Work Text:
-Sakuya-
Sakuya notices it before either of them does.
It's annoying in a way that pisses him off immediately.
A familiar touch at Yushi's back, nothing anyone else in the world would call possession, only care.
Something easy and casual.
The kind of gesture people smile at without thinking.
The one that says I know where support belongs before anyone has asked for it.
What irritates Sakuya most is how instinctive it looks on Jaehee,
as if this kind of tenderness lives in his hands without effort,
as if he never has to think about where to place it.
Worse, how naturally it is accepted.
No hesitation or surprise.
Just that small, unthinking allowance people give to tenderness when it arrives in the shape they already trust.
“You look tired,” Jaehee says, like it’s an observation no one else in the room was capable of making.
Okay, sometimes, it is soothing, Sakuya admits. Sometimes it really is.
That might be the most infuriating part of all.
Fans would melt for this.
They would replay a moment like this until it turned holy in their minds, call it proof of sweetness, proof of care, the damn proof of the kind of person he is.
Sakuya hates it on sight.
“You look tired,” Sakuya mutters instead, like it’s obvious, like it should’ve been obvious to anyone paying attention.
Sakuya feels the disgust rise so fast it's almost elegant.
Yushi only shrugs, half a smile, already letting the moment settle around him the way people always do when warmth arrives in the right shape.
“I’m fine,” Yushi says, like he already decided this conversation wasn’t worth expanding.
That is part of what makes it so difficult to hate cleanly.
“You always say that,” Jaehee adds lightly.
There is never anything sharp enough to point at.
Nothing mean. Nothing loud.
Just that same infuriating gentleness everyone mistakes for kindness and lets stay.
Maybe it is kindness.
Sakuya hates that possibility most.
Because if it were fake - if it were practiced or just another kind of performance,
he could dismiss it. He could survive it.
But sincerity is harder to kill.
Sincerity is disgusting in its own way when it comes from the wrong person.
Harder to call ugly when everyone else is already softening toward it…
or even worse, leaning toward it instead of away.
That is the trap of Jaehee, maybe.
He steps into silence as if comfort belongs to him and decides what shape it should take from there.
And that is the worst part.
How little it takes.
One hand. One warm sentence. One glance no one ever seems willing to refuse.
Nothing obvious happens, and Sakuya still feels edged out of the scene anyway.
There are only three of them in the room, yet somehow he is the unnecessary line in a drawing that was already finished.
The hand slips away again after a few seconds, but the damage is already done.
The air between them settles into something Sakuya can't stand.
A second later, the whole room does.
That is the problem no one else seems willing to name.
Jaehee does not take up space loudly.
He fills it with that same careful warmth, until there is no room left to find out whether it was needed at all.
No room left to wonder whether anyone else might have answered first.
He arrives too gently to be called interruption, and that only makes the interruption harder to fight.
“Stop doing that,” Sakuya says before he even thinks about it.
The words come out sharper than intended, like they’ve been waiting there already.
But he doesn't.
For a moment, his face reveals exactly his inner thoughts to the room, and he doesn’t think or care about it.
Oh, he even wants to be caught for that one vicious second, wants someone to see that he is not fooled by charm just because it wears a lovely face.
Calling it a lovely face is questionable, though fans have never needed much encouragement to be wrong.
Yeah... he wants to strip that sweetness out of him entirely.
Sakuya wants it gone.
Not hidden.
Not gentled into something easier to swallow.
Gone.
Torn out cleanly, all that charm and gentleness and warm-voiced care, stripped away until there is nothing left but the bare frame of him.
Let everyone see what remains then.
Let him stand there without the one thing that makes people forgive the rest.
And then the thought goes further, uglier.
He wants to see those careful hands fall uselessly to his sides, with nowhere obvious to land, no small tender gesture left to save him.
Wants that voice to lose all its warmth, to come down flat and ordinary and helpless, stripped of the warmth people lean toward so easily.
Wants, for one horrible flashing moment, to watch the whole lovely mechanism fail in public, just once, so everyone else has to look at it the way he does.
He laughs to himself, all malice and no sound.
Because it does, sometimes.
Usually through Jaehee's own stupid clumsiness.
The thought should satisfy him.
It doesn't.
Never enough. Never in a way that lasts.
The violence of these thoughts makes him still.
No one reacts immediately.
And that’s what makes it worse.
Because he means it. He really does.
It lands inside him whole and sharp, without distortion, as for a beat he has to sit there with the fact of what he is capable of wanting.
His mouth goes dry and his face cools too late.
Shame should have reached him by now.
Enough to make him pull back, to turn the thoughts into something less monstrous and easier to survive.
That is the part that does not leave.
Because the answer comes cold and immediate: too much.
Maybe the sweetness is not some extra layer at all,
but the very thing that makes the rest bearable, lovable, easy to keep.
And Sakuya hates, with a clarity that feels almost humiliating, that
the thing he wants erased is the exact thing everyone loves him for.
He can name the ugliness now, and feel it fully for what it is.
But naming it changes nothing.
The hatred is no smaller.
The thought no less cruel.
It only leaves him sitting there inside it, aware all at once that
the part he wants vanished is the part the world would protect first.
He closes his eyes and exhales slowly, as if that alone might be enough to let it go.