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If he’s asked, Fushiguro Megumi will say he doesn’t have parents.
“Hey! Me neither!” Yuuji laughs, one hand nervously rubbing at the back of his head, his chuckles overlapping with Nobara’s scoff.
“What, so we’re all just orphans, then?” She drawls, spinning her hammer in her hands, and Megumi only shrugs.
Liar, something says, a voice leftover in his head that sounds suspiciously close to Tsumiki’s gentle scolding. He ignores it, because he’s got better things to do than pick apart his clumsy up-bringing.
“Maki-san!” Nobara calls, striding away down the pitch, her brand new athletic wear swishing with her movements. It catches in the chilly breeze, blowing in with winter, the bite of the cold. “These losers are being a total bummer!”
“Hey!” Yuuji squawks, but it’s not offended in the slightest judging by the size of his grin, only growing wider as he stumbles off to follow her in a jog. “I’ll have you know the geriatric count-!”
Megumi tunes them out, listening without absorbing the words while they wait for Toge and Panda to show up, mind little better than a record scratch with how he can’t seem to move on from the original question despite his best efforts.
It’s technically true. He doesn’t have parents. His mother is dead, his father god knows where, and his sister’s in a magic death coma to boot. Maybe it’d be truer to go as far as saying he doesn’t have family at all.
Liar, Tsumiki croons again, soft and fond even though it should be harsh like he deserves, and Megumi looks away from all of his friends, hands stuffing deeper into his coat pockets. Sometimes, he wishes he was at the point where he’d forgotten what her voice sounds like. Others, he’s so desperate to hear anything of her he can that the intrusive thoughts feel welcome.
He squashes the thoughts like he always does, inevitably- pounds them up into compact little pulp, senseless and quiet, and shoves them away. They’ll all burst some day, the millions of them he keeps stored in the back of his mind. Today isn’t that day, so it isn’t his problem yet.
Forcing some of the gloom out of his expression, Megumi finally steps onto the pitch.
Nobara actually manages to upset Satoru.
He has no idea why on earth she does it, snubbing him over a box of sweet taro buns of all things, because he knows Nobara is the most materialistic bastard in Tokyo- ordinarily, she’d jump for bakery sweets over plain, oversugared cereal.
Nevermind that normally, she readily engages with Satoru for whatever bullshit he wants to start that day, always enthusiastic when it means she either gets someone to pick on or someone to give her things. It’s just…strange.
‘It’s too damn early for this crap,’ he thinks, uselessly holding a bun in his hand and Satoru already disappeared around a corner. Now the idiot isn’t going to be back until tomorrow, and Megumi was going to make him explain his stupid math homework before he left. He didn’t want to wait until Sunday to do it. He wanted the weekend off.
When he looks back at Nobara, brows furrowed in disappointment and more than a little annoyance ticking his lips down, she doesn’t look back. She just sits at the island, stirring a spoon in her soggy cereal, shrugging.
“Nice going,” Megumi mutters, getting up to leave. He stuffs the taro bun in his mouth, grabbing his plate to dump in the sink for Yuuji to do later today since it’s his turn with dishes. Nobara doesn’t say anything, and when he looks back, he only watches her stare down at her soupy breakfast, lips slanted in thought, eyes creased in regret.
He finds himself thumbing at his phone after, sat in his dorm room trying to do his stupid math homework by himself. He hovers a few times over his most recent text conversation, debating clicking it, debating not.
‘Thanks for the taro buns,’ he eventually writes, lips pressed between his teeth. ‘They were good.’
He presses send before he can think about it and talk himself out of it.
Satoru doesn’t need his reassurance. He’s almost thirty, he can take a measly little rejection without losing any sleep. Hell knows Megumi’s put him through a million of them himself over the years. Despite it, he can’t help but feel responsible anyway, a thick sort of sludge soaking into his ribs the longer he thinks about it.
Almost ten years with Satoru gave him more then enough insight about the guy than maybe Megumi had ever wanted, though he wouldn’t say he’d regret it. Not in honesty, anyway.
He’d recognized the plastic smile that had slipped on- he had to, when it was something he’d see himself frequently as a kid. How the corners of Satoru’s lips would falter so quickly it’d look like nothing more than a twitch, how they’d stretch a little wider after, a little cheerier. How that godawful smile had come after every moment Megumi had ever smacked his metaphorical hand away as a kid.
Staring down at the text, he gives up on focusing on his homework, stomach flipping slightly when three little dots appear, bouncing up and down.
How could he not have recognized it, he thinks, almost a touch guilty if only he’d admit it. Megumi had tried everything to drive Satoru away when he’d been younger, and despite anything, everything, Satoru had never once given him anything less than that smile.
His phone vibrates as the text finally comes through, long enough the screen went black. Three shooting star emojis sit plain in his notifications, two exclamation points following just after.
‘I knew you’d like ‘em Gumi!!!!!!’ Stares up at him when he finally unlocks it, settling back into the text window. Megumi scoffs, lips thinning.
‘Stop calling me that,’ he writes, to the airy response of three red hearts.
He still sits for a while after, refusing to say he’s worrying at his nails even though he picks at them relentlessly. He’s been…trying to be better, recently. Maybe Tsumiki’s coma should have been what caused it, this want he’s still trying to find a way to deal with, but Yuuji’s not death works too, he supposes.
“...You deserved better than me,” he mumbles, Satoru’s icon small on the side of his screen, some horrible selfie he’d taken almost five years ago. Tsumiki had never been the difficult child. Megumi had.
Silently, he turns his phone over, clicking it off to silent. Picks up his pen, stares down at his paper. Wishes Satoru were there to explain the polynomials he doesn’t understand and the dampening guilt in the pit of his stomach.
“Man, I’m wiped,” Yuuji mutters, trudging along beside him as they walk to the nearest bus stop, their driver having to comb through traffic to get back to them when they accidentally traveled several kilometers while fighting their curse.
“Next time,” Megumi mumbles, feeling a shred of hope when they turn a block corner and he sees a covered bench, “if it starts to run, maybe we should just say we lost it. Whoops. Oh well.”
Yuuji snickers, but it’s quieter than he’d normally be when they’re both winded, bruised, a little bloody and absolutely beat. No amount of endurance training could keep him from tiring out after almost three hours of a wild goose chase.
They topple down together onto the bench, supported only by each other’s flimsy weights, and because the universe hates them specifically, it immediately starts to rain.
“Oh come on,” he sours, as the first droplet stains the sidewalk dark, another following after it before it begins to drizzle, freezing when it was just overcast and frigid now with the coming water.
Yuuji laughs, muffled behind his coat lip. “There’s a bakery over there,” he suggests, “we could make a run for it?”
“You can still run?” Megumi wheezes, slumping down on the bench, and feels a little lighter when Yuuji laughs again. At least Nobara isn’t with them. She’d probably make them stop into the few shops he can see across the street, filled with mannequins and obviously idol-esque, a perfect trap to her and all her incessant need to spend as much money as physically possible, always.
They fall quiet as the rain patterns on, thankfully light while they wait for the driver to pull up to the location Megumi texts off, sharing shivery body heat as the cold sinks in.
“So,” Yuuji starts, foot tapping against his leg, “weird question.”
“Mhfm?” Megumi grunts, a turtle vanishing into his coat, zipped up to his chin.
“How do you know Gojo-sensei?” He asks, a lilting sort of curiosity to the words, and it’s unexpected enough that Megumi actually looks up.
Yuuji fumbles slightly, shrugging as he messes with his fingers. “It’s not- I just mean- he mentioned you used to steal his sweaters when you were younger, a while ago.” He pauses, shrugging again, eyes lifting away to stare out at the street, people hustling to get out of the rain, flurries of umbrellas opening like flowers. “I’ve just been curious, ‘s all.”
“I…” Megumi mumbles, blinking, trying to find the words when an entire dictionary could fit in his mouth, when he has nothing to say at all. “It’s complicated,” he ends up saying, another set of words stuck behind his teeth, a fidget to his fingers and a clammy thing to his palms when he thinks about giving it any substance at all.
Yuuji’s silent for a long moment, something contemplative to his face as he looks down, and Megumi can’t help when he flushes.
“I mean it! It’s not some cop out-” yes it is, Tsumiki says, “-it’s, it’s just…” He trails off, sputtering, finding solace into shrinking back down into his coat again.
“Y’know,” Yuuji murmurs, hands winding and unwinding together in his lap as he stares at them, “this might be totally out of line and probably not even relevant but, uh, my gramps,” he begins, clearly thinking of a story.
“He was always this real grumpy guy, yeah?” Yuuji says, a corner of his mouth ticking up as his eyes dart back, catching onto Megumi’s own as he stares up, frozen. “Like, total geezer. I’d go to visit him all the time, and I’d bring flowers and nice stuff to cheer him up, and he’d just yell at me to, ‘get gone, boy!’” Yuuji recites, dropping his voice and roughening it to mimic another, head tilting with his scrunched nose. “‘Quit bringing me shit and go and do something worthwhile!’”
“...He, uh,” Megumi stutters, swallowing a little thickly, “he seems…”
“Kinda jerkish?” Yuuji offers, and hesitantly, Megumi nods. “Heh,” he huffs, “yeah, I guess he sort of was.” He stops, a large sigh filling up his lungs, clearly thinking as he stares down at his clasped hands, brows furrowed.
“The nurses said that too. I always brushed ‘em off, cause that’s just how gramps was, y’know?” He mumbles, words squeezing tightly just enough to be noticeable, and wordlessly, Megumi sits up straight. “He just wanted me to go and do something that’d make me happy, but, uh,” Yuuji tries to chuckle, but it falls flat, nothing but a brush of air from his mouth as he reaches up, rubbing at the corner of one eye with soot stained fingers.
“He never really acknowledged that seeing him was what would make me happy,” he finally finishes, a streak of chalky black on his face and a slight sniffle to his voice. “He was all I really had, and he…he pushed me away more than anything.”
Megumi draws in a breath of his own after the words sit, lips parting slightly, a thump in his chest where his heart pounds. Why, he wants to ask, why are you telling me this? But if he did, then maybe Yuuji might see the fear in his pupils, the regret on his tongue.
“Nobara said it was okay to miss someone and still be mad at them,” Yuuji mumbles, as if it’s nothing he wants to say aloud either, Megumi realizes. “So,” he starts, louder than before, “I- I get it. Complicated.”
“...Oh,” Megumi utters, blinking down at his feet, thinking of the last text on his phone and how he’d made certain to know Satoru hated him whenever he found a reason to say the words, once. “It’s,” he chokes, knuckles accidentally brushing the back of Yuuji’s hand, the warmth odd in the chill of the cold.
He exhales a little easier than he would have otherwise when it’s grabbed, rough palm against his own, calluses dragging against his skin. When Yuuji squeezes, he squeezes back.
“It’s not…” He starts again, brows knitting together, lips chapped. “I…” I’m an awful person, he wants to say. Tsumiki should hate me. She wouldn’t. Satoru deserves better. He got stuck with me.
“...I really fucking hate Nobara,” he mutters, just a touch bitter, and seemingly shocked into bewildered surprise, Yuuji reels.
“Why?” He asks, an incredulous smile breaking his lips, and Megumi tilts his head up, peering through his bangs. In the fuzzy drizzle, Yuuji’s hair looks like a halo around his head against the metal of the bus stop, reflecting pink where everything else reflects dreary.
“She told me I had abandonment issues. She’s probably right,” Megumi answers, warm fingers interlaced with his own. “Definitely right,” he corrects.
Yuuji laughs suddenly and short, doubling over as he hacks, barking up the most noise either of them have made since they sat down. He wheezes slightly, shoulders shaking, reaching up with his other hand to leave another sooty stain on his face.
“Yeah,” he whistles, “she’s awful.”
“Horrible,” Megumi deadpans, relieved slightly, guilty slightly.
“Terrible,” Yuuji echoes, finally lifting up, a black car slowly pulling into view around a corner. “It’s unfair that she gets to be the well adjusted one.”
“Well adjusted?” Megumi mutters, making a face. “She extorted me into buying her new gloves last week.” Yuuji grins, face turning towards his own as if he’s a sunflower seeking its sunlight, bright and vibrant and beautiful.
“I bet it doesn’t need to be complicated, Megumi,” he says, words curving soft as his own eyes widen, stiffening into a deer caught in someone’s headlights. “I think if I’d just been brave enough to tell gramps all that, he might not have been so harsh.” Yuuji smiles again, something softer, something more melancholy, nothing but a little lopsided press into one cheek.
“...Probably,” Megumi breathes, squeezing his hand hard enough it has to hurt. Despite it, Yuuji never tells him to let go.
“Megumi!” Satoru yells, clomping into the dorms in his noisy, clacky dress shoes. “Come look at what I’ve got.”
He groans, ripping his earbuds out, but he still slinks out of his room, winding around the hallway’s corner like a wraith. Winter has not been kind to him, he thinks, more ghost of Christmas future than even Scrooge when he feels about as sallow as a skeleton.
“Look!” Satoru exclaims, holding out a pint sized cake, pink in color and decorated with peppermints. “I actually found it this year.”
“You…” Megumi mumbles, trailing off at the sight, shuffling to a stop. He blinks, swallowing hard, thinking of Yuuji’s words only last week, and how he hasn’t been brave enough yet to heed them in any way that matters.
“She’d be excited, huh?” Satoru says, humming slightly as he plucks off a peppermint. “I saw it and I just had to get it. Thought it might be nice to think about something she loved.”
Megumi doesn’t answer, all the words he might have used caught somewhere in his throat. His eyes sting slightly, the sight of Tsumiki’s favorite seasonal bakery cake tugging more than a little harshly on his lungs.
“Who’s she?” Nobara asks, head lolling over the back of the couch, and Megumi stiffens, eyes flickering up to Satoru’s face- the black glasses obscuring his eyes.
For a moment, he flounders, knowing Satoru won’t spill if Megumi doesn’t first, but forgetting how to actually say it for the second he spends drowning. “My- sister,” he bites out, staring down at the cake in favor of looking at anyone else. “Tsumiki.”
“...Oh,” Nobara tones, evidently remembering the mission where he’d told them about her, distracted slightly when Yuuji pops up beside her like a Mario character. “You knew her too, Gojo-sensei?” She asks, curious, the both of them curious, and Megumi can’t help how he finds himself rooted in place.
“I did!” Satoru beams, lighting up with any reason to talk about Tsumiki. “You’d never believe these two were related,” he laughs, like its not the best kind of lie, reaching out a hand to ruffle up his hair with and instead of batting it away, Megumi just stands still. “When we used to go out, I’d get comments all the time asking if they were cousins instead of siblings, Megumi was so grumpy. It was hilarious,” he crows, to what Megumi knows is Nobara’s narrowed eyes, Yuuji’s visible interest.
“So how’d you know ‘em? Megumi’s never said,” Nobara weasels, a spark in her voice that promises trouble, and Megumi says nothing when Satoru answers, babbling away.
“Ah, I met him when he was young,” Satoru rambles, clearly dancing around one thing or another because Megumi hasn’t offered it. “There was this whole thing with the Zen’in’s-” He tunes him out, finally looking up, watching that plastic smile slipping onto his lips as he talks, sure, but never truthfully.
He thinks about Yuuji’s words, the painful thing hiding in the ones he’d tried so hard to keep upbeat, how it had been a little gut-wrenching sat on that bench, listening to regrets he hadn’t known had been shared.
“Satoru raised us,” Megumi blurts, heart pounding in his chest as the entire room quiets. He turns his head away, face flaming, hands twisting into his thin pajama pants. “He was the closest thing to a father we had.”
He fidgets, only daring to look up when moments beat past, and no one says anything. He isn’t all that shocked to see Satoru’s face is slack, surprise lifting his white brows and parting glossy lips. It’s the sharp stab of guilt from seeing that expression at all that forces him to keep talking.
“And maybe some of us should have said that more,” he whispers, anxious under the blue boring him down, guilty for everything, anything, wishing it was Tsumiki instead of him but saying it anyway, because it’s not. It’s just Megumi, just Satoru, just all the things he regrets between them but has never found a way to change.
He barely has time to blink before Satoru’s set the cake down on the nearby counter, striding back until he’s close enough to touch, reaching out as if to grab and then- halting.
Sometimes, Megumi hates himself.
“I’m not ashamed of you,” he admits, small, timid, and knows Satoru doesn’t believe him one bit by the way his face does something complicated. A smile, a grimace, a wince.
“Of course not,” he says, and it sounds just as unsteady as Megumi feels.
Satoru stays put, like he’s rooted to the floor too, and so Megumi gives in, and tilts forwards. His head butts into Satoru’s sternum, thunking against bone and soft shirt, and it’s easier to settle slightly when long arms wrap around him.
It’s one of the few hugs he’s ever let Satoru give him. Two after Tsumiki had been hospitalized and announced comatose, one after the night parade. A handful he can’t remember anymore lost somewhere in his childhood.
He feels like a fool nestled in one now, lifting a hand to hold onto expensive button up, wishing he wasn’t the way he was but glad Yuuji’s words were enough to change him just enough.
“Now that’s a lot of damage,” Nobara whistles, before she’s kicking up a racket, Yuuji’s sharp, “Nobara!” Loud in the living room as he very audibly tries to smother her with a pillow.
“What! I can’t look at emotionally stunted idiots and call bullshit-?!” She yells, only to cut off in a shriek as a loud thump rumbles through the room, more aimless shouting emanating from the carpet as they wrestle.
“...I don’t- hate you,” Megumi mumbles, while their yelling hides his words from listening ears. “I’ve never-”
“Meg,” Satoru tones, only slightly wet. “Hey, I know. I know,” Satoru promises, one hand petting over his hair, the other squeezed tight around his shoulders, voice unsteady as it wavers.
“I just-” He stutters, wanting to keep going more than anything, less than everything. “I know I was the worst kid ever, I never-”
“You weren’t,” Satoru gasps, aghast, playful even when they’re both at a loss. Maybe even because of it. “You were definitely the grumpiest kid I ever knew, but you weren’t the worst.”
“Hey,” Megumi says, muffled into his shirt, and Satoru chuckles. It’s still a touch weak, emotional even, but it’s enough of a laugh to sound like one. “...I’m still sorry,” he continues, when he isn’t interrupted, listening to Yuuji and Nobara shove the coffee table along the floor in their grappling. Grateful they’re annoying and loud. Glad to be concealed and quiet.
“I always shut you out, I never- I couldn’t- what if you left,” he whispers, eyes wide open and disgustingly wet, the words only spoken because they can hide against Satoru’s stomach. “What if I let you in and you left me,” he admits, the pathetic warble weak, and isn’t so ashamed to admit his own pride isn’t important enough to him to reject the way long fingers card through his hair, how warm palm presses against his skull.
“...You were a kid,” Satoru murmurs, distressingly quiet, distressingly soft, and it makes him want to cry. “Of course you did. I never held it against you, ‘Gumi, never.”
“You were a kid too,” he finds himself mumbling, “you didn’t deserve it.”
Satoru huffs, a sharp puff of air from his nose, tilting his face up with thumbs along the lines of his jaw. “Maybe,” he concedes, shrugging slightly. “I don’t regret it,” he continues, pale brows slated down in determination, lips set in a grimace of a smile. “How could I when I’ve got this adorable little shadows user all to myself!” Satoru squeals, squishing his cheeks together, and Megumi rolls his eyes hard enough to hurt even though he knows they’re still rimmed red.
He stops before the words can come out, ‘god, you’re awful,’ heavy on his tongue.
“...Says the walking paintbrush,” Megumi rasps, the tease lighthearted, and tries to feel proud of himself instead of pained when Satoru pauses, taken slightly aback. He can’t blame him- Megumi doesn’t do this, hasn’t done this since before Tsumiki went away. He’s been nothing but mean in their back and forths since he lost one last piece of his remaining family.
Instead of mentioning it, because Megumi knows Satoru knows, too, he only smiles wide. “So mean to me, Megs!” He cries, all false admonishment when his grin is bigger than his damn teeth, and Megumi finally gives in.
He reaches up, squeezing, arms locking around tapered waist, and feels justified when Satoru’s own come back down to sit snug over his shoulders.
“Hey,” Nobara drawls, slightly out of breath and choked like she’s caught in a headlock, “are we gonna eat that cake anytime soon or wh- auk!” She cuts off, the sound of a palm smacking the floor repeatedly loud in the living room.
Despite himself, Megumi laughs.