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when tenderness fills the world
I fall down so I may live in it.
—
It’s summer when Megumi learns how to want again.
The air is heavy in June, tacky with sweat and sun, and from where he’s standing, this pretty, pink-haired stranger seems like the only living boy for miles. He’s got his backpack strapped over his chest like a little kid, but he flies past Megumi with such careless grace, slim frame belying his strength.
Megumi can’t afford any distractions on a mission, but instinct leads him after this boy, this blur of citrus yellow soaring past him in a startling display of superhuman agility.
Wait, he starts to say, but the rancid, festering smell strikes him first, sour with centuries of malevolence — a curse. A powerful one at that, violence swirling to life beneath the boy’s sweetness.
“Hey!” he cries desperately, spinning around, but he’s long gone.
—
His name is Itadori. Itadori Yuuji, and he’s an idiot with the biggest martyr complex that Megumi’s ever seen. Months later, and it’s his mouth, pressed warm and slick to Megumi’s cheek like a wound, that sounds out the word please.
“Your sister must love you very much,” Yuuji says in July, dusting flour off of his hands. Megumi watches a drop of water trace its way down a bruised knuckle, translucent and trembling as the other boy skillfully pleats another dumpling. Fingers pinch, fold, smooth, only pausing to dip in the bowl of water in front of Megumi. Distantly, he wonders what those hands would feel like in his own. Would it be a weakness, to touch? To hold? His own fingers are so much slimmer, fine instruments for weaving darkness, not ground pork and dough.
Yuuji falls silent and Megumi looks up to meet his expectant gaze, hiding his hands behind the counter.
“What?” he says dumbly.
Yuuji flicks some water at him, but his smile is soft.
“You clearly can’t cook anything. I can tell she took good care of you. You’re lucky, you know?”
Megumi wants to retreat from his simple kindness, but there's nowhere to run in the tiny kitchen. In the morning light, Yuuji’s eyelashes are a pale gold, brushing warmth against his cheekbones with each blink. There’s a streak of flour on his forehead that makes him look much younger. Less curse, more boy.
“Yeah,” he says stiffly. “I know.”
He runs a thumb along the edge of the counter, jaw clenching. If it was anybody else, he’d snap at them to mind their own business, but he knows that Yuuji grew up learning the same kind of loneliness. How terrible it is, to be loved so much and have no one to come home to.
Yuuji spoons out more filling into the dough cupped in his palm, humming softly under his breath. Megumi watches him for a breath, distracted by the swift turn of blue-bruised knuckles. Tsumiki would forgive him this. It’s Yuuji, after all.
“Teach me,” Megumi says, pressing his palms to the counter. He wants to do better.
Yuuji beams and offers him the spoon.
“It’s easy! I’ll show you.”
—
Sometimes, he thinks that first summer day could’ve been the end of it. He could’ve walked away before he’d gone to that school, could’ve followed another lead and never met Yuuji first. Maybe then he wouldn’t have saved him. Maybe then they would’ve executed Yuuji, and he never would’ve asked Satoru for mercy. He wouldn’t have known him at all, would’ve just shrugged and gone back to scrolling through his phone when he heard about the elimination of another curse.
It’s Yuuji, though, so he knows him first, always, knows him by his gentle hands and ringing voice. That first meeting was a moment of misrecognition — he’d wondered what are you? when the real question should’ve been what took me so long to find you?
Damn those hands. Damn that mouth. How could he not know him? All those years he’d scorned Satoru’s words, curled his lip at his peers’ softness, but somewhere along the way, this boy’s ridiculous, heaving heart has become something precious. Something he can’t lose. And Megumi is just a boy, too, hungry for something that sounds like love.
It’s a bad idea, but he wants to keep this feeling close, whatever it turns out to be.
So, somehow, it ends up like this.
Megumi can’t justify needing him, but he goes to the man who barely raised him and says: let him live. He’s never had a hard time choosing who to save, but he looks at this boy and feels dizzy with a desperation that he can’t explain. Not him, he thinks, instinctive. He does not know him, not really, but the thought of losing him reminds him of how it feels to be small and fragile, huddled under a desk while Tsumiki appeases his teacher in low, soothing tones. He doesn’t know Yuuji, not yet, but he knows one irrefutable truth: not him.
It’s a weakness that Satoru shouldn’t indulge. They both know that to be a sorcerer is to straddle a solitary space somewhere between grief and desire, where survival comes to you before love, muscles jerking with the effort to keep moving, to keep living — always hungry, never gentle. Deciding only who to save, what to kill, when to run. Living moment to moment, curse to curse. Raise your head, Satoru should say. Shoulder your weapon.
Megumi can’t justify needing Yuuji. He doesn’t even know if he wants him, but he heads into battle with fur and feather winding through his fingers and the only thought on his mind is to find him. Bring him back, and then save him, save him, save him again.
—
The first time Megumi wakes to a world without Yuuji, he can’t move. He’s curled into a ball around his pillow, the way he used to sleep when he got nightmares and Tsumiki would have to pry his fingers off her shirt so she could make breakfast. Faintly, he registers the low rumble of a storm and lifts his head to see raindrops chasing each other down the window.
Ah, he thinks. Itadori is dead.
It’s not a nightmare, or Megumi wouldn’t remember the ache in his limbs or the wistful smile on Yuuji’s face when he’d chosen to die.
He tugs his blanket over his nose, clenching and unclenching his fingers in the frayed wool.
It doesn’t get any easier after that. Not the second time, or the third, or the fourth or the fifth; it’s weeks and weeks of searching day and night only to wake up alone, the room next door silent and shuttered. The days blur together, every careless moment lost to an infinite loop of Sukuna’s sneering grins and Yuuji’s whispered blessings.
One night, he’s watching his hands shake in the shower like they belong to someone else, skin dulled and faraway, and the truth comes to him shamefully, like a parent ducking their head before their child.
He’s not good at this. Grieving. Hell, he should be used to it, opening his eyes to a world where he is alive, and Yuuji, miraculous, infuriating, tender-hearted Yuuji, is not.
But he’s not. He can’t. He wastes time playing out imaginary conversations, resting his forehead against the cool tile and pretending he can still fix everything.
Stop wasting it, he pretends he tells Yuuji. It’s your life. No one else’s. He doesn’t say please, not this time, doesn’t dare turn his words into a request when they need to be an order.
The Yuuji in his head glares back at him, defiant as always. No, it’s not, he says. Not anymore. It’s the lives of everyone I’ve hurt. That includes you too, Fushiguro.
If Nobara was there, she’d snap something like stop trying to do this on your own, idiot! we’re friends, aren’t we? friends don’t owe each other this. and punch Yuuji for his ridiculous selflessness.
But Nobara’s gone, too, isn’t she? And Megumi is just another sorcerer, trapped in an airless bathroom with the ghost of a boy, and he’s selfish. He knows how to mold the pitch-black and ugly into wing and fur and claw, but he doesn’t know how to shape the heaviness inside of him into something that’ll bring Yuuji back. Something that’ll make him stay; something that’ll finally keep him safe.
He steps out of the cooling spray of the shower, scrubbing a towel roughly through his hair. His reflection stares hollowly back at him, purple shadows sunken beneath his eyes, tense jaw blurred in the fogged mirror. He watches his lips part in the glass, tongue reaching for language and finding grief instead. Mouth struggling to rearticulate the vowel, the word, the wound, the please. The give him back.
“Come back,” he tries, out loud. It stings; salt in the gash. A thousand lost memories racing over his skin: Yuuji’s fingers tracing his cheek in the rosy lull of evening; Yuuji’s palm against his, hauling him to his feet with surprising tenderness; Yuuji’s hand over his heart when he said let me die already, Fushiguro. It’s okay. Let me go.
“Idiot,” he says, instead. It burns less.
—
Tonight, he’s sitting cross-legged on his bed, and Yuuji’s planted his head in his lap, letting himself be petted like a languid cat. Megumi winds his fingers through short, pink strands, spikes still fluffy and damp from a shower. From this angle, he can look at the strong line of Yuuji’s jaw and the tanned curve of his shoulder as much as he likes. Tonight, Yuuji smells like cheap soap and the lingering spice of his deodorant, muted after a tumble in the washing machine.
“Kugisaki saved you the last piece of cake,” Yuuji says, interrupting the comfortable silence they’ve fallen into.
Megumi hums noncommittally and scratches his nails over the short, dark hairs at the nape of his neck, delighting in the way Yuuji’s eyelashes flutter with pleasure.
“She says you’re too skinny,” Yuuji continues. “The other day we were watching you spar with Gojo-sensei and she said you look like a rake, all spiky and stick-like.”
His voice rises into Nobara’s higher pitched growl, and he snickers through the end, too amused by his own impression.
Megumi tugs lightly at the strands between his fingers in retaliation and ignores Yuuji’s indignant yelp.
“This stick eats twice as much as the two of you combined,” he returns.
Yuuji laughs delightedly.
“Have I made you a liar, Fushiguro?” He beams up at Megumi, the corners of his eyes wrinkling from the force of his mirth.
Megumi scoffs and digs his thumb lightly into his temple.
“I never lie,” he corrects, lying.
“Kugisaki could eat you alive.”
Megumi raises an eyebrow. Yuuji presses his cheek into Megumi’s palm. His mouth curves with humor.
“I’d hunt you down before she got to you, though. Obviously. If I let you forget about me you might get soft.”
Megumi snorts, tugging harshly at his hair until Yuuji rolls out of his lap and flails around until he loses his grip.
“Mercy, mercy!”
“You’re both idiots.”
Yuuji’s eyes scrunch with his next giggle, and Megumi flicks his forehead until he whines and grabs his finger, rolling back into his lap in a warm heap.
“Fushiguro!” But he’s still laughing, mouth stretched wide with boyish delight, and Megumi hides a smile of his own.
I missed you, he traces into Yuuji’s shoulder, the characters stiff and hurried. He bites his lip, curling his hand into a fist that he awkwardly knocks against his knee.
It’s foolish, because Yuuji is half-miracle, half-boy, and Megumi can’t protect himself anymore. Ever since he came back from the dead, Yuuji’s been wearing away all of Megumi’s harshness, grinding down his defenses into a fine dust that scatters with the wind and stings his eyes shut with the force of his charisma. Megumi can forgive Yuuji dying, can forgive him wishing him a long life at the expense of his own, but he doesn’t know if he can forgive him this; the way his smiles strike at some tender, slumbering space in his heart, a room he’s kept empty since Tsumiki’s eyes slipped shut and never reopened.
Too often, he finds himself toeing the edge of a cliff, blinking the grit from his eyes and sharing the sky with Nue. Yuuji eats messily and watches movies too loudly but with every snorting laugh, Megumi climbs higher and higher, feels the air thinning in his lungs and the world receding into a dizzying, nameless blue. He was born and bred of shadow, but every moment spent with this boy pulls him further into the sunlight, drags him closer and closer to that long-forgotten warmth. It’s not safe out in the open like this, but he’s mourned this boy and bled for this boy so it can’t really be that much harder to carry himself the rest of the way to the summit, to see the valley at his feet and still say you, you, always you.
Maybe in another life, they’d be a different kind of strangers. Maybe they’d meet scooping ice cream in the summer, and Yuuji would buy him dinner in the sticky evenings. Maybe they’d trip over each other in the park by his old house, and his sister and Yuuji’s grandfather would laugh at their childish arguments. Maybe they’d never even meet at all. Maybe they’d be perfectly ordinary, and Yuuji would be perfectly safe.
But Fushiguros do not get to choose. Fushiguros do not get the luxury of dreaming. But it’s gotten lonely here in the dark, and he wants to believe in Yuuji and his sweet, sweet mouth. Yuuji’s warm and familiar against his legs, and he doesn’t hide when Megumi finally meets his eyes. He just tilts his chin up and waits.
Megumi cups his cheek, callouses strange and undignified against the softness of Yuuji’s skin.
He is a Fushiguro.
He is not qualified to want.
But maybe, maybe just this once, he could. Just for a little while.
“Idiot,” he says, fond, and Yuuji curls his fingers around his with a smile.
—
and so, as the light died, we put our mouths on the least lovable, the too-full, the easy-bruised, we shouted, I choose you, and you, and you, and you, and canned that hunger, and spooned it into our mouths on the coldest days.