Chapter Text
Two thirty p.m. on the last school day of July is spent in a convenience store frantically searching for loose change with Fushiguro, their bags and pockets turned outside then in because the ice cream sitting on the cash counter is melting, and, come on Fushiguro, I thought you were better than me, how could you betray me at a time like this and, Itadori I know you’re panicking but if you don’t shut up, I’ll have to kill you, and really, thanks so much for the warning, asshole — oh! I found some coins!
Somewhat-sat on the sidewalk guardrail outside the conbini, Yuuji holds his soda flavoured Gari gari-kun popsicle in his bite so he can push his sweat-tinged bangs up and off his forehead with both hands. Next to him, Fushiguro scrolls silently on his phone, his lemon yellow ice barely bitten. Instances like these, Yuuji finds himself having the craziest urge to chide Fushiguro despite them being the same age, and then he finds all of it so funny that he ends up saying things like, “What, Fushiguro? Are you sulking ‘cause you had performance anxiety earlier?”
It pisses him off — Yuuji can tell because Fushiguro isn’t comfortable with his own anger, so he clams up instead of bursting out — his jaw sliding, teeth gritting, brows furrowing — rigid so he was inaccessible even to himself. Provoking Fushiguro is a mean little habit Yuuji picked up from Kugisaki, but immediately he has all of Fushiuro’s attention. Their eyes meet, and Fushiguro locks his phone — pushes it into his pocket.
“Tired of living?” He asks Yuuji silkily, eyes narrowed, “You keep running your mouth.” The summer sun is off-centre above their heads. When he blinks, Yuuji’s gaze flickers over the moving geometrical shadows made by Fushiguro's eyelashes on his fair cheeks. And Yuuji laughs, giddy, leaning sideways on his arm toward Fushiguro. Yuuji tilts his chin to look up at him, says, “Lemme have a taste of your Gari gari-kun.”
“No way.”
“Huh? Why not?”
“I don’t want to catch whatever makes you stupid.”
“Hey, fuck you.” Yuuji tries to grab Fushiguro’s popsicle suddenly but gives up when Fushiguro holds it out of reach. “That reminds me,” Yuuji says, looking up at the conbini’s colourful sign, absently pushing one short sleeve of his uniform shirt up to his shoulder, nibbling on the edge of his ice to melt some bits on his tongue, “I saw Gojou-sensei eating a Gari gari-kun in the staff room earlier.”
“Why were you in the staff room?”
“You seriously suck at listening, Bakaguro. I'm talking about Gojou-sensei and you’re asking me why I was in the staff room?!”
Fushiguro pulls his ear between the knobs of his bony joints — and Yuuji grabs his wrist, “Ow, ow ow, this is abuse, domestic violence! My bad, I said my bad!”
Fushiguro lets him go, Yuuji gently brushes his earlobe and scowls. Fushiguro looks at him indifferently, and — Yuuji can see Fushiguro’s mouth trembling to contain his smile. What a complicated bastard, Yuuji thinks, even as he finds himself wanting Fushiguro to touch him again — and it leaves him feeling tender like his skin is transparent soaked with all this sweat. Fushiguro says, “I couldn’t care less about Gojou-sensei.”
Yuuji sighs and finishes off his ice. He throws the leftover stick in a parabola into the dustbin a little ways away — it lands perfectly, obviously. Yuuji says, “Nanamin said a couple colleges wanted to recruit me under a track and field scholarship — he called me in to let me know.” When he looks back, Fushiguro’s lips are parted, his brows are narrowed, and his ice cream is slipping — “Hey!” Yuuji gestures toward it. Fushiguro shakes it at him as if in a provocation and says, “You idiot — that’s great news!”
Yuuji takes away Fushiguro’s Gari gari-kun, but Fushiguro takes it back immediately. “I don’t know if I wanna go to college yet.” Yuuji says. Fushiguro’s expression relaxes — perhaps in gentle understanding, “I have a deadline to decide. Nanamin said we could discuss it properly later. Anyway — this story is about Gojou-sensei.”
Fushiguro, in a move of great insolence, clicks his tongue and turns his cheek the other way, crossing his legs, eating — slurping his melting ice. “No, no. Listen — he was reading a book —”
“Which book?”
Yuuji pauses, says, “All you need to know is that it’s a masterpiece.”
“Okay.”
“Damn you — it was Shounen Jump. Don’t you dare say anything, this week’s HeroAca was amazing.”
“So what about Gojou-sensei reading HeroAca?”
“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you.” Yuuji says. Fushiguro grins slyly. It’s mischievous — rare. Yuuji leans down to catch his eye, smiling, “Gojou-sensei is so handsome, isn’t he? I couldn’t stop staring even though all he was doing was lounge around.”
Fushiguro hums indifferently, and takes his last bite. He looks at Yuuji down his nose, his dark eyes quivering in the shadows like a gymnasium pool at night way after school — feels like something against the rules — feels like something Yuuji can’t get caught seeing. Fushiguro shrugs one shoulder, “He’s not my type.”
Yuuji straightens up, shuffling his feet and gulps when his spit feels like it’s cutting his throat from the inside. He says, “In first year, Gojou-sensei caught me smoking in the abandoned third years’ bathroom.”
“You were doing what?”
Yuuji fakes a cough, says, “And we didn’t have Gojou-sensei that year right? But we’d all seen him, I mean come on, right?”
“Right.”
Yuuji runs his tongue over his teeth for the taste of that cigarette he’s already long forgotten. He thinks back to Gojou sitting back in his chair against the window, his silhouette blended with sunlight, too involved with his manga, pink popsicle almost gone as he snacked on it leisurely. “It was when Ji-chan was in the hospital.” Yuuji tells him, “He kept telling me not to come to the hospital and we’d fight every single day because I’d go regardless of whatever he wanted. But one day he was all like — don’t do what other kids do and ruin your health. Don’t drink and smoke. Don’t gamble. I thought that was rich coming from him.”
“So it was an act of rebellion?”
“Nah.” Says Yuuji, shrugging, grinning, “I wasn’t thinking of doing anything of that sort until he mentioned it and I was suddenly all curious.” Yuuji looks down and kicks lightly at the asphalt burning with summer, “I bought a couple boxes — different flavours. But then — I was so stressed that it kinda became a habit. That day was going bad for me. I went to the third years’ bathroom to smoke but Gojou-sensei saw me going in and caught me red-handed.”
And Yuuji thinks about Gojou and him in the empty bathroom, Gojou forcing himself into the same cubicle as Yuuji even as Yuuji’s heart had started beating in all the wrong places — his stomach, his throat, his lip. “He said ‘oh wow, so cool’ and took my cig and then finished smoking it in front of me in complete, utter, creepy silence.” Yuuji holds his cheek in his hand, his other arm folded across his chest, “Still the top ten worst experiences of my life. But you know what I was thinking?” He asks.
He catches Fushiguro looking at him from the corner of his eye — feels at once more embarrassed, Fushiguro says, “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking — oh, that’s my first indirect kiss. I wonder what kissing him for real feels like.” A pause, “Then he said if he caught me with a smoke again, he’d make me clean every single bathroom in the school — even the women’s bathrooms, especially the women’s bathrooms — and had me speak to the counsellor once a week for the entire semester.”
Fushiguro hums. “Do you like Gojou-sensei?”
“What — no. Nah. I'm just infatuated with him, I guess. I didn’t know I was attracted to him until I was able to figure out I was bi much later, so he was sort of my gay awakening?” Yuuji looks down and smiles a little, happy, remembers the image of textured veins in Gojou’s lean-muscular forearm — framed by the prettily folded hem of his shirt as he brought the cig to his mouth, remembers his hair falling into his eyes as he tried to get Yuuji to meet his gaze, remembers his cotton candy stained teeth when he smiled at Yuuji earlier that day when Nanami dismissed him too loudly inside the suddenly silent staff room — Gojou calling him, “Yuuji!” like his name was as easy-difficult to call as it was to say a well-wished greeting.
Yuuji glances up at Fushiguro — feeling shy shy shy about speaking these things aloud, and isn't that strange — how did boys like Yuuji do shy again? “I don’t know how to explain it — I like that there's so much to like about a person — naturally, without conscious thought — liking them only because I like them. It's fun. I think Gojou-sensei's attractive in all sorts of ways, and I don't care about him feeling the same way about me. Sometimes I think it’s ‘cause I’m my age. I might not feel this complex way about people — about men, when I'm older and more jaded, you know? But I like that this is how I can love people.”
A pause, then, "Still — it’s gross that it’s Gojou-sensei.”
Yuuji turns his body sideways to face Fushiguro and leans his weight on the railing. Fushiguro looks down to meet his gaze, “You won’t understand.” Yuuji teases, “You’ve never been infatuated with anybody like that.” He jokes.
“I have.” Fushiguro simply says.
Yuuji wobbles, wide-eyed, his arm off-balance. He didn’t expect Fushiguro to — admit it. He says, “Your ex?”
Fushiguro tilts his chin, “Nah.”
“Then who? Tell me — I told you so you have to tell me.” Fushiguro’s nose wrinkles.
“Rule’s as stupid as you.”
“Well you brought it up, so I wanna know. Who is it? Tell me who it is.”
Fushiguro says, “You.”
“You?”
“Yeah, you.”
“Wait.” Yuuji says, mouth open, his very teeth tingling, “Wait, you as in me?”
Fushiguro clicks his tongue, “Dumbass.” He stands straight — and unlike Yuuji, walks over the few steps to dispose of his popsicle stick into the bin. His open mouth dries out his tongue and cheeks, the suddenly increasing heat in his body making his ears ring. Yuuji follows after him, a little lost — very lost.
“You just — how can you say you like me and then insult me in the same minute?”
Fushiguro raises his brow, shows his tongue like a child, and mouths exaggeratedly when he says, “Like this.”
“You’re not funny.” They stand facing each other, and the afternoon brings Fushiguro’s shadow to Yuuji’s feet. Yuuji searches Fushiguro’s face. He asks, “Was I your gay awakening?” And Yuuji shuts his mouth, covers it with his palm, leans back, corrects himself hurriedly, “No. No, wait, don’t tell me.”
“Why not?” Fushiguro asks. Yuuji’s lip trembles, and under Fushiguro’s gaze, his skin is peach skin and his flesh is peach flesh. “I am—” he says, “It’s embarrassing.”
Fushiguro tilts his chin, puts his hands in his pockets, strengthens his stance, tells him, “You weren’t my gay awakening.”
“Okay,” Yuuji says, “Okay — wait.” Because Fushiguro is still looking at him like that and Yuuji still feels this way. Fushiguro says, “But you were the first person I got off to.”
“Fushiguro!”
“What.”
Wide-eyed, Yuuji’s fingers come away from his face like they were made of red phosphorus, his cheeks burning. Fushiguro tilts his head down, then shows Yuuji his cheek, says, “I’ve to go help Tsumiki at the kindergarten. I’ll text you later.”
“You can’t just act like you said nothing!”
Fushiguro stops walking away and looks back, “What do you want to say?”
Yuuji huffs in annoyance, irritating bastard, “Nothing — yet.”
“That’s why I said I’ll text you later.” He says, waving back to Yuuji, “Or you text me — whatever it is. I gotta go now.”
Yuuji waves back on pure habit, stands there a minute after Fushiguro has turned the corner, goes into the conbini to buy another Gari gari-kun — presses the condensing outer box to his cheeks and his forehead.