A #JJK #ItaFushiKugi thread for @peaceandvictory. You know why. CW: audiovoyeurism (yes, I made that up, shhh), pining, big messy sad feels

Also, did you know it's #itafushikugiweek? I did not, and now I feel like I'm gonna have to apologize. NO REGRETS, LET'S GO.

Being a jujutsu sorcerer was never going to be easy: Nobara knows this. Their lives are difficult and exceedingly short. Eventually, you get to the point where the number of people you know and the number of people you’ve lost pass one another...

and you start to question your own humanity when you lose the ability to connect with anyone. That process started for her years ago, so she’s not too torn up about it.

Still, sometimes things get a little too hard for the moment.

Sometimes, the only comfort you have is from people who GET it. Nobara really can’t remember when, but somewhere during second year, they begin to take turns bunking together, the three of them, just to chase away a few of the nightmares.

They can’t get them all, just like they can’t save them all, but it doesn’t stop them from trying. It starts innocently enough; instead of retreating to their own rooms, Nobara and Itadori stay in Fushiguro’s room.

After a particularly hard day, no one could blame them for sandwiching the slim teen in-between their sturdy, warm, still-alive bodies, clustered together in the tiny twin bed to hold him while he cries in his sleep.

But nothing stays innocent for long in the life of a jujutsu sorcerer. Somewhere during third year, the sleepovers take a turn, and their cuddling suddenly involves a lot less clothes and a lot less sleeping.

It isn’t weird, nor is it uncommon for people in their line of work to engage in these methods of…stress relief, grief counseling, call it what you want. Nobara knows for a /fact/ that a couple of her seniors have hooked up before, and they still function as a team just fine.

Hell, Gojo still makes sideways references to some of the crazy stuff he did during his years as a student. It is what it is. She doesn’t mind, and no one else asks. They’re all close, and it’s a very no-strings-attached arrangement.

At least, it’s supposed to be.

After a few months, Nobara starts to notice little changes in her best friends, and she knows these are new behaviors. She’s been keeping an eye on the two idiots since the mission with the detention center during their first year—the one where three of them became two of them...

…and none of them were the same again. Sue her for being paranoid.

The more she watches, the more the tiny gestures and the intent behind them become glaringly obvious. There’s just something in the way that Fushiguro and Itadori start sneaking sideways glances at one another

that has her heart beating a bit faster, each syncopated beat a pang of dread echoing in her chest. It shouldn’t hurt like it does. She tells herself that only small children would get upset about something as petty as being left out,

but that doesn’t stop her stomach from gnawing painfully every time it starts to feel like there’s a secret she’s not being let in on, like a joke everyone gets but her.

She wants to forget the image of their pinkies brushing against each other and hooking together;

she sees it one day when the two of them are walking in front of her. The tiny knot their conjoined fingers create becomes a lump in her throat that she can’t seem to swallow, no matter how many times she tries.

Each teasing bump of their shoulders feels...

…like they’re pushing her out, like they’re forming a wall she can’t see past, like their bodies are blocking the path she needs to walk on to get forward.

To get past this. To get on with her life before whatever this thing is turns into a curse that swallows them whole.

She shouldn’t be jealous, she knows this. Nothing has changed in regards to the way they treat her. They both still take such good care of her, holding her like she’s a doll, like she’s something to be treasured. They hold her like she’s always dreamed of being held,

but now she can’t help but wonder what it would be like if she wasn’t there. Would they still sneak into each other’s beds at night? Would it still be like they were now, slipping back to their own rooms in the early hours of the morning just before the sun crests the horizon?

Would it be more comfortable with more space and less limbs to navigate? Would it be easier to get lost in each other with only one name to whisper against the sheets?

“Hey, Kugisaki.” Itadori’s breath is hot and it tickles the shell of her ear. “Earth to Kugisaki…”

“Hm?” She hums, suddenly remembering where she is and what she’s doing. She doesn’t usually space out in the middle of…stuff, but tonight her mind is too full. Her heart is too heavy. She doesn’t have a lot of room for anything else to fit in.

Fushiguro raises an eyebrow, his mouth sliding to the side of his face in a lax pursing of lips. Nobara wants to kiss the stupid look off of his face, but she’s currently caged against Itadori’s chest, making it impossible to move.

“You bored or something? We don’t have to do anything tonight if you’re tired.”

“No,” she answers far-too-quickly for her own comfort. “No, it’s fine.”

“Maybe you just suck,” Itadori teases, nuzzling into her hair.

Her traitorous stomach does a flip and the sting she’s become intimately familiar with threatens the corners of her eyes.

“You’re one to talk,” Fushiguro responds flatly. “You’ve practically got her in a headlock. There’s no way that’s comfortable.”

Itadori’s laugh rumbles low in his chest, and it sends a chill up Nobara’s spine. She can feel the warmth pooling in her belly. An insistent ache grows between her legs to match the one behind her sternum.

“You never seem to complain whenever I hold /you/ like this.”

Fushiguro shoots a look at Itadori that pulls Nobara from the warmth surrounding her and drops her into an ice bath of negative energy. It screams annoyance, sure, but it’s coated in fondness and a simmering /want/ that has Nobara itching to flee.

It’s all she can do to tap the arms enclosing her and wrench herself from the bed with a huffed “gotta piss.” She grabs her button-up blouse and throws it over her shoulders, suddenly feeling entirely too exposed.

Her feet carry her to the adjacent bathroom and she slips inside, sliding the door closed behind her.

Catching a glance of her reflection in the mirror, Nobara almost doesn’t recognize herself. Her usually-neat bob is more like a fluffy tumbleweed -

and the bags beneath her eyes are nearly the shade of her uniform. It’s any wonder that either of them could stand to look at her…

The tears come hard and fast, the building pressure popping the worn cork inside of her that was barely keeping everything in.

She drops into a crouching position, hugging the shirt tightly around her. It’s then that she realizes the shirt is two sizes too large and smells like vanilla and bergamot and smoke and Itadori. The scent of Itadori surrounds her with such intensity that her head spins.

Nobara lets herself sit like that for a moment, all of her regrets and overwhelming, near-crushing loneliness leaving wet tracks on her face while she fills her lungs with even more regret. This is good. This is healthy. This will get her cursed energy under control.

She needs to get a hold of her emotions before things start to spiral, and that means taking control of her life. This arrangement has to end.

After splashing some cold water on her face and tidying her hair—as much as finger-combing would permit, anyway—she straightens her back

and prepares to face her friends. The door only opens an inch before she loses her nerve. She’s not ready. She needs to think about what she wants to say, needs to think of the best way to extract herself from the situation without hurting anyone—

A low moan catches her attention and steals the breath from Nobara’s lungs. She closes her eyes and focuses on calming her heartbeat. The pounding in her ears is only made louder by the quiet, wet, smacking sounds that carry from the other room.

“Yuuji…” Fushiguro’s voice is both hushed and breathless. “You’re so impatient.”

“Heh, sorry, but can you really blame me?” Itadori’s voice is more audible, the lilt of arousal evident in the way his words drag slowly through the air.

“You look really good today. Like, really, really good.”

“You need to stop, or you’re going to be explaining to Kugisaki why we’ll need to change the order of things. And I’ll need a shower.”

Itadori heaves a sigh that is equal parts resignation and disappointment.

“Hey, don’t pout,” Fushiguro scolds.

“Can I at least keep kissing you? Please? Megumi, I’m dying here.”

“Don’t be dramatic. Think you can behave yourself?”

“Mhm!” Itadori hums enthusiastically.

A chain of quiet smacking sounds follows that twists Nobara’s gut with nausea past her point of tolerance. She considers for the briefest of moments emptying the contents of her stomach into the sink like a petty cat might hack up a hairball inside their owner’s shoe out of spite

The brief respite of amusement is cut short by the high keening whine indicating that Itadori was /not,/ in fact, behaving himself.

Nobara grits her teeth reflexively to the point she’s surprised one doesn’t crack, cursed energy pulsing through her limbs like adrenaline.

It would be all-too-easy to burst into the room and start a fight, cuss and spit and shout until someone is forced to come check on them. By that time, she’ll have gathered all of her clothes and be perfectly dressed while both of them sit in their shame…

No. That wouldn’t make her happy. If anything, it would take the rift forming between them and rip it open violently, creating a chasm they might never be able to bridge again. She didn’t want that. Anything but that.

Sliding the door to the bathroom open, she silently stalks into the room and begins to collect her things—her actual clothes this time, leaving Itadori’s shirt on the floor where she’d picked it up.

“You okay, Kugis—”

Itadori sits up from where he was hunched over Fushiguro, concern written across his boyish face. Damn him for being sweet. Damn him for caring.

Damn him for caring both too much and not enough.

“Yep!” she clips, buttoning her shirt in record time. The bra, she can drape over her arm and cover with her coat. There’s no time to worry about dressing completely when she’s just going to shed her clothes the second she gets back to her own room.

A shower would be good, absolutely…the longer and hotter, the better. She needs to scrub the scent of this entire day and this whole situation from her skin as soon as humanly possible.

“Do you want us to walk you back?” Fushiguro’s query is cautious as his eyes follow her around the room. He’s probably already figured out that this is the end, that something precious and irreplaceable is cracking and Nobara’s just doing her best

to hold it all together before it fully breaks.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Her tone is dismissive and she hates the way it sounds on her tongue. It shows how much she cares and how little she wants them to know. “Just got really tired. Need to go pass out.”

Luckily for her, Itadori is as oblivious as ever. “Are we still heading down to Shinjuku tomorrow still, or…?”

“Y’know, I totally forgot I told Maki I was going to train with her.” It’s a lie, and not even a good one; she’ll have to actually schedule training with Maki,

which means working out on her day off. The idea sucks and her body will hate her for it, but at least she can work out some of the aggression building inside her. Plus, Maki doesn’t ask questions. It’s one of her favorite things about the elder Zen’in twin.

“Oh. Okay.” Itadori is apparently picking up on Fushiguro’s unease, because he starts pulling on his own shirt. “We can reschedule for another weekend, if you want?”

“No, no, go ahead without me,” Nobara says, the words sticking to her throat as she forces them out.

She’s dressed, she can leave, she—

Both boys look at her with twin expressions of concern. They know they’ve hurt her. She hates the urge she has to comfort them, to undress and climb back into bed with them like nothing’s wrong.

But everything is wrong, and she needs to be the one to correct it. She needs to be the one to step away.

She loves both of them so much she needs to break her own heart to spare theirs.

A cloying smile finds its way onto her face, somehow, and she walks over to them, pressing a fond kiss to each of their foreheads.

“It’s okay, guys. Really.”

It’s not a lie, but it’s the closest thing to an admission or the truth she’s spoken in weeks. It will be okay.

She checks to make sure she has everything before she leaves the room. The click of the latch behind her echoes through the empty hall and sounds suspiciously like the cracking of her resolve.

That night, Nobara doesn’t go back to her room. Her feet carry her to Maki’s dorm, where she spends the night crying until her eyes are sore and her voice is hoarse. She doesn’t have to train the next day, but Maki thinks they still should,

just to expend the excessive cursed energy. Maki tells her she’s proud of her. Her arms aren’t as strong as Itadori’s or as graceful as Fushiguro’s, but maybe that’s a good thing. Nobara needs to be away from them until she can think about them without falling to pieces.

Interpersonal issues aside, it's a massive risk for a jujutsu sorcerer to harbor those kind of feelings, so she keeps her distance.

They’re both her best friends, but they were never /hers,/ not really. She should be happy for them. She wants to be.

She just can’t right now.

If you prefer AO3 to long-ass threads (brevity is NOT my strong suit), I have them added there meow:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30886925/chapters/76267226