suna never had the heart to accept his feelings, now you’re drifting further apart.
c&w: suna rintarō x f!reader — angst
the silence in the room didn’t feel like peace; it felt like the breath before a plunge, heavy and humid with the things neither of you were brave enough to name.
he was slouched at the edge of your bed, the familiar curve of his spine cutting a sharp silhouette against the dim light of your desk lamp. suna always looked like he was vibrating on a different frequency—detached, observant, a predator disguised as a bored teenager. but tonight, the stillness was jagged. it was the kind of quiet that precedes a landslide.
“atsumu talks too much,” he said, his voice a low, clinical rasp that made the hair on your arms stand up. he didn’t look at you. he was staring at his own hands, his long fingers twitching against the fabric of his jeans.
“he was just being a friend, rin,” you replied softly, twisting the hem of your oversized hoodie—his hoodie, though you’d worn it so often the scent of his detergent had long since blended with yours. “i’m your friend, too. i just… i wanted you to know i’m happy for you. if there’s someone you’re falling for, you don’t have to hide it from me. i can help. i can support you.”
you meant it to be a bridge. you meant it to be the ultimate sacrifice—offering to hold the hand of the man you loved while he chased someone else. instead, it was the spark that hit the kerosene.
suna’s head snapped up. his eyes, usually hooded and lazy, were wide and burning with a terrifying, sickly intensity. there was no boredom there now. there was only a raw, bleeding frustration that looked suspiciously like grief.
“support me?” he let out a sharp, ugly laugh that felt like a slap. “you want to support me? you think this is some high school drama where you give me advice on how to win someone over? you’re so incredibly naive that it’s actually exhausting.”
the shift in his tone was so abrupt your breath hitched. “i was just trying to be nice—”
“that’s the problem.” he spat, standing up so quickly the bed frame groaned. he paced the small distance of your room like a caged animal, his shadows stretching long and distorted across the walls. “you’re always so ‘nice.’ you’re so predictably, suffocatingly kind. do you have any idea how grating that is? to have you hovering around, smiling, acting like you understand everything when you don’t understand a single goddamn thing?”
you recoiled as if he’d physically struck you. “rin, what are you talking about? i’ve stayed by you for years. i’ve been the one you call—”
“and that’s the mistake,” he interrupted, his voice dropping to a lethal, flat hiss. he stepped into your personal space, looming over you until the air felt thin. “i let you get too close. i let you think you were some essential part of my life. but looking at you right now? seeing you stand there with that pathetic, concerned look on your face? it’s infuriating. you’re becoming a nuisance. you’re a distraction i never asked for and a burden i’m tired of carrying.”
the words were like needles, precise and meant to draw blood. you felt the sting in your throat, the familiar burn of tears you refused to let fall. “if i’m such a burden, why are you here? why do you come over every night? why do you let me wear your clothes?”
suna’s expression flickered. for a second, the mask of cruelty slipped, and you saw something devastating underneath—a desperate, starving sort of longing. he reached out, his hand hovering near your face, his thumb grazing the line of your jaw with a tenderness that felt like a betrayal.
“because you’re so fucking beautiful, it’s painful.” he whispered, the compliment sounding more like a curse. his eyes traced your features with a hunger that made your stomach flip. “because when the sun hits your hair, i lose my train of thought. because you have this way of looking at me that makes me feel like i’m the only person in the world, and i hate it. i hate that i notice the way you breathe when you’re falling asleep. i hate that i know exactly how you take your coffee. it’s a sickness.”
he pulled his hand back as if he’d been burned, his face contorting into a sneer of self-loathing.
“but don’t flatter yourself,” he snapped, the venom returning. “don’t mistake my words for love. all it is, is annoyance. you’ve worked your way under my skin like a parasite, and now i can’t even think straight. you’re so busy playing the ‘best friend’ that you don’t even see how much you’re ruining me. you’re a shallow, mediocre girl who happens to have a face i can’t stop looking at, and i’m disgusted by how much time i’ve wasted on you.”
the room went cold. the ‘crush’ atsumu had mentioned—the one suna was so terrified of, the one that was ruining his composure—it wasn’t some stranger. it was the person he was currently trying to tear to pieces. he was so terrified of the depth of his own devotion that he was choosing to burn the garden down rather than let anything grow.
“get out, rintarō.” you whispered. your voice was small, cracked.
“gladly,” suna said, his eyes hard as flint. “i should have done this months ago. you’re not special. you’re just a habit i need to break. stop wearing my things. stop looking for me in the halls. i’m done pretending this friendship is worth the effort.”
he turned on his heel and walked out, the door clicking shut with a finality that echoed in the hollow of your chest.
you didn’t move for a long time. you simply stood in the center of your room, the silence now a physical weight pressing against your lungs. eventually, the adrenaline faded, leaving only a cold, numbing ache. you sank to the floor, pulling the sleeves of the hoodie over your hands, burying your face in the fabric that still smelled like him—like cedarwood and the sharp tang of mint.
you cried until your eyes were swollen and your throat was raw. you cried for the friendship that had been a lie, and for the love that was apparently a weapon.
hours later, as the moon began to dip below the horizon, you went to wipe your face with a tissue inside the pocket of your hoodie. something sharp caught against your skin.
you reached into the seam of the hoodie pocket, your fingers brushing against something small and cold. you pulled it out.
it was a small, onyx stud—suna’s earring. the one he always wore in his left ear. it must have fallen out while he was lounging on your bed earlier, or he left it, or perhaps it had snagged on the fabric during his frantic pacing. it sat in the palm of your hand, glittering mockingly in the moonlight.
it was a piece of him. an anchor to a man who had just told you that you were a parasite.
the realization hit you then, sharper than his words. he had been so close. he had been right there, wearing this hoodie, breathing your air, hating you for how much he needed you. he was drowning in his own obsession, and he had decided to take you down with him.
you clutched the earring so hard the post pierced your skin, a tiny drop of red blooming against the earring.
the hoodie wasn’t yours. the feelings weren’t safe. and as you looked at the closed door, you realized the person who had walked out wasn’t the suna you knew, but the version of him that would rather destroy you than admit he was already yours.
the earring felt heavy, a cold promise of a debt that would never be settled.
the walk home was a blur of static and freezing air that did nothing to cool the fever behind suna’s eyes.
every step away from your door felt like a limb being stretched to the point of snapping, a physical resistance that made his muscles ache. he had reached his front door, walked up the stairs, and retreated into the darkness of his own bedroom before the silence finally caught up to him. it wasn’t the peaceful quiet he usually thrived in; it was a vacuum, sucking the oxygen out of his lungs until he was left gasping in the center of the room.
he didn’t turn on the light. he didn’t want to see his own reflection—didn’t want to see the face of the man who had just systematically dismantled the only thing in his life that felt like home.
he collapsed onto his bed, his back hitting the mattress with a dull thud, staring up at the ceiling where the shadows danced like the ghosts of the things he’d said. naive. nuisance. burden.
the words tasted like copper in his mouth. they were lies, every single one of them, crafted with the surgical precision of a coward. he had seen the way your expression had fractured—the way your light had dimmed until you were just a hollowed-out version of yourself standing in that hoodie, his hoodie.
he rolled onto his side, curling into himself as a jagged, dry sob hitched in his chest. he wasn’t a man who cried, but the pressure behind his ribs was becoming unbearable. it was an agonizing, slow-motion realization: he had tried to protect the friendship by murdering it.
the irony was a blade twisting in his gut. he had been so terrified of a future where you eventually grew tired of him, or where a confession might make things awkward, that he had chosen to preemptively burn the bridge while you were still standing on it. he had looked at your face—that breathtaking, radiant face that haunted his dreams—and he had told you it was mediocre. he had told you that your kindness, the very thing that kept him tethered to his own humanity, was a parasite.
“god, why? why did i—” he choked out, the sound muffled by his pillow.
he could still feel the phantom sensation of your skin against his thumb from those few seconds of weakness. you were so soft, so impossibly real, and he was a jagged edge that only knew how to cut. he closed his eyes, and all he could see was the way you looked at him before the screaming started—with that open, devastatingly honest support. you had offered him your heart on a silver platter, asking for nothing but the truth, and he had spat on it because he couldn’t handle the weight of how much he adored you.
he hated himself for it. not with a fleeting flicker of guilt, but with a profound, soul-deep loathing that made him want to claw the skin off his bones. he was obsessed with the way you laughed, the way you hummed when you were focused, the way you always knew exactly when he needed a break without him saying a word. you were his north star, and he had just smashed the compass.
the room felt too big. the air felt too thin.
he reached out instinctively to grab the edge of his hoodie, wanting to bury his face in the fabric that usually held your scent, only to realize his hands were empty. he was shivering, the cold seeping into his marrow, but it wasn’t the temperature of the room. it was the sudden, violent realization of what his life was going to look like tomorrow. and the day after.
he wouldn’t see you in the halls. he wouldn’t hear your voice calling his name. he had demanded that you stop looking for him, and knowing you—knowing how much his words must have gutted you—you would listen. you would disappear from his orbit, and he would be left drifting in this dark, cold space he had built for himself.
he rolled onto his back again, his breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches. his chest felt like it had been hollowed out with a rusted spoon. he was a genius on the court, a master of reading people’s movements, yet he had been so blindingly stupid when it came to the one person who mattered.
he had tried to save himself from the pain of a potential rejection, but in doing so, he had guaranteed a lifetime of mourning.
the silence of his room screamed your name back at him, a relentless reminder of the catastrophe he had authored. he lay there, paralyzed by the weight of his own cruelty, wondering how someone could be so desperately in love and so catastrophically cruel all in the same breath.
he already misses his pretty girl.
keepsakes: found (preview)
four weeks, you and suna drift further apart. you were sitting near the equipment room enjoying your peace and quiet until a voice speaks up.
n: first time writing angst, kinda nervous. no one torch me, please.
© showhay — don’t copy nor translate without my permission. divider is made by me :3
