When Kairi wakes up, the room is bright.

He squints at his window, remembering that he didn't close his curtains last night. Shut them, he tells himself. He doesn't move.

-

The next time he properly wakes up, as he opens his eyes every hour or so to silently yell at himself to close his curtains, it's to his mum.

"Baby," she says, "why are you still in bed?"

Kairi barely musters up the energy to look at her. His eyes hurt. His eyelids want to close. "Tired," is all he manages.

She gives him a look, but he can't bring himself to care.

"Mattia called me. He's worried about you."

Oh. Right. They were supposed to go to the arcade today. He should probably get out of bed. Or cancel. Or just lie there, motionless.

Option C it is.

His eyes shut. He hears his mum pad over, feels her hand gently run through his hair then hears the curtains slide shut. The room is dark.

-

So Kai was the dumb one all along.

It's stupid, how much it affects him. Logically, he knows they're just words. Meaningless words.

But are they?

Kairi knows that he's slow. He knows that all his friends are in on something that he isn't. He knows that he's the butt of the joke. And that's fine. That's absolutely fucking fine-

Hot tears splash down his face as Kairi stares up at the ceiling. The ceiling stares back.

"How pathetic," he croaks out to the empty room. The words dissolve into nothing. They weren't important anyway.

Text Mattia - I'll fuck that up somehow. Maybe he was joking and I didn't know. Because I'm an idiot. He sent me a message hours ago. I didn't even read it because I'm a bad friend. He hates me now.

Tell Alejandro what's going on - no, I don't want to be annoying. Always so fucking annoying. I always need help. Am I there for him enough? I talk too much. Too much, too much, I'm too much!

Kairi presses a hand against his mouth to stifle his sobs. He's being stupid, he just needs to shut up, shut up, shut up!

His chest aches and mourns for something - anything - but holding a pillow tight to himself isn't doing anything but giving him something to cry into. His mind is so loud - it's deafening. He just wants everything to be silent.

So he goes back to bed.

-

He checks his phone. It's almost 3:00am and he has six unread messages from Mattia. He can't focus his eyes to read them, so he decides to ignore them for another day. It's not like he can hate him anymore right?

Wrong, Kairi reminds himself. At this point, he's almost memorised the ceiling. If he closed his eyes, he'd probably still be able to see it.

He can't be bothered to close his eyes though.

So he stares straight-up, not moving even as the sky begins to brighten outside.

He's so... exhausted. But of everything. And he feels hollow, like his heart isn't beating and his lungs are empty. His eyes burn and he's so tired.

So. Tired.

-

He heard a knock, he's sure of it. Or maybe he dreamt it. Maybe he's still dreaming.

"Kai?" calls the person outside his door.

Kairi can only slide his eyes to look. He doesn't know if he should let the person in or not - but then he realises he doesn't care. So he goes back to mapping the ceiling.

Alejandro cracks open the door and light shines through, making him squint.

"Kai?" he tries again. Kairi can't force a smile. He can't even move a muscle.

Ale pushes the door more and steps inside, eyes falling on Kairi in an instant. "Did I wake you?"

Nod. Just nod. That's all I need to do- just nod. Look at him and nod. It's not that hard, just-

Kairi closes his eyes and moves his shoulders in a shrug-like gesture. The movement is almost imperceptible.

It's silent for a moment. Kairi almost falls asleep. That'd be nice.

"...Are you okay?"

Kairi doesn't know. He's not happy, but he's not miserable. All he feels is-

"Tired."

Alejandro walks over to the bed. "Is that all?" he whispers.

Kairi blinks at him. Shrugs.

"Is there anything I can do?"

Silence.

"When did you last eat?"

Silence.

"I'm going to get you some food, okay?"

Silence. Kairi stares back blank-faced at Alejandro's blatant concern. Ale sighs, pats his shoulder and leaves, presumably to the kitchen. At least someone cares about him, right?

Obligation, obligation, you're an obligation-

Something climbs on him. Kairi opens his eyes to see Maiya, who is now poking his cheek determinedly. "Daijobou desu ka?" she asks, then beams. She had only been learning for a few weeks, but she was getting good.

Kairi clears his throat and wets his lip, not realising how dry they were until now. "Daijoubu." It doesn't sound very convincing, so he adds a half-smile.

Maiya frowns at him, then grabs his phone, typing in his password. He really has to change that.

"Maiya."

She giggles. "Your boyfriend messaged you."

He considers correcting her, but she's already moved on. Now, she's frantically typing something, and it's only when Kairi hears the sent sound effect that he gets anxious.

"What'd you do?" his words slur together.

His phones dings and Maiya smiles.

"You're welcome!" she says, then skips out the room. She sticks her head back in to say, "get better soon, love you, K."

He rolls himself over and pats the bed, searching for his phone with sluggish movements. He eventually finds it and unlocks it to see his and Mattia's messages

bb💕:
hiii mattia!! this is maiya! kairi does care about you A LOT but he hasnt been feeling well and i think he'd be happy if you came to see him cuz youre his boyyyyfriend

mattia❤️:
tell my boyyyyfriend that i'll be there in 10

Okay, so he should've corrected Maiya about the whole boyfriend thing. Oh well.

He groans and chucks his phone somewhere, then spends a minute or so mustering up the willpower to sit up. Luckily, Ale comes in with grilled cheese sandwiches and pulls him up.

Kairi takes one and begins to nibble at it. He usually loves Ale's sandwiches, but right now it just tastes like cardboard. Hot cardboard.

He forces down half and sets the rest back on the plate, trying to stifle the rising guilt. It's a just a sandwich. Ale won't be offended.

...Right?

Ale takes the plate, stands up and offers Kairi hand. He takes it. His vision immediately is swamped with tiny black spots and he feels woozy for a moment, but then he steadies himself.

"Water," Alejandro suddenly says. "You need water!"

Kairi ignores him and starts searching for clothes. If Mattia was going to come over, he might as well not look like a zombie.

He hears the front door open and races into the bathroom locking it behind him. He can kind of make out Alejandro and Mattia's voices, but when he presses his ear to the door they drop to whispers. Probably talking about him.

Kairi pulls a face and hops into the shower, shivering at the sudden cold. He leaves it like that though, because he knows that if he changes the temperature, he'll sit down and stay there for hours. He doesn't want his friends to think that he drowned or something, so he hurries up.

It still takes him roughly 15minutes, mostly because he kept forgetting what he was doing and staring at the wall, but he does eventually make it out in fresh(er) clothes. He walks into the living room.

Mattia and Ale were sitting on the couch, but when they see him, they jump to their feet - Alejandro with a glass of water and Mattia with a worried frown.

He's not really in the mood for questions, so he chugs the water, grimaces, then flops down onto the vacated couch.

His friends don't move for a moment, but then Ale kneels beside him. Kairi opens his eyes.

"How are you feeling?"

Like shit. Like I'm worthless. Like no one actually likes me and are just too nice to say anything.

"Like shit," is what he ends up saying after an uncomfortably long staring contest.

"What happened?"

Right. As if he'd tell Alejandro why. Look - Kairi knows he's overthinking it. It's dumb, it's not like his friends meant to exclude him out of whatever joke. It's not like they really thought he was dumb.

Maybe, his stupid brain reminds him, or maybe not. And suddenly the air is knocked out of him. Kairi buries his face into the couch cushion and tries very, very hard to control his breathing.

"I don't know," he mumbles.

"You can tell us-"

"I don't know!" Kairi exclaims, moving himself so he can look at Ale. "I just- I'm being dumb. It doesn't matter."

"Is this about what was said in the groupchat?" Mattia asks, eyes wide.

"...No." Mattia looks at him with raised eyebrows. "Maybe. See, it's dumb. I'm just being an idiot."

"Don't say that," Alejandro says.

"It's true," he mutters, ignoring his friends' protests.

Mattia flops onto him.

"What the fuck? Get off me, you oaf," Kairi whines. He tries to move but quickly realises he's trapped.

"Mm, don't think I will. You're comfy."

"And he read that physical contact helps cheer someone up," Ale adds, sitting beside them and leaning against the couch.

"I hate you guys," Kairi tries, but Mattia squeezes him, then pecks his cheek. Kairi fake-gags.

"Cap. You love my kisses."

"I love Alejandro's more."

"Oh yeah?" Mattia hovers over Kairi, eyes flicking from his lips back to his gaze. After a few moments, he pulls back and swerves his head to kiss Alejandro's forehead. "Then no more kisses for you."

"I'm fine with that, Alejandro's better anyway."

"Shut the fuck up, I'm the best and you know it."

"Prove it," Alejandro pipes up from the floor.

Kairi giggles at that, which makes Mattia beam at him. "My boyyyyfriend is so cute," is all he says before going back to hugging Kairi.

"My boyyyyfriend is ugly as fuck," he replies. Ale just looks between the two, confused, then shrugs and goes back to scrolling on his phone.

-

a/n double update because i didn't want to be TOO mean - also thinking of doing double updates every friday because im nice like that (and cannot control myself)