Just A Suggestion… What If You Simply Didn’t ? - Blog Posts

Message in a bottle

Summary: Suna says “I love you” again for the first time

Word count: 2.1k

Genre: ex-husband Suna and ex-wife reader; angst to fluff; Suna calls you a poop

Your first thought is: Suna.

Footsteps patter as you circle around your living room in a flourish of high knees and twirls. You end one phone call for another, squealing in your hand from the excitement. He answers you devotedly, expectedly.

“I got the job!”

“You got the job!”

“I got the job!”

“I knew you would!”

He matches your energy, triples the high, and makes all your insecurities disappear. This was a big promotion that skipped several rungs of the corporate ladder, far beyond your reach, but Suna vouched for you when you couldn’t.

It’s weird to be reminded of your value by an ex-husband. Your friends like to point it out whenever you mention him, as if ex-husband is an addendum to his name, but as the seasons cycled one over the other, so has your relationship.

You’ve done one full rotation from friends to lovers to strangers and to finally friends once more. By all means the transition wasn’t seamless and came with a learning curve quite steep, but the two of you are better off than even your first round of friendship.

“Let’s celebrate,” you offer without a second thought. “We should go out tonight. Fancy. I know we usually don’t do fancy but this deserves fancy!”

Where you expect immediate consent, Suna stutters instead. That cracked, almost yes shatters something in your chest. It could be your heart but maybe it’s a rib because it feels like you’ve lost your breath. You stop circling your living room to lean against a wall.

“Oh, are you busy?” 

He hesitates, a single inhale answering you instead of words and now you can’t help but close your eyes in frustration. The descent from your high is slow, agonizingly so, as you bend at the knee to slide down to the floor before hitting rock bottom.

“You could have—” just the sound of your morose tone makes you choke. The disappointment should be familiar. After signing the divorce papers, you made a new promise to yourself which was to stop expecting anything from him. Yet here you are, committed only to the same mistakes of relying on someone you shouldn’t.

Falling into Rintaro is obsessive, a swallow into the deep. He makes it easy when the candid words people keep like secrets slip smoothly through his lips.

Maybe if you’d loved him a little older, when you’d learned falling in love is an ideal but being in love is the process, maybe then it wouldn’t have taken a couple of mistakes to whittle away from the foundation of your relationship. Disappointments were tallied like grudges and eventually, you two separated not even a year into marriage.

It took years of estranged meetings, secluded conversations when somehow the two of you were left alone in a room, and a couple of awkward phone calls when neither of you knew of anyone else to be vulnerable to to be where you are now and find that balance again.

Here you are once more, with the scales tipped away from your favor.

“You could have just said that.”

“The accounting manager invited me to this company event. I didn’t plan on going, but she asked and—”

“Ayame?”

He pauses, “yeah.”

“You could have said her name. I’ve met Ayame.” She never worried you but the fact that Suna decided to hide that detail does now even when it shouldn’t.

“Yeah.”

“So you’re going with her?”

“Is that okay?”

The instinctual answer falls flat behind gritted teeth. You want to say of course as if you even have a right. Maybe your friends should suffix your name as a reminder too with ‘ex-wife.’

“Why are you asking me? You know it doesn’t matter what I say.”

He hums a displeased sound. It makes you wince because you’re not quite sure you have enough restraint in you if he decides to push any further.

Gratefully, he simply changes the subject. “I still want to celebrate with you. You should have your day. Let me take you out to that one place we always talk about but never go.”

“No, I’m—”

“You said you deserve it,” Suna reminds, “and I agree.”

“No, it’s okay. I—“

“Quit being weird. Say, ‘Rin?’” he over exaggerates in pitch to imitate you, possibly clutching imaginary pearls. “‘Did you just agree with me? Who is on the phone right now because you’re not my ex-husband.’ And then I’ll tell you I ate him like Kirby. Then you ask me who’s Kirby—“

“I know who Kirby is.”

Suna disagrees almost a little too quickly, “nah, you don’t know who Kirby is. You know who Kirby is?”

“Yes! I know who Kirby is.”

“Well I’ll tell you about him anyways and educate you on 1990s Nintendo lore for the next fifteen minutes.”

You force a chuckle for his sake only. It convinces him because one more time, he says, “let me take you out.”

Relenting is the only option because Suna knows how to pick and choose his battles.

You can finally hear the smile in his voice, another surge of ache filling your chest when he asks, “next week?”

Next week comes but you’ve already made the necessary steps to isolate yourself from a repeated mistake. The gaps between texts gradually grow longer until you’re confident to leave him on read. Sometimes you’d call him after work just to update him about your day, but instead you change out that piece of your routine for a compelling new podcast.

He allows you to let go in grace, a clean rip versus the tattered remains of your past marriage and it’s rewarding to witness the growth.

Suna doesn’t even argue when your response to him asking what time he should set the reservations is think i have a fever. can’t make it

You think you’ve outdone yourself, unexpectedly content on your quiet weekend. The floor feels smooth as you glide your toes along it, swept and polished from earlier. Your new candle is burning and your blanket’s delicately soft and warm from the dryer.

These are the hobbies of an ex-spouse, independently involved from their ex-lover. Suna is only a passing thought when you imagine his face when he receives your message but you carefully tuck him away. Somewhere special. Somewhere far.

Unfortunately, your phone, though, is in your palm. It rings with a call from Suna. His name erupts a mess in your chest that you thought you’d cleaned. You throw your phone to the side, shove it into the cracks of your sofa so that it may muffle the sound. He calls again, followed by a flurry of texts, and then another phone call. Then eventually, silence.

You exhale a breath of relief. It’s clear now, that you have to move on. It’s a peace you’ve come to terms with.

Peace that is shattered by someone banging on your door. It’s only ominous for a second, heart racing, until it is accompanied by your phone ringing once more.

Apprehension tremors into your fingers as they clumsily reach for the device.

“Thanks for answering the phone,” Suna grits, “now the door.”

“I’m sick!” you throw in a dry cough for good measure.

“August 16, 2015. We used that same excuse to bail on Atsumu when we woke up too late from a nap.” He pauses for your reply but you don’t even know what to say. “January 3, 2016 we did the same thing to Komori. We told him you had a fever, sent him a picture of you with a rag over your head–”

“You did not tell me that!”

“–and everything. And then you actually got sick two days later and you said you’d never do it again because of karma. I sent you the pics if you actually read my text messages. I’ve got the receipts. That’s our excuse so tell me why you are trying to use it on me.”

“I’m not using anything on you!” You sniffle exaggeratedly over the phone, “I’m sick. Stop yelling at a sick person.”

“Prove it.”

Your face twists at the incredulous request, “how am I supposed to do that? Do you want me to slide my used tissue under the door?”

Suna chuckles. He sounds less mad, “no. Send me a picture of your outfit.”

“What?”

“You have a sick fit.”

“A sick fit?” There’s deliberate pauses between each word, enunciating them so Suna can hear exactly how ridiculous he sounds.

“You wear that dumb hoodie you got from a souvenir shop in Harajuku because they have the thumb holes on the sleeve and always a pair of fuzzy socks.”

It’s impossible not to huff, “you don’t know me.”

“Of course I know you,” he whispers, “you’re my ex-wife, you poop. So open the door for your ex-husband.”

“Poopy ex-husband,” you say, finally softening.

Suna laughs, “sure. Poopy ex-husband.”

Breathing feels easier now, as if without your even knowing, Suna’s resolved everything. There’s comfort in the fear, companionship maybe. So you take steps back towards him and open the door.

His typical, sharp eyes dart up to you when you do, analyzing your expression with a rigid jaw then dropping to check your attire. He smirks slightly while pushing his way in.

“Called it,” he says, celebratory. “I knew you weren’t sick.”

You can’t help but point out the bag of takeout in his hands, “is that soup?”

He’s nonchalant when he says, “contingency planning. What if you were actually sick? I’d be a dick if I barged in here and I was wrong.”

“You’re a dick anyways.”

“Maybe,” Suna sets the food down on your small dining table. You take a step forward, planning to continue the banter but there’s an intensity when he turns around that stills you where you stand. You shift your weight to the heels of your feet to escape the brunt of his stare.

“But you’re a liar.” He articulates the final word with accusation but cracks at the end. If he weren’t your ex-husband, if you didn’t know what he looked like at the altar and in front of a notary public, then you would have overlooked it. He’s hurt, clear in the crumbled edges near his lips, and you’re the reason why.

His pain swallows you to him. You pull him into an embrace that crashes the both of you onto the ground. He knocks his head against your chair but he ignores it to pull you in. His palm presses to the back of your head, pushing you into his chest.

“You should have just told me,” Suna rushes to speak, as if this moment could be swept from him at any moment. “I would have never gone with Ayame if it bothered you.”

You shake your head. Doing so, you dip deeper into his neck, “that’s not it.”

“Then what was it?” Honesty ladens his statement. Accompanied by the rocking motion he’s got the both of you in, it seems like he really wants to know.

“I got scared.”

“Scared?”

“We haven’t been acting very divorcey lately and I guess it scared me.”

He hums as he sways you for a little while longer. You situate yourself against him by tucking your legs to your chest. He presses you closer.

“I can send you divorce memes in the morning,” Suna offers. “We can threeway a phone call with our lawyer for the hell of it.”

You giggle, “you know that’s not what I meant.”

“Good,” he says. Suna leans down to press against the top of your head. It feels too close to a kiss, a whisper of it. “I like what we have now.”

You concur with a nod into his chest, burrowing your face closer to him.

“I get to love you in a way I’ve never loved you,” your heart suspends in both anticipation and dread because he loves you. They’re words that you’d both thrown away into the ocean long before you even divorced and not even this slow kindling of your relationship, whatever this may be, has ever given either of you the confidence to say it again. He just has and the sound of it makes you tingle between your shoulders. There’s excitement but also fear because just as he’s said, it’s not the same.

You yearn for more, unsatisfied with the faded edges of affection. It’s easier now to admit to yourself that you love him too. Though you’re not sure you’re the same as him. You love him.  You love him the way you promised you always would.

“What,” you shuffle against his hold and perch your chin against his collar bone. Your nose lands near his pulse. He smells of memories – of Monday mornings and midday meltdowns. He smells of everything in the in between that you can’t quite wrap around where he begins and ends. You swallow before finishing your words carefully, “do you mean?”

Suna tilts his head toward you. Bangs frame sharp lines in front of his eyes but aren’t enough to mask the intensity in his gaze.

He looks at you like an altar, vowing, “like how I’m supposed to.”