Kaede is someone who’s drifted in and out of Hiyori’s orbit since they were kids. It’s almost funny, how one of the people he felt like he really could be better off without, kept swerving right back into his path. It was a sorry situation, not without effort on Hiyori’s part to make things better. One of the things about pervasive loneliness is that for all of the ways it isolates you, it also makes you recognize loneliness in others. Even when they were still young kids, Hiyori recognized that loneliness in Kaede, the one he hid behind smug grins, schoolyard taunts, and swimming titles. In some of the darker days of growing up, Hiyori convinced himself that Kaede’s offhand sneers and comments were a call for help, or an invitation to be powerful alongside him. Maybe it was desperation or hopeful naivety, but that had to be it, right? The comments about how he was a crybaby, he was too soft, he didn’t push himself hard enough, if none of the comments from one of the only people even relatively a part of his life weren’t secretly in his favor, then —
He didn’t let himself think about the harsh truth of it all for a long time.
Kaede never seemed to let anyone in close to him for as long as he had known him. The way Kaede didn’t push him away felt like a twisted sort of vulnerability, one he could paint into an almost sort of friendship when he needed the pick-me-up. It was bad, and he knew in his heart it was bad, the way he clung onto the idea of somehow being the one to fix Kaede’s loneliness, to see if those broken pieces could maybe match up with his own. It shouldn’t have been surprising when those pieces never fit together, or when Hiyori stared at the vision of what they could have together a bit too long to notice the actual Kaede had charged out of his orbit again with the insistence he didn’t need anyone.
Hiyori’s grown a lot since those days of trying to befriend a bully or cling to anything/anyone he thought he could convince to stick close to him. He’s happier with his friends, his genuine friends, but anyone who’s had to flirt with chaos just to survive knows how hard it can be to stay away for too long. Its a sickness and toxic curiosity, the idea of trying again.
He stands by what he said to Kaede when meeting him again. Swimming with Haru, against him, that could make him realize that success isn’t a path exclusively carved out of isolation. That sick part of his heart he somehow gave to Kaede hopes he can change. That sick part of him wants somebody to give that to Kaede before he relapses into those old hopes and leans into the thrill of trying his hand at doing it himself again.
Send in a random emoji and Free! character(s)/ships/etc and I’ll try to come up with a headcanon/drabble✨
