Work Text:
He doesn’t remember it.
Sometimes, he wakes with flames behind his eyelids, his lungs burning, his neck alight with a sharp, phantom pain, but they’re more nightmare than memory.
He’s not sure he’ll ever remember it, and he’s old enough to know it’s probably a blessing in disguise. It’s not as if he’ll ever forget it happened, not when he carries the pain on the back of his neck. A collar, a chain, an execution all in one.
It was only much later he understood the gravity of it all. He had been too young to understand the court cases, the police, the arrest. All he knew was that he was in pain, excruciating pain, and he was never going to see his father again.
Snapshots. Those years exist in his mind as snapshots. The image of his mother crying bitterly in her hands, photos of him spread out in front of her. Blue hospital walls with cartoon animal prints. Bandages and ointment and nurses with grief in their eyes. The deep, intense feeling that something was wrong, something very bad had happened, with the child-like confusion and inability to understand why.
He wears a choker around his neck, a wide length of fabric that covers his burn, his scar, his destiny.
When he’s seven years old, his mother sits him down at the table. A weight rests on her shoulders and he sits a little straighter, unsure as to why but perceptive enough to notice. She holds his hands, and tells him, voice gentle with an undercurrent of sadness, about soulmate marks.
“Mummy is sorry Megu, I don’t have any photos of your mark. I’ve searched and searched but-” She swallows. “Mummy tries very hard to remember what it looks like but you were so young it hadn’t fully formed yet- This doesn’t mean you won’t be loved. Mummy loves you very much, and one day someone will love you too, and it’s ok if you can’t tell for sure, you don’t- You don’t need to.”
–
When he’s nine years old, one of his classmates grabs him by the shoulders and rips off his choker. Vitriol is being spat at him and even if Meguru isn’t quite sure what it all means, even he can understand “My daddy says you’re a freak! What kind of boy wears a dog collar?”
Meguru is a crybaby. He can’t help but sob, hands scrambling to cover his scar. No one knows, he’d never tell anyone but he knows and like this, it feels as though his deepest fear, his worst attribute is bared raw and naked to the world. He can feel eyes on him, on his burn, and it hurts, he hurts. Big fat tears roll down his cheeks as the boy and his friends laugh at him. The boy grabs his hair, pushing his head down until his neck is as exposed as it can be.
(“What’s that mark? It looks so gross! What’s it, some kind of skin disease? It’s so ugly! Bachira’s a freak, Bachira’s an ugly freak!”)
It hurts. He’s never liked his scar but this is the first time he’s felt so ashamed, the first time he wishes he could hide it away, rip it from his body. He sees white teeth and white eyes and the next thing he knows, he’s smashed his fist right into the boy’s face.
Instantly, his hand bursts into a vivid, bright stinging pain but he ignores it. The boy lets out a shriek and blood is running down his face and Meguru is still crying and he has blood on his hands but- He smiles. He smiles. This is better, he thinks bitterly, the shame and embarrassment writhing under his teeth.This is better, this is good.
He leaves the school, and transfers elsewhere. His mother scolds him for injuring himself, but doesn’t seem too bothered he nearly broke a boy’s nose. He smiles, tells her that he won’t let people mess with him and she looks at him fondly, ruffling his hair.
He doesn’t tell her that sometimes, he wakes up crying. Hands clutching at the raised skin which stains his body. He doesn’t tell her that he’s ashamed, that he feels repulsed by himself.
A bright flower with bruised petals. A towering tree with rotting wood. His mother’s painting, ruined by an unwanted streak of colour. Perhaps it is the defiance within him, but Meguru is not ashamed of his body, his body is his and he owns every part of it. Every part of it, except his neck.
His neck, his burn, his scar, does not belong to him. It belongs to a man in a prison cell and the long-lost ashes of burnt cigarettes.
–
Alone, he plays alone.
Hours upon hours upon hours, he runs until he feels less human and more like a spirit of nature, existing in the rush of the wind and the churned up mud of the field. When he plays football, no one is looking at his neck, instead all eyes are on the ball and the myriad of ways to reach victory. He gets good, really good. After all, he’s sure there’s no one who has practised as hard or as long as him.
There was a point where he thought that football would be his saving grace. Maybe if he got really good, if he could be the best and make himself useful people would look at him and smile. (If he cannot have love, he thinks with the ghost of a phantom pain burning his neck, maybe he can have friendship, anyone, anything).
Football saves him, but not from loneliness. His teammates do not look him in the eye and every day, every single day, he can feel the wraiths of lingering gazes on the back of his neck and it hurts . Of course, with his luck, it’s because he’s good, too good, that people only turn their backs on him more.
It’s fine, it really is. Meguru’s happy! He finds joy in the cracks of his life, and the pain only makes him harder, harsher, stronger. Always, he sees people giving up but Meguru does not give up and he never will. (If he did, if he gave up for even a breath, a heartbeat, a moment, he would crumple and he will not crumple. He’ll survive. Even if it kills him.)
His mother cradles his face, scraped and although he tells her he fell, he knows that she sees through him. She tells him, again, again, and again, that it’s jealousy and the harsh ignorance of young children. There is nothing wrong with you, she says. You are perfect, it’s not your fault they do not bother to understand you, it is not your fault that you are so much more than they could ever be.
The truth is, he desperately wants to believe her.
He doesn’t.
–
At twilight, the thought creeps on him, the whisper in the wind, that maybe the reason he’s alone, shunned, is because the part of him that symbolised love was burnt away. His mark, because it was his, his , was ripped from him and he wonders if, in that moment, his father knew what he was doing. It feels like a curse, a hard, crushing curse. Perhaps this is his punishment for losing something so precious.
If he still had his mark, would things be different?
He knows, he does, that they wouldn’t. But thoughts exist as ghosts and now Meguru has a crowd of wraiths choking him down. The phantom pain on the back of his neck, the lingering ghost that this was how it was always going to be, and the fading thought that maybe he deserved this.
It makes him furious. It makes him so angry he doesn’t know what to do with it. He thinks of splintering bones and ripped flesh and spilt blood, he thinks of getting his hands on his father and demanding, screaming, why did you do this to me? Your own flesh and blood, why would you fucking do this to me? It makes him angry enough that if he could he’d rip the world itself to shreds, crush it in his bare hands, burn it all to black ashes the way his father burnt him.
It makes him angry, it makes him grieve. He’s lonely, he’s so incredibly lonely because what if this is really it? He will never have someone love him and that’s- that’s ok, but at this rate he thinks, starts to believe, that the burn across his neck didn’t only take love from him but friendship too. Is this it? Is he doomed to a wretched anger and constant grief because if no one plays with him, if there is no one to enjoy the best thing in the world with, if he has to stop-
At twilight, when the world is light with fire and the sun looks like a glimpse of hell, Meguru collapses. His knees give out and alone on the road with dust seeping into his clothes, he clutches at his neck till his knuckles turn stark white and he can’t tell the difference between phantom and flesh pain.
It hurts, the loneliness scares him. The thought that in five, ten, twenty, thirty, fourty, fifty years, till the day he dies, he will live like this. That he will be restricted to the harsh glares, the sneers, the laughter at him and never with, the isolation, that he will never be anything other than someone else’s cruel joke, it scares him. It terrifies him.
The burn, the scar, on the back of his neck feels like an iron shackle, tightening and tightening, with no way of getting it off his neck and he can’t breathe and-
The truth is, Meguru is made of anger. It’s stitched in his teeth and his nails and his eyes but most of all, he’s wounded. And he’s scared. He’s so, so, so scared because everyone else has a failsafe. That even if they’re lonely now one day they might find someone and just- know. Know that this person will love them, that the universe itself bled it into their skins.
He doesn’t have that.
Meguru has no soulmate, no fail safe, instead he is condemned to a loneliness that feels eternal. He imagines himself, an adult, with no football and no friends, when his mother has died and all he has left is the scar on the back of his neck and-
At twilight, alone with the fire-red sky and the aching sound of the wind, Meguru tries not to cry.
This isn’t new, he’s lived with this knowledge for years and he hates, feels such crushing shame, that it can still bring him to his knees.
Shuddering breaths wrack his body and he bites his lip so he won’t cry because this is not who he wants to be. He wants to be happy, to be strong, to be loved. He wants to be something, anything, more than what he is now.
Later, when he reaches home, he sits down, closes his eyes, and breathes. Fear, he feels it so strongly he thinks that it’ll kill him.
When his fingers reach for his scar and press down hard, he doesn’t even notice.
–
In his class, there’s a pair of soulmates, it had been the news of the school.
Between classes, at every break and lunch, they sit beside each other. It would be easier if they were obnoxious, or haughty because of their relationship but the truth is they aren’t. They’re sweet, respectful, and there’s a gentle affection in their every move.
Meguru watches. He sees the little gestures: a favourite snack at the ready, a little gift met with a blush, a cardigan given when the weather cools, the fussing, the worrying, the way they seem to softly orbit each other.
They’re sweet and the boy proudly shows off the snow-in-summer that creeps across the whole of his arm. Little, pale white petals like stars across skin and somewhere on the girl is their reflection. Meguru sees it sometimes and he wonders if they would look like scars, under a different light.
His fingers press on the back of his neck. He doesn’t notice.
Sometimes, in his dreams, he has snow-in-summer on his skin, on his neck, and the boy in his class is looking at him with a tender, gentle, love and his whole chest is ablaze with warmth. It never feels like a dream, he simply feels incredibly loved but he wakes, his cheeks are wet.
–
He grows his hair out, until the bright yellow covers the back of his neck. When his mother sees it, she kisses his temple and doesn’t say a thing.
–
The monster helps. His monster eases his loneliness and his grief, instead it lights up every part of him. And he trusts it, in the whole world it is the only thing he is obedient to. His monster is his god, his slave, his reflection, it’s him. Towering darkness and white eyes like supernovas and a smile that is as comforting as it is a threat.
Meguru does not have a soulmate but that’s ok, he has a monster like his mother, and that’s enough.
When he plays, he watches it, listens to it. The low growling voice screaming in his ears, watching his every move. His monster is rage and determination and fire, his monster is his blood, in every way but physical.
It’s why, when his monster shudders and writhes on that first day of Blue Lock, he trusts it and for the first time in a long while, he passes the ball.
(Trust him, give it to him, he’ll blaze, he’ll shine, the way none of the others did, look at him, look at that figure and watch it bloom. He hears it echo in his mind, and he’s not sure if its the monster or him.)
The first day of Blue Lock is a turning point in his life, he’ll remember it till the day he dies, because he meets Isagi Yoichi.
Meguru does not want to believe in destiny, not with the scar on his neck, not when it’s given him nothing but tears and pain. But, when he lays eyes on Isagi he thinks, desperately, please let this be fate, let this be for me.
His fingers find the back of his neck.
–
Meguru owns his body, he’s never been ashamed of it. This body lets him play football, lets him excel, lets him beat everyone who tries to rip him down. It’s why he walks around with it laid bare, smooth, flawless, (markless), skin for all to see.
In many ways, it’s a threat. He can feel eyes on his naked body, the lack of mark, he can feel eyes on his choker, the one thing he never removes. There isn’t a person who has forgotten the way he nearly shattered Igaguri’s nose, knows that he, and his monster, exude a cruelty in their every move. People won’t ask, he dares them with his bare skin, but they won’t.
He knows they think that he’s just protecting his mark from prying eyes. It makes him want to laugh, he’s not protecting a mark. He’s protecting nothing other than empty space and the only part of him he doesn’t feel like he owns.
When he walks around bare, he sees Isagi falter, cheeks red as his eyes look away. It makes him smile, pleased. He finds that he likes it. In fact, he finds that he likes Isagi a lot.
The more they play the more he can’t help but want more. It has been years and years since he’s had this much fun, he almost forgot how good it was to play with someone, someone who he could feel also had a monster. Isagi’s eyes, his legs, his movements, Meguru watches it all. He watches the way that Isagi doesn’t push him away, the way he adapts to Meguru in a way no one else ever did (ever bothered to do), sees the way Isagi blooms under his pressure rather than hates him for it.
The first time Isagi lets him get close, it drives Meguru crazy. He’s never had a friend like this before, never been able to be so close to someone without disgust so strong he can taste it being directed at him. So he clings to Isagi, touches him as much as he can, leans against him, slings an arm around him. He soaks up the touch like a sunflower leaning, growing, reaching towards the sun, and it’s fine. It’s great and wonderful and he’s so happy to finally have a friend.
One day he’s messing around with Isagi when it finally happens. He knows, it’s sheer luck that it took so long. He’s got his arms around Isagi’s waist and he’s laughing bright and clear and Isagi’s saying something but he doesn’t hear it because Isagi’s hand is on the back of his neck.
Wrenching away with a brutal, harsh strength, Meguru stumbles back. His hand goes to his neck in an instant and his heart is beating so loud he can feel it in his ears, his eyes, his lips. He knows he needs to say something, because Isagi’s looking at him with increasing concern and shock, but he can’t-
Teeth clenched, his fingers dig into his neck as an aching phantom pain flares up like hellfire. Standing there, he knows he must look wild, dangerous, cruel. But Isagi doesn’t look at him with contempt or anger, instead there’s just a wary concern in his eyes.
Breathe. Relax. Force it. Breathe. Hand down, away from the burning. Breathe.
“Sorry! Isagi, you scared me ~'' It speaks volumes of his practice that his voice comes out light and cheery as it always is. Isagi opens his mouth as if to say something and just as Meguru feels the anxiety start, he clearly changes his mind.
They move on, and it’s normal again. They practise together and it’s- It’s good. It’s fine. He’s fine. He’s happy.
Later, after dinner, Meguru goes to the bathroom and empties his stomach. Swallowing saliva, he can’t stop himself from reaching for his neck, feeling the burns under his choker.
How could he forget?
Isagi isn’t like him. He’s yet to see the other’s soulmark, but he knows he has one. Isagi is not like him. One day Isagi is going to find someone who has a painting on their skin, a mirror to his, and he will leave Meguru behind-
He will leave Meguru behind.
He can never be certain that he won’t end up alone again.
(In his ears, in his eyelids, in his fingertips, his monster is screaming.)
Isagi makes him happy. When he’s around him he doesn’t touch his neck as much, instead he has fun and he laughs with genuine joy. Isagi is fun, exciting, evolving at a speed Meguru can barely keep up with. He loves the way Isagi plays, loves the way he can help him, loves the part he’s played in his goals, loves the way he feels understood and seen when he’s with him, loves the way he’s learning more and more about him, loves that he’s no longer lonely, loves his friendship, loves-
Loves.
He feels cold.
Meguru staggers until he’s kneeling down and he feels disgusting and gross and with shaking hands he tears off his choker until bare fingers touch bare flesh. Digging, pressing, clutching at the scars, the burns.
He doesn’t cry, no, for once he doesn’t cry. He simply kneels there, breathing shallow breaths as he realises with a terrible clarity that he’s in love with Isagi Yoichi. Realises that Isagi Yoichi will never love him back.
Burns, scars, execution. Hundreds of thousands of millions of times in his life, he wished he could get his mark back. In this moment, alone, head on his knees, he simply grieves. It was his, his , and he’s never getting it back.
How could he forget? How could he let this happen?
Loving Isagi isn’t … a bad thing. It’s warm and it’s gentle and it’s ferocity all in one, and it proves that he can love, that he isn't someone incapable of it. Loving Isagi isn’t a bad thing, if he had to love someone he knows he’d choose Isagi every time but-
Loving Isagi doesn’t hurt, knowing that Isagi will never love him back does.
–
Cigarettes come in packs of 20.
At night, he touches the ridges and bumps and ever changing texture and tries to count them.
When dawn comes, he’s still awake.
He couldn’t bring himself to get past 21.
–
For a little while, he’s a bit distant from Isagi but even that doesn’t last long. It can’t be helped, now that he’s realised he’s falling in love with Isagi it seems that the feeling only grows stronger. Instead, he continues playing the best he can, continues trying to win, trying to be faster, stronger, brighter. He relishes in the way people watch him, in admiration or in fear, it feels good.
He feels good and it’s true. His choker is still his hangman’s noose and he still finds himself digging his fingers into his neck but that’s ok. Football is fun, Isagi is still his best friend, and even Chigiri and Kunigami are becoming his friends.
It’s better than his life has ever been and he’s determined to make the most of it. He’s going to be the best, he’s going to prove to the universe that no matter how lonely he feels he’s going to go further than anyone else.
It shows in the way he holds his head high, the way he feels like a force of nature, the way his monster never stops raging. Bachira Meguru has burns instead of a soulmark, a love that cannot be returned, and even if it feels like he’s grieving with every breath, he’s still going to be happy. He’s going to survive, he’s going to shine, he’s going to be ok.
And it works. He really is happy and everything is going so well, and the days pass by like light, like wind.
He doesn’t always notice the way his fingers go to his neck. The same way he doesn’t notice the way his monster gets louder, until, subconsciously, his playing style starts to change.
(His monster is rage and cruelty and egoism, but Meguru has forgotten that it was born from loneliness).
He doesn’t notice, but Isagi does.
–
And then, in a moment of weakness, joy, love, when he’s caught up in a hundred emotions he can’t give name to, he kisses Isagi.
–
If he had a choice, he’d run, but Isagi holds his wrists, gentle but firm. Grasps his wrists and says, “stop. We- we need to talk.”
Meguru has always liked eyes the best, he thinks that a person’s heart is most clear, vivid, bright in their eyes. And as he looks at Isagi’s he feels his resolve crumble.
Blurry, he feels a little blurry. It’s fear, or something else. He can’t tell.
And then, because he clearly has no control when it comes to love and Isagi, he blurts out.
“I think I’m in love with you.”
He sees shock in blue eyes and since his world already feels like it’s ending, he might as well set it alight. “But we- I can’t do this. I can’t, I don’t know- You can’t love me. We can’t be together so, it’s fine, you can just ignore it ever happened. And, and if you don’t want to play with me anymore, I get it, it’s ok. I-”
It’s not ok. His words falter and Meguru can feel his eyes burning, the tears welling up, he feels like he’s losing it all. Like he’s losing everything good in his life at one terrible moment because-
His hands go to his neck. It hurts.
Shaking, he’s shaking and he looks away and-
Is he going to survive this? His monster is howling with rage, with pain, and the loneliness which has been kept at bay for long starts to rear its ugly head, and he digs his fingers in, harsh and-
Gentle fingers touch his hands, he startles so bad they’re knocked off but- helplessly, he looks at Isagi.
“Bachira”, Isagi’s voice is so soft and tender and worried, “let go, you’re hurting yourself.”
It’s not as if he’s a pushover, not by any means, in fact usually he’s the dominating force in their relationship, when they tease, when he gets a little close to the line of flirting, but he’s helplessly in love and he feels raw and vulnerable and he could never really refuse Isagi. Not like this, not at this moment.
He takes his fingers away.
“I’m- Ah. Look, first of all, you don’t get to tell me how I feel.” Isagi’s eyes are bright, determined with a power that takes Meguru back. “I think I love you too and I don’t want to ignore this, and I absolutely refuse to stop playing with you.”
If his world was ending a few moments ago, then right now it feels like it’s being shaken, shattered, rebuilt. Except-
“You don’t understand, even if you do now you won’t-”
“Have you ever seen my soulmate mark? Yours is under your choker right? Look, I- I really like you, Bachira and I can’t imagine liking anyone else this way or so much. Please, just let me show you. And if we don’t match-”
He can’t do this.
“WE WON’T MATCH!”
Isagi stumbles back in shock and he didn’t mean to yell, to scream, but his neck is burning with phantom pain like the guillotine is slicing right through. He can’t tell which would’ve been worse, if Isagi had told him outright that he was disgusting or this terrible false hope. His fingers are back on his neck, rubbing frantically at the fabric.
“We won’t match because I don’t have a soulmark ok? So just save us both the grief because one day you’re going to find someone else and I’ll be-”
“Bachira, everyone has a soulmark.”
“I DON’T.” He’s screaming again, he doesn’t want to be. “I don’t have one, get it through your fucking skull loser. Just- Just go-”
He’s shaking and this is horrible, this is a mess, and he feels ashamed and hurt and angry and-
“What do you mean? I- I’m sorry, I didn’t want to upset you but I don’t understand.” Isagi looks helpless.
The anger leaves him. Just like that. And he’s left shaking, exhausted. He looks at the floor.
“When- When I was a kid, I got my neck burnt. That’s where my soulmark was. It scarred so badly it completely erased my mark so I- I don’t have one. Not anymore. But you do and, Isagi, you’re going to realise that not knowing isn’t worth this, or me. So, please. Just go.”
“No.”
He jerks his head up.
“I- Ok. I said it before, and I’ll say it again but no one gets to tell me how I feel. And I know I like you. I know I want to be with you because you make me happy and- Bachira, you deserve to be loved. There are loads of people out there who don’t end up with their soulmate, and even if I never know if you’re my soulmate or not, I know that I’d choose you. And I do choose you. If you don’t want to be with me then that’s ok, that’s fine. But don’t walk away just because you think I’ll leave.”
Isagi stretches out his hand, palm up.
Oh.
In his head: dog, freak, diseased, crazy, stupid, fucked up, lonely, scared, scarred, burnt.
Go. He should go but-
He loves Isagi. He really, really, really does. So, he does the bravest thing he’s ever done. Despite the screaming and the crying and the begging in his head, he reaches out because-
He was only a child when his father pressed lit cigarettes against his skin, and now he’s older but he’s still as scared, and he wants, desperately wants, what he’s always wanted. To not be lonely. To be loved.
Reaching out, he places a shaking hand on Isagi’s and he’s pulled in for a hug and he can’t help it he clutches Isagi and-
It’s terrifying. It’s so, so, so terrifying, but for the first time in his life, Meguru takes that chance.
–
It takes time, a long, long, long time before Meguru brings himself to do it. Isagi’s told him an eternity of times that it doesn’t matter, that he doesn’t need to show it, that it doesn’t change a thing but-
He wants to. As painful as it is, it’s a part of himself and he wants to own it again, wants to stop digging his fingers in. It’s not a magic fix but it’s a step forward.
Isagi’s hand is calloused against his cheek, and so, so, so gentle. Meguru swallows, and takes a deep breath. Wordlessly, he takes off the choker.
The only other time he’s been so scared, or so brave, was when this first started.
Isagi looks at him, something unreadable in his eyes, and leans forward. Meguru relaxes into the kiss, heart speeding up a little. It’s sweet, and chaste, and feels a lot like love. He keeps his eyes closed as he feels Isagi lean his forehead against his own.
“Bachira-” Isagi starts, and then falters. The moment has the weight of a thousand hidden tears, and the ease of breathing, and there aren’t any words to say.
“It’s ok. I trust you.”
The words carry the weight of clouds just before rain, of trees with roots reaching the core of the earth, of the sky and the sea and the land itself.
Meguru brings his fingers to his neck and sweeps his hair out the way.
He feels scared, he can’t help it, he’s spent years hating his scar, hating the ugly raised skin but-
This is Isagi.
This is held hands at night, quiet kisses when no one’s looking, ringing laughter and fun, exasperated but kind sighs, this is predator and prey, this is hot cheeks and intimate touches, this is his monster writhing and roaring under his teeth.
This could end with his heart broken, could end with a loneliness that he wouldn’t survive but it’s Isagi.
He trusts Isagi, and maybe this act is as good as a love confession.
Isagi shuffles forward, straddling Meguru’s lap and softly brushes away the blonde strands from his neck. There’s a moment when Meguru’s heart stops cold, when Isagi sucks in a sharp breath. Before he can start trembling, Isagi adjusts himself, and gentle as a feather, presses a kiss against the raised skin.
Gentle rain, calming seas, mist. This is what love feels like. This is what he feels.
Years and years and years and, finally, peace.
“I’m- It hurts that you had to suffer it. It hurts me to know that it hurt you but, Bachira, it doesn’t matter, this doesn’t change who you are. It’s not disgusting, it’s not ugly, it’s a part of you and I-” Isagi stops, and takes a deep breath.
It strikes Meguru that he’s being brave too.
“I really like you, Bachira, and I like all the parts of you. Including this one. I don’t need some stupid mark to tell me that you make me happy. You’ve always been there for me, inspiring me to keep going, to be better, to surpass all my limits. Bachira you’re like- You’re like a star, I think. You burn and you’re so bright and fierce, it makes my heart race. You make me feel so many things, and I want you. Really, really, really want you. I don’t need anything or anyone to tell me that I’ve never felt like this before. Fuck soulmates, fuck marks, fuck the world. I want you, like you, love you, and I get to decide that.”
Isagi’s face is bright red but he’s still got his hand on Meguru’s cheek and his eyes are burning like infernos and-
He loves him, and he’s loved back. Maybe that’s all he ever needed.
Isagi is right, he doesn’t need the universe to tell him that he’s never going to want, desire, love anyone as much as he wants Isagi. Distantly, he registers that his cheeks are wet with tears but he ignores it in favour of kissing Isagi. Kissing him again and again and again.
He can’t say anything right now, he feels too much for words and he knows that Isagi knows. So for the moment he just holds Isagi close and soaks in the giggling, the tears, the warmth.
Meguru has spent a lifetime distrusting love, distrusting others but now in this moment, holding his favourite person in the world, he realises that fate, destiny does exist. And the only person in control of it is him.
Handmade love, the love you choose, the love you trust, the love you willing take that risk for, is stronger than any scar or pain, and for the first time in his life, Meguru feels like he owns himself, every part of himself.
Love is not an instruction, love is a choice and in this moment, Meguru makes his.