Chapter Text
Toge isn’t sure which is crazier: the fact that the entirety of Tokyo Jujutsu High survived Geto Suguru’s terrorist attack last year, the fact that the city has rebuilt the damage caused in less than a year, or the fact that the yakiniku restaurant they’re at is cool with serving a literal panda . Well, the fact that Yuuta is sitting beside him is also crazy, but he can think about that later.
They’re all facts to be grateful for; for all of his life, Toge has relied on facts, things that he could objectively rely upon to be there for him. They are alive - fact. Gojo and Nanami and Kusakabe and Mei Mei and the rest are all present - fact. Yuuta is here. Maki is here. The first-years are here, too, even Panda is here even if he doesn’t technically need to eat. His friends are alive, and that’s a fact, so why does Toge feel so… uncertain?
Maybe he just doesn’t know what to do, that’s it. He doesn’t know how to talk (sort of true) and he can’t really socialize normally, that’s gotta be it. He can’t figure it all out, why he’s on such high alert when there’s nothing to be worried about. He can’t figure out why he blushes when Yuuta’s hand brushes against his, or why he’s so inexplicably happy when they’re together, or why his heart seems to bounce around in his chest when he sees couples holding hands and he imagines those hands as theirs, it all makes no sense. These things aren’t facts, they’re questions, and Toge fears those more than anything else.
Taking in a deep breath, Toge closes his eyes and opens them once again. To his right sits Itadori, getting berated by Nobara for some reason or another. Megumi sits in between the two, bearing an expression akin to a man watching two cats fighting on his doorstep - a mix of fascination, annoyance, and exasperation.
To Toge’s left, Yuuta, with his nest of unruly black hair, is conversing cheerfully with Maki. Ever since he freed Rika and defeated Geto, he seems… taller. Well, that’s a lie, he is taller, but that’s beside the point. He talks more, taking up space with his words, laughing louder when someone says something funny. The eyebags dusting his face are less pronounced, his smiles are wider and more contagious.
“You see something you like?”
Maki’s voice rings across the table, and even though Toge looks away quickly, he can hear the smirk in her question.
“Bonito flakes,” he lies, shaking his head.
“Whatever you say,” she shrugs, moving to console Panda about the animals they’re about to eat.
“Hey,” Yuuta says, tapping Toge on the shoulder. The dark-haired sorcerer is still a little awkward, in an endearing sort of way. “How are you feeling?”
Toge gives a thumbs-up.
“That’s good,” Yuuta exhales, his hand finding its way to the back of his neck in his trademark awkward™ gesture. “I’m glad we all ended up okay, to be honest.”
“Mustard leaf?”
“Huh?”
Toge points at Yuuta, who seems to realize what he’s saying a second after.
“Ah, me? I’m doing fine. It’s all ‘cause of you, actually-”
Toge feels his face go warm.
“-yeah,” continues Yuuta brightly, not appearing to notice. “Your cursed speech was really helpful! Of course, I couldn’t have done it without Maki and Panda, too,” he ponders for a moment. “I don’t want you guys to get hurt anymore, even if we are jujutsu sorcerers.”
If anyone else said those words, Toge would probably laugh them off as some wannabe shonen protagonist. But not only does Yuuta pull off the shonen protagonist look really fucking well , Toge doesn’t mind getting saved by him in the slightest.
“Speaking of cursed speech though, do you want a drink?”
Toge nods.
“We can share it, if you don’t mind? This restaurant is all you can eat, but drinks cost extra and they’re kinda expensive so we could share-”
“Just say you want to kiss already,” Maki interrupts, snatching the menu out of Yuuta’s hands.
Yuuta blushes. “Maki!”
“What?” Maki demands smugly. “It’s not like I’m wrong, you two are just too dense to see it. C’mon, Panda, back me up here.”
Panda tilts his head sideways. “You’re sort of right,” he determines sagely, ignoring Toge and Yuuta’s shared looks of betrayal. “But then again, if these two look like a couple, what does that make you and Nobara?”
Toge nearly chokes. Maki looks as if she’s about to whip out Playful Cloud on Panda’s ass. Panda nearly sings, not really minding her anger, and the scene unfolds like any other day. Strangely enough, it puts Toge at ease.
He slumps in his seat a little bit, because today isn’t something he needs or wants to stress about. With no curses today, they’re like any other group of people dining at a crowded Japanese BBQ restaurant. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots Kusakabe talking to Nanami, his brown trench coat hanging off the back of his chair, and–holy shit—Nanami’s tie is off, too. Even Principal Yaga and Gakuganji are here, the latter looking slightly disgruntled. Next to Mei Mei, Utahime is waving her hands at Gojo, who’s sitting strangely still. She waves a bottle of something that Toge probably can’t drink yet.
“Satoru,” Toge hears her complain. “Aren’t you, like, rich? Can’t you afford something pricier?”
“No can do,” he replies with his usual arrogance. Though, ever since the Night Parade of Hundred Demons, his cocky demeanor hasn’t really been the same. “This is what we, uh, I grew up with.”
In the rest of the dining room, the normal people chatter about, not seeming to mind the eccentricity of the jujutsu sorcerers in their midst. Hell, they could all be cursed fly-heads, and the civilian customers probably still wouldn’t bat an eye. They talk and laugh, carefree as ever. Tipsy boyfriends try to impress their girlfriends by chugging unhealthy amounts of alcohol. The smell of grilled beef wafts and diffuses through the air, rich and smoky and savory, almost visible.
Toge doesn’t talk too often, and people outside of his friends listen even less, so it’s easy to fade out and watch from somewhere else. Itadori is still annoying Megumi, while Nobara has struck up a conversation with Maki - good for them. Beyond their twenty-odd-person table, the rest of the place seems to glow with amber light.
Toge feels a pulse drum lightly in his chest. He picks up a grain of rice using his chopsticks, letting it fall back down into the bowl where it turns invisible. Toge breathes in, letting the words around him surround him, letting himself fuse with them so that his wallflowery silence is drifting down a river of least resistance, because things are so stable, like facts, it’s hard to want to change them when they hurt slower. Maybe he doesn’t end up with a storybook ending with a boyfriend and maybe they don’t all make it out of the book alive and well, but for Toge, being invisible is okay if he’s also invincible.
But then Yuuta taps him again, and his ideas about dying alone evaporate because he wants to be there with him. 'Cause if he wants to be with Yuuta in life, he might as well be there in death as well, right?
“Are you alright?” Yuuta questions, snapping Toge out of his daze. He offers a slice of beef as a concession with his chopsticks. “You look a bit down.”
“Salmon,” says Toge, feeling his lips curve into a sheepish smile that he can’t help. Yuuta is too genuine for someone as quiet and cynical and snakey as him because when Yuuta talks, Toge notices that he says things as he thinks of them, blurting them out because he believes in them. Toge turns the words over and over in his head, trying to decide which one is the better thing to say until he’s forgotten what he was saying in the first place.
“Are you saying you want his meat inside-”
Panda claps a hand over Maki’s mouth. “Way to ruin the mood, Maki.”
“Sorry, that was too easy,” she guffaws, pushing her way out of Panda’s grip. Toge knows that this is her type of humor, that she’s joking, but of course, she doesn’t know that he’s trying to get over Yuuta before it even starts.
He can deal with his own feelings, but the fact that Yuuta almost looks upset to the point of tears is what pushes him over the edge. Maki might be trying to help, but it certainly isn’t working.
“Ikura,” he mutters, mostly to himself.
“Sorry,” Yuuta apologizes through his hands. “Too… stuffy in here,” he manages to smile weakly before getting up from his chair and leaving, letting the door slam.
Toge feels his own face going red. He glares at Maki’s smug look with as much What the fuck, dude? as he can manage.
“What are you doing, go after him!”
“Ikura,” he curses again, this time meaning every syllable.
“Don’t be mad at me,” she sings. “I’m doing you a favor. Go get your man, man.”
Toge groans internally. Well, that seals his fate, since he can’t really choose to avoid awkwardness when it’s already here. He stands up, scraping his chair back against the floor. Shooting one last look of annoyance in her direction before leaving the restaurant.
Outside, the cold slaps him in the face. Up and down the street, hunched figures crouch, faceless atop the sidewalk. They smoke in silence, ashy incinerated entrails ascending into the sky from their cigarettes. Cars wade through the darkness in a constant ebb and flow, starting and stopping. Their water-coated windows glimmer like shards of rainbows, reflecting multicolored billboards and the reds and greens and occasional oranges of traffic lights as they pass through the intersection. Tokyo is alive.
Yuuta leans against the wall of the restaurant, his features gauzy in the lamplight.
"Sorry," he mutters before Toge can say anything.
“I know you’re probably weirded out by me,” Yuuta continues flatly. “If you don’t want to be friends anymore, that’s okay.”
To his own surprise, Toge laughs.
“H- hey, what’s that for?”
Toge shakes his head. Nothing .
For the first time tonight, maybe even the first time since he’s met Yuuta, Toge tries taking initiative. He walks right up and hugs his best friend.
Yuuta stiffens as Toge wraps his arms around him, seizing up for a moment before relaxing. Surprisingly, the victim of Toge’s embrace doesn’t make any nervous small talk like he usually does. But then again, this time is different. It’s not like their other moments of fleeting contact while sparring, or a high-fiving after dispatching a curse - no, this time, he’s actually hugging Yuuta. This time, he can hear both of their heartbeats, regardless of how cheesy that sounds.
Ridiculously, no matter how fucked up Toge feels right now, he can’t help but laugh again. This time, Yuuta joins him. By now, people are staring but he doesn’t care. Because for the first time, Toge doesn’t give two shits about facts. From here on out, it’s the realm of guesswork; the realm of trying shit and seeing if they work out because being saved by Yuuta helped him realize that only living once isn’t a curse, but a blessing.
Yuuta smiles brightly by the time they pull apart, warm enough to stave off the night chill. “What were we laughing about?”
Toge shrugs, catching his breath.
“That reminds me,” Yuuta remembers suddenly. “I was going to give this to you earlier, but, uh, I guess now's as good a time as ever?”
He pulls out a pink bottle of something that looks suspiciously familiar.
“I noticed that you always need cough medicine when we fight curses together,” Yuuta says, looking away slightly. “But I also remember you saying that it always tastes bad, so I made you some that hopefully tastes good? Shoko helped me make them.”
The end of his question lilts up timidly as if Toge would be anything other than ecstatic to receive such a gift.
“This one’s strawberry,” Yuuta continues. “And this one is, uh orange, and-”
Toge interrupts him with a kiss. Nothing gross or creepy, just a quick peck on the cheek, but it’s enough to make Yuuta freeze, his words trailing off into nothingness. He immediately regrets it, ‘cause Yuuta’s face seems to turn a few shades redder and maybe, just maybe, he’s fucked up. The anticipation is scarier than staring Sukuna in the face. At best, maybe he thinks of Toge as that one weird gay friend he’ll have to reject. At worst, he thinks Toge is- is a fag , or a freak, or-
“Toge?”
His words are soft, like him, gently pulling the white-haired boy’s gaze back. Because even though Toge wants to curl up and maybe never see the sky again, Yuuta holds open the door before he can lock it again.
“I think I might be in love with you.”
The last thing that Toge sees before burying his face in Yuuta’s chest is the love of his life. His eyes sting from the corners with tears. It’s cheesy, but that’s no longer a concern, not when they might die tomorrow or they might have died yesterday.
So Toge does something else for the first time tonight. He croaks the words out, his chest convulsing with the effort of keeping his breaths steady and even because as quiet as he usually is, his emotions won’t stay silent no matter how hard he tries. When the uncertainty of facts is the shitty reality that all jujutsu sorcerers have to live through, Toge doesn’t think it's too bad to live each day as if it’s his last. So he keeps trying to enunciate, even after messing up again and again. On the third attempt, he says them.
“I love you.”
And that’s a fact that Toge is willing to live with. It might even be a fact that he’s willing to die with.