unequally | 𝘖𝘱𝘦𝘯.

[ here's something that toji tells himself on the regular: nothing in this world is sacred. not family, not money, not blood. at the end of the day, you either live on your own terms or die like a dog. everything in between is irrelevant.

he feels megumi tremble under his grip. tighten his fingers another fraction, and he knows he'd feel the flimsiness of bone and sinew under his palm.

life is transient. megumi is so weak, so slight. it's only his stillness that makes him powerful, the conviction in his green eyes that makes toji pause.

no, is what he should say. it doesn't matter to me, one way or the other. ]

—You're not the kind of kid that'd need me to, are you?

[ a mistake. selfish and self-serving. what does toji expect this fifteen-year-old to say? "i've been living just fine without you"? for what reason? his own peace of mind?

his thumb runs across the hard bump of megumi's wristbone. this is the first time he's touched his son, he realizes, since infancy. ]

[ if tsumiki was awake and here, she would tell megumi to be kinder, more forgiving. but even if she was, even if she said those things, that would not make it so. the first grader who stared a teenaged gojou satoru in the face and more or less said without saying so make it happen about his life, about tsumiki's life, is still here. fushiguro megumi is fifteen, sixteen this coming december, assuming he makes it there. the only constant adult in his life has been he of the six eyes and the limitless.

that should say plenty.

and even he couldn't save or heal or change tsumiki's fate.

megumi doesn't think about himself. even though he doesn't have a sister to look after except to see that she's still breathing in her sleep. so when anyone might ask him this, whether a man whose face is as good as new to him, or a complete stranger, it wouldn't matter.

he stays impassive as he answers, ]

It doesn't matter what I need.

[ what matters is his work. what matters is tsumiki's curse. what matters is itadori yuuji died and was it better to die like that or should megumi have never saved him in the fist place?

what matters is when toji traces against the jut of his wrist, that impassiveness glitches and megumi hates it — how he flinches, how he can't hide...

...not even from someone who, ostensibly, gave the answer to megumi's own question ten years ago.

this time when he bites his tongue he tastes blood. ]

[ "it doesn't matter what i need". spoken like a true fushiguro.

something drifts in toji's expression, vague and unreadable. it settles like resignation on his sharp features, dulling the preternatural sense of impassiveness he wears over his invisibility— it's almost funny how little he understands about how loaded Megumi's statement is.

toji, again, has nothing. no context, no idea, no direction. he's a beast living eternally in the present, running from self-reflection; the shape of megumi's emotional pain in that one flinch only resonates as distaste.

and, here's the kicker: ] Ha.

I know I said you don't need anyone to care, but brats like you should be a little more selfish at that age.

[ as if he's not directly responsible for some of that lack of self-worth. as if gojou won't tell megumi the same, at some point. as if this is some sort of sage advice, instead of an offhanded, irresponsible comment by a man who only knows how to be selfish.

he lets go. puts his palms in the air in mock-surrender. ]

[ when he and tsumiki surmised that tsumiki's mom wasn't coming back, neither of them really blamed her. he could tell tsumiki was sad but tsumiki was tsumiki and she made an effort to at least look like she got over it pretty quick — probably for megumi's sake, and he'd told her: don't bother. she'd told him it was okay to feel bad to be selfish. she said that after toji disappeared too, he remembers without wanting to.

and... it's weird. it's so...so weird. to hear these words now. from this man. megumi was so sure so absolutely sure with the perceived infallibility of being young and old and young that he was telling gojou the truth that day: i don't care.

he has of course no idea how often his own father has uttered those words in his head or otherwise.

he doesn't know either, what he means. and what he doesn't mean.

fushiguro toji hasn't let go of him but for half a second when his son makes what is probably a mistake but call it selfishness; call it youth.

two things people tend not to ascribe to him.

call it the exception, the bad kind in his room devoid of personality except that it's someone who likes things clean and unobtrusive and easy to clean away if he ever fails to come back.

call it family. maybe.

he doesn't expect to actually be able to hit him.

so why does he try?

'i don't care.'

not exactly.

i refuse to care.

as if he's ever been good at that. the almost-foil for the man he came from. ]

[ if toji knows that he contributes to the cyclical toxicity of jujutsu culture the more he tries to break it, he tries not to think about it; all his spite and hate and bitterness for the people who shunned him didn't spur the zen'ins to grow an ounce of empathy, and all his efforts to wash blood with blood didn't do much to release him from the curse of his own.

he sees himself in megumi's incoming aggression. that flashbang of anger that comes from wanting so desperately not to give a fuck.

(memories of being sequestered in the muggiest corners of traditional japanese housing, hands folded in kimono sleeves, listening to whispers of maids and branch family. shame, externalized. the thrill of killing the people who'd called him scum.

scratch that— megumi is nothing like him.)

the fist lands. right along his cheekbone, hard enough that it would make a normal person fly back and hit the wall.

to toji, it's about as painful as being scratched by a cat. his head whips to the side, but his lips are curved. "you deserved that one, probably". ]

[ there is a lot megumi doesn't know, more than he does know, in fact; and he's aware. that does not, however, make him more empathetic towards this man, does not make him the person tsumiki would have liked better, does not make him an itadori, does not make him anything other than what and who he already is. he registers as soon as he hits that he's being allowed, like a child in training and if he thought he was angry before he was wrong.

he was exasperated. he was upset. he was trying to be neither.

now he might as well be both, and angry to boot.

subsisting on his own resourcefulness alongside tsumiki's almost a decade ago, megumi came to the conclusion that adults could not be trusted. he still thinks that, and no wonder, given his influence. there is, he admits, nanami kento who is so responsible it's almost like he's trying to make up for the satorus and the tojis of the world but that's not true of course. nanami would never exert effort that's so futile.

megumi wishes for a hair of a second he could be more like that man and it throws into sharp relief who he's never wanted to be like.

his body feels both burning and freezing; he wants to yell; he wants to not say anything else to him; he wants to not want.

why can't he just leave? that's all he's good at.

just having that thought makes megumi feel small and childish and he hates it, hates himself. then he slides all of that into a long box that might be medicinal or might be for a body in the ground and shuts it away in his head.

quiet.

well if toji won't, megumi will. he retracts his hand and makes a grab for his phone even as he turns away. ]

[ toji isn't interested in filling in the blanks. doesn't think megumi is, either, if he's being honest; knowing the minutiae that comprise 'toji fushiguro' won't change the realities of their lives, nor will it make ten years of estrangement any easier to swallow.

he doesn't wish he could taste iron in his mouth (megumi'd have to do more to make him really bleed), but he wishes his son's anger hurt more. just so he can pocket it, like so many other things he's pocketed, and shut it away to dwell on when he's drunk and filling himself with convenience store food. killing himself with junk.

toji watches the kid move to go. doesn't stop him. this isn't some cheap TV drama where the father pulls his son into his arms and begs him for forgiveness-- that ship'd sailed more than ten years ago, even before gojou satoru and the star plasma vessel, with the zen'ins and billions of yen in toji's pocket.

still sitting on megumi's bed, toji says nothing. like this, he really is nonexistent; unless megumi turns around, he knows that the kid won't be able to sense a thing about him.

probably for the better.

but, before that small, thin frame can go out the door: ]

Tell the Gojou kid that 'Toji' stopped by.

[ at the very least, gojou's reaction will be priceless. ]

[ if toji hadn't said anything, megumi would already be gone. but he does and it stops him in a way that's neither sudden nor slow. the wood under his hand is worn because it's old, cold too to the touch as he leans on it slightly shoving his bare feet into his shoes. unlike his uniform, his nondescript black pants actually cover his ankles, excess fabric spilling over the tops of said footwear; one gets the sense none of megumi's clothes really 'fit' him per se but they're comfortable and that's what matters to him really.

almost, this could be a very strange dream but it's not and he knows that. he's not a child anymore.

never mind that when he said as much to gojou not so long ago, he'd flicked him in the forehead and just said 'is that so?' in that tone adults use when they're patronizing, well, children.

the only person 'yes you are' wouldn't be offensive coming from, would be someone else his age.

maybe it's good for megumi to leave tonight regardless, the room beside his like a ghost itself.

but... ]

Tell him yourself.

[ and stay away from me.

he can almost hear tsumiki chastising him.

it doesn't help.

when megumi leaves he doesn't bother to close the door.

he doesn't own anything he's afraid of losing anymore, and the intruder is already inside anyway.

where he should go is another question though.

well. he'll figure it out. ]

[ miraculously, shockingly, and against all odds—

—toji doesn't leave. consider that a first, in toji's thirty-odd years of being alive on this planet. and really, the only consistent thing about toji is that he's inconsistent and apathetic; he stays in megumi's room not out of obstinance or sentiment, but out of convenience.

he snoops, too. opens closets, looks under the bed. the entire setup of the room is so staggeringly nondescript that he can't help but laugh. it reminds him of his own days in the zen'in house, of rotating the same three kimonos every week, of having nothing in that place that made him feel like a real, breathing human with worldly attachments to insignificant objects.

maybe loneliness is genetic. (under fifty layers of his subconscious, he distantly wishes megumi took after his mother more.)

(under five hundred layers of his subconscious, he misses megumi's mother every day.)

if megumi ever comes back, the unfortunate truth of the matter is that toji is still... there... sprawled on his mattress with a pile of his books stacked next to his pillow. an invisible gorilla sleeping with his face buried next to megumi's personal belongings. an absolute menace. ]

Edited (please learn how to english, me) 2020-12-09 03:09 (UTC)

[ for better or for worse, gojou isn't around. he's not in contact. (if only megumi knew it has to do with the very much alive boy who used to live next door, but also perhaps better that he doesn't - yet.) megumi almost goes to the second years and then doesn't. megumi almost goes back to where he used to live with tsumiki despite not having been there for ages and then doesn't. megumi almost goes to tsumiki, still sleeping, still out of reach, and doesn't.

by the time he's gotten through all of those 'and doesn't', it's morning and if he thought he was exhausted before, he's even more so now.

fushiguro toji has no presence in cursed energy, so megumi really does have to go back to see if he's still there. he hesitates outside his own door and then opens it with more ire than is useful or necessary or matters.

what bothers him the most, maybe (these things are difficult to rank), is he doesn't hate him as much as he thought he would. is apathy a form of hate? is disconnection a form of exile? megumi just doesn't know. he thinks he should feel either more loathing or more sadness but he doesn't.

he just feels cold, staring at the man in his bed.

there is, he thinks, no point in talking to him.

but he needs somewhere to go, to sleep before he passes out, the tremors in his hands indicative of overtaxation.

he backs out of his own room and goes instead to stand and stare at itadori's room. well, the door of it. he puts his hand out, curls his shivering fingers around the knob —

— ah. he can't do it. his head hits the wood of the door and he closes his eyes. what is wrong with all the adults in his life, personally?

you know, all two of them. ]

[ and suddenly, unprompted: ]

Had fun last night, delinquent?

[ a palm to a door, a presence (or lack thereof) against megumi's back. the bulk of a body trained specifically to aggress, curled and corralling a much smaller one. there's an unspoken promise here, that the fingers splayed against scratched wood could push forward and tear through this flimsy partition like paper...

...but toji doesn't. yawning, he bends forward and puts his jaw on the crown of megumi's head. ]

What's up with this room?

[ without consideration. with a degree of carelessness that doesn't belong to a man who abandoned his single-digit-aged child at the height of his tenderness. picking up a nonexistent conversation from a nonexistent time, as if toji and megumi have started a cordial relationship somewhere along the line and toji is going through the motions.

toji wasn't worried, no. but he is, in fact, curious. ]

[ he isn't afraid. the confused knot of air in his chest is only surprise, the kind of shock that roots itself immediately in self-criticism. never mind the lack of cursed energy, there are other ways to sense someone behind you before they announce themselves. being tired is no excuse; being stupidly confused is no excuse.

i don't care.

the weight of toji using him as a perch is somehow less oppressive than the hand against the door. ]

Get off of me.

[ not an answer to either question; he has no intention of doing so, after all. his hands are free. he could call his divine dogs. he could call nue. beings megumi has treated with kindness whether he meant to or not, both in the perceived battlefield of jujutsu shaman and the lesser acknowledged one of growing up and figuring each other out. he knows more about them than this man who he turns to shove away from him.

it's graceless and stupid, and megumi is not a stupid person.

he doesn't think toji is here for anything other than he said.

if he lies, if he tells him a random place where gojou certainly isn't. will he leave then?

for some reason, it feels important, keeping him out of itadori's room, keeping him from even splintering the door.

not that it would take much. the school is old. they both know that. ]

[ it is stupid. the shove. it also barely registers, like the punch from before— easy to suppress, easy to avoid, easy to break.

and, really: what has gojou been teaching him, all these years? he's given the brat a decade to hammer some useful skills into megumi, and he's still letting a stranger take his back. sigh. ]

Aah, I've really gone and made you hate me, huh.

[ AS IF... THAT WASN'T CLEAR FROM THE START... but, let's be real, toji is only saying this for the sake of saying it. his tone verges on dry, even when he reaches and tries to close his fingers around the collar of megumi's oversized shirt.

if he manages, he.

picks megumi up the way someone would pick a cat up by the scruff of its neck. ]

But you should be more careful. Bristling like that's just gonna make me more curious.

[ again: what's in the room? ]

[ he didn't think that he did until he felt it last night, and even now it feels a little distant from what it was, less burning and sour. but it doesn't dull the exasperation for how airless anything he does seems to be against this man. close combat is both necessary and good to know, and megumi has done what he can one way or another, with or without gojou's help in that arena ("you'll be in school for it soon enough, enjoy your youth while you have it hm?") when tsumiki fell into her coma, he had that thought: that he'd let gojou be too lenient with him. that he should have demanded true and more rigorous training.

as if that could have saved her.

he knows just enough to know better.

whatever he's better or worse in aside however, he'd thought he wasn't quite this bad.

or is toji just very good?

he knows nothing about him other than his observations: absent, absent, non-presence, and —

— strong.

knowing precisely how little good it will do, megumi at least tries to reach one hand to toji's wrist. even if he almost certainly fails, doing nothing isn't something he has in him, yet. probably never. and call it a sixth sense or what-have-you, but he doesn't want to call his shikigami out.

it feels...dangerous.

and maybe megumi never fears for himself but the same can't be said of how he feels for others, born of flesh and blood or shadows or light. ]

What is your problem? Go find Gojou-sensei. If he owes you, I don't care. There's nothing here for you.

[ he's not speaking about himself though it could easily be construed as such. if nothing else, he just wants to keep toji out of itadori's room. it's selfish and presumptuous to let himself mourn. they hadn't known each other long. they weren't family.

itadori's voice is an echo that doesn't stop. "please."

he'll have nightmares; he knows. maybe it's for the best that he can't find a place or moment to sleep. he wonders if he kicks out at toji, if he'll break his legs, if it would matter. if he would care even less than that.

"have a little faith."

no.

not like this, anyway. ]

[ toji's fishing. it's almost become second nature for him, at this point: lupine and opportunistic, circling his prey until there's blood in the water. ten years ago, he did his research on gojou satoru to find the holes in his impenetrable barrier— ten years later, he's doing the same to his son. testing his breaking point.

here's what he knows about megumi, now: he's sentimental. there's something beyond that door that breaks his heart, and he's fighting to keep a stranger from walking barefoot into sacred territory. thin fingers to a thick wrist, flimsy digits that toji could break in a millisecond. what then?

stupid. sentiment is the sort of thing that'd get megumi killed in half a heartbeat. ]

You're not wrong.

[ there really isn't anything for him here. if there was, he's gotten it already: the guarantee of megumi's wellbeing, made real. megumi is alive and breathing and very much against the idea of breathing the same air as him; small comforts.

still. there's one thing that toji wants to confirm. or, well. not confirm, because he knows it already— he just wants to hear it from the kid's mouth.

(in another life, toji is long dead and will only utter these words from the safety of his inevitable return to the afterlife. it'll be the only thing that drives him to sink the sharp end of an invincible weapon into his skull.) ]

Hey. [ out of nowhere: ] What's your name?

[ the way megumi's brow furrows, unbeknownst to megumi himself, makes him look his age or younger. at fifteen almost sixteen years, maybe it isn't surprising that megumi is less good at hiding his emotions and other weak points than he thinks. he has not had a vast number of people to pass judgment on such a thing, either victims or semi-present teacher, or people like scenery on a bullet train. there, real, but nothing to do with him as long as he does his job.

engaging with someone who he swore at six didn't matter to him not knowing that couldn't possibly be true for someone like himself (probably both too much like his mother and his father all at once, if from a different time, a liminal space of change cut short), is out of his wheelhouse. when toji asks him his name, megumi can't help his confusion or is spike of frustration. he's learned at this point to control and conserve his cursed energy but that's not equivalent to his feelings.

his fingers are brittle things when they curl tight, branches in winter. but it's strange perhaps, hard to tell if he grips tighter as if to hold on or to tear away.

one has to wonder why these things are so close to the same. ]

You of all people should know.

[ without meaning to, without understanding what he denies him, fushiguro megumi of the coveted zen'in ten shadows technique, lashes back; the sore spot of the name he couldn't leave behind and wanted to hate because this man gave it to him. ]

[ unbeknownst to megumi, the refusal to state his name is the best form of retaliation he could've given— that, combined with the implication that yes, he knows why toji is asking.

a teenager's denial, given fangs. toji actually has the nerve to laugh. ]

You'd think.

[ funny story, megumi— your father'd made it a point to forget, for a longass time. the irony isn't lost to him, and once he starts laughing, it doesn't stop. silent chuckles wrack his spine, constricting his lungs until they knock at the hollow space between his ribs.

it isn't funny. still, he grins. and eventually?

lets go. unceremoniously, like a puppet on a cut string. ]

Megumi.

[ toji gives up on barging into the silent room tucked next to megumi's. relinquishes that act of invasion, in favor of this one. that three-syllabled curse he'd bestowed on a kid who, even by his own admission, probably deserved better. ]

[ he's not sure what he expected but it wasn't the bout of laughter which, much as megumi hates to admit it, unnerves him. he'd taken for granted or assumption or both that his father was something along the lines of deadbeat. debt collector? please. but he'd failed to factor into any of it the matter of sanity.

all of the things he doesn't know about him, about gojou satoru, about ten years ago, well, maybe he'll never know.

is it completely his fault for not asking?

he stares, eyes wider than he knows as toji laughs and laughs and laughs.

it's like looking at an animal.

subconsciously, it hurts.

then toji drops him and megumi is so distracted he fumbles in the fall, ends up on his knees. some of it is undoubtedly exhaustion. but he raises his head at the alien sound of his name on his father's tongue.

so that's what it sounds like. ]

I guess it really is you.

[ it's only as he says that, that megumi realizes fully how much he'd been waiting to find out he was wrong, that all the details pointing to the obvious were still fallible things and twisted wishful thinking with no promise of consolation. his mouth presses thin but it's almost a smile that's so void of amusement it can hardly be called that, but it does make him look even more like toji.

not that he knows that; not that he'd admit it if he did.

the door to itadori's room at his back remains closed. in the midst of all this, that's a comfort. and how like itadori yuuji to be that comfort, even after he's dead. ]

[ toji is an animal. wild and unknown, even to himself. only half-domesticated. there's something feral in the glint of his grin, knife-sharp and humorless, and it only wanes when his delirium settles into glowing embers in the pit of his stomach. unfeeling eyes move from his focal point, a pinprick stain where the ceiling meets the wall, and down to the boy-shaped lump on the floor.

megumi.

(he's lying in bed next to a soft woman with the curve of her body aligned next to his, with the swell of her stomach under the flat of his palm. "have you been thinking of names?", she murmurs into her pillow, and toji is just relaxed enough and just foolish enough, in that moment between sleep and wakefulness, to nose against her hair and to whisper, offhandedly:

"megumi.")

he stares at that boy-shaped lump on that floor, gaze devoid of emotion, and breathes. in and out. ]

Guess it is.

[ it's all he can think of to say. "surprise", he mouths.

he takes a step back. combs his palm through his grown-out bangs. ] Anything you want to say?

[ even in the morning light, shadows exist everywhere. despite his training, despite his own unforgiving nature in regards to it, megumi loses track of himself at that question and his right hand sinks into the shadow at his side, wrist-deep, without him noticing.

the answer is never simple. 'yes' and 'no' are luxuries beyond megumi's gojou-provided stipend, beyond his dead mother's kindest wishes. ]

Anything you want to say?

[ it would be a lie to say it doesn't hurt. this is both the answer and also his own question. blood shouldn't decide how much one cares. so why? he tells himself he's just tired and doesn't believe it at all. he has a silly pointless thought as he tilts his head back to look up at toji — this weird concept that he should seem taller or scarier or sadder or something. but he isn't any of those things.

knowing what happened wouldn't help either of them. that's what megumi tells himself every split second in the space between them, centering on things he washed his hands free of in an alleyway quite some time ago. ]

[ immediately, almost out of instinct: ]

No.

[ this is, to him, the correct answer. there's nothing to say. their relationship, or lack thereof, is built on nothing. megumi owes him nothing. there's nothing toji can say or do that would make sense in the context of this situation. toji wasn't expecting anything by being here, and he wasn't expecting anything even after serendipity brought him to megumi's window. he―

(―"take care of megumi, okay?")

―pauses. watches the way megumi sinks his hand into his shadow, observes the shape of his face, the silence of his body language.

he knows grief when he sees it. his mantra, i don't care i don't care i don't care, quiets for an impossible few beats. ]

You do the talking. [ yell, scream, kick, bite, anything.

if megumi has none of these options at his disposal, then. well.

toji will leave. easy as that. ]

[ things like 'you should have come back' don't exist. neither of them is that delusional. yelling or screaming. kicking or biting. megumi can do these things, certainly, but he doesn't particularly want to, can't imagine an outcome that justifies these actions. he's rather sure, you see, that fushiguro toji will leave regardless.

his head bows not in respect or submission but sheer tiredness. even so, his voice is strange with clarity and something sharp in the center. ]

I can't get a hold of Gojou-sensei. So you probably won't either.

[ to someone who doesn't know him, that might sound like an attempt at leverage or at least a snide remark. but megumi is megumi. he doesn't mean it as either of those things, though he kind of wishes that he did. it would be easier wouldn't it? instead, though his tone is as impassive as ever, the same can't be said of his dizzied head and heart that always seems ajar. he can feel toji leaving and he told him to do as much, didn't he?

but, no matter history, no matter logic, no matter; because part of megumi rejects that.

the shadows slip a little further up his forearm.

under his breath, perhaps not even audible entirely: he's been paying him all this time...

the previously faint memory of gojou beginning to say "your dad, I..." returns and megumi almost laughs. what was he going to tell him back then? about this?

answer: sort of. likelihood of megumi finding out for certain: 50/50. ]

[ "i can't get a hold of gojou-sensei. so you probably won't either."

stupid fucking kid. stupid, dumbass fucking kid. for once, toji didn't ask about gojou and his six eyes and the billions in his pocket, and here's megumi with his eyes to the ground and his forearms painted up to his elbows in mud-black.

stupid fucking kid.

it's been a long time since toji's ever given enough fucks about anything to let himself get angry; maybe ten years and counting, fresh off of a defeat he should've seen coming. despite toji's expressiveness, his mood is mercurial: never too far from center, because having a strong opinion means putting in that extra inch of commitment. too risky.

too troublesome.

still, he knows what this is. the bile he feels in the back of his throat, the completely unwarranted anxiety that coils up his windpipe and makes him taste acid.

stupid fucking kid.

without warning, he closes the gap of space between them. takes that one step that brings him by megumi's side, and reaches with one too-warm hand to haul that thin, tired frame up and off of the floor. his grip, he knows, is hard enough to bruise; a silent threat that he's not going to let megumi struggle, not against this.

he walks away from that forbidden door, his son in tow. drags the kid, definitely not kicking nor screaming, back to his empty room with its sterile walls. nearly throws him onto his bed, where the mattress jumps and the few personal belongings that toji'd pilfered scatter back onto the floor like dominoes.

toji says nothing. after all, he did tell megumi to do the talking. ]

[ the hand that grabs him hurts; it's almost as if it doesn't want to but can't help it. when he lands on his bed, it's on his back and his body contradicts itself: relief for finally lying down whatever the cause, and mild rejection for it too, the thin gasp of air he doesn't chase. what truly catches megumi off guard in the midst of all this, is a sense that something he said has upset toji. no. that's too much isn't it? irritated, maybe. angered?

it prods at something primitive and very genetic perhaps.

green eyes stay unfocused on the ceiling. right, this is his room.

he almost forgot. ]

You know,

[ he braces one hand shakily at his side to push, bringing him upright again, though his gaze only sluices from ceiling to floor, toji's feet barely within frame. ]

I don't understand.

[ his tone has no expectations. talk? about what? to who? the items on the ground register almost like someone else's belongings, and megumi stays silent not because he has nothing to say but because he has mostly questions. toji won't answer them. so what's the point?

but, maybe more than all of the ones he had before now, he has one that thieved its way to the top. what made him angry?

and why? ]

[ everything about this situation is alien. caring is alien. feeling anything beyond that vague in-between limbo of 'just enough to get by' is alien. being forced to consider his own actions is alien. the tired acceptance on a face that looks too much like his own, too much like something treasured and beloved, is alien.

megumi is the adult in this situation. he has the wherewithal to question what he doesn't understand; toji doesn't. with everything he has, he tries to look away from it. his anger. his disappointment, mostly in himself.

(again, that echo: "take care of megumi, okay?")

his flashbang emotions scatter like shrapnel. megumi, limp and tired on the bed, fades in and out of focus. this time, toji doesn't push him back onto the mattress.

he's collecting his ire and trying to set fire to them, until he has nothing left to burn. ]

If the Gojou kid doesn't come back [ he says, his voice low to the ground ], I'm going to kill him.

[ hypocrisy at its finest. of all the things toji is angry about, this isn't even at the top of his list (the real point of contention is how little effort megumi expends to defend himself, his hurt and his own feelings)— but it's the easiest thing to focus on amidst the myriad of nebulous bullshit he's trying to compartmentalize.

gojou promised. money in return for megumi's life. now the money's stopped, and megumi is here, grief-laden next to an empty room.

toji could tear gojou in half right now, if the brat were in front of him. ]

Edited 2020-12-10 07:59 (UTC)

𝘖𝘱𝘦𝘯.

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