rintarō's in the locker room, fresh from the shower, towel wrapped around his neck, when one of his teammates knocks his shoulder as he walks past.
"your girl's cute, man," he says, "lucky guy."
"...i know," rintarō says. he flashes back briefly to atsumu asking, in his friendliest, brotherliest tone if he would be open to a threesome.
the moment is over without further implication, though, so he puts it out of his mind. his girl is cute. why get upset over fact?
on the train home, he holds onto the rail with one hand and tries not to make eye contact with anyone. he's not accosted often enough to avoid public transportation altogether, but he's made a habit of trying to avoid notice.
instead of looking at the people passing in and out through the doors, he zeroes in on his phone. he opens instagram, clicking mindlessly through recently posted stories.
onigiri miya is having an all-you-can-eat raw marinated crab day. rintarō hits like. aran has posted photos of his wife across a dinner table, a rose between the two of them. rintarō hits like. atsumu has posted seven shirtless photos flexing in a row. rintarō does not hit like.
the next photo is on your story. at first, he only thinks, wow, cute. the photo is framed to show your shoulders, a sliver of skin between the band of fabric and the bottom of the screen indicating that you're only wearing a bra, your hair tossed in a careless styled-unstyled kind of way, your face screwed up in a funny little smile. you make that expression when you're laughing at yourself, your eyes still dancing in this still photo.
tucked into your bra is a glossy photo of rintarō, jaw standing out and eyes burning fiercely as he strains midair toward the net, his form perfect as he takes advantage of a rare spiking opportunity.
my only bias is a middle blocker, says the caption. he can't stop himself from grinning, sure that he looks like an idiot as he smiles at his phone.
the crowds of people on the train thin out as he gets closer to the neighborhood where you live together, enabling him to pull out his phone and wallet, hooking a finger into the side of his mask and pulling it under his chin. he flips open his wallet to the polaroid he carries with him always, part of a set you'd gifted him for your second anniversary.
next to his face, you stare out from the laminated pocket, spread out over your bed, reaching out towards the photographer—toward him. you're wearing a black bra, not much more skin showing than the photo you'd posted, but there's a particular shine to the color of your mouth, red marks decorating your throat, your eyes hazy but your mouth caught in a permanent laugh. in the corner of the frame, you can see his hand, so big compared to the delicate wrist it's holding down.
only fan who gets to touch, he types, and hits post.
Rintarō stands in the hallway till his feet tingle, pins and needles, until he has to sit down. That's how you find him, spread out among his notebooks, half-finished calculations and doodles in the margins on display.
"Hey," he says, clambering to his feet before you can collect yourself and walk away. "Wait up."
"Were you here my entire class?" You say, sounding angrier than you should for someone whose boyfriend was waiting for them.
"Yeah," he shrugs. "I got here at the usual time 'cause I wasn't sure if it ran later on exam days."
"It does," you say slowly. That's obvious. He checks his watch. It's three and you're usually home with him by one-fifty. "You didn't have to. You shouldn't have."
"I know," he says, crouching to shove his stuff into his backpack without care for what he's crumpling. "I got your letter."
"I'm sorry," you say, hiding your face from him, turning away. He puts a hand on the back of your neck, guides it back to him. He can see it, the crushed expression in your eyes, the sad turn of your mouth. "You can't—I'm sorry, okay?"
"It was bullshit," he says. You stumble over your feet, the hard mask you'd put over your features breaking momentarily. Even when it reforms, he feels victorious, knowing that you still want him—need him, even when you try to run from it. "So I'm ignoring it."
"What?" Your eyes are round, your jaw slack. Helpfully, he nudges it closed with a knuckle.
"You don't get to do that," he says. "Break up with me. Not unless it was for a good reason. Believe me, babe, I read that thing up and down and there wasn't one good reason on there, so we're not breaking up."
"Please don't do this," you say as the two of you walk out of the hall into the light, your face crumpling into something so sad despite the sunny day it almost makes him want to cry. "It's for the best. I know that's hard to believe now, but you have to look at the bigger picture—"
"Nope," he interrupts you. "I know you're a little know-it-all—how'd your exam go, by the way—and you think you know what's best for everyone all the time, but that letter was honestly really badly reasoned. Wouldn't hold up in any mock trial. So you're getting a zero and a second chance for a re-grade."
"It was fine," you say automatically. "Wait, take this seriously, please. I care about you and I don't want anyone to get hurt."
"This is the most serious thing I've ever done," he says, motioning between the two of you. "But I refuse to entertain some fucking note where you just lie—"
"I didn't lie!" You cry out. "I wrote my feelings, you asshole, which are the basis of a relationship—"
"Your feelings are wrong—"
"This is exactly what I meant!" You shout at him, garnering a few looks from the scant people walking around the secluded section of campus you're in. You lower your voice self-consciously, but your words still land like punches to his chest. "I'm broken, Rintarō, everything we do is going to end up poisoned. I don't want—" You gesture to yourself, to the tears slipping down your face. "This to happen to you. Can't you just let me go and remember only the good parts?"
"Stop it, stop it," he stops walking to pull you into his chest, sighing with relief when you press your face into his black hoodie. "That's not gonna happen. Don't say that shit about yourself, fuck, I don't care what you are as long as you're my person. Breathe, baby."
"Stop saying the right things," you say miserably. "I was so determined to not let you see this."
He pokes your cheek gently. "Sucks."
"So..." You pull away from him and he lets go reluctantly, pulling down the sleeve of his hoodie to dab at your cheeks. "We're not broken up?"
He gives you an unimpressed look and you start laughing despite yourself, something strange happening inside your chest, weird and unburdened and maybe stitching itself shut.
summary: you and suna both have secrets; you’ve been dancing around them for months. tonight, they dance together.
word count: 1.5k
cw: reader didn’t homewreck suna’s last relationship but she also didn’t not do that, alcohol, suna dds and he has a sexy car (don’t drink and drive kids), reader might be lowkey yandere, a cigarette, a cigarette-burn related metaphor, everybody has really bad communication skills and trust issues but they are also too in love to stop, openish/hopeful ending
a/n: look nothing in this fic is based on true events except that i got called pistachio and spit this out as a result. i found out the plot at the same time you did (as it hit the page). yikes xx
you call suna at three in the morning.
having just dropped a raving drunk pair of twins off at their apartment, he doesn’t let it ring more than once before clicking answer and connecting it to his car’s speaker.
“-lo? hello? hi,” you say, voice wobbly over the airwaves.
“hi,” he says, his own steadier but more uncertain.
“hi,” you say. a simple, happy word. a greeting, not a nicety. sometimes you have this way, he thinks, of glossing everything you do and say with a warmth so intoxicating it makes everyone you meet think you put it on because of them, for them. he fell for it once. twice. over and over.
he’s not sure you know you’re doing it. it’s just that sometimes you talk to him like he’s the only person you’ve ever trusted, a priest and a best friend and a lover in one. sometimes you talk to him like you’re sure he hates you. it fucks him up.
he stays silent until you explain why you’re calling.
“can you pick me up, please? i wouldn’t ask but you’re the only one i know in the area, i promise i wouldn’t bother you this late otherwise, i’m sorry. if you’re busy i totally understand, i’ll figure something out.”
“no, i’ll come,” he says. “send me your location?”
you could have just sent him the address, but if he’s lucky, you’ll forget to turn it off in the morning. if he knows where you are, it’s almost as good as trusting you.
he’s a hypocrite, he knows, spinning the wheel with one hand and scrubbing the other over his jaw roughly. you make it okay, though.
you’re standing next to some guy with his shirt unbuttoned, smoking a cigarette, when suna pulls up.
“that’s him,” he can hear you say, shouting even though you don’t need to. the music isn’t too loud with the club closed for the night. “that’s my boyfriend. isn’t his car cool?”
a sour look on his face, the guy holding the cigarette nods. suna rolls down the window and says, “thanks for watching my girl, man.” his smirk is greasier than it needs to be.
“anytime,” says the guy. suna gets the impression that he’d slash his tires if he could.
you, uncaring of the havoc you’re leaving behind, climb into suna’s car with a big smile and plant a sloppy kiss on his cheek before settling into your seat. when the window’s up and he’s peeled away from the curb, it slips a little.
“sorry,” you say, not exactly looking sorry. “i didn’t want him to hit on me.”
“i get it,” he says. “it’s okay.”
it’s not. he wants to be your real boyfriend. you want it too. for reasons both incomprehensible and perfectly understandable to both of you, it can’t happen.
“i’m sorry,” you say again. “did i wake you up?”
“nah,” he shakes his head. “i was already up. the twins,” he doesn’t have to finish his sentence.
“oh,” you say, “how are they?”
you and the twins don’t get along. the last time you’d met, atsumu had said you’re probably going to marry that witch, and i’m boycotting your bridal party.
“fine,” he says. “they were wasted. osamu tried to make me sing karaoke.”
“i think you have a nice voice,” you protest a contention he’d never made. he doesn’t respond, just watches the night lights of the city blur past him, the white lines guide his wheels straight and true. “i like it when you sing to me.”
“i’ve never sung for you.”
“you did! you sing in my shower, every time you stay over. you don’t do it when you’re home.”
“that’s not singing to you.”
you give him a look like, sure. he turns up the aux. you hum, a little out of tune with the bass.
“there are things i want to tell you,” you say, and when he glances at you out of the corner of his eye you’re staring straight ahead, carefully avoiding looking at him. “especially like this. for plausible deniability. but then i don’t want it to come out messy.”
“you can be messy,” he says, and watches you not believe him.
“but i want to be clean. for you. i want,” you grind out. this happens, sometimes, too. you sound like you’re going to tell him that you love him and your tones says that you hate him for it. “i want you to not have to take care of me. i want you to be happy. so happy.”
“i’m happy.”
“but—” the words choke and die in your throat. “like. um. you know what i mean.”
“i really don’t.”
you flinch into looking at him. he has an eye on the road, he swears, but your hair is plastered to your forehead in places and your mouth is bitten red and you look pale with terror, the prettiest thing he’s ever seen every time he sees you.
“i’m your pistachio,” you burst out, like that makes any sense at all. “did you—have you seen that?”
“huh?” is all he can really articulate. he’s scared, too, he hopes you know, it’s why he can’t put his hand on your knee and reassure you, why he can’t say he knows what you’re saying because you turn his world upside down, you make it so he doesn’t know anything he should.
“it’s like—” you press your palms to your eyes, your mouth moving but not making words for a second. “flavors. you want something classic and familiar like chocolate, but you kind of want to try something new like pistachio, and it turns out you like pistachio too, but you still wish you’d stuck with chocolate.”
“uh.”
“fuck, never mind,” you say. “fuck.”
“okay,” he says.
it’s just a few turns left before he’ll be at your place. he knows it like a homing beacon is lit up at the top, can find it from anywhere in the city. you lived a lot further away when you first met; you had to text, hey, i’m in your city, if you wanted to do this. he’s not totally sure you didn’t move to be closer to him.
“i mean,” you make a low noise in your throat. he hopes it’s not sore tomorrow. he hopes you didn’t smoke with that guy, because then it definitely will be. “i know you weren’t single when you met me.”
his foot comes off the gas for a second.
“it was already over,” he says. “it wasn’t, like, because of you. fuck. who told you?”
“she told me by the second time we saw each other. or, well. it doesn’t matter. she hadn’t moved out, though,” you point out. “it wasn’t—that was why—rintarō.”
there’s only one turn left. suna thinks wildly of turning the other way, of taking you back to his, of driving into the sunrise so you’ll never get out of his car.
“i’m sorry,” he says honestly. for what, he doesn’t know. he couldn’t atone if he spent the rest of his life doing it, so he doesn’t even want to list his sins.
you make a frustrated noise. “that’s the thing. i don’t care. i was mad—when i found out, because you didn’t tell me, because of course you didn’t tell me. but i don’t care. i wouldn’t have even if—i can’t even say it, but it’s true. isn’t that fucked up? aren’t i fucked?”
he shakes his head, pulling up to the curb a little harder than he needs to. the car jolts. his back hurts a little, a sparking pain like a bushel of lit cigarettes pressed into it.
“that’s why,” you say. you’re talking faster now. both of you know you have to go, but you don’t. “it’s bad, but i don’t care. i—please. do you get it?”
“i do,” he says, and every confession made tonight hangs between you like stars about to implode. “i—yeah.”
“yeah,” you exhale. “sorry. fuck. bye. i promise.”
you wobble as you step out of the car and he remembers that you’re drunk, that the cards are all here, spilled all over his lap and into the footwell. he puts the car in park and rushes to steady you before you can fall.
“it was worth it,” he says steadily. “if you remember this—i want you to remember that. i really—you made my life better, every time you touched it.”
“i’ll remember,” you say quietly, putting your hand on his face. “don’t worry.”
he gives you a look like, sure.
“come up,” you say. “if it doesn’t matter to you. it doesn’t matter to me.”
you turn his world upside down; this means that it matters more than anything else ever could.
“you can kick me out in the morning,” he says, voice a dry rasp.
“i won’t,” you promise, leading him by the hand up the steps already. for the first time, he believes you.
trying to make suna jealous sucks so bad you post a bouquet of roses on your instagram story and here he comes swiping up with the Does he know your favorites are peonies
suna looks at my listening activity all the time he’ll screenshot it and texting me like “u with hana?” if taylor is on or “why tf are u listening to the nausicaa soundtrack” or “you left stray kids on repeat by accident again” (it wasn’t an accident)
suna is probably a really good singer but he only uses it to do evil things like sing help me help you by logan paul ft. why don’t we at karaoke night God i hate him
