Fallen to Deaf Ears (Zenitsu x GQ!Reader)
Title: Fallen to Deaf Ears
Synopsis: Zenitsu Agatsuma x Reader, Kimetsu no Yaiba
Warnings: Unedited, angst, discrimination, trans/gender queer reader
Details: Oneshot, wrote this in a jiff. Gonna edit later but right now its as cringe as a twitter hate post. Reader is probably trans or part from the community at least.
A/n: I’m going through something right now, apparently. This fic proves it. Why am I doing this to myself? Here’s my first contribution to the lacking world of zenitsu-fics. Yay. More will b coming :) u can’t stop me.
NOTE: That I live laugh love all LGBTQ+ ppl. Go read some fluff after this peeps.
“Come on, hurry up Y/N.” He pulled you by the sleeve to a hidden part in the garden with a veranda overlooking the nearby wisteria bushes.
“Where are you taking me?”
It was a little past sunset, and the dying sun caressed the wooden, Japanese larch beams with its languid redish rays.
You reached the floorboards overhanging the Japanase-style garden, where you hopped on top of them and finally settled down.
“Alright, alright I NEED to tell you something.”
“My god, is that why we had to come speeding over here?” you punched his shoulder lightly, earning a giggle from your friend, “For some teenage girl-talk with you?”
“Well it’s not just any girl-talk! I need to tell you about my romantic feelings.”
“Oh your precious feelings,” You rolled your eyes at that. It’s not like you were expecting anything else–specially from him–but you kinda hoped that he pulled you aside to plan the latest trick on Uzui. If the last time you ‘accidentally’ spilled some water on his makeup (earning you an earful, near-death strangle, 2.000 push-ups and a 20 km run uphill) didn’t kill you, then why not try a second time? At least he should have offered some kind of motivation for you to listen to his upcoming rant.
“I knew you that’s what you would say so… I snatched a couple red-bean mochi from the kitchen before coming here.” He grinned widely and handed you one of the squishy treats.
“Now I get it. We were going full speed before Akane could catch you. Alright, bribe accepted. Rant ahead, dandelion-boy.” Those last words came out like a jumble, as you took one bite-full of mochi. Sweet, sticky, with an earthy after-taste. Delicious.
“So you remember how I went to the market with Nezuko-chan yesterday, right?”
“We went grocery shopping first, then we stopped by a jewelry stall on the way back.” He took a couple bites more of his mochi, finishing it with a wipe with the back of his hand across his mouth. Removing the leftover crumbles atop his lip.
“And she kept staring at this sparkly pink hairclip, so I bought it for her!
“And THEN, she KISSED ME ON THE CHEEK
“Oh man! I thought my heart was going to EXPLODE. If that’s all it takes to get a kiss from her I would buy her a THOUSAND brooches!!!!
“Oh, oh, and then the other time when we went to the pantry together after training…”
His body squirmed from one side to another, reenacting the scenes he earnestly narrated to you, completely sucked into his own story as he relived the memories in his mind.
A narrator with a barely listening audience.
“I guess you really like her, huh.”
“Oh GOD, it’s MORE than just liking her.”
He shifted his gaze downward. Eyes not really fixed on anything, just looking at the pictures of his sweetheart held in his memories.
His soft, tender tone a stark contrast with your voice, broken in a thousand stinging pieces caught at the base of your throat.
“And she’s so pretty. So beautiful.”
A thousand words that you wanted to shout at him, a thousand pleas gripped inside your suffocating chest.
A thousand attempts to bring him back to you.
For someone blessed with supernatural hearing by the beings above, he didn’t catch a single one of those pieces.
How the heart beating inside you, fell apart, bit by bit, with every word that left his mouth.
Every word a sling of a pickaxe to your heart–a heart that had been beating for him for an eternity.
Beating for him ever since you met.
Because he threw light into your world with his whiny personality. Because he stuck with you like a baby duckling without a mother. A duckling that provided a ear to you, when you needed comfort. A safe place, a hug, a person who listened.
Then why isn’t he listening now?
Why can’t he hear your broken heart?
Did he ever listen anyways?
Was he really such a great friend, such a great person, as you pictured him to be?
Were those escapades under the moonlight a heartful exchange of secrets between the two of you, or a selfish one sided rant?
A one sided rant where the speaker could care less about the listener.
If he had the best hearing in the world, then why is his heart so deaf right now?
Can’t he hear the thumps that called out his name? Called out his name because that’s the only name in your mind.
Because the name that occupies his mind is not yours.
Because he doesn’t love you.
Because he doesn’t think your pretty.
That your kind or gentle.
That you aren’t as perfect as her.
And you can never, ever be perfect like her.
Because you’re you and that’s the only person you can be.
But you weren’t enough? You weren’t worthy enough to be spoken about in a tone as soft as his right now?
It hurt like a rampant sea, a storm of tears burning at the pit of your chest.
Waves crashing at your insides, tearing you apart.
Those screams that you hid inside.
Pleading, crying, screaming, shouting for help.
But his ears caught none.
“...and I think I’m going to marry her.”
“So I’m going to ask her to marry me soon! We’ll have a big wedding with pink tablecloths, and lots of FLOWERS, flowers all over, and also–”
He turned his eyes to you.
You gulped, but kept going with a shaky breath.
“What- what do you think of me?”
That was the only whisper that you could manage. The entire inaudible thunderstorm brewing in you, diminished to the quietest of questions.
It wasn’t soft or sweet anymore.
“I said I liked pretty girls.
And well, you’re….. You.”
It was colder than the air around a graveyard. The cold surrounding dead people. People who can’t talk. Aren’t heard.
That’s what you received from speaking up.
The cold of the quiet dead.
Maybe it would have been better to not know.
To have kept your voice quiet.
Quiet from the greatest hearer in the world.
After that you never spoke again.
They had children. They got a house. They raised a family. They seemed happy.
They were surrounded by a soft veil.
A sweetness emerging from your silence.
Like a sweet flower grown above a tombstone. The tombstone of a dead man. A man whose voice was forever silenced.
And even if they screamed from the pits of the underworld, no one would hear.
Because it would all fall on deaf ears.
