“ not everyone is going to hurt you. ”
soft angst starters. || accepting!!
His words are like knives to the heart. Far closer to home than she is willing to admit, their impact makes her chest burn with an unnamed ache; shakily, gloved arms tighten their desperate hold around her legs. His back is warm against hers where they’re connected – he’s a steady presence, familiar and reliable, inspiring an amount of trust within her that she’s utterly terrified to give.
Kirishima has allowed her into his mind far more than just once, but there are still moments when he surprises her with the depth of his insight into hers. He’s so good to her that it makes her heart swell and her eyes burn unbearably.
It’s hard to swallow around the lump in her throat. Breathing raggedly through constricted lungs, Mao finds her parched lips to be woefully incapable of shaping the words that would do her emotions justice. Whether or not those words exist is a question she has no answer to.
Lost in the intensity of her feelings, she tries to let gestures speak instead, even if it all feels impossibly lacking. She leans back against him almost too carefully, too conscious of her every movement, and tries to make her body relax into the contact.
None of it is enough. Not nearly, not when her vision is swimming before her eyes, blurred by the burn of welled-up tears; not when her body quakes beneath the strain of holding in her sobs. Her mind is racing, grasping at straws, things to say that won’t come out, and it takes a long while until she’s calm enough to speak without choking on the heavy knot of emotions in her chest.
“I know you won’t,” she whispers, heart stubbornly rattling the walls of her ribcage. It’s a scary thing to admit to – that he’s earned himself a trust that deep, that she’s willing to lay bare her heart and believe that he won’t trample on it, that he will keep it safe for her. “… and I know that means others out there might be the same.”
But her trust is a funny thing, by far not as steady and straightforward as it could be – so swayed by emotion that the gates leading through her ramparts may be wide open for him one day and entirely gone the next. She’s made too many bad experiences to trust fully at all times, seen too many backs turn on her in their fear of being seen. To be close to her, you have to trust her fully with all that you are, but to trust a stranger to such an extent is a leap not many are willing to take. Mao herself is not one of them either, so blaming anything but her own unfortunate fate for this predicament would be blatant hypocrisy. If Kirishima hadn’t been so immensely patient and persistent with her, she never would have let him this far in – but she has never been more grateful that he made her want to try.
Still, the prospect of someone violating that fragile trust, of bad experiences repeating themselves once more, is terrifying enough that it keeps her on edge. She’s left feeling small and vulnerable, breathing out shakily into the silence between them. “… I just … can’t risk it so easily, you know? There’s no way to … to know beforehand if someone’s going to be like you, and I …” There’s a long pause, heavy with trepidation. When she breaks it, it’s with words so small that they are barely audible. “… I don’t think I could take another rejection.”
I’m too scared.