Chapter Text
Megumi wishes he wasn’t tired. His eyes blink open and closed figuring out why everything is dark all of a sudden and why his chin is propped up on Yuuji’s shoulder. The yakiniku restaurant is gone, replaced by the bustling streets of the city, crowds of people milling about. There’s something about dragging his feet across the sidewalk, trying to stay awake, as Yuuji drags him along, a funny feeling that Megumi doesn't have the brainpower to describe right now. It’s a bit weird that it feels so nice, but Megumi stops leaning on him with a considerable amount of effort.
“Look,” Yuuji points out, noticing that he’s awake. “It’s Shibuya Crossing!”
“Yep.”
“There’s so many people!”
“Mhm,” Megumi murmurs, rubbing his eyes. “Lotsa people.”
“You’re not listening, are you?”
“I’m tired,” he responds quietly, slowly falling back into the comfort of annoyance. “Shouldn’t you be tired, too? You drank a lot.”
Yuuji shrugs, pulling his hands out of his hoodie pockets and stretching his arms into the sky. “Eh? Not… really, actually. Maybe it’s Sukuna here? If alcohol counts as a type of poison.”
But Yuuji is right - Megumi isn’t paying much attention to his words. Instead, he’s looking all around, at the couples walking the streets. At Nobara and Maki holding hands, at the piggyback ride Yuuta is giving Toge. Even Kusakabe and Nanami are at ease, their usually stoic faces now fluid and relaxed, like stones eroded by a river of ease.
It’s a nice night, and Megumi feels something he hasn’t felt before.
By the time he returns to his dorm room at Jujutsu High, Megumi’s gotten kind of used to it.
~
Megumi is nearly asleep when a knock sounds from his door.
“Fuck,” he groans briefly. “What the fuck is it?”
The clock on his nightstand tells him that it’s 11:30 pm, October 24, which is too late for anyone to be knocking on doors. Brushing his disheveled black hair out of his face, Megumi pulls a wrinkled hoodie over his head.
“I swear to fucking God if I see who I think I’m going to see-”
“Megumi! Open up! It’s me-”
“Shut up,” Megumi interrupts. “You’ll wake up the entire building.”
“Sorry,” Yuuji apologizes. As he sheepishly tries to make small talk, Megumi can't help but notice that Yuuji’s not even wearing shoes, which makes sense when he recalls that their rooms share a wall. One of his socks is white with chibi prints of Megumi’s black divine dog, while the other has the same design with the colors inverted. Yuuji always loved petting those shikigami, Megumi remembers with a small smile. The momentary warmth Megumi feels when he conjures up the image of Yuuji treating his Ten Shadows as a petting zoo almost makes Megumi forget that he’s supposed to be annoyed right now.
“What do you want?”
“I’m bored,” Yuuji replies simply. “Wanna smash?”
If Megumi were drinking something, he would have spit it out.
“Excuse me?” he manages.
“You have smash, right?”
Oh. Smash.
“Yeah, I have Smash.”
They sit down on the tiny couch. In a way, it feels like any old day, but in another, it feels like something completely different. Yeah, it’s been a while since they met, and it’s been over a year since they’ve avoided death together, but it’s also been a while since they did something as normal as eating a meal with their friends and playing video games. Like normal people.
After everything that’s happened, this moment in time feels ridiculous. Sitting on a couch, waiting for a game to boot up, waiting to do something substantial before they die on the battlefield or get injured forever. It’s a sailboat in a tempest, but the sailors are pretending that the ocean is calm; that they’ll make it to shore.
Yuuji picks up on Megumi’s stress because he’s always been good at noticing these things. From the little shadows that seem to seep from his feet when he’s upset to the clothes he wears when he’s tired to the places he looks when he’s thinking, Yuuji knows it all because, even though Megumi has lived for sixteen long years, Yuuji is the first one he’s considered to be a friend. Or, well, something else, but that’s not really his—
“Have you ever had a girlfriend?”
Megumi tries to keep his voice from shaking, even if he never intended to say those words out loud.
“Nah,” Itadori answers after a moment of consideration. “I think I’ve had preferences before, but no real crushes, y’know? Definitely no girlfriends.”
“How can you talk about this love stuff, liking people, uh, loving them, without being weirded out?”
Yuuji pauses, tilting his head to one side. “Y’know, Megumi, I’m not like you. I was a normal kid until, like, a year ago. I didn’t really know I had cool magic powers like you. I’m also not socially awkward.”
The honesty stings, though when Yuuji does it, it doesn’t feel like getting cut. Instead, it’s more like the sensation of rubbing alcohol poured over a wound, searing into Megumi gently and slowly because he knows that Yuuji will sooner die before aiming to hurt him. It scares him, to share this sort of friendship. Then again, maybe the only thing scary about it is the prospect of ruining it.
“It’s a big thing, though,” Megumi admits, wary of sounding too casual or too serious. His voice quavers and the words come tumbling out. “What if they lose each other? What if we lose them? What if I-”
He cuts himself off before he can say anything else.
“Is it?”
“Huh?”
“Is it really a big thing? I don’t think so, personally. We deserve to feel like normal people, even if we’re sorcerers. We can’t pause our lives to just go fight and die.”
“Life happens,” Yuuji insists when Megumi is silent for too long. “Maybe not on schedule, but everyone deserves a chance to live normally.”
“I guess so,” Megumi says halfheartedly, running his hand over the fabric of his hoodie. It’s frayed and old, but it gives him something to focus on while the words wash over him.
“Enough of that philosophical talk, though,” Yuuji pivots, reclining onto the couch cushions and tossing his controller around. “You wanna play?”
“Sure.”
For someone who would reliably beat Megumi in a physical fight, Yuuji is hilariously bad at Smash, or maybe Megumi is just good at these types of things. The pink-haired sorcerer (who, fittingly, chose to play Kirby) doesn’t seem to mind, though.
Soon, the red numbers on Megumi’s alarm clock tick past midnight, and then past one in the morning, and his eyes begin to droop into the familiar embrace of—
“You’re really tired, huh?”
He’s dozing off again, on Yuuji no less.
Megumi stifles a yawn before nodding up at him. “Yeah.”
“That’s alright, I was kinda getting tired, too. See ya in the morning?”
“You don’t have to leave,” Megumi says without thinking. He tries to think of some excuse - but there isn’t one.
“I suppose so. Hey, this is the first time you’ve wanted me around,” he snickers.
Megumi has to bite his lip to stop himself from laughing there. After all, the first time Yuuji came here, Megumi slammed the front door on his head. But that’s enough of his emotions for now, so he pushes off of Yuuji only to get pulled back into the latter’s pillowy sweater. He can smell the cheap 2-in-1 shampoo that Yuuji uses, can feel the gentle wavelength of his breathing, crests and troughs of assuring presence that Megumi hates, a presence Megumi can’t live without.
Outside, the sky is clear. Megumi looks into the inky expanse to stop looking at the reflection of the two of them on the dark TV screen. The air that blows past his curtains is cold and fresh, a highway stop when his engine feels like it’s busted. It feels like peace—a drug as old as time for any jujutsu sorcerer, and one that Itadori Yuuji won’t let him get enough of—and Megumi takes a massive hit of it before exhaling slowly.
If there’s any time to say it, it’s now. Say it. Say it.
There’s a noise, coming from somewhere. It’s him, he’s croaking a word, a name, he’s saying it—
“Yuuji-”
“Megumi-”
They say each others’ names at the same time, and Megumi’s social car blows the fuck up because this is not what was supposed to happen. Megumi does not stammer, he summons Shikigami and fights curses, and saves people. Megumi does not stammer in front of the likes of Itadori Yuuji, but he does.
“You can go first,” he nods dully.
Yuuji looks at him with an expression that can only be described as curious, before shrugging lightly.
“Alright, then.”
Megumi settles into him and prepares to listen while rehearsing what he wants to say at the same time. The jumble of thoughts swirls about his noggin until Yuuji’s voice rings again, louder, and clearer, and the orchestra of chaos in his head falls silent to the conductor beside him.
Except that the conductor isn’t a serious face, it’s just Yuuji, whose initial resolve careens off into uncertainty when he keeps talking.
“I, uh, I actually do like someone,” Yuuji stammers. There’s a hint of a smile on his face, but judging from their heartbeats that Megumi can hear tripping over each other, that hint isn’t enough to reassure either of them.
Megumi feels the silence on his shoulders, and the city lights shining on their backs.
“I don’t think the person likes me back, though.”
Megumi is still. His mind should be whizzing about and trying to think of hypothetical scenarios and people and memories to point to a clue to cling to, but none of that happens. Maybe he’s tired, or maybe some part of him doesn’t want to think about something he won’t be able to change, like this be-a-superhero job or the fact that everyone he loves will die eventually, but everything he’s carried up until now feels lighter than ever so that the only thing following him is the weightlessness of his own shadow. But none of that matters because Yuuji is here now , and each second of heaven he feels ticking past is, ironically, good enough to die for.
Only one thing left to do, then.
“Who is it?”
“It’s you.”
Megumi just nods and sighs into Yuuji’s chest, because that’s all he needs to do. Usually, he’d bark at something like this for being too cheesy, but after everything that’s happened and everything that could happen, he’ll allow it, just this once.
For now, though, Megumi gives in to sleep, and his memories blur with dreams.
Yeah, thinks Megumi. That does sound nice.
~
“How are you alive?”
Megumi is asking himself the same question. The bright sunbeams sear through his closed eyelids, blasting him awake. Last night doesn’t feel like last night but some distant memory in the past, because he can’t even remember how he ended up falling asleep between Yuuji and his couch, only that the alarm clock near his bed reads 1.
Wait, no, it’s too bright for that.
Megumi rubs his eyes, squinting past a curtain of dark hair to the finer text on the clock.
It’s one p.m.
The second thing Megumi hears in the morning is also Yuuji, just… not his mouth.
“You’re still hungry?”
“Yeah,” Yuuji admits. “I can cook something…”
“Right,” Megumi groans, shielding his face in Yuuji’s shirt to hide away from the sun. “Just lemme sleep a little more…”
His voice trails off, and so does he.
When Megumi awakes for the second time today, it’s not because of a sound but rather because of a smell. It’s wafting from his kitchen, which is unusual because the only smells that ever come from there are instant coffee grounds and the burnt ashes of whatever he attempts to cook.
It smells tasty enough for him to wake up and realize that Yuuji is gone. Megumi feels irritated, then feels irritated at himself for feeling that way. But then his brain fishes out the memories from twelve hours ago, and Megumi feels that strange feeling in his chest, something warm that he hasn’t felt enough to be able to describe.
“Oh, you’re finally up,” Yuuji calls from the direction of the window. Megumi looks up at the halo of sunlight encompassing his friend’s silhouette.
“Yeah.”
“You don’t have anything in here,” Yuuji continues, tapping Megumi’s refrigerator. “So I went and brought some things over from my place.”
There are two bowls on his countertop, filled nearly to the brim with savory-smelling broth and ramen. In each, a fried egg rests atop of the noodles, adjacent to a generous helping of bok choy and thin slices of pork belly.
Swiveling his gaze back across his room, Megumi feels a twinge of guilt when he spots his alarm clock again. He went back to sleep for over an hour, and Yuuji waited for him to come to eat.
“No chili oil in yours,” Yuuji winks. “I know you don’t like spicy food.”
Megumi feels that strange feeling again. “Thanks.”
“Ish nuh prownblehm,” Yuuji says through a mouthful of food.
He’s apparently hungrier than his stomach lets on because, in another instant, he’s lifting the bowl to finish drinking the rest of the broth.
“I wash the dishes.”
“I can dry!”
They stand together at the sink, basking in the morning sun that hasn’t yet grown too warm. The glow swims across Yuuji’s complexion, and Megumi has to stop for a second before returning his attention to the water pooling in the bowl he’s supposed to be scrubbing. Little orange bubbles of oil and soap cluster near the surface like stained glass, eddying around his hand as the dish gradually comes clean. Then they spill down the drain, leaving it clean as he hands it off to Yuuji.
“Sorry,” he murmurs, trying to fill the relative silence. “For oversleeping.”
“No problem,” Yuuji chirps. “You looked like you needed it.”
“I- I guess I did.”
Megumi feels the awkwardness creeping between them now - awkwardness from whatever the hell happened last night.
“So, are we gonna talk about-”
“Sure.”
“Are we, y’know?”
“Only if you want.”
Megumi smiles, not sure if there’s anything he wants more in this world.