Summary: Kunigami learns the hard way that a relationship with you could only last so long when neither of you have the time to maintain it.
WC: 5.1k
Tags/Warnings: Angst to hopeful ending, breakups, self-destructive behavior, Chigiri being a real one, Bachira being a sleepy one.
A/N: What started off as a drabble turned into a full on fic, so here ya go. Expect inaccuracies because I am not an expert on anything and I added more things as I wrote. This was going to be straight up heavy angst at first btw, but I changed my mind, so imagine how that would've went lol.
Kunigami always heard people say the breakup is the worst part.
They don't too often say the recovery from the breakup is worse by comparison, easily combining the two when, in reality, they're totally different experiences.
At least they are to him.
Before the breakup, life with you was all he could ask for and more; learning to love all that is you was an experience he wouldn't trade for anything in the universe. He memorized aspects of you that many would see as flaws, your morning routine mingled with his to make for both lively and quaint memories worth looking back on, and cherished the little instances of adoration that outweigh the occasional disagreement. He'd avert his gaze and lower his head whenever his friends would light heartedly jest about his devotion to you, something so evident in the way he'd cut a conversation short when his phone twitches in his pocket.
Meanwhile, you were the opposite. Where he'd look away from embarrassment, you'd look it in the eye and greet it with a bashful yet thankful smile, glad to feel this way over someone you hold near and dear to your heart. You'd be much more open with your affection than Kunigami, something one could think would put him off when showing affection wasn't an easy feat for him in public, but it wasn't a problem to him. There wasn't any serious problem with you or him for the three years you've been together.
Until your lives outside of "us" came knocking at the door.
You were happily doing better at work and spent more time there in the process, while Kunigami spent substantially more time with soccer. Maybe the stresses of certain teams being too good at picking out weaknesses got to him, or maybe it was a certain maneuver that made the physician force him to chill out a little with the rough play. He already didn't see you enough due to the time constraints and demand of matches, and with you becoming busier, the most he could do was immerse himself in the regular season.
Perhaps a little too well though. He'd rarely come home to you before you were asleep, and similarly, would be up and out before you knew he was home. Calls became shorter for time to focus, texts became scarcer, and effort was being put towards many different things aside from you.
You both felt bad for neglecting and feeling neglected by each other, but you especially felt forgotten by your boyfriend, and rightfully so. Kunigami, who's been nothing but a big sweetheart to you in all the time you've known him for, had begun choosing soccer over you. But in his mind, this will blow over after some time; he's just going through another rough patch with you because you're both tied up with your own things. Deep down, he knows there's something amiss, that there's a chance it won't simply blow over and will lead to a huge confrontation. How can he end that foreseen confrontation the same way he ends the occasional disagreements?
A true case of knowing when something might be wrong, but not quite knowing how to approach that something.
You apparently figured out your own solution when you greeted him at the front door one night in a stern manner, "Rensuke."
It's been a while since he came home to see you awake, and he's not sure if that's a good or bad thing right now. You aren't dressed for bed either, even though it's nearly midnight, so that should've been a red flag right there, but his mind only saw yellow. "Hey, I'm surprised you're awake," he greets you with a smile, cautious, weary, and genuine.
"Couldn't sleep," you say a bit distractedly, mentally preparing yourself as you follow Kunigami to the bedroom.
"Oh yeah? What time did you get off?" He casually makes conversation and drops his bag off.
"About an hour ago. Look," you inhale, which gets his attention, "we need to talk."
He finally looks at you, sees more than your attire, looks beyond the gleam of the promise ring he gave you so long ago, and sees the hesitation in your stance, in the way your arms are crossed and your shoulders are slightly drawn in. Your frown contains various emotions just waiting to be deciphered, and "we need to talk" became the red flag he recognized.
That was the sound of someone planning to breakup with him.
The denial kicked in right away though, and he asked nervously, "What's wrong?" An idiotic question, because what on Earth could've been right recently?
"It's about my job."
What happened with your job? Were you fired? Did someone say something to you?
"I got a better position."
His brain processes that information and he smiles, "That's good!" Why don't you look happy about it though?
"I'll have to move for it though."
The smile slips to the floor with a harsh thud, "...What?"
You cruelly repeated yourself to say your job wanted you to move for a bit to the other side of the world, and that you were considering taking them up on that offer.
Considering.
"So...you haven't made your mind yet?" He asks with optimism, unintentionally making it clear what he'd prefer you to do.
"Kind of, I don't know." You tug at the hem of your shirt when you began feeling the guilt creep in, "I was thinking of taking the offer at first."
"Before you talked to me about it?" His jacket feels too hot in the relatively comfortable room.
"I just said I was thinking about it," you remind him with an unintended tone of voice. You knew the conversation wouldn't be peaceful, but you hoped he would've at least understood where you're coming from.
"That's no different from accepting it." He knows he was wrong to say that, but continues with anger as his fuel, "And why do you have to move for this? To America at that!"
"Rensuke, it's for my job!" You make it seem like I'm leaving you, was an unpleasant statement your mind conjured up, and you felt even guiltier for not being as opposed to it as you should be. You're tired from work, but his anguish is clear to see with nothing but two bedside lamps to light the room.
Neither you nor him are tired enough to avoid arguing though, and the back and forth yelling was bad to put it lightly. He says you sprung this onto him out of nowhere, you say he should check his phone. He says you aren't considering how he feels, you say he isn't considering how you feel. He says he only saw you at 4 of his games, you say you can't drop everything for him and that was never a problem before. He says you're being unfair to him, you say you're being fair to the both of you. A dictionary of words were thrown back and forth and your neighbors definitely heard a handful of them.
Breathless and exhausted, you lower your voice and say, "I'm going to my sister's place for now until I'm ready to go."
Desperation finally comes in to play, a weird thing since your sister lives close by, but the implications are what scare Kunigami. "You don't have to-"
"I do. I need to go," your voice becomes wobblier by the second, "because my head hurts and I can't deal with whatever's going on right now. I need a break."
A break. You need a break.
"What kind of break?" He asks, desperately in need of clarification as he watches you throw assorted necessities into a bag.
You pause like you intend to say something, but remain silent, a decision that doesn't give him the satisfaction he craves. All he hears is, 'Maybe we need to break up.'
The bargaining begins.
He breathes as though he ran around the house 5 times, "Don't you think you're overreacting?"
"No." You weakly put the last shirt you picked out into your bag, "I have things I want to do."
"I know that, but-"
"Then let me do those things without wondering when you'll pay attention to me." You refuse to look at him again, or you'll really reconsider what you're doing. Just imagining what he looks like right now is almost enough to do it. You abruptly stand with your bag and keys in hand to say one little, "Bye," and walk out of what you used to call home.
He didn't fight to stop you, couldn't really, even when it feels like a plethora of things were left unsaid. He never heard the utterance of words he feared hearing from you, but everything else was eerily similar and nearly brought him to his knees. The slam of two doors, a front door and a car door, made him flinch where he was left standing in silent shock. His eyes didn't start burning until he by chance looked to his left to see remnants of you strewn across the surface of the dresser, then focuses on the bottom of the mirror lined with stickers that each hold a memory, many of which he thought he'd share with you for a lifetime.
Processing all of that on his own, forcing himself to accept that you were serious when you poured your heart and mind out to him, is what actually made his knees give out on him. The pain from the impact didn't register to his nervous system, too occupied with the numbing sensation that dreadfully spread across his body like a rash, so strong that he didn't know he was trembling until he glanced at his own hands fighting a losing battle for control. His eyes stopped burning, but were no better blurred and flooded with a river of tears, accompanied by pathetically loud wails he never thought he'd be capable of pulling off.
All at once, the bedroom felt like too much; it's not just the mirror and the dresser anymore, it's the closet of jackets and trinkets, the minor scuffs and scratches where the bed grazed the walls, the framed photos, God the photos. He can't look at those anymore. Would you want them? Probably not.
All of your things are here, are you going to take everything with you?
Would you leave him with anything?
You already took his heart with you.
"Damn it..." he whispered, frustrated and lost as to what to do, slumped on the floor and repeatedly wiping endless tears from his cheeks. There was a fleeting thought of calling someone when he began spiraling down a rabbit hole of questions about what's bound to happen, but he never went through with it.
Whoever he called wouldn't be you, a thought only twisted his guts more.
And so began the recovery process.
-----
You once joked that you'd never be able to compete with soccer if he fell too hard for it. It doesn't sound so funny now when recalling one of the last things you said to him, 'You're so selfish!'
Typical of a forward.
They knew what they were signing up for, the indignation spat out.
You should've given them more, the despair whispered.
A sickening jumble of the two sat in his chest ever since then, the brunt of which he could never wholly direct to you. How could he, when he's the one who drove you away in the first place? His heart's been diced by a knife, one that he alone wielded when you attempted to take it from him with caring hands.
Without a real punching bag to attack though, the jumble pounced onto anything in its path.
He swore he wouldn't fall back into the bad habits of his teen years, but it was all too easy to break that promise when there was no one left to keep it with aside from himself. The riptide of convoluted emotions lashing around followed him into his plays, unfairly choosing everything and everyone around him as its target. His usually controlled aggression was no where to be seen, replaced with a truculent version of itself that gave little care to its teammates outside of using them for scoring instead of cooperating. Whatever neutral or friendly chemistry he had with his team was pushed to the gutter without a care; an unappealingly churlish front is what greeted everyone no matter how nice they tried to play.
Even though he's the one acting out, it hurts him, because he's not normally like this and you'd hate to see him this way. It's as though he's watching someone who isn't him live out his days for him in a manner he usually wouldn't, even on days in the past when everything seemed to go wrong.
The parts of his unwarranted behavior that hurt the most right now, however, are Isagi, Bachira and Chigiri, because they know. The team knew of you, but the guys knew you. They all met you, exchanged numbers after getting friendly, and practically had a front row seat to the growth of the relationship. Only now, they witnessed the decay of it on both sides from start to finish. They were there for every call, shortened and missed, for every text left on read or answered with little thought, and the handful of times Kunigami drunkenly (and stupidly) lamented about you being too busy for him. They even all made sure to tell him the one thing he hated to hear: It's not your fault they left.
Saying that it would've eventually happened given how adept you were with your job is an excuse. Why wouldn't it be his fault? He went so far to blame you for things you weren't at fault for, and took his frustrations out on you after pretty much ignoring you for weeks in a borderline passive aggressive fashion.
Isagi and Bachira learned early on to leave him to his own devices after receiving cold shoulders, but Chigiri-
"Kunigami."
The orange haired man depressingly looked up from his cleats and met Chigiri's sentimental gaze. He couldn't tell if it placated him or pissed him off because that's all he's been seeing for the past two weeks.
"What?" He gave a curt response and yanked his towel from around his neck.
Chigiri didn't seem phased by it, not surprising since he's always been the quickest to see through him in moments like these. He kept a pensive expression on and leaned against the lockers behind him, "Have you heard from them since...y'know?"
The weight of the world suddenly jumped onto his back and he could feel his energy leaving him all at once (he supposes he should be thankful he typically has enough energy for soccer to not fall behind despite how he's feeling). Starting a conversation about you is no different from throwing salt into a wound that's taking a millennia to heal. Yes it's been four weeks, no he doesn't feel any better, you're still a sensitive topic, and your absence gives him frostbite in a metaphorical sense (sometimes it seems literal). He feels like the world's biggest coward everytime you're mentioned because he subconsciously clams up to avoid talking about you or what happened.
He did hear from you once though, three whole days after you broke up with him. All you said, in a text of all things, is that you'd be slowly moving your stuff out when you had the time, to which he simply replied, 'okay.' A simple and piteous response conveying none of what's been going through his mind; you don't need him to cry you a river and make you feel bad for a decision you've done enough thinking over.
It's obvious you don't even want to see him in person everytime he comes back to his place and it looks like he'd been burglarized instead of visited by a loved one.
He's not sure he'd want to see you either, though for a different reason.
Kunigami remembers Chigiri standing by waiting for an answer, so he shoves his cleats into his bag and answers abruptly with less bite than he had seconds ago, "No. Why?"
"I haven't heard from them in a couple days, that's all." A moment of silence passes and he begins to speak again, "Did th-"
"You're more likely to hear from them than I am, just give them some time." Ready to stop talking, he promptly stands the moment the slider of the zipper reaches its destination and throws out a faint, "Later," on his way out of the nearly empty locker room.
"Kunigami."
He stops, glancing over his shoulder in acknowledgement.
There's a lot Chigiri wants to say, wanted to say before things got this far, because being hopeful on the sidelines did no favors for anyone. Believing things could work out is entirely different from knowing things could work out, and he knows Kunigami believed before he could know. The man is once again experiencing a moment of powerlessness, of not knowing what to do when all you know doesn't work, when your ambitions end up taking the priority that should've belonged to something else. It's evident in how he's taking his frustrations out in the only ways he knows how, in the perineal bags under his eyes resulting from the broken sleep cycles of either too much sleep or too little, and the numerous times he's lingered in the showers just to be alone.
Despite having seen him the whole time since the breakup, it's hard to think Kunigami's mildly better than he was last month.
"Take care of yourself," Chigiri chooses to say in sincerity, and this time, hopes his teammate reads the multiple underlying meanings behind those four words.
Kunigami does, and if he had it in himself he'd laugh at how blantly concerned Chigiri is being from the norm, but the invisible down coat of exhaustion he wears doesn't slip from his shoulders.
Because you would've said the same thing, you have said the same thing plenty of times. Your words had layers to them much like Chigiri's too, the dissimilarity being the 'I love you' and 'see you tonight' slipped in between the lines.
"Yeah," he speaks in a tone encompassing how depleted he feels. The depletion could also be a result of a skipped meal or two today, something his stomach suddenly reminds him of with pangs of hunger. He walks out before anyone else can catch him, using a swiftness that used to be reserved for rushing home to you and is now for rushing away from you in a sense.
"Did you get to talk?" Bachira asks curiously from around the corner once Kunigami leaves.
He was so quiet I forgot he was there. "Define 'talk'," Chigiri answers and prepares to leave as well.
Bachira easily caught up to him and pouted, "No dice, huh?"
"None whatsoever." The long haired man starts to vent a little as they walk out of the building, "Is it bad that I kind of want to hit him?"
"Yeah, a little," Bachira confirms through a yawn. "But I get it."
"Like, I know he's going through it, but I hate when he got like this back then."
"Mhm."
"And somehow it seems worse this time. I mean, I know why it's worse, but I wish his immediate reaction to something bad wasn't this." Chigiri lets out a groan of frustration once he finishes and wills himself to cool down at the sight of Bachira rubbing his eyes. "It's only 9."
"Can't help it," Bachira slurs while drowsiness works its magic on him.
A fond roll of his eyes is Chigiri's response as they reach his car and find Isagi waiting. "You're lucky I don't live that far from you guys."
A bitter memory naturally reappears in the back of his mind, one of the last time he visited Kunigami's place at your concerned request. He may not strike anyone as a person whose life has gone to shit, but the disarray of certain areas of his house are dead giveaways; the refrigerator was frighteningly scarce of its usual contents, an empty beer can or two sat in the sink (he still wonders why to this day), and clothes sat in a pile in the corner of his bedroom. It's enough to make Chigiri wonder if you're faring any better than him, but judging from your lack of communication with Kunigami since you left, he knows you aren't so perfect either.
-----
It's been a month.
And some days.
...Three months.
He walks around his house aimlessly and doesn't look too hard for what's missing from his home, doesn't want to, or he'll conduct a search for all the things you've taken and hope like an idiot that there's something left of you. The first step is not grasping for nonexistent straws after all, and he's managing as best as he can (he's long since stopped expecting to see you anytime he checks his phone).
The heat seeking missile of irritation that flew nonstop randomly ceased by this point, leaving him in a cold, empty husk of his former self. He wonders if he was better off basked in negativity because feeling nothing doesn't seem any better. The walks to his car from practice were uneventful. Shopping for basic needs was uneventful. The drives home were uneventful. Walking inside a house void of life was uneventful. Going to sleep in a king-sized bed by himself was uneventful.
Seeing his friends is a little breather from the uneventful cycle, but that's all it is, a breather.
His performance still holds up, but whatever exhilaration the sport brings him is often short-lived and eclipsed by the blank spot of someone who once shared that exhilaration in the past.
People who get over heartbreak this soon must not have been in love, he wistfully thinks to himself in bed. It's his day off, and he opted to stay home for once, a decision he's not sure was a good one. But he spent so many days swaddled by vicious self-hatred, constantly blaming himself and never knowing how to stop, that he rarely stayed put. He was always out for a game, at practice, the gym, stores, you name it, just to stay busy.
Ironic how soccer kept him the busiest while also being the thing that put a crack in the relationship.
Though he was stubborn about it towards the end of things, the fact remains that the schedules your lives revolved around conflicted greatly after some time, something that became especially evident once you moved in with him. He was left with little time for you, and vice versa; you had a life outside of his, and he had a life outside of yours.
Maybe we were bound to split up then, he thinks while admiring the sunrise for the first time in a while. There's nothing wrong with being passionate for something, you had things you wanted to do, and he supported you (still does). He never once viewed your independence as a negative, it was something he admired about you.
He sits up with a stretch and tries not to think about the copious amount of space he's free to use.
'I feel like a house sitter,' he recalls you whimpering through your desperation that night. He wanted to ask how long you'd been feeling that way, wanted to say that he'd do better for the 50th time. But he couldn't ask about something he should've had a rough idea of, and he definitely couldn't lie to you nor himself.
After a quick trip to the bathroom, he picks up his phone with the intention of checking for rain, but is dumbfounded to see a text from you 32 minutes ago.
'Can we talk?'
He stares wide eyed at his screen until it goes dark on him. Talk. Like this? Or over the phone? He should be jumping for joy that you're asking to talk, let alone contacting him again, but he's filled to the brim with uncertainty. What did you want to talk about? Why'd you want to talk to him again? Were you worried? Did one of the guys talk to you? Did you leave something?
The last question made him look around the hallway by instinct, contradictory of what he's been trying to do lately, and he finally allows himself to assess the damage.
His auburn eyes locked onto something left sitting on the narrow table, a small ceramic lamp he remembers you picking out at a furniture store. You thought it'd be the perfect size considering where you planned to put it, and you were right, he can't imagine it being anywhere else.
But why is it here?
He walks aimlessly into the living room and sees more things worth questioning. A decent chunk of your books are still left standing on the bookshelf, your succulent plants are still sitting on the windowsill (and not dead by some miracle), and he spied one of your umbrellas left behind in the entryway organizer. Your sunglasses, one of your favorite birthday cards, your Monopoly game, they're all there. It's a little mortifying that he's just now noticing all of this, but he's far too confused to dwell on it.
Maybe you just didn't get around to everything yet, except you'd never be so forgetful to leave this many things behind. The thought immediately gets debunked anyways when something randomly tells him to check the bedroom, making him nearly sprint back to find what else he blindly looked past. Most of your jackets are in their same spots in the closet, your trinkets don't even look like they've been touched, and the photos he last saw with eyes obscured by tears remained where they've always been.
Even the polaroids, your polaroids, that you periodically took within the first year of the relationship were still in the album you purchased just for them. And the album, something you hold so close to you and look at with the fondest of gazes, still sat in the bottom drawer of the dresser.
There are many things missing, that much he can see, but there should definitely be less than this left behind after a month.
The uncertainty has left and been replaced with confusion.
Kunigami then realizes he never replied to you and quickly texts back, 'Sure,' not even bothering to figure out what exactly you meant by talk. But you want to talk, and that's something.
Your response is almost instant, 'Okay, I'm coming over. See you in seven-ish minutes.'
"Seven minutes!?" He exclaimed and remembered that your sister's place isn't so far from his. So he spends the next five minutes fixing himself up to look presentable, as well as straighten up the cocoon of sorrow his (your, our??) bedroom turned into. Here he is running around like a headless chicken for someone he should be used to and perfectly capable of keeping his composure around, but that's nearly impossible under these circumstances, especially when that someone is you.
You who he was skittish around on the fifth "friendly" date because none of your other friends joined you two for the first time, which lead to him working himself up and finally asking you out. You who came over so often that he eventually asked (nearly begged) to move in with him after handing over a second house key. You who-
Ding-dong~
-is here. That was fast, but you did say seven minutes, well, seven-ish, he has to open the door, you don't have his key anymore-
He rushes over to the front door but stalls when he's bewildered by a thought, one that was embarrassingly late to make an appearance. What are you doing at your sister's place? Isagi told him you were in America last month. The longing for answers to his questions pushes him to open the door, and the sight of you is almost enough to make him forget everything.
"Hey," he greets you in awe. You didn't go through some major transformation, and you aren't dressed any particular way. But God, he missed seeing you, missed you. He missed your warm, penetrating eyes, your soundboard of laughter, and your domestic, loving touch. He wants to hug you so badly, but is your touch still one of love? Would you let him hear your laughs? Do you still look at him the same way?
"Hey," you greet him warmly, and your left hand moves just enough to catch his attention. Your ring finger still glints, because of the promise ring, you kept the-
"You still wear it?" He asks in disbelief.
Your eyebrows raise like you never realized it and you lift your hand to touch the ring, "Oh, uh, yeah. I do."
He's flipping out on the inside, but he controls himself on the outside enough to ask, "What are you doing here?" He receives a look of perplexity and rephrases, "I mean, why aren't you in America?"
"Oh, I just..." you trail off uncertainly, but restart with a light shake of your head, "I needed to see you. Before I go back."
You're going back. He tries not to let the disappointment show, but the slight downward tilt of your chin lets him know he failed. "What did you need to see me for?"
You fiddle with the hem of your shirt (his lovesick brain focuses on the cute habit) and say, "I wanted to apologize."
He snaps out of his little trance and swiftly replies, "I should apologize. The way I treated you was unacceptable-"
"I need to apologize too, because I ignored you for a bit and-"
"That was because of work though, I have no excuse-"
"Ren, wait," you interrupt with an airy laugh, "are we going to keep trying to one-up each other at the entrance?"
"Oh, yeah," he steps aside, "wait, you said-"
"I don't have to go back today," you casually admit with an amused smirk as you walk in.
You leave him speechless at the door, but he breaks out into a laugh seconds later and runs his hand through his soft, spiky locks in relief. Neither of you have fully cracked the cans open yet, he's still in the dark about why exactly you came back, and he has two keys to his house. But the fond way in which you say his nickname, coupled with the promise ring you still wear snuggly and proudly, puts him at just enough ease to not turn into a soap opera protagonist.
Life with you before the breakup was all he could as for and more, the breakup itself was a nightmare that played out in real life, and recovering from the breakup was a hellish episode he's not sure he ever grew out of.
But if there's a promise of a life with you after all of that, it'll all seem worth it.
sleepy!keigo has had me by the throat recently so here’s this half assed ficlet because it’s the middle of the night and i’m fucking exhausted
————
sitting on your bed trying to get some work done when there’s a soft rap at your balcony door before it opens and closes again. the familiar winged man ditches his flight jacket on the floor, his glasses and headphones finding their place on the nightstand soon after, and throws himself onto the bed next to you.
“hey kei,” you say, setting your laptop on the beside table. you turn on your side to face him, propping yourself up on your elbow.
keigo mumbles a greeting and turns to look at you. you realize how exhausted he looks. noting the dark circles under his amber eyes and the fact that his normally tamed facial hair is longer than normal.
“you look tired,” you sigh, shaking your head.
“patrols have been kickin’ my ass,” he explains, falling back into the pillow. “i get so sick of being a hero sometimes.”
keigo lets out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding when you pull him to your chest. he practically melts into you when you start running your fingers through his hair. “i worry about you birdie. you need to start sleeping more.”
“‘m trying,” he mumbles. “i promise ‘m trying.”
“shh, i know baby. i’m proud of you. rest now, okay?”
keigo nods into your chest, his arms coming to wrap around your waist as his eyes slip shut.
“love you,” he breathes, slowly being lulled to sleep by the steady rise and fall of your breathing.
you press a kiss to the top of his head. “i love you. rest now birdie.”
Summary: Kunigami learns the hard way that a relationship with you could only last so long when neither of you have the time to maintain it.
WC: 5.1k
Tags/Warnings: Angst to hopeful ending, breakups, self-destructive behavior, Chigiri being a real one, Bachira being a sleepy one.
A/N: What started off as a drabble turned into a full on fic, so here ya go. Expect inaccuracies because I am not an expert on anything and I added more things as I wrote. This was going to be straight up heavy angst at first btw, but I changed my mind, so imagine how that would've went lol.
Kunigami always heard people say the breakup is the worst part.
They don't too often say the recovery from the breakup is worse by comparison, easily combining the two when, in reality, they're totally different experiences.
At least they are to him.
Before the breakup, life with you was all he could ask for and more; learning to love all that is you was an experience he wouldn't trade for anything in the universe. He memorized aspects of you that many would see as flaws, your morning routine mingled with his to make for both lively and quaint memories worth looking back on, and cherished the little instances of adoration that outweigh the occasional disagreement. He'd avert his gaze and lower his head whenever his friends would light heartedly jest about his devotion to you, something so evident in the way he'd cut a conversation short when his phone twitches in his pocket.
Meanwhile, you were the opposite. Where he'd look away from embarrassment, you'd look it in the eye and greet it with a bashful yet thankful smile, glad to feel this way over someone you hold near and dear to your heart. You'd be much more open with your affection than Kunigami, something one could think would put him off when showing affection wasn't an easy feat for him in public, but it wasn't a problem to him. There wasn't any serious problem with you or him for the three years you've been together.
Until your lives outside of "us" came knocking at the door.
You were happily doing better at work and spent more time there in the process, while Kunigami spent substantially more time with soccer. Maybe the stresses of certain teams being too good at picking out weaknesses got to him, or maybe it was a certain maneuver that made the physician force him to chill out a little with the rough play. He already didn't see you enough due to the time constraints and demand of matches, and with you becoming busier, the most he could do was immerse himself in the regular season.
Perhaps a little too well though. He'd rarely come home to you before you were asleep, and similarly, would be up and out before you knew he was home. Calls became shorter for time to focus, texts became scarcer, and effort was being put towards many different things aside from you.
You both felt bad for neglecting and feeling neglected by each other, but you especially felt forgotten by your boyfriend, and rightfully so. Kunigami, who's been nothing but a big sweetheart to you in all the time you've known him for, had begun choosing soccer over you. But in his mind, this will blow over after some time; he's just going through another rough patch with you because you're both tied up with your own things. Deep down, he knows there's something amiss, that there's a chance it won't simply blow over and will lead to a huge confrontation. How can he end that foreseen confrontation the same way he ends the occasional disagreements?
A true case of knowing when something might be wrong, but not quite knowing how to approach that something.
You apparently figured out your own solution when you greeted him at the front door one night in a stern manner, "Rensuke."
It's been a while since he came home to see you awake, and he's not sure if that's a good or bad thing right now. You aren't dressed for bed either, even though it's nearly midnight, so that should've been a red flag right there, but his mind only saw yellow. "Hey, I'm surprised you're awake," he greets you with a smile, cautious, weary, and genuine.
"Couldn't sleep," you say a bit distractedly, mentally preparing yourself as you follow Kunigami to the bedroom.
"Oh yeah? What time did you get off?" He casually makes conversation and drops his bag off.
"About an hour ago. Look," you inhale, which gets his attention, "we need to talk."
He finally looks at you, sees more than your attire, looks beyond the gleam of the promise ring he gave you so long ago, and sees the hesitation in your stance, in the way your arms are crossed and your shoulders are slightly drawn in. Your frown contains various emotions just waiting to be deciphered, and "we need to talk" became the red flag he recognized.
That was the sound of someone planning to breakup with him.
The denial kicked in right away though, and he asked nervously, "What's wrong?" An idiotic question, because what on Earth could've been right recently?
"It's about my job."
What happened with your job? Were you fired? Did someone say something to you?
"I got a better position."
His brain processes that information and he smiles, "That's good!" Why don't you look happy about it though?
"I'll have to move for it though."
The smile slips to the floor with a harsh thud, "...What?"
You cruelly repeated yourself to say your job wanted you to move for a bit to the other side of the world, and that you were considering taking them up on that offer.
Considering.
"So...you haven't made your mind yet?" He asks with optimism, unintentionally making it clear what he'd prefer you to do.
"Kind of, I don't know." You tug at the hem of your shirt when you began feeling the guilt creep in, "I was thinking of taking the offer at first."
"Before you talked to me about it?" His jacket feels too hot in the relatively comfortable room.
"I just said I was thinking about it," you remind him with an unintended tone of voice. You knew the conversation wouldn't be peaceful, but you hoped he would've at least understood where you're coming from.
"That's no different from accepting it." He knows he was wrong to say that, but continues with anger as his fuel, "And why do you have to move for this? To America at that!"
"Rensuke, it's for my job!" You make it seem like I'm leaving you, was an unpleasant statement your mind conjured up, and you felt even guiltier for not being as opposed to it as you should be. You're tired from work, but his anguish is clear to see with nothing but two bedside lamps to light the room.
Neither you nor him are tired enough to avoid arguing though, and the back and forth yelling was bad to put it lightly. He says you sprung this onto him out of nowhere, you say he should check his phone. He says you aren't considering how he feels, you say he isn't considering how you feel. He says he only saw you at 4 of his games, you say you can't drop everything for him and that was never a problem before. He says you're being unfair to him, you say you're being fair to the both of you. A dictionary of words were thrown back and forth and your neighbors definitely heard a handful of them.
Breathless and exhausted, you lower your voice and say, "I'm going to my sister's place for now until I'm ready to go."
Desperation finally comes in to play, a weird thing since your sister lives close by, but the implications are what scare Kunigami. "You don't have to-"
"I do. I need to go," your voice becomes wobblier by the second, "because my head hurts and I can't deal with whatever's going on right now. I need a break."
A break. You need a break.
"What kind of break?" He asks, desperately in need of clarification as he watches you throw assorted necessities into a bag.
You pause like you intend to say something, but remain silent, a decision that doesn't give him the satisfaction he craves. All he hears is, 'Maybe we need to break up.'
The bargaining begins.
He breathes as though he ran around the house 5 times, "Don't you think you're overreacting?"
"No." You weakly put the last shirt you picked out into your bag, "I have things I want to do."
"I know that, but-"
"Then let me do those things without wondering when you'll pay attention to me." You refuse to look at him again, or you'll really reconsider what you're doing. Just imagining what he looks like right now is almost enough to do it. You abruptly stand with your bag and keys in hand to say one little, "Bye," and walk out of what you used to call home.
He didn't fight to stop you, couldn't really, even when it feels like a plethora of things were left unsaid. He never heard the utterance of words he feared hearing from you, but everything else was eerily similar and nearly brought him to his knees. The slam of two doors, a front door and a car door, made him flinch where he was left standing in silent shock. His eyes didn't start burning until he by chance looked to his left to see remnants of you strewn across the surface of the dresser, then focuses on the bottom of the mirror lined with stickers that each hold a memory, many of which he thought he'd share with you for a lifetime.
Processing all of that on his own, forcing himself to accept that you were serious when you poured your heart and mind out to him, is what actually made his knees give out on him. The pain from the impact didn't register to his nervous system, too occupied with the numbing sensation that dreadfully spread across his body like a rash, so strong that he didn't know he was trembling until he glanced at his own hands fighting a losing battle for control. His eyes stopped burning, but were no better blurred and flooded with a river of tears, accompanied by pathetically loud wails he never thought he'd be capable of pulling off.
All at once, the bedroom felt like too much; it's not just the mirror and the dresser anymore, it's the closet of jackets and trinkets, the minor scuffs and scratches where the bed grazed the walls, the framed photos, God the photos. He can't look at those anymore. Would you want them? Probably not.
All of your things are here, are you going to take everything with you?
Would you leave him with anything?
You already took his heart with you.
"Damn it..." he whispered, frustrated and lost as to what to do, slumped on the floor and repeatedly wiping endless tears from his cheeks. There was a fleeting thought of calling someone when he began spiraling down a rabbit hole of questions about what's bound to happen, but he never went through with it.
Whoever he called wouldn't be you, a thought only twisted his guts more.
And so began the recovery process.
-----
You once joked that you'd never be able to compete with soccer if he fell too hard for it. It doesn't sound so funny now when recalling one of the last things you said to him, 'You're so selfish!'
Typical of a forward.
They knew what they were signing up for, the indignation spat out.
You should've given them more, the despair whispered.
A sickening jumble of the two sat in his chest ever since then, the brunt of which he could never wholly direct to you. How could he, when he's the one who drove you away in the first place? His heart's been diced by a knife, one that he alone wielded when you attempted to take it from him with caring hands.
Without a real punching bag to attack though, the jumble pounced onto anything in its path.
He swore he wouldn't fall back into the bad habits of his teen years, but it was all too easy to break that promise when there was no one left to keep it with aside from himself. The riptide of convoluted emotions lashing around followed him into his plays, unfairly choosing everything and everyone around him as its target. His usually controlled aggression was no where to be seen, replaced with a truculent version of itself that gave little care to its teammates outside of using them for scoring instead of cooperating. Whatever neutral or friendly chemistry he had with his team was pushed to the gutter without a care; an unappealingly churlish front is what greeted everyone no matter how nice they tried to play.
Even though he's the one acting out, it hurts him, because he's not normally like this and you'd hate to see him this way. It's as though he's watching someone who isn't him live out his days for him in a manner he usually wouldn't, even on days in the past when everything seemed to go wrong.
The parts of his unwarranted behavior that hurt the most right now, however, are Isagi, Bachira and Chigiri, because they know. The team knew of you, but the guys knew you. They all met you, exchanged numbers after getting friendly, and practically had a front row seat to the growth of the relationship. Only now, they witnessed the decay of it on both sides from start to finish. They were there for every call, shortened and missed, for every text left on read or answered with little thought, and the handful of times Kunigami drunkenly (and stupidly) lamented about you being too busy for him. They even all made sure to tell him the one thing he hated to hear: It's not your fault they left.
Saying that it would've eventually happened given how adept you were with your job is an excuse. Why wouldn't it be his fault? He went so far to blame you for things you weren't at fault for, and took his frustrations out on you after pretty much ignoring you for weeks in a borderline passive aggressive fashion.
Isagi and Bachira learned early on to leave him to his own devices after receiving cold shoulders, but Chigiri-
"Kunigami."
The orange haired man depressingly looked up from his cleats and met Chigiri's sentimental gaze. He couldn't tell if it placated him or pissed him off because that's all he's been seeing for the past two weeks.
"What?" He gave a curt response and yanked his towel from around his neck.
Chigiri didn't seem phased by it, not surprising since he's always been the quickest to see through him in moments like these. He kept a pensive expression on and leaned against the lockers behind him, "Have you heard from them since...y'know?"
The weight of the world suddenly jumped onto his back and he could feel his energy leaving him all at once (he supposes he should be thankful he typically has enough energy for soccer to not fall behind despite how he's feeling). Starting a conversation about you is no different from throwing salt into a wound that's taking a millennia to heal. Yes it's been four weeks, no he doesn't feel any better, you're still a sensitive topic, and your absence gives him frostbite in a metaphorical sense (sometimes it seems literal). He feels like the world's biggest coward everytime you're mentioned because he subconsciously clams up to avoid talking about you or what happened.
He did hear from you once though, three whole days after you broke up with him. All you said, in a text of all things, is that you'd be slowly moving your stuff out when you had the time, to which he simply replied, 'okay.' A simple and piteous response conveying none of what's been going through his mind; you don't need him to cry you a river and make you feel bad for a decision you've done enough thinking over.
It's obvious you don't even want to see him in person everytime he comes back to his place and it looks like he'd been burglarized instead of visited by a loved one.
He's not sure he'd want to see you either, though for a different reason.
Kunigami remembers Chigiri standing by waiting for an answer, so he shoves his cleats into his bag and answers abruptly with less bite than he had seconds ago, "No. Why?"
"I haven't heard from them in a couple days, that's all." A moment of silence passes and he begins to speak again, "Did th-"
"You're more likely to hear from them than I am, just give them some time." Ready to stop talking, he promptly stands the moment the slider of the zipper reaches its destination and throws out a faint, "Later," on his way out of the nearly empty locker room.
"Kunigami."
He stops, glancing over his shoulder in acknowledgement.
There's a lot Chigiri wants to say, wanted to say before things got this far, because being hopeful on the sidelines did no favors for anyone. Believing things could work out is entirely different from knowing things could work out, and he knows Kunigami believed before he could know. The man is once again experiencing a moment of powerlessness, of not knowing what to do when all you know doesn't work, when your ambitions end up taking the priority that should've belonged to something else. It's evident in how he's taking his frustrations out in the only ways he knows how, in the perineal bags under his eyes resulting from the broken sleep cycles of either too much sleep or too little, and the numerous times he's lingered in the showers just to be alone.
Despite having seen him the whole time since the breakup, it's hard to think Kunigami's mildly better than he was last month.
"Take care of yourself," Chigiri chooses to say in sincerity, and this time, hopes his teammate reads the multiple underlying meanings behind those four words.
Kunigami does, and if he had it in himself he'd laugh at how blantly concerned Chigiri is being from the norm, but the invisible down coat of exhaustion he wears doesn't slip from his shoulders.
Because you would've said the same thing, you have said the same thing plenty of times. Your words had layers to them much like Chigiri's too, the dissimilarity being the 'I love you' and 'see you tonight' slipped in between the lines.
"Yeah," he speaks in a tone encompassing how depleted he feels. The depletion could also be a result of a skipped meal or two today, something his stomach suddenly reminds him of with pangs of hunger. He walks out before anyone else can catch him, using a swiftness that used to be reserved for rushing home to you and is now for rushing away from you in a sense.
"Did you get to talk?" Bachira asks curiously from around the corner once Kunigami leaves.
He was so quiet I forgot he was there. "Define 'talk'," Chigiri answers and prepares to leave as well.
Bachira easily caught up to him and pouted, "No dice, huh?"
"None whatsoever." The long haired man starts to vent a little as they walk out of the building, "Is it bad that I kind of want to hit him?"
"Yeah, a little," Bachira confirms through a yawn. "But I get it."
"Like, I know he's going through it, but I hate when he got like this back then."
"Mhm."
"And somehow it seems worse this time. I mean, I know why it's worse, but I wish his immediate reaction to something bad wasn't this." Chigiri lets out a groan of frustration once he finishes and wills himself to cool down at the sight of Bachira rubbing his eyes. "It's only 9."
"Can't help it," Bachira slurs while drowsiness works its magic on him.
A fond roll of his eyes is Chigiri's response as they reach his car and find Isagi waiting. "You're lucky I don't live that far from you guys."
A bitter memory naturally reappears in the back of his mind, one of the last time he visited Kunigami's place at your concerned request. He may not strike anyone as a person whose life has gone to shit, but the disarray of certain areas of his house are dead giveaways; the refrigerator was frighteningly scarce of its usual contents, an empty beer can or two sat in the sink (he still wonders why to this day), and clothes sat in a pile in the corner of his bedroom. It's enough to make Chigiri wonder if you're faring any better than him, but judging from your lack of communication with Kunigami since you left, he knows you aren't so perfect either.
-----
It's been a month.
And some days.
...Three months.
He walks around his house aimlessly and doesn't look too hard for what's missing from his home, doesn't want to, or he'll conduct a search for all the things you've taken and hope like an idiot that there's something left of you. The first step is not grasping for nonexistent straws after all, and he's managing as best as he can (he's long since stopped expecting to see you anytime he checks his phone).
The heat seeking missile of irritation that flew nonstop randomly ceased by this point, leaving him in a cold, empty husk of his former self. He wonders if he was better off basked in negativity because feeling nothing doesn't seem any better. The walks to his car from practice were uneventful. Shopping for basic needs was uneventful. The drives home were uneventful. Walking inside a house void of life was uneventful. Going to sleep in a king-sized bed by himself was uneventful.
Seeing his friends is a little breather from the uneventful cycle, but that's all it is, a breather.
His performance still holds up, but whatever exhilaration the sport brings him is often short-lived and eclipsed by the blank spot of someone who once shared that exhilaration in the past.
People who get over heartbreak this soon must not have been in love, he wistfully thinks to himself in bed. It's his day off, and he opted to stay home for once, a decision he's not sure was a good one. But he spent so many days swaddled by vicious self-hatred, constantly blaming himself and never knowing how to stop, that he rarely stayed put. He was always out for a game, at practice, the gym, stores, you name it, just to stay busy.
Ironic how soccer kept him the busiest while also being the thing that put a crack in the relationship.
Though he was stubborn about it towards the end of things, the fact remains that the schedules your lives revolved around conflicted greatly after some time, something that became especially evident once you moved in with him. He was left with little time for you, and vice versa; you had a life outside of his, and he had a life outside of yours.
Maybe we were bound to split up then, he thinks while admiring the sunrise for the first time in a while. There's nothing wrong with being passionate for something, you had things you wanted to do, and he supported you (still does). He never once viewed your independence as a negative, it was something he admired about you.
He sits up with a stretch and tries not to think about the copious amount of space he's free to use.
'I feel like a house sitter,' he recalls you whimpering through your desperation that night. He wanted to ask how long you'd been feeling that way, wanted to say that he'd do better for the 50th time. But he couldn't ask about something he should've had a rough idea of, and he definitely couldn't lie to you nor himself.
After a quick trip to the bathroom, he picks up his phone with the intention of checking for rain, but is dumbfounded to see a text from you 32 minutes ago.
'Can we talk?'
He stares wide eyed at his screen until it goes dark on him. Talk. Like this? Or over the phone? He should be jumping for joy that you're asking to talk, let alone contacting him again, but he's filled to the brim with uncertainty. What did you want to talk about? Why'd you want to talk to him again? Were you worried? Did one of the guys talk to you? Did you leave something?
The last question made him look around the hallway by instinct, contradictory of what he's been trying to do lately, and he finally allows himself to assess the damage.
His auburn eyes locked onto something left sitting on the narrow table, a small ceramic lamp he remembers you picking out at a furniture store. You thought it'd be the perfect size considering where you planned to put it, and you were right, he can't imagine it being anywhere else.
But why is it here?
He walks aimlessly into the living room and sees more things worth questioning. A decent chunk of your books are still left standing on the bookshelf, your succulent plants are still sitting on the windowsill (and not dead by some miracle), and he spied one of your umbrellas left behind in the entryway organizer. Your sunglasses, one of your favorite birthday cards, your Monopoly game, they're all there. It's a little mortifying that he's just now noticing all of this, but he's far too confused to dwell on it.
Maybe you just didn't get around to everything yet, except you'd never be so forgetful to leave this many things behind. The thought immediately gets debunked anyways when something randomly tells him to check the bedroom, making him nearly sprint back to find what else he blindly looked past. Most of your jackets are in their same spots in the closet, your trinkets don't even look like they've been touched, and the photos he last saw with eyes obscured by tears remained where they've always been.
Even the polaroids, your polaroids, that you periodically took within the first year of the relationship were still in the album you purchased just for them. And the album, something you hold so close to you and look at with the fondest of gazes, still sat in the bottom drawer of the dresser.
There are many things missing, that much he can see, but there should definitely be less than this left behind after a month.
The uncertainty has left and been replaced with confusion.
Kunigami then realizes he never replied to you and quickly texts back, 'Sure,' not even bothering to figure out what exactly you meant by talk. But you want to talk, and that's something.
Your response is almost instant, 'Okay, I'm coming over. See you in seven-ish minutes.'
"Seven minutes!?" He exclaimed and remembered that your sister's place isn't so far from his. So he spends the next five minutes fixing himself up to look presentable, as well as straighten up the cocoon of sorrow his (your, our??) bedroom turned into. Here he is running around like a headless chicken for someone he should be used to and perfectly capable of keeping his composure around, but that's nearly impossible under these circumstances, especially when that someone is you.
You who he was skittish around on the fifth "friendly" date because none of your other friends joined you two for the first time, which lead to him working himself up and finally asking you out. You who came over so often that he eventually asked (nearly begged) to move in with him after handing over a second house key. You who-
Ding-dong~
-is here. That was fast, but you did say seven minutes, well, seven-ish, he has to open the door, you don't have his key anymore-
He rushes over to the front door but stalls when he's bewildered by a thought, one that was embarrassingly late to make an appearance. What are you doing at your sister's place? Isagi told him you were in America last month. The longing for answers to his questions pushes him to open the door, and the sight of you is almost enough to make him forget everything.
"Hey," he greets you in awe. You didn't go through some major transformation, and you aren't dressed any particular way. But God, he missed seeing you, missed you. He missed your warm, penetrating eyes, your soundboard of laughter, and your domestic, loving touch. He wants to hug you so badly, but is your touch still one of love? Would you let him hear your laughs? Do you still look at him the same way?
"Hey," you greet him warmly, and your left hand moves just enough to catch his attention. Your ring finger still glints, because of the promise ring, you kept the-
"You still wear it?" He asks in disbelief.
Your eyebrows raise like you never realized it and you lift your hand to touch the ring, "Oh, uh, yeah. I do."
He's flipping out on the inside, but he controls himself on the outside enough to ask, "What are you doing here?" He receives a look of perplexity and rephrases, "I mean, why aren't you in America?"
"Oh, I just..." you trail off uncertainly, but restart with a light shake of your head, "I needed to see you. Before I go back."
You're going back. He tries not to let the disappointment show, but the slight downward tilt of your chin lets him know he failed. "What did you need to see me for?"
You fiddle with the hem of your shirt (his lovesick brain focuses on the cute habit) and say, "I wanted to apologize."
He snaps out of his little trance and swiftly replies, "I should apologize. The way I treated you was unacceptable-"
"I need to apologize too, because I ignored you for a bit and-"
"That was because of work though, I have no excuse-"
"Ren, wait," you interrupt with an airy laugh, "are we going to keep trying to one-up each other at the entrance?"
"Oh, yeah," he steps aside, "wait, you said-"
"I don't have to go back today," you casually admit with an amused smirk as you walk in.
You leave him speechless at the door, but he breaks out into a laugh seconds later and runs his hand through his soft, spiky locks in relief. Neither of you have fully cracked the cans open yet, he's still in the dark about why exactly you came back, and he has two keys to his house. But the fond way in which you say his nickname, coupled with the promise ring you still wear snuggly and proudly, puts him at just enough ease to not turn into a soap opera protagonist.
Life with you before the breakup was all he could as for and more, the breakup itself was a nightmare that played out in real life, and recovering from the breakup was a hellish episode he's not sure he ever grew out of.
But if there's a promise of a life with you after all of that, it'll all seem worth it.
Currently typing out Kunigami angst for no apparent reason aside from me thinking of something from the manga that would make sense outside of its intial concept.
kageyama saying this because he immediately recognizes how absolutely incredible hinata is both in physical reflexes and also game sense and it sounds like an insult it sounds like a taunt but this is kageyamas genuine inquiry and acknowledgement of hinata and his potential and i
do you guys understand he is really genuinely saying this. like he really wants hinata to become strong. like he really respects this guy so much. oh my god
It's things like this that always keeps Haikyuu at the top of my anime and manga list. Idk what Furudate ate while he was making Haikyuu, but he is an absolute titan when it comes to writing characters. We see so early on in the series that Kageyama isn't even all that prideful, he just hates seeing potential go to waste, especially when someone who's actually into volleyball is the weilder of that potential. He never underestimated Hinata, not because of how serious he takes things, but because he recognizes genuine talent when he sees it, and knew Hinata could've done so much more.
Everyone probably expected some pompous response to come out of him when Hinata approached him, but instead we get him acknowledging Hinata's frustration. He doesn't look down on him for his weaknesses, he simply tells him to get better, because he knows he can and he wants to see someone as passionate as Hinata do better.
Currently typing out Kunigami angst for no apparent reason aside from me thinking of something from the manga that would make sense outside of its intial concept.
