hikkikomori shero 2

i was thinking about cute sadboy opportunities and i remembered hikikkomori shirou!! and how softly and slowly he and shinji were rebuilding their relationship around all of their baggage that built up in the time they were separated.

i keep thinking that shirou’s ptsd and anxiety have become so bad that he’s never been able to explicitly say that shinji’s accident was his fault. the words won’t come, even if he’s wanted to say it for the sake of closure. even so, shinji knows. when shirou refused to contact him way back then, he knew. it’s probably something he’s discussed at length with rin, who was his only window to shirou during the time he was admitted and unconscious for months.

while shinji agonized over it at the beginning, he also couldn’t imagine a scenario where it could have happened on purpose. being alone for so long gave shinji plenty of time to think and he eventually decided that someone who valued justice and heroism the way shirou did would be unable to accept having done something like this. that didn’t make his absence any easier to navigate, but shinji was doing his best to look at the situation unselfishly — ironically when it would have been understandable for him to be selfish.

eventually it just became an obsession to get to see him again. shinji had questions, but more than that, he missed shirou so deeply. he was forced to acknowledge his real feelings for him. when they finally met again all of those pressing questions faded away in favor of just being able to exist in his presence. even in this sad state, being with shirou felt like coming home. shinji was so tired and ready to be complacent for once.

so they lived that way. together, yet apart. separated by secrets and regrets and raw anguish. shinji can’t forgive shirou for something he can’t admit to — he wants to, though. shirou feels so paperthin that he doesn’t want to be the one that breaks him. he doesn’t realize how what wrenches in shirou’s gut are those same guilty feelings about shinji himself.

as time passes they become closer, despite never initiating any sort of verbal closure. they brush hands, touch shoulders... they’re magnetic to one another, they would always end up here. shinji eventually crawls into bed with shirou and knowing the effort it took shirou can’t send him away. even shinji knows it’s a dirty trick, but he wants to minimize the space between them.

shinji is persistent. always. he touches more, whispers more. he softly begs into shirou’s ear to be kissed. it’s months and months of loneliness and longing coming to a head and he truly doesn’t know how he’s managed to survive this long being so touch starved. slowly but firmly, shinji starts to push their relationship back into physical territory. while it didn’t hold the emotional significance back then as it does now, it was still monumentally important to the both of them.

unfortunately, all it takes is one misstep in intimacy to ruin everything. one flinch or hiss of pain from shinji while he adjusts his body against shirou’s is enough to send him spiraling into guilt-laden panic and ptsd flashbacks. feeling personally responsible for every tick of discomfort that shinji experiences eats away at him so painfully. gritting his teeth, shinji is full of regret when he watches shirou’s pupils shrink and his expression turned shell shocked and cold.

shinji can try to shake him back or touch his face, but it only makes shirou recoil in fear and speak in sounds that aren’t full words. it’s true terror he experiences when he’s stuck between the layers of his mind and reality. shinji tries to pull him close and whisper to him that everything is okay, that he’s fine and there’s nothing wrong, but. the suffering that rampages through shirou says there’s definitely something wrong. it’s painful to watch and it makes shinji feel wrong for wanting to exist around shirou even when his physical state causes him so much grief. for shinji, he feels like shirou is all he has left, but is also the only thing he needs.

but if his presence is hurting shirou this much what is he supposed to do?

he can’t let go of him. he can’t stop telling shirou that everything’s fine; it’s alright — without realizing it he starts repeating that it’s not shirou’s fault it was an accident, it was just an accident and it’s okay

and then the sinking feeling that he’s acknowledged the forbidden thing. he forgives shirou, of course, but they’ve never spoken about this in direct words. shinji isn’t even sure he hasn’t greatly surpassed their invisible boundary. still, he can’t take his hands off shirou’s face while he twists beneath him fitfully. if he could just get him to calm down, maybe they could finally bury this.