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“Even if he is a vessel, according to jujutsu regulations, he will be subjected to death.”
This is what Gojo says to him, with the limp body of the boy with the pink hair laying unmoving in his arms. Fushiguro can feel the dirt smudged across his own skin, and the impending feeling of everything is about to change as he stares. He looks at the boy and wonders why his heart seems like it's trying to lurch out of his chest and hand itself over to him. Why he might let it, if it chose to.
As he stares, his soul feeling like it's being pried apart, he hears himself say, “Alright.”
Alright? he thinks. Alright? He finds himself desperate to snatch those words out of the air and stuff them back into his throat until he chokes on them. No, no, not alright. I don't want him to die. I want him to live. Save him, Satoru. Save him. Please, please save him.
But he can't get any of those words out—can't even open his mouth. And Gojo simply nods and says, “I'll take you back to the school before I deal with him. Ready to go?”
It's a clawing, clamoring, shrieking thing in Fushiguro's chest: don't deal with him, don't kill him, if you kill him I'll die, I'll die, I'll die, why can't I speak, why can't I say a single one of the words on my tongue, give him to me and let me save him if you won't, I'll tear down the Higher Ups before I ever let them take him from me, I promised myself that ever since he came back with a fresh heart beating in his chest and new life surging through his veins, he's mine and he can't can't can't die, I have to save him I have to I have to I have to—
But he barely knows this guy. He has no idea where any of this is coming from. Is this Sukuna’s influence? Wriggling inside of his mind and planting thoughts there, turning it against itself? If it is, and it's this powerful, then maybe it's better if the boy dies (no no no no no—) so that this power can be snuffed out.
Yeah, he tells himself, following after Gojo with a hand pressing down on his booming chest. This is better.
–
That night, he dreams.
He’s standing on a precipice. Below him, there is a darkness, an emptiness, a place he both deeply fears and yearns for. He is inches from tumbling over into the blackness when he looks up and into honest brown eyes glinting warm and half-golden. The face above him smiles, so big his eyes squeeze shut from the force of it, before reaching out a hand.
Take it, he says, floating like an angel and still grinning brilliantly. It’s okay. I won’t let you fall.
He feels himself reach out and wrap gentle fingers around calloused hands. The boy—spirit?—holds on tight, and pulls him sharply away from the edge. He lowers the both of them to the ground, and Fushigruo settles into a crossed-legged position. He’s not entirely sure what the ground he’s sitting on even is. Everything feels hazy, like he’s surrounded by clouds and the air is stuffed with cotton.
You’re safe, the boy says, and fingertips brush careful lines across his face. You don’t have to be scared. I’m coming, okay? I’ll be there soon.
Who are you? he wants to say. What is your name? Why can’t I escape you? But none of these words leave his lips. His mouth stays resolutely shut, and the boy moves his fingers to graze over it.
I swear I’m coming, he says, tears flowing freely down his cheeks. Fushiguro finds himself with the aching desire to wipe them away, but his hands feel heavy as though they have been filled with concrete. I just need a little more time, okay? Just hold on. I’m coming for you, Fushi.
The boy’s face begins to smear, and at first Fushiguro thinks he’s melting, but then he looks down and sees his own hands smearing as well. He looks up and catches the barest glance of a parting grin and a whispered when I get you back, I promise I'll tell you, before the dream whisks away into darkness.
–
When he leaves his room the next morning, trying to shake away the dregs of unconsciousness, he watches more than actually feels himself walking out into the hallway. His steps are heavy and slow, and he stops in front of the door of the empty room next to him. His fist raises over the foreign wood before he freezes.
He blinks. Who the hell was he trying to go see? No one lives in this room—no one ever has or ever will. There's only one other first year this year, who not only hasn’t even arrived yet, but is going to be living in the girls’ rooms.
Stepping shakily away from the door, he turns around and tries to ignore the flashes of pink hair and brilliant grin racing through his head.
–
“Hey, Gojo?” Fushiguro speaks into the comfortably silent room. His mentor just returned from a week-or-so-long mission, and has now taken it upon himself to peruse some manga he purchased on the journey in Fushiguro’s room. He was relaxing into a vibrant red bean bag chair. Fushiguro does not own a bean bag chair—he has no idea where he got it from and it isn’t worth asking.
“Mm?” Gojo hums, lifting his head slightly in Fushiguro’s direction. He turns the page of his manga, so Fushiguro knows he’s still reading.
Only the weight of the situation stops him from rolling his eyes. He turns the words over in his head before he puts them out into the world, or into Gojo’s trustworthy-untrustworthy hands. “Can a curse’s effects still remain after being exorcised?”
Gojo’s attention finally fully shifts from his manga. “Of course not.” Though his posture remains relaxed, his energy shifts into something tenser and more dangerous. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” Fushiguro says, bland and leaning back into his pillow as nonchalantly as he can. He feels his heart rate pick up in quiet panic but he refuses to let it show. “Just a hypothetical.”
Gojo leans forward, manga falling forgotten into his lap. “If there’s something wrong, you need to tell me so I can deal with it.”
“Oh my god.” Fushiguro rolls his eyes as dramatically as he can, flopping sideways on his bed. “Shut up, I was just curious. I’m fine.”
He can almost feel Gojo reluctantly relax behind him, and hears the soft fluttering of the pages as he picks it up again. Fushiguro closes his eyes and tries not to think of the nameless, faceless boy that died at the hands of the man just a few feet away that he inexplicably knows was supposed to save him.
–
When he meets the new girl, it's more awkward than anything else.
“So… Fushiguro, right?” she says. Her name is Kugisaki and she seems both bouncily delighted and darkly murderous, which is an extremely strange pairing he doesn't know how to handle yet.
He hums a curt mhm in response, and they both drift back into awkward silence.
Distantly, he thinks there's supposed to be someone else here; someone to match her bounciness and bridge the gap between the two of them, make them whole and complete. But there's no one else there but Gojo and no one else who's coming to join them.
“Alright, first years!” Gojo calls out like there's more than just two kids in front of him, clapping his hands together. The sound rings out louder than it would have been without the silence. “It's time for your first mission. Are you two ready?”
Kugisaki calls out some overeager exclamation in response, while Fushiguro just nods absently.
Someone else, someone else, someone else is supposed to be here echoes in his head but he tamps it down and clenches his jaw.
“Wonderful!” Gojo announced, either unaware of or simply ignoring the painful awkwardness. “Let's head out!”
They both follow after him, and they leave the space between them wide enough to fit a whole other, phantom person.
–
He wakes up every morning feeling empty.
Someone else, he keeps thinking, but he doesn't know what it means. He pushes it down until he can pretend to forget about it.
–
Fushiguro and Maki are standing face-to-face on the training field, blades held up threateningly and feet shifting into offensive stances. He watches her carefully. Maki makes the first move, lunging forward with her ponytail flying behind her.
Fushiguro barely manages to block it, and misses his opening to strike when she pulls back. She whirls down to sweep his legs out from under him, and he barely manages to stumble back. He sloppily slashes his blade downward.
Maki blocks it easily. With a quick twist of her wrist, she sends the sword flying from his hands and into the grass. While he's still startled and empty-handed, she kicks out her foot to hook around his ankle and bring him sharply down. His back hits the grass and pain shoots up his tailbone.
“Go, Maki!” Kugisaki calls out from off to the side, alone where she sits. Something feels deeply off about that—a single voice cheering Maki on where there's supposed to be two. But then, he doesn't think they're both for Maki.
One is supposed to be for him, he realizes, but he doesn't know who that's supposed to be. No one has ever cheered for him before during training and he's never felt any particular desire for it, either. But now it's a pulsing ache; a need, almost, for a pink mouth and strong jaw to open wide, teeth flashing pearly white, as it calls out great job, Fushiguro! with a calloused hand waving over a spiky pink head.
And then—when the weapons fall, and the match is truly over, a warm, hoodie-clad body colliding with his own and nearly knocking him straight into the grass. Stocky limbs that don’t completely understand their own strength wrapping around his body, but it’s alright because Fushiguro can take it.
And underneath all that: a warmth, budding and glowing, stretching outside of Fushiguro’s body for one person and one person only. Something he can feel now if he searches for it, digs it out of his chest and tries not to name it.
He’s so engrossed in the image that he completely forgets who he is or what he’s doing, until a sharp pain exploding across his cheek yanks him out of the vision with terrifying ferocity. His hand flies to his face and he barely opens his mouth to protest before his eyes reach Maki’s pissed-off face. He shuts his mouth so hard his teeth clack painfully.
“What the hell is up with you lately?” Maki seethes. “Your head couldn't be more in the clouds right now. And what were you staring at Kugisaki for?” Her eyes narrow sharply at that, and he's not totally sure what that's about but he definitely knows he doesn't want to get stuck in the middle of it.
“No, no,” he grumbles, rubbing at his face. “I wasn't staring at her. Just…” He drifts off before he can say the spot next to her, realizing how crazy that sounds.
“Just what?” Maki pushes. She spins her weapon and shoves it into the wet ground, leaning her weight against it. It's both a casual and threatening motion that Fushiguro decides not to dwell on.
“Just…” He closes his eyes for a few beats. “Do you ever feel like…” He opens them and turns his head slightly away, Maki shoots out an impatient breath.
“Feel like what?” She stares him down, fury and concern both in her gaze, and he swallows hard.
“Like there's someone who's supposed to be here but isn't.”
She tilts her head at him like she's looking at a psych ward patient. “What?” she hisses. She's definitely surprised, like that was the last thing she expected him to say. It's strange, because it's all he can think about lately—so much so, he wonders how they don't take one look at him and just know.
He turns his head to face her with his whole gaze, trying to shake off the nervousness. “A boy. I think he was supposed to be a first year, but I'm not really sure. He was really, really bright. Like the sun in a person. I don't—the room next to mine. It was supposed to be his, and I should be walking over every morning to remind him to wake up because he always sleeps through his alarm. And then sometimes I’m supposed to sit in there and read while he gets ready, and he'd talk to me and I wouldn't say anything but I'd still be listening. And I just—he’s supposed to be here, but he isn't, and I don't know why.”
His mouth shuts with a click, and he looks back up at her from where his gaze had fallen to his lap. She's staring at him, stunned, with her mouth hanging open in shock.
He finds himself opening his mouth and even more spilling out. “I was supposed to save him. He saved me, and then I was supposed to save him back, but I didn't. I tried. I wanted to. Gojo was holding him and he said he would have to be executed, and I wanted to tell him no, you know. Tell him that I wanted him to live. But I couldn't even—I couldn't even open my mouth. I don't know why. It was like… a ghost, or a curse, maybe, was pinching it shut. I didn't say anything, and now he's gone."
Fushiguro blinks, realizing that there are tears in his eyes and now everyone on the field is staring at him—but he just feels numb. His limbs feel like they're full of static and his tongue feels like it's been drenched in acid and he's so, so tired of being haunted.
He swallows, a deep hollowness spreading throughout his entire being. "I think I was supposed to love him. I think I do love him, and he's either dead or not even real and I don't know which is worse." A single tear races down his cheek and he blinks in mute surprise, his hand flying to wipe it away. He takes a step backward and Maki reaches for him, her weapon dropped and forgotten in the grass, but he sways out of her grasp.
“I’m gonna go take a break,” he rasps, Maki’s eyes wide and concerned as they watch him. He carefully turns around and walks back to the school.
–
Later, in his room, his eyes trail over the pages of some book Gojo picked up for him on one of his trips but he isn't reading a single word. His thoughts run circles around a name he can't seem to think in its entirety and his heart pumps a rhythm that is supposed to match that of someone who doesn’t even exist. He misses, with a fervor that alarms him, an imagined ghost of pinkish haze and ever-flowing kindness.
It is here, when his thoughts are so far from the novel in his hands he doesn't even know why he's still holding it anymore, that Kugisaki barges into his room like a bull into the ring.
Before he can find his bearings, the book slipping unnoticed from his hands, she starts talking.
"Okay, so I know the two of us aren't close or anything, but I heard you talking to Maki-senpai earlier and I just wanted you to know that—” She cuts off, her lip curling in thought.
When he stares at her in silence for a little too long, he says, “Know what?”
She looks him up and down, calculating, before admitting, “You’re not crazy, because I can feel it too.”
Fushiguro freezes. The book flops to the floor completely and hits the carpet with a hollow thwap!
"What do you mean by that?" he presses, managing just barely to keep his voice steady.
She takes a fortifying breath —did she run here?— and then says, "That there should be someone else here, with us—I can feel it, too."
At first, he just blinks at her uncomprehendingly. All this time, it felt like a ghost that only Fushiguro could sense, following him down every corner and corridor. Catching him unawares during training, or at the boba shop, or in his room. It made his skull itch and his face twitch, and by God, he thought that Gojo’s half-assed teenage attempts at semi-fatherhood had finally shown through and he was spinning into the depths of insanity.
But once Kugisaki’s words truly sink in, an unfamiliar feeling of lightness washes over him. He thinks this might be relief, but not quite, because even the knowledge that he isn't going insane and that something really is wrong won't put this missing person back within arm's reach. But this is better, he decides. He would rather feel this emptiness with someone else than alone.
"I don't have any of the specific stuff, like the memories, like you do," she continues when Fushiguro stays silent. "But I get these little… lurches, I want to call them? Like, I'll look over to someone who isn't there or leave a seat open for a person that's not coming. It's been driving me crazy ever since I got here, but I thought it was just some weird side effect of working with cursed energy more often? I don't even know."
Fushiguro huffs out a sarcastic breath. "Definitely not a side effect of working with curses."
"But then you talked about him like you met him," Kugisaki continues, ignoring his comment, her eyes narrowed in accusation. "And that he was somebody that could have been 'saved.' What the hell is that supposed to mean? Did you know him? Where is he now?" She spits out each question rapid-fire, too fast for him to even process before the next one comes.
“Well, what do you want to know first?” is what he ends up asking, eyebrows raised.
Kugisaki stares at him for a moment. Her eyes are quietly furious in a way he is beginning to suspect is par for the course for her, and her eyebrows furrow in thought. It’s like watching a vicious game of tug-of-war in a hundred different directions.
Finally, she says, quieter, “What was his name?”
Fushiguro looks at her. He can feel his eyes go all wide, because… He thinks back to that day, when he met the boy and the boy saved him and Gojo was holding him… He remembers the after, the guilt and the panic… But he can’t… He can’t—
“I don’t know,” he mumbles, and they both just stare at each other.
–
When Gojo returns from his latest trip, he visits Fushiguro in his room.
“…this little dog thing I thought you’d like. Look, it looks like Kuro!” Gojo holds the figurine up to his face and sticks his tongue out. “See?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Fushiguro rolls his eyes, his gaze drifting to the wall. All that’s occupied his mind lately was this boy, but almost equally as much, if Gojo remembered him. Were there missing details for him too? The hazy, nameless figure floating like a phantom through Jujutsu High? Unexplainable actions without motive, like pulling out a chair for someone who isn’t coming, or making note of recipes that no one he knows would ever cook?
It gnaws at him, like a starving dog on an old bone. And inexplicably, the question that's been eating at Fushiguro for weeks slips unbidden past his lips. “Do you remember the boy you executed?”
Gojo, who had been busying himself with moving the toy dog’s legs to make it look like it was running in the air, pauses. “Oi?” he mutters, caught off-guard.
“The boy, with the pink hair—Sukuna’s vessel. Do you remember him?”
Gojo’s face lights up with surprise. “And if I said I did,” he says, cocking his head playfully, “What, pray tell, would my dear pupil like to know?”
Fushiguro swallows. He’s not sure how to ask this; in his delusions of trying to talk to Gojo of all people about this, he never got this far.
“If I had asked you,” he starts, his tongue flicking out to wet his lips nervously. “If I had asked you to save him, would you have?”
Gojo pauses. His usual goofy demeanor slides off his body like an old skin, and Fushiguro imagines if his blindfold were off, he would see horrifyingly blue eyes staring at him unblinkingly. After several long seconds drag out silently between them, Fushiguro presses further.
“Gojo,” he says, “Why did you kill him? Why didn’t you save him?”
Gojo takes a full step back, in the vague direction of the door. “I—” His voice cracks around the single syllable, and doesn’t regain the strength for more.
“Do you remember his name?”
When Gojo leaves the room without responding, Fushiguro has his answer.
–
I’m so close, Fushi, a voice hums in his ear. I promise, I’ll be right there. Just hang on, okay? Please don’t give up. I’m coming.
He feels the phantom brush of a finger against his scalp, and then nothing.
–
Fushiguro is walking out along the edges of the school property when it hits him.
Fushiguro! Fushiguro! a voice calls in his head. He freezes in his tracks.
“What the hell?” he mutters, looking around for a speaker—but nobody is there. Is this it? Are these his final moments of clarity before insanity finally takes hold?
The voice returns. Come on, come on! Answer me, Megumi!
“…Hello?” he croaks, still searching for a speaker.
There we go! It’s me! I’m here, just like I promised, okay? Well, almost here. I just need you to open your domain so I can get you out of there, alright? Can you do that for me?
“What the fuck…?” he murmurs. “I don’t have a domain. Who even are you?”
The voice pauses. You don’t… know who I am?
“No,” he answers, the duh plain in his voice.
No, no, no. It’s me, Fushi.
Fushiguro sucks in a shocked breath. That nickname. Is that…?
It’s Itadori.
–
A boy.
A boy.
A boy.
–
Kind, like Tsumiki. Dumb, too, but sweet. He’s like a big, pink, furry dog that jumps into your lap and makes a mess out of the dinner table. But he doesn’t beg for bones—he takes what is given and doesn't ask for anything else. It’s a good thing you would give him the world on the platter without him ever asking, anyway.
But that kindness comes back to haunt you. A monster rips his heart out and his body falls, smiling, to the pavement. You carry his body to the car and get his blood all over your nice uniform. You don’t cry until you reach Gojo, and he catches you but you won’t let go of the body. You won’t, you won’t.
And then he’s gone. Gone, gone, gone.
You mourn. It isn’t an unfamiliar feeling, but it brings down an all-new hell shaped like this: his heart feeling like it’s bleeding into his lungs, and all he can do is choke on the blood. He wastes away, fueled by a muttered live a long life and sheer willpower but nothing else.
And then. And then—he’s back. And now you want to skin him alive, to throttle Gojo and Ieiri and anyone and everyone who knew Itadori was alive and didn’t tell you. He’s back, and it all should return to normal—but then the same day you get him back someone tries to take him from you again, and you can’t have that, can you? And so you throw yourself into battle, going for the throat like a rabid dog, because they can’t take him when you just got him back.
You, Megumi Fushiguro, are quite familiar with the unfairness of the world. But for once in your life you want to throw yourself to the ground and wail not fair! like a child in a grocery store, bring out Mahoraga and rain hell on the Higher Ups and Kamo and anyone who thought they could take Yuuji from you, who thought that he was someone who wasn't worth keeping alive.
And soon enough, everything spins out of your control. Life is a cycle of kill or be killed but never let them kill him, and it’s all—well, it’s all a haze of Yuuji, Yuuji, Yuuji.
Yuuji. How could he have ever forgotten Yuuji?
–
“Yuuji,” he breathes. “Holy shit. Holy shit. Yuuji.”
Hey, Fushi, the voice tinkles. Glad to have you back. You got any idea what’s going on?
“Just tell me already,” Fushiguro grumbles.
The voice snickers lightly. Alright, alright. You’re in a really, really fucked-up domain right now, but if you can open your domain you should be able to make a hole big enough to allow me in so I can help you out.
“Sure, but help me out with what?”
Yuuji pauses. Uhhh… the curse? Isn’t there a curse in there that you’re, you know… fighting?
“No,” he answers honestly.
Oh. Uh, then… what’s going on?
Fushiguro hesitates. What is this place, really? How long has he even been here? Somehow, it feels like a lifetime, but if he really looks back… he thinks it only started when he first met Itadori. And even then, were all the days after that even whole? Or were they just a patchwork collection of little moments, scraped together to make it feel complete?
He wants to sit down and put his head between his knees. Is he even real? Is this voice? Or is it another method of torture, taunting him with the angelic voice of the ghost he’s been chasing for what feels like weeks now?
Fushiguro? Fushiguro! Fucking— Fushi!
“I’m right here,” he whispers. Where even is Yuuji? How is it even possible for Fushiguro to be able to hear him, right now? He doesn’t understand any of this, and the longer he thinks about it, the more hopeless it gets. Yuuji isn’t really here, is he?
“How… how long have I been in here?”
Uhhh… Yuuji (is it?) says. Maybe, like, thirty minutes? A while.
Thirty minutes? Thirty minutes? How the hell— how the hell has it only been thirty minutes?
“What?” he croaks. “That’s not—that’s not possible.”
Okay, seriously, if you don’t tell me what’s going on in there right now I’m going to break in with your help or not.
“If you could do that you would’ve done it already,” Fushiguro mutters. He hesitates, flexing his hand over his leg. “Itadori, are you… are you real?”
Yuuji stops. Uh, yeah? Yeah, I’m definitely real. Why do you ask?
“Because I don’t think you are,” he whispers. “I think… that you’re just another part of this place, and if I let you in, you’ll kill me.”
Somehow, he can feel the immediate panic on Yuuji’s end. Whoa, whoa, whoa! Okay, I don’t know what’s going on in there, but I’m real, okay? I’m right here. I’m right here for you. You can leave me here for hours and I still won’t move. And you would do the same for me, right?
“Yeah,” he croaks.
Alright. So trust that. Trust me.
“Okay,” he says, because it's so… it's so Yuuji. It has to be him, right? It has to be.
Because Yuuji had saved him when he didn’t even know him and should have ran for the hills, back at his old school in Sendai. Because Yuuji popped out of a box when he was supposed to be in Ieiri’s morgue, right when Fushiguro was convinced he would never be allowed something permanent. Because Yuuji was the one who stayed happily at Fushiguro’s bedside after his injuries from the Exchange Event, only ever leaving for meals and the occasional sleep with a pout.
That was Yuuji, at his core. Loyal. Dependable. Someone that stayed, even when he seemingly had no reason to. Some curse would never be able to replicate that. He knew it.
So… wanna tell me what's going on?
Fushiguro swallows. “I think it's an alternate reality, of some kind. Where I didn't save you and you died.”
Yuuji pauses. Really?
“Yeah. And it made me forget you, and everything that happened after I saved you. I couldn't even remember your name.”
Oh, he says, and even through this frankly insane mental bond Fushiguro can feel the sadness clinging to the edges of the word.
“But I do now,” he insists. “The second you spoke to me, I remembered everything. It's all okay now. I've got you back.”
He can feel Yuuji brighten slightly. Not yet, you don't. Mind opening your domain and putting a hole in this thing?
“On it.” Fushiguro smirks, and with near-ease opens his domain and hops through the hole.
–
When he lands back on solid ground—how had he never noticed that everything in that domain felt shaky and unstable?—he’s met with a face that feels as though it has haunted him for ages.
Even now, after everything, he still can't believe he forgot him. The precise pink of his hair, the soft brown of his undercut, the red crescents underneath his eyes. It hits him like a bullet through a well-worn hole in his chest that even when Yuuji’s covered in mud and scuffed-up from battle, he’s beautiful.
“Yuuji,” he says, frozen in place, caught between reaching his arms out and snatching them back.
“Holy shit, Fushi,” he cries out, lurching forward. Yuuji wraps his arms around his waist and pulls Fushiguro against the shaking line of his body.
With great hesitation, he allows himself to squeeze Yuuji back, sinking into the embrace.
“You scared the shit out of me,” Yuuji whispers, his voice cracking.
“Sorry, Itadori,” he mutters, an almost sardonic smile playing out over his mouth.
Forgetting himself for a moment, he burrows further into Yuuji’s arms, who shows no sign of letting go anytime soon. “Missed you,” he whispers, fully expecting, for some reason, for Yuuji not to hear him.
“It's barely been half an hour,” Yuuji laughs breathily.
For you, he wants to say, but he's not sure how to broach that. In the domain, everything was… shaky. Time was stretchy and strange, and he still has no idea how long he thought he spent in there. Was it weeks? Days? Years?
That's when he remembers how they got into all of this in the first place—a curse, that they didn't exorcise and should absolutely still be around somewhere. Panicked, he breaks out of Yuuji's hold and whirls around to face it.
“What the hell?” he mutters at the sight of a giant, insanely powerful-looking curse… with a huge slash right down its middle, oozing purple sludge.
“Oh, yeah,” Yuuji says, “The second you came out, the whole domain collapsed. And when you saw me, it, like, split in half. It was freaky, but it's definitely done for.”
Fushiguro slowly turns around to face this dumb, gorgeous idiot again. “And why didn't you think to mention something?”
“I was preoccupied.” He shrugs, and Fushiguro’s whole body flashes hot.
“Shut up,” he mutters, starting forward and grabbing Yuuji by the hood. “Let's get out of here.”
–
“Can you tell me more about the domain?” Yuuji whispers later, when night is beginning to fall and they're lying together in his bed.
It's strange. Fushiguro knows that they are both keenly aware of the fact that this isn't something they can excuse as friendship anymore. But the pair of them have been two equally orbiting spacestuffs since he can't even remember when, and the gap between them is ever-closing.
The issue is that, as brave as they may seem, they both are terribly cowardly when it comes to one another. Fushiguro knows that he could lean forward and Yuuji wouldn't stop him—but for some reason, that's never been enough. And he knows the other boy feels the same way. So, they're stuck in this state of stasis. Leaning into each other's space but never far enough to incriminate themselves.
“What do you want to know?” Fushiguro whispers back. He's not looking at Yuuji.
“How long was it? In there?”
He hesitates before answering. To be honest, he's still not sure. And he's not sure what answer Yuuji wants, either.
“I don't know,” he tells him truthfully. “A long time. A few days, at least. Maybe a couple weeks.” He pauses. “I saw Kugisaki. She felt it too, but she wasn't real.”
He hears Yuuji turn toward him but he doesn't look back. “Felt what?”
“The emptiness,” he says. “That feeling like someone else should have been there, but wasn't.” He huffs out a laugh. “We didn't get along very well without you.”
“I bet you two would have figured it out,” Yuuji argues.
Fushiguro doesn't say anything for a bit. “Maybe,” he finally acquiesces.
He's not sure what causes it to resurface, but he suddenly remembers the dreams that he had—of a hazy, indistinguishable Yuuji, comforting him and holding him back from the brink. Telling him that he was coming, that he would be there soon. Before, it was just another mysterious facet of the domain, but now that he knows the truth of it, he has to wonder…
“Did you speak to me, before you got me out?”
At this, he turns his head towards the other boy—just in time to watch his face flush slightly. “Sort of?” Yuuji says. “Little things, I guess. I don't know. I was… really scared, Fushi.”
“I know,” he answers honestly. “I heard you, I think. In my dreams.” Now it's his turn to blush, embarrassed.
Yuuji grins at him teasingly. “Your dreams?” His head tilts just slightly closer on the pillow, and Fushiguro leans ever so unnoticeably back.
“Shut up,” he says, still red. “I was scared too, you know.”
“Yeah,” Yuuji mutters, suddenly serious. He’s silent for a moment before speaking again. “I'm really glad you're not dead,” he whispers.
Fushiguro can't help it—he snorts lightly. “Me too,” he says, burrowing further into the bed.
They're quiet again, but it's the comfortable kind. Fushiguro feels himself drifting off. He spares a thought to leaving so he can sleep in his own bed, but he dismisses it almost as quickly. It's not like he wants to leave, or like it's even his first time sleeping in Yuuji’s bed. It's fine.
“Hey, Fushiguro?” Yuuji whispers.
He lifts out of his sleepiness, his eyes cracking open. “Hm?”
“Why do you think this curse was so weird?” he whispers into the dark. “I mean, domains are usually meant to trap people inside, right? So it should be harder to get out, but easy to get in? But for us, it was the opposite.”
When Fushiguro doesn't answer, Yuuji continues. “Like, I was out there for nearly an hour trying to punch through that barrier and it wouldn’t budge an inch. But you were able to get out in minutes and didn’t even break a sweat.
“And what the hell was that with the curse? Like, you said you never even saw it while you were trapped in there, and just escaping was enough to exorcise it. I don’t know. It’s freaking me out.”
Fushiguro reaches forward, tangling his fingers in the buttons of Yuuji’s pajama top. “Calm down, ‘Dori,” he mutters sleepily. “I think,” he starts, thinking out loud, “that the way to fight this curse wasn’t physical. It was a mental fight. I had to keep my head and keep trying to remember you.”
He looks at Yuuji’s wide, sad eyes, and wishes he were brave enough to drag his fingers down them to shut them, to place featherlight kisses on his eyelids. But he’s not, and all he can do is tighten his grip on Yuuji’s shirt.
“And I think that’s why you were able to reach me with your mind. You were helping me fight the domain from the outside—just not physically.” He hesitates before saying what he’s about to next, but Yuuji’s imploring eyes (so so so close) are plenty to get it out of him. “So… thank you, Itadori. For saving me.”
Yuuji’s mouth curls into a small smile at the corner as he laughs slightly. “No need, Fushi. Saving you is just saving myself, at this point. It’s selfish.”
Fushiguro feels his whole body warm up in response. Yuuji has said similar things before, spontaneous and casual confessions, but each time it makes him want to explode into fine stardust.
“You’re not selfish,” he whispers back. “You don’t even know how to be.”
Yuuji grins. “I think I can,” he retorts, grabbing Fushiguro’s hand and twining their fingers together. Fushiguro’s heart rate beats double-time as Yuuji pulls their tangled hands to his chest.
Then again, he can feel Yuuji’s own heartbeat—a lively pulse he could easily get addicted to.
He thinks if you searched through all his favorite songs, you would find it there. That rhythm. Steady and definitive, a pumping bass hidden like a secret underneath layers of sound. Bits of Yuuji scattered through his life where he didn’t even know they ever were.
But that was how Yuuji got there in the first place, wasn’t it? A hellstorm and peace incarnate all at once, throwing Fushiguro’s whole world upside down and steadying it in the same breath. For where Yuuji was kind, effervescently so, the world was not—it seemed determined to wrap gentle souls in layers of spikes so that destruction always followed in their wake.
But Yuuji was worth it. The destruction, the carnage, the countless lives. They were all worth it, for him.
He scoffs internally. Selfish doesn’t even touch Yuuji. Has never seen his heart. It lives in Fushiguro’s, though, is built into his bones. Into his blood and marrow.
He knows it for the way he asked Gojo to save Yuuji, knowing that he would listen while a shaking something thrummed in his throat. He knows it for the way he would bring hell down on the Higher Ups for so much as touching him, even if Sukuna ravages the world in fire and flame. He knows it for the way that Yuuji is kind, inordinately so, and that he will save anyone simply for needing to be saved—but Fushiguro doesn't save so compassionately. He saves only those he deems worthy, and if the only people he can save for the rest of his life were Yuuji, Kugisaki, and Tsumiki, he would be perfectly content.
Fushiguro is selfish. Unbelievably, undeniably selfish.
He thinks he can be alright with that, though, as long as his hand stays in Yuuji’s.
“Would you mind?” Yuuji continues. “If I did something selfish?” He lifts their intertwined hands to his mouth and grazes his lips over the other boy’s fingers.
His heart in his throat, Fushiguro shakes his head no.
If happiness could be heard, Yuuji’s grin would be deafening. It stretches across his whole face, all glistening teeth and absurdly bright, directed right at Fushiguro like it's not a nuclear-grade weapon. He feels the inexplicable urge to bury his face in his pillow, or maybe into Yuuji’s collarbone. He thinks he could perhaps trace his equal aversion and attraction to displays of happiness back to his old apartment, where his sister was sun-bright and his whole world and then nothing at all. He doesn’t want to fear Yuuji.
More than that—he doesn’t want to fear what Yuuji could be to him, all the space that he holds in his heart. The world of jujutsu is complicated. To admit to loving and being loved is to admit that this is something you could lose, and that’s the greatest fear of every sorcerer out there. Yuuji is the first one Fushiguro ever met that doesn’t seem to understand that. He came crashing into Fushiguro’s life, shoving love into his hands and saying take it, it’s yours. Even Gojo didn’t have that kind of confidence, all too aware of the danger of speaking love out into the open world.
Perhaps if even the Greatest fears it, he should too. But as he stares at Yuuji’s face, wide open and unrelentingly happy, he just doesn’t have it in him to be afraid.
He gently pulls his hand out of Yuuji’s and lays it flat across his cheek. The grin slowly melts off of the other boy’s face, replaced with something Fushiguro isn’t shy to call reverent. The love is bubbling up in his chest, like sugar on the stove or warm magma. And despite everything, despite the world they live in and the expiration date stamped across Yuuji’s back in red ink, Fushiguro doesn’t feel an ounce of fear when he leans carefully forward to press his lips against Yuuji’s flushing cheek.
“I love you,” he whispers when he pulls back, breathing the words into Yuuji’s mouth. And he feels something break when he does—like a dam, or a chain, or perhaps a cycle of death with love unspoken.
He thinks of Shoko, and how he never saw her more afraid than the day Gojo brought in a barely-breathing Utahime, body broken in his arms. He remembers the smell of her menthol cigarettes fading steadily off of her after that, and how he never saw her smoke again.
He thinks of Gojo, and how he hardly ever slept at his and Tsumiki’s apartment, never explaining why when a more naïve version of Fushiguro would bug him about it. He remembers the few times he did, and how he would mutter Suguru, Suguru, Suguru in his sleep until Tsumiki mustered up the kindness to shake him awake.
He thinks of Nanami, and how he never spoke of the boy in his year that died when they were still students, and only said he left Jujutsu High because it was too painful. He remembers Shoko and Gojo speaking of the boy in hushed tones when they thought he couldn’t hear, Haibara, and that they never mentioned the name around Nanami.
He thinks of them, stories after stories of jujutsu sorcerers condemning themselves to solitude, and he thinks we won’t end up like them. Fushiguro is making the choice, here and now, that he and Yuuji will break the cycle—they will love and be loved, allow it for themselves, and won’t let it be their end.
Fushiguro will scrub that expiration date off with blood and alcohol. He will summon Mahoraga and bring down the Higher Ups himself if he has to, because none of it will be worth it if Yuuji doesn’t make it out alive. More than that, though. He may be willing to die for Yuuji, easily, without pause, but also—he is willing to live for him, too.
You aren’t allowed to have him, he thinks, and he doesn’t know who the thought is directed towards. He just knows that this, this look on Yuuji’s face that might be enough to kill him if he stares long enough, belongs to no one but him. The feeling of Yuuji’s skin underneath his own is his to have and claim. He knew this, long before now, but it’s one thing to know and another to know, intimately and surely. He likes this a lot better.
The smile graces Yuuji’s face again. “I love you, too,” he whispers, soft and sure, before pressing his lips to Fushiguro’s own. It’s not sparks, or fireworks—Christ, it’s just Yuuji. Gentle warmth, bubbling up in Fushiguro’s chest, stoked by the push of Yuuji’s lips into his. He tastes like the meatballs he taught him to make before he died, or the blood of his body after he did. He tastes like comfort and curses and home, danger and safety both.
He feels Yuuji’s hand find his hip, calluses scratching against the skin there. Fushiguro sighs into his mouth and pulls gently away.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he tells him, brushing his fingers through the downy fuzz of his undercut. Yuuji gives him another toothy grin.
“Me too,” he laughs, knocking their foreheads together. Fushiguro’s hands rest at the crown of his head, and he’s never known peace—still doesn’t think he does now, but the feeling is so foreign to him that perhaps this sort of steadiness is exactly that. Yuuji is like the earth under his feet and he hopes he’s just as permanent.
We’ll break the cycle, he thinks, kissing him again and breaking away laughing when their noses knock together. We will.