Chapter Text
The green room was quiet at this hour. Gentle light streamed in from high windows, casting a golden glow around the room. Posters from past shows littered the walls—Kobe Abe, Shakespeare, a few student-written plays, and a handful more from modern to classical. They were organized nicely, each Theatre season’s posters hanging near each other. Fushiguro was staring blankly at the start of his own seasons with the university. A student-directed piece that was put on as a reading on their secondary stage. They only performed one night and the crowd hadn’t been huge, but it held a special place in his heart. It was his first college show. He was so terrified during his audition he almost threw up before he went on, but he’d made it. He’d done well and he’d been selected out of the multitude of majors and non-majors who showed up. From that moment on, he’d been in at least one show every season, at least two a school year.
They didn’t have huge seasons. Two mainstage shows, normally a straight play and a musical, and one to two secondary stage shows each semester. Fushiguro was not a musical kind of man. He avoided the auditions for those like his life depended upon it. That was fine, though. The department may have been small, but musicals normally drew in quite a few auditions from music majors so his absence wasn’t noticed much. Occasionally, a season would bring in a seemingly large crowd of non-theatre majors. This year, it seemed, had been one of those rare instances.
The cast for the play they were working on right now—Fushiguro’s second for the semester much to his schedule’s horror—a student-written, staff-directed show, contained two non-majors. One, a biology student named Kamo Noritoshi who Fushiguro knew, vaguely, from high school and the other a film studies major named Itadori Yuuji, who had scored himself the place of secondary lead and Fushiguro’s character’s love interest.
At first, he’d been worried about how playing off someone who had only ever watched films and not really acted would work for him. It became clear, rather quickly, that working with Itadori was the least of his problems. Fushiguro thought he was rather handsome, which had never been an issue before, but with Itadori it was becoming one.
Fushiguro Megumi did not do showmances.
Never before had he lost himself so deeply in a character that he mistook their feelings for his own. He always followed all the procedures set, to avoid exactly that, by their Intimacy and Consent Coordinator, or well, the student that was working under her and with the actors on this particular play. Yuta was a familiar face. He did good work and he was more than happy to meet with actors he worked with outside of rehearsal time if they were struggling with a particular scene or exercise.
Which is how Fushiguro found himself here, staring at the many posters on the wall while waiting for Yuta’s last class to finish.
“Sorry I’m late,” Yuta rushed out as he came barreling through the door. “I got caught by Gojo-sensei on the way here. He was wondering how things were going under Ieiri-sensei’s watch.”
Gojo Satoru. Acting and directing professor, department head, and Fushiguro’s personal annoyance from the age of six.
He had taken a liking to Yuta when he started his first year, a real prodigy, Gojo had called him. Yuta wasn’t an actor, he spent the first year of his schooling studying only directing under Gojo’s watchful eye. Now, with a little convincing from Shoko, who taught the Intimacy and Consent Coordination course they took together last semester, he was branching out and finding he was quite the prodigy in more than just directing. If Yuta wasn’t careful, he’d have a hand in every possible pot here on campus soon.
His bag was tossed down with a heavy sound onto a cushion of the couch across from Megumi. Yuta followed it with an equally heavy sound and a sigh as he stretched out.
Yuta always looked rather tired, the bags under his eyes seemed to be a permanent fixture, but he seemed even more so now. Not that it surprised him. After all, they were reaching the point in rehearsal where Yuta was working with them to choreograph the more intimate scenes in the play. With it being a love story, he was in nearly every rehearsal, almost the whole time. Fushiguro knew from experience how exhausting that was.
He felt rather guilty for taking up more of his time. Maybe he should have gone to Shoko, but the idea of telling her that he thought he was falling for Itadori Yuuji because he couldn’t separate the two of them as actors from their characters was far from appealing. In fact, he was almost certain she would have laughed in his face before she remembered she was technically a professional and not just his guardian’s friend.
“I don’t think the de-rolling tactics I’ve been using are working,” Fushiguro spoke up finally. Yuta peeked one eye open at him, but before he could say anything, Fushiguro felt the urgent need to clarify. “I’m mentally okay after rehearsal is over, it’s not anything straining on my mind. It’s…well, I think I’m having trouble stepping out of the role in the romantic sense.”
“You think you’re developing a crush on Itadori?”
“For lack of a better term.”
Yuta hummed, leaning forward. “Do you want me to answer as your friend or as your coordinator?”
“As my coordinator.”
Megumi had no interest in knowing what Yuta had to say as his friend. It would be nothing to dissuade him from going after it, he was more than sure of that. After all, Itadori and Yuta got along swimmingly, he was sure Yuta would jump at another reason to keep him around after the production was over.
“As your coordinator,” Yuta confirmed, “I think it’s a good sign that you have recognized the feeling and are sitting with it instead of acting on it. Sometimes things are going to be complicated. There are days your mind may be less accepting of the enrolling process or de-rolling exercises, so it will be harder for your brain to figure out what is real and what is acting. You remember we talked about the impacts of acting from a neurological standpoint last semester, yes?”
Fushiguro nodded.
“Consider this a little refresher then,” Yuta chuckled. “As an actor, your brain exists in a very unique state. You, the actor, know that what you are saying and doing isn’t real. You understand that you’re acting out what the character is feeling in the moment and that those feelings do not belong to you. Your brain and nervous systems don’t quite get that memo. No matter what technical approach you take to the matter, if you are giving a good performance and are truly connected to what your character is feeling in the moment, your brain will release all the right chemicals and your nervous system will react in the way it is designed to. Sometimes, as an added stressor, you’re having to fight against your baser instincts to stay true to what a character, who is different from you, might express in the moment.
“That’s all a natural part of this. It’s why things like method acting, or the perverted version of it that we think of when we hear the phrase anymore, are so dangerous. Your brain and body can’t fully understand that you are only putting up a front. Staying in a space like that for an extended period of time will have real life consequences on you, the actor, no matter how stellar the performance is.
“And it’s why I’m here,” he reached forward to flick Fushiguro gently between his furrowed brows. A gesture that was rather unprofessional from a coordinator, but appreciated from a friend. “So let’s talk solutions. You said you think you’re struggling to remove yourself from the character because you continue to feel some sort of romantic connection with Itadori after a scene ends or when you’re not even in the rehearsal space. Are you feeling any sort of strain on any other relationships with your castmates?”
He thought for a moment.
The cast was small, only six people including himself. He ran through the list of them, giving himself time to really think about what feelings had been coming up most often around them. Nothing seemed off until he reached Itadori with his stupid honey eyes and warm smile and general positive attitude that normally would have made Fushiguro want to roll his eyes but really only endeared him where he was involved.
Yeah, he was the problem.
“It’s just him,” Fushiguro answered finally.
Yuta nodded. “That’s okay. You spend most of your time in rehearsal with him and your characters are hardly ever apart, it would make sense that the feelings surrounding him are a little more intense than others. Do you think it would help to bring Itadori into your enrolling and de-rolling processes? Maybe the two of you putting on the characters together and then watching him strip off the roll at the end of rehearsal would help confirm in your mind that you two are not your characters.”
“Do you think he’d care about all this woo woo Theatre theory?”
Yuta fixed him with a look that would have sent weaker men running for the exit.
“I think you’re underestimating his love for this production and the art just because he’s new to it,” he scolded.
Fushiguro sighed, leaning back to twirl a strand of his hair idly between his fingers. “You’re right. It’s just such a vulnerable process, I don’t know that either of us could buy into it with someone else around.”
“It’s worth a shot,” the older boy encouraged. “If nothing else, we’ll figure out a different way to go about things. I can be there the first time to help guide the two of you through it, if that would make you feel better.”
“No,” he shook his head, “I think we’ll be fine alone. Besides, as your friend, and not an actor you’re responsible for, I am saying you don’t need another thing on your plate.”
Yuta just smiled and shook his head. Whatever it was that he might have said was interrupted by the door swinging open.
A freakishly tall man with his flamboyant features and far too observant blue eyes strolled in and stepped over Fushiguro’s legs to flop down beside him.
“Am I interrupting something?”
Fushiguro rolled his eyes, collected his things, and was effectively chased out of the building toward his next class by his nosy guardian.
—
Itadori’s dorm was about how he imagined it might be. One side of the room was covered in indecent pinups and various pictures of athletes that Fushiguro couldn’t hope to name. Itadori apologized profusely for the sight, admonishing his roommate only for Fushiguro to turn around and come face to face with some woman in a dark blue, almost black, bikini amongst the various movie posters that cluttered the walls on Itadori’s side of the room. When he fixed him with a look, Itadori pretended he was very busy organizing his, surprisingly, already pretty organized desk. It was a clean chaos. Things weren’t exactly where Fushiguro would have placed them, but there was a clear system. The same could not be said for the other side of the room. Fushiguro was glad that the chair he was offered faced away from it.
They sat together and Fushiguro helped him run lines in the scenes that were giving him trouble memorization-wise. They discussed and figured out what his character wanted, what his motivation was, and picked a few different actions to play—rather than emotions—until something stuck. It was sort of thrilling to watch the words begin to come to Itadori far easier under his guidance. They went over each section until Itadori was word perfect and then went over them a few more times for good measure.
It was dark out by the time they finished. Dinner time had passed long ago, which wasn’t a problem for Fushiguro who lived with Tsumiki off campus, but it most certainly would be a problem for Itadori. The dining halls were closed by now and while this dorm had a kitchen that was actually usable without setting off the fire alarms, he wasn’t sure Itadori was much of a cook. The more he thought about it, the more he decided it wouldn’t have shocked him to find that he was.
The image of Itadori in an apron, hunched over the stove, hard at work made him swallow down a bubbling laugh.
“Thank you again for coming by on such short notice,” Itadori sighed, the last vestiges of stress leaving his system. Fushiguro was familiar with that particular brand of worry. “You’ve been a huge help, not just tonight but through this whole thing. I was so nervous and you’ve been so understanding.”
“It’s nothi—”
“Hey! Let me take you out!”
Fushiguro choked. One of Itadori’s, very warm, hands made its way to his back, patting gently until he could breathe well enough to shake it off. The warmth was missed almost immediately. If he were weaker, he might have reached out and placed it right back where it had been on his own. His fingers twitched, curling into his pants.
“Didn’t mean to startle you,” Itadori apologized. “Let me take you out for dinner, my treat. It’s the least I could do to pay you back for all you’ve done for me since rehearsals started. There’s this really great ramen place not too far from campus. We could walk if you don’t want to bother trying to find parking.”
“I know the place,” Fushiguro spoke up, if nothing else than to get Itadori to stop doing so. He sounded so excited, it was getting harder to convince himself that he really shouldn’t be spending any extra time with him right now. Not until he could figure out how to remove himself from his role and the emotions attached to it properly. Even now, alone in his dorm, coming off the high of a successful mission, Fushiguro’s chest felt light and his stomach oddly fluttery. “I really should get home. Maybe some other night.”
“Come on!” Honey eyes grew gooey as Itadori pouted. Fushiguro was a goner. “I promise I won’t take up too much more of your time. I just want to do something to thank you. I mean, I’m way ahead of schedule now. Tsukumo-sensei will be ecstatic.”
She would be. Tsukumo was the staff member directing their play and from the moment they’d met, she had taken a liking to Itadori. It didn’t surprise Fushiguro too much. They weren’t too dissimilar. Itadori was a tad more introverted, despite his seemingly very friendly demeanor, but other than that, they seemed like the kind of people that would be just fine entertaining the other for hours. Itadori had distracted her more than once during early rehearsals, chatting when they should have been working. In a strange way, those moments were some of the worst for this freakish feeling dancing across his nerves.
Itadori had a nice smile. The kind of smile that would have charmed just about anyone, Fushiguro was almost sure of that. A smile that, oftentimes, came with a laugh that was soothing and made his knees a little weak. He was expressive, his features did things that Fushiguro couldn’t hope to get his to do outside of acting. Even then, he was sure Itadori had him beat. More than once Fushiguro thought he would have done wonderful work in film where close-ups of his feature’s evocative nature would have been commonplace. Not that he did bad work on stage, in fact, everything he did was wonderful.
They locked his door behind them, setting off out of the dorm and into the autumn night.
Fushiguro decided that walking would be easier. His apartment wasn’t far from the ramen shop and he walked to Itadori’s dorm directly after classes that day anyway. He didn’t have anything he needed to grab, he brought his bag with him. He could survive this dinner alone with him and then take off in the other direction, scolding himself about his silly, fake feelings the whole way home. Home where Tsumiki would no doubt sniff out his every issue like she always did. He was convinced older sisters were created with built in mindreading. Built in and not learned because she’d been doing the exact same thing since the first time they’d met. It used to piss him off, now it only irritated him a little bit. Mostly, it made him feel like he had a place he would always belong.
When they reached the restaurant, Itadori opened the door for him and then jogged ahead of him to pull his chair out. Fushiguro was almost certain they could set the pans in the kitchen on his face and get just as much heat off his cheeks as they got off the flames.
“Shoyu, for you?” Itadori asked him when he started to use the little tablet on their table to order.
Fushiguro blinked. “Yeah. How did you know that?”
“Tsukumo-sensei asked us all what our ideal bowl of ramen was during that pantomiming exercise we did.” Itadori shrugged, eyes glued to the screen like that was a completely normal thing to remember, for nearly a month, about someone that you weren’t even close friends with. “No bamboo shoots, right?”
“Right,” he confirmed, nodding.
Seriously, what was this guy’s problem?
Itadori passed the tablet over before he sent their order through, insisting Fushiguro check to make sure there wasn’t anything else he wished to remove or add. Much to his surprise, and continued wonder, the bowl belonging to him looked perfect. He couldn’t resist the urge to peek a bit. Tonkotsu for Itadori, extra meat. He remembered that because it had made a couple people with childish humor stifle giggles. Fushiguro was most certainly not amongst them. Outwardly, at least.
They fell into easy conversation, spearheaded mostly by Itadori. He wasn’t a particularly talkative person in groups, despite the general vibe he gave off, but he seemed to have no problem filling the silence between the two of them whether here or during breaks at rehearsals. They spoke briefly of classes and the dread they felt over the ever-looming exam season, but they moved quickly on to movies Itadori watched recently for his classes or plays that Fushiguro was reading. It led into a rather heated debate about what the best Studio Ghibli movie was. They were still trying to convince each other of their points—Fushiguro in favor of Princess Mononoke and Itadori in favor of Ponyo—when their ramen was delivered to them, steaming and fragrant.
Itadori’s cheeks flushed as he brought his face down closer to the rising steam to shove a concerning amount of noodles into his mouth. Immediately his face scrunched, hand coming up to cover his mouth where he was forced to let steam escape and pant gently trying to soothe the, no doubt, burning sensation on his tongue. He flailed about for a moment, chewing quickly through his struggle. When he swallowed, he grasped desperately at his glass of water, downing most of it in one go.
Fushiguro hid a smile behind his own glass.
“Hot,” he muttered, frowning slightly at his bowl like it was the culprit and not his lack of patience. “My tongue is numb.”
The beginnings of a laugh that he tried hard to swallow echoed around the inside of his cup, catching Itadori’s attention. A smile brighter than the summer sun—and just as warm—crawled across his features.
“You’re laughing!”
“I’m not.” Fushiguro schooled his features and set his cup back down, reaching for his chopsticks. “Eat your ramen.”
Itadori’s smile never dimmed the rest of their meal. It grew impossibly wider when Fushiguro agreed to let him walk him home. It had come with much argument and insistence that he didn’t need anything of the sort from Itadori, but he was a stubborn man. Fushiguro was figuring out very quickly that it was hard to tell him no when he had a killer pout and the big, devastating brown eyes to back it up.
They left, apologizing profusely for staying until just before closing time, heading out into the chill of autumn once more. The further the moon rose in the sky, the cooler nights like this became. The bite of the breeze and the rustle of dead leaves told that winter wasn’t as far away as many hoped. Their footsteps crunched, drowned out by the way that Itadori was talking excitedly about auditions for the next season. Fushiguro chewed on the inside of his cheek to curb the excitement of Itadori becoming a common face in the Theatre Department.
When a particularly harsh gust stung at his nose and ears, and found its way into his bones, Fushiguro shivered. He watched in horror as Itadori slipped his hoodie off, nearly taking his shirt with it and leaving Fushiguro with far too much skin to look at. Averting his gaze before he was caught staring (beacuse how the fuck did he look like that when he said he enjoyed spending his free time doing nothing but watching movies), he was trying to avoid looking so hard that he didn’t realize until it was too late that Itadori was pressing the bright red thing to his chest and letting go.
He barely caught it before it hit the ground.
“There.” Itadori grinned at him. When Fushiguro tried to hand it back to him, he waved him off, shoving his hands in the pockets of his pants. “I’m fine, really. I’m honestly kind of hot.”
The hoodie in his hands was proof enough of that. It was pleasantly warm, inviting. It smelled like cheap floral laundry detergent and something gently spiced.
“You are,” he answered, distracted.
Itadori tripped over his own feet, banging his fist against his chest as he coughed like he was choking. His face was so red that Fushiguro wasn’t sure he hadn’t swallowed a bug or something and actually was struggling to breathe. If he died before the show was done, Tsukumo would kill him.
It took him far too long to realize what he’d said.
“I mean—” he rushed, searching desperately for words as his own face began to feel hot. “I just noticed how warm the hoodie was. I wasn’t— Jesus, Itadori, breathe!”
The coughing gradually turned into a fit of chuckles. Itadori’s cheeks returned to their normal tanned color as Fushiguro tried to will his own to do the same. He really wasn’t sure what his problem was, but this whole thing was starting to be very inconvenient. The last thing he needed was Itadori thinking he was falling for him just because Fushiguro’s brain couldn’t understand that they were separate beings than their characters.
“I’m flattered,” Itadori hummed. “That’s certainly a compliment coming from someone like you.”
“Someone like me?”
“You’re gorgeous,” Itadori said, shattering Fushiguro’s entire world.
He tried to deflect, rolling his eyes. “I’m sure you use that on everyone.”
“You have a lot of faith in me,” Itadori laughed.
Fushiguro joined him, a smaller reaction, really just a heavy breath let out through his nose rather than a laugh, but it seemed to make Itadori happy. It made him even happier when Fushiguro gave in and slipped the hoodie over his head. He was pretty sure he might have caught him silently celebrating with a small fist pump by his side. Could have been a trick of the light though, he supposed.
They walked the rest of the way to his apartment in comfortable silence, Fushiguro’s fingers running along the soft fabric on the inside of the big pocket and sleeves. When the breeze kicked up, it didn’t bother him anymore, in fact, he rather enjoyed it. With it, it always carried that slightly spiced scent he couldn’t quite place. Fushiguro discovered it smelled strongest near the cuffs when he had brushed a stubborn strand of hair away from his forehead. Perhaps because Itadori had put whatever scent it was on his wrist. Whatever it was, it was comforting—familiar.
He thought it might be strange to ask Itadori what cologne it was, so he suffered from making guesses in silence.
Itadori walked him all the way to his front door, despite his insistence against it.
It wasn’t that there was something to hide, more that there was someone else in that apartment as she was just as nosy as a certain white haired man that she’d taken after.
“Thanks again for your help,” Itadori shifted gently, nervous. Fushiguro couldn’t figure out what he had to be nervous about exactly, but it was bothering him, whatever it was. “Tonight was fun. If you wanted to, after, um, the show and stuff, maybe we could—”
The door swung open, cutting him off. Tsumiki blinked rapidly, shocked to find more than just her little brother standing outside their door. Itadori looked like he wanted nothing more than to be swallowed up by the floor he was staring at very intently, and Fushiguro was cursing every deity he could think of for his horrid luck. He was really hoping she would have been asleep by now.
“Megumi,” she greeted finally, smiling gently. “Who’s this? A friend?”
Fushiguro elbowed Itadori, making him hiss and look up to meet her eyes. “I’m Itadori Yuuji. We’re in a show together. Fushiguro helped me out with lines tonight, I was just walking him home to show my thanks.”
“Well, Itadori, any friend of my little brother’s is a friend of mine,” she grinned and Itadori returned the gesture. “Thank you for taking care of him.”
“No, I’m the one being taken care of,” Itadori insisted, waving his hands in the air as if to bat the idea out of it.
Fushiguro’s heart jumped in his chest. Maybe he’d pissed one of those many deities off enough that they were going to kill him right there. He would only be so lucky.
“It’s late,” Fushiguro spoke up before the two of them could get too far into talking. “Thanks for dinner, Itadori. I’ll see you at rehearsal.”
He was trying to shove Tsumiki back inside and close the door behind them when Itadori caught his wrist.
“Wait,” he started, dropping it almost as soon as his fingers closed around it. “Can I get your number at least? So that we can meet up to go over lines again? I hate to drop it on you so last minute at rehearsals.”
Tsumiki smiled like a hungry shark that smelled blood. All teeth and sudden evil that didn’t really fit her otherwise cute appearance. Fushiguro was going to run away and never come back. She struggled to reach around him, a childish sort of spat between them that she won out.
Her hand extended out toward Itadori, hip checking Fushiguro further behind her. “He gets embarrassed easily. I can give it to you.”
Fushiguro tried to argue but she shot him a look over her shoulder that shut him up before he could so much as finish his thought. Mind reading. An unfair advantage. All he could do was watch in horror as she typed his name and contact information into Itadori’s phone and handed it back to him with a warm smile.
“Thanks for getting him home in one piece.” Tsumiki stuck her arm in his own. It would have looked sweet to Itadori’s untrained eye but the elbow digging into his side was anything but sweet. “We’re grateful.”
“Thank you,” Fushiguro pushed out, holding back a sigh of relief when the elbow removed itself from his side. “Goodnight, Itadori.”
“Goodnight, Fushiguro.”
The last thing he saw before Tsumiki shut the door for them was that warm, wide smile that he was growing rather fond of.
Fushiguro slipped away from her, as silent as possible as he tried to make a run for his room. She was on his heels as soon as the door locked, chasing him down the hallway with speed that should have been impossible for someone with as many health complications as Tsumiki suffered in her childhood. This was the only time he cursed the fact she bounced back quick, and about ten times stronger, from everything life threw her way.
She stuck half of her body in the doorway before he could shut his door fully. They struggled for a while, Tsumiki pushing for the door to be open and Fushiguro trying to keep her from gaining any ground while also shoving her out so it could close fully.
Tsumiki played dirty, wincing at one point when he had made too much progress in his own goals. Fushiguro hesitated long enough that she was able to throw her weight against the door and send both it and Fushiguro flying.
He would have a bruise where the doorknob dug into his stomach.
Tsumiki made herself comfortable at his desk while he peeled himself off the wall, groaning.
“So,” she started with a giggle, “who is he?”
“Itadori,” Fushiguro snarked. “He told you that already.”
Tsumiki clicked her tongue, glaring at him. “I know that. I was asking why you’re wearing his hoodie.”
The world stopped turning. Slowly, he let himself glance down, met with the bright red of the hoodie that Itadori was certainly missing right about now. When he realized his silence was only making the evidence more incriminating, green eyes flashed up to lock with the mischievous gaze of an older sister who locked onto something to tease him endlessly about. She was smiling again, but it brought him no comfort. That was not the kind of smile he liked seeing on her face.
“Don’t—”
“Don’t what?” Tsumiki hummed, spinning around in his chair a couple times before bringing herself to a stop. “Tell Gojo that you totally have a boyfriend?”
Fushiguro scoffed. “He’s not my boyfriend! I don’t even like him. He’s just a nice guy and I was cold so he let me borrow his hoodie. It’s not a big deal, you and Kugisaki share clothes all the time.”
“Yeah because we’re the same size.” She let her eyes drag over the way he, admittedly, swam in Itadori’s hoodie. It wasn’t that he was small, he wasn’t. It was that Itadori was, apparently, huge. The shoulders were a little tight, Fushiguro was at least broader than him. A small win. “He was totally flirting with you.”
Fushiguro ripped the hoodie off and threw it into his basket with all his other dirty clothes, walking over to shove Tsumiki out of the room, desk chair and all. She gave a valiant attempt, but the wheels made his chance of winning this battle easier. He sent her rolling down the hallway, laughing, and then he slammed the door behind her.
What did Tsumiki know anyway? It’s not like she was rolling in relationship success either. She’d been crushing on the same girl since high school. Kurusu was a nice person, Fushiguro approved of her, but Tsumiki seemed content—for now—to admire her from afar, and make Fushiguro want to rip his hair out every time they made lovey dovey eyes at each other in front of him. His sister insisted that Kurusu didn’t like her the same way. Fushiguro thought he might ask them out for each other if they didn’t stop putting him through their endless yearning soon.
That’s not what this was between Itadori and him. Fushiguro’s problem wasn’t that he liked him and felt Itadori didn’t feel the same way, it was that Fushiguro didn’t like him but his brain was trying to convince him that he did. Fushiguro, or rather the character he couldn’t fully strip himself of, liked the character that Itadori played, not the actor himself. Itadori only liked him because Fushiguro couldn’t seem to stop himself from letting those stubborn emotions escape him when he was around. He was an asshole that was leading him on and he needed to get that under check sooner rather than later.
His phone buzzed where he’d tossed it on the other side of his bed. He braced himself for the horror of seeing Gojo’s contact on his screen.
Instead, what he found might have been worse.
Unknown Number
Keep the hoodie. Red looks good on you, Fushiguro!
He stared at the text long enough that his screen went dark and then he stared at his reflection in it for a long, long time, shocked by what he was seeing.
Fushiguro was grinning.
Fuck.