@quatred : “ i do care about you i’m just. i’m not good at talking about it. ” fuck it go stupid go crazy
Yuu’s tired, is the thing.
Yuu’s nature is to give, and give, and give. They’ve spent their life ripping out chunks, heart or stomach or lungs, and offering them to others again and again and again. It was never this bad before, because sometimes other gave Yuu pieces back. At the orphanage, or even after their adoption, their almost - friends at school. Never quite enough to make them whole, but enough to keep them from bleeding out. No one here is hole enough to do that / everyone here is too sick to notice Yuu’s illness and care to heal.
Cater says, “I do care about you, I’m just — I’m not good at talking about it.”
Enough to keep them from bleeding. This isn’t that, exactly, the blot staining their palms behind their back, Cater finds them hacking and asks if they’re okay and Yuu wipes the blot from their mouth before he can see and hides their palms and hides and hides and snaps don’t bother, it’s not like you care, and Cater does care and Yuu knows that and that was cruel and Yuu knows that but they’re tired they’re tired they’re so tired and every day they wake up spitting blot or dreaming about someone they love trying to kill them it gets harder to ignore the missing chunks of their viscera.
But Cater does care, but he’s not good at talking about it, and Yuu still tastes ink and it’s so hard not to snap back, ‘GET BETTER.’ But Cater does care, and Yuu is patient but never pushy and kind but never saccharine and gentle but never weak and Yuu is everything everyone needs and everything Cater needs but they’re so tired and they’re bleeding out and right now they need Cater do give them something, anything, ANYTHING to staunch the errant flow.
( a funny thought : if cater knew i was sick like this, complicated like this, would he care then? )
“— Sorry,” Yuu says, and they are. Almost as sorry as they are sick. “I know you care, I’m just...”
( a funnier answer : why even ask when i already know? )
“Rough day,” Yuu finishes, carefully wiping their hands on their sides as they come back to tuck into their pockets. It’s not a lie, which is good, because Yuu can’t lie. Even now, it doesn’t sound like the whole truth. “I shouldn’t have snapped. That was shitty. I’m just tired.” Yuu is patient but never pushy and kind but never saccharine and gentle but never weak and Yuu is everything everyone needs and everything Cater needs except right now, daring to be sick instead of savior, and isn’t that it’s own kind of misery, because Yuu knows they’re not getting rescued but if that’s true, then they at least need to stay capable of saving.
But Cater does care, and he doesn’t want to get better.
But Yuu is getting better at surviving on less - than / on surviving with chunks missing.
Yuu smiles, tired and smearing but not a lie. But Yuu is getting better at surviving like this, at either convincing themself they’re happy or forgetting how to tell. “Howsabout I get you something at dinner as an apology?”
