Archive of Our Own ^beta

When would he learn to take care of himself, you ask yourself. Your relationship with Shirabu had been a rocky one from the very beginning, but at the very first stages of your love’s bloom, he had been... Caring. Constant reminders to eat healthily and to exercise dropped from his lips in a sharp tone, and eventually you learned to see past it to hear the underlying worry. 

Ironically, he was the one that didn’t seem to understand the concept of self-care. Even in the dark, you can make out the dark circles that line his eyes and the tiredness that lingers over his body like a ghoul, waiting to reap his soul. 

For a moment, you froze up when you picked up on the hospital’s call an hour ago, the words ‘You’re Dr. Shirabu’s emergency contact’ haunting your head like a taunt, louder than the DJ on the radio on a Sunday evening. The questions plague you, knowing that you’d never summon the courage to face him for the answers. 

Why were you his emergency contact? 

Did he have no one else? 

Maybe he just forgot to change it after the two of you broke it off for real? 

A soft ding sounds from a phone in your apartment, and you dismiss it, your ears instinctively categorising it as a familiar noise. It’s only as you sit down on your couch with a warm cup of coffee that you realise the ding isn’t from your phone, because no notification calls to you from the bar of your phone. 

It’s Shirabu’s. 

You laugh bitterly. Even after months of separation, traces of days when the two of you lived together still lingers in the edges of your mind, waiting for you to let your guard down to prowl in and strike for the kill. Even after so much time, the definition of Shirabu Kenjirou is still oh-so-familiar to you, so much that you dismiss his phone notification as yours because you’ve heard it so much, and you still recognise it. 

It hurts. 

You curse yourself for your inability to forget him, for the lack of self-restraint you have when you pick up drunken calls from your ex, for putting up with the meaningless mumbles that drift from his alluring lips on the drive back to his apartment. 

For how you make soup for his impending hangover and leave it in the fridge, for how you text Kawanishi so he can tell Shirabu that he was the one that drove him home, he was the one that made him soup. 

For how the thoughts of him prowl menacingly around the edges of your conscious mind. 

For how much you want to reach over and caress his face, for how much you want to scold him worriedly, berating him for how he overworked himself to the point he collapsed at the hospital. 

It’s then that the idea sprouts in your mind, the voice of the devil on your shoulder. 

Delete your number from his phone, and he’ll never call you again when he’s drunk. 

It’s as easy as taking candy from a child. You pluck his phone from where it rests next to him on the bed. You’d slipped it out from his pocket after you tucked him into your bed. It never crossed your mind to look at his messages- You weren’t the type to pry. Pity. If you’d taken a peek, you’d see that his most recent conversation was with Kawanishi, about him coming to terms with the fact he was still in love with you. 

When his phone asked you if you were sure you wanted to delete the number belonging to ‘y/n’, you had no hesitance in pressing ‘confirm’. 

“Kawanishi, sorry to bother you. Shirabu’s passed out at the hospital, they called me to pick him up because I’m his emergency contact. He’s at my place now. Could you come send him home later? He’ll need someone to watch him for a bit.” 

You strengthened your resolve, your voice spelling ‘I’m determined to forget this man and not every talk about him again’. Whatever Kawanishi wanted to say was drowned out in the ending tone of the phone call as you plopped down on the couch, staring at the ceiling mindlessly, ignoring the soft breathing belonging to the man you spent too much time thinking about from your bedroom. 

‘He loves you,’ Kawanishi wanted to say, but he could tell that it was too late, and Shirabu had passed up the chance to have you by him for the rest of his life. 

Years later, you’d look back on this day as the day that you decided you were getting over Shirabu Kenjirou. The day that you decided never means never, and that you were never going to think about him again; never going to pick his drunken calls again; never going to send his sleepy, confused state home. 

One day, if you walked past him on the street, your hand interlaced with another man’s, you would glance away and reply to your partner: “Oh, no, I don’t know him.” 

One day, you would send off your wedding invitation to Kawanishi, who had become a friend of sorts despite the person who begin your connection to each other. And the next week, Kawanishi would forget that he left your invitation on the coffee table, and he would invite his former high school friends- And Shirabu- To his place for drinks. 

One day, Shirabu Kenjirou would just be the name you brought up when you told you grandchildren of your first heartbreak and warn them: Be careful who you fall for. 

Never means never. 

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