#man i can't wait for the eventual inevitable thread where they throw hands

[heartbinders]

The Doc had better watch his back, he's in a mansion full of guys who could put him in his place.

     What's that, you say? Another tree-hugging nuisance that's gotten their diapers in a twist over the fact that evolution exists? Add'em to the pile, he's got warehouses full of the things.

[chimielie]

bitter ain't sweet

summary: Suna x F!Reader. a college fairytale in reverse

word count: 2.8k

cw: angst to fluff, [kuroo voice] stupid young people, hypothetical discussion of throwing up towards the end

a/n: one night i was so so miserable bc i just know suna is out there falling stupid in love with girls who don’t care about him and this was born

"Aren't you tired?" You say, amused, as a twenty-one-year-old Suna Rintarō stretches out his legs over the arm of your couch, his head resting in your lap.

"Nah," he shakes his head, his eyelids dropping shut and his muscles going limp when you thread your fingers through his hair. "I'm staying on that grind."

"Oh, aren’t you," you snort. He reaches up to flick your face, eyes still closed, and settles for waving his hand vaguely around in search of your face about five inches below it.

"Vulgar," he says. "Who's teaching you these things?"

"You."

"Ah. You shouldn't let me do that."

"Do what?" You cease petting his hair, and he wriggles petulantly upward, searching for your hand. You give in too easily and resume.

"Corrupt you," he says, all too happily. "Anyway, like I was saying, I can't decide where I should take her out Saturday."

With the subject change, you let your mind wander away from the man at hand. You pull your hands away from him, the only contact between the two of you the weight of his head in your lap, pressing against your stomach. He doesn't notice, too engrossed in parsing out his latest romantic encounter with his latest romantic interest.

You sigh and tip your head back as far as it can go. Oh, Rintarō. You've been long since corrupted, ruined for all men by one who falls asleep in his classes and passes them all anyway, who has a beautiful singing voice only so long as he's wasted, who takes you to movies and taught you to wait in the bathroom to watch a second one for free, whose glowing eyes see everything but you.

Rintarō doesn't have a type.

Sometimes she's tall, sometimes she's short, always she's enamored by him. He never really gets to know her that well before it's over.

He likes—adventure, likes flirting and fucking around, likes it when she does something he doesn't expect. Eventually, though, something has to shift. It can't be late-night driving and hot tub hickeys forever, as much as he wishes he could stay steady in the stream of change.

Sometimes he ends things. Sometimes she does. He's never really that cut up about it.

And there's always another girl.

Rintarō doesn’t want to break hearts; he’s not playing the dating field like it’s some kind of game. It’s just never... quite... right.

You’re right (and he knows you know it). He’s tired. He wants a cinematic story with a happy ending, in his own way, without frills or saccharine sweetness. He wants someone he won’t get tired of, someone who doesn’t idolize him, someone to love. Hands cold and blood pooling in his cheeks, Rintarō just wants.

You’re Rintarō’s best friend, one of his favorite people in the world; you make everything easy. Of course he’s sitting next to you, shoving popcorn in his mouth and staring at his television, when he figures it out.

“Your friend,” he says suddenly, interrupting the sopping, dramatic monologue of the man onscreen. “Your, ah, roommate.”

“What?” You glare at him, the tension of the scene broken.

“Is she single?”

Your expression shutters off. He’s never not been able to read your thoughts on your face. It’s disturbing. He’s not sure what he did wrong—his words, interrupting the movie, discussing her—but he wants to take it back.

“Yeah, she is.” You cock your head, still inviting an explanation. Now that he’s started, he can’t stop his momentum.

“Would you—do you think, uh—”

“She does hate you,” you say, dry to his ears. She hates him because she’s the one who checks in on you while he’s out, who watches you insist over and over again that you’re over him, who lets you lean on her when it all inevitably happens again. To Rintarō’s knowledge, she’s just a little ornery, someone who will fight for what she wants, someone whose next move he’ll never guess. “That might be a problem.”

“I’ll figure it out,” he waves it away, infuriatingly confident in his own subtle magnetism. “But only with your permission.”

“My permission.” You echo, sounding faraway. He’s handing you a big, round, waxy red apple here; watching your turmoil with serpentine eyes. Rintarō leans forward, takes one of your hands between both of his. The movie is long forgotten.

“Yeah. You’re my friend, and she’s yours. I don’t want to move forward with anything if it’ll make things weird between us.”

“Why would it make things weird between us?” You say, and he doesn’t have an answer, just a gut feeling. “Do what you want, Rintarō, don’t bother with what I think.”

“But I care what you think,” he says. “You’re right. Fucking around isn’t enough for me, anymore, you were right when you said I go after women I don’t really like. But I like her,” he says your name, and your heart feels overworked and suddenly you’re just exhausted. “I really do. I think I always have.”

You jerk your hand out of his. He jumps at the moment, at the outright fury that breaks over your face. His hands feel cold, again.

“If you care so much about what I think, then don’t,” you say, more bitterly than you want to. “Don’t ask her out, don’t try to convince her she’s the one. Don’t jump ship from dating women you don’t like to dating women who don’t like you.” You let out a broken laugh, and he’s not sure exactly where this is going but he’s sure it’s too late to salvage. “For the love of—do something good for yourself, Rintarō.”

You storm out, the blood rushing in your ears deafening his pleading, his desperate questions. He catches your wrist, and you look back at him with something awful in your face. The line between love and hate is thin. Your last words hang in the air like thunder rolling behind your lightning, and the echo sounds a lot like stop being selfish, Rintarō.

The door catches before it shuts, and Rintarō can’t bring himself to close it, ‘cause maybe you’ll come back. He sits down next to the opening and scrubs his hands over his face, through the strands of his hair. His head hurts. He feels sick. He fucked up.

You’re Rintarō’s literal girl next door, or you were, his freshman year in the dorms. Your assigned roommate was never home, and his was always kicking him out. He found a comfortable spot as the shade to your sunny disposition, spending countless afternoons dragging you outside to laze around on the green or pulling you out of the library to stock up on more poisonous energy drinks.

He’s selfish; he’s not stupid.

He's spent too many days almost lying across your dining table while you don an apron over your hoodie and shorts, whipping together incredible concoctions from a cookbook. He can't cook worth shit, but he loves to watch you do it, phone lifted in front of his face but eyes trained on you. He heckles you as you go. What do stiff peaks mean? That's dirty. I'm not eating this if the souffle comes out flat. How many syllables are in ratatouille, honey?

Every time, he says it's his favorite food in the world, right around the time you slide him a portion, because he knows he's an ass and he's sorry about it. And because you're amazing.

He knew that, too.

You have standards too high to ever want anything to do with him like that, know him too well to imagine that he could treat you like you deserve to be. At his bravest moments, he imagines that if he could prove to himself he could do it with another girl, one not as important as you, he could convince himself he could touch you without breaking.

At his most cowardly, he asks for favors you can't give.

Your laugh, that raw sound filled with anything but mirth, plays over in his mind and it feels like it’s sanding him down, tearing him into pieces. If Rintarō has nothing else going for him, he can make you laugh; he can bring the light into his sunshine girl’s face. It feels like he’s ruined that, too.

The ring of your doorbell is like a death knell. Once upon a time, when boys like Rintarō fucked over princesses like you, they would have been executed for their dishonor. Maybe he’ll go back to Hyōgo and ask Kita to bring back the old days.

There’s a scuffle behind the door; muffled words that he can’t understand.

“You shouldn’t!” He can hear your roommate say, frustrated and protective, and it hurts to think that she’s protecting you from him. He curls in on himself (further), wonders what he looks like in the fish-eye view of your door’s peephole. The stems of the flowers he’s holding crinkle in his grip.

Shit shit fuck you fucker, he thinks at himself.

The door opens a crack, and your eyes appear above the lock.

“What do you want,” calls your roommate, and his view of you disappears.

“Can you let me—” the sentence is aborted, but Rintarō can imagine your combination of hand gestures and mouthed words.

“Okay, okay,” she calls, and he’s more than a little relieved that she seems to be getting further away. He almost feels bad for it, too.

Mostly, though, all of his energy is focused towards feeling guilty about you. You pop the door open, leaning on it, and there’s not a smile on your face when you face him, just shadowy eyes and chapped lips.

“Hi,” you open the door for him, flannel pajama pants dragging on the floor, and he watches, eyes wide. “You wanna come in?”

He passes you the flowers, stammers through an explanation for them that doesn’t make any sense to his brain no matter how many words he adds on. You don’t say a word to help him, don’t complete his sentence to parse out his meaning, nothing. You just let him flail.

Eventually, he trails into defeated silence, and wishes he could be grateful that his own voice is no longer grating on his ears. It’s embittered by the way you take the flowers, expression unchanging, and turn, pretending to fluff them up and rearrange them.

He stares at your back, left open and vulnerable. You don’t have a reason to guard against him, he guesses, he left all his swords behind when he stabbed them through you today.

“I’m sorry,” you say, and glance halfway over your shoulder. Rintarō freezes.

“You should be free to date who you want. Or ask, anyway. Especially if that’s how you—how you feel.”

“No,” he says, and his tongue feels thick and gluey and stupid.

“Yes,” you argue. “I’m sorry I reacted—um. I let my f-f—” You can’t seem to finish the sentence, a long-held horror icing over your veins. Years of pining, collapsed into this one awful moment.

You drop your chin to your chest, stare down at the flowers. There’s an aphid crawling in one of the roses, descending into the heart of the bloom.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and it’s like a full-body sigh to finally say it right. You turn, and he’s right there, and it’s so easy to lean your head on his chest and let his heartbeat calm you.

Except his pulse is hammering in allegro, faster even than yours, and you have to wonder why unflappable Rintarō seems on the verge of panic.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I lied.”

“About what?” You lift your head, and his eyes are softer than you’ve ever seen them, his mouth barely turned down.

“Not your roommate,” he mutters, and you nudge him.

“Can’t hear you.”

“I—shut up, this is hard, okay?” His voice has no anger in it, though, and you can’t help the smile that tugs at your face, even as you brace yourself for god-knows-what. “I made a lot of mistakes. That were especially. Unfair. To you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” you say plainly. “Please, what the fuck?”

“I’m in love with you,” he says it like a curse, scrubbing his hands through his hair, eyes squeezed shut. You stand up, ramrod-straight, and he sways a little, practically unnoticeably, at the loss of your touch.

“You are not.” Your voice is firm but your eyes are watering. You want him out, you want him to go away. You want him not to use this, your most precious secret, against you. You want him to be better.

“I am,” he says. “And I’m sorry.”

“That is,” you struggle for words, and that distorted laugh escapes you again. “That is cruel. That’s not funny.”

“I’m serious,” Rintarō says, desperate, hands out and palms up. “I love you."

"I'm going to be sick," and you might be joking, but your hands are clutched over your stomach like maybe you mean it.

"Please don't," he says, and the familiar warmth of his touch is a balm on your clammy cheek. "I made mistakes because I was scared. That you were too good for me, that I'd fuck you over, just like I ended up doing. You're right, I think, I knew I was dating girls I didn't like or who didn't like me and I thought I couldn't face that with you. I know it sounds stupid, really stupid, but it's true, Y/N, please."

Wiry strands of Rintarō's hair are sticking to his forehead, his lashes clumping together, his mouth wobbling. You hate how many minutes you've spent staring at that mouth, the shape memorized through quick, platonic swipes of your thumb across it to clear smeared crumbs, through taking advantage of his love of side-eyeing other people and leaving you free to stare. That's your undoing—the stupid tremble of his barely pink, bitten lips, the ones you've always wanted to kiss until all of his snarky nonchalance has melted right off him, the way you know Rintarō couldn't fake that expression if he wanted to.

"And my roommate?"

"I'm an asshole," he says, with none of the usual wryness he uses when he's being charmingly self-aware. "I couldn't face my feelings for the only girl I couldn't have so I asked for the closest thing to it."

Maybe he could have survived like that, chasing a forever that could have existed if he weren't heartstoppingly, achingly, crazy in love with you. He could have watched from a safe distance as you fell in love with someone else, could have distracted himself while the girl he wanted found someone who was better for her.

"You could have me, though," you say, frustrated. He shakes his head.

"Nobody should have you. Nobody deserves you. Should just feel lucky you let them hang out with you." You huff out a laugh, but he sounds dead serious. You remember, early on, you'd gone on a couple dates, and Rintarō had always been there, sprawled over your couch, yawning, tawny eyes narrowed. Don't drop your standards for these losers.

"You know this kind of thing doesn't foster trust," your hands cover his, and there's a hopeful glimmer in those eyes that makes his breath pick up. "Kind of an ominous start to a relationship."

"I'm not romantic." He's a little afraid of the effect the words will have, but he needs to be honest with you, with himself. Even when it's ugly. Example: "You threatened to puke on me when I told you I love you."

You turn your nose up in the air, joy leaking through your expression, and the rub of your thumb over the back of his hands feels like forgiveness. His teeth tug on his lower lip, exposing the scar where he'd once had a lip ring that had driven you into a fever for all the months he'd worn it. You know then: you have history with the fucking mouth he has on him, and you're not done with it. "It was deserved."

"The worst part is that I wouldn't mind." He'd just worry that it got in your hair, that you weren't feeling good. God, he loves you so much it's grossing him out. "Are we...okay?"

"We will be," you say, and kiss him, because you've been wanting to since he first hid in your room from the chaos of your floor's common area. And then you kiss him again because he's really good at it. And then one more time, to bite his lip and hear him pretend he didn't whine when you pulled away. "You shouldn't call yourself an asshole, you know. I don't like it when people shit talk the people I love."

"Mm, it was deserved," he grins. "But if you really want it—you should make me."