Chapter Text
“Hey, Fushiguro,” Yuuji says, flexing his hand behind his back.
“Hmm? What is it?”
“Remember-” he starts, then cuts himself off. His voice is too loud for the room, for the late hour. Subtlety is not his strong suite, but it’s never needed to be. “Remember what I said, about my type of girls? With all that stuff Todo was making up?”
“Yes,” Fushiguro says slowly, setting his pen down. “What’s wrong? Did you get a girlfriend?”
He looks strained, somehow, even though his voice is even and calm. Yuuji wonders if he’s just had a bad night. Fushiguro isn’t sleeping so well these days, working on a shikigami Gojo-sensei assigned him. He’s bought sleep medicine, but he hasn’t found the opportunity to give it to Fushiguro yet, unwilling to interrupt the boy’s concentration.
“Nah, not a girlfriend,” Yuuji chuckles, rubbing his head. “I was just. Just, I wanted you to know. Back then. I was joking, about my type of girl. I don’t really have a type.”
“A joke,” Fushiguro echos.
“Yeah. A joke. It started when I was in junior high.”
“That’s good to know,” he hums, and Yuuji refuses to take it in any particular way. He shuffles out another sheet of schoolwork, because he’s the only one who really keeps up with their non-jujutsu studies.
Maybe he should be feeling awkward, standing alone with a boy he might like late at night, but it’s never been like that with Fushiguro. It’s easy, always too easy to be with him.
Yuuji can get along with most anybody provided they’re not an asshole, but it’s different, with him. With Nobara. It probably has something to do with nearly dying with each other a ridiculous amount of times, but that’s not the point.
“You don’t know my type, right?”
“Um. I don’t think so?” He’s always just assumed that Fushiguro didn’t have one, as mild as he was to anybody who confessed. Granted, that’s only happened once, at his former middle school.
“My type,” says Fushiguro, “is compassionate people. People who are kind. Who deserve to be protected.”
Fushiguro stares at him, paper forgotten. He kind of looks like he’s one of the wolf shikigami that he always summons, ready to melt into the shadows pooling at their feet.
“I don’t think you need to be protected,” Fushiguro shrugs, “but you’re also included in that description.”
x
Megumi holds the camera.
Not for the account, though.
Nobara makes a v-sign, holding up her bag in front of the statue. She’s not dressed in the Jujutsu College uniform, for once, seeing as it’s their off day. The few clothes he owns that aren’t the uniform are basically the same color scheme, and that apparently offended Nobara, so now they are out.
Buying clothes.
The camera lens shutters as he takes a picture.
“Maki-san! Sit with me,” Nobara shouts, patting at the cement chair beside her.
Inumaki is at the dorms with Panda, and Yuuji is apparently trying some new move with them, so it’s just him, Nobara, and Maki today.
An unlikely trio in all honesty, but Megumi respects Maki, and Nobara is his friend, so he’s content with following them around and taking stupid couple photos. He’s not sure if they’re wasting disk space on the thing; Yuuji is still running the account, and the followers keep increasing. They could have easily brought a regular phone for pictures, but too late now. His phone is still busted and he hasn’t ordered a replacement yet, and he doubts either of them will allow him to borrow.
He snaps another photo of Nobara leaning against Maki’s shoulder.
“Fushiguro, why are you just standing around? I thought we were here to buy you clothes,” Nobara huffs.
Maki nods. “You look like a hired camera man, Megumi.”
“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to be here?” he blinks. “Minus the paid part.”
“Shut up. This isn’t a date, it’s an outing.”
“I see,” he says. He doesn’t see. What’s the difference?
“Stop making that face,” Nobara pushes down his camera. “We’re not buying clothes.”
“We’re not?”
“Yeah,” she nods. “I’ve decided to help you.”
“With what.”
“With Itadori!” Nobara throws her arms up around Maki’s shoulder, leaning in a way that somehow looks like the most natural gesture ever. “I thought I gave him the push, but he’s just too dumb to take the hint. I’ll work on you instead.”
“About . . . ” Megumi presses his lips together. “About that. I already told him.”
“What?” Nobara squints at him, as if he would lie about something like this.
“Yeah. He told me he didn’t really like tall girls, and I told him I liked him.”
“No way. And what’d he say?” she grabs his shoulder, steering him away from the storefronts.
“He said- he said that that’s ‘cool.’” Megumi answers. “And then he left, because it was late.”
Nobara puts a hand over her eye.
“I take it back. You’re both idiots,” she groans. “Why didn’t you ask him to stay? Or at least ask him out?”
Megumi sighs. “Is that what you did? With Maki-san?”
Maki looks up from her phone at the mention of her name. “Nobara kissed me after I threw her ass to the ground. I don’t think that’d work with Yuuji.”
Nobara’s face goes red.
“Shut up,” she grits out. “Before you say anything, it worked out for me. You and Itadori are mega-weird, so you need a different approach. More straightforward.”
“Okay,” he says slowly. “Do we have to get together, though?”
“Why wouldn’t you?” Nobara tilts her head. “Isn’t that what people typically want when they confess? You already know the feeling’s mutual.”
“I’m fine as it is,” Megumi shrugs. “As long as we don’t die.”
“Don’t be so morbid,” she huffs. “I’d call you a freak if I didn’t already know how yours and Itadori’s heads go around. It’s mental.”
“I won’t say anything if he doesn’t,” he says. “We’re not set to graduate for another two years at the very least.”
Nobara snorts. “Yeah, and I bet you’ll spend those two years just pining after each other.”
Megumi rolls his eyes. “It doesn’t matter. We have time.”
Then he smiles, just a little, because it’s true. They do have time. The moment someone becomes a jujutsu sorcerer, they have a ticking bomb on their life. Maybe the only person who doesn’t is Gojo Satoru, and Gojo’s so far removed from being human that he’s done a full 360 back.
It’s nice, he realizes. It’s fun going out with his friends and taking pictures and bickering about the meaningful and meaningless. He wants this for the foreseeable future.
x
“Itadori,” he calls. Then, he considers the other boy, bounding through the campus with a frankly inhuman speed.
“Yuuji,” he tries again, and is pleased when it doesn’t feel wrong leaving his lips.
“Yo!” Yuuji waves his hand, skidding to a halt without even a drop of sweat on his forehead. “What’s up?”
“Hi,” Megumi says carefully. It’s a good day. Warm, for March. There’s dew out on the field, and splattered on Yuuji’s shoes, from where he must have been running laps. “Are you busy?”
“Nah, I was just running,” Yuuji says, confirming his suspicions. “Is there something up? New mission?”
“Yeah,” Megumi nods, showing him the phone screen. “It’s in Shinjuku.”
“Oh.” Yuuji leans over, squinting at the report. “Kugisaki’d love that. Isn’t she all about the city stuff?”
“She’ll like Shinjuku,” Megumi affirms.
“I’m glad it’s there,” Yuuji smiles. “Gotta admit, even I’m getting sick of the rural areas. I thought cursed spirits were more common in cities.”
“They are. I think Gojo-sensei’s just trying to mess with us by sending us out to the middle of nowhere.”
Yuuji wrinkles his nose. “Seems like something he’d do. When are we leaving?”
“This evening,” he answers. “Ijichi-san’s going to drive us there.”
“Cool. I’ll see you later, then,” Yuuji waves his hand for a second before he’s off again, not even leaving Megumi a chance to say anything else.
He snorts, then looks back at the report. Yuuji left before Megumi could tell him that the mission was assigned special-grade. He wonders when they’d started being able to take on those types; it’s been months sure, but he’s still Grade Two, and so are Nobara and Yuuji.
Nobody’s recommend them yet, but it’s probably not a judge of power, and more of an intense dislike almost every sorcerer has for Gojo.
It’ll be fine, he decides. Yuuji is more than strong enough to handle whatever comes their way, and if he can’t, then that’s what Nobara and Megumi are for. He’s fairly sure that Yuuji still doesn’t read any of the reports they receive anyways, relying on Megumi to tell him where to go and what they’re exorcising.
They have a routine. It’s not one he hates.
x
Yuuji sniffs something up his nose. It tastes like blood in the back of his throat, but it’s not worrisome. He took a hit somewhere in between, and a bloody nose barely means anything when Sukuna can reverse any injury within moments. Something about not looking dignified with a crooked nose, he remembers.
It’s whatever. He’s much more interested in the way shadows are pooling at Fushiguro’s feet, twisting around on the cracked cement like eels in water. They get like that sometimes after missions, moving with excess cursed energy that can no longer vent itself in shikigami.
Yuuji likes it; he thinks it looks vaguely otherworldly, even if he knows it’s just the manifestation of Fushiguro’s technique.
The followers on the account seem to think that, too. There’s lots of comments on how they get the shadows to move that way, and what lights they use to cast them. Yuuji’s glad he never made it a habit to respond to them, because he doesn’t even know the beginnings of making shadows move.
“Fushiguro,” he calls. “Over here. I want a video of that.”
He gestures at the shadows, and Fushiguro sighs, trudging over with black sticking to his shoes. It looks even more strange under the cracked lamplight, twisting and swirling.
“Isn’t that too suspicious?” he peers over the camera screen.
“It’s fine,” Yuuji says. “People’ll do anything to justify weird stuff like this. I saw one comment that was guessing that it was actually just tar.”
“Tar?” Fushiguro frowns. “I guess you could see it as that.”
“I don’t, but they think so,” Yuuji raises a finger to his lips, then clicks record on the camera.
It’s only a ten-second clip, but that’s the majority of his videos’ times anyways, so he presses save, setting a mental reminder to upload it to Nobara’s computer later.
“Looks badass,” he gives Fushiguro a thumbs up.
“You think?” the boy dispels the last toad shikigami sticking out of the crumbled building, dissolving it into shadows in his hands.
“Yeah.” Yuuji raises his hands and tries to make the symbol for dog that Fushiguro always does to summon his dogs.
It doesn’t quite work, what with the camera in his hands, but he does succeed in making Fushiguro smile, and he brings the lens back up level to snap a picture of the small smile on his lips.
“Gyokuken,” Yuuji shouts, voice echoing through the empty parking lot, bouncing through the ruined buildings and fences.
Fushiguro laughs softly at that, and he takes a picture of that too, flash lighting up the boy’s face.
“Stop it,” Fushiguro snorts, reaching for the camera.
“Make me,” Yuuji says cheerfully, dodging the half hearted attempt at hitting the off button.
“I could,” Fushiguro shrugs, and then raises his voice, yelling, “Kugisaki!”
Nobara sticks her head out from behind the wall, picking up nails. “What?”
“Take pictures of her instead,” Fushiguro points. “One of us has to confirm the mission a success.”
Yuuji obeys, snapping a photo of Nobara crouched over the rubble.
“You better not post that,” she scowls. “And stop being in such a good mood. It pisses me off. Not everyone can have inhuman stamina.”
“Maki-san does,” Yuuji snickers, turning his head to the side just in time to avoid the nail flying at him.
“Shut up,” Nobara grouses, and he lowers his camera before she really gets pissed.
Yuuji retracts the lens, clicking to the saved photos. There’s lots of blurry photos from tonight, both from his shaky holding between dodging blows from the cursed spirit. In all honesty, it was probably stupid to try and get a good shot while trying to exorcise a special-grade, but there’s one or two decent photos that he’ll be able to use.
The most recently taken ones are the best, he decides, but he’s not going to post them. None of them want their faces on an account that has almost fifty-thousand followers now. The one blurred-out photo was enough.
Yuuji still saves them, though. Nobara, rifling through cement because she doesn’t want to waste money on more nails. Fushiguro’s shadows, his melting shikigami, and his small grin, teeth glinting from the flash.
It doesn’t take his breath away, because he’s not a professional photographer and he hasn’t really improved in much except holding the camera steadier, but it’s still good. The people in the photos are what makes them valuable.
Yuuji inhales deeply, cold night air stinging his nose.
“Fushiguro,” he beckons over. “Smile.”
The boy only rolls his eyes, covering the lens with his hand, shoving it back.
Yuuji presses the button anyways, laughing when Fushiguro jerks his hand back from the shutter.
Click.