Work Text:
Byakuya’s heaving breaths echoed subtly throughout the small bathroom he was in. He had excused himself from his colleagues to ‘attend to urgent matters’ just moments earlier, before locking himself in the small room with the turn of a knob. He covered his mouth as a sickening groan threatened to escape from his throat. He would not allow it. He would not allow his own image to be tainted, even in the privacy of his own company’s restroom.
He leaned back against the door and took a deep breath as he felt his eyes and throat sting. These inconvenient, emotion-driven reactions usually never made their way to the surface of his mind…but in that quiet little room, it was as if the feeling of despair was drowning him in a closed container. He was drowning in his own lungs, and he resented the urge to cough out the water.
He wanted to be the perfect face for the Future Foundation. He wanted to be one of the shining lights of hope in the face of despair…but that didn’t stop him from remembering his mother’s face.
Though he had what would be considered a professional relationship with his birth mother in his maturing years, he still fondly remembered her presence. He remembered being only five years old and being held in her arms when he fell and cut his ankle. He remembered the times she would sing him to sleep.
These memories seemed meaningless to him in hindsight. That was the past, this was the present. He should not be thinking back to such comfortable times. Those memories meant nothing to him back when he first entered the confines of Hope’s Peak. Yet…when he was finally able to leave, he was faced with a realization that haunted him.
He would never see her again. She was dead. His entire family, besides him, was dead.
It was a useless thing to think about. It was a waste of time.
He continued to mumble discouragement to himself as he fell to the floor and removed his glasses, fearing that the tears would blur his vision further.
As if he were removing a lid from a bottle, the tears flowed further with his shame.
His own humanity would be his downfall, he thought as he laid there on the floor crying. He would never go further in the world like this.
After a while of letting his emotions out, Byakuya wiped his face with his sleeve and sat up, feeling breathless and dehydrated. He sniffled and swallowed, feeling his sinuses clog uncomfortably after the onslaught of messy tears. He stood up, grabbed a tissue off of the box on the counter and blew his nose. He stood in silence before standing straight, pulling out his phone and sitting on the closed toilet. He turned the phone’s volume up a few notches and held it in front of him as he played his video streaming list.
“Hey everyone!” The video started.
“Welcome to another video! Today we’re looking at top ten ways to tell if you’re a Sigma male, and we will be looking into all the reasons Sigma males are better than Alphas! So sit back, grab a coffee, and listen closely!”
Byakuya let out a content sigh and sat back.
“Hell yeah.”