#black meme market | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mysteria157 · 24 days ago

Text

Undone

nanami kento x black fem reader

wc- 2.8k

warnings- angst, heavy themes, mental health and healing, the fluff that nanami brings.

a/n: I have been feeling like poo these past few days and trying to find my voice in writing. So I created a little drabble that helped me feel better. hopefully, it does for others as well. happy reading

divider: @saradika | JJK Masterlist

He hasn’t heard from you in days.

Granted, that first date was 12 weeks ago, but Nanami is used to the string of texts between you that is consistently pinging—a feat that Nanami never thought to reach. He’s used to the late night phone calls, the FaceTimes that are meaningless because he just wants to look at you. But for the first time, you turned him down.

Three days ago, on the morning of a nice dinner he had planned, you called with a scratchy voice, “I’m just really tired today, but I’ll be shipshape in no time!” You had insisted.

With vigilance sewn into his body since the day he could remember, Nanami notices right away something is wrong. Maybe it was the distant crack of your words. Maybe it was the fact that you cleared your throat once, no—two times to make yourself sound as professional as possible. As if Nanami is an employer and not the man you’ve decided to let into his life.

Regardless, he was as polite as always. Content to change the subject and send you well wishes before hanging up. The meme texted to his phone five minutes later, sweetening whatever sour concoction had manifested in his belly from your phone call. But still…Nanami knows. So he waits.

He waits three days of agonizing silence before a maelstrom of worry finally claws its way to the surface of his pool of impassivity. He stops by the market first and grabs ingredients. There’s a soup recipe you love—a recipe he soaked up like a sponge as he hovered near you in your kitchen during your first date. He’ll make that.

On his way out of the market, his eyes catch a bouquet of Asian lilies. Sunset orange petals adorned with long dark stamen. He picks up a modest bouquet—something large enough to make you smile every time you see them, but not too much to make you sneeze from your allergies.

It’s 6:47 PM when Nanami’s shoes touch your welcome mat. Even as his eyes trace the tawny ‘Welcome!’ made of coir, he can feel the unease wafting from behind your closed door. Your spare key rests in his closed hand, the metal digging into his palm in a silent question. You insisted that it wasn’t too soon in the relationship for this, to have access to each other in this way. After all, finally opening his heart to love after keeping it locked behind the demands of work, Nanami wanted to take things slowly. But you had other plans—you always do. And now, Nanami is glad to have relented so quickly when you gave him the spare key two weeks ago.

You’re a tidy person, meticulous to a fault. So it’s easy for him to spot the littering of disarray. The curtains are drawn tight, casting your home into darkness. A trail of clothes starts from the door and trails to your room. There are dirty dishes in your sink—you hate going to bed with a messy kitchen. The air is permeable—a physical being that Nanami can see the particles as they float and scurry with his movements through your home.

He finds you in your room, a tornado of dirty clothes and empty takeout containers, three blankets deep, with only the top of your hair visible. The air is just as stale in here—heavy with the kind of silence that comes to life from too many hours alone with dark thoughts. Your phone lies on your nightstand, face-down, notifications from others probably neglected along with Nanami’s. He hates the sight, angry at whatever malevolent force that’s decided to torment you, and now he fights it.

The rustle of Nanami setting his things down makes you stir, the lump of covers oscillating with your movements as a flash of your melanin-rich skin pokes from the dark hole where you reside. Your eyes meet his—surprised, alarmed, and immediately angry.

“Get out,” you snap, your voice gravelly from disuse. Through the curtain of your textured hair, Nanami catches a sliver of your icy gaze, foggy with the heaviness he can smell in the room. He takes a step closer, and it’s a step too far. Your tired eyes widen with a simmering fury that makes Nanami think twice.

“Why can’t you listen?! You can’t be here…” you stop short, squeezing the covers around your already decaying form like a lifeline. “Not when I’m—like this.”

He takes another cautious step—your eyes narrow, a weak challenge—then another until he sits at the edge of your bed. The dip from his weight causes your feet to curve into the cavern, toes touching his thighs from beneath your covers.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

The still air seems to vibrate from your fury, dust motes zipping haphazardly as if being pulled back and forth by an invisible force.

“Call you? Call you?? So you could see this? So you could see how I can’t even—“A lump of confusion and rage dies in your throat, the sound gurgling like a sewage pipe. His hands clasp the blanket that covers your shoulders, pulling you up gently with no resistance. You want to smack his hands away, to yell at him to leave and never come back. Because you’re not ready for him to see you like this. Not yet.

But despite the bark of your bite, you’re exhausted—mentally and physically.

“I wanted to wait a few weeks,” you ramble, eyes turned away from him as you shiver from the cold air on your exposed upper half. You’re still wearing the same shirt from three days ago when you called Nanami to cancel; your eyes had already been filled with tears, your throat suffocating beneath torrential thoughts and negativity that springs to life when you least expect it.

“No one wants to see this so soon.”

“From that statement alone, I’m going to assume the men you dated before were below average in all respects.”

“Everyone expects some grandiose gesture to make all of…this go away. And it’s not that fucking simple.” You don’t acknowledge his assessment. Still rambling, still trying to push him away even as he stands. He pulls you up with him with a firm grip still on your shoulders, his care poking at your defenses with inquisitive fingers.

Your knees buckle, threatening to give out without the reassurance of his hold. Your rambling falls to the wayside, fading into the air around you as you finally comprehend your new position in front of him. Standing for the first time in days, the strength of his hands radiates warmth down to your toes. The room falls quiet, opening its ears to your uneven breathing and the smell of tears.

One beat. Two beats. Three.

“It seems you’re standing now,” he says simply, the low crooning timbre of his voice wafting over your face. You heave in a stuttering breath, suck down his air, and let it fill you from the inside with care you’ve neglected. Nanami doesn’t leave his words open for discussion. There is no question hidden in his matter-of-face statement. There is no undercurrent of judgment.

“A bath.”

“What? Kento—no. I don’t need—I don’t deserve—“ His hand slides from your shoulder to cup your cheek, silencing you with its warmth. You resist leaning into his touch, too embarrassed that he can see you like this—stinky, tired, so utterly crestfallen that you can barely function.

“I’ll draw you a bath. I’ll make you dinner. And once I’m sure you’re at least full and clean, then I’ll go. Until you’re ready for me again.”

Steam rises around you in the bathroom, carrying eucalyptus and lavender from the bath oils you like to indulge in on a terrible day like this one. You draw your knees up to your chest, wrapping your arms around your limbs to bury your head in the gap it creates. Your eyes catch the water droplets on your skin, hydrophobic and suspended in time before sliding into the bath water.

When you turn your head to the side, you catch your living room from the open door. He’s cleaned up—opened the curtains, picked up the laundry, and vacuumed the floors. One of your candles burns bright, the low whir of your washing machine sashaying through the apartment. All things you just haven’t had the energy to do.

It started off small, it always does. One thought—fleeting and infinitesimal—but still heavy with a nervousness that plants in your mind like a maggot, burrowing its way through the meat. Your symptoms are more anxious thoughts, more poor remarks of yourself, more he’s successful who are you kidding? More maybe they don’t like you, why can’t you see that? More once Kento sees this side of you, he’ll never want you again.

More, more, more even though those thoughts hold little evidence to prove true. But for you, those maggots burrow until there is nothing left of you but a hollow shell, a husk that has no choice and no energy but to lay down in bed and sleep the days away until the meat heals again.

Beneath the steam, you can spell the mix of thyme, peeled tomatoes, and garlic. The tomato soup you showed him how to make on your first date. He was inquisitive, watching silently, his eyes falling on yours too often to take good notes. Now, it’s another show of this man you’re growing to love, crafting something for you with his own hands, affection beneath the veil of reservation that he shows everyone else.

It’s too much for you. The tears come quietly, spilling down your cheeks and into the bath water, polluting the love that was used to create it.

You hear his footsteps, padded feet on your now clean floor as he walks into the bathroom and takes in the sight of you. You blink against the rush of embarrassment, too tired to wipe the tears away, too tired to hide a vulnerability you wanted to keep a lid on for awhile longer.

He walks to your sink, gathering product, a hair bottle, and a wide-toothed comb before coming back to you. He kneels beside the tub and rolls up his navy sleeves without ceremony, pinching off his glasses before he sets them on the floor. He’s soft but efficient in the way he rubs your bar soap on your loofah, getting it nice and sudsy. He’s relaxed but observant—his tie loosened but not completely off, his forearms flexing with quelled strength as he washes your back and shoulders, the slight furrow of concentration in his brows as he measures his next words.

“Strawberry and cream cheese danishes.”

“Hm?”

“If I eat one, I’ll want more. So I try to stay away when I can.” Nanami continues, washing the soap off your shoulders before he hands you the loofah. You take it without question, watching him disappear to sit behind you as you wash your limbs.

“After Yu…I would bury my sorrow in work. I worked and worked and worked until my boss forced me to take time off. It’s a sneaky sickness. It likes to watch over you and strike the very moment your guard is down.”

You hear the squeeze of your hair bottle behind you, your snarled strands soaking with rosemary-scented mist in his gentle fingers.

“It’s been years. But when it does hit, that darkness that seems to strangle me and tell me that I should have tried harder, that I should have protected him….I like to go across the street from my home and get a strawberry and cream cheese danish.”

You know Nanami has a sweet tooth. You’ve seen the way his eyes light up from the pies that you like to make, always bringing him a slice to work. You’ve seen the sidelong glance he gives strudel that steams behind glass display cases at the bakery he takes you to. But to imagine him leaving his apartment in the dead of night, wrinkled clothes and bags beneath his eyes, not showered in days—paying for a danish…you hitch a breath, a chuckle squeaking and dying in your throat with a painful lurch.

“Why are you laughing?” He admonishes. You can practically feel the lifted brow and gentle smile on your back. Your skin tingles with the movement of his fingers as he works them through your hair, detangling with rosemary and leave-in conditioner

“Do you buy the three-pack?”

Silence. A pause in your hair before baby hairs flutter from the puff of air he shoots out. You bite your lip to keep the dry smile from forming.

“No,” he lies, playfully.

The heaviness in the air gives way to a light current of brightness from your fleeting smile, from the smell of the tub, and your hair now detangled and loose before shrinkage claims it.

“I’m not sure what’s compelled you to think there’s a proper time to tell me that your thoughts grow dark at random moments in your life. Now, two months from now, it doesn’t matter. I love you.”

The declaration wraps around you, sliding down your ajar mouth and curdling in your lungs with certainty, taking root in the muscle for the foreseeable future.

“And if it is alright,” he continues, carding his fingers through your hair to plait it into a single braid. “I would like to love every part of you. Even the parts you try to hide. The parts that make you think that you’re not good enough—for me, or your friends, or anyone else. If anything, being able to be here, right now, is a privilege I’ll cherish.”

When the fresh tears spill over again, they no longer taint the water you soak in. They cleanse, collecting and filtering away the depression and anxiety that claims so much of your life when you least expect it.

After, when you’re clean and smelling of Shea butter that Nanami slathered you in, you sink into your now clutter-free sofa. The exhaustion settles on your bones in a different way. Well earned after a long battle instead of invasive and unasked for.

Your eyes rest on the lovely bouquet of Asian lilies on your coffee table, fresh with stems cut, curling toward you with open petals so you can see the beauty inside. The gesture fills you with more of that feeling, of love that you never imagined to come so soon with a man like him.

Nanami walks around the sofa, a tray that he sets in front of you carrying his own rendition of your tomato soup, toasted sourdough grilled cheese, and a tall glass of water.

“Extra basil?” You ask, lips wobbly around a smile as you take in another form of his adoration that you’ll have forever if he allows it.

“Extra basil.”

When he returns with his own tray, his hair falling over his eyes in a heap of hard work, he offers you a look. A measured look that’s filled with everything he wants to give, an excitement in his warm brown eyes that you can’t wait to see more of. But it’s shrouded in a gentle reservation with gaps only visible to you. Soft smiles for you. Loving touches for you. A beacon in storms that brew seemingly out of nowhere just for you.

He leans forward and brushes his lips against your forehead, a safe place where he can take some part of you while you heal. But you’d like more. So you tilt your head for him, soaking the warmth from his lips that press against yours softly.

Suddenly, your worries, your dark thoughts, your misery that you let keep you beneath your blankets for days all smoothed over from his touch. Satiated until those maggots in your mind wiggle to life again when they’re hungry.

“Marcus didn’t give a rose to Janine.” He says casually as he draws back to his side and turns on the TV, nonchalant as if he didn’t just spend the evening putting you back together with gentle hands and quiet love.

You relax into his side, looking at his arm with teary eyes as he rests it on the couch behind you, offering a blanket of comfort and safety that you haven’t had in a long time.

“Gojo spoiled it,” Nanami continues, grumbling and annoyed at the two syllables of Gojo’s name touching his tongue. He blows at his spoon of soup, eyes locked on the screen, his sharp features colored with flickering blues and reds.

He notices your stillness—of course, he notices—and offers you another kiss on your cheek before turning back to the show.

“I’ll steal his kikufuku as punishment,” you offer, arm shaking with the gentle chuckle he gives in response.

The soup steams in your hands, your hair soft and braided, your body worshiped and clean, Nanami’s heartbeat permeable beneath his clothes as you sink into him and sip your delicious soup.

For the first time in years, you know when the world feels heavy, he’ll be able to lift that weight off of you before it buries you away.

363 notes · View notes