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The call comes in when, by all accounts, Satoru is having a pretty not-terrible afternoon. His classes that morning had been good, if not very eventful, aside from Itadori somehow managing to get his fist stuck in a concrete wall when he missed the punch he was throwing. The second years had calculus with him after, instead of anything phys-ed, and Toge looked to be in such a pathetic state thirty minutes in that Satoru took pity on his poor, mathematically-uninclined students and let out of class early for a sparring match.
And then meetings, meetings, exorcism, more meetings, exorcism, but this was hardly unusual for a Wednesday, especially since Satoru had Ijichi stack his availability for the middle of the week. Easier that way, less warping to and from the school, since weekends were for longer-distance missions.
Or it was supposed to be, when you didn’t get called up to Niigata on short notice for some pointless conference regarding national security. But, abysmal as being talked at about politics for ninety minutes straight could be (politics, mind you, that Satoru is already painfully up-to-date on), today’s session had been blessedly cut short when one of the important guys had to take a call for “urgent business” and close the meeting early.
Not quite as exciting as having one of the more irritating representatives finally drop dead in the middle of speaking (which Satoru did, occasionally, daydream about in his weaker moments), but a meeting cut short was a meeting cut short. One of the other conference members frowns at him as he leaves, and Satoru realizes he might look a little too outwardly excited to leave early, half-skipping as he is. Ah, well. Let them think whatever they want of him—this board is all political posturing anyway, just stand-ins sent by the higher-ups.
Satoru decides to use his newfound twenty-three minutes of free time before his next mission for the important things in life, like the nearby food stand selling imagawayaki.
Of course, this is when his phone rings.
Hmm, that’s a new caller ID. One of our windows-in-training. Satoru frowns at it, the temptation to hit ignore treacherously resurfacing as always, and answers with a sigh. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Gojo! T-there’s a situation! I have first-year students assigned to me and we need—”
“Where are you?” Satoru demands. It’s Yuji and Nobara, undoubtedly, but they were meant to be assigned to Nitta today, not some fresh-faced trainee. Megumi is with Shoko back at the school, assisting with some medical procedure Satoru really hadn’t been paying much attention to when she explained it. His other two students must still be on the same case… “Chōfu, right?”
“No, west of Hanno, the old community center!” The trainee exclaims, and Satoru readies a teleportation sequence immediately. The distance from Niigata to Hanno will take multiple jumps. Four… no, five, and adjusting for the backlash from back-to-back warps… The trainee keeps talking, nervously, even as his voice grows muffled as reality folds inward around Satoru. “The building was clear, so they went inside to fight the curse…”
One, two.
“...a g-grade two, and…”
Three, four, and—
“...after a few minutes everything just…”
Five. And there’s the source.
“...started collapsing, and—!” The trainee startles, nearly dropping the phone. “Gojo—!?”
“That’s me.” Satoru lands from the last teleportation (maybe a little roughly) next to the guy, and takes half a second to regain his bearings. He scans the threshold of the veil encompassing the area, the crumbling building ahead of them, the brightly flaring energy signatures inside it. There you two are. “Thanks for calling. I’ve got it from here.”
Nobara is closest, and so Satoru gets to her first. She’s in the left wing of the building, sheltering under a large, tilted slab of sheet metal from the roof and pressed up against the wall. Her eyes widen when he appears, and she tries to speak but only coughs, doubling over. The air in here is too thick with dust to breathe—better get her out quickly.
“Got you—hold on,” Satoru says, grabbing her firmly and teleporting them both outside. Landing on the street, Satoru manhandles her into a sitting position a bit like a ragdoll—which Nobara will undoubtedly complain about later, but for now only coughs more and shoves at him weakly.
Satoru lifts her arms and checks across her uniform for any injuries. Her left knee is torn up pretty badly, and there’s a gash on her head, but she follows his fingers easily with her eyes when he snaps them and manages a weak, “‘M—fine.”
“Good. Stay here,” Satoru tells her, patting her shoulder once, and follows the other energy signature to warp back into the building, emerging in another half-collapsed room.
Damn, my head’s killing me, but it’s better to keep warping than risk collapsing the place using my technique. Nothing some horse tranquilizers and RCT won’t fix later, as Shoko would say. Granted, Shoko has never said this, but it feels like her sort of philosophy, and that ought to count for something.
Yuji looks like a living dust bunny, completely covered head to toe in debris. He’s crouched, bent under the weight of a massive block of concrete pinning him down and quite possibly maintaining the structural integrity of half of the roof—Satoru follows the weight distribution of the structure upward through twisted, gnarled debris and finds that, yeah, it is.
Impressive work, kid. Your raw physical strength is no joke. And good job with that CE reinforcement along your arms and legs.
Satoru reinforces himself with cursed energy, envelops Yuji in Infinity to help with the dust, and slides next to him to help lift. “Somebody need a rescue?”
“Sensei!” Yuji exclaims, relieved, and then coughs a little as he accidentally inhales some of the dust covering his face. “Eugh—phhh. Gross.” He pouts. “I think I just ate concrete.”
“Yet another new and exciting culinary frontier for you, Yuji!” Satoru remarks. “You’re tasting things on the daily that the average person can only dream of.” He lifts, shifting inward so that most of the weight redirects to him. It’s heavy, even with the reinforcement, and he’s again impressed at Yuji’s strength. “Alright, need you to slide out now, m’kay? I wanna set this thing down without shifting everything and turning us into pancakes.”
“Oh, yeah, okay! You got it all?” Yuji confirms before letting go.
Satoru braces himself. “Yep!”
Yuji releases his hands, and the rest of the weight drops on Satoru, who catches it carefully and re-stabilizes the distribution. Yuji rolls out and away easily, which is a reassuring sign of health. Still, Satoru knows how he is, so after carefully lowering the debris and making sure not to collapse anything, he gives Yuji a good once-over. “All good, student-of-mine?”
“All good!” Yuji confirms, at volume. “My arm is a little screwed up, though.”
Satoru examines it closer—the bone is fractured in three locations. Understatement of the year, kid. “Yeah, Yuji, that's extremely broken. We'll have Shoko fix it up, though.” Satoru steps over and grips Yuji’s good arm firmly. “Alright, up you go, don't throw up on me~!”
Satoru warps them back to Nobara and sets Yuji down gently, careful of the arm. The trainee has spotted them and is in the middle of jogging over. “There we go, two little ducklings back safely in the nest!” He rests his hand on his hips. “Hey, you guys got rid of that curse already on your own, right? Or should my accolades go to the building you collapsed, as the real curse-killing MVP?”
Nobara’s voice has only slightly returned when she croaks out, urgently, “Megumi!”
Satoru freezes. “What? Megumi's at Jujutsu High.”
“He—got—reassigned,” Nobara grits out, still hacking up a lung. “With—us.”
Yuji’s expression turns panicked. “Fushiguro’s still in there? I thought you were together!?”
“We—were, but he—”
Satoru is gone before they can finish, back into the main atrium of the building and pushing his senses to their absolute limit. I can’t have missed him; how could I ever miss his energy signature? Satoru scans the wreckage furiously, cataloging every speck of dust in the air in milliseconds. There’s no way; Nobara has to be mistaken, I would have—
The reasoning becomes abruptly, chillingly clear. Satoru missed Megumi’s presence because when he does find it, the energy signature is so faint and weak it might as well be a residual from weeks ago. This next teleportation is sloppy—Satoru tears through space too quickly, doesn’t put enough effort into calculating the trajectory, and the landing leaves windburn across the exposed parts of his body and a deep, wrenching ache in his limbs. RCT heals it in a heartbeat—Satoru doesn’t even spare it a thought.
His attention is focused on Megumi, who is crumpled against a wall, and dying.
Megumi’s cursed energy twists in his chest, twitching and thrashing like a cornered prey animal around the large, twisted piece of metal impaling his gut. It’s an incredibly dangerous place for a sorcerer to take a hit—and as if that wasn’t enough, several other pieces of metal and concrete puncture Megumi’s shoulder and upper ribs. He’s barely breathing.
Satoru's energy floods over them in an explosion of blue, pushing and prodding at Megumi’s own to rouse it. Megumi’s head lifts, breathing labored, and his eyes shine with relief. He twitches like he’s going to try to move. “I—”
“Don’t move. It’s fine, you’re fine,” Satoru tells him, lurching forward on unsteady feet and fisting his hands into the shoulder of Megumi’s uniform. He grips too hard and tears into the fabric—Satoru forces his hands to relax, to land softer, and to press firmly against Megumi’s still-warm body. Still warm. Still alive. I can still save him. “You’re fine, we’re good. We’re going to Shoko, and you’ll be—you'll be okay.”
“O–-k–y,” Megumi manages, over this horrible gurgling sound, blood welling at the corner of his mouth. Satoru bites his own tongue so hard it probably matches. Shit—I can’t move you like this; if I try to warp you, it’ll dislodge the metal, and you’ll bleed out four times as quickly. I need to bring help to you first.
“No. No, I’m bringing Shoko here,” Satoru decides, reassessing, arms leaving Megumi’s side. He mentally catalogues the number of jumps it will take, already running the numbers for the first location. I can save time if I push it—I’ll heal myself after. “I’m bringing Shoko to you.”
Megumi’s hand reaches out, trembling violently, and grabs feather-light at Satoru’s arm. His eyes are huge and white, frightened. “D—n’t leave.”
Satoru pushes it away, which is maybe one of the hardest things he’s ever had to do.
This whole situation is bringing back too-recent memories that send nausea bubbling up in his throat to intermingle with the freezing-cold terror. Suguru’s dead eyes, that same depth and intensity to them, superimpose over Megumi’s frightened blue, and Satoru clenches his fists so hard his nails draw blood. Focus.
“No, Gumi, I have to. I have to leave. But I’ll be back so fast, you won’t even notice.” And Satoru will, with how unstable this building looks. He’ll get it down to seconds; screw the backlash. “I’m just getting Shoko. I’ll be right back.”
“K–y,” Megumi rasps, little more than a whisper, arm drooping. “O—kay.”
Satoru gathers the energy to jump—and then the building starts to shake and crumble all around him, the ceiling caving, and his options are exhausted. Satoru holds the concrete in place with an extended Infinity, a temporary pocket to buy time that Megumi doesn’t have, and feels the weight of the rubble increase as everything else collapses, the air becoming dangerously thick with dust.
His hands are tied here. There's no longer the option to warp away and back—the minute Satoru’s leaving, all of this is falling on Megumi. And while Satoru can handle eight jumps in under a second alone, doing it with Shoko in tow isn’t possible. And the other option: stay here, hold Infinity around them, and then what—be unable to get the help Megumi needs? Satoru can’t do anything for him. Nobody would arrive in time.
Megumi makes a strangled noise as the rubble behind him shifts, threatening to widen the gashes in his chest further, and—
There’s no other way. Satoru grips Megumi’s shoulder and transports them out.
He’s gone a block away from the other students. He doesn’t want to think about why he’s done that, because he should want them nearby to help. But somewhere in the seconds between navigating out of the collapsing building and warping here, Megumi has gone entirely limp.
With the wreckage gone, there are three open holes in his chest, jagged and gushing blood, and Satoru can see where the largest one has cleaved through his gut. Time slows around Satoru as his mind runs calculations in microseconds, because regular seconds are no longer something Megumi has.
Stanching the blood won’t do anything with his vital organs so mangled. Megumi needs more than something to save time.
But Satoru no longer has time to get Shoko and return. Another option closes.
The strain from warping continuously in such a short time span will be hard on Megumi’s body. The kid hates warping more than twice in one stretch, usually, because it makes him feel sick. In this state, eight sequential warps at a reality-breaking speed will kill him before Shoko even has the chance to set eyes on him.
It reminds him of years ago, when, in the space between dying and dead, Satoru’s brain had run its own set of impossible calculations.
Can I stop the bleeding with enough pressure—apply Infinity like a gauze? … No. I’ve already lost too much blood.
Suguru will come back. I have to trust that he, Amanai, and Kuroi made it to safety. Suguru will come back for me, and he’ll get help.
But… it’ll be too late. I don’t have that long.
I guess… I need to figure out something else. I need to try…
Almost everyone Satoru knows gets cursed energy wrong. You don’t need very much of it to do things. He’s tried describing it to students as pouring water out from a faucet—all you need is a tiny drop, so just barely adjust the knob. If you use too much, it’s not only pointless, but you risk running out of energy before you have the time to let it replenish. They’d understood the analogy, but then complained and threw pencils at him because apparently it didn’t help if you had no solution for it.
He thinks the problem might be that most people don’t have a knob to adjust the amount—they’ve just got a switch that goes ON and OFF. A fast, rapid flow of energy or nothing at all. Really only efficient if you’ve got enough to spare, like Yuta, or if you can be strategic about recirculating what you have, like he’s tried to teach his other students.
But Megumi is dying, and no amount of Satoru's precision can save him.
So he breaks his own rule on conservation, for the second time in his life. The first was when he lay flat on the ground, dying, and directed everything towards his own dying body, shoving cursed energy against itself in a maelstrom of sparking collisions until something clicked and it combined and changed. Precision is key to Satoru’s technique, but sometimes all else fails and the instinctive, terror-fueled drive to make something work takes over.
Satoru reaches into that same massive, unfathomably powerful well inside himself and pours everything into his kid.
He tries everything he’s seen Shoko do, replays every explanation he’s weaseled out of her. Satoru takes the same positive energy that heals himself and pushes it all into Megumi, willing it to do something, to fix him. Nothing changes.
Satoru doesn’t stop the flood of energy, but desperation does drive him to redirect it.
This could kill him. If I’m wrong, this will kill him.
But if I don’t try this, he’ll die anyway.
Megumi’s body jolts, the faint embers of his own cursed energy reacting violently against Satoru’s own. Satoru resists the urge to shrink back, to avoid smothering him, and forces that same brutish collision between his own negative energy and Megumi’s own. For a moment, Satoru feels the last dregs of Megumi’s energy falter—and then something clicks. Megumi’s energy surges, multiplying within itself in some strange, positive fusion with Satoru’s own.
It works, through Satoru's tunneling, spotting vision, and an intense headache. It’s working—Megumi’s body is accepting the positive energy now that it’s merged with Megumi’s own cursed energy. He can see it—the skin knits together. The wounds close. But Megumi still isn't breathing. And his heart isn't beating.
Satoru cradles him to his chest and warps, the calculations already present in his mind from earlier. Then again. Then again. Then Satoru pauses to throw up and wipe the blood pouring from his nose away, because the funny thing about exhausting your cursed energy reserves is that it makes it sort of difficult to do things that require a lot of cursed energy. And then he warps again, and again, and again, until the bright lights of Shoko's infirmary are glaring around him. He feels her taking Megumi’s weight, saying something inaudible over the ringing in Satoru’s ears, and he follows until he's half collapsed on a gurney.
Megumi still isn't breathing, and there's a tiny bit of energy left in Satoru, so he grips Megumi’s wrist and pours that into him too. The rest of the world goes black and loud with the rushing of static pressure. All of Satoru’s eyes close with it.
Satoru wakes up lying on something soft, in a room that smells overpoweringly of antiseptic and blood, with all of his vision reduced to a terrifying dark void. His head hurts like a bitch. There was something Satoru was supposed to be concerned about, but he can’t quite recall it. How did I end up here? Megumi had been there, he thinks.
I can’t see anything. Satoru’s throat convulses, painfully dry, and he manages, “Megumi?”
“Megumi’s fine,” says someone who is not Megumi—Shoko—and then, “You’re okay. Don’t mess with that; put your hands down.” Gloved fingers guide Satoru’s hands, which he hadn’t consciously realized he was lifting to pull at the thing over his eyes, back down to the bed. “It’s got seals on it to block out most of your vision. Not that you’d be able to see far without it anyway until you’ve recovered. But leave it on for now.”
“Recovered?” Satoru asks, or at least tries to, and then he breaks into a fit of coughing.
“Drink this.” Shoko orders, and then she’s helping him prop his shoulders against something soft behind him and pressing a paper cup to his lips. Satoru drinks the water gratefully.
“Shoko, I feel bad,” he decides, leaning his head back. The bed spins a little underneath him.
“Maybe because you completely drained your own cursed energy and almost killed yourself in the process,” Shoko says flatly.
Satoru tries to squint at her, which is quickly very painful and also not at all visible through whatever is covering his face anyway, so he gives up. “That doesn’t happen to me.”
“Well, it did, genius, so figure out somewhere else to throw all that conviction.”
Satoru groans. “You’re always so mean to me when I’m injured. I bet it’s because you know you can take advantage of me in this state, and you like wielding power over others.” He reaches out weakly, patting the air until his hand collides with what is probably Shoko, so he can poke at her with his index finger. “You should have your medical license revoked for treating me like this.”
“Sure, that’s exactly why,” Shoko drawls, and then a firm hand shoves Satoru’s chest back flat against the blankets, ending his brief attempt at sitting up.
“Ow.” Satoru slumps back into the pillows, defeated. “I have rights too, Shoko.”
“I’ll put weights on you if you try to get up again.”
Satoru huffs, and then: “What happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Duh, or I wouldn’t be asking you.” It’s not the complete truth. His memories are coming back now, hazy and scattered, but without the usual processing power, it’s difficult to make sense of them. A building, hazy dust, Nobara and Yuji safe; he’s sure they were safe, but there was something else—
The full story is still disjointed, but the mental image of Megumi bleeding out in his arms is the only part of the story Satoru needs to understand. Shoko’s hand isn’t enough to stop him from lurching up this time, from clawing at the thing covering his eyes. “Megumi! Shoko, he was dying, he—”
“He’s fine!” Shoko’s gloved hands close around his own, clasping tight, and Satoru stills at the pressure. “Satoru, I swear, he’s okay. Just sleeping. He’ll make a full recovery.”
Satoru strains his eyes to confirm, which sends kaleidoscopes of color stabbing against his skull as his weakened energy fights the seals. Shoko lets out an irritated huff when she realizes what he’s doing, her grip tightening. “Stop it, Satoru. He’s fine; he’s literally feet away from you! Dammit, this is exactly why I broke protocol putting you two in the same room, and you still start panicking and straining yourself.”
“Megumi’s okay? You’re sure? I can’t…” Satoru swallows. “I can’t see him, Shoko.”
“I—yeah, okay. Hold on,” she tells him, voice softening. Her hands squeeze his briefly—Satoru tries to squeeze back, but it’s a weak thing, his muscles still slow to respond—and then she’s pulling away.
Satoru feels the world start spiraling anew as Shoko presumably rolls his cot across the room. Then her hand returns, wrapping around Satoru’s wrist—he jumps a little, but hey, latex is cold—and guiding it out across open air to settle on something else. As soon as he makes contact, Satoru’s hand closes around Megumi’s instinctively.
Megumi’s fingers are slender and calloused where they’re accustomed to the press of a sword’s grip, and when Satoru rests his thumb firmly against Megumi’s wrist, he can feel a strong, steady pulse. “Megumi,” Satoru confirms quietly.
“Yeah. He's fine. You healed him.”
“It actually worked?”
“More than worked. I think you removed any evidence of injury to his entire body over the past fifteen years of life. Even the healed fracture in his fibula from when he was nine and broke it at sports—remember that, how long it’s been? It’s completely gone, as in the scans don’t show the healed callus anymore, just unmarred bone. And the place where Nobara and Yuji forced him to pierce his ear last week after losing that dare is healed over, too.”
“He’ll be happy about that, at least,” Satoru says absently, mind running a thousand times quicker than his mouth. Even with the solid evidence of Megumi’s health resting in his hand, the urge to take off the seal and visually confirm what Shoko is saying is difficult to push down. But if he’s actually set off a bomb in his own cursed energy reserves (which is what his body is telling him right now through a lot of pointed aches and pains), it’s probably a good idea to take a rain check on that.
“I don’t know,” Shoko decides, voice a little further away now. Something metallic clatters as she presumably moves around supplies. “He asked me if I could do the other one for him at some point, hypothetically, and when I said yes, he told me he’d think about it.” Shoko makes an exasperated noise. “Your kids are kind of stupid, Satoru. They didn’t even sterilize the nail they used, just stuck it in the freezer for an hour and then stabbed it through. It’s a miracle he didn’t end up with a nasty infection.”
“Gumi is smart,” Satoru complains, a little deliriously, as the conversation with Shoko is becoming increasingly complex and difficult to keep up with. “And Nobara ‘s good at practical applications and making quick strategies… Yuji is a little stupid, maybe,” Satoru concedes. “But when it comes to difficult… feats of strength and CE application… he can learn from almost anybody, and… his determination means he picks it up faster… than anyone. He’ll be stronger than me… one day,” Satoru surmises, trailing off. “Hey, Shoko…? What were we talking about, again?”
Shoko’s voice is close to him now. “How you’re about to pass out and fighting it by running your mouth. Go back to sleep, Satoru. Megumi’s fine but you definitely aren’t.”
It’s a lot of sentences in quick succession, and Satoru’s head throbs as he jumps from one to the next. “Man, Shoko. Can you… stop talking so fast and complicated?”
“Nope. Already speaking at a first-grader’s level, the way I always do when I’m talking to you.”
“I don’t think so,” Satoru complains, vision spotting.
“Sleep. Focus on healing yourself this time.”
“M’kay,” Satoru agrees, sluggishly, and then a brilliant thought surfaces. “Shoko, can we…”
“… go and get imagawayaki from someplace after we…” Satoru trails off, because the world is no longer dark and black but instead illuminated by the familiar glow of cursed energy and outlines of mass. Also, his hand is now empty, his head hurts significantly less, and there are noticeably more people in the room than before.
Huh. Either my first years learned teleportation, or I actually did pass out and just now woke up. He’s leaning towards the latter, as exciting as the other option would be.
“Sensei!” Yuji exclaims, from very, very close to his head, so loud it rattles Satoru’s brain. “Of course we can! Wow, were you dreaming about sweets? That sounds like a great dream.”
“Back off, dumbass; you’re spitting on him,” Nobara chastises, yanking Yuji backwards by the hood of his uniform. She tilts her head, leaning forward to peer at him. “Gojo-Sensei, are you actually awake now, or still just muttering weird things?”
“I’m awake!” Satoru flexes his fingers, frowning. “I was muttering?”
“About lots of different foods!” Yuji offers helpfully. “It made me hungry.”
“Well, is it lunchtime?” Satoru carefully removes the seal from his face, blinking back spots, and the faces around him settle into focused clarity. His head hurts, but not as badly as earlier. Satoru grins at the three of them. “We should go get something!”
He angles his head towards Yuji and Nobara as he speaks. In reality, the full focus of his attention is zeroed in on the third, silent observer in the room, who is no longer laid out on a cot but instead leaning against the doorframe. Megumi’s energy is comfortingly strong where it swirls in his chest like liquid darkness, fully recovered.
“Yes!” Yuji pauses and then grabs for something on the side table, which has been piled with colorful bags. “Oh, yeah—and these are all for you, you know! To help you feel better!”
“As if he needs any more people showering affection on him,” Nobara grumbles, but she’s shoving a box into his hands anyway, wrapped in the deep rose-gold color scheme she often seems to favor. “Well, aren’t you going to take them?”
“Oh—sure! You know me, I’d never refuse gifts from my adoring fans!” Satoru says, accepting the presents a little clumsily. He briefly wishes he’d kept the seal over his face. It’s always been challenging not to get all mushy when his students act like this, and one has a very strict reputation to uphold.
“These are from Panda, Maki, and Toge,” Yuji says, pointing out a large assortment of candies. “But mostly from Panda. Maki says you owe them for yesterday’s lessons and she's not buying you anything until you follow through. They were visiting you yesterday, but you were asleep the whole time.”
“Aww,” Satoru says, popping a piece of chocolate into his mouth. It's really good, so he eats a few more, probably a bit too ravenously if the way Nobara is eyeing him in disgust is any indication. “What's that look for? I'm hungry. Let’s go get something!”
“You're not allowed to leave until Shoko clears you,” Nobara tells him, and then, with a calculated sort of expression, reaches out and wraps something soft around Satoru’s neck. Infinity parts for her, and absent of any clever remarks, Satoru allows her to work with a baffled sort of fondness. Did you pick this out for me? It’s a knitted scarf, a soft sky-blue, and Nobara retreats with a hum of approval for how it looks on him. “But Yuji and I can go and grab you food. What do you want?”
“Hmm, gyoza, then, pretty-please!” Satoru tells them. There’s a great dumpling place nearby that he’s sure they’ll know to visit. Satoru's not usually the type to follow bedrest orders, but it's pretty clear his sweet little students are trying to stage an intervention here, so he'll play along.
“Aww, can't you and Fushiguro go instead?” Yuji complains. “I wanted to talk to Gojo about…”
There’s a muffled yelping noise as Nobara kicks him, hard. Yuji’s expression is momentarily wounded and then lights up with a sudden epiphany, very unsubtly glancing between Satoru and Megumi. “Oh! I just remembered I love picking up food! I'll go with Kugisaki; you stay here and keep Gojo company for us, Fushiguro!”
“Be right back,” Nobara says, raising a hand to wave at him, and they leave.
Outwardly, Fushiguro appears as nonchalant as ever, but Satoru can read the embarrassment on his face clear as day. Satoru’s grin widens. “Those friends of yours are real subtle, huh?”
Megumi shrugs, jerkily. “I didn’t ask them to do it.”
No, I didn’t think you would have. You’re not usually one to seek out time with me alone, at least… not in the past few years.
“You feeling better?”
Megumi’s hand makes an unconscious movement towards his chest and stops before it lands. “Yeah,” he tells Satoru, in that guarded, heavy way of his.
“Convincing.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” Megumi tells him, rolling his eyes. “I barely even remember what happened. Just everything falling and then you getting there. Shoko had to explain it all to me.” He shifts, glancing away, still hovering in the doorframe like he’s eager for the chance to escape. “What about you? Do you want me to call her?”
Satoru waves a hand lazily. “I’m fine. Better than fine, actually. Now that I’ve figured out healing, our training sessions are gonna be twice as realistic and twice as entertaining. Just you wait for classes tomorrow.”
Megumi grimaces, and Satoru feels amusement circling in his chest. He’s kidding, mostly. He might’ve gotten the basic principle down, but Satoru can feel that mastery of RCT output is still a ways in the future. He hopes he won’t have to break out the medical textbooks, but something tells him Shoko didn’t put in years of study for the fun of it.
Satoru blinks, returning his focus to Megumi, who looks… lost, still. Uncertain, wavering at the boundary of the room.
I should check on him. Make sure…
“It’s nice talking to you again without a piece of metal sticking out of your chest,” is what comes out of Satoru’s mouth instead. Why the hell did I say that. He maintains his smile even as it grows strained. “I mean—glad you’re feeling better, Megumi.” Satoru flashes him a thumbs-up and hopes Megumi will take this as permission to ditch him for being an ass and go have actual fun talking to his friends.
“You're terrible at comforting people,” Megumi tells him, instead of leaving, folding his arms.
“I—yeah, I know,” Satoru says, coughing a little. “The price of being good at everything else, right? But, uh. Really. I'm glad you're okay.”
Megumi shuffles closer to the bed. “...How did you know it would work? Using all your energy at once to figure out healing. Was it… some sort of exchange you made? A vow?”
“No. I didn't know it would work.”
“Then why funnel your cursed energy into me for no reason?” Megumi asks, curious as always about the things he hasn’t mastered yet. “It worked, but… I don't get the logic. Maybe if you explain your way of doing it, it'll make sense to me.”
“No-can-do, sorry,” Satoru shrugs.
Megumi's expression sours somewhat, but his tone remains oddly patient. “I know you're shit at explaining things that come naturally to you, but you can at least outline the thought process behind it.”
“That’s just it, though. I wasn't thinking, Megumi,” Satoru tells him honestly. “I panicked. I couldn't come up with a solution, so I just… threw everything at the wall.”
Megumi pauses. “That's not like you.”
Satoru latches onto the comment immediately, laughing a little, and takes the air out of the weirdly vulnerable thing that had been going on a bit too long. “What, being impulsive? C’mon, Gumi, you know me better than that.”
Megumi does not match this energy, still deadly serious. “No. Panicking.”
“Oh. Well, yeah, I guess. I thought I might… You know, when I found you there,” Satoru finds himself smiling again, too widely, which makes it hard to form words and probably makes him look vaguely threatening. Talking about this brings back that same memory, the image of Megumi dying, burned into his skull in crimson. “What I'm saying is, when I saw you…”
Satoru shakes his head to clear it, chest tight. Sorry, Megumi, but that conversation’s over. “Whew, I think my brain still has whiplash from all that warping; probably ought to have Shoko check it, huh? I'm all over the place. You know, I think losing brain cells from warping—”
“Please stop talking.”
Satoru snorts. “Aww, Megumi, is that any way to be speaking to the guy that saved—”
Megumi crashes into Satoru's side and wraps around him like a clingy octopus. Satoru’s mouth closes with an audible click. “Thank you,” Megumi says, pressed against him.
Satoru remains frozen for a good ten seconds, completely startled, and then slowly brings his arms around to match. He's never been very good at hugging. “You don't have to thank me for this, Megumi.”
“For everything else, then.”
Satoru’s hand settles against the nape of Megumi’s neck. This close, he can smell the styling gel Megumi always uses on his hair. It’s the same brand he’s used since he was a little kid, when Satoru had stood with him in front of the mirror and taught him how. “You don't have to thank me for that either.”
“Just stop talking for once,” Megumi groans, clearly embarrassed but making no move to let go. It startles a laugh out of Satoru, brief and sharp, but he follows Megumi’s request and just holds him back in silence, one hand on his neck and the other splayed against his back.
Through the fabric, Megumi’s heartbeat is strong and healthy.