Adventures In Time & Space

Fight and Make Up!

I have fond memories of this prompt. Curious about your take!

So this was from Usamamo Week 2019. Day 5 was First Kiss, which morphed into 5 Years, and I never got back to the prompts for that week after that monster 😅.

BUT I did have a good chunk of this one written. It’s not high on my priority list to finish it…so here is what I wrote back then. It’s the fight, without the make-up (in which the plan was for Mamoru to learn how distorted some of his thinking is during the fight and how it’s normal to have fights with one’s partner, etc. On a side note, happy to report I’ve made my own strides on this topic since writing this…as a lot of Mamoru’s distorted thinking was also mine. Though that shit runs deep, so I won’t say those feelings are ever completely gone). So, without further ado…————————————————————-

He had ruined it.

One stupid misstep on his part, and a relationship that had literally outlasted death was over.

Idiot.

He couldn’t unsee Usagi’s tear-filled eyes, the hurt on her face after he had snapped at her for spilling coffee all over his kitchen counter.

She’d stormed out of his apartment, leaving him to marinate in his own self-loathing.

Why are you such a jerk?

As a rule, Mamoru avoided fights. If he was irritated with someone, he rarely said so directly. Instead, he would retreat, stew about it, let his feelings cool off, then come back days later, pretending nothing had happened.

Talking about it ruined things.

Fights ended relationships.

There had been that one counselor at the orphanage--the one a young Mamoru had actually started to build a relationship with, had actually started to not hate opening up to. She had fought with the administration over hours and pay, and then they had severed ties with her. Mamoru never saw her again after that.

There had been that one time he’d fallen into a sudden friendship in middle school, the kind where you feel like you connect to someone immediately because on the surface you have so much in common. He’d gone to that friend’s house to work on a science project, and somehow the conversation had diverged into his friend telling him that maybe the reason people didn’t talk to him much at school was because he “acted too much like himself” around others.

That had stung, and Mamoru had actually tried to talk about it, pointing out how objectively hurtful that statement was. The conversation turned angry and defensive, and Mamoru had spun around on his heel, walked out, and never spoken to the boy again.

But he could prevent these things, if he was perfect, if he accommodated everyone around him and never fought and never snapped and never admitted he had been annoyed or hurt or irritated by anything anyone ever did or said.

He could keep the people he loved, if he was perfect.

No one would abandon him, if he was perfect.

But he hadn’t been perfect today.

You really fucked things up.

He sank onto the couch, squeezing his eyes shut as if that could erase the memory. It had been a shit day. He’d slept through his alarm and almost missed a biochemistry test that accounted for 50% of his grade. He’d just barely made it to the classroom, unshowered, hair sticking up every which way, exceedingly aware of the judgemental eyes of everyone else in the room.

That afternoon, he’d discovered his motorcycle had a flat tire, and, after dropping it off at the repair shop, gotten stuck on a delayed metro train in the sticky, stifling Tokyo summer heat.

All Mamoru had wanted to do when he got home was take a shower and relax in the silence of his air-conditioned apartment, preferably with a good book, away from people and their judgement, away from having to be “on.”

So he hadn’t expected Usagi’s enthusiastic knock on his door just minutes after he’d entered the bathroom, about to undress for his shower.

“Usako,” he greeted her with a peck on the cheek, torn between being happy to see her and just wanting to be alone.

But what sort of person needed alone time in the presence of his soulmate? That wasn’t normal.

What the hell is wrong with you?

Usagi was her usual energetic self, chattering away excitedly about school and Naru and Minako’s latest crush and Makoto’s latest cupcake recipe.

He listened, nodding politely here and there and he set water to boil and ground the coffee beans. His hand tightened in irritation on the handle of his French press as he poured them in.

Usagi’s voice seemed particularly shrill today.

He poured the coffee into two ceramic mugs and handed one to Usagi. Just as he started to make his way into the living room, a loud crash filled his kitchen.

Usagi’s mug was in pieces, the steaming brown liquid flooding his kitchen counter, seeping into and staining a nearby dishtowel and running in a rivulet down onto the linoleum floor.

“Usa!” he barked. “Can’t you watch what you’re doing for once?”

The guilt was immediate. It rose up in his chest like the boiling water he’d just poured into the coffeepot.

You’re such an asshole.

And clearly, she thought so, too. Her bottom lip trembled, but she rose up to meet his anger.

“My God, Mamoru. It’s just a coffee mug. What is your problem?”

Eyes blazing, she stomped out of his kitchen, grabbed her shoes, and slammed the door behind her, leaving just the sound of the coffee drip-drip-dripping onto the floor in her wake.

For the prompts!! Write a piece that includes “Here. You look hungry.” (Sorry if it doesn’t spark any inspiration!!)

Thank you, @queenrisa14! This was fun! Posted on AO3/ff as well, as I don’t actually like reading fic on tumblr 😅😅. Also, this is unbeta’d practice, so go easy on me, k?