Archive of Our Own ^beta

The fluorescent lights of the convenience store cast a buzzing glow onto the sidewalk, catching the edge of a vending machine and the tired curve of Itadori’s shoulders. The plastic bags next to them rustle faintly in the breeze, filled with water bottles, protein bars, painkillers, and gauze.

Full of tools for survival.

Itadori sits on the concrete curb, elbows on his knees and eyes unfocused.

Megumi is silent beside him, trying not to look at him too closely and failing. He keeps stealing glances like he’s afraid of what he might find, and yet more afraid not to look at all.

He tells himself not to stare, but he can’t help it, not when the person sitting next to him is as familiar as the way home, yet just out of reach.

Itadori has changed. 

Of course he has. Of course he has. 

But it’s still disconcerting, seeing the boy before him. The brightness—that infuriating, inspiring light he carried—is dim now, like a bulb left flickering in a desolate, collapsed house.

Megumi’s eyes keep drifting to the angry red scars across Itadori’s face, jagged and deep. 

Too fresh to be forgotten and too furious to be on Itadori’s face. 

He is so entranced that he doesn’t even realize when Itadori starts to drift.

One moment, he’s still hunched over. Then, his head tips to the side and rests against Megumi’s shoulder with a soft sigh.

Megumi freezes.

His gaze swivels towards him, trying to hold himself as still as he possibly can.

Itadori’s eyes are shut, and his mouth is slightly open. There’s tension still clinging to his frame—he never relaxes fully anymore—but his breathing is steadily even. He looks almost deceptively peaceful.

His hair tickles Megumi’s jaw, soft and a little messy. It smells faintly of the shampoo from the dorms, a familiar citrus scent under layers of sweat and ash. 

Megumi swallows hard. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t even breathe too deeply.

Itadori, this quiet, hollowed-out version of Itadori, is like a knife inside Megumi’s chest—sharp and solid. 

Every time Megumi looks at him now, it’s akin to watching a star slowly burn out, someone who was once fiery, golden, and blazing—burning too brightly to touch, now dim. Flickering slightly, releasing exhausted sparks of light, but not glowing anymore. The final embers of a fire.

Itadori Yuuji used to shine. 

Whenever Itadori stepped into a room, it was like someone had finally turned the lights on. He was like a match struck in the dark, warm and steady. He has the kind of presence that made Megumi’s shoulders loosen whenever he came into his line of sight.

He made Megumi’s world feel a little less sharp around the edges.

He’d drop onto the common room couch with that boundless energy—“What’re you reading, Fushiguro?” Or something stupid like, “God, Fushiguro, you’re so cool. Not surprised though, with how much you read. You're so brainy, huh?” 

And every time, Megumi’s heart would ignite like a struck match. He would school his face into his signature scowl and shove Itadori halfheartedly, all while he would feel a burning heat in his chest, as if Itadori’s warmth had scorched him.

Itadori would then laugh—so brightly, so beautifully, so loudly, so freely. Unfiltered without an ounce of restraint, and Megumi would think he had never seen anyone laugh with such pure, unabashed freedom in his entire life.

He would tilt his head back, his eyes closed, his nose scrunched, and the smattering of freckles across it would pool together like stars. Megumi would find himself staring—his pulse pounding, his breath stuck—until the moment came when Itadori opened his eyes again and he had to tear his gaze away.

And then he would smile softly, pink dusting over his freckled cheeks as he whispered: “You’re really so cool, Fushiguro.”

Megumi remembers that glow like sunlight on his skin, something that was felt and not seen. Something warming him from the inside, seeping into his bones like sap, filling the cracks inside him.

Now, Itadori is a husk of what he once was, an unlit lantern.

His face is pale, drawn tight at the edges. His hands won’t stay still. His knees bounce. His voice stumbles. 

But it’s his eyes that hurt the most, once honey-golden and full of light, now dark, guarded, like something inside them is curling inward to protect what’s left. 

The loss feels as harsh and cold as metal, and Megumi aches for the boy who used to shine. 

Yet at the same time, Megumi still wants to hold him. God, he still wants to.

Even like this. Especially like this. He wants to reach out and cling to him, dig his fingers in and keep him there, even if it means pressing his hands against the blade, even if it cuts him to pieces. As if maybe, if he holds on tight enough, Itadori won’t slip away for good. 

Even if it hurts like hell. Even if it ruins him.

For months, Megumi has watched the world engrave its harsh, unforgiving lines into him. 

Not all of Itadori’s scars are visible, but Megumi sees them anyway, in the silence that stretches too long, in the way Itadori’s hands tremble when he thinks no one’s looking.

Megumi wishes he could tuck him away. He wishes he could press him into his chest and keep him there, safe. Sink him into the shelter of his shadow, where nothing cruel could ever touch him again.

He wants to protect him completely, hide him somewhere the world couldn’t break him anymore.

There’s a heaviness in his shoulders now, in the way his eyes don’t light up like they used to, in the way his smile never quite reaches the corners.

The stance and the eyes of a sorcerer. 

Megumi's eyes drift back to the scars on Itadori’s face.

Each one feels like a sentence in a story that never should’ve been written. 

And Megumi’s was one of the hands that helped write it. A sentence he helped ink into permanence.

He thinks of that moment on the roof of Itadori’s old school, all that time ago.

It should’ve stayed Itadori’s school.

He should’ve graduated there, surrounded by friends, playing sports—he was good at those. 

Or maybe he would’ve started enjoying classes, found a subject that lit something up inside him. Literature. Or History. Something that let him understand people the way he always tried to.

Maybe he would’ve met someone, a pretty girl with a kind heart. They would start as classmates before growing into friends, then best friends. 

Then they would become more. A home. A life.

Laundry drying in the sun. Meals cooked not out of hunger, but out of routine. Quiet evenings. The soft laughter of children. 

A future.

Megumi blinks, and Itadori is still there, scarred and sleeping on his shoulder, not fully leaning onto Megumi. Holding back, even in his sleep.

Itadori was never supposed to become this.

Not a vessel. Not a martyr awaiting his execution in the name of the greater good.

Not a killer.

And yet here they are.

Megumi closes his eyes for a moment, letting himself feel the full weight of Itadori’s head resting against him, and the heavier weight of what they carry together.

It’s a burden they both bear, but Megumi wishes it weren’t. If he could, he’d shoulder the entire world alone, so that Itadori wouldn’t have to carry any of it.

Megumi shifts his head, Itadori’s fluffy hair now tickling his nose. Gently, almost absentmindedly, he lifts his hand to trace the scar running along Itadori’s forehead.

Itadori stirs slightly under his fingers, before nestling further into Megumi’s side. The simple, unconscious gesture makes something both bloom and break in Megumi’s chest. Threading longing, protectiveness, and heartache through him, sewing new seams into his soul.

He wishes he could freeze time right here, freeze the whole world. 

Just Itadori, asleep on his shoulder, warm and breathing, safe. Him, watching and guarding a peace that never lasts, but still—still—he wants it to. 

So badly it hurts.

Megumi doesn't look away. His eyes trace the curve of Itadori’s face, memorizing the way sleep softens the sharp edges of exhaustion. His freckles are more visible in the stillness, scattered like stars across the bridge of his nose and cheeks. His skin looks warm beneath Megumi’s gaze, flushed with sleep and safe in a way that doesn’t feel right in their world. His lashes cast faint shadows on his cheeks, and his skin glows faintly under the artificial light. 

He looks young like this, too young to carry what he does.

Carefully, as if afraid to wake him, Megumi reaches out and brushes the hair back from Itadori’s forehead. His fingers pause there for a moment, lingering near the scar.

Itadori jolts awake.

He startles so fast that the bench rattles. His eyes go wide as he sits upright, breath catching in his throat, putting space between them like instinct, like it’s dangerous to be close.

“I—” he starts, his voice catching with panic. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

Megumi looks at him, quiet for a beat.

“You needed it,” he says evenly. “I didn’t mind.”

Itadori doesn’t respond right away. He just exhales, shaky, with a flush of embarrassment in his cheeks. 

“It’s not smart,” he mutters eventually, his voice tight, “I’m putting you in danger.”

Megumi blinks at him, his eyes narrowing. “What?”

“Sukuna–”

Megumi exhales sharply through his nose and pinches the bridge of it between his thumb and forefinger. “Not this again—”

“I don’t care if you don’t want to hear it. It’s the truth.”

Megumi stills at the tone, surprised by the sudden edge. 

Itadori rarely raises his voice, especially not at Megumi. But now, it’s trembling with a bitter mixture of pain, guilt, and fear.

A few heartbeats pass, the November air stretching tight between them, crisp and too quiet.

“I’m sorry,” Itadori whispers, his expression flickering with remorse. “But you can’t underestimate him. You just can’t.”

Megumi watches him for a long moment.

Itadori has always had an expressive face, to put it mildly. 

Everything is so painfully obvious—his joy, his sadness, his fury, his pain, his embarrassment. Every emotion overflows from his eyes, his mouth, and the set of his shoulders.

Right now, it’s a storm of things Megumi recognizes too well, and some Megumi can’t dare to hope for.

“I would never underestimate Sukuna,” Megumi says carefully. “But I would never underestimate you, either.”

Itadori turns toward him, uncertain.

“I trust you, Itadori,” Megumi says, the words heavy with the weight of truth, “I trust you with Sukuna. I…I trust you with Tsumiki. That’s why I asked you to help me.”

His voice falters slightly on his sister’s name, the weight of her absence and her situation catching in his throat.

“You’re the only person I trust this much,” he finishes quietly. “Completely. Wholeheartedly. Without hesitation.”

He lowers his gaze, eyes fixed on the scuffed toes of his shoes.

“I’m not leaving you alone again, and you’re not leaving me alone either.”

Beside him, Itadori shifts, just slightly.

“Because,” Megumi exhales, turning his head towards him again. “I need you by my side, and I need to be there by your side. Every time I walk away, something goes wrong.”

Something in Itadori’s shoulders loosens at that, a glimpse of his old self peeking through. 

“Ah, I see. So it is me,” Itadori says with a dry laugh. “I’m the problem.”

“Exactly,” Megumi nods, and—he can’t help it—a slight smile starts tugging at his lips. “I have to be there to keep an eye on you. Because you know, if you die—”

Itadori’s face almost entirely lights up—sparkling eyes, color returning to his cheeks, a smile tugging the scar along with it. 

“You’ll kill me,” he finishes, grinning.

Megumi presses his lips together, trying—failing—not to smile back. 

His chest feels lighter because he made Itadori smile, and it also somehow feels like winning a battle he didn’t know they were fighting.

He also feels so ridiculously, absurdly proud of the fact that he made Itadori smile.

There’s silence after that, not cold but not quite warm either. Just fragile, like they’re both holding something delicate between them.

Itadori’s grin lingers for a few seconds longer than he probably realizes. It softens into something quieter, but heavier in its genuineness. 

He looks at Megumi, his amber-brown eyes warming the cold November air, a hearth fire.

Megumi doesn’t say anything, just watches him.

He watches the way Itadori’s cheeks curve with that smile, the way his eyes crinkle just slightly at the corners. Watches the way his whole face comes alive when he’s happy, like his body was built to hold joy and forced to carry so much else.

And then, slowly, Megumi’s eyes catch on the scars again.

The scar that cuts through the center of Itadori’s forehead, still red at the edges, like the world hadn’t just tried to wound him—it had tried to claim him.

The one that curves along the corner of his mouth, fainter but sharper, dragging down the side of his smile. It twists the happiness there, not enough to ruin it, but enough to remind Megumi that it’s no longer as easy and careless for him to smile anymore.

Megumi’s gaze lingers. He doesn’t even notice how still he’s gone until Itadori’s smile fades just slightly, confusion flickering in his expression.

“Fushiguro?” Itadori asks, brow creased.

His voice is quiet, uncertain. Not panicked, but wary, like he’s afraid of shattering something.

Megumi doesn’t respond right away. His gaze is still on Itadori’s face, tracing the curve of his mouth, the break in the skin where the scar tugs at his expression, the ghost of that smile still trying to hold on.

Itadori shifts, just slightly. “Is something wrong?”

Megumi blinks, like he’s waking up from something. 

“Hold still,” Megumi says softly, and starts to lean forward.

Itadori blinks, then flinches, instinctively pulling back a fraction. 

Not very far, but enough. Megumi watches the air catch in his throat.

“Fushiguro,” he whispers, the name trembling on his lips, like he’s afraid that he’s about to ruin something.

Megumi freezes.

He sees it now, the fear in Itadori’s eyes, raw and stinging and full of something more profound than confusion.

Megumi’s expression softens, and his hand lifts, rough fingers brushing gently along Itadori’s jaw, steady and warm. “I’m not going to kiss you.”

Itadori blinks, caught off guard.

“Not like that,”

He leans in again, slower this time, giving Itadori the chance to pull away.

But Itadori doesn’t. His eyes stay locked on Megumi’s—wide, nervous, and…

There’s another sharp emotion in them, one Megumi is afraid to name.

Itadori watches, breathing shallowly, as Megumi’s hand rises deliberately until his palm rests against Itadori’s forehead, thumb tracing the angry red scar that bisects his skin.

He leans in, pressing a gentle kiss to the wound.

Itadori goes rigid, as if a sudden weight has slammed into him, his breath sharp and uneven.

It’s the most delicate thing, a whisper of contact, but it sends a tremor down Itadori’s spine.

“This,” Megumi murmurs, lips brushing the scar, “is for the weight you carry.”

His voice is quiet, reverent. The words are not just comfort, they are an offering, a vow, a recognition of everything Itadori tries so hard to bear in silence. The pain he isn’t speaking aloud, the lives he’s saved and the ones he couldn’t, the guilt he wears like a second skin.

Itadori doesn’t move, stone still under Megumi’s touch.

“You kept going,” Megumi continues, his voice even softer now. “After everything that happened, you got back up. For everyone. For me.”

Itadori’s eyes flutter shut. His throat works like he’s trying to swallow something sharp.

Megumi leans in just a little more, until almost no space exists between the two. “You don’t have to be strong all the time,” he whispers. “Not with me.”

​​Then Megumi draws back, just far enough to meet Itadori’s eyes—eyes still wide, still unsure, still searching for what this means.

His body is tense, but his face…it softens, just a little. As though the touch carved through something knotted inside him.

Megumi’s hand rises slowly, brushing knuckles along Itadori’s cheek before settling against the side of his face, fingers curving gently behind his ear. The other lifts to rest against Itadori’s jaw, steadying him, and steadying himself. He leans in, not for a kiss, not quite.

He kisses the scar on the corner of Itadori’s lips too, slower this time, with something almost aching in its gentleness.

It’s also featherlight, more breath than kiss, but Itadori still tenses like it struck bone. 

Like he isn’t used to being handled with reverence. 

Itadori’s breath hitches.

“What…was that for?” he whispers.

Megumi’s gaze lifts to meet his, and he smiles. Just barely. It’s tired, and crooked, and fragile around the edges, but it’s real.

“For what you’re doing for me right now,” he says. “For helping me save Tsumiki.”

Itadori blinks. His hand twitches where it rests between them. His eyes flicker to Megumi’s lips, then back up, and—

They’re close now. Too close.

Itadori is still, utterly still, as if Megumi’s hands are the only thing keeping him grounded.

Their breaths begin to mix in the narrow space between them, warm and shallow, brushing skin like a shared secret. 

The air shifts, becoming thicker and slower, as if time itself is softening around them. 

Itadori leans in, just slightly, his movements tentative, unsure. Megumi feels the faint heat of him—too close, not close enough—and realizes they’ve crossed into that fragile kind of closeness where everything else begins to fall away. 

There’s a quiet tremor in him, in Itadori, like warmth nudging at a breaking point, asking permission to fall apart.

And Megumi feels his heart trip in his chest.

He wants this.

The realization is as sudden and electric as lightning to a tree.

He wants this too.

Megumi had never let himself picture it. He had ripped it out of the soil every time the thought dared take root, not in a world that had already stripped so much from them both. Not when Itadori smiled with the kind of radiance Megumi had long convinced himself he’d never be worthy of.

But now—

Itadori is looking at him like maybe, just maybe, it’s okay to want this.

Megumi’s fingers lift again. This time, brushing lightly under his eyes.

They graze against the scars there. The ones shaped like something other and inhuman. Something wrong. Something that doesn't belong to him.

Sukuna’s eye scars.

Itadori recoils, as if he’s been slapped. Megumi watches pain flood his features, too much to hide, too fast to contain.

“I’m sorry, Fushiguro,” he chokes out, voice cracking. “I can’t.”

Megumi’s hand falls.

But he doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t take offense.

Instead, he meets Itadori’s eyes with quiet steadiness and says, softly,

“I’d never ask anything from you, except what you’re already doing for me.”

Itadori doesn’t smile. His mouth twists instead—grief curling at the corners of his eyes like he’s staring down something he can’t outrun.

“Itadori,” Megumi whispers, brow creased.

Itadori says nothing.

He just stares at the floor like the words would burn if he tried to let them out.

Megumi watches, chest heavy. He sees it now, more clearly than ever.

Itadori is the one who feels unworthy of Megumi. 

Worse, he thinks he could hurt him. 

That even now, even here, he could somehow hurt the one person he’s spent everything trying to protect, to help, to save. It’s so heartbreakingly stupid, so unbearably Itadori, that Megumi feels the jagged line of pain crack open wider in his chest. 

If only he could show him, if only Itadori could see himself the way Megumi sees him, there wouldn’t be a single doubt left. 

But he knows he can’t force that kind of belief. 

So Megumi pulls back slowly. His gaze never wavers from Itadori’s face, like maybe he can hold him that way, without touching him at all.

Itadori’s throat works around a word that won’t come, and then—

He shifts back into Megumi’s face, his face turning towards him. 

His gaze carries so much longing that it hurts to meet it, and Megumi feels his heart sting.

His voice drops to a whisper. “Itadori?”

He doesn’t answer him, not with words.

Itadori is the one who leans in this time, slow, hesitant, like he’s bracing for the world to pull him back.

Their foreheads touch tentatively, trembling, and for a moment, time stills, trying to recapture the remaining flecks of the moment they just shared.

Itadori’s eyes flutter shut. He exhales, shaky and uneven. There’s a shimmer at the edge of his lashes, the kind of tears that don’t fall but cling to eyes.

Megumi doesn’t move. He’s still, steady, heart hammering beneath his ribs.

Itadori tilts his face, just barely, and for a heartbeat’s worth of a moment, Megumi thinks—hopes—that he might close the distance. 

But he doesn’t. Megumi feels it, the exact moment he pulls himself back from the precipice again.

His voice is a whisper, wrecked and wretched.

“I can’t.”

His gaze drops, like he’s ashamed to have even tried.

“I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve you.”

The air between them holds still, frozen like them.

Megumi’s breath catches in his throat, tangled in the weight of too many emotions.

Surprise, because how could he believe he’s unworthy of this?

Ache, because how could he ever believe he’s unworthy of him?

He reaches out carefully, cupping Itadori’s cheek with a kind of gentleness that feels heavier than anything else in the air.

“Hey,” he says softly. “Itadori.”

The name slips out like a tether, something small but strong enough to pull him back from the tossing waves. Itadori’s head lifts, slow and uncertain, his eyes meeting Megumi’s with a flicker of recognition like he’s surfacing from somewhere deep and far away.

“It’s okay.”

Megumi keeps his voice steady, careful, though his chest tightens with each word. His heart feels like it’s being wrung out, but he doesn’t let it show. Not now. Not when Itadori looks like he’s on the verge of shattering.

“You don’t have to give me anything you’re not ready to.”

Itadori’s eyes are glassy, rimmed with the threat of tears. He doesn’t speak, just presses his lips together, hard, as if trying to swallow something sharp.

Fuck, Megumi thinks, watching him. The ache in his chest stings, raw and helpless as a fresh wound. He’d take it all if he could—every fear, every wound, everything that’s ever happened to him. 

But all he can do is sit there, steady and open, and hope it’s enough.

“But don’t ever think you’re not worth…being cared about. Don’t think you’re not worth me caring for you.” Megumi says softly, earnestly, reverently. 

Don’t think you’re not worth being loved by me.  

That's what he means.

But he can’t say it. The word love. Not yet, not now. 

Someday. 

Megumi knows it’s foolish—pointless, even—to believe he’ll ever truly have this someday. It’s not even like him to do so. But his heart clings to that sudden spark of hope the way a baby clings to a mother’s finger: gently, desperately, like it’s the only thing it knows how to do.

Itadori’s jaw tightens. His throat bobs, eyes shining but refusing to let go of Megumi’s gaze. 

“Fushiguro,” his voice breaks like glass. “I—”

“I know,” Megumi says, simply, firmly. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

And something in Itadori’s gaze crumbles—no, collapses —but in the wreckage, something new begins to bloom.

The tears finally spill, tracing paths down those same cheeks Megumi loves so dearly. 

Spilling down the face carved into Megumi’s heart, line by line, like a chisel to stone, impossible to unmake. Irrevocable. Beautiful.

Unforgiving in permanence, but shaped with careful, reverent love.

Megumi lifts his hand to wipe them away again, his thumb brushing under his eyes, and Itadori leans into his palm, as if finally letting himself sink into Megumi without remorse. His eyes flutter shut, lashes wet, as he surrenders without hesitation this time, like he’s laying all his weapons down. Like he’s finally allowing himself to rest in Megumi’s trembling hands, in whatever unsteady safety Megumi can offer him.

Maybe this is how Megumi is meant to love him. 

Quietly. Without demand.

Like dusk settling over a restless sky, without urgency. Just as a presence, soft and unwavering. His love will continue to live in the silence between his words, in the way his eyes follow Itadori when he thinks no one’s watching, in the way he never reaches first but always meets him halfway. 

Maybe his love is not meant to be something spoken, but something understood. In the hush of the moment they both sit in, knees nearly touching. In the steadiness of a gaze that doesn’t flinch when Itadori falters. In the calm that wraps around him like a blanket, like a promise: I’m here. I’m still here.  

Maybe this is how Megumi can love him—not with fire, but with still water, with the kind of grace that asks for nothing and offers everything.

“I’m not fine,” Itadori says quietly.

The words are soft, but there’s something unshakable behind them, like this is the one truth he can stand on tonight.

Megumi doesn’t look away. He lets the words settle between them like gravity. His breath catches, just slightly, and when he exhales, it sounds more like a confession than a response.

“I know,” he breathes. “Me neither.”

They sit there, the space between their knees small enough to vanish with a breath and to be measured in millimeters. Two boys, heavy with things unsaid, letting the quiet speak for them. Trading silence like it’s a language.

Then, in a voice barely more than a whisper, Itadori asks—

“…Can I lean on you again?”

Megumi doesn’t hesitate. His answer is brief, strong, and as gentle as his voice will allow—because gentleness is the least of what Itadori deserves. It seems redundant; Megumi had already robbed him of it when he looked Gojo-sensei in the eye and chose Itadori’s future tumultuous life over a peaceful end. 

Yet it seems more necessary than anything else.

“You don’t have to ask me that.”

So Itadori falls onto his shoulder. Not just his head, this time, but his whole body, folding into Megumi’s side like the grief is pushing him over with its weight, too much to hold alone. 

Megumi takes him in—secures him, anchors him, arm sliding around his shoulders like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Their bodies mold to each other in the way two puzzle pieces do, inevitably and with silent certainty. Aligning like they were made to be against each other.

The night hums around them. A train rumbles somewhere far off. The lights above flicker once, then settle.

Slowly, like he’s afraid to break the moment, Megumi leans in and rests his head against Itadori’s hair. The strands are soft beneath his cheek, warm from the press of Itadori’s body and faintly damp with sweat or maybe leftover tears. 

Megumi closes his eyes. In this fragile pocket of quiet that belongs only to them, he lets himself be still.

Itadori’s breath stumbles, just once, and Megumi can feel the steady thud of his heartbeat through both their chests—loud, alive, and so close.

They are still alive, they both are.

Once they leave this bubble—this small, borrowed haven—it won’t be the same. But right now, on this bench, with the other boy...

It is enough.

The bathroom hums with the low buzz of the overhead light. 

The tiles gleam faintly, a surface for the soft sheen of smeared blood and the sharp tang of disinfectant to bounce off of, lingering in the air like a ghost of violence. A damp towel hangs limp over the edge of the sink, stained red at the corners. 

The air is too still, too heavy, thick with that particular silence that only arrives after something has gone wrong, as if something loud and messy is buried beneath the hush.

The quiet doesn’t soothe; instead, it presses in, whispering reminders of what just happened.

Yuuji kneels in front of Fushiguro, the first aid kit open beside him. The sleeves of his hoodie are shoved up past his elbows, his hands slick with a mix of antiseptic and water.

Fushiguro sits, still as marble, on the edge of the bathtub. His gaze is fixed on something distant and invisible, his eyes glassy like he’s staring down a memory only he can see. 

His right hand rests limply between them. A deep split runs along the second and third knuckle, red-raw and angry, while another cut, shallower but just as telling, marks the inside of his wrist. Water, tinged pink, winds in rivulets down the pale underside of his arm, slipping from where Yuuji has already rinsed the worst of the blood away. 

The droplets collect at his fingertips before falling to the floor, quiet and deliberate, like they’re counting time neither of them is ready to reckon with.

Neither of them says anything.

Yuuji’s fingers are steady now, but only because they have to be. 

They weren’t earlier, not when he watched Kugisaki crumple to the ground, breath caught in his throat, helpless to stop it, as he watched the past bleed into the present.

He kept shoving the memory of Shibuya down, cramming it into some locked box in the back of his mind, desperate to keep it sealed, but it kept clawing its way back, flashes of blood looping behind his eyes like the reel of a horror film.

He couldn’t stop it, like a curse he couldn’t outrun. Only until he was absolutely certain that Kugisaki was breathing, that the rise and fall of her chest really meant life.

But there was no time to feel anything, because then he found Fushiguro.

Half-buried beneath the wreckage, dazed and bloodied, crimson trailing down his neck in thin, terrifying lines. 

And all Yuuji could think was: Not again. Please. Not again.

For another awful moment, Yuuji had thought he was too late, that the silence in Fushiguro’s eyes wasn’t just shock, it was the absence of everything. 

Now, his fingers move with practiced care, trembling slightly from the adrenaline that hasn’t quite burned itself out. Every movement is deliberate: pouring antiseptic over raw skin, dabbing at the edges of the wound with gauze, wrapping bandages just tight enough to hold. 

His breath comes in short, quick inhales that don’t capture enough air, but he doesn’t stop.

He can’t. There’s too much to do. Too much to hold together.

The smell of blood clings to everything, sharp and metallic beneath the sterile bite of alcohol. 

Yuuji avoids looking at Fushiguro's face too directly; he doesn’t want to seem like he’s hovering, like he’s worrying out loud with his expression, because his face will betray him, like it always does.

“I can see everything on your face, you know,” Fushiguro had said once, almost teasing, but not, because it was Fushiguro. “It’s like watching your thoughts out loud.”

Yuuji had laughed then, embarrassment bubbling over. But now the words echo, bouncing off the walls inside his chest, louder than they should. 

It’s impossible not to notice how pale Fushiguro is, how unnervingly still. His jaw is clenched, tension drawn tight across his features, and his mouth is pressed into a firm, unreadable line, like he’s holding something—everything—in.

His eyes…they’re still open, but they’re not seeing anything. They’re instead fixed on a point somewhere not in the room, somewhere Yuuji can’t reach.

So, he focuses on what he can do.

He works in silence, hands as reliable as he can make them, not because he feels composed, but because he knows Fushiguro needs wall-solid, unwavering steadiness more than anything else.

He needs hands that don’t shake.

Yuuji presses the gauze gently to Fushiguro’s knuckle and begins to tape it in place, anchoring the strip with his thumb, careful not to tug too hard.

“This one’s not too deep,” he murmurs softly, more to fill the silence than anything else.

Fushiguro doesn’t reply. Just watches him from beneath heavy lashes, his gaze drowsy and unreadable. His breath is quiet, nearly weightless, like every inhale is a task in itself.

Yuuji forces himself to swallow, to keep the thickness in his throat from rising. He doesn’t want his voice to crack, not now.

“She’ll be okay,” he says next. “Ieiri-san is with her.”

There’s a pause before Fushiguro nods faintly, his voice frayed. “Yeah…I know.”

Yuuji nods back, a quiet exhale slipping from his chest as the tension in his shoulders begins to ease. 

Something clicks into place after being off-kilter for too long. His heartbeat, which had been racing with the frantic edge of fear, finally begins to slow and steady.

The sound of Fushiguro’s voice has always had this effect on him. It has a way of cutting through the noise in Yuuji’s head, slicing through the noise like a lighthouse beam. 

Even when it’s fraying at the edges, it brings Yuuji back to himself, like an anchor in a sea with waters that won’t stop tossing.

Yuuji’s hands continue to move on instinct, mechanical like clockwork. 

Cotton pad. Disinfectant. Bandage.

They’re close enough for their knees to touch, the space between them almost nonexistent. Each time Yuuji leans in to tend to another wound, he breathes in the mingled scent of sweat, iron, and something faintly herbal—Fushiguro’s body wash, maybe? The smell clings to him, comforting and clean beneath the blood, tethering Yuuji’s thundering heart in a way that feels strangely safe.

Fushiguro’s eyes drift toward the mirror across from them, but he doesn’t look into it. 

He just lets his gaze skate past it like it might cut him if he looks too long. 

Yuuji’s eyes follow the direction of his directionless stare, but he doesn’t say a word, doesn’t pry.

Once he finishes with the cuts on his knuckles and moves to the ones along his neck, Yuuji finds himself closer than he’d realized, kneeling between Fushiguro’s knees, the curve of his throat now just inches from his face.

There’s a jagged laceration along the side, the gash deep enough to swell and dark enough to bruise. A hiss escapes Fushiguro as Yuuji’s fingers make contact near the torn skin.

Yuuji lifts the antiseptic-soaked cloth again, trying to be even gentler this time. His fingers hover for a second before making contact, cradling the underside of Fushiguro’s jaw to steady him as he dabs at the wound.

The skin there is warm, and Yuuji’s thumb grazes the steady thrum of Fushiguro’s pulse before he can stop it. 

There’s something about the quiet intention behind every touch that tugs at something deep in his chest. It isn’t just tending a wound; it feels like something more sacred. Something ceremonial, almost ritualistic, like fitting shards of stained glass back into place, each piece handled with quiet devotion.

Fushiguro doesn’t flinch again. His breathing remains light and uneven, but he stays still, letting Yuuji tend to him because he trusts him to do it right. 

That trust speaks louder than any words of reassurance could.

You’re the only person I trust this much.

Fushiguro’s old words warm the hollow pain in his chest. In this moment, with Fushiguro breathing silently in front of him, Yuuji feels safer. 

Like for just a second, the world outside doesn’t matter. Like home could be something as simple as this, tending to scraped skin with careful hands, surrounded by the quiet hum of shared breath.

​​Their eyes meet, and it’s like light catching on cut glass.

Light flickering back only for a second, as if only to show Yuuji. A flash of lightning splitting through storm clouds, gone in an instant, but enough for Yuuji to see what’s still alive beneath the wreckage.

Fushiguro’s gaze, ocean deep and rimmed in weariness, holds Yuuji’s like a gem catching starlight. 

It glows with the wordless ache of survival, and the uncertain gratefulness of being seen.

The moment hangs, glimmering before dissolving.

“I hate this part,” Fushiguro mutters suddenly, his eyes slipping away from the shared contact. “Coming home and washing off the blood, pretending that we made it out clean.”

Yuuji doesn't know what to say to that. His throat knots, words caught somewhere in the tangles.

Instead, he reaches for another piece of gauze and presses it gently to the cut just beneath Fushiguro’s collarbone. “This one’s closing up already,” he murmurs, voice careful. “It probably won’t leave a mark.”

Fushiguro lets out a quiet huff, almost a laugh, but there’s no humor in it. His eyes stay dull.

“Like it matters how deep the scars I get are anymore.”

Yuuji’s hand stills.

Fushiguro doesn’t look at him again. Instead, he leans his head back against the cold tile wall, gaze now locked on the ceiling.

Yuuji’s hand hovers uselessly for a second, still holding the gauze. He doesn’t move, watching Fushiguro in silence, his throat constricting around the weight of words he doesn’t know how to bring to the surface.

Like it matters how deep the scars I get are anymore.

The sentence rings in his chest, sharply familiar, striking something buried under. It isn’t just empathy that rises; it’s something heavier and more intimate. 

Recognition.

He’s heard that tone before, in himself. That flat, hollow tone that leaks out when the pain has been simmering too long. When your body keeps going, but your heart can’t keep up. When feeling becomes too exhausting, numbness feels safer than bleeding out. It feels more bearable, more weightless, more aligned with survival.

He wants to say something comforting, anything that will pull Fushiguro back down from wherever he’s drifted off to. 

Nothing he thinks of feels right or enough.

But he has to say something.

Gently, he sets the gauze aside and reaches up, his fingers brushing Fushiguro’s jaw, just enough to guide his face back toward him. 

Not forcing, just offering. His voice is barely more than a breath.

“Hey,”

Fushiguro blinks, slowly, the haze in his gaze lifting just enough to meet Yuuji’s. His eyes, once vivid, storm-tossed blues and greens like the waters of the ocean, are dulled now, washed out to a muted grey.

But Yuuji doesn’t look away. He doesn’t let Fushiguro’s eyes escape this time, holding that gaze with a steadiness that asks nothing and says everything.

“You’re still here,” he says. “That’s what matters.”

He doesn’t say to me, but it’s there in the way his thumb lingers just below Fushiguro’s chin, and in the way his voice wavers.

In the way he looks at him, like he’s trying to hold him together with just his eyes.

There’s a pause before Fushiguro shifts. He pulls back, not abruptly, but with a kind of tired grace. 

Yuuji lets his hand fall as the space between them opens again, the way it does inevitably.

Fushiguro stands slowly, his movements deliberate.

His eyes are lowered, not out of shame, but something quieter. Resignation, maybe. A familiar weight settling back onto his shoulders.

“Thank you for doing this, Itadori,” he says, voice as distant as his eyes.

No sarcasm. No sigh. No muttered I could’ve done it myself. Just those simple words, offered plainly, like they cost him something to say. 

He turns and walks out of the bathroom, silent footsteps retreating down the hall as he disappears into his room.

Yuuji stays where he is, motionless in the harsh fluorescent light, hands half-lifted like he’d meant to reach out and didn’t. 

The quiet left behind feels noisy, echoing too loudly in the tiled walls. He dithers there for a few long seconds, trying to tell himself to give him space, to let him be.

But something in him won’t settle, won’t let him stay still. 

So he steps out of the bathroom and into Fushiguro’s bedroom, almost tripping over his own urgency.

Fushiguro is sitting on the edge of his bed when Yuuji enters, his posture hunched, hands braced loosely on either side of him like he's holding himself up without knowing why. 

The bedside lamp throws faint shadows across his face, gold and grey outlining every sharp edge. His eyes are still blank in a way that lodges in Yuuji’s throat.

When Yuuji speaks again, voice low and strained—“Fushiguro”—Fushiguro’s gaze slowly drifts toward him. 

The motion is sluggish, almost mechanical. His eyes find Yuuji’s, but they don’t quite settle, like he's looking through him rather than at him.

Yuuji steps into the room, slower now, as if trying not to startle something fragile.

“I know you don’t want to,” he says quietly, "but don’t shut me out. Please. Talk to me, tell me what you’re thinking."

For a long moment, Fushiguro says nothing. 

The silence between them feels thick like fog, heavy with the weight of things neither of them have said. Yuuji can feel Fushiguro’s gaze settle on him, and it stirs something restless in his chest. 

He tries not to flinch beneath it, already imagining the weight of whatever comes next, the things Fushiguro might say, or worse, not say.

“I haven’t looked in a mirror since I woke up after...after Shinjuku.”

The words hang in the air like a snapped bone.

Yuuji freezes, his breath catching.

Fushiguro doesn’t elaborate yet, just lowers his eyes again, staring at the floor like it might spare him from having to see the pity in Yuuji’s face. 

He exhales slowly, voice flat.

“I mean, obviously, I still get dressed. Still do my hair,” Fushiguro continues, voice low. “Still put my uniform on like always.”

There's a hollowness to his voice, worn thin.

“But I don’t look. I just…go through the motions and hope it doesn’t look too bad.”

Fushiguro’s fingers twitch in his lap. “I can’t stand the idea of catching my reflection by accident.” 

Yuuji moves toward him, slowly, like treading through water. He settles beside him, leaving just enough space for Fushiguro to breathe without pressure.

Fushiguro’s jaw tenses. “It’s like he’s still under my skin, like he carved everything he’s done into me, and I’m just supposed to carry it.”

Yuuji swallows, his own stomach twisting at the words.

His voice is quiet, but the bitterness underneath it scrapes against it painfully.

“I hate them,” he mutters. “I hate what he left on me. They’re just reminders of everything, what he used me for.”

Yuuji can’t tear his eyes away from his face, his lips pressing together.

He remembers it all—too vividly, too cruelly. Every unbearable second of it.

Fushiguro’s body moving like a stranger’s.

Each gesture too sharp, too foreign. His limbs were the same, but they didn’t belong to him anymore. 

His voice echoed with something guttural and cold, feeling wrongly warped as if it were filtering through a broken instrument.

The wrongness in his eyes.

His eyes are what haunted Yuuji the most during those lonely, lonely nights leading up to the day of the fight.

Fushiguro’s eyes had always been quiet in a beautiful, serene way. 

Royal blue, deep and calm, like they could take in anything without flinching.

But that day, they were red. Blood-red. Violent.

It wasn’t just the color, it was the look.

There was no recognition in them. No flicker of the boy who once scowled at Yuuji for chewing too loudly, or blinked slowly in classrooms when he was tired.

They were foreign, monstrous eyes—eyes that carried cruelty instead of caution.

Something collapsed inside Yuuji when he met them for the first time, like staring into a void that used to be home.

That smile, jagged and merciless, stretched across a face that no longer knew how to be quietly brave and quietly kind.

Yuuji's heart had cracked open in that moment, the way glass does under too much pressure: sudden, splintering, irreversible.

There had been blood, so much blood. And screaming, some of it his own, though he couldn’t tell at the time.

Only the helpless horror remained, curling in his chest like a fist that never unclenched.

But what clings tighter than any nightmare, is the moment Fushiguro came back. 

The way he lay there, unmoving, drawing breath like it hurt.

The way his body shook with each inhale, like the air itself didn’t want to stay.

The way he blinked slowly, not recognizing the world he’d fallen back into.

Yuuji remembers sitting by the bed for days after, silent and watchful. Afraid to speak and afraid not to.

He’d memorized every shift of expression on that altered face. The new scars bloomed like bruises around Fushiguro’s eyes, dark and unyielding, like storm clouds refusing to pass by.

But beneath them…beneath the damage, the wreckage, the ruin—

It was still him. Still Fushiguro.

Changed, yes. Etched with new scars that told stories with no words, some worn on his skin, others in the quiet spaces behind his eyes. Wounds carved deep into both skin and soul. But still familiar in all of his quiet, beautiful ways.

The shape of his eyes, almond and sharp-edged, framed by lashes longer, thicker and darker than they should be, always half-lidded like he’s tired of the world but too alert to ever truly rest.

The slight furrow between his brows, permanently etched like a worry line from years of thinking too hard and trusting too little.

The curve of his mouth, drawn tight with restraint, the corners tilting downward whenever he was biting something back. Not a pout, not a frown, instead a quiet refusal to let the world see too much.

A faint mole just beneath his left eye and another near the edge of his jaw, almost invisible unless you knew to look for it. Yuuji did.

The bridge of his nose, straight but not perfect, with a faint scar slicing diagonally across the ridge, an old fight, maybe. One he never talked about, but Yuuji wanted to ask about.

Even with the shadows now under his eyes, even with the new scars framing them like storm clouds—it was still Fushiguro.

Now here, in the silence of his bedroom, with the low hum of the world behind the door and the sharp scent of antiseptic still clinging faintly to the air, Fushiguro looks like a storm that never passed.

His shoulders are hunched slightly, like he’s bracing for impact even now. Fingers twitch once in his lap, but don’t curl. 

“I know what that’s like,” Yuuji says, voice barely above a murmur.

He doesn’t say what. He doesn’t need to.

Fushiguro doesn’t answer. Doesn’t speak, or flinch, or meet his eyes.

But he doesn’t pull away either. Doesn’t scoff. Doesn’t shut down the way he sometimes does when things press too close.

He does nothing, except inhale and exhale unevenly, as if even that small act might give too much of him away, as if the air itself is something he doesn’t quite trust.

So Yuuji moves tenderly, no sudden gestures, no weight pressed where it might hurt. 

Only his hand, reaching up between them, tentative and butterfly soft.

His fingers trace the scar that curves under Fushiguro’s right eye, just below its twin. It’s jagged, slightly raised, and larger than he remembered. 

It feels too real under his touch, biting and recent. Familiar, and yet…not.

Something that had no right being on his face, not on the face Yuuji still thinks of as home. And yet, it doesn’t push him away. He knows the shape of it, knows how it twists under the weight of loathing, knows it like a scar of his own.

Yuuji’s thumb brushes the edge of it, as though trying to erase it under the pad of his thumb.

“This,” he whispers, “isn’t him.”

Fushiguro’s breath stutters. He doesn’t look away. His eyes, sharp and watchful as ever, glint like something terrified behind a glass cage. 

Not crying but still brimming full, bruised with feeling.

Yuuji knows the feeling, and the weight of it.

It makes a home under your skin and watches you flinch at your own reflection. It rewrites who you think you are, all your traits that you thought made you you, until all you can see are the scars and the carnage someone else left behind. 

He can’t take that pain away, nor can he undo what happened. He can’t tell Fushiguro it wasn’t that bad, because it was. Because it is. 

Trying to soften it would only make it worse; it would feel like pretending not to see the ache woven into every breath he takes. Ache that’s a part of him, and Yuuji loves every part of him.

But what he can do, what he will do, is remind him. 

Remind him of who he is.

Not who Sukuna tried to twist him into, the version carved out by pain and possession, but him.

The boy who fights resiliently, even when he’s exhausted beyond the edge and his body is broken.

The boy who only ever desired a peaceful, fragile life, unharming and unharmed.

The boy who wanted to save good people.

Yuuji’s voice softens further, the words catching on something lodged deep in his throat.

“You’re still the boy who saved me.”

He presses his palm a little closer to Fushiguro’s chest, just above his heart, feeling the thud of it beneath his skin.

“Again and again. Even when you didn’t have to, even when you shouldn’t have.”

His gaze searches the other boy’s face gently, watching like he’s trying to see if the words landed or if they slid off like water on stone. 

He’s searching for the quiet flicker of resistance, the reflexive disbelief, that familiar shade of self-loathing that always seems to creep in when Fushiguro lets someone speak too kindly about him.

But this time, none of that comes.

He just sits there, unmoving and unspeaking, as if the weight of everything he’s carrying has finally left him too exhausted to fight it.

In the slope of his shoulders, in the darkness beneath his eyes, in the way he breathes like it hurts just to stay present; Yuuji sees someone bone-tired. Someone carrying too much with nowhere to put it down. 

So Yuuji leans in not to close the space entirely, but to balance it, keeping it from trembling.

To be that place for Fushiguro to put it down.

“You’re still him,” he says, quiet but unwavering. “Even after everything. Especially after everything.”

He watches as something shifts, just barely, behind Fushiguro’s expression, like a door easing open.

There’s a long silence before, finally, barely above a whisper, Fushiguro speaks.

“I never regretted it,” he whispers, his voice quiet in the particular way it is when he’s baring the innermost whispers of his heart. “And I never will.”

The words hit Yuuji harder than he expects.

They don’t feel reassuring. They feel heavy, like a boulder pressed right to the center of his ribs.

His heart clenches around this, around the fact that Fushiguro is still saying that after everything.

After everything—after the pain, after the loss, after being torn apart and stitched back together with scars that still bleed at the seams—Fushiguro still says that, and means it.

A part of Yuuji wants to cry. Another wants to flinch away.

How could he deserve that kind of loyalty? That kind of love adorned with devotion?

Fushiguro should hate him, or blame him. Or, at the very least, hesitate.

But he doesn’t.

He chooses Yuuji still, without flinching, without regret.

“I know,” Yuuji says, and it comes out rougher than he means to, like it scraped its way up from somewhere deep.

His smile wobbles at the edges, tight with something that isn’t joy. It’s too fragile for that.

It’s grief, it’s relief, it’s a thousand apologies he can’t put into words.

He watches Fushiguro, and his mind takes him on a journey, thoughts unspooling like thread pulled loose from some hidden place inside him. His gaze stays not just on the face in front of him, but on all the moments that came before. 

Moments when Fushiguro had been there, luminous and quiet. Not just with declarations or heroic rescues, but with a kind of presence that steadied Yuuji like the silent pull of a planet keeping its moon in orbit. Just by being there, he became a fixed point in Yuuji’s spinning world, a north star in the sky of his chaos. 

Comfort radiated from him not like fire, but like starlight: soft, ancient, and always arriving, even across the distance.

Yuuji looks at Fushiguro and sees a place he can rest his heart.

His very existence is solace. 

Yuuji has lived a thousand freefalls. He’s been flung through grief, through guilt, through the aching chaos of being alive when so many others weren’t. Fushiguro is the balm pressed to that invisible bruise, the quiet hand that steadies his trembling spine. He’s the dressing on a wound, the hands that holds the pieces in place, and the gaze that doesn’t flinch, even when Yuuji is at his most undone.

He doesn’t chase Yuuji back from the edge. He simply waits patiently until Yuuji finds his own way back.

The days without Fushiguro were days where even breathing felt like tumbling through space with nothing to hold onto. Each moment stretched too long, like the world had fallen off its axis, and Yuuji was just floating, untethered, waiting for something to pull him back to gravity.

Yuuji’s cheeks glow warm when a memory, snowflake-fragile, rises like mist after rain. It comes back to him in pieces: the hush of night settling around them, the worn wood of the bench beneath their legs, the way Fushiguro leaned in without flinching.

When Yuuji blinks back to the present, he finds Fushiguro watching him.

There’s something ancient in the way Fushiguro looks at him. He doesn’t gaze with the fleeting intensity of a momentary crush, but with the slow, enduring pull of something longlasting. His stare doesn’t demand, it beckons. Tugs gently, over and over, until Yuuji feels his guard erode like shoreline stone. 

Fushiguro’s eyes don’t just see him; they draw him in, like roots pulling water from the earth, slow and vital. 

And Yuuji—Yuuji is helpless in the gravity of that look. It’s a force that makes him want to bare his soul, to rest his bruised heart in the safety of that unspoken understanding. There is no storm in those eyes, only space carved out just for him. Yuuji feels it in his bones, this gentle absorption, this way of being held without arms, known without explanation. 

So slowly, like gravity itself is pulling him, now Yuuji leans in. It’s not a decision so much as a surrender, as if some quiet force beneath his ribs is drawing him forward. Fushiguro has always been that force. Fushiguro has always been gravity—silent yet magnetic. Anchoring him when the world spun too fast, pulling him back when he drifted too far. 

It's as if something in him has always been meant to flow toward this, toward him, to fill the spaces Fushiguro offers. 

Lifting a hand, gentle and deliberate, his fingers brush back the hair that’s fallen near Fushiguro’s temple.

“Itadori,” he says, his voice quietly soft, threading through the silence like wind through glass.

Yuuji presses his lips to the scar at the top of the right side of Fushiguro’s face.

It’s featherlight, a tremble of meaning against broken skin. The way Fushiguro had kissed him once, on a bench under flickering streetlights, careful as snowfall falling onto pine trees. Soft enough not to disturb, only to be felt. 

And just like Yuuji on that night, Fushiguro stills.

He looks at Itadori with fragile recognition, like he’s watching a distant star shimmer back a light he thought had vanished. Seeing the echo of his own kiss reverberate back to him, not just mirrored, but answered. 

A flower that had taken root and bloomed in return.

Everything he feels concentrates inwards to that single point of contact, where Yuuji’s mouth meets his scar. The rest of the world tilts out of focus, suspended in orbit. It pulls back like a wave at its peak, silent and suspended, just before the crash. 

Yuuji doesn’t move away. 

“This one,” he murmurs, right against his skin. “is for when you saved me, by asking Gojo-sensei to suspend my execution.”

Fushiguro exhales.

“It was reckless,”  Yuuji continues, breath brushing against Fushiguro’s scar, “Dangerous. And it wasn’t your job.”

His breath fans gently against Fushiguro’s cheek.

“But you still saved me.”

His fingers curl just slightly beneath Fushiguro’s jaw, not holding him in place, just reminding him. 

I’m here. You’re here. This is real.

“You saw something in me,” Yuuji goes on, eyes searching his, “something I couldn’t name. Something I still don’t really understand.”

The words aren’t polished or rehearsed. They stumble in places, tripping over the threads of emotion, but every one true.

He leans in again, slower this time, more certain, and presses another kiss, just beneath the first scar, where the skin dips and rises unevenly beneath his lips.

“This one,” he whispers, “is for when you asked me to save you.”

The words land like a stone dropped into still water.

Fushiguro’s breath catches this time, and he turns to look at Yuuji with stunned eyes. His lips part like he might say something, but nothing comes. He just looks at him, like he’s seeing him for the first time all over again.

“You asked me to save you,” Yuuji repeats, softer now, almost like a memory.

His eyes don’t leave Fushiguro’s, not for a second. He needs him to hear this. Needs him to believe it.

“But it was you who saved me that day.”

His voice trembles just slightly, not with doubt, but with the weight of the truth pressing against his chest.

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” he admits. “I was unraveling. I would’ve kept going like that; broken and aimless. But then you looked at me and you said…”

His hand moves gently, resting over Fushiguro’s heart.

Yuuji chuckles. “Well, you know what you said.”

That earns a ghost of an eyeroll, a fond one.

“You looked at me like I was worth saving,” Yuuji murmurs. “And…I wanted to be for you. Even when I didn’t believe it myself, I still knew I had to try. I had to do what you asked of me.”

The silence between them tightens, full of things neither of them have said in months.

The desperation in Fushiguro’s voice. 

How he said I’m begging you, Itadori.

And somehow, even through all the fog and ruin in Yuuji’s head, those words had reached him, had given him something to hold onto. Had given him: you have to live when he had nothing else.

This is Yuuji, telling him that even then, even drowning, he reached back for him.

Yuuji’s thumb skates along his cheek, gentle and grounding.

“You don’t even know, do you?” he says quietly. “How many times you’ve pulled me back from the edge.”

Blue eyes flicker as he breathes shallowly, like each inhale might undo him.

Yuuji knows that feeling too well, and he holds Fushiguro’s gaze.

He needs Fushiguro to see it. He needs him to know, not just hear it, but believe it, down to the marrow of his bones:

That no matter what he thinks he’s become, he’s always been the one who saved him.

His fingers trail along the edge of Fushiguro’s jaw again, as if trying to memorize him. 

Yuuji leans in once more, softer this time, and presses a kiss to the scar on the left side of Fushiguro’s face, near the outer curve of his cheekbone. One more mark carved into him like a splinter of lightning, all fury and fracture, remembering the storm long after it’s passed.

“This is for when you came back,” he breathes. His voice trembles with reverence, and with the leftover horror from that day. “You saved me then too.”

His throat tightens, and he pauses, needing a breath before he can go on.

He swallows hard. “I sat at your bedside for days, not knowing if you’d ever wake up. I didn’t sleep, I didn’t eat, because I didn’t care about anything else. I just… I needed you to come back. I needed to be sure you were coming back to me.”

His thumb brushes against the edge of the scar, soft and trembling.

“And then you did.”

The memory shudders through him, like a gust of wind down the spine.

“You opened your eyes, and even though they were heavy, haunted, and hurting, I saw you in them again. In that moment, it was like I could finally breathe, like I’d been holding my breath without knowing.”

He meets Fushiguro’s gaze again, searching.

“You didn’t just survive what he did to you. You fought your way back. From wherever he dragged you. You clawed your way to the surface just to look me in the eyes again.”

The edges of his voice crack.

“You don’t know what that meant to me. You probably never will.”

He doesn’t mean it like an accusation, he would never. 

This is just because he knows Fushiguro, how little he lets himself believe in his own impact. How quick he is to brush things off, to bury his pain under silence and duty.

Yuuji leans his forehead against his, their breath mingling in the hush that follows.

“I lost so much,” he whispers. “But I didn’t lose you.”

And that, he thinks, is the only reason he’s still standing.

Yuuji feels it before he sees it, the quiet shift in Fushiguro’s breathing, the way his shoulders dip like something inside him has finally given out. 

It happens gradually, like the thaw after a long, bitter winter. The tension in Fushiguro’s shoulders fades like frost melting under morning light. 

Slowly, he leans in, resting his forehead against Yuuji’s shoulder as if gravity has finally been given permission to take him. The movement isn’t abrupt; it’s the way trees bend in strong wind: silent, yielding, inevitable.

Yuuji holds his breath. Letting Fushiguro settle against him, like this is the only place left in the world where it’s safe to fall.

Warmth radiates, the kind that comes from closeness. It isn’t just body heat; it’s much similar to sunlight after a loud storm. 

Yuuji keeps his arms loose at his side, offering Fushiguro the space to come closer on his own terms. The freedom to breathe, to lean in or pull away without pressure.

He feels the faint weight of Fushiguro’s breath against his collarbone, ragged and uneven.

Then a whisper cuts the air:

“You’re fucking insane.”

The words are soft, muffled, almost like he’s trying to disappear into the fabric of Yuuji’s shirt, but Yuuji hears them.

More than hears, he feels them, because a second later, he feels the warmth of tears seeping through the cotton where Fushiguro hides his face.

Like a season breaking open. Like the hushed rain that falls after thunder.

The quiet rain of a boy who’s carried too much, for too long, finally letting some of it fall.

Yuuji doesn’t say anything for a second. Doesn’t joke, doesn’t flinch.

Instead, he lifts his hand slowly and carefully, and brings it to the back of Fushiguro’s head, gently carding his fingers through his hair.

“Learned from the best,” he says softly, the corner of his mouth pulling into something close to a smile, but not quite.

It’s not light, or teasing. It’s true.

It’s Fushiguro who taught him how to stand back up.

Fushiguro who fought for him when no one else did.

Fushiguro who came back when it would’ve been easier not to.

Fushiguro, who kissed his scars first.

And now he’s here, burying his face into Yuuji’s shoulder like he’s trying not to be seen falling apart.

Yuuji just holds him quietly, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, as if he were made for this.

“You’re allowed to fall apart sometimes,” he murmurs into Fushiguro’s hair.  “You’re allowed to fall apart in front of me. It doesn’t mean you’re not strong.”

Fushiguro doesn’t answer, but Yuuji feels the way his fingers curl slightly in the fabric of his shirt, clutching it like a lifeline.

So Yuuji stays still, and lets the boy he loves fall apart without needing to be fixed.

The boy he loves.

He loved him then. He loves him now. He will love him always.

Back when Fushiguro had leaned toward him, on that bench, under the flickering streetlight, the weight of the world pressing into their shoulders, he hadn’t done it. 

He couldn’t. 

If he had, he would’ve taken something. Something too precious to touch with bloody hands. Something that could never belong to him.

He couldn’t push the jagged edge of his love into Fushiguro’s chest just to soothe his own.

He was too selfish to resist the boy he adored, and too selfless to let himself have him like that.

But now—

Now…

At some point, his hand finds Fushiguro’s, fingers weaving together like second nature. Like belonging.

Fushiguro’s head dips, resting against the curve of Yuuji’s neck.

He’s trembling, not in a way anyone else might notice, but Yuuji feels it down to his bones. 

Quiet, bone-deep kind of shaking that comes when you’ve been carrying something too heavy for too long and someone finally tells you it’s okay to set it down.

Yuuji shifts slightly, just enough to pull back, to see his face.

Fushiguro doesn’t open his eyes.

And there’s something in that—something trusting, something whole—that hits Yuuji so hard he forgets to be afraid.

His heart clenches, not from panic, but from something that feels like awe.

He brushes his knuckles along Fushiguro’s cheek. Careful, like Fushiguro might break.

Devotional, like he might.

At the touch, Fushiguro’s eyes open. Red-rimmed, soft at the edges, still wet, but with a blanket of calm draping over them.

Yuuji leans in, the way he’s been aching to do so, stopping when they’re a breath apart.

Pauses.

A question asked in silence, with no demand for an answer. He gives Fushiguro every chance to move away.

But he doesn’t. 

He doesn’t, and Yuuji closes the distance, the space between them folding before ending.

Their lips meet, not like in stories. There’s no crash of longing, no breathless rush, no cinematic blaze. There is no hunger, no urgency. 

Only reverence. Only presence.

A kiss shaped not by fire, but by recognition.

The kind of kiss that says: I see you. I know what you’ve been through. 

I love you.

There’s no despite. There’s only because.

Fushiguro’s hand tightens in his, barely, like ike he’s trying to ground himself without clinging. His other hand moves gently to Yuuji’s nape, his fingers brushing lightly over the short hairs at his undercut.

Yuuji responds by pressing closer, not to trap him, but to hold him steady.

His hands move with care, one settling at the curve of Fushiguro’s waist, the other rising to cradle the back of his head, fingers threading gently into his hair. 

​​It’s not a cure, not a promise that everything will be fixed.

It’s choosing to remain when the ache doesn’t leave.

The kiss isn’t about erasing pain, but staying through it.

When they finally part, just slightly, just enough to rest their foreheads together again, the silence between them hums like a secret held close to the chest.

“Made me wait long enough,” Fushiguro whispers, his voice barely audible over the thrum of Yuuji’s heartbeat, but his smile, soft and radiant and just a little shy, says the rest.

Yuuji huffs out a laugh, helpless against the way his own grin spreads across his face, lopsided, a little dazed, completely in love.

“Hey! I waited too, you know,” he says, eyes never leaving Fushiguro’s. 

Fushiguro’s smile fades into something gentler, more fragile. He exhales, then glances down, lashes low. “Back then… on the bench,” he says quietly, “I wanted to. Really, I did.”

He pauses, his fingers tightening faintly around Yuuji’s. 

Yuuji’s heart swells, knowing his voice carries the weight of everything he’d once locked away back then, for Yuuji’s sake. 

“But I knew it wasn’t the right time,” he admits. “Not for you. Not for me.”

Yuuji doesn’t interrupt, chest tightening.

“We weren’t ready,” Fushiguro says, slowly, his eyes lifting to meet Yuuji’s. “Back then…we couldn’t have been.”

His voice is quiet, but it doesn’t waver.

“Maybe we’re still not ready. Not completely. There’s a lot I haven’t worked through yet, things I’m still scared to face. And I know…I’m not the only one.”

He takes a breath, deep and deliberate, like he’s trying to make space for something fragile inside him.

“But,” he says, breathing in slowly, as if bracing for something.

His gaze steadies, his voice firmer now, more certain than before.

“I may not know how to do this perfectly,” he breathes, “but I want this. I want you. I always have.”

Yuuji swallows hard, emotion rising too fast to speak. He just squeezes Fushiguro’s hand, grounding himself in the touch.

“And I don’t know why,” Fushiguro adds, something that sounds like a faint laugh catching in his throat, “but when you pulled away that night… ”

His voice thins, as if the memory is both distant and too close.

“I believed we’d get here. Somehow. Someday.”

“I’ve never been a hopeful person, Yuuji,” Fushiguro says, his voice rough around the edges. “I don’t usually believe in things like that. But you—you made me want to be.”

Yuuji’s eyes and cheeks glow, brightening at the sound of his name, his given name, spoken so softly it barely brushes the air. Tumbling out of Fushiguro—Megumi’s—lips like the unravelling of spun silk.

His eyes sting from something else too. He opens his mouth, then closes it again, like the words aren’t sorting themselves out.

“You told me not to give you anything I wasn’t ready for,” Yuuji finally murmurs. “But I was. I was ready too.”

His thumb brushes along Fushiguro’s knuckles where their hands are still joined, grazing over the bandage he wrapped around it moments ago.

“I just…I didn’t think I deserved you.”

Fushiguro doesn’t look surprised.

His gaze is steady, full of quiet understanding, like he’s known all along that Yuuji would carry this doubt.

When he speaks, his voice is low, roughened by emotion, but certain—completely, unshakably certain.

“You do.”

Fushiguro’s face is flushed from crying, eyes still rimmed with red, lips a little swollen from the kiss they just shared. 

Tired, open, he looks unarmored in a way Yuuji knows is rare, almost impossible. And still, especially now, he’s the most beautiful thing Yuuji has ever seen.

Fushiguro’s hand is still in his, warm and strong, and it doesn’t feel like a hand anymore.

It feels like a lifeline, as if Fushiguro is the thread keeping him stitched together from the inside out.

No, deeper than that. It feels like an artery. Like if Yuuji let go, something inside him would go cold and never come back.

And somehow, impossibly, it also feels like his heartbeat.

Not just the sound in his chest, but the reason he keeps going.

Yuuji’s chest aches just looking at him; his heart doesn’t know what to do with the sheer wonder of him.

Because how could someone so beautiful be real?

How could someone so full of sharp corners and silences and quiet strength have chosen to stand beside him?

More than anything, how is he allowed to hold this boy’s hand, to press their foreheads together, to feel the steady hum of his breath in the space between them?

There’s reverence in every inch of Yuuji’s gaze.

As if he’s watching a miracle unfold in front of him. He watches him, as if the mere action of blinking will wake him up back in the ruins of a life where Fushiguro was still just out of reach.

“Megumi,” he breathes, like the name might shatter if spoken too loudly. 

He says it slowly, tasting each syllable like it’s something he’s been waiting to say for a long time. 

Not Fushiguro, the name that keeps people at a distance, but Megumi, bare and unguarded. Unshielded, honest, and soft in a way he rarely allows himself to be. Soft like this moment.

Not just a name, but his name. His name, full of every fragile, furious, beautiful part of him.

“You say I made you want to be hopeful,” he starts, eyes still fixed on him. “But you made me believe I was allowed to hope at all.”

It’s not everything. It barely scratches the surface of what he feels, what he could never quite find the words for. 

But Megumi looks at him and smiles, just a little. The smallest tilt of his lips, the kind only he could wear.

In that soft, flickering smile is all the truth Yuuji’s ever needed.

Without a word, Megumi squeezes his hand, grounding and almost desperate in its quiet intensity. He lifts their joined hands and brings Yuuji’s left one to his lips, pressing a kiss to the knuckles where fingers no longer remain.

He doesn’t let go or look away.

Instead, he holds Yuuji’s hand there, close to his mouth like a vow he won’t say aloud, eyes never leaving his.

Those eyes, still ringed with shadow, with scars that frame them like storm-broken glass. 

They’ve changed. He’s changed. 

But Yuuji sees all of him, the old parts and the wounded parts, the softness buried deep and the edges still healing.

He loves every one of them. 

Fiercely—like a storm that refuses to be quiet, something burning at the edges of his ribs, demanding to be felt.

Completely—like there’s not a single part of him left untouched by it. 

And Megumi knows. 

He knows Megumi knows.

In the rhythm of Megumi’s fingers curled into his, Yuuji hears a promise, woven with a thousand others. Not in words, but in pulse. The quiet language of touch.

I love you.