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tojiwrd · 10 months

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the consequences of the voice in your head ; toji fushiguro

pairing toji fushiguro x fem!reader

summary it was easy to love toji but, sometimes, it was difficult to make peace with loving toji.

word count 4k

content warnings angstyyy, hurt/no comfort kind of, open ending kind of, grieving, self-loathing, comparing, lots of overthinking. toji's a good good dad, megumi's a lil ice hockey kid, naoya and toji r civil and almost friendly cousins in this

Breaking habits was difficult. Waking up on a Monday at seven in the morning was difficult. Love was difficult. These were all things you knew, and they always lingered in the back of your mind ready to put their claws into any thought that questioned why? Daybreak came and went everyday, sunlight got chased away by silver streams of moonlight, and these thoughts—no, facts—remained asleep, waiting for the moment to pounce onto the occasional question that flitted across your mind: why was love difficult?

You knew there was no true answer; there was no prose you could read written by a qualified doctor on WebMD that told you exactly why love was difficult. It just was. You could ask friends, family, and even strangers on the street and they could give you an answer that, in their own circumstance, ranging from calm to increasingly tumultuous, was true. But you could never get an answer for yourself from anybody but yourself. Perhaps breaking habit was difficult for Toji Fushiguro because he had learned that love—not the fleeting kind that you have when you meet a one-night-stand and immediately feel like the stars had aligned that night for the two of you, only to feel near to nothing for them until they turn into a silly anecdote—could only happen once, with one person.

For you, breaking habits was difficult because when you were thirteen, your friend handed you a cigarette and said once you get used to it, it’s akin to the feeling of laying on your bed and the duvet is warm to the bone on a chilly day.

Waking up on a Monday at seven in the morning was difficult for you probably because as soon as your eyes flickered open, you would see Toji staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows with a rueful look on his features. The first time you’d seen this image was the morning after you, Toji, and little Megumi Fushiguro moved into your new place. It brought a smile to your face, the kind of smile that is only worn by a person when they admire somebody when they aren’t looking. That was until he opened his palms and stared down at his fingers, right hand coming up to softly brush the empty ring finger. He’d bit his lip slightly, and you just about missed him from seeing you awake, before he reached down to the pocket of his plaid blue sleep shorts you’d gifted him and pulled out a ring—the ring, you’d realized—and placed it on the empty finger he was focused on.

You had beat yourself up over witnessing him having a moment as private as that for the next week without his knowledge, but there was truly no way to bring it up to him afterwards organically.

You could say, “Hey! I actually saw you put on your ring from your last marriage on your finger that morning when you thought I was asleep.” But that would, in nearly every case, not go down well.

Toji had told you, though, why this had grown into a Monday morning ritual. Well, he didn’t exactly tell you that he woke up a few minutes before you to reminisce about his late wife and their marriage, but you’d put the pieces together like you always did. Apparently, Toji’s late wife would always wake up early on Monday mornings and prepare an otherworldly breakfast for herself, Toji, and Megumi; she claimed it started off the week right, and it always made four-year-old Megumi more inclined to wake up on Mondays. In hindsight, perhaps it was silly that you clung onto that little tidbit Toji had told you in passing when Megumi brought it up, but when you saw him wake up on Monday mornings and start his day off by playing a video reel encased in his mind of Megumi’s mother, Megumi, and himself, it was difficult for you to feel comfortable by your presence around him on Mondays. Still, it was hardly Toji’s fault for missing somebody he’d spent years with who got taken away from his life so suddenly.

You were just overthinking like you always did.

A Thursday in late June marked one year since you had been living with Toji. A year of going to sleep next to him and waking up with him there. It was a silly anniversary, and you weren’t going to mention it for it would most likely garner confused looks from the Fushiguro’s, but you still decided to cover the dining table with a variety of well-enjoyed foods between the three of you.

There was a small photo-frame that stood in an arbitrary corner of the table where nobody sat. It was a small, old digital camera picture of you, Toji, and Megumi on a lake and camping trip your friends had dragged the three of you to. It was simple; Toji was sitting on a log, five-year-old Megumi between his legs who grinned wildly with a s’more in his hand, and you sat next to Toji with your head leaning on his shoulder. Your friend had gifted it to you on a random Tuesday, and when you smiled so wide at her, she embarrassedly brushed you off and said, “The person who printed this said there’s a discount if I get two pictures printed for the price of one. I just thought the picture of me and my husband would look good with you and your… Toji.”

Neither Toji nor Megumi had seen the picture. Well, not until the moment Toji walked in with a sweaty Megumi wearing his junior league hockey uniform. Megumi was babbling about the delicious smell until he saw the new addition to the table (after cooing at the takoyaki from his favorite restaurant and telling his father he knew he could smell it while they pulled into the driveway) and picked up the frame with his growing, stubby fingers.

“Is this from Lake Ashi?” he asked excitedly, eyes tracing every corner of the picture as if he was recounting the exact moment it was taken. When you nodded, he said, “I had such a good time there!”

You smiled, and ruffled his dark locks before retracting your hand and saying, “Go shower!”

He stuck out his tongue at you before he ran upstairs, saying something about how nobody can start eating until he’s back.

You walked to Toji who was watching the scene play out from the other end of the table and wrapped your arms around his neck. “Hey, how was your day?” You grinned slightly as your body melted against his frame, a strange sense of euphoria enveloping you even though you’d only been apart for a day.

His arms wrapped around your waist and he bent down slightly to peck your lips. “Thrilling. I watched a bunch of seven-year-olds run around ice with sticks longer than them.”

“Sounds like a fun time,” you replied, nuzzling into his chest, right against the soft thumping of his heartbeats.

“What’s the good food for today?” he asked, stepping away from your hold and scanning the dishes on the table with a puzzled expression.

You smiled teasingly. “Why? Do I not make good food everyday?”

He snorted, and you concluded that the way he looked at you then was with love. The usual deep set of his brows were relaxed as he reached over to you and flicked you on the forehead. Lovingly. “I cook all the meals because the last time you tried, there was a fire alarm and the entire building had to evacuate.” He paused, staring at you while you opened your mouth to stop him from continuing. He beat you to it, though, by saying, “At four in the morning, too.”

“Me and Megs wanted a late-night-snack,” you argued playfully, slapping his bicep.

“That you ended up getting in a 24 hour convenience store after running the entirety of the fire department and residents wild.”

“Semantics,” you brushed him off. Walking over to the plates, you started scooping portions and placing it on the plate until you remembered Megumi’s demand.

Your body unconsciously carried you to the photo frame and you picked it up, smiling slightly. Toji walked to stand beside you, his eyes uncharacteristically focused on the slightly overexposed picture. His fingers reached to pull it out of your hands and you didn’t stop him when he walked to the small ledge above the (fake) fireplace to place it between the small collection of Megumi photographs. It was a small gesture, but it was more than you could ever ask for.

Your mind skipped over the fact that all the other photos on the ledge were either taken by Megumi’s mother (five of them were) or had her in them holding Megumi (two of them did). Although whenever your friends had come over to your place, they’d cautiously asked you if you truly are OK with keeping pictures of his late wife in your living room and you’d always said that you were perfectly fine with it. Honestly, it was never your intention to erase her from their lives because, after all, she was Toji’s wife and Megumi’s mother. There was no erasing her, and that was fine whether or not you had a place in their lives.

When you came home from work the next evening, the house was relatively quiet.

You walked into the living room, feet aching from having to wear short-stump heels but, still, heels all day. Every single day at your job as an editor for a magazine made you question whether or not you truly had the skill to walk around heels, even short-stump ones. But once again, the feeling of taking them off with delicacy because you were afraid the rough insides would scrape the parts of your skin your sock didn’t cover gave you a feeling of triumph. You were convinced that the day you come home without the visceral urge to shred the dark pieces of footwear into pieces would be the day you could claim you were invincible.

You didn’t call out to Toji because you figured he was probably with Megumi, shopping and whatnot, doing simple father-son activities. He hadn’t texted you all day, and the little demon slithering through your thoughts wanted you to overthink (like you always did) and go berserk. But you had learned to tame that little demon (severely distracting yourself by doing anything and everything).

When you had changed out of your work clothes, showered under a moderately warm stream of water, and thoroughly washed your face to stave away the office particles, you sat down on the couch expecting a text from Toji. It was nine in the evening, and it was dark outside. He had never gone this long in a day without dropping you a text, even if it was just a word, and you weren’t wrong for expecting it. Breaking habits was difficult.

When you scrolled through your missed notifications and scrolled past your friends’ messages, making a mental compartment in your mind to reply to them later, you were surprised to find that Toji had, in fact, not texted you but Naoya Zen’in had. Toji’s cousin. It was simple, short, lighthearted, and it read:

missed you today!

It could have been Naoya texting the wrong person (it wouldn’t be the first time) but an itch in your mind told you it wasn’t.

It was simple, short, and lighthearted. You were surprised at how quickly the bubbles appeared on his side of the chat; you barely had time to exit the screen before he’d replied:

the stupid zen’in dinner is boring without you there to annoy toji

he said you were feeling sick tho. feel better

It was rude not to reply, but it was ruder for you to find out this way. Find out what, exactly? That Toji had simply not wanted you to go to the once-in-a-while Zen’in family dinner you had been to a grand total of one time. That was one incident you always pushed to the back of your mind—something you couldn’t do with the Monday morning incident(s) because they always played out in front of you, never missing a week—because if you thought about it too much, you would end up shattering your entire heart and it would all be your own, unstoppable mind’s doing.

Toji wasn’t the one to invite you to dinner last year. Surprisingly, the callous cousin who had manifested in the form of a breaker of peace today was the one to invite you. Your boyfriend had his jaw clenched throughout the entire interaction, and you were sure it was because Naoya wasn’t meant to meet you. You had been at his apartment while Megumi was in school to spend time with him when Naoya burst into his cousin’s home through the spare emergency key Toji had hesitantly given him. It started with Toji yelling at his cousin that it is actually rude to barge into someone’s house without knocking and that the rule applied even if they were cousins and yes, it still applied after they had come closer after being distant and despising each other their entire childhoods. It progressed to you making tea for Naoya that burnt his tongue and Toji telling him that you are no good with anything that heats up. It ended with Naoya bringing up the dinner and how he, too, was introducing his girlfriend (now his wife) to the family and it would be lovely for you to be there, too. He’d said something about divided fire.

The dinner itself was what you could call pleasant. You met his family and they were as civil as they could be surrounded by many people who are related to them. The entire time, though, Toji was bouncing his leg up and down and brushed off your hand when you tried to stop him.

You do remember his mother had said something to you that ticked Toji off, and it wouldn’t take a mastermind to figure out why.

“You’re the perfect girl to have as a daughter-in-law, dear.”

Truthfully, you hadn’t realized that Toji would see her words and level its severity higher than you would. That was why after the longest hand of the clock ticked thrice and his chair scraped against the floor when he stood up and walked away wordlessly, you were shocked.

You assumed that, today, Naoya had taken his wife to the Zen’in dinner. You could have texted her to confirm, but you knew. And you weren’t sure if you had any right to be mad at Toji over this.

When you walked over to the television next to the (fake) fireplace, you noticed something missing. You knew it was missing because despite it only having been a day, you had looked at the picture of the three of you on that ledge for so long the night before when Megumi was fast asleep and Toji was immersed in a book and the image of the scene had been ingrained into your mind. It was somewhere beside the habits, Mondays, and love compartment.

The picture wasn’t there.

And the only trace in the living room of you being a part of Toji and Megumi’s life had vanished as soon as it materialized. It was just a picture, but it was the first one that you had brought out in the house. Toji was the one to keep it between the other pictures, and he was the one who took it off, too. You understood second-thoughts, and you knew he probably had strong feelings about it but it still hurt. It was akin to being handed candy as a kid then having it taken away from you after the first bite.

You had been heartbroken before, but the way your heart sank into a cold abyss was a feeling you had never experienced before. You weren’t sure if this was your heart breaking or the tendrils of a boyfriend-girlfriend argument sowing its way into the universe and you were just the first to realize it. It had been a year and a day in this apartment you were convinced turned into a home over that time. A year and a day since you and Megumi began collecting stickers from the different stores you went to and stuck to the corners of his whiteboard. A year and a day since you and Toji woke up with each other in the same room after a night of you tossing and turning, coming to almost-there consciousness when Toji would steal the blanket back from you and pull you into his warm embrace because you had a tendency to hog it.

The door clicked and you weren’t sure when you had gone back to the couch and began wordlessly staring at the ledge. You weren’t sure when this house stopped feeling like home for you, despite your best efforts to make it one. You weren’t sure if it ever was because there were no pictures of you, Toji, and Megumi in the living room.

You barely noticed Megumi coming towards you, pressing a slobbering kiss against your cheek and mumbling, “So tired. Gonna go to bed now. Goodnight.”

When Toji was the only presence you could feel—not see, because you were sure that seeing him would ruin you when you were in this state—in the room, you continued questioning whether or not you could get upset at him over this.

So, you said simply, “I haven’t had dinner yet.”

You heard him sigh softly. When he came to sit next to you and say, “Sorry, love. ‘Gumi’s practice ran late.” You knew Toji, so you knew he probably thought it was overkill to use his son for this lie.

It was like a time bomb was ticking, and you were the time bomb.

“Are you okay?” he asked, and he was sweet. It made you think, for a hitch of a moment, that he cared. And you knew he did. Care, you mean. Just not in the way you had convinced yourself he did. It might’ve been your fault because you always saw Toji as your boyfriend when, in harsh, world-turning reality, Toji was just your boyfriend.

You have had many boyfriends over your lifetime, so what prompted you to believe Toji was anything more serious? Just because Toji came with a past baggage that weighed just about what you could help him carry and an adorable, hockey-loving seven-year-old kid? Because he moved in with you? People move in together all the time. Hell, you lived with a girl you only spoke to when you had to make a cleaning schedule for the room back in university for a year.

“No,” you replied truthfully.

In that moment, you were scared of how this interaction would end but you were more scared of how the words you carefully locked away in your mouth had been tampered with by some universal force and were just about to come out.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. You finally turned around to look at him, and you didn’t realize you had stared over every inch of his face, as though memorizing it to a tee. He seemed to realize that, too, because his fingers fished for your hands and suddenly your hands were warm. Under his touch.

“I haven’t had dinner.” You were sure the words would come rampaging out of your mouth, ready to strike blows at Toji where it hurt, but you were reduced to a mere shell within now and the minute you saw Naoya’s text.

“Baby?” he asked and it hurt. “D’you want me to make you something? I can. Whatever you want.”

“How was dinner?” you asked, and you wanted to make yourself believe you weren’t waiting for a ‘ha, got you!’ moment, but you weren’t perfect.

“We just stopped by the convenience store to get some food.” You hated that he was lying because if you didn’t know the truth, you’d believe him. Toji, you realized, was good at lying.

“Naoya texted me,” you said, shaking your head as if you were trying to get rid of any thoughts.

“What?”

“Naoya texted me. Said he missed me at dinner.” At this point, you knew Toji could see the cracks in your facade.

Toji didn’t reply for a moment, and you felt like you both were blessed with the silence you needed for a moment. You weren’t prepared, you didn’t have a set of bullet points you wanted to discuss with him like you usually did when you were at odds. No, this time you were discussing everything you always omitted from those bullet point lists; they were off-the-table because you knew they would do more harm than good. They would break the cycle of a comfortable relationship.

“I didn’t think you wanted to go,” he said, sighing as he squeezed your hands lightly.

You exhaled sharply. “Please don’t lie, Toji.”

“I mean it—”

“Please don’t lie.” If you weren’t aware of Megumi upstairs, you probably would’ve raised your voice an octave higher. Just because you felt like you had to. But as you pleaded with him, your words came out soft, delicate, and a complete contrast to the red, hot, fiery anger taking space through your veins.

“I didn’t want you to go,” he admitted.

You had never been stabbed, but you were sure this is close to what it would feel like. “Why?” you croaked out.

“My family, they’d start asking about when we’ll get married and… yeah. Jus’ didn’t want the hassle.”

“Will we?” You didn’t think before you spoke.

“What?”

“Get married.”

“What?”

You changed the topic swiftly because truly, you didn’t care about getting married to Toji. As long as you had him and he had you. “Where’s the picture, Toji?”

“What picture?” Surprisingly, he sounded almost OK with talking to you and didn’t curl into himself like he usually did whenever topics such as this almost arose. Almost, because they never completely did.

You felt like you were breaking an unwritten rule.

“You know what picture.”

“I kept it in the room, Y/N,” he said, sounding as though he was treading carefully. As though you were a hibernating bear, ready to pounce.

This shouldn’t be hard. Love shouldn’t—

“Why?” you whispered, closing your eyes as you felt the salty wetness build up.

He didn’t respond, and you weren’t patient.

“Why, Toji?—”

“Because it didn’t belong there.”

You wanted to laugh. He might as well have kicked you and knocked the air out of your lungs because the latter did happen. You found it hard to breathe under his stare, his nostrils flaring in annoyance the way they did.

You didn’t want to ask why, because you knew why. You understood why, and you wished you could be blind to human emotion, to human flaws and errors because it would be a lot easier to walk away from this with the feeling that he was wrong and you were right.

When you stood up, your joined hands pulled away, too. If you weren’t as cynical as you were in that moment, you probably would’ve thought it was symbolic. Because a part of you was slowly pulling away from him, too. And love can be hard, you realized and accepted once again, but it doesn’t have to be dealt with all the time.

You weren’t sure if you could continue fighting constantly with the thoughts inside your head just so you could feel that Toji is here because he wants to be, and he’s not doing it while comparing you to his late wife. It was difficult to feel you being pushed away from him and his son’s life, even though it happened in the form of a photo frame from a small printing store. But maybe, just maybe, love shouldn’t be harder than you can handle.

“Do I belong here, Toji?” you asked, a sad smile forming on your lips.

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