Work Text:
Night in the dorm folded around them like a soft blanket—muted lights, the distant hum of a late kettle, the world narrowed to the rooms where the girls slept and the two who didn’t quite know how to stop worrying.
Maloi lay half-on, half-off the couch where she’d fallen asleep while scrolling, hoodie swallowed around her. The TV was long paused on the credits of a movie they hadn’t finished. Her thumb absently traced the fabric at the seam of Colet’s old hoodie—Colet’s, because of course it was Colet’s—and the motion only pulled the ache tighter.
She’d told herself she wouldn’t think tonight. She’d told herself she’d be brave and sleep and stop the small self-accusations before they grew. That lasted approximately eleven minutes.
Too much, she thought again, the phrase like a pebble dropped into water and making widening rings of guilt.
Too much texting when Colet was busy.
Too much clinginess when everyone else had “work.”
Too many little questions that probably sounded stupid.
Too much jealousy about a laugh that wasn’t meant for her.
And then, as if that weren’t enough, a second whisper of shame slid under the first:
Not enough.
Not smart enough. Not steady enough. Not enough to be the one Colet could brag about; not enough to be the person who never annoyed, never needed, never asked.
She sat up on the couch before she knew she was moving and padded into the kitchen. The dorm was quiet except for a clock and her own breathing, and it made confession feel less dangerous—less broadcast—and more like talking into a pillow.
Colet was already there, at the sink, rinsing a mug, sleeves rolled up. She looked up when Maloi came in and gave that small, soft smile that had once broken a dozen arguments between them. The kind of smile that said she was home even when the rest of the world was not.
“Hindi ka pa matutulog?” Maloi asked, attempting a lightness that cracked.
Colet set the mug down, towel in hand. “Hindi. Ikaw?” She crossed the kitchen slowly and looped her arms around Maloi’s waist from behind, resting her chin on Maloi’s shoulder. “What’s going on?”
Maloi’s throat tightened. She wanted to be brave and wedge the truth into one sentence—I’m fine. She couldn’t. The words tumbled out the way they always did when she thought too much and felt too much:
“I think I’m… too much,” she said, voice small. “Parang lagi akong nagddemand. Lagi akong gusto ng attention. I’m always the one asking, nag-aasam—at baka napapagod ka na.”
Colet shifted, pressing a soft kiss behind Maloi’s ear. “Say that again.”
Maloi laughed humorlessly. “That I’m annoying?”
“No.”
Colet’s voice was steady, patient. “Say that you think you’re too much. Say it so I can tell you why you’re wrong.”
The permission felt silly and heavy and she took it anyway. “I think I’m too much. And also—” she swallowed, humiliation burning—“I think I’m not enough. I feel like I don’t deserve you. Like I’m taking up your best parts.”
Silence. The kind of silence that listens.
Colet’s arms tightened for a fraction and then steadied. She moved Maloi to face her, cupping her cheeks with surprising gentleness—two hands, sure and warm. “Listen to me,” she said. “Listen properly, okay? I will wait until you listen, no interruptions.”
Maloi let out a shuddered breath, nodding like a child. “Okay.”
“You are not too much.” Colet’s voice was quiet, but every word hit with deliberate softness. “When you message me a hundred times, that’s not a bother. When you call me at midnight about something small or big, I pick up because I want to. Because I love you. If you were quiet all the time—if you didn’t tell me when you needed me—wouldn’t I miss that? Wouldn’t I ache that I wasn’t the first person you wanted to tell anything to?”
Maloi’s eyes filled. The defense she’d built against feeling unworthy trembled.
“And you are not not enough.” Colet leaned closer so their foreheads touched, breath warm and steady. “You are not some empty space I tolerate. You are my person. I don’t love you despite the things you call flaws. I love you because of them. Because of the way you hang on, because of how loudly your heart says my name, because of how messy and bright and demanding and soft you can be.”
The words were not new—Colet had said versions of them before—but tonight they were slow and sure as if she had been saving the best definition of her love for when Maloi needed it most.
Maloi whispered, “But what if I am too much one day? What if I ask for more and you can’t give it?”
Colet’s hands closed around Maloi’s like anchors. “Then we will figure out how to give it. I am not some automatic machine that turns away when overwhelmed. I am a person who gets tired and a person who rests. But I am also someone who chooses you, every day. If I sometimes need space, I will ask. If you need more, you will say it, and we will meet in the middle. Not because it’s convenient, but because you are worth inconveniencing for.”
Maloi let the words sit like gentle warmth against the chill of her doubts. She wanted the conviction to sink in.
“I keep apologizing,” she told Colet, palms smoothing at the hem of her hoodie, embarrassed by her own voice. “I say sorry a lot. Sorry because maybe I’m clingy. Sorry because I don’t want to be the type who needs so much. I tell myself—‘hindi ka dapat maging ganito,’ and I hate that I even feel this way.”
Colet’s thumb wiped away a stray tear as if it were the most tender of acts. She pressed their mouths together in a kiss that was both cradle and command: you are wanted.
When they pulled apart, Colet tucked a loose strand of hair behind Maloi’s ear and said, “Promise? No more ‘sorry’ as a shield. Say what you feel, even when it’s messy. Don’t use ‘sorry’ to pre-empt being loved. Let me hold you through the messy parts. And I will tell you if I need a minute. Deal?”
“Deal,” Maloi breathed, the single word like a quiet salvation.
They moved to the living room and curled on the couch as if that was where the world could be small and safe. Colet fetched a blanket and draped it over them, gathering Maloi close, her head pillowed against Colet’s chest. The rhythm of Colet’s heartbeat was steady and sure beneath the crook of Maloi’s ear. It was an anchor, proof: this was real, this was now.
Maloi murmured into the fabric, “Sometimes I think if I’m not enough, you’ll stop looking at me like I’m the only thing.”
Colet laughed—soft, dismissive of the fear but gentle in a way that made space for it. “I am ridiculous, you know that? I will probably be stubborn and annoying and oddly competitive when I’m old…but I will never stop looking at you like you’re the only thing. Not because you are flawless; because I’m in love with the person who makes those flaws. I love you as you are, not as you should be. You are not a test I have to pass.”
Maloi pressed a hand to Colet’s chest, feeling the rise and fall. “Teach me to be less scared,” she whispered. “Teach me to trust that you’ll stay even if I’m loud.”
“You teach me too,” Colet replied. “Teach me how to say when I need rest. Teach me how to be better at this, because I am stubborn and maybe I don’t always notice the little ways you ask for more.”
They joked and made promises in the dark that were sometimes ridiculous—like an oath to always share the last piece of cake—but they meant the practical ones too: slow apologies, honest check-ins, the right to be needy and the right to be given space. Partnership that was not about measuring out the love, but practicing it.
At one point, Maloi asked, voice small, “Do you ever get mad that I need you so much?”
Colet’s answer was immediate. “Only when you hide your needs because you think they’re too heavy. That makes me sadder than your asking. Your asking is how I get to be your lighthouse. I’d rather be bulldozed every once in a while than left wondering.”
Tiredness wrapped around them in the kindest way. Maloi’s breaths evened as sleep began to tug at her, less fueled by fear now and more by the actual comfort of being known.
Colet kissed the top of her head. “Sleep,” she whispered, “and if you wake suddenly thinking you’re too much—call me. Text me. I will pick up. I will always answer. That is my stupid, stubborn promise.”
Maloi let herself believe, just enough, and as she drifted toward sleep with Colet’s arms around her, the two small monsters—too much and not enough—retreated to the corners where fear lived when it didn’t have oxygen.
In the quiet after, when the dorm settled and the night deepened, Maloi thought she finally understood: being loved didn’t mean not being messy. It meant being chosen through the mess.
And chosen she was—over and over—by someone who would keep answering, even to midnight texts and frantic apologies, because being needed was not a punishment to be borne but a place of honor to be kept.
When she slept, she dreamed small, strange, wonderful things: Colet’s smile carved into sunbeams, their hands forever joined, and the word dearest echoing like a home.