I'd Wait For U To Realize Your Feelings Pookie ♡ - Blog Posts

"And I swore I wouldn't curl up in the palm of your hand... But you let your eyes linger on me, and I suddenly can't make a fist."

🌿 kaji ren

Synopsis

You were never too discreet with your fondness for him, and he was never too good at letting people in. And for awhile, it didn’t matter. You settled in the space of friendship, content with your place in his life. But why was he not satisfied?

character: kaji ren x gn!reader word count: 1,897 tags: reader insert, raw confessions, slightly aged up, friends to lovers (if you squint), emotionally constipated kaji ren so i make him face himself

warnings: none

At the instant you tore him a piece of your heart—right away, he knew. It would never be the same for him.

It was then back in sophomore year, when the streets of Makochi haphazardly brought an unsuspecting you, suddenly caught in the crossfire, and Kaji Ren had to throw a punch or two with the tingling from his knuckles exploding into his system. It was when you pushed your soaked suede boots into a warm Café Pothos, hair sticking to your flushed face from having braved the downpour just to meet him, that a dreadful feeling crept behind the cages of his rib, prickling ever so quietly at his chest. It was when you started taking a bit more space in his routine, during patrol when the sun dipped on the horizon, and you would check up on him, that his clammy palms felt too apparent from the uncertainty of your presence.

It was when he could sense your gaze dawdle a little bit on the frames of his thoughts, when your words would thin out into an ellipsis in the discourse, that he suspected a secret dancing on your tongue—one that would ruin him if you did so much as whisper it. With his hands behind him, fingers crossed, he hoped for you not to say it. Don’t. He would not know what to do with himself.

But it was one evening, in June, with the town half-asleep and the hums of the night harmonising with Ren’s quickening heartbeat that you let out the string of words he wished you would never make known. Somewhere between your ‘I like you’ and ‘I don’t think I ever tried to hide it’ hung the silence of his chest—and in it a dropping sensation, like his heart plunged to his gut.

It was painfully obvious, but perhaps the unspoken was a thread Ren held onto dear life for, afraid of the screaming pit right below him if the cord thinned out from the truth. He hoped desperately for you not to say it, for you not to snap his only source of sanity. He knew right away, that if you looked him in the eye and told him he meant something to you, it was trouble he could not solve with his fists.

He could not think straight, and yet, he went with what he thought was best to save himself… from what exactly? He had no sliver of an idea. All he knew was in that moment, you existed, to his doom, and if he did not right his feet now, he could end up with a gash he would only want you to mend. A thought so terrifying to Kaji Ren, he could sense his throat dry up.

“I’m sorry,” was the only thing he managed to utter. Timid, hoarse—as if he himself strained to say it. A part of him thought he needed to hear it more than you did.

You gave him a smile so surely infallible. “I’m okay, Ren. I only wanted it out for the sake of letting you know,” reassuring him none of it would change the way you have been to each other.

But you could not have been more wrong. To Kaji Ren, it changed everything forever.

It started with a slow dance. Between the fear of being known and the ache of wanting to be, tearing the floor open, his footsteps found their way to a new safe distance from you—within reach, but never quite touching... afraid that if you met his skin, he’d melt away to your mercy. He was never the same proximity as yesterday though, and every day, he inched just a little closer. He was well aware of the shortening gap despite his ‘I’m sorry’ from that night in June, but between the fear of being known and the ache of wanting to be, his body trembled at the warmth yours left in its wake.

He started to reach for your hand in every moment you went for the door, but his would freeze and hang suspended in the air, twitching at the realisation that he had given that fortune up when he said he was sorry. His eyes started to drift faintly to the pads of your fingers, staring too much as if willing it to trace his scars carefully. He started to wonder what it would be like to let you touch him in more ways than one, past skin and bones—and he started to ache in his chest, from a want so clever and bold, he wanted to take his apology back.

You acted the same as you had always, just as you said. And it messed with his head when he appeared to be the only one affected.

It was after one of Furin’s clashes with another bandit territory that he was limp on your couch, lips busted with a gaping cut and bruises on the left of his face. He wore a glare of profound irritation, you surmised his altercation with the other group put him in too much of a bad mood. But if the deep furrowing of his brows and the crease on his forehead said anything about his mood, in truth, it was frustration from the intimacy of your warm body adjacent to his cold skin. From the mindful brush of your knuckles on his cheek in patching him up, to the awful confusion of having no idea how to deal with his feelings. Too close, he could feel his pulse drumming from his ears.

You cocked a brow, lightly placing a finger or two on his forehead, softly ironing out the wrinkles from the face he was making under the bangs.

“Relax,” you said with a quiet laugh, in a probably too casual tone for Ren’s own good that he simply abandoned his better judgment.

“How are you so unaffected?”

You paused, fingers falling dead on his temple as he looked up at you from his seat. His dark grey eyes pierced their gaze into yours, never minding the mingling breaths from the closeness, and they seemed to be harbouring a raging storm straining to tame itself. Something you cannot understand.

The question came out of nowhere, and he downed into your stare so firmly, as if bracing for the answer. You blinked. “You’re here now, aren’t you? You could’ve gotten out worse, but you—”

“That’s not what I—” A sigh fell off his half bleeding lips, head dropping back into the headrest as the lump on his throat bobbed up and down from swallowed contention. His stare was glued to the ceiling, and you stepped back, fingers leaving a burn on his forehead, feeling some tension you were not made aware of as you wait for him to add on his thought.

There was a brief silence before he continued, “You were never too discreet with how you looked at me. It was obvious—from the start. I always knew.”

Stillness misted around the room once more, smoking into the cracks of the walls and the space between you and him. Save for the shuffling from his tearing away off the cushion, you could hear a pin drop. Ren bent over to his legs, elbows resting on the tip of his knees as he rubbed on his eyelids with weary circles.

“But I had hoped you wouldn’t say it,” he mumbled in a hushed tone, you almost didn’t catch it. You could not muster up any response, and he seemed as though he had more to tell you, so you let him ruminate in his mind, catching wandering thoughts that swayed capriciously. A quiet sigh left his mouth again. “I desperately hoped you wouldn’t say it out loud... else, I’d have to face it, too.”

“You finally knew what I meant to you...” He trailed off, the last note on his musing drifting into the air, breathless at the height of his emotions. “But I was still stuck on wondering why I was always so out of breath around you.”

Feelings hitched at his throat, and he pushed them down with a gulp. His fingers drummed a slow beat on jeans-cladded thigh, and he seemed to be debating what he would say next. You allowed him time, watching the way his own brows furrowed and uncrossed themselves as he was pondering.

“I was never good at feelings. I was scared.”

It was no secret. Kaji Ren was a man of few words, the everyday lollipop in his mouth stuck for the purpose of barring himself from saying too much past what he would be willing to admit. But the high walls he perched and built through his own calloused hands need not be said—it was a towering piece of evidence: he wasn’t one to let people in.

And it was fine. You respected his space.

“I feared that if I opened myself to it—to you just a little more than I usually do, I’d be giving you the power to hurt me.”

You could feel your own breath shortening, lungs tightening, hardly catching up to the racing of your heartbeat.

“And I swore I wouldn’t curl up in the palm of your hand...” The unexpected softness in his voice did not go by unnoticed. His tone small, only just under the breath, struggling to come alive at his utterance, as if he had sledgehammered his brick walls down to let you see him inside as weak as a whisper. “But you let your eyes linger on me, and I suddenly can’t make a fist.”

You opened your mouth to say something—something to give a pause to the rawness spilling all over the place. Something to slow this all down when you could narrowly suck an air in. But he had more to say, and you could sense the unplanned urgency in his speech.

“I can’t fight back. I think I’ll unravel. I think that I don’t mind being seen, being touched, if it’s you—” A tightening in his throat nearly choked his words down, and he corked up the stumbling by the skin of his teeth. “I think I’m okay if I surrender myself to you—and that scares me.”

The hindmost sentence came out in a hiss, as if it scalded his tongue to admit.

“But I’m more terrified of letting that chance pass up, never knowing how it feels to be held by you, when it’s staring me at the face.”

A pause.

A short silence, allowing his feelings to sink into your own, colliding right in the pits of your chest where your heart rests undeterred. You did not know what to do with yourself.

“So, if I’m not too late... I would really...” He spoke with a sigh, running his hand through his hair, the sweating of his hands too familiar. “I’d really love to hang out with you. I’d love to figure this out with you.”

It was after waging a battle with clutches borne out of personal grievances that Kaji Ren waged a war with his own feelings. Through his rare moment of laying his armour down, cutting himself open for you, not once had he shot his gaze at your direction.

But this time, he finally looked you in the eye.

“I wouldn’t mind resting in the palm of your hand, if you promise I’ll be safe in it.”