Work Text:
At age 13, Hinomori Shiho was done with himself.
There was something annoying him that was unfixable, rooted deep within his bones.
And at age 13, Mochizuki Honami sat next to him.
(Wait, right next to me? Oh god-)
He could practically choke on the tension between them, mourning the loss of comfort once commonplace between the two. He missed the times when silence didn't feel like it was tearing him apart limb by limb as she sat next to him. When Saki got hospitalized, their sense of normalcy went with her.
If Honami wanted him to start conversation, she was out of luck for three more years. Maybe in a few years, in highschool, when they all start anew, will he have the courage to speak first.
—
When Shiho left his friends behind, abandoned them without a word, he knew something changed within himself.
In his awkwardly short limbs and heavy bones, something crucial shifted, altering his brain chemistry, changing him for the rest of his pathetic life.
Even when he made a new friend on the roof, the feeling of needing to be alone, to leave as to not hurt others, to forever be the boy in isolation always won over anything else.
The girl next to him on the rooftop sighed. This time around, the silence wasn't painful, the stillness wasn't torture.
All she had to say to him?
A meathead-themed monologue on why she ran away, on why she never stayed in the past. And she knows that cycle will continue this time around.
"All I can hope for is for me to get better, to find a place where I'm not so lonely, because I can't take much more," She says, idly strumming the strings of her guitar.
Shiho sits and listens, pushing down the ache and ignoring how much he relates to her.
"I'll have friends again, maybe a lover, two best friends, I won't be the one to leave like way back when."
This isn't the ache of familiarity, this is sympathy, Shiho tries to convince himself. It doesn't work.
—
Midnight, on the rooftop, the night after Miu left again.
Honami and Shiho sat side-by-side yet again, the tension palpable on the rooftop's edge.
Try as he might, he can't help but feel annoyed that she was here too.
She doesn't know her worth in this town, does she? She doesn't know that she belongs, she has a rightful place where she is.
Shiho does not.
She has a reason to stay.
Shiho never has, and never will.
She seems to only be happy when she's accepted by those assholes she calls her friends. Her face only shines around them, never him.
She's only happy when… when she's not with him.
He looks at her, pulling her away from the edge and leading her to the door.
"All I can hope for is for you to get better, cause I just can't take anymore."
So he hides where he can, away from her and her "friends", tears falling on his bass and his bedsheets.
They stain his bedsheets once again.
He's leaking tears over his bass once again.