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Gojo had been prone to migraines for as long as he could remember. He’d had them since early childhood, at first suffering silently on his own; when Suguru came to live with him, he’d fallen into the role of caretaker until Gojo mastered his reversed cursed technique and could will the headaches away with the slightest adjustment of his focus.
He could have done the same for Suguru too, the day he came down with a crippling migraine that left him curled on the bathroom floor with the lights out, temple pressed to the cold tile of their walk-in shower, but Suguru was notoriously stubborn.
“If I let you heal every little ache, I’ll never be able to bear pain again,” Suguru whispered, brow pinched like even that volume made the pressure in his head spike.
You should never have to bear pain again, Gojo thought, but knew Suguru would find it too sentimental.
He prepared their bedroom, blocking out the light sources as best he could and turning down the blankets before returning to scoop Suguru off the floor and transfer him to their mattress. Medication was pressed onto the flat of his tongue and washed down with a sip of water. Suguru made a face as he swallowed, still green around the edges.
Suguru reached out a hand for Gojo. His fingers twitched in midair as he stopped himself, hand dropping to his side.
Wordlessly, Gojo pulled the blindfold free from his own eyes and knelt on the bed long enough to tie it loosely around Suguru’s.
Seeing Suguru in bed and blindfolded was dangerous. Gojo backed away as quickly as he could and watched, face burning, as Suguru wiggled his way to Gojo’s side of the bed and buried himself beneath the blankets.
“Megumi will want someone to play with today,” he mumbled. “Here, I’ll send—”
The bedframe shuddered and lifted from the floor as Niji gracefully slithered from the shadows beneath it. She was too large to manifest at her full size while in the house; even now, her tail was coiled past the opposite side of the mattress and whipped lazily. Tongue flicking out to scent the air, she turned her head to peer at Suguru.
“No,” Gojo said, quiet but firm. “The last time you tried to get in bed with him, you broke it.”
Soejima appeared at Gojo’s shoulder. “How many times have you broken it?”
“Shut up.” Gojo elbowed the curse in the ribs and shot him a look. “I can’t help that my ass is fat.”
“Your ass?” Soejima snorted. “You’re flat as a pancake. You wouldn’t know a fat ass if it sat on your face.”
“I would and I do. Look at Suguru’s ass; it’s huge. And anyways,” Gojo continued, volume increasing slightly, “what have we said about eavesdropping, you little freak?”
“It’s not eavesdropping when you literally live inside the person getting— ”
Tossing the blankets away and sitting up, Suguru said, “You two really aren’t helping my migraine.” He pushed the blindfold away to squint at the two of them in the dimness of the bedroom. Gojo had done his best to block out the light coming in from the patio doors, but weak streams of sun shifted through the slats of the blinds. “Do I need to just get up?”
“No,” Gojo and Soejima blurted at the same time. They spread out, one on either side of the bed, to pull the blankets back up over Suguru’s legs.
“Megumi is going to be totally fine,” Soejima said.
“What you need to worry about is letting your medicine kick in so you can sleep this off,” Gojo added. “Don’t stress about anything—bathtime, dinner, it’s all taken care of.”
“Is it?” Suguru asked doubtfully. “You know kids can drown in—”
“In two inches of water, yeah.” Gojo waved him off. “We paid for all those swimming lessons, Meggy should be fine.”
Soejima cocked his head and widened his eyes at Gojo as if to say, Wrong thing to say, idiot.
“I’m kidding! Of course I’m going to watch him the entire time he’s in the bath,” Gojo said. “What kind of a parent would I be if I didn’t supervise bathtime, right?”
“Bold of you to trust him to supervise bathtime when he needs supervision himself,” Soejima sighed. He stuck out his tongue at Gojo, then beamed at Suguru. “Now rest, master. If an emergency arises, I’ll be sure to alert you.”
“Of course,” Suguru said, sounding very much like he didn’t believe the curse would. He paused, monolidded eyes narrowing as if in thought, then said, “Would Megumi trying to ride Niji through the garden count as an emergency, then?”
Comically, Gojo and Soejima looked at each other, then at the ground. The space Niji previously occupied was now empty, the bedroom door at Gojo’s back open wide enough that Niji may have been able to squeeze through, as small as she’d manifested.
“Not an emergency,” Gojo determined as Soejima scuttled around the bed and made a beeline for the door. “How many times did we ride Niji growing up?”
“As teenagers,” Soejima snapped over his shoulder. “There’s a difference.”
Gojo rolled his eyes and turned back to his husband. He looked, for all intents and purposes, as though he was regretting the decision to suffer through his migraine like a normal person, if only because he didn’t trust that the strongest sorcerer of their generation and two curses were capable of keeping a three-year-old alive for a couple of hours.
Gojo would simply have to prove him wrong.
“Don’t worry,” Gojo said firmly. “We won’t get into any trouble. You sleep, and if it gets too bad, call Shoko. She’ll come, I’m sure.”
“I know.” Suguru accepted the kiss Gojo deposited on his mouth before burrowing back into their quilts until only the top of his head was visible. Voice muffled, he said, “I love you, now go have a good day with our boy.”
Gojo found Megumi sitting atop Niji’s head, one of Suguru’s sun hats sitting lopsided on his unruly dark hair. He kicked his ankles against the soft spaces behind her ears, body rocking back and forth as he urged her to move. Being outdoors had given her the chance to stretch out; she’d expanded to her true size and was sunning herself happily, multicolored eyes half-open despite Megumi’s insistent kicks.
Soejima was using the protective plates along either side of Niji’s spine to make his way to where Megumi was seated. He kept his head down as he balanced along the ridges, arms out like he was afraid of falling.
“It’d be a shame if she sneezed right now,” Gojo shouted.
Soejima flipped him off.
Megumi paused long enough to swivel and glare at Gojo from beneath the floppy brim of the oversized hat. “She’s not gonna sneeze,” he corrected Gojo primly, “because boats don’t sneeze.”
“Oh?” Gojo tipped his head and rested his hands on his hips. “Last I checked, Niji was a dragon, not a boat. When did that change?”
Megumi rolled his eyes. “When we started playing One Piece, duh.”
Duh, because Gojo was apparently supposed to know without asking what imaginary game his son was playing. The straw hat made sense now.
“Let me guess, you’re Luffy?”
“‘Course, Daddy,” Megumi responded. He resumed kicking, mouth downturned in concentration as he urged Niji on. “See my hat?”
Soejima made it to the crown of Niji’s head. He took a seat next to Megumi and righted the hat before tightening the strap beneath the chin. Over the top of the hat, he mouthed, Obviously.
“So if you’re Luffy, who am I?” Gojo asked.
“Franky,” Megumi answered automatically.
“What? I’m the least like Franky.”
Megumi wriggled past Soejima to clamber down the bridge of Niji’s snout. “You have little legs like him,” he said.
Gojo felt that insult in his chest, right where his heart was. “My legs are perfectly proportionate to the rest of my body,” he muttered. Then, because he was curious, he asked, “If I’m Franky and you’re Luffy, who’s Papa?”
“Robin!”
Gojo considered that and huffed out a breath. Big tits, curvy waist, calm in most situations—he couldn’t argue with that.
Landing securely on Niji’s nose, Megumi touched both hands to her face and said, in a serious voice, “Niji. Niji, I love you, will you take me to get ice cream?”
Niji, eyes crossed to focus on the little boy balancing precariously on her nose, rumbled out a noise that sounded suspiciously like a yes.
“Looks like there are two cursed spirit manipulators in the family,” Soejima laughed. An arm jerked out to brace against one of her horns when she shivered, then lumbered to standing.
“Niji isn’t even the one you need permission from, pup,” Gojo said. “You need to ask me.”
“No I don’t,” Megumi responded. “You always want ice cream.”
For the second time in as many minutes, Gojo found he couldn’t argue with his three-year-old son. Instead he sighed and, casting a look in the direction of the house, murmured, “I guess we’re going for ice cream.”
Niji held out a giant paw, pad-side up. Gojo stepped into her hold carefully and let himself be lifted through the air and deposited gently next to Soejima. Megumi, too, was plucked from her nose and placed securely on Gojo’s lap.
He twisted to peer up at Gojo, brim of his hat bumping Gojo’s chin with the movement. “What flavor are you gonna get?”
“The same kind I always get,” Gojo answered. “The one with the pieces of bubblegum.”
Megumi considered that, brow wrinkling. The brim of the hat fluttered in the breeze as Niji took to the air far more smoothly than she’d ever done with Gojo and Suguru. The cargo she was carrying was far more precious now, it seemed; Gojo couldn’t blame her for wanting to make their airborne transition as smooth as possible.
None of them wanted Megumi to fear their capabilities—Maya, Soejima, Niji, even Gojo himself. The world they lived in was strange, and they wanted his acceptance. They wanted his love.
Seeing the way Megumi was looking at him now, hat-brim flipped back to reveal smashed-down tendrils of blue-black hair, Gojo thought, despite everything, he may have earned that love.
He just hoped he was worthy of it.
“What if it pulls your feeling out?”
“My feeling?”
“Yeah!” Megumi pried sticky fingers between Gojo’s lips and tapped against his teeth. “The one the doctor gave you last time.”
“You mean my filling,” Gojo corrected around Megumi’s hand. He moved it away from his mouth and grimaced at the salty-sweet taste lingering against his teeth. “When was the last time you washed your hands?”
Megumi froze, eyes going round in his face. “Pirate kings don’t wash their hands,” he blurted, and jumped from Gojo’s lap.
Soejima lurched after him, narrowly missing grabbing him by the waist.
Megumi scaled Niji with practiced ease. He came to a stop by one of Niji’s horns. Planting one hand on the horn and holding the ties of his hat with the other, he peeked past the edge of her head to catch a glimpse of the blurred landscape below them as they traveled through the air.
“Oh, wow,” he breathed. He looked back at Gojo and Soejima, eyes wide in his face, tiny milk teeth on display as he beamed. “Daddy, come look!”
Gojo stood carefully and held out a hand to Soejima. “You coming?”
Soejima waved him away. “Enjoy the moment with him,” he said.
You don’t know when you’ll get this again, he didn’t say.
As Gojo crested the length of Niji’s neck, he let himself look at his surroundings through Megumi’s eyes. There was nothing but blue sky and the summer breeze, the sun a high point in the sky. Niji was warm and steady beneath them, movements smooth like a ship cutting through easy waters; Soejima, a curse he’d been raised alongside, watched him carefully, a sentinel to his childhood naïveté.
The world, for him, was a beautiful place.
Megumi reached for him automatically, instinctually, with the brazen trust of a child whose parents had never left—parents who had never let him doubt, even for a moment, that they loved him more than anything.
As Gojo lifted Megumi into the air and pressed a kiss to the thin white sliver of a scar still visible on his cheek, he promised himself:
He would do everything in his power to make sure this version of the world was the one his son grew up in.