writetomyheart | [team three] Adulthood

Maybe one day I'll stop writing fic about Zero: Ikkaku Senkin Game, but today is not that day. |D; This one is a snippet of Yuuki's backstory as I imagine it, so there's vague spoilers for episode 6 and 7 when you find out a little more about Yuuki in canon.

Warnings for power harassment/workplace sexual harassment and some unhealthy/self-destructive thinking. None of this is presented as a good thing (and I think it's in line with what's said about Yuuki in episodes 6/7), but if this might be upsetting to you, please read with caution!

Welcome to adulthood, indeed, Yuuki thinks bitterly to himself, letting out a heavy sigh as he locks the door to his tiny apartment behind him. While he's escaped work on the early side today-- it's not even nine yet-- somehow, he feels a thousand times more stressed than normal even as he sheds his suit jacket and tugs his tie loose from where it feels like it's strangling him around the collar of his crisp white shirt. He had known that investment and finance was a stressful field when he'd gotten into it, but what he hadn't expected was that the most stressful part wasn't even the work itself. He supposes perhaps it had been a bit naïve not to foresee this coming; he'd always been quick at learning new skills and figuring out solutions to mathematical problems in high school and university, so it only follows that he'd be able to keep it up in a work setting, at least on a surface level. The problem is that, just as he had for his entire life, as far back as he can remember, when it comes to the small things, he just can't stop making mistakes.

He doesn't really understand how it happens; he really does his best to double check and make sure he hasn't messed anything up, but undoubtedly, any time there's a problem, it comes back to him. Sometimes, it feels like his coworkers are scapegoating him, but he supposes that it's his own failure to be a likeable enough person if that's the case, and besides, he's been a failure at so much for his entire life that it's hard to believe it deep down, even if logically, it seems like it shouldn't always be his fault. He can practically hear his father's voice in his ears every time he has to apologize for something else he's screwed up, once you make a mistake, you can never undo it, you need to be more careful, if you make a mistake you're a failure...

He supposes it must make him difficult to work with, which must be why all of his coworkers don't like him-- it's not exactly that they dislike him, since they're mostly polite to his face, but he knows they whisper about him behind his back, he overhears it, snippets of conversations when they think he's out of earshot, giggling, pointing. His inability to not make mistakes must be annoying enough that they've started gossiping about not just his work performance, but also his appearance, his personal life, his sexuality... He knows he should just ignore it and focus on getting better at his job so that he doesn't make mistakes, but it gets under his skin, it makes him stressed and anxious and angry, angry enough that he wishes he could just invent a whole new personality for himself that's confident and outgoing and doesn't give a fuck about what other people think... but of course, he can't do that; such a transformation would be impossible unless he really had nothing to lose, and right now, he feels like everything in his life is on the cusp of falling.

All of that was bad enough on its own, but he'd managed to survive it for the year and a half or so that he's been in this job, and he'd hoped that maybe he could go on surviving it indefinitely. But of course, as always happened in his life, one thing led to another and now... well, he supposes all the whispering about how he must be gay had gotten around to his boss because, as Yuuki was getting ready to leave for the day, his boss had sidled up to him with a smirk and a look in his eyes that made Yuuki feel sick to his stomach and asked, So I was thinking it might be nice to get to know one another better over drinks on Friday evening... I heard you'd probably be interested in that sort of thing~ And with his career on the brink of failing the way it was, how could Yuuki possibly say no?

And so, now he collapses onto his tiny sofa in his little apartment, all that he had been able to scrape together for himself at the end of university, feeling exhausted enough that he must have been awake for weeks, despite the fact that it's barely dark out. Somehow, after an entire life of struggling with mistakes and failure, with all the pressure from his father and stress of trying to be perfect, he had thought that, once he was on his own, once he was an adult, he'd be able to finally free himself of it all. But somehow, things only seemed to repeat themselves, only seemed to spiral into worse and worse patterns of the same. But, he tells himself, finally finding the energy to pull his tie all the way off, things weren't that bad, and he didn't have any right to be wallowing in self pity. He just had to do his best to stop making mistakes and make the best of the situation... and besides, it could always be worse. So far, he's managed to skirt the types of terrible mistakes that his father always worried about him making, the ones that ended in horrible consequences. So long as he could avoid doing something stupid like losing the company huge amounts of money, it was at least still worth it to keep trying.

You're up,

dusk037!