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hiraethwa · 3 months

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one summer day

05 saturn i. where ushijima finds you outside your house

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pairing: ushijima wakatoshi x reader a/n: sorry for the late post, life has been hectic lately. enjoy the angst! inbox me if you want to be tagged - ave word count: 1.7k warnings: angst, childhood trauma, parental neglect/verbal abuse, past death of a family member song: saturn by sleeping at last

april, second year

you taught me the courage of stars before you left how light carries on endlessly, even after death with shortness of breath you explained the infinite and how rare and beautiful it is to even exist

ushijima is full on sprinting to your house. feet slamming on the pavements, heart thundering out of his chest. how had he not known?

he remembers the words you uttered to him last year, seemingly random. but you had phased out when he asked you about it, lost in your own thoughts. and you had seemed so genuinely disturbed that he decided not to pursue the topic, letting it go.

“my little sister was a cat whisperer too.”

even earlier today. you had been so out of it, missing the conversation that you were in, when normally you would be listening intently. when you were always listening, even when you were pretending not to hear the stupid things they talk about.

he had patted your hair, checking to see if you were alright, and you gave him the same smile as always. others may be fooled by you, but he knew something was amiss. he had brushed it off, even though his gut told him something was not right, thinking you may have been tired from adjusting to waking up early for school again.

and you had been so quiet tonight when he walked you home. once again lost in your own thoughts, seemingly not noticing the orange cat that the two of you would stop and pet whenever he walked you home. he had stopped to give the cat a little treat before noticing that you had continued on, leaving him behind. as if your body was there, but your mind was not. like a ghost of yourself.

“how is she?” semi had asked ushijima when he returned to the dorms, bringing your homework that was left behind in semi’s room. that is new. semi never asked that question before when he walked you home in the past.

you, with your smile that shined like a gem but you rarely showed people, only those closest to you. you, with your radiant kindness that stayed always like a quiet strength, even to those you were not familiar with. you, with your quiet caring, always making sure no one is left behind. you, with your warmth that didn’t expect anything in return.

to him, you were the moon with many faces. not always seen, but always present. somehow, you two shared a bond that communicated with action more than words. two quiet people who preferred to do rather than say. to keep things to yourselves rather than burden those around you.

ushijima had known that you were independent to a certain fault, but not like this.

his fists clench of their own accord, mirroring the feeling in his heart. did you felt alone? he could not imagine the pain that you were going through right now, alone in your empty house. how had he not known?

semi’s words replay in his head. “miyamura-senpai asked me to keep an eye on her before he left for college. today is the anniversary of their youngest sister’s death.”

“my little sister was a cat whisperer too.” was. was. was.

he knew he could not have guessed that, rationally speaking. but if he had paid more attention, looked between the lines, perhaps he would have known sooner.

he should have more than enough stamina to run to your house and back to shiratorizawa round trip easily, but he finds himself out of breath as he rounds the corner to your house. the windows were dark, as if all the light had been snuffed out. something in him sinks. his heart? he isn’t sure.

“miyamura!” he bangs on your front door, hoping you weren’t asleep. if he had looked, he would have seen you squatting under the miyamura hyousatsu on the gatepost.

“ushijima?” your voice calls out weakly from behind him. he whirls around sharply.

“miya–” he wants to scold you for being so stubborn. for not relying on your friends. you did not have to shoulder this grief alone, if he could help it. not now, not ever again.

but he stops himself. because in the darkness of the night, illuminated by the streetlamps, you look so small. so defeated. like you had been carrying around all this grief with you your entire life that your shoulders sagged with the weight. that you were never given the permission to bloom. you had always reminded him of spring, but he didn’t know.

he drops his bag to the ground, homework forgotten.

“what are you doing here–” your words are cut off mid-sentence as his feet moves towards you without thinking, arms wrapping around your shoulder tightly and engulfing you in a hug. i am here.

his head sits atop yours, almost a perfect puzzle. then he drops his head next to yours, hand cupping the back of your head as he holds onto you tightly. “y/n.”

he’s never said your name out loud before. it was always miyamura, or miyamura-san. so when it comes out of his mouth, a dam breaks in you. tears come uncontrollably as you fist his clothes in your hands, trying to hold on, when all you were doing is spiraling.

you sob. crying out loud. all that raging grief that was somehow miraculously locked away in you comes pouring out. your voice comes out broken and ugly as your chest heaves up and down violently. your pained wails of grief and loss a jumbled incoherent mess.

ushijima stays with you like that for what felt like forever, as your pain breaks his heart over and over again, but all he could do was hold you and remind you that you are not alone, repeating the three little words over and over. “i am here.”

when your sobs quiet down, and your breaths slow steadily with your hiccups, he pulls away to look at you. or at least, he tries to. your arms are locked tight around him, as if he would disappear the second you loosen your grip.

“y/n, i am not leaving you.” you grip stays constant, and then slowly, after a while, it loosens around him, but does not fall away. it looks like you are intent on not letting go of him. “c’mon.”

he leads you into your house awkwardly, shuffling around with you still locked onto him, turning on the lights as he goes, knowing the place like the back of his hand from how often they come over when your parents are away for work.

“i’m making you tea.” you reluctantly release him from your arms as he sets a kettle of water to boil, but keep a hand on his shirt for good measure.

ushijima picks out sencha from the variety of green teas you stocked for him after noticing that he had been bringing his own supply of tea to your study sessions. he brews the tea in a teapot, carefully proportioning out the amount of leaves. and in your cute cat painted cup, he fills it halfway, gently blowing on the hot liquid before handing it to you.

you keep silent, sipping at the tea. he doesn’t mind, ushijima thinks. you were both on the quieter side. he likes to think that friendships are not defined by how much in common that two people have, or how much they can talk about, but rather the comfort in the silence that falls when the conversation stops.

“can i stay the night?” it’s not that he doesn’t trust you to leave you alone. he doesn’t want to leave you by yourself, and from the way you are holding onto him, he thinks that you don’t want to be there by yourself either. he doesn’t want to think about what could have happened if he didn’t come back. if you hadn’t forgotten your homework in semi’s room. if semi hadn’t told him.

you nod, gratitude shining in your swollen eyes, long dried from how much you had cried. with the hand that is still on his shirt, you tug at him to follow you up the stairs.

he realizes you mean for him to sleep in your room as you wordlessly roll out the futon that he carried from the guest room next to your bed. you show him to the bathroom for him to change out of his wet tear-stained clothes and hand over the set of clean clothes that you retrieved from your brother’s room.

you seem adamant on holding on to him by the edge of his shirt as he walks into the bathroom, almost like you would stay there as he undresses. but then, reluctantly, you let go of the small corner of the fabric that you had a deathly grip on and shuts the door.

when ushijima walks out, he finds you in the same spot he left you in. your breathing is slightly labored, hands fidgeting on your sides. he reaches for your hand, relinquishing the bottom corner of his clean shirt to you. you seem to settle down with that gesture, content with his presence.

he tucks you into bed, sitting next to you while regaling you with a tale of stars that were infinite. your grip on his shirt remains until you fall asleep, the crease between your eyebrows finally easing. at that moment in time, you look so peaceful in your sleep that he could have been fooled. the quiet one who is always taking care of her friends, never expecting anything in return. now he knows the storm that brews under your skin.

a sudden wave of exhaustion hits him then, as he covers your hand with the blanket and crawls into the futon, falling asleep almost immediately.

when he wakes up the next morning, he finds you curled up next to him, hair mussed from sleep, your hand in his, fingers interlocked perfectly.

in the days afterward, life carries on as usual. you pretend like that night didn’t happen, so ushijima follows suit. he can be patient. but he sees the cracks in the mask you don ever so clearly, stars shining through them. and he wonders, what happened to you in that house?

more and more, he notices the tenseness in your spine, the invisible weight on your shoulders. the look in your eyes that feels far older than it should be. and he feels this urge in him to wrap his arms around you and protect you from all the hurt that the world has caused you.

and then one day, when he finds himself alone with you, he blurts out the words he has been thinking about.

“you don’t have to be the person in your house with me.”

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