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There is a cushion by the window in Megumi’s room at home.
He’s not sure why he didn’t pack it with him when he moved into the dorms. The worn, slightly lumpy (definitely lumpy — really, annoyingly lumpy) thing would have come in handy. It’d be nice to offer people a place to sit that isn’t his bed or the floor.
It just didn’t seem right to imagine his room without it. The wall color and the posters and the books on the shelf and the clothes in the closet and the homework on his desk — all of that can change, has changed, and the room will still feel like Megumi’s.
The cushion is the tipping point, the axis on which the whole thing spins.
Because inextricable from the cushion is the slouched form of Itadori Yuuji. Reading manga or staring out the window or texting or asking some ridiculous hypothetical. Smiling with all his teeth.
Many things about Yuuji don’t adhere to silly rules like logic and continuity. One of them — a big one, as far as the cushion is concerned, maybe the one that taught Megumi that this is a thing he needs to watch out for, that Itadori Yuuji will take everything he knows about the world and turn it on its head — is that every time Yuuji sits on that cushion, sunlight shines through the window to illuminate him on all sides, and Megumi becomes certain that angels are very, very real. It could be three o’clock in the morning during the coldest part of winter and the sun would wake early just to make sure that Yuuji doesn’t have to bear the weight of being the brightest thing in the world all on his own.
Maybe it didn’t feel right to move the cushion because it was never Megumi’s to begin with.
When he was seven and in a house full of sisters for the first time — and he loves them, he really truly does, but it was the loudest place he’d ever been. Too many people making too many sounds and he didn’t understand how it didn’t make any of them want to scream and stomp their feet and demand for everything to just be quiet.
(That would have made everything louder. That would be more trouble than it’s worth. Asking for things. Maybe that’s where he learned it. Maybe that’s why he can’t bring himself to ask now.)
Somehow the thing that cut through their noise was more noise. The ringing of the doorbell. Tinny and electric. Megumi opened it, not knowing what he’d see.
He still sees it now sometimes. In the moments in between breaths, when he can feel Yuuji’s belly expanding against his back. In the way their fingers intertwine with practiced ease, but they pretend to discover anew each time there are people to witness it. In the drunken whispers that turn into sober regrets.
It’s like his life is flashing before his eyes. Like there are only seven minutes left before he loses consciousness and all that he is hopes to regroup in some amalgamation of itself in whatever comes next, and he decides to spend those four hundred and twenty seconds with the one person he has spent his whole life orbiting like the sun.
In the doorway to the house that Megumi still calls home, even though he hasn’t lived there in two years, is a boy just slightly shorter than him. He has dimples under each of his eyes, too wide and round and open to not have their impact ripple across his face. His hair is pink, light and candied, like spun sugar. Speaking to a sweetness held within. There’s a series of bandages covering his elbows and knees. He must be clumsy. Falling without worrying about catching himself.
The first thing Megumi attempts to do is slam the door in his face, every lesson about stranger danger returning in a frantic, hurried barrage that sounds like Gojo and Geto and Tsumiki and —
A firm hand with black painted nails stops him before he can complete the motion. Geto kneels to be on Megumi and Yuuji’s level, leaving the door between them wide open.
(Of course, Megumi doesn’t know that this is Yuuji yet. And, of course, he won’t call him that for many years. The first time he says it they are sixteen, standing at the grave of Yuuji’s grandpa after the funeral. Everyone else was waiting by the cars, but told the two of them to stay back for as long as they’d like. Yuuji stares at the way the name Itadori is carved into the family grave until he can’t anymore. Then, into the bend of Megumi’s neck, through broken, hiccuped sobs, he confesses that he doesn’t want to hear the name Itadori out loud for a while because everyone else who had it is dead now and he doesn’t want to be reminded that he’s the only one anymore. And so without hesitation or acknowledgment of the stutter in his pulse, Megumi calls him Yuuji for the first time.)
It is a moment Megumi comes back to often. A flash bang that starkly divides his life into a before and an after. So vividly illuminated that remembering it is enough to feel like he is living it again. Like he is seven years old and Nanako is playing music too loud and Tsumiki can’t find her glitter pens and Mimiko is upset because they ate all the fruit snacks and Megumi has just heard the doorbell ring.
He gets caught between the two realities. Here and there and there and here and there, but not. Wondering if retracing his steps here can help him figure out how he got into this mess.
Because every breath Yuuji takes in bed next to him is another day they don’t talk about it when they’re awake. Every time they hold hands is another moment where understanding slips through his fingers. Every slurred promise that he isn’t going anywhere is another morning Megumi wakes up alone.
Megumi is on fire. Nerve endings burning up, too overwhelmed by how much they are feeling to be anything but ash. Heat engulfing and claiming him as its own. Merely a vessel for all the fire, sometimes passion, sometimes destruction, the world has to offer.
Megumi is exhausted.
He’s not sure what tires him more. Feeling too much or pretending that he doesn’t. The stoic porcelain of his face, constant and certain, is the exoskeleton of someone much more afraid than he is allowed to say.
So, really, it all comes down to this cushion. That’s the heart of the matter.
Summer break means leaving the city to go home and visit family. Means Yuuji staying at Megumi’s house. In Megumi’s room. Means Yuuji going to sleep in the guest futon on the floor, only to stir around midnight, Megumi silently accepting the comfort of Yuuji’s arms around him for a few hours each night, already knowing that he will wake to Yuuji exactly where he was when they said goodnight and have to wonder if it was all just a dream. Means being back in the room that contains the cushion in question. The cushion is really Yuuji’s.
After, Geto told Megumi that Yuuji isn’t a stranger because he already knows his grandpa. Wasuke had lived three houses down for years, and Yuuji will be living with him from now on.
(Megumi wanted to ask why, but Geto gave him a look that meant we’ll talk about it later. Later comes an hour after Yuuji has gone home. Geto explains that Yuuji used to live with his parents, but they both died, so now he’ll be living with his grandpa. Megumi asks if Yuuji had to wear a suit to his parents funeral because they made Megumi wear one to Toji’s funeral and he hated how stiff and itchy it felt. Geto says that he doesn’t know, but if he wants to ask Yuuji himself then he can. Megumi never got around to it. Yuuji wore a suit to his grandpa's funeral nine years later and Megumi decided to take that as his answer.)
And maybe if Megumi had taken the cushion with him to university. Maybe if Megumi had made Yuuji take it back to his house the first time he asked him to. Maybe if he had brought it there himself. Maybe Yuuji wouldn’t have a place to sit.
And maybe if he wasn’t sitting there, by the cushion, next to the window, he wouldn’t have told Megumi that he has a date planned when they get back from break. A date with someone who is not Megumi.
It’s with a guy in one of his seminar classes, and that almost makes it worse. Knowing that if he was a little braver, a little better, he might have had a chance, but isn’t and now there will be a boy out there who knows what it’s like to hold Yuuji’s hand in public, to kiss him in private, and that boy isn’t him.
(Megumi knows all of those things too, has done them all under the cover of night and the guise of friendship even if it never felt like that to him. He just isn’t allowed to say that part out loud.)
(The first time Megumi kissed Yuuji they were ten. Pretending to be Sasuke and Naruto at the Valley of the End. Megumi swung a little too hard and split Yuuji’s lip open and kissed it better without thinking to ask first. This was not the last time.)
(The first time Yuuji kissed Megumi they were eighteen. Coming home late from a party their first year at university. They stumbled into Megumi’s dorm and the second the door closed behind them, Megumi’s back was being pressed into it, Yuuji’s lips on his. This was not the last time.)
Other people being interested in Yuuji isn’t new. He can’t exactly blame them for noticing in an instant what Megumi has spent years already understanding. It’s frustrating and makes his cheeks pool with bile and turns him mean, but Megumi can handle it. He’s handled it for years.
Yuuji finally taking someone up on it is something Megumi does not know how to handle.
In all their years of friendship, in the late nights spent talking about everything and nothing, they have never talked about crushes. Carefully avoided it, like a creaky floorboard in an old home. Building their routines on dancing around it — knowing that once one of them fucks up, they have to talk about the way that things are between them. About which side of the line in the sand between friend and boyfriend the things they do together fall.
Except that doesn’t happen. Megumi can’t make it happen. Megumi is tired. Megumi is very, very tired.
All he can do is sit and watch as rain begins to fall, the sky taking pity on him and weeping tears over his angel that Megumi is not brave enough to let fall across his own cheeks.
/////
The cushion continues to be a problem.
They are eight days into their fourteen day visit and Megumi has just woken up from a nightmare. Monsters hiding in shadows, taking things into their depths as they find them. Sinking their claws into everyone Megumi holds dear. Holes punched through hearts and spinal cords snapped in half. There’s blood everywhere, bright and fresh, the smell of iron assaulting his nostrils.
The last one to go is not taken. He leaves all on his own.
Yuuji stands above him. Studying Megumi’s crumpled form, a pile of muscle and bone that does him no good. Megumi has had enough. Megumi is very, very tired.
As if sensing that there is no fight left in him, and Megumi will let Yuuji do whatever it is he truly wants without protest, Yuuji leaves. He turns on his heel and walks into the shadows willingly.
Megumi chants ‘Don’t go’ with the fervor of a pious man begging God for absolution, but makes no move to stop him. He can’t move. He is frozen in place. Ice cold fear paralyzing him.
Megumi is lonely. Megumi is very, very lonely.
Megumi wakes with a gasp. The darkness of his bedroom convincing his still aching heart that he’s still in the shadows. He needs to move. He needs air.
The window is his closest solitude. Megumi collapses out of bed, arms and legs still not cooperating. Stubborn, stupid, stubborn things. Why won’t they move? His chest heaves at the exertion, working for each centimeter as he crawls.
Megumi is drowning. Megumi is drowning and the cushion is an island. The only solitude for kilometers. He places a knee on it. Then the other. His arms rest on the window sill.
Megumi is no angel. There is no halo of sunlight for him. Only the moon. Serene and alone. There are no stars in the night sky. Every sun has turned its back on him tonight.
Wait.
No.
Not his sun.
Because by his side in an instant is Yuuji. He whispers words he cannot mean, but comfort Megumi all the same.
It’s ok, Megumi. You’re safe. I promise you’re safe. You’re always safe with me. I love you. Nothing bad is going to happen. I’m not going anywhere, baby. I’m right here. Look, squeeze my hand. See, I’m real. I’m real and I’m here and I love you and I will never leave you.
Yuuji puts a hand on the center of Megumi’s back and the habitual tension that keeps his heart from bursting out of his chest softens under the touch. Enough for the wellspring of tears to break through and become a geyser. Explosive and violent.
Megumi weeps. Yuuji holds him while he does.
/////
Yuuji’s date goes well.
Megumi pretends to be happy for him.
Yuuji plans three more dates.
Megumi pretends not to keep track.
Yuuji crawls into bed with Megumi after each of them.
Megumi pretends he isn’t dying inside.
/////
Yuuji has a cold the next week and has to cancel a date. The guy (Megumi refuses to learn his name, that makes it too real, too permanent) offers to come over to take care of him instead. Yuuji brushes him off, joking lightly that Megumi is already fretting over him enough for the both of them.
Megumi’s hands tremble as he wipes sweat from Yuuji’s fevered brow. He does not like sharing Yuuji any more than he already does. He isn’t taking care of Yuuji for this stranger — for this random person who has decided to wedge himself between Megumi and Yuuji.
Megumi does this selfishly. Does this to be close to Yuuji in ways they never usually allow themselves while awake. Does this because taking care of Yuuji is as natural as breathing.
These are the moments that make a relationship real. Caring for each other while sick. Showing up when things aren’t easy. This Megumi can do, has done, will do.
As he drifts in and out of sleep, Yuuji murmurs to himself. A song they used to sing together as kids. One that Gojo taught them. The rhythm is sloppy, the melody even more so, but Megumi would know it anywhere.
He tries to hum it along with Yuuji, but he keeps changing the words. It ends up sounding far too close to words that Megumi told him long ago. Ones that he would rather not remember. Ones that make the dream of being in the same bed as Yuuji feel like a nightmare.
Megumi feels himself break his promise yet again.
/////
The cushion came to live in Megumi’s room when he was nine years old. Yuuji sprained his ankle and needed something to elevate it on, but always complained about Megumi’s pillows being too soft to actually do any good.
One day at the peak of his frustration, Yuuji convinced Megumi to walk three houses down and use the spare key hidden in the fake rock by the door to let himself in to Yuuji’s house and take the cushion of the chair in the play room and bring that over here for Yuuji to rest his ankle on.
With a sigh that’s more to keep up appearances than an actual lamentation, Megumi does what he asks. It’s always been embarrassingly easy for Yuuji to convince Megumi to do whatever he wants.
(In the end, what Megumi wants most is for Yuuji to be happy, so really he’s doing what he wants to do.)
Three weeks later, the doctor told Yuuji that his ankle was perfectly fine and he was able to walk like normal, and so the cushion really stopped being necessary. Yuuji could have brought it back home at any time in the years that it sat there. Unchanging and constant.
Every time Megumi asked about it, Yuuji always said he’d get it later. But later never came. So Megumi stopped asking for it to.
/////
“Megumi, can we talk? About us?”
Why is this happening? What’s going on? What is Yuuji doing? They never talk about this thing between them. This isn’t supposed to happen.
“I … I’m worried about you.”
Everything is too warm all of a sudden. Warm, warm, far too warm. Megumi is on fire.
“You aren’t sleeping well. You’re not eating as much. We barely see each other anymore.”
Is he? Yuuji has to be wrong. If that was happening Megumi would have noticed. He isn’t stupid.
“Are you mad at me? Did I do something wrong?”
Megumi flinches.
“Ok, so clearly it’s something I did.”
Fuck. This is bad. He’s gonna find out. Everything is gonna be ruined. Megumi ruins everything.
“Are you going to tell me what it was? Or do you just want me to go on hating myself for fucking up a decade of friendship?”
No, no, no — not friendship. If this was just friendship then there wouldn’t be a problem. Then Megumi would be fine. Then it would all be ok.
“We don’t talk anymore, Megumi. I miss you — I miss my best friend.”
Friend. That fucking word. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it —
“Never mind. Just forget I said anything.”
Megumi blinks and Yuuji is gone. The sound of a slamming door is the only piece of him that remains.
/////
Is love supposed to hurt? Is it fair to call this love if it does? Is it worth it? Should he just give up? Would picking someone else to be in love with be easier? Would it ever stop feeling like pretending if he did? Is it even possible for him to love someone who isn’t Yuuji? Has it always hurt? Has he always felt like this? Did something change? Why can’t he say anything? Why did he say those things?
Why did it have to be like this?
/////
Megumi does not go home after class the next day. It’s Friday, so even though he’s finished for the day by noon, and normally he and Yuuji will get lunch together before spending the afternoon getting all their chores done so they can enjoy the weekend, he doesn’t do that.
Instead, he finds himself at the train station. Buying a ticket home for the weekend.
Yuuji calls twelve times and texts forty three. Maybe there are more, but Megumi turns his phone off after that.
He turns up on the doorstep of his family home as the sun is setting. Geto answers the door. Elation and confusion battling for prominence. He pulls Megumi into a tight hug and it’s the thing that does him in. He clings to the front of Geto’s shirt and cries like a child. Under him, his knees tremble. Unsteady and exhausted. The only thing keeping him from crumbling to the ground is the strength of his father. Geto wraps his arms under Megumi’s shoulders and sits him on the couch.
Megumi pretends not to catch Geto pulling out his phone and typing a short text explaining that Megumi is safe and will be staying here for the weekend. When he sees that the message is going to Yuuji and not Gojo, he wishes that he hadn’t.
It makes it hard to explain what’s wrong. Knowing that even his own dad could never imagine that the thing that’s wrong would be Yuuji. Or maybe it’s Megumi that’s wrong. He doesn’t really know where one of them ends and the other begins.
Geto knows how to accept the small wins. Gratitude for his son coming to him when his life is falling apart and that even if he’s hurting that means he’s alive to feel it. Another, more logical, version of himself might see the wisdom in it. The current version of himself is too pissed that he can’t force his lips to form the right syllables to tell Geto to fuck off with his well adjusted bullshit to appreciate it.
Hours or minutes later, Gojo is there too. He stands in the doorway, uncertain of what he’s walked into. Awkward, long limbs not sure how to hold. Too many things accidentally kept at an arms length. Megumi’s feelings always one of them. Gojo settles for making himself useful in other ways. Bringing them tea and ordering takeout from Megumi’s favorite restaurant for dinner.
Megumi eats it in silence.
When he walks upstairs to his bedroom, the cushion is in the same spot it always is. Right in front of the window.
For the first time in over a decade, Megumi moves the cushion, shoving it in the back of his closet next to the guest futon.
He doesn’t sleep any better with it gone.
/////
When Megumi was twelve, Yuuji taught him how to make cherry pie.
The kitchen is a disaster. There are egg shells cracked along the countertop and cherry juice staining their finger tips and butter smeared along the outside of all the mixing bowls and the whole thing is coated in a thin layer of flour.
It’s right around the age when Megumi was realizing that Yuuji is rough on his things. His shoes get holes in them within a month because he runs too hard. His library books always get returned missing a page or two, the ones that remain are dog eared to hell and back.
The teachers that scolded Yuuji for never knowing where his assignments were in his crumpled disaster of a backpack were the ones always telling Megumi that he had an old soul. It was their method of telling him it was ok that he didn’t play the way the other boys did, but it only made Megumi more aware of the ways they were different.
He couldn’t help that he preferred to make things last as long as possible. Dedicated maintenance that bordered on obsessive for someone who hadn’t finished growing yet.
(Megumi always believed that things had feelings the way he did. And if things could feel too, then he should be gentle with them. The way that he wants other people to be gentle with him.)
Now, with the dough rolled messily over the pie dish, their roles are reversed.
Yuuji shows Megumi how to crimp the edges of the crust. To form the dough into something that will survive the baking process and come out as beautiful as it is delicious.
Megumi keeps messing it up. He pinches too hard and the crust tears and he has to reshape it, but it never looks quite the same after it’s been broken.
At least his struggle is amusing to Yuuji, who exhales a laugh, loud and exuberant, but by the time he’s ready to suck in more air, his hands are already moving to rest on top of Megumi’s. Demonstrating the motion without any excuse for misinterpretation.
Yuuji talks (because Yuuji always talks, always has something to say, truly has no idea how to be quiet), but it’s not about the pie.
Or, really, it is about the pie, but not their pie. About pie, but not the pie or a pie.
It’s a story dating all the way back to his great-great-grandmother. Yuuji knows almost nothing about her, not even her name. Just this one story that has shaped each generation since so much that they can each tell it as if it’s their own. Formed like the crusts between their fingers. Pre-determined by a baker far beyond their reach.
(Megumi has never liked pie. Warm fruit is confusing to him and so he avoids it on principle, mostly. Watching Yuuji eat pie is something he enjoys though. When he takes the first bite, he smiles in two parts. It starts as awestruck gratitude to the universe that it let him be alive at the same time as pie. The first becomes the second when he looks at Megumi with a conspiratorial wink. Inviting him into his conversation with the universe. Telling it thank you for letting him be alive at the same time as pie and as Fushiguro Megumi, so that he may enjoy both together.)
(The second part is contingent on Megumi’s presence. In over a decade of friendship, Megumi has never seen Yuuji share the second part of that look with anyone else. Megumi is the only one that Yuuji thanks the universe for.)
When she was nine, Yuuji’s great-grandmother took on most of the cooking for her family. They weren’t poor, but no family with eight siblings is well off. Her parents and older siblings all worked too much. None of them had any time to keep dinner plates full with all the other ones they needed to keep spinning, so all of the cooking fell to her. She understood her role well and wanted to be a dutiful daughter, but everyone reaches their limit eventually.
On the day that hers finally came, her father made her a promise. If she could make just one pie where the crust didn’t snap when sliced, then he would find a way to not leave all the cooking to her.
Months and months went by, but every crust was the same as the last. Crumbly and imperfect, snapping just the way she ultimately did. Temper sparking like flint, raging against her father. Accusing him of making her a promise that he had no intention of keeping.
Saying it out loud was all it took for her to realize what her father had known the whole time. There’s no such thing as a pie crust that doesn’t snap at some point. Her face fell, mournful and betrayed, and she asked her father why he’d done it. Why he’d gotten her hopes up knowing that she had no chance. He looked at her with the pity of an ancient, shrugged his shoulders, and told her something that every adult must discover in time.
Promises are like pie crusts, made to be broken.
There’s laughter crinkling the edges of Yuuji’s voice as he recounts the tale. The story makes him smile, a simple history.
Megumi isn’t sure how it makes him feel.
The uncertainty distracts him from the task at hand. Yuuji takes advantage, rubbing his cherry juice covered hands over Megumi’s cheeks. Megumi flinches away, trying to push Yuuji off him.
“Oh, come on. You like it when I touch you,” Yuuji teases, saccharine to the point of aching. “Admit it.”
Megumi’s chest tightens. He feels a dread he’s never felt before. It starts high in his throat, sucking all the air from his lungs and locking it somewhere far out of his reach.
The key is in the denial. Of vehement protest that he doesn’t like it. That’s the only way this feeling goes away.
Of course, this only makes Yuuji more certain that he’s right. He latches on to the point, refusing to drop it. Dangling the key just out of Megumi’s reach.
Words can’t sway him, so Megumi must prove it with his actions somehow.
“Shut up!” Megumi shouts, louder than he meant, but it’s too late to turn back now. “When you touch me I feel nothing.”
I promise.
/////
Megumi wakes before he’s ready. Too many noises in his too loud house, even after all his siblings have moved out. Dishes clattering and voices laughing and footsteps falling.
That’s part of the problem. What’s actually happening downstairs doesn’t match what should be. Three voices instead of two.
Megumi does not leave his room all day. He sits by the door and waits for something to change.
/////
There are fences in his mind where Megumi does not allow himself to wander. Clearly marked and designated as to avoid any confusion. Accidents cannot be tolerated. New paths are being charted daily as Megumi discovers more routes that lead him back to Yuuji.
It can start with something as simple as the month of November.
On the surface, it has nothing to do with Yuuji. Not his birthday month. No major holidays. Completely and utterly innocuous.
Except that November is the eleventh month. And 1111 was their room number their first year of university. Yuuji would point it out every time they walked into the room.
Eleven eleven make a wish.
When they got home from that party freshman year, Yuuji whispered it in his ear before he kissed him. Pressed him into the door with that number written on the other side as he put a thigh between Megumi’s. Trailing kisses down his neck, his chest, his stomach, his thighs. To the space between.
Then he remembers the feeling of Yuuji’s breath hot against his ear. How convincing it sounded when he told Megumi that he loved him. The way his skin pebbled under Yuuji’s touch. How Yuuji looked at him like Megumi was the angel.
It’s annoying, really.
/////
That night, Megumi has the strangest dream.
In the dream, he is laying on the sun, looking up at the stars in the night sky.
In the dream, there is an eclipse, the sun turning a furious red.
In the dream, his eyes are filled with shadows, stretching and stealing as far as he can see.
/////
Megumi does not know if he is asleep or awake anymore.
When his eyes blink open, fighting against the impeding sun, the cushion is back in its spot in front of the window. Itadori Yuuji sitting in the center of it.
Neither of these things were there when he went to sleep.
“What’re you doing here?” Megumi hears his own voice ask, low and gravely.
“I could ask you the same question.”
This is not the Yuuji he knows. He’s distant. Challenging and cold. Maybe this is a dream after all.
It takes some of the pressure off. Megumi can say anything and when he wakes up it won’t matter. None of this is real.
“I needed space.”
“If you’d asked for it, I would have given it to you. You didn’t need to run away.”
“Since when do you care about what I do?”
It feels good. Being as angry as he feels on the inside. Letting it out. There’s so much in him all the time, but there’s way more room for it out here. Why has he never done this before?
“Because last time I checked, the only person you worried about was yourself. What? Are you actually gonna pretend like you were thinking about me when crawling into my bed after going on a date with someone else? Please,” Megumi rolls his eyes. “Spare me your pity, I don’t want it.”
All the color drains from Yuuji’s face. The lack of sunlight dripping in through the window making him seem paler than usual.
It only makes Megumi more certain this is a dream.
“You don’t know what I was thinking about.”
“Try me.”
Yuuji shifts his weight. The floorboard creaks.
“I … I was thinking about how I would have rather been on a date with you.”
Megumi blinks. For a moment, the world is still. Then.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
It’s an explosion. Vitriol and rage making shrapnel out of his ribs, his heart — the ticking time bomb of a thing — finally deciding that its had enough.
There is a small hand that digs into his bicep. Another covering his mouth and nose. Pressing fervently into the soft spin there. Taking all his oxygen with them.
Megumi looks down and sees himself as a child. Tears pricking the corners of his eyes, wild with dread. Trying desperately to hold Megumi back with a pleading gaze that Megumi does not need words to understand. He is face to face with a version of himself that would have given anything to hear Yuuji say those words, even if he didn’t mean them.
He doesn’t know when, but these are two different people now. The one staring up at him and the one that he is. Megumi’s heart hurts, realizing how broken he’d allowed himself to become. There was a time where the only person who could have put him back together was Yuuji. Yet he’s the one standing over the broken pieces.
(Who is he, really? Is he the pieces or the whole? Did he feel more like himself then or now? Which one hurts more? Which one is he?)
(Megumi would like to wake up now.)
No, if anyone is going to fix what’s been ruined, it has to be Megumi.
“You expect me to believe you? After all the bullshit you put me through?” As Megumi keeps talking, the hands gripping him fade. Just another part of the dream. “What? You lead me on, you kiss me, you tell me how badly you want it to be me in the dead of night, but the second the sun is out you can’t find it in you to act the same? Do you know how much you’ve messed with my head the past few years? How much … — fuck, I loved you, Yuuji. Did you not get that? Did it never occur to you that I might take you at your word when you told me you did too?”
“Yeah, it did, that’s why I fucking said it! But you never said it back.”
Yuuji is joining the fight, too. Letting out an anger that Megumi doesn’t recognize in him.
“I told you every time I could work up the courage to. It’s — do you know how terrifying it is to think you’re losing your best friend every time you try to tell him the truth?” His voice shakes, the outburst of courage waning. “But I still did it. I tried. And every time I said it I meant it, Megumi.”
The only sound in the whole world is both of them panting heavily. Oxygen working overtime to supply their overworked brains and exhausted lungs with enough air to keep him upright.
Is this real?
If dreams are made of little bits of real life, then this cannot be one. No ordering of the facts Megumi is so painfully aware of can add up to this being true. But if it's not a dream, then that means it is real. That he’s awake.
Megumi doesn’t know what to think.
Megumi is very, very tired.
“Then … then why did you start seeing someone else?”
It always comes back to the cushion. The way Yuuji shrinks into it, settles deeper into the lumpy fabric to soothe himself. To find some hidden bit of bravery stored there. It’s something Megumi has seen a million times before. Somehow finding its way to the heart of this memory too. The place that Yuuji is when he says, “I thought that if I tried to – like, really tried, ya know? – that I’d be able to convince myself that it didn’t have to be you. That just because I’ve spent my whole life wanting you that it would be ok if I didn’t get to have you. I just … I could never make it through the full date without thinking of you.”
Megumi blinks. Hard.
He tries to speak.
“I …”
He trails off.
He tries again.
“I … I don’t know what to say.”
Because, what the fuck is Megumi supposed to say?
His whole life is re-ordering around him. Around Yuuji’s words. The dream widening and shrinking as he sees past versions of Yuuji and himself growing up in this room together.
They are eight, practicing for their annual choir recital, collapsing on top of each other in a fit of laughter at how bad they sound.
Is Yuuji serious? Would he be so cruel as to lie about something this big? Has he meant it the whole time?
They are thirteen, watching some horror movie Yuuji found, clutching on to each other for dear life.
Can Megumi trust him? Does Megumi believe him? Will any of this matter when he wakes up?
They are sixteen, planning what colleges they want to tour together, swearing that they’ll only go somewhere if they both get in.
Does Megumi forgive him? Can Yuuji forgive him? Is it too late?
They are twenty, saying for the first time that they love each other, but only in the past tense.
They’ve made such a mess of everything.
Megumi looks down at his fingers. The heat of the moment almost makes the tips of them look cherry-stained. Yuuji looks at Megumi’s hands, then at his own. He takes a deep breath. Then, Yuuji extends his left pinky.
“Can you make me a promise?”
(The sun shines through the window, hitting the crown of Yuuji’s head the way it always does when he’s sitting on the cushion. It threatens to take Megumi’s breath away, even now. The certainty that angels are very, very real.)
“What kind of promise?”
Megumi’s stalling, but he can’t bring himself to care. What is one more second before inevitable heartbreak? What is delaying the crash for just a moment longer, when he knows the impact will end him all the same? What is one extra heartbeat in the before?
“Promise me that you’ll remember this when the sun rises.”
Megumi sits in silence for so long that his chest begins to hurt, an ache born from forsaking his need for oxygen. His body already practicing forgetting.
Once his heart catches on, it demands that he inhale. Loudly and greedily and open mouth. Taking in as much of the moment as his body will allow.
His head, his heart, his body, his memories – none of them can get on the same page. All of them screaming something different at him. New paths forward that completely disregard the ones his brain keeps barred from entry.
The sun is rising. The dream is about to end. Megumi is going to wake up soon.
He wonders what will be waiting for him when he does.