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When Yuuji was five years old, he found his first wife.
Misaki was the first girl he spoke to on his very first day of elementary school. She giggled uncontrollably when he fell off the monkey bars at recess but was kind enough to offer him a hand so he could get back up. Her bowl cut was black and shiny and reminded Yuuji of the marbles that his grandfather had given him.
He looked at her with wide, excited eyes and asked, “Will you marry me?”
“Yes!” Misaki replied immediately. “That means you have to push me on the swings, right?”
“Right!” Yuuji agreed, remembering a sitcom that his grandfather liked to put on while he was cooking dinner. The husband griped constantly about all the things he had to do for his wife, even if he hated it. Yuuji would’ve rather been the one being pushed on the swings, but he knew it was his duty as a husband to do things he didn’t like.
He pushed her higher, higher, higher, the pitch of her giggles echoing over the playground. She looked back at him, pale cheeks flushed red and grin wide. Yuuji didn’t feel lonely during that recess.
The following day, Yuuji returned to his classroom with high hopes of pleasing his wife. He had a packet of cookies stowed away in his pocket that he nicked from his kitchen that morning. It had been an exercise in extreme self-control to not eat it as soon as his grandfather was out of sight, but he managed it.
When he saw Misaki at recess, he ran to her immediately and noticed that she stopped smiling when she saw him. “Yuu-chan,” she said, bottom lip jutting out into a pout. “I can’t play with you today.”
“Oh.” Yuuji blinked. “Can we play tomorrow?”
“I can’t play with you ever,” Misaki told him seriously. “My dad says I’m too young to be a wife and that you’re weird for asking me.”
“Oh,” Yuuji said again. “Okay.”
“Bye, Yuu-chan!” Misaki ran away to play with some girls in her class.
Yuuji fought to keep the smile on his face because his grandfather didn’t appreciate good-for-nothing men that moped around all day. He perked up when the packet of cookies crinkled in his pocket, reminding him of his stolen treat. They were shoveled quickly into his mouth and when he walked to the trashcan to be rid of the wrapper, another first grader saw him.
“Are those chocolate peanut butter cookies?” The first grader asked him, eyes wide.
“Yeah, they’re really good!”
“They’re my favorite! I’m Yuki.”
“I’m Yuuji!” He grinned at her. “Will you be my wife?”
☾
When Yuuji was twelve, he had his first real girlfriend.
“I’m not sure what the difference is,” his friend told him. “You dated, like, every girl in elementary school.”
“It’s different,” Yuuji insisted. All of the girls he dated in elementary school only lasted a week, tops. His shortest relationship only lasted the span of lunchtime. Middle school girls were different, he was sure of this. There was the promise of longer relationships, handholding, instant messaging, dates, and kissing. “I’ll show you.”
Hana was just a smidge taller than him with long, dark hair held back from her face with a blue headband. “Blue is my favorite color,” she told him shyly, and he immediately bought her a blue dolphin keyring for her flip phone.
“So you can see something I got you when we text!” He grinned at her, elated at the blush that spread over her cheeks. He knew that this time, for the first time, a girl actually liked him back.
Yuuji walked her home each evening, careful to stop at the corner of her street so her mother and gossiping neighbors didn’t see them. They progressed to handholding, but only some of the time, because Yuuji’s hands got sweaty easily. That day, he leaned over and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Oh, Yuuji-kun!” She gave an adorable squeak. “What- what was that for?”
“Because you’re my girlfriend,” he responded simply, face furiously hot.
“That’s the only reason?” Hana’s eyebrows furrowed. “Just because I’m your girlfriend?”
“Well, yeah.” Yuuji cocked his head to the side. “I wouldn’t kiss anyone else like that.”
Hana frowned at him and Yuuji was absolutely lost. “Are you mad at me? Should I not kiss you again?”
“I’m not mad,” Hana said after a moment. She looked down at her feet. “Do you like me, Yuuji-kun?”
“Of course I do!” Yuuji grinned at her, feeling that the conversation was heading in a positive direction.
“Why?”
“Because you’re you.” Yuuji’s smile fell when Hana’s did. “What’s wrong?”
She fidgeted. “I think you just want to have a girlfriend, Yuuji-kun.”
“Hana-chan- I- no,” Yuuji sputtered. “I want you to be my girlfriend, not anyone else!”
“I’m sorry Yuuji-kun.” Hana took a step back from him and refused to meet his eyes. “I want a boyfriend that can tell me what he likes about me.”
Hana turned and left Yuuji standing on a street corner, miles in the opposite direction of his own house.
When Yuuji opened his shoe locker the next morning, a blue dolphin keychain stared back at him.
☾
When Yuuji was fourteen, he hit a home run that soared far, far away from his middle school baseball field.
All of his physical education classmates and teacher watched with open mouths as the ball sailed well out of the neighborhood until it couldn’t be seen anymore, seemingly falling off the face of the Earth in a matter of seconds.
His class exploded into chatter, the boys immediately running to Yuuji and demanding to know what baseball team he was on.
The girls held back, whispering amongst themselves and peeking at Yuuji over their shoulders, breaking into giggles when he glanced over at them.
“Have you seen Itadori-kun’s arms?” One whispered to her friend when Yuuji went to the water fountain.
“He’s soooo strong,” Another said when he was walking into the locker room.
“I bet he’d be such a good boyfriend,” said Isuzu, the prettiest girl in his class.
Apparently, she intended to find out.
“Yuuji-kun,” Isuzu said to him during cleaning duty that evening. He wondered when he’d come to be on a first name basis with such a popular girl. “Let’s be boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“Sure!” Yuuji agreed, even though she was short and he liked a girl that could look him in the eye. Her friends, a mere five feet away, broke into excited chittering when she looked back at them triumphantly.
And so, he was dating the most popular girl in his class.
For some reason, they never spent any alone time together.
They spent lunch walking around the school, Isuzu hanging off his arm. During physical education class, she always cheered him on loudly from the sidelines as if to say that’s my boyfriend, not yours, ha!
When he suggested they eat lunch alone somewhere, or even in his classroom, or anywhere away from prying eyes, really, she told him she didn’t want to. Isuzu flat out refused to let him walk her home, electing to go with her friends instead. When Yuuji leaned in for a kiss, her cool eyes narrowed at him and she asked him what he thought he was doing.
While Yuuji had been correctly pegged as an idiot in the past, he wasn’t blind.
Yuuji wondered if being with someone that was using him was worth not being alone.
The choice was made for him the following day.
“Jennifer Lawrence?” Isuzu’s lip curled. “What’s so great about her?”
“She’s tall and pretty and her movies are awesome,” Yuuji declared, chest puffed out.
Isuzu rolled her eyes. “Whatever, Yuuji-kun. You’re kind of dumb.”
Yuuji could take a joke, but this wasn’t one. “I think we should break up.”
Isuzu gaped at him, shocked but not hurt. “I’ve never been broken up with before.” If Yuuji thought she was snappish before, she was downright ruthlessly mean now. Isuzu told him that he should be happy that a girl like her was interested in a guy like him. A mean one? Yuuji wondered as she berated him. She made him promise to tell everyone that she broke up with him and turned with a swish of her too-short uniform skirt.
☾
When Yuuji was fifteen, he had all but given up on finding true love.
His grandfather’s declining health was more important to him, anyway. What was the point of finding new love if it meant leaving behind the only other person to ever love him?
The old house he had lived in for as long as he remembered had never seemed so oppressively dark before. There were plenty of lonely nights before his grandfather had been admitted to the hospital, sure, but there was always the promise that he would return. Now, there was only darkness that crept closer each day that his grandfather’s prognosis worsened.
Yuuji wondered if he had been cursed when he was a baby. An image of an old-fashioned mage popped into his head. An ugly, wart-covered witch stood over his bassinet, waving a gnarled hand over his sleeping form.
‘You will be alone forever,’ she said. ‘Your parents will die young. Your peers will reject your advances to befriend them. You will only know the love of a dying man.’
‘You will be cursed to be alone after your sixteenth birthday,’ she promised and climbed out of his bedroom window, never to be seen again.
Yuuji imagined a knight knocking on his door the next day, regaling him with the story of how Yuuji was cursed and that they needed to set off on a quest to slay the evil witch that damned him as an innocent baby. They had to be quick, the knight told him, so they could save his grandfather from his imminent death.
It was a nice thought. Nice enough to make Yuuji crack a grin and fall back into slumber, regardless of the cold that threatened to seep into his bones from his empty house.
☾
When Yuuji was sixteen years old, he imagined that he knew what being in love might feel like.
It felt like the sun-warmed pitch black hair, Yuuji knew this. That summer’s overbearing sunshine kissed the soft looking locks until Yuuji was the one that felt breathless at the sight, the humidity making his throat clench up.
It felt like the blink of long, thick lashes, sleepy from early morning classes, a grumpy look plastered on the rest of his face.
It looked like the darkest navy blue eyes you could imagine, looking at Yuuji with a small smile at his tenth joke that day. Yuuji really loved that smile, small as it may be.
Love felt like the sound of closing cabinet doors, of the clink of glass cups hitting a side table, of the electronic whir of a blowdryer, all muffled noises through a shared wall, reminding Yuuji that he was not alone.
“You’re unwelcome,” Megumi had told Yuuji on his first day at Jujutsu High.
And while it might have hurt Yuuji to hear that from Misaki or Yuki or Hana or Isuzu or any of the other countless girls he courted say that, it was easy to accept from Megumi.
It was simple and straightforward, and Yuuji was a simple and straightforward guy. He appreciated it.
It was also very easy to ignore.
“I told you you’re not welcome here,” Megumi said, opening a bag of chips that Yuuji brought. “...you’re just lucky that you chose my favorite chips.”
Yuuji had seen Megumi get the very same chips from the vending machines each day after lunch for a week straight and filed the information away for later. This was just one sliver of information about Megumi that Yuuji had memorized.
“Sure,” Yuuji chirped back with an easy smile. “And that’s why you let me hang out here yesterday, and the day before that and the day before that…”
That day, Yuuji also learned that love felt like an almost-too-hard punch on the back of his head.
☼
Shortly after, Yuuji learned that love looked like a pained smile as you watched your new friend die.
Oh Yuuji thought as he fell forward, distantly aware of the rain pattering his back. All he could think of was Megumi’s face, bruised and bloodied, lips quivering at Yuuji as he died. He loves me, too.
☼
Gojo promised Yuuji that distance made the heart grow fonder, but Yuuji wasn’t sure of this.
“Sensei.” He was aware that his voice was coming out as a whine. “What if he forgets about me?”
“Hmm,” Gojo hummed and brought his index finger up under his chin. “I think it would be pretty hard to forget the face of your classmate that died in front of you.” Gojo’s grin widened. “There is something funny about all this, Yuuji-kun.”
“What’s funny?” Yuuji asked, voice muffled. He was face down on the couch at Jujutsu High, mood thoroughly dampened after watching three romance movies in a row. He couldn’t help but picture Megumi’s face slipping away from him as they clung to a door in the Atlantic Ocean, or see Megumi’s eyelashes damp and thick as they kissed desperately in the rain.
“You only seem to be worried about Megumi-kun.”
Yuuji lifted his head and saw that Gojo had moved close to him, mere inches away from his face. “Why is that, Yuuji-kun?”
Their close proximity was disorienting. “I’m worried about him,” Yuuji confessed, and it wasn’t entirely a lie. “He saw me die.” It was one thing to see your classmate die, and it was another to see someone you loved die.
“Nobara’s pretty, isn’t she?”
“Eh?” Yuuji leaned back, shocked at the sudden topic change. “I guess, if you look past her personality…”
“Ah, you’re the type to go after personality, then!” Gojo stood and put his fist in his palm, like he realized something. “So, why’re you in love with Megumi-kun, then?”
“Love?!” Yuuji yelled, heart racing in his ears. “No- I would never- I don’t-”
“Yuuji-kun, Yuuji-kun, you shouldn’t lie to your sensei,” Gojo tutted and looked at him over his sunglasses. “Your feelings are natural.”
“You- you think so?” Yuuji leaned forward. This was the first time he had ever spoken about his feelings about a boy.
“Of course.” Gojo grinned at him. “And I know just how to win over his cold little heart.”
☼
When Yuuji’s reemergence was met with a lackluster response, he briefly thought that it was because Megumi had fallen out of love with him in the time he had been in hiding.
Megumi seemed more irritated than anything, which was confusing to Yuuji because that was how he always looked, and shouldn’t Megumi be a little more excited that his friend hadn’t been killed by his heart getting torn out?
With a jolt, Yuuji thought that maybe his heart was being torn out a second time by Megumi’s lack of affection, and was brought back down to Earth when Kugisaki kicked him for spilling his juice on her. Yuuji was certain that was an overly dramatic thought. Maybe he had been watching too many romance movies in his isolation.
That evening, Megumi returned to his room very late. Yuuji knew this because he was waiting outside the room.
“What are you doing here?” Megumi asked, eyes narrowed and a hand on his hip.
“I live here,” Yuuji said and pointed next door, to where his room was.
Megumi’s lips twitched down into a frown. “Loiter outside of your own room, then.” He moved to open the door around Yuuji.
“Wait, Fushiguro-” Yuuji stepped in between Megumi and the door. “I want to say that I’m sorry for leaving you.”
“What?” Megumi’s eyes went wide, mouth slack.
“I’m sorry that I died, and then I didn’t come back to you right away after I came back to life,” Yuuji rambled and brought a hand to the back of his neck. “After everything, I should’ve talked to you.” He met Megumi’s eyes, just as dark as he remembered. “I’m sorry, Fushiguro.”
“You idiot,” Megumi swore and brought a hand to his mouth. “You absolute idiot-”
“I shouldn’t have done it-”
Yuuji was effectively cut off when Megumi brought his hands up to either side of Yuuji’s head. Kabedon Yuuji thought distantly, frozen on the spot.
“Shut up,” Megumi snarled at him, rushing forward to press his lips against Yuuji’s.
Yuuji made a silent vow to never doubt Gojo’s advice again.
☼
“Kugisaki would never admit it, but she really missed you,” Megumi told him that night. It was late, later than was acceptable to still be awake, with light rays of early morning sun peeking through Megumi’s open window. Yuuji had been away for too long, though, and he had watched a lot of movies that he wanted to share with Megumi. They watched films between kisses and murmurs of affection and promises to never leave.
The summer air was cool and comfortable on Yuuji’s skin. He couldn’t help the grin that spread over his face. “And you, Fushiguro? Did you miss me?”
Megumi snorted. “No.” And he leaned in close for another kiss anyway.
☼
Yuuji had learned a lot from his past relationships.
One - it was weird to ask for marriage too soon.
A proposal may have been poised on Yuuji’s lips that first night he was reunited with Megumi - at the start of their relationship or whatever what they were doing was called - but he remembered Misaki’s words, and narrowly held it in. Yuuji wasn’t even sure how that worked between two guys, anyway.
Two - it was important that the other person knew exactly what you liked about them.
It was the most fun to tell Megumi exactly what he liked about him when they were kissing, but the best times were when Megumi least expected it.
They were at the vending machines after a tough game of baseball. “Y’know, you have the best batting form out of anyone, right?”
Megumi flushed furiously and he couldn’t even blame it on the summer heat. “Be quiet, they’ll hear you.”
They were walking along a winding hallway to their classrooms. “Yesterday, I noticed that your hands are really long and pretty, but they’re super strong too.”
Megumi shoved his hands in his pockets. “Shut up, Itadori.”
The sun had set several hours ago. “I can’t believe someone like you wants to be with me,” Yuuji whispered when Megumi crawled into his bed.
This time, Megumi said nothing and turned over to give him a gentle kiss.
Three - subtleties meant just as much as public proclamations of affection.
When they weren’t alone, all Yuuji had to do was meet Megumi’s eyes for a few seconds to see a shadow of fondness grace his features and wait a second for a small, shy smile to appear. They didn’t need to announce their relationship because it was a special secret between them.
“Also,” Megumi said as he munched on the chips that Yuuji bought him. “Kugisaki would get so jealous it would be impossible to work with her.”
Yuuji nodded. “Yeah, even though she thinks we’re ugly, she hates being left out.”
“And Gojo should never, ever find out.”
Yuuji opened and closed his mouth a few times, but couldn’t make himself confess that Gojo was well aware of their relationship. He noted down lesson four - sometimes it was better to say nothing at all.
☼
Yuuji had learned a lot from Megumi, too. Initially, he had assumed that they would spend every night together, either in his room or Megumi’s, cuddled close, and would whisper their adoration for one another as they drifted to sleep.
“Are you insane?” Megumi looked severely irritated. “Or just stupid?”
“Eh?” Yuuji blinked and scratched his cheek. “You don’t want me to sleep here?”
“You’ve been here for the past four nights,” Megumi said, exasperated. “I need some space.”
“Oh,” Yuuji said. “Okay.”
He made it out to the dim hallway and was opening the door to his dorm when Megumi poked his head out of his room.
“I’m not mad at you, or anything.” Megumi looked slightly embarrassed, now. “I just want to be alone tonight.”
“I know. It's okay, Fushiguro.”
“So, yeah.” Megumi lingered for a few moments more before walking in front of Yuuji. “Thanks, Itadori. Good night.” Yuuji was aware that Megumi was blushing, his favorite kind, the one that meant that he was overwhelmed by his own feelings. When their lips brushed together, Yuuji knew that it was what loved felt like.
“Good night, Megumi,” Yuuji whispered back, long after Megumi’s door closed.
Yuuji was grateful to have learned the difference between loneliness and choosing to be alone.