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(“Wake up, Fushiguro.”)
Megumi knows Yuuji isn’t lying.
The vast evergreen flower field that’s Itadori Yuuji’s core holds space for everything except lies. Megumi knows it better than anyone else; that’s one of the things he loves the most about him. How compassionate his soul is, his unfaltering character, his vibrant personality, and the warm honesty of his golden heart.
The same heart that was ripped apart by the demon Yuuji is fighting with unyielding strength and soul-whittling determination; just to save him from the dark.
Scars all over his skin, broken bones, lost fingers, and blood on everything the sun can touch. He has endured so much and received so little in return, and Megumi hates knowing Yuuji doesn’t care if he doesn’t get anything at all. That’s how selfless he is. The true nature of his crux, the same one present in the unshed tears in his eyes, in the nostalgic smile on his lips, and in his voice telling him that if he doesn’t want this, if he doesn’t want to live anymore, he won’t force him to do it.
He’s giving him an opportunity without the pressure to take it because Yuuji gets him.
(“I’ll do it as many times as it takes to save you, Fushiguro.”)
That’s how beautiful Yuuji is. And Megumi really thinks he doesn’t deserve him. How could he? After all this time, everything he has lost, all the lives cut short, bonds shattered to dust and tears frozen under the snow, how could he ever deserve someone like him? A shiny boy in the midst of a storm, with his selfless chest open and cut to pieces, telling how lonely a life would be without him and actually meaning it. Words said as easy as breathing but with the density of a star that lights up the heaviest night.
(“I’m not giving up on you, Fushiguro.”)
Itadori Yuuji sucks at lying. Megumi knows this too well; he has teased him about it on more occasions than he could count; feathery pushes on the shoulder, a softly said ‘Learn how to lie, dumbass’ as a teasing secret after a mission, resulting in pink dust over Yuuji’s freckles and everlasting butterflies in Megumi’s gut.
Itadori Yuuji sucks at lying.
But Megumi Fushiguro doesn’t.
He has done it before, and if he gets to live, he’ll do it again. Yet when Yuuji opens his heart, he can’t bring himself to lie this time.
Megumi has said numerous times that he doesn’t want things because life as a jujutsu sorcerer doesn’t let them dream too high from the ground. The fall is always fatal, the closest thing to a wounded Icarus after almost touching the sun. If he managed to survive another day he was content with it; that’s what he has told himself since the age of ten. As long as he had Tsumiki, then everything was fine; he didn’t need anything else.
And he truly didn’t. That wasn’t a lie.
But then Yuuji Itadori appeared, bursting through the window of a school hallway, saving him with no knowledge other than his name and the fact that he needed to be saved.
A new presence in his life, warming the beginning of his days, electrifying the afterglows in every sunset, and lighting the nights when he got lost in the maze of his own thoughts. Setting a weight over his shoulders that felt far away from a burden and too close to comfort, Yuuji’s arms were a blanket protecting him from shadows darker and meaner than the ones he was born with.
The day Megumi met Yuuji was the day he realized that love was more than a word; it was the feeling of his pounding heart eclipsing the doubts in his mind.
(“I don’t want him to die.”)
Megumi was a boy of darkness chasing the light only Yuuji’s soul could give, like a moth to a flame, like a sunflower to the early rays of light on a summer day.
And when he told himself that just surviving was enough, Megumi knew it was a lie. Because he no longer wanted to have crumbs of the possibility of a life. He wanted it all. He wanted to live.
Megumi has lied to himself many times before. But now he stops.
(“That’s why I never regretted saving you, Itadori, not even once.”)
Now he wants.
Wants, wants, wants.
Uneventful days with casual meals on their table, their shirts drying under the summer sun, warm hands holding each other during the winter nights, secret conversations in the kitchen with hot green tea and cold chocolate in their favorite mugs. A grocery shopping list secured in his pocket with the name of Yuuji’s favorite popcorn brand written out of habit instead of need or bad movies whose ends they never get to see, too focused on kissing each other instead. Yellow chrysanthemums in his arms as Yuuji guides him to his grandfather’s grave. The constant and strong beat of Yuuji’s heart under his ear as he lulls himself to sleep, gentle and candid brown eyes as the first thing he gets to see every morning.
The cold steel of a ring on his finger as he prepares the meatballs Yuuji taught him years ago and knows he loves.
Yuuji’s big smile and obnoxious laugh bathing an eternal spring the seasons of his life until they are old, with wrinkles in the corner of their eyes and white hair instead of pink and black. ‘I love you’s said as easy as ‘Hello’s but with the same intensity of ‘I’d die for you.’
The love is in the mundane. The happiness in the known. Megumi knows it. And he wants it as hard as he wants to believe Yuuji wants it, too.
Megumi Fughiguro knows how to lie. But now actively chooses not to.
(“So start by saving me, Itadori.”)
Yuuji is currently fighting a demon to save him, but he won’t force him to live the life he’s fighting with his own soul to protect.
And oh, Megumi really wanted to let it go. For a moment too long, he really wanted to end it all. Tsumiki was dead, killed by his own hands. Gojo beat and cut in half by his own technique. His body was used as a vessel, and now he was a carcass bathed in something heavier than just despair and angst. Megumi thought he was far gone. That he didn’t care anymore.
But that was the type of lie he’s been helpless to fall for until Yuuji appeared in front of him, at the most vulnerable time of his life. Back when he didn’t understand how important his existence truly was because he was abandoned by the people who were supposed to care the most for it. And then Yuuji told him the heaviest truth he had ever heard, raw honesty ripping the veil Sukuna had put over him.
(“It would be lonely without you, Fushiguro.”)
And now the thought of giving up sounds in his head as the biggest lie he has ever told himself.
Megumi pulls his shadows out of the light Yuuji has brought again into his life because he wants to fight back even if he doesn’t get to win because, at least, now he wants to try. For him, for Tsumiki, for Gojo, for Yuuji.
For maybe not a life with him, but the possibility of one.
That’s enough for him. A reason worth fighting, living, or dying for.
Megumi wants to believe that even if love is, indeed, the most twisted curse of all, he can turn it into the biggest blessing because that’s what Yuuji is to him.
And Megumi loves him as deep as his soul can reach and will keep loving him for all the days his body allows him to, and even after that too.
That is a fact.
And that’s not a lie at all.
“Because sometimes you don't need to hear how beautiful life is; just need someone to miss you if you aren't in it.”