Introducing Shouto to ASMR after he asks you what it is, having heard you mention it a couple of times in passing. You’re quick to whip out your phone and a double pair of earbuds to listen in tandem, pulling up your playlist of tried and true videos: the most relaxing, the most soothing, the ones that have you passed out in 2 minutes even on your worst day. You start your all time favorite, hunkering down next to him on his couch, ready to fall asleep with him and wake up in a couple of hours for a lazy snack. After the intro is over, you glance over at Shouto to try and gauge his thoughts, a bit smug at being the one to introduce him to such astounding media.
Only to find him completely unaffected. He’s watching it dutifully, you’d expect nothing less, but he is clearly perplexed by the video and audio. He meets your gaze, lips tilting up at you in a soft smile that you recognize. He doesn’t want to tell you that he doesn’t get it. Shouto is always like this: so nonchalant about his own preferences that it can sometimes feel like you’re tormenting him just to get him to admit that he would, in fact, like to watch a different show than the one you’d picked out. It’s not that he’s ashamed of his preferences or embarrassed or shy, but rather that he cares so much more about the quality of your time than his own. Shouto loves when you love things, even if he doesn’t understand your affection for them, and he’s so unerringly kind that he’ll always default to your preferences on almost anything, especially things he deems casual or relatively unimportant, like what snacks are going to be present at movie night or whether the time you spend together is going to be preoccupied by ASMR videos that he, truthfully, couldn’t care less about.
His expression makes you bristle slightly on the inside, a bit embarrassed at the fact that you’re already sleepy while he’s furrowing his brow, trying to make sense of the soap cutting on the screen. You want him to get it, partially because you know it does look a little weird from an outside perspective to fall asleep to ASMR brain exam role play every night. But another part of you wants him to be able to engage in the relaxation, to feel the way the sounds push and pull at your brain and hum through your muscles as they release the day’s tension. Shouto deserves to relax, deserves to spend the rest of his life doing nothing that he doesn’t desire. So, you take his blasé attitude as a challenge, whining slightly at him as you insist you have better videos to show him. Shouto nods along, shifting closer to peer over your shoulder as you scroll through your playlist, his gaze burning a bit as you’re suddenly aware of how strange some of the titles might seem to someone who’s never encountered the genre before.
But Shouto says nothing. He doesn’t tease, doesn’t look put out or bored when you catch his expression out of the corner of your eye. He wants to understand, and you know he does. His willingness to look past the initial foreignness of the concept just to enjoy something alongside you both warms your heart and makes you more determined to find something that will put the beautiful man beside you thoroughly to sleep.
You are unsuccessful. For reasons beyond your comprehension, Shouto is wholly immune to the lure of relaxing videos, affected by neither the visuals nor the audio. He humors you regardless, paying strict attention to each video you pull up no matter how perplexing the concept remains to him. You, on the other hand, are barely conscious, phone nearly slipping out of your hands multiple times as you nod off in your attempt to convert Shouto to an ASMR connoisseur. Eventually, Shouto takes pity on you, shifting your head onto his shoulder as he promises to continue his search for the video that will strike gold. When you nod blearily and press against the warmth of him, Shouto smiles, gaze tracking across your face. He keeps the playlist going, occasionally paying attention to the screen when it commands his interest, although he spends much more time looking at you. Adjusting the blanket back over your shoulder when it falls, pulling you more firmly into the crook of his neck when you shift uncomfortably in your sleep, humming sweetly and pressing his fingers gently into the crease of your brows when your dreams disturb you.
You wake up hours later, the light fading and golden as it passes through the large windows of Shouto’s apartment. He’s fallen asleep too, his cheek nestled on the top of your head, playlist still continuing on from where your phone is held in his palm. You feel victory streak through you at the fact that he did, in fact, fall victim to the relaxation properties of having your nails done by the middle school mean girl. That is, until you peer up at him and find that he’s no longer wearing the earbuds. Damn him. But at least he’s beautiful enough to make up for it.
