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It begins with one of his bowls going missing.
When Yuji first moved into Jujutsu High, the first year dorms had been barren. The fridge had some loose sauce packets and a three quarters empty bottle of ketchup. The cabinets had two cup ramens, a stack of paper plates, and a single mug. There was a rice cooker on the counter, unplugged. The drawers had mismatched takeout utensils and cheap wooden chopsticks.
He had taken it upon himself to spruce up the common areas. The grocery shopping trip with Gojo-sensei had been a bit disastrous but he filled the fridge and the cabinets and was even able to get some pillows for the living room (and Gojo-sensei even paid for it all!) Eventually Nobara added her own tea and cups and her not-so-secret chocolate stash. Fushiguro still stocked his cup ramen but also got himself a few pairs of chopsticks.
Basically, the common area was primarily Yuji's domain. His pride and joy. So when one of his bowls went missing, he noticed.
"Hey!" He called, sliding into the living room on his socks at breakneck speeds.
Nobara looked up from where she was curled up on the couch, tablet in hand, eyebrow cocked. Yuji almost crashed into the back of it, managing to vault over it at the last second. He stuck the landing. Nobara obligingly clapped.
"Thank you, thank you." He grinned before dropping his arms, "Anyway, I'm about to do dishes so if you have anything in your room, bring it out."
She kicked him with a socked foot, "I'm not gross like you boys and leave stuff to grow in my room!"
"Don't you have some plants though?"
"I know you aren't that dumb." She kicked him again.
He valiantly resisted the urge to kick her back because he knew it would quickly devolve into a wrestling match. He just tidied the living room, he had dishes to do, and a bowl to sleuth out! He was a busy man.
He did not, however, resist the urge to stick his tongue out at her, especially when she tried to trip him as he got up.
(He hopped over her leg and once again, stuck the landing. She, once again, obligingly clapped.)
It continues with the door.
Fushiguro's room was plain and boring. Even after Yuji and Nobara brought in posters and sheets and decor, the only hint that Fushiguro's dorm actually belonged to someone was a half made bed.
And he had never cared about that either. Sure, he didn't always like it when Yuji or Nobara barged into his room, but he never hid its appearance from them.
"Fushigurooo!" Yuji knocked on his door, "I've come to get your-"
The door opened just a few centimeters, his body blocking any view of the room beyond, "What do you want."
"I'm about to clean the kitchen, so I need any dishes you have!"
Fushiguro nodded and shut the door before Yuji could even think about trying to poke his head in. He pouted at the closed door. What was he hiding? What would he even find embarrassing? He wasn't the type to drink or do drugs and he would have asked them if he needed help hiding a body…
Maybe it was like a fugitive? No, Fushiguro didn't really care about stuff like that and Jujutsu High was a pretty safe place to hide in general. Not to mention there's plenty of empty dorms to use. A second person would explain the missing bowl though…
Did he have a secret girlfriend? Yuji would have to tell Nobara and Gojo-sensei so they could enact plan D3. And that would mean he would have to go buy buttermilk…
Or maybe it was a secret boyfriend! He really shouldn't assume… Is that why Fushiguro was hiding his boyfriend? Did he think Yuji was homophobic? He hoped not. Now he was worried though. How to let him not he's now a bigot-
The door opened a few centimeters, Fushiguro holding a stack of plates with a mug on top. Yuji took the dishes and blurted out, "I'm bisexual!"
Fushiguro blinked. "Good for you?"
"So, like, I'm not homophobic."
"Okay…?"
"As long as that's clear!"
Fushiguro nodded, his face blank.
"I'm gonna… go wash these dishes now…"
"Okay."
Yuji turned around on his heel, marched to the kitchen, and turned the water as hot as he could so he could pretend his face was flushed from the steam.
He noticed Nobara had added a glass to the dishes pile and grinned to himself. The bowl hadn't turned up yet though. He would need to ask Gojo-sensei or the second years if they've been using their dishes.
It continues further with the laundry.
After the kitchen, Yuji finds himself in a Cleaning Mood. He sets up some music and tidies the living room. Nobara huffs and leaves when he pulls out the vacuum but he knows she isn't really mad. He makes a grocery list and texts it to Gojo-sensei (he'll have to follow up on it later to make sure he doesn't read it and promptly forget about it.) He beats out the rugs and mops the floors and even scrubs out the weird stain on the couch! And finally, he turns to the laundry.
Instead of knocking on doors again, Yuji just hollers, "Laundry time!! Throw your dirty shit in the hall!" before retreating into his own room to collect his own dirty shit.
Half an hour later, after he dug up a shirt from an anime he liked and tried to find the missing volume 3 from his collection, his phone chimes.
[nail_emoji] : laundry.
[tiger_emoji] : WHOOPS
In the laundry room, as he sorts out everyone's whites, he holds up one of Fushiguro's shirts and squints at it. Who has hair that color and why are they rubbing their head on Fushiguro?
Oh yeah.
[tiger_emoji] : do u think fushiguro has a bf
[tiger_emoji] : or a gf ig
[tiger_emoji] : partner
[nail_emoji] : why did you find panties in his laundry or something
[nail_emoji] : actually don't answer that
Yuji chewed on his lip, dropping clothes into the machine with one hand and typing with another. Should he just ask? That would probably be the most straightforward thing to do. He did feel like a bit of a creep trying to make deductions from his laundry…
[tiger_emoji] : do u have a partner
[dog_emoji] : No.
He finished up the laundry, resolving that he wasn't going to dig further.
It ends, in Yuji's opinion, rather anticlimactically.
A few hours later, he had folded everyone's laundry back into their respective baskets and he carried them stacked on his hip back into the dorm proper.
He dropped off his own first and went to Nobara's before putting his own away. (They will stay in the basket for 2 more days.)
He knocked, "Delivery!"
She made a noise from inside that he was choosing to translate as 'thank you so much Yuji, my favorite, for doing my laundry. Come on in, the door is open' and let himself in. Nobara was hunched over her desk, brow furrowed. On the desk was her tablet and she was spinning a pen in her hand.
"Oo, what are you drawing?"
Before he could even take a step forward, she threw a (different) pen directly at his forehead and turned the screen off. He pouted at her. She stuck her tongue out at him. He made a silly face at her. She made a sillier face at him. He pulled at his face with his hands to make an even sillier face and then both of them watched the laundry baskets fall to the floor.
There was a moment of sheepish silence.
As they collected the clean laundry off the floor, Nobara asked, "So why did you text me asking if Fushiguro has a partner anyway?"
"Oh," he rubbed the back of his neck, laughing awkwardly, "He was being super cagey about his room earlier and then I found some blonde hair on his shirt."
He shrugged and laughed again, "It's really not any of my business anyway. Or at least, we would need Gojo-sensei here to pull off plans D1 through 3 and E2 is specifically for a confirmed partner."
She nudged him, grabbing the final shirt off the floor, "And that's the only reason you asked?"
“Yes! The only reason!”
She raised a very judgemental eyebrow at him, “And it has nothing to do with his, oh how did you put it… how cool and intense he is and how you, quote, like looking at his face?”
He flushed and stood up straight, gripping Fushiguro's basket tightly, the plastic groaning under his fingers, “I never said that!”
And to prove his point, he turned around and marched out. Smooth, Yuji, smooth.
Once again, he knocked on Fushiguro's door. But before Fushiguro could open it, he heard a loud and very distinctive bark. Was he practicing in his room?
The door opened an even smaller crack. Fushiguro squinted at him, looked at the laundry basket, glanced back into the room, and thinned his lips.
"You can't tell Gojo-sensei." was all he said before grabbing Yuji's front and dragging into his room.
Yuji didn't even have time to process any of the last few seconds before being almost barreled over by an extremely excited dog. Not his shikigami, a golden shiba with a notch in its left ear. All of his thoughts ground to a halt as he (once again) dropped the laundry basket and sat on the floor, accepting doggy kisses and burying his hands in its plush fur.
"Where did you even get a dog?" he asked, totally absorbed in how the dog's eyes scrunched when he pet behind the ear (and therefore not seeing Fushiguro's eyes on him.)
"My last mission. Ichiji told me to bring her to a shelter but I brought her here instead."
Yuji grinned up at him, "Softie. Have you named her yet?"
"Momo. …what?"
"No, nothing nothing. Momo is a perfectly respectable and not totally basic name, one hundred percent."
"Exactly, so we are on the same page."
He took a moment to squish her face and then, everything in his brain clicked. "So that's where my bowl went!"
"What?"
"So this morning, I noticed one of my bowls was missing which was weird because you don't usually use my bowls and Nobara is pretty good about putting her dirty dishes in the kitchen. And then, when I went to go do the dishes, it still didn't turn up! Except, when I knocked on your door, you were being weirdly cagey and so I thought maybe you were hiding a secret partner in here. And then I did more cleaning and the laundry and you had blonde hair on your shirt and I was like oh so his partner is blonde and that's when I texted you." Yuji took a deep breath, "But you were using the bowl for Momo's water, didn't want her to get out when you opened the door, and it was her hair on your shirt."
Fushiguro blinked at him.
He grinned, "Mystery solved."
He snorted and shook his head fondly, "You solved it alright."
(Word about Momo had traveled to the second years by the evening, Gojo-sensei the next morning, and Principal Yaga the following afternoon. He frowned disapprovingly at all of them as he reminded them that pets were not allowed in the dorms and said he would take Momo to a shelter.)
(He told Fushiguro later that he could stop by and visit Momo whenever he'd like.)