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xoxojisu · 15 days ago

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♡ prompt #29 "here, let me help with that." "it's just a necklace— i'll be able to—" "just let me do it for you, pretty." w. chigiri hyoma (tooth-rotting fluff, mutual pining, best friends to lovers) cw: swearing, parental pressure (on reader), panic attack mention and description (reader) wc: 3.2k lmao

‘So…this is it, huh?’

‘Don’t say it like that, Hyo,’ you chuckle. ‘I’m still gonna be your best friend, waiting for you, however long you take.’

He winced. An obscure movement, the small smile he struggled to keep on his face wavering slightly.

Chigiri Hyoma was just that, your best friend, ever since the fifth grade when you fell face-first off the monkey bars from where you were trying to show off to your friends.

Said friends laughed first and then came to help you, only to see you were already being pulled to your feet, hand enclosed in the palm of a boy with the prettiest eyes and hair you’d ever seen in your 10 years of living.

Instead of thanking him, you stared at him in awe, ever blunt, and asked, “How on earth did you convince your mum to dye your hair? I’ve been begging for ages and she’d never let me!” Your entire way of life inspired by J-pop idols you've seen on TV, it’s all you’d ever wanted. The poor boy flushed and insisted “It’s natural!”, offended.

And that was that. You’d all remained good friends after.

Chigiri was always closer to you than anyone in the group though, in imperceptible ways. After you’d walked back from the playground that day, you thought the boy was following you home creepily until you realised you both lived in the same neighbourhood, a few houses away from each other.

Growing pains overtook your minds, as you met new people and dealt with jealousy when he did the same, not speaking to each other for months on end until you confronted him in the very playground where you first met, throwing a pebble at his chest when he shamefully said it was because boys weren’t supposed to be friends with girls, reconciling and spending every waking moment together again. In manga stores curled up with bowls of ramen and sitting too close for just friends, running to the konbini down the street at 2 a.m. a day before a big quiz after a cram study session in either of your rooms.

You’d cried on his shoulder after your mum ripped and threw out all your art, convinced all your skill was driven by a relationship with someone she hated [even though you weren’t, but your pained, cracked, throat-ripping cries and screams fell on her unrelenting ears], comforted him when his injured leg cramped and spasmed, phantom pains sending tremors down the suffering muscles, the tips of your fingers leaving warm, soothing trails in their wake.

You’d realised a long time ago, braiding his silken hair, sitting outside on the concrete steps on the school grounds. A sure feeling resting at the depths of the largest chamber of your heart. You’d calmly continued the deft weaving of your hands as you wondered when it settled down and made its home there, and how long it's been hiding, waiting to strike but left gaping at your unsatisfactory reaction.

You suppose you’d always known, then, that your feelings would do what they wanted as they pleased, whenever.

Was it the unsure smiles and wide eyes from when you’d just become friends, looking so adorable you couldn’t help the sugar cubes melting against your tongue, hearts and flowers and a pink haze surrounding him every time your 7th-grade self looked at him?

‘Here, have this!’ Strawberry milk was pushed awkwardly into your blurred vision, blinking confused. You’d gotten your maths tests back, losing three too many marks on a quiz you were sure was easy, telling your parents you were confident. Terrified of their surely condescending and wrathful reaction, as soon as the teacher left the classroom, you’d burst into tears.

With your head bowed so close to the wretched paper on your desk, you didn’t see or give regard to the the worried flapping of the boy sitting in front of you, picking and prodding and poking at you like a mother hen. Flushed, he quickly flipped his own 30/30 paper and placed it under his desk, desperate to comfort you properly. His eyes caught on the strawberry milk his sister placed in the side pocket of his bag, tying a small red ribbon around it.

His favourite.

He smiled offhandedly at the kindness (no matter how much they fought), before taking it swiftly and handing it to you with matching watery smiles as you thanked him with sweet honey melting on your tongue, a soft haze surrounding every thought in your head.

It became your favourite too.

Passing notes in class as your calculus teacher droned on and on about domains and everything you couldn’t focus on, the boy sitting next to you telling you all about the cats he saw on the way to school?

‘...-all the ordered pairs of relation R is known as the domain. It may not be equal to-...,’ your brain numbly registered, your teacher’s monotone voice drilling holes into the edges of your consciousness. You weren’t alone in this fight, you knew, if the nodding heads and light snores from the back of the class were anything to go by.

If your constant doodling at the edges of your maths notebook or your hand wasn’t what was keeping you awake, it was Hyoma’s consistent note passing from beside you, without fail, in every class this teacher was in. This time, he was talking, well writing, about his new feline friends he’d met on the way to school. ‘You overslept, didn’t you? I left after 5 minutes of waiting, sorry,’ you wrote back, the paper already covered in his own sloppy sketches of abnormally noodle-looking cats.

The sunrays melting through the windows weren’t helping at all, your drowsiness teetering at the edge of your mind. He burned, nodding sheepishly, before furiously writing back, ‘I never would’ve met these kittens if it weren’t for that though.’ ‘Sure, sure, whatever you say. Don’t be late again, hate walking alone,’ was what you last wrote, before you dozed off against his shoulder.

He stiffened, refusing to move an inch, hiding you behind his textbook before dropping his head to yours.

When you had last-minute panic attacks in your room with him, in the middle of your studying, knowing exactly how to calm you down and sprinting out in the middle of the night to buy your favourite because you’d run out at home?

Fuck. It’s happening again, you thought numbly to yourself. Enthalpy and Le Chatelier and Organics spun through your head wildly as you tried to find a rhythm to your breathing. You’d worked all year for the chemistry final and the shit just refused to stick until another teacher took over as a substitute. But it wasn’t enough time. You were sure you were gonna blow this.

As your mind swam with thoughts of failure and not securing as much as you wanted to, Hyo’s hand came to rest on your knee across from where you were both seated on the floor. ‘Hey. Hey, you can hear me right, pretty? C’mon look up.’ Your eyes met his from where they were burning holes into the ground, and you could feel the faint sheen of sweat at your hairline and at the back of your neck, heart thudding and quick, anxious pants leaving your mouth. He smiled encouragingly, bringing your clammy hand up to his chest. ‘In, and out,’ he’d muttered repeatedly, gaze holding yours kindly and spilling pride whenever you succeeded.

He ran out to the store down the street to buy your precious dorayaki, and you ate it with your head resting on his shoulder quietly, listening to his sure and confident voice of his faith in you rumbling against his chest throughout his figure.

Months later, you met eyes again in his room, opening up your results together and spilling pride again.

Sitting outside during your afternoon breaks at school, on those same steps, basking in the warm, golden sunlight, your breath stopping just at your throat at the way his long hair caught the light as he tied it up, eyes slipping shut?

‘What do you plan on doing this summer?’

The finals had just drawn to a close, the last day of school inching closer until it waited at the end of that week. It was getting warmer if the sweltering and the droplets collecting at the small of your back were anything to go by. You knew his answer before you asked it, but he replied anyway. Peeking one eye open from where he was seated on the step below you, lazing and sprawling out like a cat, resting his elbows on your step, he cast you a sharp smile.

‘Spending time with you, of course. Although, laser tag and beach volley would be nice,’ he said, the both of you sighing at the thought of air conditioning and cool seawater in the middle of ice-cream-melting July.

You went to agree until he grimaced, pulling at the shirt sticking to his skin slightly before closing his eyes again slowly, an idle blink lasting slothfully as he pulled his hair away from his neck, tugging the hair tie around his wrist to twist into his hair instead. His uniform button-up lifted from where he petulantly refused to tuck it in, your eyes quickly shifting away from the peeking skin as his other hand came to loosen his tie gruffly once he was done. Your words died in your throat, face flooding with wine as you considered whether your best friend had always been this pretty.

‘Take a picture, it’ll last longer,’ he said cheesily, all the thoughts in your head comically stopping with a record scratch. You’d never sputtered defensively as much before, his contagious laughter drowning out all your chatter.

Maybe it was all of these, instead of one alone.

You knew you didn’t have a chance, though. That as girls cooed after him in the hallways, having his locker spilling letters upon gifts upon letters, especially every Valentine's, you were out of his league.

What you didn’t know was that he was looking at you, beside him in the hallways, waiting and sifting through his pile of gifts searching for your name, one letter, from you. He never received it.

Chigiri could be oblivious, but he knew what his own heart was telling him when it shifted into overdrive every time you spared him a glance, your smiling face infiltrating his mind whenever he closed his eyes, and the insufferable itch in his hands to reach for your own, especially during calculus, when he dug around for something to write you from the corners of his memories.

Hanging out during summer or winter break with all your friends, but he’d find himself drawn to your presence, magnetic and imprisoned, latching himself to you for the rest of your time together.

Yeah, you may have fallen first, but Chigiri Hyoma fell harder.

So he told you. Well, later.

‘I have severe problems with keeping my own mouth shut,’ he began, without hinting at what he was about to say, and smiled to himself at your agreement with me, too, the both of you staring ahead at the monkey bars.

You were on the swings in the park where you first met, a goodbye of sorts. The swings were too low, too small for your gangly legs dragging against the ground, worn down and almost pot-holed from age, decades of children dragging themselves up and down the set. The green expanse beyond you was empty, kids having returned home after a sweaty day of excitement on a school night, unwillingly returning home to their awaiting homework and scolding to finish their vegetables. You turn your head to look at him, his head tilted and gaze trained at his beat-up sneakers.

To say you were proud of the person he’d become was an understatement. Cocky snarks and an egotistical superiority complex had come crashing down with his ACL injury, and his self-confidence faced a severe blow. Yeah, he’d been an annoying kid, but the bullying he experienced after was truly unwarranted and you made sure your point was made when you directed your pebble throwing to a different target.

Here he was, going away to a football camp to cultivate the best strikers in the world, as a final hurrah. He probably thought he wouldn’t make it anywhere, with the believed absence of his speed shackling him, invisible chains pressing and marking themselves into his skin.

You begged to differ, but your encouragement had fallen on deaf ears, head trapped between in knees in an attempt to hide his tears when he first told you.

He couldn’t keep his mouth shut, yes, but he could prolong the wait. He told you to hold on, reaching into the small bag you’d been curiously glancing at every few minutes or so. He pulled out two tiny boxes. Necklace boxes. He places the navy case into your palm, leaving him with the white one, and you both open it at the same time.

You have to hold back a slow, quiet gasp, hand flying up to touch your sternum, in front of where your heart was hiding, thudding wildly. It was the most delicate necklace you’d ever seen - a small, silver Saturn pendant, thin lines winding through its rings. You looked over to his palm, where his own crescent moon chain rested, and tears you didn’t know were waiting sprung up behind your lash line as he clasped it around his neck.

‘You got us matching necklaces?’ you choked out weakly. He looked over at you, reaching out a hand to brush away a few tears that betrayed you, nodding, his smile kind. His own eyes stung, threateningly to mimic you.

You rushed to clasp your own around your neck, struggling frustratedly as all your emotions blurred your vision and blocked your throat. Trying repeatedly to no avail because you couldn’t even see, you let out a small strangled cry of annoyance.

‘Here, let me help with that,’ he muttered softly, getting up to stand behind you, the metal of his zip-up hoodie clanging against the chains.

‘It's just a necklace- I'll be able to-’ you desperately broke out, your own voice sounding foreign to your ears.

Hyoma chuckled lightly at your unfading stubbornness. ‘Just let me do it for you, pretty.’

Your hands stuttered at their fight against his and the clasp, falling into your lap traitorously, your body responding to his sweet words quicker than your mind could keep up with.

His gentle hands brushed against the back of your neck, goosebumps rising down your form, every hair standing on end as soft puffs of his breath reach your skin. You let out an involuntary, watery giggle at the feeling of his ghosting fingers.

You could feel his stupid smirk from behind you as he mocked you, poking at your skin much faster than before. ‘You still ticklish, pretty?’ he teased, his own quiet chuckles meeting your own choked ones. He let out a heavy sigh as he stopped, finally clasping the necklace shut. Pressing his hands to your shoulders with finality, he came instead to your front, settling down on the ground on his knees, sneakers tucked beneath him.

Grabbing your hands kindly, he looked up at you, observing for a moment before he could say what he wanted to. You looked unreal, ethereal, glowing under the moonlight and the silvery light posts set up around the park. Cicadas thrummed their tune from the green, hiding in the shadows as moths thronged around any source of light, tiny garden frogs croaking loudly all the way from the pond across the grounds. You look like one of those nature fae, he thinks absently, fitting in so well with the aura, like one of those elves or nymphs his mom used to read about as he nodded off into his scenic dreamland. You look like you’d fit right in, the pretty picture of his bedtime stories.

‘I’m in love with you,’ he says plainly, face blank but his eyes carrying insurmountable emotion, irises swirling with adoration, devotion, care, compassion and everything red.

He looked like he could just stay here with you forever, hand closed around yours, ready to run out to protect you whenever you needed to be even if you could yourself, to get your dorayaki when you panicked, and strawberry milk for when you were upset, to catch all the pebbles you threw at him in annoyance but never with malice or intention to hurt him, to offer you his shoulder to sleep or cry or rest on, to write out every valentine in the world to you or as many mindless notes to look back to when he missed you, or you missed him.

He looked like love.

His lips tug upwards, fighting a smile at how he could feel your rushing pulse at your wrist, your face set in a jaw-dropped, taciturn look. But you weren’t speechless, so you drew your hands from his, cupping your palms against the soft skin of his cheeks and said, ‘I’m in 10√2 with you too.’

He allows himself to smile, finally, laughing unabashedly at the pun you’d learnt from a drama the both of you had binged together into the wee hours of the night, sharing pillows and blankets and passing stray tissues to cry into, resorting to each others’ shoulders instead.

You lean forward as far as you could before falling off the tiny seat of the swing and pressing your lips to his, a gesture he eagerly returned, bringing his hands to run through your hair before tugging you forward, a sure knot placed through the strands.

You’d both waited and waited for so long for what you both knew, and he felt like Tantalus reaching for his fruit, Except Chigiri Hyoma actually caught the fruit, unlike the sinner, sinking his sharp teeth into the tantalizing flesh that was your lips, soothing the sting with a quick swipe of his tongue.

You yelped as he pulled at you, slipping off the swing and right into his waiting lap, arms coming up to draw around his shoulders as he drew you fully onto him by your waist. He sighed contentedly into you, pulling away slightly, unwillingly.

‘Promise me you’ll wait for me, and think of me every day as much as I will of you, to keep yourself safe and well-fed, and to throw yourself into me when I come back,’ he whispered into your lips, an oath for your ears alone, not for the empty playground or the eavesdropping cicadas or the selfless moonlight.

Raising your right hand, you both laugh quietly into each other as you whisper back.

‘I solemnly swear to uphold my promise, to wait for you, to think of you everyday as much as you will of me because you’re so in love with me, to doodle hearts and flowers around your name into every notebook, to keep myself safe and to eat well as should you, and to absolutely crush you in my arms when you come back.’

Pushing himself to the ground behind him, lips impatiently slotting against yours again with a soft groan in reply, to lay on his back against the playground you both grew up in, the mutual, comforting words of what you’ve always known in the back of your mind embedded in the bark of the silent, ancient trees, you seal it with a kiss. Or two. Or more.

Who’s counting?

[Not you, definitely.]

a/n: oops my hand slipped. (i literally have 0 self-control when it comes to this man)

requested: yes. this was supposed to be a drabble. i'm so sorry anon.

taglist: @mybelovedrin, @izzylovestnbhd, @angelchigiri (sorry for tagging u but i jus thought you needed to see this user😩)

©jisbizarre 23 - do not plagiarise or copy my work. chigiri would never write you notes about cats if you did, mark my words.

#ji.blogs!#i love going through my tags and discovering old gems

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