Work Text:
Megumi came here for a bottle opener.
He came, to IKEA, for a bottle opener.
A bottle opener that he could have found in a thousand other places: the corner store, the supermarket, that rundown shack selling lottery tickets and three-day-old hotdogs that are the best cure to hangovers the world has ever seen, his university’s cafeteria, that friend of a friend of an acquaintance’s dorm room where he smoked weed for the first time and hallucinated the hat man, the list goes on - and Megumi writes it, mentally, vengefully, while staring at the snowstorm brewing outside.
There’s a snowstorm outside, and he’s sleeping in IKEA. The closest subway station is a thirty-minute walk away.
There’s a plant in his shopping cart because a plastic plant says, I’m getting my life together. I live in a place with plastic plants in the bathroom, I can’t possibly be mentally ill. This bathroom, with my FEJKA next to the sink, is not where I cry myself in the shower to the sound of Olivia Rodrigo.
There’s a boy stuck in IKEA with him that subscribes to the plastic-plant philosophy. He has pink hair and tide-dye sweatpants, and his cart is full of heavy boxes he probably lifted himself on the very top of which, a SMYCKA - the weakest of the plastic plant options, because it doesn’t even look real in a zoom call at a distance. The kind of boy that goes to IKEA with his three roommates, half-wasted, the other hungover, to buy a pair of sheets that will never leave his bed despite being friction-tested by a different pair of knees every night. The kind of boy Megumi hates.
“You look like you have somewhere to be,” the boy says, his eyes taking in Megumi’s choice of black turtleneck and slacks in a place people come in Lululemon and the burning embers of an incoming divorce-through-couch-selection.
“I was stood up for a date,” Megumi answers, as if this automatically explains that he sat down in an underground, East Village bar, ordered a fourteen-dollar beer, waited for forty-five minutes for a date that never texted, before deciding that it shouldn’t go to waste, that he should take the beer with, that he should drink it, right there on the quad, and now he’s in an IKEA, a nifty, fifty-minute subway ride from his apartment, with a beer opener in his cart.
“Ah,” the boy says, as if he somehow understood that. Then, adds, “Her loss.”
Showing off deep dimples that make Megumi blurt, “Him,” which is the truth, which the three-roommate, probably-fucks-doggy-style boy did not have to know.
“In that case,” the boy grins, “I hear they make a mean meatball here, if you want to—if you’d like to—” And here he seemingly runs out of bravado, “…not ruin your perfect date streak. I won’t tell.”
“The cafeteria is closed,” he doesn’t mean to be so blunt.
It is closed, but Megumi’s told he’s too straightforward, and his monotone makes it hard to parse out his really limited emotional range, a portfolio that goes down to one when he’s being flirted with by hot boys - blank, deer-eyed defeatism as the incoming truck takes him.
The boy looks flustered. “‘course it is.” He breaks eye contact. “They probably went home, lucky bastards.” End of small-talk.
Outside, the snow has piled over a foot, and the wind blows a stray, abandoned shopping card left and right and left, while Olivia bellows break-up ballads in Megumi’s head like this is all so symbolic.
“But I do have this, to split between the two of us?” Megumi shows the boy the beer bottle that got him into this mess, distinctly Brooklynian with words like ‘hoops’ and ‘ales’ mocking him on the label.
*
They sit side-by-side on a queen-sized bed, passing the craft beer back and forth, opened thanks to his brand new VARDAGEN. It’s warm and not nearly enough to get him drunk, but when it hits Megumi’s hungry stomach, the buzz that bubbles up spreading to his face and limbs is not unpleasant.
The boy’s name is Itadori Yuuji. He’s half-Japanese, and, impossibly, not full-heterosexual. He wipes the top of the bottle with his sleeve before passing it to Megumi, and his throat bobs when he chugs, the skin of his nape smooth and shimmery like sand on a sunny beach.
“You don’t have to,” Megumi finds himself saying even as he hurries to wet his rapidly-drying throat.
“Yeah, probably not,” Itadori is sheepish, “Not like I’ve kissed anyone anyway.”
Megumi lets out a scoff, “What do you mean, today? You make a habit of picking up pretty boys at Ikea?” Realizing at the soft, smitten look Itadori gives him that he just complimented himself like a dick-head.
“Not usually,” Itadori is too kind to point out. He smiles, lopsided, all teeth. “Not ever.”
Megumi raises his eyebrows, mouth busy with the bottle.
“The kissing,” Itadori clarifies, “I’ve never.”
Megumi thanks movies not being real for the fact that he doesn’t choke on the beer, hearing that, and his heart does an embarrassing canter on his ribcage like a whole bunch of circus ponies are trotting in a circle around the burning carcass of his completely-wrong assumptions, while the circus-master, played by Hugh Jackman, yells, ladies and gentlemen, look at the clown!
“You seem young,” he shrugs, casually, non-judgmentally. Lots of people with super kissable lips have yet to kiss. Megumi trading spit with his bully at thirteen isn’t the flex others might think it is.
Before Itadori has time to expand that tiny frown into a protest, Megumi changes the topic, points to the stack of boxes beside him, where they’ve parked their carts next to their bedroom for the night, “off to college?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.” Cool, cool, he, a senior, has been fantasizing about a freshman, mega cool, he’s gonna go kill himself with a BRILJERA.
“Not a first year,” Itadori says, closer than Megumi remembered him being, leaning over to practically whisper it in Megumi’s ear as his hand—warm, big, warm—fumbles with Megumi’s death grip to pluck the beer bottle out of his fingers and oh— Itadori leans back.
He’s blushing prettily when Megumi looks up. “Thought you might think that but I… I lived at home before. That’s why,” he points at the precariously-balanced pile.
“Cool,” Megumi says again because somewhere in the exchanging of looks, of sips, of Itadori’s pink lips wrapping around the tip of the bottle, Megumi’s brain has categorized this as a date and promptly abandoned him without a script. And his heart is still taming wild horses. And Hugh Jackson says, look at the clown, look at him trying to flirt, watch him forget the English alphabet!
He has to say something, “So—”
“My grandpa died.”
“What?”
“—what were you gonna say?”
“No, no—”
“Oh, uhh, I was gonna mention… that’s why.”
“That’s why you were living home before,” Megumi guesses. Itadori nods. “Taking care of him?” Another nod. “That’s… kind.” He’s flabbergasted.
Ashamed, really, that he had gone and decided the fuck-boy narrative for this stranger, who’s sweet, and shy, and kind, who has never kissed anyone, and picked family over himself, whose first words after being trapped in an Ikea with a stuck-up, turtle-neck-wearing dick-head were of comfort and consolation.
Itadori waves him off with a deeper flush, rolling his eyes at himself. “I don’t usually use that card unless I’m really desperate for reasons to keep someone around.”
He seems to realize what he’s saying the moment Megumi bursts into laughter, and, watching him lose it, Itadori’s embarrassed nerves turn into embarrassed giggles and, eventually, full-blown chuckles.
“You don’t have to look hard.” Megumi picks at the sheet, folded neatly over the comforter they’re likely ruining with their boots. “This is the best bed in the whole place,” he lies like a liar. “so I’m staying.”
And he tries not to make his bedroom-eyes-in-the-bedroom-department too keen, but the choked sound Itadori makes tells him he might have failed at subtlety.
Suddenly, he feels the need to laugh it off, say sike, or sorry, but the butterflies in his stomach are more of anticipation than panic as Itadori’s eyes follow the lines of his face, breaking eye-contact to linger on Megumi’s lips, and then further down. His neck is as far as he gets before his gaze drops to the comforter, to Megumi’s fidgeting fingers, rubbing the sheet between them.
“I trust you since you come here often,” Itadori clears his throat.
“Oh, yeah, I’m stood up all the time.” Megumi smiles.
The high-pitched tone of Itadori stuttering for a recovery is intensely endearing. “I’d never,” he stumbles on after some poor attempts at backtracking that leave him as breathless as he is flushed.
“Prove it,” Megumi says, and, wow, he’s laying it on thick, but he’s half-tipsy, half-starving, trapped in a IKEA with a pretty boy as bright as the sun after a date that took him an embarrassing, hopeful two hours to get ready for, so, really, can you blame him? Look at the clown! Yes, he is the circus.
Itadori swallows and tries in vain to temper the excitement on his face. It’s all for naught; his smiles are just too big, too… everything to be kept at bay.
“Oh,” Itadori annunciates every letter of the sound, lips opening and closing like a rosebud.
“Oh,” Megumi replies.
*
They share liquid courage until the bottle is empty and clutched between Itadori’s long fingers, a recent obsession of Megumi’s mellowed brain. Itadori’s nails are clean, but the backs of his knuckles, bruised and red, like he’d had to use them recently, a black hole of contradictions, sucking Megumi—who has never once resisted the urge to analyze every detail on someone’s body and never once been so wrong at what he finds out—in relentlessly.
There’s a crease in the middle of Itadori’s forehead that wasn’t there before. Like a creep, Megumi fixates on it and reads the world’s worst prophecy in the shadows IKEA’s fluorescent lighting make on Itadori’s expression. He’s realizing that he’s being hit on by a stranger who practically suggested they should fuck on an IKEA display bed, a TUFJORD at that—the frames on those are not for the adventurous, and the head is tacky and heterosexual.
The BRIMNES on the other hand offers a sleek alternative for those looking to leave their baggage in its conveniently-placed under-bed drawers. Baggage like three matches in three years, followed by three failed dates. Never having told someone he loved them. Dead parents, and rich uncles, and finding out you’re gay through developing a forbidden crush on your math tutor. Then, there’s also the dogs; they shed. A lot. One’s blind. They sleep on the bed with him. The BRIMNES comes in King, perfectly sized to invite a random stranger to cuddle with you and your dogs, watch you wake up screaming from nightmares.
“What?” Megumi elbows him lightly, trying not to sound too accusatory or self-deprecating.
When Itadori turns his face towards him, the crease is gone, replaced by one of his exceptional smiles.
“You on the apps?” he says, forcing a fake laugh and taking a very-obviously empty sip off the bottle before remembering there’s nothing there, just the jittery need to be doing something with his hands. One beer is not nearly enough excuse to be making these mistakes, mourning a relationship that hasn’t even begun.
“Yeah?” Megumi tries to follow his train of thought.
“Then, would you swipe right on me?” Itadori asks, tone joking, hands shaking.
“Country bumpkin,” he doesn’t know why he says that, just that Itadori screams it, screams bright-eyed wonder and joy not yet dulled by years worth of dirty subway commutes and slush piled off the side of the street.
“That’s right,” Itadori laughs, the uncertainty not quite leaving his body.
“That depends,” Megumi shrugs. “would you stand me up?”
“You give off catfish vibes.”
“What?!” This catches him off guard. Truly.
He must make an awful face because Itadori melts into the bed laughing and his cheek squishes against the covers, ends up somewhere near Megumi’s upper thigh in his convulsing. Megumi’s not drunk enough for this not to cause a heart attack, but thankfully he has a goal in sight, a buoy in the tempest to clutch close to his chest while Itadori stretches his limbs like a cat, lifting the back of his shirt to reveal butt-dimples right above the waistband of his underwear.
“That’s offensive!” he gapes.
“It’s a compliment!” Itadori shoots back.
“How’s it a compliment?!”
Itadori flings himself up, leaning on his outstretched arm to look at Megumi up close. They’re quite close, very close, and close-up, up close, Itadori’s eyes are a whole-ass cappuccino on a cold, dreary day. The best kind, the bitter kind, the kind that make you shit instantly and finish a whole paper in one evening. The kind you end up betting your day on.
“You’re unreal!” Itadori explains, “You’re like too good to be true! No one looks like that. I’d just think you were fucking with me.” The compliment goes straight to his head and, being told it’s in the wrong department, it heads rightfully back to his cock.
“I mean, that’s the goal, isn’t it?” Megumi says, and the rosiness of Itadori’s cheeks when Megumi is near enough to count every freckle is worth all the cells in his body cringing at that purely fuckboyish statement. Who has he become? Shameless, Satoru would say, a line straight from Satoru’s book of grindr opening lines.
“You didn’t say.” Itadori’s wetting his bottom lip while Megumi watches the entire staff of his brain business division hand in resignation letters to move to the downstairs office.
“Would you? Swipe right?” He genuinely thinks he’s not a catch, with those long, athlete limbs, those eyes, that smile.
Megumi stares exclusively at his mouth. “Yeah.” He swallows. “But guys like you don’t usually make a move on guys like me.”
It’s the nerves that have him admitting this, or perhaps the way Itadori smells, like a day spent well doing whatever, whenever. Just because. No plans, but threaded fingers, sweaty and a little cold. Running, laughing, kissing in the middle of a crowded subway to the sound of the train crackling through the tunnels on its way to Coney Island. Just because.
“What’s guys like me?” Itadori asks. His hand twitches only once before landing on Megumi’s own. “Country bumpkins?” he bites his lip.
“Country bumpkins,” Megumi stifles a breathy chuckle. He flips his palm around to awkwardly give Itadori’s fingers a squeeze. Permission, if he chooses to take it.
“Show me around then.” Itadori leans in, bringing that smile closer, pushing it against Megumi’s parted lips before breaking that brief contact, and breathing, “City boy.”
Megumi pulls him back, hands cupped on either side of Itadori’s face, sliding to his neck when Itadori doesn’t seem to need any guidance, angling his face sideways to capture Megumi’s lips once more, pecking first, like he’s teasing him, before gently deepening the kiss until Megumi opens up for him, their tongues tasting of the same beer.
It’s a slow start that forces him to overthink every arch of the tongue, every brush of a lip, sinking into the sensations, the giddiness in his limbs, the shivers running up his arms.
He’s latching onto the front of Itadori’s hoodie, back against the soft bed, legs around the not-soft Itadori, by the time Itadori is done kissing him silly, breaking away with a bright flush that says, that really was my first time, and a string of saliva connecting their lips that says, no, it wasn’t.
There’s saving grace in the thing tenting Itadori’s pants, pressing into Megumi’s hipbone menacingly. Megumi won’t be the only one getting blacklisted from IKEA for desecrating their bed.
“Are you immediately amazing at everything you try?” he snaps, catching his stupid breath because Itadori has him running laps inside his own head, and the downstairs department has decided is time for takeoff despite the runway not being cleared off furniture, past failures, and exasperated IKEA staff members.
“Yeah, actually,” Itadori laughs.
It would sound cocky coming from anyone else, and Megumi is about to tell him that much, but Itadori has his knuckles under Megumi’s chin, lifting his face so their mouths slot together, and Megumi is a little busy keeping up with this newer, faster pace to point out someone’s who’s sooo ‘amazing at everything’ would know to grab his hair, except— No sooner has he thought that, than Itadori has thread his long, perfect fingers through his locks, and, oh god, and pulled.
Lightly. Just enough to drag Megumi’s lips off and make the tiny moan he lets out that much more humiliating. IKEA staff members be damned.
“Do you watch lots of porn or—?” Megumi’s panting as Itadori lets their lips meet again, tongue teasing contact before hiding away so Megumi has to chase after it, be the reason their kissing grows frenzied and sloppy. Hands pulling, peaking under layers of clothing to press against skin.
“Have you seen yourself?” Itadori asks, placing his head on top of his hand to stare at the mess Megumi knows is on his face. His thumb swipes Megumi’s lips, and Megumi considers himself priestly for not sneaking his tongue out to tease it. “If I give an A- performance, you’ll find an A+ to sweep your off your feet,” Itadori smiles.
“Who said anything about an A?” Megumi frowns.
The look on Itadori’s face is positively puppy-dog, the begging for prosciutto kind, too, the most effective kind. But Megumi’s not one to fold when he has already moaned once.
“High B,” Megumi gives him, watching Itadori pout harder, already diving to remedy this unfair assessment. This time, starting on Megumi’s cheek and kissing his way to his lips.
“We have all night to change that,” teasing.