses of water. Megumi held his with both hands as he drank thirstily. 

And when Tsumiki woke up they talked about dinosaurs. Tsumiki hopped up and down in her little nightdress, doing an erratic little dance around the island, warbling about diplodocuses. Megumi watched her, quietly pleased, and let her do most of the talking. 

“What’s your favourite?” Utahime asked him, making him frown that she had confronted him with a difficult question. 

And then he smiled shyly, sounding more like a little boy in his uncertainty. 

“Brontosaurus.” 

“Morning!” 

Utahime was grateful for the buffer of the children as Gojo finally appeared, just as he had been the day before in sweatpants and no shirt, his hair tousled and sunglasses hiding his eyes. Because her blush was profound as her brain merged this Gojo with the one from the dark. 

And yet, Gojo was exactly the same as he always was, teasing her, ruffling Megumi’s hair in a way that made the little boy try to retract his head into his pyjama shirt like a turtle. They laid out the plans for the day over breakfast — Utahime taking Gojo’s car to take the kids to school, while he went about some business he didn’t want to talk about in front of the kids. 

“Then maybe we can meet in the city after the kids are finished with school? Tsumiki needs to buy some tutus or some shit,” Gojo said, drinking juice from the bottle.

“Leotards,” Tsumiki corrected archly, as Utahime wrenched the bottle from his grip. 

“Language,” Utahime interjected, as if she were any better than Gojo. “Watch your mouth.” 

Gojo had a sharp grin for her, suddenly and insinuating, clearly throwing up the same memory as hers. 

Fuck, fuck, Satoru. Fuck, please. 

“I’m going to get dressed. We’re leaving in half an hour, guys,” she said airily, even though her body was flashing with heat. 

And in the bedroom, she put on another little summer frock, pink this time. She hesitated over her underwear for the first time ever, because it too seemed to lose its symbolic nature just a little bit. As she put on a romantic pale blue thong and bralette, made of next to nothing and with delicate embroidered flowers over the mesh for coyness, she realised that there was a chance that her lingerie was not standing in for her sensuality, but might actually be absorbed into it. 

Because she had experienced it. She experienced the heights of feverish arousal, climax, someone touching her body in ways that made her body arch, and in turn she had translated that sexual excitement into giving pleasure, freely, gratuitously, and in a way that gratified her too. 

Why had it been so easy? She tried to reach around to zip up her dress. Was it because Gojo was so attractive? So sexually alluring? Or was it because she trusted him?

“You gotta be careful out there,” Gojo’s voice made her spin around, because she hadn’t heard him come in. 

Because he hadn’t. She glowered at him for the fright that he had given her. He’d just warped himself there, making no sound on the carpet, watching her get dressed with his juice in a glass now in his left hand. 

“I will be, don’t worry.” 

“The Zen’in are probably gonna fuck with you the second they notice that I’m not with the kids.” To her surprise, he wandered over to her and did the zipper up on the back of her dress, “Avoid confrontation with them until I can get to you. Keep the kids in a public place. Megumi will retaliate with his dogs and we don't want that.” 

“I’ll be fine,” Utahime didn’t like the insinuation that she couldn’t manage, impatiently spinning around once he had done up her zipper. “I’m a trained sorcerer, Gojo, and I’ve been on my own for a very long time.” 

Gojo was quiet, sipping orange juice, looking at her glaring at him in annoyance, her hands on her hips, head tipped back for his superior height. 

“You’re really good with them,” he said out of the blue. 

“Who?” 

“The kids. You’re so natural.” 

Utahime felt like she shouldn’t get as annoyed as she did, because he was clearly trying to compliment her.

“Because I’m a woman?” she snapped. 

Gojo smiled, shaking his head slowly. 

“Nah, Uta. For someone who wears such girly shit, and looks like a pretty little doll, you don’t exactly conform to anything feminine and soft,” Gojo mused, “which is why I say you’re so natural with them. It’s just you being you.” 

Utahime retracted her scathing retort, disarmed that he had noticed that her femininity was something she had always used as a buffer. 

“Oh,” she mumbled, “Sure.” 

Gojo’s expression was still, and he looked down at her with a kind of measuring intensity that she didn’t understand. And then he turned, glugging down orange juice, sauntering into the bathroom.

“Thanks for talking to Megumi about dinosaurs,” he drawled, closing the door behind him so that she nearly didn’t catch the second part of his sentence. “And not about curses and power and fucking jujutsu.” 

Utahime hated driving, because she didn’t get much practice with it. Gojo’s car, which was parked in the basement parking of the building, didn’t seem like it got out much either. It was expectedly flashy and large, black and would be shiny if it didn’t have a thin layer of dust settled over it. Utahime was struck by the fact that Gojo didn’t actually have any hired help. Maybe at the Gojo Estate, there was servant upon servant, but around these children, there was just Gojo, Utahime and the cleaning lady who apparently showed up once a week. The cleaning lady had been bewildered to discover a woman there and even more shocked that Megumi had quietly explained to her that this was his mother. 

Leaving the cleaning lady vacuuming, Utahime buckled the kids into the back of the SUV. She needed to tell Gojo that the children needed carseats. 

Tsumiki told Utahime about her impending ballet classes all the way to school, and Megumi, quiet as always, only spoke to ask a question about how traffic lights worked. At the school, Utahime weathered the stares of other children and the minders dropping them off, waving Megumi and Tsumiki off while dressed in a little cotton dress from a chain brand but standing beside a stupidly expensive SUV. 

She wasn’t sure if she was being paranoid when she noticed a dark car slipping through traffic, taking the same turns as she was. Her heartbeat picked up, trying to merge into a different lane so that she could experimentally make a few decoy turns. 

Her cellphone started ringing on the seat beside her, making her jump, making her forget about traffic for a second. She flipped the phone open, putting it on loudspeaker as she cradled it in her knees, not about to crash Gojo’s car just to answer a call. 

“Hello?” 

“Good morning, Iori-san, you are required for a brief mission.” 

Utahime’s pulse spiked at the familiar harried sound of a Window who did not even bother to introduce themselves because most sorcerers were too arrogant to care. She had momentarily forgotten that this might happen. 

On instinct, Utahime assessed the state of her cursed energy before she considered any other form of readiness. 

“What are the details?” she asked, choosing not to tell the Window that she had no weapons with her should the curse’s level be higher than her own. 

Utahime would figure it out like she usually did. 

“Most higher-grade sorcerers are preoccupied at the moment with a situation on the docks, so I had no one else to call about a small incident reported in a shopping district. The reports suggest that it is a weak curse and it shouldn’t take too long to find it and exorcise it. But we can’t put a Veil down because the area is too busy.” 

Utahime gritted her teeth, trying not to get annoyed that she wasn’t even considered for the more challenging mission, one that was clearly preoccupying her stronger comrades. She wondered if that was where Gojo was right now. She felt a little stung that he would have kept it a secret from her.

“I can handle it,” she assured the Window, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. 

“Thank you, Iori-San. Will you be able to attend to this without assistance from a Window? As I said, we are very preoccupied.” 

“Send me the address.” 

The shopping district was in an old neighbourhood of Tokyo and lacked the glitz and vibrant colour of the places where Gojo had dragged Utahime and the kids on the first day that they had been together. 

It wasn’t a happy, lively place. Utahime shivered, already sensing the depressed mood of fading success, the decay of a place as she stepped along the wobbly cobbles between the shopfronts. There were speciality stores, traditional food vendors, and a constant shuffling crowd. She hoped that if the curse was as weak as they said, she could mesmerise it a little, put a little cursed energy behind her fists and swiftly kill it without it retaliating too much. Utahime could sense cursed energy quite well, and she followed the tug of her inkling through the dim light of the enclosed street. It was slippery, this curse, and it was weaving through the people, celebrating failure. 

Utahime caught a glance of it from a distance, and it paused, turning and noticing that she had seen it. It was horrible — a Komodo dragon-like body, blunt-toothed and bug-eyed.

It slithered away quickly, panicking, and Utahime darted after it. She slipped in between the depressing crowds, her heart racing in the thrill of pursuit. She had to corner it. She began her dance, creating the kernel of truth, because every time the curse looked back to see if she was still following, she alternated between ducking behind people and letting it see her gaining on it. 

It galloped down an alleyway and Utahime picked up her pace, sprinting into the gap and seeing it turn, hissing horribly at her amongst broken crates and boxes, deciding whether to charge her or run away. 

It cocked its head, not understanding the slow, impish smile on Utahime’s mouth. 

“ Watch the coin,” Utahime sang.

The curse immediately froze, as Utahime cast her trick. 

The coin vanishes into thin air.

In front of her, the curse shook its head, its vision compromised, trying to focus on Utahime and rattling in confusion as it struggled to do so. 

“ I am no longer visible, aren’t I?” she lilted softly, her voice garbling the proper cadence of the syllables. “You saw me coming and going in the crowd, so it is easy to believe.” 

The curse blinked its grim, overly wet eyes, and Utahime was satisfied that she had completely faded from its field of vision. It could sense her, though, and lashed out blindly. She was quicker, however, as she had trained herself to be, and she surged forward, her fist encased in cursed energy slicing right through the body of the curse as she moved beyond it. 

Utahime, self-satisfied, watched with a dripping hand as the curse fell over stiffly. She reluctantly wiped it on her dress. She often wondered if non-sorcerers could see the gore of cursed remains. Perhaps they sensed it, even if they couldn’t see it. She dragged the body of the curse behind some broken crates, making a note of the directions so she could tell some administrators where to collect it later on. 

“Ah, well done, Utahime.” 

Utahime froze, the hair prickling on her neck, as a familiar voice, slippery to its core, broke the hum of the shopping street behind her. 

She spun around, seeing two track marks on the dusty cement floor of the alley, an abrupt, skidding stop, silently managed. Someone who was far faster than she was. 

“Naoya,” she said tersely, her jaw feeling tight, unable to show him any deference, even though she knew it was in her best interest to do so. 

He frowned, crossing his arms.

“That’s a bit rude,” he said with a smirk. “I didn’t realise we were on such familiar terms.” 

“I apologise,” Utahime replied woodenly. 

He was taller than the last time she had seen him, and he had filled out a little, and the effect was to make him seem more threatening, his power more unpredictable. She had pushed him into a wall the last time she had cornered her like this, she recalled, and only gotten away with it because he was fifteen at the time, and hadn’t expected her to put so much force into her shove. 

“You look different,” he noted, and Utahime saw that his arrogant smile had not changed. “Can’t say that I prefer it. You looked better in traditional clothing, Utahime. Now you just look like a slut.” 

“You look exactly the same, Naoya-sama,” Utahime retorted sweetly, because it was bound to irritate him that she wouldn’t acknowledge that he was bigger, less gangly, more masculine, more adult. 

She could see from the flash of annoyance on his face that it had. 

“Unless that is what you are these days? A slut?” 

Utahime gritted her teeth, trying not to appear rankled by his slur. 

“I’m a sorcerer.” 

“Is that so?” Naoya smirked, looking pointedly at the body of the low-grade curse peeking out from behind the crates, at what would be an ignominious mission for someone like him. “I’ve heard something different.” 

“I didn’t take you for a gossip, Naoya-sama,” Utahime remarked, her voice dripping in irony. “Isn’t that a woman’s pastime?” 

His eyes narrowed at her. She had clearly touched a nerve. 

“I heard that you’ve got another occupation,“ he leered. “I heard that you’re Gojo Satoru’s whore.” 

Utahime, a proficient liar, remembered the layering of lies that she and Gojo were telling, and the reason for each of them just in time before her temper answered for her. As Gojo said, the misdirection was key. They had to deny everything first. 

“I have nothing to do with Gojo Satoru,” she said coldly. 

“The real question is why he would have anything to do with you ?” Naoya mused, his eyes glinting cruelly. “You have decent tits, sure, but you’re so weak it must be boring to even have you around.” 

Utahime flushed angrily, wanting to point out that Naoya had cornered her once at a clan wedding, that he had slid his hand over her ass, saying something about how someone like her, an orphan with no clan and no money, should attach herself to the likes of him before she got used up and ruined. 

“Then I’m sure you’re finding this conversation exceedingly boring, Naoya-sama. If you’ll excuse me, I have somewhere to be.” 

“Really? That’s strange. Fushiguro Megumi still has to be in school for several hours now,” Naoya purred. 

Utahime stalled, but kept her features steady. 

“Who?” she asked coldly. 

“Ah, I thought you were a famous liar, Utahime. A trickster. A witch,” the venom rolled off Naoya’s slippery words. “You must be a very good fuck because you are a useless ally.” 

“I think you’ve insulted me enough. I’ll be going,” Utahime said coldly. 

Naoya’s mouth twisted, his grin turning to disgust. 

“I bet you are a good fuck, you little viper. Must be fun to make you submit. I bet, at the very least, if I killed you, Gojo would be mad that I robbed him of a good lay.” 

Utahime’s heart throbbed in her chest as she dipped her head so that Naoya might not see the smile creeping in. 

“Watch the coin,” she lilted out, panicking because she had no truth to twist, no misconception planned, her tactics weak. 

Naoya’s face spasmed out of his grimace of disgust, fighting her technique. 

The coin jumps from one hand to the next. 

“I move erratically and unpredictably, don’t I?” Utahime warbled. “You think of me as a little viper, so it is easy to believe.” 

She couldn’t hope to outrun Naoya, but she could get a head start since he hadn’t had a chance to touch her. She exploded from her standing position, darting past him as he scowled at his visual confusion, shaking off her technique with his emotions, his gut feeling telling him it was wrong because the Utahime he knew was slow and weak by comparison. 

She darted past him into the thoroughfare of the shopping district, darting in between the clumps of people, dodging vendors. She ran, not looking back to see if Naoya was following, because once he gave chase in earnest she knew she was a goner. She grappled with her little handbag, fishing out her cellphone and flicking it open, fumbling for Gojo’s number as she serpentined through the shoppers. 

“Utahime,” he answered the phone after two rings. 

She was breathless as she held the phone up to her ear, jostled by the crowd, trying to break into a better sprint.

“Gojo! Zen’ins! Naoya cornered me on a mission. You might need to check on the kids!” she gasped, looking for a metro station as the crowd thinned a bit and she sprinted into the street.

If her technique was still effective, Naoya would be struggling to ascertain if she was turning left or right if he was watching from a distance. She would be an unstable target. 

“Where are you?” Gojo’s voice was cold and hard. 

“I was on a mission! A curse in a shopping district.” 

“Be more specific, Utahime. I can’t get there if I don’t know where it is.” 

She gasped out its name, rounding a corner breathlessly. She stopped short, because she collided with a solitary figure in traditional clothing. 

“Mean tricks, Utahime,” Naoya smirked, as staggered backwards, managing to keep on her feet. 

“What do you want with me?” she spat, seeing that Naoya now had coils of cursed energy protecting his ears. 

“Oh, I don’t know exactly, Utahime, because I don’t know how much Gojo cares about you. My instinct is that you’re just a sad little henchman to him because he needs a nanny at the moment,” Naoya’s voice seethed with distaste. “And then, of course, you’d let him fuck you. Actually, I bet you had to beg him to.” 

Utahime's stomach sank, even as she tried to push Naoya’s words away, remembering how easily she had agreed to the things that she and Gojo had done in the dark. 

Naoya may have been expecting her cursed technique this time, but he wasn’t expecting Utahime to throw a punch, hitting him squarely in the teeth, his lip splitting. 

“You fucking bitch—” he seethed, blood on his teeth, drawing a tanto knife out of his clothing. 

“God, you’re a disrespectful little shit. Don’t you know Utahime-senpai is your senior?” 

The cool tone of a familiar, flippant voice made Utahime and Naoya freeze. 

Utahime turned to see Gojo, hands in his pockets, head cocked at the scene. Utahime recognised, now that she had seen the real thing, that Gojo’s nonchalance was fabricated. She could feel the dark waves of anger coming off his body. 

“Nice one, Uta. You got him real good.” 

“Were you in the neighbourhood, Gojo?” Utahime choked out, too breathless, too relieved to see him to worry that he was saving her. 

“Yes. Shopping, you know,” Gojo shrugged, and his grin was so menacing, Utahime felt her blood cool a bit. 

She had almost forgotten that Gojo was actually terrifying when he wanted to be. Naoya was glaring at the two of them, his eyes bugging out in anger, frozen in the indecision of how to retaliate. 

“I just finished talking to Naoya-kun. Can you give me a ride?” 

Gojo’s eyes were fixed on Naoya, but he smiled placidly. 

“Sure, Utahime-senpai,” he said sweetly, taking his hand out of his pocket to beckon her closer. “I’ve got some time before the school run.” 

Utahime, her legs a little shaky, stepped towards him and he swept her into his arms. 

“Where is the car?” he growled quickly as he dragged her closer, arms linking behind her back. 

“Your parking garage. I didn’t bring it—” 

But Gojo had already broken down the atoms, and Naoya, the shopping district and the Tokyo street were all stripped away. Utahime had the uncomfortable sensation of new atoms configuring and bending her, as she and Gojo reassembled the world, in the back seat of Gojo’s SUV, awkwardly squashed in the dark interior, Gojo's arms still around her as they perched on the edge of the richly upholstered seat. 

“Fuck, are you okay?” Gojo asked frantically, his hands moving from behind her to feel along her arms and grab her face, angling it for the poor light in the dim interior, too rough and making her wince.

“Yes, I’m fine. I just got a bit of a workout,” Utahime was embarrassed that he touched her like this, so casually, with a kind of intimacy of familiarity. 

“Shit, Uta, I didn’t think that fucker would go directly after you!” Gojo sounded slightly delirious, like he hadn’t heard her say she was okay. 

“I’m okay,” she insisted, as his hands slid over her shoulders. “The kids are okay.” 

“You punched him, holy fuck, you made him bleed,” Gojo marvelled, his hand travelling up the side of her neck, cradling her jaw, his thumb pressing down on her lower lip. 

Utahime’s pulse hammered, because Gojo was too close, suddenly and the atmosphere in the confines of the car vibrated with coiling anticipation, like standing at the edge of the cliff face, understanding which way was certain death and yet feeling the tug of the abyss anyway. 

“Did you use your technique on him?” Gojo asked, his voice rumblingly low. 

Utahime’s breath was shallow. 

“Yes.” 

She formed the word against Gojo’s thumb. 

Gojo stared at her, his gaze slipping to her lips where he gently rubbed the pad of his thumb. 

“Did he touch you?” he asked the question like a voice from the bottom of a well. 

Utahime shivered, because there was a threat in the shadowy corners of Gojo’s voice. 

“No.” 

“Good.” 

Utahime exhaled softly, and slowly eased over, straddling Gojo as he sank back slightly into the car seat. Swallowing, Gojo reached up and pulled the sunglasses off his face. Utahime’s stomach clenched traitorously, as she gazed into the azure depths, layers of blue, violet and cerulean, the first miracle in four centuries. 

She could feel the press of his erection pushed directly against the clothed seam of her cunt, the hem of her summer dress riding up over her thighs and Gojo’s palms settled on her ass, pulling her against his hardness. He sought out her eyes when she dropped her gaze from his. 

“You’re hard,” Utahime observed, her eyelashes fluttering slightly because Gojo hands on her ass moved her, rubbing her against him. 

“Yeah, I’ve been hard since I saw you punch that little shit,” Gojo laughed huskily. 

Maybe she was a whore, because the rust in his voice made her guts tighten. She reached up and touched his mouth with her thumb, the same way he had touched her. 

“Were you at the docks?” she asked softly, wondering what she was to him, how much truth she deserved.

“No,” he murmured. “I was meeting with the man who forged the adoption papers. For fake marriage paperwork in case we need it.” 

“Oh,” she whispered, rolling her hips, making him gasp softly, wondering if she could come like this. 

“The situation at the docks is with curse users. They don’t always call me about that stuff. Just in case,” he said softly, and she shivered because he slipped his hand into the bodice of her dress, cupping her breast, his thumb sliding over her nipple. 

“Just in case?” she repeated, the brush of bare skin making her feel hungry. 

“They don’t want me to get any ideas about defecting.” 

Utahime’s heart constricted, touching Gojo’s eyebrow softly.

The loneliness in his voice was palpable. It felt sadly familiar to Utahime, who was also always alone. It was all relative, wasn’t it? In a family of non-sorcerers, Utahime was bound to be the most powerful. And Gojo, it went without saying, was the most powerful baby born for hundreds of years. She thought of Megumi and Tsumiki sleeping tangled up together, and of the desecration wreaked upon the childhoods of powerful children. 

"I'm sorry that I didn't protect you," Gojo rasped, because Utahime was rolling her hips, chasing the friction between them. 

"That's not your responsibility," she whispered.

"It is...you're my friend," he breathed, looking down as their bodies moved together, too much fabric between them, the air growing too hot. 

He had pushed the skirt of her dress all the way up her thighs, and he saw her flimsy, transparent panties, the spray of embroidered flowers damp with her arousal, pressed against the bulge in his pants.

"Shit. Your underwear," he hissed. "That's so hot, Uta."

“Can we go upstairs?” She asked softly, sliding her hand up the back of his head, brushing the suede of his undercut, cupping the shape of his head. 

“Cleaning lady is there,” Gojo whispered ruefully, hands on her waist how, following the roll of her body. 

“Oh.” 

It wouldn’t take much for her to get off, rocking along the ridge line of his erection, feeling his hands on her body, his breathlessness. But she knew she wasn’t going to do that. She wanted something more. It should frighten her that it was this easy with Gojo. 

“I can’t believe you’re going to make me come in my pants again, Hime,” he laughed, his voice getting more ragged. 

She stilled, looking again into the pale galaxy of his eyes, holding his face in her hands. Friends, allies, partners...

Blue, blue, blue. 

Utahime slowly, as if the world turned backwards a little on its axis, leant forward and kissed Gojo Satoru gently on the mouth. 

Chapter Text

Utahime touched her lips to Gojo’s soft mouth, her eyes falling shut, the gavel dropping. Her heart swooped, as she felt him stiffen slightly and the fingertips of the hands wrapped around her waist press more insistently into her flesh in his surprise. It felt like he might dip his head away, tilt his chin down away from her kiss and tell her not to, that this was too intimate. 

But then, quite suddenly, responsiveness burst out of him. His hand flew up to grasp the back of her neck, jerking her towards him as she started to pull back in slow panic. His mouth opened underneath hers, too hot, breathless, and he was furious, adamant, licking into hers, prising, coaxing, edging in. Utahime’s blood was whipped up into the same frenzy, losing her breath, returning his kiss as his tongue slid against hers, trying to push him back yet hungrily devouring him when he nipped at her lower lip. He was trying to shrug his jacket off his shoulders, but gave up, absorbed in their kiss. 

Utahime fumbled with his belt buckle, her heartbeat like a current in her ears, as he kissed her frantically. She had to laugh and break from the kiss, turning her head slightly so that she could see what she was doing. So Gojo kissed her face, bit her cheek, licked the corner of her mouth and along her lower lip, distracting her even when she managed to get his zipper down. She laughed helplessly, trying to bat his hands away as his large palms slid over her tits and tugged at the straps of her pink dress. His mouth sought hers selfishly, kisses laid over kisses, lips over lips, his fresh, blue eyes fixed on her face, watching her every reaction. 

He grew completely absorbed in kissing her, cupping her face and using the press of his thumb on her chin to urge her mouth open for him so he could slide his tongue deeper. Utahime’s heart hammered in her chest, feeling how wet she was, her desire becoming urgent. Gripping the waistband with both hands, she tried to drag Gojo’s boxer briefs down a bit, but he was too occupied in their kiss. She laughed against his mouth as he mumbled in protest that she dipped her head back to speak. 

“Help me, you moron,” she breathed against his lips as he closed the space again. 

The only concession he made was to lift his hips. Utahime tugged his uniform trousers and his underwear down in one movement, but Gojo used the motion of him lifting his body to lean more deeply into their kiss. He finally closed his eyes, like he was relishing the feeling at last. She watched his white lashes fall softly on his cheeks like a memory from a dream. And then she looked where her flimsy, translucent panties pressed now against his nakedness, his erection, and his palms pushing her dress high up on her legs, bunching at the crease of her thighs. 

As Gojo kissed her neck, biting her jugular, making her throb, she looked down at his cock, swallowing all her trepidation and arousal in the same mouthful. Utahime exhaled shakily, seeing him for the first time in the dim light of the tinted windows and the murky basement parking, remembering with a flutter of her stomach that she had taken him into her mouth the night before and that he had jolted with pleasure against her tongue. He was so big — pretty, long. 

 Fuck. Fuck, she was so turned on.

And the way he didn’t seem to care about the way she gazed down at him mesmerised— as he grasped her tits through the thin cotton of her dress, absorbed in sucking against her skin, kissing along her jaw and biting her earlobe — was a disaster of the same nature. She always imagined that Gojo would be the kind of guy who bragged about his dick. But now, Utahime gazed at the girth of it, its smoothness and glossiness over the tip, and he did not even pause to take in the effect seeing it had had on her. 

Was this how it had felt to watch her in the dark the night before?

“Gojo, I want…” she gasped, feeling helpless. 

Gojo’s eyes opened, slightly dazed, slipping his fingertips into the hair at the nape of her neck. His lips were swollen, too pink, and his eyelashes seemed heavy as he slowly focused on her face. 

“Touch me,” he whispered, his mouth hitching up at the side in a dazed smile. “You owe me a handjob.” 

Utahime frowned, even as he pressed his mouth against hers again. 

“No, I don’t,” she mumbled obstinately against his kiss, making him rumble out a little laugh in his throat, 

Her cheeks were flaming because she wanted to do more than that and she didn’t know how to say it. 

He grasped her wrist, and when his mouth left hers, it was smiling. She watched, eyes wide as he turned her palm upwards, and spat into her hand. She winced, parting her lips for a complaint that didn’t come, as he folded her hand around his cock, sliding it up the length of it, just like he had done the night before, except this time she could see it. She could see the way the pass of her hand made his lips part, his eyelids flutter, body shifting. 

Utahime pressed her teeth into her lip, her legs trembling a little as her cunt ached at the feeling, the softness and hardness all at once, slippery and obscene, and Gojo’s quiet and dark murmur of appreciation against her throat. 

“Satoru, please…” she pleaded hoarsely, wishing he would give her the vocabulary, wishing he would push the issue. 

“Tell me, Hime,” he rasped, a smile curling in voice, hitching at each slide of her hand up and down his cock. 

She was frustrated that now, at the crucial moment, she was failing to ask for what she needed, that she was blushing and anxious, looking untried. She bit her lip harder in frustration. 

I want you to fuck me. 

It shouldn’t be hard to say, but she hesitated still. This seemed so revealing, so raw. She weighed her options, wondering whether, if she said it and put herself on the line, offered herself to him, and he refused this audacious readjustment of rules they hadn’t even spoken about, she could make him forget that she had asked. She probably could — by casting a trick, the hardest one — make him unremember it all. 

But, as if she had spoken aloud, Gojo slowly tilted his head back, looking up into her face with eyes turning over to a different emotion, a stillness settling, something portentous. His eyes were ravenous, pupils seeping outwards, as his gaze dropped to her lips again.  

“Ok,” he agreed softly.

His fingers curled into the flimsy fabric of her panties and tugged them out the way, making her jump as they brushed her skin. Utahime tipped her body up onto her knees, gathering up the skirt of her dress in her hands, as they lined each other up, found the apex. Gojo watched her face, his hand around the base of his cock, brushing along the seam of her cunt. She gasped softly when she felt him ease in just a little, already a delicious feeling, and she lowered herself slowly. 

“Look at me, look at me,” Gojo whispered, his breath ragged, his voice furious.

Utahime tried to look at his face, but her eyes closed as she felt the stretching, insistent feeling of him sliding up into her in increments. The press of his fingers into her hips grew harsh, his hands almost shaking. She cursed, gasping, wondering if she could handle all of him. She was so wet that she could hear the sound of him sliding deeper, and her cheeks burned at the desperate moan she made over the snug fit and the eroticism of the slick noise. 

Finally, she slid flush with him, panting. 

“Keep still,” Gojo whispered, swallowing hard, his jaw tensed. 

The fit was so tight, so deep, that Utahime probably couldn’t move right away if she wanted to. So she hiccuped a laugh, letting Gojo grasp her hair and pull her mouth down to his again, his nose nudging her face until she tilted her chin and pressed her lips against his. The feel of his tongue in her mouth again made her pussy clench in excitement and she felt Gojo groan against her lips, and grasp the tops of her bare thighs with a grip that nearly hurt her. 

She squeaked softly as he bit her lip, something so still in the passionate violence of his grasp and his kiss, unmoving yet insisting. 

Fuck, it felt delicious. So full. She tipped her hips, exploring. 

Gojo’s hands on her thighs squeezed tighter, a little warning. 

“No, keep still,” he insisted hoarsely.

“Satoru—” she began.

“Don’t move. Let me feel all of this.” 

Utahime whimpered, because his hand slid over from the top of her thighs, pushing aside her underwear again from where it had slipped back. She nearly jolted as the pads of his fingertips circled her clit. 

“Shit, Satoru—” she gasped, her thighs tensing as if to shut, but pushed wide by his legs. 

“Look at me, Hime,” he repeated raggedly, “and don’t move. Let me see. I want to see it all.” 

She moaned, because the slippery circle he drew on her clit made her tremble, a shocking and acute pleasure all at once with the feeling of being full of him, his body in hers, hers over his. Her breathing was too shallow, feeling her bones leach out of her and be replaced instead by tension in her muscles, her stomach clenched, her cunt tensing around him. 

He nudged her again with his nose to tease her gaze back up to his, as she gasped out her exhale, his fingertips on her clit finding a devastating rhythm. She met his eyes hesitantly, her face hot, as her body shook, jerks of feelings, trying to keep still fighting the urge to move on his body. 

And his eyes moved around her face, cataloguing her carefully, biting his own lip. She wondered if he had been doing this yesterday in the dark, with this level of quiet intensity. His eyes fluttered only slightly, because she squeezed him tighter in the coming throes of her orgasm, breathless and tense, her body starting to vibrate, to squirm on his cock despite her best efforts to keep still. 

“I’m so close,” she gasped, grasping the fabric of his jacket on the shoulders. 

“So beautiful when you come. Fuck,” he breathed out, losing some of his composure. 

Utahime cried out as pleasure burst outwards from the tips of his fingers. Her orgasm rolled through her body, moving her like a wave. Gojo’s hands gripped her thighs again, his jaw set, swearing through his teeth while satisfaction rocked her body, the force of her pleasure shaking both of them. 

And she moved then, nudging slightly, insistent on the tail end of her climax, wringing it all out to the last drop. 

“Fuck, Utahime, don’t do that,” Gojo laughed unsteadily, squeezing his eyes shut. 

“Don’t stop,” Utahime whispered, her voice lustily full of the languor of her fading pleasure, of her muscles going soft with the warmth of how good he had made her feel. “Fuck me, Satoru.” 

Still stretched, still full to capacity by his cock seated deeply inside her, she felt a power welling up inside her, a dam breaking, a freedom. 

“Hime, you’ll kill me saying things like that.” 

She moved her hips a little, teasing him, knowing she was even wetter now, and he groaned softly, his head pushing back against the leather headrest at every slow circle she made. She reached up and slowly slid both straps of her dress down properly, pushing down her bra too. Just like he had done to her in the dark, she caught his hands, which were still pressing into her thighs and guided them to her naked tits, arching into the cup of them. 

“Fuck me, Satoru,” she repeated huskily. “We’re not finished here.” 

He moved, his eyes made darker by his wide pupils than she had ever seen, and pushed her onto her back on the seat beside him, moving over her and edging her knees apart with his body, pulling her legs on either side of his body. 

When he slid into her again, it was fluid, slick, and she cried out because the friction was so unexpectedly electric. Her head pushed back into the upholstery, throat arching, shocked at the delicious slide along secret places. He drew out of her and slid flush again, stammering out her name, and Utahime swore, gasping at how the force of it made her toes curl, the tension in her limbs whipping up once again. 

“Hime—” he choked, fucking into her hard, making her whimper. 

His words were failing him; Gojo Satoru who always had something to say. Something about that made Utahime’s stomach flutter, her cheeks burning, watching him lose coherence while he thrust into her. It was that in the end, that knowledge of Gojo’s words stuck in his throat that pushed her towards the edge again. Her legs locked around his body, angling him deeper into her, her hands grasping the armrest in the door panel behind her. 

He was still watching her, his blue eyes almost glowing in reflected light, when she arched underneath him, moaning his name, a name she never called him in public, and came again. And then, closing her eyes, she ached with the heavy pleasure, his hard fucking, and she felt him tensing, gasping, pushing her dress away with blind hands. 

“Hime, you’re so beautiful—” 

And then she felt him pull out sharply, cursing furiously. She opened her eyes again so she could see the sensual fact to accompany her memory of how it had sounded in the dark.

She nearly gasped, awestruck at his beautiful face in rapturous pleasure, his hair falling into eyes squeezed shut and his cock in his hand. She gave an erotic shiver as she felt the warm spatter of cum over her belly. 

Utahime held her breath, the dust settling with her pulse, as she watched Gojo’s eyes open slowly over the landscape of her body — legs parted, arms over her head, tits bare and his cum splattered across her stomach and over her bunched-up dress. 

“Look at you,” he whispered, barely giving voice to his words. “Is this what it would be like if—” 

The sudden, jarring ring of her cellphone cut him off, making Utahime jump. Gojo froze. They let it ring in the charged air of the car, watching each other, coiled for disaster. They said nothing as Gojo reached and picked up her little handbag off the floor of the car and handed it to her. Swallowing, Utahime flipped it open with a trembling hand. 

“Hello?” 

She started to blush, as if the caller might sense that she was on her back in the backseat of an SUV with Gojo Satoru between her thighs. 

“Iori-san, my sincerest apologies for calling you again so soon. I hope you were able to deal with your mission expediently?” 

Utahime cleared her throat. It was the Window. 

“Yes, sorry for not calling it in, I—”

“Please do not worry, Iori-san. I’m afraid I must ask you to attend to another issue. It seems the situation at the docks requires a greater show of force. We are now being instructed to send in any available sorcerers.” The Window’s voice was polite, yet curt, harried. 

“I see,” Utahime managed. 

She closed her eyes, because she felt Gojo touch her stomach, smearing a line on her belly with his cum. 

“If you are not already too taxed, please hurry there as soon as possible. I can send a car…” the Window let the statement hang in the air, suggesting that she hoped Utahime would decline. 

“I can make my own way there,” Utahime said softly, wondering what Gojo meant by trailing his fingertips through the mess he had made of her. 

“Thank you, Iori-san. I will text through the location.” 

Utahime slowly closed her phone, letting it shut with a small click. 

Gojo looked down at her, his face unreadable, as his cellphone started to ring obnoxiously. He had to hitch up his pants to get it out of his pocket. 

All hands on deck, it seemed. Even weak Iori Utahime, even ungovernable Gojo Satoru. 

Utahime watched him have the same call as she had, answering the questions abruptly, cradling the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he zipped up his trousers again. Utahime folded her hands over her breasts, blinking, unsure how to proceed.

Gojo, as he spoke to the Window, started to shrug his jacket off at last. Utahime watched in awe as he bunched up the fabric and gently wiped at her stomach, his eyes like steel as the Window warbled into his ear about details that had been kept from Utahime but shared freely with Gojo. 

Utahime squirmed slightly under the roughness of the material, her heart starting to throb. It was his school uniform jacket, something signature to the most powerful sorcerer in the world. He made a figure eight over her nakedness with it, wiping away what they had done. Something about the juxtaposition made a wave of emotion come over her. It wasn’t regret, it was fear. 

She was frightened that she had done something that she couldn’t trick herself about. 

Gojo hung up, sliding his phone back into his pocket. 

“We have to go,” he murmured. 

“I have to change,” Utahime whispered, her smile rueful and shaky. “There’s cum on my dress.” 

She hoped it would make him laugh, or cackle boisterously, but he just stared at her, his cheeks suddenly pinking slightly. And then he swallowed, nodding, avoiding her eyes. 

“Let’s go upstairs.” 

Gojo shut the door to the bedroom they shared so the housekeeper couldn’t see as he threw the jacket he had ruined onto the floor and reached up and pulled his shirt over his head as well. 

Utahime swallowed her surprise, pulling her dress over her head with shaky hands, following his lead as Gojo disrobed fluidly and walked into his obnoxiously large walk-in wardrobe. She slid her panties down her legs, trying to tell herself that she was foolish to be shy now, after everything. She needed to get her head in the game — there was a tricky mission ahead and she was already slightly injured, already slightly spent. 

She rooted around for fresh underwear in the drawer that he had assigned her. She’d had to wear the leggings again because she was going to have to be even quicker than normal, even more evasive, if she was fighting curse users. She unclipped her bra because she’d need a sports bra. Once again, she speculated that the layers of her miko attire would be better. 

“It’s a hostage situation at the docks,” Gojo suddenly said, making her spin around. 

They stared at each other. She had only her panties on so far, holding a sports bra in one hand and her leggings in the other. Gojo was similarly balanced, also in his boxer briefs, by clean trousers and a clean t-shirt. 

“Oh?” Utahime murmured faintly, trying to focus, because she felt the throb of his vigorous fucking more acutely as her stomach clenched. 

So beautiful, so singular. What did it mean that Gojo Satoru had let her see all of him and touch all of him? She panicked, because he was not behaving how she imagined that he would. He was too quiet, his eyes burning into her. She wondered if he regretted it. Her hand twitched to cast a trick. She could fix that, if it came to it, if that was the case. She remembered what they had told each other in the darkness of the bedroom — it doesn't have to mean anything. That was the lifeline in all this, after all, and the reason she was trying to tell herself she didn’t need to be frightened. If it meant nothing, it could be unremembered. 

Gojo cleared his throat. 

“Yes, as far as they can tell, it’s an organised hit. The Window seems to think that a band of Curse Users have been hired by some shady people to strongarm the management of a freight company.” 

She wondered if he was relieved, because this seemed too base, too money-grubbing, to prompt an encounter. This situation lacked the ideological flavour that would suggest that Suguru was involved. Maybe that was why they had finally called Gojo. 

Or maybe it was simply because their comrades were failing. Maybe it was because their comrades were dying. 

Utahime pulled her sports bra over her head, trying to break the spell, trying to be nonchalant. 

“Do they know how many Curse Users are involved?” she asked. 

Gojo shook his head, following her lead now and pulling on his trousers. 

“It seems like there are pockets of hostages across the compound, which may or may not be further fragmented by incomplete domains.” 

“They want us all to split up,” Utahime deduced, wiggling into her leggings. “otherwise they would have just called you.” 

To her surprise, he handed her his sunglasses, and she didn’t know what to do except take them. He pulled the clean cotton shirt over his head before reaching for them from her again. 

“We don’t have to,” he said carefully, “if you don’t want to.” 

Utahime couldn’t help the sharp spike of her temper, that even now as she could still feel the imprint of him inside her, he might suggest that she was too weak to handle herself. 

“I will be fine.” 

Gojo held back the remark that sprang to his lips, putting on his sunglasses slowly. He slipped his arms into a clean uniform jacket. 

“Will you call me if you need help?” 

Utahime pulled a t-shirt over her head, feeling flustered by his unreadable tone 

“I will be fine,” she repeated firmly. 

Gojo looked at the time on his cellphone screen. 

“If this isn’t finished by half past two, I’m coming to find you.” 

“Satoru—” 

“The kids will end school at three. One of us will have to tap out to go get them,” Gojo’s smile was returning, a slow thaw, enjoying interrupting her tirade before it began. “The Zen’ins will know we’re preoccupied so we need to make sure they’re safe.” 

Utahime narrowed her eyes, too proud to fully accept that he wasn’t antagonising her. 

“So I should tap out?” 

Gojo grinned now, looking more like himself as she prickled, a kitten with its fur standing on end. 

“We’ll decide at half past two, Sporty Spice.” 

Utahime gritted her teeth, even though it felt good that Gojo was smiling, that he wasn’t so eerily quiet with her. 

“Oh shut up, you overgrown mop.” 

He waited until she had straightened up from lacing up some running shoes before stepping close to her. Utahime braced herself for the turmoil of atoms that was teleportation. But Gojo’s hands slid first into the curve of her waist, drawing her flush with him, smiling down on her with a lopsided smile. 

“Don’t do too much alakazam, okay? Be careful.” 

Utahime’s cheeks burned, because it looked like he might kiss her again. 

“I’ll do exactly as much as I need to,” she countered archly, getting more prickly than she needed to because his smiling was now disconcerting her worse than his silence, “ You be careful.” 

Gojo’s hands slid down, cupping her ass, putting her onto her toes, snug against his chest. 

“It’s a deal, senpai,” he murmured fondly. 

Utahime opened her mouth to scold, but he had already let go of her ass. His fingers meshed behind her and the world peeled away. 

Utahime’s running shoes made no little sound on the asphalt because she was good at being stealthy. Multi-coloured containers stacked high and haphazardly around her, making iron crenulations against a sky dimmed by the darkness of the Veil. Her senses were peeled raw, sensitive to any disturbances. It seemed like a battle had already been fought here, because she could see scorch marks against some of the containers and on the tarmac. She had passed some dented containers that had been knocked over, like a baby god had petulantly toppled its building blocks. 

Her eyes slid upwards, to the rows of red cranes arching over the berths and the water before the edge of the Veil cut off the sequence, wondering if she was being watched from on high. This was a siege, after all. The Curse Users had been told to hold their ground, keep their hostages, and kill anyone who interfered. 

The storage areas of the shipping company had been segmented into five separate Veils, each one confusingly arranged and conditional. There were civilians inside, Gojo told her, so time was of the essence. 

Utahime took stock of her cursed energy. It was dented from earlier, but not hugely so. She could probably cast two tricks — three, if the Curse User didn’t throw off her technique immediately and if there wasn’t too much emotional rebound. 

But she would need the element of surprise. If she stumbled upon the Curse User that was guarding this segment of the blockade, then maybe she could subdue them quickly with a trick. 

And if the Curse User thought that the battle had already been waged there was a chance that they were just waiting to be told the siege was over. But she could only hedge her bets in terms of planting seeds of truth to exploit later because she couldn’t see her opponent. 

In the distance, Utahime heard a faint rumbling, the roar of a faraway explosion, and wondered if Gojo had taken someone out. She tried to sense him, but there were too many barriers between them. Maybe she’d run into Mei Mei, who had been one of the original sorcerers deployed. 

Suddenly, Utahime rounded the corner of a stack of containers, and from on high, a figure dropped down onto the asphalt, blocking her way. 

Utahime froze, her arms coming up into a fighting posture by instinct, as a lanky teenage boy straightened up in front of her. His hair was a chemical yellow, and he was dressed in white overalls unbuttoned and rolled to his waist, leaving his chest bare. With both his hands, he was holding a large toy gun in primary-coloured plastic. 

“You’re cuter than the last one,” he observed dryly, twirling his toy gun like a gunslinger. 

Utahime didn’t hesitate, hand flicking out to cast her trick, her mouth twisting naughtily. 

“Watch the coin.” she warbled. 

The kid in front of her stiffened, his eyes swirling immediately. Utahime winced because she had accidentally poured too much cursed energy onto her words. 

The coin becomes two. 

She couldn’t hesitate now, even though she had no proper kernel of truth to manipulate. All Utahime’s instincts told her to stay out of range of his seemingly innocuous plastic weapon. 

“ You ran into two girls exactly alike, didn’t you? ” Utahime sang enticingly, as her throat started to itch from the strain.“ You didn’t hear footsteps, so it’s easy to believe.” 

It was tenuous, but Utahime saw the teen blink, his vision doubling as he frowned in confusion. Utahime darted to the left, weaving, knowing that her mirror image was doing the opposite corresponding movement to her. 

He scowled, swinging his weapon around and opening fire as Utahime dodged. To her surprise, a jet of water sprayed out in a fine stream. 

It was a water gun. 

But Utahime watched in horror as the asphalt caught fire where the water hit the ground in a clatter. Her nose wrinkled, because it wasn’t just fire, there was something like the whiff of bleach on the smoke, something corrosive. 

She darted into a gap between the containers, willing the projection of herself to slip around the other side. This was one of the hardest techniques to keep a grip of, because it wasn’t only visually confusing for her opponent. Utahime could control the mirage, better than when she cast The coin moves from hand to hand. But it meant she had to be aware of the landscape from two angles. Otherwise, her opponent might see her shadow self suddenly run straight through a lamppost or a wall, and ruin the illusion. After all, it was all just smoke and mirrors. 

She pulled herself up onto a container, leaping up to get a vantage point so that she could figure out where to move the projection of herself. The teen was casting about, seething. As she clambered onto the roof of the container, his eyes shot up, clocking her immediately. He aimed his toy gun at her, and Utahime quickly ran her mirage self out of the shadows and into his peripheral vision. 

He started, jerking around to the left, opening fire on the mirage. A spray of water slashed through the air, slicing through nothing, the particles barely moving around a vision of Utahime,  which blinked passively at her assailant as the water sailed through her body and onto the tar behind her. 

The teen frowned in confusion, and the real Utahime sprang, leaping down onto him, a kick aimed for his throat. Eyes wide, he slipped backwards from her kick, but Utahime’s heel landed in his chest, knocking him onto his back. 

She sprung up, heart pounding, trying to kick the weapon out of his hand, commanding her shadow self to sprint back into the shadows again. She slammed her heel down on his fingers, and he howled, kicking against the side of Utahime’s knee. She buckled onto the ground, pain sparking, and she scrambled for his hand again, the fight turning artless and scrappy as she jammed her elbow into his chest, winding him as the arch of her foot tried to pin his wrist to the floor. 

Utahime, her ears thrumming with adrenaline, saw him angle the nose of the watergun at point-blank range. Her eyes flew wide as he managed to squeeze the trigger just a little, a few drops dribbling out the nose. She retracted her leg quickly, and the drops fell onto the teenager’s bicep, sliding off his body harmlessly until they hit the tarmac. There, they made a little flame, the asphalt bubbling. 

Utahime rolled away from him smartly, rocking onto her feet again. The kid was fast, but he wasn’t trained like she was. He was all instinct. Utahime threw a punch, putting her weight behind it, and he hissed in pain as it connected with his jaw. She quickly recoiled, landing another lightning-fast blow against the bridge of his nose, spinning around to use her momentum to kick him in the solar plexus. He finally dropped the gun and Utahime kicked it away. 

He fell against the container, his nose bleeding, his expression furious. 

Utahime went cold. Was this a fight to the death? This boy was probably only a few years younger than Gojo. She didn’t want this. This wasn’t what she had signed up for. This wasn’t a holy crusade. 

As if sensing her apprehension, a horrible smile twisted his face, the blood running over his teeth as Utahime gripped his neck. She put a little cursed energy into her grip to reinforce it. He was winded, but he would get his composure back soon.

“Are you hot?” He asked Utahime, breathlessly, winded. 

Utahime squinted at him, the hair raising on the back of her neck. 

“What?” 

“It’s humid by the coast,” the boy said with a shrug. 

“Where are the hostages?” Utahime interrupted impatiently, unwilling to listen, because she had a sick inclination of what he was getting at. 

Also, he was going to reveal how his technique worked. Utahime grit her teeth, annoyed because revealing her technique was never a sufficient payoff for the boost. The moment anyone knew it was coming, they protected their ears, their emotions whipped up against her in disgust, immediately distrustful of her. 

“They’re around. They sorta scattered the first time I sprayed one of them,” he was grinning, “ and he got properly drenched. Toast.” 

Utahime tried not to blanch at the thought of what that stuff would feel like on the skin. She watched the boy make a little sideways glance at where his plastic gun was lying on the asphalt. 

“It’s just water, you know?” he was grinning even wider. “It’s just regular water.” 

Utahime punched him in the stomach, making him double over with a grunt.

“Well, not regular water,” he wheezed, grinning through his blood. “I can fiddle with it a bit.” 

“Shut up,” she told him, squeezing his windpipe, starting to panic a little. 

Utahime felt a stinging droplet of wetness roll down the side of her face. 

“It’s something in the water. I don’t know the exact science. I don’t go to school much,” he croaked, clawing at Utahime’s hands, his face purple and his smile ugly. 

Utahime could feel it like a sunburn. She winced, wiping her face on her shoulder, feeling the sting of heat like a rash. 

“I do know whatever it is, it is inside you as well. Something in the molecules.” The teenage Curse User said, his voice growing more conversational as Utahime's fingers loosened on his throat. 

Because where she touched him grew hottest and she let him go with a gasp of pain, like her fingers had been pressed against a stove. The pain eased slightly as she fell back from him, the heat cooling over her body. 

Fear rippled through Utahime, as she tried to rapidly strategise, because she suddenly realised that this kid could boil her alive from the inside out if she touched him. She needed to cast a trick, while some of the first trick still swirled in his pupils. Her shadow self had long since faded away, crouched somewhere in the shadow of a shipping container. Her cursed energy was running low so she had relinquished that trick to the ether, her throat scratchy, her skin flushed from the heat that her opponent had poured all over her. 

There was one boost she could give herself, even if it was a gamble. She cast the trick.

The Coin is bitten in half. 

Suddenly, as her technique landed, the teenager lashed out, punching Utahime so hard she spun backwards. She fell onto the tar, everything about her halved suddenly. The gamble was to survive the moments where her strength was sapped, her cursed energy puttering out to half of its meagre amount. 

“You’ve weakened me, haven’t you?” Utahime choked out in her lilting singsong, blood on her tongue. “I didn’t seem that formidable to begin with, so it is easy to believe.” 

“Damn, is that all you have?” The kid jeered. 

She felt the restoration rise in increments as he was duped by her trick, taken in by the misdirection. Her cursed energy flared up suddenly to its full strength, the cuts sealing on her knuckles, the coin restored. 

His face fell as Utahime jumped onto her feet, their fight turning scrappy, as Utahime landed punches, blocking his artless but heavy return blows. He was bigger than she was and angry now, and every time her fist touched his skin, a layer was singed off her knuckles. She lashed out, putting some cursed energy into her fists, feeling the burst of fresh energy start to drain out the bottom again. 

She couldn’t last much longer. She’d have to cast a trick that allowed her to run away. 

But as Utahime ramped up to cast a final trick, he kicked her in the face. She staggered backwards, gasping in pain as she felt blood stream down over her mouth and chin. Before she could put up a block, his fist landed in her gut, making her fall backwards onto the tarmac. 

“You don’t fight fair.” He hissed at her, as he kicked her where she curled, “You tricked me.” 

Utahime cried out, because she felt the crack of bone, and a sharp stab of pain. She folded in on the agony, gasping out her breath with her eyes squeezed shut. She was momentarily relieved that he paused, walking away instead of kicking her again, but her pain-addled brain pieced together where he was going. 

She heard the dull scrape of plastic as the boy picked up his water gun off the asphalt. 

“How do you do it? Is it with your hands?” 

Utahime screamed as he stamped on her wrist and the bone cracked. She sobbed out the pain as he settled on her chest, pushing the air out of her lungs, crushing a fractured rib. As he touched her, she felt the rash of heat come over her, her skin simmering as the sweat and blood turned to acid.

Her vision swam as she saw him push the muzzle of his plastic water gun into the cup of his hand. 

“I told you how mine works,” he said petulantly, dribbling the water through his fingers. 

She hardly had the breath for her cry of pain as he poured water over her face, dripping over her nose and down her cheek. The nerves screamed, as the fire of his technique turned the cool water to pure, corrosive heat. 

Utahime choked on her agony, closing her eyes to keep her tears in, as the kid used the water to slash into her neck and her arms, and she felt the stickiness of blood over her clothing. 

It didn’t feel unexpected to die. She was angry at herself, but at least…at least something had been done. As everything thinned to a fine line of cold agony, she thought about soft, white eyelashes resting on cheeks. 

And blue, blue, blue. 

Suddenly, the weight of the boy was wrenched off her chest. She gasped out a breath, but didn’t open her eyes, because the cursed energy that swirled around in the space he left was not a gracious one. It was not a relief to feel it.

She heard the battle clatter on, shivering in pain, her face burning as it hurt to breathe. The boy wouldn’t last. His opponent was too fast. 

Utahime tried not to listen as she heard the skirmish’s swift conclusion, her heart sinking at the quick and brutal sound of the teenager’s death, because she knew she was probably next. She heard the soft tread of traditional footwear.  

She opened her eyes, watching Zen’in Naoya swim into view. 

“Oh dear, Utahime, he didn’t fall for your little tricks?” he asked mockingly, his voice slippery with smugness as he crouched down beside her. 

It really was all hands on deck. She could see his split lip, angry and inflamed, where she had punched him. 

Utahime just glared at him, not enough breath to speak. 

“And now your face is really fucked up. Damn.” Naoya said nonchalantly .“Such a pity. You were maybe worth something before.” 

He straightened up. 

“Oh well, let me find the rest of these fuckers. You’ve been absolutely no help at all.” 

Utahime gritted her teeth through the pain, as Naoya turned his back on her, walking away between the shipping containers. 

“What good will you be to Gojo now, little viper?” he sang, his voice echoing off the iron as he got further away. 

Utahime stared up at the dark dome of the Veil above her. She turned her head to the side and saw the feet of the kid who had almost killed her, and squeezed her eyes shut in frustration. He was just a kid. There had to have been a better way for all of them. 

She could tell she was losing consciousness, because the corners of her vision were closing in with blackness. Above her, the sky should have been blue, but it was blackened out too by the Veil. In the unnatural darkness, she couldn’t tell how close it was until 14h30. She closed her eyes and gave in. 

The sky, she mourned, the sky should be blue. 

Utahime’s entire body hurt sharply, and she whimpered with the jostling, because she was being carried hurriedly. 

“It doesn’t have to be fucking prepared. It’s my fucking suite. Do I not have a fucking bedroom anymore?” 

It was Gojo’s voice, but she already knew that he was holding her because she could sense the way his Infinity was slipped over both of them. She could hear multiple hurried footsteps in their wake. 

“And where the fuck is Kameyo-san?! Get her to come to my room immediately.” 

She could smell the iron of her own blood on her clothing. The last thing she recalled before she suddenly dipped back into the blackness and Gojo’s furious voice and the softness of his Infinity keeping the air off her skin. 

Utahime came around when she felt Shoko’s soft, white cursed energy envelop her. Feeling her bones creep back into place, and her skin scab over, she opened her eyes to see her old school friend concentrating. In the background, she saw Gojo against the wall, scowling. 

“Shh, Uta, you can go back to sleep,” Shoko whispered sweetly. “It doesn’t always feel nice when everything’s going back into place.” 

So Utahime closed her eyes again, not expecting to actually fall asleep. But the relief from the pain was almost so absolute that she felt high. She let her grip on reality dreamily loose, feeling for the first time how soft the futon was beneath her, how gentle the summer air and how sweetly the room smelt. 

She heard Shoko talking with Gojo softly, and opened her eyes to see her leave. She wasn’t sure why it was such an effort to keep her eyes open when she felt so downy and comfortable, so relieved of pain and fresh in her mood. She watched with addled curiosity, as her eyelids blinked heavily shut, as Gojo talked to a tall, austere, older woman in a beautiful kimono. 

“Who is she, Gojo-sama?” the woman asked in a harried whisper, as Gojo pushed past her into the hallway. 

The rest of the imagery came in a collage of disconnected moments. Utahime opened her eyes to the tall, austere woman placing a tray beside Utahime’s futon, offering her water through a straw. 

“If you’ll forgive me, I am Gojo Kameyo,” she dipped her head deeply when she noticed that Utahime was staring at her. “If you need anything, you are to ask me.” 

And then she recalled Gojo kneeling beside her when the room was dark, pushing her hair back over her forehead, his eyes intent on her face. 

“Hey, sleepyhead, can I get anything for you?” he whispered. 

“Where are the kids?” Utahime croaked, wondering how she could sleep for so long and still feel exhausted. 

“They’re next door eating the Gojo Estate out of house and home,” he grinned, jerking his head to where Utahime could see the lights on in a room across a verdant garden, the doors slid open to the balmy summer evening. 

Utahime snaked a hand up and touched her face, expecting the worst. To her surprise, she touched overly smooth skin, but it was alien to her. She couldn’t feel anything at all of her fingertips sliding over the smooth skin. 

“Does it hurt?” Gojo asked darkly. 

“No, I can’t feel a thing.” 

“Shoko said you might have some nerve damage. She did her best considering…” 

… how bad it was. 

“Is it horrendous?” she asked quietly. 

She had never thought of herself as a vain person and now she braced herself for the truth, with Naoya’s words echoing in her head. She suddenly remembered Gojo in their heated, fleeting moments they had shared, calling her beautiful. 

“Nah. Just darker. Shiny. Like new skin. Maybe it will fade with all those juices you keep rubbing on your face.” 

She smiled, her lips feeling dry and cracked. 

“Would I scare the children?” 

“Nope, they’ve already seen you while you were asleep. You know what a creeper Megumi can be.” 

“Can I see them?” she asked, trying to push herself up on her elbows. 

Gojo pushed her down softly. 

“In the morning, I promise.” 

She nodded, feeling tired again, wondering why she was so weak when Shoko had attended to her. There was only one thing that would account for it. 

Severe blood loss. 

Utahime wondered how long she had lain there on the asphalt before Gojo found her. She’d ask him in the morning. She closed her heavy eyes. 

“Are you sure it doesn’t hurt, Hime?” he said, and she thought he might have dipped his head and kissed her cheek over the stretch of the new scar on her face. 

But she couldn’t feel a thing anymore. 

In the morning, Utahime opened her eyes to bright sunlight. Her eyelids stayed open, no longer tugged down by lethargy. The tall, older woman in the stunning kimono arrived with two other women and watched while they carefully helped Utahime to bathe and dress, combing her hair out and styling it sumptuously, wrapping her up in simple silks and returning her to the lavish and traditional bedroom where she had been for days. 

Utahime felt more secure on her two feet as she walked over the tatami mats to the cushions surrounding an antique ebony and gilt table where a tray of food had been laid, taking up the tea that steamed there and drinking it thirstily. 

While she sat and ate carefully off the sumptuous tray, Megumi and Tsumiki suddenly bounded into the bedroom, flinging their arms around Utahime and shrieking in excitement. She soothed them, laughed with them, ruffled Megumi’s hair, asked them gentle questions about how they had been spending their time at the Gojo Estate. 

Gojo Kameyo appeared, hovering at the edge of the scene while Utahime draped an arm around each child and allowed them to feed her fruit off the end of a skewer one by one. 

The older woman bowed deeply. 

“Forgive me, I feel I must take this opportunity to introduce myself again, and to beg your acquaintance. Gojo-sama has not informed this household, nor anybody else, of your name.” 

As she straightened up, her face set in concerned lines. 

Utahime opened her mouth, but it was Megumi who answered for her, something almost indignant about his tone. 

“Her name is Gojo Utahime,” he informed the woman tersely. “She’s Gojo’s wife.”

Chapter Text

Utahime could feel Gojo’s cursed energy long before she even heard his footsteps thumping down the wooden corridor to her suite. To his suite, she reminded herself. 

She was standing in the middle of the room, wearing a pair of soft linen trousers and a silk shirt—which had been among the small stack of beautiful clothes that Gojo Kameyo had packed into the dresser for her — when he burst into the room. It was the same kind of energetic, boyish, thundering intrusion that she remembered from their high school days. But there was something different about Gojo at his family estate. His jaw was tight and his posture rigid, and he moved everywhere with impatience. Utahime cocked her head, realising that he didn’t want the dust of this place to settle on his body. 

The door was slid forcefully shut in the face of a mob of servants behind him. 

“Should you be up?” Gojo asked, frowning, his hands resting on his hips. 

“I feel fine,” Utahime shrugged. 

Gojo came over to her, still frowning, his eyes behind the blackened glass as usual but obviously assessing her, looking deeper than silk and linen, deeper than skin. He was taking stock of her cursed energy — he was checking if she had had to lie to anyone recently. 

“Kameyo-san looks like she’s about to keel over outside. I thought something had happened to you.” 

Utahime couldn’t help her wry smile. 

“I’m perfectly fine. I think you’re in trouble.” 

Gojo’s sharp grin slashed across his frowning face, quick and easy, looking more like himself as his grim expression evaporated. 

“What did I do now?” 

“Megumi told her my name was Gojo Utahime.” 

Gojo looked down at her steadily, his head tipped down because he was so tall, and his hair fell into his eyes with the angle required to look at her face when he was standing close. Utahime curled her fingers in on the urge to push his forelock away from his face. 

“Oh,” Gojo said at last. “Sid she buy it?” 

“Who knows? She just left the room and hasn’t come back since. I’ve been walking around the estate this afternoon with the kids and everyone is giving me a wide berth.” 

Gojo’s eyes glinted over the edge of his sunglasses now, as they slid slowly down his nose, and she could see that broken concentrism of blue, cerulean and violet slide down her body again, again looking for chinks in her cursed energy that might suggest that Utahime had had to bamboozle someone. 

“I think they’ve probably been waiting for me to get here to confirm or deny it. I’m sure that the obvious farce with the kids makes them suspicious. I’m sure Kameyo-san speculates that you’re just part of that ruse and Megumi’s just confused about who to lie to.” 

Utahime remembered Gojo’s words about the interlocking lies, about the cutthroat nature of his clan, and what was needed to protect the house of cards they had built around the children. 

She shivered, realising the painful politeness of Kameyo was not warmth or concern. 

They’d probably try to kill any mistress of mine that they didn’t feel was suitable. 

Utahime’s fingers floated up involuntarily, and she rubbed her fingertips along the too-shiny, too-smooth skin over her cheek and the bridge of her nose. Weak, clan-less, poor… and not even pretty anymore. She wondered, with a bitter smile, if Naoya was right about her usefulness after all. 

“Where have you been?” she asked, her voice sounding far away even to her, feeling small in the world for the first time in a long time. 

Gojo cleared his throat. 

“The docks. Finishing up.” 

His hand reached up and grasped her wrist, tugging her hand down and her fingertips away from her scar, giving her a small smile and a little murmur of displeasure. Utahime hardly heard him say it, lost in the sensation of feeling every corner of her vulnerability like a sickening, dulling blanket of silence was washing over her. 

For the first time in her life, Utahime felt hesitant to pull the plug out on her cursed energy, to launch her technique and feel her only defence glug out of her like a broken pitcher. And she felt the crushing novelty of no longer feeling herself to be a child in an adult world. That feeling chilled her to the bone because she had always been ruthless with it. 

Noise returned slowly, the daze lifting a little, and her eyes flashed up to Gojo’s again.

“It’s a lot of people to trick.” 

Gojo said nothing, his thumb still pressed over her pulse point, eyes flicking over her face, looking like he couldn’t see what he was searching for. 

“Hime, don’t worry about it for now.” 

Utahime, trying to shake off the feeling — a remembered fear —looked down at the way he was still holding her wrist. Of course, they already had a contingency so that she wouldn’t have to always use her technique to sell their lie. It was in the way he was holding her wrist now. It was why they had begun this thing of touching. 

If there was a kernel of truth, it would be easier for her to manipulate the lie later on. 

“You need to stay here with me,” she whispered. “In this room, I mean. Sleep here.” 

“Okay,” he agreed softly. 

It was for the lie, to bolster it, but as Utahime’s eyes roamed over Gojo’s face, she wished that she didn’t feel some relief that he would be close by again. It made her feel a little strange, a little panicky, like she was in a car rolling slowly backwards. 

“Kameyo-san will expect me to lie to her. So we deny it rather than confirm it,” Gojo said softly. “We need to be as evasive and obtuse as possible with these people.” 

They were standing so close now, whispering, co-conspirators. She liked that too. 

“Everything about you is starting to make sense,” Utahime scoffed, feeling a little less adrift when she was making fun of him. 

She didn’t notice that her other hand had floated up and she was brushing her fingers along her scar again. 

“Yeah, well, it’s my family. It’s fucked up by nature,” Gojo said dryly, as he caught her other wrist and pulled it away from her face. “It’s why I don’t come here.” 

There was a gentle knock on the door and Gojo turned to look over his shoulder, as if he was slightly startled. 

“Come in.” 

Utahime blinked, surprised that he would allow an interruption so soon, and she guiltily pulled her hands out of Gojo’s grip. The door slid open and Kameyo stood in the gap, her hands folded demurely over the front of a gorgeous pale blue obi. 

“Gojo-sama, forgive my intrusion,” Kameyo said haughtily. “I wonder if I might speak to you in private?” 

“No,” Gojo said shortly, “I’m going to get some of my things in the city. We will be summoned for a debriefing session with the Higher Ups tonight so perhaps we can have an early supper with the children.” 

Kameyo’s eyes widened only slightly before they settled into her usual, unreadable mask. 

“Debriefing? I want to attend that,” Utahime said sharply, as she finally let Gojo’s words from earlier penetrate. “I was there too.” 

The docks. He had been finishing up the siege. The Curse Users had either been obliterated or surrendered. Was the job unfinished because he had come to find her? 

Gojo looked down at Utahime, his eyes moving over her face again, looking for something. 

“Sure,” he said at last. “You have clothes to wear? Kameyo-san was told to…” 

“Yes, I do,” Utahime interrupted, starting to feel uncomfortable with the older woman's rigid posture at the periphery of their conversation. 

But an audience with the Higher Ups. That was formal, ancient, traditional. She looked down at the soft, slouchy loungewear she had on. She’d have to change. Kameyo’s gaggle of servants had brought a selection of beautiful kimonos as well, so she’d pick one of those. 

“Help her, Kameyo-san,” Gojo commanded lazily, “and have the futon taken out and put my bed back in here.” 

Kameyo bowed and left in silence, her face as rigid as her posture. Utahime marvelled, embarrassed, remembering who Gojo was in the grand scheme of everything, her eyes fixed on the door that Kameyo had not shut behind her. It was like a small rebellion against Gojo’s princely tone to leave it open in her wake. In the gap, three young servants were huddled and whispering, peering into the room over each other’s shoulders. Maybe none of them had ever seen the Six Eyes in real life. 

Gojo’s fingers on Utahime’s chin suddenly turned her face back up to his. 

“I gotta go. Remember, be evasive and obtuse.” 

“Got it,” Utahime said, blinking as Gojo smiled down at her, feeling her stomach clench in apprehension. “Please bring my skincare from the apartment.” 

Gojo looked at her carefully, before his mouth softened into a small smile, his hand dropping from her chin, but his body leaning into her space with comfortable intimacy. 

“Heads up, I’m gonna kiss you before I go. Those little birdies in the hallway will tell as many people as possible.” 

“I’m sure the trick isn’t convincing them that we’re fucking,” Utahime swallowed, trying to ignore that this made her ears burn. “It’s convincing them that their nineteen-year-old clan head secretly married a nobody.” 

“Mmm. I thought you said I was starting to make sense, Utahime?” Gojo teased. “Doesn’t that sound like the exact kind of obtuse and evasive nonsense I would do?” 

“Why would you lie about it then? Wouldn’t you rub it in their faces?” 

“Because they want me to get married and I’ve always said I wouldn’t.” 

“You’re right. It’s very fucked up in these parts,” Utahime said dryly, making Gojo snort out a laugh. 

He grasped her by the waist suddenly, dipped his head and pressed his soft lips against hers, smiling his kiss into her mouth, greedy and silly. Utahime let it last a moment, before her heartbeat overtook her, her cheeks burning at the sudden upwelling of arousal that she didn’t expect, and made her push him back. 

“Stop it, you idiot,” she breathed admonishingly, her lips moist, burning. 

He was chuckling, biting his lip. 

“Obtuse,” he accused teasingly. 

“Yeah, I’m a fast learner.” 

There was a muffled giggle from the hallway and Utahime’s face flamed again, remembering that they had a not-so-surreptitious audience of servants in the gap of the door. 

“See, they’ll tell Kameyo-san immediately,” he said with a smug little lift of his shoulders. 

Something about the way that Gojo referenced her seemed to fly in the face of his curt, lordly manner in this place. He ordered her about like the prince he was, and yet she wasn’t sure she had ever heard him use an honorific before that wasn’t at least a little bit ironic. 

“I can’t figure her out in all of this,” Utahime mused quietly. “Why is it so important that she believes us?” 

Gojo took a step back, his face taking on a quality of stillness, as he pushed his sunglasses back up his nose, flexing his fingers, about to teleport. 

“Because she’s very influential,” he said with a shrug, “because she’s my mother.” 

Utahime cast sidelong glances at the straight-backed woman overseeing the two girls who were helping Utahime dress.

It made sense — she was beautiful, tall, stately — of course she was his mother. Utahime wasn’t sure why she hadn’t guessed it before, because she carried herself like she was mother to a prince. On top of that, it was clear that she was mildly terrifying to all the other women in the household. But Utahime could sense the reason why her position in the hierarchy was not absolute. 

This beautiful woman had not the slightest hint of cursed energy. What an immaculate irony that she had birthed Gojo Satoru. Perhaps that was her Heavenly Restriction? She'd be the one to birth a god. 

“Is it true?” 

The blunt question from across the room, from a woman who had been haughtily polite from the moment that they had met, took Utahime by surprise. 

Utahime held her tongue, blinking, resting her hand on the shoulder of a servant as they helped her into her tabi socks. 

“It would be typical of Satoru if it was,” Kameyo continued, her mouth making a line of displeasure. 

Utahime bent her head, her cheeks hot, feeling a little angry, a little affronted, that she would be forced to bear the humiliation of being told that she was so weak and inconsequential that marriage with her was the ultimate prank that a romping teen could play. 

So she said nothing. 

“There was a boy before you, you know?” Kameyo continued, her voice taking on a different tone, something huskier, more raw. 

“I know,” Utahime said softly, breaking her own silence because even now she couldn’t let Suguru go unacknowledged. 

“We never expected a girl. And the manner in which he brought you here, his panic, and the way that you two are clearly…” Kameyo’s voice trailed off, choking softly to a stop. 

Utahime bit her lip, glad for the distraction of getting dressed. 

“I believe that I know what he is doing with those Zen’in children,” Kameyo said at last, her voice returning stronger, “but I do not know where you fit in. It makes no sense to me, given what Satoru has always said on the matter, and that is why I must ask if it is true that you are his wife.” 

Utahime straightened up, swallowing, turning towards the woman at last. She took a deep breath and for once, enjoyed the uneasy sensation of telling the truth, unable to meet Kameyo’s eyes. 

“You are mistaken,” Utahime said quietly. 

It was a relief that Utahime did not need to cast a trick. She was feeling shaky about it, uncertain for the first time in her life, wanting to be careful with her body, wanting to hoard her cursed energy. Kameyo stared at her, as one of the servants turned to pick up the kimono that Utahime had selected. 

“Is that so?” 

“Yes,” Utahime answered. 

“You’re a sorcerer, aren’t you?” the older woman suddenly interjected, her eyes narrowing at Utahime. 

“Yes,” Utahime answered again, her stomach flipping over, a shiver of apprehension creeping down her spine. 

“So you were at school with him. I remember who you are. You’re that Utahime, the cursed speech user. The Trickster.” 

Utahime, taken aback, felt her lips part in surprise, speechless that Gojo from her school days would even mention her. Maybe he hadn’t. This was his mother after all — she would take an interest in those who surrounded a fabled son, a glorious heir. 

“Have you tricked him into this?” she asked, her voice like pumice. 

Utahime extended her arms so that the beautiful silk could be slid onto her body, shaking slightly, wishing he was there to buffer her from this. And then, at the thought of what his Infinity felt like around both of them, she quite suddenly also remembered Gojo’s mouth on her body, his lips on her neck, the feeling of his body knit with hers and his rough, lost voice in the dark. The truth settled on her quietly. 

She hadn’t tricked him, she had tricked herself. 

“I haven’t,” Utahime said hoarsely, wondering why the truth felt rough on her tongue when usually it was lying that took its toll. “I’m not his wife. Megumi misspoke.” 

Silence descended on the room, as the kimono was pulled gently over Utahime's shoulders. Kameyo put up her hand suddenly, and the servant froze, looking uncertainly at her colleague and then at the tall woman standing at a remove. 

Utahime stared back, as the woman assessed her with her stony expression, her eyes shrewd. 

“He brought you here,” she repeated, as if she wanted Utahime to confirm it. “To me. So that I see who you were.” 

Utahime nodded, not sure what she was agreeing to. 

Kameyo smiled slightly, and then directed her attention to the servants. 

“Not that one,” Kameyo said, her voice rough. “She should wear the pale blue one. The one with the dragonflies.” 

Utahime had not considered what it would be like to suddenly be in the scattered crowd of people who had been summoned to appear before the Higher Ups. Her heart sank as she scanned the crowd, noting who was there and who wasn’t, wondering if that meant that they were dead. 

The room was dark, and the paper screens that hid the Higher Ups from view were spread further out so that the crowd could stand in the middle of a flood of light and give an account of the proceedings. Utahime swallowed, pushed to the middle of the crowd, listening to Principal Yaga, Gojo, Mei Mei and unfamiliar voices explain at various intervals what had transpired and how the hostage situation had been brought to order. 

This wasn’t like her. She felt a little panicky, the memory of the pain, the feeling of dying, as her comrades discussed with blank voices the way in which the days had unfolded at the docks. She felt breathless, realising that she wanted to get out of that cloying space. She never wanted to be there again. 

Then she heard the voice that made her skin crawl. 

“We should squash out every faction of Curse Users entirely.” 

Naoya. 

She hadn’t told Gojo what he had done. She felt like she hadn’t enough air in her lungs, touching her scar, thinking about his sneering voice. Her anger burned inside of her with every syllable she heard echo off the paper screens. She had never thought of herself as vain, and yet now she felt the burden of people’s glances at her face as her anger simmered. 

When they were dismissed, she pushed through the crowd and into one of the long corridors leading off the meeting room. She felt shaky with fury, her hair coming a little loose from the immaculate confection that the servants had created, the combs tinkling gently. This was stupid. She shouldn’t be afraid, and yet she was. 

Frightened and furious. 

And as she rounded a corner, she stopped in her tracks, because a familiar black and blonde head lifted at the sound of her footsteps. The shock on his face made Utahime darkly gleeful for a moment, before it was replaced by a sneering smile and a curl of the lip that made Utahime’s mind go white with rage. 

“Well, Utahime. You look better than I expected,” Naoya smiled. “Your face is still pretty fucked up though.” 

She gritted her teeth, her nails digging into her palms as she fought the urge to lash out at him, trying to keep a tactical cool. 

“You left me to die,” she said coldly. 

There was just the slightest waver in Naoya’s expression, a shadow of uncertainty, a movement in his throat, and that was what gave her the idea. 

“Wouldn’t it have been a mercy? Considering how you look now? 

Utahime smirked, pushing a lock of hair behind a jewelled comb with a delicate movement and then flicking her hand back so that the sleeve of the luxurious kimono shimmered in the low light. 

“Oh really, Naoya? How do I look now?” 

Naoya’s eyes moved over the way Utahime was dressed, the luxury of the silk, the care taken with her hair and her jewellery, and she saw the cog turn slightly, the flicker of the fish on the hook. But she had already moved her fingers and cast her trick, her mouth already smiling before her technique even twisted her mouth into the impish grin. 

“Watch the coin,” she lilted eerily, the sound rebounding off ancient walls, worrying the syllables. 

Utahime saw the light of her cursed energy swirling in his irises, because as usual, a man had underestimated her. 

The coin changes visually. 

“You are concerned that you have underestimated me, aren’t you? ” Utahime warbled, her voice creaking unsteadily through the words as she poured her cursed energy on them with dark delight. “You thought I would die and yet I didn’t, so it is easy to believe. ” 

Naoya’s face was tight, the smug smile long since fallen, and the flicker of concern was growing. 

“Did Gojo save you again, Utahime?” he asked uncertainly. 

“You are thinking that it makes no sense that he would help me, aren’t you?” Utahime continued. “Either I have powers you don’t fully grasp or I have bewitched the most powerful sorcerer in the world. The uncertainty terrifies you. Here I am, alive, dressed in luxury only Gojo could afford, so it is easy to believe.” 

She watched the colour drain out of Naoya’s face, his lips parting, even as Utahime felt a little rebound of Naoya’s emotions screaming at him that Utahime was weak and inconsequential. Utahime couldn’t resist the final twist of the knife, amplifying the part of his thinking that might lead her to the thing she wanted him to believe. 

“You are petrified of me, aren’t you?” She watched Naoya start to tremble. "Everything about me makes you want to run rather than face me again. If I could do it to Gojo, then I could make you a mindless vassal. I am always defiant in front of you, even though I appear weak, so it is easy to believe.” 

Naoya tried to sneer, but his trembling lip failed him. He was shaking bodily, his face pale, and he stared at her like she was a monster. He was frozen in place. 

Utahime smiled a little wider, knowing how unsettling the Smile of the Imp would make it. And she moved quickly, making Naoya flinch and choke out a noise almost like a whimper, as she turned and walked away. 

To her surprise, Gojo was standing at the end of the corridor when she reached it. His jaw was tight as she approached. 

“What did he do to you at the docks?” he asked, his voice hollow. 

Utahime heard the air move as Naoya fled in the opposite direction. The adrenaline of their confrontation was draining away quickly. She started to feel panicky again, realising she had let too much of her energy go. 

“It doesn’t matter. I handled it.” 

“I thought you couldn’t manipulate emotions,” he said blankly. “You made him feel afraid.” 

“I can’t manipulate emotions. I messed with his train of thought. I forced a different logical conclusion and emotions might flow out of that. It’s the existing ones that won’t budge.” 

Gojo didn’t seem like he was listening to her anymore, his eyes roaming over her face. It made her feel vulnerable, not least of all because she had let her cursed energy dip too low once again. She grappled with the feeling of being defenceless in a new way, something about Gojo’s proximity stripping her of something she had always relied on. She felt tears of frustration prick her eyes — always too weak, and now, something new, a hesitancy, a fear. 

“Do you believe the things he says to you? Do you let him mess with your train of thought?” he asked softly. “Because you shouldn’t, Hime.” 

Utahime felt breathless suddenly, the beautiful kimono too snug, as she once again curled her fingers into her palms, but this time to fight back the urge to touch Gojo gently. The damning feeling settled on her once more, the realisation that never enough lies could be told that would make her feel differently. 

Her eyes brimmed. She wasn’t going to be the same again, she realised, the centre of her world going very still. She had felt like this once, when she was just a small girl, alone in the world. There had been an orange tree on a shared fence, a shared orange tree and a shared life. And then there had just been Utahime. 

And she looked up at Gojo, now her greatest vulnerability. 

“Let’s go.” 

She couldn’t say the word “home”. 

In the grand, traditional bedroom where Utahime had been staying, her futon had been carted off. In its place was a large western-style bed with a velvet headboard, strangely ostentatious and completed at odds with the stately décor. 

“Is this your bed from when you lived here?” Utahime asked, pulling a comb out of her hair. 

She had shed all the layers of that beautiful kimono and was wrapped up in a simple silk robe, with soft pyjamas underneath. 

“Yup,” Gojo said gleefully. 

He sat down on the dresser, watching her, with his hands in his pockets. Of course, Gojo hadn’t dressed up to visit the Higher Ups like everyone else had. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a leather jacket over it, showing every indication that he had actually purposefully dressed down . 

“What was it like growing up here?” she asked quietly. 

“Dreadful. Claustrophobic,” he said tersely. “It was a relief to get to Jujutsu High.” 

“Same here.” 

“Were you crowded around as well?” 

“The opposite,” Utahime said softly. “You must have been absolutely adored.” 

“Yes, but I wasn’t loved,” he said with a shrug. “How about you?” 

“I was loved,” she said very quietly. 

“That's why you do it so well,” Gojo decided. “Where is your family now?” 

“Dead. I wasn’t strong enough.” 

Gojo watched her carefully, but didn’t touch her, letting her words bleed into the silence until she wasn’t sure she had even said it aloud. 

“Because you were alone. You aren’t any more.” 

Utahime let his words settle, her heart aching for both of them. He gazed at her, his head cocking slightly.

“Should we talk about it, Hime?” Gojo suddenly interrupted. “About what happened in the car?”

Utahime stilled, avoiding his eyes, remembering how easy it had been, how natural and unavoidable it had felt. It hadn’t frightened her then, but it frightened her now. She was flushing, her body too hot, remembering. 

Weak, weak, weak. Vulnerabilities everywhere. 

“We were worked up, I guess,” she said quietly, shivering as she remembered his hands on her body, pushing her dress away from her stomach, lost in pleasure. 

“Yes, because you clocked Naoya in the face,” Gojo chuckled. “Turned me on.” 

Utahime couldn’t help her smile, but she tried to hide it, kicking herself for being so susceptible. 

“He deserved it,” She said with a shrug, her heartbeat picking up for some reason, as she tugged at the robe, loosening the layers.  

She thought of the eager, boyish kiss that had made her smile earlier, the one that had whipped up her blood so quickly, and the giggling servants in the hallway looking on. A kiss for their benefit. She shouldn’t feel so crushed that he had done it for them, so they’d take up the lie and spread it around, pollinators of their deceit. That was what this lie entailed, wasn’t it? There would be many kisses like that in the future if this continued, many touches, maybe withUtahime dressed up like a doll, a fine wife—

And she’d feel like this every time, the hurt growing steadily worse, the wound prised open. 

“It was really good, Hime,” Gojo suddenly broke into her thoughts, easing off the dresser and coming over to her slowly. “The car, I mean. What happened.” 

She wondered if anyone would ever call her beautiful again. At least the last person had been Gojo. That meant something. 

“I really liked it,” Gojo said, swallowing, standing too close. “It was…fun.” 

She looked up at him with wide eyes, her heart throbbing, because no one else was there. This was a huge mistake — a huge liability. Once again, he was so frank,  but it was just as Utahime instinctively hid away this weakness, giving in to something else instead. 

His mouth was on hers, slotting between her lips, his tongue licking against hers, before she could talk herself off the ledge, and she moaned softly as his hands slid over her tits and into her waist, and over her ass. His warm mouth found the spot on her neck that had melted her in the street, biting down, nuzzling. 

Everything crackled. The world tilted, her blood in a frenzy as he kissed her. And she felt the edge of the bed meet her, her back bending over it and being caught quick and soft. Utahime thought she might sob, wondering now that she had ever thought to fill the gap with meaninglessness, the shadow version of what this was. Above her Gojo’s breath was too short and she gasped, fumbling with his belt buckle as he dragged his shirt over his head, as they trembled together in their gasping urgency. 

They didn’t have all their clothes off yet, just enough unzipped or dragged down for him to thrust into her, pushing her knee up with one hand under the cup of it. Utahime’s moan was ragged as she felt him slide flush in one movement, a sudden and urgent possession. She arched, made tense by the same slick electricity that had made her gasp out in the back of the car. The delicious fullness made her whimper, drawing him tightly in, making him choke. 

And he pulled out and thrust in again, a deep resonance. 

“Satoru!” Utahime gasped, because he found the deepest part of her, and the fullness was too much suddenly. 

To her shock he pulled all the way out of her, his forehead dropping against her sternum, his body held apart from her, tense and poised. 

“What’s wrong?” she breathed, her heart pounding, feeling empty and panicked by the sudden absence. 

Gojo laughed against her chest. 

“I need to calm down.” 

Utahime couldn’t account for the way her stomach fluttered at his helpless laugh. She pushed him back, so he leant back onto his haunches. 

“Let’s get naked.” 

“That won’t help,” he chuckled, his knees pressed into the covers and pushing her thighs apart. 

“I mean, let’s slow down, you moron.” 

Gojo’s smile was hooded, playful, those blue eyes eating her alive as he looked down at her with her legs spread for him. 

“Calling me names won’t help either,” he murmured. 

Her skin hot, she reached down and pulled the soft pyjama shirt over her head. His eyelashes fluttered in the low light, shadows over his cheeks. 

“Fuck, Hime,” he marvelled quietly. 

“Take off your jeans.” 

Utahime watched Gojo slowly edge back off the bed, his eyes on her while his jeans hit the floor, the buckle of his belt clattering. She gazed for a moment at his beautiful nakedness, his long lean body, his hard cock, his hair in his eyes. 

She rolled over onto her stomach, looking at him over her shoulder, her breath too shallow as she invited him with her gaze. 

“Holy shit,” Gojo breathed. 

She wiggled her ass slightly, thinking of how candid he could be, wondering if she dare admit to the things she hadn’t done, the inexperiences that she would never previously admit to. 

“No one’s fucked me from behind before.” 

Gojo’s hand smoothed over her ass, as he crawled back onto the bed on his knees, watching the press of his fingers into the soft flesh. 

“Hime, the mouth on you,” he rasped, “is going to kill me.” 

“Will you do it?” she murmured. “Will you fuck me like this?” 

He didn’t respond, instead his hands grasped on either side of her hips, tugging her body into her knees. She gasped as his knee pushed hers apart and, one hand on his cock to guide him, he pushed into her again. 

She cried out, almost laughing, because the sudden wet, tight slide of him made her cunt tense at the slippery, delicious sensation. He groaned, pulling his hips back and thrusting in again. Utahime wobbled her knees at the force of him sliding back into her. As he took up a deliberate pace, her cheek made hot friction against the coverlet. 

She squeezed her eyes shut, moaning as he found something fundamental, elusive as a spell, in the rhythm of his thrusts. 

It felt so good, just as it was, and yet she knew it was building to a peak. It made her breathless, wanting suddenly to be wholly sharing with him, intrinsically interlocking. 

“Satoru,” she made the sound against the grain of the bedclothes. “Oh!” 

Because it felt like real magic, not trickery. He made something out of nothing, pleasure out of thin air. 

Gojo was breathless when he spoke, his words broken up by the force of his thrusts. 

“You only call me that when I’m fucking you, Hime,” he bit out. “That shit’s addictive.” 

She was so close to the edge, almost sobbing with the pleasure, as his hands on her hips kept her from writhing out of his grip. 

“Don’t stop, please,” she begged. 

As her body spasmed in the build to her satisfaction, she had a realisation. It was the release, the giddy surrender, that made it so good. Her eyes filled with tears, a dam breaking, as she let herself be vulnerable, her quills pushed smooth. 

The gasping pleasure overtook her, her orgasm unfolding quickly, prettily, where their bodies joined. She cried out, ecstasy and gratification jolting through her as her body squeezed tightly, loved tensely. 

Out of Gojo’s mouth, she only heard a string of husky, urgent cursing. And then, as all the tension went out of her body, he pulled her up against his chest, her back snug while his hands cupped her ribs. His mouth found a tender spot beneath her ear, while his cock slid even deeper into her from behind. 

She wasn’t sure she heard it properly amongst the filthy things he said into her ear while he fucked into her. 

“...beautiful when you come…” 

But she whimpered, overstimulated, overwrought. 

“Come inside me.” 

It was the surrender that made it good. As he spilt into her, groaning deep in his throat, three short pumps to wring the orgasm out of himself completely, Utahime felt her eyes well up. 

A new fear, the beauty of full and dreadful knowledge, broke through the ground in her heart.

Weak, alone, poor. And susceptible. 

In love. 

Gojo rolled over with her body, chuckling as he flopped onto his back with her. The back of her head slid centre of his chest, his chin on the crown of her head. Her mind was still tingling in the shock of it, as she heard his boyish chuckle and his hands slid up to grasp her waist. 

“Holy shit, Hime, that was amazing.” 

Her lips were dry, her heart pounding afresh. 

She loved him. 

It was the worst possible outcome, the greatest tactical oversight. His words were ringing in her ears. 

Fun. Mere fun. 

“Towel,” she rasped, trying to lift her back off his chest but finding her body too spent, too unwilling, to move.

Gojo was still seated deeply inside her, and she felt the shimmering of cursed energy moving, the turn on its axis that let her know that he was healing himself. 

His hands slid up to cup her tits from behind, her hard nipples through the webs of his fingers, making her shiver. 

“Not done,” he mumbled, playfully petulant as he bit her earlobe. 

She gasped softly, feeling him get hard inside her again, the thickening of his cock pushing the cum out of her. 

“Satoru…” she said, voice trembling as she wondered whether she should tell him about her dreadful discovery, whether she should explain why they had to stop this before she was entirely shattered. 

She hated to admit her weaknesses. 

But his one hand slid down the front of her body again. She whimpered as the pads of two fingers slid through the slipperiness between her legs and circled her clit. He groaned once again because she immediately clutched him tightly deep inside her at the sharp and sudden pleasure of it.

“Stay still,” he rumbled in her ear.

“Can’t,” she said helplessly. 

Can’t stay still while you make me come. Can’t do this when it means nothing to you. Can’t love you. 

“I want you to.” 

Utahime listened, believed him for the moment, and awaited the breaking of the spell. 

In the morning, as Gojo sleepily nuzzled into the back of her neck, Utahime reached the key points of a resolution. She had always been, by necessity, a tactical thinker. 

She had breakfast with the children, discussing how they would proceed regarding their safety. Using cups of tea, Utahime gently explained a little bait and switch manœuvre that Megumi could use if they were cornered, how he could deploy his dogs surreptitiously or with a show of strength. 

“You won’t only have your dogs, you know,” she told him gently. 

She wasn’t sure if Megumi even knew that. 

“How do I get the others?” Megumi asked, his mouth in a line. “How do I get stronger?” 

“I’ll help you figure it out. All in good time,” she said, ruffling his hair. 

And just then, another tile clicked into place for the new configuration she was trying to make of her life. 

After they had packed up their things, Gojo yelled down the hall, arms full of Tsumiki’s stuffed animals. 

“Kameyo-san! We’re leaving!” 

While Gojo had gone to the kids’ bedroom to check if they had picked up everything, Kameyo suddenly appeared, finding Utahime zipping up her little suitcase of toiletries. 

“You haven’t packed any of the clothing that Gojo-sama insisted that we buy for you.” 

“They can stay here,” Utahime said quietly. “I don’t need such luxurious clothes in my everyday life.” 

“Very well, we shall keep them for your next visit.” 

Utahime watched Kameyo’s still expression, her unreadable face, and wondered how Gojo could be so candid and expressive by contrast. 

The distinction was about weakness, about vulnerability. She wondered about the conditions of Gojo’s birth, whether Kameyo had been a wife or a mistress. She couldn’t be anything more than that, Utahime thought with a stab of anger, because of her lack of cursed energy. If she was merely a mistress, a second wife perhaps, a concubine, maybe the only thing that had saved her life was the fact that she had borne the ultimate fruit. The anger turned to a pang, Utahime's heart heavy, as she thought again of Tsumiki and everything that needed to change. 

It couldn’t just be those two children. She had to do more for all of them. For others just like her. 

“Thank you for your hospitality, Gojo-san,” Utahime said with a deep bow. 

Kameyo waited until Utahime had almost left the room before she spoke. 

“Please take care of him, Utahime-sama. He’s just a boy. He’s been hurt. He’s vulnerable.” 

Utahime froze, wondering if anyone else had ever thought Gojo needed caring for, needed protection. 

“I will.” 

Once again, Utahime found that she desperately didn’t want to be lying. 

The sun was almost completely set, long bars over the living room from the large glass windows, the city swimming hazily below them, the cars like koi in a pond. 

“I have to go to Kyoto,” Utahime said softly, as Gojo emerged from the hallway, pulling a hoodie over his head. 

“Right now?” 

“This evening.” 

“What for?” 

She took a deep breath. She had been shoring up her strength for this moment. 

“Gojo, I can’t be a sorcerer. Not really.” 

Gojo stilled, his eyes flickering around her face. 

“What are you talking about?” he said, his voice almost sharp. 

“I mean, I’m not strong enough to be a professional sorcerer.” 

“Utahime, if this is about my teasing…” he began abruptly. 

“No, this is about the fact that I’ll probably die before I can do the good that I want to do, because my technique is just not enough for the frontlines.” 

“You’re wrong. I’ve seen you fight.” 

She hadn’t expected Gojo of all people to be so obstinate about this. 

“You’ve also seen me almost die. Gojo, that happens a lot,” she took in a deep breath, because it was always hard for her to admit her vulnerability. “Don’t you remember the day you called me? I had just been smacked into a wall. A grade two curse and it nearly squashed me like a bug.” 

“But it didn’t. Because you’re a brilliant strategist.” 

Utahime’s cheeks turned pink under the glow of his compliments, coming out of left field, a sucker punch she couldn’t have predicted. 

“I want to help you. The vision you have for the future — I want to help,” she continued, “but I can’t do it if I’m dead.” 

Gojo stared at her, his throat bobbing. 

“What’s in Kyoto?” 

“I called Principal Yaga about a job. He says the only opening for a teacher is in Kyoto. Gakuganji wants to meet me.” 

Gojo’s teeth sank slowly into his bottom lip, assessing her carefully. 

“A teacher?” 

“Yes, that’s how we do it, Gojo. We craft the next generation. Not just Megumi, all of them.” 

He nodded slowly but didn’t seem fully convinced. 

“I see.” 

“I think I could be more useful. I know a lot about tactics and physical combat. I’m well-read and, unlike you, I actually wrote exams at school.” 

“Kyoto is far away.” 

“Yaga says he’ll call me as soon as a position opens up in Tokyo.” 

Gojo smiled suddenly, his lip a little too pink from biting it. 

“Maybe I’ll want that job,” he said, a playful, competitive note creeping into his voice. 

Utahime smiled. Of course. And he should take it. That made sense too tactically — a two-prong approach. 

“What about the kids?” 

“We’ll figure it out. You can teleport, there’s a bullet train. I probably won’t start right away,” Utahime said quietly, her stomach tense at the thought of leaving Megumi and Tsumiki. 

“So we carry on as normal for now?” 

“Yes, we carry on.” 

With one crucial difference. 

Utahime dipped her head so her hair hid the way her face changed. 

“ Watch the coin,” she warbled. 

Gojo’s Infinity wasn’t up, and Utahime laid on the cursed energy thickly, baiting the hook as heavily as she could in the hope that it would take. 

He froze, and then his expression turned a little dopey, a little too soft. Once again, his eyes were too blue for her to be sure that her cursed energy was swirling in his pupils. 

She concentrated, knowing she would bleed for this, but casting the most difficult trick. 

The coin is behind your ear. 

It was the hardest because she had to fabricate her lies out of nothing but the flimsiest impressions. She had to change a mind and change a memory with only a little bit left that was malleable enough, that hadn’t yet hardened into emotional solidity. 

“We made a practical alliance, didn’t we?” Her voice listed through the disjointed cadences of her words. “We are still allies and comrades, so it is easy to believe.” 

Gojo blinked at her, a soft nod making her a little relieved that even if he fought back, something was penetrating. 

“But that’s all we did, isn’t it?” ahe pressed, pouring on a thick layer of cursed energy for the fine point. “You remember that we agreed to pretend, the tactics behind it, the lie and the forgeries. But you don’t remember any intimacies between us.” 

Gojo frowned, and Utahime felt a wave of rebound, the struggle that came from wrestling with memory. She bit down, soaking her words in too much cursed energy. 

“We never slept together, did we?” she persevered, her voice fraying a little right at the end. “We’ve never even kissed. Everything else remains. We have lied a lot about the level of our intimacy and if you think you remember it happening, it is simply something you vividly imagined when considering the lie. We have lied a lot, so it is easy to believe.” 

Utahime coughed, because her throat was already raw. She could feel Gojo’s emotions wrestling her words back, his frown deep.

The taste of copper coated her tongue, as she clenched her teeth, drawing up cursed energy she didn’t think she had, rolling her words in it, fighting hard. 

“You only vividly imagined it, didn’t you? ” she croaked. “We remain colleagues, friends, allies. We would never jeopardise the mission with something so foolish as sex. You are you and I am me, so it is easy to believe.” 

Gojo stared at her, his head shaking slightly, frowning, listening to her words like it was a song he couldn’t quite place, couldn’t quite remember the lyrics to. 

“Utahime, you are…” he mumbled absently. 

Utahime, coughing blood into her sleeve, squeezed her eyes shut. 

“It is easy to believe, it is easy to believe, it is easy to believe…” she chanted desperately and quietly. 

Silence followed the dying of her words. The apartment was as still as a rural morning, as bars of light crept slowly across the carpet towards them. Gojo blinked, something unfreezing in him, and his eyes drifted slowly back up to where Utahime was wiping blood from the corner of her mouth onto the black sleeve of her t-shirt. 

When his eyes focused on her, her stomach fluttered to see his cheeks flush pink, as he remembered falsely. His gaze flicked away quickly, as if he were trying to quickly shake away an image, something from the solitude of his mind. And then he smiled and tried to hide it in his palm, wiping it away with his hand, then looked at her again. 

“Sorry, I lost my train of thought,” he said. “You’re leaving right now?” 

“Almost. After supper. I’ll call the kids so we can chat about it,” she said raspily, hoping he didn’t notice that her voice was almost gone. 

“Sure, I’ll wait for you,” Gojo said nonchalantly, slipping onto a stool. 

Utahime turned to walk down the corridor, her eyes swimming with tears, trying to find her resolve again. But as she turned, a little boy with green eyes gazed at her from the end of the passageway, steadily surveying the scene in the kitchen, hearing everything and saying nothing. 

Six Years Later 

Utahime tried to smooth down some of the spiky black hair, still damp from a shower that he probably didn’t need to take.  Megumi grumbled like a cat, tugging his head away, his brow snapping down. 

“I’m not finished, wait!” Utahime murmured, folding the tie over with a flick. 

“Hurry,” Megumi mumbled, already getting as tall as she was. 

“Why couldn’t Gojo do this for you?” Utahime asked distractedly. 

“I don’t think he knows how,” Megumi said grumpily. 

Utahime looked at the petulant expression, Megumi’s pretty, pointed features folded into a grumpy pout. 

“You didn’t even ask him, did you?.” 

His elementary school uniform hadn’t needed him to wear a tie. 

He refused to answer her. He was getting quieter as he got older, and it worried Utahime. 

Suddenly, Gojo bounded into the room, his boyish, exuberant gait completely at odds with the expensive blazer and carefully pressed trousers he had on. Utahime felt her heart constrict, because he had neatly parted his hair and gelled it down. She had seen him like this once, 19 and trying to look 25, needing her help. 

“Why do you look like that?” he said, aghast, as his eyes fell on Utahime. 

She scowled, her brow snapping down like Megumi’s. 

“What’s wrong with this?” she asked irritably, because she didn’t need to ask why he was dressed like he was because it was such a familiar bit. 

“Oh, nothing,” Gojo said, smiling a little wolfishly, eyes flicking up and down her simple blazer and blue jeans combination. 

Of course, he was just getting under her skin, as usual. 

“This is a normal public school. Looking like we’re ostentatiously wealthy isn’t going to sell the con any better.” 

She patted Megumi on the shoulder, dismissing him gently. 

“Go get your backpack. The orientation starts at nine but traffic will be mad.” 

Megumi nodded, dodging Gojo’s short jab into his ribs as he passed him out of the room. 

“Last time we gotta do this, I guess,” Gojo said, coming over with his hands in his pockets. “Yaga doesn’t need to be bamboozled when Megumi gets to high school. He knows. Everything.” 

Utahime nodded, letting the era end like a book gently closed, her heart tingling for the many invented worlds, the many hurts, the many joys that had coated over her like layers of wax, sealing her gently, hardening her in its softness. 

It had been six years of a delicately held lie, telling everyone that they were mistaken and that the rumours of a secret marriage of convenience were completely unfounded, while also behaving like something quietly joint, carefully and surreptitiously intimate. The lie was kept always in suspension, batted to and fro between their denials and their open bickering, their intimate actions and the pointed respect of the Gojo Clan towards Utahime. 

She looked up at Gojo, at his hair combed carefully, at his face grown a little less animated over the years. An inversion had happened somewhere, where his easy grin and his childish goofiness was the thing that was manufactured, not the moments of seriousness. 

“Things will change then. You won’t need me. You won’t need this.” 

She gestured between them vaguely. Gojo looked at her hand, and then at her face again, his face growing more still and thoughtful. 

“Utahime, do you think that’s true?” 

Something about his tone made her heartbeat hitch in the middle of a beat, because even after all these years of her trying desperately to push it away, anything that reminded her slightly of the roughness of his voice in the dark still made her stomach flip over. 

“Truth is relative,” Utahime told him, with a playfulness she didn’t feel. “You should know that by now.” 

Gojo smiled, watching her expression intently, and he suddenly lifted his hand and settled it on her shoulder. Her heart stopped entirely, her hand shooting up to flick it off her in surprise, because he didn’t touch her often anymore. 

But her fingers skimmed over warm knuckles and the back of his hand, telling her that he had his Infinity down for her yet again. And so, her hand stalled, settling over his. 

Three circles means danger. 

“Satoru.” 

Utahime swallowed, her throat feeling tight, her heart reckless after all. As the name left her lips, she saw something shift in Gojo’s eyes, his expression growing clouded and clear in one moment, like watching a rain cloud move over a distant hill. 

“Hime,” he said simply, like he was answering her. 

She was trembling and forgetting why, enjoying his touch on her shoulder, enjoying getting lost in his steady gaze. 

“We should go, we’ll be late.” 

“We can keep them waiting a little longer. It’s manageable.” 

“What is?” 

“Waiting. If I can do it, so can everyone else. I’m very patient. Are you?” 

Utahime bit her lip, feeling his thumb gently caress the side of her neck. 

“Yes.” 

“Be honest,” he said gravely. 

She stared, lips parting, at Gojo’s intense expression at odds with his simple smile. In the distance, she heard Megumi yelling for them to leave, 

“Yes, I’m patient.” 

Suddenly, Gojo dipped his head and kissed her cheek over her scar, a kiss she couldn’t properly feel, chaste and fleeting. 

“Good. Not long now.” 

Utahime closed her eyes as he straightened up, letting her hand linger over his, letting his voice be rough on her frayed heart, rubbing off some of the wax. She let it soothe her, even though she wasn’t sure if it was true. 

But, still, because he said it, it was easy to believe.