tags:angst to comfort, implied age gap (kishibe is older than reader), break up and back together, cigarettes and alcohol mentioned.
synopsis: in trying to save your heart, kishibe breaks it anyhow - i guess it’s only fair he puts it back together again right?
what is love if it does not endure?
you stand next to kishibe, in the alleyway next to the bar public safety is celebrating at. you can hear power and denji cheering for aki to finish another pint as you stare off into the street, cigarette in hand. you don’t really smoke, you just like the smell of it since kishibe always smells like cigarettes.
“still out here?” he asks and he knows it isn’t about how you aren’t inside eating fried chicken and drinking beer with your colleagues. kishibe sees that look in your eye, and it takes his breath away at how they sparkle like diamonds in the milk light of the full moon.
“you are too, aren’t you?” and if it where another night, maybe at his apartment where your clothes are still untouched sitting next to his in his dresser he would have snorted, brought you in closer to lay a kiss on your sweet face, rubbing his stubble into your cheek until you squealed.
“so? how’d it go?”
“tamaki? he’s nice, but not really my type. paid for my cab though.” you muttered, eyes down and locked onto the orange ember on the cigarette. it’s smoke coils around you two, a veil for a moment not meant for the outside world.
the world was just the two of you - no devils, no humans, no guns and no paperwork. just you and him, maybe that’s why your apartment always felt like home when he spent the night?
“good man.” is all he can say, even though he pushed you away, he can’t stomach the idea of you with another man. the ember on the cigarette burns away more of it and you watch with dark eyes at how it flakes off onto the concrete.
“i miss you.”
“you shouldn’t.” kishibe says, voice deep and rough.
“i know, i still do.” you return, voice soft and smooth.
“i’ll just break your heart. you should want for more.” you shut your eyes, leaning your head back until it rests on the cool building. the concrete digs into your back and suddenly you feel like you are back in your apartment, this argument already having been said one hundred times before.
“you are breaking my heart right now, trying to push me away like this.” you mutter, words carried by the night wind into his ears and he sighs, in a deep bone tired way. this whole ordeal tires him, ages him far more than 30 years at this shithole of a job where each day might be his last. he’s had plenty of women before you but he’s never cared enough about them to take care of them, to cherish them the way he does with you.
it’s why he thinks he’s finally in love for the first time in a long time or maybe, this is his first love and you are bringing the man he thought died a long time ago back from the grave. another portion of the cigarette flakes off and falls to the concrete of the city, it pains him when he thinks about how that’s the brand he smokes.
“what do you want me to do?” he asks, and the words are heavy like iron on his tongue. you respond back without missing a beat, as if the words where in your mouth the moment you where born and have been waiting for this moment to speak them.
“take me home, and keep me there. don’t leave me ever again.” you say, the words shaky as something bites at the back of your eyes - tears you both realize as you wipe at them furiously with the backs of your hands. you didn’t want to cry, but like with most things kishibe can pluck all reservations in your heart and make you bear it in full.
“shhh…don’t cry come one…i’ll take you back.” kishibe finds himself comforting you, doting is a word never used to describe him but he likes to think its from how direct he is and how he can’t bear to see you cry. he touches for the first time tonight, a calloused thumb soothing away the tear track on your cheek. kishibe tries not to let the way you relax into his touch go to his heart but like always when faced with you he fails and falls anyways.
he takes you by the hand, calls a cab and you head to his apartment. it makes you wetly laugh and hiccup at how the things you left are still right where you left them. your toothbrush in a cup while kishibe’s lays on the counter ready to fall. the lipstick you haven’t been able to find sits next to the lighter he keeps in his room. your pajamas are next to his folded on the bed.
when you wake up the next morning, late in the first rays of the sun as the clock reads 10:00 you find that the tear tracks and the smoke from the night before are gone, replaced by the way kishibe’s hair shines in the low light of day.
