𝘖𝘱𝘦𝘯.

[unequally]

s h a d o w;
1. a dark area or shape produced by a body coming between rays of light and a surface.
2. used in reference to proximity, ominous oppressiveness, or sadness and gloom.
OTA 25/8 - Action, Texts, Etc.
( art )

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[unequally]

[ toji's hand makes megumi feel both more real and less real all at once. he doesn't dare breathe into the foreign presence of it, refuses to confuse it with anything else including his own physicality. for different people this would be comforting. for megumi and toji, perhaps, it's got to be enough that it's happening at all.

then it's gone.

but megumi can still feel him.

strange.

also strange:

'home'.

megumi thinks and doesn't think about that word all the way back. he understands the sense of it — no stopping for food or piecemeal ingredients megumi could certainly cobble together into something if toji wanted or asked him. and god part of megumi wishes he would; part of megumi wants to be the kind of person who demands that he eat rather than asks. but he's not. just as well. the temperature only continues to drop as they return and once stepping inside the dark flat, the cold is pervasive.

...it's kind of a relief too, the way physical discomfort often is when compared with other kinds of hardly managed distress.

he shivers while toeing his shoes off just inside the door, then turns on one light because he knows they should, before heading to the bathroom to check toji's clothing, probably wring it out once more before leaving it to hang again for the rest of the night. his eyes feel heavy but he doesn't want to sleep; he doesn't want to be still; he wants to do things.

and really that's the other reason for his phone being on all the time, as close to begging as megumi has ever been: give me something to do.

anything. everything.

as he pulls toji's shirt down off the side of the shower, the thin tremors of before are back, their subtlety like figments of imagination for the tired and the unprepared. he turns the water on and kneels to rinse it through once more, frowning at the very slight muddiness of it; well, he had been in a hurry before, he supposes. ]

[resignations]

[ once upon a time, fushiguro toji believed in the concept of 'home'. it came with a woman and her smile, with her bell-chime voice saying toji-kun to the tune of 'i care for you', and for the first time in his entire miserable shit existence, toji felt like the idea of it, of returning, was worth living for.

this apartment is a far cry from that short-lived ideal. megumi drifts away and buries his sorrow in running water like a burial at sea, and toji—

—what does toji do?

(he doesn't try to reach inside of himself for references, because he won't be able to find any. the month after that woman died and took the last shred of his human empathy with her is a blur; did he scream? did he cry? did he fill his days and nights with casual murder just to feel the pulse of life and death under his palm?)

ultimately, toji gravitates to his room. pulls open his closet, and starts rummaging through the chaos of his monochromatic clothes and gifted amenities to find something he hasn't even thought of in years.

a faded box, with a toy inside. something gojou thrust into his hands one day, and hasn't remembered since.

("would it kill you to spend some normal time with your kids? ugh.")

toji pads to the bathroom. pops his head in through the entrance. ]

Oi. [ plastic knives rattle against his palm. ] Come to the living room.

[ they both need something to keep their hands busy; why not toy with a plastic pirate's mortality to pass the time? it's suitably morbid enough. childish. stupid.

grief is like that, sometimes. aimless and ridiculous. ]

[unequally]

[ he doesn't ask why. he does take the time needed to finish properly rinsing things out, wringing them a few times, then hanging them accordingly. his hand must have brushed his face at some point, leaving the faint residual proof of rusty water that stains certain complexions too easily. there's a renegade eyelash stuck in the trail.

stepping out of the bathroom shouldn't feel so weird but nothing feels right and maybe it's more that than anything else. when he looks at toji, his gaze falls to the toy and he can't help but stare, brows rising in question. ]

What —

[ his steps are silent but not as silent nor invisible as toji's (of course not.) sometimes megumi thinks about asking toji to train him; it can only be a boon to move as undetected and not all of it has to do with cursed energy. there's something or many something elses about his father; megumi knows just enough to know how little he really knows. but being aware of a gap doesn't mean knowing how to close it. he truly doesn't. not that one.

but this one is the mere matter of human bodies; this one he can close.

one hand goes to the odd little toy and one would think megumi had never seen any toy at all given how he looks at it; but that's not true. rather, megumi with stones and stones of reluctant and unavoidable human empathy in his shoes in his soul with the body of his mother and his father shaped around it, megumi is struck by the feeling under his fingertips — always sensitive.

how old is it? who was it for?

did he ——

ah.

he must be very tired for his thoughts to do as they please.

in his head: how do you play this?

if he knew gojou had been the procurer of it however long ago, it would slot into place beside the times gojou has shown up unplanned and unannounced. but he doesn't, so, of course, despite his best attempts not to ——

megumi wonders. ]

[resignations]

[ there's rust against megumi's cheekbone. residual blood of a man toji'd killed, a life he can't even put a name or face to anymore. it rankles something in toji to see it, so he lets megumi take the outline of that colorful toy to free one hand, to rub his thumb along the jut of his son's face and scrape off that trace of bygone murder.

the contact leaves a faint red mark on megumi's skin. friction breaking fine blood vessels that'll heal by morning— if only everything were that easy.

and, well. megumi doesn't quite ask, but toji likes to think that he knows what the unasked question is. 'what is this, and why do you have it'. he could lie and say that it was his idea, that there was a moment of paternal impulse that made him stop by the toy store after his half-days spent at the pachinko parlor, but they'd both know that toji was never so sentimental.

not back then. not without years under his proverbial belt to temper some of his bad habits. ]

The Gojou brat foisted it on me, ages ago.

[ so megumi has gojou to thank for this, too. (sometimes he really does wonder if his own addition to this strange equation was really necessary; if it wouldn't have been the same, either way, with or without him. megumi and tsumiki and gojou, surviving on their own merits.)

with that explanation out of the way, toji crooks his finger. urges megumi, yet again, to follow his footsteps into the space of their living room, where he lays the plastic knives to scatter on the surface of their coffee table.

he tosses one up into the air. it spins, graceful as an acrobat, and settles into his waiting palm.

toji gestures again. sit down. ] Come on. We might as well.

[unequally]

[ he doesn't know why he does it, why he closes his eyes as if on instinct when toji reaches for him. the inexplicable nature of it annoys megumi so much that his eyes open again almost immediately; it could be mistaken for a blink at that speed. he holds his breath without meaning to.

if asked, megumi would not label himself as a particularly affectionate child at any age. but face value affection's absence is not the same as being unfeeling or incapable of certain core spaces to be filled. maybe....maybe megumi closes his eyes at first for the most splintered of seconds, because any touch from toji is a little unbelievable.

because in those moments megumi feels cared for even if he could never prove it.

the slight sting is not unpleasant.

he does his best to place this moment in a box on a shelf he doesn't look at too much, the curious toy against the curve of his hand until toji is walking the rest of the way to the living room. following is automatic and he sits adjacent to his father with the same sort of silent obedience reserved for all the moments he doesn't know what to do with otherwise.

tsumiki once told him he just 'cares too much' which he'd been blindsided by; didn't believe her, especially coming from his sister of all people. but she had leveled him with a wry tone that still laughed a bell sound and said this too: being nice to people, being kind, is sometimes about caring about yourself. the look she'd had on her face had made him incredibly uncomfortable and he'd left to find gojou for once, rather than the other way around. (didn't find him either.)

with a red cheek and green eyes and minutely shaky hands, he reaches for one of the tiny plastic knives, quizzical. what is the point of this game?

give me something to do.

well he had said that in his head hadn't he. 'anything' too.

he drops the plastic by accident, picks it up again. ]

Gojou is so weird.

[ his tone lacks sharpness or bite even if it isn't exactly warm. that he forgets 'sensei' to tack on is the most telling thing of how out of it he is, compounded by the rest. not even noticing it himself, he sighs and slides the tiny sword into one slot —

— nothing happens. ]

[resignations]

[ a real show of bad attempts at paternal empathy would've been to drag megumi out of the apartment and into a pachinko parlor or a mahjong den, but the fact still remains that toji's idea of 'dealing' is to sequester their grief and hope that it, like most things, dissipates. (and, funnily enough, he of all people should know that that's not how this works.)

sometimes, toji is struck by recollections of the kind of family that his wife had wanted to make. they hit him in nightmares, in the sinking sickness of waking up with his arms pulled sideways over an empty spot on his futon.

he knows what that bright-eyed, strong-willed woman would say if she were here.

god, just hug him already, toji-kun! you're so stupid!

toji swallows. reaches for the colorful weapons on the tabletop and tests his luck.

the pirate remains in his nest. waiting for the inevitable. ]

'Weird'? More like short a few screws in his head. [ a snort. ] Coming from me, that's saying a lot.

[ pot, kettle, etc.

he doesn't want for megumi's turn to impale the plastic barrel again. the poor little doll survives this one, too. ]

[unequally]

[ in a way, weirdly, megumi is the kind of kid who probably needs a hug but wouldn't be able to handle it either. his is a roughly tuned human heart disguised by its pieces that look like machine cogs but really never have been.

easier to talk about gojou, either way.

he picks up another piece of plastic.

this pirate just won't die apparently.

(a joke lost on megumi though it applies to the two primary adults in his life to a sick extent.)

"i bet your mom was really kind," tsumiki said one afternoon while megumi folded the laundry with his always sort of sullen look. and when he asked why she ruffled his hair and said, "'cause megumi is kind."

megumi doesn't think he's kind or good. but maybe tsumiki was half right.

maybe. ]

People 'short a few screws' are usually weird.

[ his kindness, if it exists, doesn't extend to general niceties and certainly not to soft-pedaling opinions about shady adults no matter the benefaction. yet the tone of megumi's voice belies his trust and his familiarity. a self-awareness. ]

This was probably a souvenir.

[ gojou satoru and his habit of buying random things everywhere he goes. megumi mutters this part and it might not be wholly articulate, but given the dead silence of the apartment, maybe it is. it doesn't occur to megumi that gojou would have bought this on purpose not as a spur of the moment souvenir but as something conscious and pointed, part challenge and part lack of faith and part something else totally wordless. some of this is, of course, because of how little he knows about their history; but some things are better left that way of course.

vaguely, megumi is aware that he is sort of tunnel visioning at the little barrel. his eyes are strangely heavy and his body aches hollow and dry except a low level nausea, now that he's still enough to recognize it. an uncatalogued number of hours is, it seems, finally catching up to him. ]

[resignations]

[ the steady click-snap of plastic slotting into plastic is a metronome in the silence of their apartment. without tsumiki to fill its empty corners with the comforting white noise of existing, its four walls are concrete and reinforcement.

toji makes another attempt at inconsequential murder. he thinks he knows why gojou chose this, of all the toys he could've picked, to give to him.

click-snap.

at some point, the pirate will succumb to the inevitable. toji watches megumi out of the corner of his eye, and he knows that megumi wishes it were so easy. that he wishes there was a knife he could put between his own ribs to set a series of cogs in motion, to snap tsumiki out of bed.

click-snap. ]

He was trying [ toji says, with finality, ] to be a nuisance.

[ he gets up after one more knife to wooden plastic. abruptly, as if he's had enough of this— the game, the grief, megumi himself. his past dictates that this is his intent; once again, to leave when things start getting inconvenient. to not explain, to prioritize his own defense above others'.

silent, he goes into the dark of his room. maybe he won't come back. maybe he's left out of the window, out into the streets, leaving his son to sit with the possibility of popping that pirate out of its cradle or to sit in his own loneliness and his mercy.

seconds pass. there's nothing but rustling in the distance— curtains? clothes going in bags?

neither. toji comes back with a roll of blankets that trail against his bare feet, sweeping the length of the journey from his bed to the living room. once back, he looms— not quite indifferent, not quite understanding of his own actions, but still knowing, instinctively, that this is what he can do for megumi's grief.

funny, how he knows gojou would balk at this if he knew. ]

If you need to call him [ gojou, toji means. this is the most he'll ever do for the man who, even despite his own deep-seated dislike for the guy, saved his son from his surname, ] do it in the morning.

[ the blankets are too thick for megumi's frame, but they drop and drape over his shoulders. toji, still standing, nudges the nest around his son with his foot. ]

[unequally]

[ maybe he shouldn't bother, but megumi watches toji the short distance to his room. it's only once he's disappeared inside of it that he returns to the toy on the table. he tries once more. nothing. then he looks back at toji's room, and then almost he looks at tsumiki's room as well before catching himself away from it.

instead he stares down at the pirate and the unused swords.

really what was gojou thinking.

trying to be a nuisance toji had said but megumi thinks that's not exactly shocking or unexpected. isn't that gojou satoru's usual way? even when he's dead serious. megumi doesn't remember what he did yesterday or even when yesterday was — how long ago or if it still is and therefore is today instead still; fickle. but megumi remembers very clearly very keenly very sometimes confusingly: the white haired man in the alley with his sunglasses and his expression of distaste that made megumi judge him from moment one. he remembers tsumiki coming out onto the balcony and saying his name like she was waiting for him because she always was.

before toji comes back out, megumi almost accidentally lets himself have a second, two, three, four, maybe even five.

it hurts it hurts i'm sorry i'm sorry i'll always come back so please wake up i'm so sorry i'm so stupid i'll even tell you that i know that now so please please please —

his tunnel vision from before was just his vision blurring, which he realizes now, spotting with the dark of sleep's insistence as it is. yet he still hears the shift of not the only other living being in the apartment but the blankets he carries. megumi's head is down anyway; it probably doesn't matter the way his expression was but he calms himself down out of habit. almost placid. almost. it doesn't hurt. he can handle this. he'll figure it out.

a see-through lie.

the shoulders that bow beneath the weight of the blankets are rigid and sharp. brittle. toji said something. it came to megumi as if underwater and it takes him a moment to understand. ]

Yeah.

[ it's as if the blankets pull the thread the last bit to unravel in megumi's mind over matter stubbornness, as if he could stay awake forever until tsumiki is too. impossible. he slopes forward against the table, his arms folded there in reflex; and his mouth is partially pressed there so it comes out muffled, maybe barely intelligible when he adds, half awake, ]

Thank you.

[ how to be polite. how to read a situation. how to put one foot in front of the other.

how to be kind.

fushiguro megumi, 14, ten shadows, and a heart whose bleeding would lose all meaning if it didn't run so immortally.

he falls asleep not because he wants to but because he can't help it, and it's probably far too childish for a 14 year-old to wonder if the blankets around him are comforting because they belong to toji — to his father — but that's the last thought he has before slipping into his own shadows all the same. ]