Work Text:
Sometimes, Natsuki wishes that Yuri’s emotions would flick off at the drop of a hat just like her own are capable of. Sometimes, she just wishes that her girlfriend could stop.
Stop caring, stop trying, stop doing whatever the hell she’s doing and let Natsuki just be, just breathe, for two fucking seconds.
Her chest is on fire, and there’s a pressure building up in her entire body, and she’s going to absolutely explode like a volcano and reduce their relationship to ashes if she doesn’t get the hell out now.
There’s a part of her trying desperately to rationalize that Yuri hasn’t done anything wrong. That coming home late from a study session with a couple of her other friends doesn’t mean that she was automatically cheating. It doesn’t mean that she automatically hates Natsuki, doesn’t mean that she’s going to leave her in the dust just like everyone else who’s ever been a part of her life.
But that part is deeply squandered by the part that is furious about Yuri showing up at home nearly an hour after she said she’d be heading home.
“I need some space.” The words come out through gritted teeth, and they’re the only words that have been able to come out for the past five minutes as her girlfriend tries to explain. Natsuki is too furious to hear a goddamn thing. Her ears are ringing, and her heart is pounding from worry turned to fury, and she’s two seconds away from snapping at Yuri that it doesn’t take a fucking rocket scientist to pick up a phone in the middle of a conversation to send a brief text update.
But her words come out hard and angry and low, just one more sentence: “I’ll be back later.”
Before Yuri can even respond, Natsuki is barging out the door of their apartment and slamming it shut behind her.
Her hands are shoved into her pockets at a moment’s notice, and she balls them into tightened fists as she makes her way along the sidewalk. She can barely pay attention to the passersby as she all but slams shoulders with them, too furious and too focused on one thing: Yuri has to be planning on leaving her.
Well, what is that golden rule? Abandon all others before they abandon you?
Her breath comes out shakily, and she only walks faster as she keeps her head low.
When she gets home, she can pack her damn things and get out of that suffocating apartment as quickly as possible. She can ask Monika and Sayori if she can stay with them for a few days until she figures something out, and of course, Yuri won’t get a fucking peep out of her until she’s ready to act like a responsible fucking adult for once in her life.
Fucking fucking fuck.
The urge to punch one of the brick walls in the alleyway becomes overwhelmingly appealing, and Natsuki pauses before one, allowing her knuckles to scrape over a few bricks. The sting feels way better than it should, and she immediately begins to long for the nights before anyone knew what she got up to, when she could chase that sting over and over again for as long as she wanted.
Could reduce that pressure as quickly as she could.
One swing won’t hurt.
She takes a deep breath, and as soon as her knuckles crack painfully against the wall and she cries out, she feels a rush of relief. Half of the pressure building in her arms and her legs and her abdomen leaks out of her like a deflating balloon, and she’s lost a bit of her urge to scream until her vocal chords are hoarse.
Monika and Sayori, if they saw her, would call this a split. Black-and-white thinking. Something people like her do when they’re triggered by something, or having an episode. Seeing someone as either a god or demon spawn, no in between.
Triggered, her ass. She’s just seeing the full picture and preparing for what’s eventually going to happen.
She’ll leave Yuri, and Yuri will be fine, and Natsuki will spend the night at a few bars getting drunk off her ass and flirting with a few more pretty women until she can’t remember her name, let alone the fact that she’s alone and can never be that way for too damn long.
Let alone the fact that she’s slowly turning out to be just like her father.
The thought makes her bristle, and all of a sudden, her bloodied knuckles don’t feel anywhere as good anymore.
Suddenly, all she can see is him. That bastard, sitting in the corner of their messy house, cracking open his sixth bottle of beer that morning before she leaves for school. Him sitting in the same spot when she got home, the only sign of him moving at all being even more cans surrounding his sleeping form. The absolutely ungodly image of him cracking open one bloodshot eye because she stepped on a creaky floorboard, and the feeling of pain shooting through her cheek as his knuckles met her skin, telling her to shut the fuck up, to leave him alone and let him rest.
She thinks about that hardened wall and imagines flesh instead, and her non-injured hand makes its way up in an instant to clap over her mouth, to cover her sobs.
God fucking dammit.
Why does she have to be this way? Why does she have to be some terrible fucking person all the time? Why can’t she control her emotions? Why can’t she think before she fucking acts for once in her life?
Every impulse she’s ever had in her life feels like it knocks her to the wall in one swing. Every urge she’s had to run, to stay in place until the misery consumes her, to go home and tell Yuri that she’s sorry and she loves her, to yell herself hoarse until she absolutely bombs the bridge that is their relationship, to go to Monika and Sayori’s apartment to calm down, to just skip town completely, to keep moving, to end everything right here, all swirl around her.
Her vision grows spotty and dark, the thoughts swirling in her head over and over again. She can’t see or feel anything but absolute misery for herself, and she can’t help but keep sobbing, keep gripping onto the fabric of her shirt, her pants, like the miserable, pathetic excuse of a human being that she is.
It’s no wonder everyone leaves her in the end. God, she’d fucking leave herself, if she could.
She lets out another sob, and somewhere far away, her fist slams into the concrete again, sending a dull ache through her that she brushes off.
The guilt only grows until it swallows her whole, and she pushes herself up off of the ground with shaking arms. She wobbles and hits the concrete again a couple of times, her knees still shaking as she tries desperately to get up, tries desperately to cling onto anything she can.
But she doesn’t deserve it. She’s angry and she’s thought terrible things about her sweet girlfriend that she loves more than anything, and she deserves to go straight to hell for it.
She’s terrible and awful and disgusting, and it’s the anger at herself that finally gives her enough strength to push herself off of the ground and tackle the fact that she has to do something about the stupid fucking mess she caused in the first place.
Her hands tremble at her sides as she slowly makes her way back down the sidewalk, doing their very best to hold herself together by the pockets of her jeans.
She has to make it back, at least to say she’s sorry.
Hazily, she stumbles back up to their apartment complex, a small eternity passing in the minute that it takes her to ascend the stairs to get to their floor. A million thoughts run through her head, all of them incomprehensible. Just an utter whirlwind of how to tell her girlfriend how deeply sorry she is, how to be the best girlfriend in the world to make up for her dumb bullshit, how to make sure this never happens again.
She knocks on the door before she enters, as if she has no right to be there.
After a moment, she slowly slides her key into the lock and shuts the door behind her so quietly that she’s sure her heartbeat is somehow louder than the soft squeaking of the hinges, of the lock sliding back into place.
Yuri is nowhere to be seen.
Natsuki sighs as she quietly leaves her shoes at the door, anxiety wracking her body as she heads through the living room and beelines towards the bedroom.
When she enters, the bathroom door is locked, showerhead running. She sighs and pushes herself up to sit on the bed, leaning over to grab her phone on the nightstand. Five missed calls and ten texts from Yuri, all within the span of five minutes before she must’ve inevitably realized that Natsuki left her phone on the charger.
Another pang of guilt fills Natsuki’s heart as she opens the messages and closes them without reading them, unsure if she’d even be able to process any of them in her frazzled state. All she wants is for Yuri to come out, and then they can talk, and then she can assess all of the damage that’s been done in the past twenty minutes or so.
Twenty minutes, she thinks to herself with a bitter chuckle. It feels like a fucking lifetime.
The shower water cuts off, and Natsuki drops her phone on the bed in an instant. Her nerves are at an all-time high, buzzing through her like a live wire, and she can’t help but wonder exactly what Yuri will say.
Does she speak first? Does Yuri?
They’ve had a few arguments like this over the span of their relationship, and this part never gets easier.
The bathroom door swings open to reveal Yuri in her purple bathrobe, the one Natsuki got her for her birthday last year. She’s toweling over her hair to wrap it up, and the pink-haired woman wants to cry. Her girlfriend is so lovely, how the hell could she ever question her at all?
Yuri glances up and the towel immediately drops to her feet, forgotten. Natsuki will pick it up later.
“You came home.”
The hint of genuine shock in her voice almost causes Natsuki to wince, her heart aching as she remembers the handful of times when that wasn’t the case, when she’d had to call Monika and Sayori in a state of panic to see if they’d seen her girlfriend, to know a smidgen of anything going on in those moments of Natsuki being a pissed-off fucking wreck.
She slides off of the bed in an instant, approaching her girlfriend with genuine sorrow in her eyes. “Yuri, baby, I’m so sorry,” she murmurs, words tumbling out of her mouth. As soon as she’s close enough, she caresses the older girl’s cheek with her fingertips, and as soon as she’s close enough, she breaks down into her girlfriend’s arms.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please forgive me, I didn’t mean any of it, I love you, I love you so much—”
She’s crying so hard she can’t breathe, her chest aching with every ragged breath as she babbles nearly incoherently and pulls Yuri closer to her, almost as if she’s attempting to fuse their flesh. Having her heart on her sleeve isn’t enough; she needs to pull Yuri into the inner workings of her body to show how much the other girl means to her.
She can barely hear it when Yuri speaks, but she can feel the taller girl rubbing her back gently, and her sobs and pleads morph into a quiet whimper as she concentrates on the feeling of Yuri’s hand gliding over her skin again and again, guiding her back to safety.
“I’m right here, Natsuki. I’m right here,” she’s murmuring, and it’s all that the smaller girl can do to not melt right in her arms.
It’s shitty, she’s the one who hurt Yuri and she’s the one being comforted. So after a moment, she tugs herself away just enough to look up into her girlfriend’s eyes, feeling more vulnerable than she has in a long time.
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs again, and she silently curses herself. She needs so much more than those two damn words over and over again.
“I—should’ve talked to you,” she finally manages as her hand reaches up, as her fingertips caress Yuri’s cheek and make their way down her jaw line. She just needs to keep touching Yuri, to keep feeling her and knowing that she’s here, that neither of them is leaving.
She loves Yuri, and she wants more than anything to stay for her.
And maybe, just maybe, Yuri loves her enough to stay with her, too.
The older girl’s hands are tracing patterns against her back, and she’s threading her fingers through long purple locks to tug her girlfriend down, to press their foreheads together. “I love you. I—I was just worried. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I love you.”
She hums those three words again and again, peppering them against Yuri’s forehead and cheeks and nose and lips along with gentle kisses. She wants to make up for every irrational negative thought she’s ever had in a state of anger and fill it with the love she knows she has for her girlfriend instead.
“You mean everything to me.”
Yuri stays quiet and accepts each kiss with a gentle, contented smile on her lips. Her nose scrunches a few times as Natsuki kisses it, and Natsuki can’t help but giggle. Her heart is warm, and her love is in her arms, and they’ve survived yet another stormy night.
Natsuki knows that it isn’t completely over. They’ll talk some more before bed, and in bed, and hold each other close and whisper apologies. In between that, they’ll talk about their feelings in scatters, how to better communicate with each other so that this happens a little less, so that this is able to go more smoothly next time. The DBT book will absolutely come out, and Yuri will do a few exercises with her so she doesn’t feel so alone in trying to manage everything.
But most importantly, everything they do will be filled with compassion and comfort, love and understanding that Natsuki never expected she could have.
And for now, she’ll hold her girlfriend in her arms and kiss her like there’s no tomorrow to shower her in the love and appreciation she deserves. Tomorrow will come, and they will still be together, and everything will be much better. Their foundations will be much stronger than before.
Natsuki smiles quietly, closes her eyes, and says it once again, just for good measure.
“I love you, Yuri. More than anything else in the world.”
And that will always reign true overall.