muse ⵌ⸝⸝ megumi fushiguro
yearner megumi painting u like one of his french girls, dedicating this to my favorite person ever tqm <3
Underneath all the notebooks and manga volumes covering his desk is one particular treasure.
Megumi Fushiguro's sketchbook.
It's not something he was particularly passionate about, and he didn't spend hours with creases between his brows, trying to get the perspective right. Instead, it was something he indulged in, letting the scruffs against paper fill the silence.
Self-taught would be the right word. It started in grade school, the margins of his homework, littered with petals that made out lilies; Tsumiki's favorite flower.
Then it was the neighborhood cat that wandered the streets. Ravishing the tuna Megumi left out for him as he sketched every detail of its tattered fur. Kissing his teeth, irritated, when his subject moved too much.
Before he knew it, he was buying another book with pages to fill. The fruit bowl was purely for decoration, yet he found himself figuring out how to capture every shadow. He used to talk to the waning moon, but now he'd rather draw out every pore and concave.
Megumi didn't know when it started, his growing annoyance towards you. Maybe it was the way you waltzed around the school, never bothering to acknowledge him. Even on missions, you'd only talk when necessary, preferring to take charge and let him have half the credit like he wasn't competent enough.
Maybe annoyance was too light a word.
He hated your pessimistic attitude, the bored look in your eyes. He hated how you gnawed the inside of your cheek, how your fingers tapped against the desk as if you were counting the minutes.
And God, he hated how good you looked on Bristol paper.
Graphite pencil lining the edge of your jaw. The pads of his fingers smudge the grey to mimic your eyeshadow. Geometrical shapes that just so happen to make up the proportion of your body. Every page he touched became you. Sketch after sketch—he couldn't help himself.
Megumi's hand moved before his mind caught up. Hunched over in his bed, detailing the way your hair blew in the wind. During training, watching you spar from afar, making sure he got your posture just right. The rules of the third no longer mattered to him. Composition didn't exist in his art. Not when you were his only focal point.
It was just practice; he tried to tell himself. Honing his skills through you, trying to focus on how the sun blends into the horizon rather than the texture of your hair. But somewhere between the first and last graze of his pen, your silhouette appeared in the corner, and suddenly his landscape felt complete.
He tried to be subtle, he really did. A mere creak in the floorboard was all it took for his hand to snap the book shut, a quiet wince at the graphite smearing against each other.
But when relief washed over him, and the pounding against his ribs calmed, he finally put his pencil down with a breath caught in his chest. Silently wishing it was you walking through the door, catching him—drawing you in every way he shouldn't.
But sketchbooks turned into loose sheets, and grey pigments became color. Because a pencil couldn't capture your vivid eyes, nor the faint tint on your lips. Only the shades of skin could highlight the faint crinkles in your features when you smile.
And every tender stroke of his brush painted the way he wished to touch you. Diluting shades into reverent words he could never say, illustrating the version of you that only he understood.
But you'll only ever live on paper. Longing words caught between the borders of bleeding colors.
Avoiding your eyes as if he isn't falling in love with every shade of you.
