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it’s cold. it’s cold and there’s only two pairs of indents in the snow, his and yuuji’s, and that means it’s freshly fallen and they’re the first to see it. the first to trace a path, their path, through it and disrupt the stillness of the night. it blankets everything the eye can see, a thick and still accumulating few inches, from the light posts to the rooftops to the engawa and then to the flakes quickly gathering in yuuji’s pink hair. it’s cold.
yuuji had grabbed megumi’s sleeping body by the fistful, eyes bright too bright for the middle of the night and voice unable to hide his excitement even as he’d whispered, as if the desire to shout were unable to fully be contained. megumi had grumbled, turning and pushing at the eager hands trying to drag him from his sleep. he knew yuuju most likely wanted him out of his warm, comfortable bed. megumi’s lack of desire didn’t deter itadori in the slightest.
“ megumi! ”
the hushed hiss had been unrelenting, and he finally cracked an eye open over his shoulder to see yuuji, close as ever. as if gojo himself had given the kid lessons on invading personal space. megumi doesn’t say he doesn’t like it.
“itadori.”
megumi didn’t have to say anything more for yuuji to go on.
“it’s snowing!” and he looked all too thrilled about that. had he gone to sleep at all? or had he stayed up all night, playing video games? regardless, he was there, pulling megumi from his own slumber, looking as if he could vibrate right out of his skin.
“what?” a shift, a glance out the window to see yuuji is right. it is snowing. he vaguely recalled seeing something about the weather, a surprise storm to roll in overnight, to cover tokyo in a few inches.
“ it’s snowing! ” yuuji repeated, grin stretching his mouth and eyes wide, like this should mean something to megumi. it reaches his eyes, megumi notes.
“i can see that,” came the deadpan response.
his less than enthusiastic tone had made yuuji sigh, as if greatly put upon by megumi being deliberately obtuse. as if he were missing only the most obvious thing in the world.
“ come on , let’s go outside!” he’d felt himself being rocked, shaken by yuuji’s hands grasping his arm over the blanket.
“itadori. did you wake me at 3 in the morning to go look at snow?”
and there, he could see yuuji pause, see the purse of his lips and the shift of his gaze to the side, as if realizing he’d maybe just maybe been a little childish in this instance. there was a flush to his cheeks that hadn’t been there a moment ago, but he hadn’t backed down either.
“what? you’ve never had a snowball fight in the middle of the night?”
no , was megumi’s first, instinctual thought.
but then he paused. had he? if he had, not that he could remember. his father hadn’t been the kind to roll around in the snow, toss a couple snowballs, build a snowman together, let alone at night. he wasn’t around long enough for that kind of thing. maybe when he was younger, in the fragments that were too fuzzy for him anymore. and gojo .. regardless, it’s not a familiar concept.
maybe yuuji found something in his expression, because he seemed to take that, or his silence, as answer enough, and sighed again.
“ c’mooon , it’ll be fun,” yuuji promised. and there it was again, that grin, that megumi hadn’t been able to figure out yet how to arm himself against. bright and optimistic and endlessly confident. megumi never wanted to see it fade.
megumi thought of the past year. maybe yuuji deserved a little bit of fun.
so it was without words that he’d sat up, sighing, only to hiss as his feet met the chilled wood of the floor. it’s cold .
but it had been worth it, to see the way yuuji lit up, running back for his shoes —- where were his shoes did he really come here barefoot —- as megumi pulled on his socks, and began digging through his closet for his coat.
it’s really fucking cold .
megumi knows, knows his cheeks and the tip of his nose are red, even bound in his scarf, that they’re probably going to get sick and ieri or nanami will scold them, but .. he watches yuuji roll around, quite literally, without a care, in the snow, laughing as kuro barks and bounds over the boy. laughing as kuro shakes the snow from his thick coat and sends it flying everywhere. as if the cold has no effect on him, or his happiness playing in it. beaming as he meets megumi’s watchful gaze and megumi tucks his chin deeper into the scarf.
it’s cold, but megumi feels warm.
even when the snowballs come his way and he has to dig his bare fingers in the stuff, freezing, clumping it together to form a half sticking ball to throw it back in the direction it came from — even when he ends up on his back in it, wheezing laughter, feeling it wet and cold down the back of his neck, with yuuji’s solid weight on top of him — he’s warm. when yuuji has to dust all of it off of him, when they go back inside dripping and have to hang their clothes in the bathroom to avoid a mess and scramble back in their underwear — he’s warm. when he realizes he’d stopped feeling annoyed the moment he’d watched yuuji fall back in the snow intentionally to make snow angels.
when the other boy falls asleep half dead, starfished in his bed, before megumi can even finish pulling his dry hoodie on, and megumi has no choice but to force his way in to curl in beside him. yuuji’s arm curls unconsciously around his middle and pulls megumi’s back into his chest, and maybe megumi still sniffles, but .. he’s warm.