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phasmwrites · 3 years

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𝐬𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬𝐡 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐞 | kaneki ken + fem human reader

They say that you never forget your first love. Well, what if, they forget you? or: After loving Kaneki for so long, you finally come to accept that he'll never return to you. Then, he does. [written from this request!]

⇢ genre: hurt/comfort, angst, happy ending | allusions to memory loss; mentions of blood and de*th; depictions of poor mental health, su*cidal ideation, and a panic attack | reader is fem, but no specific anatomy is described.

⇢ word count: 3.1k

⇢ notes: heavily inspired by the lyrics of bibi's “pado.”

please do not repost any of my work! this includes translation, reposting with credit, etc. if you see my work posted on another platform, please report it. thank you!

Coming home from work today, you recount—stuck in unruly rush hour traffic—the ways your day had been so incessantly unpleasant. Upon arrival, you had been shilled about five extra things to do that were ‘to be made your top priority,’ so you didn’t get any of your regular work done. You hadn’t meant to, but somehow you’d ended up working through all of your breaks, leaving you heavy with exhaustion (and a headache) by the time five o’clock rolled around. You’d caught the guy at the desk across from you ogling you and overheard one of the girls in your department talk about the way you acted ‘too good for the rest of them.’ To top it all off, you’d forgotten to pack half of the things you’d meant to bring for lunch, so your stomach is growling angrily as you wait lamely in your car, hands folded atop the steering wheel.

Is there a light at the end of this dark passage?

Today is among the many recent days you might label as being ‘just too much,’ and they seem to keep washing up for you like garbage on a beach: frequently and covered in unexpected grime. Luckily for you, though, this will be the last of the week, so, when you finally collapse on your sofa, you let yourself cry. You lie, curled up in your crumpled work clothes, and cry until the sun goes down, rendering your living room dark.

You shuffle into the kitchen and stare mindlessly at what you have: a myriad of frozen dinners, half-empty cartons of milk and eggs, some nearly spoiled fruit and veg. Thank god (or, rather, your past self) for the frozen dinners because there is no way in hell you’d be able to cook something from scratch let alone come up with something to cook at all. So, you get out a frozen dinner and set the timer. Over the steady hum of the microwave, you can just barely hear your phone ringing in the living room—abandoned at some point in your post-shift outburst. When you finally locate it, you stare at the name on the screen for many long, dragging moments until it goes to voicemail: Sasaki Haise — Mobile. You have four missed calls from him.

Weird, you think. You don’t give it much thought beyond that thought but bring your phone with you as you return to the kitchen. After sending him a text to ask if everything’s alright, you return your attention to your dinner, but that doesn’t last long.

Can you call me back, please?

It’s important.

Another text follows. It only reads your name, a final plea to hear him out.

Why did I word it that way? you wonder. It wasn’t like Haise had ever done anything wrong.

You knew you shouldn’t have gone on those dates, especially not with someone who resembled him so strikingly. You’d known it was a bad idea when you were inviting him, when you were picking at the sleeve of your sweater, and when you were asking in your best honeyed whisper. You’d known, too, as you tugged on your best outfit, as you admired yourself in the mirror and, thinking of him, imagined Kaneki sitting across a table from you.

Meeting him at the restaurant, too, you had known. He was so handsome in his button-down and slacks. His smile was so sweet, so genuine, and plagued with happiness to see you. He made you feel listened to when you spoke. He made you feel important with each guiding motion of his hand behind you, each skirting look at your face over the top of his menu. You’d especially known when Haise rubbed his chin while avoiding a line-toeing question.

“Oh, well, the thing about that…”

That had looked so like him that you’d had to retreat to the restroom to calm the wet burn in your eyes. Those dates had been surreal. Your heart had been racing—any normal person’s would be—but these were just uncanny. You had gripped the sink and let your wild breaths get away from you. A worker came to check on you, and that poor woman had found you with your knees on the tile, unable to pull yourself together, unable to find reality again as you repeated to yourself again and again: he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone.

Kaneki is not coming back.

“Are you busy on Friday night?” Haise had asked last time you’d spoken.

“Yeah… I am. Haise, I…I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

In his typical respectful manner, he hadn’t pushed beyond asking if he’d done something wrong, or if he could convince you otherwise, but you’d been firm.

Even now, you dream of Kaneki. His smile, the feel his arms around you, the sound of his voice: they are woven into the background of your life. How could they not be when you’d longed for each other so deeply and fiercely? When he’d spent so long a mere hair's breadth away?

It’s been many weeks since those dates, though, and now you’ve returned to your lonesome cycle. Turbulent inside your chest, the dull ache of grief and razor-sharp forlornness take turns bubbling behind your ribs and at the base of your throat, leaving a burning trail in their steads.

Your dates, barring your own difficulties, had been perfectly pleasant, and you knew in your rational mind that whoever came next would be lucky to go on a date with someone like him. There wasn’t a reason for you to be wary beyond your dumb, should-be-dead love for someone from your past. But still, the idea of hearing his voice—his voice that sounded so eerily like Kaneki’s even through the static of a phone call—made you feel sick.

I’m busy, you tell yourself, and you text him the same thing. Can you tell me whatever it is over text?

When his answer doesn’t come immediately, you sigh through your nose. Stirring your relatively warm dinner, your stomach and chest feel like a mess of churning and fluttering: figures. Nothing about this day was going to be normal; nothing would let up. How could it? You shake the negative thoughts from your head in an attempt to keep your pulse steady and retreat back to the couch to watch TV.

After half-heartedly making your way through the microwave meal, you jump at the sound of a knock on the door. It’s pounding and loud, riding on desperation and persistence as the sound does not let up. Peering out the window, you see Haise’s car parked across the street. This has to be a joke, you think, and you think it over and over again until you pull the door open.

“I…I didn’t know if you’d be home…but your car’s here, so…”

If it were possible, you would believe that time really stops at this moment. It’s him: Kaneki Ken. He’s standing in front of you, dampened and deflated by the rain, wearing Haise’s clothes. He’s wearing Haise’s nametag from work, too. All you can do is let your breathing carry on in short, audible huffs. Your breaths come on faster and faster, blurring into one another until you’re stumbling away from the door. It’s unmistakable and strange. He looks just as he always had—actually, he looked like they both had. How had you not seen him here all along?

“You…How are you…?”

He says your name. Jesus Christ, he says your name, and it hurts: burning and spreading over you like a film.

“There’s a lot to explain,” he starts. His voice is gentle and steady like it’s being held in form by a barely unbroken binding. “But I had to see you. Maybe that was selfish of me.”

He begins to tell you then—carefully following you inside as he does. He says so much, some of it nothing but mystery and missing context to you, but he’s explaining. It’s the moment you’ve long since stopped dreaming of. At the beginning of things being like this, you would have given anything for him to just tell you with his whole chest what had happened, why things had fallen so royally apart. He’s slow though, slow enough so you could stop his words or his advancing steps if you were able to exert any effort beyond stammering and catching your breath. He stops at the edge of the rug; you sit mindlessly on the couch.

You want to embrace him. You want to pound his chest and cry and ask how he could leave you behind. You want to kick yourself for not seeing it sooner, but you’re frozen, stunned. You could have been knocked over by the slightest breeze at that moment.

“You know he’s in love with you, right?”

Hide had been so blunt when he’d asked you that day that you’d had to ask him to repeat himself. That’d just made him laugh, but he had, indeed repeated himself.

“What are you talking about?”

“You two really are like a rom-com, aren’t you? Or, wait, is it soap operas that do the whole ‘oblivious mutual pining’ thing?”

Hide had only laughed more at the look on your face, and no matter how many years pass, you can’t forget how hot you’d felt: like you were going to melt into the grass. Like the sun was targeting exclusively you with its unearthly, live-giving warmth.

It was true. Hide had been the expert, of course. He had watched it all happen in high-definition, from the front row: every blushing exchange, every lingering touch, every passing moment of intensely loaded eye contact or staring or absent-minded sighing. In retrospect, Kaneki really was very obvious: always keening into your touch and tucking his face as close to you as possible. You know you must have been just as bad, especially as your feelings had been developing—brewing for years into the strongest, richest coffee—for the better part of a decade. Had it really been that long?

“You know, I actually said the same thing to him last week, and he had the same reaction—Kaneki did. But seriously, if someone ever looks at me the way you two look at each other, I’ll consider myself lucky, ya know?”

But even so, you’d been too afraid to act outright, and, evidently, Kaneki had been, too. It had felt like the sands of time were running so fast back then. The world was spinning on and on, and before either of you knew it, it was far too late for anything to happen aside from longing. Grieving. Regretting and what-if-ing and self-cursing. Missing.

“You don’t answer when I call anymore, Kaneki.”

You had gone to visit him at Anteiku when he’d started working there, his new heights of social withdrawal making you and Hide worry. He’d looked so flustered, then. So purely apologetic, but he’d still been hiding something, too. Trying to protect you from what you had already known at the time.

When things were at their worst, he had touched you, held you, kissed you even things were falling apart. He had changed right before your eyes, left you in the shadows. Left you behind only to return in the dead of night, crying and covered in blood and begging you to answer his question: “You’re okay, aren’t you?”

You had thought these moments meant that, no matter how much space there was between you, how much turmoil might unfold in the world and in him, he was with you as you were with him. You’d thought you didn’t need to confess anything. You’d thought it was perfectly clear.

Even when he’d first disappeared. Even when everything was so far gone from normal, from what you knew and loved, you had still believed—or at least told yourself—that he wouldn’t leave. And, until today, you’d come to find it easier to let yourself think that no, he had left of his own accord because barring that…well, the other possibility was one you would less readily accept, to say the least.

How is this my life? You have asked yourself many a lonesome night. How did I end up trapped in your arms, Kaneki Ken?

He’s saying your name again. Kneeling in front of you, his eyes are searching your face urgently. Did you hear what he said? He’s asking you.

“You were dead.” It’s the first coherent thing you’ve said since he arrived. “I just started believing that—” You let out a shaky breath, caught on the ridge of tears in your throat. “A month ago. I couldn’t believe it until then.”

The look on his face is devastating. Eyebrows drooping like his shoulders, his eyes are clouded over with a film, glinting sad and apologetic and exhausted all at once. He looks like himself from all those years ago somehow, though that Kaneki had never looked like this. There is so much movement under his gaze, too; you can see him sifting through everything, flipping through so much newly recollected material that it looked to you like he might be experiencing his life over again.

“Maybe it’s too late now,” he wonders aloud. His voice is steady but somehow thin and floating, cloudlike. “I couldn’t ask you to wait forever. I…You didn’t even know that I would come back…Maybe it was presumptuous of me to come here.”

“Kaneki,” you breathe. “I thought…I thought you were…and then you…” You reach for him only to slide your fingers along his nametag: Sasaki Haise. Why had he come back—why had he found you as someone else first? Was there a reason for any of it or was the universe really so blistering, like a harsh wind on your cheek?

With cautious fingers, he gingerly touches the back of your hand, then your wrist. Even without looking at his face, you know he’s frowning that heavy frown, that one he always wore before crying. You had spent so long alone. In those months when he’d been cutting himself off from you, in those when you’d thought him gone forever.

He lets out an airy laugh through his nose and then speaks again. “Even after all of this, you still call me Kaneki,” he whispers. You hear the slight lilt of a smile in his voice. “How did I allow that to happen?”

Dropping your gaze, you find your vision blurry and wet. When had you started crying again? He had just sounded so sweet; it was almost like the gaping space between you had not even closed, but rather it had never opened. Kaneki is warm against you, his hand on the back of your head. When had he embraced you? He’s saying something softly, cooing to you so like he had before. His arms are strong around you, and when you grip him back, it’s with urgency: clawing at his shoulder, at his shirt, like he might fall away into the carpet like dust.

“I’m here,” he says. He says it over and over again so many times that you lose count of his reassurances. His hand is delicate on the back of your head, then the back of your neck. He tries to apologize, but you shush him.

“It’s not your fault. None of it, ever,” you whisper into his cheek. “Since that time…everything’s gone to shit. Everything. Please just tell me you won’t leave again.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not going anywhere, not again.”

“I’m never leaving you again,” he murmurs, the words rolling over your lips as much as his. “You won’t be alone anymore, not if I can help it.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” you plead. “That sounds so cliché, but…It’s not like you could have stopped any of this from happening, and I seriously doubt you’d be able to keep something from happening. I mean…I just don’t think I can keep living in the delusion that everything’s just going to be fine forever. I did it before—no, I’ve been doing it, and it nearly killed me,” you say, carefully selecting your words. “I can’t do it again.”

It hadn’t just been losing Kaneki that had done such a thing to your mental health. Caring for Hide, finishing school, and working unseemly hours all while licking your own wounds; you had lost sight of yourself. You’d stopped giving room to care for yourself at all, so you’d burrowed into the lowest, darkest hole in the earth, begging for some kind of relief. Kaneki lowers his head into the crook of your neck, eyes closed against your skin.

“It would be pretty cruel to ask that of you,” he says, and you know where he’s headed with that, so you draw your fingers fluidly through the hair on the back of his head.

“Ask what?”

“To stay by my side.”

“You never have to ask for that,” you say, turning your head just slightly to whisper in his ear: “I’m yours, no matter what. All I mean is…don’t tell me that nothing like this will happen again. Just promise that I don’t have to wonder anymore. Don’t keep me in the dark.”

You feel almost childish begging and pleading for something that should be so simple, but having him here, warm and alive and close, feels surreal. Like a dream. You say it again, please please please… And he replies so sweetly each time the same few words: I’m here. I’m staying. I’m yours. I promise.

Pulling away, he puts a barely-there gap between your bodies, leans close, and noses your cheek before kissing it tenderly. He kisses the side of your face, your temple, the hollow below your eye. When his mouth connects with yours, it’s familiar, though faintly salty and wet with tears. He feels needy with each motion like he might breathe you in and flood himself with you along the vessels from his beating heart. He’s crying, too, you realize: streams of silent tears that catch between your lips and, mixing with yours, drip onto the couch. The contact is sparse though somehow. He keeps pulling away and returning in brief, deliberate presses.

“I’m never leaving you again,” he murmurs, the words rolling over your lips as much as his. “You won’t be alone anymore, not if I can help it.”

You nod against him, cradling his face in your hands. Unable to express the swimming emotions clotting in your throat, you just kiss him again. You kiss him over and over as if to make him hear your thoughts through touch alone: I believe you.

There’s a light just ahead. It’s bright and small and unshakeable. Is that the end of this dark passage?

tokyo ghoul m.list | ko-fi | ao3

𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐫! I do not own any of the characters or people mentioned in my work. these are works of pure fiction that do not reflect the views, opinions, or actions of any person, real or fictional.

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#i actually don’t think i’ve read a kaneki fic before until now and let me tell you i’m blown away at how beautiful this read!!#i have your other kaneki one in my likes too i think that i’ve been meaning to read!!!#:(( my heart #i love your writing sm seriously #phasm.recs #recs.kaneki #the pace and word choice all so so good!!#💕💕💕💕💕💕💕

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