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Love is a strange, fickle thing.
Nobara realizes this when she knocks on the door of Itadori’s room, not waiting for an answer before barging in but getting an immediate, “It’s unlocked!” anyway. She finds the two of them seated on Itadori’s bed, face-to-face, cross-legged with their knees touching as Itadori applies some sort of cream to the scars on Fushiguro’s face. It’s probably the same stuff Ieiri gave Nobara for her own face, which she doesn’t quite use as much as she should, because she hasn’t quite gotten used to seeing her marred eye in the mirror.
She kicks the door shut behind her. “You boys busy after this?”
Fushiguro hums, which is notably not an actual response.
“We’re gonna switch once I’m done,” Itadori answers.
Nobara snickers. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was like that. Should I leave?”
Itadori furrows his eyebrows in confusion while Fushiguro shoots a dark glare at her, the effect of which is negated by the faint flush rising in his cheeks.
“Nevermind.” Nobara plops herself into the chair at Itadori’s desk. She rests her chin in her hands, angling her gaze so she can properly see both of the others. “I thought it would be fun for the three of us to do something together—like go shopping!”
“Shopping,” Fushiguro repeats blankly.
Itadori hushes him, and he snaps his mouth shut. Nobara watches in silence as Itadori finishes applying the cream to one side of Fushiguro’s face, then switches to the other. His movements are careful, almost methodical, in a way that is uncharacteristic knowing his general approach to life. Which tends to be more act first, think later. He’s touching Fushiguro with the utmost caution, brow furrowed, one hand cupping his chin while the other spreads cream across the lasting mark on his cheek.
Nobara feels a phantom ache pricking at her own injury, beneath the eyepatch.
She clears her throat. “Not all of us are boring like you, Fushiguro-kun. I bet Itadori would love to go shopping with me!”
Itadori hesitates.
“Wouldn’t you?” she presses, fairly certain she can at least scare him into agreeing with her.
“Well…” The movements of his hands pause. “It’s just…we did go shopping with you two days ago. Do you really need to go again?”
“EH?!”
“He has a point,” Fushiguro agrees, because he’s a traitor who has a stick up his ass. “Why don’t you ask one of the second years to go with you instead?”
Nobara stomps her foot. “Because I don’t want to hang out with them—I want to hang out with you two!”
Personally, Nobara thought that was a perfectly normal thing to say. Itadori and Fushiguro are her classmates, and more importantly, her best friends. The second years are great—or, well, Maki is great; the others are tolerable—but Nobara will never be as close with them as she is Itadori and Fushiguro. They’re her boys, her besties, her…
Whatever.
She gets a strange look from both of them in response, like they can’t fathom she actually likes them. Which is crazy, considering Nobara regularly chooses to spend her free time with them. Even if Fushiguro is the most boring man alive and Itadori’s interests are…occasionally questionable.
“What?” she asks.
“You want to hang out with us?” Fushiguro asks, incredulous.
“Yeah? Duh. Are you stupid?”
Before Fushiguro can launch himself across the room at her, or summon a shikigami to attack on his behalf, Itadori cuts in with a well-timed, “We just figured you’d rather have, like, girl time with Maki-san and Hoshi-san or something.”
It’s true that Hoshi is way more fun to go shopping with, but Maki has never really been into the whole ‘girl time’ thing. They’re not even a girl anymore anyway, which would sort of defeat the whole purposes of having a girls’ night, even if they did like spa nights and gossiping until two in the morning. Honestly, Nobara has had more success in that sort of thing with the two dumbasses in front of her, because they’ll actually let her put facemasks on them.
“Yeah,” Fushiguro agrees, picking idly at his fingernails and not meeting Nobara’s eyes.
Nobara scoffs.
Although—she can see where they’re coming from. Why does she want to spend time with these two so badly? If she invited Maki to go shopping, and they turned her down, she’d just shrug and move onto another target. But when it comes to Itadori and Fushiguro, she feels the need to push and press until they agree to do something with her—even if she has to compromise and agree to watch one of Itadori’s shitty horror movies.
It’s honestly unbecoming of her, to be reduced to near-begging because of some painfully average boys.
Except, they’re not just ‘some painfully average boys’, are they? Neither of them are supermodels or anything, but if Nobara were going to pick the people she likes based on looks alone, she’d have gone for Maki’s sister. …Which might be a little insensitive to say now, but it’s true. Nobara has never been quite as drawn to men as she is women, based on appearance. But Itadori and Fushiguro are—
Well. Shit. Okay.
She might like like them.
She’s always gotten along with them, and enjoyed spending time with them, and they both somehow weaseled their way into her life and the short list of people she truly cares about without either one even trying. She’s known they were best friends, bound for life, literally since their first week of school.
She just didn’t realize a different sort of love had seeped in through the cracks when she wasn’t looking.
“Kugisaki?” Itadori asks.
She shakes her head. “I’d rather spend time with you,” she admits, crossing her arms. “Not sure why that’s so hard for you to believe. So if you don’t want to go shopping, I guess we can find something else to do instead.”
Itadori’s eyes light up. “Like watching a movie?!”
“No.” Fushiguro flicks his forehead. “No more Human Earthworm, or any of the other weird movies you insist are ‘peak cinema’.”
“What about I pick a movie?” Nobara suggests.
Fushiguro frowns. “Why can’t it be my turn to pick?”
“Because you only ever watch boring documentaries!”
“How is National Geographic boring?!” Fushiguro demands. “They literally show animals killing each other!”
“I don’t want to see that! And neither does Itadori!”
Fushiguro’s gaze snaps over to Itadori, betrayed. He stammers through some non-answer that confirms Nobara’s assertion was completely correct, and she grins smugly. His floundering ends with him insisting he should wash his hands since he’s done putting cream on Fushiguro’s scars now, and then nearly tripping over his own feet as he rushes towards the bathroom.
“Coward,” Fushiguro mumbles. He looks to Nobara, tilting his head. “Do you want help with yours, too?”
“My…?”
He gestures to the cream. “I figure Ieiri-sensei also gave you cream for yours. If you want help putting it on, I don’t mind. It’s easier if someone else does it, I think.”
“I don’t need help,” she growls.
Fushiguro rolls his eyes. “I know you don’t need it. Itadori and I don’t need help either.”
“Oh.” Nobara falls silent for a moment. She doesn’t really have a chance to answer before Itadori returns to the room and sits himself down across from Fushiguro. He gives her a final questioning look before focusing his attention on Itadori, rubbing the cream over his scars. Itadori’s eyes flutter shut, and he relaxes under Fushiguro’s touch.
Some part of Nobara feels as if this is too intimate for her to be watching, but she stays anyway.
Fushiguro touches Itadori lightly, as if afraid he might break under too much pressure—or maybe that he’ll melt away, reduced once more to skin and bone with a bloody, gaping hole where his heart should be. As Nobara tracks each minuscule movement of his fingers as they dance across Itadori’s skin, she can feel the love with which Fushiguro works radiating off of him, not just landing over Itadori, but filling the entire room.
It’s funny—Fushiguro may be the most closed-off out of the three of them, but it’s easy to tell his love has the most devastating strength. Even Nobara could drown in it, and she’s never been too shy about that sort of thing.
When Fushiguro is finished, Itadori’s eyes blink back open, and he gives Fushiguro a soft smile. “Thanks.”
Fushiguro looks away. “No problem.”
His eyes meet Nobara’s then, and he raises an eyebrow.
She huffs out a sigh, pushing herself to her feet. “Fine, fine. Move over.”
They make room for her on the bed, and once she’s seated, she removes the patch covering her eye. She folds it, then sets it aside. She tries not to look at either Itadori or Fushiguro head-on, because she knows the disfiguration isn’t pretty. She actually threw up in front of Ieiri the first time she saw herself in the aftermath, and though it’s improved since then, it’s still not a sight she’d wish on anyone she cares about.
But it’s a little hard to avoid eye contact when Fushiguro quite literally needs to touch her face in order to accomplish his task, so she doesn’t really have a choice other than to meet his gaze.
His face betrays no signs of disgust, or even discomfort.
Nobara can’t really feel the cream as he applies it—there’s nothing more than a vague pressure. That’s something she’ll never get back, like the full scope of her vision and her left eye, but she’s learning to live with it. There are worse things to be without, she supposes. Like her limbs. Or her life.
She’s still alive, and so are Itadori and Fushiguro, and that’s what matters most. She’ll take scarring and vision loss over the far worse alternatives.
“You know, you can join us whenever we do this,” Itadori offers. “We can all take turns helping each other!”
Nobara hums. “This isn’t just some special ritual between the two of you?”
“Nah.”
“Even if it was,” Fushiguro says slowly, “we wouldn’t mind you joining.”
Nobara cracks her eye open. She’s surprised to find Fushiguro holding her gaze, like he’s daring her to argue.
She swallows thickly. “You wouldn’t?”
Itadori reaches over, taking her hand in hers and squeezing lightly. “We’re always happy to have you,” he tells her, his tone just a touch too sincere. “I’m not sure we could ever be complete without you.”
Nobara lets her eye fall shut again. “Well. You two are lucky I like you, then.”
Fushiguro hums.
“Yeah,” Itadori agrees. “We are.”