[22:22] . . .
smelling you on his things is a kind of private torture.
a precise, aching punishment stitched into the fabric of his daily life, as if the universe—petty and cruel and vindictive—has decided he must suffer not loudly, not with theatrics or blood, but quietly. as if the world has grown tired of his avoidance, of his sins and his cowardice, and now chooses to gut him in this, the smallest, most domestic of spaces.
fushiguro toji sits in front of the washing machine like a penitent man. crouched, knees drawn up, head in his hands, shoulders bowed forward the way they were once bowed over you. his elbows dig into his thighs, knuckles to forehead, like prayer. his back aches. his neck aches. but worse than all of that is the ache in his chest. not even the kind that throbs. no, it’s worse. it’s dull and full and settled. like rot. like something that’s been growing inside of him for too long.
in his hand—those wide, violent hands that know how to kill a man in seven seconds—he holds a pair of sweatpants. grey. soft. the drawstring frayed at the end. his sweatpants, from the bottom of his dresser drawer, the pair you used to steal because you liked how they clung to your hips and pooled around your ankles. they smell like you.
that’s the part that guts him. they don’t smell like him anymore. they smell like your lotion, faintly like gardenias, something bright and unassuming that doesn’t belong anywhere near him. they smell like your cigarettes—not like his, not cheap and ash-heavy, but sweet, and menthol-like. the flavored ones you used to keep in a little box with qinghua designs on his nightstand.
he used to complain. about the smell. the smoke. the mess you made with the ashes. but now he presses the waistband to his face and breathes you in like you're oxygen, like you’re the last clean thing left in the world.
“fuckin’ hell,” he mutters, but it’s quiet, broken. it’s not anger. it’s grief.
the washing machine is already running. the room is small, barely a closet. cramped and too warm. it smells like detergent and dryer sheets and clean cotton. all of it chokes him. because nothing in here smells like him. everything is being scrubbed clean. stripped of the filth. bleached. sanitized. made to be better.
he hasn’t put the pants in. he can’t.
because fushiguro toji is a man of his word. he told you he wasn’t good for you. he said it to your face, coldly, cruelly, even though his heart cracked open the moment you turned away. he watched you leave, jaw clenched, hands fisted at his sides, as if restraining himself from dragging you back was an act of heroism. he told himself it was better this way. safer. cleaner.
you, with your gentle hands and all your softness. you, who kissed his scars and made soup when he was sick and tucked yourself under his arm at night like you belonged there. you, who said you didn’t mind the way he came apart sometimes. who stayed.
but you were also the one who made him weak. he had built his life out of steel and silence and solitude, and you were the only thing he let inside. and now? now he is here. in the after. in the wreckage.
and he is holding you in the only way he still can.
his forehead drops to the top of the machine, and it hums beneath him, merciless and impersonal, and he grips the pants harder, fingers digging into the fabric. the smell of you is everywhere. it curls under his skin, catches in his throat, rests at the edges of his eyes like tears he refuses to shed.
the memory of you is not some abstract, distant ache. no. it’s physical. it is here. it’s in the air, in the clothes, in the way his bed still sinks on your side. it’s in the chipped mug you always used. in the smell of that shampoo you left in his shower. in the faint, stubborn mark of your lipstick on the collar of the flannel he can’t bring himself to wear again.
he told you to leave. and you listened. but your ghost lingers in everything.
and toji, with all his arrogance and all his violence and all his emptiness, crumbles in this little laundry closet that smells like you. he aches for the feeling of your hand in his hair, your breath against his skin, the soft press of your chest beneath his cheek as you slept under the brittle hum of his old air-conditioning unit.
he aches for you like a dying man. and maybe, in this moment, that’s what he is. he doesn’t know what to do with himself.
toji sometimes stands in the kitchen like it’s foreign, like it doesn’t belong to him anymore. the light is too bright. the coffee too bitter. the silence too sharp. every object in the room—the ashtray, the fridge humming too loudly, the cracked mug on the counter—feels like it’s accusing him of something unspeakable.
you’re gone. you probably left the city the day after. just like you said you would. you probably packed up your things while he sat at the bar for hours pretending not to care, drinking like forgetting could be forced through his bloodstream.
you’re probably somewhere coastal, like you always dreamed. somewhere where the streets don’t scream, where you don’t have to listen to sirens and late-night arguments and the ghosts of men like him dragging themselves home. somewhere where the air tastes like salt and not like exhaust. where you can breathe.
you’d find a house with seafoam walls and too many windows. that’s how you always were—windows open even when it rained, hair tangled by wind, skin kissed by the sun. you’d pick lemons from a tree in the yard, text shiu from your porch in that half-mocking tone: you should fire him. he’s emotionally constipated.
and you’d be right. toji wouldn’t even be mad about it. not really.
because this is what he told you would happen. this is what he made you do.
he made you believe he didn’t love you. and now? now you’re probably easing into your new life the same way you eased into him: slow, deliberate, gentle. god, you were so gentle. he can see you now, in some quiet town, surrounded by people who don’t know your history, who only know the sound of your laugh, the warmth in your eyes. you’d charm the hell out of the locals. you always do.
you’d find someone. someone who doesn’t flinch when he’s touched. someone who hasn’t buried a wife. someone who didn't abandon his children. someone who can say he loves you without thinking of a grave.
he knows how it looks. he knows how he looks.
a man who never said it. never whispered it. never gave you the one fucking thing you asked him for. because how do you say i love you when you’ve said it before and meant it? when the first person you gave it to is now bones in the ground?
it felt like theft. like betrayal. like the words didn’t belong to him anymore. and now you’re gone.
you drive. you go. you probably roll the windows down even when it’s too cold. you probably sing along to old music and stop at roadside noodle shacks and smile at people in passing. you’re probably halfway across the coast now, telling a stranger your favorite movie, laughing the way you used to laugh with him. with ease. with lightness.
and toji is still here. sitting on the edge of his bed, or the floor of the bathroom, or in front of the washing machine—wherever you’re not—holding onto what’s left of you.
your smell. your hair in the lint trap. your texts in his phone he’ll never delete. the toothbrush you forgot to take. the cigarette butts in the tray you never emptied.
you’re everywhere. and he hates you for it. and he misses you for it. and it makes his ribs cave in.
he thinks of that one day when you dragged him out of town just for fun. some noodle shack off the highway, the beach afterward, your laugh, your eyes, your hand in his. he thinks of how your hair shone in the sun like it was spun out of gold, how the sand stuck to your calves, how you looked at him like you believed in him.
like he could still be someone good. but toji knows the truth.
he is a man with no children. a father with no family. a name that means nothing in a clan that hated him. a body with scars and a heart so gutted he barely notices the bleeding anymore.
and you? you were everything he could never be.
how is he supposed to forget you when your existence plagues him? when it rots him? when it gnaws at him like guilt, like hunger, like goddamn penance?
how is he supposed to live knowing that you’re out there somewhere, believing that he didn’t love you—when in truth, he’s drowning in it?
a/n: i love grief. i'm sorry. © all works belong to admiringlove on tumblr. plagiarism is strictly prohibited.
