Chapter Text
By the time Megumi started developing film commercially, Ten Shadows Camera Company had been a staple for pretentious art students of Tokyo for going on 40 years. The storefront itself was a small brick building along the beach with minimal retail space and a large darkroom, which suited the company’s business model, as the vast majority of profits came from developing film and shooting off-site, rather than selling equipment.
Megumi had been working as a professional photographer since the beginning of his college days, and to his delight, managed to avoid human contact with his clients to the best of his ability. Most of his paid work was in real estate. The architectural style of Historic Tokyo townhomes looked great in his portfolio, and the routine nature of the gigs kept his days easy:
Take keys from lockbox, get shots of rooms, return keys to lockbox, develop photos, edit scans, share Dropbox folder with client, get paid, rinse and repeat.
That was, until the shop’s owner packed up and left.
It made sense that Gojo would get work from more interesting parties, provided that his portfolio was chock full of lively action shots: colorful panoramas from the crowds of festivals; athletes and dancers frozen crystal-clear in mid-air. His work was high-quality, and the rate he charged reflected that — which is why Megumi scoffed when he heard about his newest client.
Some janky alternative band had signed him on as their tour photographer for the next several months, leaving Megumi to pick up slack at the shop. In his humble opinion, that motley crew didn’t appear nearly successful enough to afford Gojo, but Megumi would never say that to his face. Plus, he suspected they’d bagged a discounted rate on account of his boss’... affinity for their frontman, “an old friend”.
Regardless of Megumi’s speculation, it was a done deal. He’d begrudgingly covered a booking for a family photoshoot just after Gojo’s departure, but immediately after wrapping up, blacked out all availability for that service until the date of his boss’ anticipated return.
Aside from that one-off, the only major changes in Megumi’s workload were that he’d be developing a lot more film shot by other people, and he’d be dealing with said people at the shop counter. Kind of like he was right now.
Megumi was currently assisting what may have been the most disorganized “photographer” known to man. The guy had walked in, unzipped his fanny pack, and pulled out a generic-brand bottle of Zinc supplements, which he’d evidently been using to store a single roll of 35mm Kodak Gold 200. Megumi had chosen not to make eye contact to avoid secondhand embarrassment.
“Hey,” the guy said, “I’m hoping to get this—” Megumi watched as he flipped the bottle upside down, thumping it to coax the roll out “—uhh, developed. Do you guys do that here?”
Megumi raised his eyebrows just slightly and glanced down at the large banner on the other side of his counter, which he knew read “DEVELOP FILM HERE!”
What a moron, Megumi thought. “Yes, we do that here.”
“Oh, great!” the man said with an air of relief. “I was worried I wouldn’t find somewhere in time — I have a friend leaving town tomorrow night, and I’m hoping to get these printed out for him before he hits the road. Could they be ready by then?”
It was at this point that Megumi finally flicked his eyes up to look at the man’s face rather than his pathetic excuse for a film canister, which he immediately found to have been a grave mistake.
He was well-built and dressed for the weather, wearing a white muscle tee with red and white floral boardshorts that Megumi suspected were just swim trunks. His glowing skin was heavily freckled at high points where the sun hit his body, particularly his shoulders and the angular sides of his face. A pair of shades rested atop his head, framing his otherwise unmanaged pale pink hair like a makeshift headband, and his red fanny pack was hanging half-unzipped at his waist with several small items on the verge of falling out.
In short terms, he dressed stupid, he spoke stupid, and he was stupid hot. This was going to be a problem.
Despite mentally short-circuiting at the sight of the guy, the only blip in Megumi’s composure was a slight widening of the eyes. “We have a queue of orders lined up for the next couple of days,” Megumi said, “but we can expedite for a fee. Is that your only roll?”
“Yeah!” Fanny Pack replied, nodding. “I’ll probably be back with more soon, but this is the only one that matters right now. I’m totally fine with the fee.”
Megumi pulled an order form from his stack and slid it across the counter, pointing to a mug of mismatched ballpoint pens to his left. “Fill this out, and I’ll have it done before morning. Prices are on the sheet. We open at 8, and you can pay at pickup whenever you come by,” he said, taking the roll and placing it in a spare film canister for safekeeping.
“Awh man, thank you so much. I really didn’t want to have to mail these later; I suck at the post office,” the man said as he began filling out the form.
Megumi paused, turning to face the man again. “Did you just say you suck at the post office?”
“I really have no excuse; I just don’t go. I’m horrible. I’ll put a package together and leave it in my car for weeks at minimum before someone calls me all angry about it and I actually have to go send it off. I know it’s not, like, hard, but something about the post office spiritually repels me. It’s like my body knows not to go,” the man rambled, fumbling with the pen mug. Megumi tried his best not to notice how small it looked in his hands.
What an interesting way to speak, Megumi thought, an unfamiliar feeling in his gut. “Well, I guess you could say I suck at the camera store,” he said.
Fanny Pack’s expression grew puzzled, then alarmed. “Wait, I’m sorry, do you not work here?”
Megumi coughed back an unexpected laugh. It was incredibly clear that he worked there. “No, I do, but I’m usually back there,” Megumi said, gesturing to the darkroom behind him. “I don’t typically handle… this,” he motioned between them.
“Oh, you do the developing?” the man asked. “Like, you see everyone’s pictures and stuff?”
Megumi nodded, and without thinking, blurted out, “Is there anything on your roll you don’t want me to see?”
He could literally see the man’s neck heating up, which only served to highlight the strong line of his jaw. “Oh, no, nothing like that!” he assured in a panicked tone, gesturing with his palms toward Megumi in an X-shaped sweeping motion that said no no no. “I just wanted to ask, because like, I’d feel like such a creep if I did that. Not that you’re a creep, like, I—”
“I didn’t take it that way,” Megumi reassured, amused. “It does sometimes feel like… an invasion of privacy to process other people’s photos. Tokyo has a lot of, um, X-rated photo artists out there who are shameless enough to send us their film. It’s just part of the job.”
The man’s embarrassed blush deepened, but he wasn’t as frazzled as before. “Thank you, that came out wrong. The only warning I have for you is that I’ve never used a camera before yesterday. I got one on Facebook Marketplace over the weekend. So, what I mean is the pictures suck, probably.”
Megumi’s lips curled slightly. “I had assumed you were new. I’ve never seen someone do that before,” he said, gesturing to the Zinc container.
The man laughed. “I thought I should keep it out of the light, but I lost the little tube the film came in, so I did my best,” he said, finally finishing the order form.
Within a couple of minutes, Fanny Pack was thanking him, turning to wave goodbye on his way out the door, and Megumi was… smiling?
What the hell was that? he thought.
Thankfully, the question of who the hell that had been was answered by the order form in Megumi’s hand. The man wanted digital scans and glossy 4x6 prints of all 36 exposures, wanted to keep his negatives, and was named Yuuji Itadori.
A quick Internet search left very little about Itadori to the imagination. LinkedIn listed his high school graduation the same year as Megumi’s, along with a lifeguarding job that started shortly afterward. His Instagram reflected a vibrant social life — mostly casual iPhone photos with his friends — but his most recent post piqued Megumi’s attention and made his mouth go dry.
It was the first photo in a carousel from a day at the beach. Itadori stood damp at the shore, wearing even shorter red swim trunks, smiling with his shirt off and mouth open. He was either laughing hard enough to clench his abs, or he just looked like that, and Megumi felt dizzy just thinking about it.
Thick, corded muscle ran down his forearms to his hands, which clasped around the thighs of a pale woman sitting on his shoulders. She wore a navy blue one-piece swimsuit that complimented the reddish brown shade of her pin-straight bob, and her smile was almost bright enough to rival Itadori’s.
Almost.
Given the intimacy of the pose, Megumi instantly registered that this must be his girlfriend, and something akin to disappointment settled in his chest.
He thought back to the family portrait he’d shot in Gojo’s absence — staged happiness in a grassy field for a straight couple and their infant, which he quite frankly found to be very irritating. The couple, not the baby, although he was pretty indifferent to those too.
Megumi had never been particularly inclined to pursue a relationship. He’d figured for a while that he must be asexual after learning the term in high school, but the rare occasion that a man’s well-built shoulders widened his eyes would beg to differ, so the idea of being involved with someone couldn’t be ruled out entirely.
However, despite being extremely into select men under very specific circumstances, he’d never gone through with anything. This could be attributed mostly to unbearable personalities becoming evident as soon as his prospects opened their mouths.
He’d never felt like this before, but there was no use pining over a straight guy.
Megumi thought back to that stupid outfit Itadori had been wearing.
There was no use pining over a straight(?) bisexual(?) guy with a partner. Regardless, the shop was empty, and Megumi had time on his hands to start working on his newest order. Seven hours later, he stared dumbfounded at the contents of the scans in front of him.