tabiito

[tabiito]

[tabiito]

“I’ll carry that sin with you.”

[tabiito]

posted!

silly little idea, but i really loved your hard launch with the bllk boys fic, and i saw that you wanted to do isagi for pt.2, and i just thought it would be fun to see isagi hard launching noel noas daughter, like, he’s dating noel noas daughter 🤭🤭🤭🤭

ofc if you have anything else planned, pls go ahead with that! anything you write will be fun nonetheless 💋💋

ohh that's such a cute idea LOL i can just imagine the twt comments haha i'll definitely include it in the next bit and thank you!!

[tabiito]

DEBÍ TIRAR MÁS FOTOS II — hard launching with the blue lock boys after a rumour includes: isagi, barou and nagi read part 1 note: chat it's actually oliver who's the close source for barou

Shouei Barou, who's offended that he's linked with anyone other than you

You can hear Barou's disgruntled "The fuck?", as you're towelling yourself dry in the bathroom. Since there are a million things on God's green Earth that could elicit such a reaction from your neurotic boyfriend (including the state of the bathroom right now, with your various cosmetic products strewn about the place), you don't pay him much mind and go about your merry business.

That is, until you barely have half a second to cover yourself when he dramatically throws the door open and shoves his phone in your face. Shrieking, you attempt to push him out, but thanks to him being built like a brick wall, he doesn't budge.

"Have you seen this drivel?", he seethes, as you sigh, grabbing his phone and scanning the headline that was beginning to catch the eyes of the internet. Your lips curl upward, amused at how you'd and the entire team had been conveniently cropped out of the photo, focusing only on Barou and the lovely girl you'd met while picking him up from work.

"And?", you prompt, taking this less seriously than he is. "How could they even think of launching me with someone other than you?", he rages, feeling personally wronged as though they'd posted him with Isagi rather than a model was very clearly taken. You do a double-take at his words, feeling a soft smile creep up your face at his words, contrasting it with his furious expression.

The decision to keep your relationship private hadn't been one you had consciously taken; the nature of your public oriented careers had made the both of you discreet individuals when it came to your private lives. Perhaps you had done too good of a job sneaking around, since Barou, who solely alternates between training, matches, and his apartment caught a rumour in the rare time he'd been dragged along for a quick breakfast by the staff.

Barou fumes on about how you were the only person worth his "royal time" and other schizophrenic ramblings about the monarchy you'd wish he leaves on the pitch sometimes. The paws of his grubby agent are all over this; the man was constantly begging Barou to develop a more "family friendly" and "relatable" image in the name of PR. Glancing at your softened expression, Barou can't help the wicked smirk that crosses his face as he fishes his phone out of your hands.

If his agent wanted PR, he'll give it to him.

Yoichi Isagi, who can't help but exhibit strategic brilliance both on and off the field

Isagi's contract negotiations with BM were a little tense this time around. Sure, he was indebted to the club that had cultivated him since he was a young prodigy fresh out of Blue Lock, but in his prime, the German squad, now with Noel just as a coach couldn't quite match his style of play to the level he liked. So naturally, when the superstars of Madrid, where football legends are born, came calling, everyone expected him to instantly terminate his commitment and take the first flight to Spain.

Or so they thought. What they did not expect though, is for Isagi to hesitate, even slightly. Ever improving, adapting, constantly in search of more opportunities Isagi, for the first time, exhibited reluctance in his footballing career.

You thought it was absurd, though you certainly couldn't tell the man who was not his usual slur-shouting self, and instead emulating a rather tame house cat as he propped his laptop on his knees, head in your lap reviewing footage from his last match.

You tsk, pointing at the clear moment where he'd allowed Barcha to break through their defence.

"That should've been a clear red. Too bad the ref's been tapped since, like, forever," you shrugged, clicking your tongue. Isagi's eyes light up as you speak nodding along excitedly.

"Right? And I thought I was the only one! This new UEFA rule is so fuckin' stupid though, I swear that jackass was about to book me for arguing," he grouses, and you can't help the giggle that escapes your lips at the litany of profanity that seems to lace itself into Isagi's vocabulary whenever he talks about football.

"They completely narrowed the centre of the field for you guys. Forced you to pass wide and Schneider didn't even attempt to move forward. He could've completely shifted the midfield around," you add, and you notice Isagi furiously typing your words down.

As the child of a footballing icon, the sport's been in your blood since the very start. Though it wasn't in your fate to pursue it, you've always had a keen eye and an opinion that wasn't hampered by the yes-man group psychosis that inhabited a locker room, so it was only natural that Isagi would seek you out the first time you critiqued his trivela during training.

"Why are you typing all of this down?", you groan, tugging at his hair ever so slightly so he hisses in pain. "You won't need this for the next season," you grumble, and he snaps the laptop shut, flipping over so that he's looking at you with those stupidly large blue eyes of his.

You squint back down at him, sighing. "You need to sign that Madrid contract already. This is what you've been preparing for all your life," you say softly, as his fingers find yours, interlinking.

He grimaces, and you can see him internally tussling with his thoughts. His face has always had subtitles. "Yeah, but there's my whole life in Münich: you, the guys — "

You can't help but roll your eyes at his words, but also appreciate the sentiment nonetheless. "Please. You didn't bat an eyelid running into a mental facility for an unspecified amount of time without telling your parents to improve your game in Japan. I'm sure a two-hour flight distance is nothing for you."

He opens his mouth, but you interrupt him quickly.

"And don't tell me all of a sudden that you've developed an emotional attachment to Kaiser."

He slowly shuts it and you smirk in response.

"I'm going to be there with you every step of the way," you promise, and he simply flops back into your lap, inhaling your familiar fabric softener. "You've outgrown us now. You're meant for bigger things, Yoichi," you prod, and when he looks back up at you, you can see that he's made his decision.

Fast forward to the Champion's League final. You've put aside your petty irritation at the fake news an Instagram model decided to spread a day prior to the match by jumping on the clout bandwagon to finally make an actual appearance at one of Isagi's matches, much to the annoyance of your father.

You're seated on the opposite ends of where you usually sit, proudly sporting white and purple that clashes with the red and black that sneers at you from the BM stands, screaming Isagi's name til you go hoarse. You'd gotten some weird looks from those who knew of you, but you completely lost track as Madrid cooked Münich in a thrilling 90 minute rollercoaster. With Isagi proudly sporting the heavy champion's gold medal around his neck, you can't help yourself as he motions to you to join him on the field. Skipping over the barriers, he catches you in his arms, laughing ecstatically for thousands to see as confetti showers from above.

He wouldn't have made this move if it wasn't without your go-ahead, so he rightfully slides the medal of his neck, sliding it on you as you gape at him in awe. Snapping a quick picture, he posts his true appreciation for you much later into the night, when the music and crowd dies down and it's just him and his thoughts, laying any useless rumours to rest.

Nagi Seishiro, who's down a little too bad

Nagi's baffled at how you can sound so chirpy despite a 9-hour time difference over FaceTime. Along with the mechanics of Azir, your affinity for early mornings remains one of the great mysteries of the universe for Nagi.

As you ramble on about your day, along with your first professional game that you played as a part of Worlds qualifiers, Nagi finds himself being slowly lulled off to sleep. You couldn't possibly blame him, right? His bed was so inviting, and it was 1AM in London after all.

"Hey! You better be listening to me!", you protest, and Nagi's eyes flutter open, losing the warm embrace of sleep he was so desperately chasing.

"Huh? Oh. Yeah, hmm I was," he sighs, rolling over in his bed. Somehow it was taking him much longer to fall asleep in an empty room.

"Really? What was the last thing I said?"

"Er. Something about trying a matcha latte," he mumbles, knowing he's skipped larger portions of the conversation. You, however, seem to have a worse short-term memory than him as you proceed to repeat the entire incident back to him. He doesn't particularly mind, considering the calming influence your voice has on him.

Once again, he's just about to fall into dreamland when you snap him back to reality.

"Your manager called me by the way. I haven't returned her call. Do you have any idea why?", you ask, and he hums. He does remember something she was ranting to him about during today's PR briefings.

"Uhh, I think it was about me being shipped with someone," he says, trying to recall the name. You blanche on camera, your eyes widening as he names some generically popular streamer who everyone in the world watches, but apparently Nagi watched with a special interest.

"What the fuck? How come they confused one of my lives with somebody else's?", you groan, as you scrolled through the hashtag that had already begun shipping Nagi and the other streamer together.

"Does it bother you?", Nagi asks simply, propping the camera up since he realises that he's not going to be in for much sleep tonight when you start reading out the comments that have flooded gossip pages across the net.

You pause mid-rant, choosing a minute to think. The first time you and Nagi had started talking, it was clear that this was going to be a private relationship. You were already an overworked E-sports player, and Nagi, a global footballing phenomenon, had initially taken to your streams to figure out some decent plays. The last thing you needed was the internet on your ass.

But this rumour in particular though, hit a little too close to home. You'd made it two years in without an inkling of suspicion for the both of you (even though you chose him in FIFA a little too much, and he'd accidentally made a half-body cameo in one of your streams when he walked in and picked up your cat), and at this point you'd rather have him linked to you than some streamer, who was, in reality in a very loving relationship.

"I guess. It's not like we can do anything without PR's approval, though," you say exasperatedly, and Nagi doesn't like the way your chirpy tone drops to a more flat and dull one.

"Ah, this is such a hassle. Hold on."

a/n tbh I'm not happy with how any of these turned out but something's better than nothing 😜😜😜

[tabiito]

Thinking of making this a physics based series

INEVITABILITY — OLIVER AIKU note: no warnings other than underage alcohol consumption n brief harassment, they are idiots in love and KNOW IT but just don't do anything. i needed to get this man OUT OF MY BRAIN so i can study don't @ me for getting the physics stuff wrong i've been rewatching big bang theory. can be read as a precursor to his part in dtmf

You weren't supposed to meet Oliver Aiku at seventeen.

You weren't supposed to meet him ever, really.

It was a hot summer night of your junior year, and you'd just been strong-armed into sneaking off to a seedy club with the friend whose house you'd been sleeping over at. Not only were you woefully underage, you were sure you'd alerted her dog as you scaled the gate and nearly broken the heel of the boots she'd lent you on landing.

It had been an out-of-character day for you, in retrospect. Firstly, you'd agreed to the sleepover, which you usually wouldn't, given your schoolwork, and secondly, you'd let her bitching and moaning about how you "never did anything fun and memorable" get to your head.

So there you were, three hours, two thousand yen notes slipped to the bouncer, four turned down drinks later, crawling your way to the door as she'd abandoned you in favour of a much older, sleazy looking man. (Someone had to accept the drinks, she'd argued. Otherwise it looked rude.)

Truth be told, you were shitting bricks. Unfortunately, people couldn't tell your polite taps on the shoulder apart from the more intimate contact that occurs on the dance floor, or hear your soft "excuse me's", that were instantly drowned out by the bass. So the crowd didn't move an inch, and you were attempting your best worm impression as you tried to squeeze through the sea of bodies you'd read horror stories about — in this swarm, newspapers posited there were hungry loan sharks, ready to corner desperate drunks, over-enthusiastic salarymen preying on their next one night stand and gang members scanning the vicinity for vulnerable youngsters.

You were slowly, but surely, getting to the door, and miraculously not falling over and flipping up the miniskirt (once again, lent to you) that you'd been pulling down all evening. The bouncer looked akin to an angel, and the door, the gates of Heaven as you finally made off the dance floor.

Alas, making it to Heaven wasn't in your fate. A large body blocked your view, filling up your eyeliner with a rumpled suit and breath that reeked of the cheap whiskey that they'd been serving at the bar. He slurred his words, grabbing your wrist, mumbling something or the other about one dance. Your brain was screaming at you to move, but the bead of sweat that rolled down your forehead was the only motion your body could produce as you remained glued to the floor.

His hold on your hand tightened, more insistent, as your throat ran dry, unable to comprehend what to do in this scenario. You couldn't take him in a fight, nor did you think anyone would hear you crying for help over the stupid EDM blasting.

You were sure you were toast. The next third-page column title in day after's newspaper, until you felt a warm hand snake around your waist, gently pulling you close to a body, breaking out of the other man's hold with ease.

"They're with me," a raspy baritone states firmly, and you look to your side to see a pair of mismatched eyes calmly surveying the fellow.

"Isn't that right?", he adds, and you can only manage a hasty nod as he squares his shoulders back, sizing up the drunk and giving him a once-over. Back then, though he'd hit six feet, and was in the process of filling out nicely, his hair were a swathe of well kept black and there wasn't the stubble he normally kept, so it took the salaryman a few more seconds than it would take him in the present day to decide to fuck off.

Unfortunately, Oliver's presence did less to alleviate your fears. In fact, you figured you were between a rock and a hard place, and chose to agree with him since he didn't have the foul smell liquor radiating off him. Perhaps you'd be able to reason with a sober person better.

He instantly let goes of you, and you get a better look at him, in his cheap white polyester suit (that he's still got tucked away in some part of his cupboard and you make fun of) and leopard-print shirt. Young Oliver did not have the well-honed partying panache that older Oliver had, and you were biting back a laugh at his Yakuza X Great Gatsby look. "Thank you," you'd managed to stutter, and he flashes you his trademarked charming smile that you still succumbed to, all those years later.

"You could be, by the way," he'd responded, and you'd looked at him quizzically. The line still keeps him up at night, as he cringes internally at the way his attempt at flirting never even had a chance with you.

"Be with me tonight. If you want," he'd pressed on, unabashedly giving you a once over in the outfit you later had nightmares about. The laugh you'd been holding escaped your lips, comfortably disarmed by his non-invasive, but persistent nature.

"Thank you, no," you replied, and he'd been taken aback then by the phrase you used. Of course, he later learnt that it was the more polite and apparently, correct way of declining an offer.

He'd shrugged in response, internally consoling himself with something along the lines of "missing all the shots he doesn't take." Normally, this would've been the end of his ministrations, but he doesn't miss the unsure way you eye the door, or how you eye the time.

"Let me call you a cab," he offers, and you smile appreciatively. In retrospect, you should not have trusted him, because you'd read up about cab-calling scammers too, but there was something idiotically, inherently trusting that Oliver made you feel, in his awfully put together outfit and voice that didn't quite match his face yet.

Braving the cold outside while waiting for a cab and draping his jacket that stank of overpoweringly inexpensive cologne made you throw him a bone and give him your number, veiling it with an excuse of possessing some means to reach him when you'd return his dry cleaned jacket back to him.

You were sure the jacket would never go back to him. It wasn't practically possible. You chalked up your encounter with him to a moment of good karma for you, and left it at that. You'd get his jacket to the cleaners and ask for his address, never actually going there, of course.

He was the kind of guy who felt perfectly at home in a club. You were a student who wouldn't leave the house if you had a choice. There was no way your paths would cross out of the 14,000,000 people who live in Tokyo.

Three years later, your number is his emergency contact.

You're sure it's his persistence that's kept your relationship alive. His first text didn't come until three days later, sending you some corny pick up line when he was going through a dry spell in flings. You promptly responded with a clear "No LOL", and that became your dynamic.

At first, he'd try his luck with you when he was bored, and strike out every time. Maybe that's what spurred him to keep texting you, and you were sure there was something deeply wrong with you that enabled you to keep texting him back, finding his repetitiveness endearing rather than annoying.

Fast forward a few months, you managed to piece together pictures of each other as you traded parts of your life in between banter.

Unlike your previous conception of him, he wasn't some club veteran who'd spend his days partying away. In fact, in that club, he was just as underage as you were, with his debauched lifestyle not suiting an aspiring professional footballer. Initially, you were sure he'd fail. He took great joy in proving you wrong.

His conception of you, though, was spot on. You were perpetually busy, a trend that's continued to the present, but he seemed mysteriously motivated to carve out a place for himself in your life, even if it wasn't in a romantic capacity. He chalks it up to pity, at first, assuming that your stressed homebody lifestyle needed a person to vent to, to be occasionally flattered and entertained.

Though he was right about needing someone who you could be a distraction, he's now sure it's not pity that's keeping him in your life.

His clarity is stolen from an article in a quantum theory magazine you'd raged on about in your first year of university.

In most occasions, when you'd go off on your theoretical tangents relating to your major, most of it would fly right over his head. That time, though, when you'd called him to help you move in (with "helping" mostly being you yammering away to glory and him hoisting your boxes up and down the stairs without complaint), he remembers what you said vividly, even going so far as to dispute you.

"The laws of physics are not inevitable," you'd snorted derisively, jabbing at the headline. "What a piece of nonsense," you'd added, brandishing the magazine in his face. He'd lazily skimmed through the article, ignoring most jargon-y parts and instead focused on the essence of it.

A domino needs a full turn to get back to the same place. A two of clubs needs only a half turn. And the hour hand on a clock must spin around twice before it tells the same time again.

Inevitability.

Oliver doesn't believe that he can be friends with his exes. Oliver has chased, and slept with (to put it crudely), every woman who's attempted to friendzone him, til he's no longer interested in them. He's, ironically, a dwarf compared to you in the real world, not coming anywhere close to your intellect, occasional neuroticism or humour. You've blossomed beautifully from seventeen into your twenties, no longer needing him to distract you from the stresses of academia. You have a full, stable life, complete with a doctorate and other honorary credentials that he's sure most people in their mid-twenties aren't supposed to have.

Oliver, on the other hand, is crashing and burning his way through life. You like to call him a controlled flame off the pitch, and have regularly tried to diagnose him with something on your late night FaceTimes since he exhibits both hedonism and self-sacrificing behaviour, but more often than not you have to settle for the fact that he's a scientific anomaly and call it plain idiocy.

Inevitability's made your relationship come full circle. From you ranting about college applications and dead-end research work to him, he now crawls back to you with his frustrations about Japanese football, his constantly busy schedule, each and every failed fling and situationship with that same telling grin on his face.

He's now convinced inevitability is what's keeping him in your life. You have no need for him, and he can just book a therapist with the stupid amounts of money he's earning, but Oliver can read your face as plain as day when he's rambling on about Suki or Mara, tinged with longing. He's caught his expression in the mirror far too many times when you slap on under-eye patches on him in your small bathroom to recognise it as lovesickness staring back at him to not understand that the two of you are dancing around an unspoken pact, one where his heart is already spoken for every time he steps foot into the clubs you pick him up drunk from.

It's not like he hasn't tried to speed up the process, but with you it's an immovable object vs. an unstoppable force sort of situation. Every time his lips have almost caught yours, every time you've contemplated taking him up on the offer of sleeping on his bed rather than letting him take the couch, it just feels like the wrong time with the right person.

It's unhealthy, and he knows it. You go on dates with boring, serious men that make you feel much older than you actually are, and he chases after the thrill of youth, found in cramped bathroom stalls, gambling dens and back-alleys.

Despite this, it's baffling to you how much of a contradiction he is. In all other situations, you can only attribute this self-destructing behaviour to people with no clear purpose in life, forced to engage in this lifestyle. What do you say to someone who's captaining a Serie A team?

It's one of those nights again in the offseason, where he'd already shot off a message to you that he's going to sleep over, and you'd already prepared his spot on the couch along with ordering hotpot for his hangover the next morning.

"You're so fucking stupid," you sigh, handing him a icepack for where he'd tripped on your stairs in a slightly tipsy stupor. He only cheeses lazily in response, the small bruise on his cheek lifting, as if to tease you by saying: and yet, you indulge in my stupidity.

He takes his seat on the ouch as you prop up your legs in his lap. His hands ghost over your ankle, calloused and large, but just as warm as the first time they settled on your waist.

"What time's your flight tomorrow?", you ask, pulling out your phone so you can request the academic coordinator to post a message rescheduling your classes so you can drive him.

"Ten thirty. You don't need to, ah, drive," he says, wincing at the way you reach over and press the pack harder into his cheek. You respond by making a sour face, and he recognises the futility of his words: you never need to drive, and yet you do anyways.

"Are you still going to stop in Milan sometime?", he asks, tipping his head back over the edge of the worn sofa. He needs a haircut, you note.

"If I get a decent connection while on the way to Geneva, yeah," you mumble. The question's so infuriating that you've gotten used to it. You've followed him everywhere: Rome, Milan, and, if transfermarkt.co.in has it right, maybe even Spain soon. It's a given by now — if you were on your way to a conference or visiting faculty, you'd make a stop for a week wherever he was, no matter what the time of season. It's the same way he's considering no longer paying the rent for his Tokyo apartment since his toothbrush and bathrobe are perpetually parked in your toilet.

He clicks his tongue in irritation.

"C'mon, don't make it a connection. Just fly in and let me worry about how you get to Switzerland."

"I'm going to CERN, not a holiday," you grouse, and he waves you off.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Spend some time in the Sun before the Swiss suck your brain juice for what it's worth," he says dismissively. "The guys have been asking about you," he tacks on, and you roll your eyes.

"Ah yes, a team of professional footballers is interested in my measly string theory research," you intone, and Oliver cracks an eye open at you.

"Hey, don't say that. When I told Sendou you might be nominated for a Nobel on your deathbed he seemed very interested," he speaks, and you make a gagging sort of noise.

"Really? I should go from someone who got a fields medal to Sendou?", you say exasperatedly. Oliver shrugs.

"Hey, at least he'll pay for your meal instead of calculating up to the fourth decimal for how much you should split," he counters. "I've taught him well."

"Oh, so that means he'll ghost me a day later, too?", you laugh, and Oliver grins sheepishly. He's pulled you closer by your calves, you realise, since you can't feel the softness of your souvenir Ubers cushion behind you that he got for you and you keep as a tacky joke.

"Only a fool would ghost you," he says, and you mentally add this to the Wikipedia page of "things-Oliver-Aiku-has-said-sound-romantic but-because-he's-Oliver-are-actually-not"

"I guess I'm living in a noodledom then," you say matter-of-factly, and Oliver adds the word to his list of "things-you-say-that-he-has-no-idea-about-but-religiously-Googles-later-to-sound-smart-in-conversation."

"Ahh, my mother's going to send me one of her "why are you single voicemails again", you groan, flopping flat on your back onto the leather.

He chuckles. "At least you're not getting child support threats every two days."

"That's a choice you make. I'm single involuntarily," you snicker, sitting back up and noticing the way your shoulders bump given the proximity.

"Do you think we'll still be like this?", he asks, setting the icepack onto the table in front of him. "Bitching and moaning our way into our middle age?", he asks, and you make a face. Your answer, though, surprises him.

"God, I hope so. There's no way I'm staying sane if I can't complain to you about all the marriages that are coming up."

"Ha. You're assuming you're not going to drag me there with you as your plus one."

"You wound me. I never assume. I already know that's a fact," you say, dramatically laying a hand on your chest and resting your head against his shoulder. He scoots just a bit closer, and you can smell the vodka on him ever so slightly. Thankfully, he's opted for a less nasally invasive cologne.

"You're saying it's inevitable?", he questions, and you hum, nodding.

"It's just a matter of time, my dear sir," you answer, and you nestle imperceptibly closer to him. As sleep washes over you, Oliver doesn't move an inch, even though he's up for the next two hours, plagued by his own mind.

Oliver knows that on the basis of inevitability, it's just a matter of time when everything falls into place, til it becomes the right time with the right person.

You drop him off to the airport and hug him a little tighter than the last time when you say bye. He picks you up three months later and doesn't miss the way you began playing to the music he recommended. You pretend to be cordial with the Instagram model he goes out to dinner with and gets back home. He pretends to be happy for you when you show him the not-so-friendly sweet messages your coworker's sending you. You don't know how he breaks up with the girl the day after he makes his little road trip by dropping you to Geneva. He doesn't know that you say "I have a boyfriend", when you're asked out on a date by the same colleague.

You don't believe the laws of physics being inevitable, but you also didn't believe that you could know someone who's both selfless and selfish at the same time. Oliver's a contradiction, and you're scared. Time, though, is one of the few physical forces that's on his side, from seventeen to twenty three. So he doesn't mind wiling it away, and neither do you, even if it means twisting the knives in your heart just a little deeper.

You'll come around someday. And he'll be waiting.

[tabiito]

Happy valentines 🤍

INEVITABILITY — OLIVER AIKU note: no warnings other than underage alcohol consumption n brief harassment, they are idiots in love and KNOW IT but just don't do anything. i needed to get this man OUT OF MY BRAIN so i can study don't @ me for getting the physics stuff wrong i've been rewatching big bang theory. can be read as a precursor to his part in dtmf

You weren't supposed to meet Oliver Aiku at seventeen.

You weren't supposed to meet him ever, really.

It was a hot summer night of your junior year, and you'd just been strong-armed into sneaking off to a seedy club with the friend whose house you'd been sleeping over at. Not only were you woefully underage, you were sure you'd alerted her dog as you scaled the gate and nearly broken the heel of the boots she'd lent you on landing.

It had been an out-of-character day for you, in retrospect. Firstly, you'd agreed to the sleepover, which you usually wouldn't, given your schoolwork, and secondly, you'd let her bitching and moaning about how you "never did anything fun and memorable" get to your head.

So there you were, three hours, two thousand yen notes slipped to the bouncer, four turned down drinks later, crawling your way to the door as she'd abandoned you in favour of a much older, sleazy looking man. (Someone had to accept the drinks, she'd argued. Otherwise it looked rude.)

Truth be told, you were shitting bricks. Unfortunately, people couldn't tell your polite taps on the shoulder apart from the more intimate contact that occurs on the dance floor, or hear your soft "excuse me's", that were instantly drowned out by the bass. So the crowd didn't move an inch, and you were attempting your best worm impression as you tried to squeeze through the sea of bodies you'd read horror stories about — in this swarm, newspapers posited there were hungry loan sharks, ready to corner desperate drunks, over-enthusiastic salarymen preying on their next one night stand and gang members scanning the vicinity for vulnerable youngsters.

You were slowly, but surely, getting to the door, and miraculously not falling over and flipping up the miniskirt (once again, lent to you) that you'd been pulling down all evening. The bouncer looked akin to an angel, and the door, the gates of Heaven as you finally made off the dance floor.

Alas, making it to Heaven wasn't in your fate. A large body blocked your view, filling up your eyeliner with a rumpled suit and breath that reeked of the cheap whiskey that they'd been serving at the bar. He slurred his words, grabbing your wrist, mumbling something or the other about one dance. Your brain was screaming at you to move, but the bead of sweat that rolled down your forehead was the only motion your body could produce as you remained glued to the floor.

His hold on your hand tightened, more insistent, as your throat ran dry, unable to comprehend what to do in this scenario. You couldn't take him in a fight, nor did you think anyone would hear you crying for help over the stupid EDM blasting.

You were sure you were toast. The next third-page column title in day after's newspaper, until you felt a warm hand snake around your waist, gently pulling you close to a body, breaking out of the other man's hold with ease.

"They're with me," a raspy baritone states firmly, and you look to your side to see a pair of mismatched eyes calmly surveying the fellow.

"Isn't that right?", he adds, and you can only manage a hasty nod as he squares his shoulders back, sizing up the drunk and giving him a once-over. Back then, though he'd hit six feet, and was in the process of filling out nicely, his hair were a swathe of well kept black and there wasn't the stubble he normally kept, so it took the salaryman a few more seconds than it would take him in the present day to decide to fuck off.

Unfortunately, Oliver's presence did less to alleviate your fears. In fact, you figured you were between a rock and a hard place, and chose to agree with him since he didn't have the foul smell liquor radiating off him. Perhaps you'd be able to reason with a sober person better.

He instantly let goes of you, and you get a better look at him, in his cheap white polyester suit (that he's still got tucked away in some part of his cupboard and you make fun of) and leopard-print shirt. Young Oliver did not have the well-honed partying panache that older Oliver had, and you were biting back a laugh at his Yakuza X Great Gatsby look. "Thank you," you'd managed to stutter, and he flashes you his trademarked charming smile that you still succumbed to, all those years later.

"You could be, by the way," he'd responded, and you'd looked at him quizzically. The line still keeps him up at night, as he cringes internally at the way his attempt at flirting never even had a chance with you.

"Be with me tonight. If you want," he'd pressed on, unabashedly giving you a once over in the outfit you later had nightmares about. The laugh you'd been holding escaped your lips, comfortably disarmed by his non-invasive, but persistent nature.

"Thank you, no," you replied, and he'd been taken aback then by the phrase you used. Of course, he later learnt that it was the more polite and apparently, correct way of declining an offer.

He'd shrugged in response, internally consoling himself with something along the lines of "missing all the shots he doesn't take." Normally, this would've been the end of his ministrations, but he doesn't miss the unsure way you eye the door, or how you eye the time.

"Let me call you a cab," he offers, and you smile appreciatively. In retrospect, you should not have trusted him, because you'd read up about cab-calling scammers too, but there was something idiotically, inherently trusting that Oliver made you feel, in his awfully put together outfit and voice that didn't quite match his face yet.

Braving the cold outside while waiting for a cab and draping his jacket that stank of overpoweringly inexpensive cologne made you throw him a bone and give him your number, veiling it with an excuse of possessing some means to reach him when you'd return his dry cleaned jacket back to him.

You were sure the jacket would never go back to him. It wasn't practically possible. You chalked up your encounter with him to a moment of good karma for you, and left it at that. You'd get his jacket to the cleaners and ask for his address, never actually going there, of course.

He was the kind of guy who felt perfectly at home in a club. You were a student who wouldn't leave the house if you had a choice. There was no way your paths would cross out of the 14,000,000 people who live in Tokyo.

Three years later, your number is his emergency contact.

You're sure it's his persistence that's kept your relationship alive. His first text didn't come until three days later, sending you some corny pick up line when he was going through a dry spell in flings. You promptly responded with a clear "No LOL", and that became your dynamic.

At first, he'd try his luck with you when he was bored, and strike out every time. Maybe that's what spurred him to keep texting you, and you were sure there was something deeply wrong with you that enabled you to keep texting him back, finding his repetitiveness endearing rather than annoying.

Fast forward a few months, you managed to piece together pictures of each other as you traded parts of your life in between banter.

Unlike your previous conception of him, he wasn't some club veteran who'd spend his days partying away. In fact, in that club, he was just as underage as you were, with his debauched lifestyle not suiting an aspiring professional footballer. Initially, you were sure he'd fail. He took great joy in proving you wrong.

His conception of you, though, was spot on. You were perpetually busy, a trend that's continued to the present, but he seemed mysteriously motivated to carve out a place for himself in your life, even if it wasn't in a romantic capacity. He chalks it up to pity, at first, assuming that your stressed homebody lifestyle needed a person to vent to, to be occasionally flattered and entertained.

Though he was right about needing someone who you could be a distraction, he's now sure it's not pity that's keeping him in your life.

His clarity is stolen from an article in a quantum theory magazine you'd raged on about in your first year of university.

In most occasions, when you'd go off on your theoretical tangents relating to your major, most of it would fly right over his head. That time, though, when you'd called him to help you move in (with "helping" mostly being you yammering away to glory and him hoisting your boxes up and down the stairs without complaint), he remembers what you said vividly, even going so far as to dispute you.

"The laws of physics are not inevitable," you'd snorted derisively, jabbing at the headline. "What a piece of nonsense," you'd added, brandishing the magazine in his face. He'd lazily skimmed through the article, ignoring most jargon-y parts and instead focused on the essence of it.

A domino needs a full turn to get back to the same place. A two of clubs needs only a half turn. And the hour hand on a clock must spin around twice before it tells the same time again.

Inevitability.

Oliver doesn't believe that he can be friends with his exes. Oliver has chased, and slept with (to put it crudely), every woman who's attempted to friendzone him, til he's no longer interested in them. He's, ironically, a dwarf compared to you in the real world, not coming anywhere close to your intellect, occasional neuroticism or humour. You've blossomed beautifully from seventeen into your twenties, no longer needing him to distract you from the stresses of academia. You have a full, stable life, complete with a doctorate and other honorary credentials that he's sure most people in their mid-twenties aren't supposed to have.

Oliver, on the other hand, is crashing and burning his way through life. You like to call him a controlled flame off the pitch, and have regularly tried to diagnose him with something on your late night FaceTimes since he exhibits both hedonism and self-sacrificing behaviour, but more often than not you have to settle for the fact that he's a scientific anomaly and call it plain idiocy.

Inevitability's made your relationship come full circle. From you ranting about college applications and dead-end research work to him, he now crawls back to you with his frustrations about Japanese football, his constantly busy schedule, each and every failed fling and situationship with that same telling grin on his face.

He's now convinced inevitability is what's keeping him in your life. You have no need for him, and he can just book a therapist with the stupid amounts of money he's earning, but Oliver can read your face as plain as day when he's rambling on about Suki or Mara, tinged with longing. He's caught his expression in the mirror far too many times when you slap on under-eye patches on him in your small bathroom to recognise it as lovesickness staring back at him to not understand that the two of you are dancing around an unspoken pact, one where his heart is already spoken for every time he steps foot into the clubs you pick him up drunk from.

It's not like he hasn't tried to speed up the process, but with you it's an immovable object vs. an unstoppable force sort of situation. Every time his lips have almost caught yours, every time you've contemplated taking him up on the offer of sleeping on his bed rather than letting him take the couch, it just feels like the wrong time with the right person.

It's unhealthy, and he knows it. You go on dates with boring, serious men that make you feel much older than you actually are, and he chases after the thrill of youth, found in cramped bathroom stalls, gambling dens and back-alleys.

Despite this, it's baffling to you how much of a contradiction he is. In all other situations, you can only attribute this self-destructing behaviour to people with no clear purpose in life, forced to engage in this lifestyle. What do you say to someone who's captaining a Serie A team?

It's one of those nights again in the offseason, where he'd already shot off a message to you that he's going to sleep over, and you'd already prepared his spot on the couch along with ordering hotpot for his hangover the next morning.

"You're so fucking stupid," you sigh, handing him a icepack for where he'd tripped on your stairs in a slightly tipsy stupor. He only cheeses lazily in response, the small bruise on his cheek lifting, as if to tease you by saying: and yet, you indulge in my stupidity.

He takes his seat on the ouch as you prop up your legs in his lap. His hands ghost over your ankle, calloused and large, but just as warm as the first time they settled on your waist.

"What time's your flight tomorrow?", you ask, pulling out your phone so you can request the academic coordinator to post a message rescheduling your classes so you can drive him.

"Ten thirty. You don't need to, ah, drive," he says, wincing at the way you reach over and press the pack harder into his cheek. You respond by making a sour face, and he recognises the futility of his words: you never need to drive, and yet you do anyways.

"Are you still going to stop in Milan sometime?", he asks, tipping his head back over the edge of the worn sofa. He needs a haircut, you note.

"If I get a decent connection while on the way to Geneva, yeah," you mumble. The question's so infuriating that you've gotten used to it. You've followed him everywhere: Rome, Milan, and, if transfermarkt.co.in has it right, maybe even Spain soon. It's a given by now — if you were on your way to a conference or visiting faculty, you'd make a stop for a week wherever he was, no matter what the time of season. It's the same way he's considering no longer paying the rent for his Tokyo apartment since his toothbrush and bathrobe are perpetually parked in your toilet.

He clicks his tongue in irritation.

"C'mon, don't make it a connection. Just fly in and let me worry about how you get to Switzerland."

"I'm going to CERN, not a holiday," you grouse, and he waves you off.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Spend some time in the Sun before the Swiss suck your brain juice for what it's worth," he says dismissively. "The guys have been asking about you," he tacks on, and you roll your eyes.

"Ah yes, a team of professional footballers is interested in my measly string theory research," you intone, and Oliver cracks an eye open at you.

"Hey, don't say that. When I told Sendou you might be nominated for a Nobel on your deathbed he seemed very interested," he speaks, and you make a gagging sort of noise.

"Really? I should go from someone who got a fields medal to Sendou?", you say exasperatedly. Oliver shrugs.

"Hey, at least he'll pay for your meal instead of calculating up to the fourth decimal for how much you should split," he counters. "I've taught him well."

"Oh, so that means he'll ghost me a day later, too?", you laugh, and Oliver grins sheepishly. He's pulled you closer by your calves, you realise, since you can't feel the softness of your souvenir Ubers cushion behind you that he got for you and you keep as a tacky joke.

"Only a fool would ghost you," he says, and you mentally add this to the Wikipedia page of "things-Oliver-Aiku-has-said-sound-romantic but-because-he's-Oliver-are-actually-not"

"I guess I'm living in a noodledom then," you say matter-of-factly, and Oliver adds the word to his list of "things-you-say-that-he-has-no-idea-about-but-religiously-Googles-later-to-sound-smart-in-conversation."

"Ahh, my mother's going to send me one of her "why are you single voicemails again", you groan, flopping flat on your back onto the leather.

He chuckles. "At least you're not getting child support threats every two days."

"That's a choice you make. I'm single involuntarily," you snicker, sitting back up and noticing the way your shoulders bump given the proximity.

"Do you think we'll still be like this?", he asks, setting the icepack onto the table in front of him. "Bitching and moaning our way into our middle age?", he asks, and you make a face. Your answer, though, surprises him.

"God, I hope so. There's no way I'm staying sane if I can't complain to you about all the marriages that are coming up."

"Ha. You're assuming you're not going to drag me there with you as your plus one."

"You wound me. I never assume. I already know that's a fact," you say, dramatically laying a hand on your chest and resting your head against his shoulder. He scoots just a bit closer, and you can smell the vodka on him ever so slightly. Thankfully, he's opted for a less nasally invasive cologne.

"You're saying it's inevitable?", he questions, and you hum, nodding.

"It's just a matter of time, my dear sir," you answer, and you nestle imperceptibly closer to him. As sleep washes over you, Oliver doesn't move an inch, even though he's up for the next two hours, plagued by his own mind.

Oliver knows that on the basis of inevitability, it's just a matter of time when everything falls into place, til it becomes the right time with the right person.

You drop him off to the airport and hug him a little tighter than the last time when you say bye. He picks you up three months later and doesn't miss the way you began playing to the music he recommended. You pretend to be cordial with the Instagram model he goes out to dinner with and gets back home. He pretends to be happy for you when you show him the not-so-friendly sweet messages your coworker's sending you. You don't know how he breaks up with the girl the day after he makes his little road trip by dropping you to Geneva. He doesn't know that you say "I have a boyfriend", when you're asked out on a date by the same colleague.

You don't believe the laws of physics being inevitable, but you also didn't believe that you could know someone who's both selfless and selfish at the same time. Oliver's a contradiction, and you're scared. Time, though, is one of the few physical forces that's on his side, from seventeen to twenty three. So he doesn't mind wiling it away, and neither do you, even if it means twisting the knives in your heart just a little deeper.

You'll come around someday. And he'll be waiting.

[tabiito]

U guys dont even know im 5k words In 😈😈😈

thinking abt karasu and ftm reader whos the son of a football legend raised completely out of the public eye with no inclination towards football and at blue lock purely because of nepotism but karasu lowkey studies him for Science and discovers that hes mad incapable of being normal.

[tabiito]

INEVITABILITY — OLIVER AIKU note: no warnings other than underage alcohol consumption n brief harassment, they are idiots in love and KNOW IT but just don't do anything. i needed to get this man OUT OF MY BRAIN so i can study don't @ me for getting the physics stuff wrong i've been rewatching big bang theory. can be read as a precursor to his part in dtmf

You weren't supposed to meet Oliver Aiku at seventeen.

You weren't supposed to meet him ever, really.

It was a hot summer night of your junior year, and you'd just been strong-armed into sneaking off to a seedy club with the friend whose house you'd been sleeping over at. Not only were you woefully underage, you were sure you'd alerted her dog as you scaled the gate and nearly broken the heel of the boots she'd lent you on landing.

It had been an out-of-character day for you, in retrospect. Firstly, you'd agreed to the sleepover, which you usually wouldn't, given your schoolwork, and secondly, you'd let her bitching and moaning about how you "never did anything fun and memorable" get to your head.

So there you were, three hours, two thousand yen notes slipped to the bouncer, four turned down drinks later, crawling your way to the door as she'd abandoned you in favour of a much older, sleazy looking man. (Someone had to accept the drinks, she'd argued. Otherwise it looked rude.)

Truth be told, you were shitting bricks. Unfortunately, people couldn't tell your polite taps on the shoulder apart from the more intimate contact that occurs on the dance floor, or hear your soft "excuse me's", that were instantly drowned out by the bass. So the crowd didn't move an inch, and you were attempting your best worm impression as you tried to squeeze through the sea of bodies you'd read horror stories about — in this swarm, newspapers posited there were hungry loan sharks, ready to corner desperate drunks, over-enthusiastic salarymen preying on their next one night stand and gang members scanning the vicinity for vulnerable youngsters.

You were slowly, but surely, getting to the door, and miraculously not falling over and flipping up the miniskirt (once again, lent to you) that you'd been pulling down all evening. The bouncer looked akin to an angel, and the door, the gates of Heaven as you finally made off the dance floor.

Alas, making it to Heaven wasn't in your fate. A large body blocked your view, filling up your eyeliner with a rumpled suit and breath that reeked of the cheap whiskey that they'd been serving at the bar. He slurred his words, grabbing your wrist, mumbling something or the other about one dance. Your brain was screaming at you to move, but the bead of sweat that rolled down your forehead was the only motion your body could produce as you remained glued to the floor.

His hold on your hand tightened, more insistent, as your throat ran dry, unable to comprehend what to do in this scenario. You couldn't take him in a fight, nor did you think anyone would hear you crying for help over the stupid EDM blasting.

You were sure you were toast. The next third-page column title in day after's newspaper, until you felt a warm hand snake around your waist, gently pulling you close to a body, breaking out of the other man's hold with ease.

"They're with me," a raspy baritone states firmly, and you look to your side to see a pair of mismatched eyes calmly surveying the fellow.

"Isn't that right?", he adds, and you can only manage a hasty nod as he squares his shoulders back, sizing up the drunk and giving him a once-over. Back then, though he'd hit six feet, and was in the process of filling out nicely, his hair were a swathe of well kept black and there wasn't the stubble he normally kept, so it took the salaryman a few more seconds than it would take him in the present day to decide to fuck off.

Unfortunately, Oliver's presence did less to alleviate your fears. In fact, you figured you were between a rock and a hard place, and chose to agree with him since he didn't have the foul smell liquor radiating off him. Perhaps you'd be able to reason with a sober person better.

He instantly let goes of you, and you get a better look at him, in his cheap white polyester suit (that he's still got tucked away in some part of his cupboard and you make fun of) and leopard-print shirt. Young Oliver did not have the well-honed partying panache that older Oliver had, and you were biting back a laugh at his Yakuza X Great Gatsby look. "Thank you," you'd managed to stutter, and he flashes you his trademarked charming smile that you still succumbed to, all those years later.

"You could be, by the way," he'd responded, and you'd looked at him quizzically. The line still keeps him up at night, as he cringes internally at the way his attempt at flirting never even had a chance with you.

"Be with me tonight. If you want," he'd pressed on, unabashedly giving you a once over in the outfit you later had nightmares about. The laugh you'd been holding escaped your lips, comfortably disarmed by his non-invasive, but persistent nature.

"Thank you, no," you replied, and he'd been taken aback then by the phrase you used. Of course, he later learnt that it was the more polite and apparently, correct way of declining an offer.

He'd shrugged in response, internally consoling himself with something along the lines of "missing all the shots he doesn't take." Normally, this would've been the end of his ministrations, but he doesn't miss the unsure way you eye the door, or how you eye the time.

"Let me call you a cab," he offers, and you smile appreciatively. In retrospect, you should not have trusted him, because you'd read up about cab-calling scammers too, but there was something idiotically, inherently trusting that Oliver made you feel, in his awfully put together outfit and voice that didn't quite match his face yet.

Braving the cold outside while waiting for a cab and draping his jacket that stank of overpoweringly inexpensive cologne made you throw him a bone and give him your number, veiling it with an excuse of possessing some means to reach him when you'd return his dry cleaned jacket back to him.

You were sure the jacket would never go back to him. It wasn't practically possible. You chalked up your encounter with him to a moment of good karma for you, and left it at that. You'd get his jacket to the cleaners and ask for his address, never actually going there, of course.

He was the kind of guy who felt perfectly at home in a club. You were a student who wouldn't leave the house if you had a choice. There was no way your paths would cross out of the 14,000,000 people who live in Tokyo.

Three years later, your number is his emergency contact.

You're sure it's his persistence that's kept your relationship alive. His first text didn't come until three days later, sending you some corny pick up line when he was going through a dry spell in flings. You promptly responded with a clear "No LOL", and that became your dynamic.

At first, he'd try his luck with you when he was bored, and strike out every time. Maybe that's what spurred him to keep texting you, and you were sure there was something deeply wrong with you that enabled you to keep texting him back, finding his repetitiveness endearing rather than annoying.

Fast forward a few months, you managed to piece together pictures of each other as you traded parts of your life in between banter.

Unlike your previous conception of him, he wasn't some club veteran who'd spend his days partying away. In fact, in that club, he was just as underage as you were, with his debauched lifestyle not suiting an aspiring professional footballer. Initially, you were sure he'd fail. He took great joy in proving you wrong.

His conception of you, though, was spot on. You were perpetually busy, a trend that's continued to the present, but he seemed mysteriously motivated to carve out a place for himself in your life, even if it wasn't in a romantic capacity. He chalks it up to pity, at first, assuming that your stressed homebody lifestyle needed a person to vent to, to be occasionally flattered and entertained.

Though he was right about needing someone who you could be a distraction, he's now sure it's not pity that's keeping him in your life.

His clarity is stolen from an article in a quantum theory magazine you'd raged on about in your first year of university.

In most occasions, when you'd go off on your theoretical tangents relating to your major, most of it would fly right over his head. That time, though, when you'd called him to help you move in (with "helping" mostly being you yammering away to glory and him hoisting your boxes up and down the stairs without complaint), he remembers what you said vividly, even going so far as to dispute you.

"The laws of physics are not inevitable," you'd snorted derisively, jabbing at the headline. "What a piece of nonsense," you'd added, brandishing the magazine in his face. He'd lazily skimmed through the article, ignoring most jargon-y parts and instead focused on the essence of it.

A domino needs a full turn to get back to the same place. A two of clubs needs only a half turn. And the hour hand on a clock must spin around twice before it tells the same time again.

Inevitability.

Oliver doesn't believe that he can be friends with his exes. Oliver has chased, and slept with (to put it crudely), every woman who's attempted to friendzone him, til he's no longer interested in them. He's, ironically, a dwarf compared to you in the real world, not coming anywhere close to your intellect, occasional neuroticism or humour. You've blossomed beautifully from seventeen into your twenties, no longer needing him to distract you from the stresses of academia. You have a full, stable life, complete with a doctorate and other honorary credentials that he's sure most people in their mid-twenties aren't supposed to have.

Oliver, on the other hand, is crashing and burning his way through life. You like to call him a controlled flame off the pitch, and have regularly tried to diagnose him with something on your late night FaceTimes since he exhibits both hedonism and self-sacrificing behaviour, but more often than not you have to settle for the fact that he's a scientific anomaly and call it plain idiocy.

Inevitability's made your relationship come full circle. From you ranting about college applications and dead-end research work to him, he now crawls back to you with his frustrations about Japanese football, his constantly busy schedule, each and every failed fling and situationship with that same telling grin on his face.

He's now convinced inevitability is what's keeping him in your life. You have no need for him, and he can just book a therapist with the stupid amounts of money he's earning, but Oliver can read your face as plain as day when he's rambling on about Suki or Mara, tinged with longing. He's caught his expression in the mirror far too many times when you slap on under-eye patches on him in your small bathroom to recognise it as lovesickness staring back at him to not understand that the two of you are dancing around an unspoken pact, one where his heart is already spoken for every time he steps foot into the clubs you pick him up drunk from.

It's not like he hasn't tried to speed up the process, but with you it's an immovable object vs. an unstoppable force sort of situation. Every time his lips have almost caught yours, every time you've contemplated taking him up on the offer of sleeping on his bed rather than letting him take the couch, it just feels like the wrong time with the right person.

It's unhealthy, and he knows it. You go on dates with boring, serious men that make you feel much older than you actually are, and he chases after the thrill of youth, found in cramped bathroom stalls, gambling dens and back-alleys.

Despite this, it's baffling to you how much of a contradiction he is. In all other situations, you can only attribute this self-destructing behaviour to people with no clear purpose in life, forced to engage in this lifestyle. What do you say to someone who's captaining a Serie A team?

It's one of those nights again in the offseason, where he'd already shot off a message to you that he's going to sleep over, and you'd already prepared his spot on the couch along with ordering hotpot for his hangover the next morning.

"You're so fucking stupid," you sigh, handing him a icepack for where he'd tripped on your stairs in a slightly tipsy stupor. He only cheeses lazily in response, the small bruise on his cheek lifting, as if to tease you by saying: and yet, you indulge in my stupidity.

He takes his seat on the couch as you prop up your legs in his lap. His hands ghost over your ankle, calloused and large, but just as warm as the first time they settled on your waist.

"What time's your flight tomorrow?", you ask, pulling out your phone so you can request the academic coordinator to post a message rescheduling your classes so you can drive him.

"Ten thirty. You don't need to, ah, drive," he says, wincing at the way you reach over and press the pack harder into his cheek. You respond by making a sour face, and he recognises the futility of his words: you never need to drive, and yet you do anyways.

"Are you still going to stop in Milan sometime?", he asks, tipping his head back over the edge of the worn sofa. He needs a haircut, you note.

"If I get a decent connection while on the way to Geneva, yeah," you mumble. The question's so infuriating that you've gotten used to it. You've followed him everywhere: Rome, Milan, and, if transfermarkt.co.in has it right, maybe even Spain soon. It's a given by now — if you were on your way to a conference or visiting faculty, you'd make a stop for a week wherever he was, no matter what the time of season. It's the same way he's considering no longer paying the rent for his Tokyo apartment since his toothbrush and bathrobe are perpetually parked in your toilet.

He clicks his tongue in irritation.

"C'mon, don't make it a connection. Just fly in and let me worry about how you get to Switzerland."

"I'm going to CERN, not a holiday," you grouse, and he waves you off.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Spend some time in the Sun before the Swiss suck your brain juice for what it's worth," he says dismissively. "The guys have been asking about you," he tacks on, and you roll your eyes.

"Ah yes, a team of professional footballers is interested in my measly string theory research," you intone, and Oliver cracks an eye open at you.

"Hey, don't say that. When I told Sendou you might be nominated for a Nobel on your deathbed he seemed very interested," he speaks, and you make a gagging sort of noise.

"Really? I should go from someone who got a fields medal to Sendou?", you say exasperatedly. Oliver shrugs.

"Hey, at least he'll pay for your meal instead of calculating up to the fourth decimal for how much you should split," he counters. "I've taught him well."

"Oh, so that means he'll ghost me a day later, too?", you laugh, and Oliver grins sheepishly. He's pulled you closer by your calves, you realise, since you can't feel the softness of your souvenir Ubers cushion behind you that he got for you and you keep as a tacky joke.

"Only a fool would ghost you," he says, and you mentally add this to the Wikipedia page of "things-Oliver-Aiku-has-said-sound-romantic but-because-he's-Oliver-are-actually-not"

"I guess I'm living in a noodledom then," you say matter-of-factly, and Oliver adds the word to his list of "things-you-say-that-he-has-no-idea-about-but-religiously-Googles-later-to-sound-smart-in-conversation."

"Ahh, my mother's going to send me one of her "why are you single voicemails again", you groan, flopping flat on your back onto the leather.

He chuckles. "At least you're not getting child support threats every two days."

"That's a choice you make. I'm single involuntarily," you snicker, sitting back up and noticing the way your shoulders bump given the proximity.

"Do you think we'll still be like this?", he asks, setting the icepack onto the table in front of him. "Bitching and moaning our way into our middle age?", he asks, and you make a face. Your answer, though, surprises him.

"God, I hope so. There's no way I'm staying sane if I can't complain to you about all the marriages that are coming up."

"Ha. You're assuming you're not going to drag me there with you as your plus one."

"You wound me. I never assume. I already know that's a fact," you say, dramatically laying a hand on your chest and resting your head against his shoulder. He scoots just a bit closer, and you can smell the vodka on him ever so slightly. Thankfully, he's opted for a less nasally invasive cologne.

"You're saying it's inevitable?", he questions, and you hum, nodding.

"It's just a matter of time, my dear sir," you answer, and you nestle imperceptibly closer to him. As sleep washes over you, Oliver doesn't move an inch, even though he's up for the next two hours, plagued by his own mind.

Oliver knows that on the basis of inevitability, it's just a matter of time when everything falls into place, til it becomes the right time with the right person.

You drop him off to the airport and hug him a little tighter than the last time when you say bye. He picks you up three months later and doesn't miss the way you began playing to the music he recommended. You pretend to be cordial with the Instagram model he goes out to dinner with and gets back home. He pretends to be happy for you when you show him the not-so-friendly sweet messages your coworker's sending you. You don't know how he breaks up with the girl the day after he makes his little road trip by dropping you to Geneva. He doesn't know that you say "I have a boyfriend", when you're asked out on a date by the same colleague.

You don't believe the laws of physics being inevitable, but you also didn't believe that you could know someone who's both selfless and selfish at the same time. Oliver's a contradiction, and you're scared. Time, though, is one of the few physical forces that's on his side, from seventeen to twenty three. So he doesn't mind wiling it away, and neither do you, even if it means twisting the knives in your heart just a little deeper.

You'll come around someday. And he'll be waiting.

[tabiito]

no. 1 point guard 🫶🏼

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type of photos their grandchildren found hehe

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y2k coquette princess

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PEDRO PASCAL in Gladiator II (2024) dir. Ridley Scott

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Sofia Coppola

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BANG

I'm studying English so my translation could be awkward. Please comment on what's wrong

It's not my artwork. I only translated it

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“ ࣭⸰ ★ GARDEN SONG . . . ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ブルーロック ; itoshi rin x fem reader (6.8k)

⊹ ⠀⠀ rin's never been in love. he's never had the right to fall in love. so when sae is betrothed to a foreign princess, he doesn't bat an eye. you're just like every other girl who's attempted to marry his half-brother; yet, for some odd reason, he can't seem to shake you off. his heart aches thinking of you, despite how heated you make his head. he hates you. no. he loves you. no. rin doesn't know what he feels.

contains; royalty au, e2l, sfw, bastard prince!rin, princess!reader, reader is betrothed to sae, slowburn, rin calls reader names (like lowkey sexist sometimes), lots and lots of worldbuilding (bear with me please), forbidden love, swearing?, some sexual innuendos, kind of like...medieval dialogue??, tw rin literally calls reader a breeding ground like..., reader is very princess kaguya coded, some princess kaguya references near the end author's note; literally dropping this out of nowhere sorry lol :3 i think this is my best piece of writing i've like ever produced so pls give it a chance n enjoy it! i rewrote the whole thing today in present tense,, so there might be tense errors

⋆⋆⋆⠀ ⠀this part of the fic is about 2 1/2 years old ⋆⋆⋆⠀ ⠀originally a keiji akaashi fic,, lmk any name errors ⋆⋆⋆⠀ ⠀extremely descriptive worldbuilding writing,, (heads up) if it's not ur thing then u likely won't enjoy reading this ⋆⋆⋆⠀ ⠀will have a second part titled swan song in the future!

It’s humorous to Rin— the perception that titles and notability have complete control over one’s life, obligations, and status. The pure and blind belief that every problem or issue can be solved with a man on the throne; a man whose birthright has always stated that that is where he belongs. Where he’ll rule and live out his days, utterly unhappy and self-sacrificing all for the benefit of people, his people, that he doesn’t even know. Strangers. Where he’ll wear a weighted crown encrusted in sapphires and jade, bound to strands of hair that’ll be ripped out if he dare defy his solemn promise to protect his kingdom. The crown must always be worn with pride and honor— the two things in the unspoken king’s code that every man of status is expected to follow— two simple things that seem impossible in Rin’s eyes. 

Yes, he’s been raised according to the precept of manners and fulfillment of duties, but there’s something of the way his own father seems so distant and disconnected from the world around him— from the connections and relationships that he should be closer with— that makes the idea of being emperor completely disheartening. It’s completely and utterly horrid to Rin when he compares a life of golden chains to his dreams of travel and adventure. 

It’s for the best that he’s nothing but a bastard child, then.

Prince Rin of the Itoshi family is nothing if not a black sheep. He’s a man who gentlemen aren’t envious of and whom women never lust for. He’s simply a royal with no drive, no meaning to motives or dreams, and no purpose to carry him onwards. Fortune and prosperity have never and will never be the necessary materials for his happy ending— but freedom and individualism, two contrasting colors amidst blocks of the same shade, speak his language. For in his situation, there’s no point in slaving away his natural qualities in hopes of gaining an ounce of respect from his parents. 

The second born bastard child is but a shadow of a man when he stands behind the true heir—his half brother, Sae. The golden child, the pure-bred son of the true royal bloodline coming from their shared father’s genes. Sae, the future Emperor of Japan. 

An emperor who’s bound to be married off to an unsuspecting princess who’s just recently come of age, and live happily ever after with their countless children. It sounds positively dreadful, doesn’t it? A life that’s been bestowed upon all of the men that have come before Sae— a life void of real love and connection, one that pleasures the theory of bountiful rulings in retrospect to genuine happiness. A life that Rin has never wanted for himself, and has been lucky enough to avoid. 

But as his brother stands opposite to him, with his head held high as he’s about to meet his betrothed for the very first time, Rin feels pity.

It’s a sorrowful sight for Sae and the predicament that he’s been cornered into, but Rin knows his brother does not want his comfort. Their broken bond has been laced with new threads of sadness after years and years of competition— yet, everyone still deserves a choice in their future, in their loved ones, and that choice is being taken away from the crowned prince with every second ticking by. 

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

The time is now. 

As the courtroom doors burst open, gold and silver accents vanish from sight. Five guests gracefully enter the palace— that of two guards, a handmaiden, a king, and the most important arrival…you. You, the princess of the neighboring royal family from the South. The royal family that will be merging with Rin’s father’s in a legal binding between you and Sae— the infamous royal wedding of the century. 

“What an honor it is.” Emperor Itoshi greets your father with a firm stare.

The two men analyze one another, squaring out in a power strike before stepping forwards for a decisive handshake. As their palms clap together, Rin can see that this king is much different than his father— seemingly gentle, showcasing a non-plastic smile that’s true and bright whilst his daughter stands behind him— and Emperor Itoshi smiles back. “It’s truly spectacular to finally meet you; well, you and the princess, of course.” 

At his words, your father grins and extends his arm out to you, encouraging you to step away from your trusted handmaiden and towards your future father-in-law— the man who’s retiring his lifelong title in a mere two months for the sake of passage that’s occurred for centuries. A sacred passage between fathers and sons, full blooded fathers and sons. 

“Your majesty,” you bow your head.

As you curtsy in respect, your skirt drapes to the floor— the gown’s extravagance dusting the marble tiles, shimmering beneath the dense candlelight, and reflecting off the mirror and shined surfaces scattered across the ballroom. Despite the perception of beauty and grace that his father and brother seem to share for you, Rin peaks through the cracks of your facade. He can tell this regal persona you’re displaying is nothing but an act. Your stoic expression speaks all he needs to know, that everything about you is princess protocol and lacking personality, and proper folk have never been his usual cup of tea.

While he’s been ordered to entertain ladies of the court and women in the social ring for years-on-years, there wasn’t one occurrence where he actually obeyed his father’s demands— rather string along every maiden sent his way and bid them farewell after a night or two of endless, droning conversation; that and perhaps a few turns in and out of his bed chambers, which is a fact that is infamous among the palace staff. Rin disregards them, though. Tuning others out is his speciality. He uses it in daily conversation, diplomatic meetings, as well as other important matters such as the one happening now, right in front of him. Just a few feet away. 

This is pointless. 

Why is he being forced to be here? 

It’s not like you're his bride.

Rin doesn’t even bother to tune into the presumptuous meeting of you and Sae. They don’t involve him in any way nor does he care for either of you. Typically, most others don’t give him the time of day, so who’s to say that they deserve it from him? The only thing he owes to others is his mere existence as the kingdom’s greatest mistake— all to remind the ton that there is a good and gracious prince, and they should be grateful that he is to be their ruler and not Rin. 

Rin, whose birthright is to stand still and respond to his father’s wishes with no choice other than to agree.

So, as the decadence concludes with the bowing of heads and nods of approval dispersing amongst royals and servants, Rin thinks nothing of the way you and Sae stand beside one another in light conversation.

It’s desperate. The sight of you attempting to find a sliver of mutual interest or some sort of connection that binds the two of you other than royalty, makes him look in disdain. He’s grateful that he won’t be the one spending the rest of his already grey life with you, ruling the kingdom.

You aren’t really his type.

“Rin!” Sae’s voice rings through the courtroom, his eyebrows raise in expectancy as he ushers his half-brother towards his bride-to-be, wanting to introduce the two that’re going to be living in close proximity for the weeks to come. “Do come close, I’d like you to meet my bride. Perhaps you’ll find something in common and make a friend for once, for this girl can’t be another one of your whores.”

Typical Sae.

Whether the dig was intentional or unintentional, Rin grimaces at his brother’s words—pursing his lips into a tight smile and closing his eyes in an attempt to disguise his disdain with faint exhaustion.

“Apologies, my brother. I’m afraid I’m rather tired and would prefer to return to my quarters.” Rin nods towards the two of you in respect. “Do enjoy her company, yourself. I’m sure the two of you will be sharing personal physical matters in the near future— best to be comfortable.”

With a quick turn of his heel, he carries on, making his way towards the exit of the throne room, to his grand living quarters— quarters that are fit for a bastard prince such as himself. However, his rancid suggestions aren’t left unanswered, instead contemplated by you as he hears your light voice speak to his brother. Rin hates first impressions. Not because he gets anxious or worried about being disliked; but because he already knows whoever he’s speaking to already knows his history. They know the truth of his bloodline, and they’re never afraid to step on his already small ego. You’re no different. 

“So the rumors are true then?” 

You speak aloud in a low tone, deciding the best words to use, and phrasing your statements in the most respectful manner you can muster— not wanting to offend Sae in any way, shape, or form while you address his little brother. 

“Your brother is not the royal he’s made out to be?” As your voice trails off, regret immediately overcomes you as the subject of conversation stops dead in his tracks.

A scoff escapes his lips, head tilting to the left as your remark settles beneath his skin— hitting that special little spot that enrages every buried emotion, feeling, and reaction in his heart. 

Rin spins on his heel with a manic look on his face as he analyzes the regret hidden in your weary posture; which is in great contrast to the confidence and poise you’d displayed a mere seconds before— poise that appears to be only a facade, a mystery that he’d gladly uncover if he actually cared just an ounce about your wellbeing. Taking long strides towards you, ignoring the words of concern from his half-brother, he stops to a halt at your feet— giving you nowhere to avert your eyes, gaze being forced to rest on his anger and distaste only. The rage bubbling in the pit of his stomach is like an over-boiling copper pot, scorching water taunting the brink of the lid, causing it to fly off and wreak havoc elsewhere.

“Tell me, princess.” He ponders mockingly, finding great humor in how tense he was able to make you with three simple words. 

“What is it that you make me out to be?”

There’s a shit-eating grin at the tip of his tongue, a taunting aura to his spite. Perhaps there’s a part of him that hopes your response will be genuine, positive to the darkness that’s held to his head on a daily basis— but no matter. He already knows what your misconceptions contain. He knows that you’d already filed him away in the troublesome cabinet at the back of your brain. It’s almost like he’s looking at an average cavern girl with great beauty. You’d be nothing without the small tiara on your head, that’s clear after determining the lack of assertiveness you assume. 

…but perhaps, for once, Rin is wrong.

Not a single response emits from your mouth, the silent stare down between glaring eyes being intimidating enough; there’s absolutely no way you were going to anger the bastard prince any further. Yes, he’s considered to be nothing but a brute, but there’s something in his sparks of blue that makes you believe otherwise. 

This man is an underestimated enigma, and you sure as hell aren’t going to be one of those common fools who blindly thinks otherwise.

“Your brother tells me you are a good man.” you speak enunciating each word to ensure that it gives its intended effect, that being of a derogative nature masked with falsified kindness and fortitude. “He says that your people adore you, that you are one in the same. Grounded. Of level head.” Bullshit. 

Sae would never say those things.

The people would never say those things.

Rin scoffs, listening to the meaningless and unoriginal acclamations being brought to his attention, tired of having to hear them day after day by not only his fellow royals, but staff and peasants— and every other person who’s ever been fortunate enough to cross paths with the royal family, always being disappointed that he is the one to be met.

As he steps closer, wanting to see just an ounce of fear in your eyes, a frown is brought to his beautiful features. What?

In no way are you intimidated by his presence. There’s no shudder, no wince, no flinching whilst his steps grow closer and closer to your position. Just a blank stare of nothingness at his furrowed brows. You aren’t reacting like the other princesses that’ve come to attempt to wed Sae; all princesses who have come and gone due to Rin’s dark intimidation. You have spirit, a fire that’s not willing to be doused by his ocean of hatred.

“Are these your words?” he interrogates.

One of his hands reaches out to brush a stray strand of hair behind your right ear, noticing the tomato red of your cheeks. Smirking, he thinks to himself how dismantled you likely are beneath your stoney stance. “Or are these all of the things my brother has told you? Do you have any thoughts of your own, princess?”

“No need to answer that. I already know what you think of me.” Continuing on, deaf to the attempted precautions from Sae, he leans in— his lips just ghosting over yours, and whispers his final remarks. 

“You’re an open book, beautiful— and I can’t say that I'd ever want to read you.”

So, as Prince Itoshi Rin’s steps recede, the distance between you two grows with every second; and you feel a bright, red, rage bubbling deep within your heart. It’s a hot and heavy anger simmering within your soul for the sly man with dark hair— knowing full well that he will be one of the many, if not the biggest, challenge you’ll face in your newfound kingdom.

And never before, have you felt more ready to take on a challenge.

Annoyance is the most prominent emotion Rin has felt in the past two weeks. 

Utter disdain at the sight of you and Sae conversing through the courtyard, picking flowers in the rose garden, and taking romantic boat rides in the nearby lake. It’s one thing to fall in love, feel your heart begin to swell at the physical presence of that one special person— but it’s another to have to witness first-hand with no relation to the budding romance at all. Having no need to be involved in the newfound relationship, yet still being forced to interact as a third party member. It’s absolute madness.

He’s somewhat happy for Sae, he truly is. There’s a sense of pride in his soul at the sight of his half-brother stepping up to the position that he’s been in preparation for for all of his life— but with that promotion comes you.

With the rise of power comes your completely lethargic presence. 

Oh how he cannot stand you.

You’re just insufferable. You’re unapologetically and unequivocally insufferable to his mind. The mere sound of your voice sends him into a downward spiral. The mere thought of your existence ruins his day with ease. The slightest mention of your life-lasting role in the kingdom he’d grown up in ignites the most powerful feeling of disgust he’s ever known. The weight of his conscience burns with every snarky remark, dig, and insult that flies from your throat; your trained grace never falling scarce in melody, although your words could be considered crude by any proper lady. Words that allow you to terrorize his brain in the midst of night, keeping him awake whilst the moon becomes one with the sun.

He fully believes that you were created to be the bane of his existence…the hell to his heaven…the demon behind all corners in the everlasting game that he has the misfortune of living. 

“You’re looking a little grey today, Rin.”

Oh no…

“Perhaps it’d be wise to freshen up a bit!”

Please, just shut up.

“I’m sure the servants won’t mind spending a few hours by your side in an attempt to make you look handsome!”

He hates that damn sound.

There it is. The dreadful sound of your sing-song voice ringing through the hallowed halls, emptying the painfulness of your personality in the wake of the morning dew— as for some god awful reason, you always insist on being the first person to the dining hall, wanting to mark each new day with a classic and large Japanese breakfast.

“As I’ve said many-a-times before, princess.” His head swivels to face you, eyes rolling at the skip in your step. “You are to refer to me as Prince Rin, it is what I prefer.”

“Is it your honored title or is it what you personally enjoy?” you challenge, looking over your shoulder with a mocking pout, having the knowledge that he has certainly come to despise you in the short time you’ve known one another. “Greatest apologies, my liege; but it wouldn’t be proper of me, a woman, to call you, a man, a name that isn’t of great decadence.”

“Surely you can see where my true intentions lie?”

A pained grin comes to shine on his features, shooing away the rain clouds and allowing sparse rays of phony sunshine to shower you. His teeth bite his bottom lip as he struggles to keep his curses imprisoned between his heart and his tongue. You had to have been born of a despicable nature. In no world that is right, in no paradise would anyone deserve the punishment of having to know you— as Rin believes all tyrants belong with the street rats. Not to insinuate you’re a tyrant, but to express that you’re equivalent to a sickly rodent. 

“I’m not a fool, you know.” he spits, striding towards your retreating figure and grabbing you by the forearm and stopping you in your tracks. Rin smirks as his touch forces you to become overwhelmed in shock. “I see you, princess. I see through your poise and ladylike mannerisms. I can see what a lonesome and sorrowful shadow you’ll inevitably become. No wonder you’re going to be nothing but an objectified woman, an accessory to Sae’s power— a dull little doll of a woman who perhaps had moxie in her past— yet still became a lifeless puppet beneath a bejeweled tiara, stuck with the hands of judgment up her arse.”

You’re a fool to go toe-to-toe with him, of all people. 

Rin doesn’t think he’s ever seen such fire behind your eyes. Fire that burns hot, raging with seething anger and humiliation. If the world were to be supernatural, there’s no doubt in his mind that you’d have set it aflame in response to his vile predictions; the castle crumbling in ash with you standing alone in its wake atop his lifeless corpse that’s burnt to a crisp.

“You are entirely incorrect, never have I shown servitude for the sake of reputation—”

“Really?” his snarling voice interrupts you, refusing to let you get a single word in amidst his long-winded attack. “Then what is it that you’re doing right now, at this very moment. No princess with a functioning brain would ever find herself working with kitchen servants to prepare breakfast for two royal families. She’d simply order them to do it on their own. Every single thing you do is in order to gain likability from those who shouldn’t ever matter. If you had a backbone of any sort, you’d understand that— and you’d understand that titles are of nothing. They’re of no relation to any true purpose or meaning.”

“Then what are you?” you retaliate, ending the lengthy trail of hurtful words and confessions spewing from his mouth. “What are you but a sorry excuse of a prince…of a son?”

“You say titles are rubbish, yet you continue to wear that horrendous crown atop your hair. You choose to take it off of your placid vanity and wear it with honor; although you aren’t much of an honorable man, are you? If you were, then perhaps you’d have a grain of respect from your people. Perhaps you would spend your days in the throne room, being in the advisory alongside your brother— your splendid and valiant brother who has done nothing but serve for the greater good— instead of dallying away with mundane and useless tasks that no one cares to notice! As why would anyone bat an eye at a mistake, when they could be focused on someone like Sae. Someone of the sun’s decadence?”

The face opposite to yours is almost unrecognizable; with his red skin, flared nostrils, and dead-set eyes, Rin looks as if he’s just murdered a man out of spite and grief. He looks as if he’s just induced a homicide and is preparing to start anew, find another victim…that victim undoubtedly being you. 

He tips his head downwards, breath grazing against your upper hairline whilst his dark crown shifts in his hair— nearly falling off the front of his forehead, the large arches seem ominous and unwelcoming along with the deadly ocean depths of his eyes. The usual gem-like blues holding a more dangerous tone than a tsunami. 

Rin knows he’s frightening…

…and he’s enjoying it.

“You speak on things you know nothing of.” Rin fakes a straight toothed smile; his outside appearance looking completely opposite to the growing pit at the bottom of his stomach. If the peasant’s freak show has come to the kingdom, he’ll be the opening act—a fraudulent performer behind a mask of stoney emotions. “I have freedom and opportunity. If I so wanted, I could order a horse to be prepared, ride through those gates, and never look back. There is nothing holding me here— not my father, my brother, or the people. When will you realize how little your beliefs matter to me.” 

He’s boiling with rage, as are you whilst his words ring truer than you’d like to admit; each one hitting the most insecure corners of your heart. “Your meaningless and unimportant opinions in relation to my kingdom— when in reality, you’re simply another black plague that’s washed upon its shores. Another person who’s crawled out of the local sewers and weaseled their way into the generous hands of the royal family. It’s just so unfortunate...”

“...that in the end, you’re nothing but a breeding ground for my brother.”

On instinct, without a coherent thought in your mind, you feel your arm swing out— open palm flying through the air, only to land against the dark prince’s swelling cheeks— leaving not only a bright, red mark, but also an expression of identical shock on both of your faces.

Taking a step back, he reaches upwards to cup the bruise only to realize that you’ve done far more damage than a measly purple wound. You’ve managed to produce a cut, one that seeps through his scarlet blossoms and runs from the corner of his eye to the bottom of his chin; displaying the path of your anger whilst your ring-studded hand has directed itself across his face. 

Raindrops of ruby pour from the injury as you stare in horror at your blood splattered engagement ring.

The shimmering diamond turns dark as the tide of rouge rolls in, encasing the notion of property beneath your outspoken and unintentional hatred for Rin; and before you’re given a chance to respond, a second to apologize, the man has already stalked off towards his living quarters— not wanting to see the look of expected satisfaction on your face at the sight of his uncontrollable winces. You don’t deserve to smug as he rests in pain— despite how you are, in truth, regretful of what you’ve done.

Though, not that he’ll ever come to that conclusion.

As why would you, someone in the same likable ranks as a weathered gargoyle have any intent of remorse. Why would you, a woman who would soon have all the power in the world to hold over his head, care about a lasting scratch; no matter how deep. 

You’re a tyrant, and oh-how he loathes a tyrant.

A garden of statues would perhaps have more purpose than Rin in his current predicament— standing between his father and half-brother, listening in on the up-and-coming preparations for the royal wedding; whilst even the breaths he takes are ignored, lost in a sea of ignorance and invisibility. Emperor Itoshi gleams with pride, his mindset focused on the change of power— the crown on his head that will soon be worn by his eldest son, the one of pure royal blood. Yet, with the happiness in his heart, his smile only reaches so far; never shedding light on the tundra that consumes his bastard child. 

“Rin!” The man hollers beside him as he grasps Sae’s shoulder in a love-bound strength; his god-given touch of a father being miles-on-miles away from the fragile prince who needs it most. “Look at the life your brother’s going to make for himself! Witnessing him amidst the coronation will be splendid—”

“Remind me again, father.” Rin interrupts, not wanting to hear a minute more of the relentless doting. It’s night and day, a never ending string of praise and compliments, all for the great, Sae. “Where is it that I am to be for the duration of these wondrous festivities? I don’t believe I’ve heard spoken word of that as of yet.”

A wave of ignorance acts upon itself through his father’s careless hand, dismissing the trivial concerns of his youngest son; his heart only having enough room for one soul other than himself. “I suppose you’ll stand with the castle staff, it’s likely we have a limited space at the head of the church due to the size of our friends' traveling blood.”

The castle staff?

He’s to stand with lowly servants?

Rin doesn’t know why he feels so shocked, after all, he should’ve been expecting to be cast aside with those of low status. While his title associates himself with the royal lineage, he’ll never truly be accepted into the upper class— that divide has always been inflicted upon him by his own father. 

“So, I am not to be in our primary aisle? I am not to have a sliver of sight at Sae’s crowning?”

There’s a hint of spite in his tone, a spite that was usually hidden from the eardrums of others, revealing itself to the people who’d known it was lurking for decades. While Sae simply disconnects himself from the conversation, a privilege that he’s lucky to have, refusing to meet his younger brother’s eyes— their father pushes further. He’s well aware of the growing insecurities his bastard child has, but he also knows how to obliterate the subject in its entirety.

“You aren’t pure.” His voice is stoney and directed at Rin whilst gesturing to Sae, as he shakes his head at his least favorite son. “I can’t possibly have you, a boy I conceived with a gutter whore, stand at the equal sides of neighboring royalty. It would be seen as disgraceful.”

This isn’t the first time Rin’s heard these words.

“You are a disgrace.”

His father tells him these things often.

“All you are is a physical representation of my shame, boy. You’ve already embraced the darkness—it’s about time you allow the shadows to consume you whole.”

That doesn’t lessen the pain, though.

With that, Kyohei turns away and grasps Sae’s arm, leading him towards their higher chambers; ones that Rin has never been honored to walk upon. There are no glances, no solemn, not a single look back by his father to perhaps ensure that his son is somewhat okay or devastatingly upset— though, neither one is true. The only emotion racing through the thick blood in his veins is emptiness. Just the familiar feeling of being worth absolutely nothing in the eyes of the man who should see him as the world. From the beloved emperor that cares for nameless peasants and civil servants, his father is seen as just and valiant— his true nature of disdain and cruelty only being known by his immediate family.

So as he walks alone, with no council weighing down on his heart, no angel on his shoulder, and no devil in the ranks— Rin is blind to the world around him. He chooses to maintain blindness in relation to any matter that seems regal and of importance. Since, after all, who is he to state a claim on that significance…

…when he, himself, has no significance at all?

His feet move on autopilot, like a white pawn at the match’s first mark. As if there’s a knife at his throat, forcing him to play down the chessboard— across the bi-colored tiles and towards the blackened queen. Him being a simple sacrifice; one of many to ensure a victory, no matter the underlying consequences. No matter the fact of how he’ll never hear the final calling, the call of wind inducing the fallen king and victorious player— as he’ll be far too acquainted with death to rise back from the shattered stone. A small sense of relief overcomes him as he steps into the courtyard. His soul is satisfied and alleviated at the location his muscle memory has taken him. While the twilight moon is nearing, his mind is awake; fully conscious and stormy of his own self-doubt and insecurities. Two things that can typically only be dissolved by his favorite location on the castle grounds.

The secluded lake amidst the willow trees. It shimmers and glistens beneath the draping branches, and acts as a hub of life and growth. His secret spot is possibly the most beautiful feature in the kingdom, at least Rin feels so; with its evening flowers and low-light critters, the soft grass and blossoming lily pads, and the perfect view of Andromeda— it’s his safe haven.

A safe haven that he prefers to keep to himself. 

A place that no other person has stepped foot in for as long as he’d known of its existence.

A place that has just now been infiltrated by the disguised cockroach that is you.

“You torment me day and night within the walls of my own home; yet you still find it necessary to follow me as if you’re a lost duckling during ungodly hours.” he deadpans, shaking his head at the sight of your furrowed brows and taking a seat at the bay. Rin sighs deeply as his calloused skin comes in contact with the grassy fibers. “A proper princess would be in her chambers by the time midnight struck. It’s nearly 12:30, princess.”

Why are you looking at him like that?

The strange look on your face is laced with some sort of emotion that he’s never seen before. It's buried beneath the layers of organic makeup and skin. He can only assume it’s something similar to discomfort, and despite your intentional mask being well kept— he can see through anyone. He has the rare ability to understand the thickest of thieves, as he, himself, is the biggest phony of them all. 

The sparse shadows soften your usually antagonized features in his mind, a more human appearance alleviating in its wake; and Rin swears he sees a tear drip from your right eye, swimming down your cheeks, and dropping off at your chin into the dewey land— becoming one with nature’s true beauty. The earth embraces your unexplained sadness with open arms, blowing the willow branches around your body. In a strange way, Rin thinks this is the first time he’s truly seen you as what you are. A princess. You’re beautiful beneath the moonlight, but perhaps it isn’t your physical beauty that’s catching his eye…but your emotional vulnerability.

“Dearest apologies, my liege.” you mutter, voice droning on with not a sliver of spite in your tone; only exhaustion. “I’m afraid that I’m not much of a proper princess, tonight. If you’d prefer it, I’d be more than welcome to leave you be— perhaps I’d regain some of my lost dignity in doing so.”

He studies you for a moment, his eyes grazing your posture, the physical habits you display on the daily are missing beneath the moon’s kisses. All that’s left in its disappearance is a small-spoken and sadness-consumed girl. A girl that’s tired and painstakingly sick of the expectations and predecessors that she’s been forced to live up to by birth…and as much as he hates to admit it, even just to himself, he’s found a similar identity in you. A familiarity he’s never quite noticed before.

“Stay.” His voice is so faint that even he is surprised at his statement. 

“Perhaps we’ll both freeze to death.” he continues on, feigning the annoyance he typically spits in your direction. “I’d quite enjoy seeing your ghastly face covered in ice.”

While Rin believes his offering to be nothing out of the ordinary, your expression tells otherwise. It’s clear that you’re able to read through the misconceptions he’s trying to give you; looking straight into his eyes with an amused gleam and giggling softly in response. He’s never made a princess laugh before— usually the only girls he spends one-on-one time with are the tavern girls who wish to sleep with a prince— and he’d be a liar to say he didn’t like the sound. You have a beautiful laugh and Rin hangs onto every second it continues to carry through the wind. Perhaps he’s been misjudging you just as you misjudged him. Perhaps you’re not like the others.

“I’m sure you would, Rin.” you smile, sitting down next to him on the plush comfort of uncut grass. “But I have had such an awful day, that I don’t think there’s anything you can say to me that will make it worse.” An awful day?

“May I ask what happened?” Why does he suddenly care?

“Yes, you may.” Why do you want to tell him?

A sigh breathes out of your lips, whistling in the wind and getting lost in the space of stars. “I’m a lousy princess.”

He chuckles, shaking his head and nudging your shoulder. There’s no way that you, little miss prim and proper, are a bad princess. You’re practically the model that every father bases his daughter on when raising her in a royal setting; he knows because he’s met his fair share of truly lousy princesses. “No you’re not.”

“Yes I am.” you’re not looking at him anymore, rather at the constellation ceiling above you. The stars reflect themselves in your eyes, and if you weren’t a princess on earth, Rin would think you were a gift from the moon himself. “I could barely keep up with Prince Sae today. We had dance rehearsals for the wedding, and our instructor is so strict that I can barely breathe around her without being reprimanded. I couldn’t even memorize the basic steps, I don’t know what is wrong with me. I have practically been training for this duty for my entire life and I can’t remember a few dances? I’m not fit to be a queen. I just turned eighteen, I’ve barely lived at all. How can I protect an entire kingdom, when I cannot even fend for myself?”

“Prince Sae is perfect. He’s amazing. I can’t possibly be enough to be his wife. I can’t live up to those standards. It’s impossible.”

Suddenly, all of the broken pieces seem to come together. They’re swept by a broom, one that the moon king holds above the two of you, as your shattered stars of insecurities collide into one pile of stardust. Rin sees himself in you. He sees himself from a perspective that he’s never known before. Never in his life has he met someone who understands and agrees that royal duties are impossible; usually common folk and other royals tell him what an honor it is to be of a royal bloodline. They don’t care or consider his feelings on having to be held to a higher standard, while also being at a disadvantage as a bastard child. You are different. He knows you won’t judge him for these fears he has; a small part of him trusts you now. 

“My brother is a golden boy.” Rin smiles at you, and it’s the first genuine smile he’s ever given someone. “Please do not take it too personally if you cannot live up to his excellence.”

You gaze at him in appreciation, scooting slightly closer while keeping a healthy balance that wouldn’t ensue romantic implications. “Thank you. I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult it must be for you, though. How do you handle all of this? I can barely keep my head above water.”

Wow…you’re the first person who’s ever asked how he feels. 

“It’s difficult,” he explains, “but manageable. I’ve only ever known this life, so I’m quite used to being at the end of the line so-to-speak. My brother— I’m not sure why I even call him that, he’s not my brother, I’m sorry. My half-brother is the kingdom’s blessing. He’s my father’s blessing. He’s perfect like you said; but his destiny isn’t his own. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

Your head shakes in confusion, not quite understanding where his story is going.

“I’m sorry, I’ve never spoken of these feelings before; at least not out loud to someone other than my own mirror.” His human instinct shuffles himself closer to you, wanting that physical comfort whilst knowing that he can never have it. “I’m not unhappy that I am not the one to be emperor. I would rather be a bastard, because at least I have freedom to run away one day without worrying about feeding the masses and avoiding war. I can leave this kingdom and not have to think about my father or Sae ever again. That’s the one luxury I have always had— and it’s the one thing that I look forward to. I’m so sorry that you don’t have that same privilege.”

Nothing comes as a response and Rin feels a little concerned, that is until your soft voice reaches his ears. 

“I’m sorry for being so difficult towards you.”

You’re apologizing?

“I don’t regret anything, though.”

That makes more sense.

Another laugh bubbles up from the pits of his soul, setting off the volcano of amusement that’s been dormant for so long. “You’re a tyrant princess, my kingdom should be more weary of you.”

You giggle beside him, “Tyrant princess sounds more fun than disciplined empress.”

Maybe he’s gone mad or maybe the chilling breeze has gotten to his brain and made him delusional, but Rin feels his heart pounding— and not in the familiar way of anger and aggression. This rapid heartbeat is something warmer…fonder…gentler. If he’s not mistaken, he believes it to be the warmth that comes with falling in love; something that he’s only read about and wished for when he does eventually run away from home. However, he never believed he’d find that feeling within the palace walls— especially with you, whom he despised prior to this night. He promised himself he’d never fall for another royal, but his destiny is shaping itself in ways that are unpredictable.

He should thank the man in the moon.

Rin stands, dusting off his pants, before offering you a hand. It’s an earnest gesture, one that you cannot ignore, and he’s vulnerable with his sincerity. “I can’t promise that I hold any skills near to my brother, but I swear on my soul that I won’t push you into that lake if you give me one dance.”

“Just one?” your tone is teasing, yet you accept his offer. The feeling of your hand in his sparks flickers of jealousy in Rin’s mind. Why is Sae the one who gets to hold you? It isn’t fair. “If you push me in that filthy water, I’ll give you a matching scar…”

“...right there.”

One of your fingers softly grazes his cheek, the spot underneath his right eye and flicks upwards, brushing against his thick eyelashes, before you lace your hands around his neck. You sway together, with the moonlight showering its stars down upon you, blessing you with well-wishes from the galaxy— and drift away from the worries of royalty and betrothals. Rin is miles from the anger that nestled itself inside of his heart, freezing it and shrinking it until he no longer knew what the emotion felt like. You’ve melted that ice. You’ve found a crack and broken the cycle of rage he’s so accustomed to…and he’s grateful. 

For this is the first time he’s ever felt loved…

…if only you were his…

…but you aren’t.

⋆⋆⋆⠀ ⠀thank you for reading! reblogs are greatly appreciated! ⋆⋆⋆⠀ ⠀will have a second part titled swan song in the future!