gitanes | ic inbox ( ryslig )

[A few days after his talk with other Yugi, and also a lot of overthinking, Komaeda decides to finally message the woman in question—]

Lila-san... are we dating?

[Comically loud brake screeching noise.]

[She types out what the fuck, hovers over the enter key, and then . . . slowly deletes it. Instead:]

i dunno

i'm not good at
do you want to be?

[Does he want to be? He has no experience at all when it comes to love and dating... sure, he's confessed his feelings to others, but they've never... been returned before.

He swallows down his nervousness.]

I like you a lot, Lila-san, but I never really thought of myself as someone who was worthy enough to be with another person. Also, if I'm being honest... there's another person I like, too.

I don't know how you feel about that kind of thing.

[That's very honest. Which is good, technically, but Lila doesn't really have time to even try to recognize that before the lights in the surrounding floors dim to almost nothing and then slowly rise again. When her room is illuminated properly again, she realizes she can feel her heartbeat in her ears.]

[If what they've been doing isn't being together, which it must not be because Komaeda doesn't think he's worthy of that — if this is just him liking her, and he likes someone else, then what—]

"that kind of thing" meaning what exactly

[In some ways, Lila is easy to read. The lights dim, even though he's only one floor up and a couple doors down. He glances upwards, at the frosted glass sconce on his wall, and then back down at his laptop. He pauses, pressing his hands to his face and smooths fingers—both feeling and not—over his cheeks and through his fleshy hair.

Deep breath. Fingers on the keys.]

It's hard to explain, I like people for who they are... and I've liked multiple people in the past before, too.

It... it feels like I have too much love to give, maybe? I like different things about different people... and the reason I like you is different from the reason I like someone else...

[Ugh. This is hard. He's been thinking a lot about it, though.]

It doesn't mean I like you any less, but... not telling you about it would probably make you hate me, right?

yes

[That, first and foremost: yes. She hates secrets, and she hates lies. He understands at least part of that, which is good, but she wonders if he really gets it — how hard it is for her to trust anyone. How much work she's put into trusting him. This feels like a breach of trust, even though it isn't. She doesn't own him. It's not his fault this feels like safety slipping through her fingers like sand.]

[When she looks at it through the fear, she can see — that maybe she's not so surprised after all. It sounds like Komaeda. Like someone who feels too big and loves too hard, too much, too wide. She doesn't really understand it, but then, her kind of alone isn't the same as his. He's been trapped in a different kind of cycle than she has.]

[I don't know how you feel about that kind of thing, he said, and what he meant was I don't know how you feel about the way I feel things. She doesn't . . .]

[Is that even a question she gets to answer?]

i like the way you are. i just don't

it scares me. i don't know. whoever it is, i know they're nicer than me, and you can touch them. if you're into two people and one of them is me, the end of the story is kind of inevitable, don't you think?

[With all the honesty stuff, it's probably for the best that he simply... tells her. So that she doesn't wonder who the other person is... right?]

Well, he's not really nicer than you... but he's a good friend to me. It's Yugi-kun, the vampire... do you know him?

[She might not, but it doesn't matter, because at least she knows.]

Regardless, I don't want to scare you Lila-san... that's why I'm telling you this now, that way you can be certain whether you want me to be your boyfriend or not.

Because if you tell me you don't want me dating other people, I can do that... but I also won't stop feeling the way I do, either. So... what do you want to do?

[What does she want to do?]

[She wants to stick her hand down Yugi-kun the vampire's throat and pull his heart out through his teeth. She wants to close her laptop and walk outside and keep walking until she runs out of world to walk in. She wants to use every insult she knows. She wants to cause somebody, anybody pain, even (especially) if it's herself.]

[It's not that it's even necessarily bad. It's just unexpected, and she doesn't understand it, and she thought that he was asking for confirmation when really . . .]

[Really, she fucked all of this up, didn't she. Right from the start.]

if i say yes i do want to date you but i don't want you dating other people, you'll be in pain. because you love him and you can't be with him. i don't want to hurt you like that.

i thought we were dating, yeah. that's the answer to the first question you asked. i don't know what the right answer to this question is, i just know that hurting you like that isn't it. i want to be able to share you but i've never shared anything in my life, komaeda.

[. . .]

when you look at me, it feels like i'm the only person in the universe. you said you were mine. you try hard to understand me and make me feel safe. does that feeling stay if i share you?

[If Komaeda were any more perceptive, or perhaps wise, he would've had this conversation in person. In retrospect, this is definitely the sort of thing you talk about face-to-face and not over the network. It probably isn't the time to mention that the other Yugi rejected him, either.

Because right now, he can only imagine the expression Lila wears on the other side of the screen.

Is she frowning? He knows she's upset but is she flickering around her edges, her hair flared up like it's been caught in a vortex or like a towering inferno? Has she stretched into a shape decidedly less human? There's so much he thinks about, about how he doesn't want to hurt her just as much as she doesn't want to hurt him.

Lila is tough but it seems the more time that passes, the more he wants to hold her gently to his heart, with gloved hands to protect her fragile composition. It's only text, but he wants to give her that warmth, still.]

I... I don't think I could ever really put into words how much you mean to me. You also make me feel safe, and... like I can talk about the things I don't talk about with anyone else. Even if it doesn't make sense, you try to understand... and because of that, I also want to protect you. I don't want to hurt or scare you, Lila-san.

I am yours. The feelings I have for you, I don't have them for anyone else. These are feelings in the shape of you, only. I don't know if it makes sense but that's just... how it feels, I guess. I don't want to make you worry more than I already do, especially not something like this. I want you to trust me, because... I know it's hard.

I'm not used to people trusting me, either. I don't want to lose that, or you.

[One of the things about Cassel is . . . it used to be, behind closed doors, when it was just them, he was just a boy, kind of awkward sometimes, kind of funny. But when she came back, he wasn't like that anymore. Maybe underneath it all that boy was still alive, but the part of him she saw was the part that calculated the words he wanted to say for maximum effect before he let them out into the world. Who made words in the shape of influence, who pushed, who didn't even realize he was pushing half the time.]

[He wouldn't ever say anything like what Komaeda's saying now, because it's too clumsy. Awkward, unpolished, like a rock before tumbling. Feelings in the shape of you, a phrase at once clunky and painfully beautiful and so honest it hurts. Komaeda says this thing to her because, while he's probably thinking before he sends these messages, he isn't doing that to craft an image, to build a suit of armor. He's doing it to defang his words as much as possible. To keep from hurting her. To protect her.]

[Feelings in the shape of you, he says, and it doesn't fix everything — but all of a sudden, she recognizes that she was panicking and that she isn't anymore.]

[Because she believes him. Just like that.]

it makes sense.

i don't really know how it works. or how it feels, wanting more than one person at a time. i don't think i do anyway. [Does she still love Cassel, as much as she hates him? Probably. She doesn't want to talk about that.] but i never really knew that many people my age. i don't know what i'm feeling except mad most of the time. except when i'm with you i can feel the other things more easily. like you can pull some of the other bullshit back for a little while and it's okay to be whatever i am underneath all of that. i've never had anyone make me feel like that before.

i don't think i'm mad now. i think i was scared, but i'm less scared now. if everything is still going to be the same with us, or the same but more, then i'm not scared of your feelings. even the ones i don't understand.

ic inbox ( ryslig )

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