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His body wasn't his own. It never was in this dream. He could see it slumped over against a wall, feel the stickiness of blood even if he could never discern if it was his or someone else's ruining his uniform, and the pain radiating from every cut and hit he'd taken all dulled by the heaviness of unconsciousness.
Then hands. From different people all with the same idea as they gripped his jaw and held his mouth open, taking advantage of his unconscious state. Over and over, his muscles remembered the feel of sharp nails and mummified skin scraping their way down his throat as each finger got pushed down, falling deeper into him and letting the roots of Sukuna's power grip him tighter with each one. At least he didn't have to taste them.
It ends, as things do, and then a new nightmare starts. His mind processes nothing but a blur of blood and heat, movements unlike his own, hands moving to hurt those he'd give his life ten times over to protect, and those he wouldn't have minded landing a couple hits on. Yuji's hands, controlled by someone else, cause the unfair, violent, and unnatural deaths of so many. There's more blood—more of his own blood— where he drags his palms on the ground and begs for his death like it might start to tip the scales of fairness.
And then he wakes up. Fear gives way to alarm in the darkness of the room he finds himself in as he barely manages to roll off the mattress he's on to throw up his dinner on the wooden floors. His stomach clenches violently, and he barely has time to gasp before he's throwing up again. He keeps his eyes closed against the pain and tries to ignore the tears that burn at their edges. Maybe, he thinks, if he closes his eyes hard enough, he can imagine the pain has a purpose. That it'll get the fingers out of him and Sukuna will follow; the blood will come off his hands, and he'll finally sleep well for a full night. But it doesn't.
His body stops convulsing for a minute or two, enough for him to open his eyes and sit back. The breaths forcefully escaping his lungs are nothing more than sharp sobs, and when he looks at them his hands are still his hands; in the darkness he manages to convince himself that the bile on them is blood and that forces another sob out of him.
A voice weighed down by sleep cuts through the haze of his panic. "Itadori?"
He turns, ignoring his bloody hands in favor of looking at whoever is unlucky enough to find him like this. Megumi is standing at the door, painted by the moonlight that bleeds through the windows and soaks his loose, rumpled, sleeping clothes. He has half a mind to tell him to leave before he hurts him too and makes him regret ever saving him.
"I'm—" The word scrapes his throat all the way to where it stumbles off his tongue. He coughs, swallows, and tries to remind himself that the scrape doesn't mean another of Sukuna's fingers being shoved down his throat. "I'm okay. I'm sorry."
Where the moonlight tries to soften the edges of Megumi's face, worry takes over and hardens them. "No." He says, walking closer and leaving no room for arguments. "What happened?"
Pride rises in his throat, copying the bitter taste of bile, but he fights to push it down. He doesn't want to make this harder for Megumi. He's already done enough. "Nightmare." He rasps. "There's… blood, I think."
"There's no blood, Yuji. Come on."
Megumi's hand comes to rest on his shoulder, and he realizes he's been trembling this whole time. It's almost like the atoms that make up his body were trying to shake apart, and Megumi's hand reminded them to come together once more. He feels far away as he walks to the bathroom with Megumi by his side and the moonlight illuminating their path. The light gets turned on and the bathtub gets filled, and he barely registers any of it. He's stuck staring at his hands and the sticky shine on them. There's a sort of bone deep relief that comes with realizing it's not blood that's coating them, even if the reality still makes his stomach turn.
"Let's get your hands clean so you can take your clothes off." Megumi says as he pulls him towards the sink. His hands move with surprising gentleness as they help wash off the remnants of his nightmare, and with every touch Yuji feels like he's starting to come back to himself, at least enough to find his voice.
"I'm sorry about all this, Fushiguro. I didn't mean to wake you up."
"Stop apologizing, you idiot. We all get nightmares; it's fine, really."
He shakes his head, his body taking the words of comfort and rejecting them instinctively. "No, nothing is fine. So many are dead. They died unnaturally and violently and it's all my fault." He tries to meet Megumi's eyes, but his head is turned away. The water flowing freely from the faucet fills the silence their shaky breathing leaves. Megumi's hands come up to grasp his wrists, and his eyes finally find Yuji's own under the harsh light of the overhead bulb of the bathroom.
"I choose to ask Gojo to save you. Many are dead," Megumi's voice is raw with emotion, they don't say any names. They don't need to. "and most of the ones who aren't are seriously injured." Yuji tries to look away, but the hands around his wrists tighten, forcing him to keep his eyes fixed on the boy in front of him. "But this guilt you feel, Yuji, it's not fair to you. The blame could never be only yours. I wanted to save you, so let me share the blame."
He doesn't say anything; he's not sure what would even spill out if he opened his mouth. The silence hangs between them until Megumi looks away and loosens his hold.
"I'm gonna go clean the bedroom. Get in the bathtub, you'll feel better, I promise."
He nods and steps away.
Megumi comes back when he's already being lulled into a state of relaxation by the warmth of the water hugging his muscles. "Feeling better?" He asks, sitting down by the side of the tub. His sleeves are rolled up and his eyes look tired. Yuji doesn't think he looks much better. "I brought you a towel. It's warm."
"Oh. Uh. Thank you." His voice is still hoarse. He hopes it'll be different by the time the sun rises, but he's not particularly confident in things being better by the time the sun comes up anymore. All it ever does is expose the places where darkness stays, stubborn, even when everything is bathed in light.
"I also brought new clothes for you. I'll leave it here," the things get placed carefully on the toilet's lid, "so you can get out and get dressed."
"Thanks." It takes conscious effort to not apologize again. "Why are you doing this?" The water sloshes around him as he brings his legs up to his chest.
"We're… friends." Megumi stops to consider something, and the next words out of his mouth are careful. "When I was younger and I got sick, Gojo would do this for me. He'd take care of me in his own clumsy and inexperienced way. I think it's just a thing you do for people you care about. I care about you, Yuji."
A knot ties itself in his throat, making swallowing more painful, while tears burn at his eyes for the second time tonight. "I didn't want it." He says, a harsh whisper scraping his throat all the way up. "I hate it when he takes over, and they just shoved all those mummified fingers down my throat. I can feel it. My fucking muscles remember. I didn't—" He gasps. "I didn't want to do any of it."
"I know. What happened couldn't have been you. You are a good person, okay?"
He doesn't say that sometimes he's afraid that Sukuna will dig his nails into every soft part in him that holds whatever it is that makes him good and corrupt it, but he doesn't have to. Megumi reads his doubts off of the lines of tension in his shoulders. Then, he turns his body and pulls him in, uncaring when wet arms come up around him and soak his shirt. Eventually, he pulls away and even though the bath water has been getting progressively colder, Yuji feels warmed up from the inside out.
"Finish up here and get dressed. We both need sleep." The door closes gently behind Megumi, and Yuji starts feeling a bone deep exhaustion settle over him. He wants nothing more than to sleep for a week straight and wake up without the bitter taste of a nightmare lingering on the edges of his subconscious.
He stumbles back to his room blindly, with the moon as his guide after he turns off the bathroom light. He's not expecting to find Megumi sitting nervously at the edge of his bed. The floor is clean, no traces of what he suffered through, his bed looks warm and inviting, and without the tight grip of panic on his brain he can recognize the beauty of the boy in his bed, covered in moonlight with his kind hands twisting in his lap.
"Hey…" He says, walking further into the room.
"Oh, you're done. That's good. You should go back to bed. So should I. Goodnight, Itadori." He stands up sharply, not looking at Yuji.
"Megumi, stay?" Yuji asks, quiet enough to disappear in the darkness. His hand comes up to find Megumi's. The skin is soft under his fingertips.
Tired eyes find his own; they're empty of any desire to argue, but they shine with a hopeful sort of nervousness. "Okay. I will."
“A man takes his sadness and throws it away, but then he’s still left with his hands.” –”Boot Theory” by Richard Siken