Chapter Text
The ebbing flow of those that are sick and who grieve their lost illness like a beloved friend. Your sickness – part of an identity that protects you – is the friend that damns you to suffer.
There is no loving in return from this friend and they will take until there is nothing left for you to give. One day, you simply wake up to find that you have lost yourself somewhere along the way.
I love you, and yet I cannot have you.
I love you, I need you, yet you are not to be possessed.
I love you, I need you, you hurt me – the pain of being human.
Forgiveness – the desire to continue loving.
Forgive the friends and the lovers and the would-be-lovers for not running after you.
Forgive yourself from running in the first place.
Forgive yourself for wanting, for needing, for loving what you cannot possess and trying to possess it anyway.
Accept failure, accept your mistakes.
Revel in them and the comfort of imperfection – love that which is not perfect.
Free yourself from the pain of loving perfection and the endless and indescribable pain of wanting that which is not real.
“You look better with glasses.”
“I can see better with them too.”
He laughed - said he isn’t okay, but that he’s trying - touting a wilted little smile that was a little too much like a frown. What he meant to say was that he eats now, even if it makes him want to peel his skin off like a banana. Even on bad days or sad days or lonely days...there aren’t many of those days anymore. The sad and the bad were wrapped up in rainy days and missed trains or assignments that Kenma forgot to do until he was sitting in class. Things he was used to - the mundane. Pockets of sudden pain in an otherwise mediocre day, week, month, year just as his pain had been so long ago.
Everyone could see it now, though - his shame was not to be mistaken for stoicism. Kuro’s hand was so warm, so close - just beside him, and always there...the days would become less and less lonely. His voice would be louder one day too, he hoped, able to hold itself back simply because Kenma willed it to with the understanding that he could say whatever it was he pleased. And yet - at the end of the day - he would still be loved.
The storm had shifted and these days, it seemed to be a comforting drizzle. It was constant, like the slow increase of his weight over the next year and the anxiety that ripped through him for the first few months, when hurricanes would suddenly rush towards him and Kuro, always ready, would remind him that it was safer to shelter in place than it was to run – the storm would always follow. It made room for the clouds to break, leaving streaming sunlight to filter through to all of his memories. Truths that were blotted out in resentment revealed themselves in all of their shame – glorious and painful and nothing close to the perfection he had then craved.
Kuro had never left him. This was the bitterest truth he had forced himself to swallow, thrown at him in an alleyway behind a bar not too long ago – a truth that smelled as vile as Kuro’s vomit had. Kenma’s fear had paralyzed him, lost in the despair of wanting, never having. It had taken him until theh to realize that all of his thrashing hadn’t saved him – had only dragged Kuro under with him, even as their relationship had fallen to the wayside. There was always a lingering sense that the world had been lifeguards who were too afraid of his desperation to save him, and perhaps that was the case. Maybe the disorder that kept him tethered to their world – a survival mechanism that kills you itself – was what needed to go before people could carry him back to the shore.
Tooru stirred his coffee, wearing the same lilted and withering smile that Kenma did – one of the many ways he could see himself in others and find it in himself to forgive their past selves. When Kenma had imagined himself getting lunch with Tooru, he had remembered the lurch in his stomach before a match against him and the sting of Oikawa’s lilted and withering smile from the winners side.
“I’m sorry for not checking in with you after everything that happened at Nationals.”
I’m sorry for not doing the same. I’m sorry for being so mad. I’m sorry I was just as selfish. It was hard to avoid the ease with which he could change the conversation, moving it away from himself and towards Tooru – his accomplishments and fame. Guilt bubbled up and up and threated to pour over and yet Tooru showed no signs of resentment and all of his guilt was worthless if no one was angry with him for being sick. “Sick” was the truth and shame was the truth behind his guilt – the greatest mountain he had yet to climb.
“It’s okay. I started University right after school, so I’ve been busy. I didn’t really want to be pro anyway.”
“Busy, ya. And how is school going?”
“I’m finishing my residency soon. Just a few more months.”
Tooru leaned onto his elbows, tucked his hair behind his ear and did his best to look charming. “You should take a vacation when you’re done. Don’t go to work right away.” He stared into his drink a few moments too long. “What’ll you do after you’re done? What’s the next plan?”
It was one season away from Tooru’s contract termination – they finalized it the day before, just before Hajime had called - and he stirred his drink with withering eyes, a withering smile, withering hands. Not the kind that made your insides curl with flustered glee or shrink like a wallflower into his arms, his persona an aura that captured onlookers like flies in a spider’s web. Withered, not withering.
“Do you think you’ll become a coach?”
Glistening, shimmering spring rain cascaded down the windows. It stuck in tiny droplets to the glass and drip, drip, dripped from the awning outside the window. A barista dropped mugs into a dish bin and a customer let the door shut too quickly. Kenma pulled his hair back from his face and said it again.
“You would make a great coach.”
“You’re already licensed?”
“No?”
The silence stretched forever, an endless swath of open-ended questions that never got to the point, even if Kenma already knew what the point was. Tooru felt lost and restraint would bring the soothing wind of feigned worldly control. Like a salve to uncertainty, abstinence of food was the only self-comfort Tooru could remember how to perform in this moment.
Kenma took an especially large bite of his sandwich.
“Let me know if you want to play a match sometime.” He swallowed around his words. “We could get everyone together. Just for fun.” Kenma’s smile was polite, honest. “None of us have enough fun anymore.”
The truth and the shame and the sick and the guilt. All of it pooled together to make more sick and more shame and more guilt – the truth. He swallowed it. Tooru swallowed it. The truth stuck to their insides and slithered through their stomachs - wilted and withered smiles, eyes, hands.
“I feel like I’ve expired.”
The urge to peel his skin off like a banana.
“You’re not a filleted fish.”
“I feel like I’ve been gutted.”
An uncertain future, too little sleep, the exquisite pain of being perfect.
“It’s probably because you’re drinking caffeine on an empty stomach. It’ll increase your anxiety.”