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It’s almost eleven - skincare time, when it can be. A knock at the door isn’t a welcome interruption when Nobara has only just now managed to rinse the last of the the residue of her charcoal face mask from her hands, but it wouldn’t be the first time she’d been called up for a mission in the middle of her skincare routine. So she pads to the door, hoping it’s a friend looking for a place to crash and not Gojo with the assignments he always brings to her door when a call would do just fine.
It is neither.
Megumi leans against the guardrail a few feet from her apartment’s door, pressing his hand to his right shoulder, and she’s seen that enough times to know what that means. He’s probably barely standing, probably trying to hide a bleeding gash behind his hands; beneath his shirt is probably a map of bruises, prominent against ivory skin that never sees the sun. But if the injuries are unsurprising, their recipient is - Megumi is cautious, not like Nobara whose technique demands she break her body over and over, or Yuuji, who hits hard and takes harder hits in return. It’s never Megumi who stumbles, bleeding, into her apartment, in need of patching-up. So the sight of him like this, face pale beneath the watery light that reaches him through the apartment’s open door, is startling.
“You’re hurt,” she says, ushering him inside without another word. It’s a cold night, and cuts always sting in the cold - best to get him inside where it’s warm before she wrangles an explanation out of him.
“Clearly,” he says drily, limping after her. That, too, gives her pause.
“What happened?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, and she can hear from the catch in his voice that he’s gritting his teeth against the pain. “What’s with your face?”
“Rude,” Nobara huffs, leading him to her kitchen table - too big for its space, and awkwardly old-fashioned - so he can sit. “It opens your pores.”
“Sorry,” he says, clearly not sorry at all. “Clearly I’m interrupting something.”
He is, but even Nobara can’t pretend he doesn’t have far more pressing worries right now. “You’re bleeding on my carpet and you’re worried about my charcoal mask?”
“We’re on tile.”
“Fushiguro.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“So what exactly is wrong with you?”
“Broken window,” he says, glassy-eyed as he watches her rummage in a cabinet for her first aid kit.
“You mean a window broke near you and you got a shard of glass stuck in your shoulder?” she guesses, wincing. “Sounds fun.”
“No, I, um.” He scratches at the back of his neck even though the pain in his side when he tries to stretch makes him grimace. “The curse had an object manipulation technique. Broke a window to use the shards as weapons.”
“Oh. Damn.” It’s not the worst she’s heard, but as far as nonfatal injuries go, it’s a pretty nasty one. “You sure you shouldn’t be at a hospital?”
“You know I can’t.”
“It’s better than dying,” Nobara huffs. “It’s not as if you have to tell them that a curse chucked you into a window. And I am not giving you stitches.”
“I wouldn’t let you give me stitches.” He shifts, then grunts in discomfort. “Just…I dunno. If you could help me clean it up or whatever. That would help.”
“Using me for my first aid kit,” she tuts. “So rude.”
“I can’t reach,” he protests. His voice is growing raspier and Nobara knows, then, that he must be badly hurt - she wets a towel with hot water after she washes her hands, pulls on latex gloves. She has a feeling she needs them.
“Is all of the glass out?” Nobara asks, setting the kit on the table. “Or is it full of shards?” She hopes not, for his sake and for hers - the last thing she wants is to have to sanitize a pair of tweezers to pluck glass from his wound.
“No, I got lucky,” he says. “Mostly just that one long cut.”
“All right.” She tugs at the fabric of his shirt, crusty with dried blood already. “Do you need me to help you get this off?”
“No, ‘m fine,” he says, even though he has to favor his good arm to pull his shirt over his head and it still seems like it hurts him to move. “S…sorry.”
She’s about to ask him what he’s apologizing for when she realizes she’d been right - his back is covered in bruises, the gash running from shoulder to mid-back is still swollen and angry and bleeding, and a dozen smaller cuts where glass had nicked him through his half-shredded shirt could use her attention, too. “Megumi,” she says under her breath, shaking her head. “What happened to you?”
“I told you. Curse. Glass.”
Usually, that terseness would be par for the course with Megumi, but he sounds so pained now that she can’t help but worry at it. “You look terrible,” she mutters, laying the towel she’d soaked over his shoulder. He winces again, but he’s not bleeding enough to soak the cloth through, which she’s grateful for - he’s obviously in pain but he isn’t going to die on her watch. “You’re usually not this careless.”
“How was I careless? A curse threw glass at me!”
“Dodge next time,” she huffs, but her hands are as gentle as they’ve ever known how to be when she peels back the cloth, careful not to scrape it over his sensitive skin. “Why were you limping earlier?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“You don’t get to show up bleeding on my doorstep in the middle of my skincare routine and tell me not to worry about it.”
She can feel him glaring even though she can’t see his face. “Are you my mother or something?”
“No, I just won’t let you get away with being an idiot. Go get Yuuji to patch you up if you want that.” She knows Yuuji won’t ask the incisive questions that someone as stubborn as their Megumi requires if he’s ever going to be strongarmed into taking care of himself. He probably doesn’t even own antibiotic ointment that isn’t expired - not that he needs it, infuriatingly sturdy as he is. (She hopes he never needs it, hopes he never realizes it’s expired or gone and doesn’t ever have a reason to need to.) “Or go to a damn hospital.”
“Itadori’s bandaging is sloppy,” Megumi replies. “And the hospital asks too many questions.”
“Which was your complaint about me, too, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, but you’re safer.”
She knows what he means by that - he never needs to worry about her finding out what gave him these injuries, never needs a cover story when she’s the one dabbing alcohol along the length of his cuts and never pausing even when it’s obvious that it stings. But her cheeks still flush at the implication that Megumi, who likes few and trusts almost none, thinks her apartment is a safe place to retreat when he has to make a crash landing. He’s not one to tell people he cares for them, but when someone has to clean his cuts and wrap his shoulder in stiff, too-thick medical tape so it won’t move, and if someone is going to insist that he ice his twisted ankle, it’s only someone he truly loves to whom he’s ever going to give the privilege.
He’s a fascinating creature, Fushiguro Megumi is - so resilient to cover his delicacy. She suspects he’s here only partly out of need, and she won’t ever say it, but she cherishes that.
“Megumi.” When she’s done wrapping his shoulder, she leaves her hand there for a moment, leaning forwards to rest her chin atop his head. “Are you okay?”
He slumps, tired of the effort of holding his back straight. “It…hurts.”
“I know it does,” she whispers, lacing her arms around his neck so her hands come to rest near his chest. She does - every sorcerer does. There’s not a nasty technique around that some unlucky sorcerer hasn’t faced, and they all know by now that the pain of a fresh injury is always worst right after the adrenaline of a fight has faded and there’s nothing to do but replay the fight in their minds. Nobara can give him a distraction, if nothing else. “Do you feel like you can get yourself home?”
Don’t try to get yourself home like this, she doesn’t say.
“I…I think so,” he says hoarsely. “But…”
“You can stay,” she says, trying not to sound like she thinks much of the suggestion.
That’s important with Megumi, playing it cool. He’ll bolt if he starts to suspect that someone’s had the audacity to get attached to him; she has to phrase her offer as a practical one or he won’t take it, and he’ll go home and spend a lonely night staring at the ceiling and thinking about how much his arm hurts and how much it hurts that he’s all alone. Nobara knows, because that’s been her; those are the nights she knows to call Yuuji up and let him keep her company, curling protectively around her injured body - she doubts Megumi ever thinks to do that, even though Yuuji would do it for both of them with equal willingness.
Sorcerers are a lonely bunch, and Megumi has never liked letting people in. Nobara means to bypass both of those obstacles.
“Thanks,” he says weakly.
“Any time.” She backs away to seal up the first aid kit and tuck it into her hallway closet where it lives when someone isn’t bleeding on her floor. “But as soon as you’re better, I’m making you mop my kitchen.”
“Sure,” he says, knowing full well that she won’t make him do it. Nobara talks tough and backs up half her threats, but the remaining half are well-meant displays of affection - it had taken him years to grasp that. She’s one to throw out threats because they mean she’ll be there tomorrow to carry them out, even if she doesn’t mean to; they’re marks of her loyalty, of her intention to stay. He doesn’t like to admit how much he likes that thought - that caring might be less beautiful words and more self-enforcing promises to stick around. She offers her arm, holding an icepack and a dry towel in the other; he shouldn’t, but he accepts, following her down the hall and trying not to think of the strangeness of being in Kugisaki Nobara’s bedroom.
“I hope you didn’t think I was going to put you on the couch,” she says, as if sensing his surprise, and she seems rather insulted that he might’ve. “I’m not totally heartless.”
“But where will you-”
“In bed? Like a normal person? I hope you didn’t think
I
was going to sleep on the couch.”
“But…that’s… you’re …”
“I know.”
“That’s not-”
“Me and Yuuji do that all the time,” she says. “Y’know. When one of us is hurt.”
“Feels wrong,” he mutters.
“You don’t have to be such a loner all the time.” She pokes his good arm, then stacks up an armful of throw blankets beneath his ankle. “And sleeping on the sofa would be bad for your shoulder.”
“Sleeping next to you would be bad for my blood pressure,” he shoots back. “I haven’t forgotten that you thrash.”
She smiles - it’s true. The three of them had shared enough beds in high school, when nothing had seemed strange, for him to know that. “Yuuji doesn’t think it’s a problem.”
“Yuuji tried to pat my head once. He has his own set of issues.”
“Maybe you’d be less grumpy if you’d actually let him do it.” She smiles fondly, ruffling his hair. “And really? I get you all fixed up and this is the thanks I get?”
But she knows he isn’t ungrateful. He’s uncomfortable, knowing she’d sensed that he shouldn’t be alone tonight as strongly as he had, but he’s glad to have someone to sleep next to. It’s not as if he can say that, though, so he asks, “do you have any painkillers?”
“Changing the subject.” She pats his uninjured leg, then bends to kiss his cheek before she goes off to find some - he freezes for a second at the touch but shakes it off. “I see how it is. And yeah, I’ve got some in the medicine cabinet.”
Fushiguro Megumi isn’t the type who likes it when others fuss over him, but sometimes, he thinks, it’s surprisingly nice to feel like he’s been seen.