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nomazee · 20 days

Text

enough to make me cry

blade is your only roommate, your only friend, and your only way home from this terrible party you found yourself in.

blade x gn reader — 3.3k — college & roommates au!, very americanized college experiences, frat parties, mentions of drinking & vomiting, could be read as platonic but there are definitely romantic undertones, feelings of inadequacy/being out of place, hurt/comfort, social anxiety, blade is probably ooc i'm gonna be so honest, mild kafka & reader friendship, erggg im probably missing something

notes: no i have to be so honest blade is probably completely out of character i have not played a single side quest with him in it but i just think he has reluctant roommate-to-best friend potential and i wanted to pour that into a fic,,, this is mostly unintelligible but i did proofread! love you all

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A warm hand rests on your shoulder, and the first thing that you think is Blade’s hands are supposed to be cold.

It’s really pathetic. You’re somewhere in a stupid frat house, the thrumming of music around you. There’s the flashing colors and sounds of Mario Kart on the TV, the smell of puke (probably yours) and corona lite, and a hand on your shoulders that you’ve discerned is not your roommate, Blade’s.

Looking to the side, you follow the hand (painted, manicured nails, definitely still not Blade’s), and it leads up to an arm up to a shoulder up to a face, and—oh.

“You’re—” you pause, getting your words in order before you puke them up, “you’re Blade’s pretty lady friend?” It’s supposed to come out as a statement, but leans more to a question. She looks down, a bit of a teasing grin on her face, but her eyes are a little soft so you trust her.

“Is that what he calls me?” she jokes.

“No, I’m— I came up with that.” If you had any dignity left in you, you’d be embarrassed to admit that to her. Unfortunately, you’re pretty sure that Kafka (the pretty lady friend in question) just held your hair back and wiped your face as you puked into a frat-house toilet, flushing your dignity away with your dinner. Your eyes burn with tears and mortification, and you pray that only Kafka saw your embarrassing mishaps.

“I called him to pick you up,” she tells you, already looking away from you and scanning the room as if looking for something, or someone. “I would take you home myself, but I’ve got some things to take care of. And I’m assuming you didn't bring your keys with you?”

A quick pat-down of your pockets confirms that, yes, you somehow managed to leave your keys at home, the one personal necessity that you were supposed to bring besides your phone. Which, thankfully, you do at least have.

“Umm, the…” you mutter, tongue tangling uselessly as you try to find a way out of here without facing the impending doom of Blade’s aggravated scolding and his I told you so’s.

A week ago, you went to him with an invite to this frat party and begged him to come with you, saying something like You don’t go out much, this is your chance! He’d adamantly refused, calling it a bad idea and rolling his eyes whenever you brought it up. But you were stubborn, and you wanted to have a fun college experience, so you forced him to drive you to the party with the promise of paying for his next gas payment and getting your own ride back home at the end of the night.

“I can go,” you finally tell Kafka, mind stringing along memories and thoughts and alarm bells of get your ass home before you have to sit in an awful car ride with Blade, “It’s, like, a fifteen minute walk, don’t call him.”

“It’s a little too late for that, kid,” Kafka drawls, amusement in her words. She’s smiling down at you, and you’re reminded of how small you feel. “He’s already on the way.”

“No!” you protest, a little too loudly, but not loud enough to be heard over the thumping of music and bodies and voices. “It’s— Kafka, please, just tell him to turn around, I really don’t want him to deal with me today.”

If you knew her even less, you’d misinterpret the twitch in her expression as concern—but you’re not too dumb, so you read it as amusement. “Trust me, he’s not going to have a problem with that. You’ll be fine.”

Whatever that means. Kafka’s too cryptic for your liking, but you won’t complain. She wiped up your vomit from the dirty bathroom tiles and stayed with you to make sure you didn't get trampled, and she didn't complain about any of that. In a week, when you have enough strength to face her again, you’ll treat her to a good, expensive, flaky pastry. She seems like the kind of person who would love those.

Her phone buzzes with a text notification, and she clicks her tongue, standing up and pulling you with her. Her hand is still warm, seeping through the sleeve of your shirt as she takes you by the forearm, gentle but guiding. Your stomach churns at the thought of seeing Blade, the thought of him seeing you like this. Freshly-puked-out with a nasty stomachache all because of a party that he told you not to go to.

You hold back your protests as Kafka leads you through the still-crowded frat house. What time is it? Has nobody gotten bored yet, seriously? At least you didn't kill the mood by running to the bathroom and weeping into the toilet. It seems like nobody noticed, except for Kafka, and you don’t know if that should make you feel comforted or just more upset.

The cool air of the night hits you as you step through the front door, eyes tracking your feet as you walk down the concrete steps. You see the silhouette of Blade’s ugly blue car in your peripheral vision, but you don’t want to look up in fear of seeing the disappointment on his face so soon. He’s going to rip you a new one, and then call you a slob and kick you out of the apartment and say I can’t have a party fiend living with me even though this was your first party ever, honest.

You barely register that you’ve reached the passenger side of Blade’s car, only coming back to awareness when Kafka opens the door for you and starts nudging you into the seat. A really pathetic part of you wants to grab onto her arm and cry hard enough that she just relents and lets you walk home, but you’re already half into the passenger seat, looking everywhere but Blade.

“Take care of them, won’t you, Bladie?” Kafka commands lightly, her hand leaving your arm as you get situated and buckled up in the car. Blade lets out a little huff in response and your stomach sinks. He’s already annoyed.

The car ride to your apartment is only five minutes at this time of night. You just have to survive five minutes in silence and pray that he doesn’t tear into you and scold you like a disappointed parent. A glance at the clock on the car’s console confirms that it’s half past midnight. What the fuck. What were you even doing at the party for that long, besides vomiting and crying?

The car rumbles, exhaust sputtering a little bit as Blade pulls out from the side of the street and drives slowly, carefully, as if not to rattle you, and you really just want him to speed up and throttle the car around so you feel more guilty about waking him up in the middle of the night to come pick you up. Blade goes to bed at eleven, the latest. You can’t imagine why Kafka thought it would be a good idea to call him, of all people, but then you remember that you kind of don’t have any other friends on campus. Your chest tightens at the thought.

Blade makes some kind of sniffling noise, his way of trying to initiate some kind of conversation. There’s not even any music playing, because he always drives in dead silence because he’s abnormal, and on any other day you’d tease him about it like you always do. You see him turn his head to you in the corner of your eye, but you refuse to acknowledge him. You wish he’d just start scolding you, yelling at you or something.

Tears prickle behind your eyes, painfully so, but your hands tighten around each other in your lap as you will yourself to not cry like a baby in front of your roommate. He lets out another sigh, but it doesn’t sound angry, just tired, and somehow that makes you feel worse.

“What were you guys even drinking?” is his question of voice, and it’s the one question you didn't want him to ask, and you can’t help it when the tears spill over and you bring your hand up to wipe them away frantically, hiccuping a little bit as your gut churns.

“What—” Blade stutters, and he never stutters, and you see him whip his head around to look at you, crying into your hands over a simple question, and you just want to leave the car and walk home like you told Kafka you would do. He pulls over to the side of some residential street. There’s a dog barking in a yard and wind chimes clinking together, and you think of your handmade bottle cap wind chime hung in the balcony of yours and Blade’s apartment, and it just makes you cry more.

The car comes to a full stop. Blade puts it in park and turns completely to you. You spare a quick glance at him through the gaps between your fingers, and there’s something like worry on his face, which you’ve never seen before. His face is pinched, lips parted as if wanting to say something, but he can’t. He’s waiting for you.

“I didn't drink anything, Blade,” you sob, feeling miserable at the state of yourself, at how you went to a frat party with nobody you knew and just walked around like a lost child, too scared to drink or talk to anyone, too anxious to say a word. “Not even a shot, or a sip, nothing from the fridge. It was so stupid, you were right, okay? It was a stupid idea, and I shouldn’t have gone.” Your breath catches in your throat, and the car is dead quiet as Blade lets your words sink in.

You try not to make so much noise when you cry, but you’re sniveling and wiping your face and wishing that he would just stop looking at you like that. You can still see the ruby-red of his eyes even when you can’t bear to look up at him, and it makes you so viscerally upset.

Blade is beautiful, really, and it makes you so upset that he looks better than you right now despite him being dragged right out of bed by Kafka’s phone call with a request to pick you up just minutes ago. You, who spent hours selecting an outfit, just to feel inadequate and wholly ugly the minute you walked through the door. It felt like you were back in middle school, spending hours with your parents picking out an outfit to a school dance, looking through ties and pants and shoes, just to show up and feel both overdressed and underdressed, feel like a fool, feel like you just can’t look the way everyone else does. Like something is always a little wrong.

“Kafka said that you got sick. You didn't drink anything? You’re sure?”

“No,” you confirm pitifully, wanting him to just drop the topic and drive the rest of the way home and never talk about this again. “I was just anxious, and I puked like an idiot. Kafka helped me, she was the only one that I knew at the party. I don’t know. I don’t remember anymore. I was just anxious.”

He says your name, not unkindly, but with a prying tone that just makes a fresh wave of tears stream down your face in rivulets. “Why would you go if you didn't know anyone?”

“I don't know!” you shout, heated with embarrassment. You’re acting like a child, throwing a tantrum and crying and shouting in Blade’s car. The seatbelt is too tight on you. You fiddle with it, pulling it from the juncture of your neck and shoulder and loosening it, scratching your bitten nails against the scratchy cloth and looking out of the car window so that you can avoid Blade’s awful, terrible, intrusive gaze.

“I just wanted to be normal, or something. I don’t know anybody from any of my classes. I don’t talk to anyone from my major. And then I got the invite for the party somehow and I just thought it would be fun. I don’t know, Blade, I know I should’ve listened to you, I’m sorry.”

“Stop,” he says firmly, fully turned to you now, as if he wants you to look back at him, to listen to whatever he’s going to say, and that’s the one thing you don’t want to do. You hate that he’s being kind. You wish he’d be sarcastic and mean and cruel, bite into you and feed off your self-pity. But he’s being nice, nice in the same way that he’s nice when he buys the right brand of milk for you (because the others make you sick, and the taste is different), or when he drives you places in his car when it’s raining so that you don’t have to take the buses everywhere, or when he comes home with your ridiculous coffee order that costs a hellacious amount of money with all of your substitutions and additions and flavorings.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” he says resolutely, leaving no room for argument, “Just— I didn't know you were feeling like that. I would’ve gone with you if you told me you needed someone. I assumed you were going with a friend.”

You don’t respond with I don’t have any friends, because you’re pretty sure that’s clear enough by now, and you don’t want to confirm what’s already been confirmed a million times over just from the way you act. The way you cling to yours and Blade’s apartment, the way you never spend a second longer than you need to in any of your classes, the way that sometimes, when Blade goes out for class or work, you sit on the couch in silence with your laptop out, doing your work for the week and checking the clock and taking naps so that you don’t have to feel so alone for so long.

“You didn't want to go,” you say instead, “I wasn’t going to make you just because I’m— I don’t know.”

“I would’ve gone for you,” he tells you, really tells you, with a force in his words, like he wants to drive the point into you with a stake, driven right through your heart. “I would do a lot of things if you asked. You just need to ask.”

You don’t— you really don’t want to think about what that means. What he means. You rip your eyes away from the car window and turn to face him. He’s not too close. You almost wish he could be closer, but you would suffocate under the pressure in your stomach and behind your eyes.

He shouldn’t say things like that, things like You just need to ask, because you’d ask for a lot if given the chance. You’d ask for him to come to parties with you, stay by your side, let you put a hand on his shoulder and guide him around another disgusting frat house as if you know what you’re doing. You’d ask him to sleep in the same bed as you some nights, just a foot away from each other, backs turned to each other but still close enough that you can feel the unnatural coldness that radiates off of Blade.

You’d ask him to introduce you to Kafka and that other girl they hang out with, to say something stupid and funny like This is my abhorrent roommate, be nice to them, and that way you’d have more contacts in your phone that aren't just Blade and your parents and two old high school friends who you haven’t spoken to in a year. You’d ask him to be a lot more than just a plus-one to a party full of people you’ve never met.

“I just want to go home,” you breathe out, a guilty confession burning your gums and leaving a sour taste in your mouth. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying sorry,” he asserts for the second time tonight, making your lungs squeeze as you puff out a tired exhale. Blade turns back in his seat, taking the car out of park and heading back onto the road—driving slowly, yet again, avoiding cracks and potholes in the road. “You need to eat something. You’ll wake up with a hellish headache if you go to bed dehydrated.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“I said it, so it’s true,” he says petulantly, turning the car down into a road that’s definitely not in the direction of your apartment building. To your hidden delight, the glowing sign of a twenty-four-seven ice cream store comes into view, and you sit up just a little bit. Blade slows the car as he turns into the drive-thru, glancing at you with an eyebrow half-raised.

“What do you want? I’ll order for you.”

“I don’t have my wallet,” you admit, just a little bit embarrassed. “I didn't even bring my keys with me. Do you think they take Apple Pay?”

A breathy laugh escapes him, and you catch sight of a dimple pressed into his cheek, and you want to press your thumb into it and look at his smile, just for a little longer. “Don’t be dumb. I’m paying,” he tells you, the same way he has every time he pays for your cafe drink, or when he comes home from work with your favorite, and says You’re broke enough without having to pay for these drinks, don’t pay me back in that snippy way he shows his care.

You ask for a medium vanilla milkshake, with sprinkles, and he gets you a large instead, which you’re more than grateful for. He refuses to let you look at the receipt for the total cost, and hands you the milkshake with a comical severity that you often see in him. The sweet drink washes away any bitter taste left in your mouth, and you feel a little better, a little nicer in your haphazard party outfit and under Blade’s fleeting gaze.

A deep sigh escapes you, one of relief, when the car finally parks at your apartment building. Blade puts a cold hand between your shoulder blades, unobtrusive and leading, and it’s a comforting contrast from the heat lingering on your skin from the party and the closed car. It feels right, more in-place than Kafka’s warm hands were when she wiped your face and kept you steady, though she was just as gentle.

Blade all but tosses you onto the couch, claiming that it’s much too late for a shower and he’d rather not deal with you collapsing from exhaustion in the tub. You relent easily, the exhaustion of the night hitting you and soaking into your limbs.

“I’ll let you sleep on the couch,” he says, and it’s a good and kind thing, because he knows that sometimes you hate your bedroom because it’s just too empty, and the constant sound filtering into the living room puts you at ease. He never lets you sleep on the couch, because it’s bad for your back, and he jokes about you developing adult onset scoliosis with the awful way you sleep. Letting you do it, just this once, is another one of his small mercies.

The TV is on, humming at a low volume, and your legs are thrown across Blade’s lap. You’re shocked that he’s willing to fall asleep with you like this, but he’s kind, sarcastic and biting but kind all the same, as much as he loathes to admit it. It’s not too lonely, you decide, hearing the bottle cap wind chimes on your balcony clink together in dissonant harmonies.

(There’s a missing text from a new contact on your phone when you wake up, coming from pretty lady friend, extending an invite to brunch in two days, and you kick your legs on the couch in giddy excitement, thinking about how you’ll rope Blade into coming with you, too.)

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