#I'm about to blow your mind... you want to know what 'Star' spelled backwards is?

[stardestroyer81]

Oh, rats. 🐀

Inspired by @nutellapatella's Rat Noise and Bunny Noisette doodles, I wanted to try my hand at drawing my Pizza Tower sona as part-rat, which resulted in this cute doodle!💙🍕✨

[dothewrite]

your angst is AMAZING. can i please have a scenario where kuroo thinks he's alone, so he cries, but then his gf startles him by giving him a hug from behind which leads her to comforting him and cuddling him until he falls asleep in her arms. i'm sorry, but boys who cry are my weakness and i WILL cry if they cry.

Purely emotional and with very little plot, I hope this satisfies your long-awaited angst cravings. I hope you enjoy!

He’s tried this, he’s thought this all through. It’s not an easy thing to admit you need, but Kuroo has, with trial and error, discovered the perfect place to cry alone. It doesn’t mean he spends all waking moment either playing volleyball or sobbing into the sleeve of his jersey, but everyone needs a moment alone sometimes, he thinks.

The cold, hard truth is- Kuroo Tetsurou is starting to crack, split at the seams, crumble into less than the dust of cremated dreams. It all sounds a bit dramatic to him when he thinks it out in his head, but there’s no hiding from the way his breath starts to stutter sometimes, the way his eyes seem to dim behind a veil of apathy and the way his words sound like ornaments instead of messages when they fall from his lips. It doesn’t feel dramatic at all, this fall from grace. It’s slow, pedantic, and it makes him feel like he’s running away when he finally takes a seat on the hard concrete, an unforgiving temperature from the evening chill the night before. The cold doesn’t shock him into awakeness or anything, because he can barely feel it against the numbness cradling his mind.

The sunrise is beautiful this morning, after a cold spell in Tokyo for the past week or so, and Kuroo lets the bone-wracking shiver run through his body, toes upwards. He’d usually want to take a picture of it, but today, he just sits and stares blankly into the purple and orange horizon. He turns on the music player on his phone, and a soft ballad starts to play in another language, something more hollow, more broken than the lyrical Tokyo-ben he’s surrounded with each day.

His music isn’t just an attempt at atmospheric background music as he sits and broods. No, this isn’t brooding when you feel absolutely nothing inside, and the music is his way of reminding himself that he’s alive. When he hums along, or bursts into small verses, it forces emotion back into him like a tidal rush of humanity, brightness squeezing in through the cracks of his broken heart.

(Sometimes he laughs, because he can feel his heart crack-crack-cracking like pebbles on a windowpane and he finds himself utterly ridiculous. How can someone’s heart be broken by nothing? He isn’t the drama queen everyone seems to think he is, and he’s not about to let himself start now.)

“Morning, Tetsu,” a soft voice floats from behind him and Kuroo stiffens in his seat. He knows this voice, intimately, blind and through his dreams, even, but he has tear tracks crusted on his cheeks and his breathing is a ragged mess.

What can he call this?

“Would you like a blanket?” Her voice comes again, this time infinitely closer and he can feel her small hands grazing his shoulders in an embrace he’s too tense to lean into. His expression is frozen, and he fixes his gaze onto the brightening sky in shame.

Fear, he decides, he calls this fear.

“You hate waking up early,” he tries laughing, but it’s feeble, and a blush of embarrassment rushes to his cheeks immediately, making him feel foolish for even trying. “I’m amazed you’ve figured this out.”

She doesn’t shift any closer than she already is. Barely pressed against him, the only thing he feels is her fingertips and her arm perching on his stoic shoulders and the places she touches burn underneath his skin. She’s waiting for him to touch her back, he knows this, like he knows everything about her- and, it appears, like how she knows everything about him too. Even this.

“I didn’t follow you, if that’s what you were worried about,” her voice is soothing, and as much as he absolutely can’t relax, Kuroo starts to thaw underneath her bottomless warmth. “I just… well, you were acting different lately. I just thought somewhere like this would be where you’d go, if I were in your shoes.”

“There’s no limit to your perceptiveness, huh?”

It was supposed to be teasing, but all he hears is bitterness and a tinge of fear that he doesn’t know if she picks up. He doesn’t find out, because she’s silent behind him for a few long seconds, her pulse in her fingertips the only thing moving.

“It’s cold today,” she finally says, and Kuroo feels like he’s aged a decade from suspense, “I brought a blanket. I’ll…” she pauses again and starts to shift backwards, “…see you later, if you’d like.”

“…Sorry,” he manages, after she’s taken several steps too far away from him. “It’s not like I don’t want you here, it’s just a bad time, y’know?”

A weight evaporates from his chest when he soon hears again her approaching footsteps. This time she doesn’t come to rest behind him, but instead takes a seat next to him, legs crossed in her usual fashion and her hands threaded together nervously. Kuroo has to hold back a snort there- if anyone was nervous, it’d be him, with his fragmented masculinity and possibly equally fragmented rationality. Still, he lets himself slump forward, the tension draining out of him and this time he opts to watch her fidgeting feet, shifting here and there like sand.

“You okay?” He’s the first to break the silence, and he hears her soft intake of breath in surprise.

“I… I think so,” she answers quietly from her spot next to his arm. “As long as you are.” Her head lifts, bangs blowing in what must be a chilly breeze, and her eyes meet his. They’re a lot firmer than he had expected, but he tenses and and makes a split second promise to stop running. To look her in the eye, to let her in like he had said he would when they had chosen to be together, instead of sitting here in his own misery, justifying it by saying it’s for her protection. Protecting no-one, misery only loves company, and she was right here with him, ready to be there if he falls.

Kuroo’s head hangs, and a small, but genuine smile creeps up onto his tear stained face. “When did you become this strong, hm?”

“I always was,” he can hear the grin in her voice, and even though it’s weak, the fear’s ebbing away drop by drop, and suddenly her warmth doesn’t feel like something that would burn him anymore. “You just pretended to be the one wearing the pants in the relationship.”

“Dang, whipping out the burns early in the morning. Did you come up with these on your way here?”

She doesn’t respond, and Kuroo doesn’t look away. In her eyes burn with the brightness of a dead star, in the twist of her lips rests the bones of an age old martyr, and she reaches one of those nervous, threaded hands and places one around the curve of his waist. God, it feels like relief and an offering wrapped into a single touch of affection, and Kuroo can’t stop the tears that bubble up from his throat and down his chin. For all it’s worth, he’s still looking at her, but her face is hidden behind a sheen of glistening daylight, and the lump in his throat feels like all the accumulated words he’d never dared to say out loud.

They don’t say a single thing after that. Her grip on his body tightens, and by the time she’s reaching out her other hand, swinging over a leg across his knees to keep her balance, he’s meeting her midway, collapsing his large frame into her small embrace. He’s crying now, just.. crying. As silently as he can, whimpers of submerged pain floating to the surface, shaking in her hold and he lets himself bury his ache into her shoulder, soaking her shirt bit by bit. Crying, instead of screaming, or wailing, or cursing, because sometimes there is a sadness so deep that he feels, anything other than simple, salty tears becomes inadequate.

He doesn’t move, but she does, shifting closer to him so that she’s pressed against his hip, dragging his torso closer into her as she can manage. Her hands are full of Kuroo, but she gathers more and more, taking purchase of his shirt and his belt loops until he’s spread over her and he can’t even find it in himself to mind that he feels like a child being comforted. It doesn’t matter, because he can feel the caress of fingers across his cheek, the soft circles rubbing into his back underneath his shirt, and between gasps he drags in a rough breath, her musky scent pulling him back to earth.

Neither of them have any clue how long they sit there for, the sky their only indication of time passing, but Kuroo can feel his lungs starting to fill up again, his ribs no longer heaving, and his eyes no longer throbbing from exertion. Slowly, the feeling of being a person becomes bearable again, and in her unwavering arms there grows a bud of courage that blooms in his stomach to face the day.

Kuroo closes his eyes once again, and counts his breaths. There are a thousand and one words he wants to say to her- six reasons why he’s sad, four dreams he still entertains, and one chance to tell her how he loves her.

A Kuroo-esque comment teases the tip of his tongue, but is lost when his heartbeat calms and the rise and fall of his chest takes on a slow rhythm. He falls asleep against her, head pressed underneath the veil of her hair, and she presses a shy kiss against his against his sleepy pulse before resting her head against his and dozing off together.