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Two of his favorite things are cameras and the beach.
They’re on the opposite ends of the spectrum of everything he enjoys. Cameras are good to him because they preserve things, whether or not they should be forgotten. (He forgets too much anyways.) The beach and the ocean are equally as kind, sweeping everyday changes out to sea and reforming the sandy ground by sunset, different from how it was when the sun came up.
The balance of things relies on this loop of never changing and always changing. Recently, Yuji found that he prefers the simplicity of not remembering to outweigh the burden of knowing.
Megumi and Nobara aren’t too mad at him for living (which he’s relieved by, even if it seems completely backwards for them to be mad at him for not dying), and they’re able to go on a mission together soon after the exchange event. He uses Black Flash for the second time in his life and it feels good. (It feels better than good, because it feels like he’s making some sort of progress. )
It’s not all good, though. A sick feeling has the hair on his arms standing straight up as he heads back to the rendezvous point, even though they’re not in danger. Yuji doesn’t pity the curses that he’d killed instead of exorcised, but he thinks they acted odd. Too human for his liking, just like the puppets made by the curse he’d killed weeks ago. It’s wildly uncomfortable to have blood on his hands, even if it technically isn’t the first time.
“Stop that.” Nobara chides him as they walk through the woods. He's scratching at his arms, the feeling of death tangible enough that Yuji feels he’s coated in something foreign.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. It's October and all the bugs are close to dead by now, there’s nothing to worry about.”
Yuji laughs quietly and pushes a low-hanging branch out of their way.
After a bit, he speaks up. “Have you ever…killed? Instead of exorcised? Besides just now, I mean.”
“Yes,” Nobara replies. It’s a bit muffled, since she’s holding the end of a bandage for her still bleeding wrist between her teeth. She wraps it around twice, thrice, and then secures it before glancing back at Yuji. “Is that what you’re so distressed about?”
Better the truth than a poor lie. Yuji fidgets with his fingers, looking down. “Yeah, actually.”
“Well, don’t think about it too much.”
She makes ignorance sound like a simple answer. Yuji scoffs, but it holds no bite. “Thanks, smartass.”
Nobara sticks her tongue out at him. He flips her off. It's part of the little routine they do, so well memorized even after a couple weeks that it feels like second nature.
“But seriously,” Nobara sighs, “it’s not worth it to think so hard about it and won’t get you far if you really want to be a sorcerer. You pick a handful of people you’d do anything to save and you focus on them, not everyone you come in contact with.”
A handful? His heart is too big for that kind of strategy, but Yuji accepts it as an option.
There are two sides to her heart and too many facets to Yuji’s. He quietly wonders where he would fall if she only knew him as a vessel for something ancient and evil.
---
He ponders this question for a while. Thinking about what he is now compared to before the mess of jujutsu society crashed into his life and tuning out Sukuna’s monologues at the same time takes a lot of energy Yuji finds himself lacking.
He also finds himself zoning out much more often. Nobara snaps her fingers in front of his face more than once when he’s supposed to be figuring out how they’re going to solve a geometric problem on their homework sheet.
When Yuji isn’t tired, he’s sleeping. He's so scatterbrained that Megumi lands a hit on him with the wooden staff when they’re sparring, right on his chin, and the pain of receiving that blow clears some of the fog for a second.
Megumi looks as shocked and surprised as Yuji is. They stare at each other silently for a few heartbeats before Megumi asks, “Are you okay?”
No, not really . Yuji could tell him the truth, but in doing so he may become even more of a burden than he already is. “Yeah,” he lies, “just a little off today.”
Megumi looks like he wants to say something more, but he doesn't. He simply helps Yuji stand up and they continue training together. The physical exercise and strain is definitely good for him, but the endorphins are only in effect for so long. Yuji showers quickly under cold water, hoping that will clear his head a little more. Then he lays in bed, staring at the ceiling for either minutes or hours or weeks before he drifts off to sleep.
Sitting in an all-consuming darkness that stretches in every direction, so black that he can’t even see his own hands, is comforting. Yuji sits there for a while, content, before he’s pulled somewhere else.
He knows this place.
This is a school. He knows this place and he knows what’s going to happen when his mouth moves involuntarily. This is a dream, Yuji reminds himself. Junpei is standing in front of him, crying. Yuji is telling him that he can come to Jujutsu Tech and they can fix this together.
This is a dream, Yuji tells himself when Junpei looks at him, pitiful. A sliver of hope and brightness enters his eyes. This is a dream . A curse with a stitched face and blue hair comes up behind Junpei, and the light that just appeared evaporates. Yuji can’t move and can’t stop the chain of events. He wants to look away, urges himself to look away, but he can’t move his neck at all as he relives it.
And then, before Yuji even blinks, Junpei becomes a thing . A curse, like the ones he’s exorcised before. It crawls to him, a few steps. tears seep out of its eyes.
He begs sukuna to do something, to do anything. He tells him he’ll trade anything to bring Junpei back. Sukuna tells him no, and then laughs at him, malice in its purest form. The other curse joins him, echoing in Yuji’s head as his dead friend tries its best to cling to him.
All at once, rage is a living thing inside him. He is so angry he can’t breathe and every hair on his body stands on end, so angry that he feels his lungs compacting, so angry that it’s a tangible, searing hot thing that runs down his arms. He is so angry that when he clenches his fists, every knuckle pops.
He tells the curse he will kill it, and he means it. Yuji is lightheaded from fury and hatred boiling in him.
Without warning, he’s ripped from the memory. Yuji sits up in bed, lungs burning, eyes wide. He's staring at the door and when he turns his head, his desk is to his right, confirming that he’s in his room at Jujutsu Tech and not in a dream anymore. This does not, however, calm him down at all.
There's wetness on his face. He uses his hand to wipe it, and then his vision is blurry, and it takes him a second to realize that he’s crying.
Yuji doesn’t know what he’s feeling. All he knows is that he’s sweaty and crying and that he just watched someone already dead die again and that right at this moment, the world is booming loud in his ears and all wrong.
He gets out of bed too quickly and stumbles while the purple walls of his room spin. He's dizzy and short of breath and it makes his chest and throat hurt.
Somehow, Yuji makes it to the door. Somehow, he makes it to the kitchen that the three of them, the first years, share. The clock on the oven tells him it’s two in the morning. He stands there with no purpose at all as the silence overwhelms him.
Yuji cooks, Megumi washes dishes and Nobara goes grocery shopping. That’s how they’d worked out their own little system for the dorm, since they’re mostly left to their own devices outside of classes. Yuji has many recipes up his sleeve that he’d either cooked for his grandfather before he was sick enough to be in the hospital or that he had found in the family cookbook and modified to fit his own tastes.
He looks at the bound book on the counter, then steps over to flip it open. Most of the recipes in it are more waiting than doing, though, and he desperately needs something to do with his hands.
Yuji turns to the dessert section, which he rarely ever looks through. He's never been particularly good at desserts, but he turns to a simple recipe for a tangerine cake that has far more prep time than cooking time and he has no intention of going back to sleep.
Yuji tends to go on autopilot when he’s making something, especially food. It's not unlike devoting full attention to something, but he’s a little jumpy and zones out too much nowadays, so it’s more like resting your mind while your brain continues to work in the background. Thankfully, Sukuna is quiet, so it’s just him, the one kitchen light he’s turned on and the hum of the oven at the witching hours of the night.
His first cake explodes in the oven. Yuji doesn’t know how or why, but it happens, and he’s forced to clean out the inside of the oven silently so that he doesn’t wake anyone up. Yuji almost considers giving up, but they have plenty of ingredients, so he simply makes another one. The second cake is a little brown on top from being in the oven slightly too long, but it only dulls the pale orange color slightly and Yuji slices the top off to make it flat anyways.
He isn't quite sure how it spirals out of control, but Yuji finds that he likes the feeling of being busy because it keeps the fog away, so he makes a third cake. A fourth. A fifth. Actually, he isn’t sure how many tangerine cakes he bakes when he passes out on the couch in their makeshift living room around six in the morning.
As if some deity has decided he’s been tortured enough for now, Itadori Yuji doesn’t dream this time.
---
Megumi is the only early riser out of the three of them. It's funny, because both Nobara and Megumi have told Yuji that he seems like an early riser, when in reality, he has a severe inability to properly wake up before eight-thirty. Megumi consistently gets up at seven, so he wins.
Thus, it makes complete sense for Megumi to be the first to sleepily shuffle into the kitchen and see one of the weirdest sights he’d ever seen. (He’s a jujutsu sorcerer, and yet a sink full of dishes and nearly ten light orange cakes on different colored plates when they had eaten greasy chinese takeout the night before is easily in the top ten.)
Yuji is pulled from sleep at a crisp seven thirty with Megumi standing over him, tapping him on the forehead. “Hello? Wake up?”
Yuji swats at his hand, fully intent on rolling over and going back to sleep. “What?”
“Do you want to explain to me why the whole dorm smells like oranges and there’s seven cakes in the kitchen that showed up out of nowhere?”
That wakes Yuji up properly. his eyes widen, and he sits up so he can look over the couch and towards the kitchen. Megumi is right. There are seven pale orange cakes, glazed, sitting on different plates in the kitchen. Yuji blinks at them, then looks at Megumi for a second before looking back at the seven cakes. His heart drops when he remembers how disturbed he’d been that he’d had to do…whatever this is to calm down. Yuji tries to stay as positive as he can be. “Have you tried them?”
Megumi looks like he wants to slap him.
“Okay, okay, I made them last night. I couldn't sleep.”
Now, Megumi just looks torn between being confused and concerned. “You made seven cakes because you couldn’t sleep?”
“…Do you dislike tangerines that much?” Yuji asks him, avoiding a direct response and finding delight in watching Megumi's eyebrow twitch.
Later, Megumi does try one of the cakes. He tells Yuji it’s good and it makes his chest hurt. Not in the soul-crushing, ‘I need to calm down right now or I don't know what will happen’ hurt, but a good hurt. a swelling, happy hurt. If Yuji had to call it something, he would call it pride.
(Nobara also tries it, but he doesn’t feel the same feeling when she says she loves it. He doesn’t think too much of it.)
They end up giving three of the cakes to the second years and two to Gojo, leaving them with roughly two, since one had been partially eaten already from the taste testing. Nobara ends up eating a whole cake by herself in one day because of how inconsolable she was over her favorite show not being renewed for a second season. After she tires of tangerine cake, Megumi cuts the last one into neat, even slices and has one with every lunch and dinner for four days.
It's nice seeing that he’s doing something for them, something they both enjoy. Sukuna whispers that it’s the least he can do. Yuji suppresses him enough that he can’t speak for the rest of the week.
---
After a few more instances of baking late at night because he’s overwhelmed by his dreams, Yuji runs out of recipes.
It's a bit ridiculous: he discovers baking as a coping mechanism to deal with whatever is going on with him, and then six days later he’s out of flour, salt, baking powder and new things to make. Maybe it’s the feeling of mixing something together and sharing it with his closest friends that’s so good about it, maybe it’s the way he’s able to be busy on his own terms, maybe he’s developing a sugar addiction.
Thus begins his crusade to find new recipes. While the Itadori family cookbook is specific and well written, there’s only three or four different recipes and they’re all mostly the same: cake or things that are cake-adjacent, like muffins and banana bread. He really does want to try something new.
So, to solve this problem, he puts yeast on the grocery in his messy scrawl and waits a couple days for nobara to get it for him. Then, Yuji attempts to make bread.
His first attempt looks great: it’s not burnt, it smells pretty good and it’s shaped how bread is supposed to be shaped. Megumi, who had easily filled the role of designated taste tester, is the first to try it. He chews the bite he took out of a slice, swallows, and then slowly looks up at Yuji.
“Ita.”
“Yes?”
“I don't want you to take this the wrong way,” Megumi sighs, putting the rest of the slice back on the plate, “but this is terrible.”
To be completely fair, this is his first attempt, but Yuji did expect it to turn out well. He takes a bite out of Megumi's abandoned slice, waits, and then winces.
It's tasteless and gummy. Yuji nearly gags. Watching his expression change, Megumi coughs, then turns away, definitely trying not to smile. Yuji feels like he should be begging for forgiveness for making his friend eat this monstrosity.
“I am so sorry,” Yuji begins, shame burning him up while he forces himself to swallow. “I am so–”
Then, Megumi brings one hand up to his mouth, still looking away. He covers his mouth with the back of his hand and his shoulders shake silently.
Yuji blinks. “Are you laughing at me?”
That seems to be what sets him off. Megumi laughs so hard that he’s half laying on the table, shaking slightly as the giggles continue until he has to sit up again because he’s coughing. Tears glint in the corner of his eyes. Yuji watches the whole phenomenon like he’s discovered something new he never expected to come across. He documents the whole thing in his mind, wishing a little bit that he had a camera so he could record it.
“I,” Megumi finally says, smiling wider than Yuji has ever seen him smile before, “No, you don’t have to apologize to me, you just looked so much like a kicked puppy and it was so ridiculous.”
Yuji really, really wishes he had a camera on him, especially when Megumi seems to get a little shy after processing his laughing fit and stares at the table.
“Okay,” Yuji says.
“Okay,” Megumi murmurs, not looking at him.
Yuji picks up the plate with the failed bread on it, tosses it in the trash, puts the dish in the sink, then starts all over again. While he’s kneading the dough and Megumi's still at the table, sitting in his own weird little way that’s definitely not how someone’s supposed to sit in that chair, Yuji notices something.
He has a weird feeling in his chest he can't quite get rid of, like he's swallowed a sparkler or a firework that’s just now exploded into color and light. it started earlier, but it’s been at least twenty minutes and it should have gone away. Yuji decides that it doesn’t hurt, so it isn’t bad, but it is a little annoying.
He puts the kneaded dough in a bowl and covers it so it can rise. The feeling still hasn’t gone away, so Yuji tries a solution.
“Fushi, do you want ice cream?”
“Sure, what do we have?”
Yuji checks the freezer. “Cookies and cream and chocolate.”
He’s already running hot water over the ice cream scoop by the time Megumi finishes thinking about it and replies, “Chocolate.”
“I knew you would say that.” Yuji smiles.
Megumi is silent, but Yuji is scooping the ice cream so he can’t see the look on his face.
Yuji finds out that the treat cools the sensation a little. It’s not a long term solution, because Yuji is reminded of the look on megumi’s face when they’re talking about something random over two bowls of chocolate ice cream and it comes back, full force.
He puts solving this problem on the back burner for now. Yuji has other things to worry about.
---
This, of course, ends up being a terrible solution for two important reasons.
One: Yuji cannot control it. He's carrying Nobara’s shopping bags around when he sees a black bucket hat on sale and wonders if Megumi would like it, then the feeling returns. He's listening to a song on the radio and wonders what Megumi would think of it, then the feeling returns. Yuji feels like he’s fed a sad looking duckling at the park and now it’s following him home, except he is both the duckling and the victim. Ice cream is not powerful enough to lay this to rest.
Two: sometimes he’s too frazzled and feels too awful to get out of bed on time, and he doesn’t think about Megumi at all. He keeps waking up in the middle of the night, sweaty and panicked and feeling like he’s still trapped in a nightmare. Yuji doesn’t like feeling like that either, though. Feeling like there’s blood on his hands that you can’t get off is much worse than holding a firework inside of your chest.
There’s Sukuna, too, who’s becoming something of a poet the longer he lives in Itadori Yuji’s head. When Yuji feels particularly bad and disoriented, Sukuna likes to remind him that he’s destined to die; naturally it makes him feel worse.
Everything casts a shadow, some darker than others. Some bigger than others. Yuji’s stretches for miles, so black that anything it covers can't be seen. He doesn’t really want Megumi to be caught in it, but fighting his infatuation is about as effective as trying to walk down an escalator going up.
Something shifts while Yuji isn’t really paying attention, and the nightmares begin to come more often. He's lucky if for one or two days in the week, he isn’t tortured by dreams then forced to lie awake for hours, not thinking. It gets so bad that he can’t even solve it by starting an infinite amount of desserts.
In a moment of weakness, Yuji even asks Sukuna if he’s the one doing this to him.
No, Sukuna responds in his usual, condescending tone, this is all you, brat.
So Yuji goes to his classes. The shadows under his eyes get darker and deeper. He paddles as well as he can in the open ocean, his fear of what happens when a wave goes over his head far exceeding his fear of the deadly exhaustion that will soon set in.
His balance of remembering and renewal has been utterly destroyed. Crumpled. Shattered. All he can do is look at himself in the mirror and remember the look on Junpei’s face.
He turns on the oven light and sits on the floor. Yuji watches the pie bake for half an hour. He takes it out of the oven, goes back to his room, pretends to have slept and takes a shower. (He’s not fooling anybody, but it’s nice to pretend.)
Of all times, of all people, Gojo is the first one to say something to him. It should make sense: Gojo is his mentor, his one teacher and also the reason he wasn’t immediately executed. In a sense, Gojo is the one keeping him alive.
Gojo lets Nobara and Megumi leave but keeps Yuji in the classroom. He gets up and closes the door. Yuji watches all of these actions quietly.
Yuji thinks that this might be what it feels like to sit in the principal’s office; the unshakeable unease that’s summoned just by being in proximity to authority. Not that he’s ever been summoned to the principal’s office for delinquency. He was a good student when his life was still normal.
He sits on top of the desk to Yuji’s right, where Megumi usually sits, arms crossed. Then gojo huffs a sigh, relaxes a bit, and begins, “Have you been sleeping well? You look tired.”
“I'm fine,” Yuji lies. His issues aren’t worth unpacking in a high school classroom.
“Megumi told me some things,” Gojo continues. Yuji wonders what exactly he said about him and when, then pushes the whole line of thought out of his brain, suddenly feeling sick. “He's concerned about you.”
“I'm fine,” he says again, but it now sounds like more of a plea than an affirmation. “He doesn't have to worry about me,” Yuji tacks on, in hopes of sounding a little more convincing.
“He doesn't have to, but he does.” All of a sudden, Yuji feels like his teacher is looking right through. It’s irrational because Yuji isn’t even sure where his eyes are looking underneath the blindfold, but he becomes acutely aware of how he’s being observed. “and I'm sorry about what happened when I left you with Nanami-kun. He's told me about that situation.”
Condolences. They should make Yuji feel something, but they don't.
As if he’s finished running a diagnostic, Gojo’s body language shifts from anticipating a confrontation to becoming more open. He cocks his head to the side the smallest bit.
“Yuji-kun, what are you running from?”
Yuji stiffens. For a reason he can’t explain, the words have hit their mark. A mark he wasn’t quite aware of until now. They’ve scratched an itch he never even knew he had, then made the itch worse.
What is he running from?
He wouldn't say he's running from it . If he were, it's more like trying to run away while the floor is pulled out from under you and that thing you fear is catching up to you in your free fall.
Yuji can’t tell you what it is, either. All he knows is that it’s terrifying and loud and relentless in hunting him down. He is simply standing on the tracks at the railroad crossing, unable to step off as a train barrels his way. The morbidly curious part of him wants to know what it feels like to be run over, to be crushed, to have his bones break against the dark iron.
After a long while, Yuji tries to come up with a response.“I––”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Gojo tells him, using the kindest tone of voice Yuji has ever heard from him, “and you don’t have to say it now. but tell someone.”
Yuji hears the unspoken part of the advice: I didn’t and I regret it. I didn’t tell anyone and I regret it and this loud, evil thing never went away because it ate me alive.
Yuji nods. Gojo lets him leave. It's all very somber and quiet even though the thoughts in Yuji’s head are ceaseless. He goes straight to his room and tries to sleep off the headache instead of thinking about what he’s been told.
Of course, he can’t sleep. This life is a fever he can’t sweat out. a fever he can’t adjust to, a fever he can’t learn to live with.
Maybe it's because he’s alone. (He isn’t, he swears.) Yuji is not alone at all but it surely feels like it when he finds himself in the kitchen again. He's moving faster than usual and his breath is quick to match his pace.
What are you running from?
Pomegranate. It’s in season. He asked Nobara to buy some so he could make a tart and there’s two in the fridge. Yuji doesn’t really trust himself with a knife at the moment, so he decides to just use his hands and grabs a bowl to put the fruit in.
What are you running from?
He can’t get his brain to quiet down and it is making him frantic. It's only four in the afternoon––the sun is still up and bright. No blanket of stars to hide his sudden panic under. Oh, god.
Yuji is only able to get through a small section of the fruit before he’s crying. He's a complete mess, but he keeps working. He tries to relax and be carried away by the simple movements. It doesn't help, so the placemat at the table turns a darker shade of green as it’s dampened by his tears.
What are you running from?
He isn’t running from anything. If the feeling isn’t named, it doesn’t exist.
Yuji’s vision is blurry enough that he can barely see his hands. He blinks a couple times and they are stained red.
Oh, god.
There’s blood on his hands and he’s looking right at it. The scream is halfway out of Yuji’s throat before he stifles it, the logical part of his brain failing to respond. He can’t even hear Sukuna.
That curiosity where the wave crashes over him? Where the train breaks his bones? Yuji is no longer curious, because if it feels like this then he wishes he could forget where the thought of wanting to know stemmed from.
There is only him, his tears and the echo chamber of his mind until there isn’t. Yuji doesn’t even feel tethered to his body when Megumi is rushing over to check on him, to make sure he’s okay, to check why his hands are bright red.
He's able to put two and two together faster than Yuji can. His hands are red because of the pomegranate. Yuji offers no answers, silent, feeling as if he’ll die if he speaks at that moment.
Megumi takes Yuji's arm and presses his thumb firmly against the inside of Yuji’s wrist. He does the same with his other hand and Yuji’s other arm. It has a calming effect for whatever reason, and it probably works as he intends it to, anchoring Yuji back to his body.
“Ita,” Megumi says, his voice edged with panic even as he uses the nickname. Yuji hasn’t heard this tone of voice since the incident at the juvenile detention center. “Do you need rest? What is it?”
Yuji slowly realizes he’s still crying. He doesn’t think Megumi has ever seen him cry before, and it’s likely scaring him. Yuji tries to stop and can't. He just looks at him, unable to say anything, tears sliding down his face and showing no signs of slowing any time soon.
At least he’s back to feeling things. It's unbelievably scary to not know yourself because your mind has buckled under the stress of being. Just for putting Yuji’s mind back in his body, Yuji feels like he owes him.
Megumi is talking too fast. He's definitely scared; not of Yuji, but because he doesn’t understand what is happening. “What do you need? Can you tell me?”
He can’t tell him. Even if the dam holding him together keeping his feelings out of the way is covered in cracks, the concrete might shatter entirely if he were to say something. So Yuji stares at Megumi, his eyelashes wet, mind unable to be tamed.
Yuji stops breathing when Megumi lets go of one of his hands and lightly touches his damp cheek. Megumi is searching for something in his face, but all Yuji is thinking about is that Megumi is close to him and that there are no fireworks. He doesn't recognize any joy.
It seems that there is nothing that his mind can’t steal from him.
“I'm so tired.” Yuji confesses. It's not like in the movies, where he finally admits he’s having a problem he can’t fix by himself and everything immediately begins to get better. It’s whispered and his throat is raw and nothing changes in the seconds that pass.
Yuji is willing to show him more of his pain, but not everything. Megumi doesn’t need everything. He doesn't deserve that.
Megumi seems like he’s trying to pretend they’re having a normal conversation under normal circumstances. “I see.”
Yuji sits there for a little longer before he’s ready to get up. Megumi helps him. He takes a shower, numb, and nearly rolls into bed before he realizes he isn’t ready to be alone again yet. So he knocks on Megumi's door and while his hair is still wet and his eyes are still red. Megumi lets him in. They face opposite sides but there’s a presence next to him in bed, and Yuji sleeps deeply enough that no monsters craft him a fresh batch of nightmares.
---
He's excused from classes for a whole day. Megumi calls in sick for him and leaves. Yuji only knows because he left a note.
(The note didn’t say whether or not he was still welcome in Megumi’s room. Yuji has bigger fish to fry, anyways.)
The day off gives him plenty of time for thinking, which he can still do even with a foggy brain. The logical part of his mind is working again, linking together the events of the day before that pushed him to the edge of a cliff. Adding up all of his nightmares, the busy work and the sudden breakdown, the conclusion he’s come to is that watching Junpei die is affecting him much more than he’s allowed himself to let on.
It’s not like he didn’t think it was affecting him, just not to this extent. Not enough to be unable to keep himself grounded and force Megumi be the one to bring him back to earth.
He never actually told Megumi or Nobara what happened. Megumi asked him about it once, before the exchange event, but let it go afterwards. Yuji wonders if Megumi now wishes he hadn't. He never talked about it to anyone, either. Who could he have said something to?
Gojo, maybe. Nanami, maybe, but he already knows. That’s pretty much it.
(For Christ’s sake. The three of them are supposed to be on break to focus on classes. It’s a luxury they can only afford because of how many special grade curses they’d accidentally fought, a gift from the higher-ups that control jujutsu society, but instead of relaxing he’s having nightmares and breakdowns.)
Step one: becoming self aware. Yuji is done with that. The more he thinks about what step two is, though, the more uncertain he is. So, he distracts himself.
He isn't necessarily eager to go back to the kitchen after being filled with memories of being so anxious and overwhelmed, so he snoops around Megumi's room instead. He has a lot of fantasy books and stationery, organized by author and color respectively. Lots of pastel sticky notes and a navy colored lamp on his desk.
On the wall, there’s an array of pinned photos. In one, he’s a baby and he’s sleeping in the arms of a dark haired woman with striking eyes. She's beautiful. Another where the backdrop is different and Megumi is older, maybe in elementary school, and he's hugging the side of a girl who can’t be older than thirteen. very cute.
In a third picture, framed unlike the other two, it’s him and Gojo. Only the top half of Gojo’s face is visible and he isn’t wearing a blindfold. In the back, Megumi is sitting in the grass, surrounded by fluffy white rabbits. He's looking at the animals instead of the camera and he looks identical to the Megumi that Yuji sees every day.
This picture has to be recent. Maybe from the spring?
Yuji keeps looking through the small gallery. He finds a polaroid of Gojo with two dark haired children, which is a poorly lit picture that must have been snapped by a fourth person. Megumi in an airport, unsmiling; him and his sister at the beach with dark shadows below them, cast from the overhead sun; Megumi's sister in a bright red apron, cooking something on the stove. A portrait of his sister, close to their age, with her hair done and in a blue dress with a long braid resting over her right shoulder. She's nearly sparkling in the six inch long, four inch wide photograph.
A painting of a bird Yuji doesn’t know the name of is taped right below to that picture. In megumi’s scrawl, it reads ‘ tsumiki’s favorite ’.
Tsumiki must be the name of Megumi's sister. The sick one. Yuji thinks he’d like to meet her.
He picks a book from Megumi's bookshelf, one in english, and sits back down on the bed. The window is right next to the bed frame, just like in his own room, so Yuji curls up against the sill for more light as he begins reading.
Yuji is lucky to have been taught English at a young age. His grandfather was fluent, so he became fluent too. It’s especially helpful when the book turns out to be poetry and it’s filled with words that Yuji would never have learned in a normal english class, like ‘doom’ and ‘landscape’ and ‘dashed’. It’s engrossing, though, and he’s about halfway through when he decides that he’d like to buy a copy for himself.
Megumi returns, seeming like he forgot that Yuji had been laying around his room all day. Yuji watches in his peripheral vision, nose still buried in the book, as Megumi opens the door and jumps slightly when he sees him.
Megumi clears his throat.“Uh, good afternoon.”
“Hello,” Yuji replies. He watches Megumi hang his bag up on a hook and take off his shoes.
Suddenly, his stomach drops. While Megumi is doing normal, routine tasks after he comes back from classes, he is sitting on Megumi’s bed. Yuji is in Megumi's personal space, in his room, and has been for hours. The longer he thinks about it, the more horrified he becomes.
He is suddenly very uncomfortable. Not enough to turn red and pink yet, but enough that he’s forced to close the book because he’s not reading the words on the pages anymore.
Megumi sits down on the bed with him (well, on his bed. Yuji is simply an intruder.), his legs hanging over the edge. It dips with the weight of two teenagers. Yuji scoots over to the edge so he can sit in a similar position. They’re side by side. The book sits in Yuji’s lap.
“You read that book?” Megumi nods at it.
“Yeah, I started it today.” The hair on the back of Yuji’s neck is standing straight up. He imagines a bunch of tiny versions of himself lighting the fireworks in his chest.
“I bought it at a bookstore last year. Sounded cool. The English is really confusing, though, so I never ended up being able to read it,” Megumi sighs. He looks at his hands in his lap, looking a little depressed.
Yuji opens it back up and flips through the pages. He points to a poem called war of the foxes. “I'm on this one. Want to hear it?”
“Sure.”
Yuji taps his feet against the small carpet while he reads it out loud, voice soft and measured, “She had a soft voice and strong hands. When she sang she would seem too large for the room and she would play guitar and sing which would make his chest feel huge. Sometimes he would touch her knee and smile. Sometimes she would touch his face and close her eyes.”
Megumi is silent for a few moments afterwards. Yuji peeks at him as inconspicuously as possible, since he’d been looking at the paper pages so he didn’t get the words wrong. Megumi is looking at his face for a split second before he drops his gaze to the book. “I didn’t understand any of that.”
“Yeah, well,” Yuji says to him, “I don’t entirely understand what it means, so we’re in the same boat.”
A fraction of a smile appears on his face, even if only half of it is visible on his side profile. Yuji’s heartbeat is extremely loud in his ears.
Megumi looks straight ahead and the smile drops. “Ita,” he says, enough caution and gentleness in his voice that Yuji knows that something is wrong, “Are you alright?”
Ah.
Yuji feels trapped. He’s vulnerable right now and Megumi knows what happens when his mind bests him, so there’s no use in lying. Still, there’s this feeling that dogs after him, the one that tells him that if he names what he feels then it will be a real thing he’s forced to face.
(Damn it, is this the second step?)
“No,” he says blankly. If there were a lie detector next to him, it would say he’s telling the truth.
“Do you feel better now?”
“A little. Not really.” Truth, truth.
Megumi bites his lip, seeming to debate whether or not to ask something else. Yuji interrupts his overthinking, “Say it.”
He still hesitates before speaking. “...Did anything serious happen while you were gone? I know you said something did, but I never asked what exactly, so–”
“Yeah.” Truth. All the alarms in his head are blaring, telling Yuji that he’s saying too much. They’re telling him that burdening Megumi with this kind of knowledge is wholly unfair. But Megumi is here, next to him, and he at least seems like he wants to share this pain. With that thought in his head, it spills out. “I had to watch someone die.”
Megumi is wise, wise enough to sense that this is a moment where silence would be the worst possible thing to offer as comfort. He keeps Yuji talking. “Were they a friend?”
“He was.”
“Were you close?”
“No, not really, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less,” Yuji looks to the left, at the wall, so that he can’t see Megumi even in his peripheral vision. It’s embarrassing to cry from such a simple conversation. “Is that weird?”
“I don’t think so.” It sounds true. Yuji trusts him. Then, Megumi adds, “I’m sorry for prying. It’s just...familiar, I guess. I had a lot of issues when my sister first became sick and even before that.”
Yuji wants to say something, but he has no words to offer.
“I cried a lot, almost every day. You already know this, but I used to beat a lot of people up as an outlet for everything.”
“Deliquency is bad.” Yuji laughs hoarsely, then sniffles. He stops looking away even if tear tracks are going to form from the two rivers leaking out of his eyes.
“Yeah.” Megumi agrees lightheartedly, but Yuji watches his expression carefully and it looks like he’s almost happy when he talks about such a dark period in his life. Peaceful. (Yuji is a little jealous. He wants whatever that is all for himself, but he doesn’t quite know how to get there.)
Megumi stands up and walks over to the wall of pinned photos. He takes out the thumbtack holding one of them to the wall, sets it on the desk, then brings the picture back with him when he sits back down.
He sits back down considerably closer to Yuji. At least four inches closer. Blood pumping for no reason at all, Yuji tries to act as normal as possible by being still. Megumi’s focus is still on the picture, so Yuji looks at it too.
It’s the picture of the girl with a braid over her shoulder. “This is my sister, Tsumiki.” Megumi tells him, confirming what Yuji had already guessed. “She was a part of this club in junior high wher they would dress up and have tea at the park on the last Saturday of every month.”
“She’s very beautiful.”
“Yeah, well, she hated when I was fighting people. Once I ignored her scolding and she threw an open milk carton at me.”
The girl in this picture doesn’t look like the type to throw milk at her younger brother. Regardless, Yuji imagines it. Before long, a giggle slips out. He claps a hand over his mouth.
“You’re evil,” Megumi says, grinning and turning to him while Yuji tries to stop laughing, “supporting my sister’s terrible actions towards my young self.”
“I’m sure you were very cute and small, but you were still a delinquent.” Yuji declares, pretending to be serious. “Deliquency is not okay!”
Megumi smiles so wide that his teeth are showing. It’s a very good look on him. They’re very close right now, and Megumi becomes breathtakingly happy when he talks about his sister that his eyes seem to sparkle.
He has a beauty mark on his top lip that Yuji has never seen before. It’s very faint and never been close enough to see it before. His train of thought is more like an electrical motherboard, and it’s currently shorting out.
There’s another verse from that same poem that Yuji thinks about in those few heartbeats. It goes, ‘Together we trace out a trail away from doom. There isn’t hope, there is a trail. I follow you.’
(He is definitely going to buy this book.)
---
Megumi likes pomegranates a lot, so he ends up eating almost all of the tarts Yuji later finishes. He looks so bashful that Yuji forgives him, even though he would have forgiven him anyways.
They fall into a routine of sorts: they go to classes, do their homework in Megumi’s room. Yuji tells his blood to quiet while they talk about something. Sometimes they talk about nothing and sometimes they talk about him, and Yuji cries every time, but it’s almost natural for Megumi to hold his hand now. It definitely helps. Then, on nights that he’s scared to be alone, he sleeps on the left half of Megumi’s bed. (They still don’t face each other for whatever reason. It’s fine!)
He becomes comfortable with Megumi. Yuji tells him about Junpei, and in exchange, Megumi tells him about Tsumiki. A memory for a memory. A feeling for a feeling. When he talks to Megumi, it doesn't numb the pain entirely, but it does take the edge off.
At Megumi's suggestion, he begins to track his nightmares. He has three in one week, but only one is severe enough to force him awake. Is it progress? Yuji guesses so. He has a feeling it won’t be linear.
It hurts to talk, but less now. It hurts in the way that stitches hurt because there’s a needle being pushed through your skin, but it’s a necessary step in healing the wound.
Slowly, ever so slowly, he is being led to a place inside of himself where things begin and never end. Where everything begins to begin, where the wounds he suffers every day have already closed up and healed. Where he can hold the memory of Junpei and not feel an ocean of sorrow.
He runs his hands across the scar that marks where he had been hurt so severely by the death he had witnessed. Someone in his mind whispers to him, Do you see it?
I see it, he affirms.
It becomes a call and response. Is it difficult to be confronted with the fact of yourself?
Yes, it is.
Is it difficult to live?
Yes, it is. It’s even harder to want to while knowing that he will die eventually.
Yuji is only fifteen. All he wants is to heal, even if he’s going to suffer from the scars for the rest of his life. And after that, like a normal fifteen year old, one of the only things Yuji wants is to be wanted.
Maki trains them with wooden practice swords. Megumi is eons ahead of both Yuji and Nobara, and even if Yuji is a quick learner, he gets his ass kicked too many times in sparring for it to help him in any way.
Luckily for both him and Nobara, Megumi is not immune to their incessant whining and also feels a little bad about beating the shit out of both of them. He supplies ice packs while they complain, sprawled on the couch.
“I hate you,” Nobara whines, holding a bag of ice against her shoulder. Yuji agrees. He thinks that Megumi greatly underestimates his own strength with that weapon, because his thighs are covered in dark bruises from getting hit.
“You’re welcome.” Megumi sighs as he tosses another bag of ice right at Yuji’s chest. He’s probably just as tired as the rest of them but definitely sporting fewer bruises.
Yuji kicks her. “Move over, you’re hogging all the space!” She rolls her eyes at him and swats at him. He dodges as well as he can without rolling off of the couch,
The three of them in their own little bubble, bickering over little things like normal teenagers. Leading lives unlike normal teenagers. Yuji savors it like he would a piece of his favorite candy and commits the feeling to memory. This is what he wants.
---
November comes to a close and Yuji is extremely glad. It was easily one of the worst months of his life, glossing over the fact that things had started to look up towards the finally days.
December is much better. The final month of the year brings Christmas festivities, gifts and sometimes a few inches of snow. The fresh start offered by the new year, just weeks away. A sense of finality, the brisk, cold wind, and his absolute favorite: christmas cookies.
On December 2nd, Yuji convinces Gojo to let him go shopping so that he can buy Santa hats for the three of them. Nobara is excited just as he is; Megumi rolls his eyes but takes it anyway.
On December 9th, they’re cleared to go on their first field mission in months. It’s simple stuff––splitting up to track down and exorcise five or six different first grade curses that are lingering around an abandoned warehouse. Yuji tries using a sword instead of just his hands, even if he hasn’t completely mastered it, and finds satisfaction in how the blade whistles through the air when he swings it in a certain way. As a weapon, it’s near perfect.
He only freezes up when he’s tracking the last curse and it looks a little like Junpei. But Megumi is there, grabbing his wrist and yanking him to the side hard enough that he stumbles out of the way before it can use its claws to scratch him. It’s enough for Yuji to snap out of the semi-trance and he slices the monster down the middle when it tries to pounce on him again.
(“Looked like him,” Yuji murmurs under his breath as they step through icy mud on their way back to the rendezvous point.
Megumi offers his hand. A hand offering mercy and solace. It is pleasantly warm, even in the frosty temperatures, when Yuji holds it.)
On December 16th, Gojo decides to not have classes for the rest of the month. Instead of studying English or math, the first and second years decide when to have their Christmas party. They agreed on the twenty-fourth, and out of courtesy, invited the Kyoto students as well. As soon as Yuji volunteers to make christmas cookies for the party, everyone else quickly volunteers to be responsible for something as well.
Maki is writing the assignments on a whiteboard with a red Expo marker. She steps back to look at the full list. “Alright, we have Panda for finding a Christmas tree, me and Inumaki on decorations, Nobara on ornaments…” She glances at her cousin. “Megumi?”
“I can do whatever,” he shrugs.
Maki shares a suspiciously mischevious look with Nobara. “Fine by me,” she declares, “you can help Yuji in the kitchen.” Yuji blinks in surprise. Megumi shrugs again. Everything is settled.
There’s no homework to do in the afternoons that week, so Yuji does a lot of things to fill that time. He finishes that book he started in Megumi’s room, which takes about two days of nonstop reading in all of his free time and third to go back and try to understand the poems he really likes. He goes back to baking all the time, whenever he wants to try something new. There’s an endless stream of baked goods leaving the dorm and Gojo tells him that even Nanami tried some of it and liked it, which is, in his words, ‘the highest praise possible’.
Panda finds a Christmas tree, somehow, and it goes in the corner of the first years’ living room. Nobara covers it in silver and blue ornaments and ribbons and twinkling lights, which is a process that sends her into a frenzy for about two hours. Yuji sneaks away to his room so that he isn’t forced to put the tree topper on (and subsequently adjust it every ten seconds until she deems it perfectly straight) and leaves Megumi to be the only one at her disposal.
He wakes up earlier than normal, randomly, and goes to make a small lemon pound cake. Just as he’s putting it in the oven, Megumi traipses into the living room, yawning and stretching his arms. It’s endearing.
“Good morning,” Yuji calls, quiet enough that he won’t disturb Nobara down the hall.
Megumi looks at him, then at the cluttered counter and baking supplies. “Another nightmare?”
“No,” Yuji answers truthfully, “Just because I feel like it.”
He is filled to the brim with giddiness at a crisp seven thirty-four in the morning, when the sky is just now brightening. He's baking just because he feels like it; not as busy work to keep distracted, not to run away from facing himself. Just because he wants to and he likes it.
He wears that stupid smile on his face for the next ten minutes.
The week passes slowly until Yuji sleeps in late and realizes it’s December 23rd, which means it’s Sunday, which means he's supposed to be baking cookies for the Christmas party the next day. He doesn’t change out of his pajamas and just ruffles his hair a little to dispel the bedhead before he swipes the Santa hat off his desk and puts it on.
Megumi is standing on a stepladder between the living room and the kitchen, a roll of tape between his teeth and a handful of something green in his hands. He’s taping it to the ceiling.
“Good morning,” Yuji greets him.
Megumi tries to say good morning back, but it’s muffled. Yuji bites his cheek to keep from smiling. He can see the tips of Megumi’s ears turning red from embarrassment.
When the piece of greenery is secured, he carefully climbs back down to the ground. Megumi also takes the roll of tape out of his mouth, makes a face, then grabs a paper towel to put it on. “Morning,” he says, once he’s done, then gestures to the small plants now hanging from the ceiling in a few different places, “Maki asked me to do this for her.”
Once Yuji gets a better look at what’s in his hand, he flushes, the back of his neck turning pink. It’s mistletoe, of course. This is a holiday party. Of course.
Megumi is already on the other side of the room, rummaging through a deep drawer in the kitchen for an apron. Yuji clears his throat. “Stop hanging mistletoe. I am not kissing anyone at this party.”
“Maki said to,” Megumi replies, returning with Yuji’s red apron and a black one for himself. There’s a suspicious glimmer in his eyes.
With practiced skill, Yuji bites back the rest of that train of thought, which happens to be I would kiss you, though. I totally would if I got the chance. No mistletoe involved. But he’s not that brave, just impulsive, and he controls the urge to blurt it out until he loses his nerve.
It takes less that twenty minutes to discover exactly why Maki, ever mischievous, would pair Megumi off with Yuji in the kitchen. Not just because she’s probably sniffed out his colossal crush but also because Megumi is hopeless in the kitchen.
After Megumi burns their second batch of test cookies, Yuji sighs defeatedly. “God, you’re an awful cook. I regret calling you my sous chef like forty minutes ago.”
“Baker,” Megumi corrects, measuring out the flour for their third batch, “Pastry chef, if you will.”
He’s cracking jokes. Megumi, stoic and mature, is cracking jokes about being a pastry chef while their second pan of burned cookies are still steaming on the stove. Yuji didn’t think he was capable.
He tells him so. “I didn’t think you were capable of making jokes.”
Faster than Yuji can react, Megumi whips around, grabs a dish towel and hits Yuji in the arm with it. It’s so ridiculous that Yuji laughs brightly and the fake, scandalized expression on Megumi’s face drops, a smile teasing across his lips instead.
It turns out that where he’s lacking in the baking department, Megumi can make up for it in decorating. He pipes frosting with impressive skill, especially when there’s at least fifteen of each of the four shapes they stuck to. His green Christmas tree cookies are definitely nicer than Yuji’s.
“That’s not what a Christmas tree looks like, Ita,” Megumi complains, exasperated, while Yuji continues to work on his masterpiece that’s looking more and more like a green blob. He straightens up and––well, yeah, it does look like a blob.
Yuji huffs. “Whatever.” He glances sideways at Megumi, who has a large streak of black frosting on the side of his right hand. Impulsively, Yuji grabs his wrist and pulls it up to eye level, then uses his own finger to wipe it off.
“Idiot,” Megumi says, sounding a bit strained, “now it’s going to get everywhere.”
“Hm.” Once it’s off, he looks at Megumi and is startled, “Are you okay?”
Megumi is quickly becoming the color of a sliced beet, so red in the face that he looks feverish. His ears are tipped with pink too. His eyes are bright and clear, and he looks very pretty like this, so Yuji’s thoughts take a second to load. The fireworks begin to echo in his chest, exploding in time with his accelerating heartbeat. Megumi takes a half a step back, opens his mouth and tries to form words, then doesn’t say anything. Yuji just stares at him and he stares back.
Megumi looks away, decides something, then looks back at him.
And then Megumi is stepping forward, taking one of Yuji’s wrists in each hand and pushing them down to his sides. And then he’s closing his eyes and leaning forward and kisses Yuji’s right on the lips.
Yuji’s brain panics, malfunctions, then completely shuts down.
All in all, it’s a terrible kiss. The angle is all wrong, Megumi is kind of falling forward and Yuji is kind of stumbling backwards and they’re in the middle of the kitchen and in danger of crushing the fragile cookies. But to Yuji (and his poor little heart that’s just been hit with ten thousand volts of electricity), it’s complete sensory overload in the best way possible; it’s like greeting the dawn after a long, terrible night. It’s like waking up to the sun after a nightmare and standing in the cool ocean water at dusk, listening to what the wind sings.
In that wild, fleeting moment, he understands what it means to want to exist and has never wanted to so badly. And he has never, ever been so jealous of himself.
This is the way that it goes and the way it will continue forever. Always changing, never changing, and the tiny space in between where Itadori Yuji happens to sit.