Archive of Our Own

It wasn’t supposed to snow. According to the mission brief, the sky would be partially cloudy and the ground frozen, with no precipitation in the forecast. Frost would set in soon at this time of night. It was cold enough to add an extra layer to their uniforms, but the body heat they built up on the mission would keep them warm, sweat clinging to them beneath their clothes. There wasn’t any need for heavy winter jackets for the long, albeit easy, walk back across the fields to meet the car.

Weather forecasts are often wrong, however. The clouds shift in unpredictable patterns and make their own decisions. The veil wasn’t built to keep out rain, or snow.

The borders of Megumi’s domain disintegrate slowly. Black ooze drips to the ground, and each creature folds once more to the shadows. Silence sets in. Muffled and soft, it permeates the cave in the absence of a protective barrier, until the only sound that echoes through the cavern is that of breathing. Two sets of lungs heave in and out. It’s not quite comfortable, not with the ache that ricochets through Megumi’s skull and the sting of the open wounds on his face and arms, but it’s not uncomfortable, either, to rest his head against the stone wall, curl his battered body up close to it, and listen to nothing.

“You okay?” Yuuji’s voice comes from nearby and wavers between them. The sound dies, and then he’s just breathing again, sharp, ragged inhales that he’s clearly trying to even out. It’s difficult to see him through the lingering shadows and the night.

So Megumi stops trying to look. He closes his eyes in the hopes of finding a moment of reprieve and lets his jaw fall slack. He feels cold. “I’m fine,” he mumbles back.

Shuffling footsteps scrape the rocky ground, and Yuuji’s presence fills the gap in space above Megumi. It’s not a warmth, exactly, but a heavy sensation, softer than the crisp air, and it lingers so long Megumi squints one bleary eye open. Yuuji hovers over him, hesitation in the twitch of his hands. He reaches out, then withdraws again, then crouches down. Finally, he puts a hand on Megumi’s shoulder and moves to lift him up by the torso.

“Come on,” he says once he’s made his decision. “We should get out of here.”

Megumi is being lifted up before he can think about it. Yuuji makes him feel ridiculously weightless, even though all his limbs are leaden and want nothing more than to plaster themselves to the earth. He’s tired, so tired, and he isn’t much help getting himself up, barely cognisant in their uneasy march back to the mouth of the cave. They’re really not far in. The space felt so much deeper in his domain. Yuuji helps him step by step, until fresh air breaches their lungs, and the sting hits the back of Megumi’s throat. He winces, eyes watering.

The cold, dry air is the only sensory input they get when they step foot outside. Everything is dark, and still silent, and that heaviness refuses to loosen its grip on the air. It’s more prominent out here. Megumi is confused, because they should still have a little more time with the sunlight, but he can’t catch a glimpse of it anywhere on the horizon.

He’s confused until his foot slips out from beneath him, and he barely avoids taking Yuuji with him in his fast plummet face-first into a snowbank.

“Shit! Fushiguro!”

Yuuji’s voice comes from far away. Yuuji’s voice is right in his ear. Megumi is still for a second, stunned, then scrambles against the snow, all fluff and no substance. He sinks into it, and for a moment he can’t breathe. He really can’t see anything now. Every time he tries to push himself up, his hands just disappear, unable to find purchase on anything.

“Fushiguro.”

What little light there is comes back to Megumi around the edges. Snow fills his head, his chest, surrounds him, dizzying, as Yuuji’s warm hands lift him up once again. Crisp frost clings to Megumi’s face, and he breathes it in through his nose and coughs. “It wasn’t supposed to snow,” he has the wherewithal to rasp.

“No, it wasn’t.” Yuuji answers in a mutter, a crease between his brows. He studies Megumi and turns him gently by the shoulders to brush the snow off his front. For a moment, they’re the only two things that are warm. Megumi watches mutely until Yuuji meets his eyes.

Tiny cuts criss-cross Yuuji’s flushed skin. Drops of blood dribble down his cheek, and his lips are kept moist and red by quick flicks of his tongue. His honey-brown eyes scan through their clouds of breath as his own billows out to intertwine with Megumi’s. Visible are the clouds of vapour. Visible is the worry all over his face. He looks dazed, and a little sad. Yuuji lifts one hand and runs his thumb in a slow, tender line just beneath Megumi’s eye.

“Jeez,” Yuuji huffs, “using your domain really puts you out of it, huh?”

He feels it then, so thick and heavy he could cry, the weight of the shadows still soft on his shoulders. Megumi doesn’t know what the look on his own face shows, but he can assume he doesn’t look good. Another cold inhale fills his lungs. His eyes flutter rapidly, and his knees are weak enough that he sways forward even without a breeze to nudge him over, and Yuuji has to mutter “Whoa, whoa” and plant his hands firmly on Megumi’s shoulders to keep him upright. He straightens him and brushes him off again for no reason, the action soothing.

Yuuji’s breath picks up. Megumi knows, because he can see it. His eyes dart across Megumi’s face. “Hey, I know you’re tired, but please try not to pass out right now, okay? I don’t think I can carry you through this.”

His nervous gaze drifts, so Megumi follows it, catches his spinning head and stills it enough to take in the scene before them.

Silence coats the fields. Soft, sloping piles of snow stretch out to the very edge of the horizon, half-glistening in the short glimpses of pale moonlight that break through the cloud cover. The world is, ironically, covered in a warm orangeish haze, as inviting as a cup of tea by a crackling fire, but Megumi can’t hear anything but the dull rush of his own pulse in his ears. There is nothing, as far as they can see. Nothing but this. Not a creature pokes their head out to disturb the snow with their breaths, their tiny paws. Not another flake dares fall from the sky. Megumi could never imagine an image so still.

He wipes his stuffy nose with the back of one hand, and blood drips down to sprinkle the surface of the snow at his feet. He pinches his nose and screws his eyes shut, then leans over quickly and spits. More blood on the ground. It seeps between the gaps in his teeth. He must have hit his head, or something, all his teeth acting like they were nearly knocked out.

Yuuji grabs him before he can pitch forward once again, and Megumi brings his quivering hand around to clutch Yuuji’s arm for balance, an overlapped puzzle of wrist and hand and wrist and hand. Megumi feels so dizzy. He wants to lie down and sleep right here in the snowbank.

Instead, he works his tongue over the bloodied parts of his teeth and says, “Nitta won’t be able to get to us now. There’s a safehouse nearby where we can wait for her.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

It’s the last thing he says before his lungs seize, and another cough wracks his frame. Yuuji reaches out to rub his back and doesn’t let go of his arm. His hands must be getting cold, too, and his cheeks and ears. They need to get moving. Megumi staggers forward, nods in the direction they need to go, and Yuuji, blessedly, or worryingly, is quiet for the long walk.

Their moc slip-ons and old red high tops aren’t exactly the best for trudging through snow, but they try anyway. The cuffs of Megumi’s pants grow damp quickly, and it’s difficult to keep himself upright and moving, but Yuuji refuses to let go of him. He lets Megumi lean on him, only making minute adjustments every so often. He winces a grand total of once, and Megumi wonders how hurt he is before his head goes fuzzy again, and the evening seems to grow ever-dimmer.

“Which way do we turn here?” Yuuji asks softly.

Megumi looks up, does his best to discern where they are compared to where they started, and nudges him to the left. He’s not sure how long they’ve walked when a dark shape that might be a house, standing solid in the middle of nowhere, comes into view ahead of them. It’s nothing but a shadow, but some of the tension in Yuuji’s muscles eases as they grow closer, and he taps Megumi’s shoulder where he’s holding him up.

“Is that it?”

Megumi takes his best guess and nods.

It’s a cabin, he realises, as classic as could be, with wooden slats for outer walls and dusty glass windows. It’s nestled all neatly in the snow, which piles at the door and sits on the edge of the roof and leans down to watch them. Megumi can almost imagine candles twisting and turning their delicate flames in the windows. He imagines warmth, and comfort, and safety. The snow has stopped, but they can’t stay out here. Not in their school uniforms. Not with their bone-deep fatigue in the crisp cold.

Yuuji dares to let go, and leaves Megumi swaying on his feet while he checks the door. He jiggles the knob, bangs on the wood, and curses under his breath—it refuses to budge. “It’s locked,” he sighs. “Do you think there’s another way around?”

He casts a wide-eyed look back over his shoulder, and for a moment, he looks his age, fifteen and fearful, only as resourceful as resources allow. He shivers in place. The blood has only just started to dry on his face. He’s got a tear in one sleeve, and, after their trek, seems almost as unsteady as Megumi feels.

Megumi shakes his head and steps forward, chest tight. It’s his turn. He toes some snow aside and shuffles right up to the door. His hands fumble, fingertips numb, but he manages to compose himself and fold his hands together in one of his signs. All his focus, all that remains of his strength, pours out of him and sifts through the shadows. The door isn’t completely sealed on every edge, and Megumi’s cursed energy finds a way in. He senses a solidification on the other side.

Inside the cabin, something barks.

Yuuji tenses. “Is that—”

“Shiro.” Megumi’s lips move, but it’s more a mouthing than a production of speech, a command from his power and not his voice. Shiro hears, and feels, and knows, regardless. It barks again in question. Megumi answers, “Get the door.”

He braces himself with one hand on the doorway and tamps down a wave of nausea and dizziness, ignoring Yuuji’s gasp as scrabbling sounds at the door, and the click of a lock pierces the muted air. The door swings inward to a safehouse Megumi knows will be well-prepared and waiting for them. Snow spills in at his feet.

His head spins. The earth spirals too quickly in its orbit. He lets Yuuji slide past him in his eagerness to get inside and check if the lights work. They will. They have to.

Megumi doesn’t last long enough to find out. He takes one step in and loses his balance with nothing left to support him, and his vision goes dark in remarkable time. This is going to be a problem for Yuuji, he thinks, exasperated. His eyes roll back, and from his cotton-filled mouth slips a simple, “Sorry.”

He’s out before he hits the floor.

Graciously, Megumi wakes in a bed. Light streams in from outside, and he scrunches his face up and shies away from it, but he’s warm and comfortable and ready to let himself go back to sleep, if he can. They must’ve gotten in late from the mission. He reaches up to scratch at his face—something itches—and a hits a series of what feels like different-sized bandages. They litter his left cheek and forehead, and when his hand trails down, he finds a couple larger patches on his arm and shoulder. His muscles ache, but the pain in his head has dulled, at least. The soft whir of a fan is the only sound to fill the room.

Megumi opens his eyes. He doesn’t sleep with a fan on in his dorm.

In a slow wash, reality comes back to him. The present seeps in around the exposed patches of his skin, and he realises he’s not wearing his jacket anymore, though a quick patdown proves he’s still got the rest of his uniform on—white polo, dirty pants. His shoes are missing. The covers are pulled up to his chin, heavy wool and cotton sheets keeping him safely tucked into a bed that isn’t his. He glances around, and the room he’s in isn’t his, either, or anywhere familiar, and he remembers, through a faint fog that the sunlight steadily pierces, that they had reached the safehouse. He and Yuuji.

He sits up abruptly, and the ache that grips him by the skull is so tight and sudden Megumi is forced to draw in a breath to combat it. But the cabin is quiet when the pain cries out loud, and that concerns and comforts him enough to convince him to get to his feet and investigate.

Megumi props himself up with one hand on the bed and strips his socks off one by one. Even the floorboards are warm, and he feels lucky that the electricity seems to work well enough. Jujutsu safehouses aren’t always the most well kept, and so far, he can guess they ended up with one of the good ones. Maybe there’s even a second bedroom, where Yuuji is still fast asleep, and that’s why it’s so quiet. He must have been worn out, too; though Megumi’s head still throbs with every step, he feels better overall. Rested. Calm.

His heart lurches, however, the second he steps out of the bedroom.

There must not be another after all, he figures. The space is quaint, with the front door only metres from where he stands, two pairs of shoes discarded on the welcome mat. A small kitchen with wooden cupboards, an oven and stove, sink, and refrigerator takes up the far side of the room. Between them, laid out beneath another slow-running ceiling fan, a fluffy carpet, television, and three-person couch form a living area. To Megumi’s surprise, a single pillow and threadbare blanket, much less than the wool quilt he woke up under, are crumpled on the couch, and in the midst of those sits Yuuji.

He looks pale. This is the first thing Megumi notices. He’s sitting upright in an awkward position, half folded in on himself, and stares at the wall with a dull, haunted glint in his eyes, like he’s just woken from a nightmare. His shoulders are tight, and Megumi could swear there’s a tremor in his hands, which are wrapped far too tightly around an empty glass. To his credit, he seems to register Megumi’s presence and turns with a sharp inhale. “Oh,” he says in lieu of greeting, his tone flat and distinctly un-Yuuji. “You’re up. Have you looked outside?”

Megumi catches himself before he can spit out the words, What’s wrong with you? and instead demands, with an equal amount of incredulousness, “Did you sleep out here?”

Yuuji blinks once, then twice, looks down at himself like he’s not quite sure, and frowns. The tilt of his head makes dark circles beneath his eyes visible in the morning light. Megumi wonders if the question he should be asking is if Yuuji slept at all.

“Yeah?” Yuuji responds, a confused grunt. “You needed the bed.”

Megumi makes a face. “I think it could be argued that you also could have used the bed.”

“But you literally passed out, I couldn’t just leave you on the floor—”

“It’s big enough for two people.”

Distantly, Megumi realises his head doesn’t hurt as much anymore. Or at least, he isn’t paying enough attention to it now to notice. His focus zeroes in on Yuuji and then splits to designate a few lingering brain cells to what he just said. But Yuuji doesn’t say anything, just stares at him some more, and it’s morning, anyway, so it doesn’t matter now. He shakes it off and moves on. Moves forward, in fact, to get a closer look at his classmate.

“Come here,” Megumi says, gesturing with one hand. It means straighten up, look at me, and give me the goddamn glass. But Yuuji only shrinks in on himself, ducks his head away with what Megumi predicts would be a furious blush if he weren’t so pale, and Megumi has to reach down and force the glass out of his hands. A few lonely drops of water stick to the bottom.

Yuuji’s pouting isn’t often something he can take. Megumi steps away again, wordless. He could leave, shut himself back in the bedroom and show Yuuji he should have staked his claim on the comfortable bed when he could—or worse, just put his shoes on and walk out.

He doesn’t, though. Something about the cabin makes him feel too soft to feel that cruel.

The glass, he leaves in the porcelain kitchen sink to wash when he has less pressing matters to attend to, and it offers him a minute to gather himself before he marches right back over to the couch. Megumi stands his ground in front of Yuuji and glowers at him, his lips twisted in an unsavoury frown. “Are you hurt?”

Yuuji visibly jolts and blinks up at him rapidly. “What?”

“Are you hurt?” Megumi demands through gritted teeth. He takes a breath to steel himself, and then he inches in closer to Yuuji’s space than he thought he’d have the courage for. He sits on the couch beside him and hovers there; already, he’s scanning him up and down for signs of injury, and he takes the blanket off of Yuuji’s lap and shakes it out in front of him to fold. It’s all he can do for the time being to clear the space and get a better look at him. “Show me. You get weird and quiet like this when you’re trying to hide the fact that you’re in pain.”

Mouth falling open in surprise, Yuuji gives the smallest shake of his head, but even that seems to make him feel worse. He looks like he might faint. Just because Megumi is more prone to passing out from fatigue doesn’t mean Yuuji can’t do it too. “No, I—I’m fine, I swear, Fushiguro. You don’t need to worry about me.”

Megumi takes another long, slightly-less-than-patient inhale through his nose and counts to five. He’s getting tired of repeating himself. “Show me.”

Something cracks in the facade Yuuji thinks he’s putting on, and for a moment, he looks just a little more worn as the fight drains out of him. His eyes flit back and forth between Megumi’s, glued to him like he’s waiting for him to say he doesn’t care after all. But Megumi remains stoic and waits for Yuuji to reach for the hem of his shirt and gently tug it up. He struggles to get a good grip on it in his quivering hand. Megumi doesn’t dare tear his eyes away.

He’s seen worse. He’s seen worse, he tells himself, with a slow breath inward to steady himself. He was expecting something raw, but Yuuji has at least had the sense to wrap a lopsided bandage around his middle. Megumi tilts his head to see a little better. “Where did you find the bandages?” he murmurs. His fingers ghost over the small ones on his own face.

“In the bathroom,” Yuuji answers, less of a waver in his voice now. “There were some washcloths and antibiotic ointment, too. I cleaned it out as best I could.”

“Good.” Megumi notices Yuuji shiver and shift against the back of the couch. He leans in further and tries not to frown at the spot the wound must be. Patches of blood cloud the white wrapping, and it looks too thin and loose. Megumi clicks his tongue and reaches out without thinking, brushes the tips of his fingers over the blood, and checks to see how stained they come back. “Were there painkillers for you to take?”

Yuuji shakes his head. Megumi senses it more than sees it, too zeroed in on the wound. The blood spreads outward from just above his hip and spans at least a few inches, maybe the length of one hand, or less. “It doesn’t really hurt that much.”

Now Megumi looks up, a bit sharply, and Yuuji is still watching him. It catches him off guard. He blinks back with wide eyes, and the slightest twitch of a frown on his lip deepens. “You do that sometimes,” he remarks. He thinks of Yuuji staring at the wall when he walked in. “You space out to block out whatever pain you’re feeling, like you need to stop feeling it and be strong for the people around you.”

If he weren’t presumably focused on keeping still and not aggravating the wound, Megumi thinks Yuuji would jolt more than just the brief tensing of his shoulders and knitting of his brow. “Do I?” he asks faintly.

Megumi doesn’t answer, save a half-hearted hum. He slides his hands around either side of Yuuji’s torso, hesitant and slow, and watches him for any sign of a reaction. Yuuji freezes again and goes so far as to hold his breath. Megumi doesn’t even have to ask him to keep still. “I’m taking this off,” he warns, sliding his fingers over the surface of the bandage to fiddle with the loose edge. He knows Yuuji is ticklish, but now, he doesn’t even twitch.

The bandage comes undone with ease. He really must not have secured it well enough.

This is the part where Megumi catches his breath and tries to still his racing heart. He wipes his face clear until it is devoid of expression. He needs to keep himself calm, and keep Yuuji grounded—Yuuji, who is young and injured and scared, even though Megumi is also young and only slightly less scared and still rather tired. He steadies himself and moves on to more questions, something to distract them both.

“No sign of Nitta?” he asks, just to check. The wound is deep, and still bleeding. He maintains a sort of half-pressure on it from the bottom with the remnants of the bandage.

“No,” Yuuji says back. “I didn’t want to go outside and look, though.”

“That’s fine. She’d come up to the house if she were here. Anything else you noticed about the cabin?”

He sees it, now, why Yuuji didn’t strip off his school uniform. It’s difficult to see against the black, but blood has dripped onto his pants and stained part of his torn jacket. “The extra blanket was right on the bed. There’s food in the cupboard and fridge, which is cool. Somebody keeps this place stocked. It’s kind of cold, though. Were you cold?”

“No,” Megumi says, “I wasn’t cold.” He prods at the wound very gently, with very careful and nimble fingers. His attention flicks ever so quickly to Yuuji’s face and back again. “There’s a fireplace behind me, isn’t there?”

He thinks he remembers right that there is, based on his earlier scan of the room, but Yuuji’s nod confirms it. “Do you think it’s bad?” he dares to ask.

“It could be worse,” Megumi supplies. “I think you’ve lost a good amount of blood, but I can fix the wound.”

This is a decision that settles into place as he says it. It solidifies like a stone in the pit of his stomach, and he breathes himself back to life, blinking a few times and pressing the bandage back over the wound. He watches Yuuji wince and is pretty sure that’s a good sign for his emotional state.

Yuuji’s hands move of their own accord, some instinct that perhaps his grandfather taught him just in case, but perhaps he just learned too young, like how he knew how to secure his bleeding wrist when he lost a hand at the detention centre, or how to put pressure on Nobara’s scalp when she took an odd blow to the head. He lays his hands around Megumi’s and is ready to apply pressure to his own wound when the first set of hands vanishes.

He’s not the only one who can take care of injuries, though, and since he hasn’t mentioned anything about it, Megumi thinks he can assume Yuuji does not know how to stitch himself up. “What do you mean you can fix it?”

Megumi hums under his breath and wipes traces of Yuuji’s blood on his own pants. He starts to rise from the couch, already prepping in his head, walking back through the open bedroom door in his mind’s eye. The bathroom must be there, and he missed it in his disorientation. “Ieiri-san has taught me the basics of surgical care. If we can find a needle and thread, the wound is small enough that I can stitch it up. Stay put.”

He does find the bathroom, a door right in front of his face, in fact, darkened by the soft snow behind pale blue curtains. He flips the lightswitch on and is grateful that it works, opens the first drawer on his right, and digs around for supplies. He pulls out drawers until he locates painkillers—so Yuuji was either wrong or lying earlier—gauze, antibiotic ointment, and a box of large-coverage bandages, but he doesn’t find any suture material or a needle. He brings the other materials back and hands the bottle of pain medication to Yuuji first, placing everything else on the empty couch cushion.

“Here, take two of these. No matter how much you think you can block it out, getting stitches is going to hurt a bit. They’re prescription strength,” Megumi muses aloud.

Yuuji looks surprised, or impressed. “Ieiri-san?”

Megumi shrugs. “Maybe. She’s always finding ways to distribute illegal medication.”

Yuuji looks at him like he’s not sure if he’s joking or not.

The longer he hovers out in the living area, the more Megumi realises Yuuji’s right, it’s chillier out here. Plus, Yuuji is the one who’s been sitting and laying down for, presumably, most of the night, and guilt sits, not quite lightly, on Megumi’s shoulders. He breezes past the couch and moves to the fireplace next. Atop the mantel is a handheld lighter, and he wonders if Yuuji was too worn out to see it, or couldn’t bend down to light the kindling. Megumi crouches with practiced ease like he’s kneeling beside one of his dogs and touches the tip of the lighter to the dry wood.

Warmth laps in orange and yellow patterns to nibble at the kindling, and behind him, a faint gasp of awe or perhaps gratitude echoes its burst to life. Fire spreads to fill its new home in an instant. Just to himself, Megumi grins.

He straightens out his expression before he turns back, though. He still needs to find a needle and thread, and he needs to be strong for Yuuji, who has at least taken it upon himself to press some of the new gauze against his wound. He tracks Megumi’s movements with an owlish gaze. Now that he’s being taken care of, he seems calmer and more present.

“Be right back,” Megumi promises again, and once again disappears through the doorway to the bedroom.

He gives himself sixty seconds to take stock of the room and search in the best places, or else he needs to give up and find another solution. There’s a closet to his right, so he starts with that—it seems to cover the same depth as the bathroom and kitchen on the same wall, and it’s stocked full of fresh clothes, to his surprise. There are a few plain shirts in different sizes, the same for pants pinned to hangers, and even three assorted winter coats. The top shelf of the closet is messier, jumbled with what looks like a mix of socks, hats, and gloves. Megumi wonders who these things belonged to before; who stayed here before them, and what happened to them that they left pieces of their clothing behind?

He doesn’t particularly want to know the answers. Megumi sighs and grabs out a fresh shirt and pair of pants for Yuuji, plucking through to find the right sizes, and decides he’s just grateful for what they have. The cabin is far more well-stocked than he’d anticipated.

What he doesn’t find in the closet, though, is the needle and thread he’s looking for. He’s pulled out every drawer in the bathroom, so he checks the bedside table next, and lo and behold, some god is looking out for them here. Right on top inside the single drawer is a small box full of those mini suture kits, sealed and filled with nylon thread. He won’t even have to boil anything to sterilise it. He wonders again if this is Ieiri’s doing, or if the people who came before had the same problem as them and left their supplies behind for whoever wound up here next.

The last thing Megumi grabs is a washcloth off the bathroom counter, and then he marches back out to the living room. “Lie down,” he instructs Yuuji. “We’re going to do this quickly.”

While Yuuji gets himself situated, head placed on the armrest and wound on the open side of the couch, Megumi runs the kitchen faucet as hot as he can get it and douses the washcloth. He lets it soak through entirely, squeezes it out, and rinses his hands off with soap and water. There is a balance to be stricken between quick and thorough, determined and careful. He finds it and seizes it, and returns to Yuuji’s side with the washcloth at the ready.

In the moment before they begin, Yuuji looks up at him, where Megumi hovers, standing, by his side, with the purest look in his eyes Megumi has seen from him since Sukuna tore his heart out.

“Do you trust me?” Megumi asks, so much more weight behind the simple words than the situation calls for.

Those eyes show him the answer already. “Yes,” Yuuji breathes.

He draws back the bandage wrap with his own bloody hands, and Megumi swoops in to ease the bleeding and give the wound one final clean. With his other hand, he reaches behind him and tugs the coffee table forward, as close as he can get it so that he can sit down and lean in close. He dabs across the length of the wound, keeps his expression neutral, and focuses in. He feels like he’ll distract himself if he looks at Yuuji’s face again, so he takes to studying the curve of the wound, the way the flesh parts around exposed tissue, and thinks about how best to seal it. He hopes he has enough thread.

Only once the bleeding has drastically slowed again and he’s peeled off the bandages does he set the washcloth aside and shake off his damp hand. This will be over quickly, he promised.

A long, trembling breath fills Yuuji’s lungs, and then he falls still as Megumi slips the suture packet from his pocket. Eyes follow the motion of tearing it open and gathering the small items inside. It takes him a few tries to thread the needle, but he ties it off with little trouble and poises his hands above the wound.

Just once, he allows himself a glance at Yuuji, who has turned to stare at the ceiling, and really is too still now. Megumi squints at him. “You need to breathe.” Yuuji squirms in place and sucks another breath in. It’s not perfect, or pretty, but Megumi murmurs his assent. “That’s it. Keep taking deep breaths in and out. Are the pills working?”

“A little,” Yuuji manages shakily. He shifts his position again and eases himself down until he’s more stable on the couch and doesn’t need as much core strength to support himself—which is good, because Megumi needs him to not jerk away, needs his abdominal muscles relaxed.

The second Yuuji is finished making himself comfortable—or at least as comfortable as he can be—Megumi moves.

Needle breaks skin. The metal runs through smoothly, tugging the nylon in and under and back out with it, and Yuuji whimpers, but Megumi persists. He takes the easier route, the one Ieiri taught him is safer than the professional technique with a curved needle and deep tissue work, and trusts she’ll be able to pick up the metaphorical slack once Yuuji is in her care. This doesn’t need to be pretty, Megumi reminds himself, but it does need to be good, so he does only what he trusts himself to be capable of.

“You’re doing it again,” he murmurs three stitches in.

The image of Yuuji’s eyes glazing over and his jaw tensing is so strong in his mind, he doesn’t need to look up to see it. He watches the edges of the wound come together and wills them to remain.

“Doing what?” Yuuji’s voice wobbles, weak and faint. Queasiness makes itself audible in the way he slows down his next breath and swallows thickly.

Megumi scowls and resists the urge to scoff. Another stitch appears to cover another few centimetres of the laceration. It’s not as deep as Megumi first thought, and it’s a clean cut from one end to the other, not difficult to deal with. He’s helped other sorcerers with worse. But this time bothers him, and he can’t identify why. It’s not the wound. It’s not putting himself forward to take care of another person. “You’re trying to block out the pain again. And I get it, I wouldn’t want to sit through this either, but you’ve also been through worse than this without so much as flinching. What’s up?”

The words must dig deeper into Yuuji’s psyche than he intended, slip in through the opening to his circulatory system and seep through him like poison. He whimpers, vulnerable and unrestrained. Quiet cabin walls echo the pained sound. “Can’t it just hurt? Why do I need a reason?”

“I want you present with me.”

Megumi almost scares himself with how rushed the words tumble off his tongue. He huffs out a huge sigh and takes a moment to steady his hands. It’s a selfish request, but he feels it all the same. “It’s not good for you to force yourself to dissociate to escape any sort of feeling. You’re stuffing yourself into this cramped, dark space, and you shouldn’t be there. You should be here.”

To his surprise, this time, his words seem to calm Yuuji. He stops struggling, his body gives in a little more, and his breathing returns to stability. He fidgets with the hem of his rolled-up shirt in both fists, both clenched. The wad of bloodied bandages lies tossed and forgotten on the edge of the coffee table.

“You’re right.” Yuuji’s hands stop their fidgeting, and he sounds more sure of himself. “But you’re also wrong, you know.”

Another stitch. Another scowl. He doesn’t let himself lose focus. “About what?”

“I don’t try to block out the pain,” Yuuji admits. He’s still staring at the ceiling; Megumi would sense the pierce of his eyes in the flesh of his cheek otherwise. “I force myself to focus on it. I need to be strong enough to withstand… anything. But I also feel like I deserve it, sometimes.”

Megumi listens. His heart does not stutter, his hands do not shake. He runs the last stitch through Yuuji’s skin and ties off the end. Next he reaches again for the washcloth, which is a little cold now, but it’ll still help. He folds the used portion to the inside and flips it around to dab at the last bit of blood around the closed wound. He did a good job, if he’s allowed to judge his own work.

“Did you get much rest last night at all?” Megumi asks calmly.

Yuuji startles in sense more than form. His muscles don’t twitch, but his next breath wavers, and his hands fist around the hem of his shirt again. “Not really.”

There’s too much intimacy in spreading a line of antibiotic ointment across Yuuji’s bare side with the tip of his finger, but Megumi stays objective and expressionless, just getting the work done and not thinking much about it. He’s more worried about Yuuji himself. “You said there’s food in the kitchen, right? We should both eat something soon.”

“Right.” Yuuji swallows again and nods against the armrest. “Yeah, there’s plenty in the cupboards. I didn’t check very close, though, so I dunno exactly what there is.”

“That’s fine. I’ll figure it out.” Megumi lays down a thin layer of gauze, and he peels open one of the bandages, measuring it out over the wound before he removes the paper seals and fastens it over the gauze. All packaged up, the wound isn’t scary anymore; they’ll have to change the bandage once a day, and Yuuji will need to be careful not to pull on the stitches, but it all feels a bit more manageable now that they’ve taken better steps to take care of it.

Megumi’s hand drifts again to the small bandages on his face and collar. Yuuji must have been in pain, but still took the time and energy to put Megumi first, to get him settled in the bed after he’d collapsed a whole room away, removed his jacket, dabbed a cloth at every cut and bandaged them with his own hands. He’d taken care of him. Megumi exhales, glad, relieved, satisfied, that he got to do the same. The favour between them is returned, and the cabin breathes out a sigh of relief along with them.

He would have done this, though, even without any sort of exchange.

“All right.” Megumi begins to gather up the evidence, crumpling bandage wrappers, the needle and excess thread, and the old bloody wraps in his hands to take them away. “Are you injured anywhere else?”

Yuuji seems to freeze while he completes a check of himself, his eyes flitting nervously this way and that across the ceiling. His breathing has gone shallow again. “No, I don’t think so.”

The backs of Megumi’s knees press into the coffee table to push it away as he stands. It’s easier to see Yuuji’s face from above, to make out the stress wrinkles in his forehead and the downward turn of his lips. Tiny storms form whorls in his eyes, and Megumi wishes he could smooth them out. “Are you still focused on the pain?” he asks, far gentler than he would usually allow himself.

Visibly, Yuuji winces, teeth gritted and eyes squeezing shut, like he’s been caught and accused of something terrible, and doesn’t want to disappoint Megumi. “A little.”

“Is that why you haven’t noticed we’re done?”

Shock ricochets through Yuuji from head to toe. He jerks his chin forward and cranes his neck so he can see his abdomen and the freshly placed bandage. Next, he looks at Megumi, those storms spinning in new directions, mouth opening and closing like a fish. “Wow, Fushiguro,” he gapes. “That wasn’t bad at all.”

For a moment, Megumi thinks he has some witty response to that, but nothing makes its way to his tongue as he stares at the awe on Yuuji’s face. Finally, he turns over his shoulder with a scoff and stalks back to the kitchen to dispose of the trash. He locates a pull-out bin just to the left of the sink, tosses everything, and moves to wash his hands. From the couch, he feels Yuuji’s eyes follow him, but when he glances over, Yuuji busies himself with, presumably, poking at the bandage and adjusting his shirt.

“Don’t mess with it,” Megumi calls over in a warning tone.

“‘M not.”

When Megumi comes back around, though, Yuuji is still tracing the outline of the bandage with fingers that shake a tiny bit. His gaze has grown foggy again, and Megumi thinks about what he can do to snap him out of this—if he can figure out a way to leave him alone for two minutes without losing him. “Itadori,” he says.

Yuuji doesn’t acknowledge him, doesn’t look up, but he hikes his shirt a little higher and frowns down at the covered spot. “Are you sure—”

“Itadori.” Megumi lashes out a hand to grab him by the shoulder, startling him enough to get him to stop touching the bandage. He waits until Yuuji meets his gaze and holds him there, nothing but their breath between them. “Relax,” Megumi tells him at last. “We’re done.”

At the pace of molasses dripping from a spoon, Yuuji lets go of the tension in his face, his shoulders drop, and his hands move back to his sides. “Okay,” he murmurs, only a small crackle in his voice now. His chest rises and falls; the storm starts to clear from his eyes. “Okay. I trust you, Fushiguro.”

“Good. Idiot.” Megumi rolls his eyes, his ability to outwardly express tenderness sapped. He doesn’t let go of Yuuji, though, only readjusts his grip to wrap an arm around Yuuji’s middle to help him sit. “Come on, move forward a little.”

And Yuuji—touchy, warm, companionable Yuuji—takes Megumi’s free hand without hesitation and puts his other hand on his arm to steady himself. In his ear, Megumi murmurs, “Don’t pull too much,” but he means for the sake of the stitches, not his arm. Together, they bear his weight, and Megumi nudges him into place until he turns to put his back to the soft cushions. “You okay there?”

Yuuji nods once, looking a little ill, but he settles in and closes his eyes after a moment. “I’m okay. Thanks.”

Megumi can’t help but hover, his hands extended in case he needs to—what, stop Yuuji from falling off the couch? Force him into place so he doesn’t strain his stitches? “Just be careful,” he settles for eventually, withdrawing bit by bit until Yuuji cracks one eye open and offers a small smile to reassure him. Maybe the pills are doing their job now.

An ache Megumi can’t explain creeps through him as he goes about his next few motions, and his head spins again, fatigue weighing him down. He must have put more stress on himself in the act of taking care of Yuuji than he thought. But it’s not exactly the taking care of that’s drained his energy—no, if anything, all that that responsibility causes is a distant pulse in the back of his mind as he kneels beside the TV set and searches through the cabinet of DVDs, a subtle urge to turn around, to check that Yuuji is still there, that he doesn’t need anything—and it doesn’t bother him, he swears. A favour for a favour. Friends looking out for friends. It’s something else, as if a sheen of worry has fallen off of him all of a sudden, a sheet of ice letting go of a glacier to collapse into the water, a piece of him gone missing. Megumi leans his weight into the hand he’s got on the swinging cabinet door.

“You okay?” Yuuji calls.

Megumi grabs a case labelled season one of Pokémon and slides the first disc into the DVD player. He hauls himself back to his feet. “I’m fine. Try to rest for a while, okay? I’ll get something going for us to eat.”

He leaves the remote controller with Yuuji and wanders back to the kitchen, where he can still see him, he reminds himself, even if it’s only the back of his head. Except for those quick glances, though, Megumi feels himself switch into autopilot. A night of rest with no RCT to treat his wounds isn’t enough after opening his domain after all. He wonders how much Yuuji feels it too. If he’s as exhausted as Megumi is, with the energy his body needs to divert to healing, and if he can sense the tension in the air wound up by the heaviness in Megumi’s limbs.

Lucky for them, there’s pork cutlet tucked away in the far back of the freezer. Megumi drags it out and shakes the ice off the package. It might not be perfect, but they could use the protein. “Hey, Itadori, can you defrost frozen meat in a way that doesn’t involve putting it in the fridge for hours?”

It takes a moment for Yuuji to pull his attention from the TV. He seems enraptured by the first episode, or, again, maybe just tired. “Yeah, sure,” he calls back, head turned but eyes still stuck to the screen. “Put it in a bowl in the sink and fill it with lukewarm water, then leave the faucet dripping. You can still cook it even if it’s a little frozen, it’ll be fine. Just do that for thirty minutes or so.”

That’s the best he’s going to get, Megumi figures, so he unwraps the pork and does as instructed. Next, he takes out some frozen vegetables, and opens every cupboard until he finds an old, slightly rundown rice cooker. He gets it powered on okay, though, and finds an unopened box of white rice in a higher cupboard. Once everything is more or less going, he lets out a sigh of relief and just leans his head on the counter for a little while. Thirty minutes later, give or take, he has a meal to return to Yuuji with.

He sets a plate and a pair of freshly rinsed chopsticks on Yuuji’s lap, and the gratitude that alights Yuuji’s weary eyes is unmistakable. He beams at Megumi, and now it’s him his sticky gaze lingers on, longer than Megumi deems healthy for how quickly his heart ticks over in response to the concentrated attention.

Yuuji is quiet, steady, patient in his swift prayer, hands clapped together and head bowed like he isn’t alone in the presence of his closest friend in an abandoned cabin in an isolated field. Stark nothingness surrounds them, and they don’t even have a reason for why the gods chose to snow them in and trap them here, but Yuuji thanks them nonetheless. It’s endearing, and it shouldn’t be; the food is plain, for Megumi has never been the greatest cook, scared to even use much seasoning, and he’s working with what they have; but everything they do have is working out okay so far, and perhaps it’s just Yuuji’s positivity rubbing off on him, but Megumi is still thankful. He settles beside him on the couch and cradles his own plate in his lap, and he’s not unhappy.

This is different than being on campus. It’s different than being across the cold dining table in the common kitchen, and it’s especially different from the freedom the dorms allow Megumi. There, he can disappear as he wills, take his food back to his room, and be alone.

But here, Yuuji is right beside him, seemingly content to watch the episodes of an old show roll on and on, one right after the other. The couch is all they have out here, not even a stool in the kitchen, and with Yuuji planted right in the middle, Megumi is closer to him than he would choose to be practically anywhere but in a car with three people stuffed in the back seat. He doesn’t quite know what to do with himself, so he eats, and gets up to take their plates back and wash them, sits back down, stands up and checks the closets again. He fiddles with his cracked phone until Yuuji tells him there’s no use, giving up his tense looks over to just reach out and put a hand over Megumi’s. There’s no signal out here, he says. His skin is rough and calloused where it graces the smooth curve of Megumi’s hand. He retreats back into his own space and focuses once more on the TV, and he seems so much calmer now.

Warmed by the meal and the crackle of the fire, Megumi slips into a daze as they watch Ash on his adventures. There’s nothing more to do to pass the day while the sun traces a slow path across the sky and nears the distant horizon. Nitta doesn’t come. No one does. Megumi doesn’t mind as much as he thought he would.

No curses attack them here; there is no homework, no responsibility, just him and Yuuji, safe for the time being. Megumi wonders if he’s fallen into something resembling a good dream.

They’re well into the first season of Pokémon when he hears the first of Yuuji’s soft snores from beside him. Megumi turns, surprised, to find him nodding off right where he sits, position maintained, head dipping forward until his chin hits his chest. That explains the snoring then. Megumi lets out an amused, slightly fond, puff of breath.

“Itadori,” he murmurs, reaching over to shake him by the shoulder. Yuuji doesn’t stir, at first, so he tries again, firmer, moving closer. “Itadori, wake up.”

He really must be exhausted. Yuuji startles almost immediately, but it’s obvious he’s out of it, eyes heavy and whimper soft. “Sorry,” he says, self-aware and too self-conscious. He already takes measures to stretch himself out, wincing when he pulls just a bit at his side, and moves his limbs around. “I’m fine, sorry, I don’t want to take up the couch.”

“You’re not going to.” Megumi doesn’t really think. It’s something about the soft, easy environment of the cabin, the dull but steady lap of the fireplace and smell of burning wood, and the sleepy way Yuuji blinks at him with those big, puppy-dog eyes. Megumi lifts his hand from his shoulder only to loop it around his wrist and tug it with him when he stands. “Come on. You need a nap.”

Yuuji frowns, but he’s pliant enough to follow along, rising carefully from his seat to let Megumi lead him around the couch. “Where are we going?”

“To the bedroom so you can lay down.”

Yuuji tenses and yanks himself back, but Megumi tightens his grip. “No, that’s okay, I want you to have the bed.”

“I’m not using it right now,” Megumi retorts, turning around with his nose wrinkled in exasperation. “You want me to be able to sit on the couch, but you won’t take the bed, either?”

“It’s yours now.” The shake of his head Yuuji offers is adamant and must make him dizzy. “You needed it, Fushiguro—”

Megumi tugs him forward, and Yuuji must be weak enough that he can’t quite fight it, can’t wriggle free from Megumi’s touch as he steps around behind him and pushes him through the open doorway. “And now you need it. I’m not taking no for an answer.”

He has to admit, Yuuji puts up a good struggle along the way, but Megumi manages to more or less manhandle him towards the bed until he can draw back the covers and sit him in it. He can feel, step by step, the exhaustion take over Yuuji’s limbs and aching body as the last of his energy leaves him in a slow tap. The last effort he makes to protest is to wrestle his arm free from Megumi’s grasp and try one more verbal plea. “I’m all right, really, Fushiguro. I’m not even sleepy anymore.”

Megumi peers down at him and has to stop himself and curse silently when he’s stricken by the urge to cup Yuuji’s face in his hands, frame him with careful fingers and trace them over every bit of hurt he can find. The dark circles beneath his eyes, the droop of his eyelids, the downwards curve of his lips, the sweat on his forehead. Megumi wants to wipe it all away until Yuuji is left unbothered, rested. He’d be wise to bet Yuuji didn’t get any rest in the night at all. He probably stayed up staring at the corners of the cabin, in pain, fretting about Megumi. He wouldn’t admit it in a million years. He refuses to admit it now.

“You’ll feel sleepy again when you lay down,” Megumi points out, voice strained. “Why are you so insistent on arguing with me?”

Yuuji looks away, his mouth twisting in a pout. He shrugs once up and down but doesn’t answer. To Megumi’s surprise, very slowly, he adjusts himself until he’s ready to lay down, and Megumi catches him on the way so he doesn’t hurt himself. He supports his shoulder with one hand and lets Yuuji hold onto the other with a grip that could be firmer. He hopes that a good sleep will help him, that he’ll be on his way to healing soon enough, and maybe Megumi can wash away his injuries in ways other than with his bare hands.

Late afternoon sunlight bleeds across the pillows and subdivides Yuuji’s face. He peers at Megumi, unblinking, hands resting on his stomach, and just watches him for a moment.

“What?” Megumi demands. He should go over and close the blinds, he thinks, but Yuuji stops him before he can move.

“Thank you.” He lets out a short sigh, and he doesn’t smile, but it’s a near thing. “Just—thank you, Fushiguro.”

Stock-still and nervous, Megumi frowns, but it’s not a frown of discontentment or irritation. He’s not sure what is is, can’t pinpoint the meaning behind his emotions. “You’d do exactly the same,” he murmurs. He grabs the edge of the wool blanket and sheets before Yuuji can say more, waits for him to lift his hands, and drags the whole array to his chin. He spends a moment tucking him in around the edges for no reason whatsoever. By the time he’s finished and stands back again, Yuuji’s eyes have closed, and his breathing is deep and even.

Megumi allows himself fifteen seconds of staring down at him and that stray beam of sunlight. He moves away silently, gets the blinds, shuffles out of the room.

The living room is the farthest place he can banish himself to. Outside, the sky stays clear, and the snow that piled up overnight curls in soft beds against the side of the cabin, where sunlight can only hope to melt the crystals. Megumi slumps so far into the couch he thinks he might be falling. He stays there for a long time, eyes wide open, wondering.

It’s a couple hours later that he stands at the kitchen counter again in the same spot to finish off a pot of instant broth. He’s unused to cooking for Yuuji; more often than not, Yuuji is the one cooking for him, and Megumi sees it as a communal sort of meal preparation that the others are kind enough to let him in on even when he doesn’t contribute much. No, Megumi is often the one to stand in the corner and prepare tea and coffee, which Yuuji and Nobara don’t always drink. The second years do, though, and he’s never been sure if there’s any more depth to it than making him feel like he has worth in their common kitchen.

Here he is, though, with still no sign of a car arriving to pick them up, Yuuji more or less bedridden, and Megumi on his own with the provisions he wheedles from the cupboards and two bowls set out for two people. Yuuji is a growing boy who eats a lot, and Megumi is a slightly less active boy who doesn’t eat as much, so he fills Yuuji’s bowl with an extra large helping and sets his own aside to eat after he brings him his.

A cloudy haze has set in by the time he slips back inside the bedroom with the bowl cupped in his hands. Some mix of nighttime and the snow casts blue shadows on the wall through the curtains. It’s peaceful, Megumi thinks.

Yuuji is still asleep, almost in the exact same position he was left in, hands splayed over his stomach, head tilted to the side into the pillow. A thin trail of drool sticks to his bottom lip. There is such a difference between the moments he’s engaged in battle, high-strung and concentrated, and the moments he’s here, in this soft place with his eyes lightly closed, his guard dropped completely right in front of Megumi. He trusts him so much, it’s clear, letting Megumi stitch him up like that. Letting him see him like this.

He almost feels bad about waking him, but Yuuji needs more than one method of healing. He needs to eat, needs protein, iron. Megumi places the bowl on the bedside table and leans in to rub his shoulder. He doesn’t want to shake him for fear of jostling the wound and making it hurt. “Hey, I brought you dinner. You need to wake up now.”

A light that isn’t present in the room, just in his eyes, sparks to life the moment Yuuji wakes. He sucks in a breath and reaches instinctually to wipe the drool from his mouth. Until he focuses in on Megumi, or even realises he’s standing there, he’s all soft edges and clumsy movements, readjusting in bed as he processes his surroundings. Then he looks up. Already, he’s brighter than before.

“Hey,” he murmurs, a dazed crackle in his voice. He furrows his brow and blinks heavily. “What?”

Megumi disguises a breath of laughter as a patient exhale through his nose. He feels fond, and he doesn’t understand why, doesn’t know what to do with it. So instead, he withdraws and positions himself stiffly at the bedside. “Dinner,” he repeats flatly. “I made soup.”

“Oh.” A slow understanding seems to dawn with that glow in his eyes. Yuuji starts to push himself up and tugs the covers away from himself. He’s still a little weak, if the way he can’t quite grasp the thick quilt to properly push it away is anything to go off of. Maybe it’s just because he’s sleepy. “Sure, let me—”

“No. No, stay here.” Megumi’s next sigh is more forceful and not as patient. He reaches over to grab the bowl again, and tilts the spoon so the handle faces Yuuji as he hands it over. He watches to make sure Yuuji has a good grasp on it before he turns on his heels and heads back out to the kitchen. His own stomach is growling, admittedly, and he longs for the warmth he’ll be able to siphon from his own bowl.

“Fushiguro,” comes Yuuji’s anxious voice before he can make it too far beyond the doorway.

Less exasperated than he expects himself to be, Megumi glances over his shoulder. “What?” he calls back.

Yuuji doesn’t answer. The soup will have to wait. Megumi resigns himself to plodding back to where he just came from and props one hand on the open doorway. “What?” he asks again.

“I just wanted you to come back.”

Something heavy and south of comfortable, but not exactly uncomfortable, stirs in the pit of Megumi’s stomach. Wide-eyed and silent, he stares across the room for a solid minute and tries to rationalise this statement in his mind. He tries to tell himself that Yuuji is tired, and confused, and in pain, and that all compounds to form the reason why he sounds so desperate. There’s no other reason for the strain in his voice, or the worry in his eyes, like he believed Megumi would leave him and just keep walking, get his shoes on for real this time, and force him to stay, alone in the big, empty bed. His lip twists like a child’s. He looks like he might cry.

And it gets to him. It reaches down and grabs the thing in Megumi’s stomach, twists it and shapes it into something resembling acquiescence, and Megumi can’t help but feel that a part of him breaks. It is not a harsh breaking, but rather the faint crack of a thin wall of frost giving way beneath a ray of sun. For a while, he stands and waits. There’s nothing for him to say as the newly shaped emotion settles inside of him.

“Fushiguro?”

“Okay,” he says at last, and only this eases the tension from Yuuji’s creased face. “Be right back,” he promises.

This is the boy whose life he saved. This is the boy whose side he mended with his own hands, skin stitched together to form a whole. This is the boy whose side he returns to in the thick of battles, and with a second slowly cooling bowl of soup in his hands. Megumi takes a breath, sits down on the edge of the bed and cradles the bowl in his lap, and, giving up the fight to reason with himself, lifts his spoon to his lips.

At the sight, Yuuji relaxes a little more and starts to eat, as well. They stay quiet, nothing much but a muffled comment here and there to fill the space. Megumi faces the wall and blinks at his noncommittally. Yuuji faces Megumi.

“You can go back to sleep, if you want. It’s nighttime anyway.”

They’re at a point where Yuuji looks like he’s more or less finished with the bowl, or at least with the tiring act of lifting his spoon over and over. His eyes droop in the near complete lack of light. He sits slumped against his pillow. “No, I’ll stay up with you,” he mutters anyway.

Megumi shakes his head. He’s so stubborn, sometimes. Without giving him a chance to think twice about it, he takes the bowl from Yuuji like he took the water glass, or like he took his clothes away when Yuuji changed after having his wound taken care of. A deep frown creases Megumi’s mouth as he glances out at the darkened sky outside. Even the snow is invisible now. His heart flutters in his chest for a reason he can’t place.

“Go to sleep, Itadori,” Megumi insists. And that’s the last he says—he refuses to wait and see if Yuuji calls after him again (he doesn’t). He feels well enough now that he can make himself comfortable on the couch, and hopefully get some quality sleep (he won’t). But he senses the moon high in the sky, and he summons Kuro to keep him company, letting the dogs trade off in their tasks like he usually does.

The couch is more comfortable than he anticipated, but still, he feels awful for unintentionally banishing Yuuji out here the night prior. Not that he’d say that aloud. He might be grateful that Yuuji put him first and took the time to clean his wounds and tuck him in if he weren’t so annoyed. When will he learn to ask for what he needs?

Megumi tucks himself in this time, fluffs up the pillow Yuuji must have taken from the bed and covers himself up with the blanket. He falls asleep with his fingers tangled in fur and that look on Yuuji’s face—anxious and strained, when he thought Megumi wouldn’t come back—burned into the backs of his eyelids.

Things are easier in the morning. There is still no sign of Nitta, or anyone, for that matter, but Megumi has taken it upon himself to reorganise the little cabinet of books and DVDs, and it soothes him. He picks out a nice novel for himself to read, a book with cherry blossoms on the cover and an interesting title. It covers the 2011 disaster, though, something he’d waded through the news coverage and some of the carnage of with Gojo by his side, when he was too small for any normal child to be forced to face such horrors. Quite a number of curses had popped up after the tide had taken Tohoku.

Megumi stops, puts the book down in his lap for a moment, and wonders how much Yuuji and his grandfather had been affected by the disaster. Or were his parents still alive, even? He’d never considered it before.

The notion makes him faintly ill. He keeps reading.

He’s not married to the book as the morning eases on, but he finds it more inviting once he starts thumbing through the pages at will instead of reading chronologically. The author must have put in work to stitch each scene together in exactly the way she did, but for now, Megumi is more focused on drawing meaning from select quotes that catch his eye than simmering in the plot. A woman has lost her daughter, and seeks a new foundation with a man and his young daughter who lost a wife, a mother. This doesn’t interest Megumi as much as the stark language does; he holds his breath reading a stray line about a man split in two in body and soul, and lingers on a sentence here, a paragraph there. Time flits past him in its wandering way and lets him engage at his own pace, with no pressure here inside the cabin.

‘Fragility does not reside in things so much as in flesh. An object can be repaired or replaced, but the body cannot,’ the message behind the story tells him. ‘Perhaps it is stronger than the soul, which once broken can remain so forever, but it is weaker than wood, lead, or iron.’

Megumi’s fingers grace each careful word, and he thinks of Yuuji.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear. A soft rustle from the doorway leads Megumi to look up, and there hovers Yuuji, sleep in his eyes and sunshine in his hair. He stumbles—only the slightest weakness in his balance—towards the couch and plops himself right down in the same spot he was in yesterday. Blearily, he reaches for the blanket that Megumi had folded and laid to rest on the back of the couch. He unravels it in an instant to pull around himself and finishes off his arrival with a jaw-cracking yawn.

“Good morning to you, too,” Megumi says after Yuuji neglects to utter a word. Just once, he allows himself to compare the last line he read to the curve of Yuuji’s cheek and the fluff of his hair, making a shape out of one and an uptick in heartrate out of the other. Then he turns the cotton page between his fingers.

Yuuji straightens himself out, and a small grin spreads across his lips. “Good morning,” he murmurs. They don’t often get to see each other like this, waking up in the early mornings, when they have classes to prepare for every weekday and missions on the weekends. It’s Monday now, and he’s curious to hear, eventually, how Nobara’s faring on her own.

Megumi admittedly checked his phone a few more times before he cracked his book open. Still no signal, and no word from Nitta, or Gojo.

“What are you reading?” Yuuji breaks his newfound position quickly enough. He seems more interested in leaning in to get a peek into Megumi’s open hands and the book that waits there.

Sucking in an irritated breath through his teeth, Megumi rests a hand between the pages to hold his place and flips the book closed to show Yuuji the cover. He waits for him to study it, a furrow in his brow, and his gaze catches on the soft fold of Yuuji’s lips. They’ve never been this close in the morning, physically.

“Oh,” Yuuji says at last. He doesn’t seem to have gathered much from the cover alone, and he sits back with a notable amount of care, settling himself back into the cushions again. In less than two days, that’s become his spot, in a way, just as the very end of the couch is Megumi’s. “What’s it about?”

“The tsunami,” Megumi answers bluntly. “Are you feeling okay? You don’t seem to be in much pain.”

Yuuji’s expression brightens. He shakes off some of the sleepiness that clings to him in order to grin and declare happily, “I took a couple more pills earlier. They work really well. I think Ieiri-san must have had something to do with it.”

Megumi studies him, tracing a line from the glisten of his honey eyes down to the place the wound rests, over which the fabric of the new-old abandoned shirt they’d changed Yuuji into is twisted in a loop. Yuuji must have been fidgeting with it, perhaps lost in thought or anxious over the stitching while he slept. Megumi thinks it’s more likely that his own tolerance for pain is bearing the brunt of it, and the pills are only speeding the process along. He doesn’t say any of this. He doesn’t speak aloud his observations.

“Well, good,” he sighs. “I’ll check the bandage later if you don’t want to do it yourself.”

“I should be okay,” Yuuji murmurs back.

For a moment more, Megumi does nothing but watch him. It’s easier to let himself get lost in the lines that make up Yuuji Itadori when they’re alone and not thinking about much, not doing anything in particular. Time moves in slow waves, and Megumi eyes him until Yuuji looks up in surprise, and Megumi is forced to turn his face down into his book and try to will away the warmth in his cheeks.

He clears his throat, and in the silence that comes naturally with being stuck alone in the cabin, dares to raise his voice to read aloud. He picks up right where he left off. “‘Exhausted, she sat down on the bench, which she’d wrapped up like a silkworm in its cocoon, feeling the weight of her boots, their soles packed with earth.’”

Yuuji stops shuffling, stops fidgeting where he sits. His attention catches somewhere on Megumi’s lips, thoughts threaded along by the stumble of the words on his tongue, and Megumi feels it, as strong as a fishing wire in his cheek but gentle as a fresh beam of sunlight. The warmth spreads through him, and he continues.

“‘If the world were to fall now, she told herself,’” he recites quietly, “‘she would fall with it, but if there was even the slightest chance of it staying upright, she would use every last ounce of energy she had to make that happen. The city below was still asleep…’”

For a little while, he keeps going from there, hurtling through more paragraphs at a pace he keeps tripping over when he has to voice each precious word aloud. But Yuuji, for whatever reason, moves closer as he reads, and a spike of anxiety runs up Megumi’s spine. He stops abruptly at the end of a sentence and flips around in the book again. If Yuuji cares, he doesn’t say so.

Megumi starts again where the warmth guides the tip of his finger. “‘In fact, for both of them, the meetings were starting to feel less like two strangers gathering at one point in the world to travel to another—’”

Yuuji’s next exhale brushes the side of his neck. Megumi tilts the book so he can see, and lowers his voice, with him so close.

“‘—and more like a return. Him returning to her. Her returning to him.’”

“That’s like us.”

Megumi stiffens, startled. Yuuji hadn’t hesitated for a second to speak at the end of the line. He’s reading along, Megumi notices, when he turns to look at him, his brow furrowed in concentration and lips pursed, but he lets Megumi read aloud to him anyway. He’s somehow manoeuvred himself close enough to touch. Close enough to let himself give into a soft lean, without stretching out his injury, and rest his head on Megumi’s shoulder.

“What?” Megumi asks, voice trembling.

“When we first met…” Yuuji sighs heavily and adjusts, squeezing himself further into the crook formed by the meeting of Megumi’s shoulder and the back of the couch, and pulls the blanket up to his stomach to bundle his arms in the soft folds. “We were just strangers who kept running into each other, always passing. But since then, it’s like I’m always returning to a point after we’re apart. I feel more right when I’m around you, Fushiguro.”

Yuuji finishes off this confession, of sorts, and settles, hard, against Megumi’s side. His breathing evens out, and he stays still except for the gentle rise and fall of his shoulder.

And now Megumi is left again in silence that is slightly less lonely than it was before Yuuji woke, and is heavier now that he’s fallen asleep again, in the last place Megumi expected him to be. He holds as still as he possibly can like Yuuji is one of his dogs settled down for a nap right on top of him, but this is also different, so painfully and unbearably different, because Yuuji is not a dog, he’s his best friend, and he just said quite a weighty thing that puts its fists up to the silence and dares it to drag Megumi down further than the confession just did.

He doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t blink. He holds the book in open hands and stares, and then closes it, slowly, no hand stuck between the pages this time to hold his place.

They’re back in the same place all over again, and they stay like that for a long time, Megumi frozen while Yuuji is so, so warm against him. The fire crackles, and the TV doesn’t play, and snow doesn’t fall. It’s bright outside. His chest hurts. Yuuji must be exhausted.

Megumi moves, eventually, and breathes life back into himself before nudging Yuuji awake so they can get started on lunch. The provisions aren’t the best food in the world, but he’s pleased they aren’t dwindling with every meal he cooks up. Yuuji joins him in the kitchen this time, doing minimal work to keep himself occupied without overdoing it, and the scent of cooked meat fills the cabin all over again. There’s nothing different or unique about this second day compared to yesterday. It meanders and rushes by at once, tangling with itself as Megumi’s sense of time grows musty and the kindling in the fireplace burns down to ash.

After a long/short afternoon and a dinner that’s enough, they’re back on the couch again, the only place they can go, and they’ve got the later episodes of Pokémon season one playing on TV. Megumi’s lost track of what episode they’re on by the time Yuuji remarks, “I’ve never seen this part before.”

Curious, Megumi glances at him and raises one eyebrow. “As in this scene, or the whole episode?”

“The whole episode.” Yuuji sits forward, chin propped up in his hand and elbow on his knee, and stares at the television screen like he’s trying hard to process what’s happening. “It’s been a few episodes now, actually. At first I thought I just didn’t remember them, but now I’m sure I just… haven’t seen this far before.”

On screen, Jessie and James argue over some mistake or other, but the sound fades to the background as Megumi looks at Yuuji and says, deadpan, “You’ve never seen the first season of Pokémon.”

Yuuji lets out a half-strained laugh and waves his hand dismissively. “No, that’s not what I mean. When I was little…”

In a few days from now, Megumi’s gaze will catch on the spine of a DVD case while he walks through a store looking for nothing in particular, and he’ll remember the dawning that alights Yuuji’s eyes, the process of sifting through his memories and dragging one to the surface visible on his face. Yuuji has always worn his heart on his sleeve, but there’s something about being trapped here together that softens them both, allows him to show his feelings clearly and Megumi to accept them as easily as reading through the pages of a book. He’s not sure he’s ever looked at a person and felt the deep desire to know them more than the knowing they’ve walked through already.

He doesn’t want to put a name to the feeling. But it tugs at his chest, fishing wire in his ribcage, too, all of it drawing him in the direction of Yuuji.

“When I was little, we got all our movies and shows and stuff on disc from the library,” Yuuji continues. His gaze is still fixed on the TV so he doesn’t miss a moment of the vintage content that, to him, is brand new. “There was one DVD in the series that our library didn’t have for some reason, like they lost it or something, I don’t know. We checked back all the time, but they never had it. I think it must’ve been this part.”

Megumi licks his lips and tries to rationalise the fact that he’s staring, openly, at Yuuji. “Itadori,” he says, softer than he means to, “I think we should sleep together tonight.”

This gets Yuuji’s attention, tears it away from the TV, and he whips around, eyes wide. “Sorry, what?”

“Not like that!” Megumi hisses. His tone goes sour, and he locks up immediately, sitting straighter and more stiffly and leaning away from Yuuji. “I mean, it’s stupid for one of us to keep sleeping on the couch when we’ve got such a huge bed that both of us are perfectly capable of fitting in together.”

Yuuji stares at him for a moment. “How did you get from Pokémon to that?”

“That’s not the point!”

“What if Nitta comes to get us soon?”

“She’s not going to, Itadori.” The confession comes fast and sharp, and Megumi watches the minute changes in Yuuji’s troubled expression as he heaves a sigh. “The managers don’t know the locations of all the safehouses. They’re safe for a reason and need to be kept secret. Nitta’s going to have to first go to the higher-ups to find out where we are before she can come get us.”

Yuuji opens his mouth to respond, but all that comes out is a wary, bleak, “Oh.” Somewhere in the midst of Megumi’s spiel, he’d grabbed the remote to pause the show, and now they’re just waiting for the bubble of tension to break. “So… do you think she’s coming at all, then?”

The beginning of a migraine pulses between Megumi’s eyes. He wonders if Yuuji is right about how well those pills work. “Of course she’ll come—or Ijichi or someone else, even—it just might be a few days.”

It’s difficult to ignore the obvious disappointment on Yuuji’s face. It sends a pang through Megumi, and he wishes he could do something to amend the situation—but there really is nothing to do but wait, bored as they may be, until help arrives.

Megumi is waiting for it, though, when Yuuji asks, “How did you know about this place, then?”

He looks away, finally growing tired of paying mind to every shift and crease of Yuuji’s lips, his slow-blinking eyes, his pinched brows, and turns instead to where the still frame captures Butterfree, with its pale wings and big eyes. “Gojo-sensei has gotten stuck here before,” he answers quietly, folding his hands together in his lap. “He’s made a lot of use out of the safehouses over the years. Sometimes I’d be with him, when I was younger. But when I’m not…”

He trails off, but he can feel Yuuji’s eyes on him now. They’ve switched roles.

“When I’m not, I like to keep tabs on him, sometimes,” Megumi says in a rush. His face is warm again, and he squeezes his eyes shut. “When he’s on a mission alone, I always figure out where the nearest one to him is, just in case he winds up there. Then, as I got older, Okkotsu and the others came along, and then you and Kugisaki, and—”

Yuuji rocks back and forth in his seat, glances away, leans closer, can’t seem to decide where to focus his gaze. “And you… started doing the same for all of us,” he finishes for him. “Is that what you’re saying?”

Megumi wrings his hands and grimaces. He didn’t plan on being so open and honest, but what else is he supposed to do, when Yuuji asks a question and there is nowhere he can hide in order to avoid the answer? He’s stripped bare here, and he doesn’t see the point in even trying to. “He’s the one who keeps the supplies well-stocked in most of the places. The food, bedding, stuff like that. But that’s not his shirt you’re wearing, and there aren’t any sweets in the kitchen here.”

“Does it make you feel worse? To know that other people have been here, and that, well, obviously, so are we, so it—”

“It’s possible,” Megumi cuts in. “I know it’s always possible someone I ca- that someone I know will be trapped here. Although, I suppose it makes me feel better to remember it’s not actually that bad.”

He thinks Yuuji might disagree, and he can sense the press of his lips and the fidget of his hands, but he doesn’t comment. He’s sure Yuuji isn’t unused to slow-paced living, but the excess limit of having a wound in his side probably isn’t helping him feel any semblance of control.

The television dims to its version of a lock screen, flickering once before it goes dark with the little disc symbol bouncing from corner to corner, and the two of them sit and soak in everything Megumi just said. The things he admitted. He’s not used to showing how much he really cares.

“Fushiguro.” Yuuji is the first to pop the bubble and bring them back down to the present, into a routine that’s much more comfortable and familiar. “I’m going to go take a bath and change my bandage. If you want the bed tonight, I swear I’m fine taking—”

“It’s not up for discussion anymore,” Megumi snaps. He looks right at him then, sharp and bold and firm, even though his heart is beating in his chest with a tenderness he can’t explain. “We’re sharing the bed. Go ahead and get ready, I’ll get things situated out here.”

Yuuji closes his mouth with an audible click. He gives Megumi one last long look and acquiesces with a sag of his shoulders. He picks himself up off the couch carefully and slinks away into the bedroom without another word. They didn’t even finish the episode they were on.

They switch off in the bathroom once Megumi has turned the TV off and taken the disc out, put the remote away, cleaned the last of their dishes from dinner, and tidied the couch. He takes the blanket and extra pillow with him, since they won’t be using them out here anymore, and lays them on the bed. He sits on the edge of the mattress on the side closest to the window and breathes for a while in the soft lamplight. They’re really lucky the cabin has electricity.

Yuuji calls for him when he’s finished in the bath, and Megumi stands to make his way over to the tiny corner the bathroom takes up. They cross paths on their respective ways, Yuuji heading out and Megumi in, or vice versa, depending on how you choose to view the destination. Is it the warm bath, to clear themselves of the long, uneventful/eventful, short/long day, pretend their conversations didn’t happen, or solidify that they did, and ease the tension from their muscles? Or the bed, empty and waiting, the wool blanket pulled back to usher them both beneath the covers until they’ve settled in a place they can call safe, together, if only for a little while?

Or is it the doorway, where Megumi pauses to linger on the bath-slicked shine of Yuuji’s shoulder in the dim light, and his gaze falls to the patch of bandage that nestles between his hip bone and ribcage, then up to the column of his throat to watch him breathe, while Yuuji hovers long enough to admire pieces of him that Megumi himself may never get to see?

“Stitches okay?” Megumi licks his already moist lips and finds his way to Yuuji’s eyes.

“They’re perfect,” Yuuji murmurs back. He stands there, awestruck by nothing Megumi can place, and leaves him to step into the bathroom and close the door behind him.

Megumi is grateful for the electricity, but the first thing he does is turn off the light and let himself take up space in the darkness. There are blinds on the small window on the far wall that Megumi can twist open, and he does, letting the glitter of the snow outside infiltrate the space. No one is here to see him from outside, anyway. Slowly, he takes off his borrowed shirt and pants, then his boxers, and leaves them in an unfolded pile on the floor while he washes up.

Finally, Megumi slips into the bath like a sugar cube being dunked into a hot cup of tea. He lets go of a breath he didn’t realise he was holding and leans his head back, a splash of water lapping at the tufts of hair near the back of his neck. Moonlight cascades over the dark waves in shocks of white and silver. Only his toes and face poke out, and then even those he dunks under, for a few moments. For a few moments, everything is quiet. Everything is still.

The towel he dries off with is warm, and then he’s pulling on a fresh t-shirt, and he thinks it’s funny that Yuuji sleeps shirtless in sweatpants and Megumi sleeps in his boxers and a tee. They come together in the oddest ways.

He’s surprised, though, when he steps out and Yuuji is perched on the edge of the bed where Megumi sat before, gazing out the window at the snow. He stops and holds still for a moment, then draws the covers back on the bed and clambers onto the mattress.

“Itadori,” he calls, and his breath catches in his throat, but the dull rattle eases as he slides in beneath the covers. The pillow is softer than he remembers it being two nights ago, when Yuuji tucked him in.

Yuuji glances over his shoulder, anxiety painted all over his face.

“Come on,” Megumi urges. He tugs Yuuji’s half of the covers open too, in the hopes it looks inviting enough to beckon him over. “It’s late. Lie down with me.”

Hesitation lines his stiff movements, but Yuuji does rise and turn around, studying the open spot on the bed for a long while before he decides to crawl in. He eases onto his back and lets out a huge sigh when he finally settled with his head on the pillow. Megumi hopes he took some more medicine while he was in the bathroom so he can get to sleep.

“You all right?” Megumi pulls the covers over himself. He’s lying on his back, too, but it’s hard to get comfortable like this. Still, he wants to check on Yuuji before he properly rolls over. “Comfortable enough?”

“I’m fine.” Yuuji shifts and snuggles down, and in the dark, he looks okay.

Megumi closes his eyes and starts to move away, turning in the other direction to face the bathroom. “Well, goodnight—”

“Fushiguro.” Yuuji’s fingers catch on the sleeve of his shirt. He tugs, hard, and the fabric stretches slightly, until Megumi rolls back over to stare at him, baffled. He doesn’t have to question for long, though. Yuuji’s breath hitches, and his voice is so tender, so fragile, so desperate when he whispers, “Stay.”

For a moment, all Megumi can do is freeze, the muscles in his neck and back pulled taut in his attempt to support himself in the precarious position. But he sees the look in Yuuji’s eyes, the gleam that lives there although he’s facing away from the moonlight, and slowly, his body unwinds.

“Okay,” Megumi says. “Okay. I’m not going anywhere, Itadori.”

He’s not sure what he’s doing. He can’t figure it out. But Yuuji seems to know the movements, knows the right way to shuffle closer to Megumi so that it doesn’t startle him, and he experiments with a hand on his shoulder. Megumi swallows thickly and nods, and the hand drifts further over him, feeling out spots on his back with light touches until his palm graces the back of Megumi’s head, sliding easily over still-damp hair; his fingers tangle in there and stay, just stay. Yuuji pulls him in. Yuuji keeps him steady.

There’s nowhere to go, no way for them to get away from each other here. They keep returning, always returning.

“I don’t know if I can sleep like this.” Megumi’s gone tense again, all his muscles behaving as though he’s about to face off against a curse instead of tucked into bed, his head nestled on the pillow near Yuuji’s collarbone. He stares vaguely somewhere over the slope of his bare shoulder and tries not to shake.

“Here.”

Megumi startles. Yuuji’s hand comes straight for his face and tries to touch there, and he reels back, would throw himself backwards right off the bed if he were close enough to the edge. His heartrate skyrockets. His eyes bulge. “What are you doing?”

Yuuji makes a sound in the back of his throat, a cross between distressed and amused, but he rests his hand on the mattress between them for one moment while he lets Megumi resettle and get comfortable with him again. “It’s something my dad did for me when I was really little. It helps,” he promises, voice still strained. Yuuji never talks about his parents.

The chill of the ceiling fan starts to get to him a little, and Megumi’s not sure what to think about himself that he’s torn between giving up and going back to the couch and wanting to give in, move forward again, let himself burrow into Yuuji’s arms and warmth where he allows him to.

“Do you trust me?” Yuuji asks.

Shivering, shaky, against his better judgement, walking a path of moments in life that have all led up to this one, Megumi breathes in and tells him, “Yes.”

Yuuji moves his hand again very slowly towards Megumi’s face. He waits for him to inch forward on his own, raises his other hand to rest it on the back of his head again, arm across the pillow above. He sticks out his thumb and touches it to the spot between Megumi’s eyes, where it hurt the worst earlier. From there, he draws it down in a soft line all the way down the bridge of his nose and to the tip, then starts again.

“Relax,” Yuuji murmurs, and Megumi lets out all the breath in his lungs in a long, long exhale.

Yuuji keeps it up, dragging the soft pad of his thumb down the bridge of his nose over and over in a consistent rhythm, and it doesn’t take long at all for the motion to make Megumi’s eyes heavy. He feels like he’s being rocked on a sailboat on open water. Yuuji’s touch vanishes, and his eyes flutter open, and they droop closed again, further each time, with each downward stroke. His body starts to relax in turn.

He doesn’t notice when it happens, the act of letting go. Sometime soon, his breath stutters from its quickened, rabbit-like pace into a slow, deep pattern that matches the rhythm Yuuji sets. A moment after that, his eyes slip closed and stay that way, and he thinks he hears Yuuji murmur, “There you go. You’re okay.”

Megumi falls asleep faster than ever, the two of them bundled together in the dead centre of the bed.

At the cusp of day, a good while after dawn, Megumi wakes disoriented, half-buried beneath the weight of the entire comforter, with one hand flat on the mattress on Yuuji’s side of the bed. He could get used to this, he thinks, waking up in this exact bed, under the dusty ceiling fan, with someone who radiates heat and snores just a little and didn’t really kick that much in the night beside him.

Except that Yuuji isn’t here. Megumi moves his hand around a little to search for him, but he’s just gone, leaving a shallow dip in the mattress and a wall of cold air in his absence. Maybe that’s why Megumi’s got the entire bedding set on top of him right now—Yuuji probably stacked it all on top of him to make up for the decrease in body heat. It takes Megumi a moment to shove the bedding off. Then he’s upright, dizzy from the haste, and blinking against the streaks of sunlight that pierce through the edges of the curtains.

“Itadori,” he calls out to the living room. Panic builds in his stomach like this is some sort of fluffy tale on the internet, chock full of yearning that Megumi can’t help but acknowledge in his half-aware state. His eyebrows knit together. He wants Yuuji to come back.

He’s about to clamber out of bed to go look for him when the sound of the front door opening echoes into the bedroom. “Fushiguro!” comes his partner’s distinctly not-panicked, almost-yearning shout. “Come outside and look at this!”

A wave of half relief and half disappointment settles over him. Okay, so Yuuji’s fine, but if he’s outside, he probably does not plan to come back to bed. Megumi tries to reconcile with the hollow feeling this carves out inside of him, grumbles under his breath, and slides his legs out of the bed with great reluctance. His toes are already brushing the floor when Yuuji calls for him again.

“Fushiguro, you there?” Footsteps trudge closer from the living room. Megumi can almost hear the crunch of melted snow on the wooden floorboards, and he can only imagine the mess he’s going to have to clean himself later, and then—

Then Yuuji, morning-fresh and flush-faced, pokes his head in the doorway with a grin illuminated by a beam of sun. It streaks across his eyes and tufts of his pink hair and warms his expression. “So you are up. Hey there, sleepyhead.”

Beautiful. Megumi opens his mouth and closes it again, and tries to shake away the unexpected thought. It’s not his fault Yuuji wakes so freakishly early, even still in recovery and dosed up on what may or may not be regular ibuprofen, but he’s painted with so much joy now, his hair ruffled beneath a knit hat he must have dug out from the closet, and a heavy coat bundled around him. He looks brighter and healthier than he has since they left school for the mission.

Still, Megumi finds himself annoyed at having woken alone. He scowls and pushes the mound of bedding further away from himself. “You’re the one who left.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” Yuuji doesn’t sound sorry at all. The twitch of his lips through his smile is so fond. “You were sleeping so well, and looked all cozy… Did you?”

Megumi blinks back at him. “Did I what?”

“Sleep well?”

For a moment, Megumi goes still, and his thoughts run blank. Lucidity comes back to him in bits and pieces. He did sleep well, he realises. He needs time to get past the initial shock, the rude interruption, and all the ways his heart twists against his will and seems to be trying to tell him something he doesn’t understand, but once that all begins to shed from his shoulders, he feels good. He’s still warm with sleep. The sunlight isn’t irritating. “Yeah,” he mutters, surprised. “Did you?”

Yuuji’s grin goes lopsided, and he reaches up to rub one gloved hand over the back of his neck. “Yeah, I did,” he agrees, quieter than usual. “It was nice.”

Megumi opens his mouth as if to say something else, but his jaw tenses, and he closes it just as fast as a flush comes across his cheeks. He ducks his head away and drags the collar of his shirt up to cover his face.

Yuuji, to his credit, doesn’t comment. “You should get dressed and come outside,” he urges. “I can’t believe we didn’t realise how nice it is outside before!”

“Hey, wait.” Megumi jerks his head to glare up at him again. “Should you really be out there messing around? Your side—”

“Is totally fine,” Yuuji cuts in with a smile that could melt all the snow and save them. “I’m all right, I promise. So come on, get up! You need fresh air.”

Megumi wants to argue more, wants to insist that Yuuji should be here, curled up in the bed beside him, but he snaps himself out of it quickly enough and rubs the sleep out of his eyes. “Yeah, just give me a minute,” he huffs, planting his bare feet on the floorboards. The sunlight feels like butter on his back. His head spins with a dizziness that isn’t from sleep, or a migraine, but that rather might have something to do with the quickened pace of his heart.

In the same old closet in the corner of the room, he picks himself out some new clothes to slip into and a padded winter coat. He manages to dig out some gloves, too, but forgoes a hat—it can’t be that cold, and Yuuji’s right, he needs fresh air, wants to feel it run its fingers through his hair. Maybe there’ll be a nice breeze for him to breathe in while standing outside with his nose running.

Yuuji’s on his knees in the snow the second Megumi steps out. He seems to be trying to roll the snow into balls, perhaps to build a snowman, or a miniature fort, but it’s clearly not working very well. He winces just a little each time he leans forward to pack in more snow, but it doesn’t seem to be on his side anyway.

“What are you doing?” Megumi shuffles forward, his moccasins not really enough to protect his feet, but he doesn’t care. He stands above Yuuji and scrutinises the work he’s done so far, a small pile of snowballs that begin to soften while he watches. “You’re not in any shape to be having a snowball fight. And those snowballs kind of suck, anyway.”

Yuuji whips his head to look up at him with a pout on his face. “Fushiguro, you’re so mean,” he whines. “It was supposed to be a snowman, but… yeah, it’s not… the greatest packing snow.”

Out here, Megumi feels a little more like himself. He thinks Yuuji must, too. His shoulders relax a little, and he offers a contemplative sigh before bringing his hands together, clasping them even around the thick material of his gloves. “Here.”

In a moment, Shiro emerges from Megumi’s long shadow, forming prepped in a pounce to dive straight into Yuuji’s pile of snowballs. They go forgotten, though, when white dog collides with white snow and eager boy shrieks with glee and stacks himself on top of them both. Yuuji wastes no time wrapping his arms around Shiro’s neck and burying his face in its fur, laughing like there’s no tomorrow.

And ever so briefly, Megumi allows himself to feel fond. A small grin spreads across his lips.

While Yuuji is busy with the dog, though, hopefully not about to pop any of his stitches, Megumi glances up at the distant horizon.

It stretches far. Just like the night of their mission, the night they stumbled together through the snowbanks, across the fields, and arrived at the cabin that has, in certain ways, become theirs, the snow covers everything as far as the eye can see. Megumi holds his breath and waits for something to happen, but nothing does. Yuuji’s laughter and Shiro’s barks echo off the muffled landscape.

Megumi takes a step forward. The snow crunches thick and heavy beneath his feet.

Something’s got a hold of him, and he starts walking, the self he felt return to him just a few moments ago coming unmoored. But he’s determined all of a sudden—he wants to see how far the horizon goes. He wants to know if he can get them out of here. Through his daze, he barely hears Yuuji call his name in question.

Could he leave him here? How long would it take him to walk to anywhere that resembles civilisation? Megumi’s well-rested by now and more sure of his strength, sure he’s got the energy to keep going, though it might have been better if he’d eaten something first. What he’s not sure about if he means to go all the way now or just scope out the path, but if they can get out of here, the sooner the better, he thinks. His chest feels tight out of nowhere. Shiro barks somewhere behind him.

“Fushiguro?” Yuuji’s voice rings out.

Yuuji seems to be moving rapidly through the stages of healing. He has enough food to last him if it takes Megumi a little while, but he shouldn’t come with. No, he should stay here and rest—surely they can stand to be apart for hours, maybe a day or two. Megumi doesn’t remember where exactly they were dropped off, or how far they walked to get here.

“Fushiguro!”

His head feels like it’s spinning for a different reason now. He doesn’t know quite where he’s going. He just needs to go straight until he hits something, until he can solve the problem and bring help back to Yuuji, or just get out of here and send someone back to him while he retreats to campus, away from this place where nothing is familiar and Gojo isn’t here and neither is Nitta, because Nitta isn’t coming, right? He said so himself, and the snow crunches and shifts beneath his feet, even trips him a few times, but he catches himself, and if he just keeps walking—

“Megumi!”

There is such raw distress in Yuuji’s tone, the name tearing itself free from his throat with a mix of fear and grief he hasn’t felt yet, that it stops Megumi dead in his tracks. He snaps out of his daze and blinks rapidly. He breathes in, a deep, cleansing breath of fresh air, and turns back over his shoulder.

His heart nearly sinks right down into the snow and buries itself there. Yuuji is small in the distant past. Megumi walked much farther than he meant to.

It looks like Yuuji tried to follow him, got a little ways away from the cabin, but couldn’t quite keep up. He’s bent over halfway and clutching his stomach. Megumi doesn’t need any signal more than that. He pivots on his heels and marches right back towards him, and then he’s running, his heart thundering in his chest.

“Megumi,” Yuuji chokes out, stumbling towards him.

It doesn’t feel right until Yuuji is safely in his arms. Megumi captures him in an embrace and holds him close until he feels whole again, presses a hand to his back to feel his heartbeat and rests his chin on his shoulder until the conditions of the return are satisfied. Something would have broken inside of Megumi if he’d walked too far, left too long. He’s not sure why he’s so certain.

“I’m sorry for freaking out.” Yuuji buries his face in the fluff of Megumi’s jacket against his shoulder. He sounds near tears, or hysterics, and his voice comes out in a whimper. “You were just getting so far away, and then the dog disappeared, and—”

“It’s okay.” Megumi rubs his back in slow circles and just holds him. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Are you okay?” Yuuji draws back enough to look at him, distress clear on his face, but he doesn’t move more than his head and his hands so he can get a look at Megumi. “Look at you, you’re shivering.” He puts his hands on Megumi’s cold cheeks, checks him all over, and then takes his own hat off to settle it on Megumi’s head.

Megumi scrunches his face up and waits for him to adjust the hat, but when he peeks his eyes open, Yuuji looks no less concerned. His heart crawls up to his throat. A strange combination of dread and understanding washes over him, bit by bit, until his eyes go wide, and everything Yuuji’s done over the past few days really clicks. “You were worried about me,” he whispers. Not just now, but—“All this time. You were worried about me.” He echoes the words in awe and confusion, and that emotion in the pit of his stomach he can’t name grows warm.

Yuuji hesitates, takes a step back. “Well, yeah,” he stammers. “You were exhausted, Fushiguro, and I’ve never seen you open your domain before. It was—” He takes in a deep, hiccuping breath. “It was—”

“Itadori.” All Megumi can think to do is wrap his arms around him again, pull him in and hold onto him tight, like he plans to never let go. Maybe he won’t. Yuuji is warm, and soft, and safe, and Megumi lays his head on his shoulder and steadies himself in the frigid air. “I’m okay. We’re both okay.”

There’s no one out here to see them, to witness the embrace they bind each other in, arms looped over arms, chests rising and falling in tandem. They close their eyes and stand frozen for a long while. So long the cloud cover becomes too heavy, and the sky breaks, letting the first new, puffy flakes of snow drift down around them. The world stands still, too, and falls silent, a hush coming across the fields as the very earth holds its breath.

“We should go inside,” Megumi murmurs at last, blinking his eyes open to see the snowfall. “We might end up getting snowed in even more.”

Yuuji laughs, a broken, uneasy sound free of mirth, but he nods all the same.

They stumble in side by side, never letting go of each other, always touching in some way. A hand on the other’s arm. Fingers brushing. Squeezing in close to one another. Megumi drops into a crouch to untie Yuuji’s shoes while Yuuji rests a hand on his shoulder, then he slips his own off, too. He rises, and Yuuji meets his gaze and reaches out to unzip Megumi’s coat without a word. He moves slowly, his eyes glazed and focused on the zipper, and Megumi focused on his face. But when the zipper comes undone, Yuuji’s eyes drift upward and linger on Megumi’s lips. They’re both breathing heavily in the quiet space, and standing so close, still. Megumi steadies himself with both hands on Yuuji’s upper arms.

He shirks off his jacket one sleeve at a time, eyes not leaving Yuuji’s face, licks his lips, tosses the coat over the arm of the couch. He helps Yuuji do the same, until it’s just them and two layers of fabric between them, shirts on otherwise bare chests.

Yuuji’s gaze flicks up to meet his eyes again. He looks at him with a heated gaze, and like he’s hungry. Like he’s realising something that has been just out of reach all the time they’ve known each other.

“Itadori,” Megumi whispers. He can feel his pulse in his throat, hear the blood rushing in his ears.

Dazed, all Yuuji does is nod, tongue poking out to moisten his dry, parted lips. He reaches up and places his hands on either side of Megumi’s head and starts walking, guiding him backwards, while they shuffle hip to hip, chest to chest. Megumi swallows thickly as Yuuji brings him to the couch and sits him down, and he’s pretty sure the only reason they break eye contact is to explore the rest of each other’s faces; flushed cheeks, fluttering eyelashes, rosy lips.

Megumi’s never felt more steady in his life. Yuuji leans in towards him.

And then there’s a knock at the door that scares them both nearly out of their skin.

The moment shatters, the tension breaks, and they stare at each other until Megumi is the first to react. He leaps off the couch and nudges Yuuji down in his place. He runs his hands through his hair, straightens out his shirt, and heads for the door.

It swings open, the little barrier keeping them inside this world where it’s just the two of them, and on the other side stands Nitta. Breathless, tense, and frazzled, but she’s there.

“Fushiguro-kun!” She sounds more relieved than ever to see him, and an ecstatic laugh bubbles from her throat. “Oh, thank goodness. Is Itadori-kun with you? Are you both all right?”

Megumi gestures behind him to the couch, where Yuuji peers over and waves, still looking a little out of it. They weren’t expecting her. Megumi didn’t think she’d come for days, still.

“We’re fine, Nitta-san,” he announces. “Itadori has a wound on his side, but we got it taken care of. Neither of us are badly injured.”

This is the part he’s used to, tumbling headfirst into a report, an objective dictation of the matter at hand. Even so, he still needs a minute to process that this is it, that their time in the cabin is over, and they’re going home. He’s pretty sure he should feel more relieved than he does.

Nitta drops into a low bow, the ends of her short hair almost scraping the floor. “I’m so sorry,” she rushes to say. “We weren’t able to get to you when the storm began, and we weren’t sure exactly where you were or where you could have gone, and then we had to pinpoint the location of this safehouse and petition for the information, and even then the ploughs didn’t get way out here in the country for a few days, and I had to park quite a ways away—”

“Nitta.” Megumi holds his hands out in an attempt to placate her, equal parts amused and annoyed. “It’s all right. We’re fine, I promise. There were plenty of resources here to get by on.” He glances back at Yuuji for support and receives a vigorous nod, and only their agreement seems to finally calm Nitta down.

“Okay,” she sighs, running her hands down the front of her suit to smooth it. She doesn’t even have a coat on. “Okay, then, you’d better get your things together. We need to go, quickly; there’s another blizzard on its way.”

And that’s the end of it. The three of them move around the small cabin tidying everything for their leave: they make sure the fireplace is out, the bed is made, the dishes in the kitchen put away. Megumi and Yuuji get their shoes right back on and, after a quick debate, decide to leave the winter clothes behind and only take what they brought with them. They change back into their dirty, torn uniforms and hang the gently used shirts and pants and coats back in the closet. They don’t know who might need them next.

They do have a bit of a walk to get to the car, but it isn’t terrible, and the snow isn’t coming down too heavily yet. Megumi, by some newfound reflex, reaches back to take Yuuji’s arm when he notices him lagging. “I’m okay,” Yuuji murmurs, but Megumi tugs him along anyway until the car comes into view and Nitta ushers them safely into the back seat.

This is familiar. This is the part that’s so familiar, it’s almost stifling. How many times will Megumi ride in the back of this same car in the span of his whole life?

They’re both quiet on the way back, the muffled silence contemplative. Snow starts to fall even heavier around them to blanket the earth in a second layer. The windshield wipers work hard, and the headlights cut through the gloom.

Megumi can’t help but crane his neck to look through the back window as the cabin disappears from view. It was already small when they got to the car, and now the white of winter swallows it whole.

“Are you okay?” Yuuji asks, quiet amid the quiet, a slight waver to his voice. “It’s… a little weird, I know. We really rushed out of there.”

For a moment, Megumi presses his eyes closed, nausea rolling through him. He faces forward again and manages to swallow it down, then nods. “I’m okay. Are you?”

“Yeah…” Yuuji trails off with some sort of uncertainty clinging to the simple word. He laughs and rubs his hands over his thighs. “I just—I’m gonna miss that little cabin, I guess.”

Megumi nods again. There’s nothing else to do. He feels the same, in a strange, hollow way. They’ll probably never wind up there again.

They go silent again, and out the dusty windows, fluffy snowflakes fall and fall.

It’s a few days after they get home that Megumi’s walking through an Animate in Shibuya, where Gojo took them (the two of them plus Nobara, thankfully for her) to ‘decompress after their hectic ordeal’ and do some gift shopping for the upcoming holidays. Megumi finds himself alone in one aisle while his classmates giggle at something two rows down. His eye catches on the spine of a DVD case amidst a lineup of many of the same kind.

He reaches out and runs his finger down the spine, starts again from the top, then takes it off the shelf without another thought.

The next week or so is a bit of a balancing act between missions and planning for the holidays. They get a break from academics, at least, but Megumi takes on an easy solo mission while Yuuji and Nobara are shipped out with Maki for a more difficult task. They come home practically wiped out, but they still surprise Megumi with a cake and gifts he didn’t ask for on his birthday, a blue December day filled with more snowy skies. Megumi spends half the day trying to work it out of them when Gojo told them it was his birthday.

Then comes Christmas, which really doesn’t feel that different from any other day. Everyone has dinner together, the second years included, in a chaotic kitchen endeavour, and they manage to make fried chicken without burning themselves or burning the commons down. Meanwhile, Yuuji teaches an impromptu masterclass on how to make the flakiest, most buttery biscuits any of them have ever eaten.

They all eat together around the table, but there is no formal gift exchange around their shabby tree when the main event is over. This is why, when they all slink off to resume their own lives, Yuuji finds Megumi walking down the hall to spend some time alone in his room.

He plans to get some homework done for later or maybe take a nap, a little sleepy from the big meal, but he stops and turns around at the sound of Yuuji’s voice chasing him down the hall.

“Fushiguro!” Yuuji practically runs towards him, waving something wrapped and shiny in one hand, an eager look on his face. “Wait up, I have a gift for you.”

They haven’t talked about the cabin all week. They haven’t talked about the last moments they spent alone there.

“Itadori, this really isn’t necessary,” Megumi huffs. But he takes the gift anyway; it’s solid and square, probably a book that Nobara helped him pick out. Megumi frowns at it, but relinquishes with a sigh. “You know what, fine. Thank you.”

Yuuji bounces up and down on his toes. He’s been perfectly well since Ieiri healed him up their first night home, and there’s enough room for him to let his boundless energy loose here. “Yeah, you’re welcome! I really think you’ll like it—I mean, I hope you’ll like it. I’m sure you want to open it in private, so—”

“Actually,” Megumi cuts in, “I have a gift for you, too.”

Instantly, Yuuji goes still. His eyes widen, and his expression falls, curiosity taking over. “Wait, really? I didn’t expect you to… I mean, that’s really nice of you, Fushiguro.”

Megumi grits his teeth and tucks the book-shaped object under one arm. “Well, it’s Christmas,” he notes with another sigh. He did get presents for Nobara and the second years, as well, but he’d rather it not be a big deal. “I left it in my room, can I go get it quick?”

“Yeah, of course.” Yuuji nods enthusiastically and waits right where he is while Megumi slips into his room.

He sets the gift from Yuuji on his desk, because Yuuji is right, he would rather open it alone, and picks up the package of similar size and shape beside it. He’s pretty sure they all used the same wrapping paper the second years keep in one of the storage closets, so the two look similar, but admittedly, Yuuji’s wrapping skills are far better than Megumi’s. Still, he scoops up the gift and returns to the hallway. Yuuji will rip through it too fast for him to judge the wrapping, anyway.

“Thank you!” Yuuji cheers as he’s handed the gift, and as expected, he moves straight into picking at the tape to open it. He hesitates, though, to Megumi’s surprise, and looks up with wide eyes. “Is it okay if I open it in front of you?”

A faint blush creeps onto Megumi’s face as he turns away, but he shrugs anyway and mumbles, “Go ahead.” He doesn’t know why his heart is beating so fast, and tries to ignore it.

Yuuji tears apart the paper and goes silent moments later. “Oh, wow,” he says. His lips quirk up in a smile, then drop again, and he stares at the DVD set for a long time. The full first season of Pokémon, stretched over multiple discs, all packaged together in a single case. “Thank you,” Yuuji says, stunned. “Fushiguro, this is great.”

“Are you sure?” Megumi looks him up and down, lingers for a moment on his mouth, and studies the case in his paper-covered hands, uncertain all of a sudden. “I don’t know, I guess you could’ve just gotten it from the library, the one nearby probably has it.”

“No, seriously, I’m really happy.” Yuuji looks up at him and beams to prove it. Nothing about it seems disingenuous. “I was just surprised, that’s all. Maybe we can watch it together sometime? If you’re not too tired, I can set it up later tonight?”

Megumi blinks a few times. “Oh,” he says. “Yeah, tonight would be okay.”

Yuuji looks like he still has something to say, a nervous sort of energy surrounding him like an aura. He takes a step back, then forward again, shifting between his feet. Whatever he wants to say, though, he must swallow it back, because all he declares last is, “All right, I’ll see you later then. I’ll text you, okay? Merry Christmas, Fushiguro.”

With a curt nod, Megumi wraps his arms around himself and starts back towards his room, slowly. “Right. Merry Christmas, Itadori.”

They go their separate ways, parting at an invisible border neither of them can see. Megumi steps into his room and closes the door behind him. He stands there in the dark leaning against it with his eyes closed for a long minute.

Then he steps forward, grabs the gift off his desk, and finds a corner to pull on amidst Yuuji’s careful lines of tape. He’s more meticulous in his opening, maintaining the paper’s shape and not tearing it too much as he goes, but it falls away all the same, and suddenly, Megumi understands what Yuuji meant when he said he was surprised by his gift. That stirring in the pit of his stomach starts up again. He feels a tug deep in his core.

In his hands, he holds the book—the book, the one he was reading at the cabin, cherry blossom cover and all. But it’s more than that. Tiny post-it notes stick out of the pages. Megumi turns to the first one, and the post-it leads him straight to a section he read aloud to Yuuji when they were alone and the fire was blazing and the snow kept them tucked in safe. He flips to the next tab, and it’s the same thing. He starts at the beginning of the book, turns through the first few pages. It’s there that he finds a larger note plastered on the page before the story starts.

Fushiguro— it reads, I wouldn’t mind being snowed in with you again sometime.

Megumi’s heart beats wildly in his chest. He stares at the note, turns the book over in his hands, looks for anything more, a clue or something. But the only real clue, he senses, is the magnetic feeling buzzing through him from head to toe. He needs to get back to Yuuji. He needs to see him right now.

How could they not talk about the cabin? Megumi sets the book down and curses himself, rushing for the door. Obviously, something happened between them, and it’s not something they can just forget and move on from. They need to discuss their time there, unpack it, figure out what exactly changed between them that has made Megumi feel like he’s going to fall apart if he doesn’t throw the door open and—

Yuuji stands on the other side. His mouth falls open, one fist poised at the ready to knock. “Fushiguro,” he stammers.

An ache builds inside of Megumi and covers him so completely he’s not sure he’s breathing. He watched Yuuji die. He saved his life. He spent a few short days in a remote cabin alone with him where they were stripped bare, alone, and waiting for each other—waiting for something they didn’t understand. For fuck’s sake, they almost—

“Shut up,” Megumi spits out. He stumbles forward and collides with him, a planet pulled into Yuuji’s orbit. “Yuuji.” A question, an answer, a plea.

He is as warm as ever when Megumi kisses him. Yuuji catches him in sturdy hands and pulls him close, holds onto him like he’s a lifeline, and kisses back, deeply, furiously, amorously. They’ve been waiting for this. Since the moment they met, Megumi thinks, all the cells in his body have been preparing for this moment. They just needed to be locked away together in the soft light and snow in order to figure it out.

He kisses Yuuji for the first time, and he tastes like sunlight. He tastes like safety. It feels right. He tastes this boy he’s come to walk through life with, and the words echo through his mind.

On the first page he’d opened the book to, the familiar line had been waiting for him. It burns itself into his thoughts and cycles through him with every inhale he takes of Yuuji’s sweet breath.

“Megumi,” Yuuji gasps in the space between kisses.

‘For both of them,’ the book read, ‘the meetings were starting to feel less like two strangers gathering at one point in the world to travel to another and more like a return.’

That’s what this feels like, the kiss. Megumi lets it consume him as Yuuji holds him.

He thinks of sitting together on a worn out couch in a place they’ll never see again. He thinks of a fireplace, and a bath, and a pile of snowballs, and episodes of a show that he’s seen twice over but that Yuuji never has. He thinks of the sensation of the pages of a book closing over his own hand.

To the safety of each other’s arms, they return. Megumi doesn’t plan on letting him go ever again. He’s sure Yuuji feels the same.