Chapter Text
Megumi Fushiguro liked living alone.
Sometimes.
He was only twenty minutes into his day when Megumi decided he already wanted the day over with. A nine A.M lecture on a Monday morning is the kind of thing Megumi would agree on putting a law against, especially when it comes with a follow-up of a two-hour seminar he hasn’t read up on, and with the traffic this time of day, you live thirty minutes away.
Usually, a twinge of motivation could’ve come from a hot shower or the time to buy a coffee from the convenience store on his street.
But due to his luck, it’s currently 8 A.M, and there's some kind of problem with the central boiler in his building.
And so after taking a depressingly cold shower, brushing his teeth and getting dressed into whatever clothes pulled from his wardrobe that day, he’s leaning over the stove in his tiny kitchen, watching a teensy pot of water bubble over a flame.
It’s funny, really, he often over-estimates the money he has to buy coffee every day, and yet, the idea of purchasing a kettle hasn’t once crossed his mind. Funny how the mind works.
Thus, here he stands, hot water flicking onto the book he holds in a small attempt to catch up on ‘Unlocking Criminal Law’ for his later seminar.
It’s to no real avail, honestly. None of the words on the page can quite be assed to pass through his head and be remembered longer than four seconds, and so his only hopes for today are lying with a teaspoon of instant coffee, and a mug of hardly-warmed water with a weird metallic taste.
Steam curls into his face as he lazily stirs the mug, feet shifting behind him against the slippy floorboards of his kitchen, taking in the not-so-exciting view of his neat living room.
It’s only been about four months since he moved out of home, and he doesn’t think he’s sat in his living room once. A studio probably would’ve done him well enough, so living in a 1LDK has been expectedly, well, miserable.
Not that he wouldn’t take this happily over living with Gojo and his ‘friend’ for any longer.
Since he’s started university, each of his evenings consist of studying, instant ramen or whatever he can throw together from the convenience, and sleeping on his rock of a futon.
Mornings are similar, dreary even with the on and off April sun, peaceful and yet about as dreadful as being spun on a roundabout until you’re physically nauseous.
He disguises to himself a sigh as a blow into his mug, the clinking of the spoon on ceramic walls filling the empty apartment over and over again.
Clink, clink, clink.
CRASH.
“ITADORI!”
“I’M SORRY!”
There’s no way around mornings like this for Yuji Itadori. Every weekday morning, regardless of what time his shift is that day, he’s woken up at six thirty sharp by the recognised sound of banging and demands that he make breakfast. And so follows another hour of yelling, fighting over the shower, and making tea as fast as humanly possible.
The root of the cause? Nobara Kugisaki.
Her voice comes clearer as she storms her way into their kitchen, hair wet and bare-faced.
“Which mug was it this time!?” She scolds, looking down at the shards of china on the floor beside Yuji’s feet.
“The blue one…” He mumbles.
You really can’t blame him. It’s 8 A.M and the drear from his lack of sleep is still resting uncomfortably in front of his eyes and in the heaviness of his limbs. Woken sheerly, to slave in the kitchen by making Kugisaki breakfast and (what would’ve been) a cup of tea.
“URGH!” She growls, and it seems with a complete disregard to his intentions, as she angrily ditches her phone on the kitchen counter and steps carefully, yet somehow aggressively, over the mess to tear open the cupboard doors behind. Yuji only hovers sheepishly, stepping with socked feet to the other side and squatting to gather what pieces he could with only his hands, while shuffles and the clunking of objects comes from Kugisaki and the cupboard.
Apparently, what attempts he gives aren’t appreciated.
“Idiot!” Pipes the girl above him, now standing toweringly with a dust-pan and brush in hand, “Not with your hands! It’s glass, you know!?”
She folds herself to her knees, leaning over the area of disaster with her tongue twisting in either concentration or fury, gathering the slivers of china scattered over the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Yuji repeats, “I swear, it just slipped from my hand! I was taking it out of the cupboard and-”
“I don’t care how you did it!” She yells, sparing him an angry glance, “You’re paying for a new set, this is the second one this month!”
“Fine!” He defends, “But last month it was three so technically-”
He’s quickly bitten off with a smack to his foot using the brush.
So instead, he resigns to watch with a bitten lip when she stands to tip the pan into the trash.
It’s not as if he’s okay with the orders thrown at him like a dog, heck, Kugisaki’s broken her fair share of phone chargers. It’s more so that he can’t quite muster the energy to fight her today.
Neither could he yesterday, nor the day prior. Maybe that says more than he’d like it to.
Anyhow, like every other morning, the sound of Nobara cussing him out under her breath isn’t as hurtful as it used to be.
He turns carefully to approach his own room, giving the devil of a girl below him plenty time to drag him quickly back and scold him for his attempts.
But she doesn’t.
Instead, from his way back down the hall, another call from the kitchen rings with irritation against their thin walls. Sometimes he truly felt awful for their neighbours.
“YOU’RE GIVING ME A LIFT IN TODAY, I’M ALREADY LATE!”
He salutes, despite the fact she can’t see him, and calls back a; “YES MA’AM!”
It’s probably for the best that he doesn’t mention their certain fate of getting caught in rush-hour traffic.
By the time the two of them were making their way quickly down the stairwell to the parking lot, the sun that’d made a pleasant appearance that morning has decided to coax itself in thick, grey clouds, gentle spit patting onto the pavement almost mockingly.
“I need a new coat.” Nobara complains with her sweater held over her head, tip-toeing across the pavement.
“You have like fifteen on the coatrack by the door?”
“None of them have hoods.”
“Why would you buy a coat without a hood?”
She doesn’t reply, and so he watches from behind as Kugisaki makes her way to the driver's side of the car, which is a terrifying sight.
Absolutely not.
He stops in his tracks to look up as Nobara looks at him with nothing but false-innocent expectancy, waiting for him to unlock the doors with one hand still holding her jumper to shield her hair.
With a consoling breath, he starts, “Kugisaki…”
“What!? Why can’t I drive?” She straightens herself, immediately defensive, bracing one hand on her hip like she doesn’t already know exactly why. This is exactly why he can’t find the energy to fight her nine times out of ten. “I can get us there faster, you drive like the elderly.”
There it is.
Nobara’s first attempt is always ‘lets see if i can get away with this by not mentioning anything.’ and the second anyone does, her next choice is violence and merciless insults.
Itadori has always been prone to falling into this trap.
“I do not! You drive like a maniac!” He bites, pointing at her.
“No I don’t!” She fights back, still tugging persistently at the handle of the door.
“Yes you do!”
“No I do-”
“Hey, what are you two woofin’ about?”
The third voice comes from somewhere behind Yuji, unbothered, and glazed in smugness.
Unmistakable.
“Itadori’s not letting me drive.” Kugisaki tells, like she’s snitching to their mother, which Maki sort of is, but neither of the two will ever admit to that.
“Sorry I don’t want my car to end up in a river somewhere!” He fends.
Nobara tips her head back with a groan, “Itadori. It’s a twelve-year-old suzuki alto.”
“Whatever, It’s endearing!”
“Nobara, just let him drive.” Maki chimes in favorably, already stepping towards the passenger side without another question. “Can I tag along?”
He lets out a small sigh as he unlocks the doors, watching as Nobara aggressively retreats to the back-seats, door swinging dangerously close to the car parked beside.
“Yeah, sure, hop in.”
“…The law enjoys pretending ambiguity can be solved with nothing but structure, however, it usually can’t.”
The voice droned from somewhere at the front of the room, a slender, heavy-eyed man with stringy brown hair. Dressed in the kind of wrinkled shirt that suggested either brilliance or appalling amounts of time to iron it.
“Ownership is rarely as simple as possession. Legally, perhaps. Morally, although? Much less so.”
Megumi won’t even pretend he understands what the guy means by that. There's nothing outstandingly moral about ownership rights and tenant law, and in all fairness the entire discussion has him tallying just how worth studying law really is.
His eyes are more on the wall than on the display up front, which seems to be presenting a diagram that looks more like an atomic structure than anything to do with Awaab’s law.
Suddenly, and it seems only to add to the ‘not worth it’ side of the tally, the voice comes out all-too-clear.
“Fushiguro.”
For the love of god.
“Define proprietary estoppel.”
He pauses, and blinks over three times, concerningly many, before finally speaking.
“…with respect, we weren’t assigned that.” He replies dismally.
“Yeah, well, life is disappointing.”
Is this guy serious?
He exhales for longer than necessary, taking a long moment to blink before turning his attention to his laptop.
“It’s-” He scrolls up to his notes from a shockingly long time ago, and after a painfully long moment of echoing shuffles and silence aside from such, he speaks again,
“...The legal doctrine that prevents a property owner…from going back on any assurance made to another person, if that person has relied on that assurance and suffered a detriment as a result.”
“Good. Thanks.”
The voice drones back on.
He isn’t called on for the rest of the day, but his lecture that evening drags on excruciatingly. When he steps outside again it’s likely the first time ever he’s more content with being utterly drenched in the rain as he makes his way to his car in the campus parking lot.
When you turn eighteen and your benefactor/adoptive father figure refuses to buy you a car, you’re broke as fuck yourself, and your sister offers her old beat-up ford fiesta that takes seven revs to switch on, most might pass up the offer and start saving for a car that actually drives.
Megumi has decided against that.
He’s been far too desperate for the freedom that everyone tells of driving, and for much longer than he’d ever intended, and for the three weeks this car has functioned just well enough to drive him to and from his uni, he’s been pretty satisfied with his decision.
He couldn’t say the same tonight.
April rain pounds loud and tinny on the roof after he slams the door shut, and he takes a moment to sigh, relishing in the idea that his day might finally be over.
He reaches for the ignition, and twists it to a stutter repetitively in the pattern he’s so disgustingly familiar with. One, two, three, four, five, and – huh! Seems six has done it tonight.
He hums at the small gift of the thing sparing him that one extra twist, and shifts the gearstick into reverse, roughly, as the thing throws a damn hissy fit if you don’t put a real tug in it.
Reversing out of these god-awful parking spots is a near-daily humiliation ritual. Why? Because of the damned incline on the things. It’s one thing trying to pull in on the uneven ground without denting the already-cratered metal barrier, and it’s another to try and reverse out without doing the same.
Especially for his fucking beater of a car that can hardly handle a speedbump anymore.
And so, every time, slamming the acceleration after lowering the handbrake feels like a near-death experience. And luckily for him, this time, even more so.
The engine revs excruciatingly on reversing– and he’s certain he makes it around a whopping half-metre before the thing just stutters and dies, right then and there.
Unwillingly compliant, he lets it roll forward an inch before slamming the brakes and ripping up the handle, jaw tight.
So that six-twister really was just a cruel, cruel game…
He leans forward to let his head tap onto the steering wheel once, and then then twice, just hard enough so that it knocks some of the tension out of his jaw, before he miserably reaches for the ignition again, head still on the wheel.
It’s mortifying, really, how on that seventh twist, nothing happens.
The entire car just sputters pathetically as he sits back up. Actually, no, lazily would be a better description, as if the very spirit of the car has decided that it frankly cannot be bothered to move another inch, instead carefully sealing Megumi in the fate of embarrassingly breaking down.
And may I add, right here, hardly edged out of the parking lines.
His jaw clenches again, tighter this time, and instead tips his head back this time to knock against the headrest.
“Of course.” He grumbles, to no one in particular.
Yuji Itadori himself didn’t know much about cars. Which is surprising considering his very livelihood depends on that knowledge.
That, and, his grandfather.
See, if Yuji were to work at any other gas-station auto-shop, he’d have been fired the second he pulled up. Partly due to the crap-wagon he drives, and partly due to the fact he can’t name a single part of a car engine.
The only reason this isn’t the case, is because of his poor old grandpa, and the fact that Yuji’s stupidly intuitive and/or lucky when it comes to fixing cars. The dude’s owned the place since way back when, and the only reason it isn’t bulldozed over already is because it does pretty well for the locals who don’t know squat about mechanics either, which evidently works out pretty well for Yuji since no one questions what he’s doing when he’s working. Frankly, he doesn’t know either.
Anyway, the man can’t run it by himself. And so, Yuji and the two other mechanics do all the hard work and…come to think about it, he isn’t exactly sure what Wasuke does. It must be pretty important, because if Yuji knows nothing about cars, he knows even less about…payment…stuff?
In any case, the best part about the job is that it pays the bills well enough, and he can’t get fired, cuz, who else is he gonna hire? He doubts there's an awful load of kids who'd put up with the sheer abuse he gets from the old man for a thousand yen an hour.
On a note he’s rather not linger on, however, he’s pretty screwed if he ever did lose the job. He only spent one year at high-school before he dropped out, working the only part-times he got hired for. He told himself it was because he hated traditional academia, which he inevitably did, however that doesn’t make it the entire story.
The bell above the garage door rings somewhere behind him.
Yuji doesn’t look up at first, as he’s elbow-deep in the guts of something he’s pretty sure is meant to be a brake system, though he wouldn’t bet his life on it.
“Oi, Itadori.”
He glances over his shoulder, “Yeah?”
“Theres a call-out.”
He blinks, glancing back in front of him, then again back to one of the older mechanics, Hakari, leaning against the counter behind him.
“This late? You want me to come?”
“Unless you’ve got a better idea for entertaining yourself, then yeah.”
He wipes his hands on his hoodie and straightens up, and when he turns he’s met face-to-face with the note the guy’d obviously taken from the phone call. Squinting, he reads the address.
“Near the school campus?” He asks.
He honestly thinks for a moment this might have been a call from Nobara, but he’s quick to realise she must already be home. Must be some other uni student who couldn’t drive properly if their life depended on it.
Like hell if he’d know.
The two of them, despite being the only ones there at the hour, bother hardly enough with locking up before they climb into the van of the older mechanic, assuming it’d be a quick fix.
The van rattles and squeaks from the sound of tires on wet tarmac, traffic lights glistening in countless raindrops on every surface of every street.
Itadori and Hakari have known each other for a decent amount of time. Yuji coughing dramatically as he smokes out the window, all that jazz? It’s pretty ordinary.
Yuji pronounced his yawn dramatically as they pulled into the campus entry no more than ten minutes later, folding the note from the call lazily in his fingers.
Megumi had stepped out by the time he heard an engine and tires, forearm against his hairline to stop what little rain he could from completely blinding him.
Less than a few seconds later, some dusty van pulls up, not looking in much better state than what he’s driving himself.
But hey, I mean, who is he to judge?
“You’re the one who called, yeah?” The first voice that came was from a built, tanned man, looking exactly the type he’d imagine popping his bonnet for him.
The other was not. An apprentice, if he had to guess.
His expression came oddly cheery, shuffling across the seats and stepping down out of the van to approach him. He was certainly younger than the other man, his own age to put a number on it, and was accepting of the rain as it dampened his hair – pink, by the way – with no hassle. Instead, his hands rest lazily in his pockets as he joins them to make a crowd of three, smiling, for whatever reason.
He notices, briefly, the fact his eyes rest sort of easy on him. Not that he’s polished or outrightly put together, but in a way that’s sort of gentle for the situation.
He looks away almost immediately, because that’s a stupid thing to notice about a stranger in a broken car in the rain.
“So, this thing finally gave up on you?” Comes the voice from beside him, the older one, muffled slightly with the sound of pounding rain.
“Uh-” He glances back around at the car, then to the man, almost bashfully, “Yeah, just- kind of gave up.”
“You tried starting it again?” He asks, “Didn’t just stall it?”
Megumi stares, in all honestly beyond offended by the question, it shows clearer than intended when he frowns, and he reckons the man takes the hint.
“We’ve gotta ask!” He defends.
He earns a shrug from the younger one when his eyes flit back to him, eyebrows pinched, then he turns back.
“Yeah, I tried starting it again.” He says flatly.
“Cool.” The guy nods, “Pop the bonnet.”
He obliges, and less than a minute later, he finds himself standing under the pour of rain with the younger boy, the other one rummaging through his car engine like it’s got money hidden in it.
“So, how long have you been driving that thing?” Asks the boy suddenly.
He compares for a moment, whether the best choice is to embarrassingly admit that he’s managed to screw the thing up in three weeks, or lie and be potentially called out for it later in some…legal documentation or something. He wouldn’t know, he doesn’t listen to a lot of his lectures.
“Three weeks.” He decided, avoiding direct eye contact, like it might make it sting less when he’s laughed at.
Surprisingly, the only thing he gets is a scoff.
“Rough.” He chuckles, and he feels his gaze fall on him from the side. “Is it a hand-me-down or something?”
“Yeah. From my sister.”
“Figured.”
Suddenly it becomes all too clear why normal people learned to do small-talk in middle school.
“Are you not gonna help him out?” Megumi asks quietly, eyeing him from the side for a moment.
“Pft, no.” He chuckles, “Probably just get in the way. He knows what he’s doing better than I do.”
That scratches off the ‘apprentice’ guess.
“Then what are you?” Megumi asks before he can stop himself.
The boy blinks at him, “hm?”
“What do you do here.”
“Oh.” He looks mildly pleased by the question, like it’s easy. “I work here.”
Is that all?
Still, he hums, either unsure or unwilling to expand on that. The rain doesn’t do any justice in making the silence less painful.
From the front of the car, the older man lets out a quiet, annoyed sound, before straightening and leaning to the side to call to the other two.
“Battery’s dead.” He informs, “Can’t do much about it. But at least it means you aren’t completely incompetent!”
Megumi can’t quite decide whether that’s good news or bad, but the idea that the car hasn’t just lost spirit for some unknown, fate-driven reason makes him feel slightly more confident in the fact the universe might grant him at least five hours sleep.
It goes quiet again, aside from distant clanking from where his car’s being, rather invasively, operated on.
“So you’re a student here?” The boy asks brightly from beside him, shifting on his feet with his hands still pocketed.
“Yes.”
“Cool!” He pauses. “So, what’s your thing? Like- uni thing?”
He hesitates for a moment, wondering what exactly he means by ‘thing’. He figures major.
“...Law.”
“Law?” He repeats, tongue twisting in his mouth like he’s tasting it, “So like, court and…Jail and stuff?”
“Pretty much.”
He smiles faintly, foot shifting into the concrete.
“Alright!” The voice cuts through the gradually thickening awkwardness, thank the lord, “Yeah, it’s not going anywhere tonight.”
Nevermind, not thank you. Fuck you.
“Yeah…Looks like it overheated really bad.” He says as he straightens up, wiping his hand on a rag and tucking it back into one of various pockets, “We’d take it in tonight, but it’s late and it’d be quicker if we came back early morning.”
He can’t help but feel that’s a total lie.
“So, I’m just leaving it here, then?”
“Don’t got much other choice.”
Megumi glances in the direction of the station he knows is nearby, although the twenty minute walk feels more like a four-hour hike right now. He hardly notices the younger boy hesitating to say something to the other, until he shifts anxiously towards Megumi instead.
“You…uh, live nearby?” He asks earnestly.
He pauses for a moment, “Sort of.”
He points in the direction he was watching just a moment ago, “ten minute walk to the station, I live near the stop.”
He pauses, the older man already yawning with a stretch and slamming the hood shut.
“You need a lift…Or anything?”
There’s a second where Megumi notices how close he’s standing.
Too close for a stranger.
What a dork.
Despite himself, and partly due to the boy’s insistent asking beyond that, Megumi finds himself in the front seats of the van he’d watched pull up just a half-hour ago.
Raindrops smear left to right on the windscreen, the sound of rhythmic rubbing and the radio on low filling the otherwise empty noise.
“So, whereabouts you live?”
It hasn’t struck Megumi until now that these men are, in fact, strangers. Figuring it’s almost indefinitely too late now that he’s in their van, he speaks.
“Near Iriya station.”
The response should’ve been nothing but mundane, but according to the reaction he gets from beside him, it most definitely wasn't as uninviting as he’d thought originally.
“Iriya station!?” He pipes, head whipping to look at him, “I live near there! The street with the…Chinese!?”
He blinks, almost astounded by the sheer volume.
“Um, yeah, that’s my street.”
“NO WAY!” He beams, somehow the volume increases. “Hey, dude, bring us back to the shop, I’ll give him a ride with me.” He instructs their driver, without any permission from Megumi.
Then, he turns back to him, and leans in far too close.
“That’s okay, right?” He asks, undertone quickly traded from ecstatic to something apologetic, “Sorry, it’s just otherwise I have to make three trips-”
“It’s…fine.” He says quickly, leaning back an unnoticeable amount. The boy’s grin reappears, and he shuffles back into his seat.
The boy beside him goes quiet for a moment, before he starts speaking again, “Dude, if you go to this uni, then how come you live way across town?”
Admittedly, Megumi should’ve expected this question. So once again, he’s forced to make the decision; lie and risk getting caught out, or tell the truth and be embarrassed further? Decisions, decisions.
“It’s cheaper rent that way.” He decides.
A middle ground. Good enough, right? Not as exposing as ‘I genuinely could never afford a place any closer’ and not as blatant as the falsehood of saying something like he…prefers the drive, or something?
I mean, who on earth would enjoy a ride in his car?
It’s almost definitely past seven P.M by the time they pull up onto the gravel of an old auto-repair shop further towards the coast. Dingy flickering lights of a ‘7/11’ sign are the only source of light across the small expanse of tarmac. The rain has slowed enough into a drizzle as the man in the driver’s seat clicks off the engine.
The thought occurs, yet again, that Megumi has no clue where he is. As far as he knows, this could very well be some kind of kidnapping plot, although something in him doubts these two quite have the brains nor ill intention to do so. And so, what choice does he have now but to give it the benefit of the doubt? None, is the answer.
He can’t imagine a more demeaning fate than being kidnapped by a dude your age because your crappy Fiesta broke down in your campus lot.
“Sorry in advance,” The younger boy says after they climb out of the van, “my car’s pretty crap. It’s parked around the back, I’ll bring it round.”
He sees no other option but to cooperate, pocketing his fists and watching as the boy turns.
“Oh-” He pauses mid-step, and turns back, “you hungry?”
He blinks, chewing his own lip subtly. Sorry? Is he hungry?
Mentioning it, yeah. He’s hungry.
Still, he drags his foot on the gravel slightly, still wondering what might be the cause of such an arbitrary question. Is this guy asking him out?
“Yeah?”
“Um-” He points vaguely to the building just behind him, further up the gravel, the one occupying the dying light, “Microwaves, and stuff. Pretty cheap.”
Why does this dude talk like he’s saving time? Doesn’t exactly strike him as the time with more important places to be.
“Okay.”
He’s in the form now of a docile being. He’s exhausted, and the thought just struck that he has work tomorrow, his worst shift of the week. He just wants to get home.
The gravel crunches under his feet as he makes his way towards the glass doors, pushing them open with one hand. A fried electronic chime buzzes over his head when he walks in, immediately swamped in the coolness of the air conditioning. At the counter by the door, a tired-looking college student leans with his back to him, scrolling through his phone.
His options aren’t greatly encouraging. For what? Living, at this point.
Gyudon, Katsu curry.
He weighs the only two semi-appealing meals in his head, the pop song playing on low volume from various cheap speakers does very little to help.
“Warm it up?”
Katsu curry was his final decision.
“Yes, please.”
The thirty seconds spent waiting for the store clerk to heat his food are possibly the peak of the evening, if weighed on scales of pain. The microwave hums hypnotically alongside the tapping of the man’s fingers, and he decides silently to keep his eyes fixed firmly to the wood of the counter, finger brushing his nose as they have no comfortable place to linger.
From outside, he hears the sound of retreating tires on the driveway, a sound he doesn’t think too much about.
Until he does.
The idea only seems to cross his mind far too late, that actually, he could very well have just been abandoned here. He’s been too tired, hungry and incredibly beyond degraded for his body to be ran on anything other than autopilot, so unfortunately, the chances of him either being kidnapped or ditched in the middle of nowhere seem to grow steadily higher in his mind, along with this brewing anxiety curdling in his stomach.
When it’s handed back, the sight of his food truthfully kills his appetite. A plastic tub filled with what he’d probably bet money on contains nothing but yellow paste, condensation drips depressingly onto it.
“Thanks.”
Before he can reach the door handle, eyes still glued nowhere but against the ground, the bell buzzes again, surely too soon since he hasn’t actually opened it.
His eyes flit up quickly, and there stands the boy. His red hoodie is dotted with damp spots of rain, and his hair is spiking up in ways he’d have deemed physically impossible prior to the sight. He’s flushed from either the cold or from the same reason he’s panting a little, did he run back?
“Sorry!” He grins, kicking the stubborn door so it swings shut again behind him, “I accidentally left my windows open, and the passenger seat is drenched, so I went looking for something you could sit on, and then I had to get the key to open the-”
He pauses his ramble, as his eyes land on the sad tub that Megumi carries.
“Damn.”
Megumi’s brows furrow as he looks down at his food, then back up at the boy.
“What?”
“That curry looks awful.”
His voice carries such a genuine tone of disappointment and sorrow that, in what must be confusion and nothing more, Megumi’s lips twitch slightly into what some might call a very tired, very accidental smile. Maybe.
“Nice one.” A flat voice from the counter, the clerk, leaning forwards with his chin propped by one hand.
“Oh,” The boy’s eyes meet his, “Hey, dude!”
He turns back to Megumi, beaming again for an unknown reason. “Anyway, I’m parked outside.”
“You work at an auto-shop,” is the only thing Megumi’s brain musters at the sight of the vehicle, “and you drive this?”
“Yeah?” He says, like there's no question about it.
A red Suzuki Alto. The left-hand back door is dented, and one of the hubcaps is missing. The thing chirps and lights up with astounding effort as the other boy unlocks it, and Megumi hears some kind of clunk that can’t be normal when he opens the door to his side.
“I thought mechanics were supposed to like cars?” He asks, a weak attempt at a light-hearted joke when they’re both sat in the front, he deemed it necessary after seeing the complimentary towel on the passenger seat. Although the back of the chair is still damp.
The boy hums with a shrug as he starts the car, pulling on his seatbelt.
“I like when they move?” He offers.
So does Megumi. But that went to shit just a few hours ago.
Megumi pulls at his own seatbelt while the car squeals upon moving, and freezes for a second when it doesn't extend more than an inch.
“It’s broken.” He mutters, eyeing his driver from the side, who double-takes him, before his smile fades.
“Ah, shit-” He groans, before, with no warning, leaning fully over with one hand still loosely hooked on the wheel, and reaches across him for the seatbelt.
Megumi instantly goes rigid, and is left with practically no other choice but to dampen his sweater further as he flattens himself backwards against the chair, eyes slightly widened.
aYuji’s hoodie sleeve brushes his shoulder as he yanks hastily at the thing while the car pulls inchingly towards the turn-off, his tongue poked in concentration.
“You have to tug it- like, something happened to it ages ago…my roommate…” He mumbles distractedly.
The space inside the car suddenly feels absurdly small.
Up close, he smells faintly like rainwater and petrol, and maybe the distant lingering of a cheap deodorant.
“C’mon…” Yuji mutters to the seatbelt itself, brows pinched in concentration.
Eventually, after suffering the longest amount of such close-up contact he’s had in months, the boy…fixes it? His hand brushes Megumi's when he hands it to him with a small, satisfied “Ah-hah!”
Megumi’s face is still screwed into something teething on the lines of either horror or extremely reluctant impression, however he seems to pay no mind to his staring as he sits back up casually, and continues driving.
He looks back down to the seatbelt in his hand, and then pulls it across, clicking it in.
The drive itself is pretty quiet, and it’s a thing Yuji can’t quite stand. He’s not the type to often pick up on queues like ‘he should probably speak now’ or, ‘do not speak right now’ and that’s part of the reason he has Kugisaki.
The only problem is; quite obviously, Kugisaki isn’t here.
And so for whatever reason, his lack of knowledge only compels him to try and explain the seatbelt thing.
“It’s been broken for ages.” He explains, and he watches the dude’s face beside him pause for a moment before replying, it’s been just about long enough for him to not understand what he’s talking about for a moment before it clocks, and it makes his gut wince pathetically.
“Yeah?”
He sighs about as discreetly as he can.
“Yeah, I think Kugisaki yanked it once or slammed the door on it.” He explains, baring no second thought over the fact this boy doesn’t know who the hell Kugisaki is. “Either that or it’s jammed because it constantly gets wet,” He continues unpromptedly, “from- leaving my windows open.”
The boy is silent, he guesses he may have figured.
His brakes whine as he slows at a light, fingers tapping on the wheel as he makes multiple glances to the boy sitting beside him. The radio crackles.
He’d be intimidated if he knew any better, but in his own brain the guy beside him just lands as somewhat captivating in this weird…stoic, mysterious aura he has to him. It’s not often that Yuji actually meets many people his age in the same area, and to be more than frank, the only friend he’d made through Kugisaki is Maki. She isn’t the greatest at bringing people home.
So, somewhere in his head, this is an opportunity.
All night this dude hasn’t really said a word unprovoked, and subconsciously Yuji has made it his very mission to get him to do just that.
That’s just the way Yuji is. He doesn’t think about it much more.
“So, the street with the Chinese takeaway?” He asks, finally fully looking over at him. The boy doesn’t turn back for a moment, and when he does, it seems only for a sparing moment.
“By the newbuilds?”
“That one.”
“Yeah, that's my street.”
“That’s so cool!” He beams, noticing the light turn amber just a second late, “Kugisaki loves that place.”
He waits for the question.
“Who’s Kugisaki?” The boy asks, “Girlfriend?”
For a split second, he grins at the idea that he’s finally engaging in the conversation, until his internal celebration is cut short.
He stops, something irritating igniting in him to now convince this guy that Kugisaki is, in fact, not his girlfriend.
“What!?” The car swerves slightly, and that can’t be very convincing. “I mean- no! No, no, she’s not my girlfriend.”
There's a small huff from beside him, something that, yet again if he knew better, he wouldn’t assume was a laugh.
“What’s funny about that?” He grins despite his earlier defensiveness, eyes spending far too much time not on the road in front.
“Nothing.” Is all he says. Man, he’s back to square one.
But evidently, that only drives him further.
“No, seriously!” Yuji insists, once again, entirely and utterly unprovoked. “She yells at me like, all the time.”
He pauses, “…that doesn’t really disprove it.”
Yuji knows he’s not wrong, but still.
He doesn’t really compute another answer to that, and so, the radio once again fills the quiet, aside from a small hum every now and then to a song he’s heard before.
No more than ten minutes later, they pull into a slightly scungy residential back alley, per the mystery boy’s quiet directory, and the engine hums and rattles as he squeaks to a stop outside a share of apartment blocks.
“This is me.” He says quietly, already clicking off his seatbelt, “Thanks. ”
Yuji leans forward as he watches the boy reach for the door-handle.
“You got your phone?” He asks suddenly.
He pauses to look back for a moment, “Uh, yeah.”
“Cool. The shop’ll call you tomorrow when your car’s done.”
He hesitates for a second, “Or, uh, I can?” He offers with a smile.
The dark-haired boy’s face is unreadable for a moment, which for some reason scares Yuji enough into his mode of over-explanations and rambling.
“I mean- if- if you want, just saying, I can probably let you know sooner than they will, cuz-”
“Sure.”
He practically beams, and the boy, half-hesitantly offers his phone. He’s quick to put his number in, and even names the contact for him.
He grins, passing the phone back, “Done!”
Megumi glances at the screen.
It reads; ‘Itadori (car guy)’
He looks up,“…Car guy?”
Yuji only shrugs. “Well, yeah.” He points vaguely to himself. “You met me because of the car.”
There’s a pause, like he’s debating whether to add it;
“Also you never asked my name.”
He watches anticipatedly as the guy stares into his eyes for a long, long second. Yuji hopes the way panic swerves like a tidal wave isn’t as visible in his face as it is his own chest.
“Fushiguro.”
“Huh?”
“Fushiguro.” He says, flatly and precisely. Then he pauses, and adds quietly, and Yuji could’ve sworn with a faint amount of pink in his ears, “My name.”
Yuji blinks. Oh, shit- of course.
Something warm flickers in his chest, disgustingly fast.
“Oh!” he grins, like it’s obvious. “Itadori Yuji.”
Another nod is all he gets, and Yuji watches closely as he steps out of the car.
The door claps shut, and he watches him walk away.