he's trying so desperately to study for his upcoming mock trial that he ends up neglecting you ;( ( fluff, suggestive towards end ><) 2.3k
for the past three days, your law student boyfriend hiromi higuruma has not dared to drift his gaze from his textbooks for more than forty-five seconds.
you only know this because you’ve timed him — twice.
firstly, it was out of worry, but the second time was just out of spite.
attending law school has turned your boyfriend into an inhuman being, a sleepless beast assembled from caffeine, highlighters, and constitutional law.
the little apartment you had bought together no longer had the appearance of a home.
it seemed more like the site of an academic exorcism.
every accessible surface in your home is buried beneath casebooks.
sticky notes sprout from pages of his textbooks, the kitchen counter is simply decorated with empty coffee cups, multiplying at the horrifying rate of bacteria in a petri dish.
and in the middle of it all, higuruma sits by himself, gradually being consumed by his coursework.
he used to blink more often, you swear.
it all starts tuesday night.
exhausted, he returns home from campus, his messenger bag leaning on one shoulder, loose papers threatening to spill out from the zipper.
“hey,” he speaks wearily as he enters.
he barely gives you a kiss before heading over to the dining table, taking out books thick enough to be classified as lethal weapons.
“you studying again?” you ask.
“mock trial on friday, yeah."
“you’ve already spent six hours studying today, ‘romi…”
“aren’t you pushing yourself too hard?”
after the brief interaction, he spends the remainder of the night in academic hell.
you try to be encouraging at first, you truly do.
he highlights sections of text with the terrifying focus of a man defusing explosives as you bring over food. he murmurs legal jargon under his breath like incantations as you move to sit next to him.
occasionally, he would lightly squeeze your thigh whilst reading.
sometimes, he would draw you in for a precise twenty-five seconds before becoming sidetracked by some footnote.
the amount of attention you begin to derive from crumbs is just pitiful.
so, by wednesday, you’re beginning to despise the entirety of the legal system.
around midnight marks your first real attempt to win back your boyfriend.
sitting at the dining table, surrounded by enough paperwork to be considered environmental clutter, higuruma is annotating something with frightening intensity, glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose.
with the sole exception of the rain gently pounding against the windows and the sporadic sound of his pen scratching at paper, your apartment is sullen.
you leave your shared bedroom wearing one of his shirts and shorts so little they are essentially ornamental.
with every movement, the hem of the shirt brushes the tops of your thighs, the crisp cufflinks engulfing your hands. it hangs on you in an obscenely large manner.
which, normally, got a reaction out of him.
usually, there would be a pause before he takes a look at you.
usually, completely dropping whatever task was at hand and bringing you into his lap, letting out a deep, weary sigh, as if you were the only enjoyable thing he’d encountered that day.
not even a proper look, just a brief glance.
in fact, you freeze completely, just staring at him blankly.
before a distracted “hm?”
“didn’t even look at me…”
his gaze shifts upwards before finding its way back to his textbook almost immediately.
“baby… you barely even looked at me.”
“sorry, sweetheart… yeah— you look good.”
you just look at him with genuine disbelief.
hiromi higuruma used to praise you as if you invented happiness, but now he compliments you with the emotional intensity of a supermarket receipt…
you approach the table gently.
you push his chair back just a little by wedging yourself between his knees.
at last, it receives more of his focus, leaning back just enough to properly gaze up at you, his hand intuitively resting on your waist.
“trying to remember what my boyfriend looks like.”
he lets out a lethargic sigh of laughter.
“put down the book then—please?”
“you’re lucky i love you.”
then through your shirt, he plants a distracted kiss to your stomach, not even taking his eyes away from the casebook.
it’s lazy, but devastatingly affectionate.
you almost forgive him immediately out of sheer weakness.
instead, as he continues to read, you glare at the top of his head.
“y’know, i could probably flash you right now and you’d ask me to cite my sources…” you murmur.
it causes him to chuckle quietly.
low, fleeting, and enervated.
and oh, do you miss that sound...
because he’s been studying for so long, the air in your apartment is thick and stale, like the air in an overheated library.
you find him reading case reports with the disturbed look of a man seeing eldritch horrors on the couch, surrounded by colour-coded notes, his left leg bouncing restlessly.
which, to be fair, could just be tort law.
with a sigh heavy enough to be categorised as performance art, you fall theatrically over the couch next to him.
and even with a louder sigh, nothing.
you gently turn to look at him.
“would you even notice if i just died right now?”
“’course i would,” though very monotone.
you raise an eyebrow. “that sounded fake.”
“sorry…” distracted pause. “well, you’d make noise, wouldn’t you?” still furiously clicking the keys on his laptop.
you huff, looking more intently.
in all honesty, it’s simply unjust how attractive he looks right now — something about his exhaustion that makes his features a lot softer. his sleeves are pushed clumsily to his elbows, his coarse black hair a little dishevelled from the stress of it all, his brows furrowed in concentration as he reads.
you’re simultaneously madly in love and irritated with him.
a deeply unfair experience, by the way.
you cautiously reach over and take his glasses off his face.
his eyes instantly flicker towards you. “what are you doing?”
“can still see, sweetheart…”
“give ‘em back, sweetheart.”
at that, his countenance shifts, inconspicuous and small enough to go unnoticed by most, though not by you.
his eyes linger on your face for an excessively long while before he lets a quiet exhale through his nose.
“you’re distracting me, sweets — please?”
after taking his glasses captive, you sit up a little.
“you’ve been ignoring me for days, ‘romi.”
“i haven’t been ignoring you, darling — now, can i plea—”
“really? what colour shirt was i wearing yesterday?”
you point accusingly to disrupt the silence. “exactly—”
“ah— it was…” he holds his head in his hands, thinking, before looking back up at you. “grey?”
you gaze at him. “it was white. tch—”
a gasp of betrayal escapes your lips.
and at that moment, he genuinely smirks. it’s brief and clearly worn-out, but it’s still genuine enough to make you feel all warm inside.
this time, he leans in, speaking more softly. “i’m sorry, i just really need to focus, honey. we’ve spoken about this.”
additionally, higuruma’s apologies are always so sincere they just feel painful.
and despite your best efforts, your displeasure is quick to wane.
you fuss against his ear. “you owe me attention.”
a soft huff of laughter. “seems legally inaccurate.”
you lift your hand to lightly slap his cheek, to which he catches your wrist mid-air. what an infuriating man…
his focus abruptly shifts away from you once again when his phone buzzes with a notification from one of his classmates.
you collapse backward against the soft comfort of the couch cushions dramatically.
higuruma reaches out blindly to touch your ankle as he responds to the message, giving it a light squeeze as an apology.
which works surprisingly well.
you think you’re going crazy by the time thursday night rolls around.
his law mock trial is scheduled for tomorrow morning, indicating that your lover has clearly developed an almost supernatural level of intense intellectual concentration.
his side of the bed is empty when you wake up at one o’clock in the morning, again.
oh, was it finally friday morning?
well, as you follow the dim light towards the living room, you find that he’s sat cross-legged on the floor, open textbooks standing tall around him like a scholar in a renaissance painting:
other than being noticeably even more sleep-deprived, his tie had been forgotten somewhere across the room, hair a mess, his brows had long formed a stress crease deep enough to split his expression in two. the image only makes your chest ache a bit.
this time, he looks up right away, concerned more than anything.
“sorry, baby. did i wake you up?”
you stay still for a moment, checking the clock, it's sleek hands rotating with a soft click.
“i know you have your mock trial thing at nine, but can you please come to bed?"
“i need another hour, baby, ‘m sorry.”
you laugh once, though not because anything is funny, but more so because you’ve heard this exact phrase an uncountable number of times this week.
“you said that when i went to bed three hours ago.”
you watch him for another moment, and you can visibly notice how miserable he is.
well, sometimes loving higuruma is like witnessing somebody gradually immerse themselves in responsibilities whilst maintaining their composure, constantly insisting that they’re “fine.”
you approach him cautiously.
then you drop straight into his lap without uttering a word.
and absolutely everything comes to a halt, pen stopping in the middle of a note.
his arms instinctively grab a hold of you, one firmly around your waist, the other resting on your thigh.
finally, he’s looking at you properly.
“hi, sweetheart… you okay?”
with your arms wrapped around his neck, you sink securely against his chest, the room falling silent.
exhaustion clings to him up close, faint shadows underneath his eyes. like twisted wire, stress ran through his shoulders.
your beautiful, overburdened boy.
from under your hoodie, his hands gently brush across your back, warm and grounding, as if touching you serves as a reminder that he exists outside the weight of his coursework.
after a minute, he looks down at you lovingly. “have i really been that bad?”
his expression instantly changes to one of comprehension instead.
“alright— silly question,” he whispers against your hair.
“basically threw myself at you twenty-four seven…”
his mouth faintly twitches.
“so why didn’t you care…?”
his gaze quickly dips near your lips before rising back up to your eyes once more.
somehow, his voice sounds lower when he talks.
“because if i let myself be distracted by you, i wouldn’t be able to study. you wouldn’t want me to fail my mock trial in a couple hours, would you sweetheart?”
your irritation fractures right away.
“no… still really annoying though.”
with a weary exhalation, his forehead softly meets yours.
he apologises again, this time with a sincere gentleness, raw and genuine in a manner exclusive to his own.
“i didn’t realise how absent i’d been, my love.”
you melt a bit, against your will obviously.
you mutter, “my boyfriend abandoned me for the legal system…”
a small rumble of laughter. “don’t be dramatic.”
now that he’s finally stopped studying, finally being able to breathe, the tightness in his shoulders releases underneath the feather-light touch of your palms.
“you’re so warm,” inhaling your scent.
you giggle slightly. “yeah, that’s how people work, ‘romi—”
and that sound again — the sound that always feels unjustly personal.
you slowly come to the realisation that he’s now finally paying close attention to you, attention no longer divided between heaps of textbooks and study material alike, but all yours.
it’s as if he’s only now just realising how much he yearns to hold you, fingers flexing at your waist.
he smiles softly against the curve of your ear. “you really spent your days trying to get my attention?”
“don’t be stupid — obviously…”
“i performed psychological warfare just to tell you, hiromi!”
at that moment, a genuine grin appears.
beautiful enough to knock the air out of your lungs.
continuous apologies. “i’m really sorry, honey.”
“don’t be sassy with me, baby.”
you tut before carefully running your fingers through the hair near the nape of his neck, slowly.
his gaze momentarily drifts back to the pile of textbooks encircling the both of you, then back to you.
his inner conflict lasts for five seconds before letting out a long exhale, shutting the casebook that lay next to him.
the soft thump of the book closing reverberates through your apartment like heavenly intervention.
your eyebrows lift. “wow, hiromi, you’ve changed.”
his hand slides beneath your thighs, standing up from the floor and raising you properly against him before you can even think—
he carries you back to your shared bedroom, lightly kicking the door open with the point of his toe.
“i think my angel has been extremely patient with me, don’t you think?”
“i think i really owe her attention.”
your arms instinctively tighten around his neck.
“what kind of attention?”
in the faint light of your apartment, he meets your eyes before smiling.
“well, the one that doesn’t involve constitutional law, but i do just want to love you. that okay, honey?”
you don’t even have the chance to respond before he’s laying you down on the bed.
a/n: is this basically the same thing i uploaded yesterday...? uh... no! whaaat?
ugh i just love him sm ;3