hi veny!!!! for ur tshd au, can we have rin as the monster please? i know u mentioned otoya first but i think creature rin could have so much potential!!!!
(p.s. i hope u get ur manga soon w/o damages💔)
hi nonnie!! i'm currently still powering through the otoya ver. so have this snippet in the meantime. i'll write + post the full thing tmr (maybe), so i hope u like this for now!!
you have matching bracelets, go to school together, hang in your rooms and just exist in each other's space with all the entitlement that comes with known each other since before either of you even knew how to spell your own names. your first meeting at age five included a plastic dinosaur getting chucked at your head and a lot of crying. but when his older brother directed him to hold your hand so he could lead you both to an adult with little fuss, you held on tighter and hadn't let go since.
when sae left for some overseas soccer program a few years later, rin grew colder and less enthusiastic about anything but soccer. in a sleepy town like yours where the last exciting thing was watching the older itoshi brother leave for the city though, you learn to roll with his barbs and stick close to the most interesting person you know. the gods know rin needs it. for a guy who insists so strongly on being by himself, he's terrible at being alone.
lately though, he hasn't been feeling like your best friend.
the hiss and pop of a can opening up draws your attention back to the present.
rin doesn't sigh when he swings a leg over the bench to sit beside you, but his posture tells you that he's in one of his usual moods again. grumpy, standoffish, weirdly fixated on becoming self-sufficient and strong as soon as possible — what a handful. he remains colder than the snow dusting the streets.
he passes you the drink and tucks his pale hands back into his jacket, settling down in the space beside you per your routine. even if he says getting "treats" after school every day is a waste of both time and money, he still follows you to the store the nice auntie next-door runs, always. habits are hard to break for a guy like him.
you thank him for the canned coffee you'd been heckling him to buy you during your entire walk here. you don't bother hiding your laugh from the face he makes when you receive the can with both hands either. your fingers are red from the cold, so you're more than happy to wrap them around your successful itoshi-rin-scam. you take a sip and watch him just sit in your periphery. you don't even like coffee, but you keep drinking it anyway. it burns your tongue.
the silence stretches. one second. then two, three, four — slowly twisting like balloons into animal shapes. there's a buzzing from somewhere beside you and your gaze flickers to a moth on the lamp hanging by the shop's entrance. its wings flutter in response to an imagined breeze, looking like eyes blinking back at your own uneasy stare. teal eyes don't blink back at you though.
rin's hand on your wrist is the only reason you don't flinch.
"y/n?" he asks, in that faux unaffected tone he always uses.
rin went missing a few weeks ago after a fight with his brother. apparently, sae had returned earlier than expected and met with rin by chance at your school's soccer field. something happened that led to rin running away into the trees and sae knocking at your door at 6 in the morning the next day. his voice, strangely hoarse, carried the same unbothered frost in rin's, but his red-rimmed eyes said everything he couldn't. it had been terrifying to listen to — rin ran off into woods when the snow was falling heavier than usual. sae had spent the better part of the night calling out for his little brother to come back, armed only with his phone's flashlight and a voice that was quickly losing itself to the dry cold. sae only stopped and went back home when a few of your neighbors came out to see what was going on. he almost looked ashamed, standing at your doorstep with red fingers and even redder eyes. he'd asked you to come with him and the rest of the adults to look for rin.
("he might come if you call."
"you're making him sound like a dog.")
you didn't find rin on the first day. not on the second either. not on the third, the fourth — it was hell for you and sae. the adults started whispering. the other kids slowly started to stop attending your searches. sae grew wearier and angrier with each passing day while you clung to an optimism that you'd find him eventually if you just kept looking harder. in the temporary absence of your best friend, you clung to the next best thing until you could hold his hand again. you can't read rin's brother very well, but even you can tell he didn't particularly enjoy your company. the feeling's mutual. you'd prefer rin over sae any day. you just want him back.
the ending was anticlimactic but a good one: rin came back on his own after a week of being lost. he doesn't have any memory of what he'd been up to despite the agitated concerns from the adults around him. he seemed much more focused on getting something to eat and sleeping in his bed. sae left the next day.
now, you're sitting with rin. on the bench you've both been frequenting since middle school after class. his hand on your wrist is ice cold. you've long outgrown your "childish" habit of handholding, but you offer anyway. teasing him is part of your routine too.
when he puts his hand in yours with no fuss and curls those pretty fingers around your palm, the buzzing stops.
he makes a comment about you being stupid for not bringing gloves, mindlessly squeezing your hand like he's trying to warm them without noticing. it's a thoughtful gesture. very sweet and fitting for a tsundere-type like rin.
rin hasn't held your hand like this since you were ten.
snow keeps falling around you. the cold sinks past the flimsy shield your blazer provided the longer you sit there. the hand still in rin's grasp is slowly warming up. your other remains wrapped around your cooling drink.
rin doesn't like holding your hand. he also knows you don't like coffee.
you find it hard to look away from his eyes. teal and cool, unlike anything in this small town. unique. unnerving.
it's like you're caught in an impromptu staring contest. rin doesn't blink so neither will you. your eyes sting from the dry cold, but you refuse to lose first. you relent and adjust to rin's moods on a daily basis, so little victories like these are important.
rin is important. so important to you. you want him back.
the question that's been clawing at your throat ever since rin returned slams against your ribcage, or maybe that's just your heart trying to beat out of your chest. he's always given you butterflies. you think the moth you saw earlier must've gone somewhere else. it's so quiet now.
you really, really hope you're wrong.
"hey, can i ask you something weird?"
