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you shift nervously in the leather chair across from higuruma in his office. he listens intently as you describe your stalker's behavior - spilling your guts out to the man you think is your savior. it started so sweetly, you know? you tell him, the anonymous flowers left on your doorsteps, the admiring notes left on your car. it felt like an harmless secret admirer. like someone out there just got you.

until the behaviour started changing. the flowers became wilted and dead. the notes turned possessive, detailing what you wore that day, who you talked to. and it just started getting so private, like you're being watched for twenty four hours.

you hesitate but end up telling him everything, he's just so concerned about you, and he does seem like a trustable lawyer, so you didn’t want to hide any details from him. you tell him about the worst part, the thing that made you finally break down and call him. you talk about your underwear going missing from the dryer, only to reappear on your bed, stretched out, stained. you confess how you found photos of yourself on your desk. sleeping, sometimes even half naked. you tell him how you wake up feeling a little weird and there's a lingering smell like someone has been here. you're so scared, so vulnerable, and higuruma’s just nodding, taking notes, the perfect fucking professional. like he's the perfect picture of a concerned lawyer. "that's not good, when did you first notice the change in behavior?" he asks, he's so so methodical, scribbling notes on a legal pad.

suna x reader cw:suggestive, angst, mentions of flings, break up/situationships, nostalgia, mdni

what could have been. wc 1k

for the last months that you could remember, all you did was eat, breathe, and sleep suna rintarō. peacefully coexisting in each others world with a sort of ease akin to settled states. your hand in his hair, draped over the couch while some documentary played mindlessly on your television. late night drives where you sat up and stood through the sunroof, your hair blaring in the wind and a smile adorning your face, bright enough to convince you both that this was enough.

this arrangement had bloomed out of need. out of desire for something real, and suna was so easy. he was giving and kind, always attentive to you and seemed to be one of the only ones who could see you. it made sense, neither of you wanted anything all that serious, you were graduating at the end of the term and he was signing to a national team. to fill the space both of you craved, with no strings attached and no label to show for it. for a while, it was innocent.

stolen kisses behind closed doors, laughing with no fear of how ridiculous the smile looked on your face. shared meals and ice cream licked off of each others lips. shared beds and waking up far too late in the morning to do anything about the day, drowning in each others presence. you kept it on the low, while others asked you about your crush you only sighed and shook your head, telling them you had no such thing. suna’s teammates tugged at him and asked him to spill who the special girl was, to which he said he wanted to be single anyway. it was easier this way, that’s what you had both agreed on.

right? because there’s no reason for the strings holding your heart together to tug and wretch when you see suna tagged in pictures at parties where other girls pour alcohol into his mouth. there’s no reason for suna to care when you blow him off to go hang out with another guy, the same guy you’ll spend a week fucking the memory out of with him. but he doesn’t care, and neither do you, and no, you don’t talk about it. you let the weeks spin by and lull you into a comfortability that blinds you from the deadline that is your situation.

the thing about situational agreements is that they always fail. you pretend you don’t feel the way his hand fits in yours perfectly, you pretend it doesn’t affect you when he doesn’t ask about your plans after graduation, he pretends not to care when you purposefully don’t accept his follow request on his volleyball account for social media. it’s a weird dance you both partake in, because on lonely nights where you don’t spend time together, you picture a life in which you were both ready to commit. where this wasn’t out of the facade of necessity, that you had met him in the right circumstance. but the curiosity got the cat, and now you’re trying on your cap and gown in front of him while he sends over final contracts for the team he’s signing.

you don’t talk about it when he doesn’t come to your graduation. you didn’t ask him to. but your eyes still searched for him in the stands, especially when he knew your family wouldn’t be there. you don’t talk about it when you’re not there for his signing day, even when he told you he wanted a picture with you there. no, because the next time you see him it’s all said between desperate kissing and pressing each other into sheets on borrowed time. furrowed brows and begging, begging for more, because what you have isn’t enough and you both know it.

his bags are packed in his room, you sit on the edge of the bed and watch your feet dangle in the air. you hear him zipping his backpack, you pretend you don’t hear how loud your heart is.

“suna,” something pangs dangerously close to admission in your heart. he hums and pauses to look at you from across the room. “do you ever think about-“ you cut yourself off to bite your lip. it’s painful, but you think it would be worse if you would’ve said it anyway.

in his mind there’s one hundred things you could’ve said. one hundred things he could’ve replied with. but he doesn’t push, not when you don’t continue and mutter under your breath that it’s nothing. because that’s the thing about suna, about you, about you both, you don’t push the boundary line. you tip toe on the precipice of honesty and truth. but neither one of you dares to take the leap. so you spend that night lost on his mouth and begging for a goodbye worth crying over. it doesn’t come.

you stare at the instagram request months later. something aches inside your heart with the shape of his name. there’s so much left unsaid, and maybe it’s for the better. you pretend you don’t notice that he picks your favorite number as his jersey number. it’s coincidence. you pretend he doesn’t post nostalgic photos once a year, a few of which include candid photos of you from unsuspecting angles that no one would know was you aside from him, especially when they’re posted on your birthday. he pretends not to see the bubbles pop up in your text thread because he too, is sitting in waiting. he pretends not to see the profile view with your username on his professional account almost every day.

that’s the thing about the two of you. you exist liminally. in a timeline where neither of you had the courage to say what you really meant. your hearts intertwined and beating the rhythm that only belonged to the both of you for quite some time. now lost in the past of what you were. forever drowned to the sound of cowardice and fear that what you had, would never be found again.