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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[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. ]