antiaure

[antiaure]

When the Darkness Comes

SPOILERS: Through Hero Billboard Arc

Guess what? It's another sad blond boy.

You've dedicated your entire life to being a pro hero, doing what you can to protect everything you love. When Keigo comes home to you sick and injured after a terrible mission, however, you push your hero persona aside in order to help ease the pain the world gives to your beloved.

Hawks x gn!reader (no y/n)

Angst | Fluff | Sickfic

PG-13

TW: Blood, depression, sensory overload, migraines

Cross-posted on A03

Request Here

The night has never been a friend to you. When you lived all alone, you always used to shut the blinds up tight and try to keep the darkness out as much as possible in order to get some semblance of a restful night of sleep. The night itself doesn’t scare you, but somehow it makes the world seem much too big for your liking. There’s so much space outside your little home, so much earth to hide the demons and monsters that don’t dare come out in the light of day. You can practically feel the darkness crawling in through your window and clawing it’s way into your bed every time you leave the curtains undone even a crack.   

Still, you aren’t afraid of the dark. You’re afraid of being alone when the beasts it hides decide to come for you. 

Burying your face into Keigo’s pillow is enough to keep tonight’s beasts at bay. It’s not Keigo -no, not even close. Nothing could ever provide the warmth that his embrace does, but the thought of him the last time he was sound asleep upon it is just enough. 

The scent of his shampoo is stale now, a whisper of vanilla that hasn’t been renewed in over a week. Tiny golden hairs caress your cheek. You even swear that if you silence your breathing enough, you can hear the tiny chirps and coos he releases when he’s deep in sleep. They endear you, these little domestic memories of him that you carry everywhere. In moments where you feel like you’re drowning in the simple stress of life, they’re a single raft for you to hold onto.

Maybe that’s why Keigo being away at work always leaves you with a nauseating hollowness in your gut. It’s a space you can never fill, not even when the two of you are as close as two people can be. It remains an isolated and untouchable nuisance. When he’s away, you live paralyzed knowing that any night could be the night he doesn’t come home to you. When you’re together, there’s always the looming inevitability that he will once again have to leave you. As much as your love for Keigo is strong and wholly honest, there’s nothing you hate more than the distance your jobs as heroes put between you.  When you first started dating, too young yet to throw yourselves headfirst into danger and triumph, the hollowness had been a purely selfish sensation of teenage infatuation and newly discovered lust. You wanted him for yourself. You wanted to keep him from his studies and his training, wrap him up so tightly within you that he forgot the world outside was real for just a little while. The circumstances of your relationship’s birth gave way to youthful years of wrapping yourselves up in one another and shielding yourselves from the world that was hurting you.

As you aged, though, became heroes and built up the palace of Keigo memories in your head, the hollowness grew from a selfish and childish yearning to a domestic and selfless need. You no longer needed his body and his time, but rather an assurance of his safety and the comfort of his presence. 

After years of feeling both empty sicknesses, you still aren’t sure which is worse. 

Most nights lately, the nights since you moved in together, you’ve been able to swallow the sickness down and find a routine that suits the new closeness you share with Keigo. Your days are busy and filled with enough of your own hero work to keep your mind off the empty space in your soul where Keigo should be, and even though being surrounded by his things in your shared apartment helps, you still wish he were crawling into bed with you instead of wrestling villains cities away. You’d give anything to worry about him keeping you up with his chirping than worrying he’ll die in the line of duty. 

The glimmer of your cell phone screen lighting up the room shakes you from your near-dreaming of your beloved. The white light is flooding and rude, making you squint against the assault.

Keigo?

No, it can’t be. 

What time is it? 

Late. Too late. It couldn’t be Keigo. He’d never wake you up, not unless…

You don’t have time to finish the thought with the way your heart has leapt up into your throat and begun to strangle you. The feeling is blinding. Images begin to form in your mind’s eye without your permission, visions of Keigo bloodied and torn apart that live in the back of your mind at all times spring to the forefront. Your hands scramble for the device, slamming down on it and not caring to orient it correctly before you let the blinding light from the screen pulse into your skull.

No, not Keigo. 

Your agency. Again. 

All of the tension melts from your body as though a bucket of ice water has been poured over you. You ignore the text with an audible sigh, the adrenaline pumping through your blood enough to make your head begin to throb from every pressure point. If there was something crucial going on at work, the office is always directed to call you, but the mountains of text messages about petty things your sidekicks have bombarded you with in the last few days of you vacation have begun to grate on your nerves. Though you can’t imagine your agency without their antics and their joy in the face of all the tragedies that are forced down their throats, some of their pestering has gotten to you. You aren’t the easiest to frustrate, but without Keigo at home to keep your unchecked temper under wraps, you falter at things that you normally wouldn’t even notice. 

You let your head wander back to Keigo’s pillow, your eyes drifting shut to try and calm the onslaught of pain. You’d never dare express it to anyone, fearing that you may seem obsessive, but the throbbing behind your eyes is nothing compared to the empty bed that cradles you. The pain distracts you, actually, making you focus on its violence rather than the endless emptiness in your bones that Keigo leaves when he goes away like this with no way to tell you if he’s okay.  You’d give anything to touch him, to see him, even just to hear his voice and know for just a moment that he’s okay. 

“Baby?” 

The pain in your head swells then to a blinding stab as your entire body swings you into a squat as if moved by an outside influence. At the simple sound of the misplaced voice in your supposed-to-be-quiet home, you’re a different being. You’re no longer you, lying curled around your boyfriend’s pillow with soft thoughts of skin and breath in your head. No. 

You’re the number three hero now. It’s the years of it in you, the training and the everlasting readiness that gets you like this. The blood pounds through your ears in a deafening symphony of cells, but you’re thankful it’s carrying the adrenaline you need to fight to all of your poised muscles. Every inch of your skin seems as though it’s buzzing with every sense. The pain in your head, though crippling to you just moments ago, feels like a whisper compared to the excitement-terror mix that flows through each vein and vessel. Your blood heats up to a red blush in your palms. Your quirk buzzes and quivers just at the tips of your fingers, and you can feel your muscles coiling and ready to move.

A knock comes on your window from behind your tightly wound curtains. Your hand raises with your quirk lying just beneath the skin. The voice from the darkness once again follows the knock.

 “Dove?” 

Oh, how stupid you are. How absolutely and painfully stupid. 

The weight, the fear, the energy of being ready to attack slides from your body like a downpour of water. 

He’s alive. He’s right beyond that window. 

He’s home. 

You all but scramble to the window with trembling legs. The high of your adrenaline rush wears off instantly and without warning, making you tumble and have to grab the windowsill for support. 

He’s home. 

By God he’s home.

With tears blurring your vision and threatening to pour over your lashes, you grab a hold of the curtain and pull it with too much force away from the glass. 

Your heart all but bursts. There he is. There he is in all his beauty, angelic form silhouetted by the jaundice streetlights and golden eyes reflecting the moonlight back your way. There he is, waiting patiently on the balcony. 

The look on his face is bright and smiling, albeit exhausted and covered in wounds. You don’t return the shine, however. You’re smart enough to know by now. You know this expression he wears isn’t the shine of the warmth and the sun, but the shine of a squeaky clean and overly cared for plastic mask. You do not see your beloved in this shine.

You see your own reflection.

His skin is cut and his hair is greasy. His uniform jacket is no where in sight, and the clothes he does wear are tattered. He’s a man who’s been stripped of all but a few layers of material and the skin clinging to his bones. His body may still wear the remainders of his hero suit, but his soul?

His soul has been stripped naked and left out in the cold. 

“Keigo” you breathe, sure that he can’t even hear you through the glass. “Oh God, my Keigo.”  

You open the window with shaking hands, and he’s barely able to make it through before he all but collapses into you.

  You pull him in without second thought, pressing his cold and soaking wet head into your safe and warm chest. “Oh, Keigo.” 

You mean to fret, to ask if he’s okay or if he needs anything, but his name comes out as nothing more than a choked whisper. The tissue of your heart feels like it closes in more with every beat, strangling you, trying to show you just an ounce of the pain your beloved is in. The twisting sensation takes over until you don’t even notice that you’re crying. Unknown to either of your, salty tears run down your cheeks and drip into Keigo’s hair. Your despair then gets lost in the wash of rainwater clinging to his locks. 

He digs his fingers into your hips so hard that you fear you’ll bruise. His grip isn’t solid, fingers shaking and twitching against your flesh as he nuzzles his head into your chest as though trying to escape into your ribs. You’d love it if you could wrap him up in your body, keep him safe and warm from whatever made him suffer like this. 

Everything about him is so raw. The wounds on his skin that you can see are a mix of fresh and scabbed, but all of his skin is red and dried. His breathing is ragged and nearing labored. There’s dirt caked into his hair. 

It takes him almost five minutes of burrowing into your body in silence to finally speak. His two words are just breaths as though he can’t bear to say more, but it’s enough to finally split your heart in two. 

“I’m tired.” 

You run your fingers through his hair, each one coming away greasy. The tears raining down from your eyes are noticeable now. They burn the dry skin on your cheeks, making you feel raw. The pain you feel is nowhere near whatever is crushing down on Keigo, but it’s enough to make a small sob find it’s way up into your throat. 

“I know” you soothe as you try to keep your voice steady. “Where are you hurt? Let me help you.” 

He speaks into your chest, his voice so muffled you barely hear him. 

“My head.” 

“A concussion? Did you hit it?”  

“No” he mumbles, finally looking at you. “My head.” 

You cradle his face in your hands and run your thumbs over his overgrown facial hair. “I gotcha. We need to get you cleaned up and in bed. Come on.”

After years of dating, you’re used to Keigo’s autopilot-esque personality when he becomes upset or overwhelmed. Whenever the world becomes too much and you expect him to lash out or get upset, he just shuts down. It’s the flip of a switch. One minute, he’ll be buzzing with rage or despair, his face twitching, his wings puffed and ruffling, but the next he’ll go silent. There will be no movement, and for quite sometime afterward, he’s nothing more than a shell. The Keigo you know is gone for a time. All you have is the container that’s carrying around his wound-up, cowering soul. 

You’ve always wondered where he gets it from. There’s no doubt it’s a messy jumble of his childhood swirling around with his hero training, but God forbid he ever talk too deeply of his past. It haunts him everyday. You can tell by the way he darts his eyes to the floor and fidgets his feathers whenever you so much as insinuate that you’d like to hear about his life before you. So much of him, this behavior, is a mystery to you. 

He’ll go weeks without showing any signs of stopping, pushing himself to the threshold of his sanity until something as small as a spoon dropping to the floor or his pen running out of ink sends him over the edge. After that, he just exists for days. Wake up, eat food, go to work, come home, shower, sleep. He goes on like a ghost until the effects of whatever sent him to rock bottom fade away. He never asks for help, never seeks affection. He just exists.

Tonight, his existence is different. Instead of plastering on his professional face and beginning his burnt-out routine, his fingers and nails continue to dig beneath your skin in a futile attempt to make root in your flesh.

You slide down to the floor in order to get out of the awkward position his collapse placed you in. Now on your knees, his arms wrapped around your waist with yours tangled around his neck and shoulders, you can feel how aggressively he’s shaking against you. 

“What happened?” you mumble into his hair, trying not to pay mind to it’s texture or the obvious smell of sweat and musty rain that clings to him.

  He says nothing, but instead pulls his soaked and sparse wings up off the floor to tuck them tightly against his back. He’d normally wrap them around you when he needed you close. They’d tuck up against you, feathers soft and flooding you in crimson until the two of you were lost in a world where no one else could visit. The openness now sends a chill flying from the base of your spine to your skull. It threatens to swallow you, but you shove it down in favor of pulling Keigo just a little tighter against your chest.

  You give him a few minutes to stay tucked in your grip, face hidden in your chest and away from the world. When he’s ready, he’ll emerge. It can be hard to just stay silent when you know he’s suffering. Though you want to soothe him and try to speak away the pain with any words that your brain can concoct, you know it’s hopeless. He isn’t a ‘words’ man. They’re too difficult for him to articulate the right way after all the lies he’s been told and forced to tell. He’s an actions man, and to him, any honest word is sacred. 

If there’s something you need to know about that he’s allowed to tell you, he’ll let you know. He always does, even if it’s in his own confusing way. You can always trust that through all the nights you spend alone, and all the mornings he stumbles in bloody and exhausted, that he trusts you to take care of him in anyway he needs in that moment. Sometimes it’s as simple as putting a bandage on a wound. Other days it’s knowing that he doesn’t mean it when he snaps over minuet things. Today, it’s doing your best to hold his body together while his soul is crumbling apart. 

It takes longer than usual tonight for him to find himself buried in his own despair. After a suitable amount of time has passed, and the tremors in his body have subsided to a small shake, you gingerly pull his head up from your shoulder and lays his hands in your lap. 

He doesn’t look at you, but his cheeks are irritated from the salt of the tears wiped on your shoulder and the scabbing wounds in his skin. You haven’t a clue how it’s possible for your heart to break more. When you see him like this, however, it does, the shards falling into your ribs and lungs and threatening to steal your breath. 

“Hey” you breathe, cradling his face but being careful not to aggravate the already abused skin. “Shower?”

  Still, he doesn’t say a word, but he finally scoots away and allows you to stand with his hands in yours. It takes him a second to get up off the floor. His legs shake, knees collapsing in toward one another as he uses you to pull himself up. You know this pain, the pain of a hero worked to the edge. There’s no painkiller you can give him or amount of rest he could get that can fix it. It’s a deep-set pain that never leaves after you start hero work. It simply lies dormant until you make the mistake of doing your job too well and waking it to once again infect your flesh.

You make small circles on the backs of his hands with your thumbs, massaging his dry and cracked palms with your fingers as you guide him slowly into the bathroom. It’s the only thing your body can will itself to do in the feeble attempt to bring him calm. 

“Any big cuts that need to be cleaned?” you wonder once the door is closed behind you, leaving your voice to echo around in the small room in a symphony of worry. 

Still, you get no answers from him, only this time he shuts his eyes and takes a deep, steadying breath. It’s no use it seems. His trembling returns, more aggressive this time. His eyes are shut so tightly that the lids have gone white and the markings on his face wrinkle into shadow. 

Your eyebrows scrunch together and you frown even though he can’t see your expression. “Kei? What’s wrong?” 

He tucks his wings so tightly against his body that they shake, and raises his hands to place his palms harshly over his ears before he speaks. 

“It’s too loud in here.” 

It’s too loud in here. 

Of course it is. You look at Keigo then -really look- and you nearly smack yourself for not noticing it all before. His hands are constantly moving, fingers drumming on his sides and scratching at his beard and hair. His eyes dart about the room. His lower lip, normally dry and pale from the cold flights, has been mercilessly worried between his teeth to the point of drawing blood.   “You overloaded yourself with your quirk” you state, trying to keep your words as soft as possible to keep your voice from bouncing around the room. 

He nods, but only in small motions. “I’ve had a migraine for three days.” 

You say nothing more. There’s nothing left to say. It isn’t completely foreign to you, the way he works himself into near madness by using his quirk too much. Being able to hear and feel everything around him is an excellent feature when it comes his hero work, but when the world gets just a bit too loud or a bit too chaotic around him, it’s a fast transition from useful quirk to pain mongering curse. His sensory overload is inexplicably severe, and though you’ve dealt with it much since your childhood together, it still moves you to disgust everytime you have to witness the suffering it brings him.

You take it upon yourself to begin undressing him. Every movement makes him flinch and groan when he gets like this, and something as small as taking off his jacket or looking in a mirror can cause him to lose his footing. It’s a slow process, but you’re able to keep him relaxed by being mindful of keeping your hands far from his face and his wings. It may take every ounce of you to not cringe when you see all the dark purple bruising that lines the chest you lay your head on at night, or cry when you have to pull his bodysuit free from dried blood on the neck you spend nights lavishing with your kiss, but you manage to keep yourself at ease for him. 

You let yourself get roughed up too much you want to tell him, scream to him. Please stop doing things that hurt you.

You keep your mouth shut tight, afraid that these thoughts will slip out in your growing despair and add to his pain. 

When you’ve finished undressing and it’s just the two of you, no clothes and no voices to stand in between, he risks opening up his eyes to look at you. 

You smile in spite of the pain ripping its way through your mind. “Hi.” 

He reaches for you, brushing his fingers on your hips, but refrains from pulling you in. His expression falls deeper into darkness then, his fingers shaking madly as they run along your skin at a snail’s pace. His eyebrows scrunch together more and more with every stroke until his hand stops and drops from your body. 

“Hey” you breathe, ducking a bit to get into his line of vision to avoid touching his bruised and battered face. “It’s okay. Let’s get you cleaned up.” 

There are no protests. You simply believe there isn’t any fight left in him to fuel one. 

On any other day, he’d typically drop most of his feathers before showering. There’s nothing more precious to you than watching him at the end of each day, sitting cross legged on the floor with a pile of feathers in front of him, meticulously picking through them to find bad ones, and inspecting and cleaning the good ones until he once again deems them worthy of sitting on his body. Sometimes you help him. Sometimes he’s embarrassed that his feathers are dirty and doesn’t let you help until he’s swept the filthiest of them away. He doesn’t think you notice, but you do, and you’ll never tell him so. Your heart practically explodes when you catch him blushing with nerves, piling bits of his dirty feathers away and watching you from the corner of his eye like a child praying you don’t see their mess. It’s the type of memory that you hold close to your soul when he leaves on long missions. It’s the image of him letting pieces of his walls come down that gets you through the lost time. 

You don’t think there will be any adorable feather sorting tonight. Instead of piling them up in the bedroom, he simply follows you into the shower with a set of full -albeit damaged and twitching- wings. The realization that the pain of water hitting them is going to be blinding comes to you too late, and before you can warn him, his body comes tumbling into yours.

“Keigo, my God” you curse, pressing your entire backside against the shower wall in order to keep the two of you on your feet. “You’ve gotta stand up.” 

He slams a hand down on the wall behind you then, sending your heart straight up into your throat. The pound echoes deafeningly through the room, rattling the shower curtain and creating a sharp snap until the entire room -no, the house- falls into a heavy silence. You hold your breath, still doing your best to support Keigo’s weight as the pulsing remains of the boom settle and leave nothing but his heavy breaths and the sound of the water hitting the shower floor. 

You don’t need to see his face to know that he’s mere inches away from breaking right down the middle. One push, the slightest breeze would send him tumbling straight down to rock bottom where you couldn’t get to him. 

With as much care as you can muster with your trembling hands, you lay your palms over his shoulders and press you lips into the crown of his head. Tears pour over your lashes and mix with the water coming from the faucet, but you don’t let yourself waiver, You just hold him with steady hands and kiss him with gentle lips. 

“Let me help you” you request in an even voice. “I know you don’t like when I use my quirk on you, but please let me help you make the pain better.” 

There’s more silence, but his grip on the wall has slipped and landed into your half-wet hair. There’s not an ounce of strength in his grip. He’s just letting his skin touch you, nothing but the trembling indicating that he has any movement left to give. 

You take his silence as hesitance. “Please. I can help you.” 

He groans and flexes his fingers into your hair. It doesn’t hurt, but you can feel his nails just brushing your scalp. He’s trying once again to claw into you. The animal side of his quirk too often takes over when the stress of his life becomes too much, and it forces him to cling and call out to you, cower when he’s hurt or protect when you’re threatened.

“What happens if-” he stops, taking a slow and broken breath- “What if something happens and I can’t protect you?” 

The last bits of your heart that were still intact turn to dust behind your ribs. You nearly choke on the residue, your throat tying into a knot as more of your tears come down and into Keigo’s hair. Still, you try to keep your voice steady when you speak to him. 

You fail. 

“It’s my turn to protect you” you say through the pain. “I’m a hero, too.” 

It’s true that Keigo sometimes forgets that you too are a top ten hero. He holds you like your glass no matter the situation. He cradles you in his arms at night, his precious treasure, and makes love to you too tenderly for a man with such calloused hands. He forgets that your job is also to fight and to bleed. You’re a hero, and he forgets that, but it never offends you. No, it shatters you.  He forgets you’re a hero because there are gentle parts of you that he sees value in, parts of you that are priceless to him that have nothing to do with your title. 

For himself, however, his title is all he believes he is worth. 

He doesn’t speak again, but reaches up and places his hands atop yours. Slowly and with a featherlight touch, he slides your hands down his body until they’re wrapped around his midsection with your fingertips firmly placed just below the joints of his wings. 

You lean into him, allowing him to rest his face in the safety of your neck. “I won’t hurt you” you promise him. “Tell me if it helps.” 

The only response you get is a twitch of his thumb that is now barely cradling the opposite side of your neck.

  It’s taken you your entire life to master the details of your quirk, much longer than most heroes. It’s delicate work, a strangely scary and monumental thing you and a chosen few others have the ability to do. 

Taking the quirks of others is always labeled as a villain quirk, but you’ve somehow managed to make it the mark of a beloved hero. You wish everyday that it was a graceful burglary of their identity, one done with a stare like your old mentor Eraserhead or with a glow and a touch like his little girl, Eri, but no. You take quirks with blood and and with pain. It’s simply how you were born, and it’s simply how you shall remain. 

You’ve only used it on your boyfriend once, him becoming just a little too curious when you were still just friends and practically begging you let him ‘try it out’. Under normal circumstances, you never would have agreed, but you had a twinge of curiosity about what it would do to someone with such a physically present quirk. You of course, like everyone else, weren’t allowed to just use your quirk willy nilly. Many people were fascinated by it, and the curiosity of others left you with many questions yourself. So, against the nagging little voice in your head screaming bad idea, bad idea, you used your quirk on Keigo and his beautiful wings. 

The dumbest parts of you half expected his wings to poof off into nothing, but no. Instead, he was quite simply unable to use any of his feathers for much more than flight. You’ve never seen someone so joyous, someone that brought so much light into every room they walk into fall into shadow so quickly. For the first time in his entire life, his wings didn’t speak to him, and it ripped up something so terrifying from within him that he started to hyperventilate into his hands and pull his feathers out by the fistful. The entire ordeal made you violently sick to your stomach, and even hours after you returned his quirk, he wasn’t himself. He stayed silent the rest of the day, and even when he came back to school the next completely fine, you still couldn’t even look at yourself in the mirror. 

It disgusted you to even think about using your quirk for weeks afterward. Your grades slipped as you failed training assignments. Your friends worried nonstop and tried to tempt you into using your quirk like it would somehow make you feel less like a beast. Your classmates began to spread rumors that you were debating leaving school and becoming a villain.

You simply believed it impossible to become something you already were. 

What a horrible thing, others being gifted their quirks while you were cursed with yours. 

It wasn’t until weeks later when, in the middle of a lecture, Keigo leaned over and poked you in the shoulder with a sharpened feather. The poke wasn’t hard enough to draw blood, but it startled you into jumping a bit from your seat. 

“We’re even now” he’d explained when you and your sore arm demanded answers. “You scared me with your quirk, so I scared you with mine. You can’t feel bad anymore since it, ya know, cancels out. It’s math.” 

You both got detention for talking in class, and Keigo got one day extra for ‘hurting’ you with his quirk. However, you spent the entire detention with one of his feathers in your hand under your desk, worrying letters into it, trying to stifle your laughter as you watched him try to decode your messages. 

You’re sure it’s the day you fell in love with him, but you can never remember. The longer you’re with him, the more all your memories together feel like moments of love. 

That memory seems like light years away from where you stand now. Instead of writing messages into Keigo’s feathers, desperate not to add to his pain, you settle for gently tracing patterns on his back and silencing his quirk as slowly as you can manage.

He tenses against you as it fades from his reach, all of his tendons pulling and muscles locking. It doesn’t last long enough for you to be concerned, though. Seconds later, he slumps against you, a quiet sigh leaving his lips as he becomes dead weight. 

“Kei?” 

He speaks into the skin of your neck. “Hm?” 

You can feel your heart starting to pick up in your chest just as it always does when you’ve use your quirk. Though he isn’t showing a single sign of being in pain, you still itch deep within your flesh at the thought of altering him from his usual state. The image of him pulling his feathers out in your dorm all those years ago won’t ever leave you. 

“Are you okay?” you wonder, able to stroke your hand down his back now that you’ve warped his quirk into nothing.

He nods. “It’s so quiet. God. Thank God.” 

You nearly melt against the wall behind you. Finally, after three days of tortuous overload and pain, you’ve protected him. He can be safe here in your arms, quiet and settled into your skin. The simple shower, something you two do almost every night together, suddenly seems like a baptism as a huge amount of stress and suffering drips from both your bodies.  

He reaches up to stroke your cheek a bit with the backs of his fingers, nuzzling his face deeper into your neck. “Thanks, Birdie.” 

“No problem.”

  You finally get the chance to shower without riddling him in unbearable pain. He’s mostly silent while you wash his hair, his battered face, his body. The shampoo does what it can to rinse the dirt and blood from his golden hair, but it can’t rid him of the experiences that put the mess there. Red washes down the drain, but you wish it contained all his pain and woe instead of just his grit and grime. 

The sight of the blood swirling in the drain almost hypnotizes you. You’ve been a pro hero with Keigo since the two of you were eighteen years old, and somehow you still can’t stomach the sight of it whenever he comes home drenched in blood and painted in galaxies of bruises. You’re aware it’s selfish, and you know that sometimes you risk allowing it to tear you apart, but he’s your Keigo. The memories of him bringing ice cream to your room late at night to talk about crushes and homework are yours. The feeling of him sneaking into your dorm to kiss you, lay beside you, touch you, is all yours. No one else knows what it’s like being with Keigo. You were his first. He was yours. You pray everyday that you’ll be each other’s last. 

You’ve just been hoping that it’s because you get to grow old together, not because one of you dies young in the line of duty.

He nuzzles into you when you start to clean out his wings, breaking you away from your view on the now clear drain. You don’t even notice that you’ve slowly been running your fingers through the downy feathers where his wings meet his back. Normally, you’d never dare touch this area of his back if you weren’t prepared to end up in bed for the rest of the evening. Keigo’s touch was always soft. He always caresses you with a featherlight touch, never grabs you or moves at you too suddenly. Even when his days at work are filled with fighting and blood, he holds you like you’re gold. 

When you touch his wings, however, it’s a different story. 

He’s not rough with you, no. You don’t think Keigo can be rough with you. Instead, he becomes borderline desperate for touch. He keens into you. He tells you he loves you over and over like it’s the only thing he knows how to say. He’s not a man who expresses his feelings with words, but God if you don’t hear every synonym for love whenever you get your hands into those feathers. His wings are weapons of war that he can’t put down. When you stroke your fingers through them while being as close as two people can be, you do more than just put the safety on that weapon. You have the power to empty it of bullets and fill it with roses. 

You brace yourself, but don’t let go, waiting for the aggressive flap of his wings and crash of his lips. 

It never comes. 

You run your hands away from his wings in favor of teasing his behind with your fingertips. “Headache still bad?” 

He perks up from your shoulder, and there it is, that smirk. Instead of being scrunched in pain, the markings on his eyes are wide and clear now as he gazes upon your body. His lips are kinked up, the cracks in them opening into pink valleys that you’re nearly dying to kiss.  

“No, but the grab-ass is bold for someone who wasn’t sure.”

You smile and wrinkle your nose, giving his behind the firm grasp he’s looking for. “I was doing no such thing.” 

His wings kick out behind him a bit, flicking droplets of water onto the shower door. “I’d love to get handsy, baby, but I’m filthy. I need to get cleaned up.”  “I know” you promise him. “It’s just that you’re usually all over me if I touch your wings.” 

He nods then, allowing his hands to float along your sides. You flinch away a bit, but not genuinely. His calloused hands dance along you until they’re cradling your neck once again. “They’re a lot less sensitive without my quirk, I guess.” 

You abandon his behind to bury your fingers back into his feathers. He sighs, but it’s slow and warm, so you continue your stroking. You finally get to take the time to run your fingers over individual feathers and feel the way the barbs bend against your skin.

It’s nice, being able to run your fingers down his wings without him twitching and twisting with every movement. Touching his wings is a deeply intimate and private act. Others doing it sends him into a mood for the rest of the day, photoshoots and press events where fans are allowed to get a little too up close and personal with him often ending in his discomfort. All you can do to try and ease that suffering is let your interactions with his feathers end with whispered confessions on naked skin. 

It’s strange to touch them knowing the night isn’t quite heading in that direction.  

It takes over an hour to clean out all of his feathers and rid him of those beyond repair. Though his face is still cut and his body is still littered in deep purple bruises, he looks much less broken then he did when he first arrived. When you wrap a plush towel around his hair and face, he smiles at you from beneath the material. 

God it makes your heart swell. It’s been over a week since you’ve heard his voice or seen his smile, and watching the dimples beside his mouth press in and the markings on his eyes wrinkle with his grin feels akin to being blessed. 

You ruffle his hair and settle the towel onto his shoulders. “What?” 

He hesitates, but grabs your hands in his and peers down into them when he speaks. “Love you.” 

You nearly choke on your heart. It’s so uncommon to hear such affections from him. At first, you believed it was because he was truly hesitant to love you, didn’t want you the way you’ve always wanted him. He used to snuggle up against you in your twin dorm room bed, whimper when you touched him and slide his hands into your pajamas for some kind of reprieve, but he’d be damned to ever say any of what he felt out loud for years. It took quite some time for you to realize that it was simply hard for him to say, and really had nothing to do with you. His love language is quiet; acts of service, gift-giving, and teasing being the only ways he’s used to giving and receiving love. Words only come to him when he pushes himself past his comfort zone. It’s not a problem with you. You’d rather spend hours teasing one another with him at ease than see him uncomfortably forcing himself to speak words you already know to be true.  

You push his wet hair out of his face. “Love you too.” 

As much as you love spending time with him naked and covering one another in gentle touches, his body is still deeply slouched and his eyelids still beg you to allow them to flutter shut. He’s nearly snoring where he stands, so you let him lean on you as you head to bed, his wings dragging on the floor behind him.  

He crawls straight under the covers when he reaches your bed, burrowing himself into the now cold sheets and letting his eyes drift shut.

“No clothes?” you wonder, raising an eyebrow despite his inability to see you. 

He shakes his head. “It’ll, ya know, bother my cuts and bruises. Can’t have that.” 

When you don’t reply, one of his eyes pops open and glances your way from under his nest of sheets. 

“I think you’re lying” you tell him, trying to sound stern even though laughter is leaking from between your teeth. 

“I think you can’t resist laying with your manly, rugged, naked boyfriend.” 

“I don’t think there’s enough room for you, me, and your ego.” 

He smiles, all chubby cheeks and blushing skin before opening his arms and reaching to you with grabby hands. “I’ll make my ego sleep on the couch.” 

He’s like a magnet. You move toward your bed before even deciding to do so, sliding into your space before he rolls over onto you. 

He buries his face in your neck, taking a long, deep breath. “I like your quirk, ya know. It’s real useful.” 

An icy feeling shoots through your body when he speaks. It’s unlike either of you to really mention your quirk, only when it’s too important to a conversation to leave out. You’ve told him time and time again that it bothers you, that what it does to people bothers you, and he respects you enough to let the topic rest. Even after you hurt him with it, though, he always tried to make it seem like a good quirk whenever it comes up until you’re forced to sternly ask him to stop. 

You rest your face on the top of his head and speak into his damp hair. “Thanks.” 

“I’m serious.” 

“So am I.” 

There’s not enough energy in him to lift himself off you, or even look at you, but he scrambles his hand around on your torso until he finds your fingers. When he does, he holds on too tight. 

“I thought I was gonna just fall out of the sky and die on the way home. That’s how much pain I was in” he explains to you, making your heart twist and gag from being force-fed his suffering. “If your quirk can stop that, I’d say that that’s a good quirk.” 

“I didn’t stop your pain” you remind him in nothing more than a whisper. “I stopped your quirk from causing your pain.”

“So, your quirk helped stop my pain, which is good.” 

Tears prick at the very edges of your eyes, but you blink them away and continue to stroke through his ever-drying hair. God, how obnoxious you can be when it comes to your quirk. There isn’t a thing you can do to get rid of it, nothing to rip it free from your DNA or silence it in your blood. Despite the fact that it got you in the top ten, you still wish you could ball it up like homework you’d faltered on and throw it away, never to be seen again. Still, after years of using it to support yourself and Keigo, years of using it to do hero work, it feels like a mistake. 

You feel like a mistake. It makes you a mistake. 

“Hey.” 

Somehow, through his headache and his bruises, through his exhaustion and his pain, Keigo has managed to haul himself up onto his elbows so he’s looking down on you. His right wing covers you like a blanket, so you just grab on and pull it up into your chin so you can fondle through the feathers. 

He doesn’t relent. “Tell me what’s going on” -he pokes the side of your head- “Up here.” 

The man truly is ruthless. When you first started dating, you expected him to be sort of a hit or miss kind of boyfriend, as horrible as it sounds. He’d always seemed so aloof in school to everyone that wasn’t you. Popular, beloved, and sought after by everyone in school, he did everything he could to build his hero persona early on. Only around you did he ever let himself show any sort of vulnerability. It made sense. You grew up together, and you knew each other better than anyone else, but you still feared that he was just trying to get a rise out of you when he asked you on a date at your graduation from U.A. Palms sweaty, single rose in hand with sweat on his hairline, he’d asked you to come have dinner with him the next night, and your heart had expanded to fill your ribs just as it had the day he poked you with his feather. After that, it was a constant battle in your mind on whether or not he actually liked you. He knew it was happening. He knew of all your insecurities, past dating failures, and problems with yourself that plagued you, and everyday he tried his best to soothe them.

In that way -the way in which he never stops trying to make you happy- he’s ruthless.

You tap on your chest a bit, right where your heart sits. “I just don’t like using my quirk on people I love. That’s all.” 

He takes your ministrations as an invitation. His head rests on your chest, his ear pressed so tightly against you that you can feel your pulse reverberating off his skin. It’s fitting, your heart making music with the person that keeps it beating. 

“Well” he begins, his fingertip tracing patterns on your chest. “Do you love me?” 

Do you love him? If your heart were held together like a fabric of a million stitches, Keigo is the thread. Golden and thin and strong, he keeps you from unraveling into tiny sinews, winds you up so you have the togetherness to complete your purpose. Without you, he’s useful and gorgeous. Without you, anyone could pick him up, and no matter what was created from his existence, it would be gorgeous. In his most basic nature, Keigo is the beautiful weave of the universe.  Without him, you’re just pieces.

Do you love him?

What a stupid question. 

“Yes, I love you.” 

Somehow, he manages to snuggle closer to you. His skin is still sweaty and a bit sticky from his shower. It connects you, keeping him feeling like he could sink under your skin at any second. 

“Okay” he continues on. “Well, you’re technically using your quirk on me right now, and I feel great.” 

You’d nearly forgotten that you never gave him his quirk back. Your heart jumps up into your throat and begins to make you gag on your own flesh. “Do you want me to stop?” 

He shakes his head. You can’t help but be hypnotized by the bits of golden hair that fall in front of his face, unstyled and fluffed from air drying.

  Your hand finds its way back into his locks. “I don’t know, Kei. You should try to get some rest.” 

“Not until you feel better.” 

“I feel just fine.” 

A gentle kiss meets your shoulder, somehow more carefully than he usually touches you. “You’re an amazing hero. Your quirk saves a lot of people, and you’re in the top ten to prove it.” 

But I’m not like you. 

What a selfish thought that never leaves your mind. 

“But I’m not like you.” 

Apparently, in the depths of your exhaustion, confusion, and despair, it’s willing to leave your mouth.  

His wing starts to curl around you then. It nuzzles up underneath your arm, wrapping you up in it’s warmth until you and Keigo are tucked and swaddled beneath it. Still smelling of soap, and soft from the care you’d given his feathers in the shower, it’s as close as you believe you’ll ever get to lying on a cloud. 

“You’re you” he stresses. 

His voice is barely more than a whisper when he speaks. Even though your chest is locking up with a sob at a rapid rate and threatening to choke you on your own despair, you still snuggle against him so you can hear his breathy words against your ear. 

“You’re not like me because you’re not supposed to be” he assures. “You’re more distinguished and professional and trustworthy.” 

“I trust you.” 

“Trusting you to save lives and clean up after your own hero work is not the same thing as trusting me to not eat your leftovers out of the fridge.” 

Feeling him laugh gently at his own joke breaks down the gates. Your tears that have been pent up behind your lids pour over. The droplets land on Keigo’s head and ear, but he ignores it. 

“You don’t need to be a flashy hero that everyone wears on their shirts and screams at in the streets” he promises. “You’re the hero that makes everyone feel safe the second you walk in the door. You’re people’s safe haven, and that’s a really good thing to be.” 

You can’t help but wonder if the conversation is still talking about how society sees you, or how Keigo sees you. Either way, more tears are coming, and there’s not a thing you can do to stop them since the thought of removing your hands from Keigo makes your chest ache. 

There’s nothing after that, no words and no movement. No one can touch you or hurt you. There are no scars on your skin from fighting the endless fight of a hero, and there’s not drying blood on Keigo’s wounds form his constant sacrifice.

No, there’s nothing.

It’s just Keigo and yourself floating endlessly in the dark, and somehow, that’s okay. 

[antiaure]

One of these nights

characters: geto x reader (gn) - star plasma vessel arc S2 SPOILERS

synopsis: an angsty passage in which i take you through a typical night after you have suffered the traumatic incident of witnessing haibara’s death

cw: slight gore? its the same level of jjk gore, slight graphic description of what a curse looks like, not proofread sorryy this took me 2hrs!

It was like this every night.

Everyone would finish up their dinner for the day and wrap up their conversations before bidding their friends goodnight. They'd go home to their dorms and let their bodies melt into the night, dissolving into sleep.

The first part of the nighttime routine was fine for you, you could pretty much eat your food and enjoy the company of your 3 best friends. But when all was said and done and you dragged your way back to your dorm sullenly, you wouldn't sleep. Never again.

Because upon sleeping the scene would replay again and each night it got more vivid, you could hear the sounds too.

It was a special grade for sure, unregistered, yet still a special grade. Its body was designed in a way that it was covered in a grotesque plethora of holes that would ooze with tentacles if it so wished to capture its victims. Each tentacle had spikes and so when you saw the spikes wrap around Haibara you froze. It didn't even take long for him to let out piercing shrieks and so again you froze. If you fought you'd die, if you run he'd die, when you guys came you watched people die and so you froze.

Are teenagers supposed to live this way?

You lifted your body up from your soft futon upon feeling a solitary tear trail down your face. You'd only noticed you were really crying when you tasted the salt on your tongue. When you looked down you eventually noticed the goosebumps that swelled all over your arms and the chills that swooped over your body as if there was a gust that travelled within your blood. You gently tiptoed to your door.

Everyone is sound asleep right now.

The moon seemed to be glazing as brightly as she could today and the beams penetrated into your room. It's not sight someone should be familiar with as the night was meant to be slept through, not something to observe.

But you knew you weren't the only person like this and it calmed you.

"If you don't get your full 10 hours of beauty sleep, you'll never be as strong as me, (Y/N)!" Satoru exclaimed, poking his tongue out at you playfully as he was walking by Suguru whom was right beside you. At this, Suguru jerked his head straight in your direction. Satoru knew what he was doing. He knew that he couldn't help you and had to make Suguru help you. Because only he could do something.

Only he.

"What is this about?" Suguru asked, stopping in his tracks. You stopped too and let out a soft sigh. You both allowed Shoko and Satoru to head on, back to their dorms. You bit your lip in hesitation before deciding how to reply.

"He's just being dramatic. 8 hours of sleep works just the same, no?" You smiled up at him, praying he'd drop the topic. It's not as if you were afraid of opening up, you just didn't want to be a burden especially to him. You knew what he was going through himself, why did you have to be included in the equation?

"It didn't sound like he meant 8, (Y/N)," Suguru sighed. Why did he worry about you more than himself?

"7 and a half?"

"I'm saying this because you always tell me how you can hear how strongly the wind howls when its nighttime and everyone's quiet," he started, "and how it freaks you out." He's giving you that stern look again and you didn't want him to. The same look he gave you when you accidentally let it slip out that you would always go outside to play with snow forgetting to put on a jacket or scarf. You didn't want him to fret over you when he was losing himself. He was one to talk because you knew he always told you how each night the moon shines with various intensities and how beautiful it looked. You knew he was one to talk because he told you that the spark that blessed the moon matched the spark of your very own eyes and he softly admitted that he has only ever seen the beauty of the world when looking into your eyes. You didn't know what he meant, whether he loved you too or not, but you knew that you loved what he said.

And you also knew that just like you, he knew what went on deep into the night and was suffering just as much as you.

So you tiptoed straight to his dorm but paused at the door. Would you be disturbing him? Would he let you in?

"Suguru..." You whispered as you gently knocked on his door. You jumped back in surprise as the door whipped open before you could deliver a second knock.

He must've been at the door already.

"I..." he began, "I wanted to find you. But I didn't want to wake you up." You look up at him in shock. His raven tresses fell down against his shoulders and he wore a tight, long sleeved, black top with simple shorts for the night. It was his eyes, his sly, sharp eyes that you cared about now because in those eyes was the liquid drop of desperation and yearning. Yearning for you. When he saw the tears continue to stream down your cheeks as you walked towards him, he knew no more words needed to be said. He gently grasped your hand and led him deeper into his dorm, closing the door behind him. He sat you down on his bed and he sat right next to you.

"I can't sleep anymore, Suguru," you mumbled and more tears fell.

He wiped those tears with the smooth thumb of his right hand.

"I'm scared that if I do, I'll see it again. I'm tired but I'm afraid of sleeping," you cried and even more tears fell.

He wiped those tears with the top of his index finger.

"Why does it have to be us?" You asked. Whether it was a question to him or the air around you, you didn't know so you weren't surprised when he spoke without answering your question.

"I wanted to find you tonight because I wanted you to see it for yourself. Look how beautiful the moon is. A celestial pearl, never-ending glow. I never took notice of it until we started high school," he was distracting you, prompting you to look at the moon and abandon your fears. When you looked you saw a floating fish appear in front of you, following your eyes where it went. It was a pretty looking curse he had summoned for you, distracting you again.

He took note at how you'd stopped trembling where you sat and how he didn't need to wipe tears from your pretty eyes anymore.

"So many things will happen to us when we grow. It'll be good, it'll be bad, it'll be ugly. But there's nothing to be afraid of or feel guilty for. If it hasn't changed the beauty of the world around us, like the moon, then the pain will pass," he whispered, wrapping an arm around your head and pulling it directly to his chest.

His heart was beating rapidly, much like yours.

He continued, "You won't see it again, (Y/N). And even from now, with the new world I'll create, you won't experience anything like that again." He muttered this as he stroked your head and back and shoulders.

Inevitably you succumbed to sleep and instead of a nightmare you saw nothing. You were at peace. You barely got a chance to question his own eyebags, whether or not he had slept himself or why he kept mentioning this new world.

But you were grateful. That each and every night you'd come with tears pouring down your face, despite you wanting to avoid burdening him, he'd let you in. It was just like this every night, crying, hesitating if he'd let you in again, letting you melt into his arms.

So who could blame you when you lost your mind when he'd left? You pledged that one of these nights, you'd find him again. Whether he loved you like you loved him or not, whether you agreed with his new ideals or not, you needed him.

And you hoped it was just as much as he needed you.

[antiaure]

modern!xiao who would walk you home after clubs whether it was a dark or not and when you’d ask why he’d shrug and mumble nonsense

modern!xiao who wasn’t so good at english, history and all the essay based subjects but would work himself all night on a singular question you were struggling on and you’d find him in the morning glasses on his head, papers on the ground as he slept soundly on your bedroom desk

modern!xiao who would make sure he knew your timetable without your knowledge so he could check your schoolbag each day making sure you had the right equipment

modern!xiao who wouldn’t hesitate to fix your collar or your tie, adjust your tie and wipe your face whilst eating, tie your laces nagging you like a mom to take care of yourself

modern!xiao who would always deny he had feelings for you yet his ears would flush when people brought the idea up

modern!xiao who you somehow had wrapped around your finger, making him want to take care of you for life.