Sakusa comforts you when you think you’re annoying
Ushijima hurt your feelings, and you talk to him about it, and he listens and supports you
stay safe and sane yall
wishing you well,
DAEBRAEK
old pinned post
in 2023, i made a discord server. but honestly no one’s on it not even me so i guess it was a pipe dream. if u wanna talk to me, just DM me, would be the best option tbh
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hello!
link to archive
under the cut:
>character tag list
>about
>links to fics
pooh bear
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BLUELOCK:
:)
Nagi
Bachira
Haikyuu: Most Written About Character Tag list
Bokuto
Ushijima
Sakusa
Osamu
bear
About
Hello, everyone. I am dae, in my 20s. I greatly appreciate every like, reblog, reblog with tags, comment/reply, and interaction in general with my work. I see all of them, and I really appreciate you all. This is a sideblog, so I do not reply directly via comments from this URL, but just know that I deeply appreciate the interactions. Thank you! I am so glad that my writing was something you enjoyed/identified with, and wanted to interact with.
bear
Fics
Bokuto emotional comfort verse
or else the established relationship/marriage AU
can be read in any order; listed here in order of upload not story chronology
Bokuto supports reader through emotions
wanting to marry Bokuto but afraid at the same time ( marriage au part 1?)
coming home and having happy sad feelings after hanging out with friends ft codependency fears and Bokuto comforts you
Comforting Bokuto after meeting your parents goes badly (marriage au part 2 bad ending A?)
Bokuto supports reader after a dance performance, when reader works through embarrassment and anxiety
Bokuto moves on after reader’s parents ask them to break up (marriage au part 3 bad ending B?) the marriage AUs can be read in any order that you deem fit kind of
Bokuto asks out reader who has never dated before
(crossreferenced on this masterlist under getting asked out for the first time section)
Reader nervous for Bokuto to meet their parents, it goes well
Talking about dating and uncertainty with Bokuto
Crush on Little Sibling’s Best Friend AU
Ushijima college student org/activity AU
Sakusa TA/college student AU
Osamu college AU, restaurant/studying together friends AU
Ushijima emotional comfort verse
established relationship AU
Ushijima comforts you after you experience an inconvenience and are too hard on yourself about it
Working through a fear episode
Fear episode, feeling guilty about relapse, Ushijima helps
Reader feels bad for setting boundaries, Ushijima encourages and supports
Ushijima hurt reader’s feelings, they talk about it and resolve the situation
Reader scared of their roommate hating them, Ushijima comforts
Reader compares themself to others, feels bad, Ushijima listens and supports
Sakusa
Sakusa mad at reader for planning to move away without telling him, also confesses
Sakusa asks reader to move in with him & confesses, is happy with how relationship with reader is
Osamu
feeling scared of conflict, scared to advocate for yourself, Osamu listens and supports you
Getting asked out for the first time AU
Bokuto (crossreferenced in masterlist sections for Bokuto’s emotional comfort verse/ Bokuto’s marriage au verse)
Getting triggered in a (pre)sexual situation with Nagi & he is patient and kind about it
contents
NSFW elements, vague age, could be seen as college student or adult!Nagi, Reader with DID/PSTD (anxiety/depression/mental illness) who has gone to/is currently in therapy [as always anyone can read this, but i provide this extra info for context :) /], reader with past history of sexual trauma, exploring feelings about sexual, physical, and romantic aspects of relationship, height difference (short reader), reader is triggered during kissing and starts crying; some mental health event happens during kissing i don't know, nagi is very patient and respectful; abandonment issues, reader is certain nagi is going to break up with them (nagi will not)
tags
Everyone is an adult in an unspecified location AU, nagi has his own apartment AU, the apartment is really the only important physical location that matters so like, i don’t really care lol, go wild, established relationship, reader has never dated before, reader little to no romantic/dating experience, implied past sexual trauma,
word count
3045
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Poor Nagi didn’t get any Valentine's chocolates when he was in school. Times when he felt sexual frustration were so few and far between, and when he did, poor Nagi was often too lazy to do anything about it. There’s nothing sad about being a late bloomer; everyone is different. Having fun in a specific way now versus later are incomparable or equal, but not better or worse than each other.
For various, and some of those were surprisingly similar, reasons, your relationship with Nagi started slowly. Both of you were uncertain whether the other liked you. Both of you were hesitant to admit to yourselves you liked the other. For both of you, it was too much of a hassle at first. Feelings are complicated and you both didn’t want to get into anything that was going to harm or disturb you. It was Nagi who, by inadvertent accident, finally steeled your resolve, and spurred you to make your move, which started the “romantic” (?) aspect of your relationship.
Hardly anything in your life is “easy” but for all the struggle you go through to live a “normal” life that other people take for granted, Nagi is an excellent partner to go through it all. Your head spins as you are treated with gentleness, humor, love, and respect. Your paranoid brain questions every act of kindness, moreso now that a “romantic” element throws your body in a tailspin. It’s new territory you don’t know. Your friendship with Nagi brought you so much joy, and those aspects haven’t been removed. You are always grateful to have a person who provides a safe space for you in your life. You cherish these people, few and far between, who you hold tightly to your heart, a dragon guarding less than 10 gems which feels like piles and piles of countless gold coins.
All the work in your life hasn’t been for nothing. You are aware of how distant your insecurities feel sometimes. Their presence remains, memory cells floating in a busy abyss. You're grateful for your coping strategies that saved you. You are grateful for your new experiences and new strategies that can allow you to live the life you want to live going forward. You aren’t quite stuffing your insecurities to the bottom of your brain, the tartarus of your memory, but only because you don’t want any part of you to feel abandoned, lost, or hated.
The thought of roadblocks and stumbling stones in the romantic (?) aspect of your relationship causes you worry sometimes, and you accept the newness and confusion with as much grace and compassion as you can.
The physical and sexual aspect of your relationship is going to drive you insane. It already is, and it will continue to do so.
Physical touch is already a stressful thing for you. Always. With anyone. You did not have positive physical touch growing up. You went through your childhood and adolescence touch starved, and have gone through your adulthood thus far incredibly touch starved, as well. You know what you want, you don’t know what you want, you know other people seem to be getting what they want (and what you want), and you don’t know how. Whatever they do won’t work for you anyway. You’ve tried and failed, with results ranging from unfortunate to disastrous. You can’t handle any more worst case scenarios. (You can, and will if they ever emerge. But you will not put yourself in those situations on purpose, and you will always leave a dangerous situation because you are capable of protecting yourself.)
“Nagi is permissive.” This is one way to describe an aspect of his personality. That word stresses you out. You are so scared of hurting people (the way you were hurt.) You have long isolated yourself because you didn’t think you could get your needs met and keep people safe at the same time. (You were very hard on yourself and when you let people be responsible for their actions instead of taking the blame, you can learn that you were trustworthy all alone, and people, your loved ones, already trust you!)
“Nagi is too lazy to care either way.” This is another way to describe Nagi in many situations. This also causes you pause, worry, and sends you in a tail spin sometimes. While your communication in other aspects of your life has improved drastically through your dedication and hard work, communication about physical touch causes its own problems because of the subject matter. Mainly, you can’t ask for what you want. You’re too protective of yourself (well, you’re alive, so it worked) and you don’t want to throw yourself in situations where you could be rejected and disappointed if it’s going to cause you so many problems.
Yet, you want emotional and physical intimacy, so you have to accept the fact that you want opposing things at times, sometimes at the same time. And it’s very frustrating and confusing. And, you’re not going to lie, in your worst moments, your insecurities about being too much, and too much trouble, emerge regarding this aspect of your relationship with Nagi. You only have one option, which is to work through it. You’re not giving up, and you’re not giving up on your relationship with Nagi. You're not giving him up for anything. (Unless he wants, but he doesn’t, so you don’t have to go through that qualifier. But you’re you, so you still splatter your disclaimers on anything and everything, because you don’t want to hurt people like how you've been hurt.)
All of this is to say, with help from your loved ones, you were able to figure out that Nagi is okay with you cuddling with him, and he was okay with that before you started your romantic endeavors with him, too. You can’t hold his hand when he’s gaming, but sometimes he’ll still let you lean up against him.
All your romantic firsts with Nagi are special to you, and all your first time experiences in general with him (or to be fair, anyone) are special. First time going to the amusement park together, watching a movie, cooking together (he is mostly moral support, but you still count it <3), first “date.” You cherish your first kiss. Your first and every subsequent makeout session excites you. You have days where it’s all you think about. Your sex drive is far higher than Nagi’s, but he’ll play with your pussy almost whenever you ask. Sometimes his full attention is on you, gaze hot and excited, enraptured with your pants and sounds, and sometimes he’ll play with you while he’s watching his shows or streams, something casual enough to where he’ll throw in an occasional deadpan observation of you that flushes you with the kind of humiliation and desperation that is so exciting to feel (the kind you only feel safe enough to feel with Nagi.) You can’t pick a favorite. His attention and praise fills you with white hot pleasure and your brain feels overflown in the present moment with him. The feeling of being carried away safely, because it’s Nagi, allowing you to be solidly grounded in the moment, because you don’t want to be anywhere else except overwhelmed by Nagi.
Excited at the thought of experiencing these feelings again, you close the door to his bedroom and stand on your tiptoes and you still can’t reach his face. You cling to his shirt, pulling to coax him down to where you can reach. He towers over you, a hand over your head. You stare into his beautiful eyes and let out a tentative whine.
“No patience at all.” Nagi’s lower, rough voice sends a jolt through you, and then he’s kissing you. Finally.
There’s no pressure for Nagi to be creative when he touches you. For as bad as you think you are at communicating, you give him just enough to fill in the blanks that your body language leaves. Your body and voice are so expressive, and he doesn’t know how he knows what you want, but he does. You also seem pretty happy with anything he does. It makes him feel so powerful to make you so happy without even trying (that hard). Especially as time goes on and you get to know each other’s likes and tastes more and more, he likes the way you make him feel like in these moments, he is your whole world. He is all you need. Your enraptured expression, completely taken by him, the way your attention can’t be dragged to anything else makes him feel seen, and he likes the feeling. He wants you to see him.
He knows how to make you happy. When he doesn’t feel like putting in effort, but still wants to spend time with you, he knows how to make you feel good. He knows how to get results.
But the way you motivate him surprises him every time. He knows you like it sometimes, when he pretends he’s more focused on his streams than you. You like it, so he lets you believe he is more focused on his streams than he really is. But making you feel good is like no game he’s ever played. It’s a fun game, an exciting game, riveting, all-consuming, to try and read you, try and figure out what it is you want him to do, what your body language and whines are leading him to do. You’re so easy to read, it feels like you were made for him. When you whine louder and louder, he wants you to feel like he was made for you, too.
He has to let you catch your breath eventually. He uses this time to feel proud of himself, smug at his handiwork, as he looks down at your dazed expression. You look like you miss him already. Your shy, worried expression you get as you feel better and better with the sinful way you move against his body, begging for more.
He feels protective of you and never wants to let you go. He never wants you to feel hurt again and he wants to be the one to make sure of that. He wants to be there to support you through everything and he wants you by his side always, too.
He crowds you to the bed and you scramble up, and he crawls after you, and looms over you, the only image you want to see.
He descends, body heavy on yours, kisses you more. You never would have thought you could like the taste of someone’s mouth like you do Nagi’s. You can’t get enough of the way his tongue feels, the strength of his hands when he grips you. You’re so loud, which Nagi loves, and is fun for you, too, but the moments when you’re about to hear his noises, grunts and gasps and exhales, makes your tummy swoop, and you cling to him tighter. You tangle your fingers in his beautiful hair. It calms you to touch it. You like holding his head like that while he kisses your neck. You hate that he has to stop kissing your lips in order to kiss your neck because you love both so much.
Nagi is patient and attentive. He can’t get bored when he sees and hears how much you are enjoying it.
The silence has dragged on a bit too long, much longer than you need to catch your breath, and he knows you’re impatient. You act like you don’t care about breathing anymore when you kiss him, which makes him feel like king of the world, of course, but also, he wants you to breathe.
He pulls away to assess the situation. Your fingers are still in his hair, which he loves, but your body is heavy, a lot less pliable than normal, and your gaze is frozen somewhere else, expression not dazed and needy like he likes seeing you. You look like something else. Lost in thought or somewhere else in general.
“Baby.”
You twitch your fingers in his hair, but don’t look at him or say anything.
“Angel?”
You remove your hand from his hair and squirm under him. He rolls off you onto his side and watches you.
“Are you okay?”
You curl away from him slightly, so he adjusts his body too, giving you some more space.
He’s really worried, but he doesn’t want to worry you more, if something really is wrong. He knows and trusts you will tell him eventually, even if you can’t right now.
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you, too,” you say quickly.
“Can I kiss you?” he asks.
You look conflicted.
“I don’t have to. I just want you to know I love you. What do you need right now?”
You’re frozen. You don’t even feel like you can bury your head in the pillow like you want to. Well, actually, what you really want to do is bury your head in Nagi’s chest, but you definitely don’t think or feel like you can do that.
“Do you want me to go? Do you want me to take you home?”
“No,” you choke out. “I want to stay.”
“Okay,” Nagi says. “If there’s something you want me to do, when you can, can you tell me?”
Horrified, you feel tears welling in your eyes.
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“Okay,” Nagi says. “I want to help you, and can if you want me to, but I don’t have to do anything, either, if you don’t want.”
As focused as you were when you were kissing him and into it, you are now equally and opposingly scattered. Of the millions thoughts and anxieties and worries freefalling in your head, what a lot of them boil down to are: a) you are horrible; and b) he’s not going to like you anymore.
“I’m here for you,” he says. “It’s okay if you want to cry, if you feel like it.”
The sobs escape your mouth without you feeling like you let them.
He hands you tissues and stays with you quietly.
“I’m sorry,” you say, which doesn’t feel good to say. It feels like you are betraying yourself. But there was no way you were going to win the fight to overcome the urge to say it. Not right now.
“I don’t want you to say that,” Nagi says. “About crying to me ever again.”
“Sorry,” you say, because at this point you’ve given up, and have fully accepted that Nagi will probably most definitely never want to see you ever again.
“You can say sorry, and I’ll tell you it’s okay, but I just want you to know. I want it on record that I don’t want an apology for you sharing your emotions with me. Thank you for trusting me with them. I am honored.”
You cry some more, hiccupping and loud.
Once you have a tiny pile of tissues, which you push off the bed into the bin Nagi got up and retrieved for you, you feel satisfyingly empty, like how one does, after having a good cry.
“I love you,” Nagi says promptly.
“I love you, too,” you rasp out.
He gazes at you calmly.
You and him are opposites in some ways. One important way is he is never in a rush and you are always in a rush. So even though you know he would never rush you into anything, whether it’s talking or sex or leaving the house for some event or activity, your own traitorous brain yells at you, guilts you, warns you that he’s going ot leave no matter what anyway, so what are you even doing?
“Can I stay?” you ask in a small voice.
He blinks at you. “...what?”
“Can I still stay here? Even though we’re not.” You gulp around nothing. Your throat convulses. “Or I can go,” you say quickly because you don’t want to cause trouble or be shameless or assume or any of the horrible things that you could do wrong.
“You should always do whatever you want,” he says. “But if you’re asking me, I’d like if you stayed.”
“Okay,” you whisper, searching your chest for the relief you think you should be feeling. A win! Right? You don’t have to do something you’re scared of, and you get what you really wanted in the first place. All you ever want is Nagi.
“Can I still.” You wish words weren’t so hard. For all that everyone makes fun of you for constantly talking, why can’t you when it really matters? You search for the extroverted part of you, and you feel tumbleweeds where a peppy, bubbly personality should be.
Great. Abandoned. As per usual.
Nagi doesn’t rush you. He never rushes you. Logically, you know this, from past experience, and he continues in this moment. He’s so still. The opposite of your racing thoughts. The opposite of the fight or flight response pumping your body up to prepare for maximum danger and threat levels. He’s so still as he watches you, with his ever lidded eyes, eyes you usually feel so secure staring into, and would for hours on end, if you could.
You know these eyes are open to you. They demand nothing. You try to remember that he would never implore you for anything, and the only person rushing you is you.
“I want to stay,” you say.
“I want you to stay,” he says.
“I want.” Why is it so horrifying to ask for things? To ask for anything. “Can I touch you?”
“Yes, please,” Nagi says.
This time, relief crashes through your system, louder this time, bursting through a window, the sound of glass shattering cascading through your veins.
He opens himself up to you, like he always does, and you slot yourself against his body, like you’ve been wanting this whole time. You try to calm yourself down. You try to stop trying. You try to let Nagi take care of you, like he is so good at doing.
He kisses the top of your head, and he waits with you until you feel better. And you do, eventually. You always do.
Scared to talk to Bachira about him hurting your feelings (but then you do it and he apologizes and you forgive him)
Genre: comfort, established relationship, pro player Bachira
Contents: anxiety, insecurity, implied trauma, trust issues, fear of confrontation
Wc: 1289
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You’re in a little bit of a catastrophic spiral. You feel really tender and sensitive and like anything could send you over the edge. You feel like you’ve done everything wrong (what specifically? Everything. What more explanation could you possibly want?) and you feel like everything is going to be taken away from you.
You get like this sometimes. You try not to. But it’s hard to outrun a childhood. And you aren’t really trying to outrun it. You just want to be happy despite it.
Having Bachira in your life is one thing you have tried to remove from the list of things you have periodic freak outs about. You want to work on your trust issues, and you have, and you know Bachira is trustworthy. He has never done anything to prove otherwise. Logic doesn’t really help your anxieties or insecurities but you still feel the need to point out the facts.
You’ve been off kilter for a few days in a row, situations not going your way, some major, some minor, and you hate it. You hate that you can’t just coping-strategy all of this away—all of these feelings away. You pace around your house. You sit down at the dining table and rock yourself. You curl up on the couch in an incredibly uncomfortable position and don’t move.
Normally, you are pretty good at feeling secure in your relationships with people. You’ve worked hard to get to this point. You don’t have to second guess their motives, when you’ve known them for a long time, and they’ve demonstrated nothing but respect and kindness towards you. But this week has been crazy for Bachira, too, or something—regardless of the reason, you felt ignored one too many times, felt like you were snapped at, and felt like you were expendable. You don’t blame him at all since it’s your interpretation but at the same time you know from experience that invalidating your emotions isn’t going to make any of this go away.
And then you’ve gone and wrapped yourself up in your old habits of being afraid to talk about something. Your classic fear rears its head: you’re too much trouble, way more trouble than you’re worth, and everyone is going to leave you.
Bachira comes home, drops his stuff off haphazardly in the front doorway, and makes a beeline straight towards you. He ruffles your hair and presses a kiss to the top of your head.
“I’m home,” he sings.
You smile at him, but you feel crazy. He must notice something is off—how could he not?—because he cups your cheek. It has the intended effect—you indeed feel soothed. You nuzzle your cheek into his palm. You want to be completely engulfed in his touch. You hate everything you’re feeling right now. It’s too hard.
“What do you want to do tonight?”
You know sometimes he asks this as a formality. He always likes having something to do—but he is content to “compromise” with you and create an “event” for something very normal and calm and low-key that you also want to do (at home. Definitely at home.) (You hate that word because it still feels like both people lose something but whatever the word is for both people are happy with the outcome lol.)
“I don’t know,” you half-lie—at the very least, you know you have to talk to him. The words coagulate like mucus in your throat. You’re so stupid. This shouldn't be that hard. Bachira loves you and he’s going to listen to you and nothing is going to be wrong.
You can tell yourself these things. And it won’t help. But to be fair, being mean to yourself won’t help either, but. Yknow. You aren’t going to win every battle. Definitely not this one today.
Not that you want this conversation with Bachira to seem like a battle. You don’t.
He studies you for a bit. “We could…just relax together until we think of something?”
You like having a specifically-designated task, something delineated, and can make you feel like you aren’t a failure and aren’t causing a fuss or scene or trouble. You aren’t ruining everyone’s night, this still “counts” as “successful”—you give in to all your old habits, all your rigid, self-scaring habits. Why not? When it rains it pours, or whatever. Let the dam break. Etc.
You hear him heating up food in the kitchen and he spreads everything out on the coffee table in the living room. You look at him adoringly. He knows you don't eat when you’re like this. That bastard. Loving you and taking care of you.
How dare he?
You both start on your food, him digging in, and you nibbling.
“Can we talk?” you ask.
“Always,” he says, and a few pieces of rice fly out of his mouth onto the table. He picks them up and tries to feed them to you.
“No!” you bark jokingly as you twist your head away, scrunching up your face, trying not to laugh because then he will put the rice in your mouth.
“Don’t waste food!” he admonishes seriously.
“Stop!” you finally let out a giggle. He eats the rice himself and settles back down.
You stare at him and he stares at you.
“Sorry,” he says. “It’s your turn again.”
“Thank you,” you say. You figure you might as well ease yourself into it. You don’t have to accuse yourself of manipulation or lying or whatever—you just need to let yourself be. You’re trying your best. You start off with talking about some random topics that were bothering you this week to set the scene. You explain the headspace you’ve been in and how you’ve been feeling.
He puts down his food. “I’m sorry that happened,” he says. “Can I hug you?”
You nod. You put down your food just as he throws his arms around you and squeezes you tight. He kisses your cheek. “I don’t mean for those actions to make you feel those ways. Is there anything I can do to show you that I didn’t mean any of that, and that I love you so much?”
You are very embarrassed. You hate to ask for anything—even normal boring stuff, and now, this feels like you are being asked to ask for something extra special. Asking someone to make amends to you feels so wrong. It feels like you’re not supposed to cause other people trouble. But anything you say, Bachira probably has already done before, and is okay with it, and some, he’s even done on his own volition before, and you might not have even known it was what you liked or wanted before him.
You make your requests of how you want to spend some time with him doing your favorite activities and he happily acquiesces.
“I’ve been wanting that, too,” he says. He peppers kisses all over your face. “I’m sorry you had a bad week,” he says. “That’s so stupid.”
“It was really stupid,” you say sadly.
He shakes you. “Do you want me to beat them up?” he asks in the most chipper tone.
You sigh and shake your head. “No. Let’s just watch tv.”
He grabs blankets, and you finish the rest of your food while watching your comfort show, snuggled up next to Bachira, who waits patiently until you’re done eating so he can hold your hand.
Nothing can make the bad events of this week less bad—but you also don’t have to carry your insecure energy into next week. You know you can do what you need to do and you know it’s okay to feel this way sometimes. And if there’s anyone who believes in you the most, it’s Bachira.
Nagi falls asleep before you because you’re hyped up from an exciting night
Genre: fluff, domestic, established relationship
Wc: 809
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You vibrate with excitement.
“Slow down,” Nagi says, as your foot gets heavier on the gas pedal as your favorite part of the song starts.
“Sorry,” you say, the normal anxiety you would get at criticism just a pinprick in the vast ocean of your joy.
“It’s okay,” he says easily. After all, he’s happy you’re happy. You think it comes few and far between. But he sees you. And he knows you. He knows you don’t have to be fake with him. It’s an honor he doesn’t take lightly. He knows how you feel happiness is hard to come by, and good memories feel few and far between. He loves seeing you like this. Duh. Of course he would hate to see you sad. But one of his favorite things about you is the expansive joy you feel from the (seemingly) littlest things. It makes life feel…larger than life.
He also knows exactly how things are going to go down when you both get home. First, you’ll want a snack. If you don’t stop on the way home for drive through or take out (and this time, you don’t) that means you have something in mind of what you want to eat already—probably something you’ve been thinking about for a while then, since you haven’t eaten in a bit. Far too caught up in the excitement, definitely. You’ll tell him he doesn’t have to stay up with you. You know he knows this. He knows you know. And if he’s left off at a good stopping place (if there is such a thing) in his game, he probably will stay up with you. He’s already half asleep on his feet, anyway. It’s not that he has a bedtime per se (he’s a gamer …so…) but his social battery gets used up a lot faster than yours. Also, you have a lot more energy and care so much more. He doesn’t know how you do it. But it’s all worth it of course. It always is with you.
After your snack, you’ll feel obligated to go to bed. You might even make it so far as to wriggle yourself under the covers with Nagi. By now, Nagi’s eyes will be closed and his head will be on the pillow, even if the lamp on your side of the bed is still on. If he’s not already asleep, he will be drifting into slumber. He’s only human—a very sleepy human to begin with, and now? It’s late. You both are cozy. Even if your energy is very often tangible, it’s still home to him. It’s still comforting, even if it’s electric and hyper and A Lot. You never ask him to stay up with you. He wishes you would. He would try. He would at least cuddle with you while you watched a movie (and while he slept.) Galavanting on an adventure? At this hour? Maybe not. But hot cocoa and TV would be fine. He knows you don’t want the good days to end. He knows you never want to let go of happy feelings when you have them. He also knows that he’s always going to be there for you no matter what. You don’t have to be afraid of bad days anymore. You don’t have to be afraid of good days never coming back because they will. Nagi can’t “make” you happy—but you’re both happy together. You’re in this together and you’re here for each other. When you’re finally ready to let sleep claim you—and you will, eventually—it’s not as though it’s the night before Nagi goes abroad for a very, very long time and the scarcity mindset kicks in and isn’t technically necessarily wrong that time. That one time.
But now? Today? And tomorrow? You’ll both be here. You’ll both be together. You’ll wake up together—and we both know what that means is you will wake up first and he will wake up after—but you’ll be together, and that’s the point.
On nights like this, sometimes Nagi falls asleep without telling you good night and that he loves you. He doesn't like doing that. He knows you know. You know. But he knows you like hearing it. He likes telling you. He knows you feel it coming off him in waves, always, enveloping you, enshrouding you, protecting you. Even if you know, it’s no excuse for him not to tell you, since he knows the doubts you’ve had in the past, with other people, and (when you first got to know each other) even with him.
So he will make it up to you in the morning, however you want. He is here for you always. He loves you so much. And that’s all there is to it. He might not always say good night, but he will be there tomorrow to say, “good morning, angel.”
You and Nagi slam your doors closed as you switch places with the valet to get into the car. You lock it and get settled, and are anxious about holding up the line, so you are ready to drive—but there’s a line in front of you, too, so you have to make do with inching ahead, pausing for long periods of time. That’s just as fine. Your eyes adjust to the dark, and you squint to protect yourself from the too-bright headlight that some people have.
“Are you okay?”
You turn to Nagi, one of the only people whose full attention can be on you, and you actually like. You try to let yourself disengage from the previous situation—a bustling party filled with lots of famous people you don’t know and lots of friends you do know—and relax into the new situation, which was you were with your favorite person, and you felt safe with him.
Alright! You tell yourself, as you notice your anxious heartbeat. You wait for yourself to adjust to your new surroundings. Any time now!
“Mmm.” But old habits die hard. You don’t like to lie—you never would, to Nagi, unless it was a good surprise, like a birthday party or present—but you also don’t like to tell the truth about when you are “not okay.” You don’t like not being okay. It’s a hassle. You are very earnest and hard working in most things, except for taking care of yourself. When it comes to selfcare, you sound a lot like Nagi, actually. Which he does not appreciate—he wants you to take care of yourself, just like how you take care of him so well, and everyone else in your whole life. So he tries to ask you, and you try to tell him, because you want to try. You want to be better at taking care of yourself and being honest with yourself. And you like being honest with Nagi. And you feel safe to tell him stuff.
Most of the time. The other times, it’s not his fault specifically—it’s that your brain’s patterns haven’t caught up with the “new” reality you are living in (that you are surrounded by safety and love and you don’t have to be so ON GUARD anymore.)
“That was a big sigh.”
You don’t want to breath angrily at anyone—not like the passive aggressive people you grew up with. You know Nagi does not think you are angrily sighing at him, because he doesn’t think like that. But you think like that so you don’t want even a hypothetical situation where he would get that idea into his mind, because that’s not you. You love him, and you wouldn't do that to him.
Unfortunately, that means you have to explain yourself.
You take another breath, and have successfully navigated through the stressful parking situation and onto the main road. Nagi enters directions to your house on the GPS and you are grateful to be able to engage the analytical compete-a-task part of your brain—and even better, it’s a task you have done successfully many times over. You got this!
Hiori calls and asks if it’s good if they’re all still coming over. Nagi looks at you. You nod.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
You nod again. Everyone who’s coming over are people you like and feel safe with. It’s not like a huge public event where there are a ton of randos posing random threats. Random and hypothetical. You emerged safely, so, either you neutralized all threats, or there were none to begin with.
You can never be too certain, though. Right? Haha.
“Yeah, we’ll see you when we get home.” Nagi says.
“Okay, cool,” Hiori says sweetly. “See you there.”
Nagi hangs up.
“Can you turn on music,” you say.
Nagi finds the chillest playlist you guys have and turns it on. If you weren’t so anxious, you would tell him to change it because you don't want to fall asleep.
Once your adrenaline crashes, you might actually be able to fall asleep to this playlist, though. Maybe you’ll ask him to play it again once you all get home.
“How was your time at the party?” Nagi asked.
You smile a little. You know the question is not sarcastic. It’s just funny because you both basically spend the entire time together.
“I had fun with you,” you say honestly.
“We should have stayed home.” Nagi says, probably also very honestly.
“Do you really mean that?” you ask sympathetically, just in case.
“You know I do,” Nagi says.
You let out a short amused exhale.
“Do you want to talk about anything?” he asks.
You think for a second.
“Maybe,” you say.
“You’ll let me know?” he asks.
“Okay,” you say, and he turns up the music, gets on his phone, and lets you think.
As fucked up as it sounds, sometimes when things are going really well is when you are the most stressed. Take today for example. You had to roll with the “punches.” A lot of unexplained and unplanned events. And punches was a very violent word to use for a lot of situations where the stakes were very low and there was no danger. Threat level minimal. And now that things have basically wrapped up, your brain is trying to make up some danger to explain…? Well. Explain why you feel this way. Your life is usually full of danger—at least when you were growing up—to the point where you aren't even always conscious of what the danger is, just that you have a sense that there is danger somewhere.
Other people used to pose a lot of danger when you grew up. You didn’t trust easily then, and you still don’t now. You want to keep yourself safe, but you want to get better at believing in the safety that you experience in the present instead of making up danger that matches the feelings you had a lot as a kid, the feelings that come back now as habit, at the drop of a hat, the blink of an eye. There are so many triggers that happen daily, normal events that trigger these scared feelings, and it makes it really hard to enjoy daily life. You don’t have to be “normal”—you’ve basically given up on that. But you deserve to be happy and enjoy activities and aspects of life. You’re here, you’re alive, so you might as well make the best of it.
You still get frustrated when you can’t calm down. Your skepticism almost chokes you while you try to take deep breaths. Your racing thoughts smirk at your eyes, trying so hard to convince you that you are calm and safe by perceiving your (calm and safe) surroundings. You are your own worst enemy now. That doesn’t feel good. You had enemies in the past. But they were all muddled up—people who were supposed to love you and be there for you were harming you and betraying you. But your young mind could only comprehend so much.
So when you are finally treated sanely, calmly, and respectfully, your adult brain cannot fully comprehend it. Cannot fully trust it.
You arrive home, and somehow, some people have already beat you there.
“Why didn’t you call?” you ask, familiar I’m-a-bad-host panic stirring in your chest.
“We did,” Barou snapped at Nagi, who held his gaze stubbornly.
You turned to Nagi. Before you can say anything, he bonks you on the head lightly and kisses your nose.
“Fine!” Barou says.
“We’re not paying you any taxes, trash king,” Nagi says.
“Double fine!” Barou accuses.
You smile at him, laughter in the back of your throat. If you hadn't already been socialized out from the event, maybe you would have.
You let everyone into your home, and they spread out into the living room and kitchen.
You put your keys on the counter by the door, and Nagi wraps his arms around your waist and engulfs you, head hooked over your shoulder. You reach back and pat his hair with one hand and put your other hand over where his arms are crossed over your tummy.
“Thanks for going with me,” you say.
“I would say that to you, but I didn’t want to go,” he grumbles.
“Not even a little?” you ask.
“You make me go.”
“Don’t blame me,” you say, though, you know that you like events way more than he does, and he won’t let you go alone—even though he could!
He kisses your neck. “I know. If I 100% didn't want to go, I wouldn’t.”
“You only 99% didn’t want to go?” you grin.
“I 100% want to hang out with you,” he says.
You wriggle out of his grasp so you can turn around to face him, and bring your lips to his.
“You know we can go if you’re just going to make out,” Yukimiya teases you. Even though you know him a lot better by now, you still feel way more embarrassed when he teases you than anyone else. Your face still flushes and you boo him.
“I’m not going anywhere!” Bachira yells from the living room.
“Just tell them to go to the bedroom. We’ll watch a movie,” Gagamaru’s dull voice is just audible from where he’s presumably posted up with Bachira.
You take Nagi’s hand and start to pull him to where everyone’s hanging out. You can’t brute force him into doing anything, and so he makes you wait until he fills his and your water bottles before he lets you drag him to the living room.
Bachira is curled up with every blanket you own, and is trying to cover Isagi with some, too.
“It’s too hot!” Isagi pleads. Bachira throws one over his head.
“Moved in, fully I see?” you tease.
Bachira looks at you, wide eyes serious. “You joke,” he says ominously. “And yet.”
“He’s the monster under your bed,” Hiori says, eyes sweet and amused.
Bachira beams.
“Whoa. That was so good. Write that down!” Zantetsu orders absolutely no one.
Barou picks a tv show—starts in the middle of a show absolutely no one else has watched, and gets mad whenever anyone asks a question.
Having secured (negotiated) a blanket from Bachira, you snuggle with Nagi, and get settled in to watch the movie. Your anxious feelings were forgotten momentarily as you dealt with getting everyone inside and settled. Now that you are sitting down, watching something you aren’t sure you’ll be able to engage with anyway, you stare down your thoughts regretfully. You can’t stop them from coming. They’re already here. You regret them even as they are happening. You wish you could give yourself some peace.
But anyway, your brain is your brain and you're going to have thoughts, and you are not obligated to be mean to yourself about them. You still might. Out of habit. But that’s okay too.
You hold Nagi’s hand between your two, clasping your fingers with his, running your thumb up his palm and fingers, feeling his gamer’s callouses. You want to find a way to comfort yourself that makes sense for you now and that will actually be effective. When you’re with Nagi, there are some pretty effective ways. Like what you’re doing right now!
When you’re by yourself? So far you feel very ineffective. That doesn’t feel good. Relying on someone feels dangerous. Relying on someone feels unreliable.
Nagi squeezes your hand back.
“Check your phone,” he whispers after a while.
You make to reach for it when you realize. “I don’t have it.”
Nagi tch’s at you, and—you’ve fully accepted this about you, there is no room for embarrassment, cringe is dead anyway—your heart seizes with love for him. He shows you his phone.
“Do you still want to talk?” he has texted you.
“I think I’m okay,” you type.
He erases what you’ve written.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m okay now.”
“I love you,” he says.
“Shhhh!” Barou hisses.
“Shut up, trash king,” Nagi gripes while Bachira says, “I love you, too!”
Nagi looks at him.
“I was talking about y/n,” Bachira grins.
“Back off,” Nagi says lightly.
“I can’t, I’ve already moved in,” Bachira says.
“You haven’t.” Nagi and Bachira stare at each other, faces lit with flashing colors from the tv.
“I love you, too,” you say, and kiss Nagi on the cheek.
“Thanks, y/n,” Bachira grins.
“She was talking to me!” Nagi snaps.
“It’s okay, y/n, you can let him think that,” Bachira stage-whispers.
“Are ya’ll done?” Barou booms. “I feel like the show is happening here, more than on the tv.”
“It’s more interesting here, too,” Bachira is always quick with his quips.
Barou growls, and you let yourself laugh. Nagi looks at you, and you see he finally looks relaxed too. You scratch the top of his head.
“When are you all leaving,” Bachira asks.
“Why?” Isagi asks.
“I want to go to sleep,” Bachira says.
“You don’t live here!” Nagi yells (his version of yelling.)
“He can sleep over,” you say.
Bachira looks very smug and Nagi looks at you, hurt and betrayed.
“We’ll talk about it,” you promise. Nagi hugs you tighter, and everyone finangles movie choice from Barou, and as you all start watching something much more palatable to everyone, you are grateful that you are in a safe environment where you don’t have to overanalyze every moment and feeling. You settle in for a good night, and honestly, none of them have to leave. That’s what floors and blankets are for.
Reader feels lots of regrets, and Bokuto helps comfort them
Genre comfort, established relationship, domestic, gn reader
Wc 2164
Contents: hard on self, difficulty eating when stressed, food positivity/neutrality (intuitive eating/nonjudgemental eating), and of course comfort
a/n back at it again i 2023 lmfao bet you thought you’d seen the last of me etc etc lmfao haven’t uploaded in so long that i forgot my format whoops also i made a discord server hopefully the link works otherwise that would be embarrassing thanks
requested by @heart-an0n hope you like it and that it’s somewhat relevant to what you had in mind/wanted!
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The future is uncertain, and the past is a mistake, and the present is shit, so where are you supposed to be?
You can’t seem to shut down everything at once. If it’s not turmoil in your brain, then it’s in your tummy or chest. No wonder you hate being in the present moment, if the only time you’re ever in it is when you’re in pain.
You have no one to blame but yourself. As usual.
Your shame spiral swirls around you, thoughts smeared all over your brain, viscous and gluttonous. There’s nothing you can do when the overstimulation comes from within yourself.
Right?
That's how you feel, at least.
You wait.
That’s all you can do.
You wait.
You won’t be comforted. Not on your own. No comfort tv, no coloring books, no pets, no music.
You want someone to do it for you. Is that so wrong?
You shame yourself for being too dependent and lazy while you wait for Bokuto to come home, which is taking a bit longer than expected, since he stopped on the grocery store on the way home.
See? He’s doing something for you again. You can’t do anything! Leech leech leech!, you chant at yourself, just in case being mean to yourself was going to fix all your problems.
It hasn’t in the past, but what if it works this time? Don’t know until you try.
The front door clicks open and you hear rustling as Bokuto shuffles around, entering your shared abode.
“I’m home!” he announces.
“Welcome home,” you say. You’re not sure he heard you. But you know he trusts that you said it, and so even if he can’t hear it, you have to say it.
He kisses the top of your head on the way to taking the groceries to the kitchen. You want to get up and follow him but you don’t have the energy. You thought seeing him would magically blast you with the superpower to get up but alas. Some things not even Bokuto can fix.
You can’t unthink the thought. You wish you could. You wish you didn’t like scaring yourself with worst case scenarios.
He starts dinner and comes in to check on you.
“Have you eaten?” he asks.
You shake your head.
Bokuto never judgmentally sighs at you because he’s too nice. But if he was one to do that, the long pause in the air would have been the time to do it.
“Do you want a snack before dinner?”
How can you eat at a time like this?
“Chips?” he asks.
It’s so funny because you’re an adult! You can do whatever you want! You can have ice cream for dinner! Or chips as an appetizer! You can ruin your appetite however much you want!
But there’s still a nagging thought in your head before you do it like some judgmental parents are going to get you in trouble if you do.
But you can’t ruin an appetite you don't have.
Bokuto goes back into the kitchen and rummages around.
He returns with a bag of chips and eats one in front of you, then waves the bag over to you.
You sigh at yourself. You take a chip.
You see Bokuto move like he’s almost going to do a fist pump but then he stops himself. He’s not going to throw chips all over the floor. Again.
“Do you want to hang out with me while I cook?” he asks.
You really can’t say no. It is all you want. You wrap the blanket around yourself and follow him.
He smiles at you in amusement.
“What?” you ask. “Don’t say I look like a penguin,” you say, at the same time he says,” you look like a penguin.”
You level him with a look. He knows you don’t mean anything by it, so he blinks innocently.
Bokuto really is content to have you watch him cook. He doesn’t ask you to help at all. But if you didn’t think you’d get in the way with your blanket, you would.
But.
You need the blanket more than you need to feel useful.
You’re already at rock bottom, so who cares?
“How was your day?” you ask, cutting Bokuto off succinctly.
He knows how you are. He lets you distract them both with his day first. He tells you about his workout, media appearances, meetings, whatever funny stuff happened with his teammates, travel agents, room assignments, reality shows.
He chops and steams and stirs.
He washes his hands and holds your face carefully.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.
“It’s the same old stuff,” you mumble.
He squishes your face.
“It’s okay, I can listen again,” he says. “I love listening to you talk, and also supporting you.”
“Okay,” you said, but it sounds like “waaauuuuu” because he is still squishing your face.
You and he set the table and sit down to eat.
You serve yourself the portion size you think you can stomach while you hate yourself and feel awful, and Bokuto doesn’t say anything, because maybe you’ll feel better later, and you’ll be ready to have a snack at this point. It’s more important that you eat whatever you’re comfortable with now, than eat nothing at all, and he would never shame you for your eating habits. You’re allowed to make your own choices.
You start your story with “you know ______” and you’re always amazed at what he does remember (the most intricate tiny details) and what he doesn’t remember (stuff that you think is really obvious, but it’s not because he doesn’t listen, or anything. Honestly it’s just funny at this point.)
And you explain the situation and what the trigger was as to why you are thinking about past regrets now.
And you know he wants to stop you because you are going into a spiral and it doesn’t really help to spiral. You don't think you’re really learning new information at this point.
But you just want him to know all the facts and details and how wrong and bad you are so he can make an accurate assessment of the situation.
He looks at you and listens attentively throughout your story.
You sigh. “Okay. I’m done,” you say.
He opens his mouth and you burst out, “oh also,” and finish up some last details.
He listens.
“I’m done for real this time,” you say.
“If you have more to share, that’s okay, too, and I want to listen,” he says. “But I’m going to respond now, if that’s what you want?”
You nod.
He sighs.
“The most important thing is that you learn,” he says.
Shame bubbles in you. Of course he’s going to think you’re wrong and bad. You also think that. You weren’t telling him so that he would absolve you of guilt.
But it still feels bad to have your worst fears confirmed (that you already believe about yourself.)
“And you already have,” he says. “Numerous times.”
You know this. You know that this is the only thing someone can say to you. You wished it helped.
“What would help?” he asks.
You sigh. You’ve never thought about it in that way. You don’t know.
“I wish it never happened,” you say.
“Other than that,” he says.
You look at your plate. You look at a scuff on the wallpaper. You look at the line where Bokuto’s eyebrow hairs shift from pointing up to pointing to the side. “I just wish I wasn’t wrong.”
“It’s okay to be wrong,” he says. “It’s actually super okay and normal. People are wrong all the time. And some people don't even care! Some people are horribly wrong and just keep being that way, forever.”
You know this. If everyone cared ten percent as much as you care about being wrong then maybe the world would be less…like this.
“Even if you’re the villain in someone else’s story, you don’t have to be the villain in your own story. And just because that other person doesn’t forgive you, doesn’t mean you can’t move on. And even if you’re the villain in your own story, you can make different decisions next time. You learned. You grew. You want to do better. That’s all that matters.”
You feel tears peeking out. He swiftly moves to your side and hands you a tissue.
You rest your head in his chest and a sob bursts forth. You always cry the most (the best?) with Bokuto. He’s the only person you feel safe enough to be like this with.
Except now you're crying so you can’t intellectually remember all that because your ears are filled with the sound of your own crying. Your brain is filled only with that audio, and the sensation of cold tears on your hot cheeks, and the heaviness of your nose running, and the solidness of Bokuto as he lets you press yourself against him. He will not let you go until you are ready.
He pats your head and back and hands you more tissues.
You look at him, watery and poised for another outburst.
“I don’t want to be a bad person,” you sob. “I’m sorry I’m a bad person.”
He says your name softly and presses soft kisses to your head. He hugs you.
You breath through all the fluids and your chest feels emptier. Your head feels clearer. You’re afraid to feel shame again. You’re afraid to let this go in case you make another mistake again.
You don't want to make another mistake again.
It’s always hanging over your head, all the mistakes.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” you say.
“Do you want to talk some more?” he asks. “Do you want some water?”
You nod.
“Water?” he asks.
You nod again.
He goes and grabs your water bottle (how he knows where it is when you didn’t even know will remain a mystery) and opens it for you. You take a small sip. The coldness in your throat and tummy feels like a wall between you crying and you now.
“I love you so much, no matter what,” he says.
“I love you, too.”
“Seriously,” he says. “I know you know, but I am telling you.”
You nod.
“Even if you do stuff that makes you think you’re a bad person,” he says.
You shake your head.
“Don’t shake your head at me,” he says.
You’re working on the part of you that thinks you don’t deserve him, that he’s too good for you, that you’re not good enough for him. You’re working on that part. But it makes its presence known, during your lowest moments.
But Bokuto loves all parts of you. Even the parts of you that are painful for him. He loves all of you and knows that you are a person with a whole past and habits and attitudes and beliefs. And he knows that you love him and are trying your best every day, just like how he loves you and is trying his best every day.
“I love you no matter what you dom” he says. “Being a good person and a bad person doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s not real. We’re all just people. I love you so much because you’re you.”
You’re learning to accept that, but even if there’s a part of you that doesn’t believe it, Bokuto loves that part of you, too. And you love all of him, so if logic decides to ever work one day, you’ll be set.
“You’re beautiful and amazing, but that’s not all there is to you. It's okay that you’re not perfect. That’s not why I love you. That’s not why I started loving you, and that’s not why I love you now. I think you’re perfect for me, but that’s because I know that we’re both choosing this life together every day. I’m so grateful and think you’re perfect and amazing because you’re my partner. We’re in this together.”
You nod. You hug him and he hugs you back.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“Okay,” you say quietly, because a part of you still feels like if you’re too loud about your happiness, it might get taken away.
“I’m glad,” he says. “I’m proud of you and love you.”
“I love you, too,” you say. “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” he says. “Thanks for letting me be there for you.”
He makes you drink some more water and you help him put away the leftovers (which you’re probably going to dip back into in a few hours when you’re feeling snackish—and when you do, a little part of Bokuto will relax with relief, because even though he never judges you or pressures you, he wants you to be healthy, happy, and nourished. He loves you so much and wants the best for you. And he feels so lucky because he knows you would do the same for him.)
Hanging out with Osamu, he comforts reader over unrequited crush , but also idk reader’s past in general or something I don’t know
a/n: what kind of title is that lol. I’ve given up on everything. I’m in my flop era. Anyway.
edit: a/n2: fixed some typos. i am SO SORRY yall, so embarrassing <3 anyway enjoy again
Genre: college au, hurt/comfort (kind of? More like a respectful distraction? idk), pre-relationship, new friendship,
Contents: Negativity, low self esteem*like horribly low, depression, overly critical of self for having a crush, Osamu cooks/bakes for you, suspicion/not trusting, implied past trauma, surprise appearance from some boys at the end :)
Wc: 4136
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Normally, you keep a tight lid on your emotions. You don’t want to get out of control. You don’t want to feel too much pain. You try to regulate your intake and output. You try to be careful.
So when these unruly emotions emerge inside of you—jealousy, pain, others you don’t want to name, roiling, writhing, clawing, and snarling—you panic. The alarm bells clamor. You don’t want to know what could happen. You just want this to be over. You don’t want to feel these things.
You need somewhere to go.
Your brain is so well-worn on the pattern of disappointment and abandonment, that you almost forget to tell yourself not to make this a big deal. You’re almost confused why you are this upset. It’s the same old, same old. You never get what you want. So, when your crush asked someone else out, what’s the difference? You don't even know them that well. Why would they even like you? You got no vibes that they liked you back.
You wrack your brain for why you’re feeling this pain.
Aren’t you smarter than this? Haven’t you been through this before?
You find the treacherous thread of hope, snaking and coiling through your chest, wrapping your heart and squeezing. It felt like a hug, when suddenly, it was thorns unsheathed and sliced through your heart.
Reality.
You think you’re a level headed person.
And then something like this happens. The treacherous hope bursts inside of you, buzzing, fueling you. For how long? For how many days of insidious tormented fantasizing?
It's sad that the “thing” you thought “would be different this time”, for something so stupid, like—But you actually spoke to them. Shouldn’t that be enough? Like. You did something new. You got out of your comfort zone. You overcame something you used to be afraid of. (You are going to be afraid to repeat it again, now. Don't let anyone ever tell you that efforts are going to be rewarded. That’s not necessarily true.) You literally introduced yourself and exchanged numbers. And on top of that, you tried to converse with them.
You literally did so much. You wish you could be proud of that, stopping while you’re ahead. Usually, you like your crushes from a distance. Sometimes it's agony, sometimes it’s something fun to do, to occupy your time from life. You need a distraction from your problems, and thinking about a crush is fun. And then there’s always the inevitable downfall of when it stops being fun. You start to remember that no one would ever like you back. You aren’t attractive. You are weird. You are socially awkward, can’t keep up a conversation, you have nothing interesting to say. Nothing that people would want to hear. And you don’t know that many people with your common interests, anyway. There’s no way you can improve. You’re too scared to practice talking to people, so you’re never going to get better. You can’t rely on looks to draw people in. You think you are a great friend once people get to know you, but it’s the initial barrier that sucks. You can’t overcome the stress of talking to people in order for anyone to be able to get to know you in the first place.
And that’s what happened this time, too. You were right! It didn’t matter that this time, you were “ready” to try. Why? What good did it get you? You were willing to put yourself out there. You were tired of being alone, and tired of not believing in yourself.
And now, what?
You wished you could say you weren’t so arrogant to think things would work out for yourself. But you let yourself get fooled. You really thought for a second that something would work out for you! Pathetic.
You don’t exactly want to be in your room anymore and you don’t exactly want to be seen by anyone.
But it’s Thursday evening, so that means the weekend has already started, so that means everyone with friends is already out doing things. You should be safe to take a break from your depression hole and make a new temporary depression hole in the study room.
You grab your backpack and blanket and honestly debate wearing a fluffy robe over your clothes. But maybe that’s overkill. You stick your feet into fluffy slippers and triple check that you have your room key and head out to have a depressing time doing homework.
He was out of your league in every way.
What were you thinking?
You get through your pre-homework tumblr scroll and then finish re-reading the assignment. You’ve barely started on it when you hear the door swing open.
You freeze.
If the room is occupied, people would just leave.
Or they might ask if they can share. You hadn't expected this to occur. You genuinely thought everyone would already be out partying by now. Who the heck goes to college to do homework? Only people with no friends.
You think it will be fine if they take the other table and you just ignore them and stay here. What’s the rush? What’s the issue?
If you really need to leave, you can leave. Who cares? You’re too sad to do homework anyway. This is honestly overkill for the emotional state you’re in.
Everything is too much.
You take a deep breath and keep looking down. You really don’t want to acknowledge whoever came in first.
They probably won’t acknowledge you either, because no one does. You’re practically invisible.
And then you hear your name.
Tension shoots up your spine.
You don’t even want to look up.
But you have to, because it’s Osamu, and he’s really been nothing but nice to you since you met him.
Shockingly.
For someone who definitely has a girlfriend, or at least has no shortage of people to date or hook up with, he sure has a lot of kindness to go around.
Him having time to be nice to you is weird.
It doesn’t make sense.
“Hey,” you say. You blink at him. He’s looking particularly cozy in a cream cable knit sweater, sweatpants, and slippers.
“Fancy seeing you here,” he says.
You smile humorously and shrug.
“What are you up to?”
“Homework,” you say, boringly.
“Ah,” he says. “Have a busy night ahead of you?”
“If I can manage. But probably not. I feel like I’ll give up soon and just go back to my room.”
“Oh. So you might be free this evening?” Osamu asks.
You look at him in confusion. “I guess I’m free basically every evening,” is a horrible way to out yourself as a loser. Not that Osamu wouldn't already know that. “What are you up to?” you ask him, eyeing him critically that he has entered the study room with no study materials.
“Oh,” he says, taking a quick look around as if he lost his excuse somewhere in the room. He looks back at you and grins. “I was on my way back to my room, and I saw you in here, so I wanted to say hi.”
“That’s sweet of you,” you say, trying not to actually take his actions to heart. Why would you want literally another repeat of what happened thirty minutes ago—believing that just simply talking to a boy meant you had “a chance” with him—to be special and valued, liked, admired, thought to be pretty? No. “What are you up to this evening?” you ask, not because you actually want to know—it’s different knowing in a vague sense that everyone has friends that they can hang out with and you don’t, you really don’t need details and specifics, but also you’re nothing if not full of boring small talk.
“Probably hanging out with the boys,” Osamu says. “You want to come?”
You blink at him. Social anxiety and fear of abandonment keep you frozen. Why even try to make friends if you’re just not going to be enough, and they are just going to be disappointed in you and not want to invite you ever again? You don't want a pity invite.
“Aw, thanks,” you say. “I can’t impose, though.”
“It’s not an imposition, I’m inviting you! Or we could hang out. Just us,” he says.
You really wonder if he and his girlfriend are so mature and chill that they are okay with this. Seems pretty unusual for someone seemingly as normal as him and potentially (though you really shouldn't assume) cishet as him.
“Oh,” you say
“I don’t want to impose,” Osamu says.
You can’t tell if he’s making fun of you.
“You’d have more fun with your friends. I don't want to interrupt your plans.”
“They’d be fine without me for one night,” Osamu says hopefully.
You send a wobbly smile his way. Why is he fighting you on this? You’re giving him every out. Are you his new charity case or something? He’s extended far more than the courtesy kindness you would have needed to receive. Basic human decency and respect, check. What is he still doing here? “They might not be,” you say, in a dull, but faux-warning tone. “They need you.”
He looks at you thoughtfully for a second, almost in confusion, and then smirks at you. “You're funny.”
It’s your turn to look at him thoughtfully, critically, appraisingly, and try to figure out his game plan. What the fuck is he doing? You are funny, it’s true, but sometimes people can say something true on accident, without realizing it. You're funny, but you haven’t said anything funny tonight, to him. So you don’t know why he would say that. What could he possibly mean by that? He’s probably saying that you’re awkward and stupid and why are you still talking to him? Ugh.
“I don’t think I’ll be much fun to hang out with tonight,” you say, deciding that being pathetic and honest might get you the result you need—to be left alone. You don’t want him to see you that way, but you’re panicking and you need an out. “I’m not in the best mood.”
“Oh,” he says, faltering for the first time in the conversation.
You feel like a sick horrible person for feeling a sense of accomplishment and pride at that—and success. You’ve successfully alienated him enough to where he probably will never want to talk to you again! Because you’re too much of a burden, your emotions are a burden and inconvenient, you’re stupid, you’re not normal, you’re too difficult to have around. Yeah.
All of that.
“I. I am so sorry if I was overstepping and bothering you,” he says.
You shake your head. “You had no way of knowing. Don’t worry about it. Good night.”
He looks at you with some kind of urgency in his eyes. “Oh. Okay. Good night. I—Well. If you ever wanted to talk about something like this one day, I might not look it, but I’m actually a pretty good listener.”
Actually, in his little cable knit sweater, he looks more like a goodie two shoes good listener than he ever has looked. Normally he looks like a rascal and a trouble maker and his mischievous face can hardly hide his intentions.
You tell yourself to shut up. You tell yourself to stop getting carried away. It’s not his fault that he’s unfairly cute and attractive. And you wish you could say it’s not your fault that you’re attracted to him.
But you should know better.
“Oh,” you say. “I couldn't possibly—it’s stupid. And embarrassing.”
“Your emotions aren’t stupid and emabrassing!” he exclaims.
You sigh. Actually, the urge to overshare is really strong. But you have to remain calm. You can’t dump all your issues on this practically-stranger.
“I know we’re not that close, but we’ll never get close if we don't talk about some serious stuff eventually,” he says.
You narrow your eyes at him. “I don't’ think that’s how it exactly works.”
Osamu cocks his head. “Isn’t it?”
You don’t answer.
He nods with finality. “I really don’t want to push the issue,” he says. “I do want to hang out with you. But I understand if it’s a no, and maybe I can ask you a different time. But. Could I tempt you with a sweet treat and then we could talk about it?”
You blush, thinking of him feeding you your favorite dessert.
No! No. Stop it. STOP THIS!
“Or,” he says. “I’ll just make it for you. We don’t even have to hang out today. But I'll drop it off at your room later. As a treat. To cheer you up.”
“No, no, it’s okay—”
“Okay, I’m going to leave you alone now,” he says. “Have a good night. I will be by later with your snack.”
He scuttles away before you can protest.
You look down at your homework.
You suppose you might as well work until he’s done with his kitchen excursion.
#*#*#*#
True to your word, you for the most part, diligently get ahead on your assignments. Osamu swings by the study room again, this time with treats in tow.
“Oh, wow, you really are still here,” he says.
You nod.
“I checked your room first,” he said. “Maybe I should grab your number? So it will be easier next time.”
You’re unfairly excited and then subsequently embarrassed about how little it takes for you to be over the moon.
Getting someone’s number.
An attractive person’s number.
But it’s platonic. 99% likely.
So.
Whatever.
Shut up.
He sets the treats down in front of you and sits across from you. He hands you his phone and you put your number in.
“Great!” he said, texting you immediately.
It’s a good thing that you would never want to give this man a fake number. Who would?
He looks at you in alarm. “Oh. Sorry. I just sat down like I own the place. I said I would drop the treats off and leave you alone.”
You sigh inwardly. “It’s fine. You went through all the trouble of making these, so why don't we share them?”
“They’re for you,” he says.
“And since they’re mine, I’m allowed to offer to share them with whoever I want.”
He smiles and acquiesces.
You small talk with him about baking and his friends and classes.
He rests his cheek on his palm, elbow propped on the table. “I wasn’t joking you know,” he said. “About being a good listener.”
“That’s kind of you,” you say.
“You’re kind of a closed book, aren’t you.”
“No,” you say. (You are.)
“You can’t just lie. I’m telling you what I’ve observed.”
“What, am I gaslighting you,” you joke.
“And gatekeeping and girlbossing,” he says.
You pump your fist in the air mildly.
“What if I told you something first?” he says.
“Why do you want to know something so badly?” you say. “And no, don’t rope me into a negotiation I didn’t agree to.”
“Sorry,” he says quickly. “I didn’t mean it like that. You're really on your guard though, aren’t you?”
You shrug.
“I would like to earn your trust at the pace you are comfortable with,” he says. “I would like to get to know you more.”
You really want to ask why, but that’s such a pathetic question. Normal people with normal self esteem just take at face value that sometimes, others are going to be interested in getting to know them. But you? How could you ever delude yourself into thinking that? Especially about Osamu. You’ve never been worth anyone’s time or interest.
You look down at the treats, and something stirs in your heart.
You have to admit that food is one of your love languages.
And maybe you do need to practice trusting people more.
You don't know what’s the point, since all you've been is hurt before. But .
Living in isolation isn’t good, either.
You laugh at yourself. “It’s just about some guy.”
Osamu twitches and you look at him closer to see what happened, but there was no trace of the reaction on his face anymore. “Oh. You. Someone you were seeing?”
You grin wryly. “Not even. I’m much too pathetic for that. No, I just. Had a crush on him, I guess. But he started dating someone else.”
“Ooh,” Osamu winces in sympathy. “That’s never fun.”
You shrug. “It always happens to me.”
“Not always,” he says.
You glare at him. “I’m telling you, always,” you say. “You don’t know me.”
Osamu raises his hands. “I’m sorry. I just—I should have believed you, for sure. That’s my bad. But. I just thought maybe you were exaggerating.”
You shake your head. “My face is in the dictionary under unrequited, and stuff, blah blah blah.”
“That could mean guys like you and you never like them back,” Osamu says.
You snort.
“What.” he asks.
“Nothing, that’s funny,” you say.
“I didn’t mean that as a joke,” he says.
You press your lips together thinly.
“So yeah, I don’t know. Whatever. That’s why I was feeling down. Not a big deal,” you say.
“It is a big deal, if you say it is,” he says. “Do you want to talk about it more?”
You shrug. “It’s sad and pathetic.”
“Why do you say that?” he says. “I don't think you’re pathetic.”
“That’s because you don’t know me.”
“I would never think that,” he says.
You shake your head, wanting to drop the situation. You don’t know how to explain to him that you know better than him. But he has to come to his own conclusions after all. And he for sure will.
“Can I…?” he trails off.
You look at him, wondering if he’s being uncharacteristically shy.
“What?” you ask.
“Were you trying to drop the subject, or could I say one more thing?” he asks.
You shrug. “Go for it, if you want,” you say.
He looks at you and then looks down. “Now I’m embarrassed to say it. It’s kind of stupid to say something like “That guy doesn’t know what he’s missing,” huh?”
You smile. “Well. Maybe. It’s still a nice platitude though, so like. I’ll take it. Thanks for the effort.”
Osamu looks at you, torn. “I feel like I’m not. I feel like I’m doing a bad job.”
You look at him in alarm. You didn’t mean to upset him. “Of what?”
“I feel like nothing I’m saying is coming across right.”
You shrug. “I wouldn't blame yourself for that. I don’t really get things. I’m difficult. Set in my ways. Things went wrong for me a really long time ago.”
He opens his mouth.
“Don't ask me about them,” you say. “It’s definitely not something I should share lightly. It's just. It’s too much for most people.”
Osamu nods. “Okay. I trust you that you’ve had bad experiences sharing things in the past. Or maybe you just are used to not sharing about yourself at all. But yeah, I just wanted to say again, that I hope that as we get to know each other, at your own pace, you will one day feel like you can trust me with some of this stuff. If you ever want to.”
You nod, even though you won’t take him up on his offer. Most people would not be willing to stick around that long for you to be able to vet and trust them.
“Do you want any support about that guy?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean. I don't know. Do you want me to say anything in support of you during these trying times?”
You look at him in amusement and a bit of awe, that he’s still trying. “You don’t have to.”
“Do you want me to?”
“I guess now I’m curious about what you are thinking about,” you say, a bit worried about what you’re asking for.
“Just like. I don’t know. I hope that you’ll like, let yourself be sad about him for however long, but also like not for too long. Because he doesn’t deserve it. And also there’s plenty of other guys around.”
You want to argue with him on that. There are not plenty of other guys around. You have never had plenty of guys around. But you get where he’s coming from. You’d probably say something similar to that if someone you knew was going through this kind of thing.
You nod. “Yeah.”
He looks at you in shock. “Really? No argument?”
“I decided to cut you some slack,” you say.
He grins, a little openly and awe-struck, at you.
You’re embarrassed by the genuineness of his expression.
Is he being for real?
“So?” he grins. “Did you like the treats?”
“Yes, they are so good. Thank you so much.”
He preens. “There’s more where that came from, you know. You got any other requests?” he asks.
“I couldn't possibly—”
“You can! You can ask and you should. I’m asking you to ask.”
You look at him shyly. You can’t say anything.
“We could make something together one day, if you wanted,” he said.
You nod.
“And actually, you don’t need to hang out with my friends,” he blurts. “They are stupid.”
“What?” you blink. “You’re uninviting me?” you try for a joking tone.
“It’s going to be way more fun if we hang out just the two of us,” he says.
The malicious voice in your head says, oh he’s ashamed of you, he thinks you’re boring. Gross. Ew. Who cares.
“Yo, Samu, what the fuck?”
A gaggle of boys bursts into the study room and you freeze in embarrassment. You’re still in your fluffiest clothes and slippers and—
Ah, fuck it. Who cares?
You look at them quickly, and then look down.
“Are these the friends you don’t want me to hang out with?” you ask.
Every single boy in the room gapes at you.
“Okay, wait, what?” Atsumu gapes. (Okay, so you realize you remember some of Osamu’s friends a bit more than you first thought. Also, it’s kind of hard to forget his literal twin. With them having the same face and all.)
“Why are we being uninvited?” Hinata whines.
“This makes a lot more sense why you ditched us, but you still suck,” Suna says.
You look at Osamu, pleadingly. “Help!” your look says. You can barely talk to him one on one. Not with an audience, your brain can’t run all the simulations to help you say the exact right thing to not be weird.
There’s too many variables.
“You guys are stupid, get out of here,” Osamu snaps.
“Oh, what’s this?” Suna slides by the table, and puts his arm on the back of your seat, and leans down next to you to inspect the treats. You and Osamu stiffen and still in your respective seats for different (or is it the same?) reasons. “Can I have one?”
“Sure,” you say, at the same time Osamu snaps, “no!”
“Why, Samu?” Hinata croons. “I want one, too!”
“Me, too,” Atsumu says.
“All of you are useless,” Osamu growls.
“Yay, snacks!” Atsumu cheers, grabbing one for himself, after Suna swipes one first.
“Snacks, snacks, snacks,” Hinata sings and dances over, grabbing one for himself.
“Okay, it’s time to go,” Osamu says.
You look at him and wave.
“I meant us,” Osamu says pleadingly.
“As if you can get rid of us that easily,” Atsumu snorts.
“Do you want help carrying your things?” Suna asks, already picking up your backpack.
“No, it’s fine,” you say flustered, and Osamu growls, “I’ll do it!” and yanks the backpack from him.
“No, Osamu, it’s really fine—”
“No, I have to,” Osamu glares at the boys, “otherwise they’ll get their grubby little paws all over your stuff.”
“Okay, I’ll carry the food then,” Suna says.
“No,” Osamu says, and turns to you. “You grab it. Don't let them eat anymore.”
“It’s fine, isn’t it? You said we were going to make more anyway.”
“You’re making more?” Hinata says, eyes sparkling.
How can anyone say no to that face?
“Not. For. You!” Osamu snaps.
Apparently one person can.
Everyone bickers around you and you feel swept away in it all. For someone who never has plans on a Thursday night, you can’t say you’ve hated this evening.
You surprise yourself at that. It really did turn out much better than you were expecting.
You look at Osamu and are too embarrassed to thank him in front of his friends. But you will have to let him know how appreciative you are.
You let the boys escort you out of the study room and down the hall. You let yourself get invited to some upcoming stuff with them.
🞛You meet Bokuto’s friends at a party and it goes really well
Genre: comfort and mild reverse comfort, established relationship/close friendship, etc/whatever
Contents: kissing, social anxiety, people pleasing, fear of abandonment, social isolation, social needs not being met, but then having a good time at the end of this one
Wc: 2480
a/n: idk what this is but for some reason i had this vision of Atsumu seeing y/n and Bokuto hi fiving and being probably being like _____y/n??? What about my hi fives?? Come back!!!
idk lol
anyway
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
You are used to being alone. Being alone protects you from getting hurt. That’s the safest option. Because of certain things that happened, it’s not unreasonable to be cautious. But as your life ran its course, the fear became unmanageable, and your mind became warped, perceiving danger everywhere. Instead of being wary that you may be hurt by people sometimes, you think that you’re going to be hurt by people all the time.
It goes directly against everything you “know” about yourself: you are a good friend, you like talking to your loved ones, and you like to socialize when you feel safe. You want to feel safe and happy. And socializing with loved ones improves your enjoyment of life. But the pain is excruciating when you don't have enough loved ones around you, who you feel safe with. Feeling lonely is painful.
You have a hard time viewing yourself objectively, so you always say stuff to yourself like “it will be fine, getting used to being alone.” as difficult as that seems, it seems more difficult to overcome your issues and become a different better person who can socialize easier. You don’t
have much hope in feeling safe enough to meet new people and finding a community. If you can accept yourself, and not see yourself as less than, for being alone, then that would be great.
If you were able to be happy, you wouldn't care how it came about. You don’t want to have a scarcity mindset about how many loved ones you “deserve” to have in your life. Why do you need to put a limit on it? You don’t want to feel greedy. You don't want to ask for too much and get punished because you were too audacious.
You wish you had people who would spontaneously call you to hang out. You never had access to that. And in the past, you couldn't be the spontaneous friend that you wished you had in your own life, because you had no one to call spontaneously anyway.
Now, you see Bokuto’s friends always spontaneously inviting him wherever. Sometimes you have double negative associations with that because you didn't have that in the past and you still don't have that, and also it’s the end of your time hanging out with Bokuto.
You don’t want to get into any toxic analysis about toxic relationships. Sometimes people on the internet don’t know what they are talking about. And anyone can call themselves an expert or a therapist even if they are not. People lie on the internet all the time. And in real life. And even if an expert went through schooling in a whitecishetereopatriarchal society, who knows if they even fundamentally grasp the concept they're trying to speak on, much less the solution?
All of that to say, you feel loved by Bokuto and you don’t think it’s a problem that you aren’t invited to hang out with his friends. The flip side is that it’s healthy for people in a partnership of some variety to have their own separate friends and relationships too. So anything can be spun in a positive way. It’s not the end of the world.
And plus, you feel stressed about asking people for things they didn't offer. You don’t want to be a burden or a bother. And you don’t want to cause trouble or ask for too much and cause problems.
So anyway.
You’re fine and everything is fine. And you like how Bokuto treats you and you are happy with him so there’s no problems, end of story.
You are hanging out with Bokuto when he is spontaneously contacted by his friends and invited to a hangout.
You automatically start packing up your things and getting ready to transition from hanging out with Bokuto to doing something else with your evening.
“Where are you going?” Bokuto asks.
“Uh. I mean. Just getting ready to do something else,” you say. You supposed you don’t actually know where you’re going. You hadn't thought that far ahead.
“Why?”
“Aren’t you hanging out with your friends?”
“Oh. I didn't really want to today, but if you’re busy, I'll go.”
“No, I just assumed you would. We can keep hanging out.”
“Oh, okay.” Bokuto grinned, outstretched his hands to you, opening and closing his fingers like little claws. You sat back down with a smile and curled up as he tugged you into him.
“I feel kind of bad that you had to assume that,” Bokuto said.
“You shouldn’t,” you say. “I’m stupid for assuming.”
“You’re not stupid.”
“I should have asked.”
He kissed the top of your head.
“Do I hang out with my friends too much?” he asked.
You looked at him, trying to see if he was serious. “I don’t think so. Do you think you hang out with your friends enough?”
“I think so. Do you feel like we hang out enough?”
You nod, and trace your finger along his softly worn t-shirt collar. “I think it’s enough. I am happy with how things are now. I will always be up for spending more time with, you but whatever is going on now is fine.”
“Okay, cool. I also feel that way.”
“Yay. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t make your commitments to me and your friends. I hope all the commitments can exist in harmony.”
Bokuto nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, and I hope you feel that way about me and your commitments, too.”
“I do!”
“Good.”
“Yay!”
You hold up both your hands for a hi five. He crows in delight and you burst into giggles, falling over, face pressed into his chest.
“What’s so funny?”
“We’re perfect for each other.”
“Oh!” Bokuto chuckles and grins. “I agree!”
The next time his friends text him to hang out, you want to bring it up once and for all. You don’t want to keep being stressed about this. “Is it normal and fine that I don't hang out with your friends?”
He looks up at you in alarm, and guiltily.
Okay. So now you are thinking it might not be normal and fine.
“I don’t know. I think so? Do you think it’s normal and fine?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. I’m happy with you and I don’t care, unless you think it’s a problem that needs to be solved.”
He seemed to not know what you wanted to hear.
“Why don’t you ever invite me to hang out with your friends?”
“Do you want to?” he asks.
“If you think it’s a good idea. But you don’t have to. It’s okay if you want to spend time apart. Like it’s healthy and good. I don’t care.”
He looks constipated.
He looks at you.
“What?”
“They’ll like you,” he said.
“That’s good.”
He looks at you like it’s not good.
“What?”
“They’ll like you too much,” he explains.
You look up at him, embarrassed. “Are you worried about that? I love you.”
“I love you too,” he says. “I…I’m not worried about it. I guess. I mean I am. But it’s anxiety. It’s stupid. lt’s not real.”
“Your feelings are real, but I don’t think the threat is real,” you say. “I like you.”
He side eyes you.
“Do you not believe me?”
“You might like them more,” he says.
“I don’t have to meet them,” you say.
He shakes his head. “No, I can’t keep avoiding this. I have to face this fear.”
You look at him in confusion. You were the socially anxious one who was sending mixed signals about wanting to hang out or not. Maybe he wasn’t inviting you so you wouldn't have to feel bad about saying yes or no and then regretting your decision either way. “You don’t have to.”
“Do you feel bad that you haven’t met my friends?”
You shrug. “As long as it’s not because you’re ashamed of me or something. Or like you don't think I fit into your life.”
“It’s none of those things at all.”
“Do your friends have your back? Are they the right friends for you?”
“They are really good people,” he says. “That’s what I mean. They are really likeable and awesome.”
“You are likeable and awesome.”
He looks like he doesn’t believe you.
“I like you, and think you’re awesome,” you say.
He nods. “Thank you.”
You squeeze his hand and kiss his shoulder. He grabs your face and presses a gentle kiss to you.
Now that he’s being brave and tackling his anxiety, you have to be brave and tackle your anxiety.
Why did you play yourself?
#~#~#
You’re nervous to meet friends of your friends. You are always nervous to meet new people. And you are more nervous when the stakes are high—you don’t want to be an embarrassment, you don’t want to not fit in. You don't want to make a bad impression. If it’s a random stranger you’re never going to see again, who cares what you say? You’re so carefree, you don’t even know what you are saying. And generally the interactions go well. But when you want the outcome to go well, you overthink everything so much that you don’t even know what to do. You don't remember anything you’ve ever said. You don't remember anything that’s ever happened to you, or anything you’ve ever done.
What are you supposed to say?
You have social anxiety in some situations and in some situations you “perform” great.
You never know what you’re going to get.
So anyway that’s what’s on your mind when Bokuto takes you to his friend’s house.
It seems like you and Bokuto showed up leisurely and there were already a lot of other things happening.
You sit with Bokuto at first, but they move around and talk to different people and are talking about something you’re not very interested in at all so you head back to the first room where other friends are all talking.
You settle in with them and hope that you aren’t intruding.
They include you what seems like a normal amount. Not too much. They have their own things they are discussing. And you listen and try not to put your foot in your mouth or feel like you have to input too much.
You are fine to stay quiet on topics you don’t know about because you don’t want to insert yourself into topics unnecessarily and embarrass yourself. However, so far, you follow that
they are planning something. You don’t know what they are planning—a house party, or something. You’re nervous. You want to go. They seem like nice people. They probably wouldn't say no if you asked them. But would it be an inconvenience? It’s different for everyone, so you are never going to be able to know the exact amount of spontaneity that is fun and how much is stressful. You don't want to be a burden. You don’t want to invite yourself where you are not wanted. You don’t want to be rejected. You have seen people who “can’t read the room” and invite themselves over and everyone else seemed to be annoyed at them. You never want to be that person.
But. You think you are reading the room properly. And you don't think they would be annoyed if you asked. If it was something they for some reason couldn't invite you to, or didn’t want to, you think they would tell you nicely.
You think about popular friendly people you know and imagine what they would do in this situation. They might ask “what are you all planning? Where are you all going? What are you all doing after this? Do you all want to do something after this?”
It’s incredible how there’s some people who can ask those questions bravely. Not even think about it. They just want to keep hanging out, they just want their socializing needs to be met, so they are asking.
You think about those people. Apparently it’s an option to operate that way. You don’t know if it’s an option available to you, but it’s available to somebody.
You don’t have to be hard on yourself. It’s okay if you don’t do this today. If that’s too big of a step, ,it’s okay. You are already making such great steps and strides and progress. You don't have to make all your progress all at once. You did a good job today. You already did so much. You went off on your own and you talked and contributed, and you listened. And you weren’t even that anxious. You were quiet and nervous but that was because they were literally talking about a bunch of stuff you didn’t really know but they still included you. They wanted to know about you.
And anyway, sometimes it’s okay to be quiet when the other people all know each other and are talking about stuff you don’t know. That’s logical and fine. You don’t have to have off the charts charm and charisma and know what to say in every single situation to be likeable. You are likeable as you are.
And you can slowly get to know them better. It doesn’t have to be all at once. Over time, you may know more and more of what they are talking about, and the whole group of you will have joint memories that you can reference together.
You don’t have to “perform” like how other people would. You don't have to pretend to be someone you’re not. Everyone has a conversation style that works for them, and whatever you're doing is fine too. As long as you’re happy. Next time you can ask if you can go with them. You know it’s an option. And you know you would have fun! And you don’t have to have scarcity mindset. There will be a next time, and everything will be fine.
You’re proud and happy and grateful. It went well and you didn’t even “do” anything. You don’t have to be someone you're not for people to like you. You don't have to do anything special. You just have to show up and take a chance. And people can like certain things about you and that’s enough. People don’t have to know you deeply to like you. People don't have to know your trauma and trauma bond wti you to like you and find value in you. You don’t have to prove yourself an expert at anything and help other people to be valuable or interesting to them. People can like your surface level stuff. You can be an interesting and worthwhile person to get to know.
When you and Bokuto return home, he is excited to hear how it went for you. He is happy that you like his friends, and he is happier that he is still your favorite.
Osamu comforts, when scared about failing to make friends in your new era of life
Genre: comfort, friends, high school to college, but principles apply for any new era of life tbh imo <3,
Contents: anxiety, social anxiety, processing grief and loss, abandonment issues, reader doesn’t have a regular workout schedule (lol), some anticapitalism,
Wc: 3385
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
First of all, everyone should stop going to college. What if we all just took a year and all decided we weren’t going? What would happen to society? (positive) It’s something to consider.
But in this world where many people are “expected” to go to college for capitalistic reasons, and that too, there are a lot of people who are excited for it, who would probably thrive there, but you can’t help the dread building in your chest when you look at Bokuto in his living room and think, that’s a college student.
Not yet.
But one that’s going to be very soon.
The summer before college is the freest you are ever going to be in your whole life ever again (capitalism) (derogatory). You don’t want to waste it.
But here you are, wasting it, being absolutely frayed with nerves, and your body coiling in on itself trying to expunge the anxiety, but there’s an infinite supply.
Maybe if you worked out, the nerves would go away, but why did you even have that thought? You’re going to go to a gym? Or running? No.
You sit (abnormally) silently on the couch while Osamu is on his phone. The latest episode just ended, and neither of you clicked play on the next episode yet.
He glances at you. “You okay?”
You look at him with what you hope is a neutral expression (which would say a lot with very little) but it was probably plaintive (which was saying a lot with too much).
“What are you thinking about?”
As if you don’t have enough to worry about in the future, without also having to worry about the present.
Not only are you worried about making friends, you are worried about keeping them, too.
“Being alone.”
You see him hold back an alarmed expression because he wants to withhold judgment until he hears the whole story. “When?” he asks. “And why?” He blinks at you. “And how?”
You look at him expectantly.
He looks at you expectantly back.
“You done?” you ask (harshly in a joking way.)
He gives you a look that would pair perfectly with pushing up glasses like an intellectual. “I’m trying to get accurate information,” he says. “Because you know you leave shit out sometimes.”
You look at him an acute look, but say nothing because the odds are not in your favor for contesting that statement. Because yes sometimes you tend to look on the negative side and not remember the good times when you’re down. Which is normal and fine. But sometimes it helps meter things out when you can remember the good times and not paint everything as bad (catastrophizing) (overgeneralization) (mental filter) (discounting the positive) (etc).
But you can’t tell him he’s right so you have to lie by omission. (He knows he’s right. About this. About this one thing. You don’t have to add fuel to the fire.)
“When I move.”
He nods. “That’s an understandable concern. It sucks in that in-between-period when you first move somewhere and in between when you actually meet some people you feel good about.”
You have an argument ready to go but you haven’t decided whether you are ready to argue with Osamu at this point. You’re going to lose, you know this. But you haven’t yet decided if you are okay with willingly entering an argument that you are going to lose.
You know he’s not going to let you win this one. It’s going to be super important that you at least entertain the idea that you are wrong/he is right. Maybe partly in an annoying way but mostly in a good friend way who cares about you.
Ugh.
You aren’t sure if you are ready for that.
“What?” he asks.
Hm. He’s not going to let you get away that easily.
“What?”
“I know you have something to say. You look like chili peppers are dancing around in your mouth.”
“What does that even mean?”
“You know exactly what it means.”
“I was going to say: bold of you to assume I will actually meet some people I will feel good about.”
You expected his unimpressed stare so you think you are affected by it a little bit less since you were expecting it.
A little.
“Why don’t you think you will meet some people you will feel good about?”
You shrug. “I’m bad at meeting people.”
“Since when?”
You scowl. “I’m shy!”
“You are not shy.”
“Yes I am!”
“They should make you feel comfortable to be yourself! That’s their fault.”
Hm. Interesting perspective, but that’s not going to work. The world is not going to bend over backwards to accommodate you. You have to be stronger and better.
You can’t. You don’t know how. But you have to. You have to figure it out, otherwise, why are you just here on this planet to suffer? What’s the point?
You’ve lost a lot of friends throughout your school career, and you’ve taken it pretty hard. And you’ve taken it personally. You want to cling to the ones you have left. It was so hard to make friends here, and you honestly don’t know how it even happened, the few you have left. But how can you when you’re going away? People want to make new friends in their new stages of life. You’re going to be on the backburners if you even get a spot on the stove. You might not. You might be left behind and forgotten.
And you just have to be okay with that since that’s how life goes.
That sucks. You don’t want to be okay with being sad and hurting.
You don’t want to leave things up to chance. You have no control over what’s going to happen when you get there. And you don’t want to be alone. Why would you assume that you can show up somewhere and meet the people right for you?
But this is the way (American) society has been defined. You grow up in a community for a certain number of years and then you leave to go to a different community. There’s not always geographic closeness between people who are emotionally close.
The first few months of university are tough for a lot of people. But that’s not on the forefront of your mind. What you compare yourself to is who you think arrives on campus, and runs with it. People who post big group pictures the first week on campus, their Snapchat stories filled with different events every night.
That’s not going to be you.
While there’s no certainty in life, you feel safe creating certainties within your own world view. You have a lot of rules, explanations, that make sense in your head. Who’s going to tell you they don’t make sense? It might not be fair for you to characterize things in that way. It’s not 100% accurate. You leave out certain bits and pieces to make these overarching rules “fit.” But the world isn’t fair to you either, so why do you need to be fair?
You are grateful for the friends you have had throughout your life, but you have not been able to explain the losses. You haven’t been able to let those go. You still feel pain from them. And there’s no reason to expect that the friends you have now are going to give you the same time and energy that they do now when they go to college. In fact, that’s physically impossible. They are going to add more people into their lives and the time they have for you is going to be less. And people always spend the most time on what is directly in front of them.
You are used to long distance friendships, internet friendships. It’s easier for you, with social anxiety, to talk online, where people can’t see you, where you can take time to respond. Because you are so “relaxed” behind a screen, you can actually think of stuff to say. In the moment, with people staring you down, you never have anything to say.
You aren’t going to thrive in an in person environment. And you haven’t been able to develop the social skills that would help you create a safe and fun environment for you. But, since you didn't have these experiences as a child, how are you going to recreate them as an adult in adult settings? You don't have the confidence to approach people or make friends. You aren’t confident in your ability to surround yourself with the “right” people for you. You’ve never had that experience of feeling like you could find or attract people who liked you for you.
You’ve waited for so long and you don’t know why anything will be different now.
You don’t want to be alone. And you don’t know how to create an environment where you won’t be alone. No matter how hard you try, you are always sad and alone. You can’t escape it.
You are afraid of people hurting you on purpose. You feel dispensable. You feel like someone who people won’t care about genuinely or fully.
Part of you want to have hope that all of this can change. Part of you wants to have hope that you can be a different better person when you go to college.
Even though you’re ready for change and you want to hope for something better, you’re also not ready for things to change.
You don’t want to leave your friends, even if they aren’t right for you. Even if they aren’t the ones you’d “hoped” for. You’re still grateful for them and you still had fun sometimes.
Things are going to be different. It’s scary.
You want things to be different and better, but you don’t think they can be.
You don’t really know how to grieve the loss of relationships. You’ve never learned how. You’ve been hurt over and over and had to “move on,” but not really process. You didn’t know how to “process” it. You didn't know how to authentically integrate that truth about your life into your conscience. “Moving on” for you meant hiding your emotions from others, and hiding from your emotions yourself.
It’s a spiral of self-blame and pain you don't know how to get out of. There’s so much you don’t know. You feel helpless in trying to create the life you want.
“I believe in you,” he says. “You’ll do a good job.”
“No I won’t.”
He whines your name, sing-songing and chastising.
He nudges you after your silence. “We made friends.”
“I don’t know how.”
“You’re so awesome.”
“I don’t think most people think that.”
“They will when you meet them!”
“I am bad at first impressions.”
“First impressions aren’t everything.”
“No one has ever said that.”
“That’s just fake capitalist business mumbojumbo. That only applies to job interviews.”
He is proud of himself for making you quirk a smile. He’s usually very attentive so he doesn’t miss your quiet and quick exhale-laugh.
“Making friends is a really mysterious process, but you will figure it out.”
“Nothing ever gets magically figured out for me,” you say. You don’t say “life isn’t that simple” because that’s a little too dark and depressing. Even though that’s how you feel. Not that Osamu ever insinuates that you shouldn't express your full and true feelings to him. But you get lost in your own thoughts and fears and worries, that you will eventually one day be too much for him and he will leave. You wish you could be toned down in real life. But well. You’re like this.
“I don’t think you need to worry about this now since you haven’t gone there and tried yet,” Osamu says. “But there’s really no pressure to make anything happen that you aren't ready for or that you don't want or that you aren't comfortable with. So I’m just going to put this out there: some people don’t find their best friends until the end of college. And some people don’t find best friends in college at all. No matter what, it’s okay.”
You conveniently don’t register the first part of his sentence in your brain. So what you receive is: he is preparing you for failure, because of course you are a failure and can’t do anything right and you aren’t normal so you aren’t going to have a normal experience like normal people will.
Logically, Osamu can’t actually read your mind. Because in real life you have to communicate your thoughts to other people if you want them to know (tragic). But you look at him curiously, in case he does somehow know exactly what you are thinking.
“Right?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” you say.
“Did I say anything unreasonable?”
“Hm.”
“If I’m right just say that I’m right,” he grins.
You blink at him slowly. “Anyway,” you say, turning around.
He squawks indignantly. “Why?” he pleads.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Yeah, I’m right?”
You stare at the wall like a movie is playing on it.
“Fine,” he says. “But anyway—you won’t know unless you try. And there’s no reason to hold yourself back from success. You’re going to do great.”
“I’m going to crash and burn. I’m not going to be able to handle it.”
His eyebrows crease in concern. He squeezes your shoulder. “You will be able to handle it.”
“I’ll never make friends without someone holding my hand, and basically doing it for me,” you say.
“What does that mean?”
“Like, you’re going to tell me everyone you know who’s going to my college, right?” you ask. “If I don’t have an outgoing friend who knows everyone, where would I start?”
“Isn’t that normal?” he asks.
“What?”
“For people to meet through mutual friends.”
“Yeah.”
“So it’s okay, right?”
You don’t answer. .
“Is it okay to accept help?”
“Why are you asking me?”
He sighs. “You don’t have to do everything yourself. It’s not more valid because you did it yourself. You don’t have to be less proud of yourself because you need help to do something.” He pauses in case you are going to respond.
You don’t.
“And it’s not even help. I’m just connecting you guys. Give yourself some credit.”
“But I would never be able to meet up with them without this. I might never have met them.” How do you explain to him that not being able to do it yourself is terrifying? That things being out of your control is terrifying?
“Maybe so. Life works in mysterious ways.”
You suppose maybe he’s not missing the point, but rather, regular people are just somehow okay with all of this, and well adjusted to life being random and chaotic. As opposed to life being controllable. Control is an illusion, and even if you think you’ve been able to control life, you honestly haven’t even anyway. And if you could control life, why wouldn't you have given yourself a better life?
Confusion.
“It will be fine,” he says. “It’s all an experience. You can always try new things to meet new people and you can get over social anxiety. Or you can find some way to make sure that you can work around it to have the life you want. And there’s so many people at college, so you don’t have to worry about messing up because you can always go meet new people.”
You can’t believe you have revealed so much information to him that he knows exactly which aspects of fear you have going on right now.
“And it’s not personal. It’s not always about you.”
“It feels that way.” That also doesn’t click at all. It must be about you. Even if you can perceive other reasons (other than you) why someone might have to stop being your friend, there still feels something personal about it. Why were you the dead weight that couldn't come along? Why were you incompatible with the new life change? You look at Osamu, and you hope he doesn’t see the appraising look in your eyes, scouring, analyzing, detecting for the reason in the future he will leave.
He knows you, though. So maybe he knows what you’re thinking.
He pats your head. “I’m sorry. I know once you believe in yourself more, you’ll understand what I mean. But you’ll have to trust me for now.”
That’s the whole problem, though, is you can’t trust anyone.
You don’t say that now, because you know he’s trying to help. And you are grateful for the time and attention. Your brain wildly speculates whether you only get time and attention if you are in crisis. That sounds exhausting and not healthy. But you are pretty sure that you hang out with people even when you are happy and fine. You don’t remember anything right now, but you’re also not trying very hard to prove yourself wrong.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing, continue,” you say.
“And even if some people don’t like you, there will be people who do. And it’s their loss anyway.”
“Yeah.” You can’t comprehend how it would be a loss to not have you. But it’s because you really don’t fully comprehend why your friends give you the time of day anyway. It’s something you will have to accept for now because you have friends who aren’t going to leave you. The friends who aren’t in your life anymore don’t have to set a template for how your current friends or future friends will act. And people may leave for different reasons, and it doesn’t have to be about you. And you are slowly learning and growing into a person who can take care of their own needs and emotions, who can be a better person to themselves, and a better friend to others.
He grabs your hand and puts it in both of his. “It will be okay and you will always have me.”
“People pay most attention to what’s right in front of them.”
“Are you saying we won’t be friends when we go to college?” he asks.
You shrug.
“I take offense to that, you know,” he says. “Why are you trying to dump me?”
“I’m not going to dump you. I can’t afford to do that. I need you.”
“I need you, too.”
“You don’t.”
“How can you say that? Do you know me at all?”
“You have so many other friends. You would be okay without me. I don’t have that.”
“I would not be okay without you,” he says. “I am so grateful to have you in my life.”
You look at him sadly.
“Have you been thinking that this whole time?” he asks. “That I don’t value you?”
You can’t answer that without hurting him.
“Oh,” he says softly.
“I’m sorry,” you say.
“Better to clear that up now rather than later. You better not ghost me when you get to campus.”
“I won’t,” you say.
“Promise?” he demands.
“I promise,” you say.
“Good,” he says. “And even if we find people that fulfill other needs in different ways, it doesn't mean there doesn't have to be room in our lives for each other.”
You want to believe that. You didn’t realize that was what you wanted to hear. You wish you could believe it, but you don’t want to believe it.
“You’re going to do a great job,” he says. He grabs your shoulders and brings you to him in an awkward hug.
“Thank you,” you say, cheek smashed into his chest and nose squished against his arm. You wriggle out of his tangle of an embrace and hug him properly.
“You always have to have the final word, huh?” he asks.
“No, I think that’s you,” you say.
He flicks an eyebrow up and you grin at him. He takes that as a sign of a successful conversation. Nothing is going to be magically fixed, as you said, but there is hope, still. The future is not certain, and you can try your hardest, and be forgiving and gentle and loving towards yourself.
You are enough. You are enough to be loved unconditionally, and you are enough as you are. You don’t have to change anything about yourself to be loved. You’re okay, and things will be okay.
Genre: comfort, high school to college, friendship,
Contents: mentioned but not described past history of self harm, regret, anxiety, rumination, fear of abandonment, social anxiety, limiting beliefs, facets of american high school to college experience which may not apply to all people (living somewhere then going somewhere far away for college/leaving communities and social circles), prom, dances, homecoming), feeling “fucked up” and feeling like a bad role model to children, self deprecating, feeling like “garbage”, feeling undeserving of unconditional love (aka missing the point/misunderstanding the concept of unconditional love), crying, self critical, feeling incapable of love,
a/n: Bokuto hangs out in reader’s room/in bed with reader. This is fanfiction so just pretend that your controlling parents think Bokuto is perfect and completely love respect and trust him (more than they love respect and trust you even) so they really let him do whatever he wants and have no qualms about him at all. Or pretend your parents aren’t there at all. Whatever works in the fiction for the reader.
Also the word faith mentioned nonreligiously
Wc: 5432 (i’m not joking)
~*~*~*~
The clock ticks as you wait for the school day to end. Since the days are numbered, there is reason to savor each and every one—collecting every moment, stuffing them into a vial, concocting and distilling the essence of this specific time in your life that you will never be able to return to.
You could also savor the feeling of waiting for the school day to end. Although that specific feeling is not going to be as rare, since a similar feeling could arise in university or work, but somehow, that is really depressing to think about.
You need to find something to be nostalgic for, something to miss. There can’t be any possible way that you are fine or neutral as you are now. There must be something to fix, something you can be doing better.
After school, you are looking forward to something very exciting: hanging out with Bokuto.
No one would have ever expected that situation to come out of left field.
There are a lot of things you won’t miss about high school. You were really stressed about grades, socializing, outcomes, and reaching the finish line. And there are some things that you were sure you wouldn't care about because they were the backdrop of your daily life. Repetition can emulate a sense of safety, but you were sure that couldn't apply to school. You never thought you would have positive associations with the tile under your feet, the painted cement brick walls, “your” table in the cafeteria, the mess in your locker, the writing on your desk by previous students. You never thought you would be attached to those memories.
“Memories” has such a strong connotation, whether it's fond or unsavory. You never thought you could feel nostalgic about seemingly neutral observations about high school. You didn’t have to “remember” those truths because you saw them every day. You didn’t have room in your brain to remember the weird smell in the back hallway, the unkempt grass near the creek at the base of the hill behind the school, the flickering light in the bathroom by the gym, and the ever changing flowers on display in the front window of the library. You were too busy cramming for exams and trying to please people. You didn't have time to remember all those things.
The daily things you’ve grown so accustomed to might be the things you miss most, when you are having a hard time in a new place. No matter how many bad experiences you had in this building, you couldn't erase the good times—and you don’t want to forget them. At least you went there every day. Consistency feels “safe”, even if what actually happened every single day sucked.
Your favorite thing about high school was hanging out with your friends, but many of your relationships took a turn towards the end of the year. So all the previously sweet memories have a lot of pain attached to them now. Maybe you would be able to remember the good times without feeling this pain later on. But for now, the bitterness and confusion of feeling abandoned is too much to bear.
One of the few good things about school left is Bokuto.
You plan to wait for Bokuto outside the school, but he’s already at your locker. How did he get there so fast? You have to stop questioning these things because you are not into shenanigans like that. You’ll never know.
You walk out the building together and head over to Bokuto’s house.
It’s just another day with a light blue sky and sparse fluffy clouds. As if it was any other day. As if once this day is over, it can never come back.
“I can’t believe we only have a few weeks,” Bokuto says.
“You say this every day,” you say.
“It’s true every day.”
“It is.”
“What’s the point of the last few weeks of school anyway,” Bokuto says. “We aren’t even doing anything. We already know what we are going to do.”
“It’s so stupid,” you agree.
But if we didn’t have to go to the last few weeks, then the last few weeks of school would be even earlier. There’s no escaping the end. It’s going to happen now or later. Or sooner, apparently.
Bokuto tells you about some random stuff about his day and you wonder how people are having interesting things happen to them every day. You try to come up with some stuff that happened to you today and he listens like it’s interesting but you’re sure he's just being polite since he's your friend now. No stranger would want to listen to what you had to say.
You need to figure this out soon. You’ll never make new friends at this rate.
But for now you can enjoy Bokuto’s time, attention, and company, and not overthink* what you’re saying.
*You’ll overthink it, but at least you’re saying something! That’s progress!
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
The end of senior year of high school is approaching, and regret presses heavy against your chest, filling your lungs with tar, mistakes from your childhood fossilizing into “your story”. You go down there with the intent of excavating them (learning from them? Rectifying them?), but instead, you just roll around in them, frozen beside them. They will never leave. You can never let them go. It’s part of your story, and who you are, and you can't ever change it.
That is awful.
The end of an era trickles into existence moment by moment, painfully slow, and too fast at the same time. You don’t want to be an adult. Yet at the same time, you want freedom and you want to try something new. You don’t know what kinds of freedoms to expect. There are a lot of other aspects that aren’t so “free” about adult life. Supposed “freedom” can be a burden in this society which sucks.
There are a lot of experiences and opportunities from childhood you aren’t ready to let go of yet. It’s scary to not have a safety net.
The insidious thought of wishing you could have a redo coils around you, thorned stems wrapping and tightening and pressing at the bruises, drawing blood. You can’t have a redo. That’s not how life works. “Time” marches forward. You know this fact, so you wish it was simple to let go of this wish. What would you have wanted to do differently?
You wished you had talked to more people. You wished you had more friends. You wished you had more “high school experiences” like dating and parties and friend groups and doing fun activities together.
But you didn’t, so maybe you couldn't have. Even if you got a redo, other things would have had to be different too, if you were to be able to achieve the outcomes you wanted.
You wished you could have believed in yourself more or had more practice. You wish you didn't put so much pressure on yourself to make every interaction into something positive, into something that could evolve into a friendship. You wish you didn't put so much pressure on yourself to control the outcome. The outcome is not up to you. You can try to influence it, but you can’t guarantee it.
If you had put more effort into getting closer to the people you wanted to, maybe it would have worked. It didn’t work in some cases. But maybe you weren’t going about it the right way. Was there any way to be included into a friend group? Or would they have thought you were annoying for trying, and rejected you soundly? You don’t really know.
But there are some people who you think getting closer to them might have actually worked if you tried sooner.
But of course who’s to say what all the factors were that made it happen in this way. Maybe this was the way it was “supposed” to happen. It just sucks to have a friend you are excited to have only for a few more months.
All the factors that coalesced into Bokuto being a friend that you want to get close to were a mystery. You really don’t know how in that moment, you suddenly felt brave to approach someone—someone like Bokuto, no less. Life doesn’t hand you friends easily. You have to take them. You have to make them yourself.
So you know it wasn’t an accident.
It might have been luck but it’s no accident.
You miss all the time that you could have been friends with Bokuto earlier, but weren’t. You’ve missed out on things, and there’s nothing you can do about that now. You can only try to experience joy in the present moment.
You don’t want to feel the full pain of missing out. You wish you could just get over it. It’s already over. Why are you still clinging to this? Adults don’t get to go to awkward middle school dances or prom or homecoming games (as a student.) So what? Why does this have to matter to you still? You wish it didn't matter.
There’s going to be some things you can never access ever again, once you leave this building. It is scary to not have your needs met. It is scary to not know where your needs are going to be met in the future.
It’s your final year of high school, and things are going to be different.
You would be more excited for things to be new and different if you could guarantee it would be better. You don’t want to be naive. You don’t want to assume that you’re going to be a new person just because you’re in a different geographical location or a different arbitrary distinction in your life. There’s not that much difference between seventeen and eighteen and eighteen and nineteen. You don’t want to be the exact same person when you’re thirty. You want to work on your issues and become a different person. But you don’t see how you can magically become a different person without actually trying.
It’s scary.
You think you can fake being a different person but it’s hard. It’s really hard faking not being scared and acting as if you don’t hate yourself or undermine yourself. You don't even know what a person like that would act like, you don't even know what to emulate.
Actually. You have a lot of examples around you, actually. But if it were that easy ….
Well.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Bokuto isn’t hanging out with you after school today because he is hanging out with his volleyball friends. So you have more than enough time to ruminate and be sad.
What you’re not expecting is Bokuto texting you later after dinnertime, asking to hang out.
Well. You’re not entirely opposed. You suppose you can change tracks pretty quickly. Bokuto has that skill after all—making everything seem like it’s going to be okay. At least for a little while.
But you’re not actually up for anything other than lying down, and doing and perceiving as little as possible, so.
Hopefully he can adjust to that.
You text him that and he asks you if you’d rather be alone/sleep early. You tell him that he knows you’re not going to sleep.
So he comes over.
He bursts through your door like a cyclone and presents himself with a flourish and a cracked grin on his face.
You smile tiredly at him.
He closes the door and gets into bed with you.
You’ve always appreciated his audacity. There’s so many social rules that you are afraid of breaking, afraid of being seen as weird or rude. But Bokuto just asks for what he wants. He didn’t wait for “a long enough time” to pass in your friendship before he asked if you were comfortable inviting him over to your house, or if you would prefer to hang out somewhere else. Same for hanging out in your room, and in your bed. He wants you to be comfortable and convenienced, and he doesn’t want to impose on you.
He also asks what you want, too. Being his friend forces you to have to acknowledge that you want things to, and you don’t have to go along with things for someone else's benefit.
“How was your day?” he asks.
You hum vaguely in response.
“That bad?” Bokuto asks.
“Yeah.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
You sigh. “I wish you could,” you say. And it’s a little too real to be a lighthearted joke. You never know when your dark self deprecating humor is going to be too much for you. You always assume you can handle it. You’re doing it to yourself. You know what you’re going to say. How could you accidentally hurt yourself?
But if you go door to door, asking for the devil, eventually you will find him.
And when you try to find your limit, when you try to see how far you can go and what you can get away with, eventually you will hurt your own feelings.
Just because you’re always hurting your own feelings and ignoring your reactions, doesn't mean your reaction isn’t going to one day spill over.
It’s a losing battle. You’re clowning yourself.
“I might be able to!” he says, still joking.
You don’t reply and he nudges you.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
“The same old,” you say vaguely.
“Which one?” he asks (genuinely, and not at all sarcastically, which is crazy to you.)
You look at him, unimpressed, (but actually impressed) that he can lovingly and gently say something that would from anyone else be a roast (even if it is a gentle roast). He genuinely wants to be there for you through multiple of the same problems you have over and over.
You really cannot comprehend this.
“Just, like, sad. About social stuff.”
“Like what? Like me going to hang out with the team today?” Bokuto asks.
You don’t like that he is blaming yourself. Is he trying to give you an easy way out? You aren’t going to scapegoat him. You can’t.
“Kind of related to that, but about more stuff, too.”
“Like what?”
You tell him all the stories about how you’ll always be unhappy no matter what, and you're going to get the same results over and over, and you can’t change and what’s the point of trying.
You don’t get very far in your story before he interrupts you to ask, “can I hug you? Or hold your hand?”
Even though this is a normal occurrence with Bokuto since he is such a tactile person, you are still surprised every time. You are not used to asking for physical touch, so you often don't notice when having physical touch would be a gentle, soothing, and positive addition to an experience.
“I—sure. Okay.”
He hugs you and then holds your hand in between your bodies. “Okay. Keep telling your story.”
This endless unconditional support is irksome. You can’t fathom the depths of his patience. When is it going to end? You thought you were going to hit the limit long ago.
You take a break from your story to breathe. You almost don't even know what you’re saying. It’s such an old and well worn story and he’s heard bits and pieces of all of it but maybe not all of it at once and so messily.
You blink at him. He stares at you through the silence.
When you don’t continue, he asks you, “can I ask a question?”
“Sure.”
“Do you want me to respond now or later? Or listen and not respond?”
“It doesn’t matter. Whatever you want.”
“Noo!” he protests gently. “What do you want? What would be helpful to you?”
You sigh. “What do you think I need?”
“That is not answering the question,” he says. “And it’s an irrelevant question.”
“Wlel, you’re my friend who loves me and wants the best for me, right?” you ask.
“Yes,” he says, immediately and with certainty.
“So, with those credentials, what do you want for me?”
“I mean. I don’t want you to be sad,” he says. “But I know that being sad is a part of life, so you can’t ever not be sad ever again. But I wish I could support you and make this sadness easier to get through.”
“Yeah.”
“And also I wish you could see yourself like how I see you. And also be gentler to yourself.”
“Hm.” That’s neve happening, but you don’t want to disappoint him or make him sad. And you don’t want him to think that his efforts are worthwhile (even though they might be.) You don't want him to leave because he realized his efforts are going to be fruitless.
“Thank you for listening,” you say.
“I am always here for you,” he says.
Even that assertion hurts. It’s not true. It’s wishful thinking. Nothing in life is certain.
“But I do have responses,” he says. “I don’t want you to think I condone what you are saying. But only if you feel like hearing them.”
You nod.
“It’s okay?” he asks.
“Yes, you can tell me,” you say.
“I wish you could see that the rumination is hurting you,” he says.
“So what?” you want to say. But that’s really aggressive. You try to tone it down. “I’m already hurt no matter whether I ruminate or not. I can’t change the past.”
Okay, maybe that’s not super toned down, but you are hurt and frustrated. And unable to overcome. So.
He pats your head, in a slow smoothing motion from top to above your neck. “Can you forgive that it happened?”
You don’t reply. A lot is going on in your brain and you don’t think you can let any of it out. All your instincts are defensive, and one branch of thought says that Bokuto doesn't know what he’s talking about and he doesn't know what you went through and he went through as far as you can tell the exact opposite of what you went through so of course he would have a forgiving l attitude because nothing bad happened to him like how it did to you. That’s unfair because everyone has been through something or another and you don’t want to invalidate him ever but definitely not while he’s helping you. You don't want to bite the hand that feeds you or whatever.
So you forgo that line of reasoning. Second, how can you forgive and forget this? If this is your destiny, you don’t ever want to forget it. You don’t want the sting of disappointment to hurt more than the isolation ever would.
You don’t know which hurts the most.
“It’s okay if you can’t forgive it right now,” he says. “But I hope you can in the future. I hope you believe it’s possible. I don’t want you to hurt yourself more.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Ironically possible?”
You crinkle your nose in distaste. Self care ironically. You don’t know how you feel about that.
“You deserve kindness and gentleness and happiness.”
You can’t say “the world hasn’t ever given that to me.” Well, you could say that. But how can you say that right to the face of someone who is trying their absolute hardest to show you gentleness and kindness.
You wonder if you could ironically deserve kindness and gentleness and happiness.
Hm. Still no.
He sighs.
You wonder if he’s ready to leave.
“You’re doing a good job,” he says.
“No,” you say.
“Yes!”
“When have I ever done a good job?”
“Right now! And plenty of times before.”
“No.”
“You don’t have to paint everything with one brush stroke. Not everything in your life was horribly awful all the time. And especially the future doesn’t have to reflect the past.”
It’s very convenient of you to forget the good things that happened to you and all the fun you had in the past. Very convenient to push a very specific narrative that you will be unhappy and alone for the rest of your life.
Who does that benefit? Why do you feel like you benefit from this mindset?
Maybe you can’t unpack everything at once in this moment. But now that you know there’s a question to be asked, it’s going to live in the back of your brain forever, pestering you.
You don’t have the blissful ignorance you had before.
“I have something else to say,” Bokuto says.
Normally, this trait of Bokuto’s—brain bouncing off the walls, going in a million different directions, always having something to say, always taking the conversation to new places—is cute and you love it. (Normally) you love his attention and if the easiest way to get his attention is to listen to him speak, you are happy to do it. If you weren’t in the spotlight, this owuld be fine.
But he keeps trying to help you and give you unconditional love! Even though you are garbage and providing no value right now! It’s not computing.
“Can I say it?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I also wanted to say, what happened to you in the past doesn’t have to repeat. Especially what happened to you because of things that weren't your fault.”
You barely hold back your snort. “Aren’t we supposed to believe patterns?” You don't bring up that his worst subject is math because that would be petty and also isn’t pattern recognition something third graders are supposed to excel at? He can’t be that bad at math.
“Human beings have the capacity for change. And maybe you weren’t in your ideal environment to thrive. Once you’re given everything you need to be loved and supported, you will naturally evolve into who you were always meant to be.”
You shake your hand free from Bokuto’s and press it to your chest. He stares at the detachment between you. He rests his hand in front of yours. The kicker is: he still looks interested in what you have to say.
Hoooow?
“I can’t control my environment,” you say finally. Wondering if you have won the argument yet.
“To a certain extent.” Hm. You haven’t won yet. “But you can know what you are looking for and enforce your boundaries.”
“How is that going to help.”
“It will!”
Ugh.
You know the look on his face isn’t pity exactly. It’s easy to read it that way. It’s easy to think that he had friends how he loved in high school and he’s likeable so he’s going to have a great experience in his next stage of life, and all subsequent following stages as well. He has the skills and the luck. He can carve a place for himself in the world. Or maybe it was handed to him. Maybe he doesn't have to fight to fit in, find a community, to have his needs met. Maybe he’s just meant to be happy. He got lucky. He found the key. Or the key was given to him long ago. What about you?
His expression isn’t pitying, exactly, but it looks like it.
“Do you believe me?” he asks.
“What?” you grumble.
“That you don’t have to blame yourself for what happened to you. It doesn’t have to be something that was wrong with you, or your fault.”
“A—
“And even if it was your fault, you can learn and grow from it. You can do something different next time, you get accept help, you can nurture yourself into the person you want to be.”
“I just want to be different now.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you, now.”
“Then why am I sad?”
Your voice cracks between you. And Bokuto makes an aborted motion. He wants to put you back together. He wants to be there for you.
And you are embarrassed and mortified that tears burst from your eyes.
He coos at you and whispers, and pats your hair, and you cry more.
He hugs you.
This is so gross and awful and you don’t want anyone to see you cry but you suppose if he hasn’t left yet then is this really going to send him over the edge (the edge of leaving)? If this (crying) is the greatest weakness that was the straw that broke the camel’s back (the straw: your flaws, the camel’s back: Bokuto’s tolerance for spending time with you) then so be it.
But little did you know/it was impossible for you to comprehend that Bokuto wants you to depend on him and he wants to be there for you. (Wild.)
“You’re being there for yourself and trying to protect yourself. You’re only doing what you know how to do.”
“It’s not working,” you croak.
“It worked until now.”
“And now what?”
“You find a new way. When you’re ready.”
“I’ll never be ready.”
“That’s okay, too.”
You squirm and he struggles against you.
“Let me go!”
“No!”
“I have to blow my nose, dummy!”
“Use my shirt!”
You gape at him. “NO!”
He lets you go and you blow your nose in the bathroom and you spend as little time as possible looking at your crying face: glassy eyes and vacant expression. And redder than usual nose and cheeks.
You arrive back in bed. Bokuto stares up at you, head on one of your pillows, covers pulled up to his torso.
He pats the space on your bed in front of him.
You sigh. You prop your pillows against the wall and sit up.
Bokuto shuffles towards you and puts his head on your lap. He looks at you meaningfully and you pat his hair.
You think that’s the end of it. You cried, you washed your face, you are fully prepared for Bokuto to fall asleep here. You aren’t looking for an excuse to text his parents—you don’t want to be perceived by adults™ at all—but you wouldn't want them worrying about their precious boy. He’s just here, being a good friend to a fuck up. They really raised a stand up citizen, an absolutely, exquisitely kind, superstar of a person.
That’s so crazy.
“What if you tried finding your own positive intent?”
Your brain turned off because you were expecting the end of the convo, so his question startled you.
“What?” you said, while giving your brain time to catch up.
“You weren’t trying to hurt yourself back then.”
You don’t think now is the right time to bring up all the times you’ve hurt yourself in the past. You stay quiet and let him do this thing. You wish you could receive it in the way that would make him happy and not upset and not ready to abandon you because you can never change and he’s tired of taking care of you like this. But you can’t. So you listen and hope that everything will be okay.
“You weren’t trying to hurt yourself with all your decisions you made in the past. You were trying your best with what you were given. And you couldn't have known anything you didn’t know back then. There’s no way to magically wish you had known back then what you might know now.”
“Maybe knowledge is a burden. Maybe it was better to not know anything and to still have hope.”
Bokuto gasps. “You can still have hope!”
“I have to learn my lesson.”
“What lesson?”
You open your mouth, your fighting instincts ready before your words are. How do you answer this question—in a satisfactory way, that will convince Bokuto you’re right. You’re right. You know you’re right. How can you be wrong?
But all that comes to mind is how you did everything wrong and you have a hunch that he’s going to count all or some of those times as “times when it was out of your control” and “not your fault” which—
You can’t fault him for his perspective, you guess. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
And, you secretly hope he’s right. But there’s no way he’s right. You have the evidence right here. (“Evidence” … but to you it’s real.)
“Like. Imagine any child in your situation. What would you tell them?”
That question wrenches a horrified reaction from you. You don’t want to be anywhere near a child, in case all your fucked-up-edness rubs off on them. You don’t want to be the reason someone is sad like you.
He stares at you patiently like he’s actually waiting for an answer.
You “know” the right answer (be gentle and loving to the child). You aren’t pleased that he’s asking questions you don't even want to answer sarcastically. You don’t believe in “toughening” kids up at home because the world is scary. The world should be kinder. Why would anyone want to hurt kids on purpose to “prepare” them for the world? Why would anyone create a life where kids aren’t safe in the world or at home? Literally nowhere?
“It’s not their fault,” you choke out finally. He’s really not going to budge on this unless you move things along. For how hyper he is, when he decides he needs to be patient for something, he’s not going to break first.
And you don’t want to answer dishonestly. “Even for pretend” you wouldn't want to hurt a child on purpose.
“Yeah,” he says gently. “It’s not your fault either.”
You sigh. You’ll have to leave it at that for now. You trust him. You don’t think he would ever lie to you on purpose. Even if you don’t have faith in the universe, you can try to have faith in Bokuto, or at least in the fact that he wouldn't deliberately lie to your face.
“I love you,” he says.
You feel gross at that admission. How can he love all these unloveable parts of you? All you’ve done for the entire duration of hanging out with him tonight was be a burden and unloveable.
“I love you, too,” you say, because even if today you feel like you’re incapable of love, you know that you appreciate Bokuto, and his company, and how he cares about you. And you want him to know you appreciate him. Just because you are sad now doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate that he cares about you.
“Yay!” Bokuto grins. He pats your back rambunctiously, definitely evoking the vibe of Athlete after a successful huddle or point.
You suppose you and Bokuto are on a team together, a team for your mental health.
“Why don’t we do something fun?” he exclaims.
“Like what?” you answer sarcastically, but the bright eyed grin you receive and the breath he takes means he really thought—
“It’s nighttime, what do you think we’re going to be able to do?”
He looks up at you with watery, sparkling eyes. “…ramen?”
You kick him. “Are you serious? It’s so late!”
“We have to have some romantic escapades to celebrate our youth! The precious time that we have!” Bokuto says. Him weaponizing a fake genuine voice to be sarcastic is sending you (to an early grave).
He’s not wrong though is the problem. His joke is real to you and that’s what makes his joke so much funnier.
“We have to celebrate our youth!”
“Okay, I get it!” you snap. He grins at you and you pat his shoulders.
“What?”
“Well? Get up!”
He lifts his head from your lap and turns to face you rightways up instead of upside down.
“Really?”’
“Did you hear anything I said for the last seventeen hours?” you ask. “I’m taking this shit seriously! Move!”
He bounces up, manic grin shining in the lowlit room. He can’t believe you’re doing this. He can’t believe you agreed.
He didn’t think he’d get this far.
You look at the gift warily from all sides. It doesn’t count that you're having fun at this because it was so late, it wasn’t spontaneous. If someone gives you something you want after you ask for it, it somehow doesn’t count because you forced them to give you what you wanted (?) Doesn’t make sense, but okay.
So anyway, you resent but not really Bokuto for “tricking” you into having fun.
You are excited for this experience, and embarrassed that you’re so excited for something that should be normal.
You wish you could peacefully enjoy a moment like a normal person, but for now you can allow both your enjoyment of it and your annoyance at your enjoyment of it to exist peacefully because life is complicated and you’re trying your best.
Ushijima comfort: Coming back from party and it went well
Overcoming social anxiety, Proud of yourself, but stressed about being proud of yourself
Genre: established relationship, comfort
Contents/topics mentioned: eating, anxiety (general), social anxiety, fear (general), fear of angry people, fear of abandonment, scarcity mindset, social isolation,
Wc: 2249
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
You never want to leave when you’re having fun. What if it never happens again? What if it is the last time?
This will not be the last time you leave a social event after hanging out with Ushijima’s friends—you can reassure yourself that much. There will be a next time.
You’re floaty and happy, tethered to the earth only by your hand in Ushijima’s as you head back to your residence. Bursting through social anxiety and coming out the other end with a good experience—it truly makes you feel on top of the world. You always thought that you couldn't be the outgoing one. You always thought you would have to rely on someone else to be your liaison, show you the way, be the outgoing and brave and sociable and charismatic one to lead you in social interactions and help you get your social needs met. You thought you had to rely on others to give you access to resources to have your social needs met.
And there’s ways for people who aren’t loud and overly charismatic to have their social needs met, too. Ushijima is not at all a standard talkative person at all, but he has helped you make lots of friends, on your journey to building confidence in yourself.
Not that Ushijima isn’t actually “outgoing.” It just looks a little different as compared to what people may think of first. He takes initiative a lot and tries to find the most direct path to get what he needs. His needs are also different than yours in different circumstances, so sometimes he might not be the first one to make conversation. He’s content to step back and listen. Yet, usually he’s always the center of attention anyway. He’ll always make sure you’re comfortable going to an event before RSVPing yes or no for both of you. He’s equally content staying at home as going out.
You both arrive at your place, and you have some leftovers from the party, while he goes to shower. You text some of your friends that you made it back safely and you hope you can see them again soon.
You don’t want to let go of this successful, happy feeling. You never want it to end.
You’ve never had much of a social life. You’re honestly shocked that you even met Ushijima. You somehow ended up with friends in school, but you don’t remember how you made them. And once you went out into the “real world” you had no idea how to approach making friends.
You think you’d have fun going out and having fun with a bunch of people—you’re honestly not sure. You’ve been held back by fear a lot. You’ve had situations in the past where you’ve been met with a whole friend group that seemed ripe for the taking—but you froze, didn’t speak at all. Too afraid of what kind of first impression you’d make to even make any impression at all. You couldn’t participate in impromptu dance parties because it felt like dance battles—and you didn’t want to lose or embarrass yourself. You didn't know how to add yourself in the conversation because you didn't know the right thing to say. You didn't want to invite yourself where you weren't wanted. You didn’t want to alienate yourself from a friend group served on a silver platter. But in trying so hard not to mess up your chance, you completely missed your chance.
You’ve tried super hard to make friends but you felt like you always failed in one way or another. It would always end up with you being on the outskirts and excusing yourself and removing yourself from the friend group. You never fit in and it was hard to believe you weren't the problem.
Ushijima was a kind of safety blanket you didn’t know was possible. Ushijima got you out of your shell in the way that he saw potential in you and it helped you see potential in you. You had no idea how, but he was enraptured by you and it was baffling. You were a little more confident to be yourself with Ushijima by your side. You knew that at least one person was going to love you no matter what stupid stuff you said. And it turned out that when you were free to be yourself, people didn’t hate it. Not everyone, at least. And you made some good friends who you are really grateful for.
Ushijima returns from his shower and you go to take yours. You really don’t want to wash the day off of you—not when you had such a fun evening, at least. But also, even if you shower, you will still have the memories. You don’t want this good day to end, because tomorrow might be a bad day.
You want to let go of old rules and old narratives about yourself that no longer serve you. For most of your life, social anxiety kept you safe. If you think twelve steps ahead, if you micromanage yourself, if you avoid situations, then you avoid people being mad at you. You avoid danger.
It’s simple. It’s simple math.
You’re not wrong. As long as you’re keeping yourself safe, who can fault you for that? What could be more “right” than trying to keep yourself safe?
But isolation is painful. These rules that keep you safe are also hurting you.
You want friends who love you, you want best friends who are always going to be there for you. You want to be surrounded by loved ones, you want to be supported by them, and to support them in return. You want to be part of a community.
But finding a community is not that easy. Not in this hegemonically built society where it benefits a few people for everyone else to be disenfranchised, out of their power.
It’s not your fault, necessarily. At least it’s not 100% your fault.
But you feel responsible for holding yourself back. You blame yourself for not being able to change. It sucks to face internal barriers to socializing on top of the societal barriers.
Life shouldn’t be so hard.
You are unlucky often. You have had friends who you thought were right for you, and then weren’t in the end. You’ve had friend groups that weren’t right for you either, and no matter how many people were around you, they were never right for you, and eventually, you would always cycle back to being alone.
The idea “you’ve been unlucky your whole life so you should get lucky soon” is a heaven’s reward fallacy. Good people don't always have good things happen to them and bad people don't always have bad things happen to them. (Maybe there is no such thing as a “good person” and a “bad person” anyway.) And “good people” cannot prevent bad things from happening to them by being a “good person.”
Life doesn’t owe you anything. You don’t know what you think you’re waiting for. It’s not friends. That’s not going to magically happen. And you don’t really know how to make it happen yourself.
Once you are done with your shower, you get into bed with Ushijima, who is reading a book with soothing music on in the background. He looks up from his book as you climb into bed.
He pressed a gentle hand to your face and gingerly presses a kiss to your cheek.
“Did you eat enough?” he asks.
You nod. “I’m full. Are you hungry?”
He shakes his head.
“How’s your book?”
His book is open on his lap. He closes it, his finger inside to mark his page, and looks at the cover thoughtfully.
“It’s okay,” he says.
You wonder if he’s going to say more.
He puts the book away, and turns towards you. “Did you have fun tonight?” he asks.
“Yes! I hope we can do that again soon.”
He smiles. “I’ll tell them you said that. Did you get their numbers?”
“Not everyone. But yes, please tell them.”
“I’ll ask them to tell us when they’re going to plan something again,” he says.
You snuggled into the covers and look up at him expectantly. He lies down next to you, and you press your face into his chest.
You feel the social anxiety creeping back slowly. Sometimes, it’s easier and safer to feel certain emotions with others. It’s easy to get swept away with a lot of people and feel happy and loved and accepted. On the other hand, it’s easier to second guess yourself when you’re at home alone. Though you’re not actually alone when Ushijima is home. But he was in the shower earlier and that’s more than enough time for your brain to go wild. Were you really accepted? Are you allowed to have a good time? No one can know you had a good time. You aren’t allowed. Right? You’ll get in trouble.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
You sigh. You can’t shrug from this angle but you think he probably knows what you mean.
“I don’t know,” you say just in case he can’t guess.
“Thinking about something?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Just, like. Stressed.”
“About what?”
“The party.”
“That we just got back from?”
“Yes.”
He holds you tighter. “What happened there?”
Nothing, really. Nothing bad that you can think of. But what if something bad happened and you missed it? “Do you think it went okay?”
“I—me?” he stutters. “What—what does that have to do with anything?”
“How did the party seem to you?”
“It seemed fine. But was it?”
“I don't know.”
“Did something happen?”
“I don’t think so. But what if it did.”
“Hmm.”
“It’s stupid, I’m sorry.”
“It’s not stupid. But why do you think something happened?”
“Why wouldn't it?”
“Things can just be nice.”
You know that’s like …true…technically. Allegedly. But you’re still mad he said it.
“Not for me,” you want to say, but you hold yourself back.
“Everyone liked you,” he said.
You’re happy at that thought, but you don’t want to believe it. “Thank you,” you say.
“Everyone was also ready for us to meet up again soon.”
“Yeah.”
He presses a kiss to the top of your head, and to your neck, and shoulder.
“You did a really great job.”
“Thank you.”
You’re proud of yourself for overcoming your anxiety and having an outcome that you want. But no one must know. You’re scared to be happy. You feel the sensation glowing inside of you, and it’s enjoyable.
For some reason it’s easier being happy in front of other people, with friends. It’s easy to have fun with friends. Like nothing bad can happen to you if you’re with them.
But it’s not easy to feel proud of yourself. It’s not easy to feel like you’ve done the right thing. It’s not easy to be confident in your own decision. You’re tired, and happy, and afraid of feeling sad. You’re afraid of not feeling this ever again. You want to enjoy it while it lasts.
You want to let go of your resentments and live freely and one of your resentments is the seemingly easy way other people are able to get their socialization needs met but you aren’t. You are now in a situation where you can enjoy this socialization, but you have to let yourself go. You have to let yourself enjoy this.
“Is there anything else you want to talk about?”
“No, I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“I guess there’s nothing really to talk about.”
“It’s okay if you want to keep talking.”
“Maybe tomorrow morning.”
“Okay. If you’re sure. Are you ready to sleep?”
“Soon.”
“Okay. Want to watch something?”
“Just one episode.”
He goes and finds a comfort episode he can play that won’t be too stimulating, and you both can fall asleep to.
You’re doing a good job and everything is going to be okay. You still have stuff to work on but who doesn't? It’s okay to celebrate the small victories and every day is a step closer to the life you want. And there’s already so much you’re grateful for now. You have come so far from where you were before and you will continue to go farther.
You have some other things holding you back that you’re working on letting go of. You have some old rules that say you are not allowed to have fun, with friends, or otherwise. You have some old rules that say that you are on borrowed time and if you have fun now it will bite you in the butt later.
But you don't have to live by your old rules now. You can live by new rules and be kind to yourself, gentle, and loving. You can play and have fun in your life. You can never get the time you lost in your childhood back but you can make the most of the present moment you have now. You can enjoy your life in the present and let go of resentments of the past and fears of the future.
It’s not going to be easy, but you can be there for yourself and support yourself and try your best. You can be present with yourself as you go along this journey, and you can ask for help when you need.You can make your own rules. You are allowed to play and have fun in your life.
Asking for help, can’t sleep, Bokuto comforts and supports
Genre: comfort, established relationship: pet name: baby; cuddling, sleeping in the same bed
Contents: symptoms make it hard to sleep, but sleeping would also help with the symptoms (a vicious cycle :( sad), overthinking/anxiety, social anxiety, hard time asking for help, reader calls self fucked up and crazy, hypervigilance, very hard on self, self negative, low self esteem, self critical, mean for no reason to self :(, scarcity mindset, fear of abandonment,
Wc: 2460
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
You have not felt normal for a lot of your life. You saw people being able to meet their needs in a variety of ways, and somehow, you were not able to figure out how to meet your needs for yourself. Somehow, people were on a completely different plane from you. Maybe they had a much stronger foundation from which to springboard off of. You were scrambling to find your balance on a constantly tilting floor, and people were already halfway up the walls, scaling them like mountain goats or monkeys. Some were birds and seemed to fly straight to the top.
All these mountain dwelling animals were doing great. They were supposed to be here.
You have no idea where you are supposed to be.
Tonight, it’s time for your classic delay going to bed shenanigans. For what? You don’t know. You can’t relax. You aren’t purposefully trying not to sleep. But if you go to sleep right away, who is going to ruminate over all the mistakes you’ve made today, and in your whole life?
You’re tired and hungry, and you’re too tired to eat, and too hungry to sleep. Your eyes and head hurt. You’ve been watching youtube, hoping to fall asleep to one of the videos.
Even though you ate dinner with Bokuto earlier, you ate very little, because you were too nervous and stressed to eat fully. He didn’t press you to eat more than you were comfortable. He asked if you were okay and you didn’t really have an answer for him at the time.
You are bad at asking for help when your symptoms get really bad. Or even when your symptoms aren’t bad, but it would be nice to have support.
You aren’t good at relying on people. You don’t know the distinctions of when you should rely on yourself and regulate your own emotions and take responsibility for yourself and when you should ask for help and support. You don’t want to do anything wrong and you don’t want to be a burden.
Until you know it’s safe, you don’t want people to know your true emotions so you try not to let anyone know what you’re thinking. But you also don’t really have a good poker face. You also don’t like lying for other people’s benefit (when it hurts you). You don’t like the idea that you should suffer in silence while everyone else has fun. It’s not fair.
There’s some people you can never tell that you’re struggling. They won’t care and they might blame you, and will probably make you feel worse.
There’s some people you would never think to tell that you’re struggling.
Bokuto is not like that at all. He is someone you feel very safe telling your stuff to. You used to be stressed about him finding out you were fucked up and crazy, but he keeps loving you no matter what, and that doesn’t make sense to you. You are working on feeling safe and secure in this relationship. It is one of the relationships you feel safest and most secure in. It’s not to have a safe place where you can figure out how to deal with all the other unsafe places in the world that you have to interact with because you are alive.
Maybe you’re staving off a disaster right now. You honestly don’t know. Maybe you’re bottling up all your problems because you can’t deal with them right now because you might have even more problems to deal with soon. You need to be ready.
You alternate thinking about a social faux paux and feeling stress from a task you’ve been procrastinating on. And there’s probably other stuff that you can’t grasp right now. It’s so deeply entrenched in your brain that the routes will flash by unconsciously and you don’t even know what it’s about. All you know is that you are stressed, you are under attack, something bad is going to happen, you are the cause of it. You’re well on your way to spiraling.
And you know there are ways to help yourself. You need to get something to eat. You need to be gentle with yourself. Being embarrassed and ashamed isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s also not going to change the past. And also those feelings in excess, completely disproportionate to what actually happened, by the way, (barely anything happened) is also unhealthy.
That thing you said in front of your friends—no one’s thinking of it, probably. You’ve said way more embarrassing things before (yikes, oh no), but they just laugh, and still love you no matter what.
Which. That is the crazy part. That they still love you no matter what.
Even if you can’t truly believe that in your heart, you’d like it if you were able to find a way to relax and fall asleep today. There's no reason to beat yourself up about this.
There’s no reason, but you feel like you need to.
You feel stuck. There’s nothing else you can do. That’s the pasttime you do the most, the thing you're most practiced at.
You get into bed and wait for Bokuto to come out of the bathroom, holding one of your stuffed animals. You stare into the toy’s eyes and tears prickle behind your eyes.
You like being with Bokuto while he falls asleep, but you are probably going to move to another room because you feel like you are not going to be able to sleep tonight.
He emerges, and crawls into bed with you, enveloping you completely. You keep your toy between the two of you for a moment, and then put him beside you, to then go back to snuggle with Bokuto.
No matter how many times he does this, no matter how “normal” it should feel by now, you are sometimes caught off guard by the opportunity to feel safe in his arms, fighting against the hypervigilance that has ruled your whole life.
Tears absorbed slowly between your cheeks and his shirt.
He pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “Baby?” he asked, softly, uncertainty lacing around the syllables.
You squeeze your eyes tighter. Your body is so tense. You don’t want him to let go (he wouldn't).
He rubs your back.
“I know you didn’t want to talk earlier. But is there anything else I can do?”
“I don’t know. It feels disproportionate to the problems I am facing.”
“You’re doing so well. I’m sorry things have been tough.”
“I’m not going to be able to sleep.” You cry more.
“That’s okay, baby.” He catches tears with his thumb one by one and wipes them on the sheets behind you.
“It’s going to make things worse.” Your voice is caught in your throat, like your words are trying to swim through pudding.
“It’s not your fault.” His voice is so soothing. And you feel like a baby. Why do you have to be soothed? Why can’t you be a real adult that can solve your own problems and not cry about all this stupid stuff? Why can’t you just be normal?
Why can’t you accept his help?
“Sleep is hard for you and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Of course he’s going to say something kind and comforting to you. Of course. He’s radically accepting you as you are. Why can’t you accept yourself? But of course you can’t. If you could, then you would be normal, and have no problems, and your life would be completely different.
“You’ll get through this. I’m here for you and will help you.”
You wish accepting help wasn’t such a sign of weakness (you wish you didn't see it that way). But who cares if Bokuto sees you as weak (he doesn’t)? Bokuto would never talk shit about you (he doesn’t even have anything negative to say about you stored in his brain). If Bokuto is offering help, why can’t you take it?
You’ve accepted his help countless of times before. You don’t want it to run out. You don’t want it to run out when you “really” need it.
Sometimes your life seems to get worse and worse. You don’t want to be stranded without help when things are much worse than this.
This isn’t even that bad. You’ve been through all of this before. Why can’t you ever learn and grow and change?
“What are you thinking about?”
You press your nose and then your forehead into his chest. You wish you could curl up into yourself and disappear forever.
“Do you want me to watch YouTube with you?”
“No, I want you to sleep.”
“It’s okay, I can stay up with you, baby.”
“No, you shouldn’t jeopardize your health for me.”
To be frank, Bokuto actually can’t even stay up that late, anyway. He’s a battery company mascot all throughout the day, but then he needs his sleep at night. He keeps a much stricter bedtime than you—he’s actually a lot more routine oriented than you, in general.
“It’s only one night, baby. You don’t have to worry about me. I’m going to stay tough and healthy for us, don’t worry about that.”
Part of you feels endeared, but part of you feels scared. You can’t rely on him. What are you going to do when he leaves or is gone? How are you going to take care of yourself?
“I want you to feel better. This is going to pass.”
This is so frustrating and awful. Even though Bokuto doesn’t get what you are going through, he is the one who has listened to you the most. He knows more about you than anyone else. And he knows how to help you more than anyone else. Even if you can’t trust life or the universe, or other people, or your parents, you can trust Bokuto. You know this. He has shown up for you time and time again.
You don’t want Bokuto to end up on a list of people you can’t trust anymore.
“Okay.”
“Okay? To which part.”
You shrug. “Just fall asleep when you want to fall asleep, okay? I can tell when you’re sleepy.”
“You don’t have to worry so much about me, baby. I’m so grateful for you.”
“I’m grateful for you too. You worry about me so much because I'm such a mess. I don't want to be a burden.”
“You’re not a burden,” Bokuto says, doing a sweep of the room, trying to locate a laptop. “I love you so much. Thank you for letting me be there for you and help you.”
Bokuto is very disgruntled that he has to untangle himself from you to get the laptop. He cues up your favorite type of youtube video to fall asleep to because he knows you so well but also you are really predictable and only watch one thing.
He turns off the main lights and turns on the mood lights you keep on for some softer and calmer vibes. He curls around you and you know he is struggling to stay awake. You start massaging his scalp. There’s no reason for him to stay up with you.
“Baby, stop,” he says, his voice extremely sleepy, syllables sticking together and stringing each other along like putty. Actually it’s really hot. You drag your thumb across his eyebrow gently. His eyes are dropping shut.
“What?”
“You know what you’re doing.”
“Go to sleep,” you say.
“I already told you I want to stay up! Why are you sabotaging me.”
“You said you were going to be strong and healthy for us!”
“Are you sure you don’t want any company?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You’re really stubborn.”
You continue massaging his scalp as if to say “you knew this and you love me.”
“Do you want company tomorrow?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Okay. You can wake me up if you want company, okay? Or if you want anything else.”
“Sleeping next to you is company enough.”
“Okay. I’m letting you win this time, but don’t think I’m going to forget this.”
You don’t have time to say that he never lets you win, you win, also there’s no winning, you both are a team, and he would never want to set you both up as opposing each other. He knows he can get away with saying shit like this right before he falls asleep because you’re not going to argue with him as he’s about to drift off (you would never interfere with his sleep). Crafty bastard. Always coming in with the strategies. And for what?
You aren’t really paying attention to the video since the sound of the voices themselves are more soothing. You don’t really care what they have to say, necessarily. You are also calmed by Bokuto’s breathing. He drifts off to sleep, and you think about stuff. You wish you had something to do, but you’re too tired to do anything.
But you try to make peace with your thoughts. You’re going to have them anyway, so you might as well invite them in. Sit with them. Offer them tea. Show them where the shower and towels are. Ask them what they want for dinner later.
You switch to a calming show you want to watch. Your brain is going to be occupied, and it’s a little more energy than you really want to exert, but at least you won’t be bored.
You can pass one more night this way. Bokuto loves you no matter what. It doesn’t matter if you can’t sleep sometimes and that sometimes you don't feel safe and sometimes you overthink things. He loves you no matter what.
It was a hard night, but now that you’ve settled into an activity, it’s going to be okay. Time will pass. Tomorrow will come. Situations will arise. Things may be solved or they might never be. But at least Bokuto is going to always be there, offering to stay up with you. That’s really sweet of him to offer (even though you both know he’s going to nod off in a few minutes).
You hold that fondness in your heart, like a molten puddle of golden sunlight. You have to freeze the rest of your body because you don’t want to engage with the unpleasant sensations of your symptoms and stress and hypervigilance. But you focus on the warm fondness for Bokuto as you watch your show, and as the hours of the night tick away into the morning. Bokuto will wake up soon, and he will offer to help you again. And you may feel uncomfortable accepting, but you know that you both want the best for you.
Osamu comforts after you feel embarrassed in a social setting
Genre: comfort, fluff, pre-relationship/not established (romantic) relationship/ friendship,
Contents:
mental/emotional/social issues: social anxiety, self-critical, spiraling, embarrassment, shame,feeling wrong and bad, feeling undeserving, fearing other people's anger *anger never shown, fear of abandonment, thinking no one likes you, not believing when people like you, low self esteem, low self worth, people pleasing trait (not necessarily in action, but potentially in thought), scarcity mindset, not feeling like socializing needs are met,
Ability: walking is mentioned.. But i’m imaging commuting or traversing--any way that would get someone from point A to point B, does not have to be walking; and a hand is mentioned but like any kind of being able to pat someone on the head would work
Personality traits: reader does not like to cook: if you do like to cook, i imagine it would get both competitive and/or collaborative~ like arguing about who is the better cook but also like making fancy stuff together and having fun from that ; reader likes cooking as a social activity; if that stresses you out (i knew someone who got stressed by that) then like …. I imagine osamu would just love to cook for you just like everything arrives fully ready and you can just enjoy <3 or you can just watch him and hang out with him and not help while he cooks, but you’re there for company and moral support and to eat together afterwards <3 anyway;
Wc: 3585
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
“Wait, wait, wait, what?” Osamu asks.
The moment screeches to a halt. Your words peter out, while your brain tries to catch up with your mouth, and with the situation you have created.
Everyone was already looking at you because you were talking, but now, somehow—and this is going to sound crazy, but it’s true—they are looking at you harder.
You blink, your mouth dry and your throat scratchy. Everyone processes what you’ve said in deafening silence. Then Bokuto laughs and Suna says “damn.” An aggravatingly neutral response from the both of them—Bokuto laughs at everything, and Suna is painstakingly hard to read unless you really try—and even then, you still don’t trust yourself 100% in your assessments. In this case, you’re confused, and alarmed, too: Are you wrong or right? Are you going to be shunned forever, or is everything fine? You are mortified and you’re about to apologize, but everyone has already taken when you’ve said and run with it. You watch in silence and impending doom as they escalate the situation. You are witnessing a new inside joke being created. You could be proud—you had a hand in it! They can’t forget you now, can’t say this group of words, or mention anything even remotely related to this, without thinking of you, and this moment. You could be happy and how you are settling into your new friend group. But you’re not quite ready to let yourself off the hook yet. You’re embarrassed, mortified. How could you do this? You don’t know these people nearly well enough to be making jokes like that. (And it wasn't even on purpose—you said some random stuff on accident, and now you’re in this situation. You do not know these people nearly well enough for you to be letting yourself go off the cuff like this.)
The conversation goes on without you. But you don't always need to be speaking every second to be included in the group. Just because you are quiet, doesn’t mean they don’t accept you, or dislike you for that. You talk the right amount for you and that’s all that matters. And also they accept you for who you are anyway so you have nothing to worry about.
Some of the group is about to disperse for their next activity. Your plan is to linger for as long as any of them will let you. You have nowhere to be—where do you ever have to be?
The chairs next to you open up and Osamu moves to sit beside you.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” you say back, barely holding back a giggle. What’s funny? Stop giggling about everything. G-d.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing,” you say.
He nudges your arm. “You look like you have seventeen frogs in your mouth.”
You pull a face at him. “Poetic,” you say, exaggerating your wince.
“Hm, okay,” Osamu says, (jokingly) bitter and biting. “I didn’t know I was appearing before the literary committee today. I am so sorry.”
“You need to come more prepared,” you say. “You can’t keep wasting our time like this.”
“Oh, man, sorry, I’ll do better next time.”
“See to it that you do.”
Osamu scoffs at you. You think he’s trying to peer into your soul, his grey eyes trying to pry open something in you, you don’t know. Jokes on him though, you don’t have a soul! Haha.
No, but seriously, you don’t want him looking too deeply. You don’t know what gross weird stuff he’s going to find and get weirded out by.
“What do you have planned next?” Osamu asks.
You shrug. “Nothing, really. What about you?”
“What a coincidence!” he says. “We both have scheduled nothing at the same time!”
“Yay!” you cheer.
He raises both of his hands for a double hi five. You experience all the anxiety of fucking up the hi fives and not having the coordination to deal with this and you get through the moment and try not to worry about how hard or soft you completed the hi five.
We have to move on.
“Do you like to cook?” he asks out of the blue.
“No,” you say.
He barks out a startled laugh and you get embarrassed at your curtness.
“Like,” you say, and then you let the babble flow out. “I mean I have to sustain myself somehow. But I don’t really enjoy it. But I like cooking with someone. I think it’s a fun social activity. I think I have fun cooking when it’s with someone. But I get stressed to cook for my own sustenance. It’s not fun. And I hate doing dishes.”
You’ve talked for way too long and you look over at home to see if he regrets asking you anything. He looks interested, but that can’t be right. But he’s still here somehow, hanging on. You admire his determination.
He nods at you. “I get that,” he says. “Doing dishes while cooking helps, but yeah, it’s definitely the worst part. Though, actually, I think doing dishes is relaxing sometimes.”
“Yeah, it’s definitely relaxing once I’m in the zone, but it’s agony before I start.”
“Y’know, I’m a pretty good cook,” he says.
“Oooh, really?”
“Yeah, what do you like? I can make it sometime.”
Fireworks of delight go off in your brain. Someone wants to hang out with you! You’re shook! Someone else trying to make future plans with you? So that they can see you again?
You’re sure it’s not that big of a deal. It’s a big deal to you, but he loves to cook. And seems really good at talking to people or at least does not seem to have a lick of anxiety. He’s used to this. This is normal for him.
That’s what you assume.
“Oh my g-d, thank you! That sounds awesome, I am honored.”
“Of course! So make sure you think about what you want, okay?”
You tell him you definitely will.
You hang out for a little bit longer until he makes a displeased face at his phone and then looks at you.
“So I actually I forgot I do have something to do today,” he says. “But I don’t even want to go.”
“Do you have to go?”
He sighed, and looked so sad and dejected. You wanted to run your hand through his hair or press your lips to the top of his head and comfort him. What is this engagement that is plaguing him? You don’t want them to suffer like this.
“It would be better if I go,” he said, sadly admitting defeat.
He trudges through getting ready to leave, and you offer to walk him.
“I should be walking you to your place,” he says, very disgruntled.
“You don’t have time for that,” you say.
“I should have planned it better,” he grumbles.
“This way we get to talk for longer,” you say, and then you have to clasp your hands together to physically restrain yourself from clapping your hand over your mouth. Because you can’t believe you just said that (out loud). You can’t let anyone know that you're not normal. You have to pretend that you are completely normal and have a normal amount of socialization and don’t have a scarcity mindset. How could you say this?
How could you let yourself go like this?
You are really off your game and you need to step it up.
A normal person who is not desperate at all.
Everything is fine.
Oh no.
You smile sweetly and laugh, trying to make it seem like it was a joke, or exaggeration, but still with genuine intent, since you do actually like him and you're not being sarcastic about liking him and wanting to be his friend. You don’t want to swing so far the other way that he retracts his dinner/hang out offer. You aren’t trying to end up alone.
It’s a hard balance to strike. The calculations don't always run smoothly, but you try your best.
While you damage control, you try to see if he is weirded out by what you said. He scratches the back of his head, with a fairly neutral expression, if not a little redness in his cheeks. But it’s hard to say. It could be the lighting. And you don’t know him all that well yet. You are still learning his quirks and stuff. But he doesn't seem completely caught off guard or upset or angry or grossed out, so….
“You want to hang out with me that much, huh?” he asks, and his words sound like they would be paired with a roasting tone, but he actually asks his question kind of softly and gently.
“Yes,” you say. “You’re so fun and I like hanging out with you.”
He looks at you with another unreadable (to you) expression. (You don’t want to read too much into it, because what do you know?) His eyebrows fly up and he coughs. “Oh,” he says. Now he seems to be caught off guard. “I feel the same way about you.”
“Yay!” you cheer. “And thanks for introducing me to your friends.”
“Of course! Thanks for wanting to meet them! Sorry they are so stupid and weird.”
You crinkle your nose. “No, I like them.”
He smiles wanly. “Really? I’m glad. Not more than me, though, I hope.”
You laugh, startled.
He looks at you for a second longer, and you freak out because was that a rhetorical quesiton or are you going to seem stupid for trying to answer it or was he really waiting for an answer or—
“I’m glad, because they can be a lot for some people.”
You nod. “They seem pretty cool and nice.”
“You must be amazing at handling crazy personalities.”
You look at his awed expression in shock. “I don’t know about that,” you say. You don’t know what you need to do to give him back his admiration because you don’t deserve it. He’s being a little dramatic. You did absolutely nothing.
“You were so good with them!” he exclaims.
“I was so nervous,” you argue. “I wanted them to like me.” And you wanted Osamu to like you, too, of course—but you keep that to yourself, because maybe you’ve said too much the exact right number of times today, and you should really try harder not to say too much for the rest of the day, lest you reach some imaginary limit that would make everyone hate you and never return to you ever again.
Osamu tilts his head at you. And now he’s really studying you. You scramble for a smokescreen because you weren’t joking, you really don't want him finding anything gross about you and not liking you anymore after that.
“Really?” he asks. “None of us could tell. I couldn't.”
You are shocked to hear that. As usual. But you're happy. You don’t want to be a faker… but you do have to fake to be normal. Otherwise if everyone knew every fucked up thing about you, you’d be alone. So you’re happy that you’re doing your job properly. But you're still surprised that it worked.
“Do you think I was too weird?” you asked.
“What do you mean?” He adjusts his backpack straps. “No weirder than them.”
You nod.
He leans in. “Did something happen? Did they make you uncomfortable?”
You look up at him. You really don’t want to bring up the incident because you want everyone to forget it. But. It’s hard to say.
Like—why even get into it, right? Life has moved on without you. You are still stuck in the discomfort and the catastrophizing, thinking they are mad at you, thinking they hate you, thinking that they are really grossed out by you. You are waiting for people to reveal that they were waiting for a reason to abandon you. It doesn’t compute to you that not everyone operates that way.
But no one else is thinking that. Allegedly. Right? It’s okay, everything is fine. These things happen. It’s honestly really funny, and you are going to recover from this.
“No,” you say. “It’s not really them. I’m just. Always nervous. I’m a mess.”
“Oh, no,” Osamu says softly, and you are a bit alarmed at his gaze on you. Like he cares so much. You kind of wanted him to (or expected him to?) laugh it off and be like “we’ve all been there” and move on, but instead he says, “is there anything I can do to help? Or any of us?”
“Oh, no, no, it’s nothing like that,” you say, and you think his face falls, but before you can double check if it was really disappointment on his face, his face rests at neutral again. “I don’t want to bother anyone. It’s my own problem. I’m so annoying.”
“I—we want you to be comfortable, you know?” he says, and his earnestness pierces your heart. “So let us know. They’re all crazy, but they’re all good guys, and I know them, and they would definitely want to know if there was anything they can do to help. And same goes for me—I’m here if you want to talk about anything or if you need me to say anything to one of them.”
You nod.
“So there was nothing specific that happened today?” His hand twitches like he is going to reach for something, but he lets it fall back to his side. “Also if you’re done talking about this, I don’t want to pry or be nosy so like, we can stop talking about it, if that’s better.”
You truly cannot get more surprised. He’s so kind and caring and considerate and you have no idea where this all came from. What did you do to deserve this kindness? Why is he inconveniencing himself for you? Now you’re second guessing yourself—do you want to talk about it? Is it safe and fine? “It’s just embarrassing. I’m so stupid.”
“You are definitely not stupid,” Osamu says. “Did you see those dumbasses in there?”
You’re about to protest and he cuts you off with, “if you were about to say they aren’t stupid, then you aren’t etiher.”
You nod. You look up at him, and he has a self-satisfied smirk, and you want to roast him for something to bring him down a peg, but you can’t think of anything because you’re also floating away on a cloud because you’re so happy, and you never want this conversation to end.
“Did I do anything embarrassing?” you ask.
“No,” he says.
Okay. So you can take him at face value or maybe he’s lying maliciously. (He’s definitely not lying maliciously.) Maybe he was lying with good intentions? That could be positive—he feels positively towards you, and doesn’t want you to feel sad about this particular thing. That could be good.
So where do we go from here? You know that realistically this is not a life or death situation. But you keep flashing back to it, even though everyone has moved on. You don’t know whether you can realistically call it a shame attack—but who’s going to judge you for what you call it inside your head? You don’t want to catastrophize but you also don't want to invalidate yourself. You want to feel better and you want this to go away, and you don’t know how to make that happen.
You are embarrassed.
And that is okay.
It wasn’t the best outcome to have occurred (although nothing really bad happened, either.) Everyone laughed and made a joke and moved on. Everyone seemed to be giving you grace, and assuming best intent, which is great. That is great! The benefit of the doubt? Not starting drama on purpose? This is incredible. Who knew people could behave like this?
There’s no non-awful way to ask this. You look at him, wondering how to warn him.
“I have another question,” you say.
“What’s up?”
“It’s very—” you catch his eye and deliver him a displeased expression. “I am actually worried about it. But like maybe it’s silly and fine, and if it (the situation) is fine, then it’s (my question) going to be asking for validation which is. I dunno.” Embarrassing, but do you need to go into that much detail? Isn’t enough enough? Haven’t you done enough? But you keep going. “But like if I am right, then like I really do need to know, I think. So I can apologize.”
Osamu genuinely looks so alarmed. You feel bad for causing drama. Why can’t you be calm and normal? “Whoa. What is going on?”
“Was anyone mad at me?”
He looks at you for a few seconds, apparently expecting more. He lets out a sigh. You’ve done it. You've ruined everything. He’s probably annoyed now. Maybe no one was mad before, but now you’ve done it.
“I don't think so.”
“Really?” you ask.
“Really, really,” he says. “I know those guys pretty well, and they all seemed at ease and happy and having fun.”
You nod.
Did that check out?
Yes, with your perception of reality. Honestly, the other person was pretty gracious about it and did not seem mad or uncomfortable at all. Everyone had moved on, and it’s ok for this to have happened. It’s ok to have had a funny story occur, and it’s okay to be memorable, because even if it was kind of in a “bad” way, it wasn’t in a way that would make any of them not want to hang out with you anymore. It’s ok to go out and interact with people and take that risk of something embarrassing happening. Bonding happens in a lot of ways! Sometimes it can be this—not exactly in your control, which is scary. But there’s no reason to always be “in control.” Bad things don’t “always” happen when you are “not” “in control.” There’s no need to always be the savior, or a therapist, or always helping people with their problems, or proving your worth by helping to solve problems. Or trying to be indispensable by being a problem-solver.
You're now realizing that you don’t think you’re a fun person. That’s the only reason why you would be so completely shocked and confused by people liking you even if you don’t solve problems for them. You don’t think you're a fun person, but maybe other people do. You don’t have to be right about everything. Right? And there can be differences in opinions. Just because you don’t think you’re fun but other people do think you’re fun, doesn’t mean either of you have to be wrong.
There’s no need to always trauma bond. Trauma will always be a part of you but it does not have to be all that you are. You can bond with other people based on other things.
You can be fun.
So, did “was anyone mad at me?” “no” check out? Yes, based on reality. No, based on you assume someone is always going to be mad at you, is mad at you, will be mad at you, etc. You always assume you are in imminent danger.
But maybe you aren’t this one time. Maybe it’s fine.
You and Osamu reached your destination a few minutes ago and you’ve been standing in front of the building. It’s truly been 🧍🧍.
“Um—” you hate to be this person because you never want a hang out to end, but you also don’t want to be an asshole and cause problems, so you have to ask, “Did I make you late?”
“It’s fine,” he says, waving his hand, as if dispersing your question in the air. “Do you have more you want to talk about?”
You shake your head. “I want to talk to you more, but it can be after your thing.”
He grins. “Okay. Are you sure?”
“Yeah! I'll be fine. You were a big help.”
“Okay! If you’re sure.”
You nod.
He sighs. “I’m glad to hear that. So I’ll text you later?”
“Yeah!” You beam at him. “Sounds good.”
“Okay. See you later?”
“See you later!”
He stands there, and stares at you still, even after you’ve said bye 23984 more times. He is not ready to leave. You turn away, thinking he’s going to enter the building, but he stays planted.
“What?” you ask, grinning and buzzing.
“Nothing,” he says. He turns around and enters the building, yanking open the door, and speedwalks down the hall.
You turn away for real, finally, and scroll through your phone, trying to pick out what music you want to listen to as you start your journey back to your residence.
While you’re tapping through your phone, you get a notification from Osamu.
#~#~#~
Osamu: did you think of what you want me to make for dinner yet?
#~#~#~
You have to laugh. You have to.
You text him back:
#~#~#~
You: When was I going to have time to think of that? Weren’t we both together until literally just now? You know what was on my mind this whole time
Osamu: okay well think of something
You: be patient
#~#~#~
You are happy for yet another positive social interaction for the books. You’re doing such a good job, and you can be proud of yourself, and you will continue to do a good job.
And plus, now that you can put this behind you, you can spend some time thinking about what you want Osamu to make you for dinner. (The possibilities are endless.) 💖🤍🖤
Sakusa comforts you when you think you’re annoying
Genre: comfort, domestic, established relationship
Contents: social anxiety, self deprecating, snack mention (Sakusa is a snack. jk but seriously but also food mentioned in the second paragraph)
Wc: 1312
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
You and Sakusa return home from a social engagement, which you felt like didn’t go well for you. You still feel raw and inflamed even, sore from the rejection that you imagined receiving from them. Who’s to say it wasn’t real? You don't know. You can’t tell. You assume rejection has already happened or is imminently happening from everyone. Why wouldn't you?
You look at the floor dully and ignore Sakusa’s proffered leftovers box with some sweets and snacks from the event.
“Hey, are you okay?”
You’re not okay, of course. But it’s not that easy to say that. And you’re still learning how to accept help. You’re still learning how someone asking if you need help isn’t them saying that you are weak. You’re still learning that “hey are you okay?” is not an accusation.
But because you are still learning all of this, it’s not that easy for you to answer directly or honestly. So instead, you ask, unhelpfully, “What do you mean?”
“I just was wondering if everything was okay,” he repeats, because what else is he supposed to do? You asked a stupid question. Of course! As always.
You swallow air in your dry throat as you stare up at him.
“If everything is okay, that’s great. And I love you, and I'm here to talk if you want to talk about anything.”
Of course you want to talk about stuff. You wonder where you should start. You stare at his hand (you want to hold it.)
You look up at him and you nod.
“You do want to talk?” he checks.
“Yes, please.”
“Okay.” He turns to completely face you. He is always turning to completely face you. He is always there for you and you are so grateful. Your heart cries (happily.)
“Do you want to sit?” he asks.
You nod again. You go to sit on the couch and he goes into the kitchen. He brings you both glasses of water and sits down beside you, his hair rustling, and his arm thrown around you.
“Is this okay?” he asks.
You nod.
“Good,” he says. “What’s up?”
You wish for a moment, that you both could change into comfy at home clothes before this conversation. He looks delectable in his going out wear, of course, but you want to snuggle into one of his soft sleep shirts.
You take a deep breath. Actually, that would be a great way to procrastinate on this conversation, right?
Well. Maybe later.
“Does everyone hate me?”
He blinks. Even though he probably should have known you would be like this, he is still surprised. He still forgets that you can't see yourself the way he sees you—he would never ever imagine that you would even wonder this kind of stuff about yourself. “No, why would you say that?”
“I just feel so stupid and dumb.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, and I don’t want to invalidate your emotions, but you’re not.”
You huff. “Right. My feelings aren’t facts, but they are valid.”
“Right,” he says.
You look at him, displeased.
“It’s both,” he adds.
“That’s so confusing.”
He nods. “It doesn’t make sense. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
You look at him, hoping the hurt isn’t watering in your eyes too much. But you are really transparent, and he knows you, so you’re sure he can see everything. You can’t even figure out a not annoying way to broach the topic. You wish you could leave it at that, but there’s still more to go. “Am I annoying and awful?”
See? The most annoying way possible.
“No,” he says immediately.
You stare at him.
He arches his eyebrow at you speculatively, judgingly, but he also puts his hand on top of yours comfortingly.
Your heart pangs.
“Why do you want me to say yes?” he asks, seriously.
“Do you think I was annoying today?” you ask, voice tinny.
“No.”
“To everyone else, though?”
He squeezes your hand. “They didn't say anything to me. I don’t think they think that about you.”
You sigh. You were invited to the gathering. They wouldn't invite you if they didn’t like you. You hope you will continue to be invited. You wonder when you will feel like you aren’t on the precipice of being abandoned. Maybe never! That’s not a comforting thought, though.
“Do you think I’m annoying?”
“No. I love you. That's why I'm here.”
“But there are some things I do that are annoying?”
He looks displeased that you are trying to lead him to an answer, but he goes along with it anyway. “I guess. But I don't really think about it in that way. Do you think I'm annoying?”
This is a completely logical and reasonable flip to occur in the conversation, but you are still caught off guard. You are truly 😐🧍. “I mean. I don’t know.”
He can barely contain his smirk and it does make you mad a little bit, that he always seems to have the upper hand. You still love him. But it’s unfair.
“So you do think I'm annoying?” he asks.
“There are some things we do differently,” you say, pretending that you can be coy and outmaneuver him. You can’t.
“Right. And everyone does things differently. Like literally every person.”
“Right.”
“So all humans are annoying to everyone.”
“Maybe sometimes.”
“Is that okay?” he asks.
You really don’t know what you did to deserve this. A very calm and logical breakdown of why it doesn’t matter that you are annoying. Or whether you are or not is just a completely irrelevant question because you are surrounded by people who love you, so who cares?
You hate this. Why can’t everyone just hate you because that makes sense in your head? Instead they love you and forgive you and hang around even though you did nothing to deserve it. It’s not adding up.
Other people’s actions are not adding up. It would make you feel better if things made sense in your heart, and head. If you could trust what you were seeing with your eyes with what your internal beliefs are.
But maybe your internal beliefs have to change to match reality. Because you can’t keep living like this, doing this bad math. It’s not fun. It’s annoying.
“Yeah, I guess it’s okay.”
“Is it okay to not like someone 100% of the time?”
That’s where it’s getting you. It is scary. Which percent is going to be the percent where you get abandoned? You can’t be sure. You look at him. You know the “right” answer but you don’t believe it.
“100% seems like perfection,” he says. “Which is…” he looks at you meaningfully.
“Unrealistic?” you ask.
“Yeah.”
You sigh. “Okay.”
“Okay,” he says back.
You stare at him.
He pokes you in the belly.
“What?” you say. “How dare you?” you ask but he’s already poking you in the shoulder.
“Okay,” you say. “You’ve made your point.”
“I’m always right,” he says.
“You’re not even right about that, and we’re going to leave it there,” you say, jumping to your feet.
Or you would, except he completely intercepted you, and brought you back down to the couch, onto his lap. He pressed kisses to your cheek and neck, and you squirm halfheartedly, but you’re not actually trying to get away.
“I don’t think you’re annoying,” he repeated.
“Thank you.”
“I think you’re great, and I love you, and I love spending time with you.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean it.”
You sigh. Maybe it’s not the end of the world to be annoying. People really don’t like annoying people, though. But different people think different things are annoying. Anyone can be annoying to anyone. That’s compatibility.
You’re fine. Everything is fine. After a great little anxiety burst, everything ended up fine, as per normal. What else is new?
Insecure about your appearance, and talking to Ushijima about it
Genre: established relationship, hurt-comfort/comfort, healing, communication,
Warnings: suicidal ideation, death rumination, (wanting problems to end, wanting a way out, frustrated with problems), fear of pedophiles/nonspecified others’ pedophilic attraction/behavior mentioned
more details under the cut
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Contents: nonwhite, noneuropean, nonamerican reader POV but anyone can read, specific physical descriptions: babyface, small boobs; bitterness, self-negativity, self-deprecating, invalidating your own hard work, hard on yourself, self-critical, relationship insecurity, trust issues, helplessness, giving up, perhaps a fundamental misunderstanding of boundaries and how to set them, and perhaps a misunderstanding of to what extent you are supposed to expect people to respect your own boundaries, idk
Wc: 4636
More Details About Warnings
*in paragraph:[ So, when Ushijima asks you out, ,,,,] mention of [your self-preservation instincts are tied up elsewhere]
*pedophile mentioned in next two paragraphs after [But how can you get over it?] and “protecting children” mentioned in the paragraph after that
*mentioning fear of others attracted to minors in paragraph [ You wish you didn’t have to be suspicious about people when they are attracted to you. ]
*pedophile mentioned in dialogue after [ “Okay,” you say, not believing him, and letting it go at all. “But in the event that you think I look twelve, does that gross you out to be attracted to me and have sex with me?” ] pedophilic society/ scared of others being attracted to children mentioned
*[You don’t want to put up with yourself. ] mentioned in paragraph starting with [You’re a mess]
*feeling dead inside mentioned
~*~~*~~*~
Insecure about your appearance, and talking to Ushijima about it
Some people thrive in a relationship. Some people are relationship people. What is a relationship? Who knows. You aren’t from a white western family so you weren’t raised with those kinds of expectations. You don’t know what you’re doing. What seems so obvious and inherent to everyone else is so foreign to you. And even if you wanted to put on a mask and fake it, welp, you never had any opportunities to practice any of this stuff.
So now you’re old and weird. The two worst things to be in society. Awful!
You wish you could understand there’s nothing inherently wrong with you. It's not your fault your life randomly happened this way. It’s not your fault you were born to your parents with this face. It’s not your fault which country you were born in. There’s a lot of things that aren’t your fault.
But why did it happen to you and not to someone else? It does happen to a lot of people, sure, you aren’t the only one. But where are those people? You’ve never seen them.
If this all didn’t happen to you because there’s something inherently wrong with you, then why did it happen?
No one can say for sure. There are no satisfying answers.
So you had controlling parents growing up, and you didn’t make a lot of friends in a lot of different social circles, and you didn’t date at all. Okay. So what? What about when you got older? Left, the house, got more freedom? Then what?
Still nothing. Old habits die hard. You hear your parents’ voices in your head and feel their presence in your life no matter how far away from them you are. And they still say annoying shit to you, as if they didn’t raise you to be a little robot, recreating everything they designed for you.
They did a good job raising you. Kind of. If the intended outcome was for you to have a lot of anxiety, then they definitely succeeded.
So, anyway, when you had the opportunity to meet Ushijima Wakatoshi, you were terrified at the little part in yourself that thought everything would go well. Still? After all this time? Hope? Really?
You can’t believe yourself.
What’s going to happen?
Nothing.
But, still, you can’t make yourself think he’s not cute. You also can’t make yourself flirt, or make yourself pretty, you don’t know how to do that. And you can’t.
So, when Ushijima wants to hang out with you, you feel very lucky and as if you are in a dream, and also you wish you could respect yourself. You really don’t have to throw yourself at the only person who has ever given you attention. But when will you learn? Never.
So, when Ushijima asks you out, you have no idea what’s going on, but your self-preservation instincts are tied up elsewhere, so you say yes. You need the experience. You actually like him, sure, but things don't work out for you, so you aren’t even thinking along those lines. It would be nice at least to say that you’ve been in a relationship before. You don’t have to be this strange abomination anymore.
Of course, no one is going to believe you. You have nothing to prove to anyone (of course you do, that’s the whole motivation of your life. But you wish you didn’t. You wish you could be left alone.) But why do you need to tell people exactly who you dated? You don’t need to say that.
Anyway, why are you already worried about when you will break up? That’s how your brain works. There’s nothing you can do about that.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Dating Ushijima is stressful because you don't think you deserve happiness, so if something good happens to you, you are going to be punished later. You don't know where you learned this, but this is your fear, and you have to live with it.
You don’t expect every woman on the street to hate you because you are dating Ushijima. But you worry about it. Because it doesn’t make sense since you are so ugly. People are going to be so confused. You are so confused.
You wish that seeing other girls didn’t make you feel bad about yourself. You wish you could be confident in yourself and not feel negatively about yourself or about them when you see other girls. But seeing other girls with pretty faces and big boobs makes you hate yourself so much. You feel so ashamed. You will never find love or happiness, for many reasons, but one of them being your appearance. You spend as little time on social media as possible, especially instagram, so that you don’t have to see people you went to school with becoming twitch streamers because they are hot enough to do so. It’s useless to feel bad about them coopting something you were seen a loser for when you were in school. Must be nice to be pretty, since now, anyone can do anything, and things that used to be for losers and now for everyone. Pretty people everywhere can now also like things like Pokemon and anime and video games. It’s amazing how uncool and weird something is when ugly people like it, but it becomes cool and acceptable once a hot person does it.
That’s all it takes! If a hot person does something, it's automatically fun and cool now.
Great.
Love that.
But who are you going to talk about this to? Who wants to hear you complain about how ugly you are and about how it’s unfair that hot people exist? That’s not a very nice thing to complain about. That’s not very feminist of you. So you just shut up because you don’t want to get cancelled, either. You have enough problems as it is without a bunch of fake woke internet crusaders doxxing you.
You can’t say that you’re mad that women are making money off their looks. You can’t say that! Anyway it’s all your problem, not theirs. You’re the insecure one.
You just have to get over it.
But how can you get over it?
You don’t want to be seen as a honeypot for pedophiles. You don’t want to even get into that line of thinking. Is it better for them to get their urges out on you so that (actual) children are safe? But what about your safety? Just because you’re over the arbitrary age of adulthood according to the state, doesn’t mean your health and safety doesn’t matter anymore. No matter what society might want you to believe.
You don’t want to have to have worries about secret pedophiles in a relationship, when having sex.
You don't want it to be about protecting a vulnerable population (children). Why should your existence be solely about protection? Why can’t you have fun in your own life?
You don’t want to worry about any of that when you’re having sex.
You want to have sex for fun. For your enjoyment.
Why is that not allowed?
You wish you didn’t have to be suspicious about people when they are attracted to you. Are they attracted to you because you look 16? Because you look 12? Because you look 10.
That's creepy. That's really upsetting. You don’t want that.
This hurts. It hurts to think like this. All you do is hurt yourself. It’s all you know. You hurt yourself when you think like this. You need to stop saying that. You need to stop saying that you look 10 or 12. It is never a funny joke. It’s not funny to you. It always hurts your feelings. Sometimes people bring it up unprompted. But usually people don’t bring it up unless you goade them. Why do you do that? Why do you hurt yourself? It’s none of your business what people think of you unless they choose to tell you. But you don’t like when people have obvious unspoken things they think about you. And you know what they are thinking. Enough people have that thought about you that you can know reasonably well that a new person is going to have that thought, too.
How else are you supposed to think? You can only speak the truth.
But. It hurts your feelings when you say that about yourself. You don’t want to look 12. You don’t want to look 10 or 8. When does it end?
Everyone has a different opinion of what age looks like. Culturally, as well. There’s no reason to get yourself down about a white-centric beauty standard, that not even most white people can fulfill. Why should we all be sad about beauty standards? We need to move on as a society. Expand the definition of beauty, or get rid of the concept altogether. You’re tired of hurting.
Everyone looks different. And that’s normal, good, fine, and neutral, and that’s not going to change. People can alter their faces with makeup to look like one another. People can dye their hair to look the same. But at the end of the day, there is always variation. That shouldn’t be a bad thing.
But you wish you could take your intellectualizations and beliefs about society to heart. For now, you feel like you look 12. In reality, you are an adult, therefore you are in an adult body. But if that’s not how society sees you, then who cares how you see yourself? Who cares what is “true”? People believe a lot of untrue things because it “feels” true to them. If people “feel” like you look like a child, and treat you differently because of that, what are you supposed to do about it?
You wish you could see yourself as an adult, or at least, you wish you could stop playing into those “you look 12” jokes. You wish you could make yourself feel better, at least. Instead of making yourself feel worse.
But don’t you always make yourself feel worse? That’s all you’re good at.
~*~*~*~*~
You can control your appearance if you want. You can get plastic surgery or wear makeup or choose certain clothes. But you don’t want to do that. You don't dress up “for yourself.” if you were dressing for yourself, you would prioritize softness and comfort. You wouldn't prioritize whatever is the latest trend in a whitecishetpateriarchial society. You don’t gain confidence from things like that. You would just hate yourself because it was fake, you putting on a persona, pretending to be pretty and trendy. And you don't have it naturally and you’re lying, etc. Which is an unfair standard because a lot of people don’t have it naturally. The people who have it naturally are rare. And those people probably have different insecurities or problems. But them having problems doesn't help you not have problems. You are still insecure about your appearance.
You don't know what’s going to change and when and how, but you don’t want to live your whole life putting this much effort into hating yourself.
~*~*~*~*~
Your appearance is not the only thing you distrust people’s intentions for. Not trusting that people are with you for the right reasons runs far deeper, a much wider breadth. But, through tireless and dedicated work on yourself, you managed to overcome enough trust issues to at least begin a relationship with Ushijima.
“Managed.” “Overcome.” Maybe all of those are a bit of a stretch. But somehow you are here. It’s miraculous that he’s stayed with you through all this trouble. You are way more trouble than you are worth. It’s really not adding up. But you can’t really make him see reason. Everyone has to make decisions for himself. He could love someone pretty and normal, but somehow he is still here. You are waiting for your time to run out. There’s no way this is longlasting and sustainable.
The ruse is going to be up. You just don’t know when.
You’re already in a bad mood from other things—that’s what you tell yourself. It’s less embarrassing than still being insecure about your appearance. After all this time. How? Can’t you ever learn? Isn’t that such a teenager thing, to be insecure about your appearance? So what? When are you going to grow up?
Glow up comes at a cost.
You never got yours. But apparently it’s not that easy for other people either.
It’s embarrassing to still be embarrassed and insecure about your looks. Have you made no progress in the last few years?
Even if other annoying stuff happened today, right now, you’re most upset about this.
For all that you are a liar for your own benefit, you’re not always a great liar for other people’s benefit. For example, if you didn’t burden others with your problems, that would be a benefit to them. But you secretly really want to be heard and comforted. You hate yourself for this. Why can't you be self sufficient? So actually you are a bad liar when it comes to hiding your feelings because you secretly want to be comforted.
You’re a mess. Despicable. Disgusting. Why does anyone put up with you? You don’t want to put up with yourself.
It’s not hard for Ushijima to read you. He’s very perceptive, especially when it comes to people he cares about deeply. But on top of that, you are annoying, so it’s not hard for anyone to know you’re upset.
It’s a crapshoot how you’ll react to an outpouring of love. Sometimes you can accept it and sometimes you can’t. Sometimes you can accept a warm beverage or a blanket or a hand on your thigh or a hug.
You feel extra dead inside today, so you’re not sure how well it's going to go.
You sit up in bed, unable to focus on any youtube videos. Times like this are especially frustrating. If you can’t run away from your problems, and you can't fix them either, then what are you supposed to do? Suffer? This seems unfair.
Ushijima joins you in bed after his shower. Everything you know about hot people goes against everything he does in real life. Aren’t hot people supposed to not want to breathe the same air as ugly people? What is he doing here?
Your brain cannot comprehend that you can receive unconditional love. Maybe one day. But for now, you are truly trying to figure out the 5D chess game of how and why Ushijima is here.
“What are you watching?” Ushijima asks.
You look at the paused youtube video. You look at the five other tabs, also with paused youtube videos.
“Uh,” you say.
“Do you want to watch something together?” Ushijima asks.
“You can pick,” you say.
He goes to pick something that you both enjoy watching together. You grab his hand.
“Wait,” you say. You don’t want to watch something you actually like. You won’t be able to focus. You put something on in a genre that you don’t care for but Ushijima might like. Ushijima doesn’t really have watchin preferences, though, not for real. As long as you are happy. He just likes spending time with you.
Again. It’s not adding up. But what can you do? Even if he was lying, you can’t “prove” that he isn’t. If someone tells you something, you have to believe them. Right? Unless they are lying and manipulating. Then you shouldn't. So what’s the difference?
Whatever.
You don't think Ushijima is using you for ill intent. What would he gain? All you’ve been in a burden. So he really is here for genuine reasons probably. Unless he’s a fixer. But you aren't getting fixed … maybe he likes a long and difficult project.
Ugh.
This is awful.
Ushijima stares at the selection for a moment. Then he looks at you. He looks like he’s trying to seem calm but is actually alarmed.
Tch.
“Do you want to talk? Or do you want space?”
You shrug.
“Sit in silence?” he asks.
You stare into space. It’s rude to ignore him but what is he going to do? If he hasn’t left yet, what’s going to make him leave?
“I’d like to spend time with you, and help in any way I can, but if you want me to go, you can tell me, okay?”
“Okay,” you say. You can’t ignore a direct question. Actually, you can, but you don’t actually want to get abandoned. It would make sense. But you don't actually want it. You want the security of not getting abandoned, but you can't have that either. Nothing in life is certain. Anyone could die at any moment. But somehow life hasn’t taken you yet! Why? Cursed.
You actually don't want to watch this. You don’t want to watch anything. You want this suffering to end.
“Do you want to hear about it?” you ask. You’re pathetic. Fishing. Why can’t you just suffer in silence? Why can’t you fix yourself.
“Yes,” Ushijima says.
“Even if it’s the same problems over and over?” you ask.
Ushijima shrugs. “I know you are working so hard, and trying your best. And you are making progress. And none of this gets solved in a day. I love you so much and I’m so proud of you.”
You stare at him. He’s throwing pingpong balls at you and you are swatting them away with an athletic prowess you only have in this metaphor, and not in real life.
“This topic might hurt you,” you say.
“What’s the topic?”
“I’m ugly and I don’t know why you are with me.”
Ushijima nods. “Yeah. That does hurt me.”
“I’m sorry that I’m hurtful.”
“I don’t think you’re hurting me on purpose. Are you?”
You shake your head. “I wish I was normal.”
Ushijima presents his hand to you, and you put yours in his. You’re not used to positive physical touch either. Just another way you are fucked up.
“I love you and trust you. I trust you that you aren't trying to hurt me on purpose. I know you are on a journey, and I want to be there with you for it. I want to support you however I can.”
“This journey sucks. I want it to be over. It will never be over.”
“You don’t think it will be worth it?”
“I don’t even know.”
“What would make it worth it?”
You don’t even know how to respond to that. You’re not used to thinking of what you actually want. Just what you are trying to run away from or what you can never have. “I’ve already lost so much. I don't think there’s anything that I can have that would make things better.”
“That is really dire,” Ushijima says.
“I’m fine,” you say, since you don’t want to be turned into a facility anywhere. What does a capitalist imperialist healthcare system know about healing? None.
He looks at you and even though it’s a fairly neutral expression, you still feel chastised.
Whatever.
“What would make you feel better?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay. I love you. Very much.”
“I love you, too.”
“I think you are great. And I love being with you.”
You want to say something like, “And that’s where you lose me.” But why? What’s the point.
“I don’t think I’m meant for a romantic relationship.”
“What kind of relationship would be good for us to have?”
You look at him accusingly. “Don’t you want a romantic relationship?”
“I want to be with you. I like you.”
“But don’t you have romantic needs?”
He shrugs. “I don't know. I guess. But I also feel like you fulfill my needs.”
You cannot believe this. Your brain is truly blanking because this information is not computing. “That is so crazy.”
“Yes,” he says. “It’s true, though.”
You really don’t know how to bring this up. You’re going to, and it’s going to be awkward, because clearly you are a child in some respects. Gross. “But isn’t sex a component of romantic relationships?”
“For some.”
He’s disgustingly inclusive. How cute. “What about for you?”
He shrugs. “I’m happy if you’re happy.”
“Really? Do you want to have sex with other people? Would that make you happy?”
Ushijima looks shocked. “Oh. No? Not really. But why are you worried about if my needs are being met? I’m fine. Are your needs being met? Why are you thinking about this? Does something need to change in our relationship?”
“So you don’t care about sex that much?” you ask.
He starts to blush. “I—No. It’s not that I don’t care about sex. I like having sex with you. I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear.”
He does make it clear, actually, but your stupid brain can’t beleive him. “Do you want to have sex with a hot person sometimes? Or someone who’s good at sex or not boring?”
He blinks at you. You really don't’ knowwhy he puts up with your ullshit but eveyr day you are amazed at how loving and kind and gentle he is. And you hate it. Well actually you love it. But you’re also scared of it. You're scared of it running out. You really don't understand how someone can be kind and loving and gentle to you.
Why and how?
“I don’t have any of those concerns,” Ushijima says. “I think you are really beautiful. And I really enjoy having sex with you.”
This is so stupid. We’re getting nowhere. But what are you supposed to do? What do you want to happen? Him to break up with you? That won’t solve anything. It would make sense. But it wouldn't solve anything.
“You actually think I’m beautiful? Or you just love me so much so you have to think I’m pretty, because you love me so you have to support me?” you ask.
“I thought you were pretty when we first met. So it’s not that other stuff you were saying. Even though it is true, and I do love you and support you. But I also think you’re pretty aside from that.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Why?”
“I’m not pretty.”
“I think you are.”
“Do you have a weird festish?”
“I feel like it’s normal to think you’re pretty.”
“No one thinks I’m pretty.”
“I think lots of people think you’re pretty.”
“I’ve never been asked out before.”
“That’s really surprising to me, but I believe you. But also maybe everyone was scared to ask you out.”
“Why would anyone be scared of me?”
“I don't know. People may have their reasons. And it might not be because of anything you did.”
“Crazy.”
Ushijima squeezes your hand.
“Don’t you think I look young?”
“I think you look the right age.”
You give him a stern look. “Please don't lie to me.”
“Isn’t looking young good?” Ushijima asks. “Not that looking old is bad.”
“But looking twenty two is good. Or twenty four or twenty seven. Looking twelve isn’t good.”
“I don’t think you look twelve.”
“It’s okay if you do.” It’s not okay. You really hope he doesn’t actually.
“I don’t!”
“Okay,” you say, not believing him, and letting it go at all. “But in the event that you think I look twelve, does that gross you out to be attracted to me and have sex with me?”
“I don't think you look twelve, first of all,” Ushijima says. “I love you. And I love how you look. You look beautiful to me.”
“In a pedophilic society?”
“I think you’re so beautiful. And I don’t think that’s wrong of me.”
“Okay, but you think I’m cute, but not turning you on, because no one should be turned on by children. Right?”
“I don’t view you as a child.”
He looks trapped. Have you succeeded in making him uncomfortable? Have you succeeded in being a burden? Nice! You’re a good for nothing! (Only good at fucking up.)
“Have people made you feel in the past that you are attractive to them because you look young?”
“Whether or not someone says it specifically, that is how it is. It’s always there in the background. I don’t know.” You stare at the black screen of the tv. You don’t want to cause problems on purpose. But you always do. And actually sometimes you do want to cause problems on purpose. But you wish you didn’t have to cause problems to cope. You wish your problems were easier to solve.
“I’m attracted to you.”
You can’t even feel happy at that. You feel nothing. “Okay.”
“Do you believe me?”
“I don’t know.”
“But if I show you that I’m attracted to you, you will be worried it’s for the wrong reasons?”
“There’s no right reason to be attracted to me.”
He grabs your hand with both of his. He says your name softly. “How can you say that? Do you really think that?”
You huff.
I see you as an adult. But you won’t believe me when I say that?”
“How can I?”
“Do you view yourself as a child?”
“I don’t know. Yes. In the worst way. And there shouldn't be anything wrong with being a child, but in this society, most children are not treated as people, and are not respected, and are not listened to, and their feelings aren’t validated. And they are told to just put up with stuff, or just believe things that adults say, just because an adult is saying it. And they are not given freedom to protect themselves.”
Ushijima takes a deep breath. “Do you feel respected in this relationship?”
“Yes,” you say. That’s an easy question. Ushijima is the most respectful person you know.
“Do you feel safe?”
“With you,” you say. “In general, in life, no, but. I know that you love me and want to create a safe environment for me.”
“Do you feel like you have freedom?”
“In this relationship, yeah. Not in real life.”
“Is this relationship real life?”
“It doesn't add up with real life. Everything you do for me and you loving me doesn't add up in real life.”
“This is my real life. I am lucky to have you in my life.”
You turn to hug him. He envelopes you, and you hate the tears that dry in between your skin and his shirt.
“I wish I could do something to help. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too. And you are helping. I’m just fucked up and stupid.”
“You aren’t stupid. And you’re going through a hard time, but you’re doing so great. And I love you so much and am so proud of you.”
You nod. “Okay.”
“You believe me?”
“I believe you that you are proud of me and love me. I never said I deserved any of those things.”
He sighs against the top of your head. “One step at a time.” You feel him smiling up there. Ridiculous.
“I guess.”
You press a kiss to his chest, where your tears dried. He squeezes you to him tighter.
It's so embarrassing when sharing your feelings makes you feel a little better. Wanting attention isn’t a bad thing and is normal. Humans are social creatures. That means they have to give and receive attention. Boo!
“Thank you for trusting me with these things,” he says.
“Thank you for listening. You are amazing,” you say.
“You are amazing. I’m so in awe of you.”
“Okay, okay, quit,” you say, grinning. How can he say stuff like that so easily? Idiot.
He kisses your hand and presses your palm against his cheek. “My love,” he says.
You are going to die of embarrassment, but you are so, so lucky that you get to die of embarrassment in Ushijima’s arms, and you hope to continue to do so for the rest of your life.
Characters: unspecified haikyuu character, could be really any character to be honest,
Genre: angst, hurt no comfort, rejection
Contents: death mention (far off /far away death), negative thoughts ,self critical, negative spiral, cognitive distortions,
Wc: 1782
a/n: i wasn’t feeling good and im still mad tbh but i’ll get over it
~*~*~*~
The chocolates and confession letter sit in your locker on the top shelf. The image of them is the only thing you can see, as if someone taped a picture to your forehead and put you in front of a mirror.
You stare at the teacher standing in front of their powerpoint slides, but you hear nothing. You see nothing. You hope you don’t get called on because you will then have to go through the embarrassment of not knowing what is going on and getting an answer wrong in front of everyone.
But it will be a minor feeling compared to how happy and proud you will be when you finally confess.
You try to have no expectations on the situation—but you obviously have expectations. You want to be humble and not assume a positive outcome, but you have so much fun thinking about a positive outcome.
Why can’t it be yours next?
Why can’t it be your turn?
Haven’t you waited long enough?
And what’s not to like, you have great qualities, and leagues aren’t real.
There’s so much excitement. You’re also enjoying experiencing more positive thought patterns. You’re doing great. Your healing is going great and you’re making great progress.
You’re doing a good job and you’re so proud of yourself.
You are excited and you want to get it over with but you want to enjoy it. Your first confession.
~*~*~
The time has come. You take a deep breath and approach.
“Uh—excuse me, sorry—Can I talk to you for a second?”
You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
You’re lucky you caught him alone. You actually see his friends approaching him and they look at you curiously.
He looks like he wants to say no. He’s busy. He’s probably going to practice, or hanging out with his friends, or something. “Sure, what’s up?” he asks, instead.
This is a good sign. This is great. Things are already going so well.
“Can I speak to you privately?” you ask, trying not to look at his friends who circled around him.
“Uh, okay, guys, can you get out, or—”
You’re embarrassed. You were hoping he would ask you outside the building at least. Something. Near the fence, under the open sky.
But this is fine, you guess.
His friends leave.
You had a whole speech but of course you completely forgot it.
You hold out the chocolates and letter in the space between you.
“I wanted to give these to you,” you narrate the obvious. What else are you supposed to say? You forgot your speech. “I like you, and I think you are cute, and I want to get to know you better. I wanted to ask you out on a date.”
While you talk, he doesn’t take the gifts. They feel heavy in your hand.
“Oh, okay,” he says.
Your heart starts to break. And you know you can’t stop it. You know you can’t stop this pain.
You wish you could take it all back. This is the most humiliating thing you have ever done. You know there’s no reason to be mean to yourself on top of an already sucky situation but that’s all you’ve ever known. That’s all you’ve ever done. You don’t know a different option. Be kind to yourself? Why? You were stupid enoguh to get into this situation, so why would you be kind to yourself now? What good is that going to do?
If you had been kind to yourself before, then you wouldn't have even ended up in this situation. You could have just loved yourself. Why do you have to date? Why do you have to follow the crowd, just because everyone else is dating?
Dating is not the pinnacle of life. A romantic relationship is not inherently worth more than any other relationship, no matter what whitecishetpatriarchal society days.
“Okay,” you say, lowering your hands. They are going to start trembling soon. You tense up your whole body.
“Thanks,” he says.
It is the worst thing you have ever heard.
“I feel weird accepting these, since I am rejecting your confession. I’m not really interested in pursuing things with you. Do you want me to still take them, or do you want to keep them, or—?”
“Okay, yeah, I mean, it’s. Yeah.”
“You had to ask, right?”
What is this? Nightmare of an interaction? You can’t tell if they are trying to make you feel better in the worst possible way or if they are actually making fun of you.
“Okay. Well, thanks for telling me. I’m sorry.”
Oh, no, not the apology. Sorry for what? You nod. It’s not okay. Why should you say it’s okay if it’s not? You’re sad. Of course it’s okay that he doesn’t like you. But you’re sad and that’s not okay. You have to handle yourself somewhere else that’s not here.
“I’m going to head out, if that’s okay? It was good to see you and talk to you.”
You nod again. “Have a good day.”
“Thanks, you too.”
And he leaves.
And you catch a glimpse of his receding back before you have to run away.
You have to get out of here.
Why did you do that?
It was not. It was not good to see him and talk to him. It was awful. This whole experience was awful.
Oh my g-d how could you have done that.
He doesn’t regret rejecting you. Why would he? What does he have to regret? You’re just some weird alone person who doesn’t have any friends who none of the popular people know. You’re irrelevant. No one knows you. You have no special skills or talents. You have nothing interesting about you that anyone would want to get to know. You have nothing anyone would want.
You have nothing.
You remember his optimistic look, a little surprised. He’s a confident person. What does he have to worry about? He has never faced a single consequence.he’s not in trouble. No one is going to hold him accountable.
Everyone loves him.
What does he have to fear? He has nothing to lose.
You have everything to lose.
And you did lose it all.
None of his friends knew your name. Really? None of them? You were hoping for a surprised moment of like how did they know, oh they really have noticed you, you are a real person in their eyes, but you aren’t.
You’re going to recover from this, one way or another. But the recovery isn’t going to be you’re socially acceptable and everyone likes you and you have a boyfriend. Getting over this is accepting that maybe you won’t ever be normal. You won’t ever fit into a whitecishetpatriarchal society. You won’t ever be accepted for your “flaws.” You might not die alone, but you aren’t going to die with a romantic partner.
“I’m sure you’ll find someone—” Who? Why would anyone say that? It’s not going to happen for you. If it hasn’t happened, why would it? If it didn’t happen in the place with the most people congregated together as possible, then why? How?
It’s not going to happen.
It’s hard to make friends as an adult, much less find a romantic partner, in this fucked up world.
What’s the point? It’s a losing battle.
Your worst fears have come true. You are going to be rejected by every guy you try to have a connection with, so don’t even try. Why try? You are ugly. You have emotional issues so you can’t accept love and you don’t believe in yourself. You don’t put yourself “in the arena” in the first place.
What’s the point?
The attitudes they have towards you must be the following:
“Sorry, you’re not that attractive to me.”
“Why are you even talking to me?”
“This is weird.”
“Why is this weirdo talking to me?”
“Don’t they know I'm way out of their league?”
“It’s hilarious that they would even think that I would need to stoop down to their level.”
“What do I have to gain from interacting with them?”
What else could the outcome possibly be? You’re different from them. You’re different from other people. This kind of thing is not going to serendipitously happen to you. There always has to be someone at the end of the bell curve. It’s random. It sucks that you were chosen as the tribute to make other people's lives fun and better, by taking on the burden of having the life tha tsucks. Is that even how it works? Probably not. But what else is there?
There’s no way it makes sense.
It's not fair that other people can have fun and you can't.
You’re here for fodder. You’re here for bait. You’re here because “at least my life isn’t as bad as that.”
You imagine them shit talking you. You imagine how he would tell his friends about this incident.
“What did y/n want?” one of them would ask.
“They confessed to me,” he would say.
They would all look up in interest. “Oh, wow. What did you say?”
“I rejected them obviously.” He might look apologetic. He might laugh. He might look embarrassed. He might look matter of fact.
He might look like no expression or expression at all.
“Yeah,” they would all agree in unison.
That would hurt the most. The absolute lack of analysis. The 100% certainty that no one would date you. Why would they?
“I feel bad for them. They must have such an awful life as an ugly person.”
Everyone would nod.
“But look at how amazing I am since I am even considering them, and their feelings,” they would say.
Everyone would agree. “What attractive person would ever even consider them?” someone would ask.
“Attractive people are too busy being attractive, living life, having friends.” This is not something any of them would say, because this is understood. It is a given. A fish does not need to acknowledge the water. The water is already there. It is true, and undeniable.
Your life is worse. You know this. What’s the point?
But you really thought for a second, huh? You really thought you could have something good. Crazy. That’s so embarrassing.
But for all of this roleplaying, and imagining, in reality, you don't even make the news. You are so irrelevant. None of them would ever talk about you. They would go about their lives and having fun and living their dreams. No one cares about you. What’s the point?
Never put yourself out there because some random hurt person on tumblr you don’t know said this would happen.
Your body is like a terrarium. It has many different needs, and different things to balance,and different parts to upkeep. You have to make sure the moisture and sunlight are adequate, and the microbiomes are healthy and optimal. You have to check the soil nutrient levels. You have to make sure the critters are happy—have enough to eat, enough shade, enough friends, or enough alone time.
But your body is not a terrarium. It’s your body. And for various reasons, you have gone through life not actually taking care of your body as diligently as you “should.”
The “shoulds” weigh down on your life. Some of the “shoulds” are less valid and less realistic than others, but all of them weigh down on you.
You stare at the baubles and bits scattered across the counters and shelves and coffee table in your and Bokuto’s living room. You are hungry now, but you’re going to eat dinner with him later. So that’s your excuse as to why you’re waiting to eat, even though you're hungry now.
You procrastinate on eating a lot. You never noticed it was a lot until recently. But you supposed you never had to learn for yourself when you were hungry because your parents always chased you around, making sure you ate. You also developed the habit of not eating when you were stressed because it didn’t feel good. Also, you somehow developed the idea that food is a reward instead of a basic necessity.
There are a lot of various circumstances in which you might withhold food from yourself. Sometimes your nerves grip you too tight, and you have no appetite. Sometimes you are “in the zone” with something and you don’t want the moment to end and you don't want to lose momentum and you don’t want to have the situation where you don’t want to come back to the project later—so you will delay having food, so you can stay in the moment, spread the moment out longer. Sometimes it's when you just woke up. There’s a lot of barriers to getting out of bed sometimes. One of the barriers to getting out of bed is the food itself. You “should” eat. You “need” to eat. It’s been a long time since you’ve eaten (since yesterday! Since it’s been the whole night.) You don't know what to eat, or you don’t feel like eating, or you don’t have the energy to make or get what you want. But you feel like you should eat. You want to take care of your body. You want to have a good day and you don’t want to hurt yourself. Even if you are hungry, even if you are listening to your body, you can’t act on it.
The judgment about food surrounds you on all sides, like trying to walk through a boobytrapped hallway but you’re not a main character so you don't have cool spy skills to evade the spears that pierce through the air, threatening to go right through you.
You never thought to name your feelings about food “shame.” You never thought to call hiding what you eat from your parents as “ashamed to eat in front of them.” You never thought you were embarrassed to eat in front of your friends or classmates in school. You always thought the shame was surrounding the food itself, not you eating it. You were always jealous of other people’s lunches and embarrassed about yours.
You’re out of that environment now, and a lot of progress has been made. You still feel your parents’ eyes on you, even though you are far away. But things are getting better.
Your ability to sit still and wait because you are afraid of doing something wrong is astounding. But you are willing to wait for Bokuto. You don’t have another option. It will be easier.
Eating with Bokuto isn’t always “easy.” It’s obviously not about Bokuto—he is supportive and kind and loving. But eating in general is not always easy for you. It is often a struggle to act on your hunger cues. It’s not always easy to overcome the initial shame of wanting to eat. But eating with Bokuto is often positive. You have been slowly creating and collecting positive associations with eating through his help.
It’s not Bokuto’s job to “make” you eat. You aren’t his child. You aren’t his responsibility. But you love each other, and part of his love to you is supporting you while you address your issues with food. Some days are easier than others. But some days, you still cling to old habits of withholding food from yourself.
Some days, it’s actually much easier to eat without thinking much about it since Bokuto is there, and you like spending time with him, and one way to spend time with him is sharing a meal with him, even cooking with him.
He texts you that he’s leaving, and the countdown has begun. Progress doesn’t mean you never act in your old habits ever again. It means that you sit in the discomfort of taking care of your body and loving yourself unconditionally just a second longer than yesterday. It means acting on a hunger cue a little faster than you did before. It means being excited to make a new positive memory eating with Bokuto.
The lock clicks and you stare at the door as it opens.
His eyes light up when they meet yours.
“Hey!” he exclaims.
“Hi,” you sing back.
The talking starts immediately. You tell each other about your days, updating each other on any ongoing tea. You try to decide ahead of time what to cook because making decisions in the moment is really difficult. But sometimes whatever’s in the fridge decides for you.
You reveal that you have been hungry for a while, and Bokuto gets out some of your favorite snacks, and starts munching with you while you cook. You are grateful. It’s okay to have a snack before dinner. You don't have to follow your parents' old rules anymore. You can make your own rules and do what is right for you. Bokuto sneaks his kisses and touches in throughout cooking, touching your neck and shoulders and back, and kissing the same spots. Happiness is not elusive. You feel happy right now. You love being with him. It is okay to be happy. It is okay to be happy now and sad later, and they don't have to be connected or related. You sit down for another enjoyable dinner with Bokuto, and are grateful for how your life is now. You’ve come a long way, and you will continue to grow and learn. You can be proud of yourself, and not worry about arrogance. You can acknowledge your growth, and feel your happiness in full, without getting “carried away” or becoming a bad person.
As you take the first bite of your food, made with love, you are grateful for the mostly positive sensations of sharing a meal with someone you love overshadowing the doubts, guilt, and negative associations you grew up with.
And after you eat, you will have a wonderful rest of the evening with Bokuto, go to bed together, and tomorrow, you will do it all over again.
