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He’s not wearing bandages when he gets home. He left the apartment with fresh bandages wrapped around his eyes, holding his hair in place. It falls over his forehead now, frames his face. Droops. Like the rest of him.
Megumi has his feet up on the table in the kitchen. The lights are off. They’re never usually on, because Gojo’s eyes are sensitive and Megumi prefers the shadows, but it feels darker than usual somehow. Maybe it’s just Gojo’s energy, the emotions he never shows pounding at Infinity like they can somehow get out.
And Megumi’s angry at him. Cause it’s now three thirty seven in the morning and he said he’d be back in time to visit Tsumiki at the hospital with him even though they both knew that was a lie and impossible. But Megumi’s still choosing to be angry at him because he’s always just a little angry at Gojo. For reasons.
“Why are you awake?” Gojo asks, and there’s bags under his eyes. They glow in the dark. They’re bloodshot. If Megumi didn’t know any better he’d say he’d been crying.
Gojo crosses the room and stares at Megumi’s feet on the table instead of asking him to move them. Megumi thinks about punching him.
He’s not going to admit that he hoped Gojo would come with him to see Tsumiki. That would just be admitting he actually believed Gojo’s lie that the fight with his crazy ex-friend and his cult would be over at a reasonable hour. He’s not going to give Gojo the satisfaction of knowing that Megumi believed in him.
Megumi does not answer why he’s up so late. Instead, he says, “Did you win?”
Gojo exhales and sits down at the table beside him, running a hand through sweat-damp hair. “Yep. No more evil curse users destroying Tokyo. Get your feet off the table.”
Megumi does not take his feet off the table. Gojo does not actually care that his feet are on the table. “Did any of your first years die?”
“No. They’re fine.”
“Did anybody die?”
Megumi doesn’t know what exactly he’s angling at with the rapid fire questions, but the flicker of emotion that crosses his face for a moment before Gojo schools his expression is weirdly satisfying. “Yeah. Nobody you knew.”
“Geto?”
Gojo never talks about him, but Megumi’s been around sorcerers enough to have heard the name. Mostly said with an undercurrent of disgust. Often used in Gojo’s direction as a test of his loyalty. Megumi knows they were friends a long time ago, and now they aren’t. He can’t imagine what it’s like to be friends with Gojo.
It probably ends like this:
Nearly four AM, exhaustion clinging to skin and anger just beneath it. A dark room with the windows drawn, inches and infinity apart. Silence speaks the loudest, the air heavy with words left unsaid. The tension does not break. Gojo is too strong to let it.
Someone always leaves first.
Megumi doesn’t know what happened back then. He doesn’t know a Gojo Satoru who has friends.
“Yeah. He’s dead. You don’t have to worry about him anymore.”
Megumi had never worried about him in the first place. “Wasn’t.”
Gojo nods. “Good.”
Silence.
Megumi’s not going to leave first.
“You should go to bed,” Gojo says.
“Were you in love with him?” Megumi asks. Gojo’s face does not change. In fact, all of him is frozen, like he hit pause on a YouTube video, except this is real life and Megumi doesn’t think he’s ever seen Gojo this still.
It’s the worst question Megumi could think to ask. It’s been… implied by other sorcerers. The strongest could have killed the worst curse user at any point in the past ten years, but he didn’t. Why not? What other reason could there be?
Megumi’s heard the things people say about Gojo, about who he was to Geto. One time a nameless higher up called him Geto Suguru’s bitch to his face and the only reason he wasn’t Purpled immediately was because Megumi and Tsumiki were standing right beside him. Megumi’s pretty sure he was more upset that the two of them had heard the insult than by the statement itself. He’s never been one for giving a shit what other people think.
Gojo’s face finally moves, the corner of his mouth twitches so Megumi’s reassured he hasn’t turned into a photo. “Yes,” he confirms, voice quiet but clear, a confession whispered into the dark. “Does that bother you?”
Megumi knows, he knows, that Gojo is asking if his being in love with a murderer who tried to destroy the city tonight bothers him. And honestly, who knows, maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Megumi thinks he probably doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter anymore, cause he’s dead.
Megumi says, “No. I don’t care that you’re gay.”
Gojo sighs, like Megumi is insufferable, which is exactly how Megumi feels about Gojo 99% of the time, so, good. “That’s not…” he trails off. They both know that’s not what he meant. “Thanks, Megumi.”
They’re stuck like this, forever doomed to deliberately misunderstand each other and avoid talking about their feelings. They’re both aware of how stupid they’re being about it, yet too stubborn to break first.
“How was your day?” Gojo asks, stilted and awkward, filling an insurmountable silence that befalls the two of them every three seconds.
Megumi’s day was terrible. He waited for several hours thinking about a fight he was not invited to, didn’t see his sister because he was promised something he should’ve known not to expect, and it’s four in the morning now on Christmas Day.
“It was fine.”
“Good.”
Gojo gets up from the table, then with no warning and disappears into the bedroom he rarely sleeps in. Megumi is used to Gojo doing things that give him whiplash, like leaving the room in the middle of a conversation, or whatever passes for a conversation in this household, so he doesn’t react except to fold his arms across his chest in anticipation.
Gojo returns some moments later and sets a red and blue wrapped box on the table next to his feet that are still propped up there. “Happy birthday,” says Gojo, on Christmas Day.
Megumi is fifteen now. He turned fifteen three days ago. Gojo was on a mission three days ago. There’s a birthday present in front of him.
It’s a brand new pair of shoes, black Hender Scheme sneakers, ones that Megumi had been eyeing online for a few months now, waiting for the right time to steal Gojo’s card and order them for himself. Exactly what he wanted.
And Megumi’s… pissed about it. Because it’s shit like this that makes Gojo so confusing. Megumi does not and has never understood the man, and it’s too late to start trying to figure him out now.
What Gojo is to him is a question Megumi’s never been able to answer. Benefactor, teacher, older brother, weird uncle, pseudo father figure, a secret seventh thing, Megumi doesn’t know. The normie middle school he goes to calls Gojo when Megumi gets in fights. He shows up late, still holding the cursed spirit he was just dealing with. There are long stretches of time where Megumi does not see him. There is always food on the table and Megumi wants for nothing. Gojo has never forgotten Megumi’s birthday, but Megumi only learned his this year when Yaga mentioned it off-hand.
There was a deal, a long time ago, between the Gojo clan and the Zen’in clan, and Megumi still doesn’t know what Gojo’s getting out of it. He wants Megumi to be strong someday, strong enough to rival even the strongest sorcerer of all time. Gojo loves being the strongest. He doesn’t shut up about it. Megumi’s seen his nearly sadistic smile when exorcising particularly nasty curses. No one who doesn’t enjoy what they’re doing looks like that. Why on earth would he want anyone to knock him down from his well-earned place at the top?
What does he want from Megumi? Is Megumi his secret weapon? Is Megumi his way of sticking it to the Zen’in clan?
He’s going to be a sorcerer, because that seems like the only option for him. It seems like the only path Gojo wants him to take. This is the better path for Tsumiki anyways.
Tsumiki is normal. Tsumiki isn’t like Megumi and Gojo. Gojo knows how to tie her hair the way she likes it. Gojo let her put makeup on his eyes and paint his nails. Gojo doesn’t know how to break the curse on her. He tried to carve a place for her into jujutsu society and it collapsed and swallowed her instead.
Megumi doesn’t blame him. He wants to blame him. The strongest sorcerer ever who couldn’t even save one regular girl from the curses he’s apparently so good at fighting. It should be his fault. Megumi knows it isn’t. He wasn’t there. He never is.
Except for sometimes, like now. Gojo is chronic—not always around, but he always comes back. He flares up. He makes his presence known. He talks and he talks and he doesn’t say anything real. And then he disappears again, until the next time. He doesn’t stay, but he never really leaves either. There’s always birthday presents at four AM on Christmas Day.
“Are they the right ones? I got a gift receipt if they’re not,” says Gojo, which means he physically went to the store and asked for one from the employee at the counter, like he’s a real person.
“They’re the right ones,” he confirms. He still doesn’t understand how Gojo knew which ones to get. He thinks he might just know everything.
Six Eyes magically knowing everything makes infinitely more sense than the other option, which is that Gojo actually pays attention to Megumi. That would imply that Gojo has affection for Megumi as part of his family or something, and that’s simply not the case. It can’t be. Megumi doesn’t have family. Megumi has Gojo.
“Thank you,” Megumi says. Gojo nods and waves his hand dismissively.
Tonight, Gojo killed someone he loved. He didn’t say it was him that did it, but he’s the only one who could. Thus is the life of a jujutsu sorcerer. To love is to curse. Or maybe that’s just Gojo.
Megumi is going to be a jujutsu sorcerer. He might be sitting across the table from his own future.
“I’m going to bed,” says Gojo, standing back up from the table. “You should too. It’s late.”
It’s three forty eight now. Megumi nods. “Can we go see Tsumiki tomorrow?” Today, technically. Whatever.
Gojo freezes with his hands on the back of the chair, because he’s just now realized they were supposed to do that earlier, and he forgot. He taps his fingers a few times and bites his cheek. “Yeah,” he says. “We’ll go. Remind me.”
Megumi’s not going to remind him. If he forgets again then he forgets again. If a mission suddenly arises from nowhere then he’ll handle that. “Okay.”
“‘Kay,” he says, straightening up, heading towards that bedroom door. “Night, Megumi.”
It’s three forty nine in the morning. Gojo disappears into the room. Megumi stares at his brand new shoes.
"Good night.”