Lopsided and Uneven

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/49633186.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/F, F/M
Fandom: Chainsaw Man (Manga), Chainsaw Man (Anime)
Relationship: Denji/Mitaka Asa/Reze, Denji/Mitaka Asa, Mitaka Asa/Reze, Denji/Reze
(Chainsaw Man)
Character: Mitaka Asa, Denji (Chainsaw Man), Reze (Chainsaw Man), Yoru | War
Devil (Chainsaw Man)
Additional Tags: Mitaka Asa Needs a Hug, Polyamory, Jealousy, Angst and
Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Series: Part 4 of Denji/Asa/Yoru/Reze fics
Stats: Published: 2023-08-26 Words: 3,598 Chapters: 1/1

Lopsided and Uneven

by Toggle1

Summary

Asa examines her relationship with Denji and Reze, and herself, and fears for the worst.

Notes

Another prompt from LadyofBoneandIvory on the Creation Devil Contractors Discord.

Lopsided and Uneven

Asa had been reading a lot about relationships lately, hoping that if she is able to absorb enough
information, she can make the ones she has all the better and last longer. One of the things she had
learned is that relationships are about being equal with your partner, to love and cherish and share
with them just as much as you want them to love and cherish and share with you. These are words
that she has taken to heart, and if she fully believes in them, and if she can fully live by them then
everything will be okay for her. There is just one problem in this theory that the books have not
covered, and that it was dealing with monogamous relationship, two people, which is not what she
has.

She is dating Denji and Reze, Reze and Denji, two distinctly different people, and the relationship
she has with them are different, but she wants to think they are equal, but the longer she's with
them, the more she feels that maybe the relationship they have with her is not so equal to the one
they have with each other.

It started off small, she was supposed to meet them on the rooftop after school, but she was
running late, and when she finally managed to reach the roof access door she caught them making
out. That in itself wasn't a problem, she's kissed them before, both when they were all together, and
when she was with them individually, so them kissing like that when she wasn't around only made
sense, it was fair. Despite this however, she couldn't help but feel this ugly little feeling growing in
her gut in the knowledge that they were doing something when she was nowhere to be found. It's a
shitty hypocritical way of feeling and she hates herself for it, but she can't help it.

Her response to seeing them like this was to approach them in a rushed walk, give them enough
time to pull away from one another before she drew Denji into a kiss, before doing to same to
Reze.

“Well, there's a surprise,” Reze said after Asa had pulled away.

“What does that mean?” Asa said, already she can feel needles in her skin.

“Usually you're not that upfront about being affectionate.”

“Yeah, usually we got to drag that outta a you,” Denji continued.

She knows they didn't mean anything by those comments, but there's something about them that
sting.

Denji likes physical affection, of holding people and being held, and the same can be said for
Reze, and even if Asa wants to and likes to indulge in those same feelings, it's just harder for her.
She's prickly and rough corners and sharp edges, she wants to be held, to hold their hands and hold
them, but whenever she wants to do that she felt she needed to work herself up to it. For as easily as
casual, physical intimacy comes to them, where they can touch each other as easily as breathing,
Asa always felt like she is suffocating for a moment if she is being touched without the time to
prepare herself. It never lasts long, only a few seconds before she finds herself melting into either
Denji or Reze's touches, but the fact that feeling is there at all troubles her.

000

If that was it, then it would have been easy to file those thoughts and feelings away as a one off
intrusive thought, but as times goes on, she can't help but feel more and more like this.

Denji has no filter, he says want he wants and he just doesn't care what other people think about
the things he says, and while Reze is more tempered than him, she also has no problems voicing
her own opinions about things and saying them in a way that makes it clear what other people
think simply don't bother her. Asa isn't like that however, she thinks too much about what she's
going to say, and when she does say what she wants it always ends up leaving someone giving her
this look like they just don't understand her or that they are offended by what she said, and she
always ends up regretting it. It allows Denji and Reze to just talk to people much more easily than
she ever could, and during the times where all three of them are talking to someone else it often
feels like they are taking the lead from her.

She wants to stand with them at times like this, but sometimes it feels like she's just being left
behind because she just doesn't have enough to offer.

000
Something else Asa read was that it was unhealthy to compare trauma, that it was not good to
compare who had it worst among peers because all that did was create resentment and false
entitlement, but despite knowing better, she can't help but make comparisons.

She knows about the things Denji has been through, from his father, to the yakuza and Public
Safety, and with Reze she knows about being raised as a killer and a spy from birth by Russia. She
knows of Makima and how she affected them both. They both suffered so much in ways that
children never should have to go through. Asa on the other hand? She had a normal and average
childhood for the most part, she went to school, had friends (or at least tried to), her biggest
concerns were being embarrassed in public, and she had loving parents. Her father was killed by a
devil when she was younger, tragic but nothing too out of the ordinary in this world, but it wasn't
until she killed-

“You didn't do anything to be guilty about,” Yoru reminds her. “Stop thinking like that.”

...but while her problems only began after her mom died, that was only in the last few years of her
life. It was nothing compared to the lifetimes of suffering that Denji and Reze had been through.

That was something else they had in common that she simply could not relate to as much as she
wanted.

000

But what puts the final nail in the coffin, is the off-handed mention of the time Reze taught Denji
how to swim.

“Yeah, it was at a school at night,” Denji said, oh so casually over a bowl of ramen as they sat in
some cheap shop for a late lunch.

“You broke into a school?” Asa said back. “You shouldn't do that, trespassing is wrong.”

“It's not like anyone was there to stop us, and no one got hurt.”

“Not even the worst thing we did,” Reze then said with a shrug.

“Did you break public property?” Asa said in a deadpan tone.

“No, just some skinny dipping, which I think we might have gotten in worst trouble for if we got
caught.”

Asa almost snapped her chopsticks in half.

“Yeah, but we didn't!” Denji laughed, and Reze giggled along with him.

They soon moved on from that bit of conversation, though it stayed in Asa's mind for the rest of
the say.

They went skinny dipping together.

That means they saw one another naked.

That's not something she can match. At all.

She's beautiful, she knows that, back when she was a celebrity that was one of the most common
compliments she was given that she would endlessly devour, and she told herself that if someone
was going to see her naked, it was going to be someone who she had deemed had hard-earned her
affection for the privilege of seeing her body.

But they saw one another stripped down after knowing each other for less than a week, only a
handful of days. So what good was making them work for her “privilege” when they have such an
easy access to the temptation of the flesh? She still made Yoru wait outside the bathroom whenever
she took a bath.

Had they actually... done something?

000

As the week went on, Asa knew where this was going, because she knew the problems that she
has.

She wanted to be praised and shown affection, to be told she was loved and appreciated, and every
kind word and gentle touch Denji and Asa spend on one another is one she is not getting. It will
only be a matter of time, before she starts butting into their affairs, and try and make demands that
they pay more attention to her. She swore to be more selfish in her life, but there is a difference
between allowing yourself to enjoy the things that make you happy, and making other people
miserable for your sake, and she knows that if she starts doing that it would only be a matter of
time before Denji and Reze realize what a lead weight she is in their relationship. They'll realize
that they had more fun and enjoyment with one another, and that there was no reason to have her
around.

Eventually they'll leave her and break her heart.

There was one one way to resolve this matter.

000

“Asa...” she hears Yoru's warning tone. “Do not fucking do this.”

Right now, she, Denji and Reze are sitting at a diner, because the plan was to each lunch here.
Denji was the first to sit down at the booth, and Reze was the second, and of course she took the
seat next to Denji, so that the two of them could be together like that, leaving her to sit alone on the
other side. It's fitting, considering where she's about to take this meeting.

It's a common enough saying, one her mother said to her on a handful of occasions, that like a
band-aid, somethings just needed to be done in one quick motion. It wouldn't help to drag this out
any longer than it needed to be, and that doing so would only hurt everyone involved, so might as
well get it over with.

“Hey, Asa?” Denji asked, looking up from his menu.

“Huh?” she said, snapping back to reality and out of her head. “Sorry, I wasn't paying attention.”

“Is something wrong?” Reze asked, leaning forward on the table. “You've been kind of spacey
lately.”

“I'm fine,” she said, almost too quickly.

“Yoru saying stuff that bothers you again?” Meanwhile Denji was leaning back.

“I'm trying to help, you idiot!”

“No, no, she's fine,” Asa said in defense. “It's just that I've been... thinking some things over.”

“Like what?”

Asa took a deep breath, fighting the urge to back down and the bubbling unease in her gut and how
her nerves were shot. “I think that maybe this isn't working for me, and that maybe I should just
opt out of what we have.”

“Huh?”/“Asa?” The looks they give her, neither one getting what she is saying because they are
simply so caught off guard.

“I'm breaking up with you two,” Asa finished. She had rehearsed this for over three hours
yesterday, she had written the most perfect breakup speech that had ever been conceived, and after
they had listened to everything she had to say, they would fully agree with her. They would shake
hands and go their separate ways, and none of them would be any worst from it, after all, all she
had to do was perfectly articulate her feelings, and everything would be as it should. “This isn't,
um, working out.” No, that wasn't how this speech was supposed to open. “It's suffocating me.”
Stop it, stop it, stop it! “It was fun while it lasted, but I think this is where we say goodbye to one
another.” Before she can try and think about where and how she got derailed, Asa moved up from
her seat and jogged to the door, throwing it open and into the populated city streets, ignoring the
cries of protest behind her.

There, that wasn't so bad. She went off script, but in the end, everything worked out. Sure, her eyes
are stinging and her heart is racing too fast in her chest, but this is fine. She's fine.

This is actually a good thing for her. Relationships are hard, they can be messy and difficult, and
for someone like her who has not dealt too much into such trivial things in pursuit of other more
worthwhile objectives, it may be a good thing to take a break and better decide what she's like as a
person, and to better explore what she wants in partners. She's never been in a committed
relationship before, she's too young for that, so the idea that she's in one with two people might be a
bit much, after all polyamory just simply isn't for everyone, and diving right into the deep end like
that could only serve to hurt her in the long run. Now that's she's broken up with them, they will be
allowed to explore how their relationship can grow and evolve without her to hinder them, while
allowing her to better explore herself and eventually find someone on her own wavelength

This is better for everyone.

She ignored Yoru's disapproving scowl as she ran through the crowd.

She didn't need them.

Her legs were hurting with how fast she was running.

She was better off alone.

Her lungs are on fire and her heart feels like it's shattering into tens of thousands of little pieces.

But that was okay, she would get over it.

000

After she slammed the door to her apartment shut she didn't bother to turn her lights back on before
she jumped into her bed and wrapped herself in her sheets.

“Shut up Yoru,” she hissed, preemptively silencing the devil from the comment she felt she was
going to make. “This is for the best, trust me. I know what I'm doing.”

“Uh-huh,” Yoru said, unconvinced.

Asa further buried herself into her sheets. “I just need some time to get over it, that's all.” She just
wanted to vanish from the world, was that too hard to ask for?

Suddenly there were knocks at her door.

“Asa?” called a voice.

“What happened back there?” called another.

Asa groaned. What were they doing here?

“They were chasing after you this whole time,” Yoru answered. “You lost them at some point, but
where else would you go?”

“Asa? Are you okay in there?” Reze asked, concern evident in her tone.

“We know you're in there, and if you don't answer us, we're coming in,” Denji said, more blunt and
to the point.

Asa didn't answer, and she hoped that if she remained in her cocoon for long enough they would
just drop this and leave.

“You left the door unlocked, idiot.”

Dammit.

The doorknob creaked as it turned opened, and through the slight crack that had opened up. “Asa?”
It was Reze that asked. “We're coming in, okay?”

The door opened and her and Denji slowly made their way in, Denji turning on the lights as they
entered her room. Carefully they approached her bed, and Reze knelt down next to it, while Denji
sat at the foot, both giving her distance. “

“Hey, Asa?” Denji asked. “Everything alright?”

Asa sighed. She could go about this in any number of ways, but she knew that unless she outright
talked to them that she wouldn't leave.”

Reluctantly, after she made sure to wipe the tears from her eyes, she withdrew from the safety of
her sheets and pushed them aside and sat down on the edge of her bed, her feet, still in her shoes,
laying flat on the floor.

There were so many ways she could start this, so many things she wanted to say, but she decided to
just start with the hardest topic to talk about she could.

“Have you two had sex yet?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the floor. “And I mean, after we all
got together, without telling me about it.”

“No, we haven't,” Reze said, and Asa found herself believing her. “We talked about it a couple of
times, but we decided that we didn't want to do that unless we could talk to you about it first.”

“And why haven't you?” Asa didn't mean for that to sound as bitter as she made it.
“We didn't know how to ask you about it,” Denji said. “You're always kind of sensitive about it, so
we didn't now how to actually bring it up to you.”

“So it's my fault then, is that it?” Asa couldn't help how sharp she sounded.

“What? No way!” Denji defensively said. “We just didn't want to make you uncomfortable and
stuff!”

“Is this what this about?” Reze asked. “Do you not want us having sex? Or, do you want to have
sex? Or...”

“Yes? No? Maybe?” Asa said, not sure which ones were. “I think so.” Asa couldn't deny that she
had a negative opinion on sex, at least at the start, that it was something gross that people only did
when they were bored and had nothing better to do, but the more time she spent with Denji and
Reze, the more time she found herself thinking otherwise. She's... thought about them. Her and
Denji. Her and Reze. Denji and Reze. All three of them, together. Much to Yoru's frustration. But
enacting those feelings would require her to be vulnerable in a way she's never been before, and the
idea frightens her no matter how much she wants to move past it. “One day... and I really want to
mean that.” She does, she really does, because despite that fear she wants that kind of intimacy.
“And it's not just that.”

“It's not?” Denji asked.

“No, but...” She breathed in, trying to give herself a moment. “But the more I think about us, I keep
thinking about you, and how well you two work, and it makes me think how much of a deadweight
I must at times, because I sometimes don't feel as though I click in the same way you two do.”

“Asa, that's not-” Reze tried.

“And worst of all,” Asa continued. “Whenever I catch or hear about you two doing something
without me, it makes me feel awful! Like you two are doing it on purpose! It's like if I'm not the
center of attention in this relationship, then I might as well not be here!”

This time, Denji tried. “But we're not-”

“I know!” Asa yelled out, falling back onto her bed, hands pressed against her face to block
everything out, mostly her tears. “I know you two aren't doing that, but I don't like this ugly, jealous
feeling I have inside me. It just makes me feel like more of a terrible of a person than I already
am!”

Neither one answers her, and she hopes that they just leave so she can be done with this, for them to
be done with her, so she can go back to wallowing in her misery.

Unfortunately, Denji lays down next to her on her right. “You're not terrible,” he said. “I've met
lots of terrible people, and you're the least terrible out there.”

Asa grumbled.

To her left, Reze laid down on the bed too. “We don't mean to make you feel like that, you know
that, right?”

“...I know.”

There was more silence between them as all three laid on their back, staring up at Asa's
uninteresting ceiling.
“Dating's hard,” Denji admitted.

“Yeah...” Asa admitted as well.

“But, I don't wanna break up with you either of you, even though it's hard. 'Cause I'm happy with
you guys.”

“I'm happy too,” Reze also admitted.

“I don't want to break up either,” Asa said, her hands clenching over her stomach. “But I keep
thinking at some point I'll just get my heart broken, even though I know ending things with you
two will also hurt.”

“Then how about we just take it one day at a time?” Reze asked. “Don't think too far into the
future, and if anything's wrong, we just, I don't know, talk about it?”

“I'd like that.” Despite herself, Asa found herself with a smile.

“So does this mean we're not breaking up then?” Denji asked.

“No, I think we're good.”

Denji exhaled a sigh of relief. “That's good to hear. But, well now what? Do we go back out for
lunch or...?”

“I'm too tired to do anything right now, we'll just each lunch here,” Asa said, making no effort to
move.

“I'll take care of that,” Reze said as she pushed herself up and moved to Asa's fridge and cabinets.
“Give me like ten minutes and I'm sure I can make something.”

“Thanks Reze,” both Asa and Denji said.

“Want to watch TV or something?” he asked.

“Sure,” was Asa's reply, as Denji picked up her remote control and began to scroll through the
random channels.

Fifteen minutes later, the three of them were eating turkey sandwiches with a package of rice
crackers between them, while a movie about a police detective trying to solve his partner's murder
played on TV. Asa had seen the lead actor in several other movies, and decided that she had liked
him in this role.

“Told you not to break up with them,” Yoru said from her spot behind them.

Asa glanced to Denji, and then to Reze.

There's still some doubt in her, mostly in herself, about where this will lead for her, but she's more
than willing to give this a chance.

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