જ⁀* to love me is to suffer me
( sae itoshi x fem! reader )
❋ a/n — pspspspspsp summoning the bllk fandom bc where'd yall go ?
❋ word count — 1.7k
❋ content — sae itoshi x fem! reader, military! sae, high school sweethearts, non-bllk au!, everyone is 18+ here!!, angst?, mention of death, idk, not proofread.
❋ synopsis — sae itoshi will leave and always come back, he promised. even if it's only in your dreams.
── .* knowin' i'm half of you
The day Sae tells you he’s enlisting, the cicadas are screaming.
It’s June, and the air is heavy — thick enough to drown in, thick enough to hold the sound of your heartbeat as he says it:
“I leave after graduation.”
He doesn’t look at you when he says it, eyes fixed on the horizon like the world ends somewhere past the trees. His voice doesn’t shake. It never does.
You want to ask why, but you already know.
Sae’s always had that look — like this town is too small, like he’s always reaching for something you can’t touch.
So you swallow the words and nod, even though your throat feels terribly raw.
A month, he says. You’ll have a month.
And so you live like a month is a lifetime.
You go everywhere together.
Down the cracked backroads that lead nowhere, to the field where the stars still bother to show up, to the corner store that smells like old gum and dust.
You laugh until your lungs hurt. You fall asleep under the same blanket on the hood of his car, whispering about futures you don’t really believe in.
You sneak out after curfew more times than you can count.
The streetlights paint everything gold, the pavement warm under your bare feet. You’re running down the street, wind in your hair, calling over your shoulder,
“Come on, Sae!”
He doesn’t move right away. He just watches — eyes tracing you like he’s trying to memorize you. Like if he blinks, you’ll be gone.
“You’ll get us caught,” he mutters when he finally starts walking.
“Then start running !”
And he does. He catches you easily, pulling you into his chest, both of you breathless and laughing. You look up at him, and for once, he’s smiling. Really smiling.
You think that if this is what forever feels like, you wouldn’t mind it.
The morning he leaves for basic, the sky won’t stop crying.
You stand on the train platform, hands gripping his sleeves like you can anchor him here. His uniform feels wrong — too neat, too sharp. Sae’s fingers curl around your wrists, steady, warm.
“You’ll come back, right?”
“Always.”
The word sits heavy in your chest. You believe it because you have to.
You press your face into his shoulder, trying to memorize the smell of him — laundry detergent and rain.
When the whistle blows, he steps away, and your world tears neatly in half.
He does come back.
Two months later.
He’s bulkier, quieter, sharper around the edges, but he’s still him.
When you see him walk toward you at the station, everything in you shatters and stitches itself back together in the same breath.
He kisses you before you can say anything. It’s short, clumsy, perfect.
“Told you,” he murmurs. “Always.”
You laugh and cry and hold him like you never want to let go again.
He stays for a week before his first deployment. You don’t waste a second.
You walk to the diner every morning, watch old movies on his couch, fall asleep in his arms with his heartbeat against your ear.
He tells you it’s only nine months this time.
Nine months. And then he’ll be home for Christmas.
“You’ll see,” he says. “You’ll complain about my ugly sweater again.” “It is ugly.” “And everyone but you loves it.”
You do love it, you just never told him. You love everything that has to do with Sae.
You love him more than anything you’ve ever known.
The waiting becomes a second life.
You write him letters every week, filling them with small things — the weather, your classes, how Rin’s growing taller and grumpier. You pretend he reads every word.
You laugh with your friends even when it feels wrong. You smile in pictures, you go to class, you live. But underneath, everything is him.
You’re made up of Sae — heart, bones, and breath.
There’s no part of you that doesn’t ache in his absence.
When December comes, you go home for break.
The Itoshi house looks the same — warm light spilling from the windows, Rin shouting from upstairs, Mrs. Itoshi setting the table like she always does.
You spend your days there, waiting.
You help Rin with homework, tease him when he rolls his eyes, tell yourself that soon, the door will open and Sae will step inside, brushing snow from his hair, saying, “Told you I’d make it.”
Every night, you check the news, the clock, your phone. You keep his texts unread just so you can pretend they’re new.
Christmas Eve morning arrives quiet and cold.
You wake up before everyone else, staring out the window, watching snow gather on the fence.
Your heart feels like it’s already running toward the door.
Then…a knock.
You don’t think.
You just run.
Your socks slide across the hardwood. You call out his name, half laughing, half crying.
“Sae?”
It has to be him. It’s Christmas Eve. He promised.
He always keeps his promises.
You pull open the door, breathless —
and stop.
It’s not him.
There’s a man in uniform, but not Sae. His hair is darker, his eyes older. There’s a folded flag in his hands.
You laugh, small and nervous.
“Oh…are you, um is Sae-?”
The man’s mouth moves. His voice is steady, practiced. You catch pieces
‘Itoshi Sae’, ‘combat zone’, ‘didn’t suffer’, ‘hero’.
But you can’t hear him.
The world goes fuzzy.
The snow is too bright.
Your knees hit the floor before you realize you’ve fallen.
You can’t feel your hands. You can’t breathe.
Someone is screaming — maybe Rin, maybe you.
When the officer leaves, the house is silent.
The air smells like pine and iron and something unholy.
You don’t remember much after that.
You remember hands holding you down when you tried to run.
You remember your mother’s voice on the phone.
You remember Rin’s sobs from somewhere far away.
And then — nothing.
Just the quiet.
Just the ache.
Days pass, or maybe weeks. You stop marking them.
You sit by the window sometimes, staring at the snow until it blurs. You trace the frost with your finger and whisper,
“You said always.”
It becomes a prayer.
It becomes a curse.
Spring comes. The snow melts. The world forgets.
You go back to class. You learn to smile again, to eat, to sleep.
You live, because that’s what you’re supposed to do.
But every year, when December rolls around and the lights go up, your chest tightens. The air smells like him again — cold and clean and gone.
You go back to the Itoshi house, sit on the porch steps, and look out at the street where you once ran barefoot, laughing. You can almost see him there, standing under the lamplight, eyes soft, saying,
“You’ll get us caught.”“Then run faster.”
You close your eyes and pretend.
Pretend that you’ll open them and he’ll be standing there, in his stupid sweater, snow in his hair, saying,
“Told you I’d come back.”
But when you do, it’s just the snow, falling soft and soundless, the world too quiet to hold him.
You whisper into the dark,
“Always.”
And the wind answers, faint and far away,
Always.
The snow outside your window glows faintly under the streetlights.
It’s quiet tonight — the kind of quiet that feels holy. The kind that used to mean Christmas.
You’re older now. Your hair has gone gray in places, your hands tremble when you hold the teacup.
The world has changed around you, outgrown you, but that little house on the corner hasn’t. It still smells like pinewood and cinnamon. It still hums when the heater turns on.
Some nights, you still set two plates out of habit.
You still hum the song Sae used to whistle while waiting for the kettle to boil.
You still dream of him — though lately, it’s getting harder to remember where the dream begins and where it ends.
You never married. Not because no one asked, but because every time you tried, you’d hear him in the back of your mind, laughing softly, telling you to stop overthinking.
You could never learn how to live without that sound.
It’s late when you finally drift to sleep, the glow of the streetlight painting soft gold against your walls.
And in your dream, it’s snowing again.
You’re standing in the middle of that old street — the one where you once ran barefoot, breathless, calling for him to catch up. You’re young again, happy.
The lights above you flicker gently, scattering halos of color across the fresh snow. Everything feels untouched, suspended in time.
You turn.
He’s there.
Just as you remember him — hair a little too long, eyes soft as dusk, that faint, knowing smile that never needed words.
The years fall away in a heartbeat. The ache in your chest breaks open and blooms.
You don’t speak at first. You just run to him. The snow crunches under your feet, your breath catches, and when you finally collide, it’s like gravity finding its center again.
His arms are warm. Real. Home.
You want to tell him everything — the birthdays he missed, the nights you waited by the window, the decades of learning how to breathe without him — but when he cups your face, all the words scatter like dust.
“I told you I’d come back,” he whispers.
Your eyes sting. You nod, choking on a sound that could’ve been a laugh or a sob. “You took your time.”
He smiles, just a little. “You waited.”
You press your forehead to his chest, and it’s like every winter before this one — the warmth of the lights, the smell of pine, the sound of his heart steady against your ear.
The world around you glows brighter.
The snow falls slower.
The air feels like promise.
He takes your hand, the same way he did at the train station all those years ago , and when you look up, there’s nothing but light ahead.
Not blinding. Not cold.
Just warm. Peaceful.
The kind of warmth that feels like coming home.
And as you step into it, you finally understand that he never really left.
He was only waiting for you to find your way back.
જ⁀* ©airybcby ❋ masterlists
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What. The. Fuck.
