#comforting is a stretch but its fiiiiiiiiine

[fastfishloosefish]

BEEP BEEP !

21. a long text // 17. a comforting text

A letter is neatly folded and tucked into Meryl's mailbox. In scribbled cursive handwriting, sentences crossed out here and there, it reads:

Dear Miss Stryfe, The shambling ghosts crowding around your doorway in the past few days have given me cause for concern. I remembered your question to me about the spirit-nature of sea nettles. Good lord! Your shores must be haunted indeed, regardless of how watery they may be. It's strange to walk down the halls to see these souls unable to rest. I've no answer, madam, to the question of why you are being so mobbed by these creatures. But life is strange, often bringing vengeance down on those who don't deserve it, or let those who do get away unscathed. Such are the whims of justice. Once I stood on the deck of a whaling ship and watched my captain sail our crew to their deaths for the sake of his own pride and ambition, and yet I lived, only one soul out of many, one limb of a whole body, out of no one's will but God's. Miss Stryfe, I told you once the water's the most haunted place under this sky, but it seems your ghosts are of a more land-walking sort. But you cling still to the life-buoy. Ah, I've prattled on again. I wish your journeys well, unimpeded by wand'ring death, or else let your grip be firm. My regards, Ishmael. P.S. Have you heard of this card game named "Uno"? I've discovered it recently. I knocked on your door the other day but you didn't seem to be home, and neither was half the building! Funny that. I thought it might have been the ghosts, given they were out in throngs that morning. P.P.S. The ghosts, it seems, do not like the card game; I've asked.

[haikyuu-imagines-and-others]

Hey there! The askbox is still open right? I want to request a scenario with Sugawara and Kuroo (separately) where their s/o failed an exam and is feeling down so they try to cheer her up? Maybe with some ice cream or taking a walk? I had an exam today and honestly don't know what to expect lol Anyway!! thank you for your hard work. I'll always be supporting you bc you're AWESOME

Hey hey! Again! I have started using a random number generator! So congrats, lovely! Your request was chosen! Please don’t stress out over exams, sweetheart! School is only temporary, and honestly, you relearn most of the material on the job anyway…. Degrees Don’t Have Grades…. Grades do NOT define your intelligence! Keep moving forward, lovely! I know you can do it! Thanks for requesting! - Admin Satori

Sugawara Koushi:

The sound of impact alerted Sugawara to something wrong. But when he walked into the room to investigate, he was greeted with you laying on your stomach with your head thrown into a pillow. Your phone a few feet away in a pile of clothes he’d meant to clean up earlier that day.

“______?” You heard him through the pillows now pressed against your ears. But you didn’t move. Didn’t even flinch. Maybe if he thought you were asleep he’d leave you alone to pout and cry about your grades… Your terrible, awful grades that would ruin your life. “_______…” A dip in the bed beside you, his gentle hand rubbing up and down the right side of your back, “I know you’re not sleeping, ________…”

Why couldn’t he take the hint? “You don’t know that.” Against your better judgement, and your fight, flight, or hide senses, you responded. Suga chuckled softly, the sound piercing through the pillow against your ears and making you smile reluctantly. You couldn’t possibly be mad at this angel for finding you out, for sticking by you.

Suga hummed to himself, his left hand rubbing up and down your back gently, his other hand holding your discarded phone - it was opened to your grades. Scrolling through, Suga could see almost immediately why you were upset. “Ah, ______… Won’t you tell me what’s wrong?” You shook your head, Suga smiled gently, “What if I say ‘please’? Would you tell me then?”

“No.” Now you were pouting into the pillow, feeling a faux heartbreak as you remembered how confident you’d been going into the exam. Only to find out a week later, today, that you’d failed it? Bombed it? The questions you’d thought were easy… reflected your knowledge of the subject… since you didn’t get them correct.

His hand stilled on your back, and you wondered if he’d pull his ultimate move and lie down with you, cuddle you into telling him what was wrong. But he didn’t.

Instead, he stood up, the dip in the mattress disappearing. Your hold on the pillow lessened, your ears straining to hear your boyfriends gentle footfalls - wondering where it was he was going? Didn’t he see you pouting? Didn’t he care? Didn’t he want to know why you were so unresponsive to his ‘magic word’?

You didn’t have long to think about why he’d left before Suga was walking back into the bedroom, the sound of glassware clinking and sliding against each other reaching your ears. “_________, do you mind sitting up, please? I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to eat this while lying down.” Confusion sparked, curiosity tickled, you turned your head to the side and stared out of the corner of your eye at what it was your boyfriend thought he was doing. Suga smiled gently down at you, holding two bowls of something, silverware shining from the rims of the bowls. He gestured them towards you, “Please? I don’t want to accidentally get anything on the sheets when I try to sit down.”

Groaning the entire time, you flipped over on the mattress, staring up at the ceiling, bringing your pillow on your chest and squeezing it tightly. “Koushiiiiii, I don’t wanna move…” You whined loudly, but your boyfriend only chuckled quietly, finding amusement in your dramatic whining. “Fiiiiiiiiine….” You drew out before sitting up and scooting backwards.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Suga suddenly called out, making you freeze and give him a curious look as he leaned forwards just a bit his arm stretched towards you, offering you to take the bowl in his hand. You took the bowel tentatively, glancing down at its contents before focusing your attention on what it was he was doing. Already, just from seeing the soft serve in your bowl were you feeling a little better over what you’d seen for your grades. Suga kneeled on the bed next to where you sat, but shuffled closer to the headboard before sitting down, his back touching the wood. “Okay…. Come here…”

You snuggled up next to him, feeling him wrap his arm around your shoulders, “How are you going to eat your ice cream if you’re holding onto me?”

Suga suddenly realized his foul and blushed softly, “Ah…. Got me there.” He smiled down at his lap where his bowl of ice cream was slowly turning into a puddle of sugar. “So…. Do you want to talk about it?

“The ice cream?”

The silence that followed your bad attempt at an escape made you stuff a spoonful of ice cream in your mouth, using it as an excuse not to talk about anything at all. Suga tilted his head with a playfully disapproving smile, “_______.”

You cleared your throat, feeling as if your mouth, your throat, your sternum, your solar plexus was freezing over from the chilly delight. “Uhm….” You struggled to look for a place to start from, you’d failed. Simple as that. You hadn’t passed your exam. And now your life was ruined. There wasn’t really anything else to it. But you felt as if it were impossible to tell someone so perfect that you…. weren’t. You stared down at your, now empty, bowl, “I, uh…. I failed my exam….”

Another silence.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Suga chuckled at your disbelief.

“Yeah… Okay.” His gentle smile made the room brighter, made you feel warm as if you were standing in sunlight. “_______. You failed one exam…. That’s nothing to be sad over… You are an amazing student.” Suga had completely forgotten about his ice cream, now reaching over and placing the bowl on the side table without taking his eyes off you. “While I do encourage you to try to study from your mistakes… there isn’t really anything to be upset about… School is just.. school.. It’s not here forever. Once we’re out in the real world, really working with our careers… School will just be…” He chuckled quietly, “It’ll just be a fond memory.”

You couldn’t help but laugh, “School? A fond memory? Are you feeling alright, my love?” You reached up and rested your cold hand on his forehead, making him flinch with a smile.

Suga reached up and took your frozen hand in his warm ones, leaning his head against the top of your head and closing his eyes, “You’re going to be just fine, _______. Everyone fails. It’s how life is supposed to work… Otherwise, how are we ever to improve if we don’t know what we did wrong?”

It was silent for only a moment, taking the brief pause in time to really take in what he’d said. He was right, you knew. He was usually right. But you didn’t want to focus on that right now. You cleared your throat before you motioned to the sidetable, “So uh… Can I have your ice cream, Koushi?” Suga snorted and traded bowls with you, deciding he’d spend the rest of the day spoiling you.

Kuroo Tetsurou:

The moment your shoulders fell against the side of his chest was when he knew. You’d failed your exam. It was as if your aura, the mood around you, had completely turned on its head… You were now staring down at your phone, the dim light of the screen illuminating the sadness, the disappointment and the self-hatred that now lined your face.

Kuroo brought his arm down from behind you on the couch, wrapping it around your shoulders and pulling you against the side of his chest silently. You glanced up at him only briefly before back down at your phone, your frown somehow getting deeper. Your aura darker. You knew he knew. And your heart shook in your chest at the mere thought of your boyfriend judging you based on your grades. Him and his perfect A’s in all classes.

“You know…” Kuroo stared off suddenly, his golden eyes not moving from their gazing at the TV - it was movie date night for you two, and he’d chosen quite an interesting film from his odd collection below the TV. “It’s kind of rude to check your grades in the middle of spending time with your boyfriend, blind your boyfriend with your screen light, and not pay attention to the movie he so professionally hand picked for your date night.” Then his eyes were on you, peering down at you from the corner of his eye, “How’d you do?”

He’d known you were nervous about your exam. You’d studied with him for almost a whole week prior to taking it. He’d complained countless times whenever you’d suddenly ask him to quiz you - mostly because it was during the most random of times! Kuroo doesn’t think he’d ever met someone who wanted him to quiz them for an exam in the middle of having sex. Not that you’d paid attention to your request for long. Kuroo shook himself out of the memory, reminding himself that he was here with you in the present, and you were sulking over a grade that’d come in.

“I failed.”

“Hm?” Kuroo quickly, very easily, snatched your phone from your hands, leaning away from you when you whined and reached for it. “_______, you did fine. You got a 68…. Ah, if only you’d answered one more question correctly.”

You frowned and sat back, “But, Tetsu… That would have only gotten me a 69….?”

A leering smirk was sent your way, accompanied with a sultry wink, “Exactly.”

Playful irritation lit your face, covering the quiet embarrassment adorning your cheeks. You pushed his leaning form, making him laugh and completely lay out on the couch - if he lifted his legs onto yours, he’d probably be more comfortable. “You’re disgusting. I’m over here worrying about my grades, and you have nastiness on the brain. How do you sleep at night?”

“Usually next to my overly dramatic girlfriend.” His quick quip wasn’t what you were looking for and you were quickly losing your patience. Kuroo could easily see your playful irritation was slowly turning more serious, and he knew he’d be on thin ice if he didn’t watch himself. He scrolled through your grades, up towards the top, where your overall grade in the course lay. “Kitten…. Why are you so down?”

You sighed loudly, dramatically, but caught yourself too late and cleared your throat. He’d heard the drama and struggled to contain his snort of amusement, masking it as a bad cough. Squinting at him, you let out a huff, “I got a 68 on a major exam! Tetsu! That’s important! The whole course… If I don’t do better on the next exam…. Or maybe I can ask the teacher if they’ll give me another chance…. Maybe give them some sort of bribe…” You furrowed your eyebrows. Soft snickering at your expense caught your ear over your brainstorming, and you glared at your boyfriend, “It’s NOT funny, Tetsu! I need to seriously buckle down on my next exam otherwise I don’t know if I’ll be able to make graduation!”

Just before you were about to fall into a spiral of self doubt and anxiety, Kuroo’s hand wrapped around your arm and pulled you down to his level, lifting his legs onto the couch, letting your lower half rest between his long legs while you now laid on top of him. “Kitten… I want you to look at your grades and tell me what you see….”

He turned the phone for you to be able to view your grades. But you didn’t want to see them, knowing full well what he was getting at. “Tetsu! That doesn’t matter! One little slip up could land me working at McDonald’s or Panda Express the rest of my life!”

“You don’t even work there now, though!”

You pouted up at him, bringing your arms up and crossing them in front of you on his chest. You quickly stuffed your face into your own arms and Kuroo chuckled, hearing your groaning gaining volume, feeling your despair, as misplaced as it was. His large hands rested on your back, and your lower back, rubbing up and down softly. He was warm. His hands were gentle. Your heart beat strong in your chest, and you could feel his beating strong under you. How could he be so…. Okay? With a bad grade?

“I learned a long time ago that grades are…..” Kuroo stopped before snorting out, “bullshit.” You didn’t lift your head, knowing he wasn’t finished. “They don’t display your knowledge or your intelligence… it’s just a number for the teachers…. So since it’s just a number for them… why does it have so much more meaning to you?”

His question rang in your ears, and try as you might, you couldn’t help feeling he was right.

And he knew he was.

A smile could be heard in his voice, “As long as you get what you need from the college, from the school…. Which in your case would be a degree, right?” You nodded silently, still hiding your face in your arms, still feeling a little down over your failed exam. “Right. As long as you get your degree, you’ll learn on the job and everything works out….” But he could still feel your apprehension. “_______… I can promise you.. there is NO job in this world that will just…. Throw you into production…” He chuckled, “That’s purely idiotic.”

He was right. Kuroo was right. Sighing you nodded again, lifting your head, staring down at your arms on his chest, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

You nodded again, “Okay. You’re right…. It’s just a grade…. Just a number….”

Kuroo’s smile was gentle, genuine, feeling warmth spread through his chest as the dark aura around you passed without a single tear being shed. “Good…. Now let’s go get some of that sweet dairy stuff we have in the freezer.”

Sooooo… uh… I have NO idea how to describe what Suga does… but I know Kuroo would try to talk some sense into you lol Suga would just probably coax you into learning what had gone wrong! But I love you, anon! And I hope you did wonderfully on your exams!