#//mobile but i hope this is okay it wouldn’t leave me alone

[melodyplucked]

@inspotlight

“nina- that’s right, isn’t it? my son seems to call you everything but your name.” lynne is curious about the girl her son has home for christmas. she would be with any girlfriend of his, to be fair, but… she’s very obviously a different situation than when he was in high school. and not just because lynne has never met her, though that certainly adds to the situation. “i know you’re not from around here- i can imagine this little town is nothing like europe. how do you like it?” but then as much as the question is loaded with other possible questions… the girl who had left gucci loafers by the door and wore a dress lynne was fairly sure was from this season… is now in her former kitchen wearing her son’s old cotton t-shirt from some skate competition. there’s something endearing about it. even if she knows her son likely notices none of the tells of his girlfriend’s clearly immense wealth. plus well- maybe they’re both fish out of water as lynne sleeps in the guest bedroom of her former home to be close for her son the next few days. “i know ricky probably told you i was… critical of his ex… i hope we can start on our own terms. not based on lily. ricky seems serious about you.” so she’s going to do her best to get on board. even if time will tell.

[cheri-2047]

I have a request for, Zhongli Neuvillette and Ayato so they are forced to marry a reader, who looks a mess like their appearance and they aren't really into them. I hope I explained it properly it's hard for me at times and I got the idea when I saw some mobile game ad.

i think I know this ad LMAO, sure !! I’ll make it headcanons though cause those have been easier for me to write lately. thank you for the request!

Arranged Marriage (Zhongli , Neuvillette, Ayato)

SCENARIO: Your parents somehow got to get you an arranged marriage with these men. You grew up in a rich family, but due to a bad decision, your father’s company ended up going bankrupt. Suddenly, your mom just told you to get into the car and drove off, not knowing where you were going.

MENTIONS OF: Furina, Thoma, Ayaka

NEUVILLETTE:

When you enter the court (please tell me where he works guys in the comments, I forgot what it’s called), that’s when you realized.

“shit.”

This is the first time you’ve actually SEEN him. You felt embarrassed because your mother didn’t even let you change out of a decent pair of clothing or even fix your hair.

you quickly tried to change your appearance as much as you could. But when the Melisune opened the door, that’s when you panicked.

Neuvillette was…shocked. He was shocked to see you in a state but he didn’t show it. “Ah..I suppose you’re y/n?”

“yes… I apologize for my appearance, My mother pulled me out of my room and just forced me to leave without a word haha…” you were nervous as hell.

”I see. Nice to meet you.” He stands up and walks over to you, shaking your hand.

”I’d like to go over the terms of our marriage, nothing official just what we both are comfortable with.” Even with your messy appearance, he still treated you with grace and kindness

he asked the melusine to give you some tea, and now you Two were left alone.

”Well…I understand if you don’t want to do this at all, so during our relationship, I will not require you to be affectionate towards me.”

He sat in a chair nearby and he held your hand. “If there’s anything I am doing, or will do that makes you uncomfortable, please do not hesitate to tell me.”

“If you need anything, just say the word and I’ll have to for you.”

“if you would have…other affairs, since were not actually in love…I’m okay with it. Just be careful to not show it in public.” He understands that this is a forced marriage for you, so he tries to still let you have a normal life.

“ah no it’s okay, I’m not interested in anyone at the moment, but I…I would like to try to get this- us to work.” You smiled, and Neuvillette was touched by that.

During your marriage, you lived with him. He wasn’t extremely close to you but you could tell he was trying. On the first night you two slept beside each other but on the next one if you were uncomfy, he arranged another room for you in his mansion.

He lets you do anything really, if you want to work go ahead but if you just want to stay home that’s okay too.

Overall, he grew to like you. And the marriage was like a real thing.

Since he wouldn’t be home often, he apologizes by sending you gifts. When he notices you’re lonely, furina actually lets him have a day off.

as for affection, at most he would kiss you on the forehead or cuddle you close. He won’t force you to kiss him on the lips (since he doesn’t want to intrude on anything) so you’d have to initiate those <3

AYATO:

When you saw your car drop in front of the kamisato, that’s when you realized.

You tried to fix your appearance, tying your hair up with a desperate attempt to look more elegant.

thoma welcomed you, not gonna lie he noticed how you shuffled your clothes a lot and before taking you to ayato, he let you in a separate room.

”I don’t mean to be rude, but I noticed the way you shuffled with your clothes” he chuckled, handing you an old dress that ayaka owned, (since it didn’t fit her)

he let you changed and once you did, he brought you to ayato.

Ayato welcomed you and thoma left the room. He motioned for you to sit in front of him.

”nice to meet you” he smiled and bowed (iirc in japan they bow as a sign of respect/greeting? Please correct me if I’m wrong!)

you did the same. It was awkward for awhile until he spoke.

”I am sure you’re aware of what’s about to happen correct?” You nod. “I want to try to make this work” he said, looking straight at you.

”if… if we don’t work out that’s alright, but I’d like to know you more.” He smiled as you nodded.

”me too, I’m glad we’re on the same page” you smiled.

you two talked about your own interests, but now you had a problem.

its not that he hated you or judged you, but there are times it’s dead silent. for now he passes it off since you both are new to each other.

”well, I will have thoma show you your room and ah- no more need for formalities it’s okay”

After the marriage you move in together and though it’s still awkward, you two actually end up becoming close.

At some point, during the night when he’s working late, he actually started seeking comfort from you.

sometimes he would visit your room, if you were asleep he would sit beside you on the bed and tuck you in nicely after

or if you’re awake, you (aside from ayaka sometimes) are one of the only few who actually gets him to go to bed.

you sleep in separate rooms but one day he offers for you to sleep with him.

overall, this marriage was a success. Sometimes he’s busy but you take note of it and if he notices you’re lonely, he would invite you over to his room while he works/signs papers and he talks to you.

as for affection, he appreciates if you give him hugs but there are times (mostly when you’re away for a long period of time) when he tilts your chin up and goes “may I?” Before pressing a kiss to your lips

Sorry if I mischaracterized this, I haven’t done the inazuma quest and idk much about him !

ZHONGLI:

to your surprise, when you almost stopped in a mansion, you saw him standing outside waiting for you.

and that’s when you started to realize.

the moment you got out of the car, you fixed your dress. He was quite welcoming actually.

he welcomed you to his home and set you on the couch. He actually didn’t mind much your appearance.

he sat in front of you and smiled. “Nice to meet you” he handed you a cup of tea before you two got started.

he saw you uncomfortable shuffling around your clothes. “Are you alright? Is something wrong?”

”no no! Just fixing myself a bit, sorry” he wondered why you seemed so tense about your appearance.

”I do not care about such matters if that’s what you’re thinking” he reassured you.

”now..as for this marriage, I do not want you to feel forced. I will allow anything you’d like, if you’d have other affairs, I am okay with that.” He really just wants you to be comfy is all, especially since this was forced.

”however… I would like to get to know you more” and just like that a few months after the marriage, you two actually clicked.

often at night he’d sleep beside you, in the mornings he makes you both tea.

He’d be very respectful with boundaries and he appreciates when you respect his as well.

for dates he loves bringing you to gardens for a picnic or relaxing lakes, somewhere with nature. he hugs you a lot and kisses on your forehead. If you want a kiss on his lips, he will gladly say yes anytime of the day

A/N: OKAY. I loved writing this, I enjoyed Neuvillette and Ayato’s part, I kinda lost ideas for zhongli but THERE WAS AN ATTEMPT. Anyways thank you for requesting, I only have… 2-3 requests left until I can open them again ! I love how thoma would also be a gentleman to you idk I think he’s pretty cool this wasn’t proofread and comments are appreciated !! (Drop by for a tip, or if I mischaracyerized them or just say hi!)

[the-universal-sun]

what if instead of stan punching ford when he was branded he regressed

I love this idea! And sorry it took so long, I could only see this request on mobile and not my computer for some reason

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“Ahhh!” Stan screams, the pain in his shoulder was like fire scorching his skin. He clutches at his shoulder, he’s not touching the burn but he can feel the heat radiating off of it, coming in waves. He whimpers, all the fight leaving him, unwitting tears leaking from his eyes as he stifles a sob. It hurts so bad, worse than anything he’s been through. He hates this, he hates the pain, he’s tired of the pain. He doesn’t know why this is affecting him so much, because it was Ford who caused it? But, Ford didn’t mean it, did he? His brother, his big brother, wouldn’t mean to hurt him, right? He rocks himself, almost violently, hoping to at least soothe the torrent in his mind.

“Oh my gosh, Stanley! A-are you alright?” He can hear Ford call out as he rushes over to check, but he can’t bring himself to speak, the pain in his shoulder too great and his tongue feeling too thick. He just moans lowly in his throat, wincing as he feels Ford prod at the edges of his burn. Hearing his brother talk to him without scorn for the first time in a decade is what causes his sobbing, unaccustomed to and sorely missing his brother’s words and presence, He finds it hard to breathe with his tears, he rocks faster and faster until he’s stopped by a hand on his other shoulder. He finally looks up to Ford, throat tight and eyes wet and blurry. Stan doesn’t know what Ford sees in his face, but whatever it is has him gently hauling him up and guiding him to the basement’s elevator. Stan’s legs are heavy, like his tongue, and don’t want to move, so he stumbles a lot, his brother having to keep him steady. He winces, scared to get yelled at again, but Ford says nothing, just tightens his hand around Stan’s waist. The elevator ride is silent, Stan doesn’t speak, he just leans against Ford, thinking about how long it’s been since he’s done this, instead of the pain.

After what seems like forever, they make it upstairs and hobble into a room at Ford’s direction. It’s a bathroom. Stan distantly wonders if there’s hot water, he hasn’t had hot water in forever. Would he be able to shower, with his shoulder? Stan starts to think there’s something else he should be worried about when Ford makes him sit on the toilet, stepping away. He grasps at Ford’s coat, bringing him closer, so scared he’s going to leave him, making him be all alone again. He doesn’t want to be all alone again

“Stanley, I have to get a first aid kit to help and examine you. Your burn is very serious, infection is a dangerous possibility.” Ford tries to pull away again, but Stan buries his head in Ford’s and shakes his head, silently begging for him to stay. “Stanley, please,” Ford sounds exasperated, grabbing Stan’s hands to pull them off, “I need you to-” he whimpers out a vaguely sobbed ‘no’, clenching tighter to the coat. He feels Ford kneel down, his hands bringing Stan’s up, making their eyes connect. He speaks softly. “Stanley-Lee, come on. I won’t be far, the first aid kit is right under the sink here, you can still see me. Okay?” Ford stands up, backing away slowly as Stan lets the coat slide from his fingertips. Stan grasps the end of his brother's coat, still looking at him. He needs this contact, he’s scared Ford will leave and disappear if he doesn’t keep a hold on him. Ford just stares at him, a weird look in his eye, before he steps towards the sink and opens the cabinet underneath, rummaging for the first aid kit. All with Stan grasping his coat.

Ford steps back to Stan and tries to step behind him when Stan panics again, turning to face him. What if Ford leaves when Stan can’t see him?! He’ll never be able to find him then! Stan can feel more tears leak and the ache in his throat and chest get worse at the thought of losing his brother again. He can feel Ford hovering around him before something gets shoved in his lap. He looks down to see his brother’s coat, but wasn’t he wearing this? Stan looks back up, Ford’s hands are hovering right in front of him.

“There, now that you have my coat, I can’t leave. Now can I please see to your burn?” Stan can’t argue with that logic, it’s super cold outside, and his brother’s too smart to go play in the snow with no coat on. Subdued, Stan turns his back to Ford, letting him look at his shoulder. It really does hurt a lot now that he’s not so worried about Ford leaving him. Ford’s silent as he pokes and prods at his burn, anytime he hisses and whimpers in pain, his brothers hand strokes his head, calming him. Stan hears scissors snapping and feels Ford cut away his shirt and jacket. He sniffles, holding back tears, this was his warmest coat, his only coat, and now he’s gonna freeze. Stan brings his legs up the the toilet seats he’s sitting on and buries his face in his knees, using Ford’s jacket to wipe away his tears and hide his face until his burn is fixed up.

It takes forever, but Stan feels Ford finally cover his burn with a bandage. Just in time for Stan to release a big yawn, rubbing his eye with one hand, the other still clutching Ford’s coat. Now that everything’s hitting him, Stan feels really sleepy, his eyes struggling to stay open.

“Stanley, how do you feel?” Ford’s kneeling in front of him again. How does he feel? He feels light, fuzzy, kind of hazy? He doesn’t really know, and he can’t speak anyways, so he just shrugs and blinks slowly. He stands with Ford as he walks over to the door, Stan grabbing his hand and clutching it tightly before he could open it.

“Stanley, really I-“ Ford doesn’t finish what he was saying, he just looks. Stanley yawns again, swaying on his feet. If his tongue weren’t so heavy, he’d ask for jammies and to sleep. Ford must have read or mind, his brother’s so smart, because all he does is softly say something about getting Stan some clothes and getting him a room. He follows Ford as he walks, holding his hand, before he freezes. His bag! Stan’s bag is still by the front door and he needs it! It’s got Poindexter, and he can’t sleep without Poindexter!

He walks to where he can kind of remember where the door was, still holding Ford’s hand, dragging him along and tuning out his protests. He gets to the bag and finally lets go of his brother’s hand, bending down and rummaging through it until he finds and brings out Poindexter. He turns around to show him to Ford, shoving him in Ford’s face.

“Stanley what-Ack! Yes I see it! Very nice-“ Stan shakes his stuffy, Ford’s not getting it! He points to Poindexters glasses and then to Ford’s, trying to tell him that they’re matching. “Y-yes, your-um. Your bear and I both wear glasses, Stanley, that’s very fun. Listen, why don’t you get some pajamas from your bag-“ Stan cuts him off, shaking his head. He doesn’t have any pajamas, just some shirts and pants, nothing he can sleep in.

“You don’t have pajamas? Stanley, I-I…” Ford doesn’t finish his sentence, he looks really sad, which confuses Stan. He doesn’t know why Ford’s looks sad. He shuffles on his feet, clutching Poindexter and Ford’s coat tighter, he really wants to go to bed now. Ford must want to, too because he doesn’t finish his sentence, grabbing his wrist and guiding him to a room with a really ugly carpet. He’s so distracted by the ugly carpet that he doesn’t notice his brother left his line of sight until Ford’s in front of him, trying to get him to raise his arms. He lets Ford move him, too sleepy to protest. Ford dresses him in a cozy sweater, tight but warm and clean, and moves Stan to the couch in the room.

“You can sleep here tonight, Stanley. It’s the only room with a bed right now. We’ll talk more in the morning.” Ford covers him him a blanket and tries to leave, but Stan grabs his hand again. Staring up at him, begging him to stay. He buried his head in Ford’s hand, hearing him sigh. “Just until you fall asleep, Stanley.” And Stan relaxes, happy that Ford’s watching over him, that he’s staying with him and won’t leave him alone. He’s so tired, it doesn’t take him long to drift off, curled up tight against the couch, clutching Ford’s hand, his coat, and Poindexter. He manages to move his heavy tongue to mumble a ‘night-night’ to Ford, and Poindexter, before he falls fully asleep, his eyes too heavy to open any more.

“I’m sorry, Lee”

[embarrassingmf]

sweet escape | S.B (5)

SUMMARY: you and ben are left alone, leaving some heavy tension in the air.

WORD COUNT: 825.

WARNINGS: not proofread, fluff, EXTREME ooc ben, idiots in love maybe, confessions, use of y/n (1x i believe)

A/N: finally got around to writing another part for this series! so sorry to the people who were waiting for another part :((

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Surprisingly, Butcher hadn’t been sending the gang out on any missions recently. He probably didn’t see a need to since he needed to think of a new way to defeat Homelander.

Of course, Soldier Boy was still a little salty about not being able to stop his son from getting even worse and shedding more blood.

Ypu tried to reassure him best you could, but alas, it wouldn’t work. Yes, he’d actually *thank* you for comforting him, but it never did much to boost his mood.

Not that he had much mood to boost.

Everyone was out currently; Butcher and Hughie were out getting food, Frenchie and Kimiko were out doing only god knows what, and M.M was visiting his daughter.

So that just left you and Ben alone together. And the silence hung heavy.

He seemed a little more distant lately, you didn’t understand why. Did you do something wrong? Does he not enjoy your company anymore?

Your mind was spiraling trying to figure out the problem and how to make him less distant.

Ben was currently lounging on the dingy couch Butcher had, scrolling through a phone that he had either stolen or forced someone to buy for him. You didn’t know, nor did you really care to know where he got said mobile device from.

Cautiously approaching, you sat down on the couch, not noticing the brief side glance Ben shot your way.

It was a negative side glance, oh no. He merely just admired your side profile for a split second.

That split second was just enough to make him feel giddy inside.

God, he wasn’t used to this. Ben was the one who was supposed to make other people giddy! He wasn’t supposed to be on the receiving end—

“Hey, Ben?” Your voice snapped him out of his thoughts, and he swiftly cleared his throat.

“Yeah?” He hoped you ignored the way his voice wavered slightly.

“Can we talk?” You asked quietly. “I jus’ wanna ask something.”

Ben nodding, not even trusting his own vocal cords to speak in a clear tone right now. He watched your mimick his motion, murmuring an ‘alright’ under your breath.

“Are you mad at me?”

That caught him off guard. Why the hell would he be mad at you? You were probably one of the sweetest people he had met since like— forever.

“What? God, no. Why would I be mad?” Ben questioned incredulously.

You shrugged, trying to feign a nonchalant attitude. “I dunno, you’ve just seemed really distant recently.”

Ben cursed under his breath, shaking his head. “Shit, really? ‘M sorry, Y/N. Didn’t mean to make you feel like you did anything wrong or anything.”

You chuckled, the way he could read you like an open book was both amusing and embarrassing. “It’s okay,”

Silence ensued for a few minutes before Ben spoke up, his voice taking on a new softness you’ve never heard before.

“Hey, look at me for a second?”

You obliged, looking over at him. He was sitting straighter than before, almost rigid, and his phone was long forgotten on the armrest beside him.

Ben stared at you for a bit before letting out a small sigh, gingerly reaching out and cupping your cheek.

The action surprised you, mainly because you didn’t know why Ben would need to do such a thing right now. He already apologized, he didn’t need to do anything to make it up to you.

It seemed like Ben’s hazel brown eyes just *cut* through you, because you suddenly felt like putty in his hands.

Your breath caught in your throat when you noticed him start to lean forward. And it the seconds felt like hours until his lips finally met yours.

The kiss was tender, practically the opposite of his rough demeanor and yet it spoke volumes of unsaid words and feelings.

You quickly melted into it, a hand coming up to rest on the back of his neck as you leaned into him.

By the end of it, you both were smiling like idiots. Mostly you, thoguh. Ben only cracked a smile, but it was there.

“Wow, is this why you were so distant?” Ben nodded wordlessly, chuckling.

“Yeah, sorry. I just.. needed to figure out my feelings.”

You raised an eyebrow, somehow a little clueless after that kiss. You had an idea of what he meant, but you didn’t wanna jump to conclusions and possibly embarrass yourself.

Ben scoffed lightheartedly. “I like you, ya idiot. Like a lot.”

Your smile grew larger at his confession and you felt just as giddy as he did in the very moment.

“I like you too.” You murmured before pressing another chaste kiss to his lips before you two heard the door of the hideout open up, cutting the moment short.

“We got some food!” Hughie’s cheerful voice cut through the atmosphere as he held up two brown paper bags from some burger place in the city.

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taglist! : @mostlymarvelgirl @anu-piyakya97 @stariou @mochminnie @fallout-girl219 @davalos-04

[another-whump-sideblog]

Fixing Tracy -- Domesticity 

TWs in the tags

Masterlist

"Do you have a job?" Tracy asks as she helps Molly put away groceries. It's starting to strike Tracy as odd that Molly can afford all this and also spend the majority of her time with Tracy. Molly’s talked about past jobs, but never anything current.

“Not right now. Don’t worry, you’re not keeping me away from work or anything. This is where I want to be.”

“So how do you… afford all this?” 

“My parents were very wealthy, and I got all of it when they died.”

“Ah. That explains a lot.”

Molly laughs. “I’m not sure how to take that.” 

Hmm… Tracy tries to think of a way to direct the conversation that might give her helpful information. “Are you planning on getting another job any time soon?”

“Probably not. I don’t want to leave you alone all day.”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“Still, if you got hurt, or needed me for something else, you’d have no way to get help. And I like spending time with you. I would miss you the whole time I was gone.”

That makes sense, logically. No one is forcing Molly to be here, she must be spending time with Tracy because she wants to. Tracy wants to ask what makes her so special, but she chickens out. She gets the feeling that whatever the answer to that question is, she really won’t like it. “Do you… have any friends? At all?”

“Mm… I hope someday you’ll consider me a friend.” She puts the last of the groceries in the pantry. "Do you wanna play Wii Sports Resort? I bet you can get a new high score at wakeboarding."

"Sure." She's really good at the wakeboarding game.

Molly grins and sets up the game. It makes sense that she has no friends, but it’s disappointing all the same. No one is going to come visit her and ask about the heavily locked basement. Tracy isn’t getting outside help.

A thought hits Tracy like a bus. "Am– am I the first person you've kidnapped?"

"Of course!" Molly hands Tracy a Wii remote. "First and last."

A chill runs down Tracy's spine. It's okay, it's fine. Just gathering information. It doesn’t matter why Molly decided to kidnap Tracy, that knowledge won’t help her escape. "Right. Um…”

Thinking of questions is hard. Maybe she should just try to make natural conversation, and see if anything important comes up?

“Do you have a favorite video game?” Tracy asks, partially focused on digital wakeboarding.

“I’m not sure. The only thing I ever play alone is The Sims, so I guess that would be my favorite?”

“That makes a lot of sense. You like taking care of the- hell yeah!” Tracy is momentarily distracted by getting a long string of 100-point tricks.

“Yeah.” Tracy can hear the smile in her voice. “I do really like games where I can take care of people. I’ve had to ban myself from getting any games like that on my phone, I always end up setting alarms in the middle of the night to check on them. Sims don’t have their needs drain when the game is closed the way so many mobile games do.”

Tracy’s turn ends. She didn’t get a new high score, but she got close. “You’d… set alarms in the middle of the night?” 

“They’d be so sad and hungry every morning if I didn’t!”

“They’re… not real.”

“That’s the thing— how do you know? I can’t bear the thought of telling someone that they’re not real if they actually are. Can you imagine, someone coming up to you and telling you you’re not real? That would be awful! I don’t want to risk it. What separates us from programs, really? People a lot smarter than me have theorized we’re all in a simulation. If that’s the case, would it be okay for someone to starve and hurt us because we’re not real? Even deleting those apps felt kind of like killing people. I couldn’t function for weeks afterward… But I’m okay now!” 

“You’re… actually crazy.” That shouldn’t be surprising for a kidnapper, but it somehow is.

“That’s not very nice.” Her tone is lightly scolding. Not angry at all, but definitely the harshest tone she’s used with Tracy so far. “You probably didn’t want to hear about my issues, though. What’s your favorite video game?” As she talks, Molly repeatedly does so badly at the game that it pauses to remind her she needs to land on the water with her board flat.

“I never really played video games before I came here— before you kidnapped me, I mean. I think I need to try a few more before I decide.”

The conversation continues like that until Tracy gets a new high score. Just… pleasant, even if the things Molly says are disturbing sometimes. Tracy’ll have to mentally go through the conversation a few times before bed to make sure she didn’t miss any valuable information. Even if she didn’t, though, building a rapport with Molly is good. That’ll… that’ll definitely benefit her somehow, even if she’s not sure how yet.

“You’re amazing.” Molly looks at Tracy like she’s… Tracy doesn’t even know. Definitely not something human. A beautiful painting, maybe? A sunset? A skyscraper?

“For… being good at Wii Sports Resort wakeboarding?”

“For everything. Everything about you is amazing.”

“…thanks?”

Molly stares at her for a moment longer, then breaks eye contact. “I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. You barely know me, that probably sounded more like a stalker complimenting you than a friend. I’ll do my best to dial it back.”

“…I appreciate that.”

Molly fidgets with the Wii remote. “I think… I need to spend some time cleaning today. You won’t be able to relax if your living space is filthy! I’ve been putting it off a bit.”

The basement seems plenty clean to Tracy. "Okay."

"I've been keeping the cleaning stuff upstairs, so I'll go grab some stuff and be right back. Is that okay?"

"Yep, go ahead." Tracy feels like she should offer to help, but… she doesn't want to. This isn't her house, she doesn't want to be here and would leave if she could, she has no obligation to do any cleaning.

For the next several hours, Molly takes various cleaning supplies up and down the stairs (always making sure the bag with restraints isn't downstairs while Molly is upstairs) and cleans more or less the entire basement. 

Tracy plays some Minecraft, then starts a book that looks interesting. She's… enjoying herself. Is this the best use of her time? She could talk to Molly more, but did she really learn anything last time? She runs through the conversation in her head repeatedly, but can't find anything useful.

She puts the book back. She needs to think of more questions to ask, more information that might help her, she needs to do something because if she has time to enjoy herself she definitely has time to get something done but there's nothing to get done, she can't do anything she's useless–

"Are you feeling okay, dear?"

"I'm fine. Do you… need help with anything?"

"You're here to rest! I'll handle everything, don't worry. I'm basically done, anyway, I've just got to take the mop back up the stairs."

She's not pathetic enough to beg to help her kidnapper with chores, so she nods and heads to the kitchen. She'll just make lunch for both of them, Molly's okay with her doing that. It's really hard to just wait for helpful information instead of actively working towards escape, but… she can do hard things. It's not Tracy's fault that she's useless right now, anyway, it's Molly's, so there's not much she can do but suck it up and enjoy herself until Molly lets something slip.

Tag list: @whumpyourdamnpears

[purplesigebert]

WIP Wednesday #2: DW Crossover

It had been some time since he had jumped into another’s body and Klaus was still acclimating.  He walked up the driveway of the Salvatore Boarding House, reflecting on the truly atrocious Decade Dance that “Alaric” was set to chaperone that evening.

Klaus looked over the assembled group of people in the foyer as the elder Salvatore addressed him.  Klaus got into his role of the history teacher, trying to guess how Alaric would act; he settled on apologizing for arriving late, as he shut the door.

“Hey, I need you to put me down as a chaperone at the dance tonight. Klaus made his first move.”

Klaus tried to school, pun intended, his face into one of concern.

The doppelganger tried to get the meeting back on track, her hand on her face, “Okay, so we find him and then what, hmm? What's our plan of attack?”

“Me. I'm the plan.” The witch’s answered, implying that this was obvious. “He has no idea how much power I can channel. If you can find him, I can kill him.”

He was amused at how easy the Bennett witch thought it would be to take him out, and couldn’t help himself on commenting, “That's not going to be that easy. I mean, he is the biggest, baddest vampire around.”

The elder Salvatore agreed with him and then, idiotically, tried to rush the witchling, who sent Damon to the other side of the room. The doppelganger and his favourite Salvatore were struck at the Bennett girl’s power.

“Well, I was impressed,” the Ripper quipped.

“It doesn't matter if he's an Original. I can take down anyone who comes at me. I can kill him, Elena. I know I can.”  The girls shared a smile, and the doppelganger’s eyes shined with naïve, mistaken hope. 

Just then, the door opened and the blonde girl that had caught his eye earlier entered the Boarding House.  The four people around Klaus seemed like they were annoyed at the intrusion.

“I’m just passing through, Stef, can I borrow that book we were talking about the other day?”

“Caroline, we are in the middle of something, so just” the girl pouted at the Ripper, he sighed. “Just make it quick. Besides, don’t you have a dance to be obsessing over?”

“You’re right, I do but now I’m wondering, what are you guys plotting about, now?”

“Klaus has made contact, he sent me a message through Dana, she was compelled.”

Klaus noticed that the girl froze, then resumed looking for the book. 

“My advice, you should find a way to get in touch with him and try to make a deal. Klaus is way too powerful for you to defeat on your own Bon, he has backup plans to his backup plans.”

“Thankfully we didn’t ask you for advice Blondie, so you can run along,” the elder Salvatore sneered.

“I didn’t offer it to you, Satan, I was talking to Bonnie.”  

“I still think that we should wake Elijah up, he would be able to help us now that Katherine is MIA,” the doppelganger interjected.

“Yeah, like that’s going to go well,” the blonde seemed amused. “Klaus will only need to say six or seven words, and Elijah will completely abandon the plan for him.  I mean he’ll regret it a tiny bit but not enough to stop from siding with Klaus.”

The Bennett witch was confused. “We’ve kept you out of the loop, Care, how do you know so much about Klaus? Have you even met Elijah”

“Spoilers.” Caroline quirked a brow. “Trust me Bon, you don’t want to know how I know, just don’t cross Klaus, you won’t win.  Maybe, and that’s a big maybe, you’ll be able to hurt him a little.”

The Bennett witch was about to question the blonde when the latter’s mobile rang.

She glanced at the screen and lit up and the display.

“Martha! Hey, how are you?”

“No, I’m still in Mystic Falls. Besides, Katherine is still in town, you wouldn’t want me to leave her alone.  No, Klaus has her, we don’t know where.” 

There was a pause as the person on the other end of the line spoke, causing the blonde to become alarmed.  He cursed the sub-par hearing of the history teacher.

“No, no, don't come here.  It’s your honeymoon! She’ll turn up! You know how Kat is! She’s Katherine Pierce, she’s a survivor.”

The Forbes girl sounded so admiring and fond of Katerina that the others in the room looked confused and disgusted.  Klaus recalled that Katerina had murdered the girl, so it was an intriguing revelation that she was referring to her as a friend.

The Forbes girl was speaking again, it seems that he had missed part of the conversation.  Again, Klaus lamented the weak human senses of the haggard history teacher that he was currently inhabiting.

“We’ll I hope you guys have fun in Paris! I’ll call you when it’s over so you can celebrate that the curse is broken, and the Destroyer failed!”

How did this girl know about Mikael?

She hung up the phone and looked into his borrowed eyes. She flinched and was about to say something when the Bennett witch exploded.

“Why would you celebrate Elena’s death?”

“Woah, who said anything about, celebrating Elena’s death?!”

At the Bennett witch’s look, the Forbes girl rolled her eyes.

“Elena has to die for the curse to be broken, but that doesn’t mean she has to stay dead.”  She spoke as if the information should be obvious.

“It’s in Klaus’ interest for the doppelganger to survive the ritual.  He needs her alive for the next part of his plan.”

Klaus narrowed his eyes, how could the girl know this, this information was heavily guarded.  And that she knew of some of his plans, his hopes to create some more hybrids. Well, he had never told anyone, no one that wasn’t daggered.  Certainly not her. He had never met Caroline Forbes before.

Had he?

[afteriwake]

roommates: Accidently ending a phone call with your roommate with a casual ‘I love you’ seems like a very good reason to move out. Khanolly

So I took a break from stuff (mostly WIPBB stuff) to write a cheer-up fic for @strangelock221b, who wanted a Khanolly fic for a balm for long, hard days at work lately. Enjoy!

A Casual Remark (And Not The Kind You Can Take Back) (An "In Another Time, Another Universe" Story) - Khan accidentally ends a mobile conversation with Molly with a casual "I love you," words he has yet to say to her, and had intended to say for the first time differently.

READ @ AO3 | SERIES PAGE

“So you’ll be back around 8?”

“I should be.”

“I’ll see you then, then.”

“Alright. I love you.”

“What?”

He was still staring at his mobile even after he’d hung up, shocked at what he’d said. He did love her, and he was fairly sure she knew, but he’d had yet to say it. And saying it the way he did, and her reaction, seemed like a very good reason to pack his belongings and leave her home.

They were intimate, but love was another beast altogether. Sexual relations he could handle. It was pleasurable, he enjoyed making her be loud and demanding with what she wanted from him, and in the afterglow, he could hold her as she slept without comment. But love? Love was an emotion almost completely foreign to him. There had been the love he had felt towards the others of his kind, his family, but that was not the same as romantic love.

And yet that was what he felt all the same.

And he had told her, as easily as it had ever been. Not without meaning, but without meaning to. And she had asked “What?” and he had hung up. He was a coward.

A coward who was in love with a woman he did not deserve.

He was a monster, as Kirk never let him forget when they were alone. Sherlock tempered Kirk in a way,\ that stimulated him, but while he was building a new life for himself in this past alternate universe, Kirk was trying to get home. He understood, in a way; the love Kirk felt for the crew of his vessel was akin to what he himself felt for those Marcus had held hostage. Yet he knew they were stuck here, and there was no going home, something Kirk seemed to finally start understanding. Still, he hoped, and as long as he had his hope, he wouldn’t find peace.

Peace was something he himself was trying to reconcile with. He was born and bred for war, but the wars of this time were mere child’s play. Should Mycroft need him too, he could single-handedly end some of the conflicts rocking the world, though the political quagmire in the United States was something he didn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole. Give him a nice, messy battle scene or a political assassination and he would get the job done; the United States situation was best left to those who played politics all day, though he himself thought killing one or two key people in the political field would be beneficial to the Americans.

But that was neither here nor there. He had his freedom, so long as he was willing to lend his mind to building technology to help Britain advance. He had helped foster a few military technologies which had yet to be put to use, but the day-to-day technology he was working on would be far more beneficial to the people of this universe. And Molly was fascinated more by that than his prowess as a warrior, so it helped to have it to talk about. He enjoyed talking to her, being around her, sharing his life with her.

Though after the casual “I love you,” he’d need to change his name, hide his face and move out.

His mobile chirped and he answered it without looking at who was calling. “Yes?” he asked, his tone clipped.

“Oh. I just wanted to say I love you too.”

He was stunned. “What?”

“You just caught me off guard, I mean. I wasn’t expecting it. But I do. I mean, I love you too. That’s okay, isn’t it?” Molly paused. “Khan?”

“That’s more than okay,” he said, every muscle that had tensed now relaxing. “I think tonight we should celebrate this turn of events.”

“Oh, yes,” Molly said, her tone bubbly and affectionate. “You’ll still be home at 8, right?”

“I will.”

“Good. I’ll have supper ready and then you can tell me in person.”

“I’ll tell you as often as you want to hear it.”

“Good. I want to hear it a lot. And tell you I love you too a lot, too.” She paused, and he could hear someone in the background. “I have to go but...I love you, Khan.”

“I love you too, Molly,” he said, and then he hung up, and he found he couldn’t help the smile that crossed his face. Perhaps he’d been hasty in his plan to move out. It was a moot point now; she loved him too. That was all he needed to know to get through the rest of his day until he saw her and could show her just how in love with her he was.

[sanddusted-wisteria]

Empty Skies, Hazy Skyboxes, Ch. 5

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Also on AO3

------------

Qi opened the saloon’s front doors, and was greeted with Owen’s smiling face from behind the counter.

“Hey, Director! Glad to see ya.”

Qi gave him a nod. “Good evening. The usual, please.”

“Meat-stuffed mushroom with a summer sand tea, comin’ right up.” As Owen moved to the kitchen, Qi took a seat at the bar, two seats down from Justice, who raised an eyebrow in greeting as he approached.

“Evenin’, Director. Holdin’ up okay?”

“I am indeed ‘holding up’,” Qi said in a way that he hoped seemed casual. “Thank you for the concern.”

Justice nodded thoughtfully as he took a sip of his yakmel milk. “‘Course. Just makin’ sure.” His awkward manner was of no surprise to Qi. Everyone seemed to be acting cautiously around him today. Everyone knew what day it was.

Justice drained the last of his milk and stood up, leaving a couple gols on the counter. “Well, I gotta get back on patrol. You need to talk, you can find me anytime. Unsuur too, but…y’know.” With a stiff nod, he left the saloon.

The kitchen door swung open and Owen came out, carrying his food. Qi fished around in his pockets for the payment.

Owen just held up a hand. “On the house,” he said, a sad glimmer in his eyes.

“Oh… Oh.” Qi had no idea how to respond, so he just picked up the fork and started digging in. Owen silently went back to cleaning up the bar, opting to leave Qi alone. He knew his customers well. Qi never liked conversing with anyone while he was eating on a normal day. And today…

“Oh, there you are, Qi hun.” Qi glanced over his shoulder to see Vivi strolling in. “You didn’t come for dinner tonight! We all sat there for 15 minutes all worried!”

“Ah. Vivi. Apologies. I’d completely forgotten. I’m a bit absentminded today, you see…”

Vivi’s face fell. “Of course, child. Don’t you worry ‘bout it. I’ll wrap it up and drop it off at your research center so you can have it tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” he said blandly, eyes unfocused.

He was brought back down to Earth with Vivi’s gentle hands on his shoulders. “Take a deep breath, hun.” Qi closed his eyes, slowly drawing air in…and out. “That’s it.”

In…and out.

In…and out.

The fog in his head cleared a little bit. He opened his eyes to see Vivi’s sad smile. Tears pooled in her eyes.

“Tell them…that we all miss them…so much,” she whispered.

“...I will.”

------------

Qi left the saloon into the darkened street. Street lights started blinking on around him, but he turned and headed away from the lights, out towards the workshop. The last orange tinges of the sunset disappeared behind the mountains in the distance, stars already peeking out of the newly-dark sky. Qi kept his eyes straight ahead. He wouldn’t look up. Not yet.

He opened the door to the house and went to the bedroom, opening up the closet. Rolled into a neat little bundle and tucked safely in a corner was their stargazing blanket. He picked it up, dusting off some of the sand that was perpetually stuck in its folds. He took one last steadying breath. He was ready.

Qi walked through the barren streets towards the back of town. The cold night air made him shiver, and he clutched the rolled-up blanket to his chest. Finally, he stood before the graveyard gate. He opened it carefully, trying not to make it squeak. He padded silently towards their headstone. “Hello, starlight…” he murmured as he crouched down to brush the sand off the carved stone, his thumb tracing along the epithet.

Sandrock’s shining star.

Sandrock’s spirit lies with them, and their spirit lies with Sandrock.

He spread the blanket out on the sand beside the headstone and laid down. “I’m doing alright. I just submitted another paper to Vega 5’s astronomy journal. Bound to be accepted, of course. A review on all the astronomical relic discoveries we’ve made in Sandrock so far. And of course, I gave you credit where it was due.”

…

“Mi-an has been helping me build new components for the Mobile Suit. Recently I’ve managed to improve its mobility on soft sand by almost 200% by adding some retractable treaded wheels.”

…

“Sleepyhead came back a few weeks ago for the Portia road project. You should’ve seen his face when the Mobile Suit was in action! He’s off to Portia now, for their part of the project.”

…

“Yes, yes, don’t worry, I’m still getting a responsible amount of sleep every night. Regular full meals, too. Vivi would never let me live it down if I didn’t.”

…

“Elsie says the animals are well. She told me to tell you that, erm, ‘Doodles says hi’. The idea that a yakmel could say anything is ludicrous, but I wasn’t about to waste time arguing about it.”

…

“Tonight the Perseids are at their peak. Oh!” He pointed to a brilliant shooting star that lit up his vision. “Magnificent, isn’t it? It’s a debris cloud from the Swift-Tuttle comet that Earth happens to pass through every summer.”

…

…

“I still miss you. I miss you terribly.”

…

“Sometimes it still hurts to look up at the night sky like this… Just another reminder of…”

…

“B-but…I think I am getting better. Hugo and his family have practically taken me in as one of their own. They know what it’s like…”

…

“They all miss you too. You were practically a part of them as much as I am now.”

…

“I never realized how nice it feels to have someone care for me.”

…

“Still…it never feels the same as you.”

…

…

His next words caught in his throat. He tensed, trying to force them out. They sat stubbornly on the tip of his tongue.

I love you, he thought. He felt tears prick at his eyes as he struggled to say it aloud.

He’d always found it hard to say it. Like he’d spontaneously combust the instant the words left his mouth. So he’d say it in every way but his voice. An “I love you” pressed into their skin whenever they touched. An “I love you” hidden behind his signature at the bottom of every diagram he gave them. An “I love you” in every drop of oil and every tightened bolt when he repaired their machines. An “I love you” steeped in every cup of tea.

An “I love you” whispered into the open air beside their grave, long after they could ever hear him.

…

The stars slowly turned over his head. He recognized things that he had told the builder about before on this very blanket: stars, asterisms, planets, satellites. They would always listen with rapt attention as he spilled everything he knew. Sometimes, they knew a story about something he would point out. Old myths, sometimes passed down from even before the Age of Corruption. Normally, he wouldn’t entertain such nonsensical and unscientific accounts of the stars. Stories of people and animals and allsorts getting turned into asterisms? Ridiculous. But the builder’s storytelling always managed to…enchant him somehow. And even without the builder’s narration, he had to admit that it was a beautiful sentiment. Being enshrined forever in the sky, admired for all eternity.

A small part of him, deep within his heart of hearts, imagined his builder up there. Winking at him from thousands of light years away, a quiet, persistent presence in the sky.

Always bright, always beautiful, always there.

His dearest starlight.

------------

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[delicatear]

chapter one - an unexpected encounter

synopsis of chapter. a routinely mundane morning becomes less mundane…

characters. suna rintarou, miya atsumu, miya osamu, tetsorou kuroo

warnings. none content wise, but may contain potential grammatical errors.

word count. 1.1k

note. i hope you all enjoy this series as much as I’ll enjoy writing it!

It’s been the same mundane routine everyday since you were a child. Monday to Friday were strictly dedicated to academics and extracurriculars, Saturdays were for tutoring, and Sundays were reserved for church.

At first, it was a routine that was heavily enforced by your mother to ensure that you would never stray away from her ideology of a perfect daughter. However, as you grew older, it was something that you had gotten used to as it was simply the way your mother chose to raise you.

Though you didn’t realize it at first, your ‘perfect daughter’ charade gave your mother a desirable public facade to uphold—something that eventually became your burden to carry somehow.

Even now at the age of seventeen, while other kids your age were drinking and partying, you never questioned your mother’s parenting ways. You accepted a long time ago that this was your norm.

—

Fixing your plaid skirt for the fifth time within the last ten minutes, you hear your mother call your name as she barges straight into your room.

“Ever heard of knocking?” You mutter, causing her to raise her brow. She heard that, shit.

“Why, hm?” She gives you a look, “are you hiding something? Don’t make me regret getting you that god forsaken mobile device.”

You sigh, looking into the mirror once more. “Yes, ma’am.” She hums in response, looking down at her watch. “You look fine, so let’s get a move on it.”

She marches out of the room and your eyes glance over to your book bag that is resting neatly on your wooden desk. You reach your hand into the pocket of your skirt—where a small tube of cherry-flavoured lip gloss was hidden away from your mother’s prying eyes—and pull it out before quickly stuffing it into your book bag and exiting your room.

—

The car ride to school was boring as usual. Unlike most other people, your mother hated the radio. She thought most of the songs were either inappropriate or just plain bad (which she wasn’t wrong about) so car rides were mostly silent with the occasional utterance of words back and forth between the two of you.

You were always thankful that the rides to school were no more than 15 minutes. Slipping out of the car, you fix your skirt once more before turning to your mother who had a not so pleased look on her face. Following her gaze, you were met by a group of 3 boys slumped on the staircase of the main building.

It didn’t take long before you heard your mother’s heels clicking loudly (and quickly) against the pavement.

“This is strictly private property,” your mother crosses her arms, “meaning that if you do not attend this institution, I hold the right to have you arrested for trespassing.”

The 3 boys raise their arms in defence, the blonde one speaking up. “calm yer horses ma’am, we’ll leave.”

Your mother shakes her head disapprovingly before clicking her tongue and turning on her heels to walk away. “Y/N, inside the school, now.”

You glance at the 3 boys one last time, catching a glimpse of chartreuse eyes that were already fixated on you. you can’t help but notice the cigarette dangling from his lips and instinctively scrunch your nose, to which, earns a chuckle from the mysterious boy.

With a last devilish grin gracing his face, he turns and leaves with his friends, leaving you alone on the courtyard to scrutinize the last few minutes.

—

“Those 3 boys from earlier,” your mother starts, “those are the kind of people that you see end up on the streets.”

“You shouldn’t say that about other people, mom,” you sigh and she pinches the bridge of her nose.

“Just listen to me, Y/N. Don’t make friends with people like them, okay? We wouldn’t want your intelligence to go to waste.”

“Understood,” you reply, “now can I go to my locker before I’m late for first period?”

Your mother nods and you immediately turn to leave her unnecessarily spacious workspace.

You weren’t sure what was worse—the fact that your mother was the headmistress of the prestigious high school she forced you to attend or the fact that people labelled you as the ‘nerdy outcast’ who’s ‘mommy’ ruled the school. Whichever the case, you didn’t let it bother you too much.

You sigh in relief when you see your best friend walking towards you. “Hey, Y/N,” he greets, handing you a brown lunch bag which you knew contained your favourite onigiri from a small shop near his house.

You smile, “you always know how to make my day, Kuroo.”

He chuckles, “what are best friends for?”

Kuroo was the only friend that your mother approved of. Seeing as he was the son of a dear friend, naturally, you two were close growing up. Like you, he dedicated most of his time to academics and extracurriculars. If he wasn’t nose deep in the unreasonable amount of homework we received, his remaining time was allocated to volleyball.

“How’s volleyball going?” You ask, and Kuroo shrugs. “Coach has been working us to the bone, says that we’re set to face some pretty tough teams at Nationals.”

You nod, “So I’ve heard… but I know that you and the other boys will do great regardless.” Kuroo flashes you a smile and a thumbs up before pulling his phone out of his jacket pocket.

“I did some research already,” he holds his phone up for you to see, “it seems like Inarizaki High from the Hyōgo prefecture could be one of our biggest competitors aside from Karasuno and Fukorodani.”

You glance at the screen and catch a glimpse of a guy with cheaply dyed blonde hair. Looking more closely, you recognize that he was one of the boys from this morning. What a coincidence.

Almost as if Kuroo read your mind, he speaks up again, “the dude with the blonde hair is their setter, Miya Atsumu, apparently he’s got a reputation for being one of the best in all of Japan.”

You hum and Kuroo continues, “him and his twin brother, Osamu, are a force to reckon with on court.”

Glancing at the photo once more, you notice a boy with messy black hair situated between the twins. You instantly recognize that he was the third member of the trio from this morning—the one with the chartreuse eyes and devilish grin.

“Who’s the dude in between the twins?” You ask.

“I think that’s the middle blocker,” Kuroo scratches his head. “Suna Rintarou, I believe his name was.”

Before you could reply, the bell rings.

“I gotta run to class, I’ll see you at lunch!” Kuroo bids his farewell and disappears down the hallway.

You can’t help but replay the events from earlier. What were they even doing here in the first place?

For whatever reason, you decide that it didn’t matter anyways because you would most likely never have an encounter with them ever again.

or so you think.

links.

masterlist || next

[livingforthewhump]

Kind of went off with this one lol

—

“Now, just what am I going to do with you?” Villain circled the bound Hero mockingly, examining their taut muscles beneath the rope.

“You could let me go,” Hero suggested, trying to calm their erratic pulse. “After all, I thought you always said that the fun was in the chase.”

Villain chuckled, stopping in front of them and tilting their chin up. Hero was on their knees, such a vulnerable position, and they wanted to take full advantage of it. “Oh, Hero, you say that as if I chased you for no reason other than the thrill of it. Do you really believe that you’re not worth my full attention?”

Hero swallowed, brow creasing underneath their mask. “I don’t understand.”

“You’re glorious, darling,” Villain gripped their chin tighter, soaking in their fear and how desperately they tried to hide it. “I wanted you all to myself.”

“Unfortunately for you,” Hero said, “I’m going to escape.”

Villain’s fingers traced Hero’s jaw, falling down to finger the strong ropes holding them. “No, Hero, you’re not.” They allowed their fingers to linger for just a moment longer before stepping away. “Now, shall we begin?”

“Begin what?” Hero bit out, jaw clenched.

“Why, Hero,” Villain said, a smile growing on their face. “A discovery of you. I want to know all you are, everything that goes on in that brilliant mind of yours. We’ll start with your face, hm? Who is this miracle underneath the mask?”

Hero, frozen in horror and inexplicably blushing, jerked away. “No!”

Villain tsked, wrapping their fingers around their jaw and dragging their head forward again. “Don’t worry, your secret will be safe with me. I only want to get properly acquainted.”

Their fingers began working at Hero’s mask, slowly. Gently.

Hero couldn’t bear it. “Wait, please! You can hurt me, torture me, whatever you want, just please don’t take my mask off.”

“Sensitive, are we?” Villain asked softly, pausing. “Whenever did you get the impression that I wanted to hurt you?”

Hero’s cheeks burned. “Maybe when you tied me up with rope and took me to a secluded location? Or all of the times we’ve battled in the past months?”

Villain tilted their head, calculating, and went back to taking off Hero's mask without responding.

“Please,” Hero jerked away again. Villain sighed and gestured for them to speak. Hero wracked their brain for something that might get through to them, readopting their usual casual persona. “This isn’t fair. You said you want to get acquainted, but you’re leaving your mask on, love.”

Villain chuckled softly. “I know you well enough to see past that act, but very well. I’ll humor you.”

Without leaving Hero time to comprehend their answer, Villain slipped their mask off and threw Hero a wink. Hero gaped. It was that easy?

“Your turn, now.” Villain slid Hero’s mask off equally quickly so that they didn’t even have time to turn their face away. Now Villian gripped Hero’s chin, eyes roving their exposed face. Their breath caught at the direct way Villain was looking at them. Then Villain flashed a smile. “Now see? You have absolutely no reason to hide like that, gorgeous. I could do without that stricken expression on your face, but it is rather adorable.”

Hero immediately snapped their mouth shut, resuming a glare- or something close to one.

Villain sighed through a smile. “Must we go through this again? I’m not going to hurt you. If I had any reason to believe you wouldn’t run as soon as I let you out, I would cut those ropes too.��� They paused, reconsidering. “Well, not cut them as they were rather expensive. Not everyday you can find something strong enough to hold a superhero.”

“What is the point of all of this?” Hero demanded.

“The point, dear Hero?” Villain knelt in front of them, brushing hair back from their face. “I thought you could use a break.”

“And the real reason?”

Villain’s eyes dropped to their lips for half a second then fell to Hero’s collar as an apparently suitable distraction. “What fabric is this?” They asked mildly, running their fingers over it. “Feels a bit stiff to make a suit out of it.”

Hero was staring at the unmistakable blush on Villain’s cheeks. Were they… flirting? “It works well as armor while still allowing me mobility,” Hero answered.

Villain hummed, tugging back on it to expose more of Hero’s neck. Then Villain’s jaw flexed, face hardening, and it took Hero a second to realize what was wrong.

“Where did you get this?” They asked all too casually, finger sliding along the scar that hung across their throat.

Hero’s lips parted as they searched for an answer.

Villain unsheathed a knife, bringing it slowly to Hero’s throat then cutting down their suit, slicing the ropes away as well in the process. Hero was now free to curl in on themselves, to run, but for some reason they couldn’t.

Villain’s deft eyes took in the scars that littered Hero’s body, lots very clearly intentional. “Seems like somebody’s already had some fun with you,” Villain said, tracing their finger in the groove of a scar that ran along Hero’s abdomen. “Who?” Their voice was deceptively casual, but Hero knew better.

“Stop it,” Hero hissed, shoving them away. “Why do you care? I’m sure I got some of these from you, with all the fights we’ve had.”

Villain paused, regarding them curiously. “Oh? Care to tell me which ones?”

Hero rolled their eyes as though it were obvious, then started to think about it and found themselves at a loss for an answer.

“Ah,” Villain said, cupping their cheek. “You see, somebody has hurt you so much that you never noticed I’ve never hurt you once. Now- who? Who did this to you?”

Hero looked up into their eyes, shining with rage and protectiveness, and couldn’t help but wonder when this had happened. Villain had always tried to talk to them, but they never let them get more than a few words in. And really, they had no reason to trust Villain now, so why did they?

“Superhero,” Hero breathed, eyes falling to the floor.

Villain nodded, once. “I’ll help you.”

“Help me what?” Hero asked, suddenly aware of their vulnerability, kneeling on the floor, the top of their costume in tatters around them along with the rope, their arms limp at their sides and Villain still holding their face.

“I’ll help you make them pay, make sure they can’t do this ever again. Would you like that?”

Hero felt like they were being seen for the first time, like all their life they had been invisible and somehow, somebody noticed them. “I would like that very much.”

Villain retracted their hand. “We can make plans over dinner.” They winked again, moving to leave the room. “I’ll bring you something to wear. Your favorite flowers are apricot carnations, right?”

The door closed behind them, leaving Hero very alone.

“Yes, they are,” they said softly to the empty room.

—

Tag list (message me if you want to be added or removed): @castielamigos-whump-side-blog @twistedcaretaker @lonesome--hunter @poppys-writing @endless-whump @jkoo7jkoo5-baby-susan @mostlytryingtostayalive @shadowylemon @cherryblossomskye @utopian819 @whumpkitty also hope I’m okay tagging @written-to-death and @villain-enthusiast cause I thought of y’all while writing this <3

[tarosin]

The great adventures of y/n tubbo jack niki and george

requested:yes/no

pairing: platonic y/n,tubbo,jack,niki and george

summary: minecraft cave in real life

content warning: cursing

an: the word love is used a couple times but this is all platonic <3 i still don’t know how to add read more on mobile i am sorry about that, part 3 to great adventures series

it was around 4 am when the heat became a problem, unable to sleep you grabbed your phone and decided to facetime ranboo just as he was ending stream

“hey boo...you look like you’ve seen a ghost what the fuck were you doing”

“fnaf vr”

“I’m sure it’s not that bad you’re being dramatic”

“okay we shall see how you like it when I make you play it when I’m in the UK”

“okay bet I’ll add it to our list of videos and stream ideas anyway I can't sleep it’s too hot and I’m so confused as to why Tommy keeps asking me if I like and I quote being high”

“tubbo was telling me about that he keeps teasing him about planes you never know maybe you’re all going on an international adventure... or being pushed out a plane”

“doubt it there’s no way Tommy would pull something as crazy as jumping out a plane it would be pretty cool, I was thinking about doing it for my birthday”

“with a parachute? I hope”

“eh with or without, either way, is fine for me”

an hour passed you and ranboo sat talking about what was happening tomorrow and how you wished he was going to be there with you, after all, you knew how it felt to be watching people you care about making plans and doing things without you.

“didn’t you say you were going to a cave tomorrow? Minecraft in real life, nice”

“I’m begging please touch grass”

“I’ve already done that it made me want to become an engineer now get some rest y/n you’ll be getting up in a few hours, I’ll call you tomorrow goodnight”

“see you tomorrow I love you”

*y/n has ended the call*

•••

when you woke up at 9 you couldn’t shake off the awful feeling you had, today just didn’t feel like a good day you needed some time to yourself to recharge however you knew you’d be okay later on

Niki: good morning y/n!! would you like us to pick you up now or do you need a bit longer

y/n: don’t worry about it I’ll make my own way!! :]

Niki: okay see you soon!!

George: we will pick you up in an hour and a bit

Tommy: wait what are you guys doing

tubbo: following jack and Niki around

y/n: what he said

Tommy: have fun then guys without me

y/n: don’t you have work to do big guy

Tommy: don’t you have to get ready

y/n: leave me alone

•••

soon enough you saw jacks car pull up outside so you grabbed your bag from the other day as it still had everything you needed except this time you decided to bring along a mini first aid kit as you knew your clumsiness and a cave wouldn’t mix well. now you were fully awake you couldn’t wait to go explore the caves, you sat next to Niki who decided to play with your hair and spent half of the journey on a call with an unhappy Tommy who was in college waiting to go to lesson the other half of the journey was spent singing along to the radio

•••

jack started recording and turned around to see you Niki and tubbo leaning over looking down at the floor

“oh hi jack” you waved at the camera “so what’s the plan of action”

“we’re going up there”

you loved heights so hearing that you were going to go on a cable car made you pretty excited once you all got into the car you and George tried opening all the windows whilst tubbo complained

“stop trying to open things”

“it’s a window”

“scared you’re going to get pushed over the edge hmm? scared you’ll have to free fall? it’s not that high you'd probably survive the fall, it’s not like I'm trying to open the door on a plane”

“y/n I mean this in the nicest way possible I’m never going on a plane with you”

tubbo laughed and joined the conversation “we shall see about that”

you tilted your head to the side and blinked a few times trying to process what he just said

“heh?”

“tubbo if we fell we would die right”

“you know jack I've done a lot in my life”

you took the phone from jack and began filming him and George

“why is it slowing down”

“we’re going to die”

“I didn’t bring enough food”

you sat laughing at your friends' reaction before explaining that it’s slowing down for a reason

“they’re slowing it down so you can jump out, what I didn’t tell you is there’s actually a parachute underneath where you’re sat, good luck gamers”

“We could probably climb out the window”

“NO, where do we go”

you just sat shaking your head laughing whilst your friends sat screaming about it stopping

“y/n we’re going to die”

“oh no.. let me just text ranboo to start planning our funerals”

eventually, the cable car began moving just very slow you then ended the recording after jack made jokes about it moving as fast as a George video comes out, you all then spent the rest of the time enjoying everyone’s company.

•••

tubbo noticed a park and ran to the ropes giving you time to update your community a stream will be happening later on

y/n has tweeted: I am outside, stream with ranboo when we get home :]

you laughed as you posted that as all the comments started rolling in questioning if ranboo had come to the UK. you walked back to your group and wrapped your arms around jack and Niki making them both jump out of shock

“Sorry about that ahah now if you don’t mind I want to play in the park”

they laughed as you ran to the rope trying to swing without falling that’s when you gave up and started climbing the net close to Niki.

“that’s not a swing George”

jack ran towards them “I’m getting on the swing with George”

Niki laughed as she recorded what was happening in front of her, she looked to her left expecting to see you stood next to her however she heard you laugh and run towards your friends

“I’m getting on the swing with tubbo”

a few moments later George pointed out a castle and tubbo mentioned the ‘wet rocks’ you just stood with your arm around Niki's shoulders enjoying the view of the castle that was until a dog caught your attention and you walked off to go ask if you could pet it

“Niki where’s y/n they were with you last”

“with the dog”

“tubbo when they come back just follow the path towards the castle, me and Niki are going to record”

“got it, boss man”

•••

after a few minutes, you walked back to tubbo and George realising jack and Niki weren’t there you tilted your head shrugged then sat next to tubbo on the swings as George began recording

“jack and Niki have left us but we’re having fun on the swings..”

“maybe we’ll lick some rocks”

“YEAH”

•••

“if we’re quiet we can sneak up on them”

the three of you ran down the path towards the start of the castle steps looking at the cameras that allowed you to see the top of the castle

“there they are”

“they’re vlogging”

“We can just see them through the castle cameras they have no idea we can see them”

you stood leaning against George until you all noticed they were about to make their way back down the steps so all ran off to hide

“there they go”

the three of you ran back down the path ignoring the stares from strangers and comments about how your hair was obnoxiously bright, the three of you scared the pair who were looking for you all

“I’ve never been less displeased to see George”

the five of you continued walking around after joking about the green water and questioning George on how he could tell what colour it was

“I’m a genius”

a few fans can over and took photos with you all and George began questioning them

“George you’re really self-promoting right now”

“George I am disappointed in you”

•••

“dude it’s boiling”

“ice cream?”

the five of you stood inline

“I’m dying to tubbo”

“I’m not going to ask questions, I love how you just accepted defeat”

“you’re next y/n” tubbo let go of George and began walking towards you

“FUCK OFF NO” you ran behind George and used him as a shield

“y/n George isn’t going to protect you”

“I will y/n don't worry tubbo fuck off” the three of you stood laughing not realising jack was walking towards you all with the ice cream

“thank you”

“you’re welcome how’s the ice cream”

“great thank you”

you laughed at jack who somehow managed to get ice cream on his nose

•••

you and tubbo noticed a wishing well and walked over to it

“wanna make a wish”

“yeah but we have no money”

you both looked at each other then at jack them looked back at each other and nodded

“what are you two doing”

“We wanna make a wish”

“come on give me your money”

everyone stood laughing at you and tubbo determined to make a wish whilst jack argued he had no money however tubbo noticed a £20 note and grabbed it

“y/n quick make a wish”

the pair of you held the note and then dropped it into the well

“yay!!”

“We made a wish”

the pair of you walked off whilst jack stood telling you both how he can’t believe you and the pair of you had stolen over £100 from him today making you both laugh

“tell me the wish”

“We can’t or it won’t come true”

•••

“right cave time”

“we’re going to die”

“well thanks for that George”

you stood next to tubbo trying to ignore your friends as they made comments about there being mobs like creepers in the cave

“you two really need to go outside more”

everything was going well for you until the worker said to everyone

“I think we do have some kids here who are doing a vlog”

you could feel your cheeks heating up from embarrassment although you loved your job you still weren’t used to people pointing it out

•••

“This cave has a door”

“naturally formed door”

“y/n tubbo were in the caves, where are the diamonds”

you pointed in a random direction then continued walking whilst tubbo kneeled examining the rock claiming there were diamonds, as you all kept walking you had to put up with tubbo jack and George making Minecraft jokes whilst Niki followed behind them staying rather quiet, everyone’s as focusing on the cave not saying much till George spoke up

“it’s turned into a horror movie”

“why’s the cave so low why can’t they just dig up”

“y/n did you really just ask that”

“yes I did my neck hurts from ducking under the rock”

“so sorry to hear that”

“thank you for your concern George”

“I’m not concerned”

“oh-“

the tour continued and you were genuinely having a good time, you found all the different rocks and information given to you by the worker fascinating and slowly stopped listening to what your friends were saying behind you

“so this little tunnel up here is where they would send the kids”

“off you go tubbo and y/n”

“please no”

you all continued for a while till you were told you were going in the dark despite the fact you were excited you were also very afraid of the dark so stood closer to tubbo who instantly noticed and pulled you into a side hug

“we’re going dark”

“oh wow that is the only source of light”

a minute or so later they turned on some softly coloured led lights so you could all look at the geode

“holy shit that’s beautiful”

“I thought a geode was a small animal”

“that’s a pokemon dude”

you were all given time to go for a wander however rather than walking with the others you decided to stay with the geode and started a group call with ranboo and Tommy

“hi guys can’t stay long break is almost over”

“that’s okay Tommy but look at this giant fucking rock”

you flipped the camera so they could see and went around showing them parts of the cave

“holy shit”

“looks great y/n”

“cool right I have to go the worker wants us to get ready to leave see you all soon”

“wait y/n one last question, how are you with heights”

“oooh I’m great I love them we went in a cable car earlier”

“awesome see you all later”

*Tommy left the call*

“I’ll call you when I get home boo I’ll see you soon!!”

“bye y/n stay safe”

*ranboo has left the call*

*y/n has left the call*

as you all left the cave you and tubbo noticed two rocks and went to pick them up

“hey look our wish came true”

“yeah we wished for a weird looking rock when we left the cave”

“you paid £20 for a rock”

“yes”

a few minutes later you and tubbo just started walking away only to be later followed by everyone else

“where are you going”

•••

you all got the cable car back at this point you were exhausted you used all your energy running around the cave determined to show Tommy and ranboo everything

“What did you all think of the cave”

“loved it”

“you lost your rock tubbo?”

tubbo pulled out the rock and smiled at jack

“no, I didn’t”

“but you chucked it”

“told you we wished for a magic rock”

jack finished the recording and you all just sat talking about your day and any future plans

•••

the journey back home was extremely quiet you and tubbo sat next to each other, you fell asleep with your head resting on his shoulder, Niki sat in the front with jack quietly singing along to the radio and George and tubbo quietly spoke to each other trying not to wake you up.

when you finally got home you woke up on your couch confused as to how you got there it was only when you checked your phone you got the answer

Niki: you looked exhausted we didn’t want to wake you, hope you don’t mind. your keys are on the table next to your bag!! see you soon it was lovely meeting you <3

you decided to reply thanking your friends for today.

•••

*incoming call: ranboo*

you accepted the call

“hey y/n tell me all about your day whilst you get ready to stream I'm already set up”

“oh they’re gonna be so annoyed I've joined in with making jokes about you being in the UK anyway so my day was pretty good but I did end up asleep on my couch and had no idea how I got there”

“heh?”

“let me explain”

[taechaos]

Can we have some jealous/sweet smut with textbook love couple?🥲 like I guess OC was wearing an outfit that was a little short and some guy was checking her out and trying to get at her but she didn’t even realize it and Jungkook gets mad and you know😏

this really went off the fucking rails 😷

"I don't see the point in you coming, we just go there to get high."

"Maybe she wants to try it," Taehyung shrugs before looking up from his phone with a mischievous grin. "What if she's secretly a freak–"

"I'm not, I just–" you sigh, reluctant to reveal your intentions behind wanting to tag along with Jungkook to a frat party. His reason is clear: his body is craving another drug trip. Yours is unknown to them, and you purse your lips where you stand uncomfortably in the student lounge. Why would such a motivated student go out on a school night to get influenced? Oh, no reason, just want to damage my organs because YOLO, right? "I want to spend time with you," you simply reason to your unwilling boyfriend.

Jungkook clicks his tongue, an indication of an incoming refusal, "It's a crackhouse with live softcore porn, and I know for a fact you'd hate it there. Remember last time?"

The issue is that you do remember last time, and also the time that you weren't there. Much like a fairytale, it ended happily both times, but the beginnings were rocky—and you didn't want to miss out on that chapter before jumping to the end. It ruins the tale.

"It's okay sugar tits, I give you permission," Taehyung says while playing a mobile game with his tongue sticking out, unaware of the stares he's getting in response.

"The fuck did you just call her?"

"I'm not asking for permission," you roll your eyes and put your hands on your hips to assert the tiniest bit of dominance on Jungkook who you hover over. The two men are relaxed in their seats while you're tense from knowing you're going to have to rebel against Jungkook. He isn't going to give in. "I will come."

"No, no you won't," is his plain and casual command. You send him a subtle glare but he merely raises a brow, as if challenging you to retaliate.

"You're not her dad, dude. If she wants to come, she will," his friend chimes in defensively.

"Thank you," you point at him with wide eyes.

"First of all, you're not even a part of this conversation," he tells Taehyung. "Secondly, I'm looking out for you as your boyfriend," he gives you a pointed look. "Thirdly, not her dad? Wouldn't you beg to differ." The suggestive hint makes your face flush in embarrassment, and his wink worsens it.

"Excuse–"

"You told me not to tell him!" The discussion ends when you march out of the lounge to cool off your heated skin along with your high nerves. This relationship did begin when you didn't take no for an answer, so what's the harm in doing it again?

—————

The night you lost your virginity, it was autumn and easy to figure out what to wear for a party: warm and cozy with some charming color. It's spring now, and a little more difficult to decide on what to wear without looking like a "high school girl" as Jungkook often describes your outfits.

Your roommate is more cultured in that field, and was kind enough to lend you her help.

Soyeon racks her eyes over your closet with a hand over her chin, elbow crossing her stomach as leverage for her other arm. Nothing is exactly screaming out sexy to her, and unless it's a cosplay gathering, your wardrobe needs more diversity; dressing shirts, skater skirts and knee highs are out of the question.

You wait to hear her thoughts while shifting in your seat on your bed until she quietly giggles. "And I thought I was conservative." She cranes her neck to you, not moving from her position depending on your answer, "Do you want to borrow my clothes instead? They're more... suitable?"

You nod. "Sure. I mean— if you don't mind."

You trust your friend to take care of the clothing portion, and it's with a few cringing "ehhh"s and "mmm"s that you are satisfied with the outcome of this minor quest.

A thin black turtleneck with unnecessarily long sleeves cover your knuckles like sweater paws, and the fabric hugs your torso tightly but ends just below your belly button. Soyeon found a solution to your discomfort with the slight exposure of your stomach by matching it with high waisted denim shorts and nude pantyhose. It's chilly at night, so it's the perfect outfit: doesn't stand out and fits in just right. You don't look like a high school girl nor a nun.

You kept your only concern to yourself because it's not much of a big deal, but it bothers you that the denim shorts don't reach your knees. By your standards, it's a little... inappropriate, but your roommate assures you that it's a common choice in this occasion. You let it slide.

—————

Your worries of being too early faded the moment you stood before the frat house that boomed with music and flashed with violet. You don't know the time code for parties, but you must be late considering the crowd inside. People are chattering loudly when you squirm past them, but there's enough space in the living room for you to breathe. No softcore porn or crack yet. Not many are dancing either. It seems all good here.

However, the search must go on because Jungkook is nowhere to be found in the living room. You hear deep howls from the kitchen and it piques your attention, prompting you to look there next. You can only hope Jungkook's not high yet, or has a girl on his lap.

When you walk in, the kitchen that is remarkably smaller than the living room is filled with men taking shots from the center counter, and Jungkook leaning against the other counter surrounding the walls with a joint in his hand. You stand still in the doorway, suddenly nervous of his reaction, but relieved that he's alone nonetheless.

He inhales a deep breath and the small smile on his face falters when his redshot eyes drag themselves onto you. He stands straight once you lock gazes, and you grin at him before he shuts his eyes and clenches his jaw. You unconfidently strut over to him, reaching his side in only a few seconds as he glares at you.

Only a syllable comes out of his mouth before his attention diverts from you to another guy nearby in a flash. "Hey, eyes off," he calmly demands the man behind you. You glance at him when he raises his hands before looking elsewhere. You presume that's sign language for backing off, and your shoulder blades move awkwardly at the guess of what he might've been looking at. "What the hell are you doing here?" he brings your focus back onto him.

"I wanted to check up on you," you lean into him to not yell out your words.

"Check up on me?" He's incredulous. "Do you realize where you are? You shouldn't be here."

The moment is interrupted when Namjoon and Taehyung enter the scene, and you stop gnawing on your inner cheek. You don't have any answers you want to tell him, and your muscles relax when Jungkook's friends notice you.

"Oh shit," Taehyung smiles widely, "you're actually here." He appears to be sober and you smile back at him. Namjoon on the other hand, is as high as a kite as he brings you into a light hug. Your eyes widen and you awkwardly pat his back, fixated on his dazed expression.

"I haven't seen you in so long," he says as he ruffles your hair. Jungkook slaps a hand over his face at the interaction and drags the skin with his fingers. "How have you been? Do you want a molly?"

"Dude," your boyfriend intervenes, annoyed. "Why are you back here?"

"Alcohol." Namjoon disappears behind you to search the fridge and cabinets and you look at Taehyung again. He's drinking in your awkward stance as he licks his lips while Jungkook takes another drag from his joint.

"Girl, you are fucked," he says when his eyes trail back to yours with a snort. "You came here in those clothes, when you have a boyfriend? Jungkookie, I have some bad news for you. Your cock isn't even satisfactor–"

"Seriously though," Jungkook tells you with furrowed brows, "why are you here? I told you not to come." His reaction is influenced by the weed, not so mad as he is confused by your rebellion without reason—you must have a cause for waltzing in here, especially after his warning.

You hum in discomfort and shift your weight onto your other foot. "I already told you..."

"Don't give me that bullshit–"

A yelp cuts off his words when you jolt forward from a slap to your bottom. It wasn't a hard hit, but the surprise factor has you throwing yourself on Jungkook. Taehyung's jaw drops while your boyfriend barely reacts.

"If that isn't the cutest ass I've ever seen," the culprit chuckles without taking his eyes off your butt. He's almost slurring his words, and his lopsided grin doesn't seem intentional; he must feel too numb to form a full smile. You watch him in disbelief much like Taehyung. "You got any coke?"

"She's taken, man–" he takes on the peacemaker role, but it's futile when Jungkook gently removes your arm from his chest and walks forward to the stumbling man.

"Oh, my ba–" his face scrunches in confusion when his cheeks are grabbed and squished, leaving his mouth gaping. You peek from above Jungkook's shoulder to see him raising his joint before stubbing the burning tip onto the man's tongue. A scream resounds in the overcrowded room when it makes contact, and you fall back into Taehyung's arms while the deafeningly loud music tries to drown out the pained sounds. It's barbaric.

"Ah, shit," he pushes you to the side and pulls back Jungkook, who's still abnormally calm. The whole situation feels surreal, and it seems as if no one realizes this isn't a dream.

The man stops struggling against Jungkook's hold when he's released and falls to the ground, crawling back while sucking his teeth. He's whimpering and afraid. "I didn't know," he speaks with a lisp, pathetically begging, "I apologized! I-I'm sorry!"

You cautiously take a few steps back, almost like you're trying to flee the scene, but it just seems like a good idea to avoid Jungkook's temper right now. Just as you're about to turn around and sprint, you're held back by a hand on your shoulder. No words are exchanged when you're dragged away, a bruising grip on your forearm as you stumble out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

"Some fucking deja vu, huh?" your boyfriend fumes, basically shouting out his words without glancing at you to notice your struggles to keep up with his pace.

Lunatic Jungkook: Unlocked.

You trust sober Jungkook to not hurt you when he's angry, but after seeing him commit such a painful act, it's more than reasonable why you're currently terrified of him while he's high. To think you were so comfortable with him earlier because he's high. His calmness makes him all the more unpredictable, and you're unnerved when he shoves you inside a random bedroom. Some reversed deja vu.

"I'm going to ask you again: why the fuck did you come here?" The only attack is with his eyes that send daggers at you, but you keep your guard up in fear of what he'll do. You have to tread lightly.

"I was worried what would happen if I wasn't here with you." Honesty is your only approach in this instance because when he's glaring at you like that, it conveys that he doesn't want to hear any more of your ludicrous excuses.

He rolls his hand, gesturing you to continue. You're nervously forcing out your words, "I didn't, um... know how you would act around other women while you're on drugs when I'm not around." When his face falls into monotone, you defend yourself, still tense, "Last time, you kissed Soyeon and before that, another girl! I-I had my reasons..." Your voice grows smaller, just like how you feel under his gaze. Your eyes flicker to your shoes.

"And those shorts?"

At your silence, he takes a few steps towards you and leans into your face, slightly bending to level with your height. He tugs on the hem of your shorts harshly, emitting a flinch from you. You don't return his stare. "What the fuck are these? You're stupid enough to come here, but coming here in these shorts? Are you okay?" He taps your cheek, encouraging you to look up at him, but it's both humiliating and intimidating. "I know you're not a slut, baby, but why are you so adamant on acting like one?"

"I wanted to fit in," is your weak defence in a mumble, gaze still downcast. You shouldn't feel so ashamed.

"No, you told me you wanted to make sure I wasn't cheating," he counters. "Don't fucking twist things now. You didn't need to dress up to see if I was fucking someone else."

Your round eyes shoot up in panic at whatever he's insinuating, "I didn't want you to realize how paranoid I was."

"So this was your grand idea?"

"Ah," you groan, just wanting this argument to end already. You know what he's thinking: "I was stupid. I didn't learn my lesson, and I ended up hurting someone because I'm stupid."

You release a relieved breath when he gives you distance to sit on the twin sized bed. He's facing you as he says, "When I tell you not to do something, you don't do it. I'm not trying to dictate you, you understand that, right?" You meekly nod and clamp your mouth shut when he continues, "You pull this shit again, I'm going to hurt someone else again. Simple as that. I don't care if they did anything, I'll hurt them as long as it gets you to listen to me."

"Okay," you exhale, shyly walking between his legs at his beckon. You tower him, but it's not helping your confidence as he places his hands on your hips.

"Okay," he whispers back as he plays with the waistline of your shorts. A moment of silence passes, and you allow yourself to calm down enough to sit on his lap and lay your head on his shoulder. "I like the high school girl look better on you."

You sheepishly grin but decide not to respond for the safety of your friend. He pulls on your pantyhose and it slaps against your thigh when he releases it.

"Do you forgive me?"

"Can't stay mad at you," he murmurs before pecking your lips. It's you who leans back in to extend the kiss, and he responds gently. It ends when he chuckles, "Passive smoking, hm? You feeling okay?"

You nod and lock lips again, his hand soothingly rubbing the side of your thigh when you clasp your hands behind his neck. Maybe he's right, maybe you did get a buzz from the secondhand exposure, but it doesn't influence your actions as you lower one hand to his chest. It just happens to fall on his crotch.

"Mm," he pulls away with a suppressed laugh, "you're actually high? Your hands just got a mind of their own."

"Then tie them," you offer in a breath. His brows shoot up, but his surprise doesn't prevent him from unbuckling his belt singlehandedly.

"A bondage kink? Who are you and what did you do to my nerdy girlfriend?" His joke emits a small laugh from you but his smile falters once his belt is in his hand. "Take your shirt off first."

It's no longer a guess when you slip out of the turtleneck in a flash; you are under some spell when you stand and hold your wrists together. The leather grazes your skin and sends delighted tingles down your spine.

"I hope I'm not going fucking crazy and hallucinating this," you hear him whisper behind you. A laugh escapes you and interrupts his internal monologue, and the buckle is clasped. "Now for the shorts..."

He stands up, pressing himself against you and peeking from your shoulder to undo the button of your denim shorts. You can feel his erection grinding against you when he tugs them down to falll at your ankles. You step out of the garment and turn around. When he gets out of your way, he gestures you to lie down and your hands are pressing against your back when you do so.

You watch him take his short off before straddling you and leaning down for another kiss. It's merely foreplay; he cups your clothed pussy and runs his hand down up and down, prompting you to sigh into him. He bites your bottom lip just as he slips his fingers past your underwear, murmuring against your lips, "Can you take me right now?"

"I think so," you shy. "I want to."

"Good," he sighs and removes his hand to massage his erection while undressing you completely. "I think... this is a better lesson."

"For what?"

"You don't know?" he pushes the cup of your bra to pinch your nipple mercilessly, and he hears your pain through your small scream. "A guy got burnt for no reason then?"

"No, no, I know," you gasp when he twists your sensitive nub, "because I'm stupid and I shouldn't have ignored you." Your back lifts off the mattress when you clench your teeth to suppress another scream. Despite your bounds hands, it's him talking down on you that renders you submissive.

"Mhm," he's condescending in his speech, "he did something wrong, but so did you, right? This is just the consequences of your actions, isn't it?"

It's his stinging touch that makes you agree to whatever he says, and you whine, "Yes!"

That's the only confirmation he needs to push his jeans down to his thighs along with his briefs, and your now bare pussy shies away from his cock by bending your knees. He pushes your legs even closer to you, and your efforts went against your intention by exposing yourself to him completely now. "You're so pretty," he admires with slight awe, "but I can't be shallow... You don't deserve to treated well."

His words make you shutter; you didn't do anything that wrong, but you aren't courageous enough to voice your thoughts. Everything he's told you today have turned out right, so he knows better to make that call. You stay unresponsive, head turned to the side to avoid his fierce gaze.

"No, you should hurt as much as he did," he mutters to himself as he trails a finger down your folds. You shiver and his gaze travels to your shy one. "What? Are you scared?"

You are unconfident with your denial, "No."

"Look at me then."

It's with a deep inhale that you glance at him, and your breath is caught in your throat when he shoves himself inside. Your whimpers resound brokenly in the bedroom where the bass of the music drowns it out. You feel the vibrations, but it doesn't serve as a distraction and you're aware that Jungkook can pick up your pained noises. He's simply ignoring you, but you can't dwell on the thought when he lets you adjust for a few seconds only before ramming into you. Your whines aren't enough for him, after all, what's a better indication of pain than a scream of agony?

His thrusts are out of rhythm, but quick and rough nonetheless as his hands push you deeper into the mattress as if to hold you down before taking your nipple in his mouth—more specifically between his teeth to bite.

"Jungkook!" It's not a gentle bite, and you know it wasn't meant to be, but you try to squirm away nonetheless. Your flight instinct is futile because his strength overpowers yours, keeping you in place with his palms while you struggle and cry.

"No more, please!" You wail when he finally sits up, and he watches you bounce back and forth due to the force of his thrusts. It's so pleasing, especially your moans, but mixed with your bitching... it's irritating.

He grunts, the sound bordering on a growl before he says, "You deserve worse."

"I don't! I didn't do anything." Your protests fall on deaf ears, or rather ears that need you to shut up. He wraps his hand around your neck in a chokehold, daring you to speak with his grip as he moans through a bit lip.

"Your ass was hanging out in a room filled with men," he speaks in between moans while you gasp to catch your breath, sounds of pleasure getting suck in your throat when he slams deep enough to hit your sensitive spot. "You didn't listen to me! Ah..."

Your windpipe is getting crushed the tighter his grip gets, and your cheeks start to flush until he drops his hand to lift your hips, spanking you while you wheeze. "You want attention that bad?" His words are mere gasps when he starts to lose himself, now gripping your waist to match his thrusts for you.

"Only yours," you muster out as your eyes roll to the back of your skull, letting him do all the work while you get closer to your climax.

"Lying whore." He slaps your tit before completely concentrating on his release, inching closer and closer by the second teasingly. It builds up in his stomach, and his abs contract and tense while he pistons his cock inside you faster, not drained enough to get sloppy just yet. It's when a loud moan resounds in the room, reducing to pants with slow drags of his length. "God, yes..."

You feel it when he cums, painting your walls white and warming up your insides, and he rubs your clit so fast that it has you seeing stars in mere seconds. It's so quick, the high, and your moan is music to his ears; he's too spent to enjoy it any longer before he collapses next to you.

"Fuck, please let me tie you up again," he breathes while you recover from the euphoric sensation he brought you by twitching and seeing white. You're panting when his hand falls on your stomach.

"Please... I'll be nicer if you let me. Hm?"

[dumbikawa]

Fighting /W HQ Boys And Being Comforted By Their Teammate

GN!Reader | Angst to Fluff | Warnings: None

Characters: Oikawa, Akaashi

A/n: I tried to edit the format on mobile so I hope everything is in the right place lmao

OIKAWA

- Oikawa had been training much more than usual, which was already an ungodly amount as it is, leaving the two of you barely any time to talk let alone hang out.

- You understood, though, to some degree. Volleyball was his passion and Nationals was his last chance, in his mind, to prove he was good enough. Winning this was everything to him.

- You tried to bring him snacks every day either in-between classes, before practice, or after practice because it was obvious he wasn’t taking care of himself the way he should, and it pained you.

- The night before they left for Nationals, you waited for him to get out of practice so you could wish him luck in person since they’d be leaving early the following day. Your planned speech was forgotten, though, when you noticed a slight limp in his step.

- Not being able to hold back your concerns anymore, you asked him about it, and he snapped at you before heading off in the opposite direction.

- That night you walked home alone. Well, almost. Iwaizumi found you, knowing the route since often all three of you often walked together.

- He allowed you to rant about his sometimes idiotic best friend, explaining how you had been desperately trying to keep the relationship afloat, how understanding you were when he couldn’t spend any time with you, and the various ways you tried to take care of him since apparently he wasn’t capable of doing it himself. Yet, he showed his appreciation by yelling at you?

- Iwa laid a gentle hand on your shoulder, his attempt at comfort. You leaned forward and gave him a quick hug, thanking him for allowing you to just complain and blow off steam.

- What neither of you noticed, though, was an apologetic, guilty Oikawa watching as his best friend did the job he had ran here to do, and, honestly, probably doing a better job then he would’ve. It was only natural for you to gravitate to somebody who could actually be there for you, he thought. He should’ve known it would happen sooner rather than later, so he turned and walked away.

You feel slightly idiotic as you step out of your car and follow the crowd towards the packed stadium. After not returning any of your calls or texts from last night or this morning, and the last exchange you had with him being less than stellar, you’d still made the drive to watch him at Nationals because, despite all that happened, you loved him much more than he even knew, and you wouldn’t miss this for the world. Whether it ended in celebrations or tears, you wanted to be by his side through it all.

And, as heartbreaking as it was to watch their final match, you realized there would be no celebrating.

-

It hadn’t sunk in yet. He refused to believe the pain, the dedication, the putting everything else on hold had only led him to defeat. It wasn’t possible. He needed to stay strong, though. He couldn’t allow himself to cry afterwards with the rest of his team.

He trailed behind as they walked out of the gym, his eyes betraying him as they watered while he tried to scan the stands for a face he wasn't even sure would be there. You were another thing he had sacrificed to be here. The best thing he had in his life next to volleyball. Why would you want to see him after he was so awful? Especially when he had nothing to show for it.

Yet, there you were. The sadness he couldn’t yet express was written on your face. His eyes trailed down and noticed you were wearing one of his sweatshirts. That’s when it all came crashing down on him, and there you were to catch him.

“I-I wasn’t...I wasn’t good enough,” he stammers, his muscular body colliding with your sturdy figure. He buries his face in the crook of your neck, finding comfort in the way his sweatshirt now smelled like your perfume. “Not for my team, not for you--”

“Tooru,” you hum, his name feeling like home coming from your lips, “what are you talking about ‘for you’?” You place your hands on either side of his face, pulling him back just enough so you can look into his teary eyes.

“I saw you with Iwa after I--” His face contorts in pain as he thinks back to his words from last night and more tears spill past his lashes. “You turned to someone else because of me.”

Your heart breaks at the thought of him seeing that and thinking that you’d begun to move on from him, as if that were even a possibility.

“No, no, baby. I was upset, yes, but Iwa was just making sure I was okay. He could never replace the love I feel being in your arms or the butterflies I get when kissing you. Nobody could.” Oikawa feels his rigid body softening at your words, allowing himself to believe that’s the truth.. “I wish you would take care of yourself, or, at least, let me help pick up the slack. I’m so proud of you, your team is proud of you, and, most importantly, you are good enough, okay?” He wasn’t sure there were any tears left for him to cry, but another wave of sobs rack through his body. You pull him closer, whispering reassurances and sweet nothings for only him to hear while tracing soft circles on his back.

He felt a weight lifting off his shoulders as he allowed himself to relax in your arms. He wasn’t sure if it was from knowing you were still there for him, or if it was because, regardless of how it ended, it was all over and that provided a confusing relief in itself.

All he focused on, though, was the thought that there was no one else he wanted by his side for the rest of his life.

AKAASHI

- Akaashi felt the self-doubt creeping up on him. It seemed like he’d been on a steady decline in nearly every aspect of his life lately; volleyball, school, and even his relationship with you.

- His sets felt messy and it was only a matter of time before his team would take notice of it. And with practice nearly every night after school, he wasn’t finding the time to get the work done that he needed for classes. Then there was you. He never thought he was good enough for you and with everything else weighing his mood down, he didn’t want to make you feel bad, too.

- That’s when he’d put up a wall between him and everybody else, including you.

- You knew the moment he pulled back and decided to give him some space for a week or two, hoping that’s what he needed.

- When that didn’t work, you decided to ask him about it. Even if he didn’t want to talk about it, perhaps just knowing you were still there would be enough to make him feel a little better.

- Safe to say, it didn’t go as you’d planned.

- “I have to get these assignments done, y/n, I don’t have time to talk.” Keiji, I just want to-- “Y/n! I can’t right now, can’t you see? I can’t deal with this at the moment.”

- You didn’t feel like fighting, so you left, letting the door slam shut behind you.

For the first time since you and Keiji started dating, you wore your own hoodie to school. There was no inherent statement behind it, but if he wanted to take it as some sort of low blow you didn’t care. It had been a couple days since you left his house with tears pooling in your eyes and it felt like your heart was hurting more and more each day the two of you didn’t talk. 

Bokuto could tell there was something off between the two of you. He’d observed it weeks before, but figured it wasn’t his place to necessarily say anything. At this point, though, it had been going on for too long and he didn’t like seeing two of his closest friends hurting.

“Hey y/n!” Bokuto’s cheery call cut through your miserable mood. You hadn’t been swinging by to watch practice and avoided the dining hall, so you weren’t seeing him as much as you’re used to. You found it easy to return his ear to ear grin and began walking with him in the direction of the gym.

“It might not be my place to ask, but what happened?” The smile slipped right off your face and you had to physically turn away to avoid meeting his puppy dog eyes that would have you telling him everything.

Your eyes begin to water as your mind walks back through that night. A scoff leaves your lips as you begin to dab away the escaping tears. Bokuto, alarmed and guilty that he made you cry, envelops you in a bone-crushing hug. It felt...incredible, though. In trying to get Akaashi to open up, you forgot to follow your own advice.

Everything spilled out as you let the tears fall on Bokuto’s blazer. How Akaashi had pulled away so you tried to give him space. That when you attempted to talk to him about it he lashed out at you. Bokuto listened thoughtfully, recognizing times he’d seen his friend put up these same walls before. There wasn’t much he could offer in the way of advice, but all you needed was for him to listen.

Akaashi watched you pull away from Bokuto’s arms and laugh at something he’d said, a genuine smile gracing your lips. It hadn’t occurred to him how long it’d been since he saw you smile like that. He felt awful for what he said the other day and regretted it all the moment he saw the hurt on your face. Letting you go seemed like the best thing to do because maybe then you could find somebody to make you smile instead of cry. And, perhaps, you already had.

He closes his eyes with a sigh, letting himself slide down to the floor, thinking about the way you were smiling and imagining a scenario where it was because of him.

“Keiji?” Your soft voice pulls him from his thoughts as he looks up to see you standing a little bit away from him, an unsure look on your face.

“Y/n.” Everything he wants to say is stuck in his throat, so he settles for a simple, “I’m so sorry.” It wasn’t enough, he knows, but you still sit down next to him.

“What’s going on in your head?” You hug your knees close to your body and turn to look at him. He wants so badly to reach out and hold your face, watching your eyes drift close when you lean into his touch.

“You deserve better. Someone happier like Bo. I’m not a good boyfriend--”

“When did you become a liar?” You cut him off, wanting to stop his harmful train of thinking immediately. He’s taken aback, not sure what to say, so you continue. “Do you remember when you brought me my favorite food because my favorite character died? Or how whenever we’re in a crowd you put your hand behind your back for me to hold so we don’t get separated?” He wants to smile, thinking back to those moments, but remembering the things he said the other day stops him.

“But I’ve been so horrible to you recently.”

“You haven’t been horrible, Keiji. You’ve just got a lot going on up there. There’s no pressure to tell me about it, but I’m here and I’m not leaving unless you really want me to.” 

Nothing else had to be said. He leans forward and rests his head on your shoulder. Your arm goes around him, a physical affirmation that your words are true. One talk wasn’t going to solve everything. The self-doubt would still be there, and they might always be. But he felt comfort in the fact that he could share more with you without that fear of bringing you down with him.

[helliontherapscallion]

A Surrealistic Life (Adrenaline Junkie Part 17)

Part 1     Part 2     Part 3     Part 4     Part 5     Part 6     Part 7     Part 8     Part 9     Part 10     Part 11     Part 12     Part 13     Part 14     Part 15     Part 16

Spotify Playlist (collaborative)

Warnings: swearing, derealization, depression, grief, blood, mentions of death, nightmares, panic attacks

Word count: 3,385

                                          ✯¸.•´*¨`*•✿ ✿•*`¨*`•.¸✯

You cried in Philza’s arms for hours on end until you couldn’t cry anymore. Your head was left pounding and your throat scratchy from the loud crying, but you didn’t care. Nothing mattered anymore, without Arthur you were nothing. The past two and a half years just- just didn’t exist. Your mind was still reeling, the words ‘will you always be with me?’ echoing through your mind constantly filling you with guilt. 

With one last shuddering inhale, you separated yourself from Philza and wiped at the tears that had long since dried on your face. His eyes, vigilant as ever, scanned your form looking for any sign of distress. In his eyes, you saw pity and grief. This angered you, you didn’t need his pity; you were long past the point of pitiful glances. Well, you were, he wasn’t. 

You purse your lips as you watch his eyes flick between your wing and where your other wing was supposed to be. Sorrow flashes in his eyes before he looks back at you with a small, painfully fake smile. With one hand, he gently pushes your shoulder down back onto the bed and stands up. 

“I’ll be back, you get some rest.” 

With the slightest hint of a nod, you watched as he lingered in the doorway before hesitantly walking out of your room. After he left your room, you locked the door behind him. That door remained locked for weeks on end, every knock or attempt at conversation was never answered by you. Their words were nothing but background noise in the back of your mind. 

Instead of responding, you would lay in bed staring at the ceiling with unfocused eyes thinking about nothing but everything you’ve lost. Only occasionally you would leave your room to attend to your most basic needs when you were sure that everybody was asleep or out of the house. 

The days meshed together as your thoughts consume you in a whirlwind of unorganized messes. Several times, you’ve worked yourself into panic attacks and paranoia filled spiraling because you didn’t know what was real anymore. 

Being left alone with your thoughts was something that you always avoided by constantly tinkering with contraptions, your thoughts wandered off to places that greatly disturbed you. But now, you let those thoughts wash over you without a care. Your dreams reflected this; they were plagued with images of Arthur looking up at you with large puppy dog eyes and a large smile before he would be sucked into darkness screaming for you to help him, to do anything, but you were always glued in place leaving you to watch helplessly as he left you over and over again. 

Another common one you would have is Arthur getting lost in a bellowing snowstorm in the dead of night. You would be wandering through thick snow calling his name until you would come across a small, pale hand peeking out of an abnormal lump of snow; dread would always fill you during those dreams, it was a parent’s worst nightmare to lose their child.

Other dreams, though very rare, would be pleasant; whether they were about you and Arthur whistling a small tune as you both invented something or a small picnic on the cliff laughing freely into the air, you would always wake up in the mornings prepared to greet him and cook breakfast with him. It wasn’t until you moved your right arm and found that it had limited mobility that you realized that everything was a dream.

You hated those dreams, they always gave you a false sense of hope that everything was okay. Nothing is okay, absolutely nothing. 

You refused to believe that… whatever was going on didn’t happen; Philza had said that the last few years had been fake, something that your mind had made up as some form of coping mechanism, but who’s to say that this isn’t a hallucination as well? Both your experiences felt completely different from each other, this reality could be the hallucination for all you knew. 

The only thing on your mind was how you needed to get back to Arthur in any possible way you could. If Arthur didn’t exist in this reality, you didn’t want to be in it. You need him and he needs you, you didn’t want to imagine a reality without him. If you got yourself into this by dying, perhaps that was your ticket back to him. Perhaps there was a way to reverse this. 

You were going to get your son back, and you were going to die trying. 

Until then, you just have to wait out your family. They’d just stop you in the end and you couldn’t have that. You’d have to put on an act that you were perfectly fine and that would entail inventing everything over again, but you were fine with that; if you made it once, you can make it again. 

With a newfound sense of purpose, you searched your closet for your old cloak but then you remembered you got your cloak weeks after your first death. Groaning to yourself, you settled for your old bomber jacket. The slits in the back of it wouldn’t cover your nub, so you awkwardly tucked it underneath the fabric of the cloth. It shot pain down your spine, but you shook it off; the pain was something you could handle, you’ve had worse. 

Without another thought, you quietly left your room with only one destination in mind. 

--------------------------------------------------

You softly padded down the basement stairs towards your workshop. When you arrived at the bottom of the stairs, you paused and looked around. The walls that were once covered with sloppy sketches and words written in two different handwritings, both equally as messy and rushed, were barren for the most part; you forgot that the walls were painted an off white color. Your filing cabinets were gone, replaced with cardboard boxes containing old clothes and toys with thick layers of dust sitting peacefully on top of them. The crafting table sat in the corner of the room wasn’t worn, in fact it looked brand new, not a scratch could be seen on the surface. 

Everything was wrong. 

You numbly walked over to your desk and picked up the paper that laid on it, holding it up to the light. It was the first draft to your TNT launcher. The sight of the crude, minimal sketches made you cringe, it was far too messy; you had no idea how you could make out what your sloppy handwriting pointed to or what materials were supposed to go where. 

You dropped the paper and let it flutter to the floor without a care. Your eyes flickered over the desk and eyed the notebook sitting on top of a stack of spare papers. A spark of hope ignited inside of you, this was the notebook Arthur so often doodled in with different ideas of what could be invented. 

You snatched it and flipped the front cover over with haste. A wide smile stretched your lips when you caught sight of the small handwriting that littered the page. It was yours, but you had given it to Arthur so that he could learn and copy from your early years. It was perfect for a blueprint template, neat and organized. 

However as you flipped through the book, your smile dropped and the little hope that flared in your chest was snuffed out. You stared at the blank page as frustration built up inside of you. Before you knew it, you threw the notebook at the opposite wall as hard as you could. You were left standing in the middle of the cold basement with your chest heaving and your teeth gritted. 

Everything was so wrong. So, so wrong. 

You heard footsteps thunder down the stairs before they came to a stop behind you. Hesitant footsteps made their way over to you, you didn’t even have to turn around to know who it was. 

“(Y/n)? Is everything-”

“Nothing is okay, Tommy,” you gritted out, “absolutely nothing about this is okay.” 

He said nothing as he walked around you and put his hand on your clenched fist, his fingers curling around yours and opening your hand. Your palm stung slightly as you glanced down at it. Four small, crescent shaped cuts were imprinted on your skin slowly starting to glisten with blood. 

Huffing, you ripped your hand out of his grasp and glanced at his face. You caught yourself doing a double take as you saw just how innocent he looked. No sign of hidden pain in his shining blue eyes, no scars littering his skin, and the bags that once made him look years older was nonexistent. He was your annoying, gremlin of a little brother again. He was Tommy again. 

You watched as his eyebrows furrowed and his head tilted slightly, “why are you looking at me like that?” 

“No reason,” you breathed out before you shook your head trying to rid your mind of your frustrations, “no reason at all…”

He awkwardly coughed and nodded slightly, “right…”  

You cleared your throat and glanced off to the side at the book laying on the floor. Tommy’s eyes followed where you were looking and went to pick it up. You felt a twinge in your heart as he started to flip through it much like you did earlier. He looked up at you with furrowed brows, “why’d you throw this? What’d the book do to you?” He jokingly asked you. 

“It didn’t do anything and that’s the problem,” you mumbled out before you snatched the book out of his hands and tossed it into the trash can. 

“Why are you acting so weird? I know you just died and all, but you never let that notebook out of your sight and now you’re just tossing it into the bin!” Tommy fished it out of the trash can and haphazardly placed it back onto your desk on top of the stack of unused paper. You could feel your eye twitch at it’s placement before you threw it away again. 

“Leave it there, I don’t want it. I won’t need it anymore anyways,” you murmured under your breath. 

“Why wouldn’t you need it- wait, don’t tell me you’re quitting working with redstone. Cuz I’ll have you know that you’re going to be the best goddamned inventor this gods forsaken world has ever known and-”

“I’m not going to quit,” you interrupted him, “trust me, I’ll need whatever I can make. I just… don’t need it anymore, I already know exactly what I need to make.” I can’t stand the sight of Arthur’s notebook so empty and blank your mind supplied yourself. 

He tilted his head slightly, “even without the bluepri-”

“Even without the blueprints,” you curtly nodded and automatically turned to look at the bulletin board hanging above your desk only to sigh when you once again saw that it was barren. “I made these things thousands of times before, I know what I’m doing,” your gaze zeroed in on the half finished blueprint for your automatic crossbow, “I’ll just make them again.” 

Tommy once again looked at you with furrowed brows and inquisitive eyes, you could just see the curiosity and confusion swimming around in his baby blue orbs, “what do you mean, you literally only have one prototype of everything on here.” 

“You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you, so just drop it.” You hadn’t meant to snap at him like that, but the frustration was just too overwhelming to ignore. Just as you could see him start to get dejected from the corner of your eye, you made quick work of changing the subject.

“You know, I could hear what you said when I wasn’t awake. I really appreciated the music, it was a nice change of pace.”

He tensed before his eyes were drawn to the empty space over your shoulder. His breath hitched slightly as a sorrowful look appeared in his eyes. Looking back at you, he grabbed your shoulder and pulled you into a tight hug. You didn’t struggle against him despite your frustrations, you knew he needed you right now. You could still remember how broken he was when you were unconscious. The way his lip wobbled slightly before he hugged you reminded you of Arthur. 

You gently hugged him back and wrapped your wing around him. He gripped you tighter, his breath shuddering as wetness started to hit your head. You said nothing as you started to hum and run your fingers along his back tracing out patterns without a particular one in mind. 

Eventually, he pulled away from you and chuckled sardonically, wiping his tears away with a fist, “you’re the one who died and I’m the one being comforted. Gods, it’s pathetic.” 

“It’s okay to feel emotions, Tommy. You should never bottle them up, it sounded like you needed a good hug anyways. I’m happy to give you that,” you softly told him.  

He said nothing as he crossed his arms and shifted on his feet, avoiding your gaze. For a moment, your tall brother was replaced by a short, red haired boy wearing that same expression. You purse your lips in thought, your previous frustrations completely gone and replaced with an urge to comfort him or at least distract him. Though a deep sadness dragged your body down at the thought of Arthur, Tommy just reminded you too much of him. It was eerily uncanny in your opinion.

Ideas swarmed your head as you thought back to how you comforted Arthur when he fell down. Besides talking to him, you would always teach him something; knowledge to Arthur is- was like a sponge absorbing water. It gave him a distraction to whatever got him down, maybe that would work for Tommy as well. 

Wordlessly, you walked over to your desk and gestured for him to follow you. You plopped him into your office chair and pulled one of the cardboard boxes up to the desk. In the process, you grabbed your gloves, goggles, and everything you would need to set up a simple timed piston. The smallest spark of happiness flashed inside you as you saw that your resources were fully stocked. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Well, Tommy, I’m going to show you how to set up one of my favorite redstone mechanisms. Put these on,” you handed him the gloves and goggles and watched as he put them on. The goggles were a bit small on him, but besides that, everything fit him. 

“Now, you’re going to want to…”

--------------------------------------------------

Hours passed as you both worked together on the contraption. Slowly, you could see Tommy loosening up and making more jokes, successfully distracted. However, you didn’t expect yourself to follow suit. Laughter came easier to you whenever Tommy would joke around, your troubles long forgotten. 

It took a little longer than you were used to, but eventually Tommy started to follow along with the precision you’d expect from a beginner. Slowly but surely, with many mistakes along the way, there was a working piston system sitting on the desk. 

Tommy triumphantly laughed into the air as he watched the pistons work in tandem with one another. You laughed alongside him and ruffled his hair, “nice job, Artie! I knew you could do it!” 

Tommy completely stopped and looked at you in confusion, “‘Artie’? Who’s that?” 

You completely froze in place, you hadn’t meant to call him Artie. He was Tommy, he was your blond little brother, not your ginger son. Tommy was his own person, he was Tommy, not Arthur. You mentally scolded yourself for constantly mixing the two up. 

“Artie is- well, he’s just… Arthur is my old friend,” you stammered out after tripping over your words clumsily. Tommy couldn’t find out about Arthur, nobody could. That’d just ruin your plan. 

He snorted, “sure, ‘old friend’. You know, if Dad finds out that you’re dating someone he’d ground you for life.” 

“I’d never date anybody, you know that,” you scolded him with your nose wrinkled in disgust. “He’s just an old friend and you remind me of him.”

“Well, old friend or not, he sounds amazing if I remind you of him!”

You smiled sadly as your mind flashed to images of Arthur at various points in his life, “he really was, you would’ve loved him, Tommy. He might’ve been the best person I’ve ever met.” 

“Why don’t you tell me about him? I can preen your wings-” Tommy abruptly stopped himself and looked like he’d just accidentally kicked a puppy, looking at you with wide eyes and red tinted cheeks. 

Just as he started opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water, you chuckled at his expression, “you’re fine, Tommy. It’s just going to take some time for you to get used to this,” you shifted your wing and cringed at the uncomfortable feeling. You haven’t preened your wings since before you left for the cave nearly two months ago, and your wing was a mess of bent and loose feathers. “I’d… actually like a good preening, are you sure you know how to do it?” 

“Please,” he scoffed before pushing you to sit down in your desk chair, “I’ve seen you and Dad do it to each other thousands of times, I think I know what I’m doing.” 

“That isn’t how that- you know what? Just go ahead. Make sure you get any loose feathers and straighten them out,” you stretched your wing out and hoped for the best. Tommy surprisingly did a decent job of straightening out feathers, he just had to work on distinguishing loose feathers from intact feathers (you were now missing a couple of smaller feathers). 

The entire time, you were telling him how amazing your boy was. Sure, you might’ve overexaggerated just a little bit, but Arthur was certainly someone that deserved the praise. That kid was something else, truly a prodigy at both redstone and compassion. Leaving out the fact that Arthur was your adopted son and that he was ten years old was a little hard, but you managed to avoid that. 

You could tell that Tommy knew something was different about you, but you guessed that he just assumed the changes were because of your death and not because you were technically two and a half years older than you physically are. 

When he was done, you looked at your wing and you were pleasantly surprised at how well he did; sure there were a few loose feathers and they were partially crooked, but you could tell that Tommy did his best with them. 

“Thanks, Toms,” you smiled at him after you tucked your wing back in, “I really appreciate you doing that, it was starting to bother me.”

“It’s no problem,” he puffed out his chest in pride, “I told you I knew what I was doing.” 

“And I’m sorry for ever doubting you. Who knows, maybe Dad’ll let you do his wings next.” 

“Oh gods no,” Tommy shuddered slightly, “his are massive and he has two of them! If doing yours took me an hour and a half, I’d hate to see how long it’d take me to do his.” 

You cringed, remembering the last time you preened his wings. Though you were experienced, it had taken you two full hours for each wing. “Yeah, his wings are huge. Gods, I hope my wing doesn’t get to be that size.” Though they grew to be nowhere near Philza’s wingspan when you were in that reality, you weren’t sure if yours was going to be larger or smaller than what they were. 

Just as Tommy was about to open his mouth to respond to you, Wilbur’s voice echoed down the stairwell, “Tommy, dinnertime!” 

“Well c’mon then, let’s go. I’ll race you there,” was all Tommy said to you before he bolted up the stairs with a booming laugh, skipping every third step. You could feel your heart stop when he almost tripped on one of the stairs because he skipped too many. Rushing after him, you shouted at him, “Tommy, walk! You’re going to break your neck if you keep running up and down the stairs!”

                                         ✯¸.•´*¨`*•✿ ✿•*`¨*`•.¸✯

Taglists (if your name is italicized, it means I couldn’t tag you. Comment with the taglist you want to be tagged in if you want to be tagged :D):

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@crybabyjabby  @izzybobizzy13  @goldenstarofthunderclan  @bunnyz-pxstel  @averytiredfanfictionwriter  @dcml04  @sparkling-gayyyy  @bbigbbrainn  @thaticecreambish  @kiinokochii  @satansphatass  @bxkubitch @bxmentchildxx  @roxy3457  @montygator17  @feverish-dove  @the-fictionwriters-hairdo  @jichuuchaeng  @404rynnotfound @luluwinchester  @laura--444  @the-cult-classic-bitch  @youngstarfishdinosaur  @nottheotheruser  @ohworm-writes  @localwolfanon  @realitycanbeajerk  @v10dw4lk3r  @esylwen  @seraphsema  @boiled-onionrings  @smolgreenybeany  @louistommosnesquickmilk  @hyacinthrosearsha  @ryxjxnnx  @autumnpleaves  @ravennightingaleandavatempus  @0ton1n  @self-righteous-dumbass  @a-simp-for-block-people  @fortunatelylazystranger  @m1lkmandan  @mirios-sunflower  @ahmya-4  @shinipii  @noyasblush  @auroraskyfall  @cryptocry  @hee-hee-haw  @blackstar-gazer @serendipityryn

Gender neutral reader:

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SBI:

@afifaj

Adrenaline Junkie:

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[sleepy-dreamers-inc]

Being Exiled with Tommy Headcannons!|| 🥀

irl/ in-game

Genre| angst + comfort

h e a d c a n n o n s||

Sypnosis|

Both you and Tommy ended up getting exiled together.

Artist| OliverSonder on twitter!!

Warnings] mentions of manipulation, character death, spoilers for Tommy’s Exile Arc and the Season 2 finale!!

[can be seen as both platonic or romantic!!]

||gender neutral reader!!||

(also this was not grammar checked and im to lazy to watch through hours of footage so if anything in here is wrong blame it on the DSMP Wiki OKAY LETS GO-)

So i think its pretty established that if you end up getting exiled with Tommy your one of two things.

- Really sweet and loyal friend that will stick up for in-justice and be there when someone needs you the most

Or

- A total fucking gremlin that will steal your kneecaps and toes and eat your shower curtains in the middle of the night.

There is no inbetween here you guys.

I did end up going for Reader A, though. But you guys tell me if you want headcannons for a gremlin!reader because i will gladly do that!!

But anyways just... enjoy exile!

Exile|

- It was about his third day in exile when Y/N appeared through the nether portal, bags, pouches, tools, armor, etc. on their person. Tommy thought they either were here to beat him up or got exiled themselves.

- Tommy was pleasantly surprised when he learned that Y/N was actually there on their own accord, helping him through exile and being his shoulder to lean on. The first few days we’re rough, fighting back mobs in the night and farming crops all day. His clothes we’re starting to get dirty and torn by the time Y/N got there.

- Y/N ended up making a little bunker about 30 blocks from where they’re tent was, where they hid all theirs and Tommy’s valuables, such as armor, diamonds & iron, and rations. Although Y/N never gave into Dream and gave him they’re stuff, Y/N simply refused, they wouldn’t be giving in that easily.

- Most of they’re days are spent in caves mining away, chatting and fighting off Creeper’s as they tried to keep the moral high, always keeping Tommy company. Y/N never let him go anywhere alone, they we’re always with him, like his own bodyguard of sorts.

- One time they both find a Mineshaft though and got lost, they ended up at the surface two dayd later with torn clothes, cuts and bruises and we’re in bad shape. Thankfully Y/N had a brewing stand at they’re camp though, so Healing Potions we’re semi-easy to make/get.

- After the duo end up going to the artic though... things got... weird.

- Techno was not expecting to open his door to find the heathen Tommy and sweetheart Y/N at his doorstep shivering and begging to come inside, bags thrown on they’re shoulders as they teeth chattered from the cold wind and snow.

- Whenever Dream comes to visit Y/N always has to hide with Tommy, reassuring him that its okay and they’ll always be there for him, and protect him at any cost, which he highly appreciates.

- The ‘gapple-eating’ thing Tommy did was a cute, yet depressing thing. Seeing him hasitly munching on golden-coated apples was funny and caused giggles, but the meaning behind it always left Y/N with a lump in their throat and a hole in their heart.

- Whenever Tommy is in danger and calls for Dream, Y/N always has to stop him and bring him back to reality, making Tommy realize Dream isnt his friend, and never was. Many nights have happened where the two talk about Tommy’s feelings with Dream, not only for Tommy to vent and let everything out, but also for Y/N to understand whats going on in his head.

- When going into the Nether Tommy always grips Y/N’s hand, as his fear of lava and heights consumes him whole in that firey dimension.

- When Tommy gets up close to Dream in the cabin? Y/N is scared spineless, if people could see them, they’d see the palest, most terrified and worried being on earth.

- Y/N having a heart attack when Ghostbur slips up

- Ghostbur is just a whole thing and just. Y/N needs a break, okay?

- Y/N begrudgingly helping Tommy build his cobblestone tower outside of Techno’s cabin.

- Y/N apologizing soon after to Techno only for him to laugh and ruffle Y/N’s hair, saying he knows how Tommy can get anyone to any situation.

- Very rarely does Y/N ever leave Tommy’s side, when they do its usually to get supplies or visit they’re friends. So when Y/N was walking back to the Nether portal to see Tommy, Techno and Dream all standing there, looking like they’re about to slit the others throat, well...

- Nobody has ever seen Y/N drop kick a person so fast.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” Y/N yelled, they’re sword at Dream’s neck, as he laid on his back, his mask covering his shocked expression.

“Answer. Me.” Y/N gritted through their teeth, pushing their swordfurther against the masked mans throat. Techno soon chimed in, reassuring Y/N that nothing to terrible happened.

“It’s fine, Y/N. He didn’t do anything, why not we head back home? Wouldn’t want that homeless man to be to scared spineless, eh?” Techno said, hand on they’re shoulder as he looked Y/N in the eyes.

The 3 walked back to the Nether portal, purple mist engulfing Tommy and Techno as Y/N stood in front of the portal. Back turned towards Dream, Y/N shifted they’re head and glared at Dream with eyes that could kill.

“Don’t do anything you might regret, you megalomaniac.”

- When Tommy and Tubbo decide to go fight Dream, Y/N is both excited and scared. They hope Dream will finally be taken down, but they dont want Tommy (& Tubbo) to be taken down as well.

- So like any amazing best friend, Y/N brews up a bunch of potions of Strength, Healing + Regen, Invisibility and more. Even if Tommy thought he was going to be walking out of there alone, he wasn’t going to be. Y/N would make sure.

- Y/N watched from afar as Tommy got his disc out of the jukebox, laughing in success. All Y/N did was clap quietly, making sure they’re Invisibility didn’t wear off. They we’re making sure Tommy stayed safe, even if he didn’t realize it. Y/N loved him with they’re whole heart, and everyone knew that.

- At Dreams secret base, Y/N was just getting there as Tommy took Dreams first canon life.

“Tommy. Stop. Dont do anything you might regret.” Dream snarled, looking at the teenage boy, his blue eyes dull, yet full of passion and vigor.

All Tommy did was pursue forward, as everyone waited for what was to come. Tommy took one step to close though, because Dream had decided that he had enough.

Dream brought his arm into the air, hand curled into a fist, he was about to hurl his hand into Tommy’s face when Dream suddenly fell to the ground, arrow in his forehead.

Dream was shot by Y/N

Y/N stood there, enchanted bow in hand, infront of the nether portal that swirled with an eerie purple mist. Y/N lowered their bow, staring at the man who tortured Tommy for weeks now. Y/N simply stepped forward and towered over Dreams corpse before it disappeared in thin air.

Lets just say Dream wouldn’t be hurting the blonde heathen anytime soon.

a/n: howdy everyone how we doing? Decided to do Tommy x Reader for this post, although i am MAJORLY simping for Wilbur atm and i have brainrot so that’ll most likely be the next post (if i dont do a pt. 2 for this one but even so WILBUR).

Anyways i hope i did racooninnit justice, i have no idea how to do headcannons since half the time i ramble (its the adhd) so this was new for me. Definitely not my strong suit but like you live ya learn. Also, sorry if i left out quite a lot, i might make a fic about this and include more events, but this is really long for headcannons (because of my layout) so i didn’t include to much. I dont want people scrolling for like 20 seconds to go to another post (i write on mobile so undercut is not a thing for me RIP)

Anyways have a lovely day and dont let Tommy eat all your gapples!!

[hoe-doroki]

Siberia

minors do not interact

warnings: 18+, drunk sex, marking, biting, love scratches, sloooow burn

pairing: Shouto x fem!reader

genre: pining/angst, smut, fluff

wc: 13.8k

summary: On the field, you and Todoroki are rising stars amongst hero pairings. Off the field…you’re kind of in love with him. After a successful capture, you’re boss brings you in to let you know you’re being sent on assignment in foreign country…alone. Before you leave, you have to act. You’re not partners anymore, after all. And with a little liquid courage you do. Then, the next morning, you still have to leave.

a/n: Thanks so much to @some-kindofgnome​, @mindninjax​, and @linestrider​ for helping me out with this beast! Ya’ll are such dears, hyping me up when I was feeling really uncertain about this story. FYI, this story is kind of the prequel to a short fluff fic that will be posted (for bnhabookclub’s secret santa) on Christmas, so stay tuned for that!

edit: I no longer write x reader but here’s my old masterlist - mobile | desktop

September

Shards of ice and concrete flew. Ears ringing, you faced away, keeping your uncovered cheeks and hands from the debris. You’d have to turn back into it soon to keep an eye on the villain soon, though. He wasn’t exactly subtle, firing off explosions every few minutes, but he did have plumes of smoke and heaps of destruction on the city street to hide behind. Todoroki had been shooting walls of ice up to protect the buildings, but the road was shredded.

“You okay?” Todoroki shouted, also facing away from the blast.

“Yeah, you?”

“Yeah.”

You turned back with a dry, scratched hand in front of your eyes as you squinted into the wind, streaks of both freezing and hot air blowing past you. You had to consciously keep from grinding your teeth in frustration as the villain cackled at you.

Todoroki and you had a near-perfect capture rate. Usually, the two of you could manipulate his ice to capture any villain, but ice didn’t work so well against a villain with exploding spines on his back. Each attempt to restrain him ended with ice shattering, blown away from the villain’s body in one go. There wasn’t much that Todoroki’s fire could do against a guy like that either.

“Shouto,” you shouted, making your way closer to him. “Make me a big block of ice and then distract him. Be ready to run back and use your fire.”

You saw the question in his eyes for a split second, but he’d stopped asking questions of you early on in your three-year partnership. Questions and explanation took time that couldn’t be spared in battles against villains, so you just had to trust each other.

You hadn’t failed yet.

With a sweep of his arm, you had an iceberg the size of a school bus at your disposal. Todoroki ran at the guy, fire in his hand in order to distract with some close combat—neither of your specialty.

You worked quickly to manipulate the ice into four walls. They didn’t have to be straight or pretty, just sound and close enough in size to line up. Luckily, Todoroki’s ice was the easiest thing you’d ever worked with; it was free of impurities and even in temperature. From there, you could mold it however you wanted.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw another one of the spikes on the man’s back explode. Todoroki was able to counter the blast with a wash of fire, but it still knocked him back and set your heart pounding. You needed to end this before either of you ended up hurt with more than the light burns and scrapes you were sporting now.

You took the last bit of ice and lifted it overhead, letting it expand into something soft and irregular—nothing more than densely packed snow. Then, another shout of Todoroki’s hero name had him running back, and you used all your focus to shove the four ice blocks around the villain and fuse them at the corners, sealing them to the irregular ruble on the street.

“Haven’t you learned that ice can’t keep me down?” the villain shouted over your frozen terrarium.

You had learned that, but you’d also learned that he was slowing. He only had a few spires on his back—less than ten—and each one he used had to be regrown. He was regenerating them much quicker than you might have hoped, but it wasn’t as fast as at the beginning of the battle. However the explosions worked, whatever they did to his body, they must have been taking a toll. That gave you a window. A small one, but hopefully enough.

“Fire!” you shouted at Todoroki, pointing to the tall pile of snow you were controlling, moving to just above the ice box.

Todoroki loosed a thin tongue of fire, letting it hit the snow but dissipate before it turned the solid straight to a gas. He knew that what you needed now. The only thing that would bring you both victory, was liquid.

A shelf of water dumped into the room of ice you’d contained the villain in and you returned your focus back to its makeup. You held the ice strong, not letting the new water—warm in places, still nearly frozen in others—melt the walls. Then you shifted some of it to create a roof, leaving only enough room for the man to be able to poke his head out, and some air holes to allow in oxygen. You didn’t need him poking his back out of the water and creating another explosion.

You used your finest degree of control, your tightest concentration to clarify some of the ice, providing a window into your new aquarium. The villain was holding his arms, obviously cold, but he wasn’t using his quirk. Seemed that his explosions didn’t work underwater.

“God,” you said, letting out a relieved sigh as your shoulders slumped, though you didn’t relax your hold on the walls. They wanted to melt against the heated concrete, but you didn’t let them.

Todoroki came over to you, breathing heavily himself. “He won’t be able to stay in there long.”

“I know,” you said, watching the man’s movements closely for signs of hypothermia. You weren’t too worried, since Todoroki could create heat at a moment’s notice, but you still didn’t like this method. It was the best you’d been able to come up with, though.

“Great work, Snow,” he said, a thin smile curving on his lips.

The thing about Todoroki’s smiles, rare though they were, was that they were contagious. They were always earned, always a surprise, and you couldn’t ever help but return one when it was given to you. So, you smiled back, heat blossoming in your chest as your gazes lingered, panting in matching breaths.

It was easy to restrain yourself during battle. In combat, you and Todoroki were partners whose quirks worked well together, whose minds and styles had grown to be one with each other. But as soon as the battle was over and your breath was allowed to slow, the adrenaline able to recede, things felt different. You wanted to take his cheek in your hand and wipe the ash off his face. You wanted to take a washcloth and clean the blood away. You wanted to hold him in your arms and whisper that he was whole and okay and you’d both done your job well.

But all that you could offer was a hand raised in partnership. He took it and you touched from fingertip to elbow. Your tight grip on his equally cold hand held for just a moment, just one squeeze. And then you parted.

“Excellent work today, Snow.”

You were standing in front of your boss, freshly showered and out of your thermal costume, back in clothing that was a little more appropriate for a temperate fall in Japan. Nevertheless, the office felt warm, kept that way to make your manager’s day of sitting in pencil skirts at her oak desk comfortable.

“Thank you, ma’am,” you said, bowing and doing your best to read her face. “It was a team effort.”

It was unusual that someone was called to the boss’ office for good news, but, at the same time, you couldn’t read any dissatisfaction on your boss’ face. Your capture today had gone well. Yeah, there had been damage to the street, but very little to the buildings—save for the guy’s hideout, which had been ruined—and the police apprehended the man before he’d gotten frostbite. All in all, a neat wrap-up to a villain you and Todoroki had been chasing for weeks.

“Yes, it was. You and Todoroki are one of the star partnerships on the field nowadays,” she said, her gaze breaking down to some paperwork on the table.

You narrowed your eyes, able to hear the but that was coming.

“We’ve seen a lot of growth in your quirk. You used it really fantastically today when you were in a tight spot, and we’d like to send you on a covert operation.”

You cocked your head, feeling a disconnect between the different statements she was making. “…With Todoroki?”

She shook her head, looking grim. “Only one was requested for this mission, and you’re the one best suited to the job. Your ability to freeze and manipulate ice at will is really unique. If all goes well, it won’t be for long.”

“How long?”

She shrugged and your heart dropped. “Maybe a few weeks? It depends on how it goes. I’m emailing you the briefing now.”

A shrug and a maybe. She obviously had no idea.

“Okay, well, where is it?”

She looked up at you, a slight cringe wrinkling her brow and the bridge of her nose. This, she did have the answer to.

And she knew you wouldn’t want to hear it.

You’d somehow managed to drag Todoroki to a bar, you hadn’t been choosy about which. The light was dim, the décor mostly dark wood with black accents, and the atmosphere nearly morose with the lack of patrons. It matched your mood. He was nursing a gin martini and you a vodka to give yourself an ironic little laugh. Or maybe it was preparation. Either way, it was helping to steel your nerves.

“You seem upset,” Todoroki said before you were halfway through the drink. You’d been through congratulations on the day’s capture, but it had been hard to keep up the merriment. You weren’t entirely shocked that he’d picked up on it so quickly, though. The two of you were only kept alive by how attuned you were to each other, after all.

“It’s annoying that your job is being perceptive,” you said, knocking back a bit more of the drink.

“It’s yours too,” he said plainly. “What’s on your mind?”

You sighed, plucking the olive out of your drink to chew on it. Your mouth filled with brine, each taste bud standing on end at the sharp taste of pure salt. You had to take another sip to wash it down. “Boss lady didn’t tell you I’m going on assignment?”

You knew she hadn’t otherwise he would have asked you immediately. Todoroki wasn’t the kind to beat around the bush.

“Oh?” Todoroki asked, sipping more of his own drink. “By yourself? For how long?”

You ran your finger over the condensation on your glass. It was cold, though not as cold as you were used to. You liked your drinks frosty so you froze the condensation and gave the glass a swirl. “I don’t know. A month?”

You’d saddled Todoroki with the day’s villain paperwork while you’d read over the mission’s briefing. It had been short, which was your first hint that the team didn’t have as much information as they needed. They were pulling from an outside agency, after all, which always smelled of desperation to you.

“Where are you going?”

You looked down at your vermouth-mixed vodka and said, “Siberia.”

A rare bald reaction showed on Todoroki’s face. His eyes went wide and his chin jutted toward you. “Siberia?”

You held your hand out and pulled at the particles of water in the air, freezing just enough to make a few snowflakes to dance above your hand, drawing Todoroki’s gaze. “Siberia.”

It was your quirk that matched you to this assignment. You would thrive in an environment surrounded by snow. You’d be able to manipulate the whole terrain and freezing would be easy. You’d be at full power.

Todoroki took your ice-filled hand in his warm one and you felt heat flow rapidly into you as he melted the snow to water and then back into vapors barely catching the bar’s yellow light before slipping in and amongst the smell of liquor and hops.

“Wow,” Todoroki said, a word that always sounded stunted through his dull monotone, almost oxymoronic. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” you said, though receiving the compliment felt disingenuous. Being chosen for this was a testament to your strength, but it didn’t feel like an achievement—it felt like a disruption. Months away from the job that you loved and the partner you…

You swigged the rest of the martini and ordered another one. If you were going to have to go to Russia tomorrow, you’d do well to invite a piece of it to you tonight. Microdosing or something.

Todoroki ordered a second, too, as he was nearly to the bottom of his own drink. He stirred the last dribbles of it and said, “Siberia isn’t that far from Japan.”

“Just one time zone behind,” you said. You’d done some googling after memorizing your notes. You weren’t sure how much you’d be moving about the region, but the location you were being sent to tomorrow was set.

The energy between you was stiff. Battling together today had been so easy, the two of you essentially extensions of one another. Todoroki created ice that you could manipulate as though it had come from your own body. Sure, you could create ice out of the water that was around, but Todoroki could so easily give you exactly what you needed. And then his fire could clean it all away. It was a perfect pairing.

Usually that chemistry followed you off the battlefield, but now you were trapped in small talk. Stuck with you apparently one foot out the door, unable to face him fully. Your elbows fell to the black marble bar, hands pushed into the roots of your hair. “God, this sucks!”

“They can’t force you to go if you don’t want to.”

He was right, but how would that look? Heroes didn’t turn down cases without good reason; that wasn’t how the job worked. You were expected to take jobs that were difficult, dangerous, and unpleasant—that was simply the field. The only reasons to turn one down were if you felt you couldn’t fulfill it.

“I can’t exactly tell them that I’ll miss my partner too much to go,” you said, eyes flickering towards his for a moment before starting on your second drink. “Then they’ll just think I’m too stupid and they’ll fire me.”

“I’ll miss being your partner too,” Todoroki said.

Your stomach squeezed. This. This was what made it impossible to spend time around Todoroki without getting the wrong idea. He just said things, so simply and genuinely that your mind would always jump to the next thing, when really, he just said what he meant and nothing more. There was no subtext, no matter how you tried to find it. And the search made your heart ache.

“So this isn’t a celebration so much as a farewell,” Todoroki mused, finishing his first drink and joining you on the second.

You were beginning to feel a bit of a buzz. Your emotions were a bit more liquid, sloshing from one state to another with more ease than usual. The sadness was transmuting into longing. The longing transmuting to desire.

“I wish I had known,” Todoroki continued, your eyes slipping back over to him. “I might have ordered something stronger.”

“Hah,” you said, the huff coming out humorless. You might have also, if you didn’t want to avoid being hungover on the plane. “Wanna drown my memory, Todoroki?”

“No.”

He didn’t look like he had more to say. Damn, sometimes you needed just a little more—subtext or actual text—out of him.

But he didn’t give it to you, so you just looked at him. His bangs were covering his eyes from you as he looked down into his drink, but you thought you could see the sadness. His shoulders were hunched, head hanging heavy off his neck. He would miss you. Maybe not as much as you would miss him, and maybe not in the same way, but you knew he valued your partnership. Your friendship. That, at the very least, meant something to him.

Tonight, however, you weren’t thinking about the very least. You didn’t want the lowest common denominator between you—your professional partnership—to be the last image you held of your relationship before heading to one of the most desolate places on Earth.

Besides, as of this afternoon he wasn’t your partner anymore. Not for the moment, at least.

“Shouto?”

Your voice was timid, unfamiliar with using his name in this setting. It was his hero name, but that wasn’t what you were saying here, and you knew it. He knew it too, by the way his eyes jerked up to yours, a question creasing between his eyebrows.

You didn’t answer, though. Maybe he had the right idea, leaving things unsaid.

You put two fingers to his jawline, drawing his face up, lifting his whole posture off the bar with nothing but a gentle touch. His brows furrowed deeper and then they relaxed, his eyes open and at ease.

For a moment, you did nothing more than breathe each other’s air. A moment of hesitation or of resolve, you didn’t know—it didn’t last long enough to figure it out. Then your mouth brushed against his, the bitter taste of alcohol on both your lips.

It wasn’t a good idea. But you’d regret it too much if you didn’t, and you had just enough courage to make it happen. As you twisted more to the side, slanting so you could feel the smoothness of his shaved cheek, you soared. Maybe he’d wanted this too. Maybe even as long as you had, though you’d lost track of exactly what that was.

Then he pulled away. Not for breath, but for distance.

“We can’t,” he said, feeling for his wallet and pulling it out. He placed a few bills on the bar, paying for both your drinks and his. Your heart hadn’t even finished breaking by the time he was taking your hand and dragging you out of there.

He hailed a cab in record time, everything moving just a bit too fast for you to keep up with. He was ushering you into the cab without a word and then you were seated side by side, hands still clasped tight.

“Todoroki, I—”

Todoroki caught your eye and shook his head, and you stopped immediately. Just like in combat, you didn’t ask questions. You did as he said, quiet for the whole car ride to his apartment.

Luckily, it wasn’t far. Half the reason you’d been able to drag him to the bar was its proximity to his apartment. It was fully within walking distance. But it seemed he’d decided he was in a hurry.

Your hands finally split from one another as you exited the cab and you followed him through his building, still quiet. You’d been there before, visited him when he’d been sick or injured, or occasionally to talk shop—though usually that easily dissolved into something more casual with food being ordered, knees touching as you sat crisscrossed around a low table.

The moment you made it through his front door, you automatically toed off your shoes on the tatami mats. Then the light were flicked on and his lips were back on yours, catching you off guard. Hadn’t he just rejected you? Hadn’t he pulled away from you and spoken his dissent?

You fell into the push and pull of his lips against yours, both a little too dry from the constant cold and heat you put them through, but that didn’t matter. You’d dreamt of kissing this man for so long, and here he was. You allowed yourself to revel in it for just a moment more before pulling back, just as he’d done earlier.

“What’s happening?” you asked. “I thought—”

“Not in public,” he said, “That’s not how I want to do this.”

“Oh,” you said, unable to believe you’d disregarded that. Even if the bar you’d been in hadn’t been that populated, that didn’t mean that you were invisible. And, like it or not, you and Todoroki were both public figures, well known for your partnership. The two of you kissing, no matter how innocent, would be news if it went public. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Todoroki said immediately, taking your hand in his warm one. “Don’t be.”

And then he was kissing you again, this one more passionate than either of the last two. The first had been hesitant, feeling each other out, the second quick and needy. This one was full, in no rush while making sweet use of the time you did have. His other hand came up to grip your waist and you moved to grip his shoulder, feeling the swollen muscle beneath his shirt.

You were drawn to his warmth, as you always were, and your body couldn’t help but press against his, thigh to thigh, chest to chest. You’d always tried so hard to keep a professional distance that as soon as the boundary was taken away, you couldn’t seem to get close enough. Making up for lost time, as it were.

Making up for the time that was about to be taken.

You felt yourself being dragged out of the entryway, and you eagerly let it happen. In the past times you’d been to his apartment, you’d never seen his bedroom, but you knew where it was. Todoroki led you there, his lips barely leaving yours for breath, fingertips pressing in wherever they could reach.

The next thing you knew, your knees were hitting the back of a bed and you allowed yourself to be pushed back. You landed on a soft comforter atop a neatly made bed, and were met with Todoroki’s hard body crawling on top of yours. You continued to make out and you thought that if this was how you spent your last night before leaving Japan, you’d be happy. You were already happier than you’d been in ages.

Todoroki was panting when he pulled away from you, kneeling over you so that he looked powerful in a way that you didn’t usually acknowledge. You were intimately aware of Todoroki’s strength, but usually it was matched with yours, used to compliment and support you and vice versa. But now it was ­­­­suspended over you and it sent a thrill through your core. This was a side of him that you’d always wanted to see, always imagined, but never believed would be yours.

“Y/N,” he said, brushing a soft hand down your arm, the light touch making you shiver. “What do you want?”

“What do you want?” you asked, pressing up, entangling your legs.

Now both of his hands were on your arms and you loved the touch, warm on one hand, chilled on the other, but both making you equally heated.

“I want to be with you,” he said, the rare euphemism coming out as assuredly as any blunt word ever had from him. “I want to have you.”

“Me too,” you said, pushing on your knees to catch his lips again.

Then there was no stopping you. Todoroki’s hands moved down to the hem of your sweater—too cold for outside, too hot in the bar, and utterly unneeded here—and ripped it over your head before starting on the buttons of his shirt.

In the meantime, you pressed your way into his lap, riding his thighs a little as you kissed him, making your way down his neck and leaving the softest kisses, reveling in the shiver it sent down his spine as you did.

“Sensitive?” you whispered in his ear.

“Mhmm,” he murmured. Then his own shirt was off, and a quick flick of his fingers behind your back sent your bra following.

Then you were pushed back on the bed, his lips now giving your neck the same treatment. You felt him lingering in one spot halfway between your jaw and your collarbone, his teeth just barely grazing the soft skin. Before you knew what you were asking for, you whispered, “Do it,” and felt his lips latch and give a good suck.

You were going to Siberia. A scarf would never leave your neck. You’d be clothed head to toe every moment you were there, you were sure. He could mark up your whole body and no one would ever know.

What was more—you wanted him to.

You wanted to dress in the morning, clean yourself and see the footprints of his presence on your body. Little reminders that this wasn’t a dream, one of the many fantasies that had eaten at you, feeling good until they left you hollow. This was as real as the familiar smell of his detergent on his navy blue bedding. The poster of All Might you couldn’t really be surprised to see.

A moan escaped your lips as you felt the spot on your neck go hot with his ministrations, and you knew the bruise would linger for days. You grew wet at the thought of it.

“More.”

Obediently, Todoroki trailed down your neck to your chest, taking in the sight of your upper half bare to him. You’d seen him topless before, usually when the two of you exercised together, his body glistening with sweat, rippling as various muscle groups enjoyed his focus. But he’d never seen you. He looked up at you, eyes almost too soft to bear, and said, “You’re beautiful.”

You bit your lip and your head fell against his pillow as his mouth descended onto your breast, not the nipple but just above. He sucked a new spot, this one even more private than the previous. You arched your back into his mouth, wanting him to know how much you wanted it, how much you needed it. He could read you as well as ever, sucking the spot until the pain was sharp, then releasing and laving his tongue over it. Then he sunk his teeth into your nipple.

“Ah,” you gasped, gripping his hair and tugging. That pulled the smallest moan, almost a grunt out of him, and you realized that you needed more. You needed more, fast.

“Shouto,” you breathed, reaching down his waist towards his pants, but arms not quite long enough to make it there. Still, he looked into your eyes and understood, giving a smile that bloomed one of your own and pushed his jeans down, leaving him in nothing but tight boxers.

You could see his bulge straining against the fabric and your heart knocked against your chest. This was your partner, the man who held your life in his hands on the daily and his in yours. The man you sat up with doing paperwork, and who worked missions with you when you were both dead on your feet, starving, and snippy.

How did that add up to where you were now? You didn’t know, but when he unbuttoned your pants and looped his fingers around the hem, you lifted your hips. Your panties when halfway down with them, leaving half your ass against the comforter and the tops of your pubes frizzing out, but what did it matter?

You didn’t wait for Todoroki and pushed your panties the rest of the way down yourself. You immediately felt the slickness at your center begin to dribble down your thighs, sticking them together. Todoroki took the invitation and removed his boxers as well, revealing himself in his full glory to you. He was pale along the shaft and red at the tip—the same colors that you associated with him. You blushed at the thought, unable to miss the subtle dual-tone of his pubic hair, more muted in color than the hair on his head. You’d never be able to look at his split color the same way again.

Your hand was on the back of his neck, bringing him to you before you could overthink things any further. His dick pressed against the crease of your inner thigh as you tasted his tongue, the flavor of the martinis all but gone at this point and replaced with nothing but him and you.

“Y/N,” he managed, his voice coming out rough as he grinded against you, the whole of his length making it from your crosswise crease to your belly button, leaving sticky pre on your stomach. “I feel I should tell you…it’s been a while for me.”

“Me too,” you answered quickly, lifting your hips into his, pulling a groan from him.

When was there time to be meeting people—much less people who weren’t influenced by your being a mid-tier celebrity—when you were a pro hero? Not that there was any point in trying. You’d barely been able to look at other men as you spent your days fighting off a growing crush on your partner.

“I’m just saying,” he said as you went to press your lips against his neck again, “this might be over quickly.”

That affected you, causing you to bite down high on his shoulder, where the tall neck of his hero costume would more than cover.

You didn’t care about how long he would last. The base of his length had moved between your lips and was grinding soundly against your clit, ensuring that your own orgasm wouldn’t be far off either. But while you weren’t particular about how long it lasted you didn’t want it to be over. You wanted to stay in this forever.

“Nothing to prove,” you said, returning to his lips and taking them in yours. “Just need you.”

“Me too,” he said, voice low and throaty. Your heart flipped before you forced yourself not to read into it. There was no subtext. Never any subtext.

He reached away from you, pulling at a drawer next to his bed to pull out a pack of condoms. He picked a square from it and tossed the rest aside before ripping it open. He rolled the rubber down himself and you took in his size again.

It would be a lie to say that you’d never thought about what Shouto was packing before. You’d seen his costume in ribbons after a particularly grueling battle, leaving little to the imagination. You saw the thickness of his thighs, the jut of his hipbones. You’d wondered what else was there.

He didn’t disappoint. The condom left a good inch or two at the base of his cock uncovered, and he wasn’t narrow either. He’d be a stretch, a delicious elongation for you to make room for.

His hand left his dick and went to your center and you spread your legs automatically. He reached with two fingers and spread your wetness up and down your pussy. You groaned at the feeling, arching your hips up to encourage him further. Hesitantly, he began to press one finger into you and then another.

“Damn, you’re tight,” he said. “You weren’t kidding.”

You just squirmed beneath him, all of his movements far too slow to stoke anything but the smoldering coals within you. But you needed Shouto’s fire.

“Sho,” you whined. “Don’t tease.”

“I just don’t want to hurt you,” he said, his voice not carrying an ounce of the smugness that another man’s would.

“You’d never hurt me,” you said, lifting your arms up and encouraging him toward you. He indulged, giving a couple more pumps of his fingers, scissoring them just a couple times and then pulling out. Without hesitation, he slipped them into his mouth and sucked them clean.

Your face went hot. The pure nonchalance of his gesture didn’t even seem to register, as his hand dropped to the bedspread, his lips back down to yours. You tasted the tinny flavor of yourself on his lips and only felt more aroused.

“Ready?” he asked, his voice soft and hot in your ear.

You grinned. “Impatient.”

He chuckled as his knuckles brushed against your thigh, guiding his dick to your core. And then he was pressing in, stretching you wide despite the prep that he’d done. Your body ached, wanting to pull away from the discomfort, but also yearning to feel whole, feel full. But he was filling you up so slowly.

“There you are, princess.”

You felt the head of his cock kiss your cervix, and when you looked down, you saw that he wasn’t even all the way in. A good inch still hung out, keeping his hips from being flush with yours, keeping you from being as close as possible.

But you felt it, that heat that started in your groin and moved up through your stomach and your chest as you squeezed your walls around him, feeling every bit that you could. Sex wasn’t love, you knew that, but then why did having him so close make your heart flutter in a way that it didn’t when he was gone?

“Can I move, sweetheart?”

You were gone. The tone of his voice, the words on his lips made anything possible. You would take whatever he would give you and hold it with both hands.

“Please.”

He started with a gentle rocking, barely leaving you, and you were grateful for that. You were so warm when he was deep inside you, his swollen cock pressing against the nerves of your clit, even from inside. He took one hand and pressed it against the base of your belly and every sensation turned hot, searing. Every drag of his cock was magnified, and you could see the light ripple of your belly every time he plunged into your depths.

You gasped and wrapped your arms around his back, nails finding the skin under his shoulder blades and digging in. “Oh, fuck,” you whined as he upped his pace, sweat making your skin stick to each other.

“What do you need?” he grunted, his words knocking you out of your daze just enough to hone in on his sentiment.

“Fingers,” you breathed.

Todoroki rotated his hand so that the heel of his palm pressed right above your pubic bone, and the tips of his fingers began toying with your clit. After that, it wasn’t long. Your hands clawed at his back, knees rose all on their own and clung to his sides.

“Shouto,” you cried desperately. “Shouto…!”

“I’ve got you, baby, I’ve got you.”

“I—” Your voice broke as the heat spread from your core and your chest to all through your body. Even your extremities, always cold from your quirk, became flush with warmth, your cheeks hot, lashes wet as Todoroki only seemed to move quicker. “I’m—Shouto!”

Your breath left you as your orgasm tore out of you. It seemed that was all Todoroki needed, as he pushed a few more desperate ruts into you, half your name passing his lips before he stuttered to a halt, only managing a few more rough passes of his cock before he collapsed on top of you.

You panted as the heat left your body, save for all the corners at which Todoroki was still pressed against you. Those were hot, hot as any touch from him had ever been. You felt him adjust his hips as he pulled out of you, but you didn’t loosen your hold across his back, not wanting to break apart.

“Y/N,” Shouto said after a minute. “We have to clean up.”

Always so logical. Always so sensible. Your brows furrowed above your closed eyes as you tried to wish it away. You wanted to stay here. As long as you stayed put, it felt like time was paused in this moment for you. That you could live in afterglow forever.

“I know,” you said, but you made no sign to move.

Todoroki seemed to think this was because he was on top of you and rolled to the side, peeling of the condom as he did so.

You shivered immediately, your combined sweat on your chest cooling and leaving your skin tacky and raised with goosebumps.

“C’mon,” Todoroki said, placing a hand over yours. “We’ll take a shower.”

He helped you up, your body heavy, though you didn’t know if it was from pleasure or denial, and led you to the bathroom, flicking on the shower.

Under the hot spray, you leaned into the touches of Todoroki treating your skin with soap, pressing his hand gently between your legs to clean you of evidence of your activities. When he faced away from you, you gasped at the lines of red you’d left down his back, pairs of stripes marking either side of his spine. The spot you’d left on his neck was already purple, as were the two he’d left on you.

“I’m so sorry, Shouto,” you said, rubbing light fingertips over the raised spots.

“I don’t mind,” he said, turning around and taking your hand in his. “Don’t worry.”

He passed his thumb over the bruise on your breast and, despite the warm water, the soft touch had you shivering again. The intimacy was surprising. Weren’t you supposed to rebuild your walls after your time in bed was over? Was this a one night stand?

It had to be. Because you were leaving.

With that thought on your mind, you wrapped your arms around him and hid your face in his shoulder as the water poured over you. You couldn’t face him.

But you surely couldn’t let him go either.

“Stay.”

You felt Todoroki’s chest rumble around your hands, his words carrying into your bones. You weren’t certain whether he was talking about tonight, or asking you not to go to Russia. But, either way, tonight, you could do. It was all you could do.

The vibration of your phone was faint, but pulled you from slumber as the sensation rattled up your arm. Somehow you’d managed to keep your phone clenched in your sleep and you fumbled as quickly as you could in your haze to turn off the alarm. Your motions were imprecise as sleep and the last vestiges of alcohol coated a thin film over your senses.

You blinked at your phone. 4am. It was early, but that didn’t mean you had time to spare. As you tried to peel through the murky layers in your mind, you became aware of the sensation of something thick and warm across your middle.

The next breath you took squeezed your chest, seeming to inflate your heart instead of your lungs, bolstering the dual weight of joy and heartache. Todoroki’s touch was always one that you craved, his left side so warm to your constant chill while his right side never shivered at your own cold touch. You wanted to curl in closer, scoot back to deny the few inches that were separating most of the lines of your bodies.

But you couldn’t. The arm was enough of a problem.

As slowly as you could, you scooted out from under his hold, hoping that the alcohol—or the sex—had rendered Todoroki out cold. This was the first time you’d seen him in repose, so you weren’t sure of your luck. He’d never told you if he was a heavy sleeper or not.

So you could only hope for the best as you slid to the ground, recovering the clothes you hadn’t put back on after your shower and gathered them in your arm. You just had to leave the bedroom without waking him up.

But that didn’t mean you couldn’t look back.

Todoroki’s room was dark, each piece of furniture nothing more but a rectangular shadow in the sparse space. But Todoroki’s hair, pure white on his right side, caught just enough light to draw focus to the bits of him that poked out of his blanket. His cheek pressed against the same pillow you’d used, the second one behind him resting untouched. You let yourself study him, memorize him like this, and then brought a hand to your lips and blew him a kiss, relieved you hadn’t woken him.

You didn’t know what you’d do if you had to say goodbye.

The good thing was that you could feel that you weren’t hungover. You and Todoroki had both gulped big glasses of water before bed and it seemed it had paid off. Of course now you had to pee, but that would just have to wait. You couldn’t risk making the noise.

You called a car to Todoroki’s building. You were all packed back at your place, and then you’d have to dash to the airport to make the flight that had been arranged for you. It seemed this was all happening so quickly to keep you from even being able to consider making a decision. Your next steps were handed to you quicker than you could plan for. Your agreement was expected. Assured.

You shuffled back into your clothes at the front door, not wanting the pull of your sweater against your skin or the zip of your jeans to alert Todoroki to your sudden departure. Then you slipped on your shoes and pushed yourself out the door before your car was even ten minutes away. Once you closed Todoroki’s door, there was no way back in—an automatic lock. No turning back.

As you passed through the bright corridors of the apartment complex and then to the sheet of darkness outdoors, you felt the stillness of the world at 4am. Your sluggishness from both the remaining alcohol in your system and the paltry three or so hours of sleep you’d gotten feeling endemic to the atmosphere. It was a lull, providing you just enough awareness to gently guide you through the motions, but not enough to truly have to think about them.

The cold curled around you as you waited on the car, making you shiver through your sweater despite your high tolerance. You wished that Todoroki was back beside you, making you warm with either his quirk or just his presence. But now, every move you made was taking you one step further from him for who knew how long.

Time crept by before your car finally approached. You sent it in the direction of your own apartment, dark and empty, and told the guy to wait once you got there. You’d be right back down.

And then it was off to the airport to catch a redeye due north.

Shouto felt cold.

Not from his quirk. No, he’d just finished his first solo patrol in months, and there wasn’t a villain to be seen, so he hadn’t had to use either his right side or his left.

Now that he was back at the agency, he felt sluggish. Pulling his boots off, unzipping his uniform was a chore. He placed them on the wooden bench mechanically, wondering if this was what the next month or so would be like since you had left his apartment this morning.

The thought of it was bittersweet. He’d been so happy yesterday, and then had woken up to find nothing but bunched up covers in front of him when he’d woken up. Your smell had barely even lingered, since you’d showered using his soap. He’d been left alone with little more than the memory that you’d been there at all, the whole thing barely feeling real at that point.

He’d been cold ever since.

It took Shouto only five minutes to fill out his no-incident log, and then there was nothing to do but go home. But the last time he’d gone home had been with you by his side, the promise of kisses in the air between you. He was loath to replace that memory by schlepping home with loneliness as his new partner.

He closed his locker door with a slam, frustration feeding his emotions. He needed to snap out of it. You were his partner, dammit, and you were away on hero work. That shouldn’t have left him feeling so empty.

Worse, he didn’t know what to make of last night. You both had been tipsy, but not drunk—he was sure of that. You’d been to enough company holiday parties, galas, and celebrations to know each other’s spectrums of drunkenness pretty well. So that meant there should be no regret, right? He didn’t regret it.

But you’d left without saying goodbye. Had you just been upset about having to leave and had got caught up in the moment? Had you been trying to communicate something he wasn’t getting?

Shouto ran an irritated hand through his hair and left the locker room, marching for the elevator. When he made it to the boss’s door, he gave three good raps of his knuckles and waited, his nerves more on edge than they’d been for his entire shift. He touched the bruise at the base of his neck through the turtleneck he had on now. It was probably good he’d been in the locker room alone. This morning, he’d gotten a good look at the scratches you’d put on his back, flashing immediately back to the moments before your orgasm when you’d clung to him so tightly, seeming to need him more than you ever had in combat.

“Come in.” Shouto walked in to see the agency’s manager smiling up at him as she lowered her laptop screen. “Oh good, I was hoping to speak to you, “Shouto.”

She gestured to one of the chairs in front of her desk, plush green ones with rounded upholstered backs. Shouto sat down and eyed her wordlessly.

“We haven’t worked out the details completely, so that’s why I hadn’t called you in yet, but it’s just as well that you’re here,” she began, intertwining her fingers and resting her chin on them. She was casual in a way that Shouto didn’t quite think was professional, but that you always said you appreciated. “We’ve been speaking with Deku’s manager and think that it’s a great opportunity while Snow is gone for a little PR between the two of you. It’ll look good, the two of you, high school friends, crossing agencies to do a little partner work to make up for the fact that Snow isn’t here.”

“That sounds fine.”

He wouldn’t mind working with Deku—they didn’t get to see each other often enough as it was now that they were both pros. Their quirks didn’t work as well together as yours and his did, but he did know Deku’s style well enough to be able to work seamlessly. It would do in the interim.

“Of course, it’s too bad to lose her while you two are going up in the rankings, but we’ll just have to make the best of it.”

“Right,” Shouto said, his hands going clammy. “Have you heard from her? Do you know if she’s landed?”

“The flight has landed,” she said. “But I have not heard from Snow. There won’t be any internet or cell service there.”

Shouto’s eyes widened, posture falling forward. “What?”

“That’s right,” she said, looking only the slightest bit apologetic. Not nearly enough. “I’ll probably get occasional updates about the course of the operation, but we can’t expect anything more than that.”

“So we just won’t hear from her for a month,” he stated, voice tumbling out quick with disbelief.

“Maybe less, maybe more.”

Shouto stared, able to see his reflection in his boss’s perfectly polished glasses. His jaw worked as he finally looked down, hands pushing against the seat of his chair, ready to push up and out of there. “Are we finished?”

“You’re dismissed.”

Shouto swept out of there, feeling the tension of a slowly ticking clock following him.

November

“Three, two, one.”

The man beside you put his hands on the wall and you felt the telltale vibration that the snow around your feet never seemed to dampen. A round hole dug through the thick concrete wall of the building you were back against as you held a pile of snow taken from the ground aloft, ready to turn it into spikes or a dense shield or sword at a moment’s notice.

As soon as the wall was dug through, you charged in first, masses of snow floating on either side of you. You ran fast, perhaps a bit quicker than was strategic. The nondescript hallways of the concrete building blurred past you, mixing in a blur of beige as you kept your senses alert. All you could pick up on, though, were your own echoing footsteps and those of the team behind you.

When the path split, so did your group, different people going down different hallways as you continued straight, barreling forward. There had to be something this time. Some clue, some person. Or, gods willing, maybe the whole operation would fall into your lap. Rarely did you hope for battle when on patrol, but you were. Eight weeks and yet to actually interact with any of the big bads you’d read about had you itching for a fight. Hungry for it.

Anything to get this over with.

But you already knew there was nothing. Nothing more than the dank smell of mold from melted snow traveling from the grimy corners of rooms and hallways into the air. The wireless communicator in your ear was silent and you didn’t see anything to hint at any signs of human life. No footprints—nothing.

You let go of some of the snow you were holding, turning it to ice slabs and sticking it to the rough texture of the cement walls. You weren’t going to waste your energy on villains who weren’t here.

You barely felt yourself slowing to a stop, nearly causing the person behind you to smack into you. “Sorry,” you said, before gathering the strength to at least keep walking.

A clean sweep would have to be done before this building was rendered a lost cause like all the rest. And then you’d go back home.

Well, not home. Not even close.

“Why don’t you go outside?”

The Mole’s eyes were on your leg, which was bouncing up and down as you sat in a rocking chair, trying and failing to read. You turned to him, eyes cold. He had the strange snout of a star-nosed mole, though it had nothing to do with his quirk. Neither did his name, which you always thought made it sound like he was some sort of spy. No, his quirk was tunneling, which was handy for powering through old cement prisons, seeing if they had hidden basements but made for quite the nightmare from a hero branding standpoint. You’d gone simple. Ice quirk. Snow.

“Fine,” you said, standing up, feeling the heat you’d created in your leg from the anxious bouncing.

It took five minutes to bundle up. Thick socks over your thermal leggings and snow pants over those. Gloves then jacket, scarf then coat. Hat and waterproof boots. All that and when you stepped outside, you still felt the cold biting into you. Still, outside might have been cold, but inside was stifling. After two months you had cabin fever bad.

It turned out that Siberia had its own League of Villains much like the one Todoroki had interacted so much with during his high school days. Siberia housed a lot of prisons that had been dealing with high profile escapes for months. Then people with matching quirks descriptions were showing up in groups, wreaking havoc only to recruit more members.

But they were slick. Siberia was so vast that so long as the villains made it in and out quickly, hunting them down was a wild goose chase. By now, you were afraid that they had one or more teleportation quirks in their ranks, able to send them hither and yon without so much as a scent to follow.

Thinking about it too hard grated on your nerves, though, so you walked over to the garden. This was the real reason why you’d been sent to Siberia alone, without room for even just one other person to join you. Your group of heroes was off the grid with as little contact with the outside as possible. That meant growing your own food.

In the arctic.

You approached a woman who simply went by Dell—you didn’t know if it was her real name or a hero title—who had bare fingers to the soil, coaxing life out of a potato sprout. You crouched behind her, back naturally curling to match her premature hunch, making her look older than she was—and she did look old. There’d been no snowfall today, so the only snow that had to be cleared was that that had been blown by the wind. Light stuff, easy to move as breath itself—easier, actually. In this cold, every breath felt like it tore at your nostrils, then your lungs. You’d thought you were used to the cold, but it turned out you didn’t truly know it.

You easily moved the snow that had strayed into the garden, compacting it into a snowball and dropping it in your hand to toss it off into the pine trees. That brought you a smile, at least. Then you began the harder work of picking the frost out of the soil. You’d grown spoiled, manipulating little ice other than Todoroki’s for three years now. What he created was perfectly pure, exactly what your quirk liked best. This stuff was tiny, stuck in dirt and warped with atoms besides hydrogen and oxygen. It was good practice, but it made you miss the ease with which you interacted with Todoroki’s quirk. Like it was an extension of your own.

Dell’s eyes were closed, and if you didn’t know better, you’d think that she was totally unaware of your presence, her focus solely on the plants. They were growing, just barely perceptively—almost a trick of the eyes. If you stared long enough, though, you could see a leaf’s edge move past one wrinkle on her knuckle to another, a mark of the growth.

Her quirk allowed for her to steer nutrients from the earth into plants. So long as they had sunlight and water, they could grow more rapidly. She could protect them somewhat from the cold as well, but your quirk was also intended to help with that. While you couldn’t heat the soil, you could keep the frost off of it, keep the leaves bare and pointing up to the sun.

“Bad nerves?”

You looked at Dell, her eyes still closed. You couldn’t even say what color they were, you’d so rarely seen them open. When they were, she was walking from one plot to the next, eyes cast down. Humans got her ears and her mouth, plants got her eyes and her touch. As for smell—it was hard to smell anything in this cold, much less through the scarves everyone had bundled up to their eyes.

“No,” you said, perhaps a bit petulantly. One didn’t get to be a hero with bad nerves. You had to be cool and calm under pressure. Steady.

“They sent you out again.”

It had become a habit of the group, the dozen or so members who had access to this remote cabin. A location only to be found with coordinates of latitude and longitude, as there were no other landmarks for miles. Just snow, trees, and Dell’s small garden. When the few weeks your boss had promised you turned to the month you’d promised Todoroki, then turned to five weeks and even six, you’d become more and more ornery. At least you always had Dell to talk to when you were kicked out, the comfort of the snow around you feeling both familiar and allowing you to feel powerful.

No one had mentioned that you’d have no internet access. No cell phone. No courier service. The detectives in the group had some internet access, but it was strictly for professional use. Not a single private email was to be sent.

“Not a lot of patience for fidgeters,” you mumbled. “Gotta do something to stay warm.”

“The fireplace makes me sweat,” Dell commented, shifting to the next plant over.

It did for you too—you’d just been making an excuse. It was so hard to get a neutral temperature in this place. This was the land of extremes. Blizzard or drought, heat or frostbite. Yet people continued to survive and have the propensity to commit crimes.

“Something is on your mind.”

Todoroki.

On your flight north, you’d let the warm feelings of your night together linger over you, kindling into hope. He hadn’t said anything, but Todoroki wasn’t foolish enough to jeopardize a years’ old partnership for the sake of carnal passion. No, if he was going to sleep with you, it was going to be for a reason. Just like you.

Since then, you’d been in two months’ worth of circles.

“I didn’t tell anyone goodbye,” you said, just one of the many things that had been on your mind. “I didn’t get to tell anyone.”

You’d put every effort into not waking him. You hadn’t left a note. You hadn’t stolen one last kiss or even a touch of his hand. You’d thought you’d be able to talk again. Soon.

What was the point of being one time zone away if you couldn’t make contact?

“You’re missing someone,” Dell surmised, pulling a potato the size of her fist from the ground you’d just cleared of frost. Without you, it would have taken a shovel to do that. The frozen ground here was as hard as asphalt.

“Yeah,” you said. It wasn’t that you didn’t miss everyone else, but at least you knew what you’d be coming back to with anyone else in your life. You relationships were stable. But Todoroki…

“You’re in love.”

You’d been staring at the dirt, your eyes practically frozen over. You blinked up to find Dell’s eyes staring at you. They were a murky brown—or maybe a murky blue. They were right in that land of in between.

“Can you really be in love if you’re not in a relationship?” you asked. “If you’re not in it with someone else, really testing out what your compatibility is like? Isn’t it just a crush otherwise?”

You didn’t know why you were asking her. You were the only person you ever saw speaking with Dell—the others seemed to think that her plants were enough for her, that she had all the conversation that she needed with them. Maybe that was true. You had no idea what she knew of love.

“Is dating the only way to know those things?” she asked. “Is dating the only relationship of meaning?”

“Of course not,” you answered. It sounded stupid the way she said it. You and Todoroki were partners—had been. You had no idea if you’d been replaced. Certainly temporarily, if not permanently. But you knew how the two of you worked. Perfectly in tandem. As each other’s other half.

The wry laugh that followed didn’t come out as anything more than a breath, muffled in our scarf.

“So you love them,” she said, a smile quirking her lips as she pulled another potato. “But they don’t know.”

“I thought he might,” you said, the cold from both the air and your quirk leeching out any heat that that cabin had brought you.

“But now?”

You had no clue.

December

As The Mole tunneled into this building, you could tell it was different right away. Rather, you could hear it.

Human noises. Voices. Multiple of them. You ran in first, taking your place as the muscle of the group as you carried as much snow and ice in with you as you could without inhibiting your peers’ vision. You stuck patches of it to the wall, where it wouldn’t be in the way, but would be available for you to call on. Then you readied a staff of ice, compact with no air pockets so that they wouldn’t snap as soon as a fist or weapon came at them.

You began knocking people down indiscriminately, thwacking them with your staff and then sending slicks of ice to their feet, sending people sprawling. You created handcuffs and restraints watching to see who had a quirk that would let them crack out of them, only for you to trap them in something bigger.

Three months. Three months of isolation with no one but a handful of colleagues to keep you company, nothing but the case and the garden to give you purpose. Now, all of that impatience, all that frustration came walloping out on these villains, descriptions matching the text that had burned into the back of your eyes.

A screech came through the hallway, making your fingers go numb almost too quickly to counter for. But these villains didn’t know who they were dealing with.

You formed hunks of ice in your ears, freezing one of the only parts of your body that still felt the warm pulse of your blood, but silencing out some of the noise. You clenched your staff, ignoring the tingles of the villain attack and headed back into battle, deafened, looking for a mouth to fill with ice.

It was easy to spot the one making the soundwaves. It was a quirk similar to Present Mic’s, except the pitch was always high and, rather than just being painfully loud, it was at such a frequency that it messed with the nervous system. You jabbed some snow into his mouth, feeling it form around the nooks and crannies of his teeth, pressing it up against his soft palate, and turned it from compact snow to hard ice, hoping he got brain freeze.

You weren’t usually so coldhearted. But you’d been in Siberia for three months. You wouldn’t allow anyone to get frostbite. You’d cuddle any villain you gave hypothermia to if you had to. But your nerves were raw as your throat was with every frozen breath you took. It had taken three days through the tundra to reach this place.

Your patience was at its end. You’d been brought on to be the brute force.

So you were brutal.

You continued plowing through the crew in the windowless hallway, catching more of the quirks you’d read about in the mission’s write ups. Fortunately, most people could be stopped by ice—it just depended how much ice would be needed. The next thing you knew, a hole was burst through in the ceiling. You raised a shield of ice over your head, saving you from the dust and plaster that rained down on you, though it did little to help your vision.

You were unsure if the move had been done by your side or theirs, an accident or not. But it was to the villains’ detriment, as you were now able to reach your pull out of the building and drag in heaps of snow through the new hole. Now you could cage people completely if you needed to; you could freeze the whole room.

Although, suddenly, it became much harder to do that. Your ice wanted to melt. You had to focus on all that you’d already molded, keeping it solid and strong as you felt the temperature in the room steadily rising. You were sweating, both from the exertion of the fight and then the heat you first felt on the exposed skin of your face and then at your extremities, tingling from the temperature change now that the previous numbness had dissipated. Something was coming. Something hot.

Then you saw it, a bright orange flecked with streaks of yellow and red, fluid and coming at you. Reflexively, you brought your ice up to shield you. It held long enough to turn the incandescent source from orange to black in an instant. Then what was once liquid was suddenly solid, sending it crashing through your ice and to your skull.

You didn’t even remember falling.

You woke up to a pounding headache, exacerbated by the constant rumbling underneath you. You opened your eyes and found yourself already sitting up, strapped in the backseat of a car.

Panic shot through your veins immediately. You’d been caught. The villains were taking you somewhere. The feeling only lasted a second, though, as your wits returned. You were bound by nothing more than a seatbelt, limbs loose and free to unbuckle at an instant.

“What’s happening?” you asked, your voice dry.

The teammate beside you handed you a water bottle as The Mole began to speak from the driver’s seat. “Mission’s over, kid,” he said, “I tunneled the lava quirk into the ground and when he used his quirk to ride back up, we were able to capture him.”

“But what about all the other villains?” you asked

You had no idea how many had been there. Your shots had been fired indiscriminately at anyone who wasn’t one of the few people you’d spent the last three months holed up with. Everyone else had gotten your ice—until that lava villain had melted it.

“Your ice held even when you were unconscious,” he said, glittering eyes catching yours in the rearview mirror. “You’ve got a strong grip, kid.”

You furrowed your brow, drawing your attention back to the throbbing at the side of your head. You were definitely concussed, but that was nothing you couldn’t push through.

What The Mole was describing shouldn’t have been possible. Certainly, the ice couldn’t have been that strong to have withheld the heat that villain brought into the room. Unless you were holding it in place. Which you always had to put thought into. Thought that wasn’t possible when you were knocked out.

You froze a bit of the water in the bottle that was in your hand, playing with the ice as you shifted the fractals from snow to ice, changing the shapes like you were twisting the base of a monochrome kaleidoscope.

Your quirk had gotten stronger here. All the snow you’d worked with—the vast amounts, the uncontrollable impurities, not to mention your hours of detail work in the garden—it had refined your craft. Outside of the minimal hero work you’d been able to pull off—until the hurrah at the end, of course—the last three months had been an intensive in using your quirk. In living up to your hero name as you were thrust into the stuff it was made of. Without Todoroki to rely on.

“Are we going home?” you asked suddenly. The Mole had said that the mission was over, but…

“Yeah, we’re all going home,” he said, and you could hear the grin on his face.

Home, you thought in relief, your head falling gently to the headrest. Then you froze.

Home.

Shouto.

“Shouto?”

Midoriya was right in front of Shouto, eyebrows raised in concern. Shouto leaned back reflexively—he hadn’t even noticed Midoriya approaching him on the sidewalk. His training shouldn’t have allowed for that to happen, but he’d been distracted.

“Something on your phone?”

Shouto was suddenly aware that he’d been staring at his phone entirely too long. He’d barely noticed the snow landing and melting on the screen. He wiped it against his pants.

In the three months that he and Midoriya had been partnering—offset with many solo shifts and shifts with their various sidekicks—Shouto had been pushing himself. He’d been overcompensating because you’d become inextricable from his battling style over the years. And now that you were gone, he had to be on top of his game.

But, aside from that—he wasn’t mad about having to further hone his skills, after all—he and Midoriya had needed to be on their best behavior. There’d been more citizens and fans to interact with, more autographs to sign, more selfies to pose for. Midoriya had taken on your usual role of speaking with charm to the crowd, and Shouto was thankful. Thanks to him, PR had been right; Shouto’s public perception had gone up.

However, staring enraptured by his cell phone while on the job didn’t look good.

“She’s coming back,” Shouto said, unable to quite have it in him to put away the phone, still open to the email he’d just received. He had a special alert for work messages and he’d almost skipped this one when he’d heard the notification. They’d done nothing but disappoint him for weeks now—months.

“Snow?” Midoriya asked, his grin bright and genuine as ever. “Wow, that’s amazing! When?”

“Should be today,” Shouto said, staring back at the little box of black and white text on his screen. “Soon.”

His heart started pounding, and suddenly all the warmth that he’d been missing for months was pooling back in his belly, in his cheeks, in his sweaty palms.

“Shouto, are you okay?” Midoriya asked, cocking his head as he brought his hands up to the phone and lowered it.

“I’m not sure,” Shouto said, putting his phone back in his pocket to find his hands tingly, his fingertips feeling flush and warm. He took a step in the light dusting of snow, continuing the route of their patrol while Midoriya followed. “I feel very…anticipatory.”

“Anticipatory?” Midoriya echoed. “You mean excited? I know you’ve been eager for her to come back.”

“Yes, but…” Shouto let out a sigh, brushing both sweaty hands through his hair. “I don’t know.”

Midoriya smiled, eyes wide with mirth. “You’re nervous. What do you have to be nervous about?”

Shouto had been playing over the events of the last time he saw you for three months now to the point that word you’d said, every sound you’d breathed when you’d been underneath him was branded in his mind. But in between all of it, there’d never been any promises, any statements that he could glean your intentions from.

“We slept together. The night before she left.”

Midoriya nearly choked, doubling over coughing while Shouto cocked his head and patted the man’s back. He’d probably swallowed some spit.

“Midoriya,” Shouto continued, grateful that the snow was keeping people off the streets, and they could speak for a moment without hordes of fans approaching them for once, “do you think that one can make love to someone if it’s onesided?”

When he could stand straight again, Midoriya’s face was red, so Shouto waited for him to get his breath back under him as they began walking again.

“Um, wow, sorry, you just surprised me,” Midoriya said. “Can we backtrack for a second?”

“But nothing was happening back—”

“No, I mean,” Midoriya pinched the bridge of his nose and Shouto paused, allowing him to gather his thoughts, “was that the, uh, first time?”

“Yes.”

“And, er, nothing like that had ever happened before?”

“No.”

“And you’re in love with her?”

Shouto became aware of his heartbeat again, now moving up to his throat. He could see your face in his mind’s eye and wondered if your hair was longer or if you’d had it cut while you were away? Had being up north paled your skin since you’d been here in the fall, or would it have the same hue as when you’d left? It had been so long since he’d seen you; would he even notice?

“I’m not certain,” Shouto said. “But…”

Shouto put two fingers to the pulse point at the base of his neck. The mark you’d left there was long since gone, as were the marks on his back, but he could still feel the ghost of them. Your touch had hardly left his mind in the three long months of autumn turning over to endless winter.

“My heart races when I think of her.”

“Aw,” Deku said, his mouth turning down in one of those smiles that radiated out even when it curved the wrong way. “You do. But wait, you asked if you could, uh, make love if it’s onesided. Why do you think it’s onesided?”

“Because she didn’t say anything,” he reasoned. “And her actions could have meant a lot of different things.”

“Shouto,” Midoriya put a hand on Shouto’s shoulder, “obviously I don’t know the whole situation, but do you really think that her actions would mean anything other than her liking you?”

“I just…” Shouto made a block of ice in his hand, thinking of the fine control you had over your quirk. You could take this crude creation of his and turn it into something utilitarian, whimsical, beautiful. Then he took it in his other hand and melted it away. “I always thought I would be a solo hero. But I really don’t want to have to keep doing this without her.”

“So go,” Midoriya said. “You said she’ll be back soon, right? Go to her then. I can handle,” Midoriya gestured to the light flurries around them, “all this.”

Beyond the flurries there were only a few pedestrians, clad with umbrellas. There was a fairly steady parade of slow-moving cars on the city block, but no one seemed to be in a rush today. The snow made everything quiet.

“But I still don’t know—”

“You know, Shouto,” Midoriya said, an assured smile on his face. “So go do what you need to do.”

Upon getting to the airport, you’d had access to the internet for the first time since you’d left, and the first thing you’d done was google Todoroki’s name. You had to make sure that he was alive and uninjured. In doing so, you’d stumbled across heaps of articles with photos of him and Hero Deku, a few of which mentioned your absence and yours and Todoroki’s esteemed partnership.

Was there a partnership to come back to? Or had it been dissolved in your absence and you’d have to become a solo hero or settle for sidekicks until a new partner came along.

You weren’t sure that you’d ever be able to partner with someone else after working with Todoroki.

You’d become much stronger in your time abroad—you knew that now—but you wanted to bring that back to Todoroki. You wanted to show him what you’d learned, wanted to feel that power in a battle alongside him.

On the airplane, you tried to push all that aside and focused on Japan. You’d packed so sparely for the trip that the few pairs of socks you’d brought were threadbare, your costume in need of a replacement. You thought of the warmer weather, the longer days, the familiar faces, and your own warm bed. 

By the time you landed, you’d almost convinced yourself. You hailed a car, enjoying in the easy Japanese you exchanged with the driver rather than the broken English you’d brought with you to Russia.

All you needed was Japan. You could worry about everything else later

You had the car drop you off on the corner of the street from your apartment building. The snow was coming down, but it was different than it had been up north. It was only just starting to stick, each step leaving a bald spot on the sidewalk that would be filled again in a few minutes. The chill wasn’t bitter, the air no longer biting. For a moment, you reveled in the snow. It would likely be melted by noon tomorrow and, despite all the snow you’d just left, you’d still miss it when it was gone.

When you approached your building, you noticed a silhouette loitering outside through the dimming light of the afternoon. The sun set only an hour later than it did in Siberia—still not nearly enough daylight. No one knew that you were returning today, so this person couldn’t be waiting for you, but you still used your quirk to sweep away the snow to leave your vision unobscured between yourself and the figure.

You recognized the hair immediately. The last thing you’d seen before you’d left.

“Shouto?” you called, your pace increasing as you released the snow and it flurried back to fill the void you’d created. “What are you doing here?”

That rare smile tugged at his face and then he was coming your way, arms outstretched.

“I missed you so much.”

You felt his hands coming to clutch your arms first. Then, not a moment later, his lips slanted over yours and your suitcase toppled to the ground.

His lips were cold. The cheek your hand came up to touch was cold. But his tongue was hot, and you could feel the heat spreading throughout you as wildfire on kindling kept too dry and too isolated.

He pulled away too soon, your mouth taking in a breath of frozen air when it had expected another touch of his lips.

“I’m sorry, I should have asked,” he said, taking a step back.

“No, it’s okay!” you reassured him, feet creeping half a step forward, feeling the crunch of snow under your boot. “It’s just…we’re in public.”

You remembered last time, when Shouto’d had the foresight to save any physical affection for the privacy of his home. A good call, as it seemed that any knowledge of your stolen kiss at the bar hadn’t leaked.

“And it seems a lot of people have been enjoying taking your picture lately,” you said, referencing all the photos you’d seen with him and Deku.

He smiled again—maybe they weren’t so rare after all. “I don’t care. I mean, if you do that’s fine, but I want people to see us together. Because…I want to be together. If you do.”

He took your hands in his and you wished neither of you were wearing gloves. You wished all the bundled layers between you would fall away—you’d been in cold worse than this.

“I do,” you said, and you leaned in to kiss him to prove your point. If he was okay with people seeing, you didn’t care either. Your boss could take it up with you later. “I really do.”

“Good,” he said, and his hands slipped up your arms before wrapping behind you, pressing you against him. You clung to him, fists clutching the fluffy material of his coat. “I know that maybe it’s too early to call this a relationship or anything—”

“I don’t think so.”

Todoroki fell silent at your interruption, waiting for you to continue. But, for a moment, you contented yourself in breathing in his scent, before pulling your face away to look into his eyes, pupils wide from the dimming light.

“A friend told me that a relationship isn’t the only way to have a partnership with someone. That it wasn’t the only circumstance around which to have true feelings for someone,” you explained, thinking of Dell.

“You were thinking about this while you were away?”

“Every day.”

He kissed your forehead, and then his eyes urged you to continue. “What did you think about?”

“Well,” you started, feeling flush from the gesture, “the way I see it, things usually go crush, partnership, sex. Or, I guess if you’re feeling impatient, crush, then sex, then partnership. But we kind of did: partnership, crush, sex. We have all the right pieces, they were just out of order.”

“That’s not so bad,” he murmured, low voice sounding deep and rumbly so close to you. If you didn’t have the soft layers of your overcoats between you, you’d be able to feel the vibrations under your skin.

“So the only thing we really need to catch up on…is dating.”

Your eyes met his shyly, a question hidden in your words. Todoroki wasn’t always good at reading between the lines, but you were good at reading his face. You saw the understanding in his eyes.

“Well,” Todoroki said, looking around. “I understand if you’re sick of the snow, but it’s not that late yet. Maybe we could go for a walk and see where it takes us?”

“I’m never sick of the snow,” you said with a grin, taking one hand off Todoroki’s back so that you could pull all the flakes that had fallen on his person at once and swirl them in your hand, just like you’d done in the bar so many months ago. One of your favorite tricks since you were a kid. Then you dropped them to the ground with their brethren. “I even got pretty good with it.”

“Impressive,” Todoroki said. His voice was deadpan, but the brightness in his eyes hinted at his intrigue.

“I learned some tricks while I was away.”

“I can’t wait to see them,” he said. “And, you know, I don’t mind a little snow either.”

A snowflake landed on your cheek and before it melted, Todoroki leaned in and kissed it, replacing the cold with his heated touch. When you left the embrace, you remembered your suitcase flat on the ground, handle outstretched. Todoroki saw your gaze and reached for it, but you did him one better. You grabbed the thing and pushed it into a hedge outside your building, totally obscured in the low evening light. Todoroki raised a brow at you, but you just smiled, summoning snow and turning it to ice. You wrapped it around your suitcase, sticking it to the ground, and giving it a coating too troublesome for a thief to bother with hacking through with a pick.

“It’ll melt,” Shouto said. “We can just take it up to your room or leave it in your lobby.”

“No,” you said easily, looking up at the falling snow. “I don’t want to miss a moment of this. And besides, it won’t melt. I told you I’ve learned some tricks.”

And, just like always, he didn’t question you. He simply offered his hand to you and you took it as though it was ordinary. As though the many times you’d been side by side over the years had always been linked with a hand, not just trust.

Then, without a destination, you took off strolling. The night wasn’t nearly as dark as it had been in your little cabin in Siberia, what with all the city lights. The air was still below freezing, but you’d never felt warmer.

“Can I ask you something?” you said, before the air fully settled and left you in a lull of silent contentment. “Why did you bring me home with you? Back then. Did you like me and just didn’t say anything or…?”

Todoroki was quiet for a moment, the night air filled with the drone of slow-moving cars and the beeping of city crosswalks.

“It was nothing I had thought about before,” he admitted. “But when you kissed me, I wanted to kiss you back…because it was you.”

That didn’t really tell you anything. Nothing about what he’d felt before or after, nothing about how that had led him to waiting out of your building to kiss you again. But, at the same time, it told you everything. Because, after all, it was the same reason you’d kissed him. That you’d liked him at all. Because he was your partner, your best friend, the person you trusted with your life over anyone else.

Because…it was him.