Work Text:
“Hey, Bocchi-chan.”
The sounds of Bocchi’s fingers hitting her keyboard stopped. “Y-Yes?”
Nijika stared at the screen of Bocchi’s laptop; the newest guitarhero video was almost ready to go, only needing a description now. “Did you ever feel upset about me finding out that you were guitarhero?”
Bocchi jumped a little when Nijika turned to face her. She looked back at her screen, but didn’t continue typing. “W-Why do you ask?”
“I dunno,” Nijika said, shrugging. “I was just wondering. You said you didn’t want to tell anyone before you… what was it, ‘fixed the way you are’? How would you even have told us?”
“U-Um.” Twiddling her thumbs, Bocchi looked everywhere in the room but at Nijika. “M-Maybe with, uh, a big surprise party? Like, ‘Surprise! I’m guitarhero! You didn’t see that coming, huh?’ or something…”
Nijika almost felt bad for being relieved it didn’t end up turning out that way. “That would’ve been something for sure,” she said, her laugh a little dry.
“B-But,” Bocchi continued after a moment, “I’m honestly pretty happy with how things turned out.”
“Really? How come?”
“I-I feel like I might have never told you myself. I would’ve been terrified that it would be a disappointment.”
Hmmmm, Nijika hummed, and looked to the window. The sun was slowly setting, bathing everything in a warm evening orange.
“Besides… I’m not sure I will ever really fix myself.”
Bocchi had only muttered the last part under her breath, but Nijika easily caught it, turning to face Bocchi again. “Don’t say that, Bocchi-chan.”
“S-Sorry.” Bocchi stared at the floor. “It just slipped out.”
“Hey.” Softly, Nijika placed a hand on Bocchi’s cheek. “You’re doing fine, okay? You don’t need to ‘fix yourself’ or anything like that. You’ve come so far already.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“You could slow down with the apologies, but we’ll work on that.” Nijika chuckled. “No need to rush.”
That managed to make Bocchi smile a little, at least. She didn’t say anything, but the fact that she leaned into Nijika a little more was a good sign.
“I’m also happy that I found out myself,” Nijika eventually said. “I like learning more about you without you needing me to tell everything. And this way, I’m not putting you on a pedestal.”
“S-So you’re disillusioned?”
“I don’t know if that’s the right word.” Nijika placed her head on Bocchi’s shoulder. “If anything, I’m more spellbound than ever.”
While Nijika couldn’t see Bocchi’s face like this, it wasn’t hard to guess what kind of expression she was making.
Bocchi went back to typing. She’d stopped lying about her imaginary ‘boyfriend’ in her video descriptions a while ago now, but recently, she’d added something else instead.
My girlfriend loves when I play this song.